Movies

[Tigeraholic1]

Excited to see this one. I am finally able to watch re-runs of No Reservations again. It hurt for long while. Miss me some Tony...

 

[romad1]

I still think this scene where Rami Malek goes off captures my mood a lot of the time

Incidentally, listening to Thomas Rick's Churcill and Orwell (or is it the other way around) audio book and he was going over the Luftwaffe's total lack of strategic vision for the Battle of Britain and it because clear to me that having a substance abuser who was a loyal party man in charge of a battle was a bad idea. 

[gehringer_2]

4 hours ago, romad1 said:

I still think this scene where Rami Malek goes off captures my mood a lot of the time

Incidentally, listening to Thomas Rick's Churcill and Orwell (or is it the other way around) audio book and he was going over the Luftwaffe's total lack of strategic vision for the Battle of Britain and it because clear to me that having a substance abuser who was a loyal party man in charge of a battle was a bad idea. 

I get the compromise, but I still don't like when screenwriters put 21st century dialog in he mouths of mid 20th century real people. It's good dialog but it's not terminology either of those men would have used.

[romad1]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I get the compromise, but I still don't like when screenwriters put 21st century dialog in he mouths of mid 20th century real people. It's good dialog but it's not terminology either of those men would have used.

This was a flaw with the movie Glory i recall from the time it was out.   Denzel's dialogue was informed by 20th century era things and not of the period.   Still, its fricking great. 

[chasfh]

TBF, it’s hard to exactly nail the dialogue of a whole other bygone era when you don’t live during the era.

TB even more F, you don’t have to nail it exactly—you have only to make it seem to the modern audience that you have.

[oblong]

There's people bitching that they don't use British accents in the upcoming Odyssey.

I guess that's supposed to be the standard of ancient historical pieces.

 

[chasfh]

On 5/12/2026 at 11:00 AM, oblong said:

There's people bitching that they don't use British accents in the upcoming Odyssey.

I guess that's supposed to be the standard of ancient historical pieces.

 

I once read a critique of a critic (oooh, meta) who complained that Marlon Brando, playing Napoleon Bonaparte, had desecrated his performance by using his natural American accent instead of putting on the standard British accent. The critique did not miss the opportunity to point out that a British accent would not have been any more appropriate than an American accent, since Napoleon spoke French.

[oblong]

I'm listening to a podcast about Robert Duvall's career. They pointed out some movie he did where he played a Nazi general.  He used a German accent. The other nazis used their british accents.

I remember the first time I tried to watch Hunt for Red October I struggled with Connery's attempt.  My take is just talk.  It's silly to portray a Russian by speaking English in a Russian accent...  Just talk normal or speak Russian and use subtitles.  

 

 

[Biff Mayhem]

We really enjoyed “Project Hail Mary”. When I saw the previews I thought “oh, a 2026 ET”. Glad I tried it anyway. It was funny, entertaining and occasionally tension-filled. 
 

Also the plot twist toward the end was really well done. 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

I'm listening to a podcast about Robert Duvall's career. They pointed out some movie he did where he played a Nazi general.  He used a German accent. The other nazis used their british accents.

I remember the first time I tried to watch Hunt for Red October I struggled with Connery's attempt.  My take is just talk.  It's silly to portray a Russian by speaking English in a Russian accent...  Just talk normal or speak Russian and use subtitles.  

 

 

i disagree on this one. something they did in red october on a different aspect demonstrates why: the cinematographer on hfro realized that he needed some way for the viewer to instantly recognize which sub he was looking at, so he lit each one in a different color. the subterfuge works perfectly, your brain picks it up but you hardly notice at the conscious level. IIRC a similar trick was used in VanillaSky to id dream sequences. 

accents work the same, it maintains a level of illusion identifying the difference in context but still allows you access to dialog you understand. 

[gehringer_2]

On 5/12/2026 at 11:33 AM, chasfh said:

TBF, it’s hard to exactly nail the dialogue of a whole other bygone era when you don’t live during the era.

TB even more F, you don’t have to nail it exactly—you have only to make it seem to the modern audience that you have.

and there are multiple levels of this. you can do a period piece and want the characters to have period sensibilities, e.g. barbarians talking like barbarians, or you set an essentially modern fable in period and want those characters to have a ‘modern’ outlook. 

my compliant about Nuremberg was even narrower than that, which is the unnecessary use of particular words/idioms that didn’t exist in the era when the language of the era would be perfectly intelligible to the viewer if the writer had bothered to look for the anachronisms he had let creep in and purge them. 

[Stanley70]

One my least favorite actors attempts at another accent was Al Pacino in Scarface. Even when i was like 18 and should have liked that movie i didn't because he came accross as so fake.

[oblong]

45 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

i disagree on this one. something they did in red october on a different aspect demonstrates why: the cinematographer on hfro realized that he needed some way for the viewer to instantly recognize which sub he was looking at, so he lit each one in a different color. the subterfuge works perfectly, your brain picks it up but you hardly notice at the conscious level. IIRC a similar trick was used in VanillaSky to id dream sequences. 

accents work the same, it maintains a level of illusion identifying the difference in context but still allows you access to dialog you understand. 

yeah that makes sense, especially when you need to contrast.  I do recall reading specifically about that movie and the use of colors to let the viewer know which sub he was watching.

 

 

[oblong]

24 minutes ago, Stanley70 said:

One my least favorite actors attempts at another accent was Al Pacino in Scarface. Even when i was like 18 and should have liked that movie i didn't because he came accross as so fake.

That's when he became a caricature of himself.  The only movie of his after that where I can take him seriously was Sea of Love and I assume that's because it is a throwback to his 70's work.  Seriously.... that movie was good.  Saw it at the time, no big deal. Just another movie duruing a great era of movies.  Watched it again a few years ago and it's a banger.  Nothing special.  No grand meaning or whatever... just something to entertain yourself for 2 hours.  For a lot of reasons we don't have that anymore in film... not complaining about it... it's just reality.  We all have too many choices now.