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The Interview Bombs In US, Kills In China, Threatens N. Korea
First time accepted submitter twitnutttt (2958183) writes "While it has been broadly panned in the U.S. as not very funny, The Interview is surprisingly getting good reviews in China. And the North Korean government's fears of the threat posed by this movie are apparently merited: "It is powerful because it depicts Kim Jong-un as a vain, buffoonish despot, alternating between threats and weeping that he's been misunderstood. The people around him have all the signs of fear you might expect with a despot — they second-guess his likes and dislikes. Maybe he — and they — were right to fear the film. North Korean defectors sometimes smuggle USB sticks with films and soaps into the closed-off country, and there is a view in the south that these are a particularly powerful means of undermining the regime in Pyongyang. If that's so, The Interview might be a good candidate for inclusion."
If you've seen the movie, and have your own reactions, please label any real spoilers out of courtesy.
"It is powerful because it depicts Kim Jong-un as a vain, buffoonish despot, alternating between threats and weeping that he's been misunderstood. The people around him have all the signs of fear you might expect with a despot â" they second-guess his likes and dislikes. Maybe he â" and they â" were right to fear the film. North Korean defectors sometimes smuggle USB sticks with films and soaps into the closed-off country, and there is a view in the south that these are a particularly powerful means of undermining the regime in Pyongyang. If that's so, The Interview might be a good candidate for inclusion."
If nothing else, it's rather sad that Seth Rogen and James Franco are able to have a bigger impact on North Korea than sanctions and every diplomat and US president since the end of the Korean War.
This sounds like Nobel Peace Prize buzz to me. ;-)
While I'm almost embarrassingly rich thanks to a wealthy family, I've never understood the US obsession with wealth as an indicator of anything except... that a person has cash or other material assets. There are many ways to become rich, and almost none of them involve much productivity, let alone effort.
The North Korean regime's survival depends on keeping its people completely uninformed. Here's an article about how even a little bit of information about the outside world can destroy the carefully constructed myths that sustain North Korean society: http://articles.latimes.com/20...
"About two years ago, a North Korean who worked in the state fisheries division was on a boat in the Yellow Sea when his transistor radio picked up a South Korean situation comedy. The radio program featured two young women who were fighting over a parking space in their apartment complex.
A parking space? The North Korean was astonished by the idea that there was a place with so many cars that there would be a shortage of places to park them. Although he was in his late 30s and a director of his division, he had never met anyone who owned their own car.
The North Korean never forgot that radio show and ended up defecting to South Korea last year."
The article is old, but I don't think things have changed much in North Korea.
But not enough to justify a pair of full-price tickets. I will give it this; it was better than any Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey movie I've seen.
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
invade North Korea, depose the North Korean government, and depose & disarm the North Korean military, and once they stabilized it, hand it over to South Korea
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"Pirates" are not definable in absolutes like that. Some studies have shown they are the biggest consumers of both paid and "stolen" media.
Saying they are simply a non-threat/no-sale is just as intellectually dishonest as when the RIAA/MPAA claim every pirated copy is a fully lost sale.
Piracy is convenient.
Downloading - a few minutes of my time to start the download. Then after it finishes (which is very fast usually), I can watch the movie on whatever device that has enough processing power and a screen, at any time having full control of it.
Going to the cinema (in general) - need to drive to wherever the cinema is, at a specified time, watch it with a bunch of strangers (that may include screaming children), no control whatsoever - cannot pause the movie to go to the toilet, cannot rewind a few seconds to rewatch a scene I missed, cannot increase or reduce the sound volume, cannot even have a conversation with whoever I came to watch the movie (assuming I did not come alone) during a boring part. Forced to watch ads before the movie. Cannot bring the food that I want (that is not sold (at high prices) in the cinema). The movie has to be recent enough to still be showed in cinemas.
Going to the cinema (this particular movie) - All of the above but include traveling to the US, getting a hotel room etc.
Buying a DVD/Bluray - Better than going to the cinema, but still have to go to a store that sells them, have to sit through a bunch of unskippable ads.
Time from "Hey, let's watch a movie! Which one? [googles some previously unheard of movie] This one." to actually watching it:
DVD: 30 minutes - 1 hour (assuming the store is open), days (if the store is closed).
Cinema: 30 minutes - 3 hours (assuming the movie is being shown in cinemas and the cinema is open), days (if the cinema is closed), undefined (if the movie is not shown in cinemas).
Download: 5 - 30 minutes (my internet connection is up to 500mbps).
Oh, and Netflix is not available in my country in case you were going to suggest it.
So, see, even if the tickets for the movie (or the DVDs at the store) were given away for free, downloading would be the preferred option.
Maybe. Mormons always confused me. They come to your door and try to get you to convert, but they also believe that heaven only has room for 5000 people. So wouldn't you be better off keeping it to yourself?
It turns out that God gives you afterlife credits for every unbeliever you convert. So it's important to convert a bunch of people so you can hopefully slip into one of the limited spots. Ahead of everyone you converted (and most of your co-religionists) presumably.
Logical, non-hypocritical, but kinda mercenary if you ask me.