Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Hey, welcome to the first of what will hopefully be many reviews at Teh Review.

Just come back from seeing Borat at the cinema. I had very high expectations for this film, and damn, it was even funnier than I thought it would be!

Borat, played by actor Sacha Baron Cohen, is from Kazakhstan. He goes to the US to film a documentary on America for the Kazakh Ministry of Information, leaving behind his wife (slave), his mother (oldest woman in town...at 43 years old), his sister (the 4th best prostitute in Kazakhstan), his brother ("retarded"), and the town rapist. Him and his obese producer Azamat are in for one hilarious journey.

In America, he sees an episode of Baywatch and falls in love with Pamela Anderson, and decides to go from New York (where they were scheduled to film the documentary) to California where Pamela is from, so he can make Pamela his wife. He buys an old ice-cream truck and him and Azamat travel to California, with some exciting stops on the way. Why didn't they just fly to California? Well, "incase the Jews do what they did on 9/11 again" of course.

They make many stops on the way, filming more parts for their documentary. Most of the stops were actually unstage shoots, and people's reactions were genuine. In one scene, Borat goes into a gun shop and asks the man behind the counter "which gun would be best to defend from the Jews?" The man considers for a moment before recommending either a 9mm or a .45. All unstaged and unplanned.

We also see Borat doing funny things such as staying at a posh house for dinner and taking a dump in a bag, showing pictures of his son naked and inviting a prostitute over. We see him pleasuring himself in public, outside a lingerie shop and misinterpreting the meaning of Donald Trump's building, if you get what I mean (taking a dump). He pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable and exploits genuine racist, sexist and homophobic American people, and the way he does it just makes it a thousand times funnier. It's hard to describe, but you must see it.

There's far too many funny things to mention, and I don't want to give away all the funny things that happen. But it is just so hilarious and is definitely the funniest film of the 21st Century, and would be in my top 5 films of all time. You HAVE to see it. You'll hear me quoting the film for the next week or so.

Rating: 10/10

The Sketch, 95% Cotton, The Trilby and Gear at Barcode

Free gig? Youth Cafe? Weston bands? I'll admit that had I not known some of the guys who were playing, I would not have had high hopes for this one. Fortunately, for the most part, my pessimistic side was proved wrong.

The show started at seven, but I was ten minutes late and missed some of the start of The Trilby's set- not that I was missing out on anything. Perhaps that sounds too harsh- don't get me wrong, the music was good enough, some good musicians playing a mix of covers and their own songs. Their singer should have had a bottle oof water on him, as he got quite hoarse towards the end of thew set, but nothing terrible. The trouble was, there was no reason to see these guys live. They may as well have put a cd player on the stage and set it to play. I really don't have much more to say here.

On to the next band playing- 95% Cotton. I am fortunate enough to know the members of this band, and I had good expectations for their set. A little bit of background drama for you, the guitarist for 95% Cotton had left the band the day beofre the gig, due to a fall out with the tother band members. As such, the drummer stood in on guitar with a short notice guest drummer. Despite this inconvenience, or perhaps in spite of it, the band performed excellently. Unlike The Trilby before them, their stage presence and energy were thrilling- you could really tell that they were in their element. They also had a great deal of audience interaction, with Joe (on vocals) spending a lot of time in the crowd! My only criticisms are that Joe's vocals often seem weak and blotted out by the res of the band, and also that he always seems to go flat on that one bit in "Panicking". Overall, an excellent show from these guys.

Next on were Gear- a secret suprise signed band from London. These guys were also dissapointing. Sure, the music was fine- all very talented musicians and an energetic and expressive singer.

But I barely noticed them. They had the talent, they had the skill, but they had nothing that made me think "these guys are really good!". Just another band, as it were. As such, I don't really have much more to say about them.

The final band to play were the headliners, The Sketch. These guys are an excellent local band, and played some great songs. Musically, they were excellent. They had tons of energy, and really seemed to fill the stage (despite beng the smallest band playing, at three members).They played all their own songs, which formed a fantastic finale to an excellent evening.

To fin out more about the bands or venues mentioned here, you can visit:
The Trilby
95% Cotton
Gear
The Sketch
Barcode

Welcome

To Teh Review! Where I, Lex, will be casting my inexpert eyes (and ears, nose and tongue) over many things! Whining, bitching and moaning are all on the cards (what do you expect, I'm English!), as well as applause, shameless hero worship and an assortmetn of other critical type things.

First review will be: The Sketch, 95% Cotton, The Trilby and Gear at Barcode!

See you there, info-surfers.

News Already!

Teh Review is happy to announce that we have another contributer already, Rob! He'll be contributing some articles and also managing any code we need, since I have no skills.

So yes, say Hi to Rob!