A pet peeve of mine, regarding acting.

[Goodfella86]

A pet peeve of mine is when characters in movies/TV mispronounce a name or word without having any reason to do so. Imo, it shows a weakness in acting. The actors are too concerned with being authentic to their characters, and, as a result, they're being less authentic to the situations.

I saw an example of this recently, but I forgot what it was.

A few other examples.


(No timestamp. First 15 second's has it all)

Pablo Schreiber is playing Niko here. Niko is introduced to this new character, Eton. But the man who introduces them, Spiros, pronounces his name as "Ay-ton." That's the only information Niko has. Yet, Niko still calls him "EEE-ton." That's a mistake on Pablo's end. He read the name "Eton" in the script and had "Eeeton" in his head. Even if it was an artistic decision to make it seem more authentic, it still defies the logic of the situation.




Here, legendary thespian and member of the Bee Gees, Donald Gibb, plays Ray Jackson. Ray hears "Dim Mock" and immediately uses "Dim MACK." Now, if Ray Jackson read "Dim mak" somewhere, he'd no doubt process it as "dim Mack," but the only information available was the other guy's pronunciation.


Am I missing the mark here, or are these obvious mistakes? Maybe I'm giving this too much thought.

Spoiler

 

[James T. Kirk]

Why the hell couldn't Marlon Brando say Krypton right?

 

[Goodfella86]

Why the hell couldn't Marlon Brando say Krypton right?

On the DVD commentary, Richard Donner said Marlon had a few of Richard Pryor's pubes stuck in his throat.

 

[PG29 red0 Jr]

How dare you question the acting ability of donald gibb, he is above question!

 

[Kanuck99]

Maybe I'm giving this too much thought.

You're not giving it enough thought.

 

[Goodfella86]

You're not giving it enough thought.

Well, your post has given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the contribution.

 

[Kanuck99]

Well, your post has given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the contribution.

I wish I could say the same for your thread.

 

[Deadly Mass]

lol. The first thing that came to mind was the "Dim Mak" scene. It almost ruined a perfect film. Always irritated me.

 

[minute bull]

 

[Goodfella86]

I wish I could say the same for your thread.

I believe I made a good point. You tried to score some points off of me with some snarky remark that appears to be a weak attempt at fishing for likes or something. No substance whatsoever. Just vague horseshit. So, either bring the substance or go jerk yourself.

 

[MacDuffle]

I've seen that top vid before and the guy knows his terms absolutely, I just wish he did more cross comparisons than turning everything into a list article

If we're talking about tough accents people forget just how hard Coney Island is supposed to be in dialogue coaching. I've heard two separate dialogue coaches describe Coney Island as one of the hardest domestic Stateside accents to do and Jared Leto blows one away in Requiem For A Dream (not to mention Ellen Burstyn whose accent in that film was the stuff of legend)

 

[mushishi]

People have accents. Like all the foolios saying "tie" kwon do instead of "teh" kwon do.

 

[jimbob27]

8 seasons in, and Rick still can't pronounce his kids name properly.

 

[minute bull]

I've seen that top vid before and the guy knows his terms absolutely, I just wish he did more cross comparisons than turning everything into a list article

If we're talking about tough accents people forget just how hard Coney Island is supposed to be in dialogue coaching. I've heard two separate dialogue coaches describe Coney Island as one of the hardest domestic Stateside accents to do and Jared Leto blows one away in Requiem For A Dream (not to mention Ellen Burstyn whose accent in that film was the stuff of legend)

Erik Singer looks like he's got at least three Wired™ videos; I only caught the first one.

Mark Margolis was an animal; the Hubert Selby dialogue also did a lot of the heavy lifting. So that's Coney Island, huh? I always thought it was just "Jewy Mother"; it seems like it's my go-to doing an improvised routine between Jewy Mother and "Old Hollywood Agent."

 

[Thai Otoshi]

Mispronouncing any foreign word I know. It drives me insane.

The worst offender in recent memory is Person of Interest. They had a dog on there named Bear. It only responded to "Dutch" commands. Only the problem is the very American actors were giving their dog awful sounding Germanish commands instead.

Thankfully, it was finally fixed by the last season with Finch's "slechte hond" comment. The pronunciation had been so bad by that point, I actually remembered when they finally got it right.

 

[Thai Otoshi]

8 seasons in, and Rick still can't pronounce his kids name properly.

That always made me crack the fuck up.

 

[MacDuffle]

Erik Singer looks like he's got at least three Wired™ videos; I only caught the first one.

Mark Margolis was an animal; the Hubert Selby dialogue also did a lot of the heavy lifting. So that's Coney Island, huh? I always thought it was just "Jewy Mother"; it seems like it's my go-to doing an improvised routine between Jewy Mother and "Old Hollywood Agent."

Brighton Beach, all very much jewish populations (Brighton Beach Memoirs) but how Coney Island was described tough was that it has patterns of speech found in

Massachussets
Long Island
New York
Staten Island
Coney Island (region specific)

So by doing Coney Island you were essentially supposed to be approximating the entire eastern coast only you couldn't stay balanced on one limb, you had to cover 5 trees of inflection. Especially listening to the Leto/Connelly scenes you hear how much stuff is swirling around Letos line deliveries while Connelly does straight east coast upper

 

[MacDuffle]

Erik Singer looks like he's got at least three Wired™ videos; I only caught the first one.

Mark Margolis was an animal; the Hubert Selby dialogue also did a lot of the heavy lifting. So that's Coney Island, huh? I always thought it was just "Jewy Mother"; it seems like it's my go-to doing an improvised routine between Jewy Mother and "Old Hollywood Agent."

The way it's been described to me Coney Island has parts of speech from

Massachusetts
Long Island
NYC + 5 boroughs
Staten Island
New Jersey

so you're essentially being forced to approximate 5+ inflection trees all on the east coast

Burstyn had Brighton Beach in there for sure, massive jewish population (Brighton Beach Memoirs)

 

[Stranger Come Knocking]

Coney Island accent? Lol wtf. If you grew up in a borough neighborhood you pretty much have the same accent barring ethnicity differences. There's no fucking coney island accent. Source - me living 35 years in brooklyn

 

[minute bull]

Coney Island accent? Lol wtf. If you grew up in a borough neighborhood you pretty much have the same accent barring ethnicity differences. There's no fucking coney island accent. Source - me living 35 years in brooklyn

I call this level of accent "storybook," in which case there's no actual equivalent to a real dialect but rather, like @MacDuffle stated above, it's a melange of quirks that give an overall impression. Like Storybook Southern, which is much more pleasing to some ears than the nasty-ass drawls, which often tend to obscure pronunciation and thus comprehension. Real accents might be accurate but also unintelligible.

You may also notice some actors will do an accent at the beginning of the film and almost completely drop it by the end of the film -- it's because the film doesn't have time to slow down to make sure the audience is reading the film properly.