Movie: Da Vinci Code

	Studios:	Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group
	Release:	May 19, 2006
	Genre:	Drama, Thriller, Adaptation and Politics/Religion
	MPAA Rating:	PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.

I like this movie better than I like the book. Simply because the Langdon here is more skeptical than the Langdon in the novel. Impressively, the movie's scene that pays tribute to Mary Magdalene actually brought a tear to my eye - which didnt happen when I read the book in 2003. As in the novel though, the final answer to their quest is pretty obvious to the audience way before the characters realize it ... and they're supposed to be specialists in their fields.

If you haven't heard of the book this movie is based on, you'd probably find yourself wanting to read it just so you could understand the story better. I'm warning you though, the book starts out promising but all in all is nothing more than an adventure novel that strings together all those lunatic fringe theories surrounding Jesus. And those theories are probably old... the one about the paintings surely. My grandmother, who was born in the 19th century and died mid 1980s told me when I was little that the paintings of Jesus usually have hidden meanings and I should take notice of the hand gestures. I don't recall much of what she was explaining because I was below 10 years old and I just categorized that topic as too weird to pay attention to. I remembered my grandmother at once after stumbling across the Templar Revelation in the late 90s. Apparently, other people have an obsession with those paintings. I still find it too weird.

Not that Da Vince Code hasn't touched on an "obsession" of mine. I call this the movie that made those "lost gospels" popular and therefore expensive. Which slows down my book collection, no thanks to the outrageous prices.

Anyway, I'm more into hunting the pseudepigrapha these days (ever heard of Jubilees?) as I already have some of the new testament "lost books" (the Infancy gospels are truly bizarre). I saw a compilation of pseudepigrapha in the DLSU library, but I was studying then and despite borrowing it for about two weeks, never really got to read it. At least I know it is available, and I'm figuring out where I could get my copy (I was too shy to ask the librarian then, ok?). The upside to all these interest in the books these days is that more of them are popping up. Insanely, they pop up one by one now whereas before you're more likely to find a compilation.

My grandma had little to do with this interest. It resulted from a required term paper in Biblical Theology where the professor assigned each student a different book from either the apocrypha or the pseudepgrapha. Unlucky for me, the gospel I had to write on is remembered only because it existed but no text has survived time. I found a number of "lost" gospels in the SSC College library but not the one I was supposed to write on. I found them very interesting and made a note to have my own copies if I could find and afford them.