Question: Once a full-length Duh Vinci Code trailer is released, how long before we get a brokeback mouintain-spoof with Tom Hanks and Paul Bettany as the star-crossed lovers?
Sean:
Five minutes. Ten, if the servers are particularly slow that day.
It still breaks my heart that two actors I admire have signed on to do this movie (Hanks and Bettany)...
Man, I agree, Amy (on the actors). I first saw Bettany in the wonderful A Knight's Tale and have loved him ever since. Hanks, of course, found his way into American hearts years ago. And here they are slumming. Very sad.
Amy and Sean,
I'm with ya on the actors, not to mention Ron Howard.
I was at a recent Opus Dei event and a friend of mine, who has been a supernumerary for years, said the same thing.
In her words, 'people have been smearing Opus Dei unfairly for years, we're used to that. The problem with this film is what it says about Our Lord....And I just can't believe 'Opie' is involved in this! It's so disappointing,' and so on.
She grew up in Tennessee and always had a soft spot for the Andy Griffith Show and little Ronnie Howard. Not anymore!
Saw a one hour doc on Discovery (I think) a couple of weeks ago where the host started out with the premise of proving that the stuff in HBHG was true but by the end reached the quite reasonable conclusion that it was all hooey.
This is off the subject, but wondered if you had any comments on the 'Love Ulster' parade and subsequent rioting in Dublin this past weekend...with the anti-Catholic sentiment that was well in evidence? (six "Kick the Pope" bands present, Orangemen and Unionists out in full force?)
Elyse
Good for Discovery channel! I have yet to read a real scholar, of whatever field, who gives any credence at all to what's in the Duh Vinci Code. A couple of years ago an art curator for the Art Institute of Chicago took the book to task in the New York Times for all its inaccuracies about art in general and Leonardo in particular.
On the other hand, the president of the local chapter of the National Education Association here in Springfield, Ill., gave it a glowing review in our local paper. Well, that figures, doesn't it. 
Followed the link, Mark.
I was reminded that apparently Hitler said that it was easier to make people believe a big lie than a little one.
Well, I read HBHG. Besides resting so much of its "evidence" on the word of the conveniently elusive M. Plantard, unraveling the footnotes shows that they made no distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary-or-worse sources. (I.e., making statements on the basis of another revisionist's version of what somebody else said somebody said.)
"unraveling the footnotes shows that they made no distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary-or-worse sources."
Ah, the same care and attention to detail we got from John Cornwell in his abominable Hitler's Pope. I guess scholarly rigor doesn't apply when it comes to trashing the Catholic Church.
Admittedly, in its own way, that is a sign of hope.
I think I am going to give up on Hollywood altogether (I do like good cinema though). I thought Tom Hanks and Ron Howard would have more depth to their character to see that this movie so harmful.
Thank you for for the site. I can use it to send to my friends!
In THE MESSIANIC LEGACY, the HBHG tagteam discover that M. Plantard misled them with forged documents. He had to admit the same in a French court in 1993.
Ya know . . . I've not really enjoyed a Ron Howard movie since Apollo 13. His direction drives me crazy. He has to show the audience everything, rather than giving them credit for having brains. I always feel as if I've been spoken down to for 2 hours after I see one of his films. And he tends to fall in love with a pretty shot, which can be death to substance in a film. I get the impression that I'd have enjoyed the movie just as much if I'd simply read the script & looked at Howard's storyboards! He's the ultimate WYSIWYG director. And in the words of Wim Wenders, "Film can reveal the invisible, but you must be willing to let it show." Howard is only interested in the visable.
So, in light of that, I think his DVC is gonna be even worse than the source material. Which says quite a lot.
As for the likes of Hanks & Bettany taking roles in DVC, I have one thing to say: Clint Eastwood & Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (& that's just one example). When popular schlock is turned into a movie, for some reason the H'wood A list wants to do it. It's a money thing.
The Dublin riots consisted of the following (a) An Ulster Protestant group of IRA victims' relatives, which includes people with links to loyalist paramilitaries, decided to hold a commemorative march in Dublin. They applied for permission & were granted it under the usual regulations (b) An extreme republican splinter group & a Glasgow Celtic fan-group decided to disrupt the march; the Gardai had not made adequate preparations & were attacked & badly stoned. The march organisers called off the march but later held a mini-procession on the other side of the city near the parliament buildings. This was called off when the rioters got word of it & started heading towards it. (c) Many of the rioters were drunk; they were joined by anarchists & criminal opprtunists in wrecking & looting city centre shops. Total damage & lost business due to the riots estimated at 10 million euro. (d) Some of the marchers engaged in provocative behaviour (at one point a band played THE SASH MY FATHER WORE) but this was far outstripped by the rioters, who beat up a reporter for the Irish broadcasting service who happens to be a Protestant (callinghim an "Orange bastard") and yelled at the police that they should be ashamed of themselves for protecting Protestants. I suspect most of these gentry rarely darken the door of a church, & use "Catholic" & Protestant" as purely ethnic terms. (e) The rioters have been widely denounced & the general view is they have damaged the republican cause & given the unionists political ammunition. My view is the same as with the Danish cartoons; the parade was a stupid & reckless thing to do but it's worse to use violence & intimidation against it.
Comment by Dean Bertram in today's Australian newspaper...
Regardless of which party the High Court finds for, history remains the real loser. Both of these successful books have disseminated one of the wildest hoaxes of recent memory, and instilled a distorted view of the past into the minds of millions of their readers. With the risk of disappointing Brown's army of fans, it must be stated that the Priory of Sion cannot actually trace its roots to the 11th century, nor is it justified in its claims of an esteemed membership that includes some of the greatest artists and thinkers of European history.
In fact, Pierre Plantard, a small-time confidence man, founded the order in 1956. A minor player in both the French fascist and occult undergrounds, Plantard had concocted the story of a secret Merovingian bloodline for his own self-aggrandisement: he professed to be the bloodline's final descendant and the rightful king of France. Scholars have long since recognised that the parchments Brown refers to in The Da Vinci Code were forged by Plantard to support his ludicrous claims.
Plantard died in 2000, never having achieved his megalomaniacal dream of reinstituting the French monarchy with him at its head; but his ideas continue to fascinate conspiracy theorists, thriller aficionados, and shortly, no doubt, cinemagoers the world over.
Ron Howard's screen adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is due for release this May. Starring Tom Hanks, the buzz is that it will be capital-B big. When we watch Hanks decipher what is being billed as "the biggest cover-up in human history" it is worth remembering that he is acting out the convoluted fantasies of a petty French fascist.
>>"Ya know . . . I've not really enjoyed a Ron Howard movie since Apollo 13. His direction drives me crazy. He has to show the audience everything, rather than giving them credit for having brains. I always feel as if I've been spoken down to for 2 hours after I see one of his films. And he tends to fall in love with a pretty shot, which can be death to substance in a film. I get the impression that I'd have enjoyed the movie just as much if I'd simply read the script & looked at Howard's storyboards! He's the ultimate WYSIWYG director. And in the words of Wim Wenders, "Film can reveal the invisible, but you must be willing to let it show." Howard is only interested in the visable.
"So, in light of that, I think his DVC is gonna be even worse than the source material. Which says quite a lot."
Yeah, well said, Geno.
We should fear this movie far more for being 'a Ron Howard' film than for any heretical ideas it might espouse. Because the inauthenticity and 'symetry worship' we (subconsciously) learn from watching his films, or what his films have increasingly become, is a deeper and more fundamental 'heresy'.
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