Day: September 16, 2009

From Salon.com’s review of the new Dan Brown potboiler, The Lost Symbol:

“Conspiracy theory, not characters, made “The Da Vinci Code” the bestselling adult novel of all time. With that novel, Brown, previously a mediocre thriller author laboring in relative obscurity, hit upon the idea of a lifetime. Latching onto a popular but moderately difficult work of pseudohistory titled “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln […], Brown streamlined the authors’ argument that Jesus fathered a dynasty of French kings with Mary Magdalene into an airport page-turner easily understood by people who can barely read.”

…and there you have my problem with Brown. Mediocre thriller writer, cribs ideas from other (better) sources, and distills them for the masses, who gobble it up thinking it’s terribly clever.

really needs to turn some of his Supressed Transmissions into novels before Dan Brown gets ahold of them and renders them down into Conspiratorial Weirdness For Dummies.

The same guys who did the retro-Ghostbusters trailer that I posted a while back have now worked their magic on Indiana Jones:

(If this gets copied over to Facebook with the embedding screwed up: click here to watch.)

I want to see *that* movie — especially now that I’ve learned that apparently, there will be a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Part of me desperately wants to think of it as one last chance for Spielberg to redeem the series after the solidly *meh* Crystal Skull, but the realist in me knows it’ll probably end up being an embarrassing collection of Lucas PS3 cut-scenes and Ford desperately trying to prove he’s still vital.