Dixie Babble

In yesterday’s action, Marlon Brando in Reflections in a Golden Eye narrowly avoided the upset bid by Burt Reynolds & Jon Voight in Deliverance.

This match was a lot closer than it deserved to be. Have you listened to Brando in that movie? His accent is offensive both to Southerners and to closeted Army officers.

The second match of Day 2 was chalk, with Dan Aykroyd in Driving Miss Daisy beating George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke in a runaway. Brando and Aykroyd will match up in Round 2.

Day 3’s first match sees Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate going against the tournament’s most recent entry, Kevin Spacey in the new Netflix series House of Cards.

An actor as accomplished and versatile as Spacey is a bit of a surprise entry in this tournament, but he overdoes the silkiness of his South Carolina congressman’s silky drawl. He actually sounds like what real Southerners sound like when they’re making fun of how some Southerners talk.

Keanu Reeves’s speaking voice doesn’t sound natural when he’s speaking in his natural speaking voice, so whose bright idea was it to make his hotshot lawyer/son of Satan a Southerner, anyway? Did I miss the part of the plot that explained why being from the South was in any way important to who his character is, or what he does? It’s entirely possible that I did miss that part, since I’ve never been able to watch the entire movie, largely because Keanu’s accent is so bad.

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Today’s second match pits two great actresses against each other: Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof versus Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama.

Elizabeth Taylor was a beautiful woman and an electric screen presence who played Southerner after Southerner without ever quite mastering the accent. We could have picked from any of a number of movies, including her pairing with Brando in Reflections, but we decided to go with one of her best, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

And, yes, I know we’ve let Paul Newman off the hook twice now, but his accent in Cat, or in Cool Hand Luke, was never as distracting as his co-stars’.

Reese Witherspoon grew up in Tennessee, so – like with Burt in Deliverance – I’m going to blame what happens in Sweet Home Alabama on a Hollywood suit, telling the Southerner she doesn’t sound Southern enough. Her accent’s supposed to thicken as the movie goes on, but mostly it just grates.