Jackson does say something about this in the ROTK DVD commentary (somewhere around the scene where the hobbits run into each other in the cornfield, IIRC): they did try Boyd with a rural English accent, but decided that his comic delivery worked better with his natural accent, so they went with that instead.
Glasgow not Ireland, right :smack:
I hang my head in shame and retire from talking accents for a while.
(Captain Picard - just another example of immigrant stock ?)
Can I ask a question?
What is the point of doing a Russian accent anyway?
Russian submarine captians do not speak english with a thick Russian accent. They speak Russian. So if you want authenticity, shouldn’t you have him speak Russian and subtitle it?
I just saw this the other night. As an Irishman, I’m not really qualified to express a view on NK’s accent but it sounded very overblown to me. There was definitely a touch of Vivenne Leigh about it.
A very good Irish accent was done by Kate Hudson in About Adam. It was a middle class Dublin accent which is not easy to pull off as there aren’t that many existing cinematic points of reference.
Good point, but I guess I’d rather have a bad Russian accent than a generic Genteel Evil Dude British Accent, which would be more in keeping with foreign military officers.
But Fleming didn’t come up with that (in OHMSS, 1963) until *after *Connery did the first movie (Dr. No, 1962).
Yeah, they probably should have reworked the character to better fit the actor.
Still, Star Trek has a long history of actor-character mismatches. Kahn, from the second movie, was supposed to be a Punjab from India. Yet they settled on Ricardo Montalban for the actor 
That particular example isn’t a ST thing its a Hollywood thing. Remember he first played Kahn on TV in the original series. They had a habit of casting anyone who was faintly ethic in any role calling for someone with a natural tan. Montalban practically made a living out of playing Apaches. Anthony Quinn played every ethnic type you can imagine. Back then they wanted someone for the role but all they needed was someone not quite white, they weren’t about to make the effort to find a Punjabi actor. Hell even Rock Hudson played an American Indian. Different time. If the movie wasn’t about an existing character they probably would have made him Latin or had a different actor.
I don’t agree about The Highlander. Ok Lambert Scottish sucked but the rest was perfect. It was purposely ambiguous. Connery was Egyptian with a Spanish name from Japan with a Scottish accent (or something). He was a thousand years old living all over the world. What accent should he have? Lambert’s accent in the modern scenes seemed like a perfect miss-mash of accents that fit an immortal travelling the world. But yeah his Scottish sucked.
At least they kept some consistency – in “Family”, when Captain Picard went home to Earth (to recover from “The Best of Both Worlds” I and II) he stayed with his brother and sister-in-law and their son in France. The brother was Robert (ro-BAIR), the sister-in-law was Marie, and the son was René, all of whom spoke with British accents.
Maybe sometime in the near future, the UK conquers France and overwhelms them with the Queen’s English.
Maybe they wanted to be a little bit more multi-cultural?
Or maybe Picard actually was speaking French, and everyone heard it as English due to the Universal Translator! Ever think of that? What, it can tanslate for every alien race in the galaxy, but it won’t work for a Frenchman?
Well, in Futurama the professor built an universal translator, but all it could do was translate everything into an incomprehensible gibberish – when he said “Hello” into it, it spat out “Bonjour.” So that may be why the French speak English in TNG times – because it’s long dead?
As far as the worst group effort I’ve ever heard of American accents Dancer In The Dark has to take the cake. Really, really bad accents. Even wrong words are used such as “mum” rather than “mom.”
Fargo mostly tortured the Minnesotan accent. Peter Stormare starred in both films, but in fargo he never says anything so his accent is not on display.
As for Kenneth Branagh, I heard an interview with him on the subject of doing American accents and said he eschews regional dialects and goes for a “generic” American sound. I find this quite common in movies.
Then there was Colin Firth on Saturday Night Live… Well, you had to have seen it.
Here in Baltimore, Maryland (which we pronounce Bawlamer, Merlin), natives have a very distinctive accent. It’s not Southern, not Northern, but it’s very…well, distinctive.
I think I can say without fear of contradiction that not a single Hollywood actor who has ever appeared in a film set in Baltimore has ever come close to capturing it. Some (like Danny DeVito in Tin Men) tried a vague Southern accent, but most haven’t even tried. And this is true even in films (like Tin Men) made by Baltimore native Barry Levinson, who ought to know how to get it.
What’s really amusing for us natives is to be watching a film set here and all of a sudden a bit player will speak with the real Baltimore accent. If we had forgotten that these Hollywood actors didn’t sound like real Baltimoreans, the illusion is destroyed.
The most recent example I can think of is in The Wire: the marine police officer who’s been McNulty’s partner while he’s on the boats is a real Baltimorean. I think Al Brown, who plays Valchek may be a local, too, but he hasn’t got the real East Baltimore twang I’m talking about.
Of course, the early films of Baltimorean John Waters are chock full of the real thing. But he doesn’t speak with it himself. (Nor do I or can I, except for a few isolated phrases, to my great chagrin.)
My favorite example of Bawlamerese: Do you know where Baltimoreans go on vacation? Danny ayshun.
(Down the ocean.)
Alessan writes:
> . . . Wizards had J.R.R. Tolkien’s own Oxford accent.
Did Tolkien have an Oxford accent? I would expect that he grew up with something more like a Birmingham accent. (I don’t think his first three or four years in South Africa had any affect on his accent.) He did spend most of his adult life in Oxford. I’ve heard tapes of Tolkien speaking. I also lived in the U.K. and spent time in both Birmingham and Oxford. I’m still not sure I could say exactly what his accent is. Could someone who’s an expert on British accents and who’s listened to tapes of Tolkien speaking tell us what accent Tolkien spoke with?
I thought the accents in Jackson’s movies were all over the place. I think that Jackson just instructed everyone to speak in some vague kind of British accent. Claims that the various races spoke in similar accents are just post hoc attempts to defend Jackson. As a New Zealander, Jackson didn’t know enough about British accents to be able to tell his actors how to do various British accents.
I admit I know very little about old JRR except the Oxford connection, and I’ve never heard him speak but I do know that he also spent time up in Whitby, North Yorkshire (the pub where he is supposed to have drunk is now called ‘middle earth’ I think) so maybe he was influenced by a touch of gruff Yorkshire vowels - in the films think Sean Bean’s accent would be the closest.
commasense writes:
> I think I can say without fear of contradiction that not a single Hollywood actor
> who has ever appeared in a film set in Baltimore has ever come close to
> capturing it.
I think that it may be better if they don’t try. Just because a movie is set in Baltimore doesn’t mean that all the characters will speak in what you think of as a Baltimore accent (which not that many people in Baltimore speak with, to be honest). It might be better to explain away the actors who don’t speak with Baltimore accents as being born elsewhere. There’s a lot of people (like me, for instance) who were born elsewhere but who, like me, speak in nothing like a Baltimore accent. I presumably speak like what I am, someone who’s spent most of his adult life in Maryland but who grew up in rural northwest Ohio and also spent significant amounts of time in Florida, Texas, and England. Yeah, I live in Greenbelt, in the Washington suburbs, but that’s just an accidental thing. I could have chosen, like most of my co-workers, to live in the Baltimore suburbs or in Baltimore itself.
The only places where Tolkien spent any significant amounts of time were South Africa for his first three or four years, Birmingham for the rest of his childhood, Leeds where he taught for five years, and Oxford. He was in the army in World War I, which meant that he spent several years in England and in France with a mix of other soldiers from all over the U.K.
I thought Fargo did an excellent job with the upper midwestern accent. My brother’s mom-in-law speak exactly like the kidnapped/eventually killed wife did - so much so that people have asked her if she’s familiar with the movie (and she hates that, but it’s funny!). I know lots of people who talk like that (I was born in CO, but moved to WI when I was five and haven’t left the area in 20 years).
Maybe in The Cities the accent isn’t so noticeable, but get in rural areas, and oh yeah - it’s spot on.