Code Red

ANGELS & DEMONS
With Da Vinci a global smash, Dan Brown's other best-seller is on deck

It's got another secret brotherhood. Another naked dead guy in the first scene. And another foxy young sidekick for our lucky symbologist hero. But will Angels & Demons — Dan Brown's only other Robert Langdon thriller, now officially greenlit by Sony as a Da Vinci Code prequel — also set off another blaze of controversy? Though dubbed ''anti-Catholic'' by some, Angels shouldn't be as contentious as Da Vinci: The novel finds Langdon racing to stop a plot by ''the world's oldest and most powerful satanic cult'' to blow up the Vatican. There's a Church cover-up but it's hardly soul-shattering (and doesn't involve Jesus), and the Catholic hierarchy hasn't been as vocally opposed to this book as it was to Da Vinci.

FUTURE SHOCKS?
These upcoming films are poised to spark some fiery debate.

WORLD TRADE CENTER (AUGUST)
A lightning-rod director (Oliver Stone) + a sensitive subject (9/11) = a volatile situation.

BORAT (NOVEMBER)
The Kazakhstan government already ran an ad in The New York Times protesting Sacha Baron Cohen's racist and misogynistic alter ego. In the movie, he pushes the satire even further.

NATIVITY (DECEMBER)
Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke's biopic of a young Virgin Mary, which culminates with Jesus' birth, will surely spawn discussion.

RED SUN, BLACK SAND (TBD)
Told from the POV of Japanese soldiers, the second half of Clint Eastwood's WWII double feature (after October's Flags of Our Fathers) could stir up old tensions.

SICKO (TBD)
Conservatives are already sharpening their knives for Michael Moore's takedown of America's health care system.

SEX BY COMMITTEE
Here's how some famously risqué films made it under the R-rating wire

AMERICAN PIE (1999)
The sight of thrusting buttocks seems to be a big MPAA no-no, so out went some moments of in-and-out intimacy with the baked confection of the title.

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)
After the orgy scenes first earned the film an NC-17, effects wizards planted robed CG figures in the foreground to block 65 seconds of saucy footage.

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)
The big bone of contention: not the slasher violence, but a ménage-à-trois sex scene, which had to be sliced way back.

BANNED IN BEIRUT
A guide to the quirkier predilections of film censors around the world

U.K.
Until recently, British censors routinely edited films that featured or referenced nunchaku chain sticks (a.k.a. nunchucks), such as Enter the Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

LEBANON
In 2002, security forces confiscated Some Like It Hot and The Great Escape from Beirut's Virgin Megastore on the grounds that they ''slandered religion and public decency and contravened the ban against Israel.''

IRAN
In 1990, the cop comedy The Naked Gun was forbidden because of a sequence in which the Ayatollah Khomeini's turban comes off to reveal a spiked punk haircut.

MALAYSIA
Zoolander and Daredevil were banned: one due to a subplot involving an assassination attempt on the Malaysian prime minister and the other for fear youngsters would ''hero-worship someone with a devil-sounding name.''