Great movie. Whenever Jeremiah Johnson comes up, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Watch your topknot”.
“Yorn too.”
I prefer films to have the actors speaking their ‘natural’ accent (or close to it) if they are going to be talking in a language other than what would have been authentic (such as in Valkyrie). If memory serves, Tom Cruise got some criticism for speaking in his native US accent despite being German, which I thought was ridiculous since he was talking English, which the historical character wouldn’t have been doing. Another good example of this is Death of Stalin, albeit some of the actors adopt different regional (British) accents to their natural ones. Quite why the default accent seems to be RP ('Received Pronunciation) British in historical epics like Gladiator, regardless of the actor’s real accent, is a bit of a mystery, is it because of Shakespeare? I think Crowe was attempting one but the Aussie accent comes through at times.
The Romans called it Hispania.
For one thing, modern English speakers can understand the actual English slang of 400 years ago much better than that of 800 years ago. And much of the actual English slang of 200 or 100 years ago is even more easily understood by the modern viewer. So if you’re trying to depict a fictional scene that purports to be taking place in one of those more recent periods, there’s really no good reason IMHO for just making all the dialogue sound pure 21st-century.
That doesn’t mean that we should expect screenwriters for movies set in Elizabethan or Regency or Victorian Britain to deliver 100% period-accurate dialogue, of course. Various tweaks and compromises always need to be made.
But IMHO, one mark of a good period-film screenwriter is that they can thread the needle between period accuracy and current comprehensibility, rather than just saying “screw it” and writing all the dialogue to sound like colloquial speech of today. As I said, that choice tends to come across as laziness and/or incompetence, rather than informed understanding of historical speech.
If you (generic you) want to show me (specific me) a movie that purports to be taking place in an earlier historical era, and you depict everybody in the movie wearing period clothes and hairstyles and using period technology etc., then I expect them to be speaking something that plausibly imitates the language of their period, too. If it’s a film set in 18th-century England, I’m expecting the dialogue to sound at least sort of like what an 18th-century English writer would have produced. If it’s set in 18th-century France, like Chevalier, I’m expecting the dialogue to sound at least sort of like how an 18th-century English writer would have translated the words of an 18th-century French writer.
But if you show me, to borrow msmith537’s example, a scene with guys in powdered wigs and satin knee breeches saying things like “party on, dudes!”, that doesn’t give me the impression that you’re carefully making an 18th-century setting accessible to modern viewers. That gives me the impression that you just don’t know enough about 18th-century linguistic styles and mores to be able to write understandable dialogue that’s also historically plausible.
Yeah, no shit. That’s why our ability to understand the language actually used in earlier times tends to increase as the time in question approaches our own. It’s also why we as viewers tend to find it jarring to hear anachronistic modern slang in period dialogue. Because we know that such slang is a very recent linguistic development in the process of constant language change, and we associate it with the language speakers of our own time rather than those of the period purportedly being represented.
As I said in post #6767.
? According to the post count I see, you didn’t write post #6767; your post that I replied to most recently is #6773. I don’t know how the Discourse post count mechanism works, and I guess mileage may vary.
Excuse me, it’s #6757.
Seeing all of the mentions of Jeremiah Johnson here, I realized that I had never seen it. It was released when I was in high school and it wasn’t the type of movie that I would take a date to (if I had a date!) There were some depictions and descriptions of Indians (like scalping) are problematic today but were more acceptable fifty years ago. Other than that, it was an interesting movie; I appreciate the recommendations.
We watched Three Thousand Years of Longing with Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. I wasn’t sure what kind of movie it would be, hoping it wasn’t a silly Marvel ripoff. I thought it was wonderful and thought provoking, with some wonderful scenery.
She Said (Amazon Prime) How the NY Times investigative journalists brought down Harvey Weinstein. With Carey Milligan.
It hits all the investigative journalist beats: the scene where the intrepid reporters inform their editor how bad the situation is (but they’re really educating us). The editor says “You don’t have a story”. The reluctant source agrees to go on the record. The editor says “Print it!”
But even if it’s familiar, it’s very well done. And horrifying. Harvey Weinstein really was a monster.
Someone recently recommended All the President’s Men to me and they said She Said has a very similar feel. I haven’t seen either yet.
Engaging crime-jinx all the way with a clockwork plot proving once again: loser criminals annihilate. Well-shot with a good cast (including co-screenwriter José Giovanni - Wikipedia), some nice locations, a tense fight in a train compartment, lots of deception, deceit and murder (planned and unplanned). A Jag XK150 and ’61 Chrysler New Yorker are prominently featured while background composition benefits from a Porsche 356B, Studebaker Lark Wagon and assorted Renaults and Citroëns.
I had wanted to see this ever since I learned of its existence about 3-4 years ago. Remarkably/miraculously(?), it not only did not suck, it was pretty good.
I watch the 1955 movie every Christmas. It’s one of my favorite holiday treats.
I enjoyed the one with DeNiro and Penn too, but I honestly see no similarity between the two…
Operation Crossbow, 1965 Carlo Ponti war flick starring George Peppard and a bunch of Brits, with a short stint by Sophia Loren looking sultry.
Extraction II on Netflix. Ridiculous violence with Chris Hemsworth trying to outkill John Wick. Who knew that a desk made of particle board and veneer could save you from a minigun?
I stumbled onto Goodfellas and Mean Streets late at night the other day. Forbidden Planet and It Came from Outer Space were on another channel.
Escape from Colditz, which I had never seen in its entirety, was on last night.
I need more comedies to watch, so I browsed a list of “150 essential” comedy movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and picked Lost in America (1985) which I had not seen before, and which had a 95% rating on RT.
The premise seemed to have potential – a successful couple drops out of society when the husband gets fired, and set out on the road in a Winnebago. Meh! Just reinforces my impression that any comedic work involving Albert Brooks is going to be mediocre. It wasn’t horrible, just mediocre. The IMdB rating of 7 was about right, maybe a bit generous.
To each his own. Lost in America is one of my all-time favorite movies. The scene with Garry Marshall as the casino manager is an absolute classic.
Finally saw Quigley Down Under. Beautiful scenery, well filmed, competently acted, but something is missing and I’ll be damned if I can put my finger on it.
Tom Selleck’s acting ability?
Definitely leading the pack. Plus, it seemed like more of a super expensive TVM than a theatrical film, if you get my drift.