Countdown to Breaking Dawn: New Moon

So the same caveat as last time: we're all on board with the troubling implications of a book/film endorsing suicidal thrill-seeking as a good way to win back your borderline emotionally abusive boyfriend. But let's keep our eyes on the ball here: Jacob wolfs out in New Moon!

The moon ain't the only thing that's new in this one, amiright?

What I'm not ashamed to admit works for me:

• Pack your bags everyone, we're going to Camp Twilight. The Volturi, headed by the delicious and delightful Michael Sheen as Aro, injects some much appreciated levity into New Moon. From the vampire elevator music,

It's overwrought opera. Natch.

to Dakota Fanning's sweet little vamp sadist,

She looks this happy because she's torturing someone. I'm not kidding.

to EVERY LINE MICHAEL SHEEN DELIVERS,

"EEES-AH-BELLL"

the campy Vamp council makes sure this film doesn't take itself too seriously. Because after all, we're talking a werewolf love triangle here. The following clip should assure everyone that Sheen knows exactly the attitude with which to approach the Twilight Saga. Watch it. You'll love it.

What I'm fairly ashamed to admit works for me: 

• I don't hate the werewolves, y'all. Yeah, they're a little cheesy and CGI-looking,

Though I actually thought the phase-on-the-fly thing was pretty cool.

but considering the competition . . .

Sigh, Harry Potter.

Double sigh, Buffy.

• And you know, Lautner ain't half bad. His one expression--a perpetually furrowed brow--reads as at best wry skepticism and at worst brooding confusion, and for most of the movie, those emotions are appropriate for his character. But more importantly, there are a lot o'bare torsos in this one, whether you like them dripping wet and shredded:

My what big . . . eyes you have.

  or pale and consumptive looking:

My preference.

What is actually quite lame: 

• HallucinEdward. Look, I don't like spending 100 minutes without the fang-bangable Cullen either, but the book's half-baked, half-assed solution, to have Bella hallucinate his face and voice every time she does something dangerous, is even less-baked and -assed in the film.

Yeah, she's passing him like a mile marker on a motorcycle. It's dumb.

Tomorrow, my pretties? Eclipse. And that means one thing and one thing only: the tent scene.