Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

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DarkImbecile
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Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#1 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:51 pm


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colinr0380
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Re: The Films of 2018

#2 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 2:23 am

I get the impression that Dinesh D'Souza is sort of the American version of Giacopetti and Prosperi, but much dumber? (I would say he's probably trying to be like Michael Moore, but I don't want really want to imagine that there are two of them out there, even if they are ideologically opposed) I liked the bit in the trailer for 'Death of a Nation' where Lincoln rubbed his hand across a field of wheat, just like that guy in the Gladiator film! That's a real American figure: a New Zealand born actor playing a Roman general,in an era before America existed! But, I guess wheat is an American symbol? And is there a implied suggestion there that what Sophie Scholl was really protesting about under Nazism, with the thrown pamphlets, was that they had apparently set up a social welfare system?

I also implictly knew that it was possible to get any wacko out there to be described as an expert and sit in front of a camera to expound their philosophies for a few minutes, but its scary to see that idea being put into practice.

(Though the visualisation in the trailer of people insanely angry at Trump's election win was kind of funny in its distillation of liberal shock and anger into a primal rage scream of impotence! It seems like he nailed his target there, though admittedly it was an incredibly easy one!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Sep 09, 2018 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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hearthesilence
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Re: The Films of 2018

#3 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:24 am

Funny, it looks like a steaming pile of number two.

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swo17
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Re: The Films of 2018

#4 Post by swo17 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 12:05 pm

I liked Jurassic Park so I'm sure I'll like this too

McCrutchy
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Re: The Films of 2018

#5 Post by McCrutchy » Sat Aug 04, 2018 1:53 pm

The poster is really, really creepy. I think Trumplincolnstein is going to haunt my dreams for several nights:

Image

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colinr0380
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#6 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 4:03 pm

If anyone is not aware of this director, back in 2016 during the election campaign he put out Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, which is the film that amongst many staged reconstructions has a gobsmacking image of Woodrow Wilson imagining the Ku Klux Klan diving out of a screening of The Birth of a Nation and onto the lawn of the White House (plus lots of whippings, getting in on the 12 Years A Slave/Django Unchained trend, as was the style of the time), amongst other bizarre claims. Which apparently all funnels down into the Clinton election campaign! Even as someone with serious qualms about Hillary Clinton, I felt (a bit) sorry for all the things piled onto her by the end of that film! This post-screening discussion and this review kind of captured some of its problems!

Who needs the new Sacha Baron Cohen series when the same antics are even more disturbingly happening, played with an even straighter face by this guy?


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Brian C
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#8 Post by Brian C » Sun Aug 05, 2018 4:49 pm

Tougher to manipulate movie tickets sales than book sales, I guess.

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Gregory
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#9 Post by Gregory » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:10 pm

I'm really disappointed that the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra would stoop to being involved with this kind of bonkers far-right propaganda film that trivializes and exploits the atrocities of the Nazis by directly equating them with contemporary American liberalism. I just hope they know that it's actually possible to turn down a project offered to them, that they don't have to accept every single film job that comes their way.
I know that people scoring a documentary aren't necessarily endorsing its viewpoint, but there has to be some limit to what's a good idea to link oneself to in terms of picking and choosing projects. I wonder if they were even passingly familiar enough with his previous film to see what kind of dishonest conspiracy piece he'd made to help sweep Trump into office.
The score to that film (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party) was by Stephen Limbaugh (yes, a relation).

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Kirkinson
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#10 Post by Kirkinson » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:40 pm

Gregory wrote:
Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:10 pm
Stephen Limbaugh (yes, a relation).
Huh, I never would have guessed.

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Brian C
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#11 Post by Brian C » Sun Aug 05, 2018 5:43 pm

That’s a good point, Gregory, and now I’m wondering how that process works in terms of industry standards and such. Would they even necessarily know they’re doing the score to this particular movie? Or would it be more along the lines of “hey, we’d like to commission you to record this piece of music” without a lot of detail about what it’s for?

Also possible, of course, that they’re simply a bunch of Trump fans. Or that the politics are outside of their considerations. But I’ve never thought about how those kinds of things work, and I’m wondering if anyone here has any experience with how these decisions are made.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#12 Post by Kirkinson » Sun Aug 05, 2018 6:30 pm

Looking into this led me to this thread at Film Score Monthly in which James Fitzpatrick, who recorded the score, says that it's not uncommon for them to accept commissions for projects they know nothing about until the day of recording (and seems to imply that this was one of them, though he only specifies that the film didn't have a title when they recorded the score).

I'm more alarmed to learn that Death of a Nation wasn't even scored by Stephen Limbaugh but by Dennis McCarthy, a "name" composer inasmuch as he has a long, LONG history with the Star Trek franchise.

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Gregory
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#13 Post by Gregory » Sun Aug 05, 2018 6:50 pm

Thanks for the link, Kirkinson.

If they have no knowledge whatsoever of what their music is going to be used for before they go ahead with it, that's really... interesting.
We do not get involved in politics...we are simply there to record music.
So by this logic, it would be fine with them to be hired to perform for "documentaries" by blatantly pro-fascist / white supremacist groups as long as the check clears? The business of music is never just about the creative element, sadly, and saying "I'm just an artist, I don't think about anything else" is essentially a convenient screen to hide behind once you've been paid to work on something like a pro-Trump screed by someone just pardoned by Trump. It's an association that I (a nobody in this game) hardly need to heap shame on; it just speaks for itself. I don't envy any professional who's put in a position like this due to the business being what it is.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#14 Post by Kirkinson » Sun Aug 05, 2018 7:54 pm

It's worth noting that the reason the City of Prague Philharmonic is so ubiquitous in film scoring (with over 250 recording sessions a year) is that they are very cheap. And while I don't actually know anything about their economics and can only speculate, this likely means the musicians themselves are low-payed and non-unionized, probably with rotating freelance membership like most other orchestras that primarily do recordings, and thus would have very little power in situations like this, short of all of them collectively refusing to play. And if the only information on their cue sheets is that they are recording an untitled project composed by Dennis McCarthy (definitely a familiar name to anyone who's been recording film music for decades, whereas none of them likely know Dinesh D'Souza) then it's totally conceivable that at least the musicians themselves would have no idea there was anything amiss. Even if they were scoring to picture, in a typical recording set up it would only be the conductor who was facing the screen, and the musicians would only get fleeting glimpses at most. But who knows, maybe most of them wouldn't care anyway!

It's whoever books and manages them who's really responsible here. But I suspect their attitude is exactly like the sentiment you quoted.

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Big Ben
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#15 Post by Big Ben » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:28 pm

The man who produced this , Gerald Molen lives here in Montana and I've met him as he lives where my family inherited a small condo. To say that Gerald is like Sterling Hayden's character in Dr. Stragelove is probably the most accurate depiction I give that most people at large will understand. Gerald believes in it all. Fluoride. Deep State. Clinton Body Count. You name it. And to think he used to produce films like Schindler's List with Spielberg! Gerald by his own admission is not allowed to speak at schools because he's so gonzo and folks I'll tell you if ever there was a place to absolutely lose your mind in the Right Wing Abyss it's Flathead County, Montana.

McCrutchy
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#16 Post by McCrutchy » Sun Aug 05, 2018 10:38 pm

I knew this would work...OED, here I come!

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colinr0380
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#17 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Aug 08, 2018 5:42 pm

By the way, the other wack-a-doodle with a cult reputation for making terrible and sort of scary films at the moment is Neil Breen, whose film Pass Thru is kind of reminiscent of Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups with a Zabriske Point ending but without any of the elegiac style or basic competence of those master filmmakers! It is only a matter of time before the City of Prague Philharmonic scores one of his films!

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furbicide
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Re: The Films of 2018

#18 Post by furbicide » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:36 am

McCrutchy wrote:
Sat Aug 04, 2018 1:53 pm
The poster is really, really creepy. I think Trumplincolnstein is going to haunt my dreams for several nights:

Image
Wait ... you're saying that's Trump on the right, and not just some random old white guy? The photoshop is strong with this one.

Anyway, Rick and Morty have already done it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWDeMD_JkGY

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hearthesilence
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#19 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:13 pm

Big Ben wrote:
Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:28 pm
And to think he used to produce films like Schindler's List with Spielberg!
I had to look this up. Jesus, he was Spielberg's producer on a bunch of films, including Jurassic Park and Minority Report - really a lot of Spielberg-related stuff from the '80s into the early '00s. Was Molen always this crazy or did he become this way?

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colinr0380
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#20 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:35 pm

Not only that but according to imdb he also turns up in front of the camera in small roles in Amistad, Catch Me If You Can and sick triceratops scene of Jurassic Park; as well as in Rain Man and Days of Thunder

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Big Ben
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#21 Post by Big Ben » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:51 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:13 pm
Big Ben wrote:
Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:28 pm
And to think he used to produce films like Schindler's List with Spielberg!
I had to look this up. Jesus, he was Spielberg's producer on a bunch of films, including Jurassic Park and Minority Report - really a lot of Spielberg-related stuff from the '80s into the early '00s. Was Molen always this crazy or did he become this way?
It's really hard to say. My grandparents bought a small condo where he lives part time, a place called Bigfork. Bigfork on the surface isn't what I'd call insane but under the surface it's been a breeding ground for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists for a very long time. These are worse than what I'd call Good Old Boys from the Deep South because they've extended well beyond religious fervor and racism into full blown paranoia about everything that isn't white and conservative. The thing I want to stress about Gerald is that he isn't using these conspiracies in a pragmatic sense to make money and fool vulnerable people. Gerald really believes these things about the country. He believes that Obama was a secret Muslim. That Hilary has been ordering dissidents to be killed for decades etc. I met him when he came to pick up his wife from a nail salon. A parent had started up a conversation with his wife and had talked to her briefly about me and I talked to him briefly when he came to pick her up. I don't jest when I say he went from well spoken to a caricature rather quickly and in a manner that was easily discernible. I won't say specifically what he said as I'm unsure how the mods would feel about direct quotes with slurs but Gerald had choice words to say about Muslims and I very quickly recalled I needed to be somewhere else. That's the only time I've ever seen him and the conversation couldn't have been longer than two or three minutes.

My best guess is that he had a bit of a meltdown after 9/11 and went off the deep end. If you look at his production record he sort of...stops around then and has only really produced things sparingly and when he has it's been this nutso stuff ever since. I imagine Spielberg had no desire to continue working with someone who was now openly expressing these beliefs. I apologize I can't be any clearer. Most people don't believe me when I tell this story because it's so mind numbingly stupid. It's not even funny in a dark way. It's just plain awful. Molen isn't exactly lacking in talent from a production standpoint but he's no exactly there mentally.

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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#22 Post by Leo Realism » Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:52 pm

In light of this it's disappointing that Molen wasted the opportunity Schindler's List presented to expose the liberals/Democratic Party/communists/left/NWO as the true masterminds behind the Holocaust and portray Schindler as a morally righteous entrepreneur who got redpilled, left the plantation and started covertly using his business to rebel against Big Government.

[edited]

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colinr0380
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#23 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Aug 22, 2018 4:49 pm

Last edited by colinr0380 on Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#24 Post by swo17 » Wed Aug 22, 2018 4:54 pm

Wait, it's pronounced Ar-MAWND?

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Death of a Nation (Dinesh D'Souza, 2018)

#25 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:36 am

In case there was any attempt of illusion by the director of where his political tendencies lay, the recently announced Blu-ray has a special feature interview with white supremacist Richard Spencer. For all the cinematic self-flagellation I inflict upon my brain, I didn't see this in theaters as it seemed to play for a week and then disappear. Is he in the film?

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