Anti-Christian Bigotry Blamed for Ending Song"s Oscar Bid

Anti-Christian bigotry may be to blame for the pulling of an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, says Acadamy Award-winning producer Gerald Molen.

The song “Alone Yet Not Alone,” from the film of the same name, was removed from consideration last week after it was learned that its composer, Bruce Broughton, had lobbied fellow academy members to consider the song.

Lobbying for votes is not new to the Oscar process, but Broughton is a former governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and currently is an executive committee member in the music branch.

Members said he was using his influence as an official to lobby for his own work.

But Molen, who won Oscars as producer of “Schindler’s List” and “Jurassic Park,” disagreed, sending a letter to academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. In it he warned, “Critics will pound and accuse us of being out of touch and needlessly offending middle America” by pulling the nomination, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s on Tuesday, Molen said it is common for people to lobby for films during December and January.

“Why was this one singled out?” he asked. “Maybe I’ve missed something.”

In the 86-year history of the Academy Awards, it is only the fourth time a nomination has been rescinded.

Broughton had said in his email that he was bringing attention to the song only because it was from a movie that the voters most likely had not seen, and he wanted it to have a chance.

The movie “Alone Yet Not Alone” earned only $ 134,000 in a 21-day run, and has a strong evangelical Christian theme. The song was sung by Joni Eareckson Tada, a celebrity in evangelical circles who became a quadriplegic after a diving accident.

“In my humble opinion, it seems to me that this has turned a Cinderella story that America loves into a story of the wicked stepmother who wants to keep her daughter from the ball, with we, the academy, cast as the villain,” Molen wrote.

Molen is also the producer of two documentary films by Dinesh D’Souza, “2016: Obama’s America” and the coming “America.”

Molen said recently that he suspects the investigation into D’Souza’s political activities is political payback for the anti-Obama film.

Molen told Fox News he would like to see the academy reconsider its decision on “Alone Yet Not Alone.”

“If that’s the final decision, then we’re all going to have to accept it,” he said. “We don’t have to like it, and we can certainly voice our opinion.”

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• Academy Cites Integrity in Pulling Oscar Song Nod


• D’Souza Releases Trailer for Upcoming Film ‘America’

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Anti-Christian Bigotry Blamed for Ending Song"s Oscar Bid

The Oscar Nominee Interviews: 2014 Picks Include "Dirty Wars," "The Act of Killing" & "The Square"

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the five films nominated for the Documentary Feature Oscar. A record 147 films had originally qualified in the category. Watch our interviews with three of the filmmakers who were nominated, and see all of our Oscar-related coverage over the years.

Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare

We interview investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill and filmmaker Rick Rowley when “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. “One of the things that humbles both of us is that when you arrive in a village in Afghanistan and knock on someone’s door, you’re the first American they’ve seen since the Americans that kicked that door in and killed half their family,” Rowley says. “We promised them that we would do everything we could to make their stories be heard in the U.S. … Finally we’re able to keep those promises.”

"The Act of Killing": New Film Shows U.S.-Backed Indonesian Death Squad Leaders Re-enacting Massacres

We spend the hour with Joshua Oppenheimer, the director of the groundbreaking documentary called “The Act of Killing.” The film is set in Indonesia, where, beginning in 1965, military and paramilitary forces slaughtered up to a million Indonesians after overthrowing the democratically elected government. That military was backed by the United States and led by General Suharto, who would rule Indonesia for decades. There has been no truth and reconciliation commission, nor have any of the murderers been brought to justice. As the film reveals, Indonesia is a country where the killers are to this day celebrated as heroes by many. Oppenheimer spent more than eight years interviewing the Indonesian death squad leaders, and in “The Act of Killing,” he works with them to re-enact the real-life killings in the style of American movies in which the men love to watch — this includes classic Hollywood gangster movies and lavish musical numbers. A key figure he follows is Anwar Congo, who killed hundreds, if not a thousand people with his own hands and is now revered as a founding father of an active right-wing paramilitary organization. We also ask Oppenheimer to discusses the film’s impact in Indonesia, where he screened it for survivors and journalists who have launched new investigations into the massacres. The film is co-directed by Christine Cynn and an Indonesian co-director who remains anonymous for fear of retribution, as does much of the Indonesian film crew.

"The Square": Jehane Noujaim’s New Film Captures Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution After Mubarak’s Fall

As Egyptians marked the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, we looked at the new documentary that captures the ongoing protest movement in Egypt well after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak. “The Square” follows a group of activists as they risk their lives in the uprising that ousted Mubarak only to face further threats under the transitional military regime. We’re joined by the film’s Egyptian-American director, Jehane Noujaim, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Noujaim’s previous work includes the famed Al Jazeera documentary, “Control Room.”

Democracy Now! Blog

The Oscar Nominee Interviews: 2014 Picks Include "Dirty Wars," "The Act of Killing" & "The Square"

Silk Road could have led the way to safer drug use | Oscar Rickett

The drug-selling website could have offered a real alternative to violent cartels – but for the FBI it was an easier target

In the end, it was relatively old-fashioned police work that brought down Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old San Francisco resident who looks a bit like Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild and is thought to be the owner and operator of online drugs marketplace, Silk Road. It was partly through mundane, archaic websites such as LinkedIn and WordPress, as well as a Gmail account, that Ulbricht came to the authorities’ attention.

Like an upwardly mobile Apprentice candidate keen to impress Lord Sugar, Ulbricht just couldn’t quite stop himself from boasting of a new position on LinkedIn. Operating on the deep web, using Tor software, Silk Road was the next-generation, post-WikiLeaks way to buy drugs. The shutting down of the site feels a bit like a motorboat full of old-school toughs boarding a 21st-century pirate ship run by mild-mannered nerds. It also, despite allegations that Ulbricht paid a hitman to have a Silk Road user who was threatening him killed, feels like a shame. If the allegations are true, there is absolutely no defence for that, but they are inconclusive, and in stark contrast to descriptions of Ulbricht as an idealist, a young man who wanted to make the buying and selling of drugs a cleaner, safer affair.

The end of Silk Road feels like a shame because its closure – and the arrest of Ulbricht – simply tells us that the American government has found yet another way to waste time and money on the policing of drugs. The internet, particularly the deep web, has opened up a new front in the war on drugs. You can almost imagine drug authorities getting a perverse thrill from the prospect of a new type of adversary, a new breed of law-breaker to add colour to a picture that is mostly taken up by ultra-violent cartels. In steaming into this new world the drug authorities were, yet again, doing the wrong thing expensively.

Silk Road could have ended up providing a real alternative to the cartels. It could have taken money out of their pockets and put it into the pockets of people whose only crime was to sell drugs – as opposed to people whose many crimes include mass-murder and kidnapping. When I interviewed the former drug smuggler Brian O’Dea, he told me that it was the drug authorities’ decision to go after peaceful guys like him (“low hanging fruit”) that led to the drug-trafficking business being dominated by violent gangs. For O’Dea in the 1980s, read Ulbricht today.

Silk Road also provided a model for how the legalised selling of drugs might work. Reports suggest that the drugs were less contaminated and that the experience of buying them was less fraught. On the one hand, that just means less awkward sitting around in cars with guys you don’t really want to talk to – on the other hand, it means not being put in physical danger because you’d rather get high than get drunk.

We have to get out of the mindset of thinking that things are wrong because they are illegal. People make laws and people can change those laws. The war on drugs is hugely expensive. The criminalisation of drugs forces people to take risks they wouldn’t normally take and leads to overdoses and the contamination of substances that would not otherwise cause such extreme harm. It creates addicts and it creates dealers. Silk Road showed us a way – a hugely imperfect way, it should be noted – that these things could be overcome but our lawmakers, with their focus on punishment and their refusal to accept defeat, could not see the benefit in this. Prohibition never works but it’s still the order of the day.

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• Drugs


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• US crime


• Internet

Oscar Rickett

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Silk Road could have led the way to safer drug use | Oscar Rickett

Oscar Pistorius Indicted On Murder Charge

Oscar Pistorius has been indicted on charges of murder and illegal possession of ammunition for the shooting death of the double-amputee Olympian’s girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

A Pretoria court on Monday set March 3 as the trial date for Pistorius, who says he shot Reeva Steenkamp by mistake, believing she was an intruder in his home. Prosecutors say he killed her after an argument. The prosecution submitted a list of more than 100 witnesses.

Pistorius was in court for the indictment, and was seen crying and holding hands with his siblings before proceedings started.

He faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison if convicted of premeditated murder.

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Oscar Pistorius Indicted On Murder Charge

VIDEO: Did Liam Hemsworth Cheat on Miley Cyrus?

Liam Hemsworth was spotted with a short-haired blonde at a pre-Oscar party over the weekend, but guess what–it wasn’t Miley Cyrus! This one is hard to believe but the new issue of Star is reporting that Liam got hot and heavy with January Jones over the weekend! The mag says Liam arrived solo to the bash at the Chateau Marmont and had no problem cozying up to January in front of everyone. The insider goes as far as saying the two even kissed! So what do you think about this rumor, faux or fo real? Liam just doesn’t seem like the cheating type!

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VIDEO: Did Liam Hemsworth Cheat on Miley Cyrus?