Vampire

Alex O'Loughlin is best known for his role as vampire Mick St. John on the short-lived CBS/Warner Bros. television show "Moonlight." He has also appeared on FX's "The Shield" and the medical series "Three Rivers." Most recently he was seen in the feature films "Whiteout," "The Invisible" and "August Rush."

Anyone worried about the fate of Bella, Edward, Jacob and the rest of the "Twilight" gang after the moody blues of movie No. 2 can breathe a sigh of relief. "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" is back with all of the lethal and loving bite it was meant to have: The kiss of the vampire is cooler, the werewolf is hotter, the battles are bigger and the choices are, as everyone with a pulse knows by now, life-changing. It's really all because the kids are growing up. Not just Bella, Edward and Jacob, though they're doing their share of hitting major milestones what with their love triangle more fraught than ever, but Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner who finally, finally have figured out how to breathe life into the characters first created by publishing phenom Stephenie Meyer.

With "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" topping $200 million at the domestic box office, you'd think it would be easy to roll out a movie about a young vampire in love. But "Let Me In," the English-language remake of the cult hit "Let the Right One In," is finding itself in a situation more fraught than Count Dracula at an afternoon blood drive. Tomas Alfredson's Swedish-language original, based on a script and novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, told the story of a pre-teen loner named Oskar and his tender friendship with the oddball, sexually ambiguous Eli, who is revealed to be a vampire.

Having made two of the most insightful, affectionate films about teenagers with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Clueless," Amy Heckerling jumps on the most recent youth bandwagon with "Vamps. " Written and directed by Heckerling, "Vamps" isn't quite the low-hanging logline of "Clueless" meets "Twilight" though in some respects it is about the twilight of cluelessness - or how age and maturity do not necessarily equal the onset of fogey-dom, but rather offer a sense of greater understanding and seeing beyond oneself.

There's a disorienting moment at the start of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead" — the first of many more to come. The film features Jake Hoffman, son of Dustin, so it's a little confusing to see a second deathly pale, smirking vampire's visage that resembles … a young Dustin Hoffman. "Isn't that funny, people have said that to me," says a laughing John Ventimiglia, the actual owner of that second face. "Not about this, just in general. I don't know if it's the eyes or the smile, I don't know what it is."

Even after the weekend's Video Music Awards, MTV continues to celebrate its 30th birthday and to push for new relevance with two shows premiering Monday. "Ridiculousness," hosted by Rob Dyrdek, is a rip-off of "America's Funniest Home Videos" and skewed to a younger, hipper demographic. So instead of toddlers running headfirst into dishwashers (always hilarious), it's young men on skateboards and pogo sticks doing tricks that end badly, often with deleterious effects to their reproductive organs.

"True Blood's" fourth season opens Sunday night with Sam Trammell returning to HBO's racy vampire drama as Sam Merlotte, a cafe owner and shape-shifter who can turn into any animal he likes and back again. Offstage, Trammell, 40, is also preparing for his debut as the father of twins with his longtime girlfriend, actress Missy Yager. Tell me about Sam Merlotte's adventures in the new season. I understand you have a new love interest. Yeah, I do. Last season, Sam sort of excommunicated his biological family, and he gains a new family in a sense because he meets this person who's also a shape-shifter, named Luna [Janina Gavankar]

Vampires have long been objects of fascination in history, literature and lore. With the Nov. 20 release of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," HBO's "True Blood" and their countless imitators, Americans are welcoming vampires into their homes again. Though many consider Transylvania to be the lair of vampirism, there's plenty of vampire culture right here. Whether you have just come out of the coffin or long thirsted for night life, these locations offer plenty of opportunities to explore the dark side.

Kathryn Leigh Scott describes her cameo in Tim Burton's feature version of the cult-favorite, 1966-71 ABC daytime soap-vampire romance "Dark Shadows" as the film's "ah-ha" moment. Scott starred in four roles on the influential soap — the precursor of such popular vampire TV series as "True Blood" and the "Twilight" books and movies. She played the waitress from the wrong side of the tracks Maggie Evans, who falls in love with a tortured vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), as well as Josette du Pres, Lady Kitty Hampshire and Rachel Drummond.

In remaking the Swedish vampire cult hit " Let the Right One In," Matt Reeves put himself in a position as fraught as Dracula at high noon. Most people had never heard of the source material. And some of those who had ? and could help him spread positive word ? just wished the project would go away. Why attempt an English-language do-over, they asked, of a recent movie that was pretty much perfect in the first place? "I started writing the script for 'Let Me In,' and then 'Let the Right One In' got big in the U.S. I thought, 'Oh no, there's going to be a lot more focus on this now,' " said Reeves, the "Cloverfield" director and J.J. Abrams protégé who scripted and directed the new movie, which stars Chloe Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Richard Jenkins.