An impish toad. A foul creature. Devil take me!
British actors doing bad American accents really irritate me, but I'm sure that British people have to put up with more bad British accents than the reverse.
I remember Kenneth Branaugh driving me nuts in some movie -- his American accent was really very good in and sentence, but it kept drifting distractingly around the country.
I didn't know The Crucible had been made into a musical.
One of the local am dram plays I saw last year was Proof, which I enjoyed, but did spend a little time wondering if these people really sounded like they were from the same family in Chicago.
It's interesting how programs get dubbed into other languages. On one side is the fantastic east European single-voice all-dialogue by one person in more or less a monotone dubbing where the original language is still faintly audible in the background. On the other end, I remember reading an article about a film or tv show dubbed into French where they picked people with accents from an industrial area in northern France, apparently because the accents of those same characters in English were from some industrial area (in the UK, I think).
What I'm saying is that I'd watch a musical version of The Crucible where none of the characters' voices are amplified while a guy reads all of the lines over a loudspeaker in Ukrainian.
On the other end, I remember reading an article about a film or tv show dubbed into French where they picked people with accents from an industrial area in northern France, apparently because the accents of those same characters in English were from some industrial area (in the UK, I think).
The French loved "Taggart", and dubbed it using Marseillais accents, this being apparently what you get if you say to a Frenchman "incomprehensible accent of a person from a crime and drug-ridden regional port city that terrifies everyone else in the rest of the country".
whether watching American actors do British accents would have been totally distracting to a British (or Australian, or Kiwi, or Irish, or Scottish) audience.
If they were really bad at it, sure.
Less disturbing to me at least is seeing British actors playing American characters in British accents. I've seen "The Crucible" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" both done with entirely UK accents and it didn't ring false at all.
incomprehensible accent of a person from a crime and drug-ridden regional port city that terrifies everyone else in the rest of the country
Maybe some of our German-knowledgeable participants can say if that principal is adhered to in this clip of the Dapper Dan/geographical oddity scene from O Brother.
Molly and I finished the first season of Deadwood and were watching the extras before we found out that Ian McShane was Brittish.
We did know, however, that k-sky's friend's sexy landlord was Irish
Less disturbing to me at least is seeing British actors playing American characters in British accents. I've seen "The Crucible" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" both done with entirely UK accents and it didn't ring false at all.
I'd be happy with that too. Better that than a dodgy fake accent that distracts, surely?
However, I am terrible with accents - at the weekend Kid A and I watched (most of) "The Island" which is a terrible, terrible, laughable film, and I didn't actually realise that the clone Ewan McGregor was speaking with an American accent until he met his real self who sounded Scottish.
Two actors really hit by this: David Anders and James Marsters. Both were born and raised on the West Coast of the U.S., but both are so famous for roles with some kind of UK accent that it sounds eerie to hear them use their natural accents. There's at least one scene in Alias when Anders' character pretends to be an American, and Anders does this bizarre thing where he's clearly not using his real accent, but is faking a British guy faking an American accent. It seemed impressive to me.
I remember reading that something similar happened to the guy who played Grima in Lord of the Rings: he stayed in character until shooting was done, so when someone heard him use his natural accent for the first time the listener thought it was a prank. It probably happened to more than just him considering how big and multinational that production was.
Sorry to be all American-centric about this, but those are the examples that came to mind for me. How convincing do Anders and Marsters sound to people who are familiar with the accents they're assuming?
I saw a play in London in which the American accent was so bad -- somewhere between JFK and J.R. Ewing -- that my friend and I disgraced ourselves by laughing so hard we had to bury our faces in our coats. We had gotten last-minute tickets that were on the side of the stage but in full view of pretty much the entire theater.
I didn't know The Crucible had there was any English-language text that hadn't already been made into a musical.
A friend of my brother's wrote a musical called, non-ironically, Gettysburg! I now automatically hear the titles of should-this-really-be-a-musical musicals in the same way: Crucible!
14: Yeah. It's weird to hear (yeah, I admit it) Ed Westwick's natural speech even though the voice he does in character is some bizarro affected stilted thing.
Marsters' accent changed to my American ear but got more consistent over time. David Boreanaz's "Irish" accent was beyond laughable, which I think he was fully aware of.
re: 14.last
Marsters doesn't sound convincing to me. Then again, I have pretty high standards for UK accents being done by non-UK actors. Most sound wrong, although unless it's actively bad it's easy enough to suspend disbelief.
Sometimes the same actor can do it well and badly in different films. Johnny Depp in Neverland sounded decent although it slides sometimes, in From Hell pretty bad. Just in terms of Scottish accents, Cate Blanchett's in Charlotte Grey is another one I remember being good enough that I could tell which part of Scotland her character was supposed to be from.
There's at least one scene in Alias when Anders' character pretends to be an American, and Anders does this bizarre thing where he's clearly not using his real accent, but is faking a British guy faking an American accent. It seemed impressive to me.
There's a similar and not especially successful scene in the Wire, with Dominic West (English) playing a character (American) doing a bad English accent. It works as an in-joke, but the accents are pretty dire.
Dominic West has a pretty bad American accent. I sort like bad American accents by brit actors, though. Hugh Laurie's sounds like some kind of bafflingly untraceable, ultra-sarcastic speech synthesizer.
Yeah, Hugh Laurie's is convincing enough to me that I didn't realize he was British for a while, but over time I started wondering if he could do the accent in any other context than "guy being bitterly sarcastic." A change of emotion can wreck an accent, to wit Amy Adams doing a dead-on rural Southern thing for all of Junebug until her character has a meltdown, and then it suddenly comes and goes.
re: 22
Yeah. While I think, most of the time, I can tell when a British actor doing a US accent is unconvincing; I expect I can't tell when they are getting geographical things wrong. So, an actor might sound convincing enough to me but sound, to an American, wrong for their character's supposed origin.
West and Hugh Laurie both sound unconvincing (in general) to me.
Just to maintain the Unfogged infinite loop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-iQldPiH64
There's a movie called "Daybreakers" where every single actor is Australian (or NovaeZealandic) except the two stars, and all of them have to do American accents. It really cuts down on the range of emotions an actor is comfortable expressing, and left the whole thing feeling very T.V.
The degree to which actors get Boston accents wrong makes me think that they must be really blowing it with other accents, too, but I can't tell. The again, there's one movie where everybody gets Boston accents totally right, so it is possible.
21 is the funniest line in all of Buffy.
Marsters' accent changed to my American ear
He's talked about this. Once it became clear that we was going to be an ongoing character, he sat down with Tony Head and practiced accents with him. He said that Spike's accent is basically Head's accent when head is speaking in his normal voice, and not his Giles/Coffee commercial voice.
28.1 is correct.
Hugh Laurie's American accent is entirely convincing to me. It's generically American, the way 90% of TV accents are. Smearcase makes an interesting point about whether Laurie would be able to maintain it if he weren't playing the most annoying one note character of all time, but that's a problem with the show, not him.
12.1: My goodness, does this mean you haven't seen Sexy Beast? Or Lovejoy? (It sometimes seems like almost nobody saw the latter, which is a shame.)
Laurie's accent sounds like someone doing an accent, to me. Doing it well enough, but it sounds slightly unnatural. Struggling now to think of actors who do US accents well to my UK ears.
Idris Elba? Gary Oldman?
27: Julianne Moore on 30 Rock! Was her deranged Boston accent part of the joke? I choose to think yes. I thought her British accent in A Single Man was pretty good.
Hugh Laurie's accent has always sounded wrong and nasal to me, but I spent 10 years watching him be Bertie Wooster, so it was mostly hugely disconcerting, I guess.
the funniest line in all of Buffy
"That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!"
27
I think the prize winner has to be Nicholson's Boston accent in The Departed. It was so distracting I wish he hadn't even tried.
It is humiliating to admit that M/tch and I have sometimes been lazy enough to leave the TV on when The Mentalist comes on; it's a terrible, terrible show and Simon Baker's smug performance makes me want to open fire, but his accent is spot on.
Hugh Jackman does pretty well though he can come across as kind of mannered.
By googLIN, I just found out that Damian Lewis is British, which I would not have guessed.
re: 35.last
Again, I didn't find him convincing in Band of Brothers. Good performance, so I stopped noticing the accent, but it was like Laurie's. Like a good impersonation of an accent, rather than immersive.
Hugh Jackman does pretty well though he can come across as kind of mannered.
Trick enough, for an Australian.
For some reason Australians seem to be more able than Brits to do perfect U.S. accents. Naomi Watts, Radha Mitchell, for example. I actually think Julian McMahaon sounds more natural than Laurie does.
Ewan MacGregor is perennially frustrating. As an American he can portray a sniveling weasel or weakling very well. In his native accent he can do quite a bit more than that.
Damian Lewis
I've only seen him in Life, but I thought his voice was doing weird things sometimes. It didn't occur to me that he was British, though.
Ugh, it's 3:30 AM. I really should be asleep.
Just spent a while walking around with a colleague who kept trying to drag me into places that were ambiguously either hostess bars or strip clubs. Do not want.
32.last: Anyway, everyone should just stop watching House and watch a bunch of Fry & Laurie sketches instead.
These university recruitment expense accounts are getting out of hand.
For some reason Australians seem to be more able than Brits to do perfect U.S. accents.
I watched every episode of Prison Break because I had a massive crush on whoever it is that played Lincoln, the somewhat criminal older brother that Michael sets out to save. Anyway, in the course of my research, I found out that he is in fact Australian, and got so fed up with putting on an American accent for work all the time, and then going home and speaking with his normal Australian accent, that he just thought fuck it, and went American full time.
essear, do we know where you are? Are we allowed to know?
No, I'm not being recruited. And this was a fellow American who was really kind of wanting to go to a hostess bar "ironically," I think?
We did encounter some kind of scantily clad pop music lip-syncers doing a dance performance in the street, which no one seemed to be paying any attention to whatsoever. They did this song that someone mentioned here a few days ago.
44: Remember DE's pun? That's what I've been eating.
Essear has joined the pro Starcraft circuit?
re: 43
There was an interview with Damian Lewis in the paper recently, and he said he just goes American and stays American while he's there as switching back and forth is tiring.
a fellow American who was really kind of wanting to go to a hostess bar "ironically," I think?
Oh good lord. Ironically has gotten way, way out of hand.
30: I have not seen Sexy Beast. I take it I should?
34: I thought both Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen were worse in that, actually. On the other hand Scorcese was very clever about the three leads, where the relative authenticity of their Boston accents corresponded to the degrees to which their characters were true to themselves.
50: No! No no no no no no no no no no no no no! No fucking way! No fucking way!
By which I mean "absolutely".
Honorable mention for sliding in and out of accent to Gerard Butler in 300. I swear to christ at one point he said something about time to chib some fecking Persians.
I wonder who gets the prize for worst accent in an oscar-winning role? Marisa Tomei would have been a shoo-in if she'd won for In the Bedroom.
I didn't find him convincing in Band of Brothers.
his voice was doing weird things sometimes. It didn't occur to me that he was British, though.
I think it makes a big difference whether you already know someone is doing an accent. It does for me, anyway.
Also, it probably makes a big difference if one is a linguist.
OT: Woohoo! Lent! Givin' up stuff for the Lord!
[Sigh.]
Another forty days without sweets. I have got to get some cooler vices.
I can't say it makes any sense to me, Flip, but you do it if it means something.
In the Fall of 1993 or so I saw "Miss Saigon" performed in London and sadly the faux "Texas/Southern USA" accent by the actor playing the US wife did distract from the play.
During that time I saw three musicals which I rated as follows:
"Les Misarable" - awesome, even though a technical breakdown stretched the intermission to 90 minutes.
"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" excellent.
"Miss Saigon" - good to very good.
Do you still get credit for giving up candy if you replace it with, say, crack cocaine?
For musicals, I have yet to see "Wicked," which I hear is very good. Does anyone have any other recommendations?
I don't have any trips planned to NY but still I'd like to know what is recommended, just in case.
Also, I know you guys recommended some netflix streaming stuff - thanks - is there anything to add?
I saw Ghost Rider last night in 3D. If you are into the angels/demons things it is awesome, and nearly as good as "The Dark Knight" IMO, but it was a bit dim. I'm going to see it in 2D to compare it.
I can not believe they are making another beginning Spiderman movie, but I guess why not? They did it with Batrman.
For some reason Australians seem to be more able than Brits to do perfect U.S. accents.
I was always so impressed that Cate Blanchett did such an incredibly specific American accent (one that, I think, is largely extinct--Larchmont Lockjaw) in The Talented Mr. Ripley, but she's not always that good. I rented The Gift to see how she did with Georgia and it was good but not as fine-tuned.
32: Re: Moore's attempt at a Boston accent in 30 Rock.
I agree. I generally like Moore, but I was put off by that accent. Did it sound phony to Bostonians?
64: I thought Cate Blanchett lived in TX until she was a teen. Am I hallucinating? I will of course check *after* I post.
Wait, Flippanter isn't a Catholic in the first place, is he?
Anyway, as a former Catholic who gave things up for Lent, under the scrutiny of my family, I can safely say that it's less about giving things up for the Lord, and more an exercise in ceremony, a tradition that binds a certain community together, so that they can say to one another: "Oh, what are you giving up for Lent?"
Kind of like New Year's Eve resolutions.
67: Nope! Apparently her father was Texan, though. (Mel Gibson did live in the States until he was 12 or 13, but I'd rather not claim him.)
(Oh, and more for the Australian file: Heath Ledger's absolutely astonishing, better-than-an-American-could-have-done-it plains redneck whatever accent in Prettified Homosexual Wish-Dream of Rural Masculinity.)
I'm completely giving up sweets for Lent. I'm Methodist. I probably don't get full credit for it, though, because it is also good for my type 2 diabetes.
Bollywood musicals have high variance, some are completely great. Chup Chup Ke, Taxi 9211, Billu the Barber were all great, Billu especially. Usually either musical or nonmusical portion of the film is stronger.
Also, it probably makes a big difference if one is a linguist.
I don't have any particularly strong opinions on the subject, so maybe not.
I just mean in terms of noticing whether an accent is internally consistent or makes sense with a character's purported biography, not so much caring one way or t'other.
14 - Wait, someone though that Brad Dourif -- Doc from Deadwood, Billy Bibbit from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the voice of Chucky from the Child's Play movies -- was English?
Idris Elba's American accent in The Wire was so much better than Dominic West's that it kind of took me aback when I saw interviews with him and was reminded that, oh yeah, he was in Ultraviolet (this was before Luther).
68: Certainly not! Giving things up for Lent is just a way to remember/participate in the liturgical year's progress to Easter, the anticipation of which is, like an old break in a bone that creaks in the cold, never to be fully remedied by the science, technology, textual criticism, feminism, the Internet, etc., etc.
I don't think I've ever been bothered by an actor's or actress' screen accent. I spend more time wincing at ill-fitting suit coats (e.g., all the hell throughout Inception).
a way to remember/participate in the liturgical year's progress to Easter, the anticipation of which is, like an old break in a bone that creaks in the cold, never to be fully remedied
You're saying that you really like Easter egg hunts?
Did Sean Bean's accent keep slipping from whatever to something else in GofT? I'm totally bad at recognizing accents but the hearing aid has me now much more aware of differences.
I just mean in terms of noticing whether an accent is internally consistent or makes sense with a character's purported biography, not so much caring one way or t'other.
Ah, okay. Yeah, I suspect linguists (at least those with some interest in/experience with dialectology) are more likely to notice that stuff than the average person. I can't think of any specific instances when I've noticed it, but then I don't watch very many movies or tv shows.
I'm so confused. teo, what do you do? Aside from the park rangering, I thought you were an urban planning archaelolgist. In Alaska. Or something. Is the linguist thing more of a hobby? I guess you have time with not watching movies or TV shows.
Heath Ledger's absolutely astonishing, better-than-an-American-could-have-done-it plains redneck whatever accent
Charlie Hunnam on "Sons of Anarchy" always makes me think of a bad version of this, the way it sounds kind of too-American to actually be believable.
79: Hey, who doesn't?
Also chocolate bunnies.
Idris Elba's American accent in The Wire was so much better than Dominic West's
It's true, in retrospect, although I had no idea at the time (when I first watched The Wire) that either were Brits. What's striking to me now was that when I first saw West in The Wire, I thought, wow, that guy's a great actor. But when I see him in everything else, I think, wow, that guy's a terrible actor.
Piling on, Sexy Beast is a great fucking movie.
I'm so confused. teo, what do you do?
Comment on Unfogged, mostly.
Thinking about Sexy Beast and (translating) to Power & Violence, Instruments/Expressions/Instances of P & V, Accommodation Resistance Escaping P & V, Love, History...this is a very great adult fucking movie, from the rock that misses by inches to the devil muttering underground.
There are facial expressions of being intimidated in SB, of cowering, that I can never forget. 6-10 terrific performances.
90: Yeah, Ray Winstone and the rest of his Spanish villa crew all do amazing work in that film.
88: Yeah, that part I took as read.
I really wanted to like Sexy Beast, but I just found it tiresome; could barely manage to finish it. Huh.
93: A lot of it revolves around watching people be humiliated by a bullying prick, so I can see that it wouldn't have universal appeal.
a fellow American who was really kind of wanting to go to a hostess bar "ironically," I think? ... Oh good lord. Ironically has gotten way, way out of hand.
The Onion covered this 12 years ago: Ironic Porn Purchase Leads To Unironic Ejaculation.
92: Fair enough.
To answer more seriously, I've worn a lot of hats over the years (only some of them flat). I majored in linguistics in undergrad, then I worked for the NPS at Chaco for a while as a tour guide, then I went to grad school for urban planning, and now I work for the NPS again as a park planner. The archaeology blogging is the hobby part, which I started while at Chaco and have continued ever since, although my interest in linguistics has also been rekindled lately and that's shown up in my blogging a bit as well.
Maybe some of our German-knowledgeable participants can say if that principal is adhered to in this clip of the Dapper Dan/geographical oddity scene from O Brother.
I'd be kind of curious to hear the answer to this. I don't know accents at all; I basically figure the better I can understand something, the closer it probably is to Hochdeutsch, and I can follow the clip fine (especially since I know what they're supposed to be saying), but that's obviously not reliable. I almost think I'm hearing a bit of extra sibilance relative to standard, but that's probably me looking for something.
Allegorize SB. McShane is the gubmt. Kingsley is a cop or media, the heist is a stupid little war, for reasons having nothing to do with Winstone. What's wonderful is how direct, open, honest, and fucking accurate Kingsley is, cutting away all the fucking bullshit we use to support ourselves. "Yes you will." And he did.
"I'll get the check."
"No, you're my guest."
"Here, take the money."
"No, really."
"Take the fucking money, you stupid cunt."
Kingsley was authority, he said he'd pay, wtf was Firestone thinking? I hate people arguing with cops who can shoot them down where they stand. I'm a cowerer, and a sneak.
Some resistance is delusional, arguing with authority and power, some resistance can escape notice or punishment. Easier than you can imagine, more radical than you would believe.
99: A top-notch blend of bombast and subtle character work, and an intricate study of power relations; the screenplay began as a stage play, and it shows, in the best possible way.
100: Got it, and that sounds favorable. Thanks.
Also, you either should or already do write boilerplate one-liners for film reviews.
The title is not accidental, either -- there are more than one great love and sex stories running through it.
Speaking of the connection of homoeroticism (which is all over SB are you sure about the pool boy?) and violence, Clair Denis' J'ai pas sommeil last night was superb.
a) I mean why exactly does Teddy want his "Gal" back so bad?
b) Is there, was there some kind of triangle Teddy-Gal-Logan?
c) Is there a better way to say "I love and trust you?" than Teddy's final side trip? "If I cared..."
d) Logan can barely get on a plane, could Teddy have been hoping all along that his old friend Gal would solve a growing problem?
And finally, why the fucking fuck does Gal think he can say "No" to Teddy, who's really asking?
Logan knows what is contained in Gal's "No" to Teddy, and Logan can't fucking stand it.
bob, you appear to be talking about a film that not everybody has seen, so (a) spoilers, and (b) who the fuck are Teddy and Logan? If you see what I mean. Do not explain who they are!
You can't fool me, you in one of those underground study cells, aren't you?
Hugh Jackman does pretty well
In the stage production of Oklahoma, incredibly well.
Maybe some of our German-knowledgeable participants can say if that principle is adhered to in this clip of the Dapper Dan/geographical oddity scene from O Brother.
It was not. The voices were standard "media German", no trace of a regional accent.
Tangentially, I once saw an unintentionally hilarious segment on German TV about voice actors / actresses who do the voiceovers to dubbed foreign p[]rn films. By all appearances, they took their jobs pretty seriously.
In the stage production of Oklahoma, incredibly well.
Excepting that song about the bright golden haze on the 'medder'.
Excepting that song about the bright golden haze on the 'medder'.
That's an acceptable pronunciation in parts of the mountain south, ergo it's not necessarily inappropriate for territorial Oklahoma.
This is super-cool: Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down
Via TPM. I have no idea what Josh Mar/sha/ll's like as a boss, but I take this as a positive sign:
I just killed Team TPM's productivity by passing this awesome BBC infographic around.
Not being British, I can't really judge, but I love Cate Blanchett as an actress, and I've always thought that her accent in An Ideal Husband must have been good.
That's an acceptable pronunciation in parts of the mountain south
Where I grew up absolutely everyone says holler, but 'medder' would be incomprehensible. It might come out something like 'medda' if the person had a strong rural accent.
96:Thanks for the answer. So it really was all those things.
I have to say, at least in your internets persona, you make the whole Renaissance man thing look pretty effortless.
106-107: "Teddy" and Logan are the same person. The other one is Bill S. Preston, Esq.
I have to say, at least in your internets persona, you make the whole Renaissance man thing look pretty effortless.
Thanks. It's more work than it probably seems, of course, but as you suggested above my general lack of interest in the sorts of things most people do with their spare time helps.