In Pauly Shore movies, the other characters don’t beat the stuffing out of him. Completely unrealistic.
Not that I’ve seen a Pauly Shore movie…
Well… since Christmas is on Saturday this year, I get Christmas Eve off as a paid holiday. Ditto New Year’s. I was just trying to avoid rankling the atheists any more than they already are 
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
I just have to ask-
What fool is complaining about a paid day off? IF you just lay around and do nothing all day…even better!
Sheesh, losers!
-Frankie
I’m not a shrimp, I’m a King Prawn.
-Pepe the Prawn
I can’t believe no one mentioned the captain at sea marrying someone.
The Xmas story has minor truth. At the Sheraton in Chgo a women (PBX operator complained and sued when she was required to say “Happy Holidays” then they said “OK Greetings.” She continued and won the suit. The court ruling that because she had to change from the standard greeting to anything else ONLY during the holiday period it was still a form of forcing the holiday on her.
At my present hotel we have all the holiday parties but they are specifically billed as “Team Building Events.”
At least in contemporary Hollywood, no one has ever been poor, much less middle class, or experienced something close to normal family life.
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poor people are:
- either comedically crass or very noble
- dumb as dirt, no matter what
- love/hate the rich
- entirely dysfucntional or saintly
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middle class people are:
- ridiculously overdressed
- tortured by the blandness of life
- risibly flat, banal and predictable
- housed in crogglingly luxurious homes
I can’t name you many movies that show ordinary people in recognizably ordinary surroundings. Fair is fair, I somehow lost my passion and zest for movies and tv years ago, mainly because so much of it was purest facile stupidity.
Examples are too numerous, and depressing, to name, though I will if pushed and have the time. The thinking and the vision got shabby. Special effects and stereotypical thinking gained power.
Veb
Sorry I’m really late getting to this one…
Earlier Melanietarrant wrote:
I always believed this too, but snopes addressed it recently (sorry I don’t have all the details, but you can post it there to get them).
This is an often mis-used sound byte. Bush was at a convention showcasing new technology, and the scanner could read severly mangled bar codes. He just saw a demonstration of the reader correctly reading a damaged bar code and appropriately stated “that’s amazing” (paraphrase). Of course the video of him seeing something scanned and looking at the bar code and saying “that’s amazing” makes a better story if taken out of context.
I always cringe when there is a scene in a barber shop/salon (not just movies, tv too). They never do things right! When they cut hair they section it wrong (if they bother to section it at all), and they don’t hold the comb right, and they take too big (or small)sections of hair when they cut, and they hold it at a wrong angle. I could go on. I always want to yell at the screen, “Fool! If you do it THAT way you’ll get a (insert appropriate haircut here).” Or else they’d get a cut that looks like something a sibling did to you when you were 5. Surely you all notice those things, right? 
MaryAnn
No, stupid, it’s a boat!
Another thing that bugs me is that except for in Nyquil commercials, no woman ever gets out of bed in Hollywood with tousled hair and bleary eyes. In fact women always seem to get out of bed with their eyemakeup still perfect from the night before. And what’s up with those shampoo commercials with women wearing makeup in the shower??
And of course, nobody in Hollywood ever goes to the bathroom!
Speaking of barber shops…
There always seems to be at least one guy (in the movies) getting a shave. And that guy may even have the most lines to deliver.
So jow many guys have you seen in a barber shop getting a shave lately?
In Texas (I’m told by my barber) you can no longer use a straight razor. Has to do with using the same blade on different people and spreading things like AIDS or something. And he mentioned that this has been in effect for quite a while.
FWIW, My husbands barber still does straight razor shaves- he’s the only one around here that does. He indulges himself sometimes and gets it done. He says it’s awesome.
My contribution is that no one in Hollywood has ever used a computer. For anything. Ever.
Zanta
Love is like popsicles…you get too much you get too high.
Not enough and you’re gonna die…
Click here for some GOOD news for a change Zettecity
Hollywood and weapons - don’t get me started. I can live with the common “never having to reload” cliche, but sometimes things get really ridiculous:
I especially love it when somebody fires a rocket launcher from inside a building (or a helicopter) and neatly ignores the backblast. Anybody who has ever been near one of those weapons knows you don’t do that and expect to live.
Even worse: The tactics. There’s a scene in one of the Rambo flicks where the camera zooms in on our hero from a great distance - and he’s running on top of a ridge, neatly silhouetting himself against the sky for everyone in the vicinity to see.
You’d think they could afford to hire consultants…
Speaking of shaving, how many times do we see this:
Man is interrupted in the middle of shaving (urgent message or something). One half of his face is already shaved. He stops shaving and *wipes the shaving cream off the other half of his face with a towel[/]. Doesn’t even rinse it with water. Has anybody ever done that IRL? Funnily enough, the only specific example I can think of is Edward G Robinson in Key Largo, but I know there are dozens more.
I grew up thinking that the US must be virtually free of petty crime. The reason? Nobody in a Holloywood movie ever locks their car door after they park it. Leap out, slam the door and they’re off.
Everytime I see a spacious apartment set in New York, occupied by someone who couldn’t afford to sleep on the doormat, I just shake my head.
You want to talk about Hollywood cliches? I work in a prison and I’ve never seen any Hollywood prison that bears the slightest resemblance to the real thing. I guess most screenwriters figure that a prison isn’t like a hospital, a college, or a police station where a viewer might be able to compare it with personal experience, so they can feel free to indulge whatever fantasies they wish.
[ul][li]There’s always a parking space right in front of the building the character is going to.[/li]
[li]Elevators arrive just in time for someone to make a perfect exit.[/li]
Exception: when a small wait time is needed for a poignant scene.
[li]Soda machines are never sold out of the flavor the character wants.[/li]
[li]Every little kid is an expert at computers.[/ul][/li]
And regarding exploding cars: remember when Dateline was chided for rigging a truck to explode when it wouldn’t do so to demonstrate an engineering flaw? Now, before commercial breaks during the show, the announcer mentions how many Emmy Awards & Nominations the show has received. I always think, “How many are for Special Effects?”
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
And the character on the phone looks puzzled and says “hello?.. hello??” like s/he’s never even heard a dial tone and has no clue what it means.
Sheesh.
Tip of the iceberg:
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People hold guns sideways and manage to hit targets more than three feet away and suffer no recoil.
-
You can always stay one step ahead of a machine gun.
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At costume parties, everyone is in a costume and all of the costumes look great.
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When two main characters dance together, other people make room to watch them and then applaud.
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People doing those turning back kicks never just get punched in the back of the head or have their legs grabbed during their slow-ass kicks.
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People who punch someone in the face with a wrist bent don’t break said wrist.
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Explosions making noise in space.
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Teachers sleep with students and nobody seems to care!
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High school students always wear their uniforms if they’re in sports (or especially cheerleading), nerds wear tape on their glasses and pcoket protectors, and everyone cares about prom.
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If you’re filming a documentary in the woods, you still apply fresh make-up everyday and even though you’ve "borrowed’ the most expensive camera in the school it doesn’t have image stabilization, and then the witch kills you in the reverse order of what the legend said.
Bucky
I spend my working days in front of a PC and cringe whenever I see computer use:
- using a computer and not once using the mouse
- the character instantly knows the program and is able to complete their task in less than one minute
- three clicks on the keyboard not only types the message but sends it as well
- three guesses and they hit on the correct password (hell, three guesses and I’m locked out!)
I could go on, but you see my point.
How come when people cry in the movies, they don’t get all swollen and blotchy and their noses don’t run?
It would be easy for me to write a long post about the nature of realism of the martial arts in Hollywood, but I would be the first to admit realistic martial arts would be very boring in the movies.
So, although I try to give some latitude to movies that use martial arts there are some things that are purely unforgivable. The most notable example if from “Metro” with Eddie Murphy. The scene, the battle on the Tram Bus. Murphy’s character put the villians head THROUGH a plane of glass. The villian immediately retalitates (and doesn’t have a scratch on him).
Note to movie directors: If you are going to put devasting strikes into the movies make it end the freakin’ fight!
Okay, just one more. Characters who can be shot, beaten up, drugged, poisoned, etc and can still perform highly complex martial arts techniques.
Okay, just one more, really. Martial artists who apparently skipped the first several ranks and didn’t learn how to do ANY kind of defensive action. Van Damme’s movies are the worst for this (see “The Quest”, final battle, Van Damme gets punched SEVERAL times in the face and STILL keeps his hand down by his stomach).
Okay, just one more … no, I’ll stop.
“Glitch … Windows, large icons.” - Bob the Guardian