Of Seafood, Sand, Stairs and Sex

This year the Memorial Day weekend turned out to be more eventful and memorable than I'd have expected. The weather sucked big time. It kept raining through the weekend washing out all chances of the usual backyard barbecue bonhomie and beer-bash and kept us mostly indoors.

Saturday afternoon, post a rather heavy brunch at a local seafood buffet, where I totally stuffed myself to the gills with dungeoness crab-legs and oysters with cocktail sauce (yummm...) I managed to drag a nearly comatose spouse to watch Prince of Persia - Sands of Time only because I wanted to ogle at Jake Gyllenhaal. I had absolutely no clue about the video game that had spawned the movie and had no expectations other than get an eyeful of puppy-eyed Jake. And boy was I surprised!! It was a total blast notwithstanding the weirdly fake British accent that Jakey boy was sporting. And gosh, he has beefed up seriously for the role.

There’s nothing much about the story – Jake Gyllenhaal is Dastan a sixth century hero, an orphan who was plucked off the streets by the good King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup). In a series of events that don't bear repeating, Dastan ends up in possession of a super-special mucho-mystical dagger that allows him to turn back the clock for a little strategic redo. His evil uncle (Ben Kingsley) wants the dagger. So does comely Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), who joins Dastan on a quest to protect the sands, fend off evil and prevent some kind of dust-spewing apocalyptic maelstrom launched by angry gods.

Dastan, aided by CGI, bounds over the walls of a city. Dastan tippy-toes past cavernous sinkholes. Dastan copes with poisonous snakes and whirling-dervish assassins. Dastan outwits Amar (a brilliant cameo by Alfred Molina), a farcical sheikh who makes his living from ostrich races.

Through it all, Gyllenhaal pops those big baby blues and employs that strange British accent I mentioned before, and in general looks like he’s having a ball . Prince of Persia is this fun ride that is Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Mummy meets Raiders of The Lost Ark and as much as I love Jakey boy, I couldn’t help thinking that a certain Mr Roshan would have been able to do this role in his sleep without breaking a sweat!!

Sunday morning, I woke up early and wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet in the house with a steaming cup of coffee and my laptop. But fate had other plans of course, because somewhere between upstairs and downstairs, I missed a step and took a nice long tumble only to land on moi derriere. Needless to say that it hurt...LIKE HELL!!!! And, now as if I didn't have enough on my plate already, I have to deal with this and the consequence. Oh well...

On Monday night a met up with a bunch of high-heel wearing giggling women to watch Sex And The City 2. The reviews had been so horrible that I didn't have any expectations from the movie whatsoever. And the critics were right - it was a mess that boasted of extreme American obtuseness as well as ignorance and  apart from being crass, loud  and politically incorrect, it also let all of us down by displaying dozens and dozens of tacky clothes in the name of haute couture!! Well, to be kind, I have to say that there were some moments where I was reminded why I  fell in love with the show in 1998...but they were so few and far between that it was hardly worth sitting for two hours on an already sore seat!

One weekend and two movies, that too brand new releases – man, I’m back in action!!! And the critic in me is awake again....yippee!!