Larry Charles to direct Borat movie

introduced to U.S. audiences in the music video for Madonna’s 1998 single “Music”

They’ve given up on the idea that pop culture can be a unifying force and so praise movies that make them feel superior to others.

If Armond really believed this, he'd consider his own status as film criticism's most prominent contrarian.

Dude just watch it in a double-feature with Team America or something

What a moron.

(x-post) Offhand, I don't think he's ever passed off Spielberg hate as widespread anti-Semitism but rather anti-sensation, or something to that effect.

I want to see this, but I'm having trouble not thinking about the tv producer in Jackson who lost his job because he got duped.

I was going to say the same about Talledega Nights.

watch one Bruno Ali G skit.

No variety, terrible pacing - a few funny moments along the way, but overall just very tedious. If it had been a DVD I would have stopped it every 30 minutes to go do something else.

Not half as funny overall as Jackass, I much prefer comedy where the ridicule is internal vs. making fun of people who are otherwise unsuspecting.

OTM, even in the same SEGMENT as the "Throw the Jew Down the Well" scene, you had Borat teaching "Kazakh" folk dances to a square dance group ("walk like a homosexual", "beat the gypsy", and so on).

Why would someone centre his longass "critique" around a scene he admittedly saw only once?

---

ABE FOXMAN ON BORAT

Fresh from squashing the Tony Judt speech at the Polish Legation in New York, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman threw himself today into the controversy surrounding the faux-Moslem comedian Borat. Foxman expressed “profound misgivings” about the “propriety of having an Israeli-born Jew portray a Moslem in an insulting and defamatory manner.” Professing to speak as the “voice of painful experience,” Foxman spoke in anguished tones:

“The Jewish people know something about defamation through humor, whether it be in anti-Semitic cartoons or Shakespearean comedies. Defamation, however ‘skillful’ and ‘funny’ is no joke, just as racism is no joke.”

Foxman was especially uneasy with the portrayal being done by an Israeli-born Jew:

“I have been accused of being hypersensitive to ethnic slurs, but one needn’t be the head of the ADL to deplore the spectacle being made in Hollywood over a Jewish comedian who impersonates Moslems in a manner that depicts an entire people as imbeciles and bigots and wins applause for it.”

Nor was Foxman happy over the national media’s embrace of Borat’s brand of what Foxman labels, “defamatory and belittling stereotypes”:

“Even if CNN and Jon Stewart think it is funny, it isn’t funny when a blood libel is perpetrated against the entire people of Kazakhstan. And, wink-nudge, everyone knows the Kazaks are just a stand-in for Arabs in general.”

Foxman insists it was a “no-brainer to step forward,” despite the ADL’s usual prime focus on defamation of Jews:

“I asked myself, ‘suppose we had an Arab on national TV networks doing a hilariously funny impersonation of a Jew but in a derogatory manner, say as greedy or rude?’ I’d do my job and he wouldn’t be on TV very long. Indeed, with the JDL like it is, he might not be alive very long. I’d prefer it never come to that.”

For his part, Jon Stewart said, he wouldn’t hesitate to put such a Arab comedian on his show, but he doubted such an actor could “impersonate a preposterous Jew as effectively as Foxman does.”

— Max Scherz Unsinn

huh?

still, going to see this in about 6 hours.

pretty weak overall. but i bust a few guts just the same. naked wrestling was an all-time classic.

Considering two of the speakers were a member of Congress and a state Supreme Court justice, I'd have thought you'd be at least a little concerned over that.

Based on the anecdotal evidence pouring in to me about long lines at the box office, sold-out screenings, and fans driving more than an hour to find a theater showing the pic, I believe Borat was standing room only inside those screenings.

this was true of the late show in Portland i attended.

also, i liked that we saw trailers for both the Reno 911 movie(FINALLY) and Casino Royale(for the Sellers connection).

But the scenes at the bed and breakfast place and the one where he is fighting with his producer are as funny as things can get.

This was actually my situation, FWIW -- I'd seen a couple of bits but no more. Therefore, everything felt v. fresh.

AND SPEAKING OF THE TRAILERS. Yeah, the Reno 911 and Bond ones were cool. Everything else made me want to kill.

But the scenes at the bed and breakfast place
I thought that sequence was dull and uncomfortable. Once you've had The Running of the Jew and the Jewchick, you've pretty much mined anti-anti-Semitic humor as far as you can.

But come on, even you were laughing so hard your stomach hurt when Borat threw the money at the cochroadches.

1 BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
Fox

837 theatres $9,050,000
$10,812 per screen.

2 THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE
Buena Vista

3,458 theatres $5,200,000
$1,504 per screen.

-- deej.. (clublonel...), November 3rd, 2006 12:36 PM. (deej..) (later) (link)

also: according to him, Kazakhstan is in Eastern Europe. UH.