Free Republic

Catholic League president William Donohue has been dissing the upcoming Angels & Demons--the prequel to The Da Vinci Code--for a couple of months now, claiming the film to be a "smear" on the Catholic Church. For the most part, the filmmakers have taken the high road and remained silent. No longer. In a measured but strongly-worded op-ed today in The Huffington Post, A&D director Ron Howard responds by saying that Donohue should essentially zip it till he sees the movie. Howard writes that Donohue "is on a mission . . . to paint me and the movie I directed, Angels...

Ron Howard For Obama: Although not particularly funny (like the Mac-PC commercials) or substantive (like the Mac-PC commercials) this celebrity endorsement is sort of amazing.

I knew 'Opie" was a naive little kid, but I thought Andy was the wise one! Say it ain't so, Andy?? From the Yahoo! Newsroom, October 23, 2008Celebs go to great lengths for Obama excerpt: Luckily for Obama, some celebrities are taking extreme measures to show their support for him. It's no surprise to see celebrities lining up for the Democratic ticket, but these stars are going above and beyond the normal call of duty. First up, we have director Ron Howard resurrecting not one, but two, classic roles that he admits he'd rather leave behind: Opie Taylor from...

ROME (AP) - The conservative religious group Opus Dei has asked for a disclaimer on the upcoming film based on the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code." Opus Dei, portrayed as a murderous, power-hungry sect in the novel by Dan Brown, wrote in an April 6 letter to Sony Corp. (SNE) that a disclaimer would show respect to Jesus and to the Catholic Church. "Any such decision by Sony would be a gesture of respect toward the figure of Jesus, to the history of the Church and to the religious beliefs of viewers," Opus Dei wrote in the letter, which...