In last night's episode of The Vampire Diaries, "Under Control," we were assured that with only three episodes left in the season, absolutely everything is headed for a catastrophic breaking point. Can't wait. Also, before we continue, still no sign of Bonnie, only a mention of Caroline. I get that these actors' contracts probably don't allow for them to be in every episode, but they should really work on that for next season.

Stefan's Still On the Juice

Apparently after last week's episode ending binge, Stefan quit human blood again cold turkey, which led to a work out montage with which I have no arguments. It's not so easy for Stefan to wean himself off, though: in a scene out of Twilight, during a sexy moment with Elena, he's overwhelmed with blood lust and sends himself flying into the furthest wall, breaking a lamp in the process. Later, he turns to drink to keep the edge off (parroting Damon from earlier in the season), which introduces us to Drunk Stefan. Paul Wesley, thank you for Drunk Stefan, as he is a sight to behold. It's quickly revealed that while Sober Stefan takes the Brandon Walsh approach to dance (he doesn't), Drunk Stefan is all about it, going so far as a compel the DJ at the latest Founder's Shenanbon to start up a dance party. Unfortunately, some rageholic flips when Elena bumps him during some too vigorous dancing, so Stefan compels him to apologize like he means it. Also unfortunately, this scene was too dark and at an odd angle such that I suspected that Rageoids was only faking being compelled and was mere moments away from outing Stefan to the Council. That didn't turn out to be the case, but Rageoids will get his chance after he decides to attack (!) Stefan in the parking lot, so embarrassed/annoyed (!!) is he at having to apologize. Stefan, who is fleeing the party after almost snacking on Kelly (more on that in the minute), breaks Rageoids' fist and considers helping himself to some sweet, sweet blood, but continues on his plan to flee the scene when Elena shows up looking for him. Later, completely tweaking, he confesses to Elena that this withdrawal is much worse than the last, and he's not certain she's safe with him. Elena decides that she is anyway (minus point, but plus point for mentioning that it's scary to just appear in someone's bedroom, so wash). But Damon's got to have the last word: after laying out all the trouble they're in, Damon deliberately leaves unattended a glass of sweet, sweet blood behind, and Stefan throws it down with style. Ah, damn. Love it. Also:

Oh, show, just when I think I could not love you more. Remember when Vicki asked Stefan how long it's been since he drank human blood, and he shot a side glance at Elena and cryptically replied, "It's been years." Apparently that meant something! I could not be more impressed with the "apparently that meant something!"s on this show. It didn't mean something until the end of the episode, though, so hang on a moment.

In last Thursday's episode, "Let the Right One In" (incidentally a fantastic movie if you haven't seen it), Pearl once again makes the mistake of thinking she can trust Frederick for even half a second. Pearl and Anna head into town, making Frederick promise to play nice. Turns out his idea of playing nice is kidnapping Stefan, so he can torture Stefan to death. Shirtless, which is nice for the viewers, but unfortunate overall. Damon grokes to the Stefan-is-missing thing pretty quickly, but Mrs. Gibbons' is thralled into keeping Damon out. Elena hilariously thinks she should just go wander into Vamp Camp, but even Damon recognizes that for the stupid plan it is. So they appeal to . . . Alaric?!

Seems that Stefan told Damon all about Alaric's magic ring at some point off-screen. Since Alaric's vampire-invincible and human, that makes him Damon's perfect ally for Operation Rescue Stefan. For reasons unclear, Alaric agrees to this plot (although, TBH, if I were vampire-invincible, I'd probably roll up to Vamp Camp to kill all the vampires sooner or later). They eventually agree to let Elena come along as the getaway driver.

With apologies for not posting about last week's episode of The Vampire Diaries, "There Goes the Neighborhood," sooner, I won't bog you down with the gory details a day before the next episode airs. Suffice it to say:

Stefan is Still the Most Badass Vamp on This Show

Sure, Pearl's the strongest, and she does use her vamp strength against Damon and Frederick (even staking Frederick in the stomach to prove a point), but did she get staked with a huge shard of glass, rip that shard out, break a chair, and stake and kill her attacker? No, but Stefan did. Looks like he's going to pay dearly for that in the next episode, but until then he retains the Most Badass title. Damon let his attacker get away. What does it take, Damon? 

In Thursday's episode, "A Few Good Men," the truth came out. What truth? Whose truth? Pretty much everyone's truth unless the character wasn't in the episode (so, no truth for grieving Bonnie, Jeremy the adopted-sister-having soon-to-be vampire hunter, or probable-werewolf Tyler, though his classist mom is out and about (sidebar: being classist is useless enough, but being classist in a small town? There's probably, like, one other family "good enough" to associate with)). Anyway, despite stone cold liar Stefan's best efforts to manage the situation, the truth round up:

Isobel Fleming is Elena's Mother

We all already figured out that Alaric's dead wife Isobel is Elena's bio-mom, but now everyone and their brother knows it. Jenna tells Elena her suspicions and does research to confirm her theory, Elena tracks down one of Isobel's high school friends for further confirmation, Jenna also tells Alaric (he didn't know that Isobel ever had a child, but he does recognize her poorly photoshopped yearbook pic), Elena tells Stefan and Damon. In short, all the major players associated with this plot (Elena, Stefan, Damon, Alaric, Jenna) have key pieces of information in one (!) episode.

Summit plans to release the The Twilight Saga: Eclipse trailer in front of Robert Pattinson's new feature, Remember Me, which opens tomorrow, which is why the trailer's on the Internet today. Oh, sweet Internet, what do you have for us this time out? More shirtless Lautner? More wolf vs. vampire battles? More unbuttoning? Let's see:

TWoP has a photo gallery up about why The Vampire Diaries is so addictive (don't they know I already wrote all those posts for you in pursuit of what makes the show awesome?), but let me save you the trouble of clicking through with these three words: the Brothers Salvatore. I like Elena, I love Bonnie, Caroline's cool, and mad props go out to my dearly (sexistly) departed ladies Vicki, Lexi, Bree, and Grams. But the Brothers Salvatore make the show. Thanks to the writing and the wily performances of Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder, Stefan and Damon are never who you think they are.

At first blush, Stefan's the earnest, brooding good guy and Damon's his dangerous, bad boy older brother. While Stefan can be earnest and does brood (specifically with his forehead,  Damon would tell you), he's also far more dangerous than Damon could ever hope to be. Damon kills to feed or to protect himself: he's motivated entirely by his emotions. He views humans as a lesser life form, and it comes across in his every action.

Stefan, on the hand, tries to simultaneously embrace the benefits of being a vampire (longevity, super speed/hearing/strength) while rejecting that which sustains him (human blood). The wistful way he spoke of all the different jobs he's held for as long as he could didn't betray a longing to return to his human form: it spoke of someone determined to get as much as he could out of the life he chose. He's not self-loathing like Edward or Bill. He accepts, and he moves on. But you know what it takes to do as much accepting and moving on as he has? Motherfuckin' sangfroid, which he has in spades. Unlike Damon, Stefan readily forms human attachments, and his determination to protect them (not himself) from things that go bump in the night (although sadly not from Bumpits) leads him to some pretty dark places. We've seen him stake and flame-throw other vampires without hesitation. What will he do if another human ever threatens Elena? How far would he go? He's smart, funny, passionately in love, and loyal to both people and place. He's also an icy dispatcher of foes and not above poisoning his own brother. He's a study in contrasts.

Excellent news, fang-bangers: TwiCon got booted from its location in downtown Toronto thanks to this little thing called the G20 summit, so they relocated to Landsdowne Park. Say, what? Yup, Ottawa was on the radar, and now it's the place to be June 25 to 27 for TwiHards, TwiMoms, and people who like Sam from True Blood. He's going to be here, and, as your ace vampire reporter, I'm going to have to be there. It's the least I can do. Just like showing you this photo from Eclipse.  You're welcome.

Damon gets to utter last night's The Vampire Diaries episode title, "Fool Me Once," and, since he went for an over the top sotto voce delivery to the tail end of that aphorism, I'm down with that. Actually, I'm down with pretty much everything Damon does in this episode. Elena's a Little Miss Me-ffet for some of it, Bonnie and Grams team up to use super-witchy powers, and Stefan once again proves that he's the most dangerous vampire on the show. See for yourself!

Damon

Damon informs Stefan in no uncertain terms that he won't be helping Stefan track Elena down, telling him first that he hopes Elena dies and, if she still has Damon's blood in her system when she does, at least Stefan knows he'll see her again. Man, is Damon hurting. Anna tries to get Damon to work with her, which backfires because Stefan frees Elena and Bonnie (more on that in a minute) without Damon's help. Newly freed Elena convinces Damon that they all need to work together, and Damon heads down to the tomb with a blood bag for his beloved Katherine (adorable). All his searching is for naught, however, when it turns out that Katerine isn't even in there. He confronts Anna and newly-freed Pearl, who tells him that Katherine compelled a guard into letting her escape and never looked back. To add insult to injury, Anna ran into Katherine in Chicago in 1983, who knew where Damon was and didn't even care. Ouch. By episode's close, Damon's staring numbly in the fire at the Salvatore mansion with Stefan taking up quiet residence next to him. 

Last night's The Vampire Diaries episode, "Children of the Damned," featured the show, once again, at its best: equal parts doom and gloom, romance, and madness. If the ladies were featured heavily in last week's episode, it was the boys turn to shine this time around.

Damon

Damon, as you would suspect, is thrilled to be working with Elena and Stefan toward a common goal (not unlike Veronica Mars' Logan, he's at his most honest when he's at his most sarcastic). He even gets Jenna drunk and makes the family dinner (why? Don't ask. We'll never know). He also, thanks to a series of flashbacks, figures out that Jeremy's new friend Anna is Annabel, the daughter of a vampire he knew back in his human days. He grabs Jonathan Gilbert's diary (endless, endless journalling on this show), declines her offer to work together, and heads off to dig up his dad, who took Emily's grimoire to his grave. Of course, that's where he finds Stefan and Elena, who already accomplished that task (not using vampire speed for reasons unknown) and are just about to open the grimoire (why? To check for an "if found, please return to Emily the Witch. P.S. That last part is a secret" inscription?). Damon, not doubt thankful since he didn't bring a shovel anyway but definitely feeling betrayed, (unbelievably) forced his blood down Elena's throat, so Stefan handed over the grimoire. Guess it's time to crack that puppy open!

In grand The Vampire Diaries tradition, things were topsy-turvy for our ladies in "Unpleasantville," but I have to say, I love the way the show keeps all of our major plots moving at a good clip. I also love that the show puts female characters who are smart, capable, and likable front and centre, so I'm going to follow suit.

Bonnie

Yeah, I'm starting with Bonnie 'cause I love her so. Deal with that. Anyway, Damon's trying to charm Bonnie to get to Emily's grimoire (not that B knows that), but Bonnie is having none of it: "I can set things on fire with my mind. Fire kills vampires, doesn' it?" Aw, yeah. Later, Bonnie tries to prove a point to Caroline by taking charge with a guy (Ben), and it works. No sooner does a "Go, Bonnie!" escape than we find out Ben the Bartender's not just interested in inappropriate-for-him high school girls: he's also a vampire in league with Jeremy's home-schooled stalker girl, Anna. So much for my vampire hunter theory, but it at least this makes her hard sell on poor Jeremy slightly more acceptable. Anna, you see, is somehow connected to Katherine and also after the grimoire (and, presumably, Bonnie to work the mojo). Damn. Bonnie's hot, y'all. Are there really no acceptable humans interested in that?

There's this thing on True Blood about how vampires, no matter how decently they might behave and no matter how much TruBlood they might drink, are essentially predators and being in a room with one is like being in a room with a loaded gun. It's only a matter of time before it goes off. Even Bill, our erstwhile "hero" of vampiredom, feeds on humans on the regular.

So last night's The Vampire Diaries entry, "Bloodlines," featured not at all the plotline I had read (though I am informed it is in the books and only a matter of time before the show goes there), but instead something we all could have guessed: Damon rescues Elena from the car accident/potential vamp attack and then drags her off to Georgia while she is unconscious rather than taking her to a hospital (okay, maybe we didn't guess the road trip part). This marks the second episode in which Elena is griveously injured but does not seek medical attention, and I can't tell if the writers are going somewhere with this (death wish? maybe combined with survivor's grief?) or if they think we won't notice. Hey, Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec! I noticed!

Anyway, what starts out as a kidnapping morphs into a deciding to stick around with, save the life of, and start to like a dude who:

Previously, I reported my disappointment that Chris Weitz could direct two more Twilight movies. Now it appears that Summit will push ahead with filming in Vancouver this fall regardless of who they get to fill the director's chair, and it looks like it won't be Weitz. As I previously mentioned, one movie or two, I don't care because Breaking Dawn is bananas. If they do break it (and now that I'm thinking about it, they should), I suspect it will be around the -- spoiler alert -- childbirth-transition mark or Melissa Rosenberg would do well to end it on a cliffhanger (not unlike New Moon) with Alice dropping the vase and announcing a vision in which they all die.

Now, who can they get to direct them? May I suggest Catherine Hardwicke for Part 1 and David Slade for Part 2 if Summit wants to dip back into the well?  Regardless of the possible animosity between director and studio, Hardwicke excelled at building a haunting teenage love story with just a little tragedy and violence at the edges in Twilight, and the first part of Breaking Dawn continues Bella and Edward's love story with just a little tragedy and violence at the edges. Slade, who directed 30 Days of Night and will be responsible Eclipse this summer, can take on the more danger/thriller aspects of the finale, assuming his vision of Eclipse doesn't suck.

If the Summit wants to hire someone new, it will at least have built a reputation of doing so. Perhaps Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée, director behind the swoony long-distance love affair in The Young Victoria, for the romance-focused half, and Alfonso Cuarón, who is no stranger to steamy with Y tu mamá también, high-profile literary adaptations with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and end of the world-style tragedies with babies at their centre with Children of Men. Other vampire-aware director suggestions: Vincenzo Natali ("Quartier de la Madeleine"), Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch and Day Watch), and Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark). Of course, if she keeps scooping up best director awards for The Hurt Locker, it might take a little doing to entice her to this field. Then again, maybe she's one of those middle aged women who love Stephenie Meyer's work.

If you live somewhere other than New York, L.A., or Toronto, January is a great time to go to the cinema. All the buzz movies you've heard about for the last few months are finally playing at a theatre near you. You can make time this weekend for Avatar, Brothers, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Precious, The Road, Sherlock Holmes, and The Young Victoria. I highly recommend the joyous Fantastic Mr. Fox and the beautifully romantic The Young Victoria.

If you're looking for something new to see, your options dwindle. Hollywood fare opening this weekend includes Daybreakers, about a vampire (Ethan Hawke) who searches to perfect a blood substitute or cure vampirism before the last humans die out, to feed your vampire addiction; Leap Year, where Amy Adams travels to Ireland to force her boyfriend into accepting her proposal, in case you kind of hate yourself; and Youth in Revolt, in which Michael Cera seeks to transform himself from adorable geek to rebellious sex god and which tried to use Old 97s in its trailer and on its website to manipulate me into taking an interest. 

Over at the Bytowne, you've got the goofy but middling The Men Who Stare at Goats, Colin Firth's guaranteed best actor nod A Single Man,  and Pedro Almodóvar latest Penélope Cruz venture, Broken Embraces.

Last January, I reported seven film trends that defined 2008's cinema. The seventh was "vampires are everywhere." Guess what? 2009 was no less obsessed with vampires than 2008. Last night's People's Choice Awards saw seven statues go to vampires or vampire-related properties: Taylor Lautner for Breakout Actor, Twilight Saga for on-screen team and franchise, Twilight for movie*, Vampire Diaries for new TV drama, Supernatural for sci-fi/fantasy show, and True Blood for TV obsession. That last one fits so well it's almost a cliché: you don't watch True Blood. You gasp and yell, "Holy shit!" and get really pissed off if someone tries to call you between 9 and 10 on a Sunday night to interrupt your weekly heart attack. Naturally, Gossip Girl is the only point of comparison in the category.

*Not that New Moon can't fall into a hole for all I care, but Twilight came out in 2008. Why is it on the docket? I know I've become weirdly obsessed with Twilight as a direct result of my disappointment with New Moon, but surely not all the other "people" feel that way.  

Also on the vampire front, CBC put together this quiz, on which I received 10 out of 10 because I am vampire-obsessed or, as they put it, "You’re so badass, you have blood smoothies for breakfast."

With apologies for going on vacation and thus delaying the Vampire Diaries marathon wrap up a couple weeks. At least you have the benefit of knowing that these two episodes are part of the show's full tilt run toward awesome.

In "History Repeating," probably-my-favourite Bonnie gets drawn into the vampire plot when Damon's evil plan is finally revealed: with Emily's help, he can release not-at-all dead Katherine from a mystical holding chamber along with two dozen other vamps. And when do we find this out? After Stefan decides to win Damon over by impersonating Damon, which prompts Damon to impersonate Stefan. While poor Ian Somerhalder had less to work with (Damon's idea of Stefan hilariously involves "forehead-brooding" and "Elena-longing"), Paul Wesley was clearly having a ball playing Stefan's idea of his sarcastic older brother. Many laughs help point to what was probably once a close relationship. Of course, Stefan's not down with Damon's plan. Neither is Emily-in-Bonnie, so she destroys the talisman that would free Katherine. Damon decides that that means he should free the blood from Bonnie's neck. Stefan saves her, even giving up some of his own blood in the process. 

Now, during this mêlée,  Stefan tries to explain to Damon that their relationships with Katherine weren't real because of the whole mind-compulsion thing (we learned earlier in the season that the compulsion fades during the transition to vampire and eventually things become clearer), and Damon REVEALS that he knew what was going on all along. I say REVEAL like that because everything else I've read treats this moment like a giant revelation, but that makes no sense. It sounds more like Damon RATIONALIZES. Think about what that would mean if it were true:

• Damon was cool with his girl banging his brother.
• Damon was cool with his girl using mind control on his brother.
• Damon was cool with him and his brother getting turned into vampires by said girl, so they could be an eternal threesome.

Given everything we know about Damon, does that sound like him? He's been torturing but not killing his brother for the last 145 years just so he can resurrect Katherine and prove to Stefan once and for all which one she likes best.
"The Turning Point" features some well done misdirection, the likes of which I would not have expected from this show. Alaric Saltzman (from Tigerland! Okay, you probably know him was Warner from Legally Blonde, but you should watch Tigerland) rolls up with a weird ring, an old name, and a desire to be invited inside, so he's the vamp that turned Logan, right? Maybe not! He appears to be some kind of slayer because that's just what he does: walks right up to Logan and sticks a stake in him. Whether that turns out to be some other misdirection (perhaps he is also the vampire who made Logan?), we'll have to wait and see until January 21. When, you know, Elena confronts Stefan over the looks-just-like-Katherine thing. Also, other mind blowing things that I won't spoil for you here if the spoiler I accidentally read is to be believed. But I hope it is because it is mind-blowing. Also, apparently Stefan did not rock Elena's work quite as hard with his vamp-sex as dearly departed Lexi predicted, given that she had time to snoop, find the picture  (tin type? daguerreotype?) of Katherine that he leaves laying around because he is an idiot, and take off during the time it took Stefan to get a glass of water. I know it's a big house, but he's got vamp-speed and vamp-hearing. Surely he would have noticed something. Maybe his own world was rocked too hard to pay attention? We'll go with that. Go, Elena!

Since I finally pinpointed the episode where Diaries got good, I probably didn't need to keep watching the CW's week long marathon last night, but I did anyway. "Haunted" and "162 Candles" are great episodes: excellent character development, lots of action, a few surprises. Highlights:

 

 

I'm delighted to tell you that it didn't take all week to figure out how Vampire Diaries went from so-bad-it's-good to genuinely good. It was episode six, "Lost Girls." But first I had to slog my way through episode five, "You're Undead to Me." Okay, slog is a little harsh since the episode featured a car wash, which meant it featured lots of toned arms, but there's little of note except:

 

 

In yesterday's marathon installment, "Friday Night Bites" and "Family Ties," we saw some improvement over the first two episodes but not quite enough to call the show actually good yet. Still, as I suspected, episode three and dear Stefan are at the heart of making the show work as anything other than a juicebomb.

The Good:

 

There's a Vampire Diaries marathon on the CW this week (Monday to Friday, 8 to 10 p.m.). I've seen all the episodes, and I'm sort of allergic to reruns, but I've decided to watch this week anyway to try to figure out when and how the show got good. 

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if Diaries was good and got an enthusiastic "Hells yeah!" as a reply. She followed up with a clarifying, "So bad it's good or actually good?" This is an important distinction to make when talking to me, as I am a lover of camp in the first order. I thought it over, then explained that it started out so bad it's good and graduated to actually good. Not sure how it happened, really, hence the rewatch. 

I can assure you that it didn't happen in first two episodes, "Pilot" and "Night of the Comet," during which time the following crimes were committed:

• Not only was there too much voice over, but the voice overs were made to overlap. Ech! Plus, Elena's start with "Dear Diary." Do people actually write that past the age of 12? Shut up, EVO.
• Elena wore that white motocross jacket with the heinous ruched sleeves.  
• TV once again forgot about these great things called "bases" and assumed that one conversation would lead directly to sex. I mean, it does sometimes but probably not always. On the other hand, like any CW show, there are no parents, only mean teachers.
• Jeremy announced publicly and in front of her brother/his friend(ish) Matt that he had slept with Vicky repeatedly. I bring this up because there is still no fall out from that, when surely Matt would be like, "I wish all my friends would stop trying to bang my sister." Matt is the only morally decent character on the show, though, so maybe he would just stifle that impulse for the sake of someone else's happiness. 
• Damon literally said out loud, "That's for me to know and you to dot dot dot." Not left it hanging there with an implied ellipsis. Actually said, "dot dot dot." That just might be the worst dialogue in the history of the CW, and it's got pretty stiff competition. Shut up, Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec. And stop trying to make "epic" happen. It only works for Logan.

The first two eps are definitely not up to the quality I've mysteriously come to expect, so I'll be on the look out tonight for improvements. I think they might be directly related to Stefan growing on me.

When I first saw this news, my only thought was, "Motherfucker." It was more out of disappointment than any real annoyance. One of the difficulties of film criticism is reconciling the seventh art with the fact it's ultimately a money making venture. Poets don't write for the money.

So from a capitalist point of view, I can certainly understand why Summit would flip the bird to the mostly negative reviews of New Moon and make overtures to win back director Chris Weitz, he of the $480-million-worldwide-and-counting gross. Even without capitalism, I see no reason to argue against splitting up Breaking Dawn into two movies. That book is completely bananas, so scribe Melissa Rosenberg should do whatever she has to to make it work.

But what about David Slade, whose Eclipse is set to hit theatres in July? New Moon out-grossed Twilight. Who's to say that Eclipse won't out-gross New Moon? It is, after all, the best book in the series (IMHO, of course). If they give both Breaking Dawns (Breaking Dawn 2: Vampire Boogaloo) to Weitz, how will they reward Slade? Make him sparkle?