The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen....

Last night I went to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

It was fun, but I never really got caught up in the action or the characters, though I enjoyed every one of them. I liked the quirkiness, but it also seemed shallow - by which I mean, it never made me feel much. The father-son-substitute relationship between Quartermain and Sawyer was almost interesting enough to pull me in, but it wasn't developed enough to really be more than a token thing.

Verdict: it's style over substance. Brilliant style. The best thing about the movie was the visuals. I love Victorian-futuristic and this movie had it in spades. A friend of mine, an artist named Larry Stewart, loves to draw in that style: brass with wood implements, anything from Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Riven had things in that style, too.

Best moments:
(1) Sawyer on the deck of the Nautilus, looking out to sea.
(2) Quartermain facing a tiger in the snow, and not shooting it

So the Natilus was terrific.

I liked Sean Connery as always, and he had the strongest personality as Alan Quartermain. But he ought to have been sexy, and wasn't. Too heavy now, perhaps.

Second best character was Petra Wilson as Mina Harker - very striking as the Lady Vampire. I wasn't sure I understood the character or her vampirism, though. Perhaps we weren't supposed to 'understand' her. To what extent was she a creature of the night?

I liked Shane West as Tom Sawyer, both conceptually and in terms of his charm - but don't much like his looks. Didn't like Jason Flemyng at all, and I'm trying to remember where I've seen him.

Stuart Townsend was attactively dark, but again, I never really got a sense of his personality or what drove him.

David Hemmings is one of my favourite actors ever and I didn't recognize him. (the shame!) The whiskers might be the proboem, but I should at least have recognized the voice.

I liked Richard Roxburgh as M, and I notice that IMDB has a huge spoiler regarding his identity - which I guessed almost right off, after deciding he couldn't be the M from James Bond.

I figured the Phantom was the Red Skull. I'm still not sure he isn't. They just couldn't call him that because Marvel would sue. (g)

I was interested to note that the screenwriter was James Robinson, the same guy who wrote the X-Men comic I was reading the other day. Cool. I have the feeling that I'd like Alan Moore comic book version of this story more than I did the movie.

The little featherless guy....

I saw Domino today: my slightly-more-than-newborn budgie. He's been peeping from the nesting box for weeks - the two weeks or so he's been alive. Budgies are not known for being quiet, and their general noisiness starts at the moment of hatching!

The nesting box has two walls on the end: one transparent plastic, one opaque. I keep the opaque one up because obviously mama Wisdom and the newborn want darkness. But today the opaque part had fallen down. I didn't notice at first, but Domino was peeping loudly, and I saw that the plastic had fallen and Domino was lying there in plain view.

He's way too tiny to have feathers. Lying on his back, waving his wings like arms and his legs like legs. Beak barely perceptible, eyes huge. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of eyelids yet. I put the wall back up quickly.

How I hope he continues to thrive. He's just so... I can't think of a better word than "cute".

I gave all the budgies kale for a special Saturday treat.