can i just point out that whilst reading your page on the prospects of the movie you made errors of such grave proportions i thought dan brown may actually have been ghost writing for you.
first of all kate beckinsdale. quality actress. i believe you quote her as being 31. making her 32 when they'll start filming. now i don't wanna get smart on ya but i'm pretty sure that sophie is, oh exactly 32 in the book.
secondly, whilst your perfectly entitled to your opinions on movies can i just say that mark wahlberg was notoriously bad in the italian job. i mean his performance was infamously slated by critics across the globe and was one of the main reasons why the film was so poor.
thirdly, tom hanks, great actor. i'm sorry the guy can do anything. it's not up for debate.
fourthly, if kate b can't do sophie coz ahe's english why should russell crowe get to play the american langdon. (ahem, double standards)
on a closing topic unrelated to the film you said that the first 13 olympic games were all races. wrong. i'm a classical civilisation student writing my final year thesis and i think you'll find that the original olympics comprised of many events including discus and javelin.
so please if your gonna mercilessly destroy dan brown, who i don't like very much (the da vinci code is quite possibly one of the poorest written novels i've ever read, i'm not gonna get into what was right and what was wrong but from a literary standpoint it's a shambles. the dialogue is atrocious, i mean it's like e really long episode of sunset beach, and the dodgy cliffhanger suspense technique got tired so early that i wanted to puke on the book after about twenty chapters), then please make sure your right or at least that you remain somewhat unbiased. swaying so far to one side of the argument does nothing but hinder your chances of winning it.
what the da vinci proves is that when people stop believing in god, they will not believe in nothing but rather they will believe in anything.

also it's gotta be monica belucchi (mary m in the passion) or sophie marceau (the queen lady in braveheart) for sophie neveu. now thats real class

[QUOTE] .
thirdly, tom hanks, great actor. i'm sorry the guy can do anything. it's not up for debate.

what do u mean by that?
have you seen Ladykillers where the main thing Hanks does is wear a hat. ooh look at me im wearig a hat,it adds a whole new dimension to my acting abilities!

tom hanks as langdon....hmmmmm....if im not misatken, the book describes him as a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair, and not for nothing, brown makes him seem very handsome for his age. i dont think tom hanks would be suitable for this. i cant picsture him as an art historian...does anyone agree? granted hes a great actor, but i just dont see him fitting the part. also if he does take the part, whose gonna play the olive skinned sophie? remeber people, sophie's tall, has light eyes, and very slender...no actresses ring a bell? some help here please!!!! (by the way, kate b, BAD BAD CHOICE!)

Niall - I don't see that I say *anything* about Kate, but I don't believe she is a good fit for the part.

As far as the Italian Job goes, it made $105 million at the box office and got quite a number of good reviews. Wahlberg was NOT "infamously slated by critics across the globe". In fact one reviewer said "This is the zippy remake that Ocean's Eleven wanted to be and wasn't quite." I just did a web search and found only a few bad reviews but a lot of good ones. In any case that was just one movie, I happened to enjoy it. I love puzzle-thief movies

Tom Hanks is a good actor. I just don't consider him to be a *great* actor that is perfect for this part. There are many other great actors out there that *are* suited to this part.

As far as Russell Crowe, America is a melting pot. There is no "typical American". If you're going to head in that direction, the only real American is a Native American i.e. American Indian. Everyone else is from elsewhere. On the other hand, France is more insular (look at how they protect their language with law) and is not full of English types So if you have a 'typical American' they can easily be black, white, oriental, etc. But a 'typical French' is much more identifiable with a look, just like a 'typical Polish person'.

On the original Olympics, they didn't just spring full formed from the ground First there was a race. Then there were races. And over time they grew to include other sports. They didn't just spontaneously form with lots of events. It all depends on what you then deem to be the "real first olympics".

Well, IMDB still only has Tom Hanks listed on the cast list - and the movie begins filming in May! They need to choose the rest of the actors pretty soon

I think you are wrong to assume that "The Di Vinci Code" will make a good movie because "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was sucessfully converted into films. Ron Howard will make an average director but none-the-less, he is a typical output of Hollywood. May i remind you of the years that Peter Jackson put into the trilogy ON LOCATION, in New Zealand.

I stand to be corrected but i also believe the casting so far has already set the wheels in motion for chaos. The nationalities of the cast should have been the first precaution to take. Tom Hanks is not my favourite actor, and whether or not he is a good actor i think that either way his image will contradict the part. I do not wish to be reminded during the film of the character Forest Gump, or that who which he played in the recent (disaster of a movie) The Ladykillers. Tom Hanks is not a character actor.

However, i have thouroughly enjoyed the three Dan Brown books i have read so far. This may be a naive coment, coming from a 16 year old...but the result of his books is what he (Mr. Brown) has learnt from his research. Lisa Shea should be a bit more leniant on her comments as she is constantly reminding her veiwers to 'Go and Learn'. After all, im sure the majority of the content in his books has been well researched. I have never came across a book in which i have been engulfed and fasinated by history to that extent. Let alone ART history.

[quote]Originally posted by Lisa Shea: [b]The question is whether they're going to preserve the international flavor of the book, a la the casting of Name of the Rose, or make it a "US Disney version of Europe", a la most other Hollywood movies :) [/b][/quote]I surely hope not! It was amusing watching Jennifer Garner´s "Alias" when they showed "Helsinki". There were skyscrapers! Since I live in Finland I should know there are´t any in Helsinki. Why bother to show a city, if one doesn´t even want or care to find out what the city actually looks like...

Windy - Oh I agree completely, I didn't mean to imply at all that because LOTR came out well that TDVC will too. I was just saying that LOTR had an incredibly large group of people who identified strongly with the characters as written - and they did an awesome job of meeting those expectations. I don't think it was easy at all, I think Peter Jackson was brilliant in what he did with that movie. They had pages of the book taped to the wall while they made the sets, costumes and detailed accessories. That was a work of art.

Heck, the Harry Potter original movie was also famous for the author's day to day involvement with every single detail, making sure every tiny bit was authentic. So it can be done.

So I was saying it is *possible* for TDVC to achieve that same level of "authenticity" to the book if they wanted to. Will they do it? And will they be authentic to the errors the book had?

As far as Brown's research, hopefully by looking through this site you've realized that he did not in fact do much research. Most of what he wrote about had already been written about by others, and recently too. He was regurgitating tales that had already been disproven as false. And then he added in errors completely of his own devising. I highly recommend reading Name of the Rose to see what a well written, well researched book is like