Little things that bug you about shows/movies you like

Cafe Society
41

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
Boromir takes far too long to die after he’s turned into The Human Pincushion by the Uruk-Hai’s arrows in The Fellowship of the Ring.
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This is my beef with any number of movies. You either get someone who sustains injuries that would result in the immediate cessation of all life functions, yet they still have the strength and focus to give a speech (or sing, if it’s an opera), or they drop dead at once from a wound that would take hours to kill, if not days. Watch the girl stab the Bad Guy in his beer gut with the pen knife. Watch him drop dead. Riiiiight!
New BSG = Good. Old BSG = Crap. Memories are fond because they happened long ago and we don’t have to go through that crap again. Kinda like the definition of “Adventure.” “Something unpleasant happening to someone else a long way away.”

42

My friend and I were talking about this the other day - the eighties sitcom Family Ties was always kind of the most comforting, tokenistic “Family that you wish you were a member of” show of its era…except for the fact that the entire family, parents included, treats Skippy - the nerdy but entirely kind and innocent neighbor who drops in for visits - with unmasked, unrestrained contempt. Even the father, who’s usually the understanding, affectionate EveryDad, makes no attempt to mask his brutal barbs and naked dislike of Skippy.

It kind of undercuts the sweetness and gives the whole show an uneasy subtext.

43

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]

Why wouldn’t the Nazis and the Vichy administration in Casablanca simply give orders to all border guards to promptly arrest anyone presenting the letters of transit?
[/QUOTE]

They are “signed by General qwertyuiop and cannot be rescinded.” :slight_smile:

44

“The Mexican”, a decent movie spoiled by the 'Cell Phones Work Anywhere" movie plot line.

45

[QUOTE=VCO3]
treats Skippy - the nerdy but entirely kind and innocent neighbor who drops in for visits -

It kind of undercuts the sweetness and gives the whole show an uneasy subtext.
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I think the issue is that Skippy “drops by for visits” all the time, probably during meals especially, and despite routinely being denied continues to pine after their oldest daughter in unsubtle and bordering on creepy ways.

46

[QUOTE=Antinor01]
The pattern decays in the transporter buffer. As I recall, the only person to manage to do this was CE Scott and that was due to his tinkering with the system.
[/QUOTE]

That’s below feeble.

“Cap’n! We can do annathin’ 'cept invent a hard drive!”

Or perhaps flash memory.

Transporters are infinite plot-screwers. Pretty much any problem can be fixed with them - that’s why the writers conveniently forget them (as they do with all techology that they had last week that could have fixed this week’s problem) or come up with some half-assed (ion storm! aah!) reason that it won’t work right now.

-Joe

47

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]

In Dune, if the Fremen dream of creating a lush planet on Arrakis were realized, wouldn’t that kill all of the sandworms, end their supply of spice, and totally undercut their culture?

[/QUOTE]

Sounds like someone needs to read Dune Messiah and God Emperor of Dune. :wink:

48

[QUOTE=MEBuckner]
The “Out of Gas” episode of Firefly was probably my very favorite episode of what was definitely my very favorite show ever. But having Mal inject himself in the heart with a shot of adrenaline was just stupid. (It was marginally more justifiable in Pulp Fiction; at least that charcter was actually unconscious. You can’t be in cardiac arrest and be walking around the place, or even painfully limping around the place.)

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Correct me if I’m wrong (as someone who has absolutely no medical knowledge), but my impression wasn’t that Mal’s heart had stopped so much as Mal was shot, breathing bad air and ready to collapse - so, to keep himself going and functioning he injected himself with adrenaline to push his body past normal limits. You know, like adrenaline can do naturally…he just did it artificially. Of course, he didn’t have to do it in his HEART, but maybe he was feeling impatient?

-Joe

49

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
That’s below feeble.

“Cap’n! We can do annathin’ 'cept invent a hard drive!”

Or perhaps flash memory.

Transporters are infinite plot-screwers. Pretty much any problem can be fixed with them - that’s why the writers conveniently forget them (as they do with all techology that they had last week that could have fixed this week’s problem) or come up with some half-assed (ion storm! aah!) reason that it won’t work right now.

-Joe
[/QUOTE]

Well, I didn’t say it was a GOOD answer, just the one they use.

50

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Firefly: Yes, I can see a need for simple guns, but not that simple. The Colt .45 and the AK47 have both been brought up as weapons simple enough. Lever action guns are no more accurate than others, and although early semi-autos weren’t as accurate as bolt actions, that is no longer true.

I also am pissed as hell that Josh sold out and killed off 1/2 a happily married couple, as you know the rule is in Hollywood that you can’t have a happily married couple. Rat bastard sell out. :mad: Look, I love the idea, the humour and the characters, but this went too far.

Iron Giant- one long extended propaganda cartoon for the anti-gun people. :mad:

BG is just plain crap, craptastic crap, mayor of crap-town. Hey, either do a re-make, or don’t. Don’t just take the title and the idea, then dis the rest of the show. Some of us had fond memories of the old BG, cheesy as it was. Why go out of your way to piss on us? If you wanted to do something as different as possible- then don’t use the name or the concept- try an original thought, maybe. Rat bastards. :mad:
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First off, I never watched Firefly which I am beginning to regret more and more. I need to get netflix or something so I can check it out. Anyways;

I’m with the above posters saying, it would be one thing if they were using old-fashion style guns. It’s another for them to be using actual old guns. As a distant future series, you could get away with one or two characters using archaic but still effective guns as anachronism (it would become an interesting character trait), but making it a regular thing is pushing it. As for cowboy clothes; that stuff is purely functional clothing, if there are characters rustling herds of animal and riding horses, motorcycles, or something similar, then it makes perfect sense for such clothing to still be in use; otherwise? no. Just no.

Umm, I guess I miss your point about Iron Giant? I read the book it’s based on in Kindergarten, and loved the movie as well. I never took it as anti-gun, or even especially preachy about it’s anti-war message. But that’s what it is, anti-war, anti-prejudice. And really, what’s wrong with having that message in a kid’s book or movie? I believe in keeping a strong military, pre-emptive actions, and I support our troops, but I still think it’s a good idea to portray war as a bad thing.

Battlestar Galactica; You have a point, but… If they didn’t use the old name and acknowledge where the main ideas are coming from, then people like you would be posting to complain about how “Space Show X” was a ripoff of good old BG.
Although, I do think it would be better to use the title (or better yet, a variation of the title), and include an “inspired by” credit to the OS in the openings, but otherwise use new names, etc.

51

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]

How could the three Precogs detect murderous intentions everywhere, throughout the entire country, when the Pre-Crime project was extended (as proposed) in Minority Report? They seemed pretty damned busy, just monitoring the Washington, D.C. area.

[/QUOTE]

Presumably, since their dreams are nothing but future murders (as we are told in that scene with Crazy Plant Lady), as soon as the murder rate of DC drops to a negligble level, their powers will start naturally seeing crimes from across the only country anyway.

52

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Oh, I know! I know! It’s just that I’m a part-time costumer (community/college/Ren Faire) and I relish those moments when the costume director actually gets to do cool stuff that no one other than I and 12 other people in the US care about. I love that a little scrap of leather can speak volumes about characters and their relationship, even if the actor is the only one to know it. (Like the amazing detail of the costumes and sets of LOTR - most of the work isn’t even seen by the audience, but it affects the actors, the camera crew and everyone else involved - and THAT shows up on camera!)

sigh

Sorry, I’m ranting. Miss Purl McKnittingham and **Faeriebeth **would understand. sob
[/QUOTE]

Ha! When the RotK came out, my mom bought me a book all about the design of the costumes, weapons, and other props from the movies, because “I’m a big Tolkien fan, so I’d like that!” Much to my surprise, it really was fascinating, with lots of great pictures of the stuff, and detailed explanations of the research the costumers, etc., did to give it an authentic feel, or make it fit the thematic notions, etc. Really good read if you haven’t gotten it already, WhyNot! :slight_smile:

53

Bumping this thread because I have a new one.

I sat down last week and watched a movie that my dad had recently purchased, The Duellists. It’s an excellent movie in every respect. My only pet peeve was the accents. The actors were English and American, but playing Frenchmen from the Napoleonic Era. Yet everyone (I am supposing) spoke in their natural accents. It makes it a bit jarring when D’Hubert (Keith Carradine) sounds like a midwestern Yank, his sister (don’t know the actress) sounds perfectly English, and his rival Hussair, Feraud (Harvey Keitel) sounds straight off the boat from New York.

A minor point, to be sure, but annoying nonetheless.

54

[QUOTE=NoClueBoy]
Thru out Trek, the transportersconstantly have/cause problems. For a peice of equipment that important, you would think they could do better.

One of the silliest transporter mishaps occurs in The Big Fucking Whales From the Past movie, Trek IV. After locking on to Admiral Kirk, theenergy beams is just about to start, as indicated by the high pitched whine, and Gillian jumps on Kirk to get beamed up too. WTF? The transporter was tagging Kirk. Are we to assume that they habitually include enough of a fudge factor to allow for a WHOLE OTHER PERSON to get picked up in the beam?

Why, what’s to prevent a horrible accident from happening? Like creating a double at the remote location, or splitting a person into good and bad halves? The implications are frightening.

:dubious:
[/QUOTE]
In an episode of Voyager, there was a transporter accident that turned Neelix and Tuvok into a single being, who called himself Tuvix. They fixed the problem before the end of the show, of course.

55

[QUOTE=Indygrrl]
House expects us to suspend our disbelief for quite a few of their cases, but that’s not a problem for me. What I do hate is how House’s ex or Cuddy will just pop in while he’s in the middle of examining someone and bitch at him right in front of the patient. There is no way in hell that would ever happen IRL. I find them doing detective work at people’s houses more believable than that stuff.
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The “doing detective work at people’s houses” bugs the crap out of me. They should all be in jail and breaking & entering.

56

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
In Dune, if the Fremen dream of creating a lush planet on Arrakis were realized, wouldn’t that kill all of the sandworms, end their supply of spice, and totally undercut their culture?
[/QUOTE]

Yep, but they don’t realize that. I don’t recall how developed it was in the movie(s), but in the books, the gradual discovery of just what makes Arrakis tick becomes a major plot point (a minor mention in Dune, but practically the central character of God Emperor). It seemed a bit silly to me that nobody ever pieced it together, considering how important a resource spice is, but then if you pick up a Scientific American, there are regular articles about some new discovery of how ecosystems interlock in unexpected ways.