And So This Is 2011

Rather brilliantly, Oor Wullie (cartoon strip about a spiky haired Dundonian lad who dispenses wisdom from atop an old bucket) has beat Twilight (moany girl tries to persuade skinny vampire to sex her up) to be the top-selling book of 2010. Well, the top seller for branches of Waterstone's in Scotland. But that's still pretty good.

There aren't many obvious similarities between the two. Wullie lives in a fictional Scottish town called Auchenshoogle (a cross between Glasgow and Dundee), Bella lives in a real town inexplicably named after some cutlery (Forks). He is poor but happy and funny, whilst she's a spoilt white girl who takes herself too seriously and is constantly miserable. When he is bored or something doesn't go his way, Wullie concocts a daft scheme and drafts in his pals to help, with hilarious consequences. When something doesn't go Bella's way, she sits in a chair and stares out of the window for THREE MONTHS.

On the other hand, they aren't completely dissimilar. Wullie has been 9 years old since 1937, whilst Bella longs to be vampired and remain her current age for a similarly eternal length of time. Both of them jabber away constantly in a manner totally incomprehensible to people outside their target audience. And both are surprisingly popular, lets be honest. Wullie is a national institution in Scotland, but how many people do you know who actually read the strips? None, that's what. They all wait for the annual, which only comes out every two years, and buy it for someone else. Meanwhile Twilight is almost totally unreadable, yet has somehow tapped into the psyche of millions of girls across the world who will cheerfully buy multiple copies of the same book because one has a poster of R-Pattz. Stephanie Meyer's bank balance does not lie.

Out of the two, I prefer the quaint traditionalism of Wullie to the emotional wallowing of Bella and I think it's fantastic he's outsold her. It points to a level of humour in Scotland that warms the cockles of my heart. But I wouldn't rush out to buy either of them. So there.

Vampires and Werewolves 3 - Vampwolf With A Vengeance

[Scene: Jacob and Edward arguing, as per usual]

Bella: Enough! I am sick of you two fighting. From now on I am Switzerland.

Bella voiceover: Edward didn't like that.

Well of course not. Who does like it when their girlfriend comes out as a small European country made of clocks and chocolate. In front of their rival, no less. It's just embarrassing.

Anyway, Twilight 3, or Eclipse as it is also known to some die-hard fans, is a bit of a disappointment. Not because I was expecting anything in particular, but because it actually had a believable punt at being a proper film.

Yes, there was lots of gratuitous exposure of Taylor Lautner, at which someone gave an audible gasp sending the entire audience into hysterics. And the vampires are getting more unconvincingly vampirey as the series goes along, as if nobody has told them that much makeup is bad for the skin. And the message it send out to young women is morally dubious in the extreme.

But it wasn't wall to wall hilarity a la New Moon, or amusingly awful like Twilight. Worryingly it had something approaching a plot, several hints that were suspiciously close to character development, and a couple of apparently deliberate comic moments. The rest of it was a bit mawkish and trite, but neither in an hilariously OTT way nor a manner so slow paced and cloying as to be unwatchable.

Something verging on an average film is not what I signed up for, frankly, so they had better sort it out in time for the next one. (Which I am told they are splitting into two parts. That JK Rowling's got a lot to answer for... OK, they'd better sort it out in time for the next two.) I will not stay the course for the mesmerizing sheen of their shiny shiny teeth alone! I want at least one tortured, cliche-ridden monologue from R-Patz and I demand some terrible acting from somewhere - Kristen Stewart seems like the most obvious choice given her character is the most two dimensional creation since Mickey Mouse.

Taylor Lautner, meanwhile, should carry on as is. He has easily the best lines in this film, and possesses the makings of some kind of accidental comic genius. Is he self-aware? Don't care. Keep up the good work.


PS See Charlie Brooker or The R-Patz Factz for a less disillusioned take on the franchise.

Robert Pattinson Collects Belfries

In lieu of an interesting photo today, here is an old one featuring a couple of books I inherited from a big library clear out. We had to remove 9 shelves to make room for a spectacularly underused information pod. Totally worth it.

Furthermore, the creator of surprisingly readable Doctor Who blog The Mind Probe has created another internet gem, The R-Patz Factz. This is a bit like the Chuck Norris facts, but more topical as they are about sparkly vampire hunk - or vunk - Robert Pattinson. Follow the blog! Join the Facebook group! It's going to be an internet phenomenon the like of which has never been seen.