Even with Comic-Con in San Diego looming on the horizon, some of us are thinking farther down the road towards Austin, TX in September. That’s right, we’re thinking about Fantastic Fest, the amazing genre film festival that runs from September 20 to 27.

And, as thoughts turn to Fantastic Fest, so must they turn to films as well. In fact, we now know that one film in particular will open the festival on September 20th. That film? Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.

In fact, it will be the world premiere for the film, with the studio taking it out officially on October 5. The black-and-white 3D sci-fi monster film, written by John August and directed by Burton, is about a boy who brings his beloved dog back to life — with just a few complications.

Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Robert Capron, Conchata Ferrell and Winona Ryder are among the actors contributing their voice talents. Looks like fun. Can’t wait to see it and to get to Austin.

Good times.

I don’t think anyone expects Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to be good. Or decent. Or anything more than this summer’s Snakes on a Plane. Which, to some degree, it is. I liked Snakes on a Plane because it delivered precisely what the title promised.

The movie opens with the young Lincoln defending a freed slave from being taken back to the South and otherwise cruel treatment at the hand of vicious Jack Barts (Marton Csokas). That night, Barts sneaks into the Lincoln household and promptly kills his mother.

Some years later, Lincoln (Benjamin Walker)’s working as a clerk for Joshua Speed (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Jimmi Simpson), biding his time until he can kill Barts. After a heavy night at the bar, Lincoln makes his move, shooting Barts in the eye and getting quite the surprise when he discovers that Barts is a vampire.

One thing will be certain in a few weeks. Once Summer starts there will be more high profile scores than Fridays and some good music might fall through the cracks. Which is precisely why I am so excited to bring you this early review of Danny Elfman’s score from Dark Shadows.

This score ranked as one of my most anticipated of the early summer season, and that anticipation was made all the more severe when we listened to the expanded preview a few weeks back. So suffice to say I am ready to dig into the 14th collaboration between Danny Elfman and Tim Burton.

That is a lot of feature film scores from a director with a very distinct style, and recently there has been a lot of concern about repetitiveness in Elfman’s music. You can only go to that stylized dark well so many times, and eventually it will be dried up completely.

So does this umpteenth collaboration yield beautiful sonic rewards, or is this little more than a Beetlejuice or Sleep Hallow remix album?

Even though there’s a lot of movies being made from TV shows these days, that doesn’t mean we don’t have room for one more. That’s especially true when you combine the talents of Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eve Green, Chloe Moretz and Tim Burton.

In fact, that’s just what Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow have done with the upcoming film Dark Shadows. Based on the popular 70s TV series of the same name, the film features Depp as vampire Barnabas Collins and his re-emergence in 1972.

We’ve got the first full trailer from the film to share with you today. Watching the trailer it seems Burton has decided this is more of a comedy than the original series, which may or may not please fans. However, whatever Burton and company end up doing, you can be sure there’s going to be a lot of black, a lot of pasty people and probably some snow.

Check out the trailer after the break. Look for Dark Shadows to hit theaters on May 11.

2012 is going to be a big year for stop-motion animation, with three high profile stop-motion animated features invading cinema’s throughout the year. The most notable of this bunch is Tim Burton’s next feature, Frankenweenie, which is a feature length, animated adaptation of Burton’s own 1982 short film.

Frankenweenie tells the tale of young Victor, a boy who loses his beloved dog Sparky and reanimates him with the power of electricity. If it was not obvious up to this point, the film is an homage to the Frankenstein movies and novel.

One thing that the poster clearly presents, but is still probably lost on most people, is that the film is shot in black and white. This is a bold creative decision for any film, and one Burton used to great success once before in Ed Wood.

However, it is still a tremendous risk for a stop-motion animated film, a genre that is usually noted for it’s ability to present vibrant and extraordinary visuals. Even Burton’s own Corpse Bride used color to great effect in illustrating the differences between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

The film is set for an early October release, just in time for Halloween! You can see the full poster after the jump.

This may come as news to some of you. In addition to being President during one of the most tumultuous times in US history, Abraham Lincoln was secretly also a vampire hunter.

Well, at least that’s how history goes in the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Produced by Tim Burton and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the film is an adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith book about Lincoln and his quest to destroy the undead after his mother is killed by bloodsucking vampires.

We’ve got the first trailer for the film to share with you today. To be honest, we weren’t expecting much from this but it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised once in awhile. The pic, at least from this trailer, actually looks pretty good. You will, of course, have to judge for yourselves.

Check out the trailer after the break. Look for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which stars Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, and Dominic Cooper to hit theaters on June 22.

More and more, YouTube is become less of a place to watch cats beat up other cats, and more of a place to watch premium content that you are lucky to get for free on demand. In the past few years, one of those premium content trends has been “supercuts” and “movie mashups” where talented editors take clips from films and put them all together in one splendid masterpiece (if we do say so ourselves).

With that, one talented YouTuber named Kees van Dijkjuizen, an 18 year old films student from the Netherlands, who has been doing two series. One of which is a year-in-review Cinema supercut, that he’s done every year since 2008, and the other is his [the films of] series in which he showcases some of the most critically acclaimed directors of our time, from Christopher Nolan, to Tim Burton, and Ridley Scott.

His latest cut is the finale of the latter series, and it’s is a dedication to Steven Spielberg. This was a big one for him, which he lays out in the description.

Film as we know it today was shaped by thousands of creative minds working together to create something special for the audience to experience. Among those is Steven Spielberg; considered by many to be the true master of modern day cinema, Spielberg’s 26 feature films have each taken us to magical worlds, introduced us to fantastic characters and on adventures we will never forget. [the films of] has honored many filmmakers, but none of them as significant to film history as the genius featured in this final episode.

Take a look at the supercut after the jump, and check out his YouTube channel here.

Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

• While things aren’t going so well for the Uncharted or Assassin’s Creed film adaptations, that hasn’t stopped a studio from moving forward on a film based on the classic monster game Rampage.

• The heads of action fans everywhere may just explode when they see the very first poster for The Expendables 2 featuring Norris, Van Damme, and the whole cast.

• Take a jump in a depressing time machine as you see young Tim Burton acting as normal as ever in this footage from Disney Studios circa 1980.

• It looks like the internet is seeping into mainstream media again, as The Annoying Orange was just announced to have a show coming up on Cartoon Network.

• Exactly how many times did The Force get brought up in all 6 Star Wars films? We have no idea, but here they all are.

• You may know the prime Muppets, but here is a list of the best known Muppets from around the world that you may have never heard of. Like Oscar the Grouch’s Israeli cousin.

This week’s pick is Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999), a newer take on Washington Irving’s legendary 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Johnny Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, a New York City police constable who is sent to the quaint upstate village that is the sight of several grizzly decapitations.

Crane believes in science and deductive reasoning, where as the local inhabitants of the sleepy little hamlet attribute the murders to the slain ghost of a Hessian mercenary killed during the American Revolution.

Crane believes that the killer is flesh and blood, and not a demonic spirit as told to him by the town’s elders. Using his powers of deduction and a bag of scientific/forensic tools to discover traces which will lead him to the killer, Crane is about to discover that in the age of reason, there are still many things that are beyond comprehension in the world of Tim Burton.

• Alec Baldwin is very excited to be the first host of this season of SNL, so excited he felt the need to hump Bill Heder.

• Netflix had a pretty big week, between splitting off into 2 companies and pissing off their clientele. This song pretty much explains it all.

• What happens when the world’s biggest game of dodgeball starts on a football field? Complete pandemonium.

• One of the wrongest-yet-funniest comedies on TV started back up this week as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia returned to FX. In order to prep for the season, here is the blooper reel from last season.