Fashionistas you have arrived 3-25-03 - 10-3-03

Originally posted by purse junkie
And why is the hell is a British accent the world standard for classiness, particularly to Americans.........

And smartness. I've noticed also that a very high percentage of professors depicted in movies/tv have British accents. Strange, as I have yet to have a real-life British professor.

-T(Asians teaching science and math labs, perhaps, but no Brits to be found)L

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Okay, answer this question for me. What was so clever about The Usual Suspects? It seems to me that [and stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie]. I loved the movie because of the clever twist, but most people act like Verbal made up the whole thing when all he did was replace the names of the people in the actual events with things he saw on the cop's wall. Cool idea. But not mind blowing.

Thurgreed(keyser soze)Marshall

According to the screenwriters, even they really didn't/don't know which parts Verbal made up and which parts were actual events. No one really knows. All we really know is that (stop if you haven't seen the movie) all of them were put in jail, released and then the boat exploded. ALL of it in b/w could have been made up, or all of it actually could have happened but with different names. Or something in between. The screenwriters admitted this on an HBO special that was shown after the movie a couple of years back. I guess they're probably full of it and are just trying to add to the mystery, but it's more fun not knowing.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
Edited to add that you may have seen a copy of Brotherhood of the Wolf that was dubbed into English for the UK market - if the Brits heard the sound with an American accent, they would have thought - that makes no sense, why are the characters talking like Americans? Just a thought.

I suppose. But I would assume that they would just hire one set of actors to do the voices and that whatever set of actors would be geared towards the US market. I'm sure they figured the brits would think it was weird and we wouldn't since I bet so many Americans wouldn't second guess the accent because it's a foreign film and damn it if they don't sound foreign. But, why not just hire french actors to speak English in French accents and sell the movie to all English speaking countries?

TM

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by TexLex
I've noticed also that a very high percentage of professors depicted in movies/tv have British accents.

It would be a vastly superior experience to watch a movie where the professors all soundy like whiny Alan Dershowitz.

[evenodds]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I suppose. But I would assume that they would just hire one set of actors to do the voices and that whatever set of actors would be geared towards the US market. I'm sure they figured the brits would think it was weird and we wouldn't since I bet so many Americans wouldn't second guess the accent because it's a foreign film and damn it if they don't sound foreign. But, why not just hire french actors to speak English in French accents and sell the movie to all English speaking countries?

Why not watch it in French with the subtitles?

Lazy?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by TexLex
And smartness. I've noticed also that a very high percentage of professors depicted in movies/tv have British accents. Strange, as I have yet to have a real-life British professor.

-T(Asians teaching science and math labs, perhaps, but no Brits to be found)L

Oooh, that reminds me of another bad accent:

Laurence Fishburn in Higher Learning.

(also, Kendra (can't remember actress's name) from second season of Buffy, Jamacian-Irish, I think).

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Fugee


2. People with too much money and not enough sense.

This weekend I was in the tire department at Costco. Ahead of me in line was an obviously well-off 50-ish couple buying tires for their Mercedes and Jaguar (with the $60 off coupon!). The Mrs. was in very good shape with a stylish hairdo. But she was wearing the fugliest pair of D&G white denim capris with cargo pockets everywhere and a wide belt with rivet things. Those pants might have looked passable on a teen or young 20s girl but on her it looked like she was trying too hard.

That's not so bad, just think of what you would say if you were behind my $200-skirt wearing, paraffin wax pedicured ass using a 10% off one item coupon at Linens and Things.

[Fugee]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
....
Everyone in Lethal Weapon II
....
Nicholas Cage, Con Air (but, so funny I'm not sure I care)

Accents in Lethal Weapon 2? I don't remember accents; I guess it must have been the bad guys but that movie falls into my too much fun to care category. I don't remember accents in Con Air either. I must ignore them in action films.

Speaking of films, I want to catch up on good films I've missed in the last couple years. What "must see" films should I rent for the forecasted rainy 4th? Assume I haven't seen much beyond the best picture nominees, kids movies and Christopher Guest flicks (loved "A Mighty Wind").

I may have to rent the John Wayne Genghis Khan for the laughs.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by evenodds
Why not watch it in French with the subtitles?

Lazy?

The version that I checked out only had the dubbing on it. I tried very hard to find some way to sub-titles, and I ended up turning off the movie after half an hour because I was so annoyed.

[str8outavannuys]

Originally posted by soup sandwich
I did not puke all over myself when I saw "A League of Their Own", but I may have pooped my pants a little bit.

When I took a few college film studies classes, I was surprised to learn that "Desparately Seeking Susan" was treated as a serious text among feminist film theorists, and even feminist lit crit types. I've never seen it and so can't offer up an opinion about its crap-ness. But apparently it has been read by Important People to contain profound statements about identity and gender.

str8

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Sparklehorse
I swear I don't work for the Boston Tourism office, but I believe the Boston accent is a descendant of the English accent. Or so says The Nation's English Doctor (and my ears).

Edited to note that this is apparently a Thai site, not The Nation like I thought but I stand by my point.

That is a trippy site.

Actually, there has been rather a lot of work done on the origins of various Ameican regional accents. American accents are almost all derived from various English accents (duh), but they vary greatly from each other because they had, as their source, English speakers from very different classes and locations within England, and, of course, some regions were also greatly affected by the accents of various non-English groups (NYC, LA, MN, Kansas, W. VA, etc.). For instance, generally speaking, north eastern accents are mostly derived from 17th & 18th C working class accents from the north of England, while south eastern (white) accents tend to be derived from extremely lower class London and mid-aristocratic accents. Anyhow, the upshot is that most of the differences in US regional accents can be traced to differences in the source British accents.

It is always odd to hear people talk about some accent or dialect being "closer" to an older form that others. Doesn't really work that way. (Even for the Quebequois.) All accents/dialects retain different characteristics of the original that become archaic in other versions. Ones that are cut off may retain different ones than a majority of the other versions and therefore sound more unusual, but they usually aren't any less different from the source. The only thing that would cause differences in the rates of change of different accents/languages is vastly different rates of literacy: universal literacy seems to slow language changes (e.g.: Iceland).

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
According to the screenwriters, even they really didn't/don't know which parts Verbal made up and which parts were actual events. ...I guess they're probably full of it and are just trying to add to the mystery, but it's more fun not knowing.

That's exactly what's brilliant about it -- the fact that they created the mystery of "no one really knows" by telling a good story, not simply by adding so many twists that ANY conclusion could be "disproven". As an example of the latter, see Basic Instinct. (I mean "see" in the citation sense, not as a recommendation for the movie.) The plot was so ridiculously twisted around that any conclusion you reached about the identity of the killer was easily refuted. Even the writer didn't know.....but that wasn't a good thing.

The other brilliant aspect of The Usual Suspects was that they didn't resolve it for you, didn't provide all the answers and thereby ruin the mystery. As a contrary example, see House of Games (that one is a recommendation.... BUT STOP READING if you haven't seen it yet). You get to just after the scene where she's given Joe Mantegna $80k or so, she's back at her office... and you have the suspicion, maybe the strong suspicion, that this was all a scam, but you don't really know. And then, through a series of bullshit, not credible coincidences, you find out that those suspicions are correct, ruining the really satisfying, suspensful feeling that you'd had for a few minutes.

[tax_hottie]

Originally posted by tmdiva

And, on a completely other note, I just got back from lunch with Tax_Hottie. She's definitely very cute. What did we talk about? Why, all of you, of course.

tm

Flattery will get you everywhere. Mwah. By the way, Magnus tagged along and what a cutiepie he is. I really think he liked it when we flashed the waiter!

[Sidd Finch]

[i]
(also, Kendra (can't remember actress's name) from second season of Buffy, Jamacian-Irish, I think).

Kendra was like a cross between Alistair Cooke and the lady who advertises for fortune-telling services on late night TV.

Sidd(but she did have a great rack)Finch

[str8outavannuys]

The worst film accent ever is the hack job that Karl Hungus did in "Logjammin'."

str8