Borat Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's funny over here. You're quite safe from penis shots in America because American people don't have penises, so you can't see them in film. Whereas in Britain you can see your penis in film. So since it's an American picture, it's just a bum you see. Ewan McGregor, interviewed by MTV

I apologize for the lame joke in the title, but in this case it rings true. As McGregor insinuated above, there's a certain phobia about male genitalia, so much so that the mere sight of it -- even in its inactive state -- leads to uproar. Why would I mention this today? Watchmen is now out on DVD, and that means full-frontal Dr. Manhattan.

While it's probably one of the most necessary uses of nudity (fake flesh at that), Manhattan's penis sent many conservative critics and moviegoers into a rant-filled panic. Never mind the fact that he's a full-stop superhero who is naked, and has a fulled developed body. Some of the masses expected him to keep prudish sensibilities in mind and Ken-ize his genitalia as he saves the world or works in his natural state. In honor of the Manhattan uproar, here are seven cases where male nudity became the main talking point of the film.

Having been adequately prepared for the lewd horrors that would await me, I finally got around to seeing Brûno in a surprisingly full theater yesterday afternoon. (My assumption that interest in the film would have petered out by the second weekend, especially for a midday showing, landed me in the second row -- bringing me a bit closer to experience than I might have preferred.) Like everyone else, I continue to be awed by Sacha Baron Cohen's incredible focus as a performer -- though did anybody catch the one moment where he cracks an inadvertent smile? It happens while Brüno is attempting to become a National Guard cadet. Anyway, I did laugh quite a bit, and smiled even more. To its credit, the movie actually gets better as it goes along, with the last twenty minute stretch probably rating the funniest.

The question everyone has been asking this week and last is whether Baron Cohen's Borat is funnier than his Brûno. The consensus answer -- which seems right to me -- is yes, absolutely. But why? Overwhelmingly, folks are blaming the fact that Brûno is more scripted, and crucial scenes appear more staged. That's true, although may I direct you to this clip of Baron Cohen on David Letterman, out of character, recounting the terrifying experience of putting Brûno in the same room with a living, breathing terrorist. And I do think the film's decreased "authenticity" has an effect. But I'd like to get your thoughts on the following...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is only the second Harry Potter film to open on a Wednesday, after 2007's Order of the Phoenix. By the Sunday of its opening weekend, Order of the Phoenix was looking at a pretty impressive $140 million, on its way to being the year's 5th highest grosser, and a solid #2 in the franchise. By the Sunday of its opening weekend, Half-Blood Prince has $160 million in its coffers, as well as a slew of rapturous reviews and positive fan responses. (Well, mostly. There will always be whining from Rowling purists who don't know what an adaptation is.)

That raises a real possibility that Half-Blood Prince could dethrone current domestic franchise king Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which holds the top spot with $317 million. At the very least, it looks like it might be the only movie other than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to break the $300 million mark in 2009. (Transformers itself is already at $363 million -- #13 of all time! Christ!* -- and is looking unbeatable.)

Brüno took the tumble that its front-loaded opening weekend suggested (it made more than half its first weekend gross on the Friday of its release), dropping over 70% to fourth place. It will end up with around half of Borat's $129 million final number. The other summer comedies in circulation, The Hangover and The Proposal continue to hold up very well, with the former boosting from #6 to #5 in its seventh week of release.

(500) Days of Summer, opening on 27 screens in advance of a steady expansion in the coming weeks, got off to a promising 12th place start with a per-screen average over $30K.

The full top 12 after the jump.

Given the kaleidoscopic venn diagram of contexts in which Bruno can and will inevitably be viewed, it's tough to know precisely where to start, and how far to go when deconstructing Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy. Like the singular, groundbreaking Borat, it's a balls-out comedy, but it's also a social commentary; it's both the latest movie Cohen appears in, and the big-deal "next effort" from him as a performance artist and lead rather than costar or day-player; and finally, it's a lightning rod for controversy and also a generally innocuous goof on mainstream expectations of him and his character, a flamboyant homosexual. All of which suggests that the film is, or perhaps would necessarily be, richer and more substantive than its predecessor - the sort of galvanizing experience that leaves audiences buzzing, changes minds and perceptions, and transforms the face of entertainment forever.

And yet, Bruno is curiously ineffective, a sort of middling effort that fails to liberate itself from the stereotypes that provide the character's foundations, even if it also doesn't deliberately or harmfully reinforce them.

Prepare to divert your eyes, the first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno has debuted online ... and it's just nasty. How is it nasty? I think a better question would be how is it not nasty -- from the looks of it Baron Cohen has upped the ante considerably since taking on the Borat character back in 2006, and will use his Bruno character -- who he pretends is a gay Austrian fashion reporter -- to expose the rampant homophobia across the United States and, while he's at it, somehow manage to offend everyone else by falling, destroying, cursing and dressing up as your worst nightmare ... in heels.

The trailer itself -- which kicks off with a quote from Ain't It Cool News (take that Ben Lyons!) -- is pretty hilarious and very R-rated, so you'll need to enter in a proper birthdate and all that. Just how many lawsuits will come from this one, we do not know -- but I'm positive folks will be rolling in the aisles of their local movie theater come July 10. Remember, as of its first pass through the MPAA, Bruno was given an NC-17 -- but they'll probably shave some meat off and bring this sucker down to an R before it's all said and done.

You can watch the trailer over on MySpace, but be warned that this is definitely NSFW. (Oh, and check out the image that came with this new trailer in the gallery below.)

We've heard a lot about the unbelievably ridiculousness of Sacha Baron Cohen's new mock-gotcha flick Brüno (which is sorta like a sequel to Borat, but with another one of Baron Cohen's over-the-top characters), and so the news that it's received an NC-17 rating upon its first run through the MPAA shouldn't be all that shocking. According to The Wrap, that's exactly what happened -- and it was due to scenes where Baron Cohen (as Brüno ,the gay Austrian fashion reporter) "appears to have anal sex with a man on camera." Another "problem scene", according to The Wrap, comes when Cohen "goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor."

Universal confirmed the NC-17 rating by noting: "On its first submission the film did not receive an R but it is far too early to say that there is any struggle to get there as the process is only at its inception." Since Universal won't release a film that's rated NC-17 -- especially because they know this sucker will make a ton of money for them assuming it gets its R rating -- you can bet Baron Cohen will be forced to cut or trim the scenes the MPAA deems not appropriate and leave them for an unrated DVD. So fear not, friends, this will find its way to theaters -- it'll just take a little more time to hash out the ratings snafu. That said, Brüno should still make its July 10 release date.

For more on Brüno, check out our report on the footage screened at SXSW.

I can think of at least three movies in the coming two weeks that feature scenes that are strikingly out of tone with the film they're a respective part of and yet seemingly included as a means of getting people to tell their loved ones how ridiculous Bit X in Movie Y is. And so today's Cinematical Seven list will be an arbitrary, far from ultimate compilation of the most distractingly disgusting and supremely superfluous parts in recent movies. Sure, most of these are comedies, and yes, most of them seem to have been released from the year 2000 on, and as always, we welcome your comments below. Just make sure they're not too gross.

(Speaking of which, NSFW clips follow after the jump.)

Okay, for those of you who haven't been keeping track at home, here's a quick recap of the most recent release date changes:

• The Ugly Truth moves TO July
• 2012 moves FROM July
• and now Bruno moves TO July,
  if BOM is to be believed
  

This leaves the tepid-seeming Truth firmly wedged between the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen's R-rated comedic drawing power and Judd Apatow's (both Universal titles, to boot), so if Sony did indeed tuck tail and return to the April safe spot, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

It also wouldn't surprise me if the Bruno move was made for any of the following three reasons: to give the film a longer lead with which to promote itself (Borat popped up at Cannes in May of that year and proceeded to be screened excessively for its eventually successful word-of-mouth campaign), to give the filmmakers more time to shoot, and to give them more time to cut what they already have (again, Borat had something like 400 hours of footage to whittle down to feature length).

In silver lining news, this takes a wee bit of pressure off of Summit's May-scheduled bow of The Brothers Bloom, but that's a whole other story...

(We're re-posting our review of Religulous from the Toronto Film Festival to coincide with the film's theatrical release this week)

By: James Rocchi

I contend we are both atheists; I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F. Roberts

In Religulous, stand-up social commentator Bill Maher doesn't just assert how he believes in one less god than many of us, and he doesn't just craft bold, bizarre and hilarious moments of comedy and discussion with the help of director Larry Charles (Borat). More importantly, and more intriguingly, Maher states the film's thesis in an introduction filmed at Megiddo, the prophesied location of the final battle of Armageddon as written in Revelation; Maher, much like author Sam Harris does in his excellent (if dry) book The End of Faith, proposes that religious belief, in an age of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, actively endangers humanity through encouraging conflict, promising rewards for irrational behavior, justifying artificial divisions and enabling other unfounded and unkind forms of thinking. Or, as Maher succinctly puts it early on, "When Revelations was written, only God had the power to destroy the world. ..."

And then the opening titles kick in, a montage of Maher globe-trotting in search of people to talk to, and as the guitar riffs of The Who's "The Seeker" ring out, we recognize that we're going to get plenty of sizzle along with the steak in Religulous, lots of showbusiness to liven up the soul-searching. Like most documentaries dealing with weighty matters, though, the concern in Religulous isn't that there'll be no sizzle with the steak but rather if there'll be steak to go with the sizzle; does Religulous have the right ratio of factual points to funny punch lines, a balanced mix of context and comedy?

Here's a suggestion for all would-be litigants: read the agreement you signed before you decide to sue someone. Lawsuits brought against the makers of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan by three individuals have been tossed out of court by a New York judge who said that "all three accepted money and signed agreements releasing the filmmakers from liability," according to an article by the Associated Press.

The lawsuits in question were initiated by a driving instructor and two etiquette schoolteachers. Judge Loretta Preska ruled that they all agreed to appear in a "documentary-style" movie. I'm sure the contract didn't say it would be a "documentary-style movie that might make you look like a fool," but I don't think the driving instructor, at least, came off that bad -- he looked sincerely helpful if befuddled, as I recall from my single viewing a long time ago. When Monika reported on the filing last December, she noted that he had been paid $500 in cash. He sued for $400,000.

Since its world premiere at the Toronto film festival two years ago, Borat has sparked so many lawsuits and rumors of lawsuits that it's difficult to keep them straight. There were the unhappy frat boys (later thrown out of court), someone who didn't even make the theatrical cut but was fearful about the DVD version, the man who ran away on the street, and probably others. The statute of limitations is longer than I thought it would be for this type of lawsuit.