Local Hero (Page 3)

By Stuart Klawans

This article appeared in the June 19, 2006 edition of The Nation.

June 1, 2006

My spiritual adviser, Rabbi Simcha Feffeferman, is learning to use e-mail. Lucky me. Rebbe@AnsheTsurris.org writes:

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Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard, known as Opie = O.P. Symbolologically, this means Opus Payee, ancient Hollywood brotherhood! They make fun of you for watching their movies, and still they get paid!

Writer Akiva Goldsman obviously descended from Rabbi Akiva of blessed memory, who derived volumes of law even from the squiggles on letters of holy Torah. Strange. Why didn't this Akiva derive so much as a piece herring from a "book" everybody reads?

Also a mystery: Audrey Tautou = tow to = 22, not high caliber! Why her for this movie? She's French, she's pretty. Eleanor Powell she's not, let alone the living vulva of Jesus Christ.

And Mr. Big Star Tom Hanks with his Harvard Professor hair--deeper mystery. Change "H" to "Y" and you got Tom Yanks! Does he? All he's pulling here is a straight face, and then not even.

You see the pattern? It all works by opposites! The secret code is, "Grail, shmail. Just give us the money." But what I say, like we did in yeshiva, is, "The truth is out there."

Gillian Anderson--some Magdalene she'd make!

About Stuart Klawans

The Nation's film critic Stuart Klawans is author of the books Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order (a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Awards) and Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001. His film criticism and reviews for The Nation won the 2007 National Magazine Award. When not on deadline for The Nation, he contributes articles to the New York Times and other publications. more...
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