Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Flock of Dodos - Has anyone seen this yet?

Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos, the hilarious documentary that examines both sides of the controversy over the teaching of "intelligent design" in public schools, is now available on home DVD. In addition to the film itself, which as Variety quipped is "intelligently designed for popular appeal," the DVD contains eighty-four minutes of extra features, including:

  • Experts on the creationism/evolution controversy, including NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott and NCSE Supporters Sean B. Carroll and Michael Ruse, answering questions such as, Why is this controversy so uniquely American? Isn't it only fair to "teach the controversy"? and What is "irreducible complexity"?;
  • A selection of material that Randy Olson chose not to include in the documentary as too embarrassing to the proponents of "intelligent design" -- including, at the very end, footage of Michael Behe explaining, "My kids don't go to public schools; what do I care?";
  • A discussion of the use of humor in Flock of Dodos, including unused clips of a mock debate between "the world's most obsfuscating intelligent designer, Dr. Edward Sheehee, and the world's angriest evolutionist, Dr. Jonathan Girr";
  • A discussion of the lively discussions that have frequently been organized to accompany screenings of the film across the country, with footage from and Olson's commentary on a number of them.
The home DVD version of Flock of Dodos -- which New Scientist called "a film that will appeal to the average person on either side ... without condescension, poking lighthearted fun at everyone" and which NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott praises as "a powerful defense of evolution that needs to be seen by every teacher of science" -- is available from its distributor Docurama and from Amazon.com (purchases benefit NCSE).

3 comments:

Andrea said...

Just added it to the top of our rental queue! It sounds fascinating. We'll probably get it in the mail next week...I'll let you know what we thought about it.

Tommykey said...

I will have to check it out.

Eugenie Scott will be at the conference "The Secular Society and It's Enemies" in NYC next month which I will be attending.

Stardust said...

tommy, how is it that you are able to attend these conferences? Do you just find out about them then go or are you invited by someone? How do you find out about them?