Sherry Chandler » Da Vinci silliness
Da Vinci silliness
The other day at work, when we were all sitting around eating our sack lunches and chatting, I was asked if I was going to go see “The DaVinci Code.”
No, sez I. I don’t like Tom Hanks.
The room was galvanized. You’d have thought I’d said I spit on the flag daily. How can anybody not like Tom Hanks? I remember reading somewhere that he is the most trusted man in America.
Well, sometimes I just get contrary and take a dislike to somebody just because everybody else is such a fan. But in the case of Tom Hanks, I think he stands for a kind of sentimentalism that I find distasteful. He’s like a reincarnation of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. Who were wonderful in their day, but their day is gone. If you want somebody playing a nice guy, give me Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation.” I don’t much care for heroes.
Still, I find myself amused and bemused to think that Forrest Gump now finds himself at the center of the culture wars. Or Ron Howard either.
“The DaVinci Code” is about as much threat to Christianity as my twelve-year-old cat. Or the Left Behind series. Here is Hanks himself on the subject:
“But the story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense.
“If you are going to take any sort of movie at face value, particularly a huge-budget motion picture like this, you’d be making a very big mistake.
“It’s a damn good story and a lot of fun… all it is is dialogue. That never hurts.”
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6 Comments
1. Ruth replies at 12th May 2006, 2:14 pm :
I got talked into reading The DaVinci Code. By far the worst book I’ve read in years. Terrible, terrible writing. Wooden dialogue. Enough plot twists to give me torticollis. And movies are usually worse than the books they’re based on.
Tom who?
R
2. sherry replies at 12th May 2006, 6:09 pm :
I’m with you, Ruth. I really don’t understand the appeal of The DaVinci Code. But people whose intelligence and talent I admire have read it and loved it. Some like the puzzle, I think.
By the way, the NYTimes asked a bunch of people to vote and they picked Toni Morrison’s Beloved as the best novel of the last 25 years. I don’t think that’s relevant to anything we’ve been saying except that I wanted to mention it. I’m impressed that it’s a book I’ve read. I don’t read a lot of contemporary novels.
The full list is here at the link, along with a link to the list of judges. For myself, I think it reflects a NY state of mind. But I would elevate Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried to one of the best novels I ever read.
3. Ruth replies at 13th May 2006, 1:30 am :
I’ve seen that list. I’ve read I think 19 of the 27 books, but Beloved isn’t one of them. I tried to read it and just couldn’t. Agree about The Things They Carried. Excellent, excellent book. Loved the Rabbit series. Loved Housekeeping, Independence Day, Confederacy of Dunces.
R
4. sherry replies at 13th May 2006, 10:29 am :
Harry Rutherford gives his take on Roth’s The Plot Against American here: http://heracliteanfire.net/archives/605
He’s also produced some neat Word Press Themes: http://heracliteanfire.net/archives/600
5. Darlene replies at 15th May 2006, 3:08 pm :
Sherry, we are in the same camp. You’d have to PAY me to get me to watch Tom Hanks. He has no appeal to me. As for the Di Vinci Code, I see absolutely no appeal in the book and have no intentions of watching a movie about it.
6. sherry replies at 16th May 2006, 10:43 am :
Speaking of views on Philip Roth, here’s Mr. Sillimans’ take:
This kind of stuff is why I keep reading Silliman’s Blog. His iconoclasm makes me smile and he probably deserves to be poet laureate of the blogosphere.
Note: The NYTimes’s list of the 22 Best Novels of the Past 25 years included six titles by Philip Roth.
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