The Cinekin Blog

Happy 200th Birthday Darwin!

Charles Darwin

In honor of the birthday of one of the greatest scientists ever, I would like to offer a few choices of movies that I think are good birthday celebration movies for Darwin.  Please add other choices in the comments because I can only think of a few right now and know that there are more movies out there.

So first off, Inherit the Wind is a great movie adaptation of the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. This trial set in the 1920s has great dialogue and the acting is excellent.

Next up, Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus. This movie’s full title explains it’s purpose - it’s about the craziness and insanity that takes place between proponents of Evolution and Intelligent Design. The movie explains why Intelligent Design is not science (see the links below for more info), and why Evolutionary Theory is so fundamental to ALL fields of science.  In my opinion, it does a good job of getting all the facts on the table in an informed and amusing way.

I haven’t seen Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and therefore cannot make an informed comment on it.  I’m guessing that I would be annoyed  by it, as from all sources, it appears to have been made with an unscrupulous agenda in mind.  However, here’s a site in response that explains my hesitation to spend any of my money or time watching Expelled from http://www.expelledexposed.com/.

For more resources on Darwin and his contributions to science, I recommend http://darwin-online.org.uk/ a site with his complete works and lots of information on his life. Also, if you need more information on evolution and the teaching of science, check out http://ncseweb.org/ and also UC Berkeley’s Understanding Evolution site.

So what movies make you think of Darwin?