Mrs. Betty Bowers is the First to Review "The Da Vinci Code"

The Bowers woman is not flaunting her sarcasm when she said "It is clear that Plain Ol Me is completely ignorant of the salaries of Attornies who work for the top 100 firms in the USA. They start at $135,000.

Well, it looks like any discussion of BEtty Bowers is a moribund as her system of beliefs. She sounds dreadful! Can you imagine sitting down to coffee with her?

Mrs. Bowers does not drink coffee. She is of the pseudo-intellectual group that reads garbage like "Beloved" and "The DaVinci Code". They don't drink coffee either. Their choice of refreshment, being from the superannuated hippie generation, is Majijuana---certainly a drug which makes you "think" more clearly!!!!!!!That may be why very few from the superannuated hippie generation can think clearly at all!

What the f@ck has any that got to do with "The DaVinci Code". Everything that comes out of the US film industry is worthless crap anyway. The only difference is degrees.

Wilso- You are mainly correct. However, there are some great movies that have come out of Hollywood but you are mainly correct. Some of the most recent potboilers---DaVinci Code, Brokeback Mountain, Chicago, Mission Impossible were indeed abominable--but you must remember that movies are like books--Only a few each decade are truly worth while.

Meditate on:

Casablanca

Hamlet( Olivier)

Godfather

King Kong( original)

Apocalypse Now

Full Metal Jacket

High Noon

There are more, of course, but I am of the opinion that too many of us are eager to go with the style of the moment and overlook true genius.

There are not many really great movies among the thousands made but the great ones should merit our continued viewing and study. If a movie is truly great it will be like Shakespeare---something in which we find more beauty and meaning every time we read( view) it.

What a load! This woman is so to the right that -- as my 84 year old father would say -- she has both arms on the same side of her body!

I was drawn into retured Sorbonne professor Jean Markale's 1998 book,"The Church of Mary Magdalene: The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Renne-Le-Chateau."

Although the advice at Harvard is read Markale with caution, his is the only reasoned handling of the matter covered by TDVC. I urge those who thought the book was good to read Markale.

Betty Bowers is a parody, people. http://www.bettybowers.com/

Google. Know it. Love it. Live it.

I'm actually laughing at anyone who took Betty Bowers as serious. What planet are they from?

Yeh, I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read that howler. BTW, I finally did see DVC. It was a hot summer night in Kona, HI, where hotel rooms are generally not air-conditioned and we were staying at a hotel with no television (or telephone) in the guest rooms. So. . .

For summer escapism entertainment it's not quite as dreadful as everyone says. I agree that Tom Hanks is miscast in the title role. The script sticks pretty close to the book, which would be a plus if only Ron Howard had a sense of humor. If anything ruins the film (for me, at least) it's Howard's direction. He treats it as a pretty standard Hitchcockian whodunnit. (But Hitch would have seen the comic possibilities immediately, of course.) Ian McKelln almost saves the movie with his outrageous over-the-top portrayal of the British scholar Leigh Teabing. The key word, however, is 'almost.'

I don't think these people have read enough Bowers to realize her tongue is firmly implanted in her cheek. However, I always perceived her as being in the middle politically as she has taken pot shots at both sides.

I love Kona (it's my favorite) but have usually stayed at the Hilton Garden Rooms. Their hotel cafe is right over the lava rocks and I was astonished to see while having breakfast that there were little lava rocks that moved, and I hadn't even had a Bloody Mary! It was actually little black crabs moving across the black rock (what a disguise!) I forgot the little local hotel I stayed at that was not air-conditioned. It did have atmosphere but so did the Hilton. I was expecting the Marx Bros. to bolt out of the elevators. Well, maybe Crosby and Hope with Dorothy Lamour sandwiched between them is more like it although I don't believe they did any Hawaii road picture. The walk up to the coffee plantation, where there is a Chart House is a high point. Except I bought too much Kona coffee and had to have it shipped back, so it cost as much as buying it from Peet's.

Why do we go to the movies? For entertainment or for intellectual content? I go for both. I thought "Batman Begins" was the most entertaining movie of last year and it was more than a popcorn movie. The script and direction actually made the characters seem real, much like LOTR.

"Almost" movies I'm not propelled to see on the big screen. I might end up seeing this one on HBO or DVD. Ron Howard often leaves the humor out but to buffer the serious ascpects. In "Cinderella Man" it was used "almost" enough to buffer the serious and sometimes depressing aspects. Of course, it did occur during the depression and what kind of spoiled it for me was fact that I knew the history. Like watching "Titanic," I knew how it came out. Hitchcock was the director who perfected the suspense thriller, culminating in "Vertigo." Too bad he wasn't alive to do DVC.

We weren't actually even staying in Kona, LW, but in the coffee plantation hills above the town, at the Kona Hotel in Haluloa. This esteemed inn was opened as a hotel in Eighteen-eighty-something and today is painted a bright pink. Maybe a dozen rooms, none with private bath. You wrap a towel around you and go down the hall to take a shower. TV in the parlor downstairs. Owned and operated by a charming old Japanese lady who also grows her own coffee on the hills behind the hotel and sells the beans at much lower prices than what you'd pay at the local Safeway. Would you believe a room rate of $40 a night? But you have to make reservations weeks in advance. You can see that at that price there's a stampede for rooms among those in the know. It's my favorite hideaway on the West Coast of the Big Island.

BTW, I owe you a dinner. Might be in your neck of the woods late August, not sure yet. Be assured I will PM you, if so.

That looks like a best buy! I will remember that, except that isn't the frequent fog bank over the coffee plantation (which is weird to walk up into, like a ship slipping into the fog) obscure views? The Kona Hilton is certainly not $40.00 a night and but I'm sure you can walk down to the village from the Kona Hotel. You know this is the historic site where the Polynesians first landed and there's a posted sign on the shore of the site.

Is the King Kamamaha still out on the end of town and is Chuck's Steak House still there?

Well, there we go again -- off topic! At least we aren't trolling.

Oh, dinner! Wasn't that evening delightful? Sunset over the inlet of San Pedro small boat harbor. We've been there for their brunch, lunch and dinner many times. The last time we had dinner was with family friends and there was an Indian wedding in the adjoining room (the restaurant's owner is from India).

King Kam is still there, but I'm not certain about Chuck's. I usually plan to have at least one dinner at the Kona Inn, smack in the center of town. If you can get a table close enough to the seawall, you can watch those black crabs scampering over the lava rocks at low tide while inhaling a martini.

Hell with the topic.

DVC is now becoming old news.

The steakhouse is upstairs in the little shopping area adjacent to the Kona Hotel. Now I don't think it is a Chuck's. Trying to remember the name. One of the more reasonable dining spots and great steaks. Right below is was a shop which constantly turned out bags of Maui chips. I'm sure the Chart House is still on the road up towards the plantations and I don't remember the name of it but there was a little Mexican (!) restaurant up that same road. It's quite a hike up that hill, though. But no rickshaws in Kona!

Whoops, I mispelled the King Kamehameha! Wonder if the spelling/typo small minded spelling police caught that one! I call them the Petty Patrol.

I had no context for Btty Bowers -- I first heard of her when this same review was posted on another web forum.

Without a context, it is impossible to tell she is satire.

We're laughing because all anyone has to do is read the review. It's as preposterous as the storyline of the movie. I check her columns sometimes when surfing the Web for a good laugh.

It was perhaps unfair that I had this featured as soon as it was posted but BBB doesn't post in film that often and it was the first thread about the movie. I almost immediately looked for other reviews and posted Ebert's who is usually the fairest of the reviewers -- he'll recommend a movie if it has enough redeeming features but won't if it's truly mediocre (2 stars or below, depending on how mediocre or really bad). Ebert still recommends the movie and by the review it's obvious only to those who enjoy this type of thriller. Naturally, if one is offended by the premise, they should pass. I'd bet a lot of those who pass going to the cineplex to see it would still end up catching it on cable or DVD.

Now, back to the Islands -- much more pleasant than this thread has been. I can feel the cool breezes now 'cause it's in the mid to high 80's here.

Not that it means anything as far as quality and I would never suggest that:

THE DA VINCI CODE

Domestic Total as of Jul. 4, 2006: $211,193,000 (Estimate)
Distributor: Sony Release Date: May 19, 2006
Genre: Thriller Running Time: 2 hrs. 29 min.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Production Budget: $125 million
SHOWTIMES: Zip Code This Movie All


TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
Domestic: $211,193,000 29.9%
+ Foreign: $495,346,006 70.1%

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= Worldwide: $706,539,006


If it had depended only on domestic gross, it would not have made enough money to pay for the movie but that foreign gross is impressive. Just a note about the craziness of the movie business these days. It will like make another $800M on DVD and cable which is now 55% of the profit on a movie, although that's been down these days.

There are some great films being made -- one just has to search for them as they don't always show up at the cineplex but at the art theaters.

This is a funny turn of affairs as basically the same thing happened to "Troy," a very different genre.

this film is really a failure

Huh? Nearly 3/4 of a billion dollars is a failure?