In Rome last year, I remember seeing a large advertisement for the film adaptation of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code hanging on the netted cover of an in-renovation church. There had obviously been a hoo-har with the boys in da Vatican as the whole see through netted poster was reversed, a bit like a cross being hung upside down I thought. Anyway, Da Vinci and the last supper are Milan related.
The film got some mixed reviews in the Summer of 2006. I can empathise with the critics. It's not that is it such a bad film, but just so formulaic to be boring. And my goodness it is dark. I think I only saw about 30 minutes of the film, the rest of the time I just saw some facially related artifacts on my LCD screen. Maybe in the cinema things would have been different.
The darkness affects the whole film, and not in a good way. There probably is some acting going on somewhere but I just couldn't detect it.
Tom Hanks looks puffy and barely wears any expression. Audrey Tautou's face is likewise immobile, in addition to the low light, her hair half covers her face. And she looks nothing like Amelie Poulin in this film, which must have been a big disappointment to many viewers of the film worldwide.
One big problem I have with this story is the naming of the characters, it just sticks out so badly as being false. Robert Langdon, that's Lang-Don. It seems to want to mean something, maybe an echo of Langley to tell us he is good at solving mysteries. Sophie Niveau - Sophie was a dead giveaway before one of the shock revelations, Niveau tells us she is on a higher plane. Daftest of them all is the Sir Ian McKellen character, Sir Edmund Teabag or something... silly.
Oh dear, Juergen Prochnow again playing the devious German (well Swiss German probably.) I was just waiting for him to enjoy some more thumb-cutting.
The film chronicles 24 hours in the life of these characters. Where were the toilet breaks? How can you develop character depth like that, just a brief meeting of strangers. And how did they get into england without customs and immigration? Answer, they just drove past the armed police with the 'fugitives' hidden under a blanket on the back seat - please give me Nancy Drew.
What with all the switches in characters from one side to the other, the impenetrable stuff about Rosicrucians, Sion, whatever. I could not follow this film, I just peered into mostly darkness for 2 and a half hours.
Tuesday 17 April 2007
Thursday 12 April 2007
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