Of course, all movie computers can do one other thing: They can flawlessly emulate the sound of a dot matrix printer. Used mostly for credit shots, but sometimes during “dramatic scenes.”
I wonder if mechanics find movie cars as funny as I/we find movie computers . . .
“Like an ant trying to fight God.”
In Star Trek: Generations the bad guy shoots a missile at the sun. It hits its target and causes the sun to collapse. The whole thing takes just a couple seconds. However, the planet they are on is earth-like and the sun appears to be about the same distance. Even assuming the missile has warp capabilities, the light from the sun should still be hampered by the speed of light. The missile’s effects should not be visible on the planet so quickly.
“It is impossible to experience one’s own death objectively and still carry a tune.” – Woody Allen from Getting Even
Next time you see Terminator 2, check the scene in Dyson’s home. When Sarah Connor attacks him in his home, and holds him at gun point, his head on the coffee table. Between cutting to his reactions and hers, the magazines on the table do a little dance, and end up in different stacks. Once in neat piles, then spread out, then in neat piles again. I can’t believe no one saw that!
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the extras wearing watches in Ben Hur.
They can also type very rapidly with one hand–see the villain in Goldeneye.
DHR
ThufferinThuccotash–
Sounds like that might be a leftover from the “Jitterbug” scene. I’ve only heard of it, but apparently in the first release, there was a scene where the wicked witch sends out jitterbugs to attack them, making them dance uncontrollably.
All this talk about sound effects has gotten me thinking about how loud and over-done sound effect usually are.
If somebody pours seltzer into a glass, you can hear it bubbling. The audience’s ears are assumed to be in the glass, I suppose.
If a cat walks by, it will meow (without moving its mouth) even if there is nothing to meow about.
If someone walks out of a building and a car drives by, there will be the sound of someone honking.
If someone is handed a semi-automatic shotgun, some yoyo will feel the need to insert a sample of someone operating a pump shotgun.
To prove that the bad guy is out of ammunition, same yoyo will feel the need to insert the sample of “hammer falling on empty chamber” even if the weapon is a single-action.
See, just because it is dark outside and there are no people around and there are streetlights on, doesn’t mean the audience can figure out it is night time. For that you need the sound of crickets chirping.
A teensy bit off-topic, but what the hell…
THINGS THE MOVIES TAUGHT US
If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises wearing their most revealing underwear.
If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.
All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.
All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
It’s easy for anyone to land a plane, providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.
The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any part of the building without difficulty.
You’re likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
Should you wish to pass yourself off as a
German officer, it will not be necessary to
speak the language. A German accent will do.
The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
People on TV never finish their drinks.
A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
The chief of police always shouts.
When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.
Kitchens don’t have light switches. When
entering a kitchen at night, you should open
the fridge door and use that light instead.
During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and
waffles for their family every morning, even
though the husband and children never have
time to eat them.
Cars and trucks that crash will almost
always burst into flames.
Wearing a singlet or stripping to the waist can make a man invulnerable to bullets.
A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.
If a killer is lurking in your house, it’s easy to find him. Just relax and run a bath - even if it’s the middle of the afternoon.
Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.
All single women have a cat.
Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.
Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.
If a phone line is broken, communication can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying, “Hello? Hello?”
Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper
cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.
It does not matter if you are heavily
outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a
threatening manner until you have knocked out
their predecessor.
During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.
When you turn out the light to go to bed,
everything in your room will still be clearly
visible, just slightly bluish.
Dogs always know who’s bad and will naturally bark at them.
Police departments give their officers
personality tests to make sure they are
deliberately assigned a partner who is their
total opposite.
When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
Action heroes never face charges for
manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste.
No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.
If there is a deranged killer on the loose, this will coincide with a thunderstorm that has brought down all the power and phone lines in the vicinity.
You can always find a chainsaw whenever you’re likely to need one.
Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son’s eighth birthday.
Many musical instruments - especially wind instruments and accordions can be played without moving the fingers.
All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.
Guns are like disposable razors - if you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. You can always buy a new one.
Make-up can safely be worn to bed without
smudging.
A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.
“ChrisCTP-…the sweetheart of the SDMB…” --Diane
Chris’ Homepage: Domestic Bliss
Die Hard 2 had so many mistakes that I couldn’t enjoy the film.
[li]The airport was supposed to be Washington Dulles, but all the pay phones had “Pacific Bell” on them.[/li]
[li]The plot hinged on terrorists controlling the Instrument Landing System during a whiteout snowstorm, but the attack was planned months in advance. How did they know?[/li]
[li]The planes can’t land without the ILS because they can’t see the ground. But one scene has a reporter looking up into the sky and seeing the airplanes circling around. Uh, if she can see them, why can’t they see the ground?[/li]
[li]The airplanes are held hostage because they can’t land, but a passenger jet has enough reserve fuel to divert to bleemin’ FLORIDA from Washington.[/li]
[li]An important plot point is that no one can talk to the airplanes in the sky because the terrorists control the tower. But what about all the aircraft radios in the planes parked on the ground? How about using one of a zillion handheld aviation radios that you can find at any airport? How about contacting the planes from the local TRACON, or another tower in the area?[/li]
[li]There are no manhole covers on runways[/li]
[li]The hero jumps off a 747 that is about to blow up. The wing on a 747 is about 2 stories in the air, and the airplane would be going about 140 mph. Can you say hero pancake?[/li]
[li]Another important plot point involves the terrorists turning a big dial on the ILS and fooling a jet into flying into the ground. ILS systems use fixed antennas, and can’t do that.[/li]
[li]Hercules transports don’t have ejection seats[/li]
I’m sure I’m missing some. Granted some of these details would only be known by pilots, but plenty of them would give any observant moviegoer fits of laughter.
Movies like that bug me, because these weren’t small errors overlooked by accident, but the result of condescending moviemakers. They just didn’t think the audience would care, or that they would be too stupid to notice.
There is a graphical UNIX OS made by Silicon Graphics. It was this OS that you see in the movie (the part where the girl is clicking on files in a GUI and says “Hey, this is a UNIX system”). It is called IRIX.
What more could you expect from somebody who lets people kick him to the head?
The most irritating movie errors to me are in Gettysburg. Good movie, good acting, historically (reasonably) accurate. But what is with the beards? If some of them, like Jeb Stuart’s and James Longstreet’s were any worse, you would be able to see strings going up around the ears to hold them on.
God, I’ve blocked most of them out.
How about the incredable morphing plane in Iron Eagle? It’s an F-16! No, wait, it’s an F-15!, no, wait…
Or the scene when the “Migs” are shown taking off from the runway…with Israeli markings! I’m talkng the freakin’ Star of David here!
There was a movie with Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker–some kind of cop movie. Anywho, during the obligatory car chase scene, you see the front left hubcap come flying off. It grows back in the next scene. I remember this because my friends and I almost got thrown out of the theater for laughing so hard.
**Wing Commander.**Wooooo! The cool vector graphic displays on the ship’s bridge! The way that the crew had to manualy load the space torpedoes, like in a WW2 sub. The way the aliens looked like WWF wrestlers wearing cat masks…
Predator. That hand-held Gatling gun Jesse “Look, I’m a senator now” Ventura held. My friends and I figured he’d have to have a Red Rider wagon latched on to his belt to hold the car batteries and ammo he’d need to fire that thing, never mind the recoil.
Another one for Predator:When the big, bald black commando (“You ghostin’ me, man”) crawls under the sticks, and gets shot in the chest with the Predator’s shoulder gun: My buddies and I were watching the movie when it first came out on video at my house. My mom (who’s a nurse) walked in right at that scene, and there was a moment of silence as we all waited to hear her complain about the graphic violence.
All she said was “Why are his guts in his chest? His lungs go there.”
Never underestimate your mom. 
One time, during me and my buds’ Bad Movie Night, we rented the blackplotation Savage (“On the streets, or between the sheets, he’s Savage!” ). The “best” scene was when Savage used his machette to kill a bad guy in the jungle, by chopping him from behind in the backpack. Oh yeah, it’s time for Bad Movie Night again…
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
ChrisCTP-
Great list!
That one about the parking spaces has ALWAYS bugged me.
And there’s not just one free space, right in front of the entrance, but 4-5 so no pesky parallel parking necessary. Just pull right in! As if!
And how about elevator doors always closing JUST IN TIME!
I just saw “The Mummy” with Brendan Fraser the other day. There’s a point in it where one of the crypt guards is on the boat, jabbing his weird hook-hand thing into the heroine’s face. It bends. It bends again.
Oooohh! Threaten me with a rubber knife! I’m so skeeered!
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, dogs are from Pluto. - Anonymous
I missed that one in The Mummy, Canthearya, but how about the ending scene where the weasling traitor is trapped in the treasure room and consumed by a hoard of scarab beetles? At that point, the Mummy is dead and the curse is banished. So why aren’t the beetles acting like ordinary bugs?
It’s bugged me ever since I saw it. Besides, it would have been a lot more powerful to me had the bad guy been shown sitting there lost and forlorn amidst the treasures he so badly wanted as his torch slowly guttered and died. With no way out, he would have a very nasty, slow, terrifying death – probably while going batshit in the process.
But no, American moviegoers aren’t sophisticated enough to get such a subtle ending. He has to be attacked by a hoard of man eating beetles and finished off in a matter of seconds. Sigh…
Two from Titanic:
(1) Quite a while after the ship sinks, the lifeboats start looking for survivors. As they call out, you hear their echoes bouncing back and forth like they’re in freakin’ canyon! C’mon mister moviemaker, I know they’re not really in the middle on the Atlantic, but can’t you at least try to make me forget they’re on a soundstage?
~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~
Well, this isn’t really a “mistake” from Titanic as much as sloppy, lazy research, by the stupid makeup designer who actually got nominated for an Oscar, for chrissakes.
The costumes were pretty accurate, but the makeup–oy! Women did NOT wear blood-red lipstick in 1912, nor have plucked eyebrows, nor did they wear false eyelashes and eyeliner. A good makeup designer can make actresses look gorgeous, and still fake the period makeup (Merchant/Ivory films are good at this). You’d think with all the millions spent on the film, someone would’ve picked up a photo to see what kind of makeup women wore back then (very little, and very subtle).
I have a question about the movie Titanic, while we’re at it. It seemed that while the boat (whoops, SHIP!) was sinking all the lighting and electricity was still working. Wouldn’t the electricity either have shorted out and left them in darkness or electricuted everyone wading through the armpit high water while it lapped over the wall mounted lightfixtures and outlets?
Oh, Titanic. Ick ick ick. I despise this movie.
The single thing that bothers me most about this movie (other than hearing everyone in the world tell me how great it was) is that the whole time the ship is sinking, people are flailing about in the water inside the ship for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes or so, and they’re perfectly fine.
However, a few minutes later, when they’re in the water OUTSIDE the ship, suddenly they’re COLD.
Apparently the Titanic had immersion heaters built into the walls so that just in case the ship sank the passengers could go for a swim.
The steering “mistake” on TITANIC was actually accurate. The helmsman steered to port to go to starboard and to starboard to go to port. Most big liners steered this way, so the helmsmen of the day were used to it.
Last night, I thought of a few more:
In THE BLUES BROTHERS, Elwood’s best line begins “It’s a hundred miles to Chicago…” If it’s only 100 miles, why does it take all night to get there?
CON AIR had many errors, but the geography of Las Vegas stands out. Cage and the federal marshal chase the cons on motorcycles from The Strip to downtown. In reality, downtown and The Strip are about two miles apart. In the movie, they’re adjacent. And there is no tunnel underneath downtown. And that tunnel appeared to be at least two miles long!!
In PLEASANTVILLE, the TV town was supposed to be totally isolated, its own little world. Its high school basketball team was undefeated. Where did the opposing teams come from?
In TOTAL RECALL, Arnold makes a flight from Earth to Mars while every government agent in the world was looking for him. A flight to Mars, using realistic rocket technology, would take more than a year. Did he stay in disguise that entire time?
In ROBOCOP, which was filmed in Dallas, one can easily see many Dallas landmarks, particularly Reunion Tower and Hotel. In a chase scene, the cars are first going toward the tower, then away from it in succeeding shots.
In WAR OF THE WORLDS, one can often see wires holding up the Martian war machines. (That’s due to the level of SFX technolgy at the time, though.) Also, all the witnesses to the atomic bomb blast most likely received a fatal dose of radiation.
I was going to rip apart ARMAGEDDON, but that would just take too long.
Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it. Georges Santayana
I thought Titanic was an incredibly stupid movie, stupid plot, stupid characters- but as for the lights, yeah, they stayed on an amazingly long time. Crewmen died trying to keep them on. The ship hit ice around 11:40 the lights stayed on until after 1:30, just before she tipped up and went under.
Raiders of the Lost Ark in Marion’s bar she has the medallion around her neck - the lamp flickers and voila its not around her neck, and the chain is dangling.
So many mistakes, so little time.
…at night, the ice weasels come…
I’ve always wondered something about “King Kong”. The natives built the wall to keep Kong out, right? So why’d they build a door big enough for him to walk through?