Good news everyone…after the initial hesitation from The Vatican and major religious parties in Rome, Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons has been met with the coveted “Vatican Seal of Approval”.  OK they don’t have a seal, although it’d be funny if they did (and funnier it actually looked like something from the book…oh, the irony) but I think it’s great that the Vatican says they’re fine with the outcome of the movie and more importantly the portrayal of events depicted in Vatican City.

Rome’s ‘official‘ Vatican newspaper released a statement and ComCast reports:

Reviewers at the Vatican’s newspaper have passed judgment on “Angels & Demons,” finding the religious thriller commercial and inaccurate, but concluding it is “harmless” entertainment and not a danger to the church.

So I guess a big “whew” is in order for Ron Howard and the gang.  I also bet this news will limit any controversy that would arise from trying to release this internationally.  But that’s just my guess because even though the Vatican says, “we’re fine with it”, other religious groups are expressing their problems with this film.  I’m not even minimally knowledgeable about religious debates so I’ll move on.

I’ve said it before, but having read Angels & Demons last Christmas, I am eager to see the film because I loved the story so much.  Now, I know there are avid readers out there (of both novels and comics alike) who get angry for a movie ” butchering the source material”, but it’s been said that The DaVinci Code lost viewers because it stuck too close to the source material.  The end result is that just didn’t translate to a compelling “Hollywood” film mostly, I think, because it lacked “Hollywood” pacing.  I for one though pacing was OK, just the plot changes and Tom Hanks took me out of the movie.  It still worked for me but at the end of the day the audience is a fickle creature and you can’t please all the people all of the time.

But back to Angels & Demons, perhaps the biggest joy I hope to be getting from this film are all the amazing locations/scenery in Rome.  I’ve never been to Italy but really wanted to go (even more than before) after reading Angels & Demons.  What absolutely floored me is that everything Dan Brown wrote about and depicted…actually exists…even CERN which I thought had to be fictitious.  It’s one thing if he made this all up for the book, but to find out that these expertly crafted and ingeniously designed places he described were, in fact, built and still stand today for people to see.  I’ve written earlier that I think Dan Brow’s greatest trait is the ability to take something that people already know about but blur the lines just a bit, so that (if you aren’t a scholar or expert on the topic) you’d think everything he’s writing is real!!…at least I do anyway.

Secondly, with regards to the locations, it was amazing to hear, from other blog sites, that since the film makers weren’t allowed access to certain churches, the film crews went “gorilla” and for some weeks posed as tourists photographing the same locations they were denied access to.  The efforts of the “rouse” gave them access to anything they wanted to shoot and yielded them nearly thousands of pictures hundreds of hours of film to use in digital recreations…also I bet they saved a ton of money.

Yet, one aspect of this film, which won’t make or break it for me but I’m still concerned, is Nikolaj Lie Kaas. I’m curious to see if he, in the role of the Hassassin, is better cast and acted than Paul Bettany as the Silas (the albino monk) in The DaVinci Code film – which I always thought that was going to be a tough character to bring to the screen.

So for all the reasons above I am really looking forward to the film next weekend.  How about the rest of you??

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