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Posts Tagged ‘Bruno’

Maura Flynn

Bulls-Eye: ‘Bruno’ Hits Hollywood Hard

by Maura Flynn

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” –David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap (1984) 

When it comes to humor I’m super picky. I physically cringed at all but one of the multiple fart jokes in Pixar’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I still don’t get The Three Stooges. Call me uptight. Slapstick without redeeming intellectual humor, toilet jokes, sexual references, and ”shock” scenarios do nothing for me.  So how is it possible that I laughed myself sick while watching Bruno? That’s easy. Because, goofy as it pretends to be, it is a pretty smart film. 

You’ve probably heard that this film is about homophobia, but the story arc is about what it takes to become a celebrity.  Frankly, both facets are hilarious. 

This satire has real teeth, and it’s also fair. I completely disagree with the reviews that claim it mocks middle America, puts “innocent” people on the spot or casts them in a bad light. If anything this film ruthlessly savages Hollywood. The scenes with stage mothers are so appalling that the audience collectively gasped and groaned. One hopes that this exposure will, at the very least, lead to interventions from Social Services and cause us to rethink some of the “entertainment” exemptions from child labor laws. Cohen introduces us to women who are willing to have their babies/toddlers strung up on crucifixes, dressed like Nazis, subjected to bees/wasps, and driven in cars at high speeds without restraints. (Personally, I hope this leads to actual arrests). One toddler’s mother adds that she’s okay with all of that, “if he’s got the job.”  (more…)

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Posted Jul 16th 2009 at 5:03 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Politics | 62 Comments

Mike Long

Review: ‘Bruno’

by Mike Long

Well, I liked it. That’s no guarantee you will.

Years ago, I did stand-up. Learned a lot doing that. One thing you learn is that there’s often a difference between the craft of comedy and what it takes to reliably get laughs. Some of the most inventive, impressive comedy minds don’t sell a lot of tickets. (I could name them. You wouldn’t know them.) But one act you can almost always count on selling tickets—putting “butts in seats,” as a venue-owner will say—is one that is big and loud and shocking. That is, there is The Fine Art of Stand-up Comedy, and then there is Getting A Reaction Out of The Audience. (That’s why many comedians curse so much. That’s why I cursed so much.) Turns out the latter is almost always going to sell tickets, and people are going to laugh for much the same reason a baby laughs when you play peek-a-boo with him. I think most people laugh at Gallagher not because he’s particularly creative in busting that watermelon with a sledgehammer, but because he had the stones to drag the thing up there the first time and smash it at all. We are surprised, and all but the most unpleasant surprise begets laughter. (more…)

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Posted Jul 13th 2009 at 7:02 am in Reviews | 48 Comments

John Nolte

Critics: Sacha Baron Cohen’s a ‘Genius’ Only When He Ridicules ‘Those’ People

by John Nolte


Bruno and “Gayby”

Oh, big city critics loved them some “Borat,” which spent 95% if its screen time manipulating, editing and boiling down average, working class, not-bothering-anyone Americans (and Romanian peasants) into the worst possible caricature imaginable. How they laughed and found genius and insight into the machinated savaging of everyday folks just minding their own business. But listen to some of them squeal and squawk now that the satire is turned on someone other than us. Here’s a sampling:

San Francisco Chronicle: 

Imagine if a white comedian went into the Deep South, disguised in a very convincing blackface and started acting like Stepin Fetchit.

Hollywood Reporter:   (more…)

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Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 2:18 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism | 82 Comments

Cam Cannon

What Political Correctness Reveals About the Politically Correct

by Cam Cannon

John Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found favor with the left-wing elitists because it poked fun at us regular folk. But in praising “Borat,” they revealed something about themselves, something I’ve known to be true since the summer of 1994.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates. (more…)

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Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 11:57 am in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Political Humor, Politics | 211 Comments

John Nolte

Review: ‘Bruno’

by John Nolte

One of the great Hollywood con jobs of the last five years was in convincing a mostly indifferent American public that a film with fewer domestic ticket sales than “Click,” “Mission Impossible III,” “Over the Hedge” and “Superman Returns” was some sort of cultural phenomenon. Wildly profitable? Sure. But any reasonable analysis of a modest $127 million haul shouldn’t be described as anything nearing a “phenomenon.” Luckily for “Borat” (2006) the right people were on board to hype up this nonsense-machine.

The “right people,” naturally, are mostly coastal elites who loved watching the everyday folks they so loathe cynically set up and manipulated to a point where they could be edited into unappealing, buffoonish caricatures, which isn’t to say a few weren’t truly unappealing and buffoonish, or that when it wasn’t gross-out disgusting the adventures of Sacha Baron Cohen’s clueless foreigner didn’t serve up a few honestly-earned laughs. But just the thought of joining up with the superior, self-satisfied smugs imperiously chuckling from Hollywood Hills and Manhattan skyscrapers as their personal jester demeaned we peasants cast a mean-spirit over everything.   (more…)

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Posted Jul 8th 2009 at 6:04 pm in Featured Story, Reviews | 139 Comments

Steven Crowder

Lonewolf Diaries: Why ‘Gayness’ Can Be Funny

by Steven Crowder

I’m sure that I’ll get some heat for this, but I feel it is timely to say… Folks, it’s okay to find flamboyant homosexuality funny. Somewhere along the “common sense line,” people have started to equate the ability to find the humor in life with hate speech. Does the idea (note: I didn’t say content) of a movie like “Bruno” offend you? Do you feel that the idea of somebody chuckling over a flamingly over-the-top gay man to be so repulsive that it borders on hatred? To you I say “Nay”! Read on to find out why.


Let me be the first to say it. My name is Steven Crowder and I happen to find blatant gayness funny. I mean really funny. I can remember my first “gay encounter” as a child. I was watching the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving morning. Al Roker was interviewing Richard Simmons. As nothing more than a wide-eyed four-year-old, I was completely vexed. Here was a man on my television set, complete with chest-hair and quadriceps fuzz. He was just…“off” to me for some reason. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until the light bulb in my underdeveloped noggin turned on. “Hey Dad,” I asked. “Why does that man act like a woman?”

(more…)

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Posted Jun 23rd 2009 at 3:53 pm in Entertainment, Lone Wolf Diaries, Other | 6 Comments

Big Hollywood

‘Bruno’ Hits Theatres July 10th

by Big Hollywood


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You can see the NSFW Red Band trailer here.

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Posted Jun 18th 2009 at 10:32 am in Entertainment, Video | One Comment

John Nolte

Summer Movie Season: The Good, the Bad and the Maybe

by John Nolte

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)

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Posted Apr 9th 2009 at 1:09 pm in Entertainment | 2 Comments

Ben Shapiro

Borat, Keira Knightley, and the Case Against Shock Value

by Ben Shapiro

There were two big stories that emerged from Hollywood this week.  The first was the release of the first trailer for Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s newest movie creation, a highly offensive faux documentary about a gay Austrian fashion critic touring America.

The second was the release of Keira Knightley’s new ad about domestic violence.

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Now these two videos have very little in common.  Cohen’s trailer is an outrageous piece of shock theater.  Knightley’s ad is a public service message designed to raise awareness of domestic abuse. 

But what both have in common is a willingness to cross all lines of good taste and judgment.  (more…)

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Posted Apr 6th 2009 at 12:02 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 84 Comments