utenzi

Ren and I watched two movies today. Inside Man by Spike Lee and The Da Vinci Code by Ron Howard. I'd heard a lot of bad things about Da Vinci Code so I wasn't expecting to like it, especially since I thought that the book wasn't written very well. Imagine my surprise then when I found myself liking the movie. I thought the movie held the interest and theme far better than the book did. Shortening the globe trotting that goes on was a very good move on Howard's part. In the book, Brown just didn't know when to stop with the continuous clues to yet new locations or the preaching about the Feminine Devine stuff--the movie handled it a lot better. Inside Man really impressed me. I was quite taken by the movies pace and approach to giving hints and clues in very small doses. While I have some reservations about the final scenes of the movie that didn't spoil the enjoyment of the excellent pacing and writing of the movie. And talk about an all-star cast. Denzel W...

I'm thinking of rereading The Da Vinci Code (by Dan Brown in case you've been living in a cave in Tibet these past 3 years). All the hype surrounding the movie release has been getting to me and I'd like to refresh my memory. I don't take this decision lightly since this is one of the worst written books I've ever finished. Usually when writing is this crappy I just toss the book aside, but the plot--can I call it that?--was sufficiently interesting in the first half of the book that I was hooked. I say "first half" because by the second half my reason for finishing the book was more a fascination to see just how bad things would get. The same reason people slow down to look at car wrecks, I guess. I read the book in May of 2003, a month after it was released and well before the landslide of publicity. There's a lot in the book I like, I just wish someone who could construct complete sentences had written it. Or knew what the word "plot" mea...