My rant (not a very serious subject, but it really bugs me).

[Bouncy Ball]

Ok in movies where the character is supposed to be from the "south" could the film makers POSSIBLY invest a bit of time and research into how people ACTUALLY sound from that region of the south? Would that be, I don't know, too much to ask?

People from New Orleans do NOT sound like people from Georgia. People from New Orleans generally don't sound like people from Shreveport.

People from Georgia do NOT sound like people from Boston. It is a DROPPED SOFT r, not a rounded r, you crackhead producers or whoever is responsible.

AND most of the time nowdays you can only find the older generations still doing that dropped soft r thing in the south. The younger people are losing it. You have to really relax your mouth to get it right.

And someone from Texas does NOT sound like they are from Mobile, Alabama. Hell, someone from east Texas doesn't even sound the same as someone from Lubbock.

I mean, all that money in movie budgets and you can't get a freaking decent dialect coach who knows what they're doing?????

JFK, the Oliver Stone Film, has some of the WORST New Orleans dialects I have ever heard. Ever. It's like some weird hybrid of Mississippi and Brooklyn.

And if you are an actor and you are attempting a British dialect, either do it REALLY well, or don't do it at all. Half-ass sounds worse than anything. And don't mix up Northern England with the Queen's English with a little bit of Scottish dialect and everything else you ever learned thrown in.

Sorry. I'm a linguist. It bugs the shit out of me.

[johnnie]

1. Oh.... how I wish this was my "problem of the day"

Lol, I guess I understand the rant, but if I would have this as a concern of mine these days, I would be one happy man.
Don't take this as a dig on you, it just made me smile is all.

[Bouncy Ball]

2. I'm sorry.

:hug:

What's wrong?

[johnnie]

28. Oh, I'm OK..thank you :)

It's just one of those days. I have those here and there..lol.
Thank you for the hug :)

[expatriot]

7. I have a similar problem with portrayal of the midwest

on edit:

this should have been response to main thread.

i don't see too many movies but a lot of times they just get really lazy in their portrayal of things and go wholly on stereotypes. To them, midwest=farmland and country roads. I remember a long time ago, it has to be at least ten years now, perhaps more when "Dumb and Dumber" came out I watched it on video and I got so irrate that when they were goin west to Colorado they were supposedly in either Iowa or Nebraska (landscape looked like Nebraska) and Interstate 80 was a TWO lane road with some old farmer driving a tractor and no other traffic. I know it was just a stupid comedy but still.

[Bouncy Ball]

10. How do you feel about "Fargo?"

I went around saying "oh, yeah, you betcha" for days.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. You know what always bugged me? The Noo-Yawk accents in Flashdance.

The film takes place and was filmed in Pittsburgh. No one talks like that in Western PA.

[Bouncy Ball]

4. See, another good example!

Although (blush) I'm not as familiar with PA, so I wouldn't have caught that one.

They are just LAZY about that!

[Beware the Beast Man]

9. Pittsburghese is a dialect all its own.

[Bouncy Ball]

11. I worked with a woman from Philadelphia.

Does that city have a distinct dialect? I could hear it in her but then it's pretty easy to hear the difference in her way of speaking here (in Texas).

[Beware the Beast Man]

15. Philly- I'm not so sure.

Most of the people I have known from the area had nondescript accents. A few sounded a bit like New Yorkers. You'd definitely know a Pittsburgher if you should hear one with a heavy accent. Fred Rogers is about the only Pittsburgh celebrity I could use as a comparison.

[RebelOne]

33. Definitely a different accent from the rest of the state

I was born in Philadelphia. My parents moved to Miami, FL when I was 4 years old. And to this day, I still sound like I just moved from Philadelphia. That is an accent you can never get rid of.

[Richardo]

37. That is so true.

I have not lived there since I was 4 years old, but when I'm around Pittsburghers I almost instantly pick up the pronunciations 'n'at.

[Phentex]

5. I guess they can't find actors from the south...

:eyes:

It bugs me too.

[Trigger Hippie]

6. Thank you!

This is a big pet peeve of mine too. Especially when they try to do Cajun accents (I'm from southwest Louisiana). Those accents don't sound Texan or Georgian either.

:grr:

[Bouncy Ball]

8. Nope, those are VERY distinct.

And if you mess that dialect up, it's pretty obvious.

[Shell Beau]

12. I have to agree with you 100%! It bugs the shit

out of me too!

[YankeyMCC]

13. Two words -

Cliff Clavin

Now, we here in Boston, really have something to complain about! ;)

[Kathy in Cambridge]

27. That was THE WORST Boston accent ever

if you can't do a Boston accent, don't even try. Plus there's many variations of the Massachusetts accent, and you have to be a native to understand the nuances. :-)

[Gormy Cuss]

54. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon got it right in Good Will Hunting

Oh, WAIT!
Never mind.
:silly:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

58. My sisters went to high school with Matt Damon

yeah, they got it right all right. ;-)

[ksilvas]

14. One of the worst New Orleans accents ever...

Was Dennis Quiad in "The Big Easy". It was like Cajun Brooklyn and totally forced.
My mom's from Naw'lens and I've spent a fare amount of time there with cousins
and the like and it's a tricky accent to aquire. The volume modulation alone is
a killer.

[XemaSab]

16. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

bird songs in the movies are a crime.

The end of LOTR, they've done a fantastic job with CG, everything has just been a real pleasure so far.... then the eagles come giving red-tailed hawk calls, and I was like "you have got to be kidding me."

Spiderman, real good film, Tobey is yummy, the plot is aight, the special effects are good, but Peter Parker is in his room in queens and there's a california quail calling outside.

Don't even get me started on "Charlie's Angels..." Man, oh man...

On edit: It's about lazy, lazy filmmaking. No attention to detail.

[Bouncy Ball]

21. Wow, I would NEVER notice that!

:rofl:

Now I'm going to listen to bird songs in movies more, not that I'll know if they're right for the area or not!

[jedicord]

17. People from Texas do NOT talk like Bush...

oh yeah, forgot, he's not really from Texas.

[BikeWriter]

41. Thank you. :-)

[redqueen]

18. Wild...

I probably wouldn't even notice most of that... but I get how it would bug the crap out of you, though, being a linguist.

[Bouncy Ball]

20. Not a linguist by trade, but I studied it in college

enough that I was one class away from it being my major (my major was English).

I almost wish I didn't notice things like that, you know? Like that poor guy a couple posts above this who notices wrong bird songs and calls? I would NEVER notice that in a million years.

But once I hear it (bad/incorrect dialect), I CRINGE everytime they speak for the rest of the movie.

Steel Magnolias has some bad examples, too. Some of those actors ARE from the south, so they sound pretty natural. But the ones who aren't? Ooooooh God my aching ears.

NO ONE in the state of Louisiana (who is native) sounds like Julia Robert's character in that movie.

[XemaSab]

32. I'm not a guy

:-)

[Bouncy Ball]

40. Sorry!

[XemaSab]

42. It's all good

:hi:

[Misunderestimator]

19. Keanu Reeves in "Much Ado About Nothing"

talk about a BAAAAAD English accent!! :rofl: Ruined the entire film... that and Michael Keaton's unintelligible muttering and grunting.

[Bouncy Ball]

22. What do you think about Gwyneth Paltrow's British accent?

[Misunderestimator]

23. It's one of those generic ones that doesn't really offend me but isn't

authentic. I have met some British people who speak similarly, with a lot of American influence. I think she does ok actually.

[Bouncy Ball]

26. It's probably getting halfway-authentic by now.

What with her living in London most of the year and married to that guy from Coldplay.

[Shakespeare]

29. I saw that with a room full of Shakespeare students & profs....

...and when he utters Don John's line that he is "not a man of many words," the catcalling and "thank god!"s drowned out dialog for a few minutes afterward (y'all never knew Shakespeareans could be such a rowdy group, didja...)

Keaton's portrayal of Dogberry was atrocious. Aside from Keaton and Reeves, though, I thought Branagh did a fantastic job with the play (one of my favorites).

And, Bouncy--add me to the list of cranky southerners who wonder why the film industry can't be bothered to get their southern accents right. Drives me nuts.

on edit: one of the BEST southern accents I've ever heard on film was Emily Lloyd's (she's a Brit) dead-on Arkansas twang in the movie In Country.

[EC]

24. Did Kevin Spacey have it right in "Midnight in the Garden of

Good and Evil"?

[Bouncy Ball]

25. I don't recall.

I saw the film, but he must have done a decent job because it doesn't stand out for me. But it's been years.

[AngryAmish]

30. Ever hear a good Wisconsin accent in the movies?

That should be close to your heart.

[Bouncy Ball]

31. Umm.....

I don't know.

Why should it be close to my heart?

I'm not from Wisconsin, never been there. I hear it's nice, though.

[Spider Jerusalem]

34. Laziness, really.

I mean, if you're an actor, HOW HARD is it to work with a voice and dialect coach? Or to do a little study in the area of linguistics and dialect, learning about the mechanical differences in tongue placement, aspiration, glottalisation, alveolarisation, palatisation, and all the other tiny and technical details that go into creating an accent?

I sound NOTHING like a Southerner, but I can "do" about three different varieties of Southern accent pretty convincingly (according to others), and British Received Pronunciation well enough to fool Americans, thanks to the fact that I've done a little acting and studied linguistics and dialect in some detail. If I can do it, then poeple who are GETTING PAID FOR IT should be able to, too.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

35. Bad Boston accents make me cringe

Hardly any of us sound like the Kennedys. They have their own family accent.

[grace0418]

36. Movie producers think all Chicagoans sound like Mike Ditka.

I sound nothing like that dumbass Republican.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

44. Actually Ditka grew up in the Pittsburgh area I think.

So that would affect his speech pattern.

Ditka should stick to what he knows: football and leave out the politics. He's another classic case of someone who forgot where he came from.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

38. "Quiz Show": Fake Boston Accent by the actor from "Northern Exposure"

who played Dr. Fleischman (Rob Morrow). Sounded like some lame concept of JFK, really, really terrible. He was playing the attorney investigating the quiz show cheating scandal.

It ruined for me what was basically a pretty good movie otherwise, with the great John Turturro.

[tjdee]

46. Maybe the guy sounded like that, is what I thought. Surely there are tapes

of him, right?

I just figured he listened to the tapes in his research for the role, and imitated that guy.

You know somewhere there *is* a Boston guy who sounds like that, LOL.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

55. No, sounded like a New Yorker faking a Boston accent. And entirely

unnecessary to the plot for him to be a Bostonian.

Plot would have worked fine if the lawyer was some New York guy, and the movie wouldn't have had the distraction of an awful fake accent all the way through it.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

39. And people from Appalachia do not sound like people from Atlanta

You listen to their sentence...wait one minute..and THEN you suddenly get what they just said :D

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. Quite true

I didn't realize this until I had both a Mississipian and a North Carolinian in my circle of friends and acquaintances at the same time.

And the variety of accents in the British Isles--there are several people from that part of the world attending my church, and each one has a different accent.

But then, I'm a linguist by training, too, so I notice things like that and have been imitating accents since I was in grade school.

[Blue Gardener]

45. And people from the Midwest

Do NOT have southern accents, as is often portrayed in the movies. I guess if you're a farmer, no matter where you live, you're supposed to talk with a southern accent.
And, as a side note, if the movie or tv show is set in the Midwest, the trees and shrubs are NOT green in the winter. For crying out loud, they could at least make an effort and not make every place look like southern California.

[Bouncy Ball]

51. No shit, that bugs me too.

A farmer in Nebraska is NOT going to sound like he's from Kentucky, you fucked up movie making people!

[grace0418]

56. I went to school in Champaign, Illinois and the farmers

that lived around there DID all have "southern" accents. Strong ones. My roommate one summer was from Carmi, Illinois and I could barely understand her mother. The first time I talked to her she asked me "Y'uns fixin' to set awahll?" and I had no idea what she was saying to me. Nice lady though, she'd bring us cheese and bread so we didn't starve to death.

[gmoney]

47. Well, you can't judge a movie by Costner's accent...

He's legendary for his inability to approach a consistent accent.

[MrSandman]

48. Try copying the Morse Code....

It seldom copies out as what is decoded.

[Rabrrrrrr]

49. Oh,man, no shit! It's never accurate - just a bunch of random dots and

dashes.

Except in Star Trek V, when Scotty was morse coding "stand back".

[skygazer]

50. Improper accents bug me, too

The TV show "Newhart" used to bug the crap out of me. It was supposed to be set in Vermont and the resident morans, Larry, Darryl and Darryl were supposed to be the "typical" Vermont idiots but their accents were so far from Vermont as to be absurd - possibly Appalachian? Not sure, but NOT Vermont!

[bridgit]

52. well, let me know if you agree here...

but they maybe could've gone to the likes of: Michael Jeter, for southern dialect coaching while they had the chance, i liked Michael, he always seemed like a real person to me ~ http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/detail/celeb/189745

[Bossy Monkey]

53. Remember American Gothic?

It was set here, though in a rural, and hopefully fictitious, part of the state. If there would be anybody who would speak in a straight SC accent it would be the kid. Instead, he did some random Southern accent, like they'd hired Budget Dialect Coaches Inc. It also had no relation with how his family talked. Nice verisimilitude.

[uppityperson]

57. Kevin Costner can NOT do a good accent.

JFK, Robin Hood. I could barely watch Robin Hood because of his stuuuuuupid accent. Friend I went with kept whispering "shut up shut up" when I would mutter rant at the screen "shut up shut up".