Not just movies, either. Try reading a Victorian novel set in the fourteenth century.
For Westerns, the haircuts tend to give away the game in spite of every effort otherwise toward authenticity. E.g., Elvis in Flaming Star, Warren Beatty in Some Tedious Robert Altman Rubbish, Kurt Russell in Tombstone, Olivia Wilde and her meticulous highlights in Cowboys & Are You Kidding Me With That Third-Act Twist?.
The story is based on Judas Priest though, and the relevant events took place in 1996, only one year before Buffy aired on TV, and four years AFTER the movie.
1: Oh, man, I love those. Conan Doyle? Charlotte M. Yonge?
I feel like I should have more to say about this.
Contrariwise, there's a thing that I like that the seventies had for the twenties and thirties. E.g. The Conformist, or even the relatively cheesy look of The Great Gatsby
I didn't know Charlotte Yonge was a novelist, but I consulted her History of Christian Names a few days ago on Google Books. She preciously narrativizes linguistic change:
Kann seems to have been originally a past tense of ken, and the Teutonic mind concluded that to have learnt is to be able, for all adopted the word can without an infinitive, and varied it into past tenses. To be able was likewise to dare, whence the old Teuton kuoni, Frank chuon, Saxon cene, German kuhn, bold.
One of the interesting things about Rock Star is that it's actually (somewhat) (some slight what) about the conundrum of endlessly repeatable authenticity: Marky Mark plays the singer not of a cover band so much as a TRIBUTE band (also largely a phenom that took wing in the mid-90s), and gets hired by the band he's tributing (as actually happened when Mr Halford quit Priest). He then discovers that he -- the professional cash-in mimic -- is as a consequence far more committed to the original band's ideals than they are any more.
It is amiable: I like Marky Mark. It has a very silly ending but endings are hard.
It took me a very long time to understand that the Happy Days reruns I watched in the eighties were originally produced in the seventies, not the fifties.
Mark Wahlberg is underrated as an actor (although he's doing just fine). Watch him get hit in the face in I ♥ Huckabees. He's astonishing.
The same story happened with Journey, too, iirc. They hired the philipino/malaysian (can't remember which) tribute band guy.
4: Oh, man, I love those. Conan Doyle? Charlotte M. Yonge?
I was thinking of Conan Doyle, just having reread "Sir Nigel" and "The White Company". They're both still good reads though; I like the gentle way the narrator (and all the other characters) poke fun at Nigel Loring's Quixotic attitude to war, and the way that he's set up as a contrast to the looters. And Doyle was surprisingly good at writing hardbitten old women; both the Ladies Loring are very good characters.
Haven't read any Yonge.
Marky Mark is a disingenuous, violent racist. Good actor, though.
The haircut thing doesn't seem to apply to sandal epics so much, probably because there's a fairly settled idea of what haircuts people actually had back then (Caesar cuts, shaved heads, or mad-John-the Baptist dreadlocks).
"sandal epics": correct name "peplum movies"
5:As someone who watches so much chambara and jidai-geki, I should have something to say about this. I am always looking for the flesh-colored skullcaps. Mu impression is that Mifune Toshiro and Tetsuya Nakadai got away with full geads of hair. Famous story about Kurosawa's Red Beard prolonged over several years of indecisiveness which bankrupted Mifune, because the red beard kept him from getting other parts. Destroyed the K-M relationship til K died.
11: Still waiting for that Dornford Yates revival, publishers of the world.
13: Or perfect Disney-princess, Prell-girl hair for Jesus.
15: There are a couple of movies in which Mifune had to submit to the samurai haircut, but not many. Doesn't Nakadai do the traditional in Sanjuro?
16: Racist. What about the part where Mifune flips out and kicks everybody's ass?
We've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix and doing a similar, though future-minded, version of that. 80's haircuts and 90's makeup persist for centuries, apparently. Those curled bangs and Dynasty shoulder pads will never go out of style.
We've come up with a drinking game, but I get drunk too quickly..... drink when Wesley whines about something, drink when some entity takes over the Enterprise, drink when they break the laws of astrophysics (explosions in space, etc.), drink when Dr. Crusher's hair looks ridiculous. Really, I'm drunk within the first 15 minutes.
19: I had not, but now my life is complete. Thank you!
18: drink when they break the laws of astrophysics
A commenter over at MB's old place dubbed cinematic scientific law-breaking in general as, "Steven Seagal outruns the laws of physics".
Haha oops I just dug out my 2001 review of Rock Star for Sight and Sound and back then I tagged it as set in the mid-80s and made pretty much exactly heebie's argument: " It's a getting-of-wisdom film, and the wisdom is this: your girlfriend knows best. Wahlberg gets to move on from diligent playacting, to grow as a person and find himself and his art. Meanwhile, as girlfriend Emily, Jennifer Aniston gets to be strong, patient, forgiving, loving and beautiful, her role thus as entirely boring and static for her as it is for us. Even her hair is more culturally aware than her boyfriend, totally anticipating the revolutionary conditioning products of the mid-90s..."
But it's also obvious from this review that I didn't then realise (wikipedia less than a year old!) it was actually based on the Judas Priest story. I still basically think the dramaturge knew exactly what they were doing re the look; the script writer and/or director were the ones who were attempting confused anachronism.
This is a particularly good (read: awful) episode:
http://sttngfashion.tumblr.com/post/7936962209/the-dauphin-2-10
Best part is when the writer refers to Riker as "the Enterprise's answer to Mystery." Also, when Riker says, "I've boned light beings too, son." Because that is so, so true. Riker boned his way across the entire universe, with nothing but sexy facial hair to his credit.
Riker boned his way across the entire universe, with nothing but sexy facial hair to his credit.
Cough Shatner, may he live forever cough.
23 is so so great. And I've never even seen a full episode of the show.
I feel like I should have more to say about this.
Up until today, I thought Halford was boldly using his real name here at the Mineshaft. Hello, cultural lacunae!
I've boned light beings too, son
So awesome.
And here I was wondering why a promising postwar British poet from the early 1950s was so obsessed with bizarre uses of juries and preventing artists from earning money.
Oh fuck Wikipedia says he was a novelist, not a poet. I thought I remembered the book better. And 28 was meant affectionately. I like the jury and IP craziness!
And here I was wondering why a promising postwar British [novelist] from the early 1950s was so obsessed with bizarre uses of juries and preventing artists from earning money
Once-promising, but latterly failed and impecunious--clearly, the IP abolitionism is about bringing everyone else down to my level. The metaphor goes deep.
24: Yes, but *sexy facial hair*. Shatner had none.
First, the best gif ever: http://i53.tinypic.com/5nurud.jpg
From this, the best recap ever, because it is a recap of the PORNO version of TNG: http://sttngfashion.tumblr.com/post/5550581072/special-report-star-trek-the-next-generation-a-xxx
I nearly peed myself laughing.
Considering the erotic havoc wreaked by the smooth-cheeked Shatner, we are all fortunate to have been spared the sexy apocalypse that would inevitably have flowed from his adopting a Van Dyke or Flashman-style cavalry whiskers.*
* To quote, at random (and of course without endorsement of the sexism therein), Flashman and the Mountain of Light: "Where would Flashy be without his tart-catchers?"
"effulgent whiskers" - remember that phrase for when you're writing a period novel or screenplay.
33: Save yourselves. I'll stall by asking him about T.J. Hooker.
33: Apparently we disagree about what constitutes "sexy" facial hair. That misplaced merkin Shatner is sporting does not qualify.
[And now I'm considering "Misplaced Merkin" as a band name....]
"Misplaced Merkin" as a band name
Nice! The first album can be an all-covers LP titled All-Merkin Rejects.
