Sunday, May 17, 2009

Angels and (miss) demeanors

Dan Brown is to writing what Starbucks is to coffee. If you are on holiday in America and can't find a good cafe` then Starbucks will do - if you are at the Airport and can't find "The Slap" by Christos Tsiolkas then Dan Brown will do.

The good thing about Mr. Brown is that after you have read him you forget him - that is until Ron Howard comes along and forces him down your throat again.

We all sat through the interminable screen version of 'The Da Vinci Code', a movie that did more damage to the art of film making than the Catholic Church has managed to do to Science in it's entire 2000 year history.

You may have noticed I'm not a fan.

What has happened to Tom Hanks? This was the actor who so powerfully portrayed 'Andrew Beckett', a gay man dying of HIV/AIDS in the 1993 film 'Philadelphia', an actor who convinced us that "life was just a box of chocolates" in 'Forrest Gump' and who took us across the beaches of Normandy to save Private Ryan. What has happened - we know he can act, we know he can and will make courageous choices in the the roles he plays - why oh why has he revisited this rather dull character of 'Professor Robert Langdon'? Has the Global Economic Downturn hit the mega rich so hard, that it is robbing them of their talent?

It's a silly plot - The Pope has died, let's elect a new Pope, let's kidnap the favourite candidates, let's resurrect the 'Illuminati', (boy can they hold a grudge), lets drive fast through the streets of Rome, (or a town that could possibly be Rome if we had not been banned from filming in Rome), might as well throw in the 'Hadron Particle Super Collider' and instead of the Anti Christ I know let's have some Anti Matter .

Why did I go and see it - well it was free. Proving once again that old adage, "There's no such thing as a free film in this town".

Now look here Mr Howard, you gave us 'Frost/Nixon', you gave us 'Apollo 13' and you gave us 'A Beautiful Mind' - why oh why are you punishing us with this dross? Perhaps you and Mr. Hanks have made some secret compact to punish all of us who still remember you as 'Opie' and him as 'Kip Wilson', ('Bosom Buddies').

Look go and see it if you want, it's not 'Citizen Cane' and by the time you get back to your car you will have forgotten just how ordinary this movie really is. A much better idea would be to bite the bullet and see 'Samson and Delilah', one of those movies you always say that you should see but always put off because you are never quite in the right frame of mind. It's the difference between artifice and art.

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