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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
1969 | Action, Classics, Western

"I think I gotta go with that old stand-by, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Love the — you know, it’s the two guys. It’s what me and my brother specialize in, the two guys. Well, in the Three Stooges‘ case it’s three. But the relationship between two guys like that, I don’t think it’s been done any better than with Butch and Sundance; particularly with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The way they worked in so many different things, from comedy to romance to action and the way it’s so beautifully shot and, you know, a great story. And they didn’t pull the punches at the end. If you made that movie today, I’m sure that you’d do the test screenings and somebody would raise their hands and say, “We want them to get away at the end!” But they didn’t get away at the end. Today you’d have to re-shoot the ending where the guys go off on some secret beach somewhere and live happily forever — ’cause that’s the way audiences kind of demand it. But with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, of course, they met their demise at the end of the movie, and they had it coming ’cause that’s who they were. I just think it was a beautiful movie."

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Angels and Demons
Angels and Demons
Dan Brown | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.7 (64 Ratings)
Book Rating
First published back at the turn of the century (in the year 2000), this - while the second of the two Tom Hanks starring Robert Langdon movies, after The Da Vinci Code - is actually the first book in that particular series, albeit less well known than its sequel (the aforementioned The Da Vinci Code).

And, like, I'm sure, many others, I actually read that sequel first, only later discovering it was such (although, admittedly, not a direct sequel) and going back to read the first on the series.

This is the one largely set in and around Rome, with a high-tech ticking time-bomb counting down in Vatican City as the Cardinals all meet to elect a new Pope following the death of the previous incumbent of that role. It also makes lots of the (supposed?) divide between religion and science, drawing on lots of conspiracy theories and bringing back into the realms of popular culture that old secret society, the illuminati.

I have no problem with any of that, and I do like a bit of derring-do, mystery and romance, but even I found it hard at times to swallow some of the outlandish scenarios and set pieces of this novel - I think, for me, the icing on the cake was the surviving-a-jump-out-of-a-helicopter-without-a-parachute bit towards the end!