Well, just one reason for right now, but basically it's that whole Titanic/Pearl Harbor genre of vast overblown richly photographed splendor of a historical event and the players are all the hot young starz of today and don't seem to look or act like anything more than if they're playing dress-up. Nothing wrong with dress-up, per se, but I keep wondering why the directors keep trying to pay so much attention to set design and such, when the screenwriters have people acting and saying things with modern tone and attitude. It just doesn't fit.
Case in point is this new movie they're flogging about World War I with all this spectactular aerial dogfight going on in the trailer, and then some kid saying something like, 'I watch you guys and blah blah blah...' That word "guys" just brings everything to a screeching halt every time I hear it said. It just sounds wrong. You might as well hear him say "let's rock and ROLL, dudes!" as to hear that.
Just to satisfy myself, I checked the online version of the 1913 Webster's dictionary and as I suspected, the word at that time still hadn't taken on its modern sense of "people" or even the slightly older sense of "male people," but was still something more akin to "weirdo."
Anyway, it's a minor thing, I suppose, but it sure does get in the way of the willing suspension of disbelief that you have to have for a movie to really work.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 30, 2007 09:16 AM