All your Da Vinci Code are belong to us!

For those of you living under a rock or who have spent the past three years vacationing in a fine Amish community, there is a movie coming out this Friday based on a fairly popular book of recent note. In fact, The DaVinci Code has actually sprouted its own cottage industry, from hundreds of books , to television specials, to tour packages , to reality tv shows , the Da Vinci Code is starting to rival the 800lb gorilla that is the boy wizard.

While the book was released with little fanfare outside of the publishing world, Hollywood is taking a much different approach, using the momentum of the book in thier favor. You can't watch a prime time tv show without seeing a commercial. We have The Da Vinci Code tie-ins everywhere. Tom Hanks and Opie are doing the media tour blitz big time.

Literary to film translations can be a hit or miss proposition. For every Fight Club or Bladerunner we get an American Physco or Queen of the Damned. But all signs point to a great movie with The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks is a good actor and I think a great choice for Langdon. I also like Ron Howard as a director, although not sure how he will do with the suspense aspect of the story.

As part of its brute force marketing, Sony Pictures has teamed up with google and a world champion puzzle creator to make the Da Vinci Code quest. A series of 24 games and puzzles culminating in a final challenge for 10,000 lucky participants. Finalists were sent a replica cryptex and notification that they will be competing in a series of 5 questions timed for the chance at a single grand prize of all kinds of cool loot .

Honestly, with Sony's recent ass raping of its customers we would have avoided this entire deal without the involvement of Google. But, as luck would have it, we completed the last round 1 challenge 8 minutes after it was available and GOT OURSELVES ENTERED AS FINALISTS!!!! WOO HOO! (its funny how moral objections can be sidestepped by flaunting 130k worth of prizes at us)

So this weekend team memepunks will be undertaking the final Google Da Vinci Code challenge, and with the luck of the search engine gods upon us, we shall be jetting off on a wacky adventure around the world! (we get to take 2 extra people, so if your real nice and pimp our blog, you could be joining us)


"With heart, faith and Google. In the end there can be only one."- (apologies to) Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez


Update: It appears that people are trying to cash in already. Some hapless souls are attempting to sell off their Cryptexs on Ebay. They even tag them with things such as "1 of 10000" which is technically true (as of this update, the are not available for sale on the promo makers website), but what they don't mention is the Cryptex sent to us aren't that different from the ones you can buy direct from the marketing firm that made them, with the exception of the same piece of paper congratulating us and telling us to visit a website. This isn't a "numbered" piece or anything like that. In fact, these cryptex are supposedly even lamer then the ones sold online, because these we arent supposed to be able to change the code to open them. I haven't tried to take it apart yet, but I plan to remove the set screws tonight and see if this is in fact true. It also actually only locks with the last two letter wheels anyways. I wouldn't be storing any government secrets in this thing, thats for sure.

Some folks are even including their Google IDs and a CHANCE at the grand prize with the Cryptex and trying to Cash in BIG TIME. Personally, we feel thats akin to selling off your child on ebay, but as its not in the google/sony pictures rules or a violation of ebay (unlike ACTUALLY selling a child) we wish them the best of luck.