Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Opening nationwide in theaters next week, April 18, 2008, is Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This looks to be a good and entertaining look at the ongoing debate between the Darwinian Evolutionist camp and the Intelligent Design camp. With Ben Stein being involved, it will also prove to be somewhat funny as well.

The fact brilliant scientists are losing their jobs, being denied tenure, putting their entire academic careers on the line for an alternate theory is ludicrous, especially in this day and age. Unfortunately, the naturalistic evolutionists are the gatekeepers to upper echelons of the scientific community and therefore they wield a lot of power and can squash much of the counter-perspective brought against them. They say that the Intelligent Design group does not have any serious papers published in peer-reviewed journals, therefore their views and research cannot be taken seriously. But what most people do not understand is that those papers have to go through the evolutionists and they do the peer-reviews and they decide who gets published and who doesn’t. So the game is rigged right from the start because they control the peer-reviews, the access to get published by them, etc.

The unfortunate thing about all this is that there is some good research being done that has better explanatory power and scope over 19th century Darwinism. Just to be clear, I’m not claiming that all evolutionary theory is bad or incorrect. There is viable and valid aspects of what it has done and brought to light. But there are also many things that it is capable of explaining and it seems that there needs to be tweaks to the theories as well as alternate theories allowed the chance to come to light so that intelligent people can make up their own minds, do their own research, and be allowed access to grant money to help fund that research.

Anyway, I’m typically swamped with work, school, church activities and the like, but next week I plan on making time to catch this in the theaters.

Below is an extended trailer:

Blu-ray Releases - 3/11/2008

The following Blu-ray movies are being released today:

• Appleseed Ex Machina
• August Rush
• Dan in Real Life
• Dogma
• Gattaca
• Hitman: Unrated
• I, Robot
• Independence Day
• No Country for Old Men
• Sleuth

The one that I am mainly interested in from this bunch is Dan in Real Life (Disney/Buena Vista). I watched this on my birthday that I share with a guy by the name of Dan (coincidence? I think not…). It was an excellent movie with a fantastic soundtrack - I just loved it. I will be picking this one up today and adding it to the collection. Others that I am interested in are Gattaca (purchasing), I, Robot (purchasing) and No Country for Old Men (renting). I will not be buying those other ones yet, but I bet they would look terrific dressed in Blu. The technical specs for Dan in Real Life are as follows:

• General information:
  • Studio: Disney/Buena Vista
  • Year of Release: 2007
  • Length: 98 minutes (1 hour, 38 minutes)
  • Rated: PG-13
  • Street Date: Mar. 11, 2008
• Video:
  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
  • Resolution: 1080p
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Audio:
  • PCM 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
  • Dolby Digital 5.1 (English)
• Disc: 50GB Blu-ray
• Price: $23.95

American Idol (2008) - Week 3 - Top 3 Girls

So I had a tough time picking 3 girls who I felt were good enough to be in the Top 3. I seriously thought this would be a Top 2… Guys are definitely stronger than the girls at this point in the competition and if any of the women want to win, they had better really step it up. My top 3, in order, are as follows

1. Kristy Lee Cook (2 weeks in a row - 1st time in the #1 position, last week was #3)
2. Carly Smithson (2 weeks in a row - last week was #1)
3. Amanda Overmyer (1st time in Top 3)

Kristy Lee Cook sang Journey’s Faithfully with a light country sound layered on. A small subtle change that really worked out well for her on a very difficult song, but she did an excellent job.

Carly Smithson sang Celine Dion’s I Drove All Night. She did a good job of it and man she has a good voice, but c’mon…Can we get a moratorium on diva songs, please? Celine, Whitney, etc…for the good of mankind, let’s just not attempt it.

Amanda Overmyer sang Joan Jett’s I Hate Myself For Loving You. Perfect song choice for her voice and style. Unfortunately for her this might be all that she is capable of and therefore she will be relegated to AC/DC status - three chords, a clever lyric, and a bar. She totally butchered Kansas last week and she should have been sent packing then. She redeemed herself this week, but because she has such a narrow range and genre, she will not make it far in this competition.

Going home tonight: It’s a toss up - anyone but these three…

Here are my top 3 performance videos:

Kristy Lee Cook

Carly Smithson

Amanda Overmyer

Dreamworks Still Seeing Red

The last studio standing in HD-DVD exclusivity is Dreamworks. According to a statement made by Katzenberg (HighDefDigest), Dreamworks was waiting to hear back from Toshiba on how they should proceed. Bad news is that Paramount is has nixed their HD-DVD schedule past March 4, which means that the Bee Movie (a Dreamworks picture) that was scheduled to be released on March 11 by Paramount will not be happening.

Sounds like a bit of a mess if you ask me. Hopefully they resolve this soon.

Paramount Changes Release Schedule

Paramount Pictures has announced a change in the upcoming movie releases. According to Video Business, Paramount will release its final HD DVD movies on March 4. Everything that was scheduled to be released after that date on HD-DVD has been pulled. There is no word yet on when the Blu-rays will begin rolling out the door for Paramount, nor is there any word on what the first Blu-ray offerings Paramount will dish up when they do begin releasing them.

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