Worst Film Accent?
 

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" just doesn't sound good with an Italian accent.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Yes, one must ask why Madonna didn't seek to effect a Boston accent.

Worst Film Accent?
 

I assume you're referring to: "You're not too smart are you? I like that in a man."

Which, for whatever reason, reminds me of this exchange (from a movie I can't recall):

"Are my breasts too small?"
"Sometimes."

Worst Film Accent?
 

While I wouldn't recommend it, and I certainly did not pay to see it, Dick Tracy didn't make me puke all over myself.

Worst Film Accent?
 

I'm not sure how "wailing" on an empire equates to "classiness", but whatever. Maybe because some Brits tend to enunciate well they sound refined. My parents still retain a fairly heavy accent and people do think they're smarter than the average bear because of it. Kind of funny, but it's not a bad thing. My brother-in-law is African but educated in England, and people tend to think he is educated above his actual education because of his accent, which he picked up from spending 12 odd years there. It is kind of odd, but he doesn't mind.

Really sad news
 

Buddy Hackett
dead at age 78

LOS ANGELES, June 30 — Buddy Hackett, the squat, round, rubbery-faced funnyman who appeared for more than 50 years as a top act in nightclubs, Broadway shows, on television and in such movies as “The Music Man,” “The Love Bug” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” has died, his son confirmed Monday night. He was 78.
HACKETT DIED AT his Southern California beach house either late Sunday or early Monday, Sandy Hackett told The Associated Press Monday night. His body was found Monday.
Hackett was invited to join the Three Stooges when “Curly” Howard, the bald-headed member of the comedy team, suffered a stroke in 1946. But Hackett declined, believing he could develop his own comedy style. Playing for small money on the Borscht Circuit for New York City vacationers in the Catskill Mountains, he learned to get laughs with his complaints about being short, fat and Jewish.

For those of you who are watching Last Comic Standing, remember Buddy, whose last job was a reality show.

Buddy Hackett full story here

Worst Film Accent?
 

I swear I don't work for the Boston Tourism office, but I believe the Boston accent is a descendant of the English accent. Or so says The Nation's English Doctor (and my ears).

Edited to note that this is apparently a Thai site, not The Nation like I thought but I stand by my point. :rolleyes:

Worst Film Accent?
 

I'm sorry, I should have said the Stuarts and Tudors had more SCOT than Twit in their bloodlines. That Scot/Scottish thing always gets me. Thanks for correcting it.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Now I'm hearing Tony Curtis spouting ?Shakespeare to Larry Olivier in his New Yawk accent.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Apparently, the Vermont/Maine accents are the closest you'll come to hearing the original English accent. The accent most Americans associate as being English is the product of generations of elocution lessions.

Kline & Kobayashi
 

I thought Kevin Kline's accent in French Kiss (and his French, for that matter), was pretty good. But of course you've never heard my French, so for all you know I could be talking out of my ass.

I thought the Kobayashi was the brand name at the bottom of the blackboard?

And, on a completely other note, I just got back from lunch with Tax_Hottie. She's definitely very cute. What did we talk about? Why, all of you, of course.

tm

Usual Suspects
 

Okay, answer this question for me. What was so clever about The Usual Suspects? It seems to me that [and stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie]. I loved the movie because of the clever twist, but most people act like Verbal made up the whole thing when all he did was replace the names of the people in the actual events with things he saw on the cop's wall. Cool idea. But not mind blowing.

Thurgreed(keyser soze)Marshall

Random Thoughts
 

1. Stupid things I want to buy: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1451/3966200.html

But I don't want a doofy little boxed chip, I want a honking big chunk with a plaque noting its provenance and then I want to put it either (1) in my office for social commentary (although I suppose the little boxed chip would work for that) or into the landscaping of Fugee Manor. It would be better than the pink flamingoes.

2. People with too much money and not enough sense.

This weekend I was in the tire department at Costco. Ahead of me in line was an obviously well-off 50-ish couple buying tires for their Mercedes and Jaguar (with the $60 off coupon!). The Mrs. was in very good shape with a stylish hairdo. But she was wearing the fugliest pair of D&G white denim capris with cargo pockets everywhere and a wide belt with rivet things. Those pants might have looked passable on a teen or young 20s girl but on her it looked like she was trying too hard. (Mind you I was dressed pretty slovenly myself so I shouldn't judge but she spent a ton of money to look so bad.)

3. In mourning for Kate

Katherine Hepburn is and will always be my style idol. I would love to dress like she did but it doesn't work if you are short and dumpy and don't have cheekbones that could slice bread. And I love her old movies because she played characters with the kind of confidence and presence I'd like to have. Sob.

Bottled water
 

If you keep telling yourself that your glorified fanny pack makes you look like anything other than a dork when you do what you probably don't think is the white man's overbite when you go out, does it work? If I told you 100 times that paigow is as sane as a serbian*, will you believe it?

TM

* doesn't quite work, but i like the alliterative quality -- and it sounds funnier than "senator"

For Love or Money
 

Virgins are overrated. Go with the girl with the skills.

Worst Film Accent?
 

And smartness. I've noticed also that a very high percentage of professors depicted in movies/tv have British accents. Strange, as I have yet to have a real-life British professor.

-T(Asians teaching science and math labs, perhaps, but no Brits to be found)L

Usual Suspects
 

According to the screenwriters, even they really didn't/don't know which parts Verbal made up and which parts were actual events. No one really knows. All we really know is that (stop if you haven't seen the movie) all of them were put in jail, released and then the boat exploded. ALL of it in b/w could have been made up, or all of it actually could have happened but with different names. Or something in between. The screenwriters admitted this on an HBO special that was shown after the movie a couple of years back. I guess they're probably full of it and are just trying to add to the mystery, but it's more fun not knowing.

Worst Film Accent?
 

I suppose. But I would assume that they would just hire one set of actors to do the voices and that whatever set of actors would be geared towards the US market. I'm sure they figured the brits would think it was weird and we wouldn't since I bet so many Americans wouldn't second guess the accent because it's a foreign film and damn it if they don't sound foreign. But, why not just hire french actors to speak English in French accents and sell the movie to all English speaking countries?

TM

Worst Film Accent?
 

It would be a vastly superior experience to watch a movie where the professors all soundy like whiny Alan Dershowitz.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Why not watch it in French with the subtitles?

Lazy?

Worst Film Accent?
 

Oooh, that reminds me of another bad accent:

Laurence Fishburn in Higher Learning.

(also, Kendra (can't remember actress's name) from second season of Buffy, Jamacian-Irish, I think).

Random Thoughts
 

That's not so bad, just think of what you would say if you were behind my $200-skirt wearing, paraffin wax pedicured ass using a 10% off one item coupon at Linens and Things.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Accents in Lethal Weapon 2? I don't remember accents; I guess it must have been the bad guys but that movie falls into my too much fun to care category. I don't remember accents in Con Air either. I must ignore them in action films.

Speaking of films, I want to catch up on good films I've missed in the last couple years. What "must see" films should I rent for the forecasted rainy 4th? Assume I haven't seen much beyond the best picture nominees, kids movies and Christopher Guest flicks (loved "A Mighty Wind").

I may have to rent the John Wayne Genghis Khan for the laughs.

Worst Film Accent?
 

The version that I checked out only had the dubbing on it. I tried very hard to find some way to sub-titles, and I ended up turning off the movie after half an hour because I was so annoyed.

Worst Film Accent?
 

When I took a few college film studies classes, I was surprised to learn that "Desparately Seeking Susan" was treated as a serious text among feminist film theorists, and even feminist lit crit types. I've never seen it and so can't offer up an opinion about its crap-ness. But apparently it has been read by Important People to contain profound statements about identity and gender.

str8

Worst Film Accent?
 

That is a trippy site.

Actually, there has been rather a lot of work done on the origins of various Ameican regional accents. American accents are almost all derived from various English accents (duh), but they vary greatly from each other because they had, as their source, English speakers from very different classes and locations within England, and, of course, some regions were also greatly affected by the accents of various non-English groups (NYC, LA, MN, Kansas, W. VA, etc.). For instance, generally speaking, north eastern accents are mostly derived from 17th & 18th C working class accents from the north of England, while south eastern (white) accents tend to be derived from extremely lower class London and mid-aristocratic accents. Anyhow, the upshot is that most of the differences in US regional accents can be traced to differences in the source British accents.

It is always odd to hear people talk about some accent or dialect being "closer" to an older form that others. Doesn't really work that way. (Even for the Quebequois.) All accents/dialects retain different characteristics of the original that become archaic in other versions. Ones that are cut off may retain different ones than a majority of the other versions and therefore sound more unusual, but they usually aren't any less different from the source. The only thing that would cause differences in the rates of change of different accents/languages is vastly different rates of literacy: universal literacy seems to slow language changes (e.g.: Iceland).

Usual Suspects
 

That's exactly what's brilliant about it -- the fact that they created the mystery of "no one really knows" by telling a good story, not simply by adding so many twists that ANY conclusion could be "disproven". As an example of the latter, see Basic Instinct. (I mean "see" in the citation sense, not as a recommendation for the movie.) The plot was so ridiculously twisted around that any conclusion you reached about the identity of the killer was easily refuted. Even the writer didn't know.....but that wasn't a good thing.

The other brilliant aspect of The Usual Suspects was that they didn't resolve it for you, didn't provide all the answers and thereby ruin the mystery. As a contrary example, see House of Games (that one is a recommendation.... BUT STOP READING if you haven't seen it yet). You get to just after the scene where she's given Joe Mantegna $80k or so, she's back at her office... and you have the suspicion, maybe the strong suspicion, that this was all a scam, but you don't really know. And then, through a series of bullshit, not credible coincidences, you find out that those suspicions are correct, ruining the really satisfying, suspensful feeling that you'd had for a few minutes.

Kline & Kobayashi
 

Flattery will get you everywhere. Mwah. By the way, Magnus tagged along and what a cutiepie he is. I really think he liked it when we flashed the waiter!

Worst Film Accent?
 

Kendra was like a cross between Alistair Cooke and the lady who advertises for fortune-telling services on late night TV.

Sidd(but she did have a great rack)Finch

The last word on bad accents
 

The worst film accent ever is the hack job that Karl Hungus did in "Logjammin'."

str8

Worst Film Accent?
 

I disagree. I think there is enough evidence (all the killing on the boat, the killing in the building where they meet kobayashi, all the other killings, the fact that the usual suspects were in fact jailed together, etc.) that his story really just substitutes names of actual people.

TM

Desperately Seeking Susan
 

I loved that movie (12 years ago). The identity stuff really resonated with me.

Keeping the Faith was also pretty cool in that way.

Usual Suspects
 

You beat me to the reply, so I will say -- yeah, what he said!

[don't read below if you don't want to know...]

Actually the last time a watched it (about 5 or 6 months ago) I was thinking that much of it must have been made up by Verbal because "the devil himself" would not have put himself in the places that Verbal claimed to be. It is kind of interesting to look at the various scenes ( I focused mainly on the boat scene) from that perspective. I agree with the person who said that it was a story made up on the spot (with certain pieces based on first hand knowledge of actual events and other parts based on conjecture by Soze), not just a changing of names based on items in the office.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Yeah, I'm thinking it was not the West LA/Valley accent differences, but rather the south african accents that sounded more australian. I'll happily forgive patsy kensit any of her accent transgressions, though.

Usual Suspects
 

House of Games


Spoiler



It's been a while since I've seen this one, but it's a great flick. I have always felt the real merit in HoG was its exploration of the psychology of the con rather than the con itself. I have wondered, though, when they decided to pull the long con on her. The whole time, or in the aftermath of the leaking gun?

Usual Suspects
 

I totally agree with y'all. It's a sign of great moviemaking that both explanations are reasonably plausible and we are still arguiing about it all these years later.

Worst Film Accent?
 

Well, you can't really disagree about what was real and what was not when the folks who wrote it don't know.

[Don't read if you haven't seen the movie]

There is no evidence of the whole Redfoot deal, nor (I don't think) any evidence of the death's in Kobayashi's building. In my opinion, the entire California scene was made up. I think there is evidence of the New York "taxi" service, but no evidence that it was pulled off by Verbal and crew. For all we know, after they were released, Soze had them all killed and then blew up the boat himself. Verbal made up the entire story to perpetuate Soze's legend. He used other characters to make it sound like he was a ruthless, omniscient killer.

Also, he made up the story JUST to fuck with Kujon.

Edited to add that I put way too much thought into this movie when I was very stoned in college...

Film Recommendation
 

Wet Hot American Summer! No, it's not a porno. Early '80's summer camp spoof. Stupid humor at its best. If you're into that sort of thing. I'm generally not (e.g., I hate The Simpsons and Dumb and Dumber), but for some reason I loved this flick. Try to rent the DVD so you can listen to the soundtrack with extra farts.

http://www.wethotamericansummer.com/

Usual Suspects
 

And that the fact that y'all are arguing about it all these years later is a sign of something else, which I won't say until y'all leave the room.

Film Recommendation
 

I'm not sure how The Simpsons and Dumb and Dumberer get grouped together.