The news broke over the weekend that Catherine Hardwicke won’t be directing the “Twilight” sequel, “New Moon”.

This is a good thing; Hardwicke’s a terrible director — bordering on the incompetent, really — and though I’m sure teenage girls the world over will disagree with me, “Twilight” is atrociously bad.

Hardwicke’s “New Moon” would surely have been worse, with the success of the previous film encouraging her to follow her directorial bliss. (Remember “Lords of Dogtown”? It’s be like that, but with werewolves.)

But wait! Cinematical reports that Summit Entertainment, which holds the rights to Stephenie Meyers’ books, is considering Chris Weitz, whose most recent credit is “The Golden Compass”, to take over the franchise.

I am leery about this. Weitz may be a terrific director of actors — “About a Boy” features Hugh Grant’s best screen performance, bar none — but “The Golden Compass” demonstrated that he hasn’t got the slightest idea how to make visual effects compelling, and clearly “New Moon” is going to have a few of those.

Ah, whatever. We’ll all find out how he fares in a year or so; until then, it’s entirely academic, right?

Also, the L.A. Film Critics Association has named “WALL-E” the Best Picture of the year. Not Best Animated Feature, mind you, but Best Picture. Good for them!