Speculation circulated last Friday that Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat aka Bruno aka Ali G had signed on to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic about the gay singer. A quick check of IMDB and Variety indicated no such thing, so I was pretty skeptical. Turns out skepticism was a good thing as Cohen's publicist released a statement this weekend saying it was "Pure hokum." Now that's short and to the point! Instead, it sounds like Johnny Depp is the front runner for the part--and, frankly, a better choice.

Katharine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy might be T.R.Knight's best friend, but that hasn't kept bisexual film director Mike White (who also wrote and starred in Chuck and Buck) from wondering if Heigl's upcoming relationship comedy Knocked Up isn't playing a little bit to the homophobes in the bleachers. Knocked Up is directed by White's colleague and friend Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and White sees the "gay" jokes in both Virgin and Judd's latest as being bullying. Says White in a Sunday New York Times article:

To me, I definitely stand in the corner of wanting to give voice to the bullied, and not the bully. Here’s where comedy is catharsis for people who are picked on. There’s a strain in ‘Knocked Up’ where you sort of feel like something’s changed a little bit. My sense of it is that because those guys are idiosyncratic-looking, their perception is that they’re still the underdogs. But there is something about the spirit of the thing, that comes under the guise of comedy, where — it’s weird. At some point it starts feeling like comedy of the bullies, rather than the bullied.

The trailer for the movie (which looks like pretty well-trod ground) is after the jump. As for the potential homophobia, there is one creepy anal sex with a kid joke and a character who reads a little gay and not in a Neil Patrick Harris way.