I have to admit, I was looking forward to “Valkyrie,” Bryan Singer’s film about the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Yes, I’m aware that the film stars Tom Cruise, but the remaining cast, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson was intriguing. The film also re-united Singer with Christopher McQuarrie, his screenwriter from “The Usual Suspects.”
The Sunday Times now reports that the film has been pushed to 2009. Originally scheduled for a summer 2008 release, the film received its first push-back to the fall earlier this year. The paper cites a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains who says, “I know there have been all sorts of problems with this production and we will not be screening it at all this year.” The article also notes, ” The quality of Cruise’s German accent was widely commented on. The film has also had to have reshoots after footage was damaged in labs.”
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8 responses to “No Oscar for ‘Valkyrie’ in 2008”
That accent thing was some bullshit story started by an Asian gossip site or paper. There’s no accent in the trailer anyway. I also find those reshoots strange. Especially that big desert battle sequence which was always scheduled to take place after principle photography. The film was probably too talkative and too little action.
Spuij is right on the money about the lack of accent in the early trailers, it was non-existent, which considering he is playing german is a tad…odd. Bear in mind however that some American actors should simply NEVER do accents because they are entirely American. John Wayne could never pull it off, nor could Brad Pitt (OK, once he got away with gibbberish in Snatch, but Seven Years from Tibet??). Cruise bordered on being terrible in Interview with the Vampire with his clipped Christopher Plummer accent making me think he is among those who should stay away from accents…period. Sadly this new film seems to be among those big budget films that ghets into trouble and stays there.
Sorry…Seven Years in Tibet…and the movie only seemed like it was seven years long…
Why should they do accents anyway if the entire film is in English? It is not like you have to distinguish them from anyone else. I think it’s generally silly to make actors use accents if the whole film is based around one community whose members all speak the same language. If they used german accents, then it would seem like they were German but chose to speak English to each other, which is just wrong.
If the film isn’t in German in the first place, then they should let the actors speak in their own accents.
Wait, wasn’t this pushed to March 2009, like, long ago?
Kris: Yes.
I totally agree with Chris. Hearing Nicolas Cage attempt an Italian accent in «Captain Corelli’s Mandolin», while Penélope Cruz delivers some very weird Greek accent mixed with a very distinct Spanish twist, I’m only wondering what language those two people may have actually used. Accented English? I guess not.
I totally agree with Chris and Thomas. Accent is useful when a foreigner is in the foreign land, like Streep in many of her roles. When film is set in a non-English speaking country and characters speak English, accent is useless because in reality they would be speaking a foreign language.