I'm not afraid of controversy! Not when I'm right! (I think...)

Devoted reader Adrian dropped me a line about a funny bit of news regarding Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  The producers of the movie have recieved the dubious honor of a "Pigasus" award, awarded by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) to people or organizations that have done their best in the past year to snuff out science and promote irrationality.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed won under the category of "To the Funding Organization that supports the most useless study related to the occult, supernatural, or paranormal during the year."

As much as it tickles me to mention this 'award,' I have to say that I would define very little of Expelled's content as relating to the occult, supernatural or paranormal, and the elaborations on the Pigasus website offer little defense of their reasoning.  To be fair, several of their other 'awardees' have only the slightest connection to these subjects.  It seems this award is really just looking to lambast bad science, which is all well and good, but maybe not so fun. 



The producers share the 'honor' with such luminaries as late night cable TV, some guy who claims he can shoot beams from his eyes, Jenny McCarthy (for her anti-vaccine hysteria), and Kevin Trudeau.  I happen to have actually read Trudeau's book about "cures THEY don't want you to know about."  A friend bought it and gave it to me, asking me for my opinion.  I found it startling that the book provided not a single actual 'cure,' instead spending the vast majority of its time bad-mouthing such villains as Doctors, Gyms, and antibiotics.  It was also one of the most eregrious examples of logical fallacies I've ever seen.  Until Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed came along!  ZING!


Congratluations to the producers of Expelled!  Your movie is great proof that any publicity is good publicity! 

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It's sure not a lamp shaped like a leg: The Widow's Might Wins Major Award!

A 19-year-old filmmaker beat out the makers of Fireproof  and Expelled  to win the best of festival prize at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival .  This is the prize that comes with $101,000 of cool, hard cash.  


The winner is the movie that we've talked about once or twice, The Widow's Might .  Now that its available for download and has won a major prize, we'll have to review it soon.  


The Rebelution Blog reports the full list of winners, scooping the film festival itself, which has nothing on their own web page yet, although the parent organization of the film festival, Doug Phillip's Vision Forum, does have a press release .  I'm late myself, and I've at least got the excuse of playing war with the national guard all weekend!  

All the rest of the categories are listed below.  Interestingly, the "Best Commercial Advertisement" and "Best Promotional Material" winners are not listed on either list of awardees.

Best Trailer:  Changing Lives  (this is apparently a "trailer" for the film festival itself, seems like a good way to get free advertising.  Anyway, you can watch it here , and it was made by Jeremiah Warren, who also worked on The Widow's Might 
Young Filmmakers:  A Journey of Hope
Best Treatment:  Sand Town (this is not a film, but an idea in the pre-script stage)
Best Creation Film:  Noah's Ark
Best Biblical Family Film:  Binding Faith
Best Short Film:  Prodigal Trilogy
Best Original Score:  The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry  (not to be confused with The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey )
Audience Choice:  The Widow's Might 
Best Documentary:  The Terry Schiavo Story (just when you thought CNN/MSNBC/FOX had wrung all there was out of that story.  But at least it beat Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed )
Best Feature Film:  Fireproof  (an interesting split with The Widow's Might .  Fireproof certainly doesn't need the money...)

Oh, and I should correct an earlier mistake.  The Widow's Might is available on DVD, in a limited edition run, for $20.  

(Thanks to Awaken Pictures for the head's up on this story!)
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Finalists for San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival $100k prize

The finalists for the big prize at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival's have been announced, and some of them will be familiar to SuperCandid readers.

Feature film finalists are:
Fireproof 
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed 
Pendragon, Sword of His Father 
Pilgrim's Progress: Journey to Heaven
The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry
The Sound of a Dirt Road
Throw a Few Things on the Ground
The Widow's Might 


My money's on Fireproof, the Titanic of Christian movies.  If Expelled wins, the SAICFF should be forced to shut down.

The semi-finalists have also been announced in other categories, including documentary(for which, thankfully, Expelled is not nominated), short films(including Dialtone ), and Young Filmmakers.

Hopefully Fireproof wins so that the Kendricks get an extra $101,000 for their next movie.  We want more action scenes!

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Fireproof starts a fire in the box office!

WOW!  Fireproof  blew up this weekend!

Fireproof  grossed a total of $6,514,000 over the weekend!  That's 13 times its budget!  One weekend and it's twice as big a profit, percentage wise, as Star Wars: Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith!

Even more amazing, it averaged $7,764 per screen, which puts it in the neighborhood of Evan Almighty, which had a budget over 10,000% higher!  

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed , which was made a huge splash as the 12th highest grossing documentary of all time, averaged only a little more than $2,000 on its best weekend.  

Congrats to Sherwood Pictures, the Kendrick Bros. and whoever is making all the money off this film (probably MGM, the parent company of distributor Samuel Goldwyn).  Hopefully we'll see it next week!

(Box Office Mojo) 

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More on Expelled

More info on the much talked about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Stein makes more contradictory statments in an interview with the Toronto Star.  He says that he didn't have any opinons on intelligent design before making the film, but he also says that he was "intrigued by the idea of making a movie that would implicitly connect Darwinism with the Holocaust," so he can hardly be called "un-biased."  

I'm kind of tired of hearing about this film, so unless there is some really big news I think this'll be our last Expelled post.  

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Expelled Lawsuit Update

Oh, a quick post before I go off to study for an exam!  Don & I saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed this afternoon.  Yes, we've broken our no documentaries moratorum for the 4th or 5th time.  Anyway, the review'll be recorded on Friday, so look for it this weekend.  

But...you can have my arm chair lawyer thoughts on the copyright lawsuits right now, as a follow up to my post from last week.  

My positions have completely reversed!  The use of John Lennon's Imagine, which I thought sounded problematic, looks like fair use to me.  Only a couple of lines are played, and they are played to illustrate the fact that one of the speakers is basically saying the same thing.  I think that it falls well within the fair use guidelines. 

However, the cell visualization, regardless of weather it technically violates any copyrights or not, is just a rip-off of The Inner Life of a Cell.  The music, the visual choices, the cutting; straight lifts.  They might not have technically done anything wrong, if they show that they simply used similar research material as a basis, but it is really bad taste.  There is no way to say that they were not, at the least, copying it in spirit.  A gentleman would not stoop so low.   Save This Page