A good action movie, a great political commentary.

Prior to seeing this movie, I had never thought of blowing shit up as an effective means of fixing societal problems.

Good job guys!

In its defense, though, it could be argued that the movie attempts to counter-act the demonising of “terrorists”, and get people to merely consider their point of view, to try to see some motive beyond the somewhat tired ”they hate freedom” rhetoric we’ve all come to know and love. However, if that was the idea, it was far from obvious. The movie seems to actually condone terror attacks rather than trying to ask any questions.

If you’re looking for something with knives, explosions, and great special effects, then this is worth consuming. But if it’s the message behind a film that matters most to you, it would probably be better to skip it.

_’Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon and then — fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work… What are these Martians?’
‘What are we?’ I answered, clearing my throat._

I recommend this because, on top of it being a well-written and truly groundbreaking science fiction novel, its criticism of humanity’s over-inflated ego and sense of superiority is still extremely relevant.

Plus the image of Martian invaders laying waste to Victorian London is just so totally awesome!!

A must-read.

Never mind Nevermind, this is the best Nirvana album.

Okay. I recognise that the Da Vinci Code is a fictional novel. However, at the very beginning of the book, Brown makes the claim that ”all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

This is simply not true; his descriptions are speculative at best, and just plain false at worst. This is especially obvious in his description of Da Vinci’s original Madonna of the Rocks painting, and how it differs from the later version:

Oddly, though, rather than the usual Jesus blessing John scenario, it was baby John who was blessing Jesus… and Jesus was submitting to his authority! More troubling still, Mary was holding one hand high above the head of infant John and making a decidedly threatening gesture—her fingers looking like eagle’s talons, gripping an invisible head. Finally, the most obvious and frightening image: Just below Mary’s curled fingers, Uriel was making a cutting gesture with his hand—as if slicing the neck of the invisible head gripped by Mary’s clawlike hand.

It doesn’t take a scholar to point out that this isn’t so. Not only is Uriel blatantly pointing, rather than making a “cutting gesture”, but it isn’t even John that Mary is supposedly holding her “clawlike hand” over. The child on the left is clearly identical in both versions, and is marked out as John in the later version by the reed cross he’s holding. Note also how Jesus is blessing John in both paintings.

But even putting aside Brown’s severe bending of the truth, it was an awful, awful book.

The characters are utterly two-dimensional, the writing is uninspired and fraught with clichés, and the shocking twist towards the end not only feels unnaturally tacked on, but the manner in which it is revealed makes absolutely no sense.

I simply cannot understand how so many people like this book.