Best and worst portrayals of well known people on film

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I've never figured out whether Michael Sheen in Frost/Nixon is a good, bad or accurate portrayal of David Frost.

I assumed it was a ridiculous portrayal, until I found out more about him, and it seems that he really was Tony Blair without the convictions and moral character.

[Lang Spoon]

Christ I have a bigger (well, 38-40 inch for t-shirts) chest then Young ‘Enry? Fucking sap.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

yeah, I was surprised at that. he would have been relatively lanky by today's standards. The Average chest size is now 42 inches apparently.

[Lang Spoon]

Mibees upper body muscle was very different then, one giant Nadal style shoulder and arm from holding the lance/broadsword. And he was very svelte apparently till his accident and peramnanet suppurating leg.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I turned off the Brian Cox rendition of Churchill to try and save his reputation as an excellent actor, but I had seen ten minutes and he was beyong saving.

[Lang Spoon]

Gleeson as well. At least I never liked fucking Oldman (what the fuck was that sub Nic Cage bollocks in Leon?).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Mibees upper body muscle was very different then, one giant Nadal style shoulder and arm from holding the lance/broadsword. And he was very svelte apparently till his accident and peramnanet suppurating leg.

well I've got essentially no upper body muscle and I have a 42 inch chest. People's ribcages have grown quite noticeably from the fifties. (an average of 37 inches to 42 inches, and not all of it is fat)

As for Henry, It's difficult to say really. If you're an armour wearing cunt, you're going to have to be enormously strong, and have tremendous stamina. The thing itself is incredibly awkward and heavy, and ultimately the aim is to be able to fight other cunts in armour, long enough to either exhaust them, or to break their bones with your heavy sword. then bear in mind that anyone going off to fight is going to have to sleep in a field, eat hopelessly inadequate food, and is almost certainly suffering from dysentry and a whole host of stomach parasites. It was actively hard to get fat back then. But he managed.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I've just been sent the DVD Gauguin - Voyage de Tahiti, haven't had time to watch it with my wife as we were in Spain until the beginning of last week, but I've got a feeling Vincent Cassel (Paul Gauguin in the film) and I won't see eye to eye over his interpretation of Gauguin...

[Lang Spoon]

Read Gargantua, Berba. Folk in ‘Enry’s time (in parts of England as well as Rabelais’ Paris) were eating enough to get fat, non jousting or warring clerics especially, merchants, Big Fermers and kulak yeomen, could all be eating quite well indeed. Fat o the land.

[Sam]

Measurements taken from his various suits of armour indicate a height of between 6'1" and 6'2". When he was in his 20's he had a 32 inch waist, which is pretty good for someone in his 20's. but his 39 inch chest is small by modern standards. By his late forties he had a 48 inch waist and by the end it was a 52 inch waist, and a 53 inch chest. Why he was getting suits of armour still made at this point is beyond me.

For propaganda purposes, basically. They have a whole (very boring) section of the Tower of London dedicated to this explanation, if you ever go (I wouldn't bother going, though, at least not for the armour room).

[tee rex]

In Chariots of Fire the Prince of Wales seems a nice enough chap. He can't persuade Eric Liddell to run on a Sunday though.

Actually that was the future Edward VIII, who wasn't very nice at all.

[Patrick Thistle]

Everyone who gushed over The King's Speech talked about how well Firth played George VI and Helena BC as his wife but I don't think anyone could honestly know whether the depictions were accurate. The Queen liked it, apparently.

The clips I've seen of Matt Smith as Prince Philip in The Crown look very believable.

[Jah Womble]

Everyone who gushed over The King's Speech talked about how well Firth played George VI and Helena BC as his wife but I don't think anyone could honestly know whether the depictions were accurate.

I think that that's going to be a problem with a lot of historical portrayals.

[Stumpy Pepys]

People's ribcages have grown quite noticeably from the fifties.

[citation needed]

I'm not fat, I'm big-boned …

[Janik]

I think that that's going to be a problem with a lot of historical portrayals.

To paraphrase from another genre of film: when the legend becomes truth, play the legend.

And talking of Westerns, the vast majority of the portrayals of historical figures in those are massively bogus. The heroic treatment of Colonel George Custer would be a particularly egregious example. Not that movies can be entirely blamed for that seeing as the American press was reporting legends over facts (many spun by his widow), often knowingly, from a few days after his death.
The Earps and Doc Holliday would be another classic example. The noble individuals of My Darling Clementine these guys most assuredly were not. A violent gang, very much the same as the people they were fighting, but one who happened to have gained themselves a badge is a more accurate. As for the common depictions of the fight at the OK Corral, well these don't generally have the two groups being as close as 6 feet apart when the shooting started. And yet, despite this closeness, more survived than not, some completely uninjured. That gives a clue about how accurate the shooting was.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Depiction of Custer in Deadwood seems pretty realistic. "He was a cunt, a stupid cunt who got himself and all his men killed." is the expressed opinion of Calamity jane.

[Jah Womble]

That's pretty colourful dialogue for a musical...

[Stumpy Pepys]

I'd like to have heard Doris Day deliver that line

[Satchmo Distel]

A scene involving Custer, which treated him as a blustering coward who killed women and children, was shot for The Searchers but cut from the movie.

Henry Fonda's character in Fort Apache was also based on Custer.