Posted on 06/02/2019 10:52:55 AM PDT by morphing libertarian
I’ve always wanted to buy the OED set. I subscribe online and whenever I log on everyone within 15 feet moves a little bit further away from me.
I read the book. A movie faithful to the text ought to be really fascinating.
Ah
not sure how faithful it is or if all the facts re historically accurate. But it held my interest. The movie has a connected person who bails him out, but I wonder ion that was just a movie gimmick.
the improbable partnership between Murray and William Chester Minor made for a fascinating story, and despite heavy license in the cinematic retelling, the bare bones remain intriguing. Murray (Mel Gibson) is a genius autodidact with a staggering fluency in more than a score of languages. ...to take over the stalled editorship of the dictionary, he overcomes significant academic snobbery... moves his wife (Jennifer Ehle...) and family to Oxford... and begins to tackle the monumental assignment, which he estimates will take between five and seven years...
Paranoid American doctor Minor (Sean Penn), in a delusional state, kills a man... He’s declared insane and imprisoned [in a] psychiatric facility... Civil War trauma has triggered bouts of madness in this otherwise brilliant man of medicine...
A general call is put out for freelance contributors to submit word origins, and Minor maniacally begins bombarding Murray with references that advance the dictionary...
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Sorry I refuse to watch any movie with Sean Penn in it.
Have already been told this is a must see.
I have the abbreviated set.
Thoroughly enjoyed Simon Winchester’s book about the making of the OED, “The Meaning of Everything”.
I refuse to watch that jerk Sean Penn.
don’t apologize to me. you’re loss, not mine.
Thanx The other one must have been for my Democrat porn site.
He is a jerk, no doubt about it. But he is a good actor. I still think about hs performance in Mystic River. (It was probably so good because Clint Eastwood directed it.)
It's like Tom Hanks -- how can he act so well and be such a jerk? Hard to figure out. I've even met him in person and he was a jerk in front of my kid. I try to avoid paying money to see him, but if one of my friends is watching something of his by cable, I'll watch. The one a few years ago where he played Walt Disney was very good -- Saving Mr. Banks. Stupid title, though.
Thanks! I value the opinion of those whose opinion you value!
OK, I saw this last night. Good, far from great.
First—and I hate to do the Hollywood thing, but—the motivations of two of the key people are never clear. One guy wants to stop Prof. Murray (Mel Gibson) from heading up the Dictionary project. But it’s not clear why (class? jealousy?) Second, the doctor who is overseeing the treatments of Dr. Minor—Sean Penn-—escalates to more severe treatments, but then in the end seems to willingly throw in with Murray.
Second, Penn’s emoting and overacting is (pardon the pun) maddening. I couldn’t hear half the dialogue. Both Penn & Gibson whisper a lot, but Penn in particular with his crazy character adds in other indistinguishable inflections.
The project itself is inspiring and the forgiveness/love story (even if true) is mind-boggling.
See what you think.
The revieweralso had problems with the script's lack of focus. But I am still curious about the entire mise en scène effect of being in that period, with those clothes, those accents, those backgrounds, furnishings, props like the library books and writing implements, and whatever shreds of the real story the writers did manage to shoehorn in there. It's probably at least as historically accurate as A Beautiful Mind or many of the BBC period dramas, which is to say, 30 to 50%—but moreso visually realistic.
I’d give set design an A+
I read the book years ago. Amazing story.
I'm sure to enjoy that part, then!
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