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

Pauline Kael gave such a bad review of 'Sound of Music' that when it turned out to be another cinematic classic, she was canned.

Ive heard its taken loads of money at the box office so its not doing too bad.

That's a supposition that Kael was fired for her lambasting of "The Sound of Music," and it was near the time when she felt that movies were in a quality down-turn and was not longer excited about being a film critic.
She also famously panned "Raging Bull."

I heard that the reason that Pauline Kael was canned was that she was a raging homophobe.

Now that's a lot of raging bull.

Anthony Lane absolutely savages DVC in The New Yorker this week, both book and movie.

Another christian freak?

The Davinci Code
What's the general opinion on the film against the book?

Was the book better? They usually are!!




Menace

Not heard any comparisons.
To me the film is 99% the same as the book, just how Id imagined it.

I think the hooha is happening again just because of what the film is trying to say.Its not a bad film but people are saying it is to dumb it down.

I'm not sure. Not necessarily so, Wilso. He bearely mentions religion at all. His thesis seems to be that both book and movie are trash from a purely aesthetic and literary point of view and not worth wasting one's time on. High-brow elitist, that's all.

(I, for one, fully agree that the book is trash. Haven't seen the movie yet. Have I mentioned recently that I loooved the book?)

Somehow I never read Anthony Lane as being particularly religious and it doesn't take a distaste for the conceptual material to dislike the book or the film. Both are produced for entertainment, with some inventive didactic asides, and that we can't be taken in but only partially by what the Bible states. Well, duh. I can assimilate the moral posture of some of the writings in the Bible but not the major premises of the Bible. That's easy to do when it's already distorted in film that Moses parted the Red Sea, when the Bible states it's the Reed Sea, miles away from the Red Sea and considerably more shallow. Something like the book and its many interpretations.

I usually like Anthony Lane, but I think he got three major things wrong in his review. One is that he seems to have no place in his universe for true fluff -- he mentions, as some sort of non-elitist cred, that he reads "Day of the Jackal" once a year. NO true fluff holds up to annual readings.

The second, closely related to the first, is that he doesn't seem to get that there are people who think it's pure hooey but also enjoyed the fluffy ride. He seems to think that all the fans take it very, very, seriously.

That said, the third thing he got wrong is that the book/ film is "self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith." Sorry, Anthony, I've seen it happen in at least two instances. Amazing, I'll give you that, but it did happen.

You got that right, sozobe. If "The Da Vinci Code" can be accused of pop culture sophistry, so is Anthony Lane's review an elitist sophistry. Critics originally loved to pan "The Exorcist" when first released and many have not-so-cleverly back-tracked and now claim that they like the movie. I wish critics would put a film into a genre and compare it to other films in that genre. If one doesn't care for that genre, they can avoid a trip to the multiplex.

I, for one, enjoy escapist literature and film. If I want serious, I will read a book of non-fiction.

I think that there are people, especially some in the church, who really underestimate the intellect of the American people. I would suspect that those who take the book and the film seriously, are a very small (and not too intelligent) portion of the population.

They don't just want to underestimate the public's intelligence -- they want to control the level of the public's intelligence. That's the one major problem I have with religion -- they claim that religion is a choice but then they actively participate in eschewing opinions that are transparantly a desire to control thought.

(I'm chuckling at the movie's apparant success as people are listening -- the Bible isn't what it appears and it's outing itself).

Who's DNA
If as claimed, that Jesus and Mary Madeleine had a child, would it not be the case that such a child would not only carry the blood line of Jesus but also that of his mother the Virgin Mary. This would then draw into question the DNA of the child. Mary had a divine birth with no known male intervention, yet she had a son, the son of God.
Based on the fact there are 75 trillion (7,500,000 billion) identical cells running through human bodies. Within each cell there is a nucleus (centre) that is made up of 46 chromosones. These chromosones are inherited -22 from your mother and 22 from your father. The final two are sex chromosones, and males have an X and Y and females have two X's. Chromosones contain within them equal parts of DNA and protein.
Are we then to assume that the male chromosomes are those of the Holy Spirit? Would this not give major concerns to the Church if such DNA was obtained?

If Jesus did have a brother called James would it not be tantalising to crosscheck their DNA?

Re: Who's DNA
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Gargar, fascinating to imagine the Church crusading to demand that DNA science be banned out of fear that Jesus and his brother James had the same DNA markers. Sort of bash the virgin thing?

WOW! Wouldn't that be fun?

BBB

Bash theVirgin!!!

Bash God, what was he doing impregnating someone he hadnt even met!!!Talk about bad manners.

It was a result of that great single's bar in the sky.