Sacha Baron Cohen as The Dictator on some Australian morning show.
My favorite Cohen character has always been Bruno (though TV-era Bruno is funnier, I think) for the same reason why I love this character - he simultaneously mocks the kind of person he portrays and subverts our perceptions of them.
Bruno is unabashedly gay and completely cool with it - so much so that he just assumes everybody else is, too. The funniest joke with Bruno is not that he’s gay (though that’s pretty funny) but how other people react to how comfortable he is with his own homosexuality and the homosexuality he assumes are in the people he talks to.
The Dictator is a ridiculous stereotype of a secular Middle Eastern dictator in the mold of Qaddafi with some pretty biting criticisms of islamic culture embedded even in the smallest things (notice how, in the above clip, he shakes everybody’s hand except the woman’s, who stands around awkwardly as if she doesn’t really know if she was part of a joke or not).
There’s a scene in the trailer where the dictator and his compadre talk, in a language that sounds vaguely arabic but probably isn’t, about a fireworks show at the Statue of Liberty, while a frightened middle-aged American couple look on, horrified at their apparent plans for blowing up a landmark.
That’s Cohen at his best, I think - using the easy comedy of stereotypes, sure, but also subverting them and turning the focus back on the viewer’s own prejudices.
NEWS: Seemingly Ancient Beast Turns Out to be Only 35 Today
The incomparable Dan Tallarico wrote a special press release for my birthday and it’s hilarious.
“ It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansyassed people react when you push back.”
This is a scene that exemplifies my love for the moment of clarity - the climactic, transformative point around which the whole narrative pivots.
This is from the movie Signs, which predated the dimming of both the director and the star’s bright futures. This is Shyamalan at his best.
![thepittsburghhistoryjournal:
Pittsburgh, 1941 [Shorpy]
From the comments:
This is the corner of Madison and Lockhart, looking west. The church with the onion domes is St. Mary’s — Bavarian Catholic, believe it or not.
You can’t go and see this intersection anymore since it was destroyed in the 1980s so that the Parkway North could be built. The church is still there, although now it’s a hotel.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2xuscOr151qakblyo1_1280.jpg)
Pittsburgh, 1941 [Shorpy]
From the comments:
This is the corner of Madison and Lockhart, looking west. The church with the onion domes is St. Mary’s — Bavarian Catholic, believe it or not.
You can’t go and see this intersection anymore since it was destroyed in the 1980s so that the Parkway North could be built. The church is still there, although now it’s a hotel.
“ A GERMAN POLICE BATTALION arrived at the shtetl of Sudilkov, in the Ukraine. The policemen led several hundred people to a bomb crater outside the town and shot them. The victims fell into the crater. A woman, unharmed, climbed out and sat on the edge, crying. A soldier shot her, and she fell back in.”
