Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 May 10 - 05:19 AM

Robin Hood 'Men in tights' says it all. Cary Elwes as Robin, Isaac Hayes as Asneeze and a wonderfuly hammy Patrick Stewart as King Richard.

From the film:

Prince John: And why should the people listen to you?

Robin Hood: Because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.



Wonderful.

:D (eG)

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 20 May 10 - 04:57 AM

Amen to that Crow Sister. he is one total tosspot.

P.S.
WTF is this doing in the music section?

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 20 May 10 - 04:52 AM

These Antipodeans have no sense of humour...
Bee Gees - Born on Isle of Man, raised in Chorlton, Lancs, according to Wikipedia. Didn't move to Australia until later. Who was Antipodean?

Actually the thing that I find ridiculous in the Robin Hood films is usually the age of the actors.

Just for curiosity I checked some dates. King John - born 1157, became King 1189 (age 32) (also start of 3rd Crusade), Imprisoned Late 1192 (on way home from Crusade) until early 1194 (age about 37) Died 1199 age 42.
When he was the same age as the actor playing him in this particular film, he had been dead 6 years.
King John - age 22 at start of Crusade, and almost 27 when Richard released after ransom, so an actor age 30 a bit closer.

In the 1976 film Robin and Marian, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn play an aging Robin and Marian after the death of King Richard. (I know the plot is all hokum, but bear with me). The whole point of the film was that Robin (in terms of 12th Century lifespan) was getting old and worse for wear. How old was Connery? 46!
Back to the current new film - How old is Crowe? 46!

I think an Irish accent is the least of his worries...

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 20 May 10 - 03:37 AM

"To go with Lady Jean's last paragraph; the majority of people who go to see the film won't give a **** what Russell Crowe's accent is."

It'll probably be glaringly obvious only to people from the UK and Ireland.

Otherwise, Russel Crowe is a total brat, or you can swap 'br' for 'tw' there if you prefer.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 20 May 10 - 03:26 AM

"South of Yorkshire accent", Dave. There isn't really a South Yorkshire, thats just a political device.
Al (from York).

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 20 May 10 - 03:22 AM

To go with Lady Jean's last paragraph; the majority of people who go to see the film won't give a **** what Russell Crowe's accent is.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 May 10 - 03:07 AM

DH: These antipodeans have got no sense of humour

True. Having worked with many antipodeans over several decades, they tend to be wonderful at dishing it out but not quite so good at taking it.

On one occasion, in Papua New Guinea, I'd been the butt of "whingeing Pom" jokes for days. I finally retaliated with a barbed comment about Aussie farmers nad *their* whingeing about the weather putting Poms into the shade. The Queenslander I was working with immediately bristled: "So you don't like Aussies, then?".

I replied "I've got no problems with Aussies, but I get pissed off with the attitude of a lot of the white bastards that have moved there in the past couple of hundred years".

His mates had to haul him off me!!! He wouldn't speak to me for the rest of the project.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 20 May 10 - 02:41 AM

According to one report Crowe said he based his accent on his ' friend ' Sir Michael Parkinson, who came from Barnsley, even Parky doesn't speak with a South Yorkshire accent anymore.

These antipodeans have got no sense of humour, remember the Bee Gees walking out on Clive Anderson ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 20 May 10 - 12:54 AM

Are you trying to say Ivanhoe may have been Navaho? I guess that explains why he won the archery contest.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: LadyJean
Date: 19 May 10 - 11:25 PM

Most of the Native Americans in westerns are Navahos. When the script calls for them to say something in a Native American language, the director would tell them, "Just say something in Navaho, after all, who speaks Navaho?"
I think we all know the answer to that one.
According to the anthropology professor who told me this story, an actor playing Cochise (who wasn't a Navaho.) brought the house down at a reservation cinema, when he charged the cavalry shouting, "Hello friend! Good to see you!"

The majority of the people who see "Robin Hood" won't know a Yorkshire accent, anymore than they can speak Navaho.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 May 10 - 09:06 PM

I vaguely remember something in recent times about a movie set in Nazi Germany where the actors spoke English with German accents!

Even in the best dressed & designed films there is something that screams modern. Clothing styles usually have something of the designer's day in them, hair is usually not accurate, & makeup is another giveaway.

One pics I've seen of Robin & Marion shows her wearing what looks like a long-sleeved tee-shirt with something corset-like, but not tight laced (corsets weren't worn in those times) over it.

One of my historic costume books was written in 1904. Society ladies modelled their ancestors' dresses & are illustrated by perfect drawings of these 18th century dresses worn by Edwardian ladies with Gibson Girl faces.

dandra

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 19 May 10 - 08:06 PM

I think it important to point out that Yul Bryner spoke just like a Siamese king in The Magnificent Seven.

Don

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: *#1 PEASANT*
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:56 PM

The accent was not of the region imho but I am no expert however
that was the least of the problems in the movie

1. They might have been poor but the villagers would not have been so stupid as to not know how to make propper wattle hurdles (fencing)- the movie showed them torn up and full of holes.

2.The landing craft look just like WWII d-day ones but covered with wood....I have never seen a landing craft of the period but can't have looked just like a WWII model in wood.

3.Rushes on the hall floor. Person designing the set had no Idea how to spread rushes. It was one here one there with yards apart rather than a good thick covering.

4.Reference to Lion Heart accurate or not, as guilty of mass murder did not further the plot and were there just to dig at the nobility.

5.Frequent references to the Celtic Past (standing stones crop up frequently- not crosses but standing stones etc...) seem to depict the English of the period living like squatters in the ruins of the past. Anyway what were those ruins....? Destroyed church comes up several times? Certainly that was not till later...

6. Did I not hear the song "Women of Ireland" I believe that was written by Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains within the last 30 years or so.....no attempt to get the music right what so ever.

7. Somehow someone was working hard to tie it in to the audience's familarity with Monte Python. Both sherif and king John were both far too comic for a serious movie. Serious actors playing those roles in past movies would have been much better.

8. Good Point: Almost worth watching the whole movie just to watch the very artistic credits at the end (no but close they were very good) So go out to the lobby for popcorn and come back for the credits.

Now how do I get around having to be informed of sequal after sequal which due to the point in time of the legend collections that the movie was placed seem to be out there in a long succession.

If you want to see a good movie get the Immaganarium of Dr. Parnassus
Gilliam- just out in DVD- my world exactly.

Conrad

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Lox
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:43 PM

"I heard a speech of Robin's on the radio. Irish!"

Nah ... he was just putting it on ...

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:36 PM

For those old enough to remember, Errol Flynn once played Robin Hood -he also played General Custer and other American western folks. He was Tasmanian by birth and never lost his accent. Most people didn't care at the time and few commented on it. Different times.... Had Russell Crowe spoken the language of the times in which the story is set, it would have been unintelligible to modern humans, most likely -with the possible exception of habitue's of Reykjavik discos late at night.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:27 PM

JFW: Robin Hood ballads go back to 600 AD, when he would have spoke a language similar to modern Icelandic.

Interested to see your sources for this as, AFAIK, there are no ballads about him recorded before the early 14th century. Since ALL the early stories and ballads are set in post-conquest times, it's hard to see where a pre-conquest date would fit the legends. Sure you're not confusing him with Arthur?

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:18 PM

Definitely not Irish. But not Yorkshire or North Midlands/ Notts either.

Though, even if he was a real person (there is reference to a Robert or Robin Hood of Loxley in the York Pipe Rolls of the early 1200s) he certainly wouldn't have spoken with either accent.

As a Yorkshire lad born and bred an easy walk for a 5 year old from Robin Hood's grave near Clifton, I was brought up in the certainty that Robin was a Yorkshireman...after all, Loxley's in Yorkshire, he's supposed to have died at the hand of the Abbess of Kirklees (near Clifton, in Yorkshire), someone of the name is mentioned in the York Pipe Rolls, Little John is supposed to have "kept kine at Hartshead" (right next to Clifton) and is supposedly buried in Hathersage, on the Yorkshire/ Derbyshire border. Sherwood at the time would have extended over much of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.

So we always felt that he was "ours" and that the midlanders had somehow managed to "steal" him :-)

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:17 PM

So in erupting during that interview he was staying in character...

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: john f weldon
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:57 PM

Robin Hood ballads go back to 600 AD, when he would have spoke a language similar to modern Icelandic.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: GUEST,Chris Murray
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:46 PM

I heard a speech of Robin's on the radio. Irish!

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:43 PM

Well, however Robin Hood spoke (imagining/assuming he existed) it is hardly likely to have been like modern Nottinghamshire accents, or Yorkshire either(since that county has at least as good a claim to him).

Accuracy doesn't come into this, unless you want to go the Mel Gibson route and have the cast speaking Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. Just avoid accents that sound too out of place, which is a matter of taste more than anything.

I imagine Russell Crowe erupted at the suggestion that he lacked taste. Or maybe that he couldn't do accents, when he'd gone to all the effort of not sounding Antipodean.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:14 PM

Yes, seen the film. Pretty dissapointing too.

Crowe's accent is terrible, certianly not like nottingham accents I have heard.

It rates alongside Mel Gibson's Scottish accent in Braveheart and Dick Van Dyke as a Cockney in Mary Poppins.

It should have been a better film but it descended into to 'Merry England' type scenes with villagers dancing around to music from a mandolin and a hurdy gurdy....not too sure they were around in the 13th Century.

At one point you are also persuaded that Robin's father wrote the draft for the Magna Carta. So all in all a pile of faeces...

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:00 PM

Depends who you think Robin Hood was - if he was nobility he'd have a Norman French accent. If not, the local accent, whatever that was at the time.

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Little Robyn
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:50 PM

Wot do ya expect from a Kiwi?
Robyn

Subject: RE: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:46 PM

...Where's YOKSHER?

Subject: Accents: Russel Crowe and Robin Hood?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:34 PM

Russell Crowe has been criticised for his accent in his new Robin Hood film: he seems to be the slightly touchy sort, and got annoyed when an interviewer suggested he'd used cod Irish rather than cod Tyke in his performance.

Now, has anyone who would (a) know a Yoksher accent from a horse's fart seen the film?

or (b) got any interesting ideas about what accent Robin Hood (assuming he existed) would really have had? OK it was Middle English, but would it have been more like the present Yoksher or Nottamun accent, or like American (if so what sort), or even Jamaican or Mexican...?