11 Months Set

In the meantime, enjoy Weird Al.

For a film little appreciated by critics, Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons is a fun, fast-paced jaunt through Vatican City worth at least the price of my Sour Patch Kids. Even before a pseudo-bomb threatens to destroy the College of Cardinals, St. Peter’s Basilica, Ron Howard’s camera crew, and a little bit of Italy, someone is already praying: “Don’t blow us to heaven!”

The film (based on the novel by Dan Brown) centers on Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor with a symbol fetish, and Vittoria Vetra, a scientist who helped to create something called “anti-matter.” These academics are asked by the powers-that-be in the Vatican to assist them in uncovering the mystery of a group of missing Cardinals called the Preferiti (four men who are something like the final contestants on American Idol Vatican Edition, the assumed favorites to succeed the Pope, who has recently passed into eternity). Vetra’s stolen anti-matter lies somewhere nearby, threatening destruction, and Langdon’s assistance is requested based on his recent work with the symbols and lore of the “Illuminati,” an historical (according to the film) enemy of the Catholic church, and allegedly responsible for the dilemma at hand.

In Dan Brown’s make-believe world, members of this underground organization were branded as heretics by the Catholic church for their desire to bring science into conversation with faith. Their alleged purpose was to eventually dominate the church, which brings Angels and Demons to it’s initial conflict. What follows is day-long adventure following the Illuminati trail, led by the whims and symbol-informed directions of Professor Langdon, to a spectacle of a twist ending.

But amidst the clues, the crowds, and the chaos, is a film about the battle between Religion and Science. Not only is the science-friendly secret society out to destroy the government of the Catholic church, but something created in a lab is threatening to destroy the physical church. Crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square quarrel about birth control, and Langdon, a man of science, is continually questioned about his beliefs in something greater than what the human mind can conceive.

But Science and Religion aren’t completely at odds in this film. For starters, Langdon and Vetra, two scientists, are working alongside Vatican security toward a mutual goal. At one point, Professor Langdon even dons the suit of a priest (minus the clerical collar), opting for the closest clean suit over his bloody shirt.

For what some might consider a stuffy old religion, the Catholic church in Angels and Demons bends protocol faster than expected, faster than some churches today would pick the color of their pews. Rules are broken and sacred places are tarnished, but Angels and Demons seems to ask if people are more important than church protocol. For a church in the real world, this is hefty question with real consequences. The film suggests that the way the Illuminati was treated by the church spurred them on to violence, and begs today’s church to ask itself if its treatment of modern culture is helping or hurting its cause. Maybe “blowing them into heaven” is right in principle, wrong in method.

That’s the space shuttle Atlantis. In front of the Sun. Which is awesome.

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to “influenza A (H1N1) virus, human,” and referred to as “killer Mexican flu” by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985 people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world’s population. Twenty countries reported infections; one death from the flu was confirmed in the United States; and 25 people had died in Mexico, where a cute five-year-old boy named Edgar Hernandez was presented to the media as “patient zero.” Mexico shut down for five days to contain the illness, China began to quarantine Mexicans, and Vice President Joe Biden appeared on television and counseled U.S. citizens to avoid airplanes, subways, and classrooms, which led to protests by the travel industry. “I think the vice president misrepresented what the vice president wanted to say,” explained Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting Coptic Christian pig farmers.

Via Boing Boing