Everyone remembers Flood, the documentary about a the efforts of a Church community to save their building from Hurricane Floyd. Well, with the recent Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico & Flordia that movie has been on my mind a lot. One story in particular reminded me of that film. I hope that someone got some video of this, or else maybe friend of the show Tom Swift (director of Flood) could make it into a fictionalized story. It is just crying out for a movie!
Community members take refuge in a Bolivar Island Church, where they have to survive not only the wrath of Hurricane Ike, but also the danger of a stranded lion. Essentially, a man was trying to evacuate his lion from the local zoo, and he was caught in the storm. Desperate for shelter, he found the Church, built on high ground. Fortunately the other refugees were welcoming to him and his deadly pet, and they rode out the storm with the lion. Reports indicate that the lion was quite calm, and was content to eat pork roast instead of its fellow survivors. The capper on the story is the National Guard soldiers who delivered supplies after the storm; upon spotting the lion they leapt out the door.
When we saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed last week, I saw the name Mark Mathis in the credits. I wondered if it was the same Mark Mathis who was once a local talk radio personality, but Don said it was probably a common name. Well, I looked it up!
It's actually hard to draw the connection. But, through this website I found the website of Rampant Films, one of the co-producers of Expelled. On the Rampant website you can find the bio of Producer Mathis, under "Inside Rampant." Mathis is best know as a PR guy, so you might be able to lay some of blame/credit for Expelled's ubiquitous media presence on his shoulders. He's also a founding member of "Citizens for Responsible Energy," a group that has such diverse goals as increasing wind power, drilling for oil in wildlife refuges and discrediting the "myth" of global warming.
I remember Mathis best for his radio show, which dissapointed me when it was cancelled(and the whole, ill-advised FM talk radio station went under shortly after). Mathis hosted it with his wife, Dianne Anderson(an ABQ news celebrity), and it was quite entertaining. Mathis & wife had a great rapport and created a entertaining talk show about local issues, even if I disagreed with them about 70% of the time. The biggest problem with the show was that Mathis had the awful habit of eating on air, so he was constantly talking with his mouth full. Ugh. Also, the producers of the show made the disastrous decision in choosing what show to air as a repeat when the hosts were on vacation. Of all the shows they could have chosen, they re-aired the live coverage of Albuquerque's deadliest shooting spree in recent history. Listeners who tuned in that day could hear a complete recounting of the live coverage from that tragic day, complete with speculation and news reports. When I heard it my first thought was, "oh no, not another killing." I actually had a chance to discuss that with the show's producer when she visited a class that I was taking in college, and she could offer no explanation other than, "we messed up."
If you want my recommendation, pickup either The Fog of War or Grizzly Man. #18 & #26 on the top grossing documentaries list, but those two films are both entertaining and enlightening throughout. They will change your life. The key difference between those two, and other excellent documentaries, is that they raise questions and challenge you to let go of your assumptions. Unlike some others, which shall go unnamed, that prefer to tell you what to think.
Ben Stein goes all Michael Moore(except he's on the host and didn't direct it the way Moore does), and we make a rare trip to the theatres to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Sorry the podcast is so late, but we've had a hectic couple of week.s I even had a really great photo to put up with this post, but now I'll have to save it because I don't have the energy to get my digital camera and upload it at the moment.
Anyway, some good reading if you want the "full story" behind Expelled:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has been making a lot of news lately. It was the number 10 movie over the weekend(admittedly in a weekend of lousy movies; No. 1 was The Forbidden Kingdom, a Jet Li/Jackie Chan film, by way of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3-as much as I like Jackie Chan, and occasionally enjoy Jet Li, this looked like crap to me). They are getting enough recognition that the movie dominates the entire first page of Google results for "expelled."
Anyway, I've been following this movie for a while, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it. We were supposed to review it for the podcast last friday, but Don had to go and take a vacation that weekend. So we'll have something next week, Lord willing.
However, I did want to post this interesting news bit, since it's not really related to anything we might be reviewing in the film. The producers of the movie have been hit with two legal complaints regarding material being used without permission in the film.
"Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. "
As a filmmaker, I have some experience with the fair use doctrine that the producers are trying to use to defend their use of the film. I haven't seen the film yet, but I think that they have a very shakey case. I'm no lawyer, but based on my readings of fair use law, it seems that it is permissalbe to use copyrighted material if you are making a statement about that material.
For example, in a parody film that I made a few months ago, I use a movie trailer and the audio from a television commercial to make a statement on the strange and ludicrious similarities between the two. I initially considered using on the song from the commercial, since that song has been associated so strongly with the brand, but the problem with that is that by divorcing the song from the context it is merely a song. I would still be making a statement about the movie trailer, but what, if any, statement would I be making about the song? I might be able to defend it based upon the song's strong association with the commercials, but it would be a bit of a stretch.
This is a problem that filmmakers often have involving music and fair use. Often, filmmakers will legitimately use video material to make a commentary by, say, juxtaposing video of violence on the news with complaints of violence in video games. This is legitimate, "fair use" of the material. However, if they put a popular rock song over the video, that would be copyright violation, unless they were somehow making a statement about the song as well. I'll have to pay attention in the film to how Lennon's music is used to see if it seems fair use to me.
The independant Christian film world is really just taking off left and right! Just today I heard about a cool project being produced by Dallas Christian Filmmakers. It is titled Measure of a Man and is a doucmentary about a man who was born with no limbs who preaches the gospel. It sounds like a very cool and inspiring documentary project, and I hope that they do well with it. Stephanie Carrillo, the director of the film, writes about it on her blog, which is where I heard of it. On a related note, the Dallas Christian Filmmakers, an association of film-minded Christians banding together to produce films, is a great idea. They have a DVD available of a short film entitled The Call of Courage on their website. It looks like it could be entertaining; a Civil War drama featuring some good looking Civil War re-enactors participating. It is a bit pricey for the length($12 for 20 some odd minutes), but I might take the plunge and buy it anyway. If we're going to review bad, low budget movies, I'd rather put my money towards those that are produced by people who love to make films and have something they want to say than send another $15 to Hollywood for some insulting attempt at getting Christians money.
John Armstrong has reviewed the recently released The Case for ChristrThe Movie on DVD. He gives it high marks as a film and as a DVD, which has several interesting sounding extra features.
It sounds like a fairly boring documentary, but I hope that they managed to get some of the more engaging parts of the book translated well to the screen.
I read this book years ago, and, if they simply video the interviews from that are described in the book, it would be an effective, if dry, movie. Good christian documentaries need to learn from the bad ones, which cover up their poor research and lack of "facts" with flashy effects and dramatic music.
