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A fine Marvel comic book movie, it works pretty much from beginning to end. It’s better than I expected from the trailers.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays an arrogant New York neurosurgeon (rather like William Hurt in The Doctor) who loses control of his hands in a Lamborghini crash. When no doctor can repair them, he ventures to a monastery in Katmandu to see if the Mystical Wisdom of the East can help him. Tilda Swinton plays the Celtic head sorceress and Chiwetel Ejiofor is her right hand man. Mads Mikkelsen is the Nordic bad guy.
Doctor Strange draws a fair amount visually from Inception, especially the city block-folding, along with Harry Potter movies and Matthew McConhaughey driving a Lincoln commercials.
Most big budget blockbusters these days are either about eugenics or death. This one is about death. The dialogue is better than you’d imagine.
Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity is that Cumberbatch attempts an American accent. He sounds reasonably authentic but it straitjackets him compared to what he could do with his classically trained English accent. In contrast, Swinton and Ejiofor use their standard English stage actor accents to good effect. This kind of higher hoo-ha works better with an English accent.
English and Australian actors have become much better at imitating American accents since Cary Grant’s day. The old movies never tried to explain Grant’s accent.
By Anthony Hopkins’ time as an American movie star, there was often some sort of vague explanation about how his American-born character had been a Rhodes Scholar or something and picked up the accent at Oxford. Personally, I think that’s fine, except when trying to do biopics like Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon.
The introduction of videotapes enabled young men in Manchester and Perth to practice sounding just like their American movie star favorites.
Thus in Mel Gibson’s new movie Hacksaw Ridge, all the English and Australian actors are quite competent at playing American GIs. On the other hand, the only featured American, Vince Vaughn, stands out. He seems to be having more fun with the dialogue than the non-American actors. (On the other hand, Vince Vaughn has long been on the ambiguous edge of being a a leading man movie star. Having him drop down to a supporting role like in Hacksaw Ridge does a lot for a movie.)
I suspect Cumberbatch would have had more fun playing Doctor Strange speaking the Queen’s English. Give Doctor Strange a backstory like the Anglo-American Nolan Brothers, whom the movie borrows from: English father, American mother, and an upbringing back and forth between London and Chicago, so Christopher has an English accent and Jonathan has an American accent.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
I don’t know what it is in Cary Grant’s accent that reminds of Groucho Marx’s manner of speech. Or perhaps vice-versa.
Since Hollywood drew on many vaudeville and burlesque performers, early movie comedies bear the stamp of those popular theatrical genres. Groucho's take was Yiddishy. Grant's was more upscaley.
It’s actually unsurprising you hear that. Both came up as vaudeville comedic actors (Grant in England, Groucho in America).
What is more, neither began as comedy acts: Grant was the young handsome face straight roles, while the Marx Brothers were originally a straight singing routine. But Grant found he had a knack for getting laughs despite his suave appearance (comedy were usually for the ugly guys) which got him more gigs, while Groucho’s humor came from him desperation to save him and his brother’s from getting booed off stage. Furthermore, both Grant and Groucho’s early comedy was largely physical, the verbal being a setup to a great pratfall, which used a different patter than more verbal, so-called “cerebral” comedians.
Here’s a famous Grant physical comedy routine from Bringing Up Baby, where he’s trying to cover up Hepburn’s ripped dress (begins at 1:12 mark):
So, in essence, both Grant and Groucho were accidental vaudeville physical comedians using the established patter of their times to get more work, and who were both masters at it. It’s just surprising because one looked like Cary Grant and the other like Groucho Marx.
Gunga Din shows off Cary Grant’s physical comedy mastery.
Gunga Din shows off Cary Grant’s mastery of physical comedy.
Actress Louise Brooks’ memoirs make the point that the shift to sound in 1927 meant that a lot of stars who had been hired to be physical comedians suddenly had to shift to verbal comedy. Some got lost, such as Buster Keaton. But a few geniuses made the transition, but we don’t realize how good they had been as vaudeville comedians.
Brooks’ prime example is W.C. Fields, whose movies suffered from being shot in standard close-up, but are still quite funny. But Fields had spent decades in vaudeville perfecting a sound and vision act that would have been amazing in full frame, but that kind of cinematography was out of fashion by the time Fields became a major movie star in the late 1930s. But the Bank Dick and the like are still pretty funny.
Chiwo Ojowo a Celt!!! He couldn’t even pass as Welsh. Only in Hollyweird.
Special effects in 3D were pretty good for those into that sort of thing. I wondered why a person would have to move all the way to Katmandu in order to meet up with a white and a black, the wisest people in the country. The Nepalese are just there in their own country as local color and as a backdrop to the foreigners. Lefty Marvel is quite insensitive to that. But hey, it’s just a comic book.
There are probably as many comic characters as there are gods in the Hindu pantheon, so are the sausage factories going to churn these out movies until the end of time ? Can’t they try make at least one good Western a year, are people never going to tire of all these ?
Supposedly the reason why Swinton is playing the Ancient One is because the Chinese censorship board would likely have banned a film showing an obvious Tibetan buddhist monk with awesome powers.
Even more interesting is the casting in the Ghost in the Shell live action adaptation. Initially the controversy was just Scarlett Johansson, but future Toyko has some very jarring demographics as a whole. But hey, the faceless mooks who get gunned down are all still Japanese. Not even the monks are Asian. She still can’t act and they haven’t got somebody with a less annoying voice to ADR her lines.
Also, what's Scarlett Johansson doing to her career? I'm not watching that crap.
He would have been a full-fledged one had our ruling caste seen fit to allow men to lead.
Perhaps we’ll now see men who can take the lead whether they’re allowed or not.
Can anyone elaborate for me the how, why, and when of Mel Gibson’s transformation that, as he aged from young and sexy to middle-aged and stalwart, somewhere along the way the exotic Australian turned into an American?
Maybe if the establishment wants deplorable voters to believe in their narrative, they should stop making movies where the hero’s guru tells him “forget everything you think you know.” I mean look at the damage The Matrix has done them through the red pill meme.
Or maybe this kind of fantasy actually works as an escapist safety valve for some deplorables to live out their social/political intuitions vicariously.
Dr. Strange is great in 3-D because the spells can produce any effect that would look cool. It’s also just a good world to make a movie in because the spells can work as narrative devices — if you want to give someone a soliloquy when they die, you can project to the astral plane and play out the scene in slow motion, if you want a flashback you can reverse time.
They didn’t just deny him the use of an english accent, they implied in the film that part of it takes place in London but did nothing with that.
In any case it looked like Cumberbatch prepared for the role by binge-watching Hugh Laurie as House.
I agree with you and Steve that when the film gets to the mystical mumbo-jumbo, an Oxford accent would have been preferable. But on reflection it also would have been routine. Part of the charm in a story like this is to have all the ageless, Old-World mysticism coalesce around a plucky, can-do American. I think Mark Twain invented the genre in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
From what I’ve seen in the commercials his accent sounds unbearable even there.
It’s weird that we can do English accents but they can’t do American accents.
However in recent years the number of Americans doing credible English accents seems to have risen. Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, James Cromwell, Rene Zellweger (very close), Johnny Depp (sort of). Gillian Anderson (spent part of her childhood in England though, so thats cheating).Replies: @blank-misgivings
Sailer strategy mentioned at: http://observer.com/2016/11/americas-emerging-nationalism-crisis/
That Oxford accent that must be feigned by all actors in any movie that is set in the ancient world is one of my least favorite Hollywood conventions.
Rexy Boy on Hacksaw Ridge.
http://observer.com/2016/11/mel-gibsons-hacksaw-ridge-is-the-best-war-film-since-saving-private-ryan/
Better than Heartbreak Ridge?
Hacksaw seems to focus on the eccentric in war.
John Woo’s Windbreakers did too. About some Indian with language skills.
Was stunned by its Christographic themes and symbolism. Would not have expected such healthy fare to sneak past the studio censors.
Ideological clincher: when the villain says “you’re on the wrong side of History.”
I never thought Grant sounded particularly British (even though he was). His mid-Atlantic accent blended in pretty well with the similar accents of many American actors in that period.
In the Nixon clip , Anthony Hopkins sounds like a Welsh shepherd talking to his sheep.
As for Cumberbatch, I really couldn't stand him as Sherlock Holmes (too theatrical in a bad way), but I might just watch this film. Not really sure he speaks a proper Received Pronounciation English ( the modern way of saying Queen's English). He does sound very upper middle class and London though.
Benedict Cabbagepatch is repellent in every way.
He started out as an American.
Vince Vaughan suffers from being both older and fatter than the mostly gay and female casting directors prefer; and also conservative. There is no question that his politics have severely hurt his career.
But he’s also been hurt by the two kinds of movies Hollywood makes. The first is the SJW Agenda movie, which form the vast bulk of the movies: the new Star Wars female lead movies, Ghostbusters Unfunny Fat Female Edition, and stuff like Emma Stone in “the Help” where the whole point of the movie is the hot young White chick publishing gossip about the older not so hot anymore White women and getting applauded by Black people in a church.
The second kind of movie that Hollywood makes are Comic Book Movies and Kids Animated movies that pull in amazing amounts of money; primarily through (around 65-80% I’d say) merchandising. Think of them as 2 hour commercials for “stuff” — games, bedsheets, lunchboxes, etc. Marvel does very well on this, but Frozen has generated $1 billion in revenue two years AFTER its release. Everywhere I look in the grocery store there is some Frozen tie in.
The Marvel movies are mostly though not totally absent the PC stuff with evil White Dudes and glorious people of color with the one good White dude as their leader fighting evil White Dudes and “All Whites save a chosen few are evil” message. The animated kids movies are almost totally absent that save a few Disney “Diversity” movies that FLOP. White and Asian parents won’t shell out money (and their kids won’t demand it) for merchandise around some Black girl, no matter how well the songs are crafted.
Vaughan is an amazing actor but doesn’t fit into the Marvel/DC Comic Book extravaganza, he doesn’t spend every waking moment in the gym and has the wrong politics, and is not a kid-friendly voice for silly kids movies.
I’d like to see him in TV, something on Amazon, he’s got a great presence that is both funny and menacing.
He can also seem sensitive without loss of presence. He was terrific in The Locusts, as was Kate Capshaw.
FDR
Agreed. William Powell, a Midwesterner who learned acting in New York, comes to mind.
I’ve always said the problem with Brits doing American accents (and visa versa) is the same as with plastic surgery. Plastic surgery doesn’t actually make you look younger; it makes you look like someone who has had really good plastic surgery. Likewise, with regard to the accents, I find myself saying, “That’s a heck of a job doing that accent! (Rather than just believing it’s actually Richard Nixon or whoever I’m looking at on the screen).
Comic book movies………….. The great cultural product of early 21st century America.
Philosophy, ethics, statecraft, metaphysics………….all by and for 12 year olds.
Truly, we live in an age of crap.
Dr. Strange was pretty outstanding, actually, and the dialogue was unexpectedly good.Replies: @Truth
I have a gut feeling that in exactly 12 hours you will be right again.
It may interest you to know that the creator of Dr. Strange, Steve Ditko, is a man of the right. Several of his other creations expound the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand (one of the villains he created was called, in classic Randian parlance, The Looter).
Ditko is also the co-creator of the Spider-Man strip, where he featured “reactionary” themes like support for the social order, family loyalty, self-sacrifice, the dignity of work, and an impatience with student “protests” and the hippie ethos. Ironically, his flights of imagination in the Dr. Strange strip became a favorite of the psychedelic drug culture.
The motivation for Ditko’s departure from Marvel in the late 1960s is famously mysterious, but it coincided with editor Stan Lee’s embrace of the counter culture. Ditko is alive and active as a cartoonist, with an office in New York City; but he’s an utter recluse who appears to live by a rigid personal code of refusing to “cash in” on his earlier creations. It’s likely that he has not received a dime out of the film version of Dr. Strange. I was glad to see that he did received a screen credit for having created the character.
Resident Evil is more fun.
Most anime is fantasy of Japanese as whites.
Bubblegum Crisis is filled with Irish.
Meet Miss Madigan.
Perhaps we'll now see men who can take the lead whether they're allowed or not.Replies: @Hapalong Cassidy
Tall actors like Vaughan are almost never leading men. Leading men seem to fall in between 5’6″ and 5’11” – which is roughly the range between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. In fact, it seems like a lot of the exceedingly tall actors, like Vaughan and Will Ferrell, get shunted off into comedy.
It's not all who-whom, but it's not nothing.
James Stewart: 6ft 3in (191 cm)
John Wayne: 6ft 3.75in (192 cm)
Gregory Peck: 6ft 2.75in (190 cm)
Rock Hudson: 6ft 5in (196 cm)
Charlton Heston: 6ft 2.5in (189 cm)
Gary Cooper: 6'2
MAGA! No Mas! Basta!
No more:
– Crappy Hollywood movies
– Crappy software (and iterations, and updates)
– Crappy armaments
– Crappy financial products
– Crappy ‘improved drugs’
Unfortunately, these are what America mainly consumes and exports nowadays.
We Are Doomed.
In any case it looked like Cumberbatch prepared for the role by binge-watching Hugh Laurie as House.Replies: @ChrisZ, @European-American
Very perceptive observation, Bicycle, about the American accents of Dr. Strange and Dr. House.
I agree with you and Steve that when the film gets to the mystical mumbo-jumbo, an Oxford accent would have been preferable. But on reflection it also would have been routine. Part of the charm in a story like this is to have all the ageless, Old-World mysticism coalesce around a plucky, can-do American. I think Mark Twain invented the genre in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
That is one of my favorite bits about those cheesy old sock and sandal movies. For some reason, in Rome the aristocrats and legionary officers all have Oxford accents, and the street rabble and foot soldiers have Cockney accents. Also, it is easy to tell who the villain is, it’s the guy with the pointy beard.
It's weird that we can do English accents but they can't do American accents.Replies: @Wilkey, @Lurker, @Lurker
From what I’ve seen in the commercials his accent sounds unbearable even there. It’s weird that we can do English accents but they can’t do American accents.
I’m sure Englishmen used to hearing atrocious American attempts at English accents would disagree.
We went to see “Dr. Strange” opening night. I usually find Marvel/Avengers movies just tolerable, at best, but “Dr. Strange” was actually really good. I think perhaps it’s because he’s the most Batman-like of the Marvel characters I’ve seen, who are usually pretty shallow.
It's weird that we can do English accents but they can't do American accents.Replies: @Wilkey, @Lurker, @Lurker
I wasn’t sure what his accent was supposed to be, I assumed he was meant to be British but long resident in the US, to explain the accent.
It's weird that we can do English accents but they can't do American accents.Replies: @Wilkey, @Lurker, @Lurker
We could say the same about you guys. 😉
However in recent years the number of Americans doing credible English accents seems to have risen. Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, James Cromwell, Rene Zellweger (very close), Johnny Depp (sort of). Gillian Anderson (spent part of her childhood in England though, so thats cheating).
A nod in the direction of “The Black Narcissus”, an hilarious Deborah Kerr movie?
Or maybe this kind of fantasy actually works as an escapist safety valve for some deplorables to live out their social/political intuitions vicariously.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Spot on. Those escapist deplorables imagined they could vote Trump into office.
Too bad for them there is no “meme magic.” President Elect Hillary is going to accomplish amazing things.
Grant’s accent was sui generis, a unique blend of Bristol, RP, New York, and General American. I’m not quite sure how someone could go about explaining why (say) Grant’s Newspaper editor character in His Girl Friday talks so oddly.
I’m glad that we didn’t have to hear Cumberbatch’s RP drone. That kind of accent gets boring quite quickly.
Actually, Ejiofar isn’t speaking with with an “English stage actor” accent. His Mordo has a vaguely foreign (Nigerian? Generically Anglo-African?) inflection.
Swinton’s the “Celtic” character in the film.We don’t hear anything about the background of Ejiofar’s Mordo.
Put Grant in a scene with Jimmy Cagney and Katharine Hepburn, and he’s not going to sound out of place.
Born in NY state, family moved to Australia in late 60’s when he was around ten or 12 till Mad max 2 that’s 12-15 years of his 60 on earth or 1/5 or so. If he cant be credibly american, it would be astounding
As for the film, caught it last weekend. I rather enjoyed it. The visual effects are striking, and the performances are solid (I particularly enjoyed Rachel McAdams and Mads Mikkelsen). As someone who devoured reprints of the classic Lee-Ditko Dr Strange comics in my youth, I have a few quibbles here and there, but they are all of the fannish variety (Sling-rings?Those aren’t in the comics!)
He lived in New York State until he was 12. His father moved the family to Australia at that point. Mel had to learn an Australian accent and it it did not come immediately.
My friend had this succinct review:
“It’s Iron Man with wizard robes”.
I liked the first Iron man, so that’s not bad.
The film’s doing excellent business:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4241&p=.htm
Shit movie.
Two hours of phony pseudo-zen, and prosaic drivel about astral planes and other dimensions. Seemed like it was written by 19 year old comic book nerds.
I don’t know, you can always hear the decidedly lower class English accent in Cary Grant, mixed with the American accent.
In the Nixon clip , Anthony Hopkins sounds like a Welsh shepherd talking to his sheep.
As for Cumberbatch, I really couldn’t stand him as Sherlock Holmes (too theatrical in a bad way), but I might just watch this film. Not really sure he speaks a proper Received Pronounciation English ( the modern way of saying Queen’s English). He does sound very upper middle class and London though.
The theme of the movie is pretty much textbook tantric Hinduism.
The Sanskrit language manuals,
the yantras/mandalas,
the chakra diagrams,
the Hindu holy men hanging around outside the Kamartaj building…
Odd that so few people in the West have mentioned it.
Anny one with an American accent was the hero, usually played by an American.
Bald-headed white woman as a Tibetan…
How more pomo can you get?
LOL
One thing about British accents, they’re all over the place. I doubt many British actors can jump between them all convincingly. Americans all seem to default to bad cockney, or a received accent.
I’m with James, Grant never sounded that British to me. Just odd. Like many Americans in older films.
If you want hilarious, check out the black “British” guy from The Walking Dead butchering a Southern accent. Or Michael Douglas butchering a Southern accent in The Ghost and the Darkness. Or any Hollywood actor not from the South attempting a Southern accent, really. It’s not like they’re about to immerse, or hire Southern coaches.
British actors would probably do well to do their Southern accents by way of Ulster.
A lot of the difficulty Americans have in mimicking a received British accent is that when they hit a word they’re not sure of, they break to Cockney, when they should break to American.
Well, when Mel Gibson first appeared in movies (Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Mad Max, Tim) it was as an Australian actor.
From Danilof’s link:
A good piece, miles ahead of the drivel most outlets publish, but Schindler seems to be undermining his own point here. First he implies that Nationalism as a political force in multiethnic societies is optional, then he quotes Yew to the contrary.
And he’s underestimating Nationalism, if he thinks it’s finished off as a political force in Germany.
But again, a tour-de-force, compared to the usual swill.
Steve, here is where your Anglophilia clashes with your citizenism.
I object, as a matter of principle, to the idea of non-Americans’ taking jobs away from Americans. I don’t want to see Englishmen taking away our acting jobs; I don’t want to see Indians or Chinese taking away our tech jobs; hell, I don’t even want to see Mexicans taking away our janitorial jobs.
(I believe those menial toilet-scrubbing jobs should be done by robots, even though automation is at least as big – and far more inevitable – a threat to the American worker as immivasion.)
Either you* are going to say that, in general and in principle, you oppose foreigners’ stealing American jobs, or you are going to say that it’s okay for whites (or even only English-speaking whites) but not for browns, blacks, yellows, and/or what-have-yous to steal them, or you are going to admit that your views are muddled and self-contradictory.
If you accept the outsourcing of acting, then you must also accept the outsourcing of, say, the white sliver of the NBA pie. I accept neither.
(The NBA is a lost cause, I guess, but it still galls me that most of the few whites playing on our teams aren’t even American.)
A non-American actor who plays an American is taking a job away from an American actor. An American actor who plays a non-American is taking a job away from a non-American actor. There is no getting around this fact. Only so many lucrative acting jobs are available.
Now, it would be ludicrous to make a blanket statement that non-Americans should never play Americans, or vice versa – there are exceptions to every rule. But when a sizable percentage of American movies set in America feature all- or nearly-all-non-American casts, then we have a real problem that needs to be addressed.
Yes, I know that the performing arts, from the high-school level on up, are a gay ghetto in this country. And, yes, Hollywood is a loony bin full of leftist kooks. (Somehow I doubt the foreign actors coming in are any less liberal than the native-born ones.) But that still doesn’t absolve American industries of their obligation to hire Americans.
Every single hiring of a non-American to do an American job should be questioned, and challenged, and contested. Americans might have to accept the fact that, sometimes, non-Americans will be hired over Americans, but they shouldn’t welcome and embrace it.
*I’m not talking about you in particular, Steve; I’m talking about anyone and everyone.
The issue is that MILLIONS of foreigners have been replacing American workers in fields that pay well, or used to pay well. Not as well as top actors and athletes, but well enough to be upper middle class, or in some cases even lower-upper class. Jobs like engineering, programming, nursing, the construction-related trades, various kinds of union work, etc. And of course millions more foreigners are doing menial labor jobs that never paid all that well, but would pay more if those jobs only went to Americans.
That does affect the prosperity of a large number of Americans.
So, no, it's not Anglophilia that causes us to not care that Cumberbatch is getting acting work in America using an American accent. It's a question of the total number of people taking American jobs, and the fields that they are taking the jobs in. Believe me, if millions of British came over and started competing with us for every job, our Anglophilia would end in an instant.
I find both Cumberbatch and Swinton personally loathsome and would even if I didn’t know they are leftists.
Since Bringing Up Baby has been mentioned, here’s my favorite clip from it. (Supposedly Grant’s character was based on John Ford, hence the glasses. )
In any case it looked like Cumberbatch prepared for the role by binge-watching Hugh Laurie as House.Replies: @ChrisZ, @European-American
I was also reminded of House, not unpleasantly. But Cumberbatch’s American accent is much more uneven than Laurie’s.
Never been a fan of Tilda Swinton, and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character and portrayal are a bit weak. But Rachel McAdams and Benedict Wong play well with Cumberbatch, and the special effects are very fun, in a story format that somehow allows fractals and other graphics to not look terrible and out of place.
So yeah, a pleasant surprise, though superhero films feel like a low bar, doing best when they mock themselves. My favorite is still Thor, which has good jokes and nice Shakespearean bits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXfgvcJ5T8EReplies: @European-American
Good movie. Was glad it was relatively short compared to other recent comic book movies. Cumberbatch was funny but I think he’s overrated in general, and weird looking. Mads Mikkelsen is always fun to watch. I was surprised and amused by his “Wrong side of history” line. “Mister doctor” was funny too.
Schindler has been tip-toeing around the alt-right for quite a while. He’s about given up on the Putin-Trump angle; I don’t think he and the rest of the surveillance state mouthpieces have figured out that no one really gives a shit, even if they are in bed together.
I wondered at first why they’d choose a C-list hero like Doctor Strange for the big-budget treatment (even Ant-Man is a higher-profile character), but after seeing the film with my wife last night, I think I finally understand — they’re trying to win over female viewers. The first time Benedict Cumberbatch appeared in his cape, the girls in the audience audibly gasped (in approval). I thought my wife might swoon.
“Ah,” I thought, “so that’s what this is all about.”
And in hindsight, it is a very, er, feminine movie, as superhero movies go. The dramatic arc is basically “arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male proves himself worthy of female approval by getting in touch with his feminine side (while still remaining an arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male).”
A list: Iron Man, Captain America
B list: Dr Strange
C list: Ant-ManReplies: @okie, @Mr. Blank
"Ah," I thought, "so that's what this is all about."
And in hindsight, it is a very, er, feminine movie, as superhero movies go. The dramatic arc is basically "arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male proves himself worthy of female approval by getting in touch with his feminine side (while still remaining an arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male)."Replies: @syonredux, @Truth
In the comics, Dr Strange is definitely higher-profile than Ant-Man.Using the ABC system and ranking according to pre-cinematic popularity levels:
A list: Iron Man, Captain America
B list: Dr Strange
C list: Ant-Man
the true A list is Spidey, the Fantastic 4 and X-men,
but those are all commissioned to other studios.
it boggles my mind that the only A list comic book hero they have is the Hulk and after two failed movies, he is just a Avengers bit player now.Marvel and Disney have made multiple billion dollar franchises of b-list heroes and even c and d list ones they are making incredibly popular like this one and Ant man?!?!?Replies: @syonredux, @map
OT: Here is probably the most eloquent of the prog left analyses of Donald Trump’s victory – it says you will need 9 minutes to read based on word count but I think most of us can get through it faster than that.
https://medium.com/@SnoozeInBrief/an-analysis-of-donald-trumps-election-win-and-the-prospects-for-his-presidency-f6a87eef6d70#.9p5bx4vm2
A female protagonist who’s been (not so secretly) using the dark side to maintain an overripe mastery, ostensibly all for good reasons who’s finally ready to/forced to (it’s ambiguous) let go so a talented, competent, but flawed (inevitably, as all heroes are) straight white male can take his crack at things?
Seems timely.
Yeah, but then he shifted to Hollywood and Yank parts, which meant recovering his boyhood accent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson
The cloak (a.k.a. mantle, i.e. of leadership) choosing him was a nice symbolic touch.
How more pomo can you get?
LOLReplies: @syonredux
Ejiofar’s Mordo character is Romanian in the comics….
https://medium.com/@SnoozeInBrief/an-analysis-of-donald-trumps-election-win-and-the-prospects-for-his-presidency-f6a87eef6d70#.9p5bx4vm2Replies: @Lugash
Wong’s Kublai Khan on Netflix Marco Polo is a must see.
Perhaps there are also some good Chinese/HK/Korean series on Genghis Khan, dunno...
There were a couple Russian movies on the topic too...
A list: Iron Man, Captain America
B list: Dr Strange
C list: Ant-ManReplies: @okie, @Mr. Blank
move those all down one letter grade
the true A list is Spidey, the Fantastic 4 and X-men,
but those are all commissioned to other studios.
it boggles my mind that the only A list comic book hero they have is the Hulk and after two failed movies, he is just a Avengers bit player now.
Marvel and Disney have made multiple billion dollar franchises of b-list heroes and even c and d list ones they are making incredibly popular like this one and Ant man?!?!?
Which is amazing since you would not expect Disney's corporate culture to allow these Marvel movies to be made.Replies: @Ozymandias
Which was my point.
It’s not all who-whom, but it’s not nothing.
In classic Hollywood, things were a tad different:
James Stewart: 6ft 3in (191 cm)
John Wayne: 6ft 3.75in (192 cm)
Gregory Peck: 6ft 2.75in (190 cm)
Rock Hudson: 6ft 5in (196 cm)
Charlton Heston: 6ft 2.5in (189 cm)
Gary Cooper: 6’2
I hereby propose a 10 years moratorium on butt-kicking babes in films. Enough, please!
Also, what’s Scarlett Johansson doing to her career? I’m not watching that crap.
OT but the NY Times has become my favorite paper since 11/8/16:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/us/politics/a-newly-vibrant-washington-fears-that-trump-will-drain-its-culture.html
(warning: not safe for work and not for the faint of heart)
https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/first-blog-post/#commentsReplies: @Steve Sailer
It’s interesting only as martial arts fare. In that sense, it has easily transcended the genre. But in every other sense, the martial arts fare has dragged it down into the mud. Really silly shit. It would be nice to have a show about the Mongols that 1) had this show’s production values 2) left out the horrible martial arts and Hollywood drek (butt-kicking babes, etc.) and 3) showed the Mongols for the pieces of shit that they were, instead of whitewashing them for western audiences. Tall order, I guess.
Hulk’s problem is that his entire appeal is spectacle. Smashing everything. That can only take a movie so far. And it’s really expensive. In a comic book, every panel has a roughly equal budget. Movies, not so much.
The burning horses sequence in Marco Polo was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen on a screen. On the plus side, the Mongol aesthetic is much easier on the eyes than the Chinese.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/us/politics/a-newly-vibrant-washington-fears-that-trump-will-drain-its-culture.htmlReplies: @BB753
Funny, in the linked article there’s a picture of Obama buying books at Politics & Prose.. That bookstore is connected to the infamous pizza joint which is the center of Pizzagate:
(warning: not safe for work and not for the faint of heart)
https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/first-blog-post/#comments
Tilda Swinton would be a great pick for the Hebridean noblewoman/sorceress (and lover of Leif Ericson) Thorgunna, if anyone ever made a film of the Leif Ericson/Eric The Red sagas – I’m amazed no one has yet. And it even has a murderous butt-kicking babe in Leif’s sister Freydis.
OT
BAD SIGN: Neocon Giuliani or Neocon Bolton for SecState? How do we stop this?
https://t.co/ekRm5DG7uf
John Oliver / Jon Stewart as mass conditioning
Please don’t quote Jefferson
http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_cbb2f84f-edc6-56b6-9fcc-059ee8123d28.html
College towns for Hillary
A list: Iron Man, Captain America
B list: Dr Strange
C list: Ant-ManReplies: @okie, @Mr. Blank
You’re probably right. It’s been decades since I followed comics, but I remember Ant-Man appearing seemingly all the time in supporting roles with bigger, more popular characters. Doctor Strange, not so much. That might be why I perceive Ant-Man having a higher profile — he just always seemed like the generic one-issue sidekick for characters who didn’t have a regular sidekick. The perennial “guest star,” in other words.
(warning: not safe for work and not for the faint of heart)
https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/first-blog-post/#commentsReplies: @Steve Sailer
I’ve bought books at Politics & Prose.
Well, I definitely think there's a grain of truth to this pedophile ring business, but how is this related to Epstein and the Lolita Express? There's some pretty damning circumstantial evidence linking the Podestas to the pizza joint Comet Ping Pong, but not to the Clintons.
But he's also been hurt by the two kinds of movies Hollywood makes. The first is the SJW Agenda movie, which form the vast bulk of the movies: the new Star Wars female lead movies, Ghostbusters Unfunny Fat Female Edition, and stuff like Emma Stone in "the Help" where the whole point of the movie is the hot young White chick publishing gossip about the older not so hot anymore White women and getting applauded by Black people in a church.
The second kind of movie that Hollywood makes are Comic Book Movies and Kids Animated movies that pull in amazing amounts of money; primarily through (around 65-80% I'd say) merchandising. Think of them as 2 hour commercials for "stuff" -- games, bedsheets, lunchboxes, etc. Marvel does very well on this, but Frozen has generated $1 billion in revenue two years AFTER its release. Everywhere I look in the grocery store there is some Frozen tie in.
The Marvel movies are mostly though not totally absent the PC stuff with evil White Dudes and glorious people of color with the one good White dude as their leader fighting evil White Dudes and "All Whites save a chosen few are evil" message. The animated kids movies are almost totally absent that save a few Disney "Diversity" movies that FLOP. White and Asian parents won't shell out money (and their kids won't demand it) for merchandise around some Black girl, no matter how well the songs are crafted.
Vaughan is an amazing actor but doesn't fit into the Marvel/DC Comic Book extravaganza, he doesn't spend every waking moment in the gym and has the wrong politics, and is not a kid-friendly voice for silly kids movies.
I'd like to see him in TV, something on Amazon, he's got a great presence that is both funny and menacing.Replies: @Kylie
“I’d like to see him in TV, something on Amazon, he’s got a great presence that is both funny and menacing.”
He can also seem sensitive without loss of presence. He was terrific in The Locusts, as was Kate Capshaw.
They both started out as vaudevillians, and there was a vaudeville patois, itself having strong roots in ethnic ridicule and slang. (Language games.)
See Wayne Keyser’s “vaudeville history and lingo” site.
Since Hollywood drew on many vaudeville and burlesque performers, early movie comedies bear the stamp of those popular theatrical genres.
Groucho’s take was Yiddishy. Grant’s was more upscaley.
Did you notice the spiral symbol on the highest part of their signage? Lol!
Well, I definitely think there’s a grain of truth to this pedophile ring business, but how is this related to Epstein and the Lolita Express? There’s some pretty damning circumstantial evidence linking the Podestas to the pizza joint Comet Ping Pong, but not to the Clintons.
Ms Swinton has all the acting ability of a regular piece of cardboard slated for recycling.
Her contacts must be excellent.
The Spanish expression “enchufada” (plugged-into the system) springs readily to mind.
She's blue-blood old Brit establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilda_Swinton
Two hours of phony pseudo-zen, and prosaic drivel about astral planes and other dimensions. Seemed like it was written by 19 year old comic book nerds.Replies: @BB753
Now, a Black Panther movie written by T- Genius Coates and directed by Spike Lee, that would be quite a film! Am I right, Truth? With Obama in a cameo.
the true A list is Spidey, the Fantastic 4 and X-men,
but those are all commissioned to other studios.
it boggles my mind that the only A list comic book hero they have is the Hulk and after two failed movies, he is just a Avengers bit player now.Marvel and Disney have made multiple billion dollar franchises of b-list heroes and even c and d list ones they are making incredibly popular like this one and Ant man?!?!?Replies: @syonredux, @map
Cap and Iron Man are A. Spidey, FF, and X-Men are A+
That’s your confirmation bias talking. No one is whitewashed in that series.
Yeah. Odds of Hollywood depicting, say, the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258 are pretty close to zero.And they would never even dream of depicting the true scale of the carnage that they inflicted on Eurasia:
http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Mongol
They were no different than the Vikings or a host of other conquering peoples from the fringes of civilization, except they were probably more successful at it than any other.
If anything, Western media rarely, if ever, depict the Pax Mongolica that ensued from their conquests, during which caravans of traders and emissaries could pass through vast stretches of territory with nary a fear of being robbed by bandits.
As for the Netflix series, I find it execrable in its historical authenticity and characterization.Replies: @syonredux, @random observer
No need to wait that long. Netflix has the Luke Cage series. I’m sure that Truth would enjoy all those black bodies:
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/luke-cage-worships-black-body-its-strength-power-a-243430
Philosophy, ethics, statecraft, metaphysics.............all by and for 12 year olds.
Truly, we live in an age of crap.Replies: @map, @Truth
The comic book movie is basically the modern version of the cowboy movie.
Dr. Strange was pretty outstanding, actually, and the dialogue was unexpectedly good.
The reason they didn’t have to change or explain Cary Grant’s accent is because in the Northeast (of the U.S. for God’s sake, sigh) a lot of people, especially Thurston Howell III, sounded exactly like Cary Grant. That was a real thing. And of course those insanely brave and manly Maine fishermen, Burt and I, also sounded like Cary Grant, but a lot more serene and letting-it-happen.
And let us not forget that the lovely Katherine Hepburn sounded exactly like Cary Grant, and SHE was a true-blue, native-born American. From the Northeastern United States of America. For which it stands, baby.
Over the past 70 years of course the American and British accents have continued to diverge even as the sometimes influence each other. But I swear when I hear some British, Australian and New Zealand accents, I can actually hear the origins of the lower-class New York City accent. It’s there. Just listen to how Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race does American.
AND, whenever I listen to long interviews of Irish and Scottish actors and actresses, I without a doubt hear from their accents, syntax, idiom, etc. the origins of the euphonious tones of the Southern United States. Out West you hear Cornish pirates.
Of course it is a mystery why British actors and actresses are INFINITELY better at coping an American accent than Americans are at the inverse. Gotta obsess about that a little more. I’m not getting any younger.
https://books.google.com/books?id=RK_91TR_YE0C&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=cary+grant+accent&source=bl&ots=SDPZkdt1-K&sig=3mIepkZPEPritwKvZbQNCtmKEA0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJtpu_6KnQAhXBylQKHcw5CLE4ChDoAQgnMAI#v=onepage&q=cary%20grant%20accent&f=false
the true A list is Spidey, the Fantastic 4 and X-men,
but those are all commissioned to other studios.
it boggles my mind that the only A list comic book hero they have is the Hulk and after two failed movies, he is just a Avengers bit player now.Marvel and Disney have made multiple billion dollar franchises of b-list heroes and even c and d list ones they are making incredibly popular like this one and Ant man?!?!?Replies: @syonredux, @map
The Disney renditions of these movies are the best. They pull out all the stops on writing and production and they stick to the original comic books as closely as possible.
Which is amazing since you would not expect Disney’s corporate culture to allow these Marvel movies to be made.
Seriously? Do you have trouble distinguishing 'Sleeping Beauty' from 'Maleficent'?
And I’ve read several Jonathan Franzen novels. And yet neither of us was ever invited to the Obama White House.
I think “windbreakers” are a type of clothing. The Navajo code talkers were called “Windtalkers.”
And let us not forget that the lovely Katherine Hepburn sounded exactly like Cary Grant, and SHE was a true-blue, native-born American. From the Northeastern United States of America. For which it stands, baby.
Over the past 70 years of course the American and British accents have continued to diverge even as the sometimes influence each other. But I swear when I hear some British, Australian and New Zealand accents, I can actually hear the origins of the lower-class New York City accent. It's there. Just listen to how Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race does American.
AND, whenever I listen to long interviews of Irish and Scottish actors and actresses, I without a doubt hear from their accents, syntax, idiom, etc. the origins of the euphonious tones of the Southern United States. Out West you hear Cornish pirates.
Of course it is a mystery why British actors and actresses are INFINITELY better at coping an American accent than Americans are at the inverse. Gotta obsess about that a little more. I'm not getting any younger.Replies: @syonredux, @guest
As I pointed out upthread, no one sounds exactly like Cary Grant.His accent was sui generis, a unique blend of Bristol, RP, New York, and General American:
https://books.google.com/books?id=RK_91TR_YE0C&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=cary+grant+accent&source=bl&ots=SDPZkdt1-K&sig=3mIepkZPEPritwKvZbQNCtmKEA0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJtpu_6KnQAhXBylQKHcw5CLE4ChDoAQgnMAI#v=onepage&q=cary%20grant%20accent&f=false
Nonsense. The Mongols were always despised as those barbarous conquerors and mass murderers who erected “pyramids of skulls” in Western cultural imagination (even though the whole pyramids of skull thing was more Tamerlane than Genghis Khan).
They were no different than the Vikings or a host of other conquering peoples from the fringes of civilization, except they were probably more successful at it than any other.
If anything, Western media rarely, if ever, depict the Pax Mongolica that ensued from their conquests, during which caravans of traders and emissaries could pass through vast stretches of territory with nary a fear of being robbed by bandits.
As for the Netflix series, I find it execrable in its historical authenticity and characterization.
The prospect of the Mongols as possible allies, and as rulers of a great civilization, was there in the Christian European mind from the very beginning and never left. Even if mostly legend and at the end of a long daisy chain of distortion. From the hope of alliance against the Muslims, to the tales of Marco Polo, to the brief revival of Mongol fascination in Europe when Tamerlane rules, through the everlasting legend of golden Samarkand. The Mongols were NEVER just conquerors, and certainly not just barbarians, in European legendry. Not even Tamerlane.
And of course by the time I was in high school, ALL one heard of the Mongols were the laws of the great yasa and the protection afforded the Silk Road trade. Great lawgivers and warrior protectors, like the Jedi Knights of the steppe.
I think of the Mongols as Europe's great predecessor and rival title holder in imperialism, at least in sheer scale. Conquest,, war, devastation, at times spread of disease, exploitation of men and resources, use of local troops in endless intra-Mongol wars. They had it all. OTOH, they did many good things at which I hinted above. They remade the politics, law, culture, commerce and dem ography of Asia in their image, and their legacy lived on. A bloodline traceable to Genghis was the gold star of political legitimacy in much of Asia for over 500 years, even in places like India where he never ruled.
Like them, Europeans did plenty of good and bad. Much of the good was the same [infrastructure, commerce, culture and language, including reviving local cultures and knowledge] and so was much of the bad. Although most of the big intra-European wars were fought in Europe. Most Mongol dynastic wars were decidedly not about trashing Mongolia proper.Replies: @Twinkie
They were no different than the Vikings or a host of other conquering peoples from the fringes of civilization, except they were probably more successful at it than any other.
If anything, Western media rarely, if ever, depict the Pax Mongolica that ensued from their conquests, during which caravans of traders and emissaries could pass through vast stretches of territory with nary a fear of being robbed by bandits.
As for the Netflix series, I find it execrable in its historical authenticity and characterization.Replies: @syonredux, @random observer
I’m not talking about the traditional take on the Mongols; I’m discussing the contemporary SJW worldview.
No need for the qualifier. The Mongols were vastly more successful than the Vikings, the Huns, etc. And being that successful meant causing the deaths of millions of people.
I was happy to see Stan bring this up as I was about to:
” all the English and Australian actors are quite competent at playing American GIs.”
Yeah, what the hell?
Just as Indian colleges train people to get H1Bs, so too does RADA work to train their grads to get American acting work up to and including accent training.
Meanwhile, the Brits have long given favorable tax treatment to British productions that hire British.
So they are over here taking our jobs, doing just what tall dorky Eastern Europeans are doing to black American basketball players. A huge number of American roles are now played by English and Australian actors. It’s driving rates down, increasing competition, and hurting American actors. Plus, they come over here and speak jackassery about our politics.
It’s much harder to make a living as an American actor these days. That’s the subtext of the movie, That Guy Who’s Was in That Thing.
I agree with Steve, Dr. Strange was a very good movie and Cumberbatch’s American accent was fantastically accurate. Generally, though, I think the Australians have been better at American accents than the English. Anthony Hopkin’s Nixon accent was forced and annoying, IMO. I think the Australians can get in the mindset of America a little easier or something.
As good as the movie was, it did go a bit overboard on the cg effects halfway through. I’m frankly getting pretty tired of comic book movies – I think the craze is due to the ability of computer effects to create anything.
It didn't help that Dr. Strange was basically Dr. House, W.D. (doctor of wizardry), and Hugh Laurie has the most perfect fake American accent I've ever heard.
And let us not forget that the lovely Katherine Hepburn sounded exactly like Cary Grant, and SHE was a true-blue, native-born American. From the Northeastern United States of America. For which it stands, baby.
Over the past 70 years of course the American and British accents have continued to diverge even as the sometimes influence each other. But I swear when I hear some British, Australian and New Zealand accents, I can actually hear the origins of the lower-class New York City accent. It's there. Just listen to how Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race does American.
AND, whenever I listen to long interviews of Irish and Scottish actors and actresses, I without a doubt hear from their accents, syntax, idiom, etc. the origins of the euphonious tones of the Southern United States. Out West you hear Cornish pirates.
Of course it is a mystery why British actors and actresses are INFINITELY better at coping an American accent than Americans are at the inverse. Gotta obsess about that a little more. I'm not getting any younger.Replies: @syonredux, @guest
That’s not much of a mystery. They’re awash in American culture, from birth. We aren’t awash in British culture, though it is available. Except music, but popular British music is sung with an American accent, mostly. (Not punk, for instance, but that’s only a small portion).
Also, and this is a biggie, the money is in Hollywood. If a British actor wants to make it (moneywise and international famewise) he goes to Hollywood. If an American actor wants to make it, he doesn’t go to London. That’s simple economics.
Mystery solved.
I object, as a matter of principle, to the idea of non-Americans' taking jobs away from Americans. I don't want to see Englishmen taking away our acting jobs; I don't want to see Indians or Chinese taking away our tech jobs; hell, I don't even want to see Mexicans taking away our janitorial jobs.
(I believe those menial toilet-scrubbing jobs should be done by robots, even though automation is at least as big - and far more inevitable - a threat to the American worker as immivasion.)
Either you* are going to say that, in general and in principle, you oppose foreigners' stealing American jobs, or you are going to say that it's okay for whites (or even only English-speaking whites) but not for browns, blacks, yellows, and/or what-have-yous to steal them, or you are going to admit that your views are muddled and self-contradictory.
If you accept the outsourcing of acting, then you must also accept the outsourcing of, say, the white sliver of the NBA pie. I accept neither.
(The NBA is a lost cause, I guess, but it still galls me that most of the few whites playing on our teams aren't even American.)
A non-American actor who plays an American is taking a job away from an American actor. An American actor who plays a non-American is taking a job away from a non-American actor. There is no getting around this fact. Only so many lucrative acting jobs are available.
Now, it would be ludicrous to make a blanket statement that non-Americans should never play Americans, or vice versa - there are exceptions to every rule. But when a sizable percentage of American movies set in America feature all- or nearly-all-non-American casts, then we have a real problem that needs to be addressed.
Yes, I know that the performing arts, from the high-school level on up, are a gay ghetto in this country. And, yes, Hollywood is a loony bin full of leftist kooks. (Somehow I doubt the foreign actors coming in are any less liberal than the native-born ones.) But that still doesn't absolve American industries of their obligation to hire Americans.
Every single hiring of a non-American to do an American job should be questioned, and challenged, and contested. Americans might have to accept the fact that, sometimes, non-Americans will be hired over Americans, but they shouldn't welcome and embrace it.
*I'm not talking about you in particular, Steve; I'm talking about anyone and everyone.Replies: @Light Roast
There is so little room at the top in acting and in sports, that it doesn’t affect the overall prosperity of Americans when some of the jobs go to foreigners. How many foreign actors, using an American accent, get work that would otherwise go to an American? A few dozen actors, maybe? A hundred?
The issue is that MILLIONS of foreigners have been replacing American workers in fields that pay well, or used to pay well. Not as well as top actors and athletes, but well enough to be upper middle class, or in some cases even lower-upper class. Jobs like engineering, programming, nursing, the construction-related trades, various kinds of union work, etc. And of course millions more foreigners are doing menial labor jobs that never paid all that well, but would pay more if those jobs only went to Americans.
That does affect the prosperity of a large number of Americans.
So, no, it’s not Anglophilia that causes us to not care that Cumberbatch is getting acting work in America using an American accent. It’s a question of the total number of people taking American jobs, and the fields that they are taking the jobs in. Believe me, if millions of British came over and started competing with us for every job, our Anglophilia would end in an instant.
By the way, about Vince Vaughn. After breaking out in the comedic Swingers, he betrayed his talents and tried to make it as a Serious Ah-ctore in dreck like Return to Paradise. He was allowed to try, I think, because he was in an “Indie” comedy, instead of Fatties III. Also because he’s handsome.
Then he hit big in a supporting role in Old School, plus Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball. He was a comedic actor again, and a mainstream star to boot. I don’t know what’s happened since because I stopped paying attention, but I don’t think he packs ’em in anymore.
He could possibly have made a good serious actor. Sorta like Robert Downey Jr., I think. Both are handsome motormouths and were born funny, with some serious chops and something of an Indie feel. Vaughn didn’t crash and burn and redeem himself, though. He just had ups and downs.
Anyway, my big point is that very few big Hollywood names are allowed to be serious and funny at the same time. There’s Tom Hanks and…that’s pretty much it. Unfair, because guys like Vaughn waste their God-given humor chasing respectability.
As good as the movie was, it did go a bit overboard on the cg effects halfway through. I'm frankly getting pretty tired of comic book movies - I think the craze is due to the ability of computer effects to create anything.Replies: @guest
I think Cabbagepatch’s accent was so-so. Not distracting, but I wouldn’t buy him as a real American. Unless that American had some sort of weird affectation I’ve never heard before.
It didn’t help that Dr. Strange was basically Dr. House, W.D. (doctor of wizardry), and Hugh Laurie has the most perfect fake American accent I’ve ever heard.
In other words it’s the cinematic equivalent of a food court for wage slave geeks in Emeryville or Sunnyvale.
Roger that. In both senses of the term.
Reminds me of a scene in The Commitments, when Jimmy Rabbitte stops the band as they’re rehearsing ‘Mustang Sally’, and hollers ‘It’s riiiiide, Sally, riiiiide — not roid, Sally, roid!’
I like the bit where Dr Strange is in India and is robbed by a multi-cultural gang featuring a white bloke, a black bloke and a Chinese bloke. It showed what we can achieve when working together.
(Yes, they then get beaten by a black bloke with super kung-fu skills… that was just unlucky)
“Her contacts must be excellent.”
She’s blue-blood old Brit establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilda_Swinton
Swingers was more than comedic. It was proto-RedPill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXfgvcJ5T8EReplies: @European-American
Thanks, I’ll check it out. I resisted so far expecting it to be an ahistorical abomination like that series with Leonardo as a hero, but I’m curious.
Perhaps there are also some good Chinese/HK/Korean series on Genghis Khan, dunno…
There were a couple Russian movies on the topic too…
” A few dozen actors, maybe? A hundred?”
Try thousands. And it’s not just that. Movie industry has moved outside of America, filming in boring locations to save money. This kills technicians’ jobs. Moreover, fewer Americans over time even consider acting because the competition is worse than ever–and unlike basketball players, they can’t go compete in Europe because the European film industry is more protected.
We should give favorable tax consideration to projects that use all American talent.
Your expectations have been 100% fulfilled.
First two seasons, no mountains of skulls. That’s like Nazis without the holocaust.
The Mongols were the worst murderers in history. Do you really think that comes across in Marco Polo?
That’s like saying the whole Nazi thing was more Hitler than Goebbels. In terms of degree, I mean. Sure, you can say Tamerlane was more into the mountains of skulls thing than the Mongols in general. Whoop-tee-doo I’m sure the Mongols’ mothers were proud.
Numbers matter. Mongols killed between 7 and 10% of the world’s population. Far worse than the Nazis, the Commies, the Vikings, or anyone else.
Yeah, the Pax Mongolica was great. “Cower in fear, or we’ll kill another 7 to 10 percent.” Yay for the Mongols.
Mongols were scum. Worst people in history.
He said the Mongols’ true claim to fame won’t be depicted by Hollywood, and he’s right. So, your comment is the nonsense.
The Germans, the Scandinavians, the Russians, they all went on to create strong, modern countries. The Mongols did not. That’s probably instructive.
Gibson was born in America, New York State and lived in America as a child. His parents moved the family to Australia. And after he became well known he moved back to America. He never developed the distinctive Australian accent as a teen and young adult in Australia
Philosophy, ethics, statecraft, metaphysics.............all by and for 12 year olds.
Truly, we live in an age of crap.Replies: @map, @Truth
Hey Buddy, you got something right! I’m excited by this development.
I have a gut feeling that in exactly 12 hours you will be right again.
No, it would be shit too, but at least weirdly interesting, and for this reason, I hope you get what you desire.
Strangely, this concept has never entered my mind, but you do, seem to have a…well…unique interest in this area.
(Yes, they then get beaten by a black bloke with super kung-fu skills... that was just unlucky)Replies: @Truth
Well you guys are always complaining about not having enough virile white men in movies. What’s more virile than beating people up on the street?
Dr. Strange was pretty outstanding, actually, and the dialogue was unexpectedly good.Replies: @Truth
But then again, you are twelve…
Dude, factual or ridiculous, can you just let a WhiteMan have a good alt-right bitch session?
"Ah," I thought, "so that's what this is all about."
And in hindsight, it is a very, er, feminine movie, as superhero movies go. The dramatic arc is basically "arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male proves himself worthy of female approval by getting in touch with his feminine side (while still remaining an arrogant, highly-desirable alpha male)."Replies: @syonredux, @Truth
That’s weird, that guy looks like a ferret.
However in recent years the number of Americans doing credible English accents seems to have risen. Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, James Cromwell, Rene Zellweger (very close), Johnny Depp (sort of). Gillian Anderson (spent part of her childhood in England though, so thats cheating).Replies: @blank-misgivings
I agree – as an Englishman who’s lived in the USA for around 15 years, I find English actors doing American accents unbearably jarring, including Hugh Laurie/Dr House, whereas I find Americans are pretty good at the English accent, to the extent that I rarely know if the actor is actually American. There may even be a physical / phonetic explanation for this, in terms of lengthening / shortening of vowels and which takes more effort.
Which is amazing since you would not expect Disney's corporate culture to allow these Marvel movies to be made.Replies: @Ozymandias
“The Disney renditions of these movies are the best. They pull out all the stops on writing and production and they stick to the original comic books as closely as possible.”
Seriously? Do you have trouble distinguishing ‘Sleeping Beauty’ from ‘Maleficent’?
Ideological clincher: when the villain says "you're on the wrong side of History."Replies: @random observer
From a certain point of view, I can see that.
Although I admit I rather strongly saw in it an anti-Christian message, the only thing about the film that concerned me.
spoilers:
The heroes are all about upholding the ‘law of nature’, specifically not meddling with time or mortality. Ignoring all the other things they do that less powerful people might consider violating the ‘laws of nature’, yet somehow clinging to this one arbitrary principle just because until now none of them can mess with time. I would have argued that once Strange masters that skill, how is it any different from the rest of the mystical arts depicted?
But I digress. The heroes uphold mortality and linear time, and Mordo breaks with Strange over it.
The villains pursue immortality through timeless union with “The One” aka Dormammu. Yes, Dormammu and his dimension look pretty like some sort of hell-in-outer-space. One could see him as a Satan analog, or as some sort of dark gnostic being who falsely promises ecstatic union to his evil mortal lackeys.
But it equally struck me as a subliminal attack on the core goals of Christianity.
Perhaps that was just me. There’s a traditional way of interpreting all these SF/fantasy god analogs as being merely powerful material beings in a universe in which God still exists and is just acting through mortals. But sometimes one wonders.
Then again, I used to go to comic cons, although I was only ever on the most fringe periphery of that subculture. In retrospect, I have started to think of Stan Lee and his stable of writers, along with their DC counterparts to a lesser degree, as archetypal culture villains as influential as any Hollywood hack. And the comics culture itself as the embryo of the ghastly future, for that matter.
Good comparison. I doubt I would have come to that conclusion reading the comics 30+ years ago, but comparing this movie to recent Batman movies, it clearly works. I had never seen it before you mentioned it.
That’s funny, because I think to most people he brought to mind Iron Man. He was a little too close to Iron Man, in fact. I’m surprised they didn’t make him an alcoholic.
I found the discussion of the Ancient One in the media seemed like diversity eating its own young.
On the one hand, sure. They took an Asian character and ‘whitewashed’. OTOH, at the same time they were turning a male character female. Tibetan man to ‘Celtic’ woman. I would have thought that the feminist gain would cancel out the whitewashing but even Swinton didn’t dare say that. Race more important than gender. Even where the ‘race’, Tibetans, has not meaningfully been victimized [by white people].
Besides, if they had kept the Ancient One an Asian male, they would have done the usual Hollywood thing and picked any Asian male actor because [trad Hollywood version] they have too few Asian actors and all Asians are the same or, with the same effective result [progressive Hollywood version], they would have picked any Asian male actor because “Asians” are one unified people with no distinctions [much the way West Africans should play Egyptians because, well Africa is all “Africa”].
Or they would have looked for a Tibetan and been beaten up by their Chinese studio masters from Beijing, and then hired a CCP actors union member to portray the Ancient One as a member of Shaolin or whichever traditional school the party approves of. If any.
I did not know the Mordo thing. Just looked him up. A “Transylvanian noble”, no less. Nevertheless, I’m happy with the new version of Mordo. Chiwetel Ejiofor is an excellent actor, including for this kind of material. One of his early breaks was as “The Operative”, the villain in the ‘Firefly’ movie, ‘Serenity’. Excellent work in that.
They were no different than the Vikings or a host of other conquering peoples from the fringes of civilization, except they were probably more successful at it than any other.
If anything, Western media rarely, if ever, depict the Pax Mongolica that ensued from their conquests, during which caravans of traders and emissaries could pass through vast stretches of territory with nary a fear of being robbed by bandits.
As for the Netflix series, I find it execrable in its historical authenticity and characterization.Replies: @syonredux, @random observer
The old myth is as you give it in some ways, but even then the Mongols were never quite the same thing as the earlier Huns, or “The Huns”, in the western imagination.
The prospect of the Mongols as possible allies, and as rulers of a great civilization, was there in the Christian European mind from the very beginning and never left. Even if mostly legend and at the end of a long daisy chain of distortion. From the hope of alliance against the Muslims, to the tales of Marco Polo, to the brief revival of Mongol fascination in Europe when Tamerlane rules, through the everlasting legend of golden Samarkand. The Mongols were NEVER just conquerors, and certainly not just barbarians, in European legendry. Not even Tamerlane.
And of course by the time I was in high school, ALL one heard of the Mongols were the laws of the great yasa and the protection afforded the Silk Road trade. Great lawgivers and warrior protectors, like the Jedi Knights of the steppe.
I think of the Mongols as Europe’s great predecessor and rival title holder in imperialism, at least in sheer scale. Conquest,, war, devastation, at times spread of disease, exploitation of men and resources, use of local troops in endless intra-Mongol wars. They had it all. OTOH, they did many good things at which I hinted above. They remade the politics, law, culture, commerce and dem ography of Asia in their image, and their legacy lived on. A bloodline traceable to Genghis was the gold star of political legitimacy in much of Asia for over 500 years, even in places like India where he never ruled.
Like them, Europeans did plenty of good and bad. Much of the good was the same [infrastructure, commerce, culture and language, including reviving local cultures and knowledge] and so was much of the bad. Although most of the big intra-European wars were fought in Europe. Most Mongol dynastic wars were decidedly not about trashing Mongolia proper.
Eventually though there was some cooperation between Byzantium and the Mongols - a Byzantine princess (an illegitimate daughter of an emperor, I think) was even given as wife to one of the Western Khans.Genghisids were literally called "altan urag" - the golden lineage/family.
The prospect of the Mongols as possible allies, and as rulers of a great civilization, was there in the Christian European mind from the very beginning and never left. Even if mostly legend and at the end of a long daisy chain of distortion. From the hope of alliance against the Muslims, to the tales of Marco Polo, to the brief revival of Mongol fascination in Europe when Tamerlane rules, through the everlasting legend of golden Samarkand. The Mongols were NEVER just conquerors, and certainly not just barbarians, in European legendry. Not even Tamerlane.
And of course by the time I was in high school, ALL one heard of the Mongols were the laws of the great yasa and the protection afforded the Silk Road trade. Great lawgivers and warrior protectors, like the Jedi Knights of the steppe.
I think of the Mongols as Europe's great predecessor and rival title holder in imperialism, at least in sheer scale. Conquest,, war, devastation, at times spread of disease, exploitation of men and resources, use of local troops in endless intra-Mongol wars. They had it all. OTOH, they did many good things at which I hinted above. They remade the politics, law, culture, commerce and dem ography of Asia in their image, and their legacy lived on. A bloodline traceable to Genghis was the gold star of political legitimacy in much of Asia for over 500 years, even in places like India where he never ruled.
Like them, Europeans did plenty of good and bad. Much of the good was the same [infrastructure, commerce, culture and language, including reviving local cultures and knowledge] and so was much of the bad. Although most of the big intra-European wars were fought in Europe. Most Mongol dynastic wars were decidedly not about trashing Mongolia proper.Replies: @Twinkie
The Western imagination of the Mongols as Prester John and his Christian army did not last very long, because it became quite clear to the lords of Outremer that they were likely a far greater threat than the Muslims.
Eventually though there was some cooperation between Byzantium and the Mongols – a Byzantine princess (an illegitimate daughter of an emperor, I think) was even given as wife to one of the Western Khans.
Genghisids were literally called “altan urag” – the golden lineage/family.
The Mongols were the worst murderers in history. Do you really think that comes across in Marco Polo?That's like saying the whole Nazi thing was more Hitler than Goebbels. In terms of degree, I mean. Sure, you can say Tamerlane was more into the mountains of skulls thing than the Mongols in general. Whoop-tee-doo I'm sure the Mongols' mothers were proud.Numbers matter. Mongols killed between 7 and 10% of the world's population. Far worse than the Nazis, the Commies, the Vikings, or anyone else.
Yeah, the Pax Mongolica was great. "Cower in fear, or we'll kill another 7 to 10 percent." Yay for the Mongols.
Mongols were scum. Worst people in history.He said the Mongols' true claim to fame won't be depicted by Hollywood, and he's right. So, your comment is the nonsense.
The Germans, the Scandinavians, the Russians, they all went on to create strong, modern countries. The Mongols did not. That's probably instructive.Replies: @Twinkie
It wasn’t murder. It was medieval warfare. They were just better at it than most. In other words, their crime was quantity, not moral quality. In just about all pre-modern wars, cities and towns that resisted sieges were forfeit when they fell to the besiegers. The victors then could do what they wished to the inhabitants and property contained within the city – which usually meant wanton killings, mass rape, and looting.
You have a strong view of people you will never meet, who existed hundreds of years ago. Do you hold a similarly strong view about the Vikings or the medieval Japanese pirates?
Yes, they ran into Christianity, specifically the Roman Rite in the case of the Germans and the Scandinavians. It’s probably instructive, indeed, that the one country in your list – Russia – that did not run into Rome is different than the rest.
As far as the moral quantity/quality argument, what point are you trying to make? Because it sounds like you’re saying a serial killer or mass murderer’s crimes are on the same moral level as the man who killed one person. Which is ridiculous.
Each individual Mongol murder is as bad as every other murder, okay. But who cares? We can judge them on quantity, like we judge the Nazis, for instance. Because the allies killed innocent people, too, just not as many. (And the Nazis started it, supposedly, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)
They were not morally better or worse than, say, the Vikings who engaged in the same behaviors, just a lot less successfully, notwithstanding the modern Western romance with the latter (but whose civilized contemporaries treated them with utter horror, hence the famous phrase a furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine).
It's silly to judge historical events and people through the prism of the Westphalian construct and the 20th Century Hague Conventions. Such wide scale brutality was the norm in pre-modern eras. As Tacitus put it: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.Quantity of deaths is not the reason we rate the Allies higher in morality than the Nazis. We judge one or the other better based on the peace they create, not the means with which they create it. And being the winner, of course, is sine qua non - there is no peace without victory after all.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @BB753
To put plainly, I am stating that the Mongols were no better or worse morally than any other group of warrior conquerors hailing from fringes of civilization. They warred, they raided, they raped, and they killed. They were just better at it than most others.
They were not morally better or worse than, say, the Vikings who engaged in the same behaviors, just a lot less successfully, notwithstanding the modern Western romance with the latter (but whose civilized contemporaries treated them with utter horror, hence the famous phrase a furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine).
It’s silly to judge historical events and people through the prism of the Westphalian construct and the 20th Century Hague Conventions. Such wide scale brutality was the norm in pre-modern eras. As Tacitus put it: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Quantity of deaths is not the reason we rate the Allies higher in morality than the Nazis. We judge one or the other better based on the peace they create, not the means with which they create it. And being the winner, of course, is sine qua non – there is no peace without victory after all.
They were not morally better or worse than, say, the Vikings who engaged in the same behaviors, just a lot less successfully, notwithstanding the modern Western romance with the latter (but whose civilized contemporaries treated them with utter horror, hence the famous phrase a furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine).
It's silly to judge historical events and people through the prism of the Westphalian construct and the 20th Century Hague Conventions. Such wide scale brutality was the norm in pre-modern eras. As Tacitus put it: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.Quantity of deaths is not the reason we rate the Allies higher in morality than the Nazis. We judge one or the other better based on the peace they create, not the means with which they create it. And being the winner, of course, is sine qua non - there is no peace without victory after all.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @BB753
The Mongols were Democrats.
They were not morally better or worse than, say, the Vikings who engaged in the same behaviors, just a lot less successfully, notwithstanding the modern Western romance with the latter (but whose civilized contemporaries treated them with utter horror, hence the famous phrase a furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine).
It's silly to judge historical events and people through the prism of the Westphalian construct and the 20th Century Hague Conventions. Such wide scale brutality was the norm in pre-modern eras. As Tacitus put it: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.Quantity of deaths is not the reason we rate the Allies higher in morality than the Nazis. We judge one or the other better based on the peace they create, not the means with which they create it. And being the winner, of course, is sine qua non - there is no peace without victory after all.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @BB753
We usually judge one side higher than the other by its success. The winner gets to write history.