Ho-de-ho-ho, if it isn’t being Saint Patrick’s day ya bloody bollocks, and as a special service to our ‘Of-Irish-Descent’ readers, its time for a patronising article that has bugger all to do with Ireland (and in no way increase our readership by being blatantly confrontational and obnoxious obviously).

Time to pick up a green plastic bowler hat (just like they had in the old country that neither you nor anyone you know has ever been to), fill it with dyed green cheap whiskey (because that’s what a true Irishman would obviously do) and check out the best, definitely, positively, Of-Irish-Descent oh-yes-sir-honestly actors!

Ya feckin’ eejit.

Christian Bale

There’s nothing more Of-Irish-Descent than Batman is there? He’s a cop, working in a New York/Chicago analogue and helping out a flatfoot named Gordon. It’s to Bale’s credit that despite a penchant for growling like a bulldog a lot recently, he never once let’s the comedy accent slip. Well, Hollywood is certainly a step up from Bournemouth- top work Bale, you Of-Irish-Descent Psycho you!

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: Sam Worthington

Grunt. Roar. I am a machiiiiiinnnneeee!!!It isn’t often you see someone out-acted by their own leg muscles, But Worthington pulls it of with aplomb. We’d tell him, but he’s not allowed out of his cage between scenes. Also happens to be English, but we’ll ignore that for now…

Mel Gibson

In Lethal Weapon, Gibbo cemented his status as Hollywood’s go-to Of-Irish-descent action man, chain smoking his way through a million glorious mullet-waving action scenes, even going so far as to become violently and visibly anti-Semitic in later life- top o’ the mornin’ to ya Mel!

Of-Irish-Descent version: Bruce Willis

Wow, some one who may actually, just about, have a relative who once lived near Kilkenny! And even though McClain is actually a Scottish name rather than an Irish one, who cares, it’s all the same country outside Poughkeepsie ain’t it? Da noive a’ some peoples!

Robert Pattinson

Ah, those dark eyes, that swoon-inducing giant beehive-quiff of doom, he could only be an of-Irish-Descent rogue.Or the product of a warped imagination that had been reading too many back issues of Preacher when vampire casting week came around. Whatever, the thing they call R-Patz will be clogging up your screens in Remember Me this week, so why not heas down with a bag of green popcorn and enjoy his unique brand o’ bollicks.

Of-Irish-Descent Analogue – Taylor Lautner

He’s got the smouldering good looks down for sure. What a shame they’re buried in the tiny plastic face of a Ken doll, and married to the kind of acting skills last seen on MTV’s The Hills- A bright, Oscar-filled future awaits!

Hugh Jackman

Fist seen playing Curly in Oklahoma, it doesn’t get much more Of-Irish-Descent than a real live cowboy does it?? Jackman then hammered home his all-Of-Irish-Descent status by appearing as..erm..the Canadian Wolverine! And Leopold, Duke of Westminster! Erm…to be fair, we haven’t really thought this one through properly have we…

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: Eric Bana

Yep, this one is absolutely Of-Irish-Descent! 100% positive. Except in ‘Chopper’ obviously. And ‘The Beast’. Shite, we’re going to have to go with Treat Williams instead aren’t we?

Gary Oldman

One of the lesser species of Of-Irish-Descent thespians, Gary covers up his blatantly cockney drawl with squawking southern warblings at every available opportunity, only reverting to type as Syrius Black, but hey, that can be explained away by magic right? As Of-Irish_descent as a dyed green apple pie.

Of-Irish-Descent analogue: James Woods

Almost as adept at whispering and looking vaguely inscrutable, Woods never quite manages the ‘explosive shouting and Scotch drinking’ combo required of the true Of-Irish-Descent acting experience. Although he did once manage to shag a TV set after doing the sex with an ex-Playboy bunny, which is pretty darned close!

Well, a pretty good turn out for the Of-Irish-Descent actors today, with a massive 1 of them them actually having some measure of Blarney floating near their family to be sure! To mis-quote Phil Lynott: Is there anyone in the audience with any Irish in them tonight?

No. No there isn’t.

With Santa set to shove his massive, pie-encrusted bulk down your central heating pipes at any moments, it’s time for the film world to turn it’s 8mm eye Oscar-wards, various illuminati gathering to heap praise on any worthy drama that hoves into view.

Usually the whole event is shrouded in secrecy, but this year producer Adam Shankman has been letting a little more away than the academy would like thanks to his love of Twitter. Shankman, who has a modest following of..ooh..48,000 on the site, usually keeps his tweets innocuous, telling us of dinner with co-hosts Steve Martin and Greatest Actor In The World ™ Alec Baldwin and other boring claptrap, but all hell broke loose when he recently asked his followers exactly what they’d want to see in among the flurry of back-slapping and sub-par Forrest Gump flicks.

Not surprisingly, the web went into overdrive, and while a bizarre rallying call for Neil Patrick Harris as host caught our eye, there’s no surprise that Twilight fans would happily sit through 4 hours of boring yakking to catch a glimpse of R-Patz and Kristin Stewart together on stage (just like New Moon then…). Other idiots in the frame were ‘the new Olivier Zac Efron’, and a variety of musical buffoons from ‘Glee’.

This disturbing lean towards musical theatre has left STS scratching it’s head and wondering who we’d cast for the 82nd awards – current frontrunner is Bishop’s severed head from Alien – but how about you guys? Do you think the entire cast of Wicked would do a better job than Billy Crystal, or would the whole thing be safest in Van Damme’s capable fists? We want your dream Oscar host/presenters/showtune combos and we want them now!

Generally, we watch any old crap round here – in the interest of being a representative, even-handed site obviously – from Marley & Me to Apocalypse Now,it’s all fair grist to the review grinder-yep,we even sat through Troll 2 once.

But just occasionally there are some movie crimes so cynical and heinous in their deployment that we’re robbed of even the enjoyment bought by bright shapes moving around a large screen.
Twilight: New Moon is one of them…

The Twilight Saga’s advance guard of posters and promos have been doing the rounds for a few weeks now, it’s gangsta/Calvin Klein ad Werewolves looking like the world’s worst boy band as they balefully bring to life everything awful about post-Rowling fiction in one sanitised, imaginatively stultified package

The reasons for the unerring – and to most people over 30,completely mystifying – popularity of the Virginity-embracing Goth-a-thon are manifold and as ancient as the vampire myth itself, but the main one?

Boredom.

To contextualise; it’s probably worth remembering at this point that tabloid fodder Cradle of Filth are from a small country village, the interminable ennui of small-town existence producing gratuitous, theatrical stabs at an inescapable conformity that have absolutely nothing to do with the isolationist work of their contemporaries

Twilight has risen from the endless malaise of the American Midwest. Despite the stunning scenery, for many growing up there it’s an endless vista of mini-malls and soccer meets, a land robbed of endless opportunity that retains a general snobbishness for any authentic ‘old-world’ culture (”What do you eat in Britain?” Is a standard enquiry I received while travelling), and while this is a gross oversimplification; in terms of romance, Utah is up there with Chernobyl.

It’s no wonder then that the Disneyfied, stripey-sock Goth peddled by Hot topic is grasped so ravenously by teenagers in a locale where dying your hair or missing church is a rebellious act, and although tweens the world over go through endless recycling of these tropes the constant marketing of them as a substitute for genuine invention is a troubling one. Potter and his ilk are the spawn of daytime TV and half-remembered nursery tales, rather than any familiarity with actual fantastical literature. It may be churlish to suggest, but I’d be sorely surprised if J.K’s library included anything by Lord Dunsany. Tapping into a culturally bereft society doesn’t gift a work with any greater kudos.

Likewise Twilight is born of a warped, half developed sexuality, a flirting with defiance in the face of the US religious machine, and the deeply unsatisfied and unrealised yearnings of its author. Vampires are the ultimate asexual – the bite representing a non-threatening penetration – that means they are non-threatening romantic partners, perfect grist for the mill of the unsettlingly carried out (if well-intentioned) Chastity movement the books encourage. While virginity and chastity are both admirable qualities, they are very personal ones that shouldn’t be enforced by mass-media or religion; to do so is a backwards step, rather than a liberating one. Here non-sensationalist information is the key, not mass hypnosis.

Most movies try to sell you a tie-in computer game and a McDonald’s happy meal. Twilight tries to sell you morality.

Twilight (And Buffy beforehand, although Weedon at least realised this and had fun with it) is in effect Mills and Boone without the edge. Here there’s no sex, and while there’s haemoglobin aplenty even death is robbed of it’s power.

Author Stephanie Meyer claims the novel is about ‘losing true love’, but has aimed it squarely at a population so cut off from genuine interaction the word becomes meaningless, a substitute for parental affection and an excuse to pretend at the rebellious. In one of the most telling scenes Bella’s ability to commune with Edward is enhanced when she pursues ‘The Dangerous’. In this case, riding a motorcycle – that ever present symbol of disaffection for American youth. Meyer has crafted a work where motorcycles and leather jackets stand-in for danger, where Italy represents the entire planet outside the Midwestern bowl, and where dreaming of wider horizons inevitably leads to terror and sadness-or at least a simulation of it.

New Moon offers an endless curse – one of morbid, flatulent commercialism infecting its victims with a warped feminine ideal where the answer to everything is a good man who doesn’t want to have sex. It has more in common with Mona the Vampire than Dracula – this is sex and death without the sex and death played out by blandly attractive mannequins whose only supernatural power is the height of their hair.

Excited yet?