My Bloody Valentine 3D isn’t worth watching in one dimension, let alone three. But it does serve to spark some good conversation. What other gimmicks have boosted the box office of sub-par films? What does good contemporary horror look like? Neil Marshall’s The Descent offers a refreshing palette cleanser. Also, what do horror and porn have in common, besides cheap nudity?
Karina checks in from Park City with some hits and misses from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Moon, Hump Day, and The September Issue were worth writing home about, while Paper Hearts and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will quietly fall into obscurity (we hope).
Listen to FilmCouch and win free stuff! Send us an e-mail telling us the most absurd piece of merchandise you’ve seen branded with an image of Che Guevara, and you can win a program from the Che roadshow signed by Steven Soderbergh, a copy of Che’s Diaries, and the soundtrack to the film. Send e-mails to filmcouch (at) spout (dot) com.
FilmCouch 105 [47:09m]:
Play Now |
Download
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro
3:22 - Psychoanalyzing a listener based on his favorite films
8:15 - My Bloody Valentine 3D, gimmicks throughout movie history
16:22 - Humanizing horror vs. porn with blood
31:12 - Sundance
filmcouch-105
Last week, Roger Ebert finally got around to destroying reviewing Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Ebert’s rant is as cerebral as it is merciless, and it’s worth a read even if you haven’t seen the film. He makes some good points about how the film completely misunderstands the concepts of probability and selection, forming flashy but ultimately useless argument.
Ebert’s rage is thinly veiled. He’s obviously upset that clear logical fallacies can go unnoticed by so many people. Sure, misreading Darwin while attempting to refute him is a lame move when engaging in scientific debate, but the practice is quite common when it comes to filmmaking. When movies deal with evolution, there’s an unspoken understanding that they can completely distort the theory beyond recognition. It’s kind of like calling someone a pedophile during a Friar’s Club Roast, everyone knows it isn’t true, and it’s all in good fun.
When you look at it in this way, Expelled is just the latest in a long line of films that distort the theory of evolution to make a buck. Here are 5 more that are guilty of crimes against the origin of humanity:
…Read more
