You know, years ago when the SDMB was still over at AOL, I typed up a 14-point hatefest for Godzilla. Granted, some of the points were mistakes–and some were just plain ignorance/laziness on the part of production. I don’t off-hand remember what all the points were, but I do remember the one that pissed me off most–Helicopter is fleeing Godzilla. Godzilla is chasing helicopter. It NEVER OCCURS TO THE PILOT TO FLY HIGHER out of Godzilla’s reach. That scene was so innanely stupid I thought I was going to throw things at the screen.
General interest item:
High Noon is the all-time classic for “real-time”, and has plenty of clocks scattered around town to prove it. For those who have never seen it, imagine TV’s “24”, but without Kiefer Sutherland.
My pet peeves:
Pretty much all of these revolve around the theme of “things that force me to break my suspension of disbelief in an otherwise fine movie”. For short, let’s call them JarJars.
The requisite “Dramatic Crane Shot”. I guess all the directors who were making independent films on credit cards get to the studio lot and then just HAVE to work a crane shot in.
The Cool Car. Protagonists often have to have a unique car to demonstrate their personality. This is often an “old heap” that in actuality would be a collector’s item well beyond the economic means of the character.
I agree with 555-SUCK comment. I also hate when characters clearly are not dialing a number, e.g. not enough digits, too many digits, not even looking at the phone.
It also drives me nuts when people agree to meet for a date or something without exchanging nearly enough details, like location, domicile, timing, etc.
As far as something that only bothers me …
The Universal Translator. We are so far away from having anything like that. Anyone who has worked with the translating programs we have now will tell you how crappy they are.
Intuition is a large part of translating, and there is no language (except probably artificial ones) that can be translated word-for-word into English. Syntax is one huge obstacle: in English we put the subject first almost all the time, usually immediately followed by the verb and then the direct and indirect objects, etc., but other languages start with the verb, have six or seven clauses, then give you the subject. Look up the word “set” in an English dictionary and you will find that its definition takes up as much as two and a half pages. Combine that with another rich language, and you might have a hell of a time figuring out how to translate one into the other.
I saw one show several years ago, I have no idea what it was but it was a sci-fi show set in the near future, where they had a Universal Translator robot sent into a crime scene hostage situation and immediately calm down the Asian immigrant criminal. It was a super duper amazing robot, had no problem with the criminal’s regional accent, possible speech impediments, the heightened emotionalism in the criminal’s voice, the individual way the guy pronounced words due to scarcity of teeth, etc. It determined which language and dialect the guy was speaking instantaneously. Impressive, and impossible.
You know when the character is somehow trapped or held under water?
I’ve had the habit for a while to start holding my breath when the character goes under. They’re always underwater for at least a minute after I’ve decided I’m about to pass out and give up.
Not to mention that all that underwater giant-squid wrestling has to elevate your heart rate just a bit.
Doesn’t anybody ever lock their doors when they leave their homes?
Does anyone ever really leave their keys in the ignition?
Does everybody just pay cab drivers off with one bill?
Spanky The Dolphin
I was going to say crap about the video game controller right before I read what you said. The reason why I was thinking about it was because I was watching The Sopranos; when Tony’s son Anthony Jr. was playing Mario Kart for the N64, Tony sits next to his son and starts to play. The kid could have at least told James Gandolfini, (Tony), how to work the control without looking like a moron… Gandolfini could have asked or looked to see how the kid was doing it… HE WASN’T EVEN HOLDING IT RIGHT, and BASHING AWAY!? You know, I don’t even know if the kid knew how to work one. People not really driving, but act like they are do the same thing. If they were really driving, they would be all over the road. Your post made me laugh so hard.
One thing I hate is that for at LEAST a while, the weaker (good) people can outrun the faster looking (bad) people. (Or at times, the bad person WALKS after it’s victim… but those kinds of things are in awful films like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer", MAN I HATE those movies.
I saw this on the show ‘24’, they took the main character’s daughter hostage. She got away and eventually got caught… but the chase would have been over a lot sooner! Or the man who was chasing her had his foot fell asleep, (HisFootsZZZ).
White Lightning
Hey, thanks for the good word man!
Or he was walking on high heels.
uhhhh…Little House on the Prairie episodes, anyone? Kids were dying left and right.
Plus, if you’re dying to see to murdered kids and animals, there’s always NIGHTBREED and the update version of THE BLOB.
How many times, in a movie, have you seen somebody on foot, being chased through a parking garage by someone in a car? The person on foot doesn’t dodge to the side, but runs straight down the lane, with the person in the car considerately keeping it down to about ten miles an hour to avoid running over the person he’s supposedly trying to kill! Sometimes this goes on for an amazingly long time.
Or when they have to call someplace they’ve never called before, but just magically know the phone number. No one ever has to look up a phone number or call 411. :rolleyes:
In Titanic, when Jack wants to draw Rose naked, she takes off her 25 pounds of clothing, including a whale-bone corset, and emerges with NO MARKS ON HER SKIN from her clothing! I wonder how long it took in real life for those marks to go away. My guess would be they shot that scene first thing in the day, before she ever put on the costume. Otherwise, it probably would have wasted a couple of hours waiting for all the marks on her skin to go away.
At home, it probably takes at least an hour for the marks from my bra and my underwear elastic to go away.
I agree with the 555 comments - it’s too bad that just about every possible phone number is “taken.”
I also agree with the ‘person running from car’ comment. You want to scream at the guy - “duck into a corner!!”
And here’s my own peeve:
In movies, when the “adventurers” discover “treasure,” there is invariably a shot of them standing in front of the open “treasure chest” or whatever, with rippling golden light on their faces.
That’s annoyed me, for some reason, for a long time.
I have no personal peevs to share at the moment but here’s two industry-specific peeves I’ve heard about:
In a radio interview shortly after the release of The Perfect Storm, Linda Greenlaw said she was amazed that George Clooney kept the torch going after being dunked in water several times. She said she would have had enough trouble keeping that torch lit in clear weather.
People who work in the radio industry are often peeved at how Hollywood handles the technical aspect of their jobs. I’ve heard one movie has come close to reality but forgot what it is.
This is good, anyone else have scenes from you fav. or least fav. movies, (or just any movies) that you would do different, even if it’s little? Not just mistakes (although that’s fun to read too, keep 'em coming). What about a movie makes you say, “It was the best!! -but not quite perfect.” What makes it not quite so perfect? What little things would change in your direction?
Having been a musician and having perfect pitch, it always makes my skin crawl when I see somebody in the movie playing an instrument and the notes don’t match their finger placements. Like when a character picks up a trumpet and starts playing a tune, but the valve combinations don’t match the notes, his armbature is all wrong, he’s not breathing in the right spots, etc. Anal stuff like that.
The person was shot 15 times, falls five floors onto broken glass, a safe lands on their foot and the friend/buddy-cop/lover will say, “Are you all right?”
A murder took place in a dark room so police come in and walk around with flashlights…no need to touch that light switch on the wall?
A person’s spouse was just decapitated and fed to wolves and the well-meaning friend says, “Why don’t you go lay down and rest…”
Some films (Batman/Flawless etc. and every episode of XFiles) use about 2 Watts of electricity and you stare at a black TV screen, unable to see a damn thing.
Everytime you want kids to leave so adults can talk, someone will chirp, “there are milk and cookies in the kitchen.” How about once just telling the little brats to get the f out of the room/house?
Driving 80 MPH and looking at the person next to you for 5 minutes straight without once glancing at the road ahead.
If you hitch a ride in the South, only beat-up trucks with chickens in the back will pick you up.
In a crunch, any 17yr old with thick glasses can type real fast on a computer keyboard and break into the Pentagon’s computer systems and find the address of a Russian spy in Minsk, along with a couple of photos and their bank account numbers. These computers do not have a mouse attached.
Anyone in a high rise with a telescope or binoculars is absolutely assured to find a good looking naked chick soaping up in front of her window in the building across the street five floors down. The partner will joke not to look there and go back to watching the idiot thieves who also are certain to be counting money on a table in front of the window. Apparently, there are no curtains or blinds in high rise building.
You mean stuff like this? 
My pet peeve isn’t necessarily any particular movie or scene, but rather how many movies are shown on TV. Often, the opening of a movie will be letterboxed so as not to cut off any of the credits. Of course, as soon as the credits are over, they’ll zoom into a typical pan & scan broadcast. I should know better but I can’t help clinging to the false hope that one day that the damned corporate philistines at the TV stations will show movies in their proper aspect ratios.
off topic, I hate it when TV Dramas do there show in letterbox format. They want to be cinema… but when the commercials pop on, you know they are just pretentious TV show people. So what, it’s normal format? Do all those shows work on the wide TVs? is there REALLY a difference, because I like regular size a lot better.
Regarding the TV thing, I hate it how the TV always makes a little pssht sound when you change channels and there is always a little flash of static on the screen.
I’d be willing to bet good money that my parents don’t even know where a key to their house is. However, they live in rural Arkansas down a private dirt road off the county road off the U.S. Highway. The way they figure, if anybody wanted to break into their house it would be easy because nobody would hear or see it until they got home. So they’d lose whatever someone wanted to steal whether the doors were locked or not. It would cost money to replace a broken window, so don’t make them break the window.
Again with my parents. My dad nearly always leaves his truck running if he’s not planning to stay more than 10 minutes. Even if he’s staying, he doesn’t take the key out, he just turns the ignition switch off.