Two fellows from the now-famous Glod, the Romanian village where some of the scenes of the controversial comedy “Borat” had been filmed, sued in court on the 20th of November the producers of the movie. They asked for $30 million as moral damages.

The villagers from Glod, Dambovita, played in Cohen’s movie the roles of some Kazakhs fellows in very humiliating postures (that include sexual and racial connotations). The Romanians have been saying that the American producers of the movie were lying, telling them that they were to make a documentary about their difficult everyday situation. However, the villagers have later found themselves as the actors of some parody movie, which is in fact holding up to ridicule their poverty and ignorance.

Nicolae Todorache and Spiridom Ciorbea, the ones who sent their complaint to the New York court, asked for $30 million and also for the movie not being showed till the problematic scenes are being cut. These facts are known from the papers that have been put forward at the federal court from Manhattan.

Tudorache, who had lost his right hand in an accident from the past, was forced by the movie’s crew to wear a prosthetics, which was in fact an erotic toy, as it appeared in the papers.

Tudorache had told the Daily Mail reporters two weeks ago that he, as well as all the other villagers, allowed the British actor to humiliate him, hoping that he would won more that his monthly income of 350 Lei. He got only 15 Lei for his part, anyway.
The accused of this case are Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation’s News Corporation, the studio that produced the movie, as well as other production and distribution companies. Gregg Brilliant, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation’s spokesman denied all the accusations. “Although I have not yet seen the papers, none of the Romanians had been told that the movie was to be a documentary. The Romanian village was used as a supposed Kazakhstan village; it was evidently a satire.”
“Borat” is considered one of the most incoherent political movies ever. It’s about a reporter from Kazakhstan who is making a documentary about the United States. The main character of the movie is the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
“Borat” has been launched at the ending of October 2006.

Technorati Tags: Borat, Glod, Romania

In Romania there are villages that are completely inhabited by gypsies. Some of these villages are inhabited by rich gypsies, who have many Mercedes cars in their backyard, and other are inhabited by the poor ones, who are driving those strange carts (the car frame lugged by horses), as you could see in “Borat”.
The Glod village, where “Borat”’s team filmed the scenes from Kazakhstan, is situated a few kilometers from one of the most expensive mountain resorts from Romania, called Sinaia. As a matter of fact, this contradiction between pure beggary and luxury could be found everywhere in Romania.

The producers of “Borat” paid the gypsies about $3/day. A Romanian newspaper has published today the testimonies of the Glod inhabitants that participated to the filming:

“They made us run after the car and howl ‘Yeahh’…”
For some days the village has been being visited by television crews, so a new, shining and expensive car brings them in mind worthy affairs. Not to tell that Pro TV invited in their cars 3 or 4 Glod “actors”, took them to Bucharest to watch the premiere of the movie and also gave them about 2 million Lei (less than $100).

“Look, Cireasa (Cherry), was yesterday in the city, together with the TV guys..!” This Jane Doe, Cherry, has her home in front of the main bar of the village and she’s doing something in her yard, casting sly glances to the group in the street. “Come on, Cherry, come to speak to these gentlemen!” “The actress” seems not to be so interested, but she’s asking money for her items of information. “So, if you want me to speak, give me money. But quickly, I have something to do..” At great pains she has accepted to take a photo for 100.000 Lei. ($3)

When she came to Bucharest to watch the movie in which she had her part, she was dressed up like a lady, wearing lipstick and soft fragrance; and she also seemed fascinated. “They gave me juice and food, I stepped on the red carpet and we watched the movie”. She specially like the hall: “It was big, one could see the light on the wall..” “Anything else… what to say? The movie was a naughty one, what to like…?”

The audience starts talking already. They are telling that at the filming they didn’t have quite difficult jobs, they only screamed and cried. “That Beret or so, asked us to run over the car, to raise our hands and to scream like this: ‘Yeahhh’”. Staring at the money Cherry was jumping all around in the laughter of the gypsies. Victor al Puchii tricked the Americans by taking $3 without doing anything: “I was chopping something across the road and they said they could not film because of the sound. So they gave me $3 just to stop.” Natalia, the sister of Borat in the movie, had been brought from another village, because these gypsies were all black and the producers were looking for a blonde.

The Glod inhabitants don’t know what Kazakhstan is and they hadn’t known that they were going to be Kazakhs. When interviewed they haven’t known whether they are or not on tape, so they were screaming in the recorder: “Go, go there, so that one can see you too on the TV!”

Now, it seems that these people want to sue in court the producers because it seems that they were told they were going to film a documentary about their painful life from the Glod village. No one ever thought at the moment that all of that was in fact a parody.

I myself drove through Glod several times. When I was visited by an American business partner I took him to Sinaia especially through Glod, so that he could see a 100% gypsy-inhabited village. He was shocked by the misery, poverty and primitiveness. Now, those same people (gypsies that are refusing changing and civilization) are complaining that they have been cheated. It is not quite so.
“Borat” practically presented real facts of the gypsy community. The gypsies are selling their children, they are living according to their own rules, they are destroying everything that enters their way and they have no relation with the civilization.

Daily Mail published something about the Glod village in their Sunday edition. One of the commentaries of this article says: “Disgusting treatment of innocent people! I won’t be going to see this movie! Hope others who learn of this will feel the same.” The author of this comment does not know the reality, unfortunately.

“Borat” juggled with the opposite things: on one side, the poverty and the primitiveness from the gypsy villages from Romania, and on the other side the totally ignorant part of the Americans. It parodied the both cultures. I think the message of this movie (which I haven’t seen yet) is that there should be a middle way between the poverty that is giving birth to ignorance and stupidity, and the welfare that is in producing in fact the same results.

In conclusion, the gypsies and the Americans are the ones that should realize something after watching this movie, not the Kazakhs, who are in fact just a false trigger of the movie. “Borat” is an irony of opposite things and of the causes of ignorance.

Technorati Tags: Borat, Romania, Gypsies, Controversy

To be clear, an overrated movie it’s not a bad movie

Here’s my list so far (it’s not a top, it’s a list so the order is quite random):

Titanic
Crash
Troy
American Beauty
Gladiator
The Godfather I and II (it’s good, but it’s overrated, folks!)
Brokeback Mountain
Scarface (Goodfellas is much better…)
Cidade De Deus (overrrrrrrated)
Apocalypse Now
The Passion of the Christ (or the obsession of Mel Gibson…)
Mystic River (nice though)

Feel free to add yours…

I’ve watched “The Departed” with a certain delay. Usually, when you’re going to watch a movie from which you’re expecting much, you’re kind of unsatisfied at the end, no matter how good it has been in fact. So I went to watch “The Departed” without thinking of it being considered the best latest Scorsese’s movie, from “Goodfellas” on. And I haven’t really been disappointed.

The movie’s beginning is difficult, even boring. As the action and every character’s profile are coming into view, “The Departed” starts to be attractive. Scorsese is using for this movie a Tarantino and Guy Ritchie’s sort of humor, which is quite an unusual thing for him. “The Departed” would be, probably, his most “humoristic” movie for a certain period of time. Maybe this humor was used to compensate for the tragic and unfair situations of the plot. The final scene, featuring the slaughter from the elevator, reminds me of the same sort of Tarantino’s putting into acting of “Reservoir Dogs”; only that in Scorsese’s vision everything is quickly flowing, in a very relevant and simple way.

Leonardo Di Caprio and Jack Nicholson are acting in a quite magnificent way. In my opinion, Di Caprio is the most talented fellow of this new generation of actors; and I think that after this role he is not going to be thought anymore as the cute, likeable teenager from “Titanic”. Matt Damon didn’t impress me very much; he performed well, as usually.

“The Departed” might be truly considered an Oscar movie. Till now, “The Departed” is the year’s best movie produced at Hollywood.

Technorati Tags: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, The Departed, Oscar

Here’s an email I just received from Beibitzhan Ershat (Beibitzhan.Ershat@yahoo.kz):

We the Kazakhstani people gathered tonight in the city hall tent and looked over digg.com and see only about Borat. We cannot write anything about any other picture movies because Borat is there. We are Borat’s friends but we want to share with us our great wisdom so we decided:

1. We the Kazakhstani people found many other interesting movie around DC++ and Torrents and would like to write about that but we cannot because of our beloved Borat.
2. Everytime we can load corectly a digg page we see words about only Borat.
3. We admire Borat and we wait for him back because the movie was success and he will not executed.
4. We thanks Larry David and Larry Charles for the contribute for this great movie picture.
5. Borat, you are on Digg please send a message because phones are not working in the Capital here for 2 months.
6. We hope you enjoyed making fun of the Americans so our nation can take great benefit from your general wisdom.

We kindly ask the people on Digg to stop posting every two minutes about Borat because we know him, it a friend and we heard that you have more than one place for the Box Office Top 10.

We thanks you
Some Kazakhstani people who are friend of Borat.

I’ve come across the Japanese producer Takashi Miike for the second time and I could say that he gained me as a supporter of his style of making movies. The short reel “The Box” has given me the first opportunity of hearing of Miike. I could dispute a certain accent of pure and un-hidden violence (which is in the specific nature of Asians), but I couldn’t dispute the fact the Miike certainly CAN make better horror movies than the ones produced at Hollywood.

As I was saying, my second encounter with Miike was called “Audition” (”Odishon” in Japanese). I wouldn’t relate about the movie, because is senseless; there are dvd rentals for this. The movie, which is categorized as a horror movie, is not that scary at all. Maybe it’s because of its extreme parts (feet chopping, needles-in-the-eye sticking) that the movie was categorized this way. It’s a movie about revenge (what else might’ve been?), but about a kind of “mazy” revenge. As a matter of fact, someone is hardly paying the others’ mistakes. The woman is, as always, the deadly and also the hidden suffering element, which becomes from a frail person a monstrous one. On the one side we are able to understand her, though the masculine character is plaintive. We can see “Audition” as a more relevant “Kill Bill”.
I’m stressing once again on the obsession of the Asians of using a child’s figure as a starting point for a horror movie (see also “Ringu”) and on the eternal problem of pedophilia. However, after a time the movie is taking place on many plans and we don’t certainly know if the woman has accomplished her own plan. The provident dream of Aoyama is interrupted by the hardcore scenes, and the ending allows us to choose our own interpretation. Maybe Miike wanted to put the atrocities into a parallel and fantastic plan.

And I’m wondering: does it worth to have Eihi Shiina on top, if this involves feet chopping and needles-in-the-eye sticking?

Technorati Tags: Takashi Miike, Miike, Audition, Horror, Odishon

I like the “Lord of the Rings” sort of movies, which involve fights, battles and great wars. As this kind of movies has also become in fashion (see “Troia” or “Kingdom of Heaven”), the Hollywood guys thought about making another movie from this category, “300″. With an estimated budget of $60 million, “300″ will be a super-production.

The movie is relying on Frank Miller’s graphic novel and illustrates the battle of Thermopiles. So it’s a great, juicy subject, though one shall wonder about the success of this production. The producer is an unknown one (Zack Snyder), the cast doesn’t feature famous names, but the budget is of $60 million and the trailer looks good. Would that be sufficient for this movie to become a success? We shall see on the 9th of March 2007.

Here’s the teaser:

Technorati Tags: 300, 300 movie, 300 trailer, frank miller

Microsoft official staff have stated today for BBC that Microsoft is reconsedering its presence on the Chinese market, and that a possible regresion of the company’s activities in China could emerge. The announce has been made by Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for Microsoft, as a consequence of some pressions made by the Chinese authorities in order to shut some “reactive” blogs which are being hosted by MSN Web Space. Amnesty International informed Microsoft that the Chinese government seems to be using Microsoft’s logistics for controlling the ones who are expressing themselves against the Chinese communism. At the same conference from Athens, Cisco were accused of supplying the Chinese police with their products.

As I am not a supporter of Microsoft’s business methods, the statement has positivelly surprised me. I’m really fond of the fact that one of the biggest coorporations worldwide is thinking, at least declarativelly, about changing its direction regarding the Chinese market (which is an important market, as there are now 120 million people online in China, up from 80,000 in 1994). And another pleasing fact is that the blogs have become
”a cornerstone” of the freedome of speech from the countries under totalitary governments. Is Microsoft risking to lose some of its engagements with the Chinese government and implictly a big amount of money from the Chinese market? Yes, it does, but maybe the worldwide cooporations have become more and more aware that the affairs envolving China should be continued not only with this country’s economical changes, but also with the most important authorities’ mentality changes.

I’m not quite sure if this is a reaction at the recent incident from the Nepalese border, when the Chinese frontier guards were shooting plenty of Tibetans which were becalming in India. (The shots were broadcast by the a Romanian television and they aroused a quite important diplomatic scandal.)

I’m glad that Microsoft appreciates and supports the right of freedom of speech through blogging and that it does not wish to be at the Chinese government’s orders. That’s a daring start.

However, Google doesn’t say a word and continues censoring.

The whole story could be found here.

Edit 11/06/2006: Even though Fred Tipson’s declaration was not revoked by Microsoft, the software company annouced today that it has no plans to slow business in China. Money talks, people die…

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, China, blogging, freedom, censorship, Google, human rights