Movie industry takes notice of 'Inconsistent Truth'

A "global warming movement" critique that emerged from nowhere (or Nashville, which is close enough, by movie industry standards), "An Inconsistent Truth" was the surprise No. 1 movie in America on a per-screen basis on its opening weekend.

Of course, the movie -- a documentary rebuttal to Al Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" -- was only on one screen, the Regal Hollywood 27 in Nashville, when it debuted Jan. 27. In contrast, the action-adventure film, "The Grey," which also opened that weekend, was in 3,185 theaters, so its $6,174 per-screen average resulted in almost $20 million in ticket sales.

Even so, the $20,733 gross of "An Inconsistent Truth" was extraordinarily impressive, and a shock to the film business pundits and bloggers who parse box-office tallies the way college football reporters track the BCS.

Today, the PG-rated "An Inconsistent Truth" expands to its second market, Memphis -- or, more specifically, Cordova. The movie is here for at least a week, exclusively at Malco's Cordova Cinema, 1080 Germantown Pkwy.

Nashville conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine, the film's producer and writer, will host the 7 p.m. screening today.

Featuring interviews with politicians and scientists, the movie was shot over a period of about 21/2 years, Valentine said. He said he financed the film himself: "There's no big oil money, just big Phil."

Directed by Shayne Edwards and distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, a company that specializes in films with special appeal for Christians ("The Lion of Judah") and tea partyers' ("Atlas Shrugged: Part 1"), "An Inconsistent Truth" attempts to debunk the "liberal" idea that the Earth is suffering from dangerous climate change caused by such human activity as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

Rest…