Since this is what’s passing for movie news today, here’s a clip from Religulous featuring Bill Maher arguing about evolution with Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor.  Personally, I think it’d be a lot more interesting if Pryor had to carry a trident and fight a monkey wearing a helmet that says "Evolution".  

This is the Canadian poster for Religulous, Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ documentary about religion.  Very subtle, I thought.  I noticed that they missed Buddhism, so I sent them the picture I took of the Buddha passed out at a frat party after I drew a cock on his face.  On second glance, it might’ve just been a Korean guy, but I still say he had it coming.  

[Thanks to RoboPanda for the tip] 

Religulous is an upcoming documentary from Bill Maher and director Larry Charles (Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm).  In this clip, Maher visits a burqa store in order to… uh, in order to do material, it looks like.  I like to make fun of people as much as the next guy (who’s probably a douchebag), but if I were standing in front of a scary, stone-faced Muslim, I’d at least pretend to listen to what he was saying.  I also wouldn’t show up with a chick wearing a tank top.  That’s probably the equivalent of showing up with a naked hooker covered in dog crap at a burqa store.  But hey, as long as we’re insulting the guy’s way of life for cheap jokes, why not go with "Boy, this burqa really is ‘da bomb’.  ‘Da bomb’, get it?" 

"Hey, you guys think bees convince each other that they get 72 bee virgins in the afterlife if they sting you?  Because they die right afterwards, so they’re kind of like the suicide bombers of the animal kingdom when you think about it.  Is this thing on?  I think we got a cold mike here."

Coming in October, Religulous is a documentary from Bill Maher and Borat/Curb Your Enthusiasm director Larry Charles that follows Maher’s quest to stomp the yards of churches, temples, synagogues, altars, and wherever scientologists pray everywhere.  On the one hand, having been bombarded with religion growing up I kind of like seeing religious people get served.  On the other, I wonder if Bill Maher has to be so goddamned (literally!) smug while he’s doing it.  I hate people who are comfortable with themselves.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution documentary financed by a creationist think tank, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (see the ridiculously long trailer above), has hired a big marketing firm in preparation for its April release (around the same time as Bill Maher’s Religulous comes out).

They’ve hired Motive Entertainment, the marketing brains behind "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe," to spread the intelligent design gospel and tapped powerhouse PR firm Rogers & Cowan to handle the film’s media campaign. [Variety] 

Stein himself has been doing lots of PR, and if his recent appearance on The O’Reilly Factor is any indication, his film will ground the debate firmly in the Israeli/Palistinian-patented Who’s More Persecuted? context.

There are many scientists we interviewed who have been expelled from their jobs, who have had their websites shut down, who have been denied grants, who have been denied tenure, because they want to question the boundaries of Darwinism.

Gosh, I can’t imagine either of these flicks will be preaching to the choir!  Still, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Scientologists are mentally retarded.