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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 05/14/2009 : 22:54:35
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Angels & Demons
From the divine to the ridiculous!
I freely admit I know less than a hangnail about particle physics, but I'm fascinated by it and by the work CERN has pioneered in its investigations of antiparticles and antimatter including the development of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Medicine has already benefitted from matter/antimatter imaging. But it is for the potential fuel applications that the energy-hungry world is waiting.
So quantum mechanics truly seems a divine manifestation - at least as beautiful a one as nature can produce.
If Dan Brown were a better writer he'd have used the fragile reality posed by antimatter which when united with its matter parallels serves to eliminate both. That sounds like a powerful metaphor for social dynamics. But in Brown's hands it merely exists in parallel with a story of mindless vengence overlaid with religious babble.
And the film begins at CERN as the presumably fully operational LHC is fired up with the hope of producing some antimatter, which however small, we're told, has the capacity to explode with substantial destructive force.
And, wouldn't you just know it ... no sooner has the darn stuff been captured in a capsule then the Italian physicist monitoring it is murdered and the antimatter is stolen.
With hardly a moment of grief, the dead guy's daughter piggy backs on an investigation to rescue the capsule.
Meanwhile, deep in the Vatican, the beloved old pope dies and the Conclave of Cardinals get locked in a chamber, as per tradition, to elect the new pope. Since the pope-chair is vacant, power temporarily resides with the Camerlengo or Chamberlain - aka Ewan McGregor, an orphan who just happens to have been raised by the ex-pope. St Peter's Square is packed with the devout and the world's press.
And in the midst of the ceremonies - BOOM! the Vatican receives notice of the return of a dormant sect, The Illuminati, still smarting from the betrayal they felt over four centuries ago. Four of the cardinals preferred for promotion have been kidnapped, their lives in danger. And that's where symbologist Tom Hanks gets the call to run not walk from Massachusetts to Italy to help solve the mystery.
And from now on we're in ridiculous mode, with the two stories becoming unreasonably intertwined, but helpfully providing for what passes as the action - I hesitate to use the word plot.
Hanks and McGregor can do this stuff in their sleep, and are ably supported by such stalwarts as Cardinal Armin Mueller-Stahl and Head Cop Stellan Skarsg�rd. Ron Howard's direction packs all the punches, moving swiftly along so as not to give too much time to fall through the plot-holes. And if you're a fan of playing who's the real badguy, there are some double and treble takes before all the loose ends are tied.
I thought Hans Zimmer's score a tad heavy handed, but maybe that was another ploy to stop you thinking too hard.
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duh 
"catpurrs"
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Posted - 05/15/2009 : 04:38:01
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quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
Angels & Demons
From the divine to the ridiculous!
I freely admit I know less than a hangnail about particle physics, but I'm fascinated by it
Me too.
I enjoy reading books that are dumbed down for non-mathematicians like me, about Physics and the search for a unified field theory and so on.
quote:
And from now on we're in ridiculous mode, with the two stories becoming unreasonably intertwined, but helpfully providing for what passes as the action - I hesitate to use the word plot.
I remember when The DaVince Code was released and someone posted here that when they saw it in the theatre, the audience laughed at some points that weren't intended to be humorous. Therefore, I am surprised that this new film was produced. I guess somebody must have made some money on the first one. |
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demonic 
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 05/18/2009 : 18:47:06
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| Somebody did make an awful lot of money - it was a massive box office success, one of the most successful of 2006. The same people that bought the book by the bucketful went to the cinema to see it regardless of how good it was; in this instance - really bad (like the book). That hasn't stopped popular culture yet. |
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damalc 
"last watched: Sausage Party"
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Posted - 05/19/2009 : 01:00:38
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| i read before the movie was released that protesters planned to be disruptive in theaters during showings of "A&D." anybody experience that? |
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turrell
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
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Posted - 05/21/2009 : 01:16:45
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quote:
Originally posted by damalc
i read before the movie was released that protesters planned to be disruptive in theaters during showings of "A&D." anybody experience that?
It wasn't planned - just a lot of spontaneous grunting. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 06/09/2009 : 22:14:38
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Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons" is, I'm pretty sure, the single worst novel I have ever read in my whole life. If the English language were a person, Dan Brown would be in jail. So I find myself inclined to be surprisingly charitable to the movie, as I'm more drawn to notice all the stupidity that's been excised rather than the stupidity that remains.
Still, this is not really a smart movie in any way. I enjoy it on the level of a popcorn flick though -- I appreciate that the horribly written Hassassin character has been replaced by a legitimately creepy hitman in a pair of terrifying glasses. I appreciate the ironic martyrdom of a key character in the late scenes. Some of the chase scenes are good, it's surprisingly violent, and thankfully we spend much less times on the clues and Tom Hanks solving anagrams.
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 07/07/2009 : 01:37:40
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Angels & Demons
Terrible, horrible novel.
Terribler, horribler film.
When I eventually forced myself to read the last 300 pages, I sat in the Planty in Cracow, which is just lovely. The film experience sadly had no such ameliorating features, other than it was thankfully not quite so very time-consuming. |
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Angels & Demons - spoilers I guess
