"Expelled Exposed" - New and Improved!

[Skeptic Ginger]

These links may be posted somewhere but in case they have not been seen yet:

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry: Expelling All Reason

Scientific American: Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...

 

[Dragon]

Now that is cool because it really did piss me off when they played John Lennon's, "Imagine", over pictures of Stalin.

If you ask me, Ono is just exercising her free speech right to protest that insult to Lennon.

skeptigirl, how much of the song is in the movie?

Can any of the lawyers here say whether they think that the producers will get away with a "fair use" defence?

I really hope Yoko cleans them out - the notion that lack of faith leads to the evils of communism/Nazism is absurd and insulting (plus I'm a Beatles/Lennon fan).

 

[krelnik]

I have not seen the film but I heard it was about 25 seconds of the song, which is 3:05 long, or 13% of the song.

At the very least, Yoko will take some of their money away from them via lawyers fees. If she does win they might have to recall all the prints & recut them which is a major pain.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

skeptigirl, how much of the song is in the movie?

Can any of the lawyers here say whether they think that the producers will get away with a "fair use" defence?

I really hope Yoko cleans them out - the notion that lack of faith leads to the evils of communism/Nazism is absurd and insulting (plus I'm a Beatles/Lennon fan).

Krelnik is right, it is less than a whole verse. I don't know how the fair use thing works but my understanding is it would depend on this being a documentary and seen as using it like one might use a news clip.

But maybe they'll at least have to pay legal fees. The theft of copyright for The Inner Life of the Cell has a better chance of succeeding.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Krelnik is right, it is less than a whole verse. I don't know how the fair use thing works but my understanding is it would depend on this being a documentary and seen as using it like one might use a news clip.

But maybe they'll at least have to pay legal fees. The theft of copyright for The Inner Life of the Cell has a better chance of succeeding.

There is a really intense discussion about this very point going on over at the Panda's Thumb blog...

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/yoko-ono-sues-e.html

From what I've seen there, it doesn't seem like only 15 seconds of "Imagine" being used will be any cover for the Expelled goofs.

I think Yoko Ono is going to end up kicking ass, and the Harvard/XVIVO lawsuit over "Inner Life" is going to mop up what's left over.

Ben Stein et al are screwed.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Does anyone know how much money they spent on expelled? Despite the fact that it didn't gross much, is it in the black?(Ignoring lawsuits)

An estimate on this has been posted here...

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/expelled-the-fi.html#comment-152016

Long story short, it was estimated there that Expelled cost about $6 million to make, advertise, and distribute. Given that it made less than $3 million on its opening weekend and looks to be short-lived in theaters, I think the makers of the film are going to lose big money on this fiasco.

And then there's going to be the cost of lawyer's fees for the lawsuits. Not to mention any potential damages that might have to be paid...

The irony is that when advertising Expelled, the promoters were trying to get church crowds to attend the opening. So at screenings they promised churches & religious schools that these institutions would get "ticket refunds" if they were able to get a lot of people out to the movie on opening weekend.

Given how poorly the finances have worked out for these clowns, how much do you want to bet those poor church saps are going to get screwed on those "refunds"?

Yet another example of the ignorant being fleeced by scam artists

 

[Dragon]

Krelnik is right, it is less than a whole verse. I don't know how the fair use thing works but my understanding is it would depend on this being a documentary and seen as using it like one might use a news clip.

But maybe they'll at least have to pay legal fees. The theft of copyright for The Inner Life of the Cell has a better chance of succeeding.

Thanks for the reply - my very brief look at the "fair use" thing suggests that they might still be in trouble because the film is not about the song (or Lennon or the Beatles post-breakup music etc ...).
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."*



*Lyrics from Imagine by John Lennon - don't want to get into trouble with Yoko

 

[shadron]

Fair use says you can use small excerpts of copyrighted materials for illustrative or educational purposes. From the Copyright Act of 1976:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections § 106 and § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I think Expelled's use of it runs afoul of point 1, because the use is of a commercial nature. 15% is likely not too large an amount of the work, but it might be. The first use of Fair Use in Copyright law was an author who copied 353 pages out of a 16 volume tome about George Washington as his own 2 volume work. The court said that wasn't fair use.

 

[arthwollipot]

I was once told that 14 seconds of a track could be legitimately used before breaching copyright. That was quite a while ago though, and in Australia.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Ben Stein says "Darwinism can't explain planetary motion"

Wow, old Ben has gone totally off the rails. I'm not kidding about the subject line - that's a direct quote...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8aifay678

On another note, it seems the Expelled free-fall continues. See this link for the latest...

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?sortdate=2008-04-25&p=.htm

I’m not surprised at all to see the film rapidly sliding down the list. The one thing that did surprise me is that it’s still on at 1041 of the original 1052 theaters - and here I had predicted that it’d be on only 600 by this weekend. My prediction was clearly wrong, but I was confused as to why such an under-performing movie would stay on so many screens.

I have found out an interesting tidbit since I made my prediction: it ends up that Regal Cinemas, which I believe is hosting most of the screens for Expelled, is owned by one Philip Frederick Anschutz. Anschutz is an active supporter of the Disco Institute and one of their major financial backers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Anschutz#Political_and_Christian_activism

So there’s yet another layer of deception here - the movie gets released on a whole bunch of screens, not because it’s a good movie (we now know it isn’t, the public has spoken on that), but because most of those screens are owned by a man who actively promotes ID-creationism.

One more thing… the fact that Expelled has stayed on so many screens yet it STILL fails to bring in larger numbers of viewers is yet another testimony to how awful this film really is.

 

[arthwollipot]

One more thing… the fact that Expelled has stayed on so many screens yet it STILL fails to bring in larger numbers of viewers is yet another testimony to how awful this film really is.

I think it's a testimony to how much money someone is paying to keep it on. Normally when a film is not making much money at a particular theatre, they pull it in favour of a film that can get more bums on seats. For this many theatres not to have done so suggests to me that they're getting money from somewhere.

 

[MattusMaximus]

There are also two more major slams of "Expelled" out... one from conservative commentator John Derbyshire and the other from the Anti Defamation League.

John Derbyshire:
A Blood Libel on Our Civilization

"... The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)

And yes: When our greatest achievements are blamed for our greatest moral failures, that is a blood libel against Western civilization itself. What next, Ben? Johann Sebastian Bach ran a slave-trading enterprise on the side? Kepler started the Thirty Years War? Tolstoy instigated the Kishinev Pogrom? Dante was a bag-man for the Golden Horde? Why not go smash a few windows in Chartres Cathedral, Ben? Break wind in a chamber-music concert? Splash some red paint around in the Uffizi? Which other of our civilizational achievements would you like to sneer at? What else from what Waugh called “the work of centuries” would you like to “abandon … for sentimental qualms”? You call yourself a conservative? Feugh!"


Anti-Defamation League:
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

"... Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."


Wow - two beautiful smack-downs

 

[bokonon]

I have heard, from someone who may have more detailed information than is available at boxofficemojo, that the producers feel their core audience still hasn't hit the theaters. When I checked, the movie was getting most of its play in the Bible Belt and the midwest, but according to my source, most of the money has come from the more metropolitan areas in Washington, Oregon, etc. I don't know how accurate my source's information was, and he wasn't privy to raw numbers, so take it with a grain of salt. I know it's only playing at a handful of theaters here in L.A.

Assuming he's right, and they're not seeing the kind of numbers they were expecting in more fundamentalist communities, I'm thinking maybe they misread interest in the film. Maybe most of that "core audience" is satisfied to sit home and believe Genesis, without feeling the need to reinforce the belief by watching a movie. Maybe "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" means they aren't willing to burn the gas they'll need on Sunday to get a dose of the real gospel. After all, this movie doesn't preach scripture, it just trashes Darwin.

It isn't doing that badly, but at the rate it's going, if they spent $6 million getting it into the theaters, it's beginning to look doubtful that they'll break even. I'll feel better if it's dropped from a few hundred theaters tomorrow.

 

[arthwollipot]

Has the film been shown in any theatres outside the continental USA?

 

[PixyMisa]

There are also two more major slams of "Expelled" out... one from conservative commentator John Derbyshire and the other from the Anti Defamation League.

John Derbyshire:
A Blood Libel on Our Civilization

"... The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)

Check out the quote about half-way down the second page.

 

[bokonon]

Has the film been shown in any theatres outside the continental USA?

Supposedly it will be shown in Canada this summer. I don't think it's being shown anywhere outside the U.S. yet. It's in two theaters in Honolulu, and one theater in Anchorage, so the answer to your question is "yes."

 

[MattusMaximus]

Check out the quote about half-way down the second page.

I was wondering if that was you...

 

[MattusMaximus]

It isn't doing that badly, but at the rate it's going, if they spent $6 million getting it into the theaters, it's beginning to look doubtful that they'll break even. I'll feel better if it's dropped from a few hundred theaters tomorrow.

Yeah, it's really starting to bottom out...

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=expelled.htm

However, I'm not sure if I'd expect it to suddenly get pulled from theaters this weekend. It ends up that I think most of the theaters it is appearing in are part of the Regal Cinemas chain, which is owned by Phillip Anschutz. Anschutz is a strong supporter of the Discovery Institute, so it looks like he's been stacking the deck for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's given orders to keep the movie in most theaters, despite the fact that the seats are empty.

At least, that's my take on it.

 

[arthwollipot]

Supposedly it will be shown in Canada this summer. I don't think it's being shown anywhere outside the U.S. yet. It's in two theaters in Honolulu, and one theater in Anchorage, so the answer to your question is "yes."

Okay. Thanks. I certainly haven't seen anything about it in Australia, and if I asked the average guy on the street about the film he'd say "what film?"

It's just not on anyone's radar down here.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Dallas Morning News ran some a post viewing poll that some group had conducted and the majority of viewers loved it, felt motivated by it and said they'd be more active because of it. I'll try and find a link to the poll if I can.