To be fair, Los Angeles is not where you would go for ‘the waters’. That statement may even be on the Salton Sea tourist T-shirt’s.
In the so-so Kevin Costner pro football film Draft Day, he drives an absolutely nonsensical route across Cleveland. Anyone watching who’s from the city would ask, “Why the hell would he drive all over the place like that?”
American made productions set in London are notorious for that (and give a lot of amusement to Londoners) where for example a character arrives at LHR and on their way to their hotel in the centre, pass by St Pauls on their way to the hotel next to the Houses of Parliament.
I overlooked this one earlier but since I’ve sort of got a Bay Area theme going in this thread, the chase route was… creative. The two cars would round a corner and straighten out two miles away.
There was a seriously blatant continuity error in Our Man in Havana. Alec Guinness goes to a luncheon where the host is holding a black dachshund. He puts the dog down, and it drinks a poisoned cocktail and keels over. The dog’s owner rushes over and picks it up. Both times the owner is holding the dog it’s the black one. When it’s walking around on its own, it’s a RED dachshund.
It was a B&W movie, but it’s still possible to differentiate between the two coat colors. The only thing I could think was that each dog had different acting abilities?
It was so flagrant to me (maybe because I’m a doxie mom), that I can’t believe they did it.
All car chases involve closely matched participants. Sports car vs van, ace hero driver vs amateur, sport bike vs anything, suped-up getaway car vs cop car, all deliver about the same performance.
[quote=“Morbo, post:185, topic:838319”]
Gold is waaaay heavier than movies think it is. You can’t: [ul]
[li]Pick up a gold brick with one hand and throw it at Oddjob[/li][li]Have it bounce off of you with no effect, even if you’re Oddjob[/li][li]Fill up a dump truck under the Federal Reserve and expect that dump truck to go anywhere[/li][li]Fill up a Mini Cooper and expect it to go anywhere, even with a “beefed up suspension”[/li][li]Swim through an avalanche of gold items inside a Gringotts vault without being crushed[/li][li]Expect a bag of sand to effectively replace the weight of the Golden Idol of the Hovitos[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
And it was averted in - of all movies - Return from Witch Mountain. The car was destroyed by the gold bars.
Any period movie that has period cars in it. It doesn’t matter if they get it right and all the cars in it, even the deep background ones, were made before 1962 or whatever. It doesn’t matter if the cars were perfectly selected to reflect the characters and in appropriate condition given their age and use in the movie. When the old cars are on screen, I spend all my time judging them. At best, I appreciate all the work that went into getting the cars right. At worst, I’m distracted by the 1988-era composite headlight taxi cab in the movie set in 1984. But in all cases, I am distracted and taken out of the picture.
I suspect all the people complaining about guns with too many bullets and open chambers, incorrect vintage war machines, or improbable fight physics have the same problem. It doesn’t matter if the film actually gets it right; you spent all the movies’ run time looking for the mistakes.
Have you seen *Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *(set in 1969) yet? I was impressed by the crowded street scenes and the many vintage cars.
There was a scene in The Americans that featured a post-1987 Caprice with composite headlights in an episode set in 1984. They actually put black tape around the headlights to try and make them look like the sealed beam headlight used on the older models. Even though you can still tell if you’re looking closely, I do have to commend them for at least knowing the car was wrong and attempting to hide it. Even though they didn’t always get it right that show seemed to at least make an attempt to get appropriate cars. And I know that was hard to do since being a spy show they specifically wanted nondescript cars, the kinds of cars that collectors typically don’t bother preserving like Plymouth Reliants and Buick Skylarks.
My favorite thing to do now that I’ve noticed it is to look at the grill of a vintage car in a movie set in WW2 or whatever, especially a Mercedes. You will inevitably notice an oval-shaped area of the grill that is much cleaner than the rest - it’s where they removed the high mileage badge. 
Whenever a police car pulls up to the scene, it inevitably issues a “whoop whoop” on the siren. It arrived without the siren on, yet the driver has to activate a “whoop whoop” on the siren as he parks the car. I can’t help but think of the driver remembering to reach over and manually activate the quick siren sound as he pulls up, which is stupid and pulls me out of the movie.
Are you recommending this film in particular to torment me?
The Americans did a good job with cars as you note - but I was always looking for the background cars that seemed to pop up repeatedly. Like the Mercedes 240 that was in DC and then in Baltimore. It was the Forest Gump of cars.
And now I have a new focus for my obsession.
Something I can see is blatantly wrong. I watched Money Monster and right away I knew the premise was wrong. Basically, a man storms the set of a CNBC-type finance/investing show and holds the host hostage because of some bad financial advice he gave. The guy was able to get past a snoozing guard.
No way, no how. I’ve been to 30 Rock. The security there is INSANE. There’s absolutely no way something like that could happen, especially post 9/11. PERHAPS on some rinky-dink TV station out in the middle of the boonies, but even then, I doubt it.
Missed the edit window.
Even if, by some reason, the guy manages to get on set, there’s no way the broadcast would continue live. I think the old Murphy Brown did an episode where they looped the feed into the studio so the guy would think he was still live but he wasn’t.
Not a movie, but a tv series. I was just watching an episode of the Australian series, “Doctor Blake Mysteries”. It’s established in the episode that it takes place in 1960. A closeup of a police detective clearly showed that his ears had been pierced.
[quote=“Morbo, post:185, topic:838319”]
Gold is waaaay heavier than movies think it is. You can’t: [ul]
[li]Pick up a gold brick with one hand and throw it at Oddjob[/li][li]Have it bounce off of you with no effect, even if you’re Oddjob[/li][li]Fill up a dump truck under the Federal Reserve and expect that dump truck to go anywhere[/li][li]Fill up a Mini Cooper and expect it to go anywhere, even with a “beefed up suspension”[/li][li]Swim through an avalanche of gold items inside a Gringotts vault without being crushed[/li][li]Expect a bag of sand to effectively replace the weight of the Golden Idol of the Hovitos[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Yeah, I remember in Kelly’s Heroes when they’re all jumping around celebrating at the stack of gold-filled boxes. Someone accidentally hits a box with their flailing hand and sends it flying like a, oh… an empty balsa wood prop. I mean, it wasn’t even a regular wood box which would still have had enough mass even empty to not be accidentally flung around by an errant arm swing.
Sets that turn up in work after work with (or without) the slightest modification. I’m thinking specifically about the diner in Pulp Fiction. Also, the courtyard on Cestus III in the Star Trek episode “Arena” somehow became that of a Latin American prison on Mission: Impossible (the two series were filmed at Desilu/Paramount studios). In another episode of M:I, *Enterprise *corridors served as the interior of a secret laboratory behind the Iron Curtain. In both cases, the effect was jarring.
Hairstyles from much later periods on actors playing characters in the '30s, '40s, '50s. I’m thinking here of MASH*** especially.
There’s an alley in Vancouver that shows up everywhere.