Movie report
Yesterday stringwoman and I took the afternoon off so I could be her chauffeur while she car-shopped. Then we went and saw Angels and Demons.
Like most American movies these days, there's a notice near the end of the credits to the affect that the American Humane Society kept their beady eyes on the crew and made sure no animals were hurt. Given the quality of the Vatican and Roman sets, they really should have added a notice to the effect that no actual priceless and irreplaceable works of art or architecture were damaged or destroyed in the making of this film.
Other than that, Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård are, as usual, very good; Pierfrancesco Favino is possibly too handsome to be a police officer, especially one with any seniority, but manages to sell it fairly well; Ayelet Zurer, because she is not an American flavor-of-the-month actress, actually looks smart enough to be a physicist (Imagine, say Anne Hathaway playing a physicist. I dare you.); and Thure Lindhardt, besides being pretty as a palomino*, is an excellent physical actor.
As to the plot, well, this is based on another one of those books by Dan Brown. You knew that. right? I admit I left the groves of Academe many years ago, but I have trouble believing a world-famous scholar of symbology, especially one doing to sort of research that would require access to the Vatican Archives and Library, would not be able to read Latin fairly well, and probably Italian also. Yes, that's a Narrative Tool™ designed to convey information to the audience, but it is a dumb tool, and should be taken away lest its users cut themselves with it. The only way my Suspension of Disbelief™ could get past it was to decide the reason the Vatican wouldn't let Langdon near their archives was not the Fear of What He Might Expose to the Light of Day, but their sure and certain knowledge that he was an ignoramus. It wasn't happy about that, though, because it remembered that the Vatican called him in on purpose in this hour of need, so it went away and hung out near the popcorn machine in the lobby, which was good, because it would have become quite cranky by the point we got to the helicopter.
So yes, Dan Brown, feel free to roll your eyes, but McGregor and Skarsgård make up for a lot (with Armin Müller-Stahl being aged and imposing and motivationally opaque any time he's in a frame), and you can watch Ayelet Zurer look smart enough to be an actual (although quite hot) physicist, Pierfrancesco Favino smoulder, and Thure Lindhardt do more with posture than most American actors his age could dream of.
*I realize the degree to which you can use that term decreases with the subject's age, but he's the sort of blond that doesn't show age too quickly. So even though he's a bit past 30, I'll give in to the urge to objectify him in this manner.
Like most American movies these days, there's a notice near the end of the credits to the affect that the American Humane Society kept their beady eyes on the crew and made sure no animals were hurt. Given the quality of the Vatican and Roman sets, they really should have added a notice to the effect that no actual priceless and irreplaceable works of art or architecture were damaged or destroyed in the making of this film.
Other than that, Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård are, as usual, very good; Pierfrancesco Favino is possibly too handsome to be a police officer, especially one with any seniority, but manages to sell it fairly well; Ayelet Zurer, because she is not an American flavor-of-the-month actress, actually looks smart enough to be a physicist (Imagine, say Anne Hathaway playing a physicist. I dare you.); and Thure Lindhardt, besides being pretty as a palomino*, is an excellent physical actor.
As to the plot, well, this is based on another one of those books by Dan Brown. You knew that. right? I admit I left the groves of Academe many years ago, but I have trouble believing a world-famous scholar of symbology, especially one doing to sort of research that would require access to the Vatican Archives and Library, would not be able to read Latin fairly well, and probably Italian also. Yes, that's a Narrative Tool™ designed to convey information to the audience, but it is a dumb tool, and should be taken away lest its users cut themselves with it. The only way my Suspension of Disbelief™ could get past it was to decide the reason the Vatican wouldn't let Langdon near their archives was not the Fear of What He Might Expose to the Light of Day, but their sure and certain knowledge that he was an ignoramus. It wasn't happy about that, though, because it remembered that the Vatican called him in on purpose in this hour of need, so it went away and hung out near the popcorn machine in the lobby, which was good, because it would have become quite cranky by the point we got to the helicopter.
So yes, Dan Brown, feel free to roll your eyes, but McGregor and Skarsgård make up for a lot (with Armin Müller-Stahl being aged and imposing and motivationally opaque any time he's in a frame), and you can watch Ayelet Zurer look smart enough to be an actual (although quite hot) physicist, Pierfrancesco Favino smoulder, and Thure Lindhardt do more with posture than most American actors his age could dream of.
*I realize the degree to which you can use that term decreases with the subject's age, but he's the sort of blond that doesn't show age too quickly. So even though he's a bit past 30, I'll give in to the urge to objectify him in this manner.