Find articles

Exclusive: Joshua Loudermilk says suspicions first raised during filming by gun shaped like wearable plastic bottom: ‘You’re gonna put a butt on top of a butt? You can’t run in that’ • This article contains spoilers for Ali G: Who Iz I? Joshua Loudermilk, one of two men apparently discredited by the new Ali G movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, has said that he was in on the joke, but that the film-makers didn’t realise this. Loudermilk, a 54-year-old aspiring actor from North Carolina, has told the Guardian he recognised star Sacha Baron Cohen early in the shoot but continued pretending to be a hard-right Maga sympathiser prepared to defend the US border at all costs. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Michael Aboud, whose actions in what he believed to be a documentary are likely to come under considerable scrutiny, has expressed anger at the film-maker • This article contains spoilers for Ali G: Who Iz I? The chair of the El Paso County Republican Party has said he intends to sue Sacha Baron Cohen over footage of the local politician used in new satircal comedy Ali G: Who Iz I? In the film, Michael Aboud is shown taking part in a training programme with another Cohen character, ex-Mossad terrorist expert Col Erran Morad, who instructs Aboud and fellow Maga sympathisers in self-defence techniques including the wearing, over clothes, of protective plastic buttocks. He also schools them in how to fire bullets from the middle of these buttocks by the repeated up and down manipulation of a rubber penis. Continue reading...

Baron Cohen’s live-ammo prankster is back, 20 years on, but has to battle with his own irrelevance in search of big laughs and the approval of a new generation • Exclusive: Republican leader embarrassed by film says he plays to sue Sacha Baron Cohen: ‘A liar and a pervert’ If you liked Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G the first time around, you’ll like this less; if you disliked it, you’ll dislike this more; if you suspected it was racist, you’ll be more emboldened to say so – especially as Baron Cohen has dreamed up a whole new character apparently to pre-empt and mock precisely that objection. Broad and crass as it often is – in fact always is – this Ali G sequel is sometimes funny: the athletic vigour of our hero’s pranking and punking is like the umpteenth Jackass film at which you might find yourself laughing, and Baron Cohen blunders with the semi-intentional force of an XL bully into the issue of whether jokes are still allowed. Unlike the first film, Ali G in Da House from 2002, this is not a full written-through narrative. It is basically another live-ammo series of hoaxes with some spectacular bad taste perpetrated upon the deserving and less deserving; it satirises the shamelessness of anti-woke free speech martyrs, punching up and down with grossout cringe, and the targets include some big names who shouldn’t be revealed here. There are two other subordinate characters: Erran Morad, a sinister Mossad/IDF officer turned US security consultant (who appeared in Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? TV series ), and a new figure: Dr Nira Cain-N’Degrocello, a grotesquely supercilious white liberal who is the self-appointed scourge of cultural appropriation. The dupes are built into a big silly climax fabricated with body doubles and (presumably) covert reshooting. Continue reading...

Sacha Baron Cohen, who starred in hits like "Borat" and "The Dictator," joins "CBS Mornings" to talk about reviving his character Ali G for his new movie, "Ali G: Who Iz I?"