and I really enjoyed it. I thought Howard did a great job with a very difficult task. In a novel, one can spread out the information to the reader over lots of pages so that difficult concepts don't have to be grasped all at once. This novel required a bit of learning on the part of many readers since very few really know church history.

Howard included all the major scenes and I thought did a masterful job of putting out just enough info to keep the viewers informed. Any less and the plot wouldn't have made sense. Any more and it would've felt like a lecture.

After reading our local newspaper's review (3 stars out of 5), I really expected the acting to be subpar and was pleasantly surprised to have the characters much as I imagined them in the book. Hanks was a bit subdued but so's Robert Langston's character in the novel. He's after all a nerdy college professor not some Indianna Jones stud. Paul Bettany is chilling as Silas and Audrey Tatou is stunning and smart.

I have to wonder, were I a Christian, how watching that movie would've made me feel. It certainly takes major potshots at the Catholic Church and features primary characters that are atheist and pagan. It could make people that are very serious about their faith a bit uncomfortable. I'm wondering, since a huge percentage of our country are Christians and we'd expect that those percentages would follow among reviewers too, if the lukewarm reviews aren't more related to personal philosophical judgments than true assessments of the art.

Judging by the huge lines in the theater when we got out of the early show, I somehow doubt the reviewers are going to have much effect.

Art