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Duh Vinci Code

Not that I would jump to the defense of The Da Vinci Code and its literary and cinematic merits, but I found one tiny part of A.O. Scott's review in today's Times to be a good example of the old "people in glass houses" adage.

First, Scott offers this takedown Dan Brown's writing style:

To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"), have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair." Such language — note the exquisite "almost" and the fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition — can live only on the page.

But note this error, caused by a misplaced s, undoubtedly ignored by Scott's fastidious use of his computer's spell check program:

To be fair, though, Mr. Goldsman conjures up some pretty ripe dialogue all on his own. "Your God does not forgive murderers," Audrey Tautou hisses to Paul Bettany (who play a less than enormous, short-haired albino). "He burns them!"

I'm sure he meant to write that Paul Bettany plays a less than enormous, short-haired albino, but then again I haven't seen the movie. Perhaps both Tautou and Bettany appear in the film as one albino, like a couple coming to a Halloween party dressed as a horse.

Posted by Doug at May 18, 2006 01:41 PM