Expelled — rounding up some odds’n’ends

Expelled — rounding up some odds’n’ends March 10, 2008


Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary on the Intelligent Design movement and the opposition it faces from evolutionary scientists and the academic establishment, was originally going to open in February, on Charles Darwin’s 199th birthday.

The release date has since been postponed to April 18, and both the filmmakers and their opponents are using the extra time to raise awareness of the film, whether intentionally or otherwise; Variety was already reporting on the movie’s promotional efforts almost a month ago, and both SlashFilm and Paste magazine have noted that the new release date puts the movie out there about two months before Bill Maher’s religion-mocking documentary Religulous, which will presumably have a similar “guerrilla vérité” style but from a completely opposite ideological point of view.

Today, the New York Times reported that Orlando Sentinel critic Roger Moore caused a stir recently by giving the film a negative review at his blog. Leonard Pierce at The Screengrab has also written a scathing review, though the film’s fans don’t appear to have noticed it yet. In the meantime, the film has had glowing endorsements from Tom Bethell of the American Spectator and Jack Cashill of WorldNetDaily, and a more balanced assessment from my colleague Brett McCracken. Moore has been criticized for failing to sign and then follow a non-disclosure agreement, but McCracken says there was no such form to sign at the screening he attended; it is not clear whether Pierce, Bethell or Cashill were asked to honour any embargoes before writing their own commentaries.

Ben Stein, who narrates the film and stars in it, has spent the past few months drumming up interest in it, starring in trailers and doing interviews and so forth and so on. My own interview with him will appear at CT Movies closer to the film’s release date.

For now, here is the extended trailer, which includes a nod to Ben Stein’s cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986):


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And here is Ben Stein being interviewed by R.C. Sproul:

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