Back in August, I wrote about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno and its apparent distortion of a key, Palestinian interview subject. The controversy is set to continue: A shopkeeper from Bethlehem who was branded a terrorist in Sacha Baron Cohen‘s film Bruno is seeking $110m (…£67.5m) in damages. Ayman Abu Aita is suing Baron Cohen, US…
Following the legitimate outrage over the Toronto International Film Festival presenting Tel Aviv as a model of cultural and ethnic harmony (hello occupation down the road), the key issues are being raised day after day in the media, a positive thing: Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow and Jerry Seinfeld were among dozens of…
I saw Bruno tonight, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film. I’ve written before about Cohen and his work and I’ve often liked his chutzpah. But his latest work is pretty average. A few laughs, some witty one-liners but far too long and all-too-obvious. Like Borat, his work works far better in small segments. This, though, is…
I’ve written before about the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat and Bruno) and his use and abuse of Jewish traits. In this interview with David Letterman he comments on visiting the West Bank to meet a “terrorist” for his latest work:
This is a great clip from 2006. Sacha Baron Cohen, as Bruno, meets some British skinheads. His subversion of Judaism and its relationship with “enemies” is almost transcendental:
Are there limits to humour, especially when discussing “Jewish-related themes”? Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of Borat and Bruno, bravely skewers the Holocaust in this clip that mentions Auschwitz. Would a non-Jew even be able to get away with this without being accused of “insensitivity” and “anti-Semitism”?
It appears that Rosie O’Donnell, Justin Timberlake and Sacha Baron Cohen have beat out Dubya on TIME magazine’s annual Top 100 Most Influential People list. It’s almost impossible to imagine how the President of the United, a position that is commonly accepted as the most powerful position in the world (he polled #1 in 2004)…
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, October 30: [Sacha] Baron Cohen is one of the few British Jews to venture successfully into the comedy of shock. It was somehow both shameful and predictable that when Lenny Bruce was invited to appear in London for the second time, in 1963, he had no chance to perform before…