Borat and the patent application

An American patent examiner has rejected an application for a "Scrotal Support Garment," which bears great similarity to the appalling swimsuit that Sacha Baron Cohen famously wore in Borat.

In the non-final rejection, the examiner pointed to this picture of Borat found on the Internet. 

In 2009, three years after the film came out, inventor Donald R. Quinn attempted to patent this apparatus, describing his invention as relating to "medical appliances and support devices for male genitalia, and particularly to a scrotal support garment that provides support for the scrotum for patients having ailments or medical conditions affecting the genitalia or groin in order to relieve pain or discomfort." This is the image in the application:

But, the inventor hasn't given up. Two weeks ago, he made a request for an extension of time to respond to the non-final rejection.

Attorney Stewart Walsh commented on the IP Watchdog website that the "teaching point is that prior art can be found anywhere" and that patent examiners can't look beyond past patents to find reasons for rejections in pop culture. 

He also pointed to Samsung's recent defence against iPad patent claims made by Apple in which the company pointed to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Firing up the Chariots

 1924 ... 2012. There are 88 years between the British heroics of the Paris Olympics, as depicted in 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire, and the hoped-for domestic triumphs dreamed of ahead of this year's London Games.

But according to the film's producer, Lord (David) Puttnam, the "guts, determination and belief" still hold as good today as they did in those gentlemanly days of yore.

Which is why his film is being digitally re-mastered for a re-release to coincide with the upcoming sports extravaganza.

One of the more spoofed films of recent times, with the Vangelis theme still able to tingle the spine, its latest reincarnation has been for the Sun re-launch ad which also features a middle-aged, deckchair-bound Nigel Havers - co-star of the original film.

Out Of This World

It used to be that a movie could have a slow burning effect on audiences, could build both reputation and box office at a rate that would lead to a return on the not inconsiderable investment to the people who backed it.  How times change. With the mentality of a sleep deprived Vegas gambler, high on caffeine and hoping for the jackpot, the trend is for Hollywood studios to offer ever more expensive spectacle in the hope that audiences will not be able to resist handing over their cash and seeing it (ideally) more than once.
 

Every so often they score a mega-success with a film like Avatar, and all the risks seem worthwhile. More often there are duds like John Carter, Disney's ambitious tale of a Civil War vet who suddenly finds himself transported into an internecine feud on Mars.  Based on stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, released in 3D and at a cost some have estimated at $275 million (with a further $100 million spent of promotion and advertising) the lukewarm reviews and limp commercial performance of the film have led Disney to write off $200 million of its investment.

A rare mis-step from Andrew Stanton, one of the main men at Pixar, this live action adventure boldly went where no director would willingly take it, and all talk of sequels being prepped and ready to go are swiftly forgotten as John Carter becomes a new benchmark for hubris in the surreal world of film.

Bear necessity

Britain's "best animated character of all time" isn't even British.

Beating Super Ted, Aleksandr Meerkat (from those annoying TV ads) and Wallace & Gromit - surely the bookie's favourites? - to the prestigious title is Peru's most famous export, Paddington Bear.

The title was bestowed on the nation's favourite following a public vote at this year's British Animation Awards.

Other winners included 'The Tale of Three Brothers' from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 1, for Best Animated Sequence in a Film while Bertie Crisp was Best Short Film.

An arresting performance

Hot on the heels of Russell Brand's run-in with the law - which basically involves a broken window and a paparazzo who no longer has a working iPhone - we have another actor who's been nicked by the rozzers.  The guilty party here is George Clooney, though he would have been unsurprised at the outcome. He and other like minded souls were protesting outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington DC over the marked reluctance of those in charge of that country to pass on food aid to refugees.  Using his celebrity to shine a light on leaders who will not relish the extra attention is a shrewd act from a star who is brighter (in every way) than most of his kind.

Bouquet for Babs

A quarter of a century after she made her last feature film - playing The Pet Shop Boys' landlady in 1987's It Couldn't Happen Here - Barbara Windsor MBE is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bradford International Film Festival.

Windsor, who will be 75 later this year, made her uncredited film debut as a schoolgirl in The Belles of St Trinians in 1954, went on to co-star in nine Carry On comedies as well as many of the TV spin-offs and comedy specials.

Better known, latterly, as a stalwart of BBC TV's EastEnders (she's authentic in her own right), Windsor also appeared in On the Fiddle, Sparrows Can't Sing and A Study in Terror.

She will receive her award in Bradford on April 20, a day after the festival opens with the UK Premiere of Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress.

The festival runs until April and showcases 27 new films including the period cross-dressing drama Albert Nobbs and In Love with Alma Cogan, co-starring Roger Lloyd Pack, John Hurt and Niamh Cusack.

Cutting to the past

Hammer Films, back in business following the success of The Woman in Black, the studio's first film for 35 years, now also has its famous past very much in mind.

The company has issued a public appeal to track down lost scenes that were cut from its films by censors - nine from six of its titles, in particular:



The Reptile - an extended "knife in neck/snakebite" scene
The Curse of Frankenstein - the "eyeball" and "head in acid bath" scenes
The Mummy - "under-dressed maidens", "tongue-cutting" and/or the "tongue wriggling" scenes
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell - extended "glass-in-throat" and "body falling into grave" scenes
Rasputin: The Mad Monk - extended fight scene
The Viking Queen  (pictured below) - extended, more explicit version

At the time, the censored scenes were deemed too gory or shocking for British audiences. However, uncut films often survive in film reels sent to other countries.

"We're fairly sure they exist in private collections, instead of official archives," Peter Naish, Hammer's senior vice-president of distribution, said.

"There's a network of Hammer fans and collectors who snap these things up, so we need to scour the whole world and appeal to the fans at large to see what we can come up with."

Mr Naish said Hammer was particularly keen to find the lost footage from Peter Cushing film, The Curse of Frankenstein, which features the "head in acid bath" scene.

"I think that one's iconic - that would be the one people would most want to see. But if we can find any others, that would be great," he added.

The film studio plans to restore all the cut versions as part of a wider restoration project.

What the Dickens?

As we await the umpteenth remake of Great Expectations later this year - co-starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Jeremy Irvine and Ralph Fiennes - the British Film Institute now proves conclusively that Dickens has been a cinema staple for more than 110 years.

In the 200th anniversary of the author's birth, the BFI has just discovered the oldest surviving film featuring a Dickens character.

The Death of Poor Joe, believed to derive from a character in Bleak House, dates back to March 1901, seven months before the previous winner in the "Dickens earliest" stakes, Scrooge or Marley's Ghost, released in November of the same year.

At 35 seconds long, the new footage as, according to BFI curator Bryony Dixon,  directed in Brighton by George Albert Smith and featuring the filmmaker's wife, Laura Bayley, as Joe, and Tom Green (also above) as the watchman.

Danny Dyer Is A Riot

The crafty Cockney actor Danny Dyer has revealed how he would have got involved in the London riots last year were he still a teenager.

The star thinks it's inevitable he would have participated.

"Probably. I can’t lie," he says. "What they did was disgusting, but when you’re running with a crowd and you’ve got f*** all to do with your life…they just got wrapped up in this idea of a lawless Britain. Why would you risk everything over a pair of trainers? I don’t think I would have gone that far with it. I probably would have got wrapped up in it. But I’ve got too much respect for my Mum to let them down. I probably would have gone so far, then f***ed off home."

Dyer was filming in South Malden at the time and remembers thinking the end was nigh.

"I remember going home and watching it on the TV and thinking f***ing hell, this is like a movie," he says. "All this bollocks about the Mayan calendar, this is the last year, something is going to happen. I was thinking, 'f*** maybe it’s going to come true, the prophecy.'"

Luckily, Armageddon didn't come to pass and you can still see Dyer playing a serial killer in the British indie Deviation, out on DVD now.