Best Expelled review yet

I nominate this review of Expelled as the best yet. It's by Ken Hanke, film critic of the Asheville Mountain X Press, the alternative weekly in western North Carolina. The summary is priceless ;;;;; "An interminable, shockingly bad and completely irresponsible slab of propaganda masquerading as fact." And the review is full of gems like:

Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking in Nathan Frankowski's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--a no more shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda has ever skulked its way into the theater.

...

The reality is that the film is as phony as Stein's "just folks" posturing. This is nothing but stacked-deck religious-right propaganda palmed off as a serious debate on intelligent design.

...

All this builds to the film going completely nutzoid as it proceeds to link eugenics to modern-day Planned Parenthood and the theory of evolution to Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust.... This may be the most morally vile exploitation of the Holocaust on record. Not content with the inserted horrific clips, we're also treated to Stein pretending he's just heard about Dachau for the first time and burying his face in his hands after the fashion of a 19th-century manual of dramatic gestures. It's one of the most stomach-churning moments in the history of film.

How about we start a little contest: nominate your favorite Expelled review in the comments to this post, and in a week we'll just how scathing the film criticism community can be, as judged by me. All nominations must be of published reviews.

Whoever finds the best review will get a copy of a book on science fiction in the movies I picked up at this year's North Carolina Science Blogging Conference.

Tags

More like this

From FOX: After seeing a new non-fiction film starring Comedy Central's Ben Stein, you may not only be able to win his money, but also his career. Stein is that whiny little guy with the monotone voice that makes him seem funny and an unlikely "character" for TV appearances. But that career may be…
The makers of Expelled have just issued an "online media alert" in response to a critical review of their movie, as some readers have forwarded to me. It's hysterical. We already had our first security breech [sic] and are asking YOU now for your support to stand up for EXPELLED: No Intelligence…
They just keep coming. A few hours ago I posted about a lukewarm review of Expelled that appeared on the Variety website, and rottentomatoes.com has pointed me to a few more reviews of the film. A Slant review by Nick Schager skewers the film for the hypocrisy within it; For a film about American…
As you have undoubtedly heard, a group of evolutionary biologists and evolutionary biology supporters attended a showing of the movie Expelled, in the Twin Cities, last night. This group included the very famous Richard Dawkins and the only slightly less famous PZ Myers. PZ and Richard, in fact,…

Great review. I also liked the one in the Detroit Free Press.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008804180337

I believe these people who made "Expelled" have fallen victim to their own right wing dogmas. You can almost see these guys deciding if Micheal Moore can get by with fudging facts to attack the right they could do the same making this film. Little realizing the truth of the statement:

"The truth has a liberal bias" - S. Colbert 2007

By d simpson (not verified) on 26 Apr 2008 #permalink

My favourite paragraph from the Derbyshire review:

These dishonesties do not surprise me. When talking about the creationists to people who don't follow these controversies closely, I have found that the hardest thing to get across is the shifty, low-cunning aspect of the whole modern creationist enterprise. Individual creationists can be very nice people, though they get nicer the further away they are from the full-time core enterprise of modern creationism at the Discovery Institute. The enterprise as a whole, however, really doesn't smell good. You notice this when you're around it a lot. I shall give some more examples in a minute; but what accounts for all this dishonesty and misrepresentation?

I disagree with a lot of what is written at NRO, but this was spot on. It perfectly articulates what I've long felt about creationists.

So I vote for Aaron to win the book.

Whoops, I meant, I vote for Omar Ali to win the book.

Gaagh. I can't seem to get it right- Efogoto for the win!