The Da Vinci Code

Roy Munson

I for one am looking forward to seeing the movie. I read the book and it's extremely entertaining, movies rarely are as good as the book they are based on but I'll be going to see it! All the crap about the book brought up by the church goes to show just how paranoid they are! About a week ago I answered a knock at my door and three religious folks were in my neighborhood going door to door attempting to "debunk" the DVC! Geez, Dan Brown wrote a novel and to the best of my knowledge he has never made any claims about anything in the book being real!

VR3

Im looking forward to seeing it when it comes out on DVD. But I refuse to pay 6 bucks to see a movie that got a 17% rating..LOL - aint no way.

As for its controversy with the churches - I dont really care about it either way. People that cant differiniate a movie from reality are right up there with people that associate video games with reality. Freaking morons.

shack

Neither the book nor the movie holds much interest for me. Anything this hyped is rarely any good IMO. Besides, I find the constant search for new ways of unearthing some sort of widespread conspiracy boring (in whatever genre be it political, religious, scientific, military, etc...).

aaharvel

16%. :eek:

I think I might wait for a rental on this one.

MacLeod

Ill be seeing it this weekend, hopefully.

I dont care about the reviews really and I havent read the book. The premise really intrigues me so thats why I want to see it.

I just love the whole idea of a 2000 year cover up of the biggest news in history.

jpchleapas

john d. strong wrote:

Amazing how so many religious organizations are flipping out about it. Whole countries are even banning it!

Good lord people, it's a work of fiction!

I bought the book and am reading it. I see it for nothing but entertainment value, which is REALLY good by the way.

Unfortunately, I have a girl that wants me to take her to see it. Gotta satisfy the girly!

I am not a regular church going person at all. But can you imagine the howling by not so moderate Muslims if they made a real life movie about the pedophile Mohammed who created what some call dare a belief? He married one "wife" when the little girl was only 6 years old. He did not consumate the marriage until she was ~9 years old. What a stand up guy.. We in the civilized world dare to call that child predatory behavior illegal. Did you not remember the burning, rioting, and killings in many Arab (and non Arab) Countries when their head scarfs got all tangled up over a just few cartoons? For a while it looked like the Novel, "Is Paris burning?" In real life Hitler could not have his Army burn Paris. But over cartoons and other non-sense "those not so moderate people" tried. They torched thousands of cars, lit up (burned) one disabled woman on fire on a public bus (and no one intervened when they doused her with a flammable liquid and lit her on fire), and they burned hundreds of businesses over there in France. So how about a movie depicting the real life child predator Mohammed? How would that movie go over with millions of the not so moderate followers of a real life pedophile? John

bobman1235

Just got back from seeing it. It's pretty much exACTly the book, until the end. I mean, they leave out soem details for the sake of time (and it's already 2.5 hours), but it's pretty faithful. I really don't understand why it got such bad reviews (unless it's a big conspiracy coverup.... ), cuz I really enjoyed it. It wasn't QUITE paced like most movies - it doesn't quite fit into the action / suspense / mystery genres very well, but it's still very interesting. I'm curious how someone who hadn't read the book would take it - I'm not sure how much taht helped.

But a thumbs up from me.

aaharvel

bobman1235 wrote:

Just got back from seeing it. It's pretty much exACTly the book, until the end. I mean, they leave out soem details for the sake of time (and it's already 2.5 hours), but it's pretty faithful. I really don't understand why it got such bad reviews (unless it's a big conspiracy coverup.... ), cuz I really enjoyed it.

lol go to RT and you'll notice that the same negative review for the movie is posted like TEN TIMES on the front page.

there goes my faith in RT.

whoops..

swerve

Just got home from seeing it. I never read the book and this film just dragged on. It was just a sea of information it seemed... nothing wrong with that but I just kept losing myself yet I had no real attachment to any of the characters.

And to lack emotional attachment to a character in a movie that is 2.5 hours long something is seriously wrong.

Good night,
Adam

PolkThug

I thought the movie was good but not great. I have not read the book, but I have studied Da Vinci and I am already familiar with biblical origins regarding the Councils of Nicaea, which I think helps aid in understanding the movie. My wife has read the book and she said the movie follows it very closely. She made the comment, "If you've read the book, there's no need to see the movie."

Funny thing is, the real life boycotting of this book by the Vatican, kind of ties into the themes of this movie.


Side note: I found the discussion of the Last Supper painting to be interesting. I've never really stared at that painting before, but the person on JC's right definitely looks to be female.

http://www.eskimo.com/~rwb/images/europe/11-milan-last-supper.jpg

MrNightly

PolkThug wrote:

Side note: I found the discussion of the Last Supper painting to be interesting. I've never really stared at that painting before, but the person on JC's right definitely looks to be female.

http://www.eskimo.com/~rwb/images/europe/11-milan-last-supper.jpg

I have yet to see the movie, but after staring at the photo in the link you provided, I think it is safe to say that the person in the middle (Jesus) looks like a female as well! Half the people in the picture look feminine! Just my thoughts, and I will see the film later this week probably. Too bad it was so long and dry.

bobman1235

After reading hte book I actually read a bit about the Last Supper painting, just out of curiosity. The person to Jesus' right in the painting is almost universally recognized as the disciple John. From Wikipedia :

Other paintings from that period (Castagno’s 1447 and Ghirlandaio’s 1480) also show John to be a very boyish or feminine looking figure with long fair hair. This was because John was supposed to have been the youngest and most unquestioningly devoted of the apostles. Hence he is often shown asleep against Jesus's shoulder. John, painted as the usual effeminate da Vinci youth, is comparable to Leonardo da Vinci's St. John the Baptist.

PolkThug

Nice! Quite the 'girly man'. Wonder if the Phelps family knows about this? ;-)

aaharvel

the locale of Judas at the table of the Last Supper is common knowledge yeah?

Demiurge

MrNightly wrote:

I have yet to see the movie, but after staring at the photo in the link you provided, I think it is safe to say that the person in the middle (Jesus) looks like a female as well! Half the people in the picture look feminine! Just my thoughts, and I will see the film later this week probably. Too bad it was so long and dry.

It's not a photo, it's a painting. Which means interpretation.

bobman1235

aaharvel wrote:

the locale of Judas at the table of the Last Supper is common knowledge yeah?

Pretty much everyone in the PAINTING (which as Demi points out, is just Leonardo da Vinci's artistic interpretation, and has little basis in "fact") has been identified through research of da Vinci's writings and whatnot.

aaharvel

that's what i thought. I didn't even know who Judas was until someone pointed him out to me. And now it seems obvious...don't know how I missed it.

MrNightly

Demiurge wrote:

It's not a photo, it's a painting. Which means interpretation.

Right. That's what I meant. Thanks for the clarification

wodom1

After all the hype about the book/movie, I finally went to Border's and bought myself a copy this afternoon. I'm on page 150 and must say that it's a very good book so far and I now want to learn a few more things about Da Vinci, but I still view it as a work of fiction and agree with the comments regarding people/organizations who are taking it too seriously. I won't be going to the theater to see this, however. I'll wait for it to come out on DVD and then rent it.

George Grand

Wodom, among other things, Da Vinci developed the first Whoopee Cushion. Few people know this.

MacLeod

We just got back from seeing it and I thought it was great!

Excellent acting and directing of course and the story was well written albeit a little hard to follow in some parts.

The whole premise to me is a little far fetched but then again so is Raiders of the Lost Arc.

I liked the ending, while not really climactic or anything it was still cool.

I dont know if I would recommend it or not because if youre not into this type of flick you could get bored really quick.

If youre wanting a fast paced thriller then youd better wait til this comes out on DVD. If you like the intrigue of a good mystery and dont mind having to keep up with whats going on as it unfolds, then you should see this.

Id give it 8 out of 10.

aaharvel

yeah I'll go see it tomorrow, tired of putting it off.

Shizelbs

I hated the book, everything about it. Dan Brown cannot write. I will not see this movie.

aaharvel

Not great.
Not crap.

my take of this overly-hyped and forgettable movie.

millerman 3732

just got back about an hour ago overall I enjoyed it, like MacLeod said very well acted and an intresting story, does it live up to all the hype? for me no, but that doesn't mean that the movie is not any good just didn't live up to all the build up, I didn't read the book so some of the things that happened were new to me but I've seen enough about the book on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic that I could keep up with most of what was going on, my wife on the other hand had not so she was mostly confused and really couldn't follow the story so sure she thought it was long and boring. as far as the pace of the movie I felt it was just right for the story, with in the first 10 min your right in the middle of it tring to figure out whats going on and why the hell does that white haired man keep doing that to himself. If you like Tom Hanks and Ron Howards style of directing check it out if you want to see stuff blow up go see MI3

kingkip

I read the book and was very entertained. I just came back from the movie and liked it as well. You do have to have patience for it though.

On a side note, I am fairly certain this movie will single-handedly bring down Christianity. Yep, you can practically hear the pillars of Heaven crumbling every time the flick is shown.;)

PolkThug

wodom1 wrote:

and I now want to learn a few more things about Da Vinci

Da Vinci is fascinating. I actually took a clas on "how to think like Leonardo da Vinci". Lucky for us, he left behind lots of notebooks.

Gaara

Personally I despised this movie, but did enjoy the book. The reasons I hated the movie:

It seems watered down from the book, take for example when Teabing is talking about how the christians started a war against the pagans, and Langdon speaks up to say there is no evidence, and the pagans could have began it. This happens numerous times in the book, Teabing is made to look crazy and speaks against the church, and then the brilliant Langdon takes the middle ground. I did not like this and felt that they watered it down to appease the church.

There was also the fact that the men who gave Arinagrosa in the movie were not part of the church, they were some dark secret sect and they would all be excommunicated if the church found out. Again it seemed watered down, as if the church would have nothing to do with this sort of thing, and they were working on their own. There was also what Sophie witnessed when she was home from college, a big deal in the book, barely there in the movie.

I did not like the added scenes such as Sophie and the druggie, or the extended chase scene in the beginning of the movie. I felt that they could have removed these scenes and given more background about Sophie and her grandfather. They could have also used this time to add one minute more about Silas to explain how he gets out of jail, I loved this in the book and was disappointed to see its explanation missing in the movie. I wish they added more explanation, like about Sauniere, about him and Sophie, or about all of the information presented. I know it was already long, but they could have removed some of the pointless extra scenes.

I also did not like the fact that Langdon was some sort of super genius. He saw the letters and how they fit and was just spewing out words. If I recall correctly Sophie figured out half or so of the puzzles in the book, like so dark the con of man, or the account #, in the movie Langdon knows them all. I find it ironic that he needs no help from her, or the librarian in the book, to solve these puzzles. Considering the topic of the movie, just ironic that a man figures everything out, with no help from a woman, gotta love equality, the divine feminine me arse.

The changes that were made were also poor. I did not like the ending, I did not like the spin that the movie put on it. I much preferred the ending of the book, and it made a lot more sense to me. Then there was the change with Fache, he was no longer devoted and intelligent like he was in the book, he was brutal, like him and the air traffic controller. Instead of using his intelligence and authority he uses brute force, I did not like this. Not to mention the ending with him and Arinagrosa, very different from the book, I loved how they finished it in the book, not in the movie. Silas was also much sadder in the book, I really felt for the guy, in the movie he was just some sick killing machine.

That pretty much sums up what I didn't like about the movie. I did enjoy the book, but definitely did not like the movie. Your milage may vary, but I did not like it, and it had nothing to do with it being blasphemous.

PolkThug

Just in case anybody is confused, one of my local churches is still offering a class: THE DA VINCI DEBACLE AND OTHER HERESIES THAT MAKE YOU GO “HMMM” (I'm not kidding)

"Invite a curious friend, nay-saying neighbor, or cynical coworker to join you for our intriguing and accessible DaVinci debunking"

They have no clue how they are actually making people more interested in seeing the movie.

bobman1235

Gaara,

While you're entitled to your opinion, and I don't necessarily think you're WRONG about what you say are the movie's faults.... it was already 2 and a half hours. If you did all or even a few of the things you mentioned, it would probalby be the longest movie in the history of mankind. There's a reason film adaptations of good books usually aren't as good as the original book, and that's that you're paring down hundreds of pages into two hours, AND you have to somehow find a way to show internal dialogue visually. Considering how intricate the da Vinci Code novel is, I think they did pretty well bringing it to film. You just cannot cover everything like you do in the novel, it's not possible.