Accents in movies

It's not just Harry Potter though. Many UK tv shows you might get have been written for the US market. We spot them here a mile off just by the little things; they refer to mobile phones as cell phones. They are never refered to cell phones here and the use of that by a UK show leaves baffled looks on those watching in the home markets. Then the house phone rings a single Ring instead of Ring Ring as it would here. Police sirens here are like yours but on these tv shows they're dubbed into some weird sort of French police siren to give it a more European flavour. If the lead cast member is meant to be a poor, down to earth type, they drive an old Volvo Estate car (Station Wagon). Nobody here of that type could afford to run, tax, insure a Volvo. More like they'd drive a clapped out Ford Fiesta or Vauxhall Corsa.

I know some is artistic licence but a lot of it such as changing the whistle on the Hogworts Express has nothing do to with that.

I know you all call holidays vacations and the pavement is called a sidewalk and the road is called a pavement and a bum is called a fanny (don't as what the English version of fanny is!). It doesn't take a genius to work out the context, but why books and films see the needs to change it for the US market is strange. I remember reading Silence of the Lambs and the Americanisms were part of what made a good read.

If anyone in here works in the film industry and is responsible for these abominations, please hold your hand up.

 

...also, if you're one of the Americans doing the promo voiceovers for BBC America in the FOUL fake accents!

 

Sorry for my lengthy absence - I've been in five Chinese cities in the last five days.

Guy Pearce gets a pass from me for Neighbours, the Australian soap that defined the teen years of most British people my age. But also for Memento, which was a truly fantastic film.

Surely this was not a controversial statement? Surely my statement about British people being better-looking and infinitely cooler than Americans was just a calm statement of commonly-accepted fact?

 

Yes. Both of them were remarkably convincing.

It was a shame about the Iron Lady, though. Meryl Streep was brilliant. But they took an incredibly interesting story (whether you like Thatcher or not - and I don't - she had a remarkable journey to power, fighting ingrained sexism every step of the way), and almost completely failed to address it.

I think you're both right about that lack of exposure to the rest of the world. Apart from the occasional British baddie popping up in films, I don't think Americans are as exposed to the rest of the world as people in other countries are. The education system and popular media seem to conspire to cut Americans off from the rest of the world.

But I think there is another issue. America (and even more so Australia) has a limited range of accents, I know there are accents specific to class and geography in America, and I can identify most of them quite easily. But the geographic thing covers very big areas. In Britain, you can often tell where someone's from to within ten miles from their accent. So I suspect British actors are more exposed to the concept of differences in accent from an early age than American actors are.

That doesn't explain Brian Cox, though.

 

What you need is a proxy server.

 

Yeah...haven't been able to reliably suss those out. I had one running that allowed me to stream the BBC coverage of the Olympics Closing Ceremony, and haven't been able to get it running again. Combine that with the stupid registration requirements of the stupid Pottermore site, and I will just have to live without the Kindle versions of the books. (But...I found a bitTorrent for the Fry audio versions. Yeah, if they won't let me pay for the version I want, I will resort to piracy. So there.)

 

Yes, that's a common problem. I don't think retailers have caught up with the changes in environments. Loads of Australians either pirate music or use proxy servers to buy songs from the US - the price of a song on iTunes Australia is twice that of a song on iTunes US. And the retailers don't seem to have got their head around the fact that we're going to object to this.

And in terms of availability - people know what they want to see. They'll buy it legally if they can, and they'll get it illegally if they can't.

Steven Fry is the perfect choice for a Harry Potter audiobook. Have you read any of Fry's own books?

 

I've read Fry's autobiography and a novel he wrote, which appeared to be pretty autobiographical. I wish I could get his show QI here, but that brings us back to proxy servers, (and regionally encoded DVDs). I would listen to Stephen Fry reading a phonebook! And, back to accents (and trains of thought), Hugh Laurie's American accent was phenomenal in all—8?—seasons of House.

 

Well, I certainly wouldn't recommend giving up on your search for regionalised DVDs and going to kickass.to and searching for QI and finding a torrent of the first eight seasons in a single pack, because that would be illegal. Don't they show QI on BBC America? They show it on UKTV (a BBC commercial thing) and BBC Knowledge in Australia.

Making History and The Stars' Tennis Balls are not autobiographical, although Fry clearly bases the lead characters on himself in both books. They're both great stories.

And yes, Hugh Laurie's accent was up there with Damian Lewis' as one of the most convincing American accents I've heard from a British actor. I've heard stories about American viewers wondering why he puts on this ridiculous English accent during interviews. So that reflects pretty well on how convincing he is.

 

QI isn't on BBC America because there's no room in the schedule between all of the Top Gear reruns...I think it is feared that QI might be too 'intellectual' for US audiences, much the same way we couldn't be expected to understand an untranslated Harry Potter. It's very disheartening. And I would certainly never consider anything illegal with regard to electronic media, or, therefore, be able to thank anyone who might tip me off to the locations of such collections.

It was Fry's first novel, The Liar, that I read. I forget why I stopped there...

 

You'd think that if the BBC thought Australians could handle QI, they'd think the Americans could too. It's a great programme: I've found out all sorts of weird stuff by watching it.

I'm delighted to hear it. If anyone were to tip you off about such things, you should look at them sternly. Especially if part of that person's job was actually IP protection....

I think that was his weakest novel. Still good, but I think the others are even better.

 

I'll have to look at the YouTube clips when I leave China (I don't have time to mess about with proxy servers).

But I do see your point. I suspect the weather has a lot to do with it - being hot, and squinting away from the sun. That would lead to a similar drawl.

 

Amy is cool as all get out.

 

This is from the trivia section in the QI listing in imdb, and it is one of the stupidest attempts at justification I have seen in quite a long time:

'There have been several attempts to broadcast the series in the United States. Comedy Central, PBS, Discovery Channel and BBC America all showed an interest. But the main issue preventing this is the cost of clearing the rights for the many pictures shown on the screens in the background. They are cleared for UK usage only.'

One can but roll one's eyes...(whilst looking sternly at IP pros who recommend shady practi[c/s]es, who we are very glad to hear is safe despite proximity to a knife-wielding madman.)

 

Stupid as it sounds, that does kind of make sense in isolation. But it loses credibility when you consider that it's on every night in Australia, on the two BBC pay-TV non-news channels (BBC Knowledge and UKTV, both through Foxtel cable), and free to air on ABC, the Australian State-owned broadcaster. I can't imagine that negotiating usage rights for Australia is any less annoying or less cost-effective (on a cost-per-viewer basis) than it would be for the US.

Yes! Be stern! I hope the knife-wielding madman wasn't just doing some freelance IP enforcement for the BBC.

 

...and the production team could not have changed their picture licensing deals for program(me)s recorded after interest was shown by other countries...? One might think US broadcast rights would more than pay for making different arrangements with photo suppliers, mightn't one? I've seen variations on this claim now in several places, and I simply do not find it credible. I can't help but wonder if what they won't say is that the humo(u)r is simply too raunchy, and most US networks would bleep/cut too much to leave anything remotely comprehensible. That said, Graham Norton and his guests seem to get quite a bit of latitude on BBC America, but a lot seems cut—not sure how much of that is time vs content though.

I'm sure the BBC's budget doesn't run to hiring stray madmen (just the usual ones) if they can't afford to pay for undistinguished photo rights, so I wouldn't worry about that!

 

And on an UNaccented note, news about the lovely Guy Pearce, au naturel...

Guy Pearce, We Are Pleased To Find You Looking Vaguely Disreputable In 'Jack Irish' : Monkey See : NPR