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

How nice for Roger Ebert! He is entitled to his opinion, as is anyone else.

Ebert gave the film three stars despite what he thought of the plot and basically states that the movie is better than the book. He usually judges a film within its genre. Not that it will compel me to race down to the cineplex. Moviegoers do not comprise a majority of the American public, nor is the film just making money in the states, so that is proof of, well, nothing. Take that over $70M in the US and divide it by the ticket price. Hardly a significant cross-section of society, although I can agree that under both parties, our educational system is not one to be proud of. Could it be the politicians are basically poorly educated dolts (God fearing dolts at that)? They are certainly educated to be lawyers. What was that joke about 99% of all lawyers, again?

Domestic: $145,481,000 31.3%
+ Foreign: $319,500,000 68.7%

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= Worldwide: $464,981,000

Now closing on a half-a-billion dollars, Ebert has written an article on why good movies sometimes draw bad reviews. It was in the Orange County Register but will try to find it on line. Ebert and Roeper gave the film two thumbs up. The new X-Men movie captured the three day weekend number one spot and "The Da Vinci Code" was down nearly 70% domestically.

Howard Stringer Sony Inc. CEO and ex CBS News chief will be relived if not pleased.

How did he become Sir Howard anyways?

Saw the movie today with my wife and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. We thought it was excellent and glad that we didn't take into account what the critics said, who seemed to universally pan the film.

I never read Dan Brown's book -- if Dan actually wrote it and there is some doubt about that -- because when I read a review of it when it was first published, the review cued me into the fact that it is not literature and I don't have time to waste.

I had wanted to see the movie, largely because I am an Audrey Tatou fan and like the rest of the impressive case. As the reviews came out, I made the decision to wait until it reached the second run houses, which I figured would happen in July.

A friend called and asked if I had time last weekend. I did. I saw it. While it didn't reek, it was a bad film.

I thought it questionable as soon as Bezu Fache (is his name supposed to remind us of Fascism? If so, that would be relevant. Read on.) approached Langdon while he was at a book signing. Buzz. Unrealistic. A cop would have waited to approach the man and not make a spectacle out of himself.

I considered walking out -- except I was with my friend and I have never walked out of a theatre, managing to stay seated even through The Great Gatsby! -- when they reached the scene in which another cop and Fache discuss the fact that two prostitutes picked up in sweep identified Sophie and Langdon as the couple they saw walking together in the Bois de Boulogne.

Really???!!!!

At night? In a city the size of Paris? Streetwalkers pay attention to couples? They can see in the dark?

Can you say deus ex machina, boys and girls?

By the end of the movie, I was thinking Why did they ignore the great basilica of the La MAdeleine, the pilgrimage church at Vezelay, which along with Canterbury and Campostella was one of the three biggest Medieval tourist attractions?

I am fascinated with how the Jewish woman Mary of Magdala became La Madeleine and one of the patron saints of France, just as I am fascinated by how Ste. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus, became the patroness of Brittany.

I have read Susan Haskins book, examining through art how attitudes toward Mary Magdalene -- who was never a prostitute -- changed over the past two millenia and I recommend it to anyone suckered in by Brown and Howard. I have read books on Ste. Anne, which are not fly-by-night stuff like Brown's, which many people whose writing I admire say is badly written.

The Boston Phoenix wrote that the movie needs characters and it does. Langdon and Sophie and Leigh are just cyphers and their dialogue is exposition.

The only thing worth seeing is the glass pyramid, which I love.

I know there are people who believe Brown's fantasies about the Holy Grail, the descendants of Jesus, the Knights Templar, Opus Dei and the true story of Mary Magdalene.

First of all, Dan Brown double majored in Spanish and English. As a Spanish major, he probably read the novel which has something about a panel in the title which involves solving a murder through paintings.

After graduating from AMherst, Brown tried his luck as a singer-song writer and produced a CD or two that garnered little attention.

Then, he taught at his alma mater where is father also taught, Phillips Exeter.

Then, he decided to try his hand at books. He wrote some generally ignored thrillers, but, at this time, he met a woman 12 years his senior and moved back to NH with her and the two eventually married.

Together, they began writing humor and advice books. There is some question as to which one did the writing although Mrs. Brown really promotes her husband, who is good looking in a fey, preppie way.

Remember the law suit against Brown by a group from England that wrote a book with the same 'research' back in 1982? Judge sided with Brown. I don't. Most of the stuff is in that book, as it is in another book called something like the Bloodline of the Holy Grail, published in 1996.

The author of bloodline is Laurence Gardner who gives himself a string of titles and relates the Grail to the Stewart kings of England. He later said Jesus' forebears were aliens.

A man named Stewart ......... just forgot the name ......... wrote a book about Gardner in which he says that he, Stewart, was abducted by what he at first thought were aliens as a teenager but who later turned out to be govt agents in disquise. According to Stewie, Gardner and American conservative Wm F. Buckley are both shapeshifting lizards who devour babies in fantastic rites.

Chuckle.

I think Da Vinci is probably a joke and is definitely plagiarized.

I don't think the church said a thing about it. Mrs. Dan Brown is a publicist and I think she dreamed up and created the church's so-called opposition.

When I was a Catholic grade school student, a nun said that of course Jesus had brothers and sisters.

From PRAVDA:



A high-ranking Vatican cardinal has spoken out against the "The Da Vinci Code," the best-selling novel that is about to hit movie screens, saying it is based on wrong facts and can turn people against Christianity.

Cardinal Francis Arinze said "The Da Vinci Code" does not offer "a good presentation of Christianity at all. Rather, it does the very opposite, presents it wrongly: wrong facts and orienting people against Christianity."

Arinze, a Nigerian cardinal with a reputation for conservatism, made his comments in a documentary produced by the Rome-based TV news agency RomeReports and made available Friday. He was the latest church official to criticize the best-selling novel by Dan Brown.

"Any film produced on the basis of that book is already in error from the word go, no matter how interesting it may be," said Arinze, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Church officials have spoken out repeatedly against Brown's novel and the upcoming film, which stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou and is scheduled for release this month.

I have seen the film twice. Enjoyed it twice. The film opens your mind to the possibility of a spiritualism that includes women and is based on Christianity. I can see how that would upset orthodoxy. Oh well too bad - so sad.

gayora -- Although raised in the Catholic Church, I left it in my heart at age 15 and officially at age 21.

There has been a great deal said about women's spirituality over the past three, maybe four, decades. Some of it is good and some of it is lame and some of it is just plain out on a limb.

The genesis of DVC supposedly was a book by Margaret Starbird called The Woman with the Alabaster Jar. Starbird, too, was raised in the RC church and remained, turning not to the left-wing intellectual wing of American Catholicism but to the evangelical wing. The she read a book by a trio of men named Baigent (part of the group who sued Brown and claimed his name was made into an anagram Teabing), Leigh and Lincoln.
There is another book on the same subject by a real nut case named Laurence Gardner who has as a supporter a man claiming to be a descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Gardner has invested himself with all manner of titles.

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln got some of their ideas from a man named Pierre Plantard who invented all manner of secret societies, including the one Brown has Langdon decry as a hoax that guards the sacred bloodline of Jesus and La Madeleine. Plantard was something of an anti-Semite and some of his organizations were designed to curry the favor of Marshall Petain.

These people are out on a limb.

There is a woman who goes about giving lectures on the connection between Mary MAgdalene and the Black Madonnas who claims that the Black MAdonnas have been hidden for centuries. That's not true. The Madonnas and their connection to La Madeleine were written of in that travel classic from the 1950s, Three Rivers in France.

The trouble is all of these people play fast and loose with the factoids, to say nothing of the facts.

Former Sorbonne professor of Celtic Studies Jean Markale -- who members of the HArvard and the UCLA faculties of Celtic Studies say to take with a grain of salt -- has written in his retirement on Chartres, a Black Madonna site, and on La Madeleine. I intend to look into his books.

There is a great deal of serious work to be done on Mary MAgdalene and Susan Haskins has made an admirable start. However, whatever the
connection between Druids, early Christians, Celtic pagans, Black Madonnas, middle eastern female refugees, St. Michael and more are lost in the mists of unrecorded time.

Now, in Celtic France, severed heads were worshipped and female figures did confer sovereignty upon chiefs. There were sacred wells and sacred pits to emulate wells into which offerings were thrown -- some of which were artifacts, some were butchered humans.

The quarter days had significance and the calendar was divided into light and dark halves -- the Calendar of Coligny still remains, at least in part.

However, without further massive archeaological finds, there is too much speculation and too little fact.

I saw the movie 3 times... I personally thought it was super but could have been 1 hour longer... and oh,by the way, i've found this cool site that gives awesome movie reviews. yea might wanna check it out.
http://www.mydvdreviews.com

Looks like another movie one either loves or hates.

There are some lawyers, Light Wizard, who make more in a day than you do in a month......and I am sure that they are much brighter than you are!! "Poorly educated dolts" do not go through Harvard, Yale, or Stanford Law Schools.

What law school failed to accept you?

Your comprehension skills are very limited. I stated they were educated as lawyers which does not mean they were well educated in anything else. So sensitive, aren't we? You must be a lawyer.

You know nothing of what I make per month and whether or not I ever wanted to be a lawyer. Peddle your petty trolling on someone else, Italgato/Massagato.

BernardR wrote:


There are some lawyers, Light Wizard, who make more in a day than you do in a month......and I am sure that they are much brighter than you are!! "Poorly educated dolts" do not go through Harvard, Yale, or Stanford Law Schools.

What law school failed to accept you?

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This is a non sequitor. Not all people who attend law school are brilliant. Not all graduates of law schools make heaps of money.

In fact, there is no correlation between intelligence and the ability to make a great deal of money.

Furthermore, who gave you the right to horn in and attack contributors?

You do sound like massagatto, an arch conservative.

Conservatives on this forum and on abuzz were always complaining about lawyers who ruined America by bringing lawsuits against many people. You seem to be favoring lawyers.

Someone with as few manners and as many contradictions ought to think before he inserts his foot into his mouth.

Lawyers who graduate from our top twenty law schools are among the most brilliant people in the USA.

Plain ol me states that there is NO correlation between intelligence and the ability to make a great deal of money.

Even as far back as 1991, the US Department of labor gave a wage chart that showed the following professions in order, Now, these may not be in quite the same order, but they are indicative of the INTELLIGENCE NEEDED. High IQ occupations have median wages well above the median.

Here are the professions in the wage distributions---

Accountants'
Social Scientists
Natural Scientists
Mathematicians and computer scientists
College Teachers
Engineers and Architects
Physicians
Attorneys.

I am very much afraid that Mr. plainolme is wrong. There is a correlation between Intelligence and the ability to make a great deal of money.


Of course, not all people who attend law schools make a great deal of money but a very high percentage of those who attend and graduate from the top twenty law schools do make a great deal of money.

Plainolme isobviously unaware of the correlation between Intelligence and the two factors which are needed to be accepted in a top twenty law school--A very high LSAT and very very good grades in undergraduate school.

Plain ol me was the one who "attacked; with his comment--"poorly educated dolts". If he had brought forward evidence as I have, I would have accepted his evidence and then tried to rebut it, but he gave no evidence.

You, plainolme, seem to think that a rebuttal is an attack. For a person who claims to be a voracious reader, you obvioulsy do not know that in the marketplace of ideas, good ideas flourish and poor ideas die.

All Light Wizard had to do was to defend his statement--"poorly educated dolts". I would bet that one of those poorly educated dolts who graduated from Harvard Law School would make LightWizard's head swim.


I do not side with "trial lawyers" Most of them are ambulance chasers. People from the top twenty law schools are not ambulance chasers. They do not have to be.

BernardR, would you be kind enough to explain to the rest of us non-lawyers what your very erudite screed has to do with the subject at hand, i.e. Mrs. Betty Bowers' review of The daVinci Code? I believe that was the theme of this thread. If there is some relevance between the review of a film and the education of Americans in the field of jurisprudence, we'd all be very interested in learning about it.

even better massagato/bernard would you be kind enough to piss off and leave the thread?

squinney and I saw Da Vinci Code Friday. It was okay, basically just a whoodunnit IMO. I don't see what the church has their panties in a twist about. It is obviously a work of fiction with a "what if" premise and that's it. I enjoyed it, but it's hard to read anything serious into a movie that supplies a "sacred" code key in a modern block caps letter font.

As for Tom Hanks' hair, which seems to be the matter of much discussion, I thought he nailed the look of a scholarly intellectual who looks like he doesn't get to the gym or a hairstylist because he's too busy being an intellectual. Sort of the way I imagine Bernard/Massagato maybe looks.