language in film

[Lynne Murphy]

>From salon.com's review of the Coen Brothers' new film:

On the surface
it's purest formalism: masterful black-and-white cinematography (by Roger
Deakins, the Coens' customary co-conspirator), note-perfect character acting
and period diction. I mean, these guys pay attention to the friggin'
details:When Doris Crane (played by McDormand, who in real life is married
to director Joel Coen), the main character's alcoholic and perhaps
unfaithful wife, gets drunk at an Italian family picnic, she says the word
"goddamn" with the precise inflection of a mid-century woman unaccustomed
to cursing. Another character says "the out-of-doors" rather than the more
contemporary "outdoors."
<end-quote>

Something to look forward to, then.

Lynne, who wishes that Shakespeare films had postvocalic 'r's in them

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320