My husband is watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Talk about racial miscasting. Willem Defoe makes a terribly corny Mexican. Right up there with Charleton Heston in A Touch of Evil.
Spike: Taking up smoking, are you? Harmony: I am a villain, Spike. Hello!
Spike/Harm ,'Help'
Buffista Movies 3: Panned and Scanned
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Burrell - Dec 10, 2004 8:09:37 pm PST #7052 of 10001
Why did Darth Vader cross the road? To get to the Dark Side!
dcp - Dec 10, 2004 8:31:37 pm PST #7053 of 10001
The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.
Worse than John Wayne as Genghis Khan?
Matt the Bruins fan - Dec 10, 2004 10:27:13 pm PST #7054 of 10001
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand
Only Pauly Shore can credibly claim to have been worse than John Wayne as Ghengis Khan.
tommyrot - Dec 11, 2004 6:13:28 am PST #7055 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
OTOH, Ricardo Montalban was the best Khan.
DXMachina - Dec 11, 2004 6:14:47 am PST #7056 of 10001
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.
Only Pauly Shore can credibly claim to have been worse than John Wayne as Ghengis Khan.
I dunno. Zero Mostel once played Kublai Khan versus Desi Arnaz, Jr's Marco Polo. [link]
Mr. Broom - Dec 11, 2004 8:41:18 am PST #7057 of 10001
"When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I'd love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie." ~Trent Reznor
I would think that any Mexican with a sense of ethnic pride would be more irritated by Antonio Banderas playing a Mexican, considering he's a born-and-raised Spaniard, and there's still no love lost between Spain and Mexico.
§ ita § - Dec 11, 2004 8:48:05 am PST #7058 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
Once Upon A Time In Mexico is such a feverishly ethnic pride movie, though. I wonder what sort of box office it and Desperado did in Mexico.
Fiona - Dec 11, 2004 8:58:23 am PST #7059 of 10001
Apparently Gael Garcia Bernal does a creditable Spanish accent in the new Almodovar, Bad Education, so maybe it evens out.
Nutty - Dec 11, 2004 9:03:54 am PST #7060 of 10001
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."
I was going to say, much was made of Gael Garcia Bernal learning Spanish Spanish for that latest Almodóvar movie (he is Mexican). Because if he hadn't, it would have sounded silly to the audience in Spain.
(Banderas's accent in Spanish is pure southern Spain, and his English doesn't sound Mexican-accented at all.)
But I'm not sure as how Rodriguez is making movies for a Spanish-language audience of any nationality; the Spanish in his movies always seems incidental. Also, Rodriguez always seems cheerful about the hilarious lack of logic in his movies. In The Faculty, the invading aliens have conveniently read several classics of SF literature and obeyed their irrational assumptions.
Kathy A - Dec 11, 2004 11:51:55 am PST #7061 of 10001
We're very stretchy. - Connie Neil
One of the more interesting cases of racially-blind casting is the upcoming film Alatriste with Viggo Mortensen (Danish/generic American heritage) playing a 17th-century Spanish mercenary. Even if he does speak fluent Spanish, it's Argentinian dialect, not old-world Spanish.