Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is great eye-candy and mostly great fun too.
True to the traditions of fairy tales and more modern children's literature it's a thick gothic soup of blended undercurrents - Freudian, Dickensian, Dahlian, Burtonian et al. There are also thick dollops of self-mocking American Jewish angst and Brooklyn postmodern smartarsiness.
One to recommend unflinchingly, in spite of one of these undercurrents (I'd actually call it an undertow) - Potterishness - but I know I'm in a minority on that one.
On the other hand I've never been as Carrey-phobic as a good number of my friends, but it's clear from the deleted scenes that the director Brad Siberling had to carefully excise the parts where the Jim Carrey Show threatened to take over. Most of them make entertaining DVD extras however and Carrey's Count Olaf is possibly his most irresistible performance since the Cable Guy.
The animated end credits alone are a must-see.
Lemony Snicket is the fictional author/narrator created by Californian Daniel Handler. According to Wikipedia Handler originally came up with the name as a pseudonym when submitting his name to the mailing lists of several right-wing organizations he was then researching. Thereafter his friends used to order pizzas under using the alias.
V introduced me to Handler's work a couple of years ago, but I've never actually read any of the books. The "fateful film" crunches the storylines of the second and third of the series into that of the first. As there are twelve in total, we can expect some sequels.
