Expelled Posts 3rd Best

Never mind the critics — people are giving the movie thumbs up with their wallets. Here’s just a few of the comments from viewers that I received in e-mail this weekend.

One theatre in Clark County, WA presented “Expelled”. It seats 321 (I asked) and I estimate there were no more than 10 or 15 empty seats.
We attended a 7:00 Friday night showing in the San Diego area. The three-hundred-seat Edwards Cinema was almost completely full and the film received enthusiastic sustained applause at the end. Overall, I’m pleased with the finished product. This morning, some friends told us they saw “Expelled” yesterday (Sat.) afternoon at 1:30 at the same theater–300 or so seats. They said the house was 2/3 – 3/4 full and the film received warm applause at its conclusion.

I saw the movie at a 6:30 pm showing in a Kerasotes theatre in Skokie, IL, a northern suburb of Chicago — the showing wasn’t full, but was well-attended (most of the seats were filled, with significant applause at the end)

Northern California, 7:15 pm showing, looked sold out or practically sold out. One guy was handing out Darwin $10,000 bills. The audience was audibly impressed. I thought it was really good and could hardly restrain myself during the cell video portion and Dr. Axe’s excellent explanations. Big kudos to everybody.

We went to the opening last night in Independence, OR which is about 15 minutes southwest of Salem. Our little town theater was packed for the opening night of this movie. Young and old alike were present. Everybody clapped at the conclusion.

I took a couple of friends to the 9:15 showing of Expelled at Bellevue’s (WA) Lincoln Center last night. The theater was more than half full (pretty good, I thought) and the crowd was friendly — even applauding at the end of the film.

Haven’t gotten to the theater yet (will do so tonight), but by sending hoards of our students, greedy for bonus points, we made a big showing at 5:30, sold out at 7:45, and almost certainly sold out 10 (tickets for that show were going fast at 7:30!). I expect more of the same Saturday.

I took friends to the 7:40 showing but it was sold out. Only one theater in town had it on the schedule.

We had about 45 people in a theater that holds 4-5x as many, but we too had applause at the end. Note Eugene (OR) likens itself to a Berkley of the Northwest and that might be a massive turn out for us.

We were not sold out (north of Houston), but we went to a late night showing due to time schedule constraints.

San Bernardino, California: It’s nice to know that I am living in the deep south, according to the various critics of this movie. Not sold out, but very full on a Friday evening when our baseball team was playing rival High Desert Mavericks on 50cent Fridays.

I have offered my students extra credit if they go see it. When I went last night I found about 70 – 100 people in my showing (which is only 1 of three theaters in the Lexington, KY area that are showing it. And I was pleased to say that only 1 of the other attendees was one of my students (I had feared that my students would make up half or more of the audiences).

I saw the movie yesterday — it was awesome! (Knoxville, Tn)

The theater here in Ontario (Calif.) was near to full at the Friday night 7:40pm showing. The audience seemed to really enjoy the film and applauded at the end.

The real measure of a work of art is what is left out of it. In the realm of communication, the theme is what provides the power and the persuasion. If the producers had cluttered up the theme of injustice by introducing extraneous intellectual material, it would have ruined the effect. As an analogy, consider Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a dream.” Now picture him reserving a section for commenting on trickle down economics and imagine what happens to the inspirational tone of the address.

5-STAR!

I went with my son and a friend to a 10 p.m. showing on the 18th in Fayetteville, NC.

Only about 20 or so there at that late hour.

The movie is GREAT! Stein and producers have a knack at keeping the action flow lively so it is not just a series of boring interviews, but should have an appeal to a much wider audience than solely science and/or religion aficionados.

The juxtaposition of old movie footage interspersed throughout drove home key points being made and provided some creative humor interlude. All was done respectfully enough, it should be noted, and not in the sarcastic and profane way that so much of this has been done in similar contexts by the evolutionists.

It was made clrearer than ever through the on-site interviews at the death camps with Uta George and Dr, Weikhart that Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust WERE justified ultimately by the irreligious spirit pervading Germany at the time which emanated from the German academy.

There is plenty of history available to corroborate this and its open-handed discussion should be undertaken in our schools today as a fair warning to our children.

The connections between the eugenicists and Planned Parenthood were noted and are obviously quite ominous in our day as PPH is the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars of government largess. (I was expecting to see a picture of Terry Schiavo flash across the screen when euthanasia was mentioned, but time or taste apparently did not allow for this)

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw a colored push pin protruding clearly from the heart of Cumberland County, NC, on Eugenie Scott’s Hot-spot
U. S. map of “creationist” uprisings for which she had been called to assist in suppressing! This was our doing not too long ago.

Ben Stein was so calm and collected through the whole set of interviews and it was amazing how he had Dawkins, P.Z. Meyers, and others confessing to ulterior (sociological/political) motivations and implications of their grand Neo-Darwinian programme.

Don’t expect rave reviews in secular media. Mostly they will attempt to ignore it and hope it “goes away” and is soon forgotten. But it is timeless in content and should be promoted via DVDs in every school in America as well as shown on television wherever this can be arranged.

I know that some have complained that the movie didn’t focus more on ID as science, but my deep impression was that this film indeed was a documentary: documenting Ben Stein’s odyssey searching for the real answer as to whether or not academia was silencing debate. If you look at each vignette, it builds on the prior ones as Stein comes to the realization that ID is not bogus science, and that Darwinism is indeed like a religion.

The objective nature of this odyssey gives the movie its strength. So, I, for one, am happy with its composition. I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do: document Darwinian bigotry and idealogy.

I think that the connection between Darwinism and Nazism was fair in the context used. The point was to draw to attention the fact that Darwinism is an ideology, and like any ideology it can be twisted or misinterpreted with truly horrifying consequences. I approved of the acknowledgement that Hitler truly believed that he was doing the right thing, at least when it came to the slaughter of people with disabilities and ethnic cleansing. He truly thought he could create a “perfect” race. Nazism is a deadly mixture of misinformation, self-righteousness, and extreme Darwinism. That is undeniable. I’m an agnostic myself, and I have no quarrel with those who draw attention to atrocities commited “In the Name of God”. But say that Darwinism is incapable of begetting evil, to say that organized religion exclusively a source of corruption… that is simply absurd. Humans have always lived, died, and killed for causes. At the end of the day, Darwinism is just another cause, an old cause that’s started to crumble. And the purpose of this film was to expose the oppression suffered by those who oppose it.

Much laughter at Dawkins and others.

30 secs or more applause at the end.

They loved that Dawkins made a fool of himself.

Approx 50 attendees at 5:40 Friday showing. My wife and son went.
Applause afterword. Great movie.

I would have preffered more actual science/math evidence supporting ID.

I just sent in my donation to the Discovery Institute. I want them to be able to buy the whole building.

Denyse, today I noticed in the entertainment section of the Dallas Morning News it had the EXPELLED movie ad almost hidden. It was one page after the rest of the movie ads, all by itself, and away from the movie listings. What are the odds of that “coincidence”?

Smurf