Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 12:59 PM

Longfellow poem has sunlight streaming through a glass window, coloured. In the court of King Authur? In a castle? Thatched wooden walls in the middle of a marsh more like.

At least these lack of authenticity things have a long and illustrious pedegree.

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: mousethief
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:00 PM

And the pundits that scratch their arses about it have a long and illustrious pedigree too, only some of them know how to spell "pedigree".

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:06 PM

hey Brett....Yeah, you're thinking of the right series. And speaking of blood and guts, that series also delt pretty accurately with that. There were a lot of severe burns and deaths of Spit and Hurri pilots because of the placement of the fuel tanks made cockpit fires all too common. Plastic surgery made great advances during that time out of necessity and a large number of candidates. But they also showed many of the other ways things happened. The original squadron commander slipped off the wing of his plane and died of a skull fracture.

AND......Is there anyone who doesn't like "Princess Bride?"

Spaw

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:13 PM

I'm more bothered by impossibilities in books than in films. I cringe when a writer writes about walking in the light of the new moon at midnight. I get mad at a children's book illustrator when my daughter asks me why a railway car was lost just because the illustrator didn't care about how many cars she was drawing. I'd love to see a single children's book which gets the curvature of the moon correct when moon and sun are displayed in the same drawing.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Bardford
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:35 PM

I guess Samuel Clemens was an Authenicity Ne(u)rd too.Mark Twain took exception to Fenimore Cooper's linguistic liberties in a biting and wonderful essay which was published posthumously in "Letters From the Earth." I found a website with the full text:

Click here

Authentically yours, Bardford
Also, while I'm here - bodhrans on the Titanic? Come on. Then again, if they put one there, why couldn't they put them all there?

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Bardford
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:40 PM

Yikes. Authenticity Update: "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences" was first published in the North American Review (July 1895).
Cheers,Bardford

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:40 PM

Maybe I am the only person in the world who notices and is annoyed when actors wear glasses that don't have real lenses in them.

This happens because most actors wear contact lenses, if they need corrective lenses at all. Then, if they need glasses for dramatic reasons, instead of going to an optician and having real lenses made, someone in the prop or costume department whips up a fake pair. Those guys don't know how to make glasses look real, but they think no one will notice.

It's rare to see eyeglasses in movies. It generally happens only when the actor portrays (1) a pathetic nerd - like Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor," or (2) a beautiful but cold and unapproachable woman who will, at some point in the story, take off her glasses, let her hair down, and get romantically involved with the hero - like Helen Slater in "The Secret of My Success," or (3) a real historic character who wore glasses - like Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in "JFK." These stereotypes irk me too, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

Real lenses can be recognized by their shape, and their shape can be inferred from the shape and motion of the reflections you see in them. Real lenses almost always have a convex outer surface. Rarely, the outer surface is perfectly flat, or nearly so, but this happens only with very nearsighted people whose lenses are very thick around the edges and thin in the center. Those lenses can be recognized easily by the obvious distortion of anything you see through the lenses, like the outline of the wearer's cheek.

Flat lenses in movie glasses are always a giveaway that the prop man used a flat piece of Plexiglas or something similar (hopefully not window glass, for safety's sake!) to make fake lenses.

Sometimes you see no reflections at all in the glasses, which betrays that the frames are empty. This is common in TV shows and old movies, but not in recent movies. I think this is because sets of many TV shows, especially sitcoms taped before live audiences, are very brightly lit, and the designers aren't trying to achieve realism as far as lighting is concerned. They are probably more concerned that there will be too many reflections. This is understandable, and forgivable in that context.

By far the worst glasses I ever remember seeing were those worn by Kevin Costner in "JFK." His lenses were made from a thin, flexible sheet of plastic, and in forcing them into the frames, someone had left them badly warped. Whenever Costner moved his head, the reflections in his glasses wobbled and twisted like the images in a funhouse mirror. The effect was made worse by the ultra-realistic lighting. Some indoor scenes were very dimly lit, and the light from a nearby window, or from a TV, was so contrastingly bright that reflections were very prominent.

The solution is simple: have real lenses made by an optician. If an actor needs no visual correction, they can supply "blanks." This is commonly done for people who need correction for one eye but have perfect vision (or are blind) in the other. (You don't see many monocles out there, do you?) If an actor with perfect vision needs thick glasses for dramatic reasons, an optician could even supply contact lenses and glasses that cancel each other out!

And by the way, I am NOT an optician.

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: GUEST,Les B.
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 01:59 PM

Rick et al: In regard to Citizen Kane - it always seems to appear on Top Ten lists, and you're right, in comparison to more recent films it seems a bit slow and stodgy.

But, in it's day it was a breakthrough piece. Use of sets with ceilings because of the low angle shots, deep focus lens designed by cinematographer Gregg Toland, innovative sound work, and the courage of Welles to take on a major media figure - William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was so pissed at the not-so-veiled reference to him and his paramour, Marion Davies, he tried to buy and destroy the negative, and his nationwide newspaper empire successfully prevented the film from achieving any sort of commercial success.

As far as the aging of Welles in the Kane role - yeah, it wasn't great, but Welles was only 26 years old then. So taking him up to a 60-year old was a challenge. (Even with the available excesses of Tinsel Town - booze, women, drugs and power !!!)

The comment on the Rosebud scene, which begins and ends the film, reminded me of the supposed femminist philosophy question: "If a man says something in the middle of a forest, with no one else around, is he still wrong ?!?" :)

There is some interesting scuttlebutt about the Rosebud scene. It is apparently one of the scenes that really incensed Hearst. The writer who co-wrote the film with Welles knew Hearst and his lover, Davies, very well and used some of his knowledge to embarrass them. Supposedly the word "Rosebud" was Hearst's pet word for a very private part of Davies' anatomy. When Welles trotted this out in the first scene of the film it sent old man Hearst's blood pressure through the ceiling !

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 02:26 PM

The other thing that gets me -- and this is not really anyone's fault -- is movies about recent historical figures. Whether it's Anthony Hopkins playing Nixon, or Jack Nicholson playing Jimmy Hoffa, or whatsisname Carradine playing Woody Guthrie, I can't get past the fact that I know what this guy looks/talks/acts like, and that isn't him up there on the screen. In a couple of cases the portrayal was so convincing that I didn't mind (Gary Busey playing Buddy Holly, or Denzel Washington playing Malcolm X). But most of the time I could do without these. It's particularly bad in the made-for-TV movies about people like Elvis, the Beatles, Judy Garland, etc. -- which tend to be pretty awful anyway.

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: Kim C
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 02:44 PM

We rented the Bela Lugosi "Dracula" about a month ago figuring we'd be scared. Mister and I both loved Dracula as a novel (although I think he read the Classix Illustrated but I'm not sure!).

It was the funniest damn thing I've ever seen that wasn't supposed to be funny. And of course, it was set in the time period in which the movie was made, instead of the period in which the novel took place.

Everytime Bela did his Hyp-Mo-Tize stare, we cracked up.

That's another thing that bugs me. Movies based on books that don't follow the books. I love Stephen King novels but the movies always suck. (I heard The Green Mile was really good, though.)

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 02:53 PM

Regardless of the book, "The Green Mile" is worth seeing and interestingly, they discussed the non-authentic things like the uniforms. Good flick no matter what and I am not a big King fan as far as movies go.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Confessions of an Authenticity Nurd!
From: mousethief
Date: 15 Mar 01 - 03:03 PM

This thread, although fascinating, is overlong. Here's a new one on the same subject:

blicky