Category Archives: culture

Creation

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Creation, the first feature-length biographic film about Charles Darwin, is playing now at the Toronto Film Festival. NCSE’s Eugenie Scott got to attend a preview, and she likes it.

I believe it to be a thoughtful, well-made film that will change many views of Darwin held by the public—for the good. The acting is strong, the visuals are wonderful, and it treats with loving care the Victorian details of the furnishings at Down house and other sites (such as Malvern), and the local church.

The film focuses not directly on the writing of The Origin, but instead on Darwin’s relationship with his devout wife Emma, which by every account I’ve read was uncommonly tender. Roger Ebert makes some remarks, too, though he’s waiting on a full review until the film is released. Which, unfortunately, hasn’t been arranged yet in the States. I think it looks really good, and it’ll be a crying shame if it doesn’t arrive stateside during the year of the Darwin Bicentenary.

Via GrrlScientist, who links to more reviews and the movie’s website [flash].

“There were a few flipper babies.”

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The AV Club gives the under-appreciated Brain Candy its dues.

The Kids In The Hall’s ill-fated debut feature is closer in conception, ambition, and scope to Monty Python movies like Life Of Brian and Monty Python And The Holy Grail than the Saturday Night Live movies being churned out at the time by SNL Studios. Like Idiocracy,it’s less about a character or a set of characters than society as a whole.

Comedy doesn’t come much blacker than when one of your movie’s most quotable laugh lines is a crack about birth defects.

AV Club on Eyes Wide Shut

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Via kottke.org: The Onion AV Club rehabilitates Eyes Wide Shut. I don’t remember much of the critical panning that accompanied the movie’s original release, and I didn’t see it till some grad-student friends and I committed to watch Stanley Kubrick’s major films in chronological order a couple years ago. But I agree with the review that it’s up to Kubrick’s usual high standards.

Given the choice, though, I tend to prefer 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove, which between the two of them account for my interests in evolution, hard science fiction, conscientious objection to war, and Peter Sellers.