Ninth Gate, The (1999) - Roman Polanski

A stupid film in which Polanski tries to do a 'Bond meets Omen' film. I would have said 'Bond meets Da Vinci Code', but this is a precursor to the Da Vinci code. The similarities are striking, though - the girl is French; she turns out to be a key person; there is a secret society (for the devil, instead of god), the search is through clues in an ancient manuscript, and the film is equally stupid.

Da Vinci code

Dan Brown

An unintentionally funny book. The main characters in this yet another pseudo-intellectual quest for the holy grail are a couple of bumbling monks, a Harvard symbologist, a British expert on the grail (Royal historian and a Knight of the British Empire, no less) and a French cryptologist (providing the feminine angle). I have always found the grail legend a bit too pop for my tastes, and to have a Harvard expert and a Royal historian expounding on it in utter gravity sounds like a trick one would use to make fun of both institutions. After all, if some ghastly truth about Jesus or Christianity comes to light today, most of India and China would not care either way, much of Europe would probably not be moved by it either, and regardless of what people say about the hard-core Christians in the US, I doubt if it would result in riots there. To believe that people would murder others over such a trifle requires more imagination than I possess.