You could say that Bella's father in Stephenie Meyer's young adult fantasy collection Twilight, which is about to become a big-screen series of movies, is the reason for all the vampire romance. In the book, the young Bella (who will be played by Kristen Stewart) heads to Forks to live with her father. There, she falls for Edward (Robert Pattinson), and in typical YA, romantic, vampire fare, things get sticky.

Up to this point, we've gotten a slew of casting notices about Bella and the parade of vamps, but now MTV, which seems to be the official source for Twilight info, has confirmed that Billy Burke will be playing him. The actor has popped up in a ton of television shows, but he's also been in flicks like the recent Untraceable.

Ashley Greene, who plays Alice Cullen in the film, confirmed his casting and said: "I've only met him once, and I don't really have any scenes with him yet. But I think he's a pretty good fit ... He's commented on making the character a strong character." Strong, weak, or anything in between, he's definitely a good fit to play the dad of Stewart. If you're a fangirl or boy itching for more info, in another post, Greene discusses her involvement in the film, from softball to complaints that's she's just too darned tall for her character.

An average to slightly above-average thriller with a noticeable lack of twists, predictable or otherwise, Untraceable is acceptable viewing for anyone who is a fan of Diane Lane or dense enough about the Internet to buy the film's premise, that a hacker of limited means and intelligence could create and maintain a high-profile Website; the origin of which is untraceable by the FBI. It's a conceit that sounds fishy even to the computer know-nothings in the theater and at one point the film acknowledges this, throwing in the caveat that while the technology to trace the killer does exist, it's only available to the National Security Agency, and they aren't willing to share their technology with the FBI. Uh-huh. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's the case. Once FBI agents themselves start getting murdered and their bodies grotesquely displayed on the site in question, wouldn't some responsible FBI chief threaten the NSA with a press conference to let America know that this culprit could be caught if the NSA spooks would only share their toys?

After they're stalked and selected, the killer's victims meet the sharp end of a taser and end up trapped in a Saw-like contraption in a dank basement, staring into a video camera that's sending feed to a website called KillWithMe.com -- yes, Sony has grabbed that particular domain and you should go there now to see some funny marketing. The killing mechanisms, be it a drip of acid into a water tank or the turning on of heat lamps one after the other, are incrementally activated by the number of hits the Website receives. The more people tune in, the faster the victim dies. Much like in Seven, the killer chooses high-profile, prominent victims to draw attention to his crimes and that only adds to the outlandishness of him being uncatchable. Still, there's enough lack of knowledge about the technology in question to make it sound something less than absurd, and the movie works on a the level of a cheap, quick ride that you can ride just long enough before it gets tiresome and irritating.

No director alive can make family melodramas as brilliantly as Douglas Sirk once did, but I'd suggest that Robert Benton comes the closest. Though filmmakers continue to grind out weepies by the truckload, it's extremely difficult to find that exact thread between heavy and hammy, perhaps even more difficult than making a funny comedy. Weepies generally tell depressing stories, about death, disease, failed romances, unrequited romances, estranged romances, etc. The trick is not to make the film itself depressing. Most directors make the mistake of shooting the material head-on, which has the effect of bludgeoning the audience rather than coaxing them in. Part of Sirk's genius was his timing; he made his best films in the 1950s when you couldn't show everything. He used his skills, his palate of colors, space and the elements, to suggest, rather than tell, his stories.

Admittedly, Benton isn't as visually astute as Sirk, but he's a good writer, good with words and characters. He has lots of different kinds of films on his resume -- he's often attracted to crime stories -- but his melodramas almost always hit home: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), for which he won a Best Director Oscar, Places in the Heart (1984), and Nobody's Fool (1994). Even his previous film, The Human Stain (2003), worked on a basic, emotional level, though critics generally dismissed it because of its failure to live up to Philip Roth's novel and its mismatched casting of Wentworth Miller as a young Anthony Hopkins. Benton's new movie has less of a pristine literary pedigree, and so perhaps it will go down easier.

It's all about beefing up a film's cast today, as the new Diane Lane flick, Untraceable, has added a few more names to its pot. Colin Hanks, Billy Burke, Joseph Cross and Mary Beth Hurt have joined Lakeshore Entertainment's thriller, which follows an FBI agent (Lane) while she attempts to track down "a ruthless online predator." So, basically, it's like an extended Law & Order/FBI Files episode, only with a bunch more familiar faces.

Hanks is set to play Lane's FBI partner (can you believe Tom Hanks' kid is now playing an FBI agent in a film?), while Burke shall play Lane's lover, Hurt, her mother, and Cross will take on the role of villain. Gregory Hoblit (Frequency, Fallen) who, coincidentally, directed episodes of L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues back in the day, has come on board to helm the pic, which begins production next month in Portland, Oregon. Bonus points go to scribes Robert Fyvolent and Mark R. Brinker for penning an original script (as in Untraceable will not be based off some novel, short story, play, etc ...), though Cross isn't a very scary bad guy -- then again, online predators are known to blend in with the crowd. Hmm, I wonder if this one will end with a crew from Dateline NBC showing up to spoil the party?

Odds and ends from Monday:

• Billy Burke (Ladder 49) has signed on to star in Jennifer Chambers Lynch's (Yes, that's daughter to director David Lynch) Surveillance, her second directorial effort following 1993's Boxing Helena (Yes, that's fifteen years since her last film). Pic follows an FBI agent who gets help tracking a serial killer from the lunatic's would-be-victims. Production is set to begin in or around October.
• Newbie Jodie Whittaker and Viggo Mortenson will take lead roles in Good, an adaptation from the award-winning play. Directed by Vincente Amorin, story revolves around a German professor who, during the 1930s, is seduced (I take it flowers and a goodnight kiss weren't involved) by the Nazi party. Yeah, it's safe to say things didn't go well there from then on out.
• Shortly after the death of animal lover Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, the rumor mill jumped all over Russell Crowe saying the actor was interested in playing Irwin in a possible biopic. However, Crowe shot down the reports (in a rather absurd Crowe-like way) by saying, "That's one of those appalling pieces of sh*t that's come out of the press. While my friend's body is still warm, I'm being accused of doing commerce over his grave, and it absolutely disgusts me." He then picked up Irwin's coffin and chucked it at the reporter. I mean, so they say ...