Tag: movies

The domestic Korean movie “The Himalayas” must be pretty good considering it took on the new Star Wars movie this weekend and beat it in ticket sales:

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opened atop the box office all over the world, but it proved no match for “The Himalayas” in South Korea, where the homegrown survival tale snagged the No. 1 spot on Friday.

Based on a true story, “The Himalayas” made $1.6 million on Friday, while “The Force Awakens” came in second with $1.3 million. Friday was the opening day for both films.

Of course, the newest “Star Wars” installment is not hurting for box office returns. The J.J. Abrams-directed space epic has taken in $129 million from abroad since it began rolling out Wednesday, distributor Disney reported on Saturday.  [The Wrap via Reddit]

You can read the rest at the link, but I saw the new Star Wars movie this weekend and found it to be better than any of the prequels.  However, the plot played it safe and was pretty predictable. Also Kylo-Ren and the Golem on steroids has to be one of the worst movie villain duos ever.  However, the incredible special effects, likable lead characters and some unexpected humor made for an overall really good movie.

https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/653671366361681921

I don’t see Hollywood changing their stereotype of military veterans any time soon even with this film festival:

My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.”

The GI Film Festival opens in Washington this week in its ninth year as a corrective to the one-dimensional portrayals that many observers fear have influenced how the public sees the military. The festival runs May 18 through May 24 and features 60 movies, including shorts, documentaries, comedies and dramas. All are either made by veterans or feature military characters.

At a time when only 0.5 percent of the population is on active duty, many in the military community argue that even the cinema offerings that attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of soldiers and veterans — such as the acclaimed “American Sniper” — end up breeding harmful stereotypes.

Recent films have also portrayed vets as murderers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted”); as deserters suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“Stop-Loss”); and as mavericks so addicted to combat that they can’t reintegrate into American society (“The Hurt Locker”).

“People believe what they see in the movies,” said Laura Law-Millett, a veteran who founded the GI Film Festival with her civilian husband, Brandon Millett. “If someone had seen some of these films who had never met anyone in the military, prior to about 2007, they would say, ‘Oh, so everyone who joins the Army becomes a drug dealer or a rapist or a murderer?'”  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but with Bush out of office the amount of movies and documentaries depicting troops as murderers and rapists seems to have decreased.  It seems now they focus more on veterans being heroic or broken from PTSD. 

Kidnapped directors and American defectors: North Korea's six decades of cinema http://t.co/j6ZVBHHjhl via @mashable #NorthKorea #DPRK

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) December 22, 2014

The highly controversial movie “The Interview” was released yesterday despite threats from North Korean sponsored hackers and that means more reviews of the movie are in.  Like some of the initial screening reviews I read these reviews are not good either:

The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy calls it “an intensely sophomoric and rampantly uneven comic takedown of an easy but worrisomely unpredictable target, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. In the relatively sparse annals of irreverent major studio comedies that pissed off foreign nations, for big laughs this one doesn’t rate anywhere near Borat or Team America: World Police. … As political satire goes, The Interview has the comic batting average of a mediocre-to-average Saturday Night Live sketch, with a few potent laughs erupting from an overall mash of sex, drugs and TV broadcasting jokes that feel rooted in a sense of humor primarily characterized by a frat-boy/altered state/prolonged adolescence mind-set.”

Additionally, “if you set up as provocative a premise as do the makers of The Interview, you ultimately have to deal with all its implications; let’s just say that what concludes the film is rote action, simplistic wish-fulfillment stuff that feels cheap and naive and more concerned with looking coolly kick-ass than with any real-world consequences. Even if one part of the film is sincere in wanting to highlight North Korea’s negatives (famine, ideological orthodoxy, cult of personality, militarism, nuclear brinkmanship, et al.), the larger part is devoted to very Western-style sexual grossness, deterministic outrageousness, self-satisfied obliviousness and contended immaturity.” Alongside Franco and Rogen, “Park brings great energy and enthusiasm to his tricky job of portraying the world’s least known big-deal ruler — there are even scenes of him getting the famous Kim haircut and selecting a suit from a closet full of identical ones.”  [The Hollywood Reporter]

You can read more reviews at the link, but this movie appears to be pretty horrible.  I think I will pass on watching it even if it is supposed to be my patriotic duty now to do so.  Has any ROK Heads seen this film and can verify how bad it is?

North Korea is trying to get the Czech Republic to ban the recent movie Team America.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic – North Korea (news – web sites)’s embassy in Prague has demanded that the film “Team America: World Police” be banned in the Czech Republic, saying the movie harms their country’s reputation, a report said Saturday.

In the film by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a team of marionettes rushes to keep North Korean leader Kim Jong Il from destroying the world, reducing world capitals to rubble along the way.

“It harms the image of our country,” the Lidove Noviny daily quoted a North Korean diplomat as saying. “Such behavior is not part of our country’s political culture. Therefore, we want the film to be banned.”

The Czech Foreign Ministy said the film would not be banned in the Czech Republic.

“We told them it’s an unrealistic wish,” ministry spokesman Vit Kolar was quoted as saying. “Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country.”

Obviously Kim Jong Il must of forgot the Czech Republic gave up Communism 15 years ago and will not be pushed around by another Communist bully. If North Korea wants to bully someone to ban Team America they should demand South Korea ban the movie. The South Korean government already gives North Korea everything it wants anyway, so banning a movie is no problem. Who cares about freedom of speech when you have North Korea to appease.