Culture January 1, 1

The real story out of Kazakhstan isn’t Borat, it’s oil. No sooner did this sprawling Central Asian state declare independence in 1991 than foreign investors began jockeying for a piece of the action. But for the excitable Arkansan heading there to meet his mail-order bride at the start of Christopher Robbins’s engaging if somewhat starry-eyed travelogue Apples Are from Kazakhstan, the place still smacks more of myth than of reality. “That country’s got gold and every other metal, and more oil than the Arabs. And they’re building a shiny new capital out in the middle of the prairie, pretty as