In the Italian town of Ceccano, two members of the town council burnt a copy of the book "The Da Vinci Code" on Saturday one after the movie opened in cinemas. Stefano Gizzi and Massimo Ruspandini, both from centre-right parties, lit the pages of the controversial novel by Dan Brown, as an outraged crowd yelled "buffoons" and "Taliban" and threw rotten tomatoes. The novel, with 46 million copies in print, contends that Jesus married Mary Magdalene had descendants, and that Opus Dei, a conservative religious organisation close to the Vatican, and the Catholic Church were at the centre of covering it up.

The two members of the city council burning the book said that they consider the book and the movie and an insult to Jesus and to their Christian Heritage. Several Vatican officials and cardinals have spoken out against the novel in recent weeks in the run-up to the film's release, including at least one Vatican official who has called for a boycott. As the pages of the book slowly turned black, dozens of people railed against the two council members saying that their act was a return to the Inquisition times.

Carabinieri struggled too keep the crowd under control as tempers flared, and shouts of "communist" and "fascist" echoed across the square. The event took place in a square nestled between the city hall and a small church. While the crowd was yelling in the square, inside Ceccano's city hall, the mayor was presiding over a wedding. Following the wedding the Mayor declared that he was "ashamed" of the book burning and called it a "deplorable act."

But right now you want to know is: Is "The Da Vinci Code" a good movie? The answer overall is yes.

*****

For most of its overlong two and a half hours, the film is enticing. And surprising in that it's not Tom Hanks — solid as usual — or French film star Audrey Tautou who make the movie tick. It's Sir Ian McKellen, who appears about a quarter to half way through the proceedings and very sublimely scores himself an Academy Award nomination.

*****

....it's a good movie, a solid entertainment with much to recommend it. The only people who could be unhappy with it are Opus Dei, which is fairly well attacked as represented in excellent performances by Paul Bettany, Jean Reno and Alfred Molina. Mainstream audiences will take this for what it is: superb escapism, excellent summer entertainment and ambitious filmmaking.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman was "startled" when he heard that Vatican cardinals were condemning his next picture, the hotly anticipated film version of "The Da Vinci Code." "Then I was concerned," he muses, "and then I realized that the Vatican doesn't like condoms either, and a lot of people buy those."

*****

"I'm the guy who wrote the screenplay that every single person has read the book of. That's a lot of people going, 'Let me tell what I imagined…."

*****

He follows what seems to be the classic rule book on how to become a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He swears by screenwriting guru Robert McKee, eschews writing original scripts, and worships at the altar of the three-act structure. "The screenplays I write are formally very predictable," Goldsman says. "They're essentially the one-page version of a clothing dummy. They have two legs, a middle, two arms and a head. I can dress them up pretty on a good day, but the structure is simple, and I like that."

*****

When Goldsman first read "The Da Vinci Code," it wasn't a bestseller, merely an interesting galley floating around Hollywood. That had changed by the time he and Howard sat down with Brown more than a year later in a hotel room at the Toronto Four Seasons. "There were two cultures staring across the table at each other," recalls Goldman. "We were the movie. He was the novel…. He [was thinking,] I'm sure, that our agenda was just to change everything." Adding to the intrigue is that Brown had written his own version of the script, which no one to this day has seen.

The sides came together over, of all things, codes. Brown was pleased to find out that the pair was fascinated by the use of such mysteries in the book and that Howard wanted to add more codes to the film (which he's done). The ice was broken, so much so that Brown hung around the set "a good third of the time," says Goldsman.

After losing a copyright claim against Random House, the publishers of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Leigh, an American-born novelist and historian, and his colleague, Michael Baigent, have to make a down payment of £350,000 in the next 28 days. Even after that they will still owe £750,000 - plus their own costs, estimated in court at £800,000.

It was one of the most expensive mistakes in British legal history and Leigh, shell-shocked by the verdict, admitted that he had no idea how he would find the money. "I welcome any suggestions on that," he said. Baigent and Leigh had accused Brown of stealing the "central themes" and "architecture" of their 1982 book, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail - a claim totally rejected by Mr Justice Peter Smith. Both books posit the theory that Jesus Christ married and had children with Mary Magdalene, the bloodline continuing to this day.

*****

After ordering the two men to meet 85 per cent of the costs of the publisher Random House, which coincidentally published both books, Mr Justice Smith asked how the two men were going to meet the bill. The answer was unclear, although their lawyer suggested that one of them might have to sell their house. At that point, James Abraham, QC, for the publisher, jumped up to say that it had never been his client's intention to bankrupt the two writers, or force anyone to sell their house. How else, asked the judge, are they going to pay?

The pair wrote the Holy Blood book with a third writer, Henry Lincoln, an Englishman who now lives in New Zealand. Lincoln, a former scriptwriter for Z Cars and Dr Who, has been as disparaging as his colleagues about Brown's book, but refused to subscribe to their lawsuit and did not attend the High Court hearing.

Brown is just doing what we all do every day, and what we've all been trained to do through years of schooling: Take an idea, go to the library or online to look for facts that support or deny that idea or examples to enhance it then write your paper, letter, book or song.

If there still is such a thing as an original idea, I'd like to hear about it. Turn on any TV show or open any newspaper, magazine or book, and chances are that most stories are there because the writer, editor or producer saw it somewhere else first. If the judge rules that Brown did indeed plagiarize from Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh's 1982 book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book that they've profited from handsomely, needless to say research as we know it, for writers, students, professionals, anyone who relies on any form of media, will be forever changed.

The worst-case scenario is that a flurry of unfounded accusations will emanate from slighted creative types everywhere, with the "authors" of overheard conversations suing writers for "copying" their words and ideas. This prospect is much more frightening than James Frey's sin of thinking his fiction was no different from nonfiction. In the aftermath, the only thing that's changed in the publishing industry is that the fact-checking calvary is now called in whenever a manuscript is tagged as a "memoir."

Industry wags figure the plaintiffs' chances at winning are about as good as Dan Brown's fifth novel being published this year, an extreme long shot since a manuscript is nowhere in sight. Publishing insiders pegged the trial as a cheap publicity stunt from the start, launched only to attract attention for Holy Blood and for Baigent's next book, The Jesus Papers, to be published April 1, just in time for the worldwide release of The Da Vinci Code movie in mid-May.

*****

The fact of the matter is that Baigent and Leigh didn't pluck the premise for Holy Blood, Holy Grail out of thin air, since it's been written about and bandied about for centuries. They read about it somewhere else first. Just like Dan Brown. No one — artist or not — lives in a vacuum. We learn from and are inspired by the ideas of others, which we then absorb and convert into our own. Then someday, someone else will hopefully be likewise inspired by our ideas. Perhaps Chilean novelist Isabel Allende said it best in her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses: "Copying one author is plagiarism. Copying many is research."

Doubleday, Brown’s publisher, has posted a "webquest" on the internet as part of its advance marketing strategy for the new book. The webquest challenges budding codebreakers to unravel a series of puzzles starting with the ciphers and symbols that are "already in your possession." The site says: "Disguised on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code, numerous encrypted messages hint at the subject matter of Dan Brown’s next Robert Langdon novel."

A faint grid reference written in reverse on the cover leads, with an adjustment of one degree, to a sculpture called Kryptos in the courtyard of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Kryptos is covered in about 1,800 letters of code, much of which is still a mystery despite its location at the workplace of some of the world’s shrewdest cryptographers.

A further clue on the jacket is visible with a magnifying glass. Some of the lettering describing the plot is in bolder type than the rest. When read separately from the other words the letters read: "Is there no help for the widow’s son?" Those words, a Masonic call for help, have been linked to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known as the Mormons. He started to say them as he fell to his death from a window after he was shot and fatally wounded by the mob who stormed his prison cell in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844.

Brown is reluctant to betray too many details but he has said that he grew up surrounded by the "Masonic lodges of our fathers" and confirmed that his next novel would be set "within the oldest fraternity in history, the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons."

Two authors are launching a High Court action against the publishers of The Da Vinci Code, which they say infringes upon their ideas. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing Random House, claiming the bestseller lifts from their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. A High Court hearing will be held next week, followed by a trial next year. Random House was unavailable for comment on the claim that Brown stole the idea that Jesus had a child.

A spokeswoman for Baigent and Leigh said the authors had been struck by alleged similarities to their history book. She said: "The basis of their case is theft of intellectual property. "There are huge chunks of The Da Vinci Code which they say is lifted from their book." The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was recently reissued through Century, part of the Random House group. It features "cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar" and links them to "a dynasty of obscure French kings" and the Holy Grail. It also claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child together.

In August, Brown won a court ruling in New York against writer Lewis Perdue, who claimed The Da Vinci Code plagiarised elements of two of his novels, Daughter of God, published in 2000 and 1983's The Da Vinci Legacy. Perdue sought to block future distribution of the book and forthcoming film, as well as $150m (£84m) in damages, but the judge said any similarity was based on "unprotectable ideas".