Of the 42 massively anticipated films coming out over the next year, only one of them is a new Tarantino film. Django Unchained is one of the most exciting concepts to come down the pike in a long time, and the addition of such an amazing cast only cements the expectations.

Entertainment Weekly has unchained the first official shots from the film showcasing three of its high class stars. The first shot looks incredibly western-y with Christophe Waltz and Jamie Foxx looking fantastic in some period gear.

The second image is far more exciting. Leonardo DiCaprio as evil plantation owner Calvin Candie, who makes his strongest slaves fight each other to the death. This cruel basterd has Foxx’s wife, and the plot of the movie will generally revolve around his attempts to save her.

With a Christmas release date, hopefully we should be seeing some actual footage soon. Inglorius Basterds and Kill Bill were high water marks for Tarantino’s visual style, so there is great excitement to see what he does with a western sandbox. The possibilities are staggering when a filmmaker is on a career high, his concept is solid gold and has the cast to pull it off.

Check out the full pictures after the jump.

The titan of quality that is Pixar might have stubbed it’s toe last year with the release of the sub-par Cars 2, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still riding a nearly two decade long winning streak. Creatively, their mandate of doing what isn’t expected has paid off in droves.

What makes Brave such an interesting next step for Pixar is the fact that it is the first film with a female lead who is for all intents and purposes a princess. That’s right, this is a classic Disney princess fairy tale, but done the Pixar way. Fans of Disney and Pixar have reason to be very excited at that prospect.

Disney has just released a third trailer for the film, but instead of just hyper cutting more footage to beautiful music, they opted for an extended scene that does a brilliant job of summing up the general conflict of the movie. You can tell immediately that this film has that Pixar charm we all know and love.

Check out the new trailer after the jump.

With the recent resurgence of fairy tale themed shows such as NBC’s Grimm and ABC’s own Once Upon a Time, the Disney-owned company is now prepared to launch their second fabled show in the form of a live-action retelling of the children’s classic Beauty and the Beast, originally written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.

The pilot will be written by Jonathan E. Steinberg (Human Target, Jericho with Steinberg acting as executive producer with Gary Fleder and Mary Beth Basile. It is also speculated that the series, if picked up, will air after the networks already highly successful Once Upon A Time. This version of the tale is intended as a period piece and will feature a hardboiled princess who develops a connection with a wild beast. No word yet on casting.

As if one Beauty and the Beast show wasn’t enough, the CW has also ordered a reboot of the CBS-produced version which ran on the network from 1987-1989. It starred Ron Pearlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy) as Vincent, a lion-faced creature who wanders the New York sewers and occasionally quotes Shakespeare.

Happy New Year and welcome to another year of your favorite films here at Monday Picks. This week’s feature to ring in the New Year is the 1972 Spanish horror classic Horror Express a.k.a. Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express. The film stars both Hammer Films greats Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee who battle an alien life form which has existed on Earth for millions of years.

The film opens in 1906 Manchuria where English naturalist and explorer Alexander Saxton (Lee) has discovered an ape-like creature that has been frozen for thousands of years. Convinced he has found the missing link, Saxton and his party crate up the fossil and prepare to transport the cargo by train to Moscow, Russia.

While in Shanghai, Saxton encounters his fellow Royal Society member Doctor Wells (Cushing) who also plans to board the train bound for Moscow. While under guard, Saxton’s crate is picked by a thief who turns up dead on the station platform, his eyes turned white. A crazed monk and spiritual advisor to a Polish Count believes Saxton’s cargo is unholy. Saxton dismisses the monk’s ranting as spiritual nonsense.

Maggie Gyllenhaal certainly loves her sex comedies. Before taking over for Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight, Gyllenhaal was best known for smaller films like The Secretary or 40 Days and 40 Nights in which she was normally the object of sexual affection.

It looks like she’ll be returning to that role in the upcoming period-based sex comedy, Hysteria. The film’s premise isn’t one that we could articulate to you without giggling through the sentence, so we’ll let Vulture do it justice.

Gyllenhaal stars alongside Hugh Dancy and Rupert Everett, who play inventors struggling to come up with the perfect vibrator to use on their female patients, all of whom have been deemed “hysterical”.

From Dark Knight to a film about the invention of the vibrator. Why not? It certainly can’t be any more exposing than the 2004 TV movie titled Strip Search she did, in which she was abused by the ghost-seeing Miles from LOST.

Hysteria hits the Toronto International Film Festival this year, so you can expect to see it hit theaters shortly thereafter.