Posted on 12/09/2012 5:13:44 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Dinesh D'Souza's documentary "2016: Obama's America" failed to earn an Oscar nomination despite earning $33.4 million at the box office, and becoming the fourth highest grossing documentary in history. Of course, there isn't much an outcry inside liberal Hollywood. However, D'Souza didn't keep quiet about the Academy Awards committee snub.
"I want to thank the Academy for not nominating our film," D'Souza joked, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "By ignoring 2016, the top-performing box-office hit of 2012, and pretending that films like 'Searching for Sugar Man' and 'This Is Not a Film' are more deserving of an Oscar, our friends in Hollywood have removed any doubt average Americans may have had that liberal political ideology, not excellence, is the true standard of what receives awards."
The film's producer, Gerald Molen, isn't keeping silent either.
"I was surprised," Molen, who won an Oscar for "Schindler's List," told FOX411's Pop Tarts column. "'2016' was never made with any particular award in mind nor [was it] looking for specific accolades from anyone. But as an industry practice it was submitted along with a number of other documentaries."
The film, which was released late last summer, examines the question: "If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?" It shows D'Souza "immersed in exotic locales across four continents" as he "races against time to find answers to Obama's past and reveal where America will be in 2016."
Filmmakers say that during D'Souza's journey "he discovers how Hope and Change became radically misunderstood, and identifies new flashpoints for hot wars in mankind's greatest struggle. The journey moves quickly over the arc of the old colonial empires, into America's empire of liberty, and we see the unfolding realignment of nations and the shape of the global future."
The film made more money than all 15 short-listed films such as "Searching for Sugar Man," "Ethel" and "Bully." Molen told the Hollywood Reporter, "Dinesh warned me this might happen. The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood circles. The film's outstanding success means that America went to see the documentary in spite of how Hollywood feels about it." He added, "'2016' loses an opportunity to compete in what most always perceived to be a fair business atmosphere. But no way, it is totally unbalanced and unfair... The left rules – for now."
FoxNews.com in its Pop Tarts section reports that while Molen was somewhat surprised, others in the media industry were not.
"Hollywood is seldom just about money. It's about propaganda. And if you defy the party line, you stand no chance of winning. So when Dinesh D'Souza's movie got passed over, I wasn't even vaguely surprised," noted Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Institute. "Is that bias? Of course. Jack Nicholson was close: Hollywood can't handle the truth. And they can't handle disagreement. Their one-sided view of what deserves awards underlines that."
When D'Souza was asked by The Christian Post at the time of the film's release whether "2016" would have an impact on the presidential election, he said, "Well, the film is intended to [offer] a debate about what's the future of America. Nowhere in the film do we mention the election.
We certainly don't tell people how to vote.
"The film is about the American dream and Obama's dream. In some ways it's about my dream, which is the immigrants' dream," he said. "Also worked in there is Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream an¬d the dream of the founders. In that sense it's very different. In some ways I was inspired to do this by Michael Moore. I feel embarrassed to say that because Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is an intellectual disaster, but nevertheless that film was about a controversial president and it was received at a time when one half of the country was for the president and one half was against him and it was dropped in the middle of an election.
"So that gave me the idea to make a film under similar conditions – controversial president, one half of the country is for him, one half is against him, and drop it in the middle of this year's debate," he explained. "But I wanted to make and have made a very different kind of a film that is not fast with the facts and is intellectually and factually very sound. So far, no one has alleged the contrary."
Just my humble and long-considered opinion...
I know which film will win next year...
“Cloud Atlas”, a real crap film where every bad guy, killer, thief and evil person is a white male and the heroes are black, gay, female and Asian.
The white men are racists and homophobes and evil and ugly...
Crappiest film I ever saw.
>> Of course, there isn’t much an outcry inside liberal Hollywood.
Hollywood sat by in silence while a filmmaker was seemingly accused by the Admin for inciting 9-11-12 terrorism. Hollywood has no integrity.
BOYCOTT THE OSCARS! It’s time for us to seriously put the hurt on these liberals where they live - but to do so, means we have to cut off watching THEIR liberal crap TV stations, movies, etc.
“Cloud Atlas”, was made by the Wachowski brothers...the guys who brought us ‘The Matrix’; Andy and Lawrence... Now Lana after his/her sex change.
The cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant and more...
Crappiest film I ever saw.
Pure PC propaganda with no plot and a monumental waste of time.
No Oscar nomination for 2016 is the highest form of compliment Follywood could bestow on a high grossing film.
No Oscar nomination for 2016 is the highest form of compliment Follywood could bestow on a high grossing film.
Oscar who?
I did not find the film worthy of an award. It was well intentioned. But it was poorly done. Dinesh put too much of himself into the movie. That distracted from the allegedly intended message about Obama. That is not great film making. This is the plague of our side. We lose focus in our message. We again need the great communicator or great communicatorS.
I have been boycotting viewing anything Oscars since “Hearts and Minds” won decades ago. When the acceptance speech praised the Communists in Viet Nam and Cambodia (this preceded the Cambodian slaughter), my parents (I was living at home at the time) heard me hurl a torrent of profane insults at those Marxist (censored). They realized later that I was right.
Being snubbed by those far-left fascists is a badge of honor. That said, I haven’t watched the Oscars in 20 years. ‘eff them.
My “shocked” face.
I’ve been boycotting the oscars and movies for years except those made by Sherwood Pictures. I have seen a couple of movies this past year like Tyler Perry’s Witness Protection. I love Tyler Perry. Wish he would win an oscar. Madea is awesome!
One of those “I’m not impressed” with Oscar looks would be appropriate.
Wasn’t “Cloud Atlas” a huge box disaster? I believe Roger Ebert(no conservative to say the least) panned it.
I’ve no interesting in shelling out another dime for any Tom Hanks film after he said it was “un-American” to believe marriage is between a man and a woman. The logical conclusion of his reasoning is that the Founding Fathers and every American who lived up until the past decade was “un-American”.
'Cloud Atlas' was 'Gey'...figuratively and literally.
Who really cares about oscars anymore? The thing to do is to starve out the bad and liberal flicks. Eventually, it will come down to the dollar for the hollywood big mouths.
We went to see Clint Eastwood in the Curve but never heard how he did with this movie. Was not surprised when I saw no mention of it coming out of Hollywood. I do know that we kept reordering the Empty Chair bumper stickers before the election and absolutely couldn’t meet the demand for more.
When I was on the committee I had to personally screen almost fifty projects!!! At times there may be well over a hundred. And before the advent of home media systems ... a person would be required to physically attend screenings of the possible nominees!!! All I can say is ... Thank the lord for the progress of technology!! ..... So the question I had to ask myself was ..... "How the heck am I going to screen all of these films?!?! Where the heck was I going to find the time to do so??? ..... The answer was actually quite simple ...... Heck .... there is no way I was going to screen them all!!!
So I proceeded to look at the copies sent to me and read the synopsis and plot overview of the films and whittled down the list of projects that actually piqued my interest and ignored the rest. My point here is .... most of the members of AMPAS tend to be on the Liberal end of the social and political spectrum .... and, other than a few film zealots that take their job seriously .... the majority of members on the nominating committee, whether they admit it or not, use the same system I used. Therefore most of them would have just set aside "2013" into the "Don't Watch" pile because of lack of interest and moved on to a more socially or politically appealing project.
Yes the system is rather one sided and biased.... but that is how the system and machine is set up. So to expect a conservatively bent project, even though it may be based on fact ... to actually make it to the top of the heap as being nominated would rather tend to exist only in the realm of wishful thinking. Unless a project is so called "Critically Acclaimed" by critics and winning praises in the Hollywood community .... that just wouldn't happen.
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