Will Ron Howard direct or star?


Either way, he's a shoe-in for another Oscar ("More than a billion tickets sold"):


Then he can go on to tackle the really BIG historical...






... or even religious subjects:

What's with the whole, 'Ron Howard is a clown'?

Maybe you should go back a few pages (like six or seven) and follow the discussion...

I happen to believe that Ron Howard, Tom Hanks and "Da Vinci"'s screenwriter are clowns. I am also going for a metaphor here: Ron Howard's films are to good movies what McDonald's menu is to nutritious food: a poor imitation offered at popular prices.

Well I can understand not liking some of their movies, but to call Hanks and Howards clowns, is a little harsh. They are two of the most successful people in Hollywood, and I can think of few others who have enjoyed such long term success throughout their careers. Dont really see how they could be considered clowns. Uwe Boll and Freddy Prince Jr, sure, but Hanks and Howard?

Yeah, baracine, give it a rest. You've more than made your point. Yawn.

Guess it'd be funnier if it were true.

I think a lot of the positive reaction to this movie is due to the fact that everyone's expectations were significantly lowered by the early reviews which were, yes, too negative.

Think about the movie you actually saw, people. It's about as average, uninspired, and dull as anything I've ever experienced on the big screen. Has a thriller/chase movie ever been less exciting? I can't fathom the idea of sitting through it more than maybe twice. And only twice because Ian McKellen manages to inject a little bit of life into it when he's on screen.

Even though I wasn't a big fan of the book because of the awful writing style, I still found it a quick and exciting read because of the strong forward momentum of the plot. The movie doesn't even have that, and throws in even more laughable lapses of logic. Imagine what a good director with an actual imagination, with a desire to make it genuinely dark, thrilling, and controversial instead of merely pleasant and watchable to as large a crowd as possible, could have mined out of this material. I think the McDonald's comparisons are very apt, myself.

I have to agree with, for a thriller - this was so by the book (pun not intended), and as you aptly put it: dull. I have to admit I nodded off just once.

There's probably more venom being spewed in this thread than ... than ... well, than you'd get from 400 snakes on a plane, for example.

Wholesale denigration of anyone connected with this movie really gets tiresome.

You don't like the movie? Fine, share your opinion and then move on. Go rent Gigli or Pluto Nash.

I saw this yesterday afternoon and found it a very decent screen version of the book. I was never bored, thought the cast was never less than good, and overall was satisfied. Is it a great movie? Not at all, but it surely is not the stinker as some have described (and actually were hoping for in several postings).

I didn't really picture Tom Hanks either.

I pictured Robert Langdon to be more like Lance Henriksen from Millennium. Random, I know. I've hardly watched that show at all. But he definitely seemed to fit more...

I think what you are saying is: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. It that were true, there'd be a whole lot of movie reviewers on welfare and there wouldn't be dvdtalk.com forums at all.

As for Ron Howard, the fact that he made a bad film is not only a disappointment to the readers who were looking forward to a good adaptation of a favourite book, it is also disastrous for the movie industry. If ever Hollywood had a chance to redeem itself after a drought period, it was now.

And this catastrophe, like the bursting of the New Orleans levies, was preventable and was foretold a long time ago. Remember a thread called Ron Howard (?!) to direct "The Da Vinci Code" (2005") way back in February 2004?

I was created by yours truly and started like this:

No, I think his point was, you got your digs in so just give it a rest. You keep coming back with clown pictures to hammer your point home over and over. We all know how you feel; no need to punish us with it.

Please do not misrepresent what I said. To refresh your memory:

"You don't like the movie? Fine, share your opinion and then move on."

How exactly does that become "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" ?

Exactly, posting the same crap over and over devolves into thread crapping.

Negative opinions are certainly welcome, but the same ones over and over get old (same thing if someone is repeatedly posting a postive opinion over and over).

Plus I don't get why someone that disliked a movie would waste more of their time posting about it repeatedly on the internet.

I see a movie I didn't like, I already wasted 2 hours of my time. I'll post a brief review saying why I didn't like it, and then move on and not even click on the thread again most of the time. No point in wasting more of my time posting the same crap over and over about a movie I didn't like.

THE DA VINCI CODE
Domestic: $85,885,320 36.0%
+ Foreign: $152,617,212 64.0%

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= Worldwide: $238,502,532

Yeah, you're right, I dont see how Hollywood will ever be able to recover from a disaster of such epic porportions. They may have to go back to silent films after this apocolyptic failure.

Since we seem to be speaking bluntly, I'll reply to this:

[pretentious dick]

Readers who consider The DaVinci Code a favorite book of theirs don't know any better. It is Death Wish IV, Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6, Britney Spears' fourth album, etc. It is a poorly-written airport novel with massive plot holes, terrible characterization and a recycled plot from his first book in the trilogy (and how many secret societies can Langdon uncover, anyway?). It is a favorite book mostly among those who normally don't read, and quite frankly the biggest thing the movie had going against it from the start was not the possibility of white-washing the plot (which is a rather bizarre accusation since the controversy is what's been selling the thing since day one, and the suits all know this and have been playing it to the hilt). What this movie had going against it was the monumental task of taking all this banality, cramming it into a few hours and showing it to an audience who will be much more likely to realize the stupidity of it all when set to visuals, a format they're more familiar with.

Ron and Akiva had a monumentally stupid, empty base to build from (doubly so since Langdon's characterization all happened a book earlier), and they did about as well as could reasonably be expected. If they were going to whitewash anything it would be the Jesus story, which wasn't touched. This was a dumb movie because if came from a dumb source, and even using the book as the shooting script would not make this one iota more intelligent or more controversial.

[/pretentious dick]

Oh, and I'm not a fan of Ron Howard or Akiva Goldsman.

OK fair enough What I really mean is its just that

I'll see if the end of the book is different

I don't think expressing contempt for the book or its readers salvages the film's image at all. I don't normally read "airport literature" but I was attracted to this book by its subject. Like 65 million other people, I found it a good read despite its flaws and the only book I had read in a long time that cried out to become a film. Now, adapting a successful novel to the screen from the point of view that it's a piece of crap that will need to be "improved" for the general public - who presumably can't read at all - is wrong-headed and the perpetrators here didn't even do that. They just dumbed it down all the way, trying not to offend anyone - except the people who put the book on the map in the first place. The book was about a certain bloodline and that bloodline was altered in the film so as not to imply that

Besides being lugubriously boring, it is full of "ifs" and "buts" about its central premise, it needlessly alters all the main characters and robs the central heroine of her humanity, family, back-story and closure. I don't care how much money it will make under those false pretenses: It's a cop-out pure and simple and it proves once and for all that Hollywood can't even adapt a monumentally successful "airport novel" to the screen anymore without shooting itself in the foot and shouldn't aspire to anything higher than animated features about fuzzy animals, adapted TV series starring Tom Cruise, teen/toilet humour/body fluid comedies, superhero comics/graphic novels, movies glorifying sadism and the criminal lifestyle, remakes and their summer sequels.

But I feel like I should say something positive about Ron Howard since there is a quota on bile-spewing in this group and this is it: Ron Howard did a better job than Mel Gibson would have, but just barely.

I just think it's funny that Dan Brown approves of the movie yet you're claiming the book was raped. If that was the case, shouldn't he be more upset than anyone?

Not to mention, of course, the millions of other people who'd read the book, saw the movie and were satisfied.

Dan Brown signed the rights away to all his Langdon novels to the same outfit and he probably has a percentage of the gross. Like any good whore, he knows which side his bread is buttered and he's not about to rock the boat. As for the people who read the book and liked the movie, may I remind you what your opinion is of them? Semi-illiterates, was it?

You have an amazing ability to twist things into what works best for your argument. His statement was "It is a favorite book mostly among those who normally don't read," not people who don't know how to read.

FinkPish, in case you haven't noticed yet, you're on my "Ignore" list for unnecessary needling and obsessive stalking. But you could have the courtesy to let sethsez answer for himself when he is called upon to do so. And, for your information, a "semi-illiterate" is a person who knows how to read but usually chooses no to do so or isn't regularly called upon to do so (i.e. doesn't read a lot of books).

Well, it's good to see that the ignore function is working properly...

No kidding.

And baracine, for you information, semi-illiterate can also mean someone who can read or write but has limited understanding, which is what I thought you meant, which is why I "needled" you.