Free 'illuminati' iPhone Game
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=309334218&mt=8&v0=WWW-NAUS-ITMS-TRAILERS-APPLICATIONS
Hanks' Sex Scenes Cut
Tom Hanks was forced to omit sex scenes his new movie Angels & Demons - because there just wasn't any time for "smooching" in the action-packed film.
Hanks stars as Harvard professor Robert Langdon who investigates the murder of a physicist and a terrorist act against the Vatican by a secret brotherhood.
But moviemakers had to downplay the blossoming romance between Hanks' character and his female companion, played by Ayelet Zurer. And the actor is disappointed he didn't get to kiss his pretty co-star.
He tells Parade magazine, "We really don't have time to make out or go to bed when Cardinals are being killed on the hour. We tried to work it into the screenplay over and over again. We were like, 'Isn't there a bigger car with a bigger backseat?'
"But we were stuck with an Alfa Romeo so we didn't have an opportunity to grab some smooching on the way to the Pantheon or the Piazza Del Poppolo. It's my loss, but I think it did make it easier for Ayelet."
Book Review by "W. R. Greer" - Angels and Demons
by
Dan Brown
Published by Simon & Schuster
Review by W. R. Greer
Like the majority of readers, I read Angels & Demons by Dan Brown after reading The Da Vinci Code. I would venture that most people reading this review are asking the question, "How does Angels & Demons compare to The Da Vinci Code?" The short answer is that they're very similar. If you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, you should enjoy Angels & Demons.
Angels & Demons introduces the character of Robert Langdon, professor of religious iconology and art history at Harvard University. As the novel begins, he's awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN, the world's largest scientific research facility in Geneva, Switzerland. One of their top physicists had been murdered, with his chest branded with the word "Illuminati." Since Langdon is an expert on the ancient secret society known as the Illuminati, he's asked to help solve the murder. A high tech X-33 plane transports Langdon from Massachusetts to Switzerland in a little more than an hour.
The murder victim is Leonardo Vetra. Not only is he one of the world's leading physicists, he's a Catholic priest. He's a priest who has adopted a daughter, Vittoria, who is also a scientist at CERN. This was the largest suspension of disbelief for me, a man who is a priest, a father, and a top physicist, but accepting it sets the rest of the story in motion. Vetra and his daughter were using the world's largest particle accelerator to create antimatter, and then suspend the antimatter properly in canisters so that it doesn't interact with matter. If a canister is removed from the electrical system which keeps the matter and antimatter separated, then backup batteries will serve the same purpose for 24 hours. When those 24 hours expire, the two will collide in an instantaneous explosion of unprecedented power.
Lenoardo Vetra created the antimatter to simulate the Big Bang. In his mind, this would show proof that God exists, being able to create new matter and antimatter in the same way God created the universe. Vetra's murder, though, allows one of the canisters to be stolen. The question of who stole the canister and what they planned to do with it is soon answered. The canister is quickly found on a security camera in Vatican City, with its LEDs counting down the time until the batteries run out. The security camera, however, is nowhere to be found, leaving the canister's whereabouts a mystery too. Langdon and Vittoria Petra are quickly sent off to Rome and Vatican City, to help find the canister and return it to CERN before it explodes at midnight.
Not only does the canister threaten to destroy Vatican City, but with the recent death of the Pope, the cardinals of the Catholic Church are all within the city for the conclave to choose the new pope. They are all about to be locked within the Sistine Chapel where, according to church law, they must remain until a new pope is chosen. They are awaiting the preferiti, the four cardinals from four different European countries who are the preferred candidates to become the new pope. While Langdon and Vittoria are trying to convince the captain of the Swiss Guard and the camerlengo, the Pope's chamberlain who leads the church until the new pope is named, that the antimatter bomb is real, a phone call is received from a man who claims to be from the Illuminati. He has the four cardinals, which he will murder one by one, and then allow the bomb to destroy Vatican City, which houses not only the church hierarchy, but also its possessions and wealth. He has no demands; his only wish is the destruction of the Catholic Church in retribution for the church's treatment of scientists and the Illuminati over the centuries.
Langdon and Vittoria Vetra are in a race against time. They dig through archives and ancient mysteries to find clues, which also requires an extensive background in art history and religious symbology. This makes Robert Langdon the expert tour guide through all this arcane knowledge with his congenial and scholarly fashion, doing his best to educate without seeming superior with his own intelligence. Much like The Da Vinci Code, Langdon understands enough about each mystery to go in search of the missing pieces necessary to solve each puzzle, which leads him to the next one. Vittoria is beautiful, tough, intelligent, and determined to avenge her father's murder and keep the canister from exploding. The two of them are constantly one step behind the Illuminati, and once it's clear that the Swiss Guard and Vatican City have been penetrated by the ancient society, they don't know whom to trust. This leads them through churches, fountains, crypts, forgotten passages, secret passages, and catacombs. Death stalks them at every turn, in one form or another.
So it's time for the comparisons of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. In some ways, Angels & Demons has a more suspenseful storyline with the antimatter bomb and the race to prevent the destruction of Vatican City. Both share a hired assassin, a tough and beautiful woman as Langdon's sidekick who's mourning the murder of a loved one, and mysteries that require extensive knowledge of art history, religious symbology, and secret societies. Robert Langdon is a protagonist that you can't dislike in any way, with just enough vulnerability to go along with his intelligence and right amount of charm. Angels & Demons is a looser story. It takes longer to get going, each new puzzle takes longer to solve, and too much character background is given for too many characters. While Dan Brown's writing style will never be called literary, he's obviously matured as a writer between the two books. The chapters in The Da Vinci Code are shorter, tighter, and the suspense is never allowed to wane.
While some judicious editing might have made it a tighter and more focused novel, Angels & Demons is still a highly enjoyable read. For those who love plot-driven novels, and for those who love thrillers and mysteries full of strange bits of information that tie everything together, grab a copy of Angels & Demons and find a comfortable chair. It's time well spent.
Copyright © 2004 reviewsofbooks.com
Movie Review by "USA Today" - Angels and Demons
Angels & Demons is better, though not by much, than 2006's
Hanks is likable and credible reprising his role as irreverent, code-cracking
Still, for an academic, Langdon has some impressive action-hero moves. And he needs them: He's up against a one-man terrorist brigade. The ubiquitous bad guy is an assassin, acting in the name of the "Illuminati," an ancient brotherhood of scientists. It's hard to get too worked up about villains made up of astronomers, philosophers and physicists.
The clock is ticking as a bomb is aimed at
The movie posits that Langdon, a man of science, may have a shred of faith he doesn't acknowledge. But it deals heavy-handedly with the faith vs. science debate.
The dialogue tries to be portentous, but it reeks of cliché. "We're in God's hands now," intones papal representative Father Patrick McKenna (
Angels doesn't know when to quit: Just when you think it's over, it continues, like the franchise based on Brown's books.
Angels and Demons Onces Banned by Vatican
Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code.
The Vatican said Dan Brown's work wounded religious feelings
“It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into films in the name of business,” he said, adding that Brown’s work “wounds common religious feelings”.
The Vatican could be gearing up for an official call for a boycott of "Angels & Demons," Ron Howard's big-budget follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." The Turin daily La Stampa, meanwhile, said the Vatican soon will call for a boycott of the film, though the same article also quoted Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, who warned against a "boomerang effect" that could call attention to the film and eventually make it more popular. Scores of church officials called for a boycott of "Da Vinci Code" when it was released in 2006, but the calls had little effect on the popularity of the thriller, which is based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown.
Angels and Demons Movie Global Posters
The first ever "Angels and Demons" Poster
Russion Poster
HongKong Posters
France Posters
Russion again
Angels and Demons have driven force
Vatican Steps Away...
U.S. actor Tom Hanks, left, Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer, centre, and British actor Ewan McGregor arrive for the world premiere of Angels and Demons in Rome on Monday. (Andrew Medichini/The Associated Press)The Vatican appears to be changing its approach to Dan Brown's thrillers.
While it launched numerous critiques of The Da Vinci Code and banned filming in Vatican City for Ron Howard's film version, it has been quiet until recently on the related film Angels & Demons.
The Da Vinci Code raised the church's ire because it postulated that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and had children, but the Vatican has not issued pronouncements about Angels & Demons, despite a story line about a murderous secret society within the church.
Angels & Demons portrays symbologist Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, seeking to solve the kidnapping of a group of church cardinals at the hands of the bizarre cult.
On Wednesday the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano broke that silence with a review of Angels & Demons that lauded it as "gripping" with "splendid" visuals.
And in a surprising editorial, it said the success of Brown's works should make the Catholic Church rethink the way it uses the media to present itself.
The editorial said the fact that the "simplistic and partial" vision of the church portrayed in Brown's works is attracting readers should prod the church to rethink the way it presents itself to the media.
"It would probably be an exaggeration to consider the books of Dan Brown an alarm bell but maybe they should be a stimulus to rethink and refresh the way the church uses the media to explain its positions on today's burning issues," it said.
The film review in L'Osservatore Romano was not wholly positive, but recognized the film's entertainment value.
It called Angels & Demons "a videogame that first of all sparks curiosity and is also, maybe, a bit of fun."
The movie was "a gigantic and smart commercial operation" filled with historical inaccuracies and "stereotyped characters," the review said.
The Vatican's 2006 campaign against The Da Vinci Code had the effect of whipping up interest in the film, which earned more than $757 million US.
15 五月 2009
Angels and Demons Movie Trailer [long version]
Angels and Demons Movie Trailer [short version]
The First Known Ambigram
Recently, we posted the History of Ambigrams, and mentioned that the first known non-natural ambigram was created in 1893.
Today we received a scan of that first ambigram.
The picture below was created in 1893 by Peter Newell as the last page in his book “Topsys and Turvys”. It read “THE END” normally and when inverted became the word “PUZZLE”.
Although Peter Newell was better known for his children’s books and for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain than he was for his ambigrams, he published 2 books of illustrations of invertible designs (”Topsys & Turvys” and “Topsys and Turvys 2″), where the picture (and text) turn into a completely different image when turned upside down (see our Matchbox Art page for an example of invertible images).
The End / Puzzle Ambigram
