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Mr Finch wrote:Funny how some straight people get so disgusted about anal sex when the film indisputably proves that heteros (some of them anyway) engage in it as well.

Wait, since when has this not been common knowledge? I think Babs just didn't want to see graphic sex, period. I don't think she, or anyone else on the planet, is/was under the impression that gays are the only segment of society who have anal sex.

During the 'whipping' scene at the sex party, I saw out of the corner of my eye some people leaving the theater (clearly in disgust). I turned to look at them, and I don't know what shocked me more: that it was a mother with three pre-teenage kids, or that it took her sixty minutes to figure out the movie wasn't appropriate for them.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Banned in the Ukraine.

That same article notes that Borat was banned in Russia. I don't know whether that was true earlier, but it certainly isn't true now since there's a Russian edition on DVD. Several reviewers on that site complain that it's dubbed in Russian and lacks the original English language track. Frankly, I can't imagine the film dubbed since you'd miss out on Sacha Baron Cohen's inspired linguistic travesties.

Actually, the Borat DVD was one of the more brilliant examples of package design that I've seen, since the interior case and DVD really are perfect imitations of Russian bootlegs. I hope the future Bruno DVD has equally inventive packaging. Surely black latex will have to figure in it, or perhaps some Kristen Bjorn models?

mfunk9786 wrote:

Mr Finch wrote:Wait, since when has this not been common knowledge? I think Babs just didn't want to see graphic sex, period. I don't think she, or anyone else on the planet, is/was under the impression that gays are the only segment of society who have anal sex.

Maybe it's just my personal experience but a lot of straight colleagues or acquaintances always seem to imply that not only is anal sex icky but very much a gay thing. I guess I just find the hypocrisy of it quite irritating. But I don't want to derail this thread: re Bruno, I'm genuinely hoping that most people who don't usually go to see gay-themed films will see that it's very clearly satirical and that the extreme caricature of the feminine stereotype is not even remotely representative of most LGBT folks. It does pain me a little to think the film might encourage the less enlightened to keep laughing at tenderness and intimacy between two men as if it was a comedy.

Just because there is a Russian Dvd does not mean that the film isn't banned there. The Russian edition of Borat was one of the Chinese bootleg versions of the film here in China, and that was during a few month window when a number of Russian bootleg editions were the first arrivals in China.

Also, the film might be banned in the theaters in Russia, without affecting the grey/black market Dvd distribution. This has happened with a few films in China in the past few years.

Here in China, some Dvd's such as The Blue Kite says right on the front cover, Banned in China (unfortunately it doesn't have English subs). There are also Dvd's here including The Truth About Communism which I'm sure isn't approved. While last year there was one Dvd that actually shocked me, something like Greatest Mass Murderers of the 20th C, and it had a picture of Mao on the cover next to Stalin and Hitler.

Mr Finch wrote: Maybe it's just my personal experience but a lot of straight colleagues or acquaintances always seem to imply that not only is anal sex icky but very much a gay thing. I guess I just find the hypocrisy of it quite irritating. But I don't want to derail this thread: re Bruno, I'm genuinely hoping that most people who don't usually go to see gay-themed films will see that it's very clearly satirical and that the extreme caricature of the feminine stereotype is not even remotely representative of most LGBT folks. It does pain me a little to think the film might encourage the less enlightened to keep laughing at tenderness and intimacy between two men as if it was a comedy.

You're probably right re: straight perceptions of anal sex, but at the same time the whole straight anal sex porn industry is a HUGE. Even if people say they think it's icky, a lot of straights are secretly fascinated by it. There's a great deal of hypocrisy about all this, which Bruno sends up in various ways.

BTW, I just saw it last night and thought it was inferior to Borat--less coherent in its points, less concise of a narrative, but still very funny and worth a look. "Straight Dave's Man-Slammin' Maxout" was terrifying to watch, showing as it does how easy it is to stir up mob violence. One cannot underestimate how much danger Cohen and his crew put themselves in to make that scene. It reminded me of the underlying potential for physical violence that got exposed during the McCain/Palin rallies last year.

Mr_sausage wrote:During the 'whipping' scene at the sex party, I saw out of the corner of my eye some people leaving the theater (clearly in disgust). I turned to look at them, and I don't know what shocked me more: that it was a mother with three pre-teenage kids, or that it took her sixty minutes to figure out the movie wasn't appropriate for them.

Gee, shouldn't the frigging R rating have tipped her off just for starters?

HarryLong wrote:

Mr_sausage wrote:During the 'whipping' scene at the sex party, I saw out of the corner of my eye some people leaving the theater (clearly in disgust). I turned to look at them, and I don't know what shocked me more: that it was a mother with three pre-teenage kids, or that it took her sixty minutes to figure out the movie wasn't appropriate for them.

Gee, shouldn't the frigging R rating have tipped her off just for starters?

So the scene

Spoiler

where Bruno has sex with his man-boy lover, shoots fire extinguisher up his butt, rockets his lover off a giant rubber band onto his penis, etc.

and

Spoiler

the dancing, talking penis scene

are okay; but it's crossing the line and time to leave when a movie shows a woman whipping a man. Ha! Would've loved to hear that post-viewing conversation on the car/bus ride home.

I saw this last night and two black couples left the theater during the pseudo-Jerry Springer scene. Sort of surprising to me since I thought that scene had been used quite a bit in trailers, commercials, etc. so most people would get the basic idea beforehand.

I wanted to leave too, but mostly out of boredom. Despite a couple of funny scenes, this is as limp as the Ali G movie (and Sasha's talking cock). Seeing that it's also blatantly staged in the majority of scenes, you'd think they could at least come up with a better script with funnier lines (rather than 6th grade jokes like "Your finger's in my alley"). This is basically a 90-minute gay joke that, even in 5-minute segments on the TV show, was the weakest of SBC's three characters. Now, after 10 years of Ali G, Borat and Bruno, it's finally time to see if he can come up with something new, fresh, and worthy of his undeniable talent.

I liked it and pretty much agree with this interesting essay.

Just as nasty as John Waters' early movies. Not as funny as I thought it'd turn out but I still applaud the film's exposure to homophobia still running deep in our country, from the converters in Alabama to the voters in California. Even though the film tends to generalize folks, such as the homophobic African-Americans at the talk show. Only viewers with intelligence figure that not every African-American is like those portrayed in the film...nor every gay person is like Bruno, Perez Hilton or Bobby Trendy. But unfortunately as the film proves, not everyone is smart or cultured and because of that the phobia still breeds and thrives. It was Bruno's "investigation" that made the film for me. It was really tough viewing homophobia and ignorance this brutal and violent but at least Bruno allowed me to laugh AT those idiots, which turned out bizarrely cathartic for me and my husband. Very few movies could do that.

Bruno doesn't always center around homophobia even though it's the main steam of the film but it also criticizes celebrity obsession (not a fresh idea, still ongoing since La Dolce Vita) and even America's general treatment/view of the Mexicans. Bruno, not having furnitures in his LA house, turned his Mexican laborers into "chairs" and a "table" serving sushi to Paula Adbul when she visited for an interview. So nutty it all looks but...so sickening if looking at the bigger picture.

colinr0380 wrote:It said a lot that the Ali G character started out in segments on a programme called "The 11 O'Clock Show" on Channel 4, and the rest of that series was so terribly unfunny that even his intermittently smirk-worthy sections seemed wonderful by comparison. (It seemed to have originally been created as a vehicle for the pushed as a big new talent, but actually a punchable black hole of anti-charisma, Iain Lee. Much as Michael McIntyre is currently being promoted).

To be fair, Michael McIntyre is actually funny, which puts him several leagues ahead of Iain Lee - a man so annoying that I used to mute The 11 O'Clock Show every time he appeared on screen (I seem to remember him doing a routine in which we were supposed to fall about laughing at the phrase "thick Paddies" - no context, just those two words in combination). Like many, I only watched it for Ali G, though it was usually pretty easy to spot when his segments started, even out of the corner of my eye - the flash of yellow was the usual giveaway.

On the whole, I rate the original Ali G interviews higher than you do - many of them are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny to the point where I'm amazed the crew managed to keep a straight face when filming them. But I didn't bother with Ali G Indahouse, as I wasn't convinced the character could sustain a dramatic narrative, and it sounds as though Bruno has similar problems.

Well the only other interview I really remember beyond the Posh and Becks one was when Ali G interviewed Gore Vidal and turned out to be confusing him with Vidal Sassoon! That was a quite good single joke (and looks similar to the Hamas/Houmous thing from the Bruno trailer), but continuing for five minutes hammering Vidal over the head with questions about hair styling got a little wearying.

I was left wondering whether all the time and effort spent securing the high profile interview or doing the big stunt meant that the audience was going to see every last piece of footage that was filmed to justify going to such lengths, even when the joke was obvious or would have been helped much more in its impact by cutting away to something else sooner while it was at its height. The Beckham one was so good because he had someone who would obliviously bounce things back at him that he could play off of - that more than justified the length it was given, but I don't think I saw anything else in the interview shows that would not have benefited from a trim down.

By "the original interviews", I mean the ones from The 11 O'Clock Show - the Beckham and Vidal ones were much later. I'm thinking of the ones with Tony Benn, Sir Rhodes Boyson, Heinz Wolff, assorted people from Wales and Northern Ireland and so on.

So which figurine are you getting?

Saw this tonight and I thought the second-half was gut-bustingly brilliant, while the first half was merely OK. The main problem with the film is that there is just far too much "plot" than a concept of this type really needs. Borat succeeded because it established the character in the opening few minutes and then basically just filmed Cohen doing his thing in various scenarios to both comedic and satirical success. With this film, once Bruno

Spoiler

decides to try and become straight

we get this most outrageous, interesting and hysterical moments in the film. The final half hour is utterly inspired stuff that I wanted to see some sequences extended and even further expansion of that whole angle. As for the Middle East stuff, at times it felt like Bruno channeling Ali G and seemed disjointed from the rest of the picture. But the film is worth seeing alone for some of the situations Cohen gets himself into without breaking character (though, one can clearly see him nearly losing it while on the Army base) and at times, putting himself directly in the path of potential physical violence.