I love my kids. I really, really do. But if I could change one thing, it would be the accent they’re picking up.
Now I’m a Yorkshireman by birth but if you met me you wouldn’t encounter the traditional flat-cap-off-out-wi’t-whippets accent of North Yorkshire. There might be the odd turn of phrase that gives it away but they’re few and far between. And please don’t misunderstand me! I have nothing against the Shetland accent. It’s a lovely, lilting, slightly Norwegian twist on the Scottish accent. I could listen to it for hours on end (and still not understand a word) but it’s doing dreadful things to my kids!
A few examples.
“I’m off ooooootside!” “No, outside.” “That’s what I said. Oooootside.”
Yeah, basically anything with an “ow” sound becomes an “oooo” sound. Or shooold that be sooond?
Rs. Farrrr morrre than you need in any worrrrd. Or rather, worrud, as there’s also this wonderful thing called “The Scottish Intrusive Vowel.” This little gem turns forms into forrrrums, worms into worrums.
Then there’s the interesting local habit of dropping the “y” from the end of worruds. Bugger! Words. See? They’ve got me doing it now. The town of Scalloway becomes Scallowaa. Bressay -> Bressaa. I heard my middle lad trying that on in his reading homework tonight. The girl, Sally, definitely became Sallaa.
I know there’s a strange craze to preserve these dialects. The Shetland dialect has a whole website devoted to it, and I encourage you to have a Google for it if you want to encounter, as Mel Brooks might’ve termed it, genuine frontier gibberish.
The worst part of it? The kids have started doing exaggerated impersonations of me when they’re speaking “proper“.
The Easter Holidays are officially over today. Yep, this is the last day. The last Friday, the last day the kids’ll be at home/out of school club/farmed out to relatives (hah! I wish!). Well, the last day unless you count the “In-Service Training” day that’s been tacked on for Monday. As if 2 weeks wasn’t long enough.
Anyway. Given that the kids are at home, the weather has naturally turned to crap. We’ve a blasting, lazy north wind howling past. Any time you think “Yep, looks good enough to go to the park” you can guarantee that the hail/sleet/snow will come rushing past to disabuse you of any such foolish notions.
So the kids are watching Disney’s Aladdin while I write this. I love Aladdin. One of my favourite Disney animated movies. Robin William’s performance as the Genie far outweighs my problems with their butchering of the story. I mean, setting it in some fictional Arabian country? C’mon, guys, read your sources! Aladdin was set in China! And just the one Genie? Get with the program! You need a Genie of the Ring and a Genie of the Lamp! Hallmark got it right (and John Leguizano gave superb performances as both of them)! Even my daughter’s school panto got that right! But my favourite character in the whole thing? The Carpet. Yep. The Carpet.
Y’see, the Carpet doesn’t say a word. It coveys a world of expression through simple posture and movement. No voice to get in the way of the humour going straight from the animator’s wonderfully skilled hand to your brain. Perfect.
And this got me thinking back to some of the other Disney movies I love, wondering if this is a pattern.
Quick pause to admire the hail-bow we’ve got outside at the moment. It doesn’t take a decent picture but it’s strangely beautiful.
Tangled. Disney’s take on the Rapunzel story, definitely influenced by Shrek in terms of humour, and possessing not one but two of these superb silent characters – Samson the horse and whatever the little Chameleon thing is called. I’ve seen this movie a few times now as it’s first on whenever the kids get to their Granny’s house and this pair are nothing short of genius. No amount of dialogue could convey the sheer depth of disdain Samson has for the thief than a single raised eyebrow. Priceless.
Wallace and Grommit. Okay, so not Disney, but nonetheless. If you want to see a masterclass in the raising of a single eyebrow, you need look no further than Grommit. Nick Park deserves deification for what he’s achieved with plasticene.
Ice Age. The Squirrel. Scraps? Scrats? Thing1 informs me he doesn’t have a name. But as @Daddacool has just reminded me, he’s one who entertains without fail and without uttering a word. Gets me just there every time Sid brings him back from the dead. And that quivering lip when he realises he’s just set off the volcano?
Star Wars – R2D2? Not exactly silent but close enough for government purposes.
Sometimes all the witty dialogue in the world just gets in the way. Nick Park could very easily have given Grommit the voice so many people (especially Americans, sorry) think he has. Any Disney character at all could get a voice and nothing more would be thought about it. It takes guts to keep a character silent (and the odd whinny doesn’t count, Samson).
Now I haven’t seen The Artist yet – warned off picking up any pirate copies (black and white, no sound…) – but I love Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie – the only spoken line in the entire thing is delivered by Marcel Marceau! Looking forward to it hitting DVD so I can find out just how good this dog is.
I have precisely 2 horror films in my DVD collection. I much prefer to borrow them from people and then return them when I eventually remember. Which reminds me, if I have a DVD of yours, please give me a prod. It would be 3 but I simply cannot find a copy of “In The Mouth Of Madness”, one of the finest pieces of Lovecraftian circular horror out there, on DVD for a price I’m prepared to pay. And when I say “price”, I’m generally talking about 99p on eBay here.
Anyway, one of those films is the ZomCom, “Sean of the Dead”. Where “Hot Fuzz” took “Midsomer Murders” to it’s logical conclusion, “Sean of the Dead” applies the same sense of humour to the zombie genre. A good film but not one I can watch all the time.
The other one is the 1982 “The Thing”, by John Carpenter. A superb piece of isolationist horror – protagonists trapped in a limited environment, something killing them off one by one. Traditional 1980s slasher flick territory. Only this time the eponymous thing could be anyone – it can mimic people perfectly. Right up until it mutates, lashes out with it’s tentacles and absorbs you. As a creature, it’s perfect. Couple state of the art special effects (for the 1980s, anyway, but they still hold up well today) with a creepy soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (a man better known for his work on spaghetti westerns) and some genuine shock moments – the defibrillator scene, anyone? It is a superb movie.
Then I discovered that someone had made a sequel. Or rather, a prequel. Now this puts things into a very dangerous territory. Prequels, especially those made almost 30 years after the original, don’t tend to work very well. For one thing, special effects have moved on a touch. What’s possibly today, with the help of computers, was definitely not possible back in the 1980s with the help of prosthetics, plasticine and Duck tape. You only have to look at the TV series “Enterprise” to see prequels done very, very wrong – too shiny, too new and could someone please explain continuity to them? But the Klingons were funny.
However, this is a prequel done right. Almost. The soundtrack is nowhere near as good as the Ennio Morricone one. Not by a long, long, long, way. The creature, while looking better, sticks to the ground rules laid down in the first film as far as what it can and cannot do. It explains them a little more, showing a bit more of the how but still none of the why. You still know nothing of the creature’s origins, purpose, intentions (other than survival). In a way, some of the transformations don’t work as well because they look almost too good. It’s lost something in the “and then we handed it over to the CGI guys for them to work on”. The movie sets up the original as a sequel perfectly. You know know what happened before MacReady and team turn up – and just why that damn dog’s so dangerous. It stays true to the original’s sense of isolation, horror and uncertainty.
I’m tempted to add this one to my collection, especially if someone kind out there does a BluRay double-pack with the pair of them.
Final Rating: 8/10. It would’ve been higher but the soundtrack really let it down.
For the gamers out there, there is a sequel to The Thing. I never got to play this as it was only released for the PC and didn’t see the light of day on a Playstation. It’s use of Fear/Trust mechanics to balance how much – or little – you trust the other members of your team sounded like it hit the spot, though. I seem to recall a graphic novel as well…