First, RIP Patrick Swayze.
Second, as submitted to Texts From Last Night:
"i hope kanye doesn't show up to patrick swayze's funeral. " i'll let you get back to your funeral in a minute...but michael jackson had the best death of the year. just sayinnn "."Genius.
If you haven't heard, there's a movie coming out soon called Creation based on the life of Charles Darwin. From Roger Ebert's blog, in which he emphasizes that his actual review of the film will await its October release:
"I expected the film to be focused on Darwin's theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882. There they had ten children, three of whom died young. The film is much concerned with his grief at the loss of Anne (1841-51) who was one of the brightest and most delightful, and whose direct questions perhaps helped embolden him to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after a 20-year delay."Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, thinks highly of it.
"Most of the people watching the movie think of Darwin as a cardboard figure – especially the stern, elderly Victorian guy with a long white beard in the black coat. They aren’t going to think about Darwin as a tall and vigorous man very much devoted to his pretty wife, with a houseful of noisy children who adored him. In my experience, much of the public, following the Creationists, thinks he wrote one not-very-good book, and is unaware that Darwin devoted his life to science, conducting experiments and making observations and being held in high regard by his contemporaries. In particular, Darwin as a passionate, loving human being is far from how most Americans picture him. And that’s too bad, because cardboard cutouts aren’t real – and the real is so much more interesting. I like to think that someone seeing this movie will be stimulated to read one of the many biographies found on the movie’s excellent website (www.creationthemovie.com), or otherwise easily accessible. "Dr. Scott does make one important point: Creation does not yet have a North American distributor. But we live in hope:
"If a bomb like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed can get a distributor, a well-made movie with an excellent script, actors, direction, and cinematography like Creation surely should."Seriously. Go see it, people.
Before I move on, let me set the record straight: I consider the two Batman movies with Christian Bale and the Iron Man flick with Robert Downey, Jr. to be three of the best movies I've ever seen. Because they're action movies that remembered the first rule of good moviemaking: It's the storyline, stupid!
But now this:
"On Monday, Marvel Studios announced that Natalie Portman has been added to the cast of the upcoming big-budget Thor flick, scheduled to begin production early next year. She'll play "an updated version" of Jane Foster, a character who served as love interest for both the God of Thunder and his earthly alter-ego, Dr. Don Blake, back in the Thor comic's early years."Further proof that now that Marvel has its own movie studio, it's even more determined than ever to make a movie out of EVERY SINGLE MARVEL CHARACTER EVER PUT TO INK! And in the case of Spider Man 3, stuffing as many of the villains into one movie as you can, thus watering the soup in the process.
And he hated every minute of it.
And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it "From Darwin to Hitler." He finds a Creationist who informs him, "Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism." He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment.Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one "result" of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. "As a Jew," he says, "I wanted to see for myself." We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. "It's difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place," he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.
Ebert's blog states he'd been accused of not reviewing the movie because he had a bias against "Intelligent" Design. He actually has a bias against false Christians (or in Stein's case, Jews) and intellectual dishonesty.
(W)e lost an American icon who stood for traits that have been in short supply...: shrewdness, humility, decency, generosity, class.
Roger Ebert loved it:
“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”
Yawn.
Someone once said Star Wars looks better the younger your eyes are. True, for me.
...because even Fox Freaking News says so.
Congratulations, Ben Stein, you have well and truly dialed in the rifle sights on your own credibility.
