Intelligent design and popular culture: Uncool film wins in Toronto

(Note: If you are looking for some of the ID in the UK posts, go here and here. Also, my review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.) Now to today's story:

Of this indie anti-abortion film, Robert Novak writes,

"Bella" was conceived by three young Mexican men -- producer, director and lead actor -- who are conservative Catholics and want to make movies removed from Hollywood's movie culture of sex and violence. Bankrolled by a wealthy Catholic family from Philadelphia, they shot
the film in 24 days in New York City.

The star is Eduardo Verastegui, a Mexican heartthrob as a lead performer in TV soap operas who now lives in Los Angeles. A devout Catholic, he told me he was tired of movies showing Latinos as disreputable and immoral . He has learned to speak English in three years well enough to play the lead role mostly in English (with subtitles over the Spanish).

It was a stretch to get "Bella" even shown at Toronto, much less win an award. "Going into the festival," said the Hollywood Reporter, "absolutely no one, including the team of filmmakers that made 'Bella,' ever imagined it would capture the People's Choice Award, voted on by festival audiences."

Materialists, it seems, cannot count on the support of the public, not even in secular Toronto. Give the people a vote and everything's lost. Hence the importance, to the materialist, of indoctrinating students at public expense in the school systems and suppressing dissent at the universities. Re this film, the key question is, Novak asks, will the film actually be shown in US theatres. Note, he did NOT ask, would US audiences like it? The question he raises is, will they be allowed by the Hollywood-based distribution system to see it? (Of course, there is always DVD. Can't remember the last time I watched a show in a theatre, but it may have been at the Smithsonian.) I would love to help write the screenplay for a film about the ID community. How about "ALPHIE: When science nerds dare to ask ... what's it all about?"

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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