Sadly, even with a Bradbury pedigree, I had exactly zero interest in seeing Sound of Thunder. Don't know why. Just did not grab me.

There was an article in Slate the other day to the effect that Ray Bradbury is, most of the time, a pulp-horror guy. And as such, not always strong with the plot,although awesome at atmosphere. Even if this new movie were not a hunky underpants movie, I still doubt it could be adapted with any ease. Same again, "The Crowd" or "The Jar" or "The Veldt" or most of his better short stories.

I saw The Brothers Grimm, and it was half goofball, whizbang romp and half quasi-serious story-development Hollywood Script Lesson adventure story. Kind of a weird mix, but some fun folktale mishmash excitement. Also, Heath Ledger as an hysteric.

Maybe it was the cinematographer's doing and afterwards Hyams said "Oh well, let's keep it.

6 of 1, half-a-dozen of the other. Hyams is the cinematographer and, according to ImDb, has been for the last 11 of his full-length movies. :)

Ah. I'm at a loss to explain then, but thankful nevertheless.

So, in Brothers Grimm, are Matt Damon and Heath Ledger supposed to be British, not German? Their accents sounded British in the trailer I saw. If so, does that mean we have a movie with British protagonists?

I read a thing that said they used English accents so they sounded "foreign," or not-modern or something, but they didn't want to have them with German accents. Which makes no sense, especially since the French guys have goofy French accents.

Actually, this is an issue I have in general -- if people are supposed to be speaking their native language in an English-language movie, they shouldn't have a "foreign" accent anyway, so American or British accents make as much sense as anything else to me.

So then I guess the goofy French accents do make more sense, since they are (I guess) supposed to be French people speaking German, which would mean they would likely have heavy accents. Anyway. THe Bros are German.

It's Terry Gilliam, I've learned to not try to make too much sense out any one thing.

I find it amusing that many movies set in the ancient world (Gladiator, I'm looking at you) have posh BBC accents for their characters. Never mind that the leads of Gladiator were Australian, American, and Danish, and it was a US production. Everyone knows the Romans talked like Olivier, right?

I was watching Rome last night and it appeared to me, at times, that James Purefoy's Mark Antony was lapsing almost into an Italian accent. It was very cute. But mostly, they're all British. Oh, and last night's ep *WAAAAY more sex. Lots of explicit sex. I'm enjoying the show very much. And not just for reasons whitefonted.

Everyone knows the Romans talked like Olivier, right?

I don't know how that works for the Brits (maybe it's just "fine -- they talk like some of us, that makes sense, doesn't everyone?"), but I think it serves to give a sense of alienness to non-Brits without making it too foreign.

It's been insisted in the Great Write Way thread that if you write the book's whole dialogue and reflect the regional pronunciation, people will go batty. I understand that when it's spoken, it's different, but there's a coded level of inaccuracy that is part of the entertainment contract, I'm guessing.

How should they sound, anyway?