Before R. Kelly believed he could fly: "Finding Neverland"

Not sure if you missed me, but I just got back from a little R and R out west. You know, people get a little touchy about that Grand Canyon. Seemed to me a little graffiti blended right in.

As you might expect, it's not a short hop to the other side of the country, and my westbound flight featured "Finding Neverland," the only movie nominated for Best Picture that I hadn't seen before the Oscars. The missus and I talked about catching it at the neighborhood cinema, but once the awards came and went, my interest waned. C'mon ... it's about how some guy came up with Tinkerbell.

On a five-hour flight, though, you tend to reconsider things, and so it was I came to watch Johnny Depp ("Private Resort") playing around with a sick woman's kids and coming up with characters for "Peter Pan." Not sure why there's been so much Depp in my movie diet lately, and not sure I want to think about it too much. At least I haven't stumbled across "The Astronaut's Wife" yet.

As for "Neverland," it was OK but definitely not on par with the other Best Picture nominees. Depp was good as usual -- the guy could get nominated for reading a shampoo label -- although it was hard to understand just why he took to these kids so much. Sure, his own marriage to an English hottie wasn't going so well, but most guys in that situation just head to the strip club for company. (Kidding, honey!)

Otherwise, you had Kate Winslet doing her typical Brit-speak, Dustin Hoffman not getting much screen time as a theater owner and Julie Christie playing the mean grandmother to the aforementioned kids. As for those kids, they sure were cute, but I could take only so much of them. Maybe it would have been better if they had foiled home burglars or saw dead people.