I Finally Read Dan Brown

Hats off to Roddick, totally owned Fed. But I guess Fed is the ultimate player of the century for a reason, eh? Mad final match, I’m surprised Fed’s wife did not go into labour right there in center court.

Sorry Mr. Brown for taking this long, I am deeply ashamed & regret this very much. But more about that later.

I’m baaaacccck from Bali with me UTP bros & sistas. We fought valiantly against the swines & all the As & Hs & Ns & 1s, we wore sarongs, we discovered that anything that had land space qualifies as a road in Bali, we witnessed the overpopulation of motorcycles, & we discovered we were naturally talented in swallowing Kuta waves rather than surfing. Especially Suet Yeng, to whom I had to play Baywatch saviour to keep her from overdosing herself with salt water.

The closest we ever got to successfully standing on the board at Kuta beach

I would have loved to say Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was totally awesome but who am I kidding? It was one heck of an unbalanced movie, so thankfully I checked my brain at the cinema doors. I had no idea what the plot was all about frankly - something about Megatron working under The Fallen, a big gun that would shoot the sun or something hidden in the pyramids, & Megan Fox working in a bengkel – it was just plain ridiculous, but really who cares since we were there to see the robots & outrageous action-packed almost-pornographic shots of Megan Fox CGI spectacles. Minus the irritating twin Autobots (which the Devastator should have easily tapao’ed) & the many additional generic pointless Decepticons (& WHAT THE F**K WAS THAT DECEPTICON CHICK ALL ABOUT?! Tiba-tiba felt like Species pulak), Bay did not disappoint when it comes to cool robot action. The Optimus action scene in the mountains in the middle of the movie reigned supreme & was the spectacular moment of the film, it left me completely breathless. Bay really shouldn’t have attempted to do so much & draw out so many unnecessary scenes that just seemed to go on & on. Shia did a commendable job by the way, holding his own against the mighty presence of the robots.

Optimus giving some serious prime ass whooping in the mountains

With this holidays completing its first month, I have been catching up with the one favourite thing I last religiously did with the last Potter book – reading. I finally, finally, gave a chance to Dan Brown, & first started off with Da Vinci, & now I’ve also completed Angels & Demons followed subsequently by Deception Point. I must say, regardless whether factual or not, Dan Brown sure knows a whole load of shit & is exceptionally gifted in creating outrageously superb plots, though I was occasionally tired by the sudden flashbacks & some overdrawn descriptive points of Angels & Demons as well as Deception Point. The Brown books could not however match my feverish fetish for Potter, but it would be unfair to compare Potter against the Dan Brown novels, due to their different writing styles & plot structure. Let’s just put it this way; I enjoyed tremendously the intelligence & thrill of Dan Brown, but I skipped meals, sleep & toilet trips for Potter. Nevertheless, I would not hesitate at the least to give a two-thumbs-two-toes-up & rate The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons & Deception Point as must-reads.

Now, I am one of those who unashamedly watched the movie version of Angels & Demons before reading the book, so I did enjoy the movie, but now after reading the book, I realize why many of Dan Brown fans are unhappy with how Ron Howard tremendously simplified the plot (almost completely taking away the science aspect & role of the book) & only concentrating on the battle against the Vatican. The many layers & complexities of all of Dan Brown’s stories are one of the best things about the novels, & more notably for Angels & Demons, since this particular book is where Dan Brown first attempts at intertwining science with controversial religious plots. Keeping faithful with the book would have given the Camerlengo’s role much more crucial resonance & substance on the big screen. 

Speaking of which, guilty of the sin of watching both Ron Howard’s big screen adaptations before reading Dan Brown, I robbed myself of the powerful exhilaration I would have experienced facing Dan Brown’s plot twists in Da Vinci & Angels head-on first time, & I only have myself to blame for not giving a chance to Dan Brown up till now. Anyway, just like Sir Ian McKellen in Da Vinci (as Sir Leigh Teabing), I admired the inspired choice of the brilliant Ewan McGregor as Camerlengo Ventresca/McKenna. Tom Hanks is definitely not the Langdon I imagined from the books, but at least I enjoyed Audrey Tatou (as Sophie Neveu) much more than Ayelet Zurer’s disappointing role as Vittoria Vetra. The one thing I truly was fascinated from the Angels & Demons movie, however, was how the grand sequence of the Camerlengo saving Vatican from the antimatter explosion was visually depicted. It was quite breathtaking on screen.

Ewan McGregor was brilliant!

& again, because I watched both the movie versions of both Da Vinci & Angels before reading them, resulting in me imagining the respective movie characters in their roles when reading, I could not help but do the same for Deception Point. Of course there’s no Deception Point movie (yet, I guess?), but I couldn’t restrain myself from imagining particular actors/actresses playing the characters in the movie as I read. Interestingly though, from the moment Rachel Sexton (what an irresistable name!) appeared in the first few pages, the first actress that came into mind was relatively unknown Rachel Nichols, & I seriously do not know why! Call it male intuition? Anyway, you can see her in previous movies like Charlie Wilson’s War & P2 or in the coming G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, since you probably do not know who I’m talking about.

Which begs a rather intriguing but insignificant question, who would be suitable to play the roles of the characters in Deception Point should there be a big screen adaptation in the future? Now, I figure the probability of a Deception Point movie is much less compared to the likelihood of Dan Brown’s soon-to-be-released The Lost Symbol being made a movie first, keeping in mind how we love the controversial Vatican & religious scandals as opposed to the government conspiracies of Deception Point, but what the hell, it’s the holidays for me. Oh, I’m going to take Rachel Nichols out of my mind for a more realistic choice (even though she stubbornly stucked in my mind all throughout my reading). Here’s KV playing director, for pointless fun.

Rachel Nichols, Bryce Dallas Howard, Evangeline Lilly & Jennifer Garner

Rachel Sexton - Bryce Dallas Howard/Evangeline Lilly/Jennifer Garner

Michael Tolland – Ewan McGregor/Robert Downey Jr.

President Zachary Herney – Steve Martin. Joking! Harrison Ford?

Senator Sedgewick Sexton – Russell Crowe/John Travolta

Corky Marlinson – Paul Bettany

NASA Administrator Lawrence Ekstrom - William Peterson

William Pickering – Liam Neeson

Marjorie Tench – Judi Dench

Gabrielle Ashe – Marsha Thomason/Zoe Saldana

Delta-One – Clive Owen

This all-star cast is nuts, but Deception Point would make quite a kick-ass movie. Besides, who could possibly resist such a movie of which its protagonist carries a name like Rachel SEXTON?

So, anyone wanna lend me a copy of Digital Fortress? & by September, The Lost Symbol?