The A.V. Club - Bruno

DVD: Contest:Win Bruno on DVD (again!)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:05:00 -0600

Yeah, we just gave away a bunch of Bruno DVDs last week, but guess what? We got some more! Ten more to be exact. You know you want one, because Bruno was damn funny. "Better than Borat," says Entertainment Weekly. Just send US an e-mail this time, and ten lucky folk will receive one in the mail, hopefully in time for Christmas.(US addresses only please, and include your mailing address in the e-mail.) ARV of prize: $29.98. Employees of Onion Inc. and their families are not eligible. Good luck!

Film: Inventory:Are you faux-real? 18 “documentaries” that blur the line between truth and fiction

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

1. The Last Broadcast (1998) The Last Broadcast’s greatest strength is its central gimmick: before Blair Witch Project exploded on the scene and made cheap, videotaped horror films into a cliché, Broadcast used grainy footage and cheap visual effects to tell its story about an ill-fated public-access TV show’s foray into the New Jersey woods. Broadcast never admits its fictional basis, and it’s easy to imagine someone stumbling across it some late night and falling for the gag; on the surface, it’s believable enough, built out of interviews, old footage, and the sonorous narration of supposed ...

Film: A.V. Talk:Brüno

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Does Sacha Baron Cohen's gotcha methodology in Brüno and Borat have any bearing on whether the movies are actually funny? How much longer will he be able to pull off this kind of shtick, and what will he do next? Three A.V. Club writers get into some of the knotty issues behind an almost-plotless comedy that has a few obvious agendas, but at heart, is just about laughs at any cost. Subscribe to A.V. Talk iTunes http://feeds.theonion.com/avtalk

Film: Review:Brüno

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:05:00 -0500

The left-field success of 2006’s Borat created a whole new set of problems for Sacha Baron Cohen: It’s hard to slip into loaded situations incognito, then slink away in a cartoon cloud of mischief and anarchy, when you’re behind one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of the decade. Yet it’s a testament to Cohen’s genius as a professional chameleon and his devotion to staying in character that flamboyant creations like Ali G, Borat, and Brüno are arguably more famous than he is. Cohen wisely waited for Borat mania to cool down before launching a ...

TV: Newswire:Sacha Baron Cohen sued yet again, this time for crippling an old lady

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:43:00 -0500

Remember all those Borat lawsuits, claiming that star Sacha Baron Cohen and his producers had deceived and traumatized various people — and in one case, gotten them drunk — in order to get them to humiliate themselves on camera? To quote Twin Peaks, "It is happening again." WENN and TMZ are both reporting that California woman Richelle Olson is suing Cohen (and NBC Universal) over a 2007 incident related to filming of Cohen's upcoming movie, Brüno. According to the suit, Olson (described as "elderly" in some news stories, though none we've seen so far gives her exact age) was ...

Film: Newswire:Cohen and Ferrell do Holmes

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:03:00 -0500

Columbia has announced that Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell will team up for a new Sherlock Holmes spoof. Cohen will play Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic, deerstalker-capped detective, and Ferrell will play his assistant, Watson in the as-yet-untitled film; the two last appeared together in 2006's Talladega Nights, and Talladega producers Judd Apatow and Jimmy Miller will produce again here. (Etan Cohen, co-writer with Mike Judge of the woefully underappreciated Idiocracy, is penning the script.) This news comes a month after the announcement that Guy Ritchie will be directing a new Sherlock Holmes drama for Warner Bros.

Film: Inventory:Little more than a cameo: 19 stellar cinematic one-scene wonders

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:40:00 -0500

1. Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross is the quintessential one-scene wonder. As an oily emissary from "downtown," Baldwin introduces a justly famous twist on the monthly sales contest for a contingent of sad-sack, Willy Loman-esque hucksters shilling dubious real-estate shares in Florida: First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize on down is, you're fired. Baldwin transforms one of David Mamet's most memorable monologues into a glorious symphony of verbal abuse, self-aggrandizement, shameless appeals to greed, and naked cruelty. He's ...

Film: Newswire:Sacha Baron Cohen to play Abbie Hoffman?

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:14:00 -0600

Having recently killed off his most popular characters, Sacha Baron Cohen seems to be angling for more "serious" fare lately (well, except for this). Today, Variety reports that Cohen is now attached to star as yippie ringleader Abbie Hoffman in The Trial Of The Chicago Seven, which Steven Spielberg has apparently been developing for some time over at DreamWorks. This past summer Aaron "Subtlety? Who Needs It?" Sorkin signed on to write the script, but these new developments aside, the whole thing will probably have to wait until Spielberg is done with both his upcoming Abraham Lincoln biography and his ...

Film: Review:Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:31:00 -0600

Sacha Baron Cohen's 2002 vehicle Ali G Indahouse tried haplessly to wedge Cohen's titular wanna-b-boy into the context of a feature film. Without the exhilarating mix of high and low culture, and the real, unsuspecting interviewees that characterized Da Ali G Show, Cohen's daft youth reporter came off as just another clueless faux-black poser along the lines of Jamie Kennedy in Malibu's Most Wanted. Cohen's Borat character, another product of Da Ali G Show now getting a movie of his own, is essentially what vaudevillians called a "dialect act," a broad ethnic caricature in the ...

Film: The A.V. Club Blog:Borat The Meaningless

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:35:00 -0600

This Friday, the hyped-to-the-rafters Sacha Baron Cohen comedy Borat finally comes to American theaters, albeit to fewer American theaters than it was originally supposed to. Pundits have been wringing their hands over why the movie "isn't tracking well," especially since Cohen-as-Borat has been in any every major newspaper and magazine repeatedly over the last two months. (Possible answer: As with Snakes On A Plane, "the Borat experience" has played out too much in the media instead of on the screen, such that potential audiences may feel like they've already seen Borat even though they haven't. Also, while ...

DVD: Review:Ali G Indahouse: The Movie

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0600

The feature debut of Sacha Baron Cohen's beloved Ali G persona operates under an innate disadvantage, because Da Ali G Show gets its exhilarating tension from the interaction between real and fake, as scripted questions are posed to unscripted, unsuspecting interviewees. By subjecting American luminaries to inane queries from Cohen's B-boy wannabe, the HBO show elevates ambush comedy to the level of performance art. How could any actor, no matter how skilled, be as compelling a straight man for Ali G's antics as C. Everett Koop or Buzz Aldrin? In jumping from the small screen to the ...

DVD: Review:Da Ali G Show: Da Compleet First Seazon

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

"Things are funny or comedic because they mix the real with the absurd," explains Buzz Aldrin semi-patiently late in an interview with the seemingly daft host of Da Ali G Show. Aldrin is referring to a lame bit of moon-themed humor, but he could just as easily be discussing the subversive humor of Da Ali G Show star Sacha Baron Cohen, a deadpan chameleon who, masquerading as a series of absurd alter egos, conducts real interviews in which he volleys ridiculous questions at real-life luminaries who aren't in on the joke. Cohen perfected this dynamic in his native Britain ...