True Blood and Nora’s Accent

We watched last night's True Blood this evening On Demand. It was a great episode, with some nifty twists, except for one minor detail. We learned that Nora was an English noblewoman who became a vampire in the 17th Century. Hence her very upper-class English accent.

Which didn't yet exist at that time.

To which some will say, "You can accept vampires and all of the other magical creatures on True Blood, but you cavil at that little historical error?"

Yes. Because when fiction is set in an unreal world, all the tiny details have to be correct in order not to destroy one's willing suspension of disbelief. That's true for all fiction, but it's especially true when the very setting contradicts reality.

More than that, the grainy, gritty details of the fictional reality have to be very sharply real in order to make the fantastic world continue to seem real.

That minor details is not so minor, at all.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter – the definitive historical movie about Abraham Lincoln!

I finally had the chance to watch "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" on DVD. I had missed it in the theaters, through which it zipped fairly quickly. I gather it was a commercial flop.

I don't know why it flopped. It was loads of fun and extremely well done. It had its problems, such as the lack of facial resemblance between the actor and Lincoln, despite the hours he spent being made up for the part every day before shooting began, and his lyric baritone voice vs. Lincoln's reportedly high, nasal one. There were moments where I had to strain a bit to hold onto my willing suspension of disbelief, and some of the over-the-top action scenes (e.g., the fight on the backs of the thundering herd of horses) went on too long, but those were relatively minor problems.

It was a great humans vs. vampires adventure romp fairly well integrated into actual history. Even with the vampires insinuated everywhere, it gave me a far more convincing feeling of the time and place than the lauded and quite bad "Lincoln" with Daniel Day Lewis. I saw Lincoln in the theater and regretted paying the money and was relieved when it finally ended. I wish I had seen this one in the theater and I was sorry when it ended.