Overheard at Table Two

Henry David Payne: I thought it was prtty decent, seemed like your standard Arabian adventure tale, it had all the elements of those old Thousand and One Nights . . . you know, boy from the street, becoming a prince, a damsel in distress, some magic amulet . . .

Niall Carter: . . . you mean the knife?

HDP: Yes, of course I mean the knife.

NC: Because the knife was cool. With the button in the hilt, click, sands take you back in time, that was sweet!

Lucky Moran: The name of the movie: The Sands of Time. I must just be me, but I've never liked movies that have two titles. The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I mean, which is it? The Prince of Persia or the Sands of Time?

NC: It's both. That way, when they come out with The Prince of Persia: The Scimitar of Gold, you know which one you're downloading off the 'net.

HDP: I really don't see why you would pan a movie for the title that it has - that's like judging a book by the cover.

LM: You have your critique and I have mine. I had a problem with the dual title, it just felt like it was too much. But Gemma Anderton made a nice aside.

HDP: Actually, that's the only problem I had with the movie . . . I mean, we have so many heroines who are proud and haughty but feisty and firey and eventually fall in love with the hero, that it all just seems so trite?

LM: Would you rather go back to the old movie days when all they do is swoon. "Oh! Oh! Save me, hero! Lest I die tied to this train track!"

HDP: Of course not. But it would just be nice if they weren't all stereotypes in a different way.

NC: You can't have that in movies. Maybe she couldn't play that if she did have a role like that.

HDP: Not true! I saw her in a Masterpiece Theatre presentation of Little Dorrit. She was fantastic in that. That was a wonderful show. That would be nice to see on the big screen.

LM: That would be. Imagine. Little Dorrit fighting her way out of the debtor's prison, scimitar in one hand and the dagger with the Sands of Time in the other.

NC: Nice!!

Verble (walking up to the table with refills all around): Except you're totally wrong. It's Gemma ARTERTON, not Anderton, and she didn't play in the BBC Little Dorrit - that was Claire Foy . . . but she did play the lead in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which was in the same series of classics ran on BBC and Masterpiece Theatre during 2008.

LM: Well, that certainly makes a difference.

NC: Sure does. Imagine Tess with the Sands of Time dagger! I can see a lot of slicing and dicing there! All that pent-up rage. Ugh, just makes me shiver t'think of it!