North Korea
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Everyday Is Like Sunday: Soon-Mi Yoo’s Songs From the North
Soon-Mi Yoo’s Songs From the North joins a small group of recent films that attempt to understand North Korea despite a lack of readily available resources. (The Interview will not be mentioned except just this once, because c’mon.) Jim Finn’s The Juche Idea combines real North Korean footage with CCTV-level, rigorously stilted fake propaganda and musical numbers of the director’s own puckish division, attempting to define something about the nation by producing materials ostensibly following the titular gibberish ideology; Mads Brügger’s annoying and unlightening The Red Chapel sends the Danish provocateur to the DPRK along with comedians to find out What’s Really Happening, mostly by […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 18, 2015 -
Watch: A “Language Lesson” from Jim Finn’s North Korean Mockumentary The Juche Idea
The FBI can’t prove that North Korea is responsible for hacking into Sony, releasing thousands of documents and confidential company information. So it can’t be said with any certainty that the hack was launched as an official attack on James Franco and Seth Rogen’s forthcoming let’s-assassinate-Kim Jong-un comedy The Interview, although the outraged North Korean government has expressed their approval, stating that “hacking into Sony Pictures might be a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK.” Regardless of how it shakes out, what better time to revisit Jim Finn’s peerlessly odd, deadpan take on North Korean propaganda? 2008’s The Juche […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 9, 2014 -
The Ambassador — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Ambassador had its world premiere at IDFA 2011 and its U.S. premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It was picked up for distribution by Drafthouse Films. It launched on VOD and digital platforms on August 4, 2012, and opens theatrically at the IFC Center in New York City on August 29, 2012, and at The Cinefamily in Los Angeles and Alamo Drafthouse locations in Austin on August 31, 2012.) For the Fox News crowd, the Central African Republic could be seen as the future they’ve been waiting for: a skeleton government that rules hand in hand with ruthless, unregulated […]
by Paul Sbrizzi on Aug 30, 2012
