The Twilight Quartet: Twi-Hard Confidential

(with apologies to James Ellroy)

'New Moon' posters perniciously proliferate. Heart-throb head shots hang from hoardings. Brooding bloodsuckers emblazon bus stops. The emo undead encroach on commercial breaks, inveigle the internet, gaze glassy-eyed from glossy magazines. I'm implicity ignoring and tenaciously tuning out the abject adverts. I'm soft-pedalling on Stephanie Meyer's sell-out saga and getting justifiably juiced on James Ellroy's latest lump of locquacious literature.

But my defences are down, my attention absent, and the cool clinical clampdown that categorically colludes in the quality control of my aesthetic affectations has been cold-cocked and duplicitously declared out for the count. It happens before I can batten down the hatches, occurs before I can offer an alternative. "You know," my wife says, "I'm almost tempted to watch 'Twilight' just to see what all the fuss is about."

It happens fast but it's flagrantly my fault. I should have stamped down on the surreptitious suggestion. Niftily nixed it and nipped it in the bud. I should have instantly instigated an injunction and imperviously impailed the irredeemable idea. I should have expedited an excoriating 'Exorcist' emulation, hepped up on holy water and crucifix-crazy: "I cast you out, pasty-faced, big-haired vampire boy. The power of the film critic compels you, the power of the film critic compels you ..."

But I don't. I'm enmeshed in Ellroy's exhaustive epic, addicted to alliterative appellations and acerbic action, nobbled by nihilistic narrative. Next thing I know there's a damnable disc disappearing doom-laden in the DVD player and I find myself focusing fearfully on the forlorn film falsely fulminated upon as fantastic and fabulous by its fixated and fanatical fanbase. I'm wilfully and woefully watching the torturous and twisted 'Twilight' - me, the man who blazingly begun this blog as a bombastic bastion behoven to bigging-up big screen brilliance and movie magnificence, who tantalisingly titled it after hep-cat Herzog's words of wisdom, who swore sincerely to steer clear of moribund mundanity and mass-market mediocrity.

I'm suffering for my art and bleeding for my blog. I'm psyched on cynicism and hellishly haemophiliac. I'm fatalistically factoring in four days of seditiously sarcastic reviews and contemptuous commentary. I'm ready to dance with the devil and tangle with the Twi-hards. Remember, dear readers, you heard it here first - off the record, on the QT and so frickin' hush-hush it's unbelievable.