Accents in Cold Mountain (the movie)

[Wilson Gray]

On Apr 8, 2005, at 12:44 AM, Paul Frank wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      Accents in Cold Mountain (the movie)
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> --------
>
> The Cardozo Insider
> Issue: 2/8/04
>
> "A more serious flaw is shared by almost all the actors: although they
> are supposed to be from North
> Carolina, not a single one is able to pull off the accent. Geography
> may be to blame, as the
> combination of Australia's Kidman, England's Law and Winstone,
> Canada's Donald Sutherland (as
> Kidman's father), and Harvard's Portman make for a linguistic goulash.
>
> Listen to a John Edwards stump speech. Turn on Charlie Rose or Bill
> Moyers

Bill Moyers a North-Carolinian? No bleeping way! Billy - as he was
known, then - Moyers is from Marshall, Texas. Cf. his autobiographical
Public-TV special, "Marshall, Texas! Marshall, Texas!"

-Wilson Gray (also from Marshall, Texas)

>  on Channel 13. That's
> what North Carolinans sound like. There is a natural musicality in the
> cadence of their speech.
> Kidman forces it, and the others don't really even come close. Worse,
> Zellweger (who mastered
> Britspeak in Bridget Jones' Diary) sounds like she spent too much time
> watching Dukes of Hazzard
> reruns. Remember Daaayzee Duke? The usually wonderful Philip Seymour
> Hoffman, as a defrocked
> preacher, takes us into Blanche DuBois territory. Maybe this is all a
> bit nitpicky. It is a movie,
> not real-life, after all. But the garbled dialects in this film take
> us out of the Civil War-era
> South and transport us into 21st century Hollywood. I think it's time
> to read Charles Frazier's novel. "
>
> http://www.cardozoinsider.com/news/2004/02/08/Entertainment/Cold-
> Mountain.Six.Characters.In.Search.Of.A.Dialect.Coach-600708.shtml
>
>
> Paul
> ________________________
> Paul Frank
> Chinese-English translator
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> http://languagejottings.blogspot.com
>