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Kim Jong-il critiques the Oscars

Do these Academy Award nominees meet rigid North Korean cinema standards?

 

Rae Votta

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Posted on Jan 31, 2015   Updated on May 29, 2021, 3:48 pm CDT

Thanks to a little film called The Interview, we already know that North Korea has passionate feelings about cinema. What if that passion was applied to critique the most recent batch of Oscar hopefuls, using Kim Jong-il’s own book on cinema as the guiding principles for success?

Wisecrack, the channel behind Earthling Cinema, applies Kim’s beliefs to the Oscar nominees to see how they stack up. Kim’s nuanced views include such things as, “in a film, the actors face, and the eyes in particular, should be made up well.” That bodes well for a repeat Oscar for Meryl Streep, whose transformation into a witch for Into The Woods is definitely in line with Kim Jong-il’s writing.

It’s apt that a channel that hosts a show devoted to explaining human cinema to aliens excels at using the world’s most alien society to clarify the Oscar race. But at least North Korea can rest easy knowing that Seth Rogan and James Franco are nowhere near the podium.

Screengrab via Wisecrack/YouTube

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*First Published: Jan 31, 2015, 12:27 am CST