Sacha Baron Cohen

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has signed a deal to make "Borat 2," a sequel to the hit film about an intrepid Kazakh journalist's road trip across America, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said Thursday. "He's signed up to do a sequel for us," Murdoch told reporters.

Sacha Baron Cohen went undercover as his alter ego Bruno on Sunday by crashing a rally in support of a ballot measure that would ban gay marriage in California. The British comedian, who previously starred in "Borat," is working on a film based on the fictional character Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion reporter who conducted gag interviews on HBO's "Da Ali G Show." Baron Cohen, in disguise in a blond wig and preppy outfit, marched with demonstrators who support Proposition 8 while being trailed by cameras in a rally across from Los Angeles City Hall.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen begins the second and quite possibly last American season of his "Da Ali G Show" Sunday night on HBO. Two seasons was all he managed in the UK, where his breakout fame quickly made it impossible for him to practice his stock-in-trade -- the guerrilla spoof interview, in which respectable, even respected, individuals are lured into patience-trying, sometimes revealing, exchanges with one of Cohen's three characters.

Borat is dead. Sacha Baron Cohen tells the Daily Telegraph that he's retiring the clueless Kazakh journalist, as well as his alter ego, aspiring rapper Ali G. "When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing," the 36-year-old actor-comedian said in the British newspaper's Friday edition. "It is like saying goodbye to a loved one.

But what about Borat? Much to the relief, no doubt, of ABC's standards department, Sacha Baron Cohen will not be a presenter at this year's Academy Awards. "He was asked," Oscar broadcast producer Laura Ziskin said Friday, "but he declined." Baron Cohen has been reluctant to make appearances as himself, preferring to do interviews as Borat Sagdiyev, star of the faux documentary, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

AS hard as it is to write the software to make computer-animated movies, it's almost more challenging to cast their voice actors. These performers may only work for a few days, but their contributions are incalculable. Get it right, and you've picked Ellen DeGeneres for "Finding Nemo," Eddie Murphy in "Shrek," or even Sacha Baron Cohen in "Madagascar." Get it wrong, and you're listening to James Belushi in "The Wild."

Re "Borat, Blue Dogs and the GOP joke," Opinion, Nov. 13 Niall Ferguson may be a comic genius on par with Sacha Baron Cohen. Ferguson conflates the exposed fools and bigots in the Borat movie with Republican voters duped by "conservative Dems." But fear not. The Archie Bunkers shall return when they watch in horror as these charlatans drain the corruption swamp, stop the wildly unpopular war and perform their constitutional mandate of oversight. Ferguson is quite observant that Cohen and Karl Rove target the same demographics.

The question that came to mind while awaiting the arrival of the group Zohar at the Skirball Center on Thursday night was whether the music would be straight or satirical. Zohar's leader, after all, is Erran Baron Cohen, brother of Sacha Baron Cohen, and the composer of the soundtrack music for "Borat." But no luck. Baron Cohen, playing flugelhorn and synthesizer keyboards, often pushing buttons on a laptop computer, offered no moments of satire, sarcasm or whimsy.