Posted on 07/11/2014 5:18:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dinesh D'Souza shocked the movie world in 2012 with his anti-President Barack Obama documentary "2016," which became the second highest-grossing documentary in U.S. movie history. On July 2, he unveiled his new documentary called "America: Imagine the World Without Her." It has already grossed $5 million in its first week. One fictional competitor, the abortion-promoting comedy "Obvious Child," barely grossed $2 million in its first month.
But there's a more dramatic contrast. Film critics are supposed to judge art, but their liberal politics are smeared all over their reviews. Metacritic.com collects and analyzes movie reviews. "Obvious Child" drew a high Metacritic.com score of 75 (out of 100). For D'Souza's "America," it was a ridiculously low score of 14.
Then take the highest-grossing documentary in our history, Michael Moore's 2004 hatchet job "Fahrenheit 9/11." Editor and Publisher magazine reported nine of 10 newspaper movie critics recommended the film.
The Washington Post gushed over Moore's prankumentary. "Its trajectory is guided with pinpoint accuracy," wrote Desson Thomson, and it "obviously skews facts to its own advantage, but that's what the game is all about. What counts is the emotional power of Moore's persuasion."
"Fahrenheit" was loaded with bizarre and unproven charges against former President George W. Bush, most offensively suggesting the Bush family and Osama bin Laden's family were in cahoots over 9/11. Moore concluded the film with a conspiracy theory: "In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects." All of that was just fine.
But when it came to the new D'Souza film, the same newspaper's Mark Jenkins suddenly found perceived fact-skewing and one-sidedness to be just awful. "'America' is less successful as a debate, since it isn't one. D'Souza controls the conversation, and thus goes unchallenged when he tries to make real-world points with make-believe scenarios."
Then there's The New York Times. In 2004, Dana Stevens wrote that while the facts of "Fahrenheit 911" could be debated, "it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression." As for D'Souza's self-expression? The Times critics have yet to bother reviewing the movie.
The movie's only questionable note is the egocentric turn at the end when D'Souza shows himself in handcuffs and notes his own prosecution for making $20,000 in straw donations to a U.S. Senate race in New York. D'Souza has a point about selective prosecution under Obama, but it loses its punch when the accuser has admitted his guilt.
But overall, D'Souza's approach is far more serious and substantive than Moore's conspiratorial claptrap. Moore's idea of a "debate" was mocking Bush's golf game and reading "My Pet Goat" to schoolchildren when the news of 9/11 arrived, or showing Paul Wolfowitz as he combed down his hair with his own spit. D'Souza deals respectfully, even gently, with radical leftists from Noam Chomsky to Ward Churchill to Michael Eric Dyson. Churchill, for example, thinks a nuclear strike on America might be justified.
D'Souza underlines their argument: "Today that notion of the essential goodness of America is under attack, replaced by another story in which theft and plunder are seen as the defining features of American history." D'Souza argues that the "conquest ethic" is the global norm and that America is unique in trying to depart from it for higher ideals. He includes a rousing clip at the end with Irish rock star Bono, who hails the United States as "a great idea."
For those who've felt the leftist American-greed-and-imperialism narrative shoved down their throats, this movie is a welcome rebuttal. The fact that liberal film critics can't stand watching it makes it only more attractive.
God must weep that such a thing is even possible.
Wow---Benjamin Brat was D'Souza's lawyer?
Brat is brilliant---he actually got a bigtime Ponzi schemer off w/ no jail-time---negotiating a deal promising the con artist would return the $5 million scammed.
Sure enough the guy started another Ponzi scheme and used the proceeds ---other people's money---to payback the original penalty.
Yes, he went to jail for violating the deal.
==============================================
Brat was also the lawyer for the wife of Jacob the Jeweler who went to jail for money-laundering.
The wife was being scammed by the infamous----Ken Starr "accountant to the stars." Brat had her record her phone calls w/ Starr which was potent evidence of the scam.
Starr scammed the Hamptons crow---but what is most memorable is that Starr married a pole dancer/stripper. He tried to sucker his clients into getting pole dancing recognized as an Olympic event.
What a surprise.
Take the single quotation marks out of the headline.
I just heard a CBS radio news report over a local station about the bombings going on in Israel...According to that “news” report you’d swear that Israel was the attacker and that Hamas which has been launching unprovoked rocket attacks deep into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon was defending itself.
MSM has been getting away with this type of trashy “news” long enough they should be hacked into and those news “editors” and “reporters” be confronted in and outside their towers of disinformation by flash mobs.
I thought you were supposed to underline it or put it in italics.
Limp-wristed lefties didn't like the movie, either!
Wtf do the critics know? that fat liberal pos Ebert knew so much about movies he wrote one of the worst of all time.
Of course, the leftist communists hate the movie. I’t about them.
Any questions?
Film critics are racists!
Pray America wakes up
They hate “America” because they hate America.
Splenetic reviews of movies and books by obvious leftists are very often what motivates me to watch or read what they review. The more shrill they are about it, the more certain I am that the content is worthwhile.
AMEM!!
Film critics hate a movie that questions the supremecy of their Lord and Master? ROFL!!!!!! What other shocking headlines might we see today? Water is Wet? Skunks Stink?
D’Souza should feel proud liberal elite ‘critics’ don’t like his film. If they did - if they LIKED his work it’d be insulting to D’Souza and to the rest of us.
Ask yourself this: “Would YOU vote for a person the New York Times recommended?”
Your answer is ‘Hell NO’... “Would you watch a film the New York Times hated because it’s conservative?” Hell YES....
Enjoy.
The more upset they are, the closer you know the work is to the truth about them.
I agree, and in addition to that I simply revel in their contempt.
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