Carl Sagan on preserving the pale blue dot

A nicely done You Tube presentation of Carl Sagan speaking about the earth.

“The Happening”–the best intelligent design movie of the year?

According to some, anyway.

I just came back from viewing “The Happening”. As I referred to in an earlier post, there are apparently many people that feel the film is at least vaguely anti-science, and some say it downright promotes intelligent design. I had heard the movie received fairly dismal reviews, which was disappointing to me as I enjoy M. Night Shyamalan’s films very much.

I am a Shyamalan fan and went in to the theater not worried about whatever the film had to say, or imply, about science. It is just a movie, after all. And yes, science was portrayed in some pretty lame ways in the movie. “The Happening” seemed vaguely anti-science (characters referring to “acts of nature” or talking about things being “only a theory”) yet pro-environmentalist at the same time.

Regardless, even if science had been portrayed in a better light, the movie just really wasn’t that great. The acting was pretty poor by all involved, in my opinion. It definitely isn’t my favorite Shyamalan flick so far, and I can’t see it being the sort of movie I’ll watch over and over again.

My recommendation: wait to watch it on HBO or one of the other movie channels that you already pay for.

Some links to some interesting reviews of “The Happening” are below. Keep in mind some are rather biased, but they all added something to my knowledge and perception of the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, beware of spoilers when you look at these reviews.

The Happening is the Biggest Intelligent Design Movie of the Year
Framing Science
Wikipedia: The Happening
Review from The New Republic

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