Watch military movies in the various base theaters [mrAru and I saw Hunt for Red October on the submarine base here in Connecticut … that was a hoot =) mrAru was stationed on hte Miami at the time =) ]
Exactly - anybody who has ever needed to rely on their horse to stay alive on a trip understands this, they are not machines, they are pretty delicate for their size.
What chapped my ass was a documentary back in the late 80s/early 90s about going on pilgrimmage to Jerusalem, and a bunch of assholes rode several sets of horses to death between France and Jerusalem. I guess all their research never pointed out that you only really rode about 6 hours of a day, and you stop for a day every 3 or 4 days, and for really bad weather … you can not ride day in and day out for weeks and weeks at a time … I want to horsewhip the assholes who killed off horses to make a tv show …
On the other hand, I grant that it is unrealistic, but can horses be trained to drink moderately, or pretend to drink? If the horse were trained to drink and the scene required several takes then there might be a danger of the actual horse getting overwatered.
Any death by gunshot, prior to Bonnie And Clyde (1967 movie). The Magnificent Seven and the Dollars trilogy are certainly great movies, but they show people shot and instantly dead, without a visible mark on their bodies. That looks ridiculous to a modern audience.
Well, I work in Sports Lighting, and I can assure you that (older) lighting controls make a HUGE clunk when they are turned on. I once nearly crapped in my pants when we activated a 1960’s-vintage contractor. It sounded like a gunshot!
In a similar vein, The Graduate had Benjamin traveling from Southern California to Berkeley to stop Elaine’s wedding and using the top deck on the Oakland Bay Bridge… which is westbound. I guess he felt he had time to stop for some take-out in Chinatown.
Monk was absolutely terrible with San Francisco, well, everything. Drinking at a bar that was still open at 5am, SF native Adrian Monk calling freeways “The 101,” Obvious blue and white LA streetsigns, SFPD having jurisdiction all over the Bay Area, saying things like “That’s the 4:30 BART from San Jose!” or “It’s 20 minutes to Monterey County, let’s go!”
And he was driving eastbound, which means they had to shut down traffic on the Bay Bridge to get that shot, during the day, which blows my mind.
OK, so I momentarily forgot about relays and contactors. Still a crack, rather than the stereotyped ka-HUNK!
Do the big lighting systems still use electromechanical devices? I’m assuming it’s moving to DMX control with silent triacs or small relays inside the instruments that just go >tick<.
Hmmm. He’s on the suspension (western) end of the bridge and that looks more like San Francisco than Yerba Buena Island ahead of him. Also, the camera is on the shady (north) side making west to the right. Sure looks like he’s driving west to me.
That reminded me of another bad one from Monk: “He’s probably fleeing by train – check San Bruno, or maybe Millbrae.” The only trains you can catch there are Caltrain, which can only take you as far as Gilroy. All the Amtrak trains run through the East Bay. I mean, it is possible to take Caltrain to San Jose and transfer to Amtrak there, but it was strongly implied that the suspect was taking a long distance train from San Bruno, not a commuter train. They even showed a full on train station with indoor seating, not the sort of platform Caltrain uses.
Psych was equally bad with Santa Barbara, doing things like showing people jogging on trails through lush coniferous forests, nothing like the sort of flora you’d find in that area. Vancouver might be able to stand in as a generic North American city in many cases, but it looks nothing like Santa Barbara.
A subset of the ‘unnecessary noises’ category- animals cannot enter a scene without making a noise. Snake species that are silent in the rest of the world nevertheless hiss in Hollywood. Cats meow, occasionally closed mouthed, at the sight of a camera. Plus that hawk that lives in every desert, and the ubiquitous frogs.
It doesn’t seem to matter at all if the noise is appropriate or not, and any animal with an open mouth means a roar; this is admittedly not Hollywood, but it’s a somewhat extreme silly example, from a team that really, really should know better.
Also, whenever someone has been without access to a razor or any other way of grooming their facial hair (including cavemen), even if their beard is scraggly and disheveled, their mustache will somehow miraculously be trimmed over their mouth.
Unless it’s the protagonist who needs to staunch the blood, stagger a little and wince a lot. Then, thanks to gritty determination and having truth on his side, dispatch the stabber.
This is one thing that takes me out of a movie: the Plot-Specific Event.
Knives kill instantly *if *the plot needs that, or a mild inconvenience if that’s what the script says. Bad guys are laughably terrible shots and good guys can dodge and weave through an assortment of randomly-aimed bullets… until the plot says it’s time to take out the Plucky Sidekick. Then suddenly it’s time for one shot with surgical precision.
What bugs me is when a character is shown pouring a hot drink of some sort into a cup, and the sound of the liquid going into the cup is wrong. Haven’t they noticed that the sound of hot liquid being poured is distinctly different (a higher pitch) from a cold liquid?
… And Claude Rains is telling Rick “You couldn’t have come here for the waters, we’re in the middle of the desert.”
Uh, no, you’re not. Casablanca is on the windward side of the Atlas Mountains, not far from the West African coast. The climate there is a lot like Los Angeles’s, and Los Angeles is not in the desert.
A friend of mine visited Morocco several years ago, and I kept commenting on her social media photos just how much it looked like California. There were wildflowers everywhere (it was springtime when she went). I admit I had the mistaken image of Morocco as desert. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised – they say California has a “Mediterranean” climate, and Morocco is a Mediterranean country (I know, Casablanca isn’t on the Mediterranean coast, but on the Atlantic).
Contactors are still widely used, but more and more LED fixtures are being installed, and they are pretty much silent. Even modern contactors are pretty quiet. I’ve heard some new ones that are so quiet that I thought they weren’t working.