December 14th. "I am Legend." Fucking be there.

[WindupAtheist]

After enough "Wah wah, the Americans made a WW2 movie and marginalized us Brits!" bitching over the years, I'm ready to just say "Fuck you, make your own movie and have Churchill fend off the Nazi invasion of Washington DC with his hat for all I care."

[Ironwood]

Right on time, the 'We Saved Your Ass in WW2' cliche.

Seriously, it's weak trolling.

[Tebonas]

Just for the records, the Americans didn't save my ass, my grandfather was on the losing side. Is my opinion about movies suddenly more valid than Ironwoods?

[stray]

While I agree that the jingoist shit needs to stop, I don't see where this "Americans have to have their 'own'" sentiment is coming from.

Batman -- probably one of the biggest action icons outside James Bond -- is played by a Welshman. The same who also played in American Psycho, who also just played in a decent Wild West flick with that Aussie box office draw known as Russell Crowe.  

Another recent Wild West flick was played by the best actress around right now -- who's an Aussie.

Joker, the Hulk, and Wolverine -- all American icons -- are played by Aussies.

Clive Owen, Ralph Feinnes, Jude Law, Geoffry Rush, Kate Bekinsale, Helena Bonham Carter, and Kate Winslet, all from the UK, plays plenty of American characters without anyone getting upset about it.

Ray Winstone played the most gruff, badass Bostonite in recent memory. Nobody complained.

Gillian Anderson played Agent Scully for years, without anyone complaining that she was a Brit.

Everybody fucking loves Anthony Hopkins. Everybody loves Peter O'Toole. Everybody loves Daniel Day Lewis. Everybody loves Sean Connery. Everybody loves Albert Finney. Everybody loves Liam Neeson. Everybody loves Ian McKellan. Everybody loves Ben Kingsley. Everybody loves Jeremy Irons. Everybody loves Alan Rickman. Most people love Tim Roth. Most people love the Professional and Jean Reno -- not to mention Gary fucking Oldman. Or Natalie Portman, for that matter, a native Israeli.

Two words: Peter fucking Sellers.

Okay, that was three words.

[IainC]

For shits and giggles, I hit up Mojo and snagged this year's box office records for France.  With 47 weekends in the books, 30 were led by American movies, while 16 were led by French movies and 1 was led by a British movie.  No other nation had a #1 movie at the French box office at all.  Meanwhile, 34 of 47 weekends were led by American movies at the UK box office.  And that's with me assuming that anything I don't immediately identify as American must not be.

The rest of the world's movie industry put together sucks Hollywood's cock.  And don't give me any "Wah wah, it's not all about money!" horseshit.  That money comes from people buying tickets to things they want to see.
EDIT:  Listen, you can bag on America in a lot of areas and I won't complain.  But we absolutely rape everyone else when it comes to movies.  We just do.

Fail.
The Bombay movie industry pisses all over Hollywood's output.

Secondly, Hollywood is the dominant Western film centre, it's not really surprising that it dominates Western markets. They show the same films in France that they do in the US, they also show French and other Continental movies but these tend to be limited appeal compared to mass-market Hollywood stuff. I lived there for three years and apart from having hairier armpits and a better command of English, French teenagers are not much different to American teenagers - they like to see Spiderman kicking the bad guy's ass too. Faced with this cultural juggernaut, the European industry doesn't try to compete head to head as that would be stupid, instead they make the films that Hollywood never would, the quirky, off beat stuff which sometimes is ace (Brotherhod of the Wolf) and sometimes is horrid (Banlieu 13).

You cannot argue with any sincerity that popular automatically equals good. I can disprove that premise instantly with the music chart for any week you care to mention.

While I agree that the jingoist shit needs to stop, I don't see where this "Americans have to have their 'own'" sentiment is coming from.

It's not so much the actors, it's the shoehorning of a token American character (at best) into an established story or at worst rewriting the whole thing with Yanks. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a case in point. Fair enough they'd already mutilated the corpse of the graphic novel so one more idignity was never going to make much of a difference, but shoehorning Huck Finn in was just unnecessary.

[Ironwood]

Bale is Welsh ?

Really ?

[schild]

The Bombay movie industry pisses all over Hollywood's output.

Bollywood sucks balls though. I mean, really fat stuck in the 1980s but without the good music and awesome hair balls.

[stray]

Bale is Welsh ?

Really ?

Sure is...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.... Sugartits (though he was born in the States, I guess)

And pardon me for calling Crowe an Aussie. I think he's a Kiwi, right?

[stray]

The Bombay movie industry pisses all over Hollywood's output.

Bollywood sucks balls though. I mean, really fat stuck in the 1980s but without the good music and awesome hair balls.

Bollywood has fucking killer film scores though. Or dance routines. Either/or.

[schild]

Bollywood has fucking killer film scores though. Or dance routines. Either/or.

I'm not worldly enough to agree with this comment. The music sucks for the most part and the dance routines just make shit lamer than it already is. But then, I hate dance routines across the board.

I do love me some indian food though.

[Furiously]

And I think no one is thinking of the best devil.....



http://images.allmoviephoto.com/2000_Bedazzled/elizabeth_hurley_bedazzled_001.jpg In case it doesn't show...

[Engels]

Gillian Anderson played Agent Scully for years, without anyone complaining that she was a Brit.

Not to rain on your Brit parade, but unless the wiki entry is somehow mistaken, Gillian Anderson is pretty much an American. She spent her first 10 years in England as a child, true, but how anyone could mistake her for a brit is beyond me.

[stray]

Because she grew up there, talks with a strong British accent, and lives there now, doing a lot of BBC and stagework these days. Figured she's a Brit as much as anyone else there.

Kind of like Sugartits up there, I guess. Born American, but pretty much an Aussie, no matter how often he tries to fool us with that "Riggs" voice of his.



[EDIT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws60MdOaNWU


What's funny is that when she is interviewed for American stuff (like the X-Files), she puts on an American accent. Which is what Bales does too.

[Signe]

What exactly is a "British" accent?

[stray]

The one you talk with too.

[edit] I think? Could have sworn I've heard you on TS once.

[edit] Err... or are you getting picky about dialects or something? I'm sure there are dozens. I have a book on accents I used to study. It had dozens from England. Upper-class British RP, General London, Cockney, Birmingham and Manchester, Liverpool, Geordie, Bristol, Cornwall, Worcestershire....

[HaemishM]

My biggest problem with American attitudes towards film isn't the need to fuck up good stories by making characters into Americans. My biggest problem is the need Americans have to put classic English accents on certain genres of stories.

Biblical story? EVERYONE MUST SPEAK THE KING'S PERFECT ENGLISH. No Hebrew accents here, no sir. Fantasy? All dwarves must speak with a Scottish accent, and everyone else is a goddamn Brit, even if they are not. As if speaking classical English suddenly makes everything have more weight.

[stray]

Ah, that's one of the reasons Last Tempation works so well for me. Harvey Keitel as Judas, Victor Argo as Peter -- bloody perfect. It really captures the ghetto atmosphere the original guys probably came from.

[IainC]

Ah, that's one of the reasons Last Tempation works so well for me. Harvey Keitel as Judas, Victor Argo as Paul -- bloody perfect. It really captures the ghetto atmosphere these original guys probably came from.

It's like the classic moment in The Black Shield of Falworth where Tony Curtis turns and says "Dis is da castle ov ma fadder." Really transports you off to mediaeval New Jersey Europe.

[stray]

Also, Harry Dean Stanton as a fire and brimstone southern preacher. Really, there's no better person to cast, no better way to go about it.

And New Jersey/New York or not, Keitel's Judas is epic.

[WindupAtheist]

Right on time, the 'We Saved Your Ass in WW2' cliche.

The fact that you managed to get THAT from a comment that had nothing to do with the actual war itself is pretty funny.

And anyway, we didn't save YOUR ass.  You're Scottish.  You were already England's slaves or something, ever since they finally managed to kill Braveheart.  If anything, the Germans might have been nicer to you.

...you asked for trolling...

[DraconianOne]

Bale is Welsh ?

Really ?

Grew up in the same town as I did. 

[Samwise]

Secondly, Hollywood is the dominant Western film centre, it's not really surprising that it dominates Western markets. They show the same films in France that they do in the US, they also show French and other Continental movies but these tend to be limited appeal compared to mass-market Hollywood stuff.

I think you pretty much made WUA's point for him right there.  It's not just us stupid Americans that love those stupid American movies.

You cannot argue with any sincerity that popular automatically equals good.

You must have missed our discussion a couple years back of how Revenge of the Sith was the best movie ever made.  

[Signe]

The one you talk with too.

[edit] I think? Could have sworn I've heard you on TS once.

[edit] Err... or are you getting picky about dialects or something? I'm sure there are dozens. I have a book on accents I used to study. It had dozens from England. Upper-class British RP, General London, Cockney, Birmingham and Manchester, Liverpool, Geordie, Bristol, Cornwall, Worcestershire....

No, no... I meant in her case.  I don't remember hearing her speak other than in shows so I wasn't sure what you meant.  But, yeah, I was wondering what sort of British accent she has.  London, Liverpool, whatever.  Just out of curiosity.

As for me... I suppose I speak strange but it's because I've lived in so many different places.  I don't think it sounds particularly "British",  though.  People in Britain don't think I sound British.  For some reason, people in France think I'm Danish.   Righ, though born and raised in Glasgow, has a proper English accent for the most part.  Between boarding school from 11 on and leaving Scotland early on to find work that actually pays, his accent is very soft, though the Glaswegian slips in with certain words.  (especially when he's angry, drunk or around other Scots)

[stray]

I re-edited that original link and provided an interview with her, where she is speaking in her native accent. It's very much "British". Apparently, she moved to America when she was a teenager, got made fun of for how she talked, and learned to affect a good American accent that way. The one she uses in the X-Files. Like I mentioned about Christian Bale though, when she used to do interviews promoting the X-Files, she'd keep the American accent for some reason. Not sure why. Bale says he does it so as not to confuse people and break their illusions -- he gets into his characters a lot so I guess he thinks off-screen persona is just as necessary. I heard that when he was doing Batman, he insisted that his chair said "Bruce Wayne", not "Christian Bale".

[WindupAtheist]

You must have missed our discussion a couple years back of how Revenge of the Sith was the best movie ever made.   

Which I never really said... but... what the hell!  Fuck yes, it rules over all movies!  Also all films!

Anyway, this tangent was begun specifically by my reference to which movie industries people do or do not "give a fuck about".  If there's a better way to measure that than by what they buy tickets to, please enlighten me.

[Signe]

Wow.  Gillian Anderson looks better than I've ever seen her look, even in XFiles which was early 90s, no?

[Ironwood]

Bale is Welsh ?

Really ?

Grew up in the same town as I did. 

DraconianOne is Welsh ?

Really ?


(Oh and lol at Samwise.  Good one.)

[Ironwood]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws60MdOaNWU


What's funny is that when she is interviewed for American stuff (like the X-Files), she puts on an American accent. Which is what Bales does too.

God, I'd never heard her with that plummy voice before.  It actually really, really suits her.

[stray]

This would be a very boring world if all anything good that ever happened, happened on one section of one continent. Thinking so is a sure sign of mental retardation.

And anyways, ticket sales don't always measure something's worth. Why should money be so important to you? There are intangibles with anything artistic. For example, there's the case of being influential, but not popular in one's day. Take music for example. The Velvet Underground didn't sell much in their time -- or perform much, for that matter. But it's been said that whoever did listen to them more than likely went off and created their own bands. That's power that can be put down in a pretty little chart. There are films and filmmakers like that too. Foreign ones. Too many to list, but needless to say, you see their effects on films every day (American and otherwise).

[Samwise]

I don't think anyone's talking about artistic merit or even overall quality.  We were talking about why there are so many USA-centric (English-language, jingoistic, what have you) movies coming out of Hollywood.  It turns out it's because they make lots of money.

 

Doesn't necessarily mean they're good.  But you can't lay the blame for those movies at the feet of stupid American moviegoers (as some are trying to do) when those movies are dominating box offices in other countries as well.  And you can't blame movie studios for wanting to make movies that will sell lots of tickets.

[Roac]

And anyways, ticket sales don't always measure something's worth. Why should money be so important to you?

I have this awesome, artistic idea.  I'd like you to take a mortgage out on your home to help fund it, and I won't guarantee you any returns.  But it's artistic.  I'm sure it'll inspire someone, and money isn't important to you anyway.  Be my funding bitch, pleeeease?

[stray]

Since when does it work like even with art? I don't know who you are really, but what I do know would make you a dipshit in my eyes. So I'll judge your art on that basis alone. People like to see some kind proof of concept or simply just like the artist as a person before investing in them.

[Tebonas]

There is a difference between USA-centric and jingoistic. ID was just over the top.

Why exactly did you all fall for WUAs trolling and discuss the general merits of movies from different countries? Like you should give a fuck from where the movie is if it is good.

[bhodi]

That's right.

Surprise, Cockfags!

[Murgos]

That's right.

Surprise, Cockfags!

Nah, I'm pretty sure we are all aware that WUA is a cockfag.