Expelled

There’s a new movie coming out called Expelled. In it Ben Stein takes on the scientific community, claiming that scientists who dare challenge evolution are being unfairly ostracized. The movie was recently screened here in Central Florida and movie critic for the Orlando Sentinel, Roger Moore, blasts the film to smithereens. My favorite part:

He was showing the movie to what he and the producers hoped would be a friendly, receptive audience of conservative Christian ministers at a conference at the Northland mega-church next to the dog track up in Longwood. They’re marking this movie, which they had said, earlier, they’d open in Feb. (now April) the same way they pitched The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, said Paul Lauer of Motive Entertainment, who introduced Stein.

In other words, a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn’t a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it.

They postered the Orlando Sentinel with email invitations, then tried to withdraw the one they sent to me. No dice. They also passed out non-disclosure “statement of confidentiality” agreements for people to sign. I didn’t.

What are they hiding from you? Straight propaganda, to be sure.

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Oh, and keeping your movie from the public because you’re afraid of ridicule is just gutless. Put it out there, let people have time to chew on your arguments. Your fans will buy tickets. And plenty of folks will emerge to tear it apart. Even Michael Moore has the courage to do that.