Movie Review: The Dictator - SBC provides some moderately juicy humour that isn't quite repressive enough for my liking.

The latest offering from the team Sacha Baron Cohen is what you would expect really, a tidal wave of gags involving SBC offending some group, country and organisation while getting his willy out at least once (which must be written into his contract for everyone of these films).

Getting to see this a few weeks early was a bit of treat though, piling into a packed fan screening full of smelly drooling SBC fans, iphones and androids at the ready. SBC even made an appearance to introduce the film (in character of course) with his bitches in tow, bagging a few Aussie political figures where possible and warming us up for his latest comical feast.

I hadn’t seen Bruno his second effort, which apparently was pretty average, but had seen Borat and from what I remember I was fairly entertained throughout. Here you have much the same thing though, some moments that aren’t really funny at all, perhaps too try hard, and some others that do have you chuckling a fair whack.

SBC has always had a soft spot for the Americans and here his character General Aladeen makes the trip over to the US from his beloved country ‘The Republic of Wadiya’ to attend some sort of United Nations meeting. His right hand man (Ben Kingsley) double crosses Aladeen and tries to have him assassinated putting a moronic body double in his place and enabling him to secure a deal that will bring democracy to The Republic of Wadiya. Never cries the General! And the rest of the film is spent with the Aladeen trying to hatch a plan that will allow him into this meeting to stop this ridiculous event taking place. He comes across a hairy arm pit organic shop owning dictator hating she/male that helps him on this quest to prevent democracy ever arriving in Wadiya. They team up pretty good, with him continually taking the piss out of her and her  really hairy pits, making for some entertaining moments.

But like I’ve said this is much of what you would expect, SBC keeps things trucking along and has some okay support from Kingsley and Anna Farris (Scary Movie franchise). Rumour has it that this was watered down after various test screenings in the states, not much to my surprise. Why though I asked myself? These films are meant to pack comical punch are they not?! Otherwise they just tend to struggle, drag a bit, with you feeling slightly out of pocket (well cheated shall we say if you didn’t happen to pay for it).

Damn those yanks.

4 Northern Thumbs out of 10.

Oh and check out an introductary video from the General, it’s titled G’Day Mahal.

http://youtu.be/v0gYK7vKm60

The White Rabbit Gallery - A cheeky hip Sydney gallery and a cafe that sells hot pond water. What more could some annoying Sydney sider who thinks he's into art possibly want?!

Well not a lot more I thought as I paraded into The White Rabbit Gallery to have a closer look after nattering with a work mate last week, who recommended it rather highly.

Tucked down the back streets of Chippendale near Sydney city, it's a gallery that's been open only a few years that hosts contemporary Chinese art and there are some fantastic bits and pieces hung up, projected and strewn around here.

It's not overwhelming either (I hate galleries with too much stuff in it), with only 45 an hour needed to cover everything and satisfy your artistic taste buds.  The work has a nice variety to it from video works, arts and crafts style pieces and some dude who decided to re-create an old Chinese painting by inserting 1000's of tiny needles into a canvas, as a posed to just trying to paint the damn thing again. What a patient fella.

They change all the works every 6 months (good call), shutting for around 3 weeks to install it all. So this latest collection will come to a close end of July.

There is even a nice cafe that sells gay tea, so check it out and you can feel all wanky and pretentious like me:
 
http://www.whiterabbitcollection.org/