E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

I know it's hard to believe, but Hollywood once made good films. Even great ones. The one that the blowhards in North Korea apparently blew their tops over would not have qualified as either, but that, it seems, is about as good as it gets any more in that self-absorbed town that still fancies itself as the entertainment capital of the world. What Hollywood still has--Sony Studios or no--is an archive, a repertoire if you will, of great films, from over the last century. And believe it or not, as I witnessed first hand and played my own small part in making it happen, it was those films that carried out the real revolution in China: the post-Maoist, post-Communist revolution that made the people (if not yet the government) of China want to join the rest of the world--really for the first time in it's 7,000 year history. It wasn't intentional--far from it. And Hollywood moguls still fret about how the Chinese 'stole' all their movies. But the point they miss is t...

I stand by my prior position, that no one in North Korea has the sophistication to pull off that successful cyber attack on Sony Pictures and cancellation of their Christmas release "The Interview." (On a separate matter, why exactly, was Christmas Day chosen to release a movie about a political assassination anyway? Not that North Korea would care). They either had an insider, or someone capable of straddling both worlds (the Communist Far East and 'decadent' West) simultaneously. That would be the Chinese. I know this because I spent 30 months there teaching American English and using Hollywood movies as a basic teaching tool. So, could one of my students have done this? I hate to think so, but yes, in theory that would be possible. My students were smart, sophisticated, eager to communicate with and learn about the West (not just the U.S. but also Europe and Latin America) and most certainly had the skills. But someone beholden to Kim Jong Un? I don't think...