Customer Reviews

On the Art of the Cinema

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is very repititive. If you like books in which things are repeated, this is the book for you because things are repeated in it. This book says the same thing in different ways. Similar ideas are stated in different ways many times in the book. Although stated differently, many times, a sentence states the same idea that was stated previously. This happens many times. Many many ideas are repeated many many times. It gets redundant.

My mind was simply blown away!!! The dear leader is an author par-excellence. Given that it was written in 6 hours flat, this book is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is sad that the biased western media has not recognised the great man's writing abilities. Nor have the reindeer eating ignoramuses in Sweden considered the master for the Nobel Prize for literature. Not that the great man needs one.

In this book, his greatness discusses, in depth, the fine intricacies of various aspects of film making from kidnapping directors and their wives, to ordering people in to movie theatres.

As the person who solely invented 3D cinema, digital projection and bullet time photography, his Kimness can teach a thing or two to posers like Speilberg. But his shortness's abilities are not limited to film production techniques. He directed what is the undoubtedly the greatest movie of all time, Dairy of a Girl Student and also lesser known movies like Star wars, Saving Private Ryan and God Father 1&2. Godfather 3 was not directed by Lil Kim and hence sucked big time.

The Kim man also reveals in the book, his dabblings in alternative cinema, directing and starring in masterpieces like Kim goes South, Interracial Kimming and Kimm until she's Ill, which although is widely considered to be the greatest adult movie ever made, is not available outside due to privacy concerns. Fears of leaking these masterpieces to the western devils is rumoured to be the reason why North Koreans don't have access to the internet. But the movies can apparently be bought on BetaMax in North Korea for an average monthly salary of a North Korean or 1 piece of bread.

To summarise read this book or face the firing squad when the revolution comes.

First off, I'm a huge fan of Mr. Jung's work.

"Let's Work On Doubling the Output of the Red Harvest Tractor Factory #8!!!!" was a beautiful little film, all four hours of it. Great rainy day treat, if your work militia collectively owns a dvd player.

This book gets a little heavy on theory however, which is a missed opportunity in my opinion. While Jung's theory on extracting socially realistic acting from kidnapped Japanese soap opera stars was helpful in my latest project, Jung's technical work is so stunning that this book is merely a footnote to an awesome contribution to world cinema, if by world cinema you mean North Korean cinema.

I could choose from a few different angles to take with my review. I could just write about my own personal opinion about the book, and tell you to take that at face value, or I could write to convince you why my opinion is justified, in the hopes of saving you money from buying this book. Kim Jong-Il, however, has already done much of the work for me, when he wrote his preface to the book (find it in the product description). I'll repeat it here, as I think it offers more than enough insight to what the book is like:

"The cinema is now one of the main objects on which efforts should be concentrated in order to conduct the revolution in art and literature. The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction. Therefore, concentrating efforts on the cinema, making breakthroughs and following up success in all areas of art and literature is the basic principle that we must adhere to in revolutionizing art and literature."

Allow me to break this down sentence by sentence. His first statement is rather bold (regarding cinema as a forefront of art and literature), yet he offers nothing to back up this claim (I know, it's just the preface, but you wont find any justifications in the book either.). Moreover, why would such a revolution be necessary, wanted, or even interesting to read for that matter? As has been previously noted, repetition can be found throughout (e.g. the preface's first 2 sentences: "The cinema... art and literature.", "the cinema" and "revolution" are repeated 3 times in 4 sentences, "art and literature" repeated 4 times, twice in the last sentence.). All 4 sentences of this preface say roughly the same thing: Cinema, being an important part in art and literature, can be a useful tool in revolutionizing the whole. I hope that's enough.

I can imagine only one reason to read this book: to see (if only a minor amount) into the mind of a person in a position of great influence. Let me say, it is my own opinion, that you'll get the jist of the book just from reading the preface a couple times.

A man of many talents, the Dear Leader , Comrade Kim Jong Il, can be found most nights crunching popcorn down at his local cinema and turning in a neat film review for the Democratic Peoples Advertiser, where he is star critic. He finds it a great way to relax after a hard day at the office - ensuring the ideological purity of Marxist-Juche Thought and pursuing a long-term strategy of nuclear brinkmanship can be a drag sometimes, as he candidly admits in the preface to this, his first collection of reviews. Theres nothing like a good flick to ease the pressure of life as a Great Helmsman. In fact, Kim is such an ardent movie buff that he even had himself cloned, enabling him to review two films at once at his local Lenin Multiplex (which explains the seemingly odd situation above where two Kims are listed as the authors of this book). Trivia fans might like to note that Kim is also president of the Pyongyang Ava Gardner Fan Club. His favourite movies include It Happened One Night, Rocky III and Blade Runner (but definitely the directors cut as he finds the Harrison Ford voiceover on the original lame and the happy ending cynically contrived). He is also a massive Star Wars fan  his Yoda impression was the toast of the 30th Communist International. Sadly he had to confess that he found The Phantom Menace disappointing. Never mind, I wonder what Kim Jong Il (and Kim Jong Il!) will make of Attack of the Clones (!). I cant wait for the next volume 

I never understood cinema. To me, movies were movies. You went in, ate popcorn, and, if you were lucky, stuff blew up.

Then came Kim.

His words are like poetry and his descriptions are as delicious as ice cream (of the mind). Suddenly cinema made sense. It is art, it is life.

I'm no writer, so I'm not sure if I can put this into words as well as Kim could, but his book is like touching a beautiful woman in a special place and she doesn't call the cops on you. It's that good!

A guide to how films should be made according to the strict aesthetic principles and dialectical methodology of Juche, "On the Art of the Cinema" certainly does not mince words. It is at once surprising - passionately written by someone who sincerely cares about cinema - in its attempts to debunk one hundred years of classical film theory and criticism, from Siegfried Kracauer to Andre Bazin to Lotte Eisner, from Pauline Kael to William Rothman to Christian Metz - and at the same time, it teaches us to rethink our notion that the creation of great films can only be achieved by "free" societies and the will of individual directors. Certainly, fans of North Korean Classics like "A River of Blood" or the later (1985) DPRK-science-fiction "Pulgasari" will find in Kim Jong Il's film theoretical work much food for earnest discussions. Kim Jong Il also gives advice to aspiring North Korean directors by stipulating three essential principles of cinema: "seed theory" (the "proper" revolutionary themes that should be presented), "modeling" (the "proper" portrayal of working class struggles to achieve class liberation), and "speed campaign" (the quick production of films to meet The Party's needs). "On the Art of the Cinema" is arguably a twentieth century classic, albeit with a frank and radical twist.

Er ... ahem .... ummm .... is this perhaps a big joke?

If so, it's a good 'un.....

mind still boggling here .....