Who wants cake? Anybody? Cake? No? Just me?
About Me
- Name: Pops
- Location: The 951, California, United States
I'm very interesting. I would describe myself as witty and insightful, but that wouldn't make either true. I have two degrees in history from the least prestigious University of California campuses. As a result, I stay home full time with my kids. If anyone can think of anything useful to do with a history MA, please don't hesitate to share.
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Monday, November 15, 2004
No Secret Messages Contained Herein
I'm going to break my usual pattern of waiting to report news until it has had a chance to age properly so that I might bring you fast breaking entertainment news!
Tom Hanks has been cast in the lead for the film version of The Da Vinci Code.
Ron Howard will direct. An A-list director and one of the very few truly A-list movie stars will be adapting what has been one of the most astonishingly successful novels in recent memory. As far as I can tell, the project can't miss.
There is one thing I'd like to point out, however: Wow, what a terrible book that was. Never in my life have I come in contact with fiction so completely in slavish service of research. That guy who wrote it (forgot his name... isn't that curious?) managed to put every single tidbit of everything he ever read about Holy Grail legends and then hung this chase plot around it. Let me reconstruct his worknotes for you all:
1. Clues to Grail legends in da Vinci paintings in the Louvre. Characters search for them and discuss in brief. Bad guys do similar, forcing good guys to flee.
2. Clues to Grail legends in some old church in Scotland. Characters search for them and discuss in brief. Bad guys do similar, forcing good guys to flee.
This goes on for about 300 pages, which are divided up into over 100 chapters. This is the only book I've ever read that has a shorter attention span than I do.
Every whiz-bang chapter ends either with the solving of one puzzle or the introduction of another. All are solved in exactly the same way: one of the two protagonists, stumped by 2,000 years of intractability for two (sometimes as many as four in the case of the real head-scratchers) pages suddenly goes: "A-ha! My enyclopedic knowledge of everything related to this story has produced an answer in very specific detail and in tension-building time-release fashion!"
For all future novelists out there, I would like to torture a metaphor as a reader giving adivice: if you put in too many twists, all you have in the end is a tangle. And everyone knows tangles are only fun as a means to passive-aggressively torture misbehaving children as they are "combed out".
Perhaps it is possible that my aversion to this particular book has something to do with it's widespread appeal to the masses, the same way I hate the movie Titanic and that Hoobastank song.
I don't think of myself as a snob, but I guess I do have snobbish tendencies. I don't know how I came by them. They can't have come from childhood, as--at least socioeconomically--there was no one to look down on when I was growing up.
No, the fault must lie in higher education. As a full-time caregiver to children (OK, not full-time as I obviously found time to jot this mess down) I have all these well-honed "critical thinking" skills beaten into my head from 5 years of college and another full year-plus of graduate school. With no problems to solve beyond Who Was Playing With The Talking Pooh Bear First (same answer always: I was), my only contact with the outside world of adults is sadly vicarious.
So I must sit here and let Yahoo! News tell me what is happening outside the walls of my suburban Tower of Ivory (really more of an off-white stucco) and then pass haughty judgment on the philistine consumptive tendencies of my fellow man. Maybe my reaction to this particular book has to do with my background in history, religious history in particular, the inarticulate bastardization of which this author perpetrates and perpetuates.
Or maybe it just sucked ass. Shouldn't dismiss that possibility out of hand, no.
If you can't wait for a hackneyed, cobbled-together second-rate chase movie based on completely debunked myths, you can always go out right now and see the new Nicolas Cage blob of awful National Treasure, itself a hopelessly transparent ripoff of The Da Vinci Code.
But Pops, you're thinking, if Da Vinci is so horrible, why would I pay money to see a pale imitation of something that is itself bad?
The answer is you shouldn't. Forget I mentioned it. In fact, forget all of this. Any discussion of The Da Vinci Code can only hurt mankind.
This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.75
Pops
- posted by Pops @ 12:25 PM
Comments:
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I really liked the Davinci Code. But it was my first fiction read in several, several years as I tend to sway toward non-fiction and scores of "Pooh's ABCs" and "Blue Finds a Clue" books.
I have the attention span of a gnat. Therefore, Angels and Demons (the book Dan Brown wrote before Davinci with the same character) is just as exciting of a read. (or it was to me. Wouldn't be to you, Pops, you bloody snob.)
Thanks for the breaking news about Tom Hanks. I just don't like Ron Howard's movies. I try. Can't. Hope this movie changes that for me.
I have the attention span of a gnat. Therefore, Angels and Demons (the book Dan Brown wrote before Davinci with the same character) is just as exciting of a read. (or it was to me. Wouldn't be to you, Pops, you bloody snob.)
Thanks for the breaking news about Tom Hanks. I just don't like Ron Howard's movies. I try. Can't. Hope this movie changes that for me.
What drove me crazy about that book, I guess, was that the guy put in everything he researched without question. No reversals, no consideration... it was all so linear, inevitable and literal.
Plus the 3-page chapters drove me crazy.
Plus the 3-page chapters drove me crazy.
If it ever came over you to read the book, you could do it in about 90 minutes, it's that lightweight. With all those chapter breaks, about 1/3 of the pages are half-full of text at best.
Tom Hanks, although he's been at the top of the heap for longer than anyone else in my lifetime, is simply proving that there is a finite amount of time audiences will go see just anything a particular star is in, even if it's ridiculous crap. You can only make so many You've Got Mail's before people start demanding non-crap.
Look what happened to Kevin Costner. He still hasn't figured that out yet.
Tom Hanks, although he's been at the top of the heap for longer than anyone else in my lifetime, is simply proving that there is a finite amount of time audiences will go see just anything a particular star is in, even if it's ridiculous crap. You can only make so many You've Got Mail's before people start demanding non-crap.
Look what happened to Kevin Costner. He still hasn't figured that out yet.
I canNOT picture Hanks as Robert Langon. He needs to have some sex appeal, for god's sake. Hanks, for some reason the most lauded American actor of his generation, has zero amount of sex appeal. He may as well be a neuter! God, if only Harrison Ford was like twenty years younger. Why am I going on about this, anyway? I didn't like the book, and I'm going to see the movie--why amd I getting all worked up? Damn you, Pops!!
# posted by 
: 11/16/2004 1:34 PM
: 11/16/2004 1:34 PM
It doesn't really matter, Steph, because Robert Langdon is a non-character character. He's a place-holder voice to spew out the author's annoyingly detailed research sessions.
They got through that whole book, him and that French chick, basically talking past each other and then suddenly at the end, they're making plans to go fuck each other blind.
It's like the author was saying "Oh yes, there was a romantic subplot in there. Did I forget to mention it?" right at the end.
Man, that book pissed me off.
Has there ever been a book/movie/TV show where a man and a woman worked together and didn't end up naked together? "The X Files" almost did it, but then they pussed out. This might end up a post of its own...
They got through that whole book, him and that French chick, basically talking past each other and then suddenly at the end, they're making plans to go fuck each other blind.
It's like the author was saying "Oh yes, there was a romantic subplot in there. Did I forget to mention it?" right at the end.
Man, that book pissed me off.
Has there ever been a book/movie/TV show where a man and a woman worked together and didn't end up naked together? "The X Files" almost did it, but then they pussed out. This might end up a post of its own...
Da Vinci code sucked much ass. Agreed on that, and National Treasure is an obvious rip off. But given the choice between seeing Nic Cage or Tom Hanks on the big screen, I choose Nic. I have a little thing for him. Tom does nothing for me....despite the cuteness of You've Got Mail.
Rory
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Rory
# posted by : 11/16/2004 6:26 PM
: 11/16/2004 6:26 PM<< Home
