Shakespeare's echoes in "New Moon"

"Matty Robinson, a co-host of the excellent movie podcast Filmspotting, likes to say of an underrated performance, "I don't want to see his Hamlet, but [X] is not bad in this role." You don't want to see Kristen Stewart's Hamlet—and based on a few lines Ed reads aloud in an English-class scene, you really don't want to see Robert Pattinson's Romeo—but both actors are ideally suited to their roles as pining sweethearts separated only by the fact that one lacks an eternal soul. Based on her mumbly, visibly uncomfortable appearances on the talk-show circuit, Stewart really is a bit of a Bella, rough-edged and glum. (Of course, the knowledge that they may or may not be dating in real life—not since the days of Walter Winchell has a Hollywood romance been more carefully stage-managed—adds to the penumbra of mystery that surrounds the couple.)I'll observe that unlike its predecessor, the sequel (directed not by Catherine Hardwicke this time but by Chris Weitz, co-director of About A Boy and American Pie) is often intentionally funny: the scene in which Bella insists on taking not one but two prospective suitors to an action movie called Face Punch or the moment when a paper cut at a birthday party leads to a near-mauling by her vampire pals". Source: www.slate.com

"Frankly erotic, though appropriate for those 12 and older, New Moon (like its source material and also like many romantic movies and literature before 1970) is about the sexual heat generated by chastity. Let's just say its temperature is about 104 degrees.It is also about the two types of boys to whom girls are drawn: Brainiac and Jock, the madonna/whore of male archetypes". Source: www.philly.com