Nomad
Posts: 311
Joined: July 2007
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Okay, trying to respond to a bunch of comments at once here..
First off, no non disclosure agreement. They explained that they just had to get our information because they movie wasn't in final form and because of the piracy threat. It wasn't really a legal form, and unless I somehow forgot this part I don't think the form even had a place for a signature, just for printing your name and phone number and such.
About the cell animation, I just don't know. There was no flagellum (no talk of it at all, also no talk of IC, the movie made nearly zero mention of any actual fact or scientific argument except a bunch of ID "scientists" saying that mainstream science has no explanation for a bunch of unspecified stuff). I'm not up on my biology, so I can't tell you what it was that was shown in the animation, but one of the memorable bits was similar to something I'd seen on the XVIVO animation. It was similar to the scene where you see what looks like an almost cartoonish pair of walking feet walking along a tube, pulling a large blob attached to them by a tether. But it was different in the version used in the movie, the feet weren't so much walking as sort of sliding along the tube like they were running along a rail. It also had scenes of structures disassembling themselves, breaking up into a cascade of small pieces, but again it doesn't appear identical to the XVIVO piece that I'm looking at to refresh my memory although similar sequences appear.
I hope I didn't imply that I was accusing them of stealing it, I felt it was unlikely given the attention that the previous theft attracted and the fact that this will (theoretically) get a nationwide commercial release. But the similarity was striking, I was just waiting for someone to start talking about the cell as a city. I should have watched for CG credits at the end.
As far as the extent of the theatrical release, they had no specific info. One of the other members of the audience asked how many theaters it would be released in and the rep said he didn't know. I have to wonder if the reason he didn't know was that they're having trouble getting it into any theater, they only got it into this one by renting it out and apparently using their own equipment. The digital projector itself looked like they might have brought it, after the movie started it shifted slightly as they tried to straighten it out, it had been a bit crooked and they made it perhaps slightly more crooked by messing with it.
Regarding their usage of the Pink Floyd song.. I think they got permission somehow or another. It wasn't the original Pink Floyd performance, it was played solely on string instruments. I don't know the details, but I think the law is different about using a musical composition but recording a new version yourself. It's still protected, but perhaps not to the same degree or something. I just don't think they'd steal a song and use it on a movie intended or at least hoped to be released to a nationwide audience. Unless the commercial release is a hoax and they never intended to get it out to anyone other than these carefully selected audiences.
I'm not entirely certain if the point of this movie is to make money. When you look at some of the details, like the plans to pay schools to force their students to go see it, it starts sounding fishy. I start wondering if the whole thing is meant more as a promotional stunt than a means to rake in the money. They make motions of intending to release to theaters nationwide and keep pushing the date back and then finally they could announce that the evil conspiracy is keeping them from getting into the theaters. Maybe the producers could get some cash from charging for churches to show it in their basements, but in that scenario the movie is more like a large scale advertising campaign.
They could still make some money by releasing it on DVD, in fact one member of the audience asked when the DVD would be out. But judging by the getexpelled site (which was the one referred to as being for people of faith and includes information for people who want to set up an expelled debate at their school) they're trying to convince their target demographic that they're part of a grass roots campaign to defend freedom and liberty. I don't think this is a cynical attempt to profit off of the religiously minded. I think it is an even more cynical attempt to manipulate the religiously minded who aren't already fixated on taking over schools and forcing their beliefs on the entire country to start doing just that.
Oh, and one final note about something that I feel I should have been clearer on regarding the treatment of the holocaust. What they did in the movie was refer to the instances where the Nazis gathered up and executed the... I don't know how to say it, the disabled. The "physically inferior". They got a German tour guide of the structure where the people had been killed to state that the people were killed because of Darwin. I wanted to ask the filmmakers if they were familiar with the traditional way for ancient Spartans to deal with the birth of such a child, and if they believed that the evil of darwinsim extends backwards in time as well.
They then attempted to suggest that that sort of thinking was behind the entire holocaust. This is tricky to talk about because I feel like I'm trying to defend part of it, but the campaign to exterminate the Jews was different. It was racial scapegoating, it was a traditional tactic arguably as old as religion itself.
And I'm still furious that Ben Stein played off his Jewish Heritage and ignored all those details to blame it all on science. I still can't figure out Ben's motive behind all this. He can't have been paid enough. The filmmakers can proceed to make more drivel like this, they'll always have an audience. But can Ben be counting on becoming the next bizarre conservative religious spokesperson in the style of Kirk Cameron or Chuck Norris? Perhaps his recent financial advice screwups were the result of him phoning in his last days as a financial guru before he moves on to Liars for Jesus inc? Is a Fox News guest commenter relationship on the horizon?
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