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I guess I am not a hypocrite, as I thought that BOTH of these "films" were trash, not funny, and insulting to it's audience's intelligence.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I actually was always a little bothered by the way the Hyenas were treated in Lion King, although I never thought of it specifically in terms of racism.
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posted
Personally, my experiences with Sacha Baron Cohen begin and end with one DVD of his TV show... I thought the only redeeming value was witnessing the grace with which many of his victims put up with him, but couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the way he'd expected me to see it.
With that said... in the first link, how does quoting the right-wing New York Post work as an example of leftist critics? Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Because only a leftist critic would make the "Blackface" comment. It doesn't matter what direction you think the newspaper leans, what is said is what matters.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I actually was always a little bothered by the way the Hyenas were treated in Lion King, although I never thought of it specifically in terms of racism.
I have the same sort of problem with the different species in the Redwall novels.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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...actually, now that I've looked at the actual Post review in question, it seems even more of a stretch, seeing as how it's a positive review:
quote:"Bruno," gonzo comic Sacha Baron Cohen's long-awaited, envelope-pushing follow-up to the brilliant "Borat," is probably more gut-bustingly funny than anything else out there right now.
It does conclude that the film "exhausts a vein of shock humor he has been strip mining since 'Da Ali G Show.' It's good for more big laughs this time, but it's time for him to move on," but I don't get the impression that this has anything to do with anybody's ideology. But I could be wrong.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Occasional: Not really Samp. I post them and others comment. That is all that is required.
1. Required of what?
2. If so, then where does your thread title fit into this? What do you mean by it?
Sorry, this is a really interesting conversation, but I have to leave now and go teach a hippo ballet.
Clearly Occ attended the Lisa Academy of Thread Openers- he clearly did well in Oblique Titles and Misleading Premises 101. He minored in not fully reviewing his linked material.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I found Bruno to be more entertaining than Borat but neither was that great imo. I guess that part of my problem with Borat was that my friends, who saw it before me, hyped it up so much that my expectations were too high. More generally, I don't tend to find awkward scenes to be terribly funny without some additional humor. In the case of Borat and Bruno I enjoyed the scenes where the other people would act funny too (ex: In Bruno I liked the talk show scene, the baby model scene, and the final scene but didn't like the hunting scene , or the scene with the degayifier guy).
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:I thought that BOTH of these "films" were trash, not funny, and insulting to it's audience's intelligence.
That's exactly how I thought I would feel about Borat and refused to see it when it came out. Then a week ago a friend was outraged that I'd never seen it and put it on. I thought it was BEYOND hilarious.
*****SPOILERS*****
I didn't think the humor was really belittling minus a few exceptions- it was just over the top ridiculous. Watching the annual Kazakhstan Running of the Jews where giant demon characters hatch "Jew eggs" that must be destroyed, driving a bear around in an ice cream truck with the music on, and kidnapping Pamela Anderson with a burlap sack aren't really mocking anybody- they're just stupid and outrageous. They're so stupid and outrageous that it's funny. You could argue that the "Jew Run" was making fun of Anti-Semites, but it was so ridiculous that I'd imagine most anti-Semites wouldn't see themselves in it.
Sure, he pokes at the people he interviews and gets them to do stupid things, but for the most part, you're not laughing at their stupidity, you're laughing at the fact that he puts people in to that situation.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
What about the Romanian vilage that he only paid 24$ to?
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Seeing as how individual extras in Romania were paid more than that ($70-$100) you might want to check that number. I agree they were treated rather shabbily, though.
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: Seeing as how individual extras in Romania were paid more than that ($70-$100) you might want to check that number. I agree they were treated rather shabbily, though.
I don't think so honestly- I remember the movie, it was just a bunch of Romanians running after a car. Neither here nor there. What SBC actually says is his lookout.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: he clearly did well in Oblique Titles and Misleading Premises 101. He minored in not fully reviewing his linked material.
Seriously if he's not going to explain himself, then I guess that's the natural conclusion.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Absolutely no interest in seeing either of his movies. Not a fan of uncomfortable humor (don't like "The Office," either).
Perhaps the reason why I'm not going to watch bruno have something to do with how Arrested Development makes me feel all crawly.
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posted
I think it's worth noting that "Bruno" is running at about 70% on the Tomatometer. It may be that some critics had what can be described as a "left-wing elitist" reaction to Borat, but I wouldn't call that an affirmation that there's a majority share of elitism among the left-wing, or a majority of movie critics are left-wing elitists.
As for me, I saw "Borat" on DVD, and found some of it funny, and some of it cringe-inducing. I did find a lot of what Cohen did fairly courageous in its way, but in some way the most surprising thing is how many people continued to struggle to be polite and take things at face value in the face of some of his more outrageous behavior.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Absolutely no interest in seeing either of his movies. Not a fan of uncomfortable humor (don't like "The Office," either).
I did like him as the barber in "Sweeney Todd," though.
I am somewhat curious about them, but embarrassment makes me ache... I find it unbearable.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Absolutely no interest in seeing either of his movies. Not a fan of uncomfortable humor (don't like "The Office," either).
I did like him as the barber in "Sweeney Todd," though.
posted
Also not a fan of cringe humor, but frankly from the previews I have a very strong doubts about the reality of anything shown in the trailers. At which point it just becomes one group of people mocking another group of people and pretending it's real.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I found Borat difficult to watch and have had the same issue with The Office at times as well. I get very uncomfortable and embarrassed.
But, for me, enduring that discomfort is completely worthwhile. I get to enjoy some funny stuff, and (I think) enduring embarrassment is a very useful skill. I'm probably only going to find my embarrassment endurance skills acquired via entertainment about 10% applicable in real life, but it's 10% I wouldn't have acquired elsewise.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I think American audiences are always going to be somewhat left behind by the comedic styles of people like SBC and Ricky Gervais. Cringey class-based humor is much more important in England, which has a much more compact and delicate class structure than does America. When you consider that comedy in both countries is one of the few mediums where actual class background, or looks, is the least important element of a person, and skill is the most important, it's not a big surprise that both countries express their class conflicts through comedy. It just happens that many Americans are more socially mobile than English people, by dint of living in a much larger and younger country. I've often heard that cringe-inducing "humour" in England serves the same purpose as the blunt speech of our comedians when we talk about wealth or race.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I think it's worth noting that "Bruno" is running at about 70% on the Tomatometer.
What I can't figure is why IMDb's vote total is stuck. For some reason they report only a handful of votes, all of them tens, in their aggregate rating. But if you trawl through the comments (which I just did for 10 minutes) and extract the sample of individual ratings given there, you get the following distribution:
Financially speaking, the weekend fall-off between Friday and Saturday was an "outrageous" 39%, possibly driven by negative word-of-mouth. And with Harry Potter opening this weekend, the guess is Bruno will have a hard time hitting $10 million in its second weekend.
<edit>It's fixed now. The aggregate rating currently sits at 7.5 after appr. 16,000 votes.</edit>
quote:I think American audiences are always going to be somewhat left behind by the comedic styles of people like SBC and Ricky Gervais.
Entirely possible, although there are plenty of British comedy series and actors I do like, and, for that matter, more than a few styles of American humor and comedians I absolutely despise, such as the glorification of the moron (i.e. roughly half of Jim Carrey's work, and 80% of Adam Sandler's)
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