Brandon- thanks, yes, Way of the Gun
Again, not a movie, but in the HBO-series Rome there is a scene where the two main characters, Pullo and Vorenus, are discussing how Marcus Antonius conducts buisiness while Caeser is out of town. Vorenus is pretty mad that Antonius is behaving in a way that he finds disgracefull, and starts comparing him to various other wretches through history. At one point he mentions “the Grachii”, which made me jump from my seat. The Grachii (the spelling eludes me at the moment) were two brothers, both politicians, named Grachus, who tried to implement land reforms and other changes some hundred years before the main action of Rome. They were Caesars political ancestors in many ways, certainly they created precedent for many of the things he did to win popularity whith the people. But they are certainly not common knowledge, I know about them only through a university-level class on ancient rome. The fact that this was included is impressive, and the level of historical accuracy in this series is unique when it comes to fictional portrayals of roman times.
Not thar there isn’t the ocassional total goof (you’re going to smoke what, exactly?)
United 93 got almost everything technical dead-on. It helped that they used real pilots and in a lot of cases the actual air traffic controllers who were working that day. A few minor quibbles with radio calls aside, I was impressed.
Well, they’re in Gladiator also, if I’m not mistaken.
You can’t see it in Joe Rosenthal’s’ famous picture “Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima” because the Marine not wearing his helmet is totally obscured, but if you have seen the William Genuast 16mm color combat footage that he took of the flagraising you will see in the ten or so seconds of footage he shot as the men hold the pipe before they put the flag up one of the Marines (Sergeant Mike Strank) is just wearing his soft cover (cap).
In Clint Eastwood’s movie “Flags of Our Fathers,” Barry Pepper plays Mike Strank. As he sits to tie the flag to the length of pipe, Pepper tosses his helmet aside and dons his soft cover. I was quite amazed that Eastwood (or one of his minions) would have even noticed or even thought it important enough to get right. So many little details in that movie were wrong (not egregiously, but I’m a former Marine who nitpicks!), but that one they got right.
Of course in the War Memorial statue and every stature I’ve seen modeled on the photo the figure of Strank is uniformly helmeted to match the other five.
Sir Rhosis
They also had both Pacino and DeNiro doing correct chamber checks on their weapons (i.e. pulling back the slide about a half inch to check if a round was in the chamber). Pacino also runs out of ammo with the shotgun in the final confrontation, but doesn’t realize it and takes the shot only to hear the pin fall on an empty chamber, something that can easily happen with a pump action shotgun. (Director Michael Mann had the main characters train with Andy McNab for two months, so most of the firearm usage is very accurate.) Also, you’ll note that, unlike most cop shows/movies, nobody is wearing a shoulder holster (which are for poseurs and mammie-boys). Everybody is carrying either high rise pancakes (most of the cops), IWB holsters (DeNiro, Kilmer), or crossdraw (Pacino). (The flashy Pacino also has a seriously modded 1911 Commander-style with ivory grips, while the spartan DeNiro charcter is carrying a stock Sig P220, both in .45 ACP, symbolizing their differences and similarities.)
In Real Genius, while significant liberties were taken with certain technical aspects of the storyline for the sake of humor/plot, much of the laser terminology that was used was accurate and (at the time of filming) current. There’s one scene where Kilmer is describing the operation of their laser and talking about “being radiatively coupled to the ground state” which could have been utter technobabble gibberish and few people in the audience would have been the wiser, but the screenwriter clearly consulted with someone in the field. The idea of an excimer laser with a solidified lasing medium was also in vogue for high powered lasers (though the field wouldn’t have lasted the dozens of seconds it did, probably wouldn’t have fit into so compact a chamber, and they would have needed a hell of a lot more than a leaded glass shield and some radiation aprons for protection). Classic geek fair that has aged much better than most Eightes teen flicks.
Stranger
The Gracchi are in Gladiator? That would be some pretty terrible historical inaccuracy. ‘Rome’ didn’t overly impress me, accuracy-wise, I have to say. What did was ‘Alexander’, which, although a terrible movie, took a few lines directly from the ancient sources, like “Don’t worry mother, he, too, is Alexander.”
Master and Commander gets many trivial details right, including the opening shot in which you can glimpse a sailor using the head in its correct position in the bow of the ship.
There is a *character * called “Gracchus” in Gladiator. There’s also one in Spartacus. Both fictional, AFAIK.
The Gracchi Septima refers to lived in an earlier century. Some see them as sort of the JFK and RFK of their time.
I’m surprised that none of the Elizabethan or Jacobean dramatists ever wrote a play about the Gracchi. It’s a great tragic story.
Uh… wouldn’t you have to be REALLY far away to detect any delay between seeing the explosion and hearing it?
There is a fictional “Senator Gracchus” in Gladiator.
Define “really far.”
You can hear the delay when watching a baseball game from not too far away; there’s a noticable delay between when the bat hits the ball, and when you hear it.
I can’t speak to Red Dawn, but when my father and I attended a Battle of Gettysburg anniversary reenactment (135th I believe), you could distinguish about a second’s delay between seeing the puffs of smoke from the Union cannons and hearing them fire. I’m not good at judging distances, but I’m pretty certain they were less than a mile away.
It takes sound five seconds to travel a mile. One second to travel 350 yards. That is very slow. It is very common on battle fields to see explosions well before you hear them. It is also common to hear the passage of a snipers bullet before you hear the report from his gun.
Oh. Well, carry on then.
Incidentally, Revedge, how much more quickly can you run 350 yards? 
IIRC, 2001 A Space Odyssey had a few oddities (once your indoors on the moon, you’ve all the gravity you need!) but sound in space, or its lack thereof, was shown well wasn’t it? You only hear the sound of the astronauts breathing in their helmets when they’re doing their EVAs, the sound stops suddenly when HAL rips off Frank’s helmet. Ditto for the airlock scene (though I really thought the pod should have flown off in the opposite direction under the force of the explosive bolts and the air from the pod)
In “The Great Escape” Steve McQueen is running from the Germans on his stolen
motorcycle. (although model and brand used in filming was NOT accurate) He stops to check his bearings, catch his breath, decide where to head off to next and… unscrews the gas cap and looks into the tank while slightly rocking the bike side to side to check on his fuel level. Only an experienced rider would have thought to have done this.
That’s because McQueen was a very skilled and experienced motorcycle racer. He competed in a number of enduro rallys and was a member of the team that represented the US in the International Six Days Trials. In fact he only took the role on the condition that he could ride in it, and the reason he’s riding a (British) Triumph instead of a Zündapp or BMW is because he raced on Triumphs. He did all his own riding except for the jump over the fence (he tried it, but crashed), and also dressed in a German uniform and rode as one of the soldiers chasing him.
Star Trek: First Contact shows the proper Bridge procedures for a Sovereign-class starship under Borg attack. I was impressed by their attention to detail. 
Even in Nausicaa?