The best part of the wine-tasting scene, if anyone’s interested, is right near the beginning when the elderly men try to teach Borat how to hold a glass of wine. The first time I saw this I nearly peed my pants. And for those of you who find parts of Borat offensive, THIS part is just about holding the glass. No offensiveness there.
I also suggest the scene where Borat goes to the gym. Incredibly, incredibly funny.
ruh roh… the thread is borked, can’t click on page 4 :eek:
That’s exactly how I remember it. I had forgotten that they were the wine tasting guys though. Borat was driving them nuts!
No he wasn’t. Those guys loooved Borat! They even kissed him on the mouth without protest when he said goodbye (most people refuse when he tries that).
Here’s an SDMB thread with info on both “Gypsy” groups in the US (those being of Eastern European and Irish descent).
I meant with the wine glass thing. It was hilarious how they kept going around and around in circles with him about how to hold the glass.
I like Borat, but sometimes he goes too far and ruins the joke. One of his best bits was his full speech before the Oklahoma City Council, which wasn’t televised but is online as audio. He tells the story of the Tishnek massacre, asks them to stand and show respect, and only after they stand does he say:
“Please we will have ten minute silence.”
He stops after about a minute and a half. He keeps them going for a long time with platitudes about how Kazahkstan can learn from “US and A democracy”, stories of his home and whatnot, but then he sort of ruins it when he starts talking about diarrhea and making advances towards a female council member. At that point the aren’t going to call him out, but they know he’s messing with them and they’re angry. Same goes for the bit with the Congressman, it’s great when he’s talking about him being “powerful like Stalin” and so forth but eventually he starts asking for bathrooms and talking about touching the man’s khram and they just stand there staring, looking like they’re going to hit him.
wow riker1384, the two examples you posted about Borat going overbaord are my two examples as well 
Telling the Ok City woman “I want to make love inside you wah-wah-we-we” does go overboard, and would make me think it was a put on if I was there. Same as with the Congressman- asking the woman if he can speak to the someone who votes, and have her get indignant- priceless (but you are woman)! I even liked “may I make shit in your bathroom please”. He has big hram, I’m still with him, but “you want touch” = overboard.
But hey, I think he is the funniest guy on the planet, so my two critiques over such a large body of work is maybe nitpicking on my part.
I think he likes to see how far he can push things and sometimes he goes too far and it stops being funny, but (like I said in the Jackass thread) this is an experimental, unscripted form of comedy and not everything is going to work. In general, though, I think his tactics work but there are times when I think he can’t believe what he’s getting away with and he’s almost TRYING to get somebody to see that it’s a joke.
I’d seen this video clip before- and I’m still not 100% sure what it proves.
If you watch it again, you’ll see and hear the audience clapping and hooting BEFORE Cohen gets to any offensive lyrics. NOT because they think the Kazakh country singer is good, but because they’re being good sports, and cheering on a seemingly clueless, talentless foreigner who’s trying his best.
In other words, Cohen is patronizing those cowboys, but the cowboys were simultaneously patronizing the little foreign guy on the stage.
Now, MIGHT those good ol’ boys have been genuine Jew-haters? Sure, anything is possible. But in this case, I suspect the hoots, claps and cheers were far from sincere. By way of analogy, I have absolutely no musical talent… but if I got up in front of a bunch of drunk rednecks at a karaoke bar and sang a horrible version of “I Got Friends In Low Places,” the crowd would surely give me the same treatment- clapping and hooting sarcastically, and singing along loudly.
Ironically, to date, Pat Buchanan is the only person I’ve seen come off well in a Cohen/Ali G segment! Buchanan obviously had no idea who Cohen was, but he caught on fairly quickly that the whole thing was a put-on, and decided to play along.
If the cowboys were just clapping along and hooting occaisionally, I’d be inclined to agree with you, and I’m sure alot of people were just going along patronizingly. However, there’s more than a few that were actually singing along, (even the one woman doing motions to go along with the song), and getting into it more than you would if you were just being polite.
Have you ppl seen the clip where an american hunter agrees that he would like to kill and hunt jews? It wasnt shown on tv, but you can probably find it on youtube. Thats about the craziest thing I have ever seen.
I think this is one of the most amazing things about all of his work, as Ali G, Borat and the rest of his characters…there is no going back. He can’t just call cut and ask all the dupes to pretend they don’t know they are being duped in take 2. He gets one chance to pull off what he wants to do and then that’s it. As soon as it goes to air he burns even more potential targets.
I have to ask - why are all the ads in this thread for recipe sites?
My wife is a dead.
I think the Borat character is in part a piss-take of the rather, um, old-fashioned attitudes still widespread in eastern Europe and beyond. I shared a house once with a couple of Ukrainians. Lovely, funny guys, well educated, but occasionally prone to jaw-dropping Borat-esque comments about Jews and so on. They seemed to find it hilarious that there were so many black people in Britain, just walking around the place like regular people.
It seems that Borat is fighting back
Brilliant. 
Now hold on!
Haven’t you people ever been to karaoke? Those claps aren’t sarcastic! They may not be applauding a person’s phenomenal performance skill, but they are applauding a fellow man takin’ a crack at that song they all love!
He’s a funny guy, but MAN did he suck in Talladega Nights. He leeched the humor out of every scene he was in like a laugh vampire.
That’s not the comparison being made. If a specific form of racism wouldn’t see the light of day for one group, then it shouldn’t see the light of day for any group. If the experience of the Jews plays in part of the calculation, it’s to show the evil of the specific form of racism and serve as an object lesson why it is not acceptable.