I didn’t read the book or see the movie, so you may be right. My review of Turturro’s accent is based on seeing extended previews of the movie.
Yes, I believe you’ve described the pronunciation better than I. It is the same here.
Most offensive recently was Big Fish. Helena Bonham Carter’s came closest to being acceptable, but only because she seemed to have the attitude of “I’m affecting an accent, so by damn I’m going to run with it” and didn’t care for accuracy so much as the feeling of the thing. Jessica Lange did a pretty good job, too. The other big names dropped the ball, and all the child actors – oy!
I don’t think we’re talking about the same movie. Dead Again was the one where he and Emma Thompson were reincarnations of ex-lovers from the 30’s, right? It was all set in LA, and he was affecting (a lot) a “generic American” – actually, LA – accent. His big tagline was “I’m not Roman!” and he sounded just like Mira Sorvino to my ears.
Natascha Richardson in Nell just nailed it. I know dozens of women who talk exactly like she did in that movie – well-educated, living in an urban area, with enough of the accent that it doesn’t come out in certain words but colors everything she said. (Of course, I’ve heard people point hers out as one of the worst they’ve heard, so to each his own).
I thought Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs was really good too; you could tell it was affected, but it sounded like someone trying to get rid of a strong accent – it flared up when she was under stress.
Oh crap. I forgot about that one. That could be the winner.
I don’t recall being bothered by Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. But in LadyKillers his accent was so distracting that at first I thought the Coen’s wanted him to play obviously false and he would be revealed to be a Yankee or Brit or something – but no such luck. I *think * he was being serious.
Serious? There wasn’t a serious moment in the movie. Every character spoke with exaggerated accents or mannerisms. Hanks especially was playing what essentially was a cartoon character.
Charlton Heston, starring in a TV miniseries called Chiefs was memorably bad. It was such a shock to see someone I knew to be a good actor totally ruin it on a horrendous accent.
Hey, CrazyCatLady — My Mom grew up in Paintsville at about the same time that Loretta Lynn was growing up nearby. My Mom sounded nothing like her, but when I went up there to visit my Grandma, I heard some cousins and plenty of other folks who did.
Duvall also nailed the accent in The Apostle. I think that most of the other actors were authentic.
Tom Berenger lives on the South Carolina coast. His house is in Beaufort, near Hilton Head.
[QUOTE=lissener]
The leading southern dialect coach in Hollywood (memory of an old NPR profile) is a guy in New York who’s never been south of Greenwich Village. This is the guy who they had teach Julia Roberts a Georgia accent for Steel Magnolias. See, she was pronouncing her Rs, but this guy said she should be dropping them.
Oh, and Julia Roberts is from Georgia.
[QUOTE]
I thought Steel Magnolias was supposed to be set in Louisiana?
Someone mentioned Jessica Lange in Big Fish.
She, too, lives here in VA (Charlottesville), as does Sissy Spacek. Both of them are very down to earth and pleasant - Robert Duval not so much.
We were all pretending that the accent never happened. 