Quickie Review: Atlantic Crossing

[Kevin M.]

Masterpiece Theater presents: Subtitles... And More Foreign Languages Than You Can Shake A Stick At --

Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Tom Wolper]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 12:30 AM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

Masterpiece Theater presents: Subtitles... And More Foreign Languages Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I prefer that a million times to actors speaking English with different accents and pretending that it's different languages.

[Kevin M.]

I think it was the late Richard Jeni who once suggested that we “... find out why all the ancient Romans speak with British accents...”

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Tom Wolper]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 11:37 AM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 8:32 AM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:

I prefer that a million times to actors speaking English with different accents and pretending that it's different languages.

I think it was the late Richard Jeni who once suggested that we “... find out why all the ancient Romans speak with British accents...”

I would certainly give a pass for ancient languages. I'm thinking more like WWII adventure movies where the hero is an American dropped behind enemy lines to help the French Resistance and conveniently the French and Germans speak only English even if it's among themselves. Or Westerns where they go to Mexico and the Mexican all speak English except for words like vamos or adios.

[Kevin M.]

There was a Russian produced TV series shot in Los Angeles in the 1990s co-starring Gary Busey. The name of the series translates rather unoriginally to “Russians in Los Angeles". There’s also a movie whose name translates to “Russian Daughter.” Both featured a mix of English and Russian, and both were great at helping me learn the language when I was in the Peace Corps. However, when at home on the couch after a long day of work, I’m not always in the mood for a language lesson... or to read subtitles. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Adam Bowie]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 4:37 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think it was the late Richard Jeni who once suggested that we “... find out why all the ancient Romans speak with British accents...”

I'm not sure what you're implying :-)

There's a German language Netflix series called Barbarians that has an interesting take on what the Romans speak. The series is about the Germanic tribes battling the Roman invaders. The tribes speak German, while the Romans speak, well, Latin! 

My other favourite way of doing things was in Armando ('Veep') Iannuccci's The Death of Stalin. It's set in Russia and everyone speaks English. But they do so in a  white variety of accents, including Stalin himself, who being from Georgia, gets a regional British accent. But Steve Buscemi doesn't hide his New York accent, and Jason Isaacs uses a thick Yorkshire accent to play General Zhukov which somehow just works.

[Dave Sikula]

I'm the exact opposite -- if only because it leads to one of the things that bugs me the most in movies like that: where all the characters speak English, but all written material is in the foreign language, giving us characters who can speak only English, but read only (Russian, German, Latin, Spanish. etc.).

In Kevin's example of Richard Jeni's line, the only time I've seen that done effectively was 1981's "Masada," where the effete Romans were played by Brits and the rougher Jewish rebels were played by Americans. Nowadays, we'd have everyone played by Brits, with half of them doing crappy American accents. (And speaking of that, I'd like to know what part of the world Kate Winslet's character comes from in that new HBO horror; it's sure not anywhere in the U.S.)

--Dave Sikula

[Bob Jersey]

I'm from that state, in fact from a town a few letters different from the one in the title (even though there is an actual place by that name closer to Philly, which does NOT have the amount of hills you'll find around here) and I'm more jealous that (A) somebody still cares about making movies here, or at least set here, and (B) the first voice you hear in its trailer is half of those "@$$holes" calling the IronPigs on radio back in 2014 (link to GG web archive) (the other half is in San Diego sports radio, and got to enjoy his local university men go deep into March Madness® this year)

B

Dave Sikula, in part, April 15th:

[Diner]

Funny you should mention "Masada"... just a couple nights ago, Antenna TV ran a Johnny Carson rerun from 1981 where Johnny wondered why all the Romans in "Masada" spoke with British accents. Some jokes never die, I guess...

[Karen Owen]

I'm watching this one on PBS Roku app because of the subtitles.

I can watch on my bedroom TV where I'm closer to the screen.

The regular English captioning is including what language the characters

are speaking so we've had Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and German.

I had to go to Wikipedia to figure out the characters and their languages.

King Haakon is speaking Danish, Prince Olav is speaking Norwegian

and Princess Martha is speaking Swedish.  Those are the countries

they are originally from.


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