Halloween. A time when children dress up as cute little pumpkins and witches, teenage girls put together a ‘costume’ that merges scary with slutty, and grown ups desperately attempt to create something that looks cool and yet effortless.

No doubt this year’s ghoulish festivities will be primarily built around the Twilight and True Blood franchises, for kids and adults. But here at Dork Adore, we’d like to suggest a few more alternative costumes.

Let’s kick off with this Cyberman costume on the right from Littlewoods (£56.40). The Doctor Who nemesis’s outfit comes complete with silver jumpsuit and mask. There’s a more expensive Cyberman costume from Jokes Around, which looks slightly less like a gimpsuit…

Geek chic

Seeing as you’re reading this on a site dedicated to everything dorky, we’re probably right to assume you like to embrace your nerdy side. So why not go the whole hog and kit yourself out in a Nerd costume?

The Nerd costume (Fancydress.com, £27.99) is a short-sleeved one-piece, with an extra- high waist, matching bow tie and pocket protector.

Wear it with big black rimmed glasses and some stick on zits for the full effect.

Goblin costume…for your dog

Isn’t half the fun of Halloween in dressing your dog up in something ridiculous? No?

Perhaps this Goblin costume will change your mind. The black harness is attached to the dog, with an angry-looking goblin perched on top, ready for battle. There’s a headless horseman and a cowboy one too if you’re warming to the pet costume idea.

£18.49 might seem like a lot for a pet costume, but I think we can all agree the dog looks damn happy about wearing it.

Mario

It’s-a-me, Mario!

Super Mario Bros is 25 this year, so why not celebrate the Italian plumbing duo’s birthday by pulling on Mario’s famous blue overalls?

The Adult Deluxe Mario Costume, which comes with a jumpsuit, inflatable belly, gloves, hat and authentic moustache, is from Allfancydress (£43.99).

If you’ve got a willing child who’s happy to be your sidekick, you could get this Toad Child Costume from Costume Express ($24.99). There’s also a Princess Peach costume for $49.99 and a Yoshi costume.

Spaghetti Cat costume

A special mention goes to this handmade meme costume of Spaghetti cat, which scares the living daylights out of me.

Imagine that arriving on your doorstep *shudder*.

What will you be dressing up as this Halloween?

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In just over a month, Vampires Suck is released in the UK. From the school of cinema that brought us Epic Movie, Not Another Teen Movie and countless others, it attempts to mercilessly shred the Twilight movies. And other vampire cash-ins, but mostly Twilight.

In fact, if you’ve somehow managed to avoid any familiarity with the blood-sucking Pattinson juggernaut, you might struggle with this trailer. These people really hate sparkly vampires; it’s lucky they rushed it out quickly enough for Twilight references to seem relevant.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The Vampires

These movies already have a bad reputation for going for the cheap laugh, but Vampires Suck managed to attract further internet rage by out-earning geek darling Scott Pilgrim Vs The World at the US box office. Fortunately, Pilgrim made it out first over here, so there’s little risk of repetition.

Aside from that, it looks like a typical outing from the Hollywood self-parody factory, but there are a couple of good jokes in there. And it’s quite possible all the best bits are in the trailer, so checking it out below could save you the price of a cinema ticket.

Or am I being needlessly harsh? If you love these films, tell me off in the comments below.

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The release of Twilight: New Moon brings with it a flurry of merchandise emblazoned with the ‘Team Edward’ and ‘Team Jacob’ slogans.

I’m so Team Jacob.

Let’s be honest, the CGI is much better for the wolves, whilst Edward has to be content with a bit of a shimmer in the light.

Want to know how the wolves are created in the film? Have a look at this nifty little video.

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It’s time to book your tickets to the latest instalment of the world’s favourite teen flick franchise, which opens this weekend. Cedric Diggory and chums will be back on the big screen in Twilight: New Moon, casting haunted looks and making free with the red lip gloss.

Here’s a sneaky peek at the next part of the saga, which provides ample opportunity for Robert Pattinson to look rily rily sad and rily rily tortured.

Book tickets online at LoveFilm

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You can’t open Google, turn on the telly or talk to certain people called Charles at the moment without being assaulted by vampires, actors who have played vampires falling out of sub-standard nightclubs, and interviews with people who have written about vampires.

You can’t blame it on Halloween – the whole of 2009 seems to be the year of the vampire. Also, the ox, but he doesn’t seem to be getting so much publicity.

But vampires aren’t even that good . They’re fussy eaters, pretty antisocial and will never be able to partake in a summer picnic, unless it’s at night, which is rubbish.

I think we need to regain a bit of vampire perspective, and so I’ve collated the top five things that are better than vampires.

• Browser shortcuts to specific Google docs
  

These are way better than vampires: they are productivity gold in a way Bram Stoker could never comprehend. Now, I can get to my ‘huh, what an awful lot of people are yet to pay me’ spreadsheet in seconds. You can even have a ‘new document’ shortcut, which is why I’ve created 67 new documents in the last three days.

• The Motorola Droid

Last week I wrote about how much I wanted an Android phone that wasn’t ugly, but had yet to be convinced. This week, I have all my hopes pinned on Motorola (a sentence I never thought I’d be writing), as the Motorola Droid has been officially launched in the US, with rumours of it coming over here.

It runs Android 2.0, has a 5-megapixel camera and a QWERTY keyboard (not entirely sold on that one).  It’s official: cute little android characters are cooler than vampires.

• Fireworks night

On the surface, you might think fireworks and vampires go together, both requiring night as they do. But I have never seen a vampire display, and the latest vampires do not explode into awesome shapes, like lips and hearts. Fireworks do in both cases.

• Philippe Starck
  

If you did not see him in his ‘Masterchef for people that want to design knives, forks and chairs’ programme on BBC2, get thee to iPlayer.

He was the best French man I have ever seen, and should almost certainly be releasing a Christmas coaching video on how to be so awesome-ly French. You never see a French vampire, now do you? (Oh, and the programme was called Design for Life, in case the previous explanation yielded no results in the BBC’s stupid search facility. Katie wrote about the winner the show and her Kaspa Lamps here. She was also inexplicably rude about Philppe Starck.)

• Werewolves

The main reason werewolves are better than vampires comes down to your basic Mean Girls halloween conundrum. If we can make werewolves the new vampires, it can only result in Hilarious Consequences as girls try to work out how to make a Sexy Werewolf costume.

Because face it – there’s nothing sexy about a hairy wolf. There just isn’t.

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Any self-respecting Twilight fangirl will want to get herself a pair of the mittens Bella can be seen sporting in the movie.

This knitting pattern, created be self-confessed Twilight obsessive, Subliminal Rabbit, is totally free. Plus, the mittens are pretty special even if you’re not fussed about what Bella and her grumpy bloke are emoing on about.

You can get the free knitting pattern from Subliminal Rabbit’s website. What a nice lady!

Also on Ravelry.

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Twilight is not a good vampire story. This is mainly because it doesn’t have any vampires in it. They can go outside in the daytime. They glitter in sunlight. What you have there, people, is more of a murderous, blood-drinking pixie.

Here are six shows and films that are better than Twilight…

• Ultraviolet (1998)

It only ran for six episodes on Channel 4, but Ultraviolet is still a definitive take on the modern vampire. Downbeat, menacing and claustrophobic, it starred Jack Davenport as a London police detective recruited by a shady group of vampire-hunters (including The Wire’s Idris Elba) with ties to both the government and the Catholic Church.

The clever, logical way the series thought through how vampires, with their traditional strengths and limitations, would operate in contemporary London, remains impressive ten years on. Not to mention their hunters – why use stakes when you can use assault rifles and carbon bullets? But its best trick was to make you think the vampires kind of had a point. A hated minority being hunted down by a Vatican-funded death squad, just trying to survive? They must be the good guys, right?

• Vampire’s Kiss (1989)

Businessman Nicolas Cage gets bitten by a Jennifer Beals-shaped vampire and starts going a little unhinged, in this little-known, alternately funny and disturbing film. He thinks he’s becoming one of the undead, starts avoiding sunlight and gets special ceramic fangs made so he can bite women in nightclubs. I find Nicolas Cage creepy and uncomfortable in most roles, but this part plays directly to those, uh, strengths.

• Angel (1999-2004)

Look, I preferred it to Buffy, okay? Angel spent most of its time snarkily undermining the heroics of its central character, had a nice line in moody philosophising and its middle three years essentially made up one massive, crazily apocalyptic storyline. Unexpectedly cancelled after five series, it went out with a rain-drenched, Blakes 7-style ending born of angry defiance.

• Blade (1998)

After three films and a TV series, still nothing in the Blade oeuvre matches the first ten minutes of the first film, in which Wesley Snipes, armed with a shotgun, a sword and a black leather trenchcoat, slaughters an entire nightclub full of techno-loving vampires. Cheap thrills, yes, but they did make my 18-year-old boy-self think he was about to see the most kick-ass film of all time. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but the rest of the film does offer some great fight scenes, some nice mythology-building (sadly abandoned in favour of over-the-top insanity in later instalments) and the most surreal action hero one-liner ever. Apropos of nothing – “some motherfucker’s always trying to ice-skate uphill”.

• The Lost Boys (1987)

Dude, it’s The Lost Boys. I don’t need to explain this. Although when checking Wikipedia to see when it was released, I discovered that a sequel has been greenlit, with the Kiefer Sutherland role taken by his brother,  Angus Sutherland. I am not making this up, but I really hope Wikipedia is. [Update: Looks like Lost Boys: The Tribe is already out on DVD with a third one on the way]

• …and True Blood?

I’m watching at Channel 4 speed, so it’s early days, but so far I’m frustrated. It takes a great concept (vampires have revealed themselves to the world) and spends all its time in a small, cut-off town where the locals would probably be equally awestruck and intrigued if there was a sudden influx of Belgians. I mean, show me Chicago or New York now we all know the living dead are among us. Because things are probably kicking off. Well, maybe later in the series.

Book tickets to see Twilight The New Moon

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