Very tween appropriate, don't you think?

Pictured: Alex Meraz (Paul), Chaske Spencer (Sam Uley), Bronson Pelletier (Jared), and Kiowa Gordon (Embry). Photo courtesy of Timothy White

Twilight, that suckalicious sparkling-vampire movie starring Robert Pattinson (eeeee!) and Kristen Stewart (Bella!), is out on DVD tomorrow. But it's not any ol' DVD release: It's a two-disc Special Edition DVD, and it's going on sale in just less than 12 hours, complete with parties at Borders, Walmart, and Blockbuster locations across the country officially starting at 10 p.m.

Certainly, though, the lines will form much, much earlier. Especially considering that the Twilight folks have not only promised plenty o' giveaways, but "Twilight actors and filmmakers will be making surprise appearances at select locations throughout the country!"

And if those facts don't make you faint, you'll certain need a splash of water to the face and a cookie if you decide to give plasma at one of the blood drives select Walmarts will host. It's unclear whether the Clinton, Md., store — apparently the only Walmart throwing a Twilight party — will be participating.

For more information and to find the location of the nearest screechfest, go to twilightthemovie.com.

• Dave McKenna incited a quiet riot on Monday by asking, "Did Anybody Go to the Phish Reunion?" Phish fans, many endowed with a LSD-inspired sixth sense, flocked to the comments board. The exchange was nowhere near as trippy as the culture war going on over at the Sexist, or as revolting as the average Twilight attack, still, I was mucho impressed to see the school of stone-washed stoners band together in defense of Trey "Is this thing on?" Anastasio.
• Speaking of getting stoned: "Police said Monday they confiscated about $1.2 million in illegal drugs and more than $68,000 in cash...Authorities also arrested 194 Phish fans during the three-night celebration of the band's return to the stage after a nearly five-year absence." That's the gut of an AP article about the Phish reunion concert. Let me sum it up in a different way: Laid back folk got together to listen to some laid back tunes, and the cops ROBBED THE SHIT OUT OF THEM. For those of you who are thinking (or typing) "serves those scofflaws right," I want you to look around your home or office for a consumable that some other person might perceive as unhealthy–a bottle of Jager, maybe, or the April 2004 issue of Genesis magazine, or a package of Ramen noodles. Now, I want you to imagine some sweaty prick with a Taser taking that thing away from you, bending your arms behind your back, snapping a picture of you after you've been crying (this picture will end up online), demanding thousands of dollars in exchange for your freedom, and then releasing you in your dirty laundry with that taboo attached to your personal record. Ugh.
• The National Review Online's Media Blog tips its hat to the Washington Times for totally nailing the Chas Freeman story. Kevin D. Williamson writes: "The other Times — the Washington Times — was very much on the case, with Eli Lake providing the most substantive reporting on Freeman, his history, and his connections to the Chinese and Saudi regimes. National Review, The New Republic, and other opinion journals covered the story, but the newspapers were largely absent. The Washington Post covered the story sparingly, and the Wall Street Journal touched on it, too, but considering the issues at play, it was remarkable that so much of the daily press took a back seat." It would seem that this is one of those stories only Washington folk give a shit about: Jamie "Am I bigger than Jesus, yet?" Kirchick dug his heels into the Freeman story over at The New Republic and the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel suggested that the now office-less Freeman will one day form an unholy alliance with Michael Steele.
• Michael Perkins did some WMATA math and found "Metrorail fares have stayed flat relative to inflation for trips of equal length." He goes on to suggest that WMATA could stand to raise them: "Would it be better if fares kept up with inflation, and there was less pressure for service cuts?  Maybe with fare increases, there would be money for increased service after the recession is over." Perkins' post is deep, folks. I suggest those of you who can handle more than a graf or two of uninterrupted transportation talk dive the hell in. Though for my money, I think WMATA would invest in a chain of children's haircutteries before it raised fares as much as they need raising–an amount that would further marginalize the people who need WMATA the most. (Also a good transportation read: "Nobody Rides for Free," by Sarah Godfrey.)
• Last but not least, there's a party: My some-time bosses at Reason magazine and reason.com are hosting a Reason.tv (so many domains!) viewing party this Friday in celebration of John Stossel's 20/20 special, "Bailouts, Big Spending, and Bull." I have reason to believe that "[s]oft and hard drinks and light fare will be served," and I'm certain that admission is free, and that most of the attendees will be the sweetest, most disarmingly-sincere capitalist pigz most of you have never met. Just make sure and RSVP. (Ruth Samuelson wrote a great piece about think tank food awhile back, now's as good a time as any to read it.)

OK, folks, let's seize this thing.

Flickr photo courtesy of David Drexler. Thanks David!

Stewart was particularly blunt about Twilight's publicity tour: "You get a slew of all these bullshit questions like, 'What’s it like to kiss a vampire?' and 'How much do you love Robert?' Then you’ll get one that’s actually real, but you’re like, 'No, I can’t right now, I can’t even consider [it].'"

Maybe by the time production for Eclipse rolls around, Who Will Play Jacob? will turn into Who Will Play Bella? Better start keeping your craziness to yourselves, people!

Surely, Amazon's preorders are already through the roof. If you haven't heard the details yet, the package will be "packed with bonus features that are sure to please even the most hardcore Twilighter.

"They include extended and deleted scenes, three music videos, a commentary with director Catherine Hardwicke, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart, a featurette on the "Comic-Con Phenomenon" and an in-depth, seven-part documentary, The Adventure Begins: The Journey from Page to Screen, that takes the fan through each step of the film-making process."

A seven-part doc! That should appease even the most ardent Twihards. (Yeah, I said it.)

So, my dear Twilight fans: Taylor Lautner will be back, despite being toyed with by Summit Entertainment and the People Who Make Decisions these last few weeks that they may not want him for the franchise's second installment, New Moon. It's a pleasant surprise, considering that the widely reported rumors were practically eulogistic.

That's right, I said PLEASANT. I may have picked on director Catherine Hardwicke, writer Stephenie Meyer, and star Robert Pattinson for Twilight's tediousness.

But I blame Lautner for nothing — as Jacob, the Native American complication in the Bella-Edward love story, the erstwhile Sharkboy did good. He smiled, he charmed, he made the young girls cry. (Or at least squeal.) Way to go!

And now, let's hear from you. Don't be shy!

But I had to say something about Robert Pattinson's recent remark to OK! magazine about why he's not looking forward to filming the franchise's next installment, New Moon. Pattinson claimed that his lifeless-in-a-bad-way performance as hottie vampire Edward Cullen was marred because of..contact lenses.

"Wearing coloured contact lenses... It was like I constantly had sand in my eyes. I was wearing them for three months constantly and my eyes never ever accepted them! It took me 20 minutes per eye every single day and I ended up having to literally fold it into my eyeball."

And the star believes the dreaded lenses may inhibit his acting skills – because he couldn't properly portray his character's emotions due to the "two orange blobs" in his eyes.

He adds, "It was frustrating as well because normally your eyes are saying something, but if you've got two orange blobs in your face it's so annoying!

"The director (Catherine Hardwicke) would say, 'Look at her (Kristen Stewart) like you love her,' and I'd be like, 'I'm trying!'"

Oh Robert, that explains everything. Now what's the rest of the cast's excuse?

Summit Entertainment announced that Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first big-screen adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer saga to middling-to-awful reviews, won't be returning to helm New Moon, the second of Meyer's four sparkling-vampire novels.

In a joint statement, Summit and Hardwicke claimed that New Moon's targeted winter 2009/spring 2010 release "does not work with Ms. Hardwicke's required prep time to bring her vision of the film to the big screen."

I'm sure Twilight's second-week box-office drop of 62 percent has nothing to do with it.

New Moon, new chance to make the vampires not look like this

An actor faces a lot of pressure when tapped to embody a beloved fictional character. But try living up to fan expectations when the author who birthed said character describes him as “devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful,” with a “musical voice” and “soft, enchanting laugh.”

Those adjectives — along with many, many others that reiterate his perfection — add up to Edward Cullen, the heartthrob teenage vampire who helped Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series become exalted as “the next Harry Potter.” Which would be accurate, if only the novels were better written. And the stories appealed to boys as well as giggly girls (albeit of all ages, apparently). And — most crucial — if the franchise's inaugural big-screen adaptation by director Catherine Hardwicke didn't suck more than its vampires actually do.

Twilight is not Bram Stoker's Dracula. Meyer threw out all the vampiric rules to make Edward (Robert Pattinson) and the other baby Nosferatus in his family sexier, more glam — because, ew, who'd want to read about a hottie who weakens or combusts in sunlight when he could just, well, sparkle instead? Yes, when Edward insists on showing his new love, a mortal named Bella (Kristen Stewart), what he looks like when the sky's not gray, you might expect something frightening. Instead, he glistens as if covered with Urban Decay glitter. Dreamy! And forget about needing to be invited into someone's home. Edward pops up in Bella's bedroom whenever he feels like it, which is totally hot.

Really, though, Twilight is Bella's story, and scripter Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up) does a fair-to-inadequate job translating the novel's first-person introspection to the screen. Bella is a junior in high school who's moved from her native Phoenix to Forks, Wash., to live with her father, whom she irritatingly calls Charlie (Billy Burke). She hates the rain and the goofy guys who hit on her, but nonetheless becomes friends with the goofiest of the lot, Mike, and the girl who's crushing on him, Jessica (Michael Welch and the usually bitch-cast Anna Kedrick, both of whom give the truest portrayals of their literary origins even in their reduced roles).

Bella stops minding the perpetually overcast weather, though, when she becomes drawn to Edward, a master at playing hard-to-get who hangs only with the rest of his pale, odd foster siblings and nearly busts a dusty blood vessel when Bella ends up sitting next to him in biology class. He glowers and clenches his fists; she naturally swoons, even though it's a love-hate thing for a while because she doesn't understand how someone could act so angry at her when they haven't even spoken.

Edward soon softens around Bella and eventually reveals a few of his quirks: One, his eyes change color. Two, he and his family skip school to go “camping” on sunny days. And three, Edward had to ball his fists and storm out of bio because he was pretty close to chowing down on her fair neck.

Edward can also read minds, but he can't read Bella's, part of what marks her as his “own personal brand of heroin.” But because the Cullens' patriarch, a doctor named Carlisle (Peter Facinelli), has taught his brood to snack only on animals and not on humans — to lessen that whole monster angle — Edward cautiously courts the tasty new girl.

The will-they-or-won't-they tension that's rather titillating in the book is all but lost on screen, though. The problem isn't Stewart, best known for Into the Wild and a believable, likable Bella who trips in all the right places. (Meyer saddled her with a case of clumsiness that's as unsubtle as Edward's flawlessness.) Not even Pattinson's to blame — rather, it's that Hardwicke's interpretation of Edward and his fellow vampires is as ludicrous as Meyer's vision was unachievable.

Try not to laugh when you first see Dr. Cullen at the hospital, treating Bella after an accident: Even among pale Washingtonians, Facinelli's Carlisle looks like an albino mime, as alien as someone with a lab coat and clipboard could look and still resemble a human. And Pattinson's mood-swinging but “musical” reticence too often sounds like a 12-year-old attempting to deepen his voice, with grunts instead of sultry “hello”s resulting. Pattinson tries really, really hard to be really, really ridiculously good-looking, but with crazy hair, pancake'd skin, and almost-tough-guy attitude, he just looks ridiculous.

It doesn't help that, with the exception of some rogue bloodsuckers and a game of — I swear — vampire baseball, Twilight's main action is yearning. Meyer liked her characters to convey their thoughts with expressions almost more often than words; therefore, Pattinson and Stewart do a whole lot of staring. And because Edward's supposed to be a good guy, he shows off his speed instead of his violent side.

The leads have a couple of juicy moments together, and a mini damsel-in-distress arc is thrown in to keep the story from being completely, well, bloodless. When Edward warns Bella that he's a killer, she responds, “I don't believe you!” Neither do we.

Slightly larger barbarians of the teen and tween variety, meanwhile, will be descending on a little movie called Twilight, a girl-meets-vampire story that would be so Blacula if not for its apparent status as OMG, the biggest thing since Harry Potter!. I'll be braving an afterschool showing today and posting my review here if I make it out alive.

And anyone who's looking for cinema instead of Hollywood has the following choice choices:

I've Loved You So Long, a respectable weepie (not always an oxymoron) that stars Kristin Scott Thomas as an ex-con trying to rebuild her life after 15 years in the pen;

JVCD, Jean-Claude Van Damme's more serious version of My Name Is Bruce in which he plays himself, i.e. a somewhat beloved but more often mocked action star who can't roundhouse-kick his personal demons;

A Christmas Tale, a 2 1/2 hour French take on dysfunctional holiday reunions; and

Lola Montes, a restored version of Max Ophuls' 1955 drama — and his final film — whose plot summary I leave to one Volker Boehm, helping out on IMDb:

"The film tells the tragical story of the life of Lola Montes who was a great adventurer and stopped being the attraction of her circus after having been the lover of various important men."

Though it's tragical, loving various important men can still keep a woman from being a circus attraction. Let's let Lola Montes remind us of how far we've come.