“I am Chronos, master of all time!! .. [drumroll, thunderclaps, the works]”
- Chronos the bear to Johnny Bravo, Johnny Bravo series, CN cartoon cartoon

Chronos notwithstanding, I am finally master of my time, to some extent anyway, so here I am. As with most of my posts I have decided now to formally do away with ay semblance of structure and will generally flow along.
The first thing that comes to mind are the 2 movies which I was unfortunate enough to see during the last two weekends.

The first – Shootout at Lokhandwala.
This from the director of Ek Ajnabee, a sterling effort where the villain ends the climax scene with the deeply philosophical line “Life’s a bitch”. That should’ve warned me but the Slimes group had given the movie 4 stars so Lambu and Bawa and myself landed up for our weekly share of blood, gore and general senselessness. Diya Mirza (in a de-glamourised role :((( ) seems extremely convinced about something – what exactly? No one knows. I think the director thought of that one as a rider thrown in to stimulate general public interest, y’know, solve De Fermat’s last theorem while you watch movie, types. Sunil Shetty looks ok as long as he doesn’t speak and it is now finally established that Arbaz Khan’s dialogue delivery capabilities would give any decent cheese omelet a superiority complex. Sanjay Dutt and Vivek Oberoi look ok and growl and snarl at the right points. And then there’s Tusshar Kappoorr (Pardon the multiple s’s and r’s – I haven’t a clue as to actual spelling .. btw .. why hasn’t his name sprouted a “K” yet??). Tusshar’s supposed to play menacing sharpshooter Bhuva (oooh … ); only thing is his “Eyyyyyy” sounds more like the warm-up notes of St. James’ School junior school choir. There is also Neha Dhupia (again in non-ornamental role, for reasons best known to Apoorv Lakhia; both Diya Mirza and Neha Dhupia I ask you!), competing hard with most marble slabs I have seen along lines of facial expression capabilities. Add to that the complete lack of script, the booming Bacchan (elder one, younger one gets bumped off after modeling for Aviator sunglasses) and loads of tomato ketchup and you have a fairly accurate idea of what the whole movie is about.

The second movie – Pirates of the Caribbean
For the record, I did not want to catch this one, but Seedie was very enthu about it so I ended up at the movie hall anyway. To get to the movie, I actually felt sad while watching the movie – Johnny Depp does not deserve to be known by this kind of shit. Law of averages I guess. So there’s this Calypso lady (or goddess, or generally prophetic female, never could figure out what exactly – anyway I’ve never thought of Calypso associated with anything other than West Indian cricket) who goes around mumbling arbit brain dead senti one liners (try and figure that one out) in West Indian accent (proper Micheal-Holding-like – not the voice part I mean, but generally accent an all, y’know). Her exact relation with the pirates and with Davy Jones is another rider along similar lines as Diya Mirza’s rebel without a cause act previously mentioned. There’s Keira Knightley also, running through the movie with a single expression and putting speech in Independence Day fashion, but then who really cares – she looks a darned sight better than most of the other cast anyway (not that that’s saying much). Orlando Bloom floats in and out based on general whim and fancy- he’s supposed to be some kind of BPO guy working by night shift at the end of the movie (interesting analogy, courtesy Lambu), only he’s ferrying souls across the seas yonder types. Net net, unless you are a die hard Depp fan who can put up with his sustained hamming, avoid!! .. the Slimes group review notwithstanding…