Category Archives: Film

Updated for the Third Time: Borat's Cultural Learnings

America, Anti-Semitism, Film, Hollywood, Media

On Saturday, I caught the matinee screening of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” It’s well-worth seeing. The man is a great comedian.
I like the way Cohen only interviews in character, as Borat, never revealing who he is. Reviewers haven’t been hip to this tactic. Cohen’s transformation into the unattractive Borat (and equally awful Ali G and Bruno) is remarkable, considering he’s quite a dish.

This next “learning” is probably only available on Barely a Blog, but, for what it’s worth, when Borat and Azamat Bagatov (his Kazakh “producer”) talk, Borat rattles off in Hebrew. Azamat is speaking in tongues, for all I know. Cohen can speak Hebrew, but his accent is not the best.

Here’s a very funny Vanity-Fair interview with Borat Sagdiyev. In response to the question, “Who is your favorite American celebrity and why,” Borat writes:

“My favorites celebritys is dancing Negro Michael Jacksons, singing transvestite Madonna, and, of course, fearless anti-Jew warrior Mel Gibsons. We in Kazakhstan agrees with his statement that Jews started all wars and also have proof that they were responsible for Hurricane Katrina and also killed off the dinosaurs.”

Update: Those of you with a funny bone will find the following hard to believe. Around the Internet, the dour and dreary (that includes Abe Foxman) are decimating Borat for his high-wire antics, and accusing his creator, Baron Cohen:

* Of promoting anti-Semitism (“In one scene Borat insists on driving to California rather than flying, ‘in case the Jews repeat their attack of 9/11′”).
* Of libeling America as endemically anti-Semitic, even though Americans come off (as I pointed out in “Fun in Kazakhstan“) as kind, sweet, polite, and infinitely patient with “this delightful fellow,” as one of his gracious Southern hosts mischaracterizes the bumbling Borat.
* Of harboring an imperial mindset (this is by far the kookiest complaint) because he victimizes and patronizes Kazakhstan. (“In Kazakhstan we say, ‘God, man, horse, dog, then woman, then rat.'” Also according to Borat, the national sport in Kazakhstan is shooting a dog and then having a party. You can earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is made from fermented horse urine. Kazakh villages all have a Village Rapist.)

Sorry, I had to stop writing—cracked up remembering Borat’s reference to Bush as the “mighty warlord.” The guy’s a satirist—a funny, one-of-a-kind comedian. Only losers “analyze” Cohen, aka Borat, alias Ali G-cum-Bruno.

Updated Again: At last, Alvaro Vargas Llosa of The Independent Institute has a decent defense of Boart as “simply anarchic.” Here’s an excerpt:

“I have read that Borat is a left-winger in disguise. This doesn’t square with his mockery of feminists (“give me a smile, baby, why the angry face”) and of a black politician with whom he discusses homosexuality. I have also read that Borat is a right-wing fascist. It doesn’t quite square with the scene at the rodeo in where he persuades the organizers to let him sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” only to launch into an intentionally satirical tirade against Iraq (“I hope you kill every man, woman, and child in Iraq, down to the lizards”). No, Borat is simply anarchic—there is no institution, idea, cultural value or government he does not find worthy of being picked apart through humor. It’s always healthy to take a second look at the way we all live.”

Updated for the Third Time: Where did you first learn Borat was speaking Hebrew? On BAB, of course. Here’s the confirmation–in case you needed one.

Fun in Kazakhstan

America, Britain, Bush, Film, Pop-Culture

Sasha Baron Cohen, alias Ali G, is a British comedian and the creator of Borat, “a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.” Borat’s exploits in the US are something to behold. Simply brilliant comedy, as in the time he asked a dating agency for a woman with plowing experience. Or when he sang his country’s anthem at an American sports match. The mournful wail went on for at least 20 minutes. His American spectators, bless them, were very patient. And what about “throw the Jew down the well“? That’s the infectious sing-along Borat began in a Texas bar. A classic.

By having fun at Kazakhstan’ expense, Borat (who has quite the bottom, if I say so myself) has created an international incident. Read how George Bush might get involved.

Brokeback Mountain Revisited

Film, Hollywood, Homosexuality, Media, Private Property

From “Brokeback Mountain Revisited“:

“That gays have such a vested interest in this dreary and dull film indicates that, like Hollywood, they too have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all gays seem to crave now is the State’s pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy—and private property—were the object of their anger and activism.

More poignantly, if, in Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, ‘civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,’ then sexual activism or exhibitionism—homo or hetero—is anathema. All in all, it’s most regrettable that the closet has come to signify oppression rather than discretion”.

Brokeback Boredom

Film, Hollywood, Homosexuality

The film “Brokeback Mountain” was available for viewing on my BA flight back from the Britain, last month. As a captive audience, I twitched through half an hour of the thing.

I have very little patience for Hollywood fare. I used to love the cinema. But that was before the motion picture industry forsook good scripts and well-developed characters for storylines fit for a stun-gunned audience, with the attention span of a nit, and an ability to focus only on fast-moving or imploding animated objects and characters as flat as pancakes.

Movies with a message are especially irksome, although film has almost always come with a moral. “Midnight Expresses” or “Deliverance” had messages, but they were incidental to the story. Because the people involved in movie making are much less talented nowadays (not an implausible thesis, and perfectly compatible with Charles Murray’s in his monumental, “Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950“), and because they think in clichés, the overall effect on the viewer is that of a giant wagging, prodding finger. They really get in your face and stay there—for two hours, plus.

Peggy Noonan once said succinctly that “George Clooney is a fellow who read an article and now wants to tell us the truth, if we can handle it.” George Clooney or Ang Lee (Brokeback’s director); it’s all the same to me. To pay for a two-hour-long sermon in the guise entertainment is not my cup of tea.

About the gay thing I’m agnostic. If, however, in Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,” then sexual exhibitionism—homo or hetero—is anathema. All in all, it’s most regrettable that the proverbial closet has come to signify oppression, rather than discretion.

Like Hollywood, gays too have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, they now want nothing more than the State’s pension and its stamp of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy—and private property—were the object of gay wrath.

After sampling bits of Brokeback—it was horrible—I quickly went back to my book. Heath Ledger as Ennis (an unfortunate name) Del Mar tried to emulate Marlon Brando’s potato-in-the-cheek mumbling in The Godfather. A bad idea today as it was then. The “love scene” between the two men was, as my daughter suggested, like a bear fight. And as sexy. The only sympathetic, ever-so-sad character was the betrayed wife and her neglected babies.

Brokeback’s bathetic tagline was “Love Is A Force Of Nature.” I didn’t get that feeling at all from this flick. I got it in spades from, say, “The Crying Game,” a truly unorthodox love story. Directed by an Irishman, and starring Stephen Rea, the superlative Jaye Davidson, Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson (Queenie of “Black Adder“), and Adrian Dunbar—the 1992 British drama/thriller was everything Brokeback wasn’t. There was no accompanying advocacy, only an achingly bare and beautiful love story with a twist (which I cracked right away), against the backdrop of terrorism and intrigue.