"The Wire" on HBO

http://markgorman.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/cameron-bullingdon-dining-club2_468x420.jpg
2. dcam, 3. history mayne, 8. boris johnson 9. dominic west

nice shades enrique

i remember some interview where laurie said he was very pleasantly surprised that people liked his acting on house since for the first season or two he literally wasn't thinking about anything other than making sure his accent was ok.

in general, american accents ARE more "monotone" than british accents. an american will start a sentence strong and end it weakly, and unemphasized. a britisher will often start weak and then end strong, raising the pitch at the end as well - which can sound more "musical" or whatever.

a microcosm of this phenomenon can be found in the two different ways of pronouncing "singapore"

monotone v girls aloud

Oh hey you just reminded me that the German Eurovision winner was a skiffle-beat song and it made me want to listen to Girls Aloud and I've forgotten to until this moment. Thanks!

What are the two different ways of pronouncing Singapore? I can only for the life of me think of one.

Actually I guess you're talking about SINGapore or SingaPORE. Obviously the latter. Sorry, this has nothing to do with The Wire.

wtffff, i spent like 200 total on the individual seasons

an american will start a sentence strong and end it weakly, and unemphasized. a britisher will often start weak and then end strong, raising the pitch at the end as well - which can sound more "musical" or whatever.

I.e. Brits speak in iambs, Americans in trochees?

tom wilkinson's american accent is ok, but it's not house good. e.g. i hear lots of problems here, and even more when he's acting on camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjTp3MSh-Vw

maybe this is actually sounds ok to americans because there are americans who talk like this? who slip into british? i've never heard them. although i had never heard a maryland accent until the last 30 rock.

ok that's not actually as bad as i remember it

One of the true joys of Wire watching is catching McNutty slipping into Brit for a second.

argh i found this one of the most annoying things about it!

ha that's true caek - he says "consyoomed" and "stahted"

my admiration for wilkinson's american accent comes from "in the bedroom" - he played a guy from massachusetts, where there's a lot more leeway there for non-rhotic r's i guess

but really it's all about the inflection - you can have all the technical aspects of an accent down right but if you don't emphasize the right things it just doesn't work - i think wilkinson has an ear for the way americans talk

chap yeah, there's a million microexamples like that - HOT sauce vs hot SAUCE is one that i notice... and there's the classic sport(s) divide - duh-FENCE vs the basketball chant: "DEE-fense!!"

cf Leee

did you ever see the what the accents ended up sounding like in life is just a game? i have some great behind the scenes footage of you with mike!

argh i found this one of the most annoying things about it!

― harbl, Saturday, June 5, 2010 6:32 PM (1 hour ago)

ayo can someone post a clip of mcnulty or stringer falling into british? i've rescreened (/morbs) part of season one since i learned they were lolbritish but can't tell anything?

i don't think he did it in season one, iirc it happens a couple times in season 4 & 5. maybe he got lazy. i don't remember stringer ever falling into british. he is one exception i can think of to my general hatred of actors faking another country's english.
there is a clip here http://thewire-hbo.com/2007/07/22/english-actors-in-the-wire-would-you-have-guessed/

oh wait is that one from season 1? haha

and i can't believe anyone praises his "baltimore" accent, let alone american

oh wow that one is really bad!

West said in one of the DVD commentaries that he couldn't get the Balmer accent down so he just went with a semi-generic American. The only time we hear McNutty talk in Balmer is that one scene in season 5.

this is the really bad mcnulty scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg_3ZSeHL4g

i think this is pretty much the worst in all five seasons, but there's usually a problem with every other line.

stringer's is almost perfect though.

i like this little tidbit:

King Pin Stringer Bell is skilfully played by Hackney actor Idris Elba. According to IMDB, he actually uses his American accent when talking to The Wire fans.

“Wherever I go the real hard-core drug dealers come up to me and confide in me. I almost feel guilty turning around and saying: ‘Ello, mate. My name’s Idris and I’m from London.’ I don’t want to break the illusion.”

an american will start a sentence strong and end it weakly, and unemphasized. a britisher will often start weak and then end strong, raising the pitch at the end as well - which can sound more "musical" or whatever.

as somebody from the west coast of Scotland, a pretty wild accent even for a "Brit", i remember the hilarity my accent caused Californians, not because i started up and went down, but because i went up a down several times throughout a sentence. While they couldn't imitate my vowel sounds or accent they could nail the pitch, wavering so much more than theirs ever would.

McNulty's accent is pretty woeful, although i somehow managed to take a while to work out he was English (in hindsight "snot boogie" tells you all you need to know). Not sure how great Stringer's is. It's consistently american in the way House's is, but i don't know how accurate it is of a black man from inner-city Baltimore (not that the American cast are generally any better for this afaik).

and knowing hugh laurie has always made me go "ooooh bullshit" over house (not that i've watched more than a couple of episodes, it outlives its premise after about two).

caek i did not, actually! would love to see.

House does not sound American. House sounds like nothing.

xp, i sent you an email.

everyone else: if you ever need someone to teach an american accent to a british actor who can do a really weird al pacino impression, but that's about it, then tracer is your man! : )

he could also do a frankly amazing walken!! i know that walken is a common party trick but i've never been able to pull it off

yeah, the walken was actually really good. there's a few lines of straight up pacino and walken in the final thing, but mostly it's just his weird london/jersey (not new)/rhotacism/american thing. great times : )

I didn't get the email \(;_;)/

ha! i have three or four email addresses for you. i will try one of the others.

got it!

NY ilxors: This Saturday is your chance to bust a (paintball) cap in Marlo Stanfield's ass - also: Omar, Snoop, Kima & more!

rescreened (/morbs)

I can't let this stand. "Rescreened" is (/Alfred).

Maybe it's just me, but once in a while String sounds almost Cockney.

Best written show on television among worst closed-captioned on DVD? Small sampling from Season 4:

"Couldn't smoke out who was pulling the strings." as
"Wouldn't smoke. Guy was pulling the strings."

"I debriefed"
"I had to brief"

"was gutted for political reasons"
"we'll cut it for political reasons"

"Fuck the Bunk"
"Fuck that bunk"

etc.

At least they don't do the West Wing thing of editing all sentences for brevity, but come on.

What did Charlie Brooker make of Season 5?

ha i love that the ilx wire thread got so nerdy we are criticizing the closed-captioning

i'm about to watch the finale. feel like i am going for one last visit before pulling the plug on a beloved family member or something

*gulp*

Peace be with you.

your hair look good, samosa

i watched New Jack City on the plane home from NYC a couple days ago, and there are a few exchanges that are almost identical to bits of dialog in The Wire

I've been watching The Wire on the 101 Network on DirecTv. I never caught it on HBO and never saw the dvds.

It just hit me that that the actor who played Wallace also plays Vince Howard on Friday Night Lights. The episode where he came back to the low rises after leaving his grandmom in the sticks was really a punch in the gut.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/5219462887_b504fd89a4.jpg

lol

http://mightygodking.com/images/ac-wire.jpg

miss u this show

think I'm getting all this DVD's for xmas!