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Editor's Note: The movie "Angels and Demons" is considered a financial flop in the United States. It must be noted 70% of revenue generated by Hollywood films derives from foreign viewership. See: http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/ -- JMZ Disparaging the Catholic Church is the real purpose of the latest Dan Brown/Ron "Opie" Howard movie “Angels and Demons.” Bill Donohue, President of the anti-defamation Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights www.catholicleague.org is demanding a disclaimer as the team who produced "The DaVinci Code" uses the same confusing mix of "fact and fiction" to spin a suspenseful conspiracy tale revolving around a secret ...

In a Q&A billed as an “interview” on his own website, Brown writes “My goal is always to make the character’s [sic] and plot be so engaging that readers don’t realize how much they are learning along the way.” Or how much misinformation they’re absorbing. Quick, how did Copernicus die? Dan Brown readers "know" the answer: "Outspoken scientists like Copernicus" were "murdered by the church for revealing scientific truths," according to a tag-team history lesson by Harvard "symbolist" Robert Langdon and CERN director Maximilian Kohler in Angels & Demons, the predecessor to Brown's blockbuster sequel, The Da Vinci Code. On...

The movie treatment of his novel, 'Angels and Demons,' is cleaning up at the box office this week. The sequel to 'The Da Vinci Code,' due out in November, might buoy the publishing industry through the recession. And if you want to understand the state of American religion, you need to understand why so many people love Dan Brown. It isn't just that he knows how to keep the pages turning. That's what it takes to sell a million novels. But if you want to sell 100 million, you need to preach as well as entertain — to present a...

Bill Donohue saw “Angels & Demons” today. Here is his take: The movie is so spectacularly stupid that it blunts its anti-Catholic elements. But there are problems, nonetheless. In the movie, the Catholic Church is said to have murdered members of the Illuminati, of which Galileo was a member. In real life, the Catholic Church never laid a hand on any member of the secret society and Galileo died almost a century and a half before the Illuminati were founded. In the movie, even Church officials admit that the Illuminati have reason for revenge, when, of course, this is pure...

[Caution the ending of the movie Angels and Demons is revealed below]Angels and Demons director, Opie, explains quite innocently with his Mayberry accent how his latest Dan Brown flick merely, 'presents the conflict between religion and science, and no one comes out the winner.' Wrong, Richie Cunningham Breath, as the end of the movie has a Catholic Cardinal stating that "Christianity is a very flawed religion." It could have been more balanced if Ron Howard (Big Barack supporter See YouTube) had one of Al Gore's many Global Warming opponents telling the truth about the Environmentally ill, but no, Dan Brown...

ROME, MAY 14, 2009 - Despite every attempt to stir controversy and fan fires of moral outrage, Ron Howard’s film adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel "Angels and Demons" enjoyed a peaceful world premiere May 4. The Italian press was more irate over the one-and-a-half hour delay in starting the film while the cast and author did red carpet interviews, than anything else. Most European journalists dubbed it “Americanata” -- silly stuff Americans enjoy, like McDonalds. The movie had its worldwide release May 13, and although it is a fast-paced, action-packed popcorn movie with terrific set design and beautiful filming of...

William A. Donohue, the perennially indignant president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, had no sooner finished a conference call with reporters Wednesday, in which he demanded the firing of a White House aide, when CNN called. “CNN wants you to do Rick Sanchez at 3:30 on the Notre Dame thing, and also Bill Cunningham wants you to come on about ‘Angels and Demons,’ ” said his assistant, Susan Fani, in the wood-paneled 34th-floor Midtown Manhattan office from which Mr. Donohue surveys the world — and more often than not finds the world rife with anti-Catholic bias....

MSM's anti-Catholic bias http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/05/11/top_stories/doc4a07a267421bf585636036.txt

Ron Howard: Vatican obstructed 'Angels & Demons' By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer May 3, 2009 Director Ron Howard claimed Sunday that the Vatican interfered with efforts to get permits to shoot certain scenes of his "Angels & Demons" religious thriller in Rome — a charge the Vatican said was purely a publicity stunt. The film, which stars Tom Hanks and is based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown, has its world premiere Monday in Rome. "Angels & Demons" combines an ancient secret brotherhood called the Illuminati, a papal conclave and a high-tech weapon threatening to destroy the Vatican....

ROME (Reuters) - Director Ron Howard accused the Vatican on Sunday of trying to hamper the filming and the Rome roll-out of his new movie "Angels & Demons," and challenged Catholic critics to see the film before condemning it. The movie sequel to author Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" will premiere in Rome on Monday, with fictional symbologist Robert Langdon returning to the big screen to help the Vatican rescue kidnapped cardinals and find a ticking time-bomb. The Vatican was outraged by "The Da Vinci Code" and the Rome archdiocese made no secret about denying Howard authorization to film...

Ron Howard has been doing his best Opie impression while running around claiming that his upcoming movie, “Angels & Demons,” is not anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. Howard is in denial and perhaps a bit distracted by the box-office. In the film, the Catholic Church and the Vatican are depicted as secretive, conspiratorial, ignorant, and violent.

How do you film a movie set largely in the Vatican when the Holy See itself has banned you from shooting within its walls? If you are the producers of Angels and Demons, the prequel to the church-baiting worldwide blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, you send in cameramen posing as tourists to take more than 250,000 photographs and shoot hours of video footage.The team behind the new film, which is based on an earlier book by Dan Brown, used the surreptitiously-gathered material to digitally recreate many of the famous papal buildings, Tuscan colonnades, fountains and monuments within St Peter's Square.Special...

Director Ron Howard on Tuesday defended his film adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown 's "Angels & Demons" from criticism that it smears the Roman Catholic Church, heightening an ongoing battle over fictional depictions of the Vatican. Howard, who also directed the 2006 movie adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code," posted a blog at The Huffington Post website saying that neither he nor his new movie "Angels & Demons," which debuts in May and stars Tom Hanks, are anti-Catholic. "And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church...

RON HOWARD LIES ABOUT “ANGELS & DEMONS” April 21, 2009 Ron Howard, director of “Angels & Demons,” the movie version of Dan Brown’s book by that name, attacked Catholic League president Bill Donohue yesterday on the Huffington Post. Referring to a booklet on the movie that Donohue authored, “Angels & Demons: More Demonic than Angelic,” (click here) Howard wrote: “Mr. Donohue’s booklet accuses us of lying when our movie trailer says the Catholic Church ordered a brutal massacre to silence the Illuminati centuries ago. It would be a lie if we had ever suggested our movie is anything other than...

Ron Howard, director of “Angels & Demons,” the movie version of Dan Brown’s book by that name, attacked Catholic League president Bill Donohue yesterday on the Huffington Post. Referring to a booklet on the movie that Donohue authored, “Angels & Demons: More Demonic than Angelic,” (click here) Howard wrote: “Mr. Donohue’s booklet accuses us of lying when our movie trailer says the Catholic Church ordered a brutal massacre to silence the Illuminati centuries ago. It would be a lie if we had ever suggested our movie is anything other than a work of fiction….” Howard also said that “most in...

It was described as a “phantasmagorical cocktail of inventions”, a “masonic plot” and a “pot pourri of lies”. Now a nervous Vatican is braced for the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and the return of its nemesis, Dan Brown. Angels & Demonsis the latest Brown thriller to be turned into a film, and already the Catholic Church is agonising over how best to respond: to urge the faithful to boycott the film, or to ignore it? The Vatican and the Italian Catholic Church condemned The Da Vinci Codein its book and film version, but some church officials argued that...

AUGUST 21--The next time you forget to return a couple of library books (and ignore those annoying letters about the overdue status of said volumes), think of Heidi Dalibor. The Wisconsin woman, 20, was arrested earlier this month in connection with a pair of books overdue for several months. Dalibor, who made the mistake of ignoring a court citation issued after she failed to respond to letters and phone calls from the Grafton library, was busted August 6 for failing to return copies of Janet Fitch's best-seller "White Oleander" (a 1999 Oprah Book Club selection) and "Angels & Demons," author...

VATICAN CITY — Were the makers of Angels and Demons, a movie based on a Dan Brown novel by the same name, seriously hoping to film scenes on the premises of Catholic churches in Rome? If so, they must have been dreaming.The movie, which is a prequel to Brown’s more commercially successful potboiler, The Da Vinci Code, sees Tom Hanks reprise his role as Harvard professor Robert Langdon. This time, however, instead of battling a murderous “Opus Dei monk,” Langdon is on a mission to save the Vatican from being blown up by a canister of antimatter. The storyline also...

CNN, following in the footsteps of ABCNews.com’s overblown take on the subject, couldn’t help but to insert snotty language into its report on the Catholic Diocese of Rome’s denial to the filming of the movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s "Angels and Demons." CNN international correspondent Jennifer Eccleston, closing her report on Thursday’s "American Morning," labeled the Church’s refusal, based on "The Da Vinci Code" book and movie’s bashing of the Catholic faith, "a big problem in Rome, where some sins are just too grave to be forgiven -- even if they're for art's sake." "Sins" that are "just too grave...

A movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s book, Angels and Demons, is now in production; it is the prequel to the film, “The Da Vinci Code.” There are reports today that the Vatican has banned those associated with “Angels and Demons” from shooting in Catholic churches in Rome or in the Vatican itself. This is important because there are scenes in the movie that are supposed to take place in the Vatican and in two churches in Rome. “Angels and Demons” stars Tom Hanks in his role as Robert Langdon, the symbologist. This time he is trying to unravel a plot...