More Da Vinci Confusion
From the Scotsman...
Every time Barbara Falk walks past a billboard for the movie "The Da Vinci Code," the elegant 50-year-old teacher who has been a celibate member of Opus Dei for 26 years wants to accost people to tell them "I'm normal."
The Catholic organisation is portrayed in Dan Brown's best-seller as a secretive cult willing to murder to defend a 2,000-year old Catholic cover-up. The face of Opus Dei in the book is Silas, an albino monk with a masochistic streak....
Opus Dei is a conservative Catholic organisation founded in 1928 in Spain by Escriva to teach Catholics to strive for holiness through work. It has 85,000 members world-wide, of which 2,000 are priests. Escriva was made a saint in 2002....
Opus Dei has launched a publicity blitz to counter the negative image of the book, hence the reprinting of "The Way" which was first published in Spain in 1939. It has since been printed in 46 languages, with 4.6 million copies in print.
Published by Doubleday which also happens to be Brown's publisher, "The Way" is a collection of 999 short nuggets of advice, exhortation and philosophy.
Meanwhile from the Irish Examiner...
Director Ron Howard has dismissed calls for his film The Da Vinci Code to include a disclaimer as unnecessary.
Opus Dei had asked film-makers to make it clear the Tom Hanks-starring movie is a work of fiction as it portrays the Catholic group as a corrupt, barbarous cult at the centre of a cover-up of the truth about Jesus Christ.
But Howard says The Da Vinci Code is clearly fictional: "It's not theology or history. Spy thrillers don't start off with disclaimers."
Ron Howard, if you forgot, played Opey Taylor in the Andy Griffith show. Which makes the following a bit more ironic...
The legacy of Mayberry's Deputy Barney Fife is invoked in a New Hampshire man's film poking fun at Hollywood's adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code."
New Hampshire attorney Alfred Thomas Catalfo told the Boston Herald he got the idea for his spoof, "The Norman Rockwell Code," after reading Dan Brown's bestseller.
Catalfo's 35-minute film is set in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., and invokes Langford Fife, the son of "The Andy Griffith Show's" comical deputy, as his his symbologist.
After the curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum is killed, Fife "sets out to uncover the clues hidden in the paintings of Norman Rockwell," says a description on Catalfo's Web site, www.thenormanrockwellcode.com.
Maybe there's more to this movie than Opey is willing to admit, hmmmm.
Posted by Danny Carlton at May 11, 2006 5:45 AM