Day: March 26, 2017

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF SACHA BARON COHEN

Isla Fisher can’t suppress her smile, but Sacha Baron Cohen looks rather grim walking out of Elton John’s birthday party. Maybe he’s remembering his last movie The Brothers Grimsby, which was a massive flop. We were huge fans of Ali G and consider Borat the funniest movie ever made. What happened? Sacha’s prank interviews with earnest politicians etc were beyond hilarious but everyone recognizes him now so he can’t get away with it. Also we think his comedy became TOO slapstick and dumbed down – aimed at teen boys. If ONLY he could star in the Freddie Mercury story – but he disagreed with band members who wanted Freddie to die in the middle of the movie, leaving the band to carry on without him. It would have been the perfect comeback role.

Photo Credit: AKM-GSI

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THE REAL STORY OF “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” IS NOT SO PRETTY

We walked out of a screening of the opulent Beauty and the Beast wondering about the fairy tale’s history. It turns out the REAL story of Beauty and the Beast, which evolved into the Disney movie, is WAY more interesting than the fantasy version! (Not as pretty, though.) In 1537, a man named Petrus Gonsalvus was born in Spain’s Canary Islands suffering from the rare disease, hypertrichosis, (werewolf syndrome) that causes copious amounts of hair to grow on the face and body. He was a curiosity and treated like an animal – kept in a cage and fed raw meat as a child. At the age of ten he was shipped to King Henry II of France as a gift. The king was fascinated by the child and decided to try an experiment. He began educating the hairy child and treating him like a human. Petrus eventually had the upbringing and education of a nobleman and spoke three languages, and he was nicely dressed, yet he was still considered to be an “animal.” When the king died, his widow decided to conduct her own experiment – she wondered what would happen if the beast married a pretty woman. Would their children be little beasts? She found him a wife and they had seven children – four were afflicted with the genetic disease. The king’s widow was thrilled to have created a wild family. The beast and his wife and afflicted children toured European countries – eventually the hairy children were given away as gifts to entertain royalty! Not a happy ending like the Disney version…

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