Borat

  • Bored by Borat links? Too bad. Here's a fascinating interview with the three writers behind Borat, with occasional guest appearances by Sacha Baron Cohen trying to drive around L.A. As opposed to the "unscripted" label often thrown about in articles about the movie, almost every joke and scene in the movie was scripted entirely, with the writers essentially creating flowcharts of action based on the reactions of the non-actor participants. (2) #
    1/10/2007
  • An excerpt from the Rolling Stone interview with Sacha Baron Cohen, as himself.
    The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist -- who believe that there's a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old.
    (5) #
    11/17/2006
  • Hordes of journalists have descended upon Kazakhstan to find a native that looks or acts like Borat, or failing that, to find Borat-like culture in action. None have had much success.
    At a local restaurant, I recommended we order the marinated skewered meat called "shashlyk." "Lovely," Lemanski pronounced his meal when served. "Is this dog, then?" The waiter, taken by surprise, vigorously shook his head. "Could this come in dog?" Lemanski asked hopefully. The waiter looked apoplectic.
    (37) #
    11/2/2006

Summer blues

The Onion AV Club isn't very excited by the movies coming out this summer, and neither am I. I was particularly bored by the recently unveiled Superman Returns trailer. I will likely see Mission Impossible III, but more for Phillip Seymour Hoffman and director JJ Abrams than anything else.

At the moment, I can only think of four movie going experiences that I'm looking forward to in 2006:

  • The Fountain
  • The Borat movie
  • Snakes on a Plane (note that I said "experiences")
  • The Tenacious-D rock-opera

And maybe Fantastic Mr. Fox. (Yes, these aren't all summer films.) As for the summer, I will go see the sequels for X-men and The Pirates of the Caribbean, but I'm not expecting much from either. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the Fall crop of Oscar-baiting films -- anything else I should be looking forward to?

Update: Ah, two more summer films: I'll go see A Scanner Darkly and Gondry's The Science of Sleep as well.

(via kottke)

Wed, 05/03/2006 - 9:33am
Home