Reading about someone’s obsessive dislike of a film they haven’t seen is pretty damn tedious, I realize, but pieces about Johnny Depp plugging Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest are much, much worse. Depp is mugging and prancing around in tall boots and a loose-flowing shirt and a three-cornered hat so he can get paid….end of story. If I could wave a magic wand that would make all the arts editors at all the big syndicates and big-city newspapers totally ignore this film, I would do so. Beware the commercial gleam in the eyes of Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer because they are seducers, not lovers. They are not interested in the state of your soul or the beating of your heart after you’ve seen their two-hour, 30-minute “entertainment” — they’ll scamper out the rear exit door before the opening credit sequence is finished, laughing like hell. Beware Pirates screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio…beware their machinations. (They wrote both Zorro movies…they wrote the “story” of Godzilla…they’re bad people.) Beware Keira Knightley in all her manifestations, but especially in 18th Century gowns and hair extensions. I for one intend to arise early on July 7th and hike into the mountains and find an isolated spot and beat myself with birch branches like Max von Sydow in The Virgin Spring.