Da Vinci's Code

I am still waiting for "Da Vinci's Code" to be shown here as it is being shown in Dubai. Yesterday, I read in the Arabic news paper that "nobody" has applied for permission to screen it yet. Somehow I doubt it. I know that there are a lot of political reasons for not showing it here and the Government has to have an official position on it. But it all does not make sense when the book on which the movie is based is available at bookstores.Not to mention the fact that the movie itself is available at video stores for rent and a pirated DVD version is available for sale all over the place.

The other thing that really bothers me is that certain people feel they have a monopoly on history and that all other versions of history that do not conform with their own version is considered a heresy. That is why certain people do not want the movie to be shown, because it shows a none approved version of certain historical events.

With the exception of modern history, I do not think that anyone should be 100% sure of what took place, every once a while a new discovery takes place that sends all we held to be historically true, to the trash can.

What is wrong with the critics

I always suspected that the average person enjoys movies more than the average critic, but I never had proof, until today that is.

I decided to go to metacritic.com and compare scores of 20 movies of all genres. I compared the average critics score and the average viewers score. The scores varied by up to 300%. But I finally had confirmation; the viewers gave scores to the movies that were on average 20% higher than the critic's.

These results are not surprising, the critics simply look for what is wrong in a movie. The average viewer does not.