Jak si? masz? 1 am come to Canada to see how the audience is response to the new movie, Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Movie cause lots of angry protestor from home village in Kazakhstan, where we threaten to make the brown on any American that comes to visit our fine prostitutes. My sister is good prostitute, though not as good as Nalalya. Aliya is only #6 prostitute in Kazakhstan. But still cleanest prostitute in town. Borat has Kazakhstan journalist go from little village to report on culture of US and A. He goes to New York where he making the trouble when try to say hi to local. He sees gypsy woman with wares and finds picture book with Pamela Anderson, so he travel across country to Los Angeles so he can have her as his wife and her vagina. Audience very make laugh at funny things done by Borat as he do camera interview with many people of American politic. Crowd laugh even harder when Borat try to greet peo- ple from New York but they say that they will beat ass. I don’t know what that means when they say that, but it seems worse than when men in fancy parade follow Borat into shower with ‘toy for the inserting into bum. Lots of things have audience doing groan like when they have the sexy time. Now that I think, they do laugh and groan during scenes that not funny back in home village. Girl next to me scream during scene where Borat and producer Azamat do the wrestling with clothes on floor much like boy and girl make for sexy time, but with man with hair of the ass and man with black bar covering testes satchel. Maybe girl next to me never have before the sexy time? Boys and horse in my village go crazy for girl like that. She make many retard baby for town rapist. - AS Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Taraz Shakanov, OP Kazakhstan correspondent (with notes by Vince Yim) I do research on how Borat make controversy with Kazakhstan government. Kazakhstan president say movie make bad image for home country. After seeing audience make the laugh at American interviewing response to Borat, I think that the Borat make worse image for the US and A. I read article written before moving make release date all over North America, saying that the Jew and the gay make looking bad in Borat. | am disagree, like Borat shows that the not lik- ing from American of the Jew and gay, which have the audience groan. I think the audience knowing the Jew not scary and not crashing the towers with planes, as they laugh while the running of the Jew. Why they make the laugh? Running of the Jew is serious cere- mony in home village. Only time we let retard brother out of cage. Audience make the funny, so I thinking that audi- ence knows difference between fact and fiction. But, some scenes have audience still not knows difference, as many laugh at part where Jewish hotel owners turn into scary cockroach and Borat and Azamat leave out back window. Jewish really turn into cockroach. I see behind scenes. No effects that are special. The people watching movie making the laugh, but some know that one or two may not finding the funny, but one or two is making the brown while making the funny. 1 2 THE OTHER PRESS NOVEMBER 16 2006 Death of a President Birth of the Crockumentary lain W. Reeve, Assistant Editor Death of a President attempts to blaze new ground in the con- gested world of filmmaking. It. tries to carve out a new niche genre: the fictional documentary. On top of this, it is part of another film trend along with The Queen, where films talk about real persons, not just while they are alive, but still occupying the office in question in the film. While the con- cept is interesting, and while the film has many effective aspects to it, by the end it fails to be convincing and is dragged down by its heavy-handed political messages. The film is a fictional documentary, meant to be from something of an alternate future where George W. Bush is assassinated after giving a Speech to business leaders in Chicago amidst mass protests. It aims to have the look, feel and content of a real documentary. It includes “on the scene” footage, news footage, security camera shots, inter- views with those involved, and collections of actual footage, much of which is computer edited to fit the purposes of the film. While this is not the first fictional documentary, let us not forget Spinal Tap and The Blair Witch Project, it is the first I am aware of to have this sort of historical/political weight to it, and to use real people. And I must say that many aspects of it feel real. The actors in the interviews give con- vincing performances, the footage is mostly quite believable, and the events mostly fall within the realm of possible reali- ty. Most of the computer-altered scenes do look alittle shoddy, but not quite so much that it detracts from the film. This feature was quite satisfying from a political angle initially. The portrait of Bush and his policies actually appears quite objective. Most of the “interviewees” spoke very highly of him as a president and a person in the film’s first half. However, things fly off the rails a bit in the secor half when the manhunt for the president’s killer begins. The film suffers from two major problems. The first is that it seems unable to decide if it wants to be an accurate yersion of what a documentary on this topic from an alter- nate future would look like, or an entertaining piece of filrr for an audience that knows it is all fake. The result is a film that is not paced in a way that seems realistic. Information withheld that wouldn’t be to a future audience that knows what will happen, interviewed suspects are in environment: which may or may not be prison. It all feels like tertsion is being built for the observer who knows it is fake, this takes away from the validity of the alternate future documentaty format. The second problem is that of the film’s political messz I was sort of hoping for a film that was more or less politi ly neutral, that hoped to show what the outcome of Bush’s death would be. It starts this way, but by the end the politic posturing is so heavy handed it is downright distracting. Tl may be the goal of the film, to get out their message of racism and political incompetence, but I have always main- tained that the best political messages are the ones we don’ know we are being told. Death of a President is an interesting project that will hog fully lead to new and better advancements in the future. It first step into new territory that is worth seeing, but ultima leaves much to be desired.