Besides, the book is only good to a select few- those being sexually deprived preteens. Way to go Meyer.

You might not like the books or the movies – but short of bitching like the sad wenches you are – what else are you doing in your life? You cared enough to make comments about the books and movies. Not much else happening then, he????

As for the topic of romance, you’re right, obsession should not be glorified, nor should any concept related to the sickening “birth” seen that Jessica described. HOWEVER, I think our very jaded world is seriously lacking the reckless abandon that can make love so breathtaking – these movies seem to offer that reckless abandon. I think the reason why people, seemingly incorrectly (I’ve never read the book, so I can’t judge), call this book breathtaking is because “Edward” (the main male character) seems to do what so few men do these days – fall recklessly in love. I think for somewhat uneducated or young folk the presence of this reckless abandon makes the book breathtaking. For the rest of us, it makes the book/movie difficult to stop reading/watching. I think while we might say that we can’t stop watching/reading the book/movie because “it’s hard to not watch a train wreck” (or something to that effect, as Jessica said above), secretly we know that we can’t stop watching/reading the book/movie because we all desperatly wish we could afford to lose ourselves in our emotion the way these characters seem to.

Having said all this, I only watched the first movie, and even then I fast forwarded through most of it, so maybe I’m not qualified to comment. Maybe the farther into the story one gets the more disturbing vis-a-vis passionate the whole thing becomes. For example, if that beat-up-during-sex thing is true, then I think these books are downright dangerous for teens to read.

Thanks. :)

Oh, and then I guess it's “tense” when he uses his vampy fangs to cut open her uterus with his mouth. (Yes, that's in the book, and it's MESSED UP.) He has to do that, see, because the baby, who Bella wants to die for because women are nothing more than self-less baby incubators, is so vampire-strong that it breaks her ribs, spine, etc.

So you see, Edward HAS to free the baby. From her uterus. With his teeth.

And yes, this is in a “teen romance” book series. I'd say it was awesome, but it's actually more disturbing and wrong. Maybe Stephenie Meyer is confused about what “eating out” means.

But anyway, these vampires are supposed to be kind of old-school and they live under some city in Italy and sort of “police” the rest of the vampires in the world. So kind of like a vampire Vatican, I guess, and also vaguely like a Russian mafia, as far as I can tell.

So maybe their outfits are supposed to be a play on the sorts of things a vampire Pope would wear and that's why they look so outdated.

These aren't exactly great movies though, so I don't expect much from the costume department. For one thing, the vampire baseball scene in the first movie is lame enough when you're reading it and imagining it, but I don't recall them ALL WEARING BASEBALL UNIFORMS in the book. Seriously, when I saw the clip of that for the first time, I laughed so hard I cried. If they had uniforms in the book, I blocked that crap out. So lame.