AliG Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In an interview for Sweeney Todd over at the Telegraph, Sacha Baron Cohen goes into lots of detail about the process of learning to sing for the role. He tells a long anecdote about having his mother look up a singing teacher for him in the Yellow Pages, and then finding out the woman not only never heard of him, but also never heard of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp or the musical Sweeney Todd. "I ignored everything she said and went to the set the next day," he says. When made to audition for Sondheim, Cohen says he was unable to hit a crucial high note, but came up with a unique solution -- "I brought in a very fat female opera singer to sing the final note." Apparently, that was good enough to gain him Sondheim's approval.

Cohen also talks at length about his alter-egos Ali G and Borat, and says that he's come to realize that the popularity of the Borat movie means he'll never be able to do the character again. "Admitting I am never going to play them [Borat and Ali G] again is quite a sad thing," he says. "It's like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's kind of self-defeating form, really. It's upsetting, but the success has been great." Of course, the interviewer tries to get some info out of Cohen about Bruno, the next character he'll be taking to the big screen, but Cohen pretty much stops him cold. He's not opening his mouth about that.

These are good times for comedian Demetri Martin. In just a few years, the Yale graduate and NYU law school dropout has won a comedy award at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival, scored a high-profile gig writing for Conan O'Brien, worked as a Daily Show correspondent and also starred in his own Comedy Central special. Oh, and he's sold two comedy pitches to major Hollywood studios -- I'd say that's a pretty good three-year run.

The first pitch, which sold to Dreamworks earlier this year, was entitled Will and will be executive-produced by Scot Armstrong, one of Old School's writers. Pitch number two, called Moon People, was just bought by Columbia and sounds potentially very cool, assuming it's been placed in the correct hands. The movie will detail the struggles of "a group of people who return to assimilate on Earth years after they were sent to colonize the moon." Nice, huh? Martin himself will write the screenplay and then hand it over to Ali G Show writer-director James Bobin to direct.

Ever since I was assigned one of the Ali G DVDs for review, I've been a pretty big fan of Sacha Cohen's aggressive humor. (Dig the guy's material or not, there's little denying that he's more of a satirist than a stooge.) Annoyingly enough, I always seem to "get in late" where the hot new comedies are concerned, but I also seem to discover the good stuff before too long. (Robot Chicken! Woohoo!) Anyway, I do have some movie-related news to pass along, and it comes in the form of a trailer. A trailer for a film called Borat. A trailer that made me laugh out loud on two separate occasions, which is more than I can say for Date Movie, which runs about 40 times longer than the Borat trailer.

Borat, for those who might not be fluent in Sacha Baron Cohen, is a Khazakstanian news reporter who travels the globe while annoying people and doing ridiculously amusing, but often strangely clever, things. (Frankly I think Borat is funnier than the flagship Ali G character, so this Borat flick was obviously made for me.) Of course, there are some Khazakstanians who don't find Borat all that amusing, which is understandable, but at least their most globally recognizable buffoon is a fictional character and not an elected official. (I'm jealous!)

Directed by Seinfeld / Entourage writer/producer Larry Charles (after Todd Phillips quit the gig), Borat will hit American shores (in November) courtesy of 20th Century Fox, provided the studio doesn't get cold feet and shelve the thing, which is something that seems to happen to ballsy, brazen, or potentially controversial little comedies from time to time. (Did the Ali G movie even PLAY in American theaters? I mean, it's not brilliant, but freakin' Date Movie opened on 3,000 screens!)

Anyway, back to Borat: JoBlo dug it, this guy dug it, and here's the official site, too. Have fun.