So the Joaquin Phoenix "I'm Still Here" thing was an act, which everybody pretty much knew...

... except Roger Ebert (kind of), who gave it a terrible review, which everyone else did too. So now, the director (Casey Affleck) is trying to claw his way back into respectability by taking the stage to tell us it was a Borat-ish fake, except that no one cares anymore, because the film wasn't entertaining, partly because it made the few people who saw it feel bad about the druggy dissolution of a once-great actor.

Well, so maybe it could become entertaining now that Affleck has unburdened us of the sadness we felt to see Phoenix fall — a burden, Affleck had to know, hit people with the additional weight of reminding them of the death of Joaquin's brother River — and we know that Joaquin is acting!

But when Joaquin was traveling about making the film, clips leaked out, people suspected it was an act, and the clips weren't funny then, which I suspect is why they decided to put the film together in a way that deprived the audience of the ability to confirm that it was an act. Make it a puzzle. Stir people up. But that didn't work.

It's so pathetic to try to get a second chance at attracting attention to your movie. But we're all glad, I take it, that Joaquin's okay. Now, will somebody give the actor a script?

That journalistic encounter in Italy.

"[E]arlier in the week at the Venice festival, an Italian journalist stripped to his skivvies, declared himself gay and begged a clearly ticked-off [George] Clooney for a kiss. Ewan McGregor, who co-stars in Goats, told USA TODAY earlier in the day,'It was a waste of everyone's time, really. When you have these big press conferences ,the trouble is, that’s it. You get the half an hour, 45 minutes, and for a lot of journalists, that is it. I don’t know what his deal was. Later on, he was following him around in a boat. I saw him later." Perhaps he was inspired by Borat's stalking of Pam Anderson.'"

"The first glance was not of course positive, it cannot be because you see a lot of not so good things."

"But then, after that, when we start seeing interest in our country, it was of course reflected better, it was positive. People, after looking at this film, they will like to come and see: ‘is it real, is it the same or not?’ It helps to learn more about our country... The statistics show that inbound tourism grew by 13 percent. At the moment, no problem."

Kazakhstan not so mad at Borat now.

We've had enough British humor.

Variety reports. We liked Borat and some Ricky Gervais, but there's only so much we can take.

Really, it's hard to understand why humor would translate across cultures. There's the initial novelty, but British comedians can't migrate en masse to America. That's not going to work.

When I watch "The Daily Show," the person who amuses me the most is John Oliver, who is British. And yet, if there were an all-British "Daily Show," I probably wouldn't watch.

Obama has to deal with an annoying man.

Video.

Was it that guy's goal to piss Obama off and get him looking bad on camera? I'd say Obama kept his cool and handled it well, but I'm sure there will be people who will say this is Obama losing his cool. To that, I'd say: If this is Obama losing his cool, Obama is very cool. Perhaps a better question is whether Obama is too cool — too bland and unemotional to enthuse us. But we've already gotten overenthused at Obama. Some day, we'll look back on these scenes and puzzle over the enigma of Obama.

Damn, that guy was annoying. He was a bit like a Sacha Baron Cohen character... except he was not funny.

NOTE: I've replaced the embedded video with a link. People continue to have problems with Redlasso video — I think because it's high-quality video.

"European man... putting security on red alert... stripping down to tight shorts and dancing in the lobby of Wichita Airport."

What's the matter with Kansas? Don't they get HBO?

Baby Borat!

It's Olive.

"She had signed an agreement allowing her to appear in the movie, but she claims that she did not realise how much she would be ridiculed..."

Another in the long line of lawsuits I hope will fail.

Cathy Martin, an Alabama etiquette expert, agreed to let [Sacha Baron Cohen, AKA Borat] film a dinner sequence at her home...

In case you missed it the last time someone sued Cohen, here's the contract. Right up front, it says:

It is understood that the Producer hopes to reach a young adult audience by using entertaining content and formats.

Everyone wants to be in the movies, but somehow they fail to think about why anyone would want to see them in a movie.

The Guardian The Observer obsesses about naked male wrestling in the movies.

Apparently, there's lots of it.

Well, we all remember "Borat," and I can remember Oliver Reed and Alan Bates naked-wrestling in front of the fire in Ken Russell's version of the D.H. Lawrence film "Women in Love." ("According to Russell, Bates and Reed were fairly evenly equipped, although Oliver 'kept nipping behind the curtains between takes to give nature a helping hand'.") But what else is there? There's at least the new David Cronenberg movie. ("Having won hearts as hunky hero Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo really shows what he's made of in Eastern Promises, grappling his male assailants with nothing more than a patchwork of tattoos to cover his rippling body.") And: "If you type 'Jason Statham' and 'oil wrestling' into Google (as I have often done) you will be directed to several sites featuring a scene from The Transporter in which the geezery star, stripped to the waist, smothers himself with lubricant before going mano-a-mano with his slippery opponents in a sticky slick."

Should I be reading The Guardian more? I love the subject matter but the prose is making me a little ill.

UPDATE: I'm told this piece is actually in The Observer, a separate paper. Sorry, I'm not reading the paper. I'm reading a website. And the big red "Guardian" logo makes me think I'm reading something called The Guardian. This mistaken perception has been going on for years.

"American Idol" -- the winner is (I hear) announced... and the theme is: cruelty.

"But I'm only human..." Did everyone in America crack up simultaneously when Phil sang that line in the top-6-guys rendition of the Smokey Robinson song "Ooh, Baby, Baby"? It had to be a cruel trick to assign that line to him, after all the snarking about him looking like Bat Boy/Nosferatu. Hey, Smokey's here! I love him. I saw him in person one time, in one of those Las Vegas performances. It was nice seeing Sanjaya again. Nice seeing Chris Sligh too. Inspired me to start blogging.

The show so far: Jordin and Blake sang a Beatles song ("When I Saw Her Standing There"), No Doubt, Kelly Clarkson, and a horrible "Best Presentation" award that went to a kooky fat lady who -- in keeping with tonight's cruelty theme -- tried to crush Ryan to death.

Now, Ryan acknowledges that people are pissed that last night Blake got cheated out of the chance to beat-box, which is what he does best. They bring out Blake with -- we're told he's legendary -- Doug E. Fresh to do a big beat-box number together, and he shows off nicely. And it's more than impressive, it's genuinely entertaining, unlike nearly everything else on this damned show.

They give a vocalist award to a bad singer, and then they ask him to sing "Silent Night," which he sings with the line "All is prom..."

Now the top 6 "girls" do "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and Gladys Knight comes out and joins them. This must be fun for Jordin, who totally knows she won. In fact, I think Blake had a lot of fun in that beat-box number because he didn't have to worry about the possibility of winning. It's really cool to see Gladys with LaKisha and Melinda singing "Midnight Train to Georgia."

Tony Bennett sings "For Once in My Life." We see Paula -- the show's embodiment of all womanly emotion -- swaying ecstatically. But guys love Tony too. In the audience, we see Justin Guarini and Smokey Robinson, beaming nuttily.

A best duo award. Among the nominees, Simon and Ryan, and they have a montage of all the rather lame humor about whether they might be a gay couple. The award goes, quite rightly, to Jonathan and Kenneth, two young men who seem perhaps mentally disabled. Funning with them was deemed by some to be cruel, and maybe they'll think it's cruel to bring them back and give them an award, but who are you to say they weren't into it and aren't having a great time? Ryan asks Kenneth how he felt about Simon's insult -- "bush baby" -- and he says at first he was hurt, but he's gotten famous over it, so he forgives him. Fame conquers all. He says, "Lighten up. I have." Hear that America? But that doesn't me you can all go out and mock the disabled, because you don't have fame to bestow in exchange. They display a picture of a bush baby, and it really does look like Kenneth. "I'm just being honest" is one of Simon's favorite sayings.

Ryan awards Jordin and Blake the keys to new Mustangs and Blake does a Borat imitation: "High five! I like that!"

TiVo'd past: Carrie Underwood, doddering, blabbing Clive Davis, African children's choir. And now, a special tribute to Sanjaya. He performs with Joe Perry (for some reason). "You Really Got Me." Crying girl is in the audience.

TiVo'd past: Taylor Hicks. Next: Jordin sings with Ruben Studdard. Next: Bette Midler???? Yikes! "Wind Beneath My Wings." Well, that expresses the "American Idol" aesthetic. Ugh! Who canceled and left her in this spot?

Hmmm.... another Beatle thing: a tribute to "Sgt. Pepper." (Must mean next season will have a Beatles show or two.) It's Joe Perry playing guitar and Kelly Clarkson singing the title song... quite rousingly. Then, Taylor Hicks doing "Day in the Life." Carrie does "She's Leaving Home." The first two are very nicely down. Carrie kind of scares me though. Makes me want to run away from home myself. I suddenly realize Paul should be there, like Gladys and Smokey. Ruben sings "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." There's a group sing of "A Little Help from My Friends." I get ALL excited over the impendingness of Paul, and Paul never arrives. So, I guess Paul canceled, which is why we got Bette.

Something truly screwed up happened here!

Tons of commercials, and we're getting perilously close to the end of the TiVo recording, despite the added on 3 minutes. Here they are. Ryan blabs about how many votes there were. And the recording ends.

So, great. 2 hours, and I didn't get to see the few seconds that matter. As if I don't know Jordin won. Well, I said the theme was cruelty. Paul wasn't there. Bette Midler was. The TiVo misses it.... grrrrrrrrrrr......

ADDED: A distant saying from the past reasserts itself: Paul is dead. If he's not, I'm sergeantly pissed.

We want our sexist comic characters to be more charming.

Andrew Dice Clay is back with a reality show on VH-1:

The VH1 reality show “Dice Undisputed” — about his attempt at a career comeback, co-starring his two sons, his shrill fiancée and his motley entourage — is intended to shove him back in our faces, right where he apparently belongs. But we must again resist his advances. Let’s say it one more time: He’s charmless and unfunny.

I've said what I had to say about him back here:

The first time I saw Andrew Dice Clay, I took him to be a brilliant critic of masculinity. Then everybody just got mad at him and made him go away.

Looks like they're about to make him go away again. Since he played a lout, you can't feel sorry for him. If only he could warm us with a smidge of lovableness, like that big sexist bastard Borat.

"Wa wa wee wa, is Borat in trouble again?"

The Himalayan Times reports (yeah, I'm getting my news about Sacha Baron Cohen from Nepal!):

Dovale Glickman plans to sue the Golden Globe-award winning comedian for copyright infringement...

The Israeli comedian coined the phrase ["wa wa wee wa"] 16 years ago, for a character on the hit Israeli comedy show "Zehu Zeh." Glickman further popularized the expression in a series of TV commercials for the Israeli yellow pages. It caught on and is still commonly heard on the street in Israel.

Copyright infringement for a 4-syllable exclamation? Wa wa wee wa! Oops, now I'm in trouble!

"I don't buy the argument that, 'Oh, I wouldn't have acted so racist or anti-semitic if I'd known this film was being shown in America.'"

Says Sacha Baron Cohen about the people who are suing him over the film "Borat":

"This wasn't Candid Camera," he says. "There were two large cameras in the room."

It makes you wonder -- doesn't it? -- why we didn't hear about people suing Allen Funt all the time back in the "Candid Camera" days. Maybe people accepted the pranks because they were primed week after week with the jaunty theme song that instructed us to have a sense of humor:

When it's least expected - you're elected. You're the star today
Smile! You're on Candid Camera!
With a hocus-pocus - you're in focus. It's your lucky day
Smile! You're on Candid Camera!

It's fun to laugh at yourself. It's a tonic, tried and true.
It's fun to laugh at yourself as other people do.

How's your sense of humor? There's a rumor: Laughter's on its way.
Smile! You're on Candid Camera! Smile! You're on Candid Camera!

I don't know. Looking back at those lyrics -- and remembering the tune -- I get the feeling they are laying it on way too thick. It seems to tip us off that they are nervous that their victims will get mad or the viewers will think they are being too mean.

According to the producer of "Candid Camera," there weren't lawsuits and it was because "We never tried to embarrass people or put them in a precarious situation... We did much gentler things."

All that niceness and denial of any cruel edge make it less funny, though, doesn't it?

On Bloggingheads, we were talking about whether it was wrong to respond to Simon Cowell's invitations to laugh at people who look odd or are afflicted with delusional self-esteem. I had to say that part of what makes "American Idol" work is this feeling that it's wrong. That feeling that to laugh is to transgress is what makes you laugh.

Comedy is sadistic.

Sacha Baron Cohen on "Fresh Air."

Hear him speak in his real voice. It's a little startling. He discusses, among other things, how the scenes for "Borat" were planned and accomplished. The scenes had to advance the plot, but they could not be sure exactly what people would do and say. The scene in the church was pivotal, and the predicted dialogue turned out verbatim. With fundamentalists, it seems, you actually do know what they will say, for example, if you say, "No one can save me."

On many occasions, people called the police, and Cohen stayed in character as "Borat" even after the police arrived. You never know what useful footage you'll get. I guess we'll see that on the DVD.

Cohen thinks he's the victim of his own success, or so he says. He's so recognizable that he can no longer go out as a funny character and trick people. Or can he? He's saying now that he'll have to write scripted movies and work with actors, but that would be a useful message to send out if he wants to keep up the real-life tricks. He's awfully good at disappearing into his characters -- note that he studied acting and has performed in Shakespeare plays -- and, as he says, people consistently believed Borat was real. I think the tricks will go on, in some way or other.

About those pop culture law school exam fact patterns.

I'm always basing my Civil Procedure II exam on some pop culture thing. CivPro2 here at UW covers jurisdiction and related topics, and I always need a fact pattern -- it doesn't matter what the substantive law is -- that involves a lot of people and places so I can generate some questions about who can join together in a lawsuit and where they can bring the suit and so forth.

In any given year, students could take bets on what pop culture phenomenon will turn up on the exam. If they'd done it this year, it would have been terribly easy to guess. It's "Borat." I changed the name, but basically it's a comedian traveling across the country provoking encounters... and sowing the seeds of lawsuits. It never matters whether the claims are sound or not. (I hope they're not!) I've simply got to create a controversy that has a somewhat complicated mix of people and places.

Does it add some fun to exam-taking, or is it annoying? I hope that, afterwards, it doesn't spoil the fun of the movie for the students. Ack! That was my Civil Procedure exam! I don't mean to do that.

Here's a list of a few things I've used for CivPro2 exams in the past: "The Apprentice," "The Blair Witch Project," "America's Funniest Home Videos," the Beach Boys' legal problems with Eugene Landy, "Supersize Me," "The Real World," the Cat in the Hat balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, paparazzi and the deaths of Princess Diana and Sonny Bono, stage diving at the Rave, the U.S. News law school rankings.

Ben Stein hates Borat.

Let's see why. I should say first -- and before reading Stein's comments -- that I saw the movie a few weeks ago. Why didn't I write about it? I started to, actually, but never got past the first sentence. I liked the movie well enough, but I much prefer "Da Ali G Show," with its short Borat segment, mixed with just enough Ali G and Bruno. I'm happier with disjointed sketches than with a long, connected narrative. It must be the blogger in me. Really, I didn't need the narrative frame involving the cross country road trip and Pamela Anderson and so forth (although I took advantage of it in concocting a fact pattern for my Civpro2 exam). As for the little encounters that were stuck in the frame, I've seen many Borat segments on "Da Ali G Show" that were just as funny or funnier.

But let's see what Ben Stein says:

1.) The auteur and star of the movie, Sacha Baron Cohen, is a Jew of high degree in England and now in Hollywood. But much of the movie is viciously anti-Semitic. This includes not just some but many "jokes" about killing Jews, about how Jews are the devil, about how Jews will kill for money, about how Jews are like cockroaches (the last a direct steal from Joachim Goebbels, who compared Jews with breeding rats and insects). This is in a world where we just lived through an anti-Semitic holocaust with the same themes and another is promised by the terrorists in Iran.

These are not funny jokes. These are really just old-fashioned sickening racism disguised as hipness. It's also a smug joke by Sacha Cohen which is basically his endlessly saying, "I hate Jews, too, even though I'm Jewish, and hey, I guess I don't look Jewish because I can say all these horrible Jew hatred things and no one says, 'Hey, what are you doing? You're a Jew.'"

It's repulsive.

Clearly, Cohen means to lampoon anti-Semitism. You could say that it's ineffective, because there really is nothing to force anti-Semites to look critically at themselves and feel chastened. They can sit back and laugh heartily at the anti-Semitism.

I remember the first time I saw Andrew Dice Clay, before I heard all the outrage at his sexism. I thought he was brilliantly lampooning sexism. So I may not the best person to judge.

Back to Ben:

2.) Much of the movie is about Borat making fun of people who have been completely kind to him. This is just infantile and narcissistic oppositional disorder. It's also rude, and it's not very funny. Maybe it is if you are five.

Well, the key question is whether it's funny. But I can see feeling that it's wrong to laugh if he's being rude to people who are trying to be nice to him. But it's awfully straitlaced. All sorts of practical jokes and teasing are sort of mean. You could object to everything going back to "Candid Camera."

3.) Much of the story is mocking and belittling Southerners as a group....

It is a bit cheap to target Southerners.

4.) It has a genuinely nauseating mockery of a woman just because she happens to be black. Why aren't people getting upset about that? It's pure, unadulterated KKK type racism. You have to see it to believe it.

She happens to be a prostitute as well. Actually, I thought the movie got politically correct about the black woman. In the end, Borat goes back to her and marries her. It was more sympathetic than it needed to be. If anything, the movie targeted white men.

5.) Worst of all, it has acute mockery of Christians. There is a long scene mocking Christian fundamentalists, in which Borat makes cruel fun of the idea of Jesus as Savior...

I agree that this was a pretty cheap target. It wasn't so much Christians as rural Southern Christians.

A close friend who saw the movie the same night I did said, "It makes you laugh, but then you want to take a shower after you've seen it."

I think he's being way too prissy about it. What do you think? Is this just a matter of taste or is there a serious moral question here?

"I'm worth billions of dollars, and I have to listen to this fat slob?"

Donald Trump expresses himself... about Rosie O'Donnell.

IN THE COMMENTS: Johnny Nucleo says:

This smackdown is the funniest thing since Borat, which I have not seen, but I understand it is very funny.

Rosie's shots are more polished than Donald's, but I think his are funnier because they are more like a kid's insults. It's stream of consciousness, everything but the kitchen sink stuff: "You're fat and ugly, and I'm going to steal your girlfriend, which will be easy, and Barbara Walters hates you, and I'm going to sue, and you're fat, and ugly too, and you are a loser, and nobody likes you, fatso." I was laughing all day at work and everyone thought I was high, which I was, but that was not why I was laughing. Watch the videos - hell, just read the transcripts - of Trump going off and try not to laugh.

Donald Trump is a treasure. I mean that. He is one of the most unintentionally funny human beings ever to walk the Earth.

"Even though Mr Dylan's name is not used, the portrayal remains both defamatory and a violation of Mr Dylan's right of publicity."

Bob Dylan is suing to block the release of a movie -- "Factory Girl" -- that depicts the life and suicide of Edie Sedgwick:

The Californian heiress was the troubled muse of artist Andy Warhol, whom she met in 1965, and starred in many of his films.

The character that Dylan has issues with is called Danny Quinn and the part is reportedly a mix of him, Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger.

"You appear to be labouring under the misunderstanding that merely changing the name of a character or making him a purported fictional composite will immunise you from suit," Orin Snyder, Dylan's lawyer, wrote to the filmmaker.

The lawsuit is in Britain, so I have no opinion about the legal merit of the claim, but I certainly find it rather absurd that a public figure like Bob Dylan even cares that a fictional composite character is based in part on him. And if he's really so sensitive about how he's portrayed, why isn't he sensitive about portraying himself so damned sensitive that he'd sue to block the release of a film. It's not even a Borat film.

"Two Borat-inspired British animal rights activists clad in lettuce bikinis braved the winter chill in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty..."

The message: Stop eating horses!

"The Borat film is ridiculing Kazakhstan, but we come with a positive message: how to live a healthier, longer life" said Yvonne Taylor, one of the two Lettuce Ladies, her teeth chattering as they stood in Almaty's main square in freezing temperatures....

"This is disgrace," said 74-year-old Orazbek Ziyakhanov of the activists' outfits. "Don't we have enough of our own spoiled girls? This is not Europe, this is Asia."

As for becoming a vegetarian, Ziyakhanov said: "How can we stop eating meat? All the vitamins are in meat."

"Judge makes benefit for Borat."

High five!