Da Vinci Disaster
Stressful week at work, but everything turned out alright, I suppose ... did have a nice happy hour time with Dan and Joe at Dupont Circle ... had an English Muffin Crabcake called the B Springsteen. Umm... Friday didn't really do anything, I think my original friend from Alexandria, Michael, has died, apparently he hasn't been to Union Street in over a month and he hasn't responded to my email, no one is really going to come down to Old Town and I don't really like wandering in and out of bars by myself so I will try to go to Arlington and DC more perhaps.
Saturday I, hmm ... I went to Target to buy a beach blanket ... bought an accounting book and a really cool book about the history of finance .... it goes all the way back to Sumeria, today I learned that ancient Sumerians would list gods as creditors; Shama, the god of light or something, would sign credit, usually at 20% or 30% interest. Economic history is truly fascinating, it actually makes current filnance much easier to understand.
Yes! Firehook has redone their back and there are several couches ... I think I read almost a hundred pages of Angels and Demons ... speaking of, I broke down and saw the Da Vinci Code at Old Town Cinemas ... First, the manager of the theatre is now my "enemy # 1" I swear he gets up before every movie and wants to know how cool everything is, wants everyone to buy the theatre out, hell I pay $9 to see movies there, leave me alone. Second, wow, the Da Vinci Code was excrutiating, I wouldn't get into it except I think I will become a movie critic when I am older so ... It was not as amazingly incoherent as Elizabethtown, but, I did want to remain inside the movie theatre until the end for that one. About halfway through, no, almost at the beginning, I wanted to walk out, I think this was the first time I have wanted to walk out of a movie so badly, oh, some teen horror flick called "Cry Wolf" was much more engaging ..
Right from the beginning, Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou let us know that they were superficial characters. OK, when reading the code I was amazed by the characters' ability to remain relaxed during all this, I thought the movie might at some emotional depth, show the characters concerned ... not at all, Hanks was completely nonchalant, Tatou, well, the character in the book had a lot of strenght initially, Tatou just kind of mumbled her way through, lacking much presence. Especially dissapointing was the bathroom scene, where much of Sophie's character is explicated in the book, Tatou just stands in a corner whispering some stuff the suspense and wonder of going back and forth through the Louvre, the history of Da Vinci (he was pretty much ignored), the hidden symbolisms in Da Vinci's paintings, the scene with the Mona Lisa ... these were the best parts of the book, were skimmed over, the movie could never recover, no matter what happened next. What I would have done, was have real-life flashbacks, suddenly, with Langdon giving a presentation on the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci, then suddenly the action starts right back again ... the historic 'sureal misty' visual explanations were very silly. The Teabing character was not bad, he of course did a good job, but then, wow, I was flushing out of embrassment, Howard the screenwriter, whoever, decides it would be a good idea to have Langdon become a skeptic of the Last Supper and all the symbology behind it ... Hanks, all of a sudden starts incessantly smirking! it gave me the creeps ... that was added obviously to give some kind of balanced view! the movie was so bad by that pointit didn't matter, but weird! Oh, and the stuff about Langdon's claustrophobia, well of all things to exclude from the movie, that was certainly it!!!!!!!!
One knew everything that was going to happen, if the movie wasn't going to create interesting characters what was the point of making it ... there was absolutely no suspense, all the suspense in the book came from going inside their heads, wondering if they would be able to think things through .... on that point the movie should not have been made at all, because I don't know how that could be recreated on film. I kept waiting and waiting for it to be over, seriously, I only stayed because I wanted to see what Rosslyn Chapel looked like, that scene was way too long actually. The visuals of London and Paris were not very intriguing either. It is fun to see bad flims sometimes because it makes you think creatively and critically about what might have made it better if I werer a movie producer ... a different director, Ron Howard he's a nice guy and well rounded director, but he didn't have the creativity or sheer talent, someone a little darker less mainstream would have been better ... another actor, maybe Viggo, and if only Isabelle Huppert were younger. I wonder if Tom Hanks enjoyed the book or not, probably not as much as me.