"OMG OMG OMG New Moon OMG OMG shatters records! OMG $140 million! OMG Precious?" Yes, that's what much of the blather about the box office this weekend sounds like. It's a film about lunar shifts or large men who turn into ghastly wolf-beasts or something. Somewhere in the nethers is Inglourious Basterds, still valiantly holding on. However, The September Issue has sunk out of sight. Also: Couples Retreat stays firmly within the Top 10. Basically it's a litany of old tales: print's dead, tweens have cash to burn, and Vince Vaughn has as much post-apocalyptic staying power as cockroaches.

Today, Robert Pattinson runs to Dover cliffs, the wind whipping his unruly mane. He looks out across the Strait of Dover, unwraps a tasty chocolate New Moon bar. In between delicate nibbles of this candy morsel, he asks the world, "Why!" As in "Why does New Moon have to suck so much!?" Because despite record projections, the actor is still itching for "serious roles" that "showcase" his "talents" as an "actor." To which end, his native Britain is barren. Even for such an accomplished player like him.

It seems like just yesterday Washington State was getting all caught up in the Twilight/New Moon mania and spinning off tours and downloadable PDFs for all Twihards who felt like coming to visit Port Angeles, Forks, and the spooky area of La Push. Now they're offering actual trip giveaways to the Twilight promised land. New Moon officially comes out today, and Washington is going to ride the vampire wave as long as they can, or at least until April, when they'll stop giving away free trips.

I’ll admit straightaway that my take on Tim Burton’s show at MoMa is biased for two reasons. One was the crowd. I’ve been regularly attending the museum’s openings a couple years now, but have never seen the rank-and-file turn out like they did on Wednesday night. There were 20 times as many people as there were for say, Monet’s Water Lilies, and the long wait in a blue-lit corridor (which doubled as some hideous fiend’s esophagus) eventually lulled me into thinking I was waiting for something far more Space Mountain than museum exhibition. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- I like Space Mountain -- but after all the jostling with strangers, I expected an exhilarating ride.

Arrested Development has become the poster child of TV critical darlings that couldn’t win mass appeal. In the show’s final episode, after the show was officially cancelled, executive producer Ron Howard mentioned, with a wink and nod, that a movie was a possible next step. Since then, the development of the Arrested Development movie has been a soap opera of sorts, with several reports claiming that Michael Cera was holding up the project. Cera has been quoted as saying that he wasn't confident that an Arrested film adaptation would work, and he decided to spend his time instead on other film projects. Fans of the show took to the virtual streets, though, and apparently convinced both Cera and the film's backers to move forward.

I already knew Miley Cyrus and I had a lot in common: a love of hot pants, pole dancing. But not until her recent oh-no-she-didn’t interview with Ohio radio station Q92 did I realize we were sisters from another mister. Smiley hates Twilight, too! Our reasoning is a tad divergent. Cyrus says she doesn’t “believe in [Twilight]. I don’t like vampires ... I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t like the shirts, any of it.” Perhaps church-girl Miley is aware God hates fangs, but, really, jealous, much? I, on the other hand, am fine with vampires. Bill Compton can suck my blood any time. If True Blood’s Bon Temps, Louisiana, actually existed, I would be at Fangtasia like every night. Yet even the hair gel-loving vamps on the CW’s Vampire Diaries are about forty shades darker and more complex than Twi’s limp fish Edward Cullen. Who we know is a ruthless bloodsucker because his skin glitters in the sun. Come on. Inside me is still an awesome 13-year-old girl, and she is insulted.

Show me the money! He’s just not that into you. You can’t handle the truth! For most people, these are cinema’s potent quotables. But I prefer the underdog sloganeers, like Kim Basinger in 8 Mile, who says to a belligerent Marshall Mathers, “What are you doing with your life that’s so great?” Or that hooker in Fargo, who insists to Frances McDormand’s pregnant cop, “He was kinda funny lookin’.” This year, there were so many amazing movie catchphrases. But never mind the obvious choices, because frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

This had to have been the best week, like, ever for the hordes of Robert Pattinson fans out there. His New Moon media blitz is climaxing with the movie's release at midnight tonight, and Pattinson is just everywhere. The Internet should rename itself the Robertpattinsonet. Only blind people and luddites haven't seen him nervously run his fingers through that perfect hair like only he can. So how is Pattinson -- who is famously allergic to his own fame -- coping with all the, um, fame? We've scrutinized, analyzed, judged, and fawned over three of Pattinson's recent talk show appearances -- The Late Show with David Letterman, The Today Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly -- to see how the actor handles himself on camera when he's not working off a mediocre script.

Cellphones can put screenwriters in a bind when it comes to horror and suspense. No sooner does Jason Voorhees dismember one measly kid than fourteen others have simultaneously called the cops and Twittered about their still-in-progress near-death experience. Since no one thus armed is ever truly alone, helpless, and at the mercy of whatever terrible thing lives in the woods, writers have to fake it. The kids have just gone “too deep” into the forest. There’s a storm. Their phones have been variously mislaid, submerged, smashed. The same bits (or is “excuses” more apt?) have been so overworked that they feel de rigeur in certain kinds of genre filmmaking. Rich Juzwiak over at VH-1 is hip to this. He’s made an hilarious, exhaustive, and what I can’t help but think was a fairly labor-intensive clip reel of such moments. After the jump.

For the uninitiated, New Moon is the second chapter in a heart-stopping series that explores the range and breadth of the human condition. A series that, for all intents and purposes, asks us to be so bold as to carve open our hearts and mindfully pick out emotions encrusted around the ventricles. Such calcified collections of rage and sorrow they are, inhibiting blood flow to the brain, moving us to consequently make poor life choices like this. Yes, New Moon casts a modern-day Marlowe-esque light on The Way We Are. Its protagonists are constantly torn with having to make shady business deals to get their True Heart's Desire. There is Bella, the intrepid, lower lip-biting everygirl, who would throw all the money away if she could just be in Edward's arms forever. Then there is Edward, who would give all the money in the world if he could make trash angels. But twist! There's also Jacob, whose end-game may be the most easily attainable: To strike a deal with the devil to procure a limitless supply Crest white-strips. But sadly, people whose jobs it is to sit down and critique films, but never to actually slap some celluloid together, have decided that New Moon is nothing more a pile of steaming bat poo.