Christian Foes of 'Da Vinci Code' Debate How to Fight It

[eborr]

"I've got to get me to a library fast".

Reminds me of cartoon where showing a man fainted in the middle of a crowd - with the caption - make way I'a m an insurance agent.

Oh and Leigh Teabing - what's sort of name is that, did he mean to say Teabag but spelt it wrong

Perhaps it''s an anagram

[The Watcher]

"
Oh and Leigh Teabing - what's sort of name is that, did he mean to say Teabag but spelt it wrong

Perhaps it''s an anagram

Perhaps it is.

edit way after the fact to find out that people did not know that was indeed the case.

Joke on me.

[yovargas]

I could honestly be tempted to see this, were it not for the fact that I really don't want to contribute to Mr Brown's pot of gold.

I heard on a radio show yesterday Brown mad $75 million last year.

I don't think your $8 bucks are gonna affect him much one way or the other.

[Erunáme]

I can't decide whether I want to see this movie in the theatres or not. I keep reading awful reviews, but then I think about all the glowing reviews the critics have given about other movies and I ended up not liking those movies.

[Alatar]

"
Oh and Leigh Teabing - what's sort of name is that, did he mean to say Teabag but spelt it wrong

Perhaps it''s an anagram

Perhaps it is.

The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are, wait for it,

Baigent and Lee

[Ethel]

Heh. My friend wants to go see this this weekend. I'm trying to talk her out of it but it might not work - there aren't a lot of other good choices. Not that this one's a good choice. "But the Tomatometer's at 17%!" I told her. She likes to see the new movies though. If she does go, and talks me into going with her, I'll report back.

[Jnyusa]

There was a cute NPR review today. An hour into the movie, the reviewer said, everyone in the audience has figured out the ending, and that The DaVinci Code is an anagram for Catchin' de Video.

Jn

[Meneltarma]

The New York Times review is hilarious.

Meanwhile the albino monk, whose name is Silas and who may be the first character in the history of motion pictures to speak Latin into a cellphone, flagellates himself, smashes the floor of a church and kills a nun.

Teabing, who strolls out of English detective fiction by way of a Tintin comic, is a marvelously absurd creature, and Sir Ian, in the best tradition of British actors slumming and hamming through American movies, gives a performance in which high conviction is indistinguishable from high camp.

[Primula Baggins]

Yoicks! In spite of all those awful reviews, the film is opening huge in North America: $29.5 million estimated for Friday alone.

It's on track to make between $70 and $80 million the first weekend, which is a lot.

I still think it will drop very hard after the first weekend.

[JewelSong]

In spite of some talk (a good deal less than in the book) about the divine feminine, chalices and blades, and the spiritual power of sexual connection, not even a glimmer of eroticism flickers between the two stars. Perhaps it's just as well. When a cryptographer and a symbologist get together, it usually ends in tears.

Best. Review. Ever.

And let me just say, for the record, that I adore Ian McKellan.

[WampusCat]

As for me, I watched "DOGMA" on video this week...now there's a funny and clever movie. (And quirky, but, hey!)

I am seriously considering purchasing a "Buddy Christ" statue for my dashboard.

(In DOGMA, the Catholic Church decides it needs a makeover and one of the things that has to go is the Crucifix. Too much of a "downer." So they introduce this likeness instead. The Cardinal is played by George Carlin. )

Jewel, I confess I have a little Buddy Christ statue. It sits proudly amid my other, more serious icons. "Dogma" never fails to make me laugh. Sure, it's ... um... unorthodox and, some would say, blasphemous, but I believe that religion without laughter has become an idol.

That's why the church would be better off laughing at The DaVinci Code rather than condemning it.

[tinwë]

The film critic for my local newspaper gave the movie a pretty good review - 3 ½ out of five stars.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/ ... 616017.htm

Warning: Minor spoilers:

Fictional food for thought

`DaVinci Code' film nimbly navigates slimmer version of book's plot

LAWRENCE TOPPMAN

A thought for everyone swept away by the brouhaha over "The Da Vinci Code:" The book and movie offer fictional conspiracy theories, not philosophy lectures or history lessons. Expecting religious enlightenment here is like viewing "National Treasure" to discover clues to a hidden fortune, placed in the Declaration of Independence by our ancestors.

That said, the 149-minute film is a crackling rendition of Dan Brown's novel, siphoning off unneeded fat and fancy and leaving us with a streamlined train of a picture that never stops moving.

Unlike most Hollywood blockbusters, this one assumes audience members will be smart.

When cryptographer Sophie Neveu asks Harvard professor Robert Langdon if he has an eidetic memory, you're supposed know that's an ability to recall words and images exactly as he saw them. When Langdon and British historian Leigh Teabing debate the Priory of Sion, which supposedly keep a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church, new information flies at us in chunks.

In fact, that's the adaptation's only major drawback: If you don't know the book, it's tough to assimilate details so quickly, and you have to make leaps of faith about Langdon's ability to solve puzzles at remarkable speed.

In the novel, a message in backward writing baffles the three hunters of the Holy Grail, who discuss various linguistic possibilities until one thinks of a mirror. Here, Langdon says something like, "Backward writing, just what Leonardo Da Vinci liked," and the story chugs on.

But what else could writer Akiva Goldsman and director Ron Howard do in 2 1/2hours? (Some fans wished for a miniseries, which would have allowed a more deliberate pace.)

The filmmakers stay true to Brown's narrative while discarding his sidelong musings, and the characters are just as paper-thin as Brown left them in the book.

Parisian investigator Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) believes Langdon (Tom Hanks) has killed a curator of the Louvre, who mentioned him in a dying message. Sophie (Audrey Tautou) thinks her dying granddad summoned Langdon to solve his murder and protect a secret dating back to the time of Christ. Together, they go on the run to solve the crime.

They suspect the old man was a top member of the Priory and enlist Teabing (Ian McKellen) to help. He informs them that the Priory's job is to protect the Holy Grail -- not the cup shared at the Last Supper, as most believe, but the sarcophagus holding the bones of Mary Magdalene, who married Jesus and fostered a bloodline that survives today.

Goldsman and Howard did a shrewd thing: They made Langdon a skeptic who describes the Priory as a myth, rather than an advocate for conspiracy theory. Hanks is again an Everyman who stands in for you and me and must be convinced of this seemingly outlandish idea. (I wasn't personally convinced. I'm not convinced Lyndon Johnson knew John F. Kennedy was going to be whacked, either, but I still enjoyed Oliver Stone's "JFK.")

The filmmakers also change the book's clerical aspects, and here they can expect an outraged response. Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) is no longer an icy zealot who happens to work for the Opus Dei order; now he answers to an undefined high council within the church that authorizes his deeds. Silas (Paul Bettany), the assassin saved from a brutal life by Aringarosa, still gets sympathetic treatment, though Howard telescopes his history to a 60-second flashback.

The casting is ideal, all the way down to Reno and Etienne Chicot in the roles of the main cops. (This is the rare Hollywood movie where French people speak only French to each other; about 20 percent is subtitled.) The sniping at Hanks' casting proves foolish; Langdon solves problems with his brain, not with a bullwhip or by swinging over a pit full of poisonous snakes.

As befits this type of hero, "The Da Vinci Code" ends not with a bang but a question: Could Jesus have been the divine son of God and led a fully human life, fathering a child? Goldsman and Howard don't force this idea on us like a conjurer passing a card; they set it out for us to consider. They want us to come in thinking and go out the same way.

I blame WampusCat .

Actually, I’ve seen several reports that movie goers, in general, seem to like the film. It seems as though it’s mostly critics, and critics of the book, that don’t like it.

I’m looking forward to it myself. Once it comes out on video.

[Alatar]

This bit is worrying:

The filmmakers also change the book's clerical aspects, and here they can expect an outraged response. Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) is no longer an icy zealot who happens to work for the Opus Dei order; now he answers to an undefined high council within the church that authorizes his deeds.

That will really add fuel to the fire.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

And lots of people who won't read the book will still assume that the stuff in the movie is in the book.

[Faramond]

Yesterday I took a walk and while out I popped into the bookstore and squizzed a paperback copy of the DVC. I checked out the "fact sheet" and as people have said it is after the half title page thing. However, I have to say that my impression, even knowing better, was that these were meant as actual real life facts, not fictional facts. Yes, I now know better ... I accept the explanation about the title page and everything. But I also believe that this distiction will be lost on almost all readers and they will come away thinking that Dan Brown is claiming these are facts, not fiction.

Just an observation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

A couple of points I want to make about the movie. I'm not sure if these points accurately follow the book, but I suspect they do.

First of all, when Teabing first starts talking about the history of the Priory of Sion, Langdon says straight out that "that was proven to be a hoax in 1967". Teabing then replies with words to the effect of "ah, that's what they want you to believe". So, assuming that this does accurately reflect the book (which I think it does) Brown was well aware of the charges that the Priory history was a hoax.

Secondly, in terms of the divinity of Jesus, all that is stated is that before the Council of Nicea there was debate over the point, and conflicting texts that said different things, and that the "debate" was "resolved" at the Council and that the texts that made up the New Testament were chosen at that time. That is all, as far as I am aware, completely historically accurate (whether the choices as to what texts were chosen were divinely inspired or not).

[Jnyusa]

Faramond: But I also believe that this distiction will be lost on almost all readers and they will come away thinking that Dan Brown is claiming these are facts, not fiction.

I suspect that is true, and it is a large part of what makes me find this whole media event 'not funny.'

In the absence of HBHG I think the reaction would be quite different. One doesn't have to have deconstructed a book to know just from doing lots of reading that once you get past the copyright and dedications and all that, and see that title written on the page one more time, you expect the book to begin. Authors manage to put prologues and set-ups in front of Chapter 1 all the time without confusing people.

The problem is that in this case the publisher of both books (Doubleday) is still trying to promote the phony one as history (HBHG), which casts a shadow of confusion onto the transparently fictional book.

The more I think about this, the more I think that the people who want to boycott over this should be boycotting Doubleday - that's where the obfuscation is being prolonged.

But I also get this sense, from this thread and websites and radio interviews, that those who are opposed to this for religious reasons are objecting to the popularization of the idea and not the spuriousness of the marketing effort. In other words, they would be objecting even if everything done by the publisher had been done transparently. That's not a position I would agree with.

It would satisfy me if Doubleday would reclassify HBHG and issue an apology for the manner in which it was re-released.

This is not the first time, btw, that I've seen a book deliberately misclassified by a publisher so that a speculative premise would be taken seriously. I may have to get out my standard form letter and do my duty as a citizen ... lodge some complaints that I've just been too lazy to lodge in the past.

Jn

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Doubleday's actions are a problem. False history should never be categorized as real history, although I'm not entirely surprised at Doubleday's specious actions (lies don't surprise me), but hopefully enough people will remember that HGHB was debunked.

However, I have to say that my impression, even knowing better, was that these were meant as actual real life facts, not fictional facts.

This might be something that is person by person. I figure that most things written in fictions books (except the copyright and such) to be part of the fiction because otherwise there would be no real reason to include it. If that fails, I just check things on wikipedia to see what is said there.

[Alatar]

$119 Million opening weekend. Second only to Star Wars.


Way to go on the free publicity!

[yovargas]

Damn. I wonder if Brown is getting any of that money.