Our Culture Critic Saves a Day for You
If only there were Cliffs Notes for everything in life. You wouldn't have to fill up precious free time with reading and watching, but you'd be clued in enough to seem semicultured at a dinner party. And sometimes you just want to know that your kids were crying because Dumbledore is dead without having to read 600 pages. So, we're going to help you cheat a bit, thus adding a day of free time to 2006.
The Historian. In this summer bestseller, a teenage girl finds out she's from a line of vampire hunters. Dracula leaves books with academics that are blank except for a picture of a dragon that's really a map. Why? Apparently, he's looking to enslave someone as his librarian. Near the end, the vampire hunters seem to kill Dracula. But then the girl grows up, and she finds a dragon book.
The Da Vinci Code. The head of a group of people carrying the secret of the Holy Grail is found murdered. His granddaughter and a Harvard professor need to figure out who did it and where the Grail is. Turns out the Grail is actually the tomb of Mary Magdalene, who happened to be Jesus's wife and mother of his child. The church hid this fact when the Bible was written way back in the day. So, although the killer was a misguided Opus Dei member, the Roman Catholic Church turns out not to be the culprit in the present day. The real evil guy is a British historian. And the Holy Grail is at the Louvre.
Brokeback Mountain. You should see this, but if you can't bear to cry in public, we'll help you out. Two young men fall in love herding sheep. They go their separate ways, marry women, and have children. They meet a few times a year for trysts in the mountains, but the strain of not being together weighs on both of them. Then one is beaten to death. It is sad.
Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Even we were not going to waste our time on that one.
Aeon Flux. It's the future. A virus has wiped out most of humanity. Aeon is sent to assassinate the leader. Turns out, her orders come from the leader's evil brother, who is trying to take over and get rid of women who can have babies naturally. A lot of people die but not Aeon or the leader, who end up together.
King Kong. You know how it ends. The big ape gets it. The girl and the playwright fall in love. There are freaky brawls with dinosaurs and a gelatinous serpent thing with huge teeth. And it takes THREE HOURS!!!!
This story appears in the December 26, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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