Cinefiles: Kim Jong-un, Seth Rogen, and hackers, what’s going on with the Sony leaks?

Jenny Levine
Arts, Entertainment, and Technology Editor
@JALevineCourant

Over the past couple of weeks you might’ve heard mentions of Sony from James Franco’s SNL monologue or SNL’s hilarious new sketch featuring Dr. Evil, or maybe your Aunt Jan posted a link from the Conservative Tribune on your wall about North Korean spies. Every day it seems that the emails get raunchier and involve more and more high profile actors and directors, even the President.

An anonymous group of hackers who call themselves, Guardians of Peace, began the cyber attacks by releasing unaired movie scripts, including the script for the new James Bond movie, Spectre. They then continued by leaking the private emails between Sony studio chair, Amy Pascal and various producers and actors.

Within these emails, Pascal spoke candidly, calling the director of the upcoming war flick, Unbroken, Angelina Jolie, “a minimally talented, spoiled brat.” She also made a racist comment about President Obama. “Should I ask him him if he liked Django” (she continued to list other slave related movies).

These comments caused enormous waves of backlash in Hollywood and Washington, but what the American population is livid about is Sony’s decision to cancel the release date of the Seth Rogen, James Franco comedy, The Interview, after five major theater companies like AMC quietly pulled the movie from their screens.

The decision of major companies to cancel the premiere of The Interview came after Guardians of Peace released a statement warning moviegoers to avoid theatres showing the movie, even alluding to 9/11.

You might be thinking to yourself: by conceding to thinly veiled threats, isn’t the company legitimizing the terrorist’s actions? The answer is yes. Yes, it does. Many people of the entertainment industry and Washington agreed and tweeted their disgust with the handling of the controversy:

Here’s where the story gets even stranger. Some individuals who work for the US government believe that North Korea is behind the leaks, despite their lacking any evidence, other than an official Pyongyang statement which lauded the hacks as “justified.”

The reason North Koreans are getting their model #3475389 in concrete gray panties in a bunch is because of the subject of the movie, which features Seth Rogen and James Franco assassinating current leader and pioneer of the middle part, Kim Jong-un.

Is this an international cyber attack aimed to cripple America at its most self absorbed, yet worshipped core? Or is this a red herring to cover for some inside Hollywood studio sabotage. We may never know, well actually, I think because these leaks concern Leo Dicaprio, the CIA will have 528 page report by Monday. Hopefully there won’t be waterboarding this time.