Did anyone catch Ali G's alter ego or the film yesterday?

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Borat kicks up storm of controversy on red carpet
Updated Fri. Sep. 8 2006 8:13 AM ET

Mary Nersessian, CTV.ca News

Jagshemash Toronto! Intrepid Kazakhstani journalist Borat rode into town Thursday night on a carriage pulled with the strength of six peasant women, kicking up a dust storm of controversy on his way on to the red carpet.

Borat sat atop the carriage, his horse resting comfortably by his side, while six women clad in multi-patterned peasant-wear pushed and pulled the cart down to the Toronto International Film Festival outside the Ryerson Theatre.

Working the crowd like a seasoned pro, Borat greeted his Canadian fans by slapping high-fives and doling out random double-cheeked kisses to the tune of an energetic Eastern European brass tune.

The women, on the other hand, looked despondently at the crowds chanting Borat's name, their faces bearing traces of mud and dirt.

When asked if he had yet found a significant other, Borat admitted to CTV.ca that he was on the lookout.

"I look for wife tonight," he said on the red carpet.

He added, with a big grin, that he liked Canadian women "very much."

"Because all the women I have seen here, they only have teeth grown inside of mouth."

Borat, who is one of three principal characters played by Cambridge-educated British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on HBO's hit Emmy-nominated series "Da Ali G Show," is in town to promote his mockumentary.

The awkwardly named Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, which purports to be a government information broadcast, opened the film festival's Midnight Madness program early Friday morning.

'Funniest movie I've ever seen'

Cohen had one ardent fan in the crowd.

Cohen's fiancée Isla Fisher, best known for her role as Gloria in The Wedding Crashers, told CTV.ca the film is the "funniest movie I've ever seen."

When asked whether she preferred Cohen or Borat, the red-headed actress was quick to respond: "I've got to go with Borat."

The film follows Borat Sagdiyev as he leaves his stuffed animals at his primitive home in Kazakhstan to travel to the United States to make a documentary.

The trailer abruptly sets the often-explicit tone for the film. A cheerful Borat swaps spit with a slatternly blonde only to proudly introduce her to the camera as his sister, the number four prostitute in all of Kazakhstan.

In this riotous no-holds-barred satire, the mustachioed fictional television reporter makes his journey cross the U.S. and A. in an ice-cream van with a documentary crew accompanying him.

But plans for the documentary go awry when the gleefully clueless Borat encounters, on a late night television rerun, CJ Parker, the character played by Pamela Anderson on "Baywatch."

He decides to make his mission finding her and marrying her in the Kazakhstani-style (a plan that involves a burlap bag).

Armed with a microphone and an endless supply of patience, Borat's shtick is to reel in unassuming American targets and pepper them with inappropriate questions. The punchline is not in his question, but in their answers, which often expose their deep-rooted prejudices.

In one scene, Borat is at a rodeo discussing homosexuals with an older man clad in rancher-style apparel. Borat tells the other man: "They hang 'em in our country." The man replies: "That's what we're trying to do here."

Kazakhstani criticism

Kazakhstani envoys have already expressed their criticism of Cohen's film, saying it misrepresents their country.

New York Magazine reported that the Kazakhstan government is scrambling to address the film and is considering buying air time in the United States to educate Americans about the "real Kazakhstan."

In fact, Borat has already been threatened with a defamation lawsuit by the government of Kazakhstan itself.

Borat's response to the suit was to claim that he "fully support my government's decision to sue this Jew."

Anti-Borat hardliners have also yanked borat.kz, Borat's Kazakhstan-based website. Meanwhile, the "Official Borat Homesite" has been moved to the .tv domain, where it remains.

"We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name," Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, told Reuters. "He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains."

Cohen alludes to Borat's standoff with Kazakhstan in a recent question-and-answer interview published in Entertainment Weekly.

When asked whether his friends and family fear he will "go Hollywood," Borat (who is interviewed in character) remarks that he doesn't think this will be a problem.

"I already number four most famous person in Kazakhstan behind our glorious leader, Premier Nazarbayev, pop star Billy Sexcrime, ex-Olympic gymnast Lily Utmarkan (she now work in Kazakh State Circus, where she famous for putting one foot in mouth while other is in her [CENSORED BY KAZAKHSTAN BUREAU OF COMMUNICATION AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS]) -- and acting chimpanzee ''Jonny the Monkey."

Borat's career in the United States has been marked by a series of controversies.

He was greeted with dumbfounded silence and boos when he addressed an MTV awards ceremony with "Good evening, gentlemen and prostitutes."

And in one of the most widely circulated clips from Da Ali G Show, the cowboy hat-clad Borat informs an audience at a redneck bar in Arizona that he will sing a song from his country.

He then sings, "In my country there is problem, and that problem is the Jew. They take everybody money and they never give it back."

The reaction of the audience is split. Some sit in mute horror. But others stamp their feet to the beat and join in to sing the chorus: "Throw the Jew down the well (so my country can be free)."

In his new film, Borat is no less politically incorrect.

In one scene, when Borat goes to buy a car, he asks the dealer whether a Humvee would be suitable for running over gypsies.

In another scene, the unabashedly anti-Semitic Borat insists on driving to California instead of flying, "in case the Jews repeat their attack of 9/11."

At another point in the film, Cohen is shown spitting out food given to him by the Jewish owners of a bed-and-breakfast because he believes it may be poisoned.

But Cohen, who is himself Jewish, defends his character by explaining the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry" rather than a display of actual racism.

Film fest co-director Noah Cowan dismisses suggestions that the film goes too far with its humour.

"It's both a great deal of fun and a wonderful political statement," he told CTV.ca on the red carpet.

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan hits theatres in November.

Borat urges members of the public to watch the film, if not for their own amusement but to save a life.

"I make a movie film -- please you come see November 3 -- if it not success -- I will be execute," Borat pleads on his MySpace.com page.

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