On this night, when the Oscars honoured the very best in cinema of the past year, I went out and rented The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen… which certainly does not qualify. Have you ever gone out of your way to rent and watch a film that you know is really going to stink? And when its done, you feel a little gross but know you have no one to blame but yourself? Yeah. I should have known better, but…

It wasn’t insultingly bad. I didn’t feel the rage bubbling down in my stomach the way I did with, oh, Batman & Robin, but it was pretty bad. It lacked the amazing attention to detail and prim Victorian properness that made the source graphic novel so enjoyable, as well as the steampunk London setting. Somehow the premise doesn’t work nearly as well in a more historically accurate 19th century. The plot itself wasn’t fundamentally bad in concept, but it had holes you could drive the Nautilus through (I suspect the editing had a lot to do with that). The characters, however, were disappointingly shallow and one-dimensional. For so-called men of mystery, they gave up their secrets ridiculously easily. Though it wasn’t all bad – some of the effects were well done – the whole was an unqualified mess, and you can’t pin it all on the well-reported conflicts between Sean Connery and director Stephen Norrington. I may yet run it again with the director commentary on to see if he addresses it at all, but that would require me to sit through it again. Ah, there’s not much more I can say. It got panned on release, and deservedly so. A shame, since its a brilliant concept and in the right hands, it could have been something really cool on the screen. At least I still have the comics.

Overheard on the Academy Awards last night: “This is the first Academy Award and third nomination for Canada”. CANADA. Wow. So does this thing get passed around from household to household? I could use a doorstop.

And speaking of the Oscars – Uncle Grambo offers a top-notch play-by-play of the ceremonies. Whatevs.org – your one-stop celeb stalk HQ. I caught the last hour or so of the Oscars and while I wasn’t paying much attention, it seemed like a very sedate affair. Lord Of The Rings cleaning up was of no surprise to anyone, ever since Fellowship they’d been saying that Peter Jackson was going to be rewarded for the trilogy only after the third one came out. I was pleased to see Sofia Coppolla pick one up for Lost In Translation though. She’s so cute.

I took advantage of the warm snap yesterday to dig the bike out of mothballs and go tooling around the Annex. Dang, did that feel good. I’m looking forward to April, which I will formally declare as the start of bike-to-work season. Hope the weather co-operates.

np – The Mountain Goats / We Shall All Be Healed

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