Thursday, December 18, 2025
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Rudy Guiliani Says His “Borat” Scene is Faked, But It’s Not, and When Fans See It They’ll Know What Happened

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Rudy Giuliani says his compromising scene in “Borat” was faked or fabricated. But it wasn’t. As I wrote this morning, I’ve seen the movie and played his scene a few times to make sure what happened wasn’t some figment of my imagination.

When fans see “Borat 2” on Amazon Prime beginning Friday, they’ll know the truth: Rudy Giuliani is a dirty old man.

The fact that Giuliani is stupid enough to agree to be interviewed for Kazakh TV is just the beginning. That he went to some dreary motel room to do it is another. He’s the attorney for the President of the United States. Is he so desperate for fame and attention?

Apparently yes.

You will see in the segment how Giuliani is easily flattered by actress Maria Bakalova, who is pretending to be a journalist. She fawns over him, says “I feel just like Melania.” Come on. She touches his knee. They hold hands, fod god’s sake. You’re not doing that with Savannah Guthrie or Lesley Stahl.

Even worse, Rudy poured himself a drink. He’s holding a neat Scotch in his hand. He’s drinking during an interview– with a Russian, basically.

When Maria suggests they go into the bedroom for a drink, Rudy is lit like a candle. He’s into it. In the bedroom, by the way, I do not think he’s playing with his genitalia, as UK papers blared. They are taking his microphone off. But in a bedroom? On his back? On a bed? Giuliani thinks he’s getting lucky, and he’s ready. He makes a total fool of himself.  If Maria hadn’t been an actress, and Sacha Baron Cohen hadn’t stopped them, Rudy would have been popping blue pills and trying to make a go of it.

The man who cheated on three wives was busy cheating on his girlfriend, Dr. Maria whoever she is. If she’s stupid enough to believe the excuse that this was fabricated, someone should check her medical credentials. I was the reporter who caught married Rudy on a date with Judith Nathan in April 2000, the day after his cancer diagnosis. It turned out his real illness was hubris. It’s incurable.

PS Thanks to everyone who lifted from “Borat” review this morning including pictures. As Borat would say, “Niiiiice!”

 

Adele Update: As “SNL” Hosting Approaches She Has No Record Ready to Go, But HER Drops New Single

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As “Saturday Night Live” goes into rehearsal with host Adele and musical guest HER (who apparently people in the know call Gabi Wilson), here’s an update.

HER dropped a single last night called “Damage.” It’s terrific.

Adele has nothing. There’s been no indication of a single or anything else. People in the know tell me there’s been zero preparation or indication of any new music. Outside of Adele humming something on “SNL,” she is so far not scheduled to sing any known song on “SNL” this weekend. Music rights have to be cleared before broadcast on “SNL.” No one has applied for any clearance of any kind with her song publisher.

I’m sorry, kids. I wish I had better news. This doesn’t mean something won’t emerge before the end of the year. But for example, when Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” was announced, it seemed like a surprise to all of us. But a month of preparation went into that announcement. Today, Paul McCartney announced a new album, same thing, it’s for December 11th. To launch a worldwide album you need that much time.

If something changes, I’ll let you know.

Here’s HER. Great record:

UPDATE New Paul McCartney “McCartney III” Album Coming DECEMBER 11TH, 50 Years After the First One, 40 After the Second

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Looks like Paul McCartney made an album at home during the pandemic.

On social media he’s been teasing a “McCartney III” album coming soon. It’s been preceded by not very subtle Instagrams and Tweets with three flowers, three dice, three dots. Some fans say they’ve received a cloth bag in the ail with three dice, and three dots on each side.

now we know “McCartney III” is coming on December 11th.

The original “McCartney” album is a classic, an instant masterpiece. The second one was a disappointment. Frankly, after listening to the second CD in the new “Flaming Pie” box, with “Same Love,” and “Love Comes Tumbling Down,” that whole thing could have been an album. It’s worth the price of the whole package.

So stay tuned…

For Real: Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” Sequel Captures Rudy Giuliani on Film Flirting with, Trying to Seduce “Russian Reporter” in Hotel Bedroom

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Sacha Baron Cohen has done something to Rudy Giuliani we could only dream of: he’s captured him on film as a dirty old man on the make. In the sequel to Cohen’s 2006 hit comedy, “Borat,” headed to Amazon Prime on Friday, thrice-married and divorced Rudy is filmed attempting to seduce a beautiful young “Russian reporter” in a hotel bedroom. This is real, not a joke. He thinks he’s being filmed for a real interview. Alone with her in the hotel room, he accepts the “reporter”‘s invite into the bedroom for a drink, lies down on the bed, and is clearly headed for what he thinks is a happy ending.

This is real, I must impress upon you. When you’re watching Giuliani in “Borat 2” you’re thinking this is acting isn’t it? But it is not. Giuliani has been totally duped by this pretty young woman who is an actress playing — to the movie audience– Borat’s daughter, Tutar. The point is to reveal the former mayor of New York, President Trump’s personal lawyer, for the lowlife who he is, and it works. Rudy is not in on the joke. He is the joke.

Rudy is lured to a New York hotel (looks like one in Battery Park City maybe) for this interview and Tutar, played by Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, gushes over him. At one point Cohen comes into the room posing as a sound man. When he sees Giuliani is infatuated with Tutar, he says, just loud enough to hear, “You should stick to marrying your cousin.” (Giuliani’s first wife was his cousin.) The former mayor shoots him a look but things are moving fast. Plus, it looks like Rudy is drinking a neat Scotch.

Tutar flirts shamelessly and he flirts back. When she says she’s nervous, he says, grinning, “Ill relax you.” As Giuliani coughs– coughs!— he tells her Trump saved at least a million lives from the virus. They discuss where the virus started. “Not with a bat,” he says. “Have you ever eaten a bat?” he asks the reporter. She bats her eyelashes and says she will only do it with him. It’s agreed. She invites Rudy into the bedroom “for a drink.”

In the bedroom, Tutar (who blossoms from feral animal to sex pot in the course of the film) pushes him down on the bed and starts unbuckling his pants to remove the microphone. It’s quite clear at this point what the intentions are: he thinks they are going to bed. Only Cohen, dressed improbably in a wig and women’s underwear, bursts in and tells Rudy “she’s too old for you, she’s 15!” (Bakalova is at least 23, don’t worry.) Rudy hightails it out of the suite.

It’s a devastating moment that comes at the end of an almost 90 minute comedy that also includes Cohen trying to disrupt a Mike Pence speech at a CPAC meeting, and plenty of other “gotcha” moments. We know Borat, we love him. The last time we saw him was in 2006. It turns out in his fictional world of Kazakhstan he was punished for the first movie’s success. Now he’s sent back to America to improve his country’s public relations. Bakalova’s Tutar hides in a crate and meets him in Texas as part of a mistaken shipment.

Bakalova replaces Borat’s old sidekick, actor Ken Davitian as Azamat. (We do learn Azamat’s fate, and it’s not pretty.) Cohen and Baklova then proceed to set up unwitting fools in Texas, Georgia and other locales, eliciting racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic comments from them. You do laugh a lot, I laughed a lot, even though it’s shooting fish in a barrel.

To their credit some of the real people rise to the occasion. Alan Smith, who I interviewed yesterday, didn’t know what was going when “Borat” entered his UPS store in suburban Atlanta. But he acquitted himself well. So did baby sitter Jeanise Jones who, if she’s in on the joke deserves a Golden Globe. She plays the whole thing straight when Borat leaves Tutar with her tied to a ball and chain with a dog dish for water. Poor Tutar: she’s the butt of many jokes all to make satirical points, gets a lot of laughs and Bakalova– whoever she is– is a sharp little actress.

The original, hilariously over the top “Borat” was just to make fun, it had no real point. This one, don’t be fooled, has a specific purpose beside being funny (which it is all the time). It’s also arriving at a planned moment. Cohen skewers “McDonald” Trump, Mike Pence, and everything about this election. He goes out of his way to address the Trump administration’s willful ignorance about anti-Semitism. In one scene he visits a synagogue and tries to start trouble. But he winds up a meeting an extraordinary Holocaust survivor, Judith Dim Evans, who sadly died in real life after the taping. Evans’ family tried to stop her inclusion in the film. In a brilliant gesture, Cohen dedicated to the movie to her.

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” sounds like a lot of work. It isn’t. At the heart of all this is goofy fun, gut laughs, and a lot of silliness. Don’t forget that. We do learn that Borat’s middle name is “Margaret.” And that one of his sons, named Huey Lewis, changed it from “Jeffrey Epstein.” In the end it’s possible that the entire coronavirus outbreak is a scheme by Kazakhstan to get back at America, and they used Borat as a superspreader.

And the real people? There are plenty of them. One of them, a Georgia plastic surgeon, won’t be too happy. A baker in Macon may be embarrassed for writing on a cake, “Jews are not going to replace us.” We’re going to be hearing stories about them for the next couple of weeks. Many “stars” will be born. As for Rudy Giuliani? He can’t explain himself out of this. He’ll never shake this story.

 

 

 

See the Very Stylish Trailer for David Fincher’s “Mank” starring Gary Oldman as the Real Life Hollywood Screenwriter of “Citizen Kane”

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David Fincher‘s “Mank” is a much hyped and anticipated Netflix film about Herman Mankiewicz, Oscar winning co-writer of “Citizen Kane.” His brother, Joseph Mankiewicz, won four Oscars in writing directing each “All ABout Eve” and “Letter for Three Wives.” Herman aka Mank was more of a Hollywood character. He drank and caroused and had a great time until he didn’t. Gary Oldman fills his shoes. Tom Pelphrey, who’s thisclose to being a star, plays Joseph. Pelphrey is coming off a stunning season on “Ozark.” He’s waited 10 year since leaving the CBS soap “Guiding Light” to become an overnight sensation. Lily Collins and Amanda Seyfried co-star.

“Mank” is incredibly popular with the folks on Film Twitter, who want it to win a lot of Oscars. The good news is it’s on Netflix and not in theaters so box office won’t be an issue. The trailer is really cool, and I loved the graphics. PS Yes, Josh Mankiewicz of TCM fame is Mank’s grandson, as is NBC’s Josh Mankiewicz. (They’re brothers.) Someone, somwhere is working on a parody song called “Manks for the Memories.”

Humor: Here’s an Actual Kanye West Campaign Commercial That Is Not a “Saturday Night LIve” Video

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If these are real people, and weren’t paid to say this stuff, they are in terrible trouble.

Good News: Kelly Ripa Reports that Ryan Seacrest Tests Negative for COVID-19, He’ll Be Back Tomorrow (Whew!)

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Ryan Seacrest’s COVID test came back negative. Kelly Ripa is positive that he’s negative, and posted the good news on Instagram. Whew! Live with Kelly and Ryan is the number 1 syndicated TV show. They’ve dodged a bullet, as they say. Congrats!
PS If something did make him sick, it had to have been the top 40 music. I listened to his radio show yesterday. Wow. That stuff could kill you if not handled properly!

First Borat “Victim” Alan Smith, UPS Store Owner in Suburban Atlanta, Thought He Was Part of Training Film for Russians

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Exclusive: Alan Smith is the nicest and most congenial owner of a UPS store in suburban Atlanta. His place is called the PMS Center (the funny part of the name is real and unintentional). A couple of weeks ago a friend called and him said he saw the store in the trailer for the new “Borat” movie. Immediately, Alan knew what he must be talking about.

“I did not know who they were when they were here,” Alan told me today. He meant Sacha Baron Cohen, dressed as Borat. In the film, which debuts on Amazon Prime this Friday, Borat sends faxes back and forth to the president of Kazakhstan. The faxes that come back have a Russian looking masthead. Alan told me he really sent faxes to a Russian number. “Borat” paid him for everything.

“They were here from 8am to 2pm, all day,” Alan said. “They told me it was a training video for Russians, and that it would be shown on Public Television in either Georgia or Florida.” Alan has learned the hard way, like so many of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “victims” over the years, this wasn’t true.

He was relieved to hear that he comes across very nicely on screen, very patient and friendly. That might not be true of all the real people in “Borat Subsequent Movie Film.” (He was interested in seeing clips, which I could not help him with. I guess he’ll have to wait til Friday.) By the weekend, PMS UPS in Coweta County is going to become a landmark, I’m afraid, and Alan a movie star. I hope he’s ready.

“You’re my first call,” he said. “I guess there will be more.” There will be, Alan. There will.

PS He’s voting for Trump. I liked him anyway. I asked him to reconsider and he said he would, but I think he was just being nice.

RIP Great Blues Rocker Spencer Davis, His Group with Stevie Winwood Produced Classic Hits “Gimme Some Lovin'”,”I’m a Man”

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Spencer Davis has died age 81 from a heart attack at his home in California.

Well, I cannot tell you what The Spencer Davis Group meant to me. “Gimme Some Lovin'” featuring Stevie Winwood and his brother Muff Winwood is a high point of all of rock and roll. So is “I’m a Man.” There is nothing you can compare this with now. I feel like a part of my childhood died.

Spencer Davis was Welsh, but lived in northern California because when you’re a great rock star, you need sunshine and warmth. Rest in peace. You gave us great gifts.

Fleetwood Mac: Here Are Three Great Songs from the Band’s Early Years Before “Dreams” Became Soap Opera Filled Nightmares

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Want to know what Fleetwood Mac was really like before they were ruined by fame and soap opera?

Up until 1975, they never heard of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. It was Mick Fleetwood, the McVies, Bob Welch, Danny Kirwan, Peter Green. THAT was Fleetwood Mac.

Here are three songs that typified their coolness. Rhino has a box set now from that era that far outshines what came later.

Hynotized:

Bare Trees:

Heroes are Hard to Find:

and I’ll concede “Over My Head” by Christine McVie from the 1975 self titled album. I’d love to know what she thinks of all the changes that went on.