The first Hollywood flim I see in years leaves me sniggering from the fourth frame or maybe even the second and discounting 6/10 of the visual content of most frames. This Michael Clayton thing in running for the tra-daah Oscar. The tired trademark devices of outrageously busy office rooms in impressive panic mode where everyone succeeds (to me, hilariously) in appearing busy and if they're important, also fashionably distressed so they get to rub their face and put a hand on their hip. Dialogues that carry the audience along; allowing them to snoop on some intense affair of involved jargon. Then the usual pyrotechnics for relief and then a line that makes a desperate-for-cooption Indian audience exclaim and puff and guffaw at: 'I am Shiva, the God of Death'. Only both times it was spoken I heard it as: 'I am Sheba, the God of Death'. Ok, anyway, that really makes the grade.Lawfirm vs. biotech co. Sooo this is an Erin Brokovich, Bourne Identity overlap that's taken the worst of each and brought in little else except hack and treadmill dialogue only 2/10ths of which anyone understands unless they really care and watch it a second time. Again its male-dominated, women are artless or shakily crafty which I know is true in real life but in the last year I've begun to see a good majority of well- grounded, rounded women. On the whole, flim-flam waste of time. Oh and there's all that dolby-digital gravitas thing going to forbode some pyrotechnic or the other.

That brings me to a little tribute I'd like to make to my companions of the evening 'IS' and 'S' who have taught me a couple of lessons in the little time I've known them. Their stable, undemanding and free-willed selves have taught me that company is best enjoyed for itself and is ruined by demands. Their ancient friendship is before me and there is no other set of guys I have enjoyed drinking with as much, even if at any time, one or the other or both have some excuse for abstaining. Well. Here's a mug to them.