On the same day that Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as General Aladeen, led an elaborate, absurd, and hilarious press conference at the Waldorf Astoria for his new film, The Dictator, a slightly more serious press conference was conducted with the films supporting actors, Sir Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Schindler’s List) and Jason Mantzoukas (Baby Mama, The League). The Dictator, which is now playing everywhere, stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Supreme Leader, Chief Ophthalmologist, and excellent swimmer, General Aladeen, a misogynistic, anti-Semitic dictator of a fictional country in northern Africa called The People’s Republic of Wadiya. Sir Ben Kingsley plays Aladeen’s scheming uncle and Jason Mantzoukas plays Aladeen’s Chief Nuclear Scientist.

Along with other members of the press, I had a chance to sit down with Sir Ben Kingsley and Jason Mantzoukas to discuss The Dictator. The actors discussed the energy of New York City, what it was like working with Sacha Baron Cohen, trying not to break character, the phrase ‘just kidding,’ improvisation, Arab Spring, accents, and beards.

Supreme leader, Chief Opthamologist, and excellent swimmer, General Aladeen of the People’s Republic of Wadiya, addressed hundreds of journalists from all over the world recently in New York City. General Aladeen is the latest alter ego of Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brüno), a comedian known for promoting his films with in-character stunt appearances. In his latest film, The Dictator, which opens Wednesday, May 16th, Cohen plays a misogynistic, anti-Semitic dictator of a fictional country in Northern Africa, called Wadiya.

This Wednesday, Sacha Baron Cohen's latest comedy The Dictator arrives at theaters across the nation, but today, a new extended clip reveals just about four minutes of the movie.  Considering that the film clocks in at a brisk 83 minutes, those four minutes represent a pretty good little patch of The Dictator.

The clip has Baron Cohen as the de-bearded Admiral General Aladeen and the always-welcome Jason Mantzoukas as sidekick Nadal.  Many a trailer and teevee spot has featured the two of them horrifying a couple of tourists on a helicopter flight over Manhattan, but this clip provides the full sequence of Aladeen and Nadal's helicopter adventure.

Paramount Pictures has let loose just under two minutes of new footage from The Dictator.  The clip is actually the opening of the movie, quickly introducing the entirely-fictitious Republic of Wadiya and its in-no-way benevolent leader, His Excellency Admiral General Aladeen.  After mixing in some real footage of world leaders and situating Wadiya geographically, The Dictator's opening minutes provide a brief biographical view of Aladeen's life, from his already-bearded birth to his 14 Gold Medal triumph at the Wadiyan Games.

There's a new trailer for The Dictator, the latest comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen as an original character.  Previous promotion worked to establish the title character, His Excellency General Admiral Aladeen, as the full-on despotic dicksplash lording over the fictitious Middle Eastern nation of Wadiya, positing him as the comedic equivalent of, say, a Colonel Gaddafi or President al-Assad. 

This trailer, though, offers a good idea of The Dictator's actual plot, so if you're looking to stay spoiler-free, give it and this whole post a wide berth.

Did it strike anyone as slightly ridiculous that yesterday we saw two ten-second previews of the John Carter and The Avengers Super Bowl spots?  Commercials are one thing, but commercials for commercials is a whole different level.  Another movie that will be showing up during the copious commercial breaks of America's favorite sporting event is The Dictator, the new comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, the guy behind Borat and Bruno.  The comedy has sidestepped showing a ten-second peek and instead just released its first TV spot wholesale online for your viewing pleasure several days before the big game.

The first teaser trailer for The Dictator has arrived online, introducing the title character, a megalomaniacal tyrant ruling over the fictitious Middle Eastern nation of Wadiya.  Sacha Baron Cohen plays that dictator, so yeah, this is a comedy.  The trailer contextualizes Baron Cohen's character as a Muammar Gaddafi-style despot under international pressure using fresh footage, before sliding directly into many an incendiary line guaranteed to cause no small amount of conversation around The Dictator.  The trailer doesn't give any sense of the story beyond the fact that the titular ruler travels to Manhattan, where he encounters John C. Reilly (who shows that the film's satirical focus will include America) and Megan Fox as herself.  Sort of.

Synopsis: This holiday season, acclaimed filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) directs an amazing and true story about a single dad who decides his family needs a fresh start, so he and his two children move to the most unlikely of places: a zoo. With the help of an eclectic staff, and with many misadventures along the way, the family works to return the dilapidated zoo to its former wonder and glory.

The first animated Ice Age tale came about almost a decade ago, in 2002, and while it was an enjoyable tale of anthropomorphized prehistoric animals banding together as unlikely buddies and making it through an epochal cold-snap together, you wouldn't be wrong for not expecting it to spawn a viable franchise with two sequels in the can and another on the way for next summer.  The 2006 sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown, found the gang heading for high ground as the ice turns to water, and 2009's Ice Age: Rise of the Dinosaurs found the tangling with, you know, dinosaurs.

Ice Age: Continental Drift sees the main characters trying to keep it together as Pangea, the massive unified continent, drifts apart into the seven continents as we know them.  The first teaser poster for the new film predictably employs the long-toothed squirrel Scrat once again in pursuit of an acorn, this time on a makeshift sailboat.

In an introduction to the first trailer for the thoroughly R rated comedy The Sitter, star Jonah Hill calls the film, "The filthiest R rated babysitting movie ever made."  While it remains to be seen whether or not that statement is actually true (Adventures in Babysitting did feature inexcusably filthy sex acts, right?), the red band trailer makes a strong case that The Sitter is indeed every shade of filthy.  Not only does it include innumerable obscenities and instances of child endangerment, but it opens with Ari Graynor in the throes of an ecstatic, cunnilingus-induced orgasm.  If that doesn't provide ample incentive for you to watch, then I don't know what will.