Box Office Report: Anti-Obama Doc Drawing Big Crowds, Even in New York City

[bsteadman]

Box Office Report: Anti-Obama Doc Drawing Big Crowds, Even in New York City

The Hollywood Reporter
Pamela McClintock
8/21/2012

Excerpt:

"Already the No. 2-grossing non-nature documentary of the year, "2016: Obama's America" expands nationwide this weekend.

An anti-Barack Obama documentary based on conservative author Dinesh D’Souza’s book The Roots of Obama’s Rage will expand nationwide this weekend after doing notable business in select markets across the country -- including in liberal-minded New York City.

Overall, 2016: Obama's America grossed an impressive $1.2 million last weekend as it upped its theater count from 61 to 169 for a total gross of $2 million, the second-best showing of the year for a documentary after Bully ($3.2 million). That doesn't include nature documentaries Chimpanzee ($29 million) and To the Arctic ($7.6 million).

It's already the No. 12 political documentary of all time -- a market that Michael Moore has cornered -- as well as the No. 2 conservative documentary after Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ($7.7 million).

On Friday, Obama's America, co-directed by D'Souza and John Sullivan, will be playing in 1,075 theaters in an aggressive expansion that comes on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., which gets underway Aug. 27.

Obama's America, distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, first began rolling out in mid-July and has been adding theaters slowly. On Aug. 10, it opened in a number of markets, including New York and Los Angeles (including the conservative Simi Valley).

Some in Hollywood were stumped by the amount of business the documentary did at the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 in Lower Manhattan, situated in a liberal neighborhood where films from the likes of Moore have done huge business.

Obama's America was the No. 3 film of the weekend behind The Dark Knight Rises and Total Recall at Union Square, prompting at least one film executive to joke that people must have thought it was a pro-Obama documentary (New York is the No. 1 city when it comes to the amount of giving to the Obama campaign).

Moreover, Union Square turned in the second-best gross of any theater in the country after a multiplex in Simi Valley.

Last weekend, Obama's America fell only 40 percent at the Union Square theater.

Obama's America intends to show how the country's future will look if President Obama is elected to a second term in the White House and includes an interview with the president's half brother, George Obama.

"I think the reason why the film is doing so well is threefold: We've expanded into good markets, we've been advertising nationally for two weeks on talk radio and television news channels including Fox News Channel, A&E, History and MSNBC," Sullivan told The Hollywood Reporter.
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...lection-364479

[bsteadman]

D'Souza's '2016' Unearths Obama's Rage

Newsmax
Thomas Sowell
8/22/2012

Excerpt:

"Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie "2016," based on Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.

Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.

The audience was riveted. You could barely hear a sound from them, or detect a movement, and certainly not smell popcorn. Yet the movie had no bombast, no violence, no sex, and no spectacular visual effects.

The documentary itself was fascinating, as Dinesh D'Souza presented the story of Barack Obama's life and view of the world, in a very conversational sort of way, illustrating it with visits to people and places around the world that played a role in the way Obama's ideas and beliefs evolved.

It was refreshing to see how addressing adults as adults could be effective, in an age when so many parts of the media address the public as if they were children who need a constant whirlwind of sounds and movements to keep them interested.

Dinesh D'Souza's own perspective, as someone born in India who came to America and became an American, provided a special insight into the way people from the Third World often perceive or misperceive the United States and the Western world.

That Third World perspective is Obama's perspective, D'Souza demonstrates in this documentary, as in his book — and it is a perspective that is very foreign to that of most Americans, which may be why some believe that Obama was born elsewhere.

D'Souza is convinced that the president was born in Hawaii, as he claims, but argues that not only Obama's time living in Indonesia and his emotionally charged visits to his father's home in Africa, have had a deep and impassioned effect on his thinking.

The story of Barack Obama, however, is not just the story of how one man came to be the way he is. It is a much larger story about how millions of Americans came to vote for, and some to idolize, a man whose fundamental beliefs and values are so different from their own.

For every person who sees Obama as somehow foreign there are many others who see him as a mainstream American political figure — and an inspiring one.

This D'Souza attributes to Barack Obama's great talents in rhetoric, and his ability to project an image that resonates with most Americans, however much that image may differ from, or even flatly contradict, the reality of Obama's own ideological view of the world.

What is that ideological view?

The Third World, or anti-colonial, view is that the rich nations have gotten rich by taking wealth from the poor nations. It is part of a much larger vision, in which the rich in general have gotten rich by taking from the poor, whether in their own country or elsewhere.

Whatever its factual weaknesses, it is an emotionally powerful vision, to which many people have dedicated their lives, and for which some have even risked their lives. Some of these people appear in this documentary movie, as they have appeared throughout the formative phases of Barack Obama's life.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is just the most visible and vocal of a long line of such people who played crucial roles in Obama's evolution. When Jeremiah Wright thundered about how "white folks' greed runs a world in need," he captured the essence of the Third World or anti-colonial vision.

But many of the other mentors, allies, family, and friends of Barack Obama over the years were of the same mindset, as this documentary demonstrates."
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View the complete article at:

http://www.newsmax.com/ThomasSowell/...8/22/id/449348