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Product Description ------------------- In Ron Howard's thrilling follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, expert symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) pursues ancient clues on a heart-racing hunt through Rome to find the four Cardinals kipped by a deadly secret society, the Illuminati. With the Cardinals' lives on the line, and the Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor) desperate for help, Langdon embarks on a nonstop, action-packed race through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and the most secret vault on Earth! .com ---- If the devil is in the details, there's a lot of wicked fun in Angels & Demons, the sequel (originally a prequel) to The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard delivers edge-of-your-pew thrills all over the Vatican, the City of Rome, and the deepest, dankest catacombs. Tom Hanks is dependably watchable in his reprised role as Professor Robert Langdon, summoned urgently to Rome on a matter of utmost urgency--which happens to coincide with the death of the Pope, meaning the Vatican is teeming with cardinals and Rome is teeming with the faithful. A religious offshoot group, calling themselves the Illuminati, which protested the Catholic Church's prosecution of scientists 400 years ago, has resurfaced and is making extreme, and gruesome, terrorist demands. The film zooms around the city, as Langdon follows clues embedded in art, architecture, and the very structure of the Vatican. The cast is terrific, including Ewan McGregor, who is memorable as a young protégé of the late pontiff, and who seems to challenge the common wisdom of the Conclave just by being 40 years younger than his fellows when he lectures for church reform. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent as a gruff commander of the Swiss Guard, who may or may not have thrown in with the Illuminati. But the real star of the film is Rome, and its High Church gorgeousness, with lush cinematography by Salvatore Totino, who renders the real sky above the Vatican, in a cataclysmic event, with the detail and majesty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. --A.T. Hurley P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Set Contains: ------------- The extended edition of Angels & Demons provides enough extras to fill the Sistine Chapel--all of them fascinating. "The Full Story" is the complete behind-the-scenes story of making the film, with great interviews with director Ron Howard, star Tom Hanks (who acts as host), and writer Dan Brown, who worked closely with Howard on the set. The sections on filming on location in Rome and Vatican City alone are highlight enough--imagine navigating a huge film crew through the nooks and crannies of Rome's cobblestone streets. And the re-creation of the Vatican's interiors--done, amazingly, on sound stages in Glendale, California--is a masterpiece of detailed work by set designers, prop managers, and costume designers. There's a whole section just on Ewan McGregor's priestly vestments and their fabrics. Other great extras include "Characters in Search of the True Story," in which Brown and the film's screenwriters talk about bringing such a well-known novel to life onscreen. And the short documentary "This Is an Ambigram" is a captivating look at written symbols that read the same upside down--as does the word Illuminati in Angels & Demons. The artist who studies ambigrams is named John Langdon--the same last name as Hanks's character in the film. Coincidence? Fans of Dan Brown and Angels & Demons know there is no such thing. --A.T. Hurley See more ( javascript:void(0) )