So I get that Captain America is well strong, yeah. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that he can hold onto a building with one hand and drag a rising helicopter down with the other.
But presumably he’s not HEAVIER than the helicopter can lift? And yet here he is, hanging on to the skids with his feet off the ground and dragging it back to earth. He’d have to weigh several tons. Tens of tons, probably. And yet he rides in aircraft all the time.
The bit where one hand is on the rail and the other on the helicopter works because the helicopter clearly couldn’t lift the building and Cap is attaching one to the other. But how is he dragging it out of the sky in the first place with no point of leverage?
The physics simply doesn’t work. Really annoying.
What pointless film niggles really get under your skin?
It’s a generic one, rather than any specific film.
It’s explosions and typically the hero diving to the ground and emerging unscathed without any damage from the blast wave, never find flying glass and other debris.
It’s something you have to live with otherwise you’d stop going to anything that contains action elements.
One more – in shoot outs. People open car doors for cover. Because that’s going to stop a high velocity bullet, isn’t it? And they suffer lots of hits.
I can live with that but I do roll my eyes at violent head trauma resulting in dude shaking his head a bit and blinking before going full ninja 4 seconds later. Nobody ever gets concussion, or feels a bit wobbly and has to take a moment to throw up.
Ok it’s TV but the ‘grenade in their flat’ sequence in the last Sherlock series was a stone cold example of this. Insanely annoying.
Exactement!
Especially as the villain’s massively intricate plot depended on none of them being killed or serious wounded by the blast or the jump through an upstairs window. Grrr!!
In a previous job, I worked in a location which was considered to be at a high risk of terrorist attack. So we were given a talk by the security authorities on what to do if one did happen. One of the most specific things they said was ignore what you see in films and don’t hide behind cars as bullets can pass right through from one side to the other, not just through doors. And check on the pillars and walls in your buildings to see which are part of the support – those are the ones that will protect you, not the partitions.
IRC Cars don’t blow up when you hit them with bullets. In movies they either do, or are totally previous (see above).
I really enjoyed the bits in 21 and 22 Jump streets where vehicles do not explode despite being hit by bullets whilst transporting fireworks, high explosives etc. But the chicken wagon….
One specific one: in the first Lord of the Rings film, at the Council of Elrond (er, the bit where a load of people, most unintroduced yet to either the viewer or each other), when someone announces that Strider is actually the heir to Isildur (and hence claimant on the throne of Gondor), and that his real name is Aragorn.
All that is fine, it’s in the book. But what is annoying is that, in the film, Sean Bean as Boromir (an emissary from Gondor) then says, in awe/surprise, as if meeting a legendary figure, ‘You are Aragorn?’
The problem is this: no one in Gondor had any idea there was such a person named Aragorn, let alone a living heir of Isildur. What Bean/Boromir should have said, with awe/surprise, is this: ‘You are the heir to Isildur?’
A small point, but an irritating one that could easily have been fixed in the script. There are other annoying things in the film versions (like the whole of the Faramir character), but most of the first one is pretty convincing if you’re a fan of the book.
You read too many long books, in fine detail, Colin.
“Also, why didn’t they get the eagles…” SHUT UP!! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!
My most annoying moment in film would be near the end of The Two Towers where they insist on sung special effects to show Théoden emerging from the baleful influence of Wormtongue (and by extension, Saruman). You have one of the finest actors around in Bernard Hill. Why not let him ACT his way to clarity instead of using silly digital trickery?
When sex happens in slow motion. FAKE!
Or lasts for like, more than a minute. What do they think we’re stupid?
And women in films seem to enjoy sex, which is a nice idea but rather far-fetched.
and when they’ve finished, panting & satisfied, they’re still in their grollies. How does that work then ?
But underwear still lets you rub your belly buttons together like you’re supposed to. I don’t understand the issue.
Issue. Hurrrrr
And in film and TV world they’re almost always doing it standing up.
With neither party going “Ooh, me knees!”.
Standing up? Barbarians! Whither the old-fashioned romance of bending her over a dustbin?
It’s not just standing, it’s that the woman leaps up, wraps her legs around the guys hips and with no use of hands, no fumbling at all, it’s instant ecstasy.
If sex isn’t standing it’s missionary (demure, allows both parties to be covered by a sheet), or woman on top (gives the lads a bob shot as a going home present), but very rarely doggy which in my experience (not vast, but I think pretty typical) is everyone’s favourite. Just less picturesque I suppose.
Woof WOOOOOF!
What’s that? Someone’s trapped in the old abandoned mine?
….and they’re doing what?
I get uptight about correct period details in films – particularly cars and music.
If a film is set in 1966, how can you have a radio station playing “The Wind Cries Mary” and “Whiter Shade Of Pale”?
Yes, I’m looking at you The Boat That Rocked.
And that bit at the end when the hippy DJ dives down to save his prized collection, the one album he makes a grab for is The Incredible String Band – The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion.
In McVicar, you can clearly see a Mark 4 Cortina when John McVicar returns to London – in 1968?
And in Quadrophenia, a 1976 Volkswagen Passat can be spied on the Goldhawk Road, and a Morris Marina drives past the doors of The Grand Hotel in Brighton
And everybody’s hair is too long. Lee Ingleby in George Gently has hair that simply would not have been entertained by anybody in the police force before 1972, no matter how well connected.
MASH you can forgive, because everyone knows it’s about Vietnam rather than Korea. And because Elliot Gould.
The missus was watching ‘The Help’ the other night. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, early in the film the main character drives into town with Johnny Cash & June Carter’s ‘Jackson’ as the soundtrack. I said to her “this is supposed to be 1962 but this song is much later” (1969 I found out later). She thought I was crazy. But these things matter!
Pedantic, I know, but.
Films or TV set in the 70’s or even the 80’s where wine is being consumed with meals. It wasn’t that common – outside of relatively well to do households – was it?
Certainly not in ours. I can’t ever remember my parents having wine, though I imagine they did at Christmas etc. They rarely drank at home, not out of abstimony, people just didn’t.
UK wine consumption increased dramatically with the spread of package holidays, in particular those to Spain when Franco courted hard currency paying tourists. Wine consumption doubled between 1969 and 1970 and more than doubled again over the next decade. There were campaigns like ‘Wine’s a Winner with Sunday Dinner’. According to Dominic Sandbrook (my bath reading this am).
Doubled in one year? That is remarkable. Could the large number of people starting to go to the new redbrick universities also have contributed?
I tried to find that campaign but this was the best I could do.
https://onsizzle.com/i/if-you-combine-wine-and-dinner-the-new-word-is-2785981
Here in Sweden wine was not something that real men drunk until fairly recently.
Along with their “big strong beer” (that’s what you asked for in a pub), no party worth its salt would be complete without some moonshine. Knowing someone who had a distillery somewhere in the forest would ensure you a lot of friends.
If you start from a low base, doubling is no great shakes.
I think my parents started having wine with Sunday lunch from the mid 70s, and I’m sure there was something aspirational about it. Bulls Blood for red and Black Tower Liebfraumilch for white as I recall (which is easy to mock now, but perfectly reasonable for beginners who probably took their lead from advertising).
Yes, very aspirational I think, along with prawn cocktail and coq au vin. But not uncommon – Mike Leigh was merciless on this stuff, which suggests I think that people in New Towns and beyond were familiar with such attempts to appear sophisticated and continental.
That makes me wonder when it was that wine drinking was so normal that the word “plonk” became commonly used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(wine)
It’s of Australain origin (vin blanc – plonk) but Down Under they often use the term “goon”.
Goon is the stuff you’d find in your cardboard box varieties.
Goon clearly is quite a phenomenon on the backtracker trail. Here is a whole article describing how naff it is.
http://artofadventuring.com/goon/
Bag in box, here in Sweden at least, no longer means undrinkable. The quality is high. Goon has been yuppified.
I remember reading about Bull’s Blood at Xmas in “The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole”
“I was given a glass of Bull’s Blood wine and felt dead sensual. I talked brilliantly and with consummate wit for an hour but then my mother told me to leave the table, saying “One sniff of the barmaid’s apron and his mouth runs away with him”
My in laws only ever drank wine on Christmas Day. If it was too dry they added sugar to the glass for taste !!
In the early/mid 70s the vin du jour was Hirondelle.
Advertised in all the Sunday supplements it used to carry adverts with things like pictures of flying pigs with the caption It’s as likely as a duff bottle of Hirondelle.
Truth be told, both red and white, Hirondelle were disgusting and the advert should have read a quaffable bottle.
Sunday supplements? Another sign of changing lifestyles and a new affluence in the 60s. Googled and discovered that the first was the Sunday Times in February 1962. Not possible earlier as newsprint had been rationed until 1958.
Lefty academics and the clergy criticised its promotion of consumerism, conspicuus consumption and la dolce vita but the Dan Drapers of the UK were licking their lips with delight.
I once bought a bottle of red from the office in Crouch End that was described as ‘approachable’. That became our catchphrase, as in ‘I think it’s time for a glass of the approachable, don’t you?’
“The French adore Le Piat D’or.”
No they don’t, they’ve never chuffin heard of it!
Europe was a long way away in them days.
“Europe was a long way away in them days.”
Apparently – and sadly – it still is.
I know you’re talking more about plausibility issues — people being ‘knocked out’ is a bugbear of mine, as is ‘super-obedient children’ who disappear when the plot requires — but there are two tropes in particular that grind my nads.
1.) The visual trope — a group of people walking towards the camera in slow motion, a la Reservoir Dogs. Even more points knocked off if there’s an explosion behind them.
2.) The narrative trope — dad works hard, he provides his family with an extraordinarily comfortable standard of living as a result. Does this make him a good dad? Everywhere else in the world, yes, of course it does. But not in Hollywood, where it makes him a BAD DAD, who must learn to put his family first (preferably with the help of Robin Williams / Tom Hanks / Will Ferrell)
Ooh – I dunno about (2) there. Doesn’t this logic imply that all rich men must be great fathers?
I was about to say that! There’s way more to being a good dad than “providing”! In fact I find the whole “provider” narrative really tough. Don’t like it at all.
Quite a number of my friends with well paid jobs have reacted to fatherhood by plunging themselves deeper into their careers.
For at least some of them, it’s a means of avoiding doing more parenting than they have to/filling their time now their wives are otherwise engaged. I think there’s also sometimes a slightly dangerous assumption that they can make up time later with their kids once they’re a bit easier to be around.
Tricky one. I found myself having to work more to fill the financial gap caused by my wife giving up work (I was self employed). I was accused of “having fun with your mates” because my work used to involve UK and foreign travel and eating in a restaurant at the end of a 14 hour day. I suppose the truth is that being a parent is tough on both parties in different ways.
Isn’t it partly guilt? Seeing their beloved going through the sheer physical horrors of pregnancy and childbirth and thinking “….oh god, I caused all this… I’d better get busy compensating”
To be clear, I’m not saying all men who work hard are heartless, child-avoiding bastards. Just that – purely anecdotally – I know a few who did a few months of looking after baby, recognised that this wasn’t their bag, increasingly left it to the missus and decided now was as good a time as any to get a bit more career-focused. There were also others who felt a newfound responsibility to provide a stable life for their nearest and dearest.
There’s no “right” way of doing this stuff, each to their own – I don’t know anyone who feels they’ve got the balance of responsibility between work and kids spot on.
One I had a young child I completely understood the guys at work who are there inexplicably till 6.30pm, or go on long business trips. Hitherto I worked however long was needed to complete what I was doing and buggered off, and avoided business trips like the plague. Not that I succumbed of course…
I would say the opposite. I have known a number of guys working inexplicably late because they don’t want to go home to a crying baby, bed times etc and leave it to the wife.
Or maybe that’s what you were saying. Not sure.
That’s what I was saying (not very clearly, evidently).
Nah, I’m a bit dull today.
It would have helped if the bastard iPad hadn’t changed Once to One.
Me! Me! I have! Don’t work, don’t got no kids, don’t got no responsibility! Spot on!
Did you find that when you didn’t have kids you really threw yourself into not working? Because I’ve heard that can happen.
Nah. I’ve always aspired to doing nothing whereas I only noticed I didn’t have kids while reading this thread.
Hell yes!
Or rather… Hell mebbes, whatevvs *snorrre”
If it’s nuanced and well-written then fair enough. But it never is. It’s shorthand — an off-the-peg way of giving a young character ‘issues’. The privileged kid feels neglected by dad, while mum (Mary Steenburgen) stands by helpless, and thus the kid shifts his affections to the quirky stranger / cute animals / animated sprite that has just entered his or her life until dad learns what’s *really* important in life — fun, you fool — they have a snowball fight and family is saved. Yeck!
He’d be mad to go out for steak when he’s got Mary Steenburgen at home.
I understand this completely, the person loves their work and neglects kids as in time and affection. Providing for your family is only part of it.
Real life: ‘Daddy, will you play with me?’ ‘Sorry, sonny, I’m a bit busy, maybe another time, eh?’ = shit happens.
Hollywood: ‘Daddy, can you come and play?’ ‘Sorry, sonny, I’m a bit busy, maybe another time, eh?’ = this guy’s worse than Hitler.
“The Boat that Rocked” was unspeakable for us hip AWers. Music all over the place, and a failure to document that it was socialist fantasy uncle Wedgie Benn who sought to bring in funderful Radio One to play bubble-gum to the happy workers rather than wierdy-beardy stuff that might distract from production targets. Instead they have a predictable uptight Torybehidn this plan, when we all know, that like Christopher Mayhew, they were tripping in tweeds and a paisley cravat.
All you need to know about that piece of crap:
Of course it was. It’s a Richard Curtis film. A guarantee of lack of quality.
Re: The Boat that Rocked
Yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman really blotted his copybook there.
We had a thread about that film – there was so much low quality stuff going on. Aside from the Beatles-free and often very inaccurate soundtrack, there was a scene where shag-tastic fat DJ Nick Frost decides that the scrawny young teenager character needs to lose his virginity. The plan is that “Nick” goes to bed with his ladyfriend. Then, at a pre-arranged time, he leaves his bedroom in the middle of the night as if to go to the loo. Teenager returns to the bedroom in the dark, wakes up ladyfirend and gives her one – she’s none the wiser because she’ll think it’s “Nick”. That’s rape isn’t it?
Hey man, it’s, like, set in the sixties! This is a thread about authenticity, right?
It’s free love – there was an awful lot of it about back then, supposedly.
Was so looking forward to a decent film about pirate radio ……. what a bag of absolute shite !!
What about underwater scenes, where people seem to be breathing out forever. They can spend up to a minute underwater, with bubbles of air constantly coming out of their mouth, like their lungs are the size of dustbins.
Yeah but your lungs expand as you approach the surface and the pressure decreases. In fact if you don’t keep exhaling they would burst.
Agreed, but I saw Tom Cruise on Graham Norton talking about really doing the long underwater shot in the last Mission Impossible film, something like 5 minutes. Bloody show off!
Jacqueline Bissett. Just saying.
The Matrix is crazy enough, but the bit where the bloke says:
“It means buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause Kansas is going bye-bye.”
Is quite possibly the worst bit of dialogue I have ever heard in a film. He just sounds like a tool.
You’ve not seen ‘Gigli’, have you?
Any excuse.
http://www.theonion.com/article/gigli-focus-groups-demand-new-ending-in-which-both-606
On a semi related note, I once attended a Film Studies lecture in which it was claimed that initial audience testing for Basic Instinct found 90% of female viewers would prefer the movie if Michael Douglas died at the end.
Oh, I think I know at least one of the bits of dialogue you mean. Horrid! The bit in the Matrix though is so (and I don’t like this word much) snarky, it really winds me up.
On the other hand you get your incredibly accurate gunfire when the plot demands it. Hello, final chase in SPECTRE!
My police firearms mate says you might as well forget about hitting anything, on purpose, outside of about 30 yards with a handgun.
The nadir of SPECTRE (so we’re talking uber-nadir here) was Bond escaping from the villain’s lair, at walking pace, holding the Bond girl’s hand, while casually and absentmindedly spraying a machine gun behind him, without looking where he was firing.
Wasn’t the nadir of Spectre just having a significantly less sinister Herr Lipp from The League Of Gentlemen as a villain? “Tschuss James! See you next year!”
That movie full on sucked donkey balls.
“I vill tek ofer ze vurld in my nice slacks and cable knit sveater. Contain your terror.”
‘Oh my God, this out-of-control helicopter is going to crash into that crowd below. What can I do?’
‘Maybe you could stop smashing the pilot’s head against the control panel and let him fly it, Bond. Just a thought.’
Spectre was the moment kids stopped being excited by a Bond movie. Just a series of incoherent scenes strung together.
Not saying any of you are in any way wrong or nuffink, but Spectre is nowhere near as bad as, oooh let’s just start with every Bond movie involving Pierce Brosnan. Basically dismissive of the laws of physics and/or materials science all over the place. Or any Bond involving Roger Moore and the casual approach to logic and narrative. I think we moved the goalposts after Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible.
And point of order – have kids been excited about a Bond movie since The Spy Who Loved Me and the Lotus Esprit ?
That said, Christoph Waltz in Spectre wasn’t a million miles away from Curt Jurgens in TSWLM, which is not a compliment…
This is exactly why people are complaining about SPECTRE (and to a lesser extent the previous two Bonds) though: Casino Royale took the character back to basics as a sociopath in a suit and dispensed with all the crap you mention, a move basically forced upon the franchise by the Bourne films.
CR, and Craig in CR, was so great and so refreshing that the subsequent decliine is so much more saddening for “what could have been”.
Plus I’m pretty sure Roger Moore never had his bollocks smashed with an iron chain…
If he had, I’m sure he would have raised an eyebrow.
Add to that the holding the gun sideways crap (which I should point out was mocked in The Sopranos).
A police friend told me that they love it, and hope Hollywood doesn’t drop it, because holding the gun in that way means shooters can hardly hit a thing at 10 feet, never mind 30 yards.
Also the concept of basic password discipline hasn’t got into the movies. Every mobile phone can be used immediately – no password, no PIN, and in the unlikely event that there is a password on, oooh , say, the CIA main database, 20 seconds of furious typing will crack that sucker.
And computers don’t work the way any computer in the world has ever worked.
Hack into the the aforementioned database and you’re flying through a rich GUI of tunnels and buildings to represent the file system, rather than some bloke typing commands in DOS.
And the one you’re looking for is right in the middle, glowing slightly.
And when the folder containing the nuke plans is copied the computer will waste tons of processing power by riffling graphically through screenshots of every file contained therein, ideally each one inexplicably stamped with a big red ink TOP SECRET in a box.
And to start copying them, the hacker will type “copy all files now” or “release all files to the world’s press”. Computer programming languages are just slightly stilted English.
Has there ever been a movie where someone has actually got caught illicitly downloading files onto a memory stick in someone else’s office?
Status bar says 80% downloaded
Hero hears footsteps and looks up
Status bar says 85% loaded
Goonsquad burst into the room
Room is empty
As anyone who has used a computer owned by a large corporation knows, IT will have disabled all the USB ports.
And status bar will fill at least 60% of the screen
I saw a terrible film recently called Keeping Up With The Joneses. Yer man breaks into an office late at night, sits at a computer, types ‘display all users’ and two seconds later has the information he needs. This is *literally* all he does.
And you can construct a working mobile phone from three broken ones and a bicycle lamp which you can then, in a few seconds, establish an international data connection and transmit said nicked file back to base. Where in practice getting the bloody micro sim in takes 10 minutes, then you phone the network provider, find the IMEI, agree transfer of ownership, pay 20€ by PayPal over the internet connection you don’t have yet…and when the baddies burst in, you are gone! 👍
I like the bit in Independence Day where Goldblum writes a computer virus that disables the alien shields. Because presumably the advanced alien civilisation were running Windows 95.
Should have bought a Mac.
I think Goldblum’s laptop in Independence Day is a Mac laptop.
I haven’t seen Independence Day since it came out, but doesn’t he connect a laptop to the spaceship with a USB cable? I know what the U stands for but even so …
1996, did they have USB then? Probably more like Ethernet!
RS232 cable
The alien ship has those little SCSI connectors with the screws.
Nobody’s micro-SD card ever springs out and flies across the room, requiring 10 minutes of crawling about on hands and knees in a darkened room on a charcoal carpet muttering “Where are you, you little bastard? I can’t see a bloody thing. I wish I’d got my reading glasses with me”.
Is that a movie you’d pay money to go and see?
It’s not a movie I would wish my wife, or even my servants, to see.
And they NEVER use the space bar
All computer hackers type at the speed of light with no mistakes.. want to be in the movies and try it your self it’s easy … http://hackertyper.com/ .. (just start typing anything…)
Ah as we leave the era of touch-typing this will become impossible to believe in. I can still freak out colleagues by typing at 60wpm while looking at them rather than the screen. If you learn on a manual you learn accuracy.
I can do that and I’ve never used a manual typewriter in my life.
And the progress bar is HUGE, I mean was beyond 72 point typeface, to make sure we can read it over the hero’s shoulder.
way beyond even
Every password that is typed in, appears character by character in the password box for all the world to see.
Poorly written dialogue and knobbing with your shreddies on certainly fulfil the disproportionately annoying criterion, but getting back to the physically impossible element of the OP, it’s time to post this again – even if it’s not so much annoying as “f**k, yeah!”
(McBain shoots the pilot of a jet)
That’s a hell of a shot. Never mind the trajectory and velocity of the two aircraft – it didn’t break the glass in either of the windows.
Don’t know if this bugs any other AWers, and it really is beyond a First World Problem, but…
Producers – you have stumped up the thousands of dollars to use the original version of that music classic. DON’T EDIT IT. Either play the whole thing, or fade out at some point, but by all that’s holy don’t cut from the second chorus to the repeat and fade at the end, or chop the instrumental out, or butcher it in any way…..just play it!
Nobody in America has bags or pockets which is why their car keys have to be stored in the sun visor of the car.
And – universally in all film and TV – no-one ever locks their car door, a good slam should do it.
They don’t even close the windows.
Maybe it’s just too hot in many of those countries, and everyone respects that.
Weirdly though, whenever someone does steal a car, they have to break into it first.
La la Land the latest film to do all this, Ryan’s vintage convertible top down, no locking all the way though
Nobody wanted it after they’d seen the driver. Any aspirational thief would be terrified of catching hipster bell-end, and would nick Mia’s Prius instead.
Vintage black and white British war films set in World War II and their overuse of stock footage. There’s one clip of a plane nose-diving into the ground that seems to pop up in every single one of them. That footage even turned up more recently colourised in a TV drama whose name escapes me.
The other problem with stock footage is inconsistent editing. Take “The Malta Story” for example, where the stock footage used to illustrate Spitfires defending the island drifts between many different Spitfire models from different eras, with some real footage of post-war Griffon engined models thrown in to confuse things further.
Was lightly surprised in the recent Allied film where Brad Pitt knocks off an German halftrack, and for once it looks like a real German halftrack as opposed to the usual American one with the German cross painted on it.
There are quite a few genuine German halftracks around now – the smaller Sd.Kfz 251 type at least, and possibly some of the big ones which towed 88mm guns. Lots have been (sometimes literally) disinterred from the former Eastern Bloc, or Russian forests. There are several working Panzer IVs in existence as well.
There is a rich seam to be mined re inconsistencies in war films. The whole of ‘Where Eagles Dare’ for instance, but as to annoying niggles, not so much a moment, but several minutes of Paul Newman goofing about on a bike to ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ . Please, cut out the cheese, it adds nothing to the film, nothing, I say.
As I recall Where Eagles Dare also has a helicopter, does it not?
There were a couple of German helicopters in service during the war, the one-man Flettner Fl 282 and the somewhat larger Focke-Achgelis Fa 223. Both were twin-rotor machines.
The helicopter that featured in Where Eagles Dare was a single rotor one, however, probably a Bell 47.
I think the film might have been inspired by the ‘rescue’ of Mussolini from a mountain-top, but the mission used a Fiesler ‘Storch’ plane, rather than a helicopter.
It was a Bell 47.
Oooh! No! That’s the best bit of “Butch Cassidy…”! If only because each year I’m luck enough to get to go on holiday to the wonderful Utah desert and visit the house and garden where that scene was filmed. It’s in a lovely ghost-town called Grafton, and I run around that little patch of meadow like a loon, pretending to be a dashing and rebellious gunslinging hero for a bit.
Here is that very location six months ago. Cue BJ Thomas:
No-one ever made an unsexy female robot/synth did they? From Metropolis forwards to Bladerunner and Ex Machina. Where’s the DotCottonbot filling the tumble dryer?
‘Do you want that on a service wash, Mr Deckard?’
So much easier to blend into the background with a pinny, fag and headscarf than with sequins and a snake. If those replicants had infiltrated dystopian Walford (ie the only one) instead of dystopian LA they’d be supping pints at the Vic still while Harrison Ford got sorted out by the Mitchell brothers.
At the end of the first series of Humans Gemma Chan’s robot explained that they represented all races because their creator did not think that appearance was important, so I suppose it was pure coincidence that regardless of (artificially created) race or gender every of them was gorgeous.
Exactly. Katherine Parkinson should have taken one look at Mia and gone ‘look I have two none-too bright boymen in my house, give me the DotCottonbot or this will end badly’
And for this we are truly thankful.
Fair enough. But our research has established that the average length of time from the moment the wife goes out and leaves the gentleman alone for the first time with their anatomically correct female robot and and the “pleasure mode” being engaged is shorter than it took me to type this…
Up
How would you not electrocute your knob?
That’s what I want to know.
Which particular model do you have in mind? Most of the ones my friend has been looking at have soft, tactile, insulated material for the action-parts, hands, lips etc……
After all, vibrators don’t electrocute people, do they?
Woah! Things have moved on since our mutual friend Bryan had his breath taken away.
Typical Moose. All the perfectly safe orifices we provide and you had to stick it there.
Oh, and vibrators don’t electrocute people, people do.
Toasters don’t make toast, people do.
I have it on good authority that U-Roy is practically a rarebit addict. Where does that leave us?
He uses a grill.
I think he uses that one near Tyrone Taylor’s cottage.
(*Adopts Dan Maskell voice*)
Oh I say!!
Let’s not forget Irona in Richie Rich. One for the Dads, as they say.
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the ‘crocodiles’ at the start are alligators, which unless alligators have started to migrate are not endemic to India.
LOL
Good point, well made!
I’ve said it before, but I won’t let that stop me. DaveBP will appreciate this.
There’s an episode of Midsomer Murders where an annoying twat of a folk club promoter is killed when four – yes, four! – Marshall 4×12 cabs are pushed off the front of the stage ontop of him.
And that was only the right FOH channel, there were another 4 cabs stage left.
In a village hall with a total capacity of fewer than 100 punters. And a stage about 7 feet high.
Was this rural folk club expecting to host a Motorhead gig?
I love stuff like that. You can play a hall that size with an unmiked Fender Princeton.
There are a few folk club promoters* I’d like to set about with, well, a Fender Princeton would do nicely. I don’t think I’d be able to get much of a swing with a Marshall 4×12.
(*) If any folk club promoters are reading this, and I have ever growled “Get you effing hands off my desk” at you, then, yes, I mean you. That first rule of gigs – always be nice to the sound man – applies to you as well.
Thing is, the number and size of amps required or amphibian subspecies or authenticity of German halftracks is something you can get away with, as civilians, largely, won’t notice anything “off”. This was probably true about the computer hacking/ file nicking stuff a couple of decades ago but they are still doing it.
Something I’ve noticed listening to movie review podcasts made by Americans is that they are all firearms experts – there’s no way you’d use that gun in that situation etc – whereas, the sideways grip aside, I’ll believe anything I see gunwise right down to there being 200 bullets in the clip…
I knew someone whose grandfather was a farmer in Dorset. She took him to see Polanski’s version of Tess (filmed in Brittany). He thought it was true to the book, very well acted and even the accents were convincing, but “those weren’t Dorset haystacks”.
Dorset Haystacks…. great bassist.
His brother was a better wrestler though…
And the murder rate in that county is just ridiculous, oh hang on ….
Truly unbelievable. You mean you actually watch Midsomer Murders? 😂
It’s a domestic contractual stipulation of being allowed to spend every other spare minute listening to/thinking about/buying music (or devices to play music on). Or writing rubbish on here.
I’m never going there, though, far too dangerous. Just like Oxford was, before Morse cleaned it up.
Fairy Nuff.
I live between the Midsomer villages and Oxford. Not many murders these days. We’re more of a minor traffic infringement sort of county.
Minor traffic infringement? You unconscionable blackguards! Clap them in irons!
Hard man takes out three baddies with his bare hands. Whinces when a pretty woman dabs at his face with a cotton wool bud.
Yeah, but he’s not looking for sympathy (ultimately leading to bed) from the three baddies.
Speak for yourself… He might have been
Nightclubs. Not seen Human Traffic for ages so it may be better, but in a non-music film:
The club itself. In real life: deafening, can’t hear what your mate is shouting in your ear; queue to get in; pay a bored teenager behind a plastic window a small fortune; take 20 mins to get served at the bar; dancefloor either wedged or empty; most of the place completely dark; toilets overflowing with nasty stuff.
In films: music at exciting background to conversation level; free to get in and no queues; get served at the bar straight away; dancefloor popular but with 2-person sized hole in the middle; lighting at ‘edgy part of John Lewis’ level; toilets an attractive locale for stand-up belly rubbing.
I should say I’m a pro-clubbing with a 90s stretch at Cream, Sankeys, the Misery, The End, Turnmils etc etc.
Brilliant! And the music always gets louder when a fight starts.
….and people don’t start chanting “Fight!….Fight!” like in real life.
Or “Leave it!!! He’s not worth it!! Just leave it Terry!!!”
Conversely Hollywood is also enamoured of ‘domestic’ scenes that scriptwriters must believe happen in real life but which never ever do. I give you the ‘toilet talk scene’ – usually a husband and wife discussing some issue. To show how real this couple is she is having a demure wiz while he sits on the bath and they make some decision.
Anyone ever decided their first place for primary school applications while having a tinkle?
No woman will be stupid enough to distract a man while he’s having a wee. Leave him alone with his concentration and the bastard might actually get some in the bowl.
That’s why toilet scenes where men are having a wiz are usually comic (ted).
So if I’ve got this right, you lot want to see a film where the hacker spends half an hour trying and failing to get into the system, but the font is so small we can’t read what he/she is typing, then scrabbles around the floor for 15 mins when their micro SD card falls out, during which time the baddies catch them in the act and presumably the world isn’t saved. Meanwhile, a period authentic soundtrack plays the actual shite that was popular at the time (as opposed to the stuff we impose on the past) – a nice bit of Agadoo maybe, while a female robot moulded in the shape of Fag Ash Lil pushes a hoover round.
I dunno, but are you sure it’d catch on?
I’m making this fucking film. That’s all there is to it. I’m making it. Green light ahoy!
Oh and the hero must weigh at least 3 metric tonnes.
Don’t forget the nightclub scene which last 20 minutes, 19 of which is in the queue to get in, followed by 60s of pitch-black pounding techno with a bloke shouting something you can’t hear properly over the top.
How could I forget that scene. I’m sure the critics and audience won’t either.
Anything else we’re missing? How about the hero’s best friend, who happens to be a woman of colour, doesn’t get shot half way through, the chief of police is white, the sidekick survives but the hero is killed and both live in a really small apartment, which they can only afford by Airb’nb-ing the spare room to itinerant travellers, who always complain about the home made soap and leave the loo seat up.
Mrs. T and I always comment on the apartment. People with no money live in large, airy, Hugh ceilings super cool apartments with acres of space and a perfect mix of boho furnishings, always in a groovy downtown area surrounded by interesting and frequently useful neighbours.
Exactly. American Werewolf in London being one example. Nurse happens to own/rent an apartment in central London that Dodi Fayed would call palatial.
My film will be set in a dingy peeling bedsit in Harlesden that costs £2500 a month.
You do know that that is because the TV cameras until recently wouldn’t have fitted in a normal-sized apartment set?
Hugh ceilings? Do you need a special grant for those?
Not if you already have a Hugh Scullery.
Yes – it was a Hugh Grant. But these were abolished in the dying days of the John Major government
Brookside did this kind of thing in a storyline that ultimately resulted in loyal, frumpy middle class housewife Annabel Collins having an affair. Long, tedious scenes of silent household boredom with incoherent brief and perfunctory conversations.
Can’t say I blame her… daughter Lucy was bonkers, son was inconveniently gay and husband Paul was essentially Henry Crun from the Goon Show. And the family car was a Maestro. Bloody hell, she should have been lining ’em up!
The estimable Mr Brookmyre expounded (at length) about this in One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night: The BDQ – bullet deadliness quotient. The exposition is here https://books.google.com/books?id=p3JmJzG3T3gC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=christopher+brookmyre+bullet+deadliness&source=bl&ots=gs7nqZmeh8&sig=49vGG2mGIwsFZIg9OoyyGe9F7bU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVxJGR2obSAhVE6iYKHZV2C9EQ6AEIJDAC#v=onepage&q=christopher%20brookmyre%20bullet%20deadliness&f=false
I call it the A team problem: A crack commando unit who can’t shoot worth a damn? I’m 1/4 blind and I can do better than that
I rather suspect I’m in something of a minority here but Hollywood nudity always irritates the crap out of me.
If I had a quid for every scene I’ve seen where the woman is full frontal and the bloke has a sheet delicately draped across his nethers I could afford to fly to LA and whinge about it in person.
I’m not saying that I need a full-on sausage fest in every film, just that it should be an awful lot more equal opportunities. All covered up or all hanging out.
For US TV, where the inadvertent appearance of a stray nipple or buttock (let alone a man sausage) would cause the end of western civilization as we know it, women must always keep their bra on during sex. I think the requirement to keep one foot on the floor has been set aside, although it will probably be subject to an executive order any day now.
I’m always struck by how happy the film industry is to show innards and splattered brains, and yet a penis is still pearl-clutching time. (To the extent that an on-screen erection in Under The Skin seemed genuinely subversive and shocking.)
Why is violence more acceptable than sex? It’s so weird.
Pearl-clutching… crikey.
I reckon it’s because everybody deplores violence, so the reaction to onscreen violence is fairly uniform, whereas the reaction to a penis, erect or otherwise, is very personal. Some people will laugh, some will be shocked, some will be titillated etc.
Ahem. Yesterday I spent two hours cheerin, hollerin and a-hootin my way through John Wick 2. The violence was plenty titillating.
Wait there’s a John Wick sequel? Fantastic!
With the K man, the correct reaction is “Woah!”
Good is it? Excellent stuff. I was very encouraged that the AV Club review compared it to Universal Soldier 4.
But I still maintain that it’s easier to control audience reaction to violence than it is to sexuality.
Hm. A penis and a pearl necklace…you’re definitely watching a porno, Friar (not a sentence I imagined I’d ever type)
Second pearl necklace reference on the blog today. Spring has sprung already and love is in the air. Well something is, anyway.
In the episode of Suits I saw last night
Mike’s desk phone rings
Mike’s PA picks up the receiver, listens, says nothing, puts the receiver down
“He wants to see you”
Mike looks worried
Next scene – Mike is at the other guy’s office and they discuss some unfathomable business deal.
No hello or goodbye, no arrangements re time and place.
Phones have their own rules in films, and anyone delivered shattering news has to look stunned and put the handset down without further comment. My own favourite is:
Bring bring! Bring bring!
Yeah?
Turn on the news, there’s something you need to see.
Not only will there be a television in that room, probably ready to be switched on with a remote kept next to the phone, but the set will be tuned to the correct channel, and the relevant news it will have just started, despite whoever is on the other end of the phone already knowing about it. No one ever says, ‘What was it? They’ve moved on to a story about pandas now?’
“Flooding in Cornwall? How is that relevant to my expertise as a nuclear physicist?”
As @twang correctly points out below, they will watch the headline then turn off the set as the story continues. ‘Authorities say …’ click. They never hang on to get as much information as they can.
I also think movies and TV are guilty of using the unfathomable business deal as a plot device.
Bloke 1 “the IPO is being brought forward”
Bloke 2 – “What? The SEC would never agree to that!”
Bloke 1 -“They just did”
Bloke 2 (pensive) “Walter is making his move…”
Bloke 1 “Unless…” (Knowing look)
Bloke 2 “You’re serious?” (Look of astonishment at the audacity)
Bloke 1 “Let’s get to work”
Next Day – Walter is in his office with the two blokes
Walter “You BASTARDS!”
The end
Dammit John. Dammit all to hell.
Marjorie…..
I’ve raised this one before – I watched Basic Instinct at the movies in San Francisco. There’s a scene where the Michael Douglas character turns onto Telegraph Hill and pulls straight into a parking space, right outside Sharon Stone’s place – everyone in the theatre howled with laughter at the ridiculousness of this. In the early 90s, finding a parking space in SF anywhere, and on Telegraph Hill especially, generally meant driving around looking for 20 minutes and then walking at least 3 blocks back to where you wanted to be.
Let’s not forget the extra gear change cliche. When being pursued by baddies, the hero, having been at full thrash for several minutes, will magically contour up another gear, grate his (for it will be a he) teeth and squeeze a dramatic burst of acceleration out of the car which will inevitably have bits hanging off it from the several major incident collisions it has endured during the scene.
Jason Bourne, oily rag and socket wrench in hand, changing the cylinder head gasket on his stolen mini by the side of the Rue de Rivoli.
Logically, dropping down a gear would provide a burst of acceleration in normal driving conditions.
Throwing it down to third at 120 mph would probably just blow the head gasket.
People can of course be a little too nit-picking.
My wife and I went to a screening of The Damned United at The Barbican, London which was followed by a Q&A with director Tom Hooper, Michael Sheen and a third person involved in creating the film.
It was all very interesting and then one guy asks “Did you employ a location manager?” The answer is yes and some name is stated, very experienced etc etc.
“Well he didn’t do a very good job. The scene where Brian goes to see Dave Mackay at home took place in 1968. But the double glazing in the house was a type not manufactured until the 1970s!”
I had to restrain myself from crying out “Oh no! The film is ruined for me now”.
That is so funny, Carl. There really is no hope for that guy. Pedant does not come anywhere near.
When I watch a movie I am absorbed by the actors, camera work and the plot. His cinema going seems to centre on an assessment of the windowing.
There was an episode of Torchwood where Captain Jack had to raead out a book’s ISBN. The book in question was the Faber edition of the collected poems of Emily Dickinson.
He started ‘019…’ ‘Hold on!’ I cried. ‘Faber ISBNs start 0571; 019 is Oxford University Press. I realised that I had spent too long working in bookshops at that point. I even had an additional theory, that the scriptwriter in need of an ISBN just reached for the closest book which, not unreasonably given their trade, was a reference work, an OUP dictionary or thesaurus.
This is the best post ever.
Ah yes…09 (Hutchinson), 224 (Jonathan Cape), 00 (Collins)…*wanders dreamily off into brown study where he keeps his old books*
0140 Penguin, 0300 Macmillan, 0330 Pan … I haven’t worked in books for well over a decade, but these are imprinted on my memory as they say an old soldier’s army number is. Yet I’d struggle if you asked me what I had for dinner last night.
I clicked on a website the other day called “30 Biggest Movie Mistakes.” The second one involved The Great Gatsby and said something along the lines of: “in once scene, Jay Gatsby is seen eating an ice cream sandwich. The scene was set in August 1931 but the ice cream sandwich wasn’t invented until March 1932!! How could they make such an outrageous mistake?”
Really? FFS.
To quote Scotty in Star Trek 4: “How do we know he didn’t invent it?” Maybe JG was trying out his prototype…
Why do people never say “goodbye” on phone calls?
How is it that Old Bill can roar across town to the incident and never get lost? And always get parked when they get there?
“Shit! I forgot they put those bollards up.”
I don’t really watch enough films to comment but I find Tom Hanks voice disproportionately annoying, does that count?
Oh and when the plot starts to come together and there’s an exposé news broadcast on the telly, the person with the greatest interest in the world always switches the telly off before it’s finished.
I hate it when an east end villain goes into a shop to “‘ave a word” with the proprietor, and flips the sign on the door to “Closed”
The last 2 minutes of Perfect Strangers, a hugely enjoyable ensemble piece of the sort the Italians do so well. I say no more.
“Hey Chuck. It’s me, Marvin.
Your cousin, Marvin BERRY.
You know that new sound you bin looking for?
Well listen to this…..!”
Stuff like this. One of the best films ever crow barring in a rock n roll reference with all the elegance of a Steve Bruce cross field pass
I love that bit! Cracks me up.
Aiming a gun at a padlock is more to result in a bullet ricocheting off somewhere or in the case of a using shotgun, doing bugger all.
Likewise house locks won’t open under bullet fire and you are more likely to jamb the mechanism.
I don’t really want to go into how I know this….
You bad boy.
I didn’t even realise Oscar Pistorius posted here.
Anyone having a phone conversation with the phone held under their chin while they doing something else with their hands. Making dinner or whatever.
Who is that f**king busy? Just stop making dinner and hold the phone up to your ear and have the f**king conversation. Or, say ‘look, I’m busy. I’ll call back’
And movie rain. It’s always monumentally pissing. It’s never just a bit of drizzle. And even if it is really hammering down no-one ever seems to mind. There’s never ever any dialogue like ‘Look, I really need to tell you… jeez can we get out of this bloody rain for a minute..?’
More on people who are just too damn busy.
A detective inspector (it doesn’t matter which one) goes to ask a watchmaker, cobbler or whatever, someone who works with their hands anyway, about a murder. Rather than stopping what they’re doing and paying full attention, as you or I might, the watchmaker will carry on what they’re doing while talking, only pausing and looking up when disclosing and particularly relevant new detail (‘… you know he had a son, of course …?’)
And the interviewee will always be the one to call time on the interview after no more than 60 seconds have passed, with a “Well if that’s everything Inspector, I’m a busy man you know…..”
And, if there’s a scene where the said dinner is being served and eaten, the main bits of it are presented in bowls down the middle of the table with everyone serving themselves.
Everyone takes just enough. There are never any rows. ‘Easy with the potatoes, Twiggy! What about everybody else?’
No one uses a knife either. Just a fork, leaning forward with one elbow on the table, doing plot-heavy dialogue until someone takes umbrage and storms off leaving a full plate.
Never in my universe.
People in TV dramas are constantly leaving pubs with pints left on the table with a pathetic token inch drunk out of the top.
Have you seen how much beer is in pubs these days? If you’ve got to rush, down it in one or take it with you, you big numpty! DO… NOT…. WASTE… BEER!
Yebbut…I’ve always longed for one of those American kitchen wall phones with a cord that goes on for ever.
“Christ, have you seen that fucking rain? It’s PISSING down. Seriously, look at it – it’s coming in horizontal! Look, I’m absolutely soaked through! To the skin! To. The. SKIN! Blimey, I haven’t seen rain like this in donkey’s. Listen to that! It’s mental! Bloody hell!”
*pause*
“Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”
The correct reaction is that of Eric Morecambe in Singing In The Rain…
“I’m wet through….I’m wet through!”
*looks down camera lens*
“I’m wet through, you know!!”
Eric Morecamble dialogue should be used at all times.
Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ for example
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Death’
‘Have you come for me?’
‘I have long walked by your side’
‘So I have noticed’
(To camera) ‘I’m working him with me foot!’ *waggles glasses*
What a wonderfully entertaining thread this is. I finally got round to reading it all the way through last night. Very nice work, Friar. They will promote you to Abbot soon! No false modesty please. We will have nun of that!
One thing that can be very peculiar is people speaking the “wrong” language. An explorer arrives at a village in the Amazon or a monstery in Tibet and miraculouly they all speak English.
I appreciate that there is certain suspension of disbelief here. The Sound of Music would not have been such a hit if it had been done in German.
This reached its apogee with the Kenneth Branagh Wallander which was a most peculiar experience for those of us here in Sweden. All filmed in Skåne using Swedish realia like newspapers, magazines etc., but everybody was speaking English and sometimes badly mispronouncing the Swedish names.
Invasion of the Lingo Snatchers?
Equally weird is that there have been several German series shot in Sweden where the characters are all Swedish but speak German.
Imagine a film shot in Newcastle where all the characters were speaking a language that you did not understand a word of.
Wey aye man. Canny bagga Tuda’s.
Cinema Paradiso: filmed in Italy…. Actors speaking French, which was then dubbed back into Italian (and not very well). Weird.
I did not know that.
I was probably concentrating on the sub-titles and didn’t notice lips and words were not in sync.
A period film where you can see the double yellow lines have been covered….badly…
“Yea verily my dears, we do sweat cobs in all this taffeta-style nylon… pop one of those UPVC windows will you my sweet one?”
watched “hacksaw ridge” at the weekend.
spoiler alert…..big cliff, americans at the bottom. Japanese at the top acting pretty narky.
ONE scramble net only for access.
why did the sneaky japs not just…….CUT THE NET OFF????
FISH.
I read somewhere that the film version isn’t very accurate in terms of the size of the ‘ridge’ etc….apparently they didn’t even visit the real location before filming!
In Sci Fi films (Star Wars, I’m looking at you here) the weapons are always way behind the rest of the technology. They can jump to light speed, build huge fucking planet destroyers, have robots that do anything, but they haven’t thought of having guided weapons that don’t miss the target, and insist on the rule that they must re-enact the Battle Of Britain.
Indeed. The Korean War was the last one in which aircraft routinely fired unguided weapons on each other. Closing speeds of well over 1000 mph meant that guided missiles were the logical next step. If you look at, for example the Falklands War, the Exocet was fired on british ships from up to 70 km away. Not very filmic: pilot presses button, turns plane round. But long ago in a galaxy far far away away technological development happened slightly differently.
Ah, but Luke Skywalker has “guided missiles” – guided by The Force…
I’ve thought of two more things that really annoy me in films.
The first is a function of the way films are filmed, with coverage, overdubbing and such. It’s when two characters are talking, with the focus on how character A is reacting to what character B is saying. The camera is over character B’s shoulder as they talk, so we hear what they’re saying and we see their jaw move, but — crucially — the movement of the jaw is almost never in sync with the dialogue.
I haven’t explained it too well, and you’re probably thinking WTF is he going on about, but I swear on this bible I’m holding that it happens ALL THE TIME, and once you begin to notice it, it will annoy you as much as it annoys me.
The second is a lot easier to explain, and again it’s a function of ‘the industry’, but it’s the fact that movie world is populated by such good-looking people. Your gritty war film has an entire unit of male models. Every man on your 18th Century whaling expedition has chiselled features — and those prostitutes in Victorian London! Phwoar.
No it bugs me too.
See also: angled shot of someone looking in the mirror. We can see your reflection so therefore you can’t, you doofus. Stop shaving immediately, you’ll cut yourself to ribbons man!
A technical explanation of your first point. Video requires much more processing time than audio, so the sound often leads the pictures – often by tens of milliseconds. There are, of course, simple ways to correct for this.
Unfortunately many
over-paid tosspotsextremely-gifted-artist-programme-editors either don’t care, or can’t properly operate the equipment they have at their disposal.Ex-trade grump over.