[Sca-cooks] One more costume question...

S CLEMENGER sclemenger at msn.com
Sat Sep 12 19:22:02 PDT 2009


Christianna, speaking as someone who's primarily a historical costumer, and 
for whom movies in general are fairly far down on the list, there really are 
remarkably few that are "good" in a historically-accurate sense.  What you 
tend to get, in the better cases, at least, is stuff that's good as 
"costume," insomuch as it enhances whatever mood or attitude that needs to 
be brought across.  "Shakespeare in Love" is a decent example of this, as is 
the first "Elizabeth" movie (haven't seen the second one, so I can't 
comment)--decent enough costumes, but they compress 60 years of fashion 
change into a couple of years to make some silly point about E the 1st as 
the Iconic Virgin.  But historical, in general, no.  And some, like, say, 
"The Tudors" of t.v. fame, or "Braveheart," are appallingly bad.
In general, I have learned to turn off my costuming taste buds, and just 
enjoy what they're doing--especially if it's so tongue in cheek, like 
"Knight's Tale," where you have women wearing something that's this odd 
combination of 14th/15th century high class stuff, but with oddly modern 
touches.  Or "Forever After," with some fairly decent 16th century stuff, 
but it's all mixed up.  Or "Dangerous Beauty" which is visually gorgeous, at 
least. (I'm not always sure of the accuracy of other time periods being 
depicted--my primary area of study has been 16th century Northern Europe.)
There's an h-costume list out there--I'd ask for you, but I'm not on the 
list anymore.
--Maire


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kingstaste" <kingstaste at comcast.net>
To: "'Cooks within the SCA'" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2009 10:13 AM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] One more costume question...


> .and then I promise I'll quit.
>
> Many of you are familiar with "Medieval Cookbooks - An Annotated
> Bibliography" put out by Jaelle of Armida / Judy Gerjuoy.  It gives a 
> brief
> run-down on various cookbooks relating to our period, with a rating along
> with each one. 
> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/articles/food_bibliography.html
>
>
>
> Is there a similar list of historically accurate movies as relate to
> costume?  I'd like to be able to recommend some movies to a fashion design
> class, but so often when I think a movie is great, I hear costumers 
> picking
> it apart.  I realize even the best effort will get this sort of 
> going-over,
> but there have to be some generally-agreed-upon films that get thumbs-up
> from the accuracy crowd?  Just wondering if there is any sort of list or
> website or something that I could access?
>
>
>
> Thank you, and now I return you to your regularly scheduled cooking
> conversations.
>
> Christianna
> 



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