However, they made the very important point that in rating it, they operated in IT’S ONLY A MOVIE mode, looking at it pretty much as – in Ebert’s own word – “fantasy”, to which Roeper agreed. “If anyone takes any of it seriously, they should spend their time on something more plausible, like flying saucers”. Nicely put.
As to the high Box Office in traditional-Catholic (but free) countries, well, that’s exactly what I’d expect: a conspiracy-theory tale involving the Church would draw big crowds. “Oh, the Pope is a living saint, and my parish priest wouldn’t molest a fly, but it’s those bastard fatcat prelates in the hierarchy surely are up to no good, in cahoots with Tha Man” is not an uncommon sentiment. Many of these “Catholic bastions” have a history of vicious anticlericalist factions. Substitute “Jesuits” for Opus Dei and you have a conspiracy scapegoat for various times in the previous centuries…
I reaffirm my previously stated contention that the way to get back at the Church Lladies is not by standing in line for DVC but by renting “Dogma” …
Interesting indeed. Last week, some people on the SDMB were commenting that the critics’ screening for The DaVinci Code was quite close to the release date. Supposedly, this is a tactic used by movie producers when they know that their film sucks, and they’re hoping for a good opening weekend before bad word-of-mouth gets around. The movie is definitely getting bad word of mouth; the opinions I’ve heard and read have all been rather underwhelming, ranging from mediocre (“It wasn’t too bad”) to downright lousy.
With X-Men 3 coming out next weekinend, I expect DVC to fall off the radar fairly quickly.
Good point… I only wish it would make a difference. I didn’t read the book mainly because every time someone tried to sell me on it, I ended up getting into an eye-rolling conversation about how “no, X is not true” or “no, we don’t know that Y happened”. And many of these people are generally intelligent people, too.
I like my fantasy pure, like Lord of the Rings. Trying to mix it into reality is just way to hard to do well, IMHO.
I heard the unabridged recording a month or so ago during a long drive. So, the story was fresh in my head.
I saw the film this afternoon. I felt that they handled the basics of a complex story with many sub-stories fairly well. They could hardly have thrown away the Opus Dei part but it was a mess to me. They should have either pared it down a LOT more, used subtitles or in some fashion made it clear to those few souls who hadn’t read the book first just who the hell THOSE guys were. The dialogue barely did a job of it.
Overall I really enjoyed it, I have to say. I’m fond of history and antiquity and the fact that Mr. Brown has had fun creating his own tales using solid historical fact as the spine for his tales doesn’t bother me one whit.
As for the fuss over veracity and accuracy, those who are believers who need to see films that purport to be very accurate got to spend their popcorn money on Passion Of The Christ. This was an amusing fiction.
Gotta admit, it does make me wanna visit the Louvre. Alternately, if I visit the new Apple Store Fifth Avenue, will I find a small Rubik’s Cube resting directly underneath the immense glass cube above? ( And, more to the point, will I find the tomb of Adele Goldstine ?
CNN said on opening day that a movie theatre down the block from the entrance to the Vatican City was doing very good business showing the film.
That’s exactly what I thought. I’ve maintained for some time that the Catholics for a Decent Community were actually on the payroll of the Indie distributors. Any time you see an arthouse with a line around the block, you can bet the movie’s been boycotted.
( And, more to the point, will I find the tomb of