“Triangle” is probably the best horror/thriller film I have seen since I was blown away by the fabulous genre-shift in “The Descent”.

If you look at the poster for this film you will think it is a slasher movie and say no way. If you watch the trailer you will think it is a slasher movie and definitely say no way. If you read some of the reviews from critics who didn’t get it then you will think it is a slasher movie and hire something else.

So ignore the poster and don’t watch the trailer and don’t read any reviews. Rent the DVD. Turn the lights off and prepare to get scared. And also prepare to get your brain scrambled at the same time because the narrative requires to you do some serious thinking. This is definitely not a slasher movie though there is some serious slashing going on – but it is “essential to the plot” style slashing, not the slashing for slashing sake seen in real slashers.

Melissa George (apparantly she was in Home and Away) plays Jess who is not having a good time with her disabled child. She accepts some respite from friends who invite her on a yachting trip. But they are capsized in a storm and end up boarding a deserted ocean liner. The ship has long echoing corridors and a ball room that reminded be of “The Shining”. Jess has a strange feeling of Deja Vu. Has she been on the boat before?

Then the violence begins and we first think that the whole story is over in about 30 minutes. Except that it happens again. And again. And by then you realise with a creeping sense of dread why she as that Deja Vu.

I can’t say anymore without totally ruining the story. But it is a thoroughly entertaining, scary film. It is complex and a superbly written mystery that unfolds at a perfect pace. Writer and director Christopher Smith has spent a long time weaving this film together with a fine thread of intricately crafted detail.

Be prepared to watch this stunner more than once! You’ll probably need to to get your head round it. And it ISN’T a slasher movie! Okay!

Why are there so many vampires around at the moment? I haven’t actually had any knocking on my window late at night asking to be invited in for a bit of blood sucking but they do seem to be everywhere else.

At the cinema we have Twilight (moody teenagers with the extra trauma of vampirism lumped on top of their usual hormonal excesses). On TV we have True Blood (vampires from the deep South of the USA talking in the best hicksville accents and having lots of raunchy almost pornstyle sex whilst tripping out on imaginary drugs). And best of all on UK TV we have Being Human which on the face of it seems to be about three friends sharing a house. All very domesticated and normal until you realise that one of them is a ghost, one a vampire and the other a werewolf.

They go about their days working in hospitals, making cups of tea, cleaning their house and listening to CDs and watching DVDs. But the vampire is on the wagon (i.e. doesn’t drink any more – get it?). The werewolf transforms into a beautiful CGI monster once a month. The transformation sequence lovingly rips off the original masterpiece transformation sequence to top all transformation sequences from the 1981 film “An American Werewolf in London”. And the ghost no-doubt wishes that she was wearing something a little more glamourous when she died than the grey jog bottoms and T-Shirt she is now stuck with for all eternity.

Being Human is as dark as True Blood, drips gore in equivalent quantities, and is only slightly less graphic in its carnal overtures – but it wins hands down in the humour stakes (no pun intended). It flits between dark humour, laugh out loud humour, and the deep emotional entanglements of its characters. This drama explores the agonies of friendships and love affairs but with the added complication that said friend or lover could in fact be a ravening monster.

When I was younger you always knew where you were with vampires. They couldn’t come out in the daylight. You could kill them with stakes, garlic and holy water. Crosses would always scare them away. And they always had long black cloaks, high foreheads and swept back black hair.

Now it’s much more compicated. In Being Human they can handle the daylight with sunglasses whereas they still spontaneously combust in True Blood when sunlight strikes skin. Crosses no longer seem to work at all and most modern vampires are obviously not concerned about garlic at all. Infact they seem to be very happy cooking and eating it by the pan full. Vampires these days must come with an operating manual personalised to the genre that it is born into.

These TV shows are well worth checking out. In fact vampires seem to be getting so much airtime on popular TV at the moment that I wonder how long it will be before they turn up in a soap opera. Come to think of it when was the last time that Coronation Street’s was seen in daylight?

I must admit that I was fairly oblivious to the invasion of the coffee houses, as well known brands like Starbucks and Costa carpet bombed city centres and established an outlet on every street corner. It wasn’t until the invasion was over and the High Streets of the UK had been subjugated that I really became aware of them.My initial impression was why would anyone want to spend up to a fiver on a gigantic cup of coffee when they could make their own with a kettle and a jar of instant for a fraction of the cost, or in my case simply get a free cup out of the machine at work (even though it is questionable whether the stuff out of the machines can actually be described as coffee rather than simply hot coloured water).

Then one day one of the best known brands opened an outlet in our own staff canteen. Each morning I walked past huge queues of people who could now buy their coffee within feet of their desks, still thinking that even though it was subsidised it was still rather a lot of money for a cup of coffee.

But then of course the genius of this latest advance guard for the high street coffee brand onslaught became apparant the next time I had an external visitor – I found myself offering to buy them one – almost without thinking. And of course they accepted, because they had just flown up from London which has been infiltrated by the caffeine conquerors to an even greater extent than Edinburgh, and they were even more used to excess expresso than their Scottish colleagues.

I must say I enjoyed it. I even had two and spent the rest of the day and well into the night wondering whether my heart rate would ever slow back down. But after that first taster, initially I managed to restrict my branded coffee intake to meetings with external visitors.

Then one fateful morning, a shorter then usual queue lured me into buying one for consumption at my desk. That was it. They had me. Their carefully crafted strategies had worked and I was hooked on high street coffee just like the millions who had already succumbed.

One cup a day soon became two and then sometimes three. And on particularly meeting heavy days I have started to lose count of the number of cups I was shelling out for.

Eventually I worked out how much I was spending and I was horrified to find that I had gone from spending zero to £40 per week, at least, on coffee.