busker

Nix Prolix

New Year's Rez (for the 30th year running): be less longwinded, especially now that I'm trying to craft blogs that even *I* might care to read. Everyone else manages and I only need clink on my links to read folks who set me good examples with entry.

Bad Movie Accents

New entry: Kyle MacLachlan in Touch of Pink in which he ponces around in faux posh gear à la Brit gentry of yesteryear. God knows which glottal stops he thought he was tapping but what emerges is a mix of German professor-meets-patina of cockney. Now I see that he's meant to be a Cary Grant revival, it's worse than I thought.

Others figuring high in this pantheon of parvenu pronunciations:

• Ken Branagh's excruciating Merkan accent in Dead Again
• Bob Hoskins' appalling southern preacher in The White River Kid
• "Sir" Michael Caine's laughable effort in Secondhand Lions (opposite the gritty Robert Duvall, to boot)
• Any of James Cromwell or Tom Wilkinson's efforts.

On the can-do side: Gwyneth Paltrow and Annette Bening (Being Julia), both faultless.