i have a feeling that being Vice, they have a very strong drive to push weird and crazy, instead of impartial documentary film making but you cant argue with what you see in some cases
the one thing about North Korea one though is: open any guide book for any country in the world and you'll have the same format on offer as they get there. They paint it as propaganda but is it any different for visitors to say London or Washington DC??
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:26 am
by Phigure
the north korea one is nuts
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:42 am
by knell
hipster.tv
just kidding, i love vice
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:48 am
by Shum
When I was younger I used to tutor this kid in mathematics (in Seoul I should add), I found out much later on that him and his parents were North Korean defectors. We'd talk about our childhoods and what have you and the stories he told me, like the video says, were something out of the past. I tried hunting him down a few years back just to see how he was but no luck.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:06 am
by Phigure
Shum wrote:When I was younger I used to tutor this kid in mathematics (in Seoul I should add), I found out much later on that him and his parents were North Korean defectors. We'd talk about our childhoods and what have you and the stories he told me, like the video says, were something out of the past. I tried hunting him down a few years back just to see how he was but no luck.
shouldn't he have been tutoring you
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:09 am
by Shum
Phigure wrote:
Shum wrote:When I was younger I used to tutor this kid in mathematics (in Seoul I should add), I found out much later on that him and his parents were North Korean defectors. We'd talk about our childhoods and what have you and the stories he told me, like the video says, were something out of the past. I tried hunting him down a few years back just to see how he was but no luck.
shouldn't he have been tutoring you
Ha ha, It seems that North Korea isn't the best Korea when it comes to Mathematics education.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:11 am
by Phigure
Shum wrote:
Phigure wrote:
Shum wrote:When I was younger I used to tutor this kid in mathematics (in Seoul I should add), I found out much later on that him and his parents were North Korean defectors. We'd talk about our childhoods and what have you and the stories he told me, like the video says, were something out of the past. I tried hunting him down a few years back just to see how he was but no luck.
shouldn't he have been tutoring you
Ha ha, It seems that North Korea isn't the best Korea when it comes to Mathematics education.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:18 am
by Shum
To be fair to him, they push the kids pretty hard at school in South Korea. Its the exception, rather than the rule if you aren't getting further tuition in subjects in fact they have these places called Hagwon that are basically night schools that kids go to after school in the day. I was tutoring him because his family couldn't afford to send him to one of those places.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 8:46 am
by DRTY
knell wrote:hipster.tv
just kidding, i love vice
kinda true though.
I fuckin HATE some of their stuff, but love some too.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 8:55 am
by knell
what do you hate? i agree some of their stuff is meh but i cant see myself hating it... but i havent watched it all...
their afghanistan 06 BBC stuff is amazing, and for that i can forgive anything
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 9:12 am
by DRTY
knell wrote:what do you hate? i agree some of their stuff is meh but i cant see myself hating it... but i havent watched it all...
their afghanistan 06 BBC stuff is amazing, and for that i can forgive anything
I'm not really sure, I just remember reading a few articles that fucked me off.
Some of the writers come across as absolute bellends, it all seems so try hard. Although the article 'Let me Hear you say UNGH' is one of the best things I've ever read.
Tbh I haven't watched many of their video tings, only read the mag tho.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 9:45 am
by nicenice
The guides are alright, its just that for a lot of the documentaries its just guys in ray bans, canvas shoes skinny jeans and low cut tops that have no idea why they're there or what they're talking about.
"we need to get some guy who knows mexico to go down and look at the cartels it might be a bit dangerous"
"er I'm half mexican and my parents can pay expenses"
"perfect"
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:18 am
by Badman Juice
noam wrote:They paint it as propaganda but is it any different for visitors to say London or Washington DC??
they bug your hotel room and send you on compulsory state run guided tours. so yeah it's a bit different to a holiday in london.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:13 pm
by dubsola
DRTY wrote:Some of the writers come across as absolute bellends, it all seems so try hard.
I met someone who wrote for Vice once. I didn't know that until afterwards, but that person was inCREDibly irritating. When I found out they wrote for Vice, it all made sense.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:22 pm
by laurent__duval
i think the north korea one is a bit weird and a bit boring too but the liberia one is mental.
get the feeling they went into liberia without really realising what they were doing. that or theyve got big ol' balls.
as far as noam was saying about impartiality, its pretty difficult to find an impartial, unbiased documentary. people wouldnt bother to make one unless they had an agenda or a story to film. its one of the great problems with documentary film making.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:24 pm
by laurent__duval
dubsola wrote:
DRTY wrote:Some of the writers come across as absolute bellends, it all seems so try hard.
I met someone who wrote for Vice once. I didn't know that until afterwards, but that person was inCREDibly irritating. When I found out they wrote for Vice, it all made sense.
also, a friend of mine did an internship at vice a few years ago and said they were by-and-large arrogant wankers. a lot of failed artists and musicians that take out their jealousy on the people that are actually doing it where they couldnt.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 2:22 pm
by noam
yeh i didnt really want this to become about how much Vice is a hipster land-fill site of a magazine at bottom akin to Sugarape from Nathan Barley but i definitely share the sentiment in some way
@Badman Juice - yeah ofcourse in that way its different. i put it badly, it was late. i was more on about WHAT they get taken to see on their govt guided tour. the guy makes out that by taking them to see sites of national interest, thats something 'TOTALLY WEIRD... and FUCKED. UP.' if you went to Buckingham Palace and had a guided tour, with that mindset, you could come to the same conclusion surely? think about the major train stations in london, big, old almost palatial buildings, then the stops as you get further out, just shitty little underground or overground train stops. same as there. i just felt some of it was trying too hard to make essentially a boring trip + inevitable culture clash (vice magazine writer/N. Korean Govt Official - ??) into something more.
plus the whole idea of propaganda like the U.S.S Pueblo is pretty much the same as you get here, i didn't see anything in the documentary that itself which appeared to be indoctrination, more like the guy would film the female officer telling them a fact about the capture and then it'd cut to him back in America going ''AND THEN!! she told me how they caught the american soldiers... TOTAL indoctrination''.
watched Wodka Wars last night aswell... that was alrite, more of a 'real' documentary about a semi-interesting story.
seems like a lot of these have great titles but lack substance... vice.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:24 pm
by Sexual_Chocolate
Shum wrote:To be fair to him, they push the kids pretty hard at school in South Korea.
very very true...
when i was at highschool, most the foreign students from Korea were increadibly skilled at maths & science... and if they scored less than 85% on tests they would get very upset.
tbh, wish i was that determined when i was at school haha
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 2:16 am
by ruckus49
you all should download the Joe Rogan podcast where he interviews Shane Smith from Vice. Very interesting interview and I definitely see the similarity in his personality and the fictional staff of SugaRAPE. Hes more mature, but still seems to have a strong detachment from all the "fucked up shit" he has witnessed, seeing it as some kind of novelty of hopelessness.
He also said some real stupid shit about how after seeing all these war-torn african countries he's more conservative because he realizes that people need strong law enforcement and we can't have free anarchy like liberals want. He then says later that liberalism is a failure because look at what happened with communism.
He does admit that before they started doing these documentaries they only wrote about "cocaine, denim and supermodels." So expecting some kind of genius insight is too much. But I think its great that they're getting the footage and hope they keep it up.
Re: Vice travel guides...
Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 2:42 am
by capo ultra
noam wrote:yeh i didnt really want this to become about how much Vice is a hipster land-fill site of a magazine at bottom akin to Sugarape from Nathan Barley but i definitely share the sentiment in some way
@Badman Juice - yeah ofcourse in that way its different. i put it badly, it was late. i was more on about WHAT they get taken to see on their govt guided tour. the guy makes out that by taking them to see sites of national interest, thats something 'TOTALLY WEIRD... and FUCKED. UP.' if you went to Buckingham Palace and had a guided tour, with that mindset, you could come to the same conclusion surely? think about the major train stations in london, big, old almost palatial buildings, then the stops as you get further out, just shitty little underground or overground train stops. same as there. i just felt some of it was trying too hard to make essentially a boring trip + inevitable culture clash (vice magazine writer/N. Korean Govt Official - ??) into something more.
plus the whole idea of propaganda like the U.S.S Pueblo is pretty much the same as you get here, i didn't see anything in the documentary that itself which appeared to be indoctrination, more like the guy would film the female officer telling them a fact about the capture and then it'd cut to him back in America going ''AND THEN!! she told me how they caught the american soldiers... TOTAL indoctrination''.
watched Wodka Wars last night aswell... that was alrite, more of a 'real' documentary about a semi-interesting story.
seems like a lot of these have great titles but lack substance... vice.
What are you chatting, propaganda doesn't happen in the west that's only for the bad countries