“Christians have not been this worked up about a movie since Martin Scorsese‘s Jesus stepped down off the crucifix in The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988.” — Laurie Goodstein‘s N.Y. Times piece about the various ways hot-headed Catholics are planning to protest Ron Howard‘s The DaVinci Code (Columbia, 5.19).

Why is the Cannes Film Festival press-screening The DaVinci Code, a movie that lasts about 150 minutes, at 8:30 pm on Tuesday the 16th rather than, say, the slightly more workable hour of 7 pm? Especially considering that a good portion of the viewers will be jet-lagged Americans? Because Sony publicists have arranged for Ron Howard‘s film to be shown to Cannes press at more or less the same time that New York and Los Angeles journos will be seeing it. The Gotham screening, I gather, will happen around 2:30 or 3 pm (a film critic for a major weekly told me that the Cannes screening will actually begin “a half-hour earlier” than the Manhattan screening). By this logic the Los Angeles showing would obviously be happening around noon, although a press pal says that the only LA press screening for DaVinci he knows about is set for Wednesday, 5.17, at 7pm at Hollywood’s Arclight .

There’s a launch party happening at the Columbus Hotel in Monte Carlo on Tuesday, 5.16 — the night before the Cannes Film Festival begins — to announce the International Emerging Talent Film Festival , which hopes to begin each year a few days before Cannes. American Cinematheque’s Margot Gerber is handling U.S. publicity. Participating supporters include producers Tricia Van Klaveren (Lying, Edmond), Bruce Cohen (Big Fish ), and George Litto (The Crew). I’d go but that The DaVinci Code press screening at 8:30, man…it’s a toughie.

I heard last night from a seasoned director-writer who’s something of an aficionado of fantasy flicks and has no agenda against Bryan Singer that I know of, and his message said that “an agent at UTA is referring to Superman Returns as Heaven’s Cape.” I get the thought but not the analogy. Singer puts passion into his films, but he’s never been and is nowhere near the wildly indulgent egomaniac that Michael Cimino reportedly was, etc. The import of this crack, obviously, is that the “okay, let’s trash this sucker sight unseen” mentality is extending beyond the geeks who’ve been gunning for this film for months and into the “suit” ranks. The reason I’m running it is because I didn’t like that too-positive “plant” review that ran on AICN a while back. If WB is smart they’ll stage some early screenings with people like me to try and elicit some counter-views.