The Sun-Herald

Culture: Make benefit box office

He may be getting sued for misrepresentation by the Romanian Gypsies and US college students who appear in his movie, but in Australia Borat is a god. Over the weekend half a million of us went to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, bringing the total box office to $6.09 million in two weeks. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out! Borat sucked most of the ticket money out of the marketplace, leaving a mere $943,000 for Hugh Jackman's The Prestige, $913,000 for Tim Allen's The Santa Clause 3, and $312,000 for Russell Crowe's A Good Year.

When they weren't guffawing over Borat, Australians were at home getting nostalgic over their CD players. The top-selling albums of the weekend were 18 Singles by U2 (75,000 copies sold already) and Love by the Beatles (50,000 copies). Younger Australians were downloading I Don't Feel Like Dancing, by the Scissor Sisters, a title that sounds more appropriate for the people who were buying the top two albums.

We welcome your comments.

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin).

Other columns in this series can be found at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind.