Bahstan Accent Crisis

January 14, 2001

I saw Thirteen Days yesterday and ended up liking it. I was pretty reticent to go see it, but was coerced into it by a friend of mine. The fact that a new Lord of the Rings trailer was attached pretty much sealed the deal.

After watching the first scene, I wanted to set my own hair on fire. Costner, never known as the male Meryl Streep, botched his northeastern accent so badly that the prospects of two hours of it made me contemplate a drawn out suicide. That scene must have been the first day of shooting or something, because after that the accent became much more tolerable. Once the movie got going, I actually found myself enjoying itself. Bruce Greenwood turns in a killer performance as JFK.

I never really learned much about the Cuban missile crisis, so the film remained interesting and dramatic. I often thought to myself “Um, are there missiles in Cuba still? This can’t be true.” I guess truth is stranger, even in Washington D.C.

The Lord of the Rings trailer was a teaser, but it was fun anyway. Peter Jackson seems to have done a really nice job. The casting seems dead on and the scenes looked like they were pulled right off the pages. I have to buy a new edition of the books, just to re-read them before the movies come out. This edition is probably the one I’m going to get. There are so many editions that I had to research a little bit before putting it in my wishlist.

Posted in Moving Pictures