News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

The North Korea Crazy #1

The Amusing Korea, North Korea, has outdone itself in recent weeks.  Plans of their strategy to attack the United States leaked out and were very reminiscent of 1984’s Red Dawn.  Gulp.

by Chris Neumer

A few months back, I wrote about the insanity of the actual invasion plan of the Russian/Cuban forces in the eighties cult classic, Red Dawn.  It featured Russian forces singling out Texas as the first state in the Union to attack.  I thought it was hysterical that this notion would ever be suggested.  As I wrote then:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this scenario—foreign troops invade Texas from the south—was actually a fantasy of a fair number of Texans.  “I finally get to shoot people coming into this country illegally from Mexico?  And it’s okay?  Wait, I might get a medal for it and be considered a hero?”

Well, life has a funny way of unfolding.  In recent weeks, it was reported that North Korea has prepared a “US mainland strike plan”.  In this plan, their first course of action would be to attack Washington DC, southern California, Hawaii and, you guessed it, Texas.  Austin, Texas, to be specific.

Now, this plan of North Korea’s is so riddled with problems and errors that it’s hard to even call it a plan.  If there were a journalistically approved method of putting air quotes around a given word, I’d do that with the word ‘plan’ here; simply using quotation marks won’t quite cut it.  Not the least of there problems is that North Korean missiles aren’t even capable of reaching the west coast of the United States, let alone the nation’s capital.

Experts on the situation are quoted as saying that they believe that the strike plan is designed to “demonstrate [North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s] mastery of military affairs” to North Koreans as opposed to representing an actual plan.

Yup, because nothing says military know-how like stealing an invasion strategy from an eighties teen movie.

Ironically, if Kim had taken the invasion strategy from the most recent version of Red Dawn, a movie that actually featured the North Koreans as the bad guys, he would have had a much sounder strategy to show off to his people.  But, in this case, he would have then had to watch the new Red Dawn, and that’s something that you wouldn’t even wish on a despotic Asian ruler.

The North Korea Crazy #2

Not simply content to steal plot material from one eighties movie, North Korea then turned its sites on Lethal Weapon 2 and ordered its diplomats to start selling narcotics.  Seriously.

by Chris Neumer

In 1989, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover teamed up for a second time in Lethal Weapon 2 to match wits with the head of the South African Consulate who was taking full advantage of his diplomatic status (and immunity) to head up a huge drug ring inside the United States.  You see, because Arjen Rudd (Josh Ackland) was a diplomat to the US, he couldn’t be prosecuted for trivial crimes like murder, racketeering, conspiracy and drug trafficking.  It’s a good gig if you can get it!

Quote

“I made a promise?  No, no, no, no, no!  I made a business deal!  A promise is something you make to your mother about wearing itchy clothes when it’s cold outside.  A promise is something you make very late at night to someone you’re probably never going to see again to get to the good stuff.  A promise is something you make to your dentist when he’s scheduling your next appointment.  I know what a promise is and I didn’t make one!”

– Bruce Willis made a promise in Moonlighting

The only problem with the aforementioned scenario is that there’s a good faith component to it; the home countries of diplomats can wave said diplomatic immunity.  In several instances, diplomats would commit a crime—spousal abuse, smuggling, or in one case murder—and when this news reached the diplomats’ home countries, their government quickly revoked their diplomatic status, allowing them to be prosecuted.  As an aside, the country that seems to take fullest advantage of this diplomatic immunity?  The United States.  While looking into this, I encountered numerous mentions of United States diplomats and embassy cars hitting locals they shouldn’t have and getting away with it because of their diplomatic immunity.

Well, one country saw Lethal Weapon 2 recently and, instead of seeing it as a entertaining action flick, looked at it as a rather inspirational film that laid out a great path on how to make some extra cash.  At this point in time, do I even have to mention that this country was North Korea?  I mean, since Kim Jong-Un came to power, North Korea’s role in the world transformed from nuclear pain-in-the-ass to comic relief.

As reported in the Washington Post, “North Korea ordered its diplomats in some number of foreign embassies, including at least one in Eastern Europe, to sell illegal drugs on the streets.”  The plan was to give the diplomats about 40 pounds of meth, which the North Koreans make very well, and have them sell said drugs for $300,000.  North Korea aimed to have 10+ diplomats doing this, netting them a cool $3 million in the process.

Since there are so many sanctions in place against North Korea, they have had to resort to underhanded methods such as these to get some cash flowing into the country.  North Korea is also known to be a huge counterfeiter of US $100 bills and to be a major player in illegal arms sales.  For more info on this, look into the cryptically named program, Room 39.  The results are fantastically interesting.  (Here’s a good starting point).

The saddest part of this story is that because meth is so much cheaper than actual medicine scores of North Korean citizens use meth as an actual medication.  The Daily Beast reported that they have witnessed doctors actually prescribed meth to their patients as something of a cure-all.  As such, North Korean is widely believed to have one of the worst methamphetamine problems in the world.  However, North Korea widely denies this, much the way they widely deny having any problems of any type.

If only Gibson and Glover were around to tackle this problem…

The Section Formally Known As “This Week’s Sign You’re Getting Old”: Taylor Kitsch Just Turned 32.

Actor Taylor Kitsch knows how to age up quickly; he went from 18 to 32 in just four years.

by Chris Neumer

It doesn’t take much to make me feel old these days; turning 37 can do that to a person.  However, when I saw that actor Taylor Kitsch turned 32 this week, I felt even older than usual.  Little Timmy Riggins from Friday Night Lights was solidly in his 30s.  It just seemed like entirely too much time had passed entirely too quickly.

After looking at Kitsch’s IMDB page though, I realized that this was not your run-of-the-mill sign that you’re old; as a matter of fact, after looking at Kitsch filmography, I actually started feeling younger!  Why?  Because it was only four short years ago that Kitsch was making a household name for himself by playing a senior in high school on Friday Night Lights.  It was less than a year ago that he turned 26 on-screen in the movie Battleship.  And now he’s 32.

The lesson here is simple: no one should ever feel old when compared to someone who can age from 18 to 32 in four short years.

The Photo of the Week

Womb

Ah, the “rape kissing” photo from Womb.  This week we’re taking a break from Sean Penn’s emo-ed rocker in This Must Be the Place; he will be back next week.  While looking at the production stills for Womb, I saw this one and was taken by its power and emotion.  If I recall the scene correctly, this is where Eva Green’s character’s cloned boyfriend (Matt Smith) that she gave birth to has sex with her.  Regardless of what convoluted relationship Green has with Smith, there is a tension and presence here that deserves to be highlighted.  No one does sexually deviant better than Green.

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

1) Sharon Stone has three sons, all adopted, named Roan, Laird and Quinn.

2) Stone has stated for years that she was a member of MENSA (an organization for people “whose IQ is in the top 2% of the population” according to the MENSA site).  She admitted in 2002 that she had made that up and, as officials of MENSA has stated many times previously, Stone had never been a member.

3) Stone is an ordained minister.

4) Prior to acting, Stone was a Ford Model.  Though she didn’t graduate from college, when she attended she planned on majoring in creative writing.

5) Stone cites the Dalai Lama as a close friend.  The Dalai Lama heard about this, nodded and replied that he had indeed met Stone.