With the Armenian President scheduled to make an official visit to Kazakhstan tomorrow, PanArmenian.net says that it will coincide with the second meeting of the Kazakh-Armenian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation. However, Artyom at iArarat jokes that all might not be as it seems.

And so the rumor has it, that after meeting Premier George Walter Bush and complaining about the Borat phenomenon and the adverse effects thereof, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev is planning a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Robot Robert Kocharyan to raise the issue of Azamat Bagatov’s Armenian background and find out whether they can jointly execute the guy.

Artyom had previously broken the news in the Armenian Blogosphere that Borat’s Kazakh sidekick in the new film, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was really none other than ethnic Armenian Ken Davitian. Katy at New Eurasia now repeats this revelation although perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised given that the news had been posted over a week ago.

So everybody knows that Borat’s producer/sidekick Azamat is played by Armenian actor Ken Davitian. But what I was surprised to discover that any time that Azamat is speaking in “Kazakh” to Borat, he was speaking in Armenian! This took place throughout the film, probably for 10 or 15 minutes total. Most of what was said matched the subtitles, with one exception where some conversation was just placed over a shot of a house.

Often Borat would reply back in gibberish (as I understand a mix of Hebrew and some other languages), but would occasionally pick up on one key Armenian word and use it in his reply.

Simon at Blogian, however, has some additional information about the film and says that there is also an Azerbaijani connection.

There is something that I will not forget about Borat. The very last clip of the movie (at the end of the credits) was supposedly the picture of the glorious Kazakh president. It was actually the idiotic Ilham Aliev, president of the Azerbaijani Republic.

In a few words, offensively hilarious mocumentary!

I must see this film. It has to come to Armenia so that we can all be part of the Borat phenomenon. Indeed, when Artyom was over here recently much of our dinner conversation revolved around discussion of Borat. Well, let’s say it mostly centered on Artyom impersonating Borat, so for those of you in Hayastan who still don’t know who he is, here’s what Rolling Stone says about the film.

As Borat Sagdiyev, a visitor from Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen is a balls-out comic revolutionary, right up there with Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, Dr. Strangelove, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Cartman at exposing the ignorant, racist, misogynist, gay-bashing, Jew-hating, gun-loving, warmongering heart of America. Borat will make you laugh till it hurts, and you’ll still beg for more.

[…]

Borat is such a mind-blowing comedy classic in the making (seeing it once is just not enough) that Cohen’s cover will surely be blown after the movie opens. But during the time it took Cohen to put Borat’s journey on film with director Larry Charles (he debuted with Bob Dylan’s Masked and Anonymous, a title that would also fit snugly here), people lined up, signed releases and bought the scam: that Borat, with his pubic patch of a mustache, his unwashed gray suit, his butchered English and his blatant bigotry, really was a roving Kazakh citizen doing a documentary on American culture.

OK, not everyone bought it. The government of Kazakhstan was appalled at seeing its country depicted as a place where men treat women as slaves, screw their sisters and swill wine made from horse piss. No wonder the Kazakh scenes were shot in Romania. “Not too much rape — and humans only,” Borat helpfully tells a friend as he leaves his village for America, carrying “a vial of gypsy tears to prevent AIDS.” Cohen makes primo slapstick out of all the silliness, but it’s his merciless knack for Swiftian satire that gives Borat its remarkable staying power. There’s something cathartic about laughs that stick in your throat.

[…]

At a rodeo in Virginia, Borat is greeted with cheers when he tells the crowd, “We support your war of terror,” and then hypes them up more by longing for the day that “Premier George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.”

At a gun store he asks the owner for the best gun for killing Jews and is told that a 9mm or a 45 will do just fine. He settles for a live bear. Terrified at having to sleep overnight at the home of a kindly Jewish couple, Borat believes that two cockroaches crawling under the door are the Jews transformed. To make them go away, he throws money at them. And so it goes, with Borat’s antics extending to a frat-boy boozefest, a Pentecostal church rally, a classy dinner party down South in which he is taught the formal art of toilet training and a confab with feminists who seem startled by the well-known fact in Kazakhstan that the brain of a woman is the size of a squirrel’s.

Poor Kazakhs, although New Eurasia’s Kazakh section not only has a link to an interview in Russian with the creator of Borat, but also some local responses to the character played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

Borat is definitely smarter than stupid Kazakh officials, so Kazakistan deserves him. If Borat comes to Kazakhstan, he would find it even funnier.

Anyway, kudos to those of us in the Armenian blogosphere who are cross-posting and linking to each other. Still more black marks to those who aren’t. Anyway, the official site for Borat’s Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is here.

Rotten Tomatoes page of reviews is here, and you can read what’s being said on Borat in the global blogosphere here.