The Southern Vampire Mysteries -- which began in 2001 with "Dead Until Dark," and continued through 13 novels with hard-to-keep-straight titles and a dozen or so short stories and novellas -- is comfort reading of superior quality, made even more endearing by the series' longtime audiobook narrator Johanna Parker. As the series title suggests, these books, while typically shelved in the romance section, are actually whodunits. In each volume some annoying minor character gets killed, and by the end the culprit has been nabbed: serviceable plots, these, but certainly not the source of the series' charm.

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"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" was picked as last year's worst picture Saturday by the Razzies, an Academy Awards spoof that hands out prizes for Hollywood's lousiest movies on the eve of the Oscars.

The finale to the blockbuster supernatural romance dominated the Razzies with seven awards, including worst actress for Kristen Stewart, supporting actor for Taylor Lautner, director for Bill Condon and worst screen couple for Lautner and child co-star Mackenzie Foy.

Adam Sandler was named worst actor for the raunchy comedy "That's My Boy," his second-straight win after 2011's "Jack and Jill," which swept all 10 Razzie categories a year ago. Pop singer Rihanna won worst supporting actress for the action dud "Battleship."

"Twilight" movies had been well represented in Razzie nominations over the years but had not won any key awards there. Razzie voters joke that as with "The Lord of the Rings" finale winning best picture at the Academy Awards, they were waiting for the last "Twilight" flick on which to heap their scorn.

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"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" earned $141 million domestically over opening weekend, putting the final "Twilight" in the eighth position on the list of all-time domestic debuts, leaving the supernatural series with three of the top-10 openings, joining 2009's "New Moon" (No. 7 with $142.8 million) and last year's "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" (No. 9 with $138.1 million).

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2," Summit, $141,067,634, 4,070 locations, $34,660 average, $141,067,634, one week.

2. "Skyfall," Sony, $41,104,513, 3,505 locations, $11,727 average, $160,941,621, two weeks.

3. "Lincoln," Disney, $21,049,406, 1,775 locations, $11,859 average, $22,468,242, two weeks.

4. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $18,582,937, 3,622 locations, $5,131 average, $121,750,227, three weeks.

5. "Flight," Paramount, $8,802,881, 2,612 locations, $3,370 average, $61,523,691, three weeks.

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In Cronin's dystopian hellscape, "virals" harry the few remaining pockets of humanity in the continental U.S. The infected feed on blood and exhibit a certain animal cunning, but have no memory of their former lives. Each serves as a drone-like follower to one of 12 original vampires, test subjects in a military experiment gone very, very wrong. A couple of generations after these creatures have laid waste to the country, the more intrepid characters from the last half of "The Passage" continue their quest to kill the 12, thereby liberating their hives into true death.

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"Right," I say, crossing out "cyborg" in my notes.

There are shots of vampires, witches, mermaids and more -- all scantily clad or in the buff (see the slide show). We're sitting at the kitchen table in his home in Antioch, Calif., looking at Hansen's supernatural nude photography as his Rottweiler enthusiastically licks our feet. This hobby of his has twice gotten him suspended as a San Francisco police officer. Now he's suing the department, claiming it violated his free speech rights by punishing him for his extracurricular activities.

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The recipes in "True Blood: Eats, Drinks, and Bites from Bon Temps" probably won't help you resemble trim stars like Anna Paquin or Stephen Moyer. The book features rich, southern Louisiana fare like jambalaya, andouille and crawfish dip.

James Costos, vice president of licensing and retail for HBO, told the Associated Press that a cookbook was a natural extension for the show."The senses play a huge part in ‘True Blood,'" he said.

HBO released a cookbook based on "The Sopranos" and is due for another Louisiana cookbook next spring to accompany the show "Treme."

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Unfortunately, this argument smacks of chauvinism. McGreevy (currently adapting Bram Stoker's "Dracula" for the big screen) blames this on a new, dangerous "female gaze" -- as opposed to the misogynistic "male gaze" as defined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The female gaze, he suggests, makes these non-threatening vampires "pornography for tweens." When he asserts that "Mad Men's" Don Draper is actually more of a vampire than any of the "True Blood" or "Twilight" characters, what he's saying is that Draper is more of a man.

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Hopefully this joke, tossed as a casual aside after Sookie punches Eric in the nose (like a shark!) for trying to eat her, is a harbinger of the return to "True Blood's" better writing days. King Bill's whole scene where he lays out that any vampire caught feeding on YouTube will meet "the true death" is pretty baller, if only because it reminds us (and not in a bonk-you-on-the-head kind of way) that these characters live in a world where viral videos, along with "Jersey Shore," exist. The concept of the Internet having a place in the world of "True Blood" is 20 times more interesting than ghost were-panthers. Let's 2.0 this bitch up! Give Eric back his cellphone for texting!

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Jason Stackhouse wakes up tied to a bed in the "Hills Have Eyes" community that he has been entrusted with after his V-addicted girlfriend Crystal went away to have sex with her brother. (Side note: How can something that is so hot on "Game of Thrones" be so disgusting on "True Blood"? Incest, she is a fickle turn-on.) Turns out Stackhouse has been conned by these young rednecks who eat raw meat and lick his head wounds, because he is just that dumb. Crystal and her half-brother Felton are back, and they want Jason to spawn little werepanther babies and continue their totally non-defected, inbred gene pool. But first Jason has to become a werepanther himself, in a ritual that looks a lot like the vampire's turning process: draining (or in this case, clawing) a person till they are almost dead, then waiting for the next full moon. I think they are a missing a step where Jason needs to drink (claw) their blood? So now he's all infected and gross. Man, Stackhouse, if only you were smart enough to outthink a family whose cumulative IQ adds up to less than Forrest Gump's. Alas.

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During a recent interview to promote the fourth season of Alan Ball's HBO show (which premieres this Sunday at 9 p.m.), Moyer told Men's Health magazine that Anna allows him to bite more than just the necks of some of his more rabid fans.

From Men's Health:

"I get to sign boobs a lot. I get to bite boobs occasionally, when I’m allowed…If my missus is there and she approves of the person I get to bite boobs… and necks."

Jesus, what?! Stephen Moyer is going around biting people's breasts (if his wife "approves of the person")? Because I don't remember one instance of that happening on the show. There aren't even any major arteries in the breast; that's why vampires on "True Blood" usually go for the neck, thigh or under the armpit.

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In case you hate spoilers, don't read this next part: Now we know where Sookie went when Glinda the Good Witch Claudine her Fairy Godmother came and swallowed her up in a ball of light. Because remember, Sookie (who I keep wanting to write out as a Snookie, so help me God) is part fairy, and also she is mad at her boyfriend Vampire Bill, so why not just run away with a lady offering you glowing fruit, right? Anyway, Sookie gets transported to heaven/fairy land/a Greek bathhouse with very complimentary lighting, and runs into some old friends!

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That might have been what the producers of the "Fright Night" remake had in mind when they cast smoking bad-boy Colin Farrell in the role of the bloodsucking neighbor Jerry instead of going with the original concept. Why hire a paunchy shmoe to play a vampire when he could be a gorgeous A-lister riding a motorcycle through an exploding garage?

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What's your favorite scary movie? That infamous line haunt the victims of Wes Craven's "Scream" and its subsequent remakes, the most recent of which Andrew O'Hehir just reviewed in Salon. But it's a question that also haunts its young audience, a generation that has grown up in a period when the lack of good horror films is downright scary. Millennials have the torture porn of "Hostel" and "Saw" to call our own and all those slick remakes of classics like "Dawn of the Dead," "Halloween" and "Nightmare on Elm Street." But for all the bodies piled up on "CSI" and "Law & Order: SVU," where is our "Twilight Zone"? Our "Tales From the Crypt"? Hell, we don't even have our own "Twin Peaks."

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“It’s great to win something outside of ‘Twilight,’” said Pattinson. 

Aside from the pale undead, other winners include Taylor Swift, "Wizards of Waverly Place" star Selena Gomez, and Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian. The awards are hosted by singer Katy Perry and the male stars of "Glee": Chris Colfer, Kevin McHale, Cory Monteith and Mark Salling. Even the newly non-engaged Levi Johnston shows up. 

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Salon talked to Dr. Anthony Youn, a cosmetic surgeon who happens to be a favorite of the Rachel Ray show, to ask how the facelift works and whether it's a good idea.

So what exactly is a vampire facelift?

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You'll notice I've avoided most of the better-known recent vampire films, and that many of my picks were created outside the United States, made on indie film budgets, or released before the cutoff point after which the current crop of teen and preteen viewers seem inclined to label a movie "old." (Based on a depressing recent conversation with a college student who offhandedly called "Fight Club" "a pivotal film of my childhood," the cutoff point is somewhere around the time that the Tom Cruise suck-fest "Interview with the Vampire" came out.)

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The Vampire King of Mississippi rides up in hunting pinks. What! The werewolves are under his command? He's so disappointed in how they've treated Bill. He shoots the second to last werewolf and then reveals the remaining one's humiliating nickname! Cooter! Oh how Bill laughs! These werewolves, they are so childlike. Clearly Bill doesn't realize he still has that messy meal chin.

But this petulant schoolyard rapport between Bill and Cooter sets up the theme of this episode: wounded, angry children.

This is what happens when parents abandon their children physically or emotionally:

The children grow up bitter and vulnerable, never having learned how to change quickly from a dog into an owl should they find themselves about to be hit by a Mack truck (Sam). Or they walk away from true love (Jessica) and when they have to dismember the trucker they accidentally killed and hid in the basement, they have no idea how expensive chainsaws are!

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