I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve known a priest who referred to people as “My son.” But he was also a massive movie buff (his most recent movie trip was mentioned in the homily almost every week) so when I first heard people saying that priests don’t normally do that I figured he just swiped it from the movies.
This is what made my nuts about Stephen King’s 11/22/63. The main character is supposed to be 35, just a few years older than myself, and his pop culture knowledge is rooted almost completely in the late 70s, which is before he would have been born. I’m not saying it’s impossible for someone to love the pop culture of someone else’s generation, but the main character had literally no connection to any piece of pop culture created after 1979.
It’s mentioned somewhere in the first book that Katniss believed all the districts were the same size as 12, but that once the train took her through them she realized just how massive the rest of them were. Much, much bigger than city size, but still a significant population decrease from what we have now.
I remember reading Penthouse Forum or Variations years ago, and being completely yanked out of some story because the writer decided the best euphemism for “anus” was “rosebud”. Actually, I think that was what convinced me that all the stories/letters were either fabricated by the magazines’ own staff, or were reader submissions, but rewritten by that same staff to conform to the “house style”. Because every author seemed to want to use that same ridiculous euphemism.
If one is a railway enthusiast, one will come across numerous annoying mistakes in fiction writing / films. As a poster on this thread says, “part of the curse of being a nerd”…
I’m a railfan but not American, and not hugely knowledgeable about American railroads, so didn’t know before this post, about the frequent mistakes re Grand Central Station. I suppose it just sounds very glamorous and New-York-y, so authors / scriptwriters automatically seize on it, regardless of the facts.
One American rail error in fiction which did irritate me, was in the novel “Tatiana and Alexander” by Paullina Simons. The heroine, newly arrived in the US in 1946, has to travel for some reason from, I think, New York to Chicago; and the author refers to her as making the train journey using Amtrak. Er, no – Amtrak as general “blanket” operator of US long-distance rail passenger services, was inaugurated in 1971: the heroine would have been travelling by the services of whichever private railroad company/ies.
Another, perhaps trivial, which bugs me; is in Frederick Forsyth’s thriller “The Day of the Jackal”. The action of the book is in 1963: the villain travels by train from central France, to Paris, on his mission to assassinate De Gaulle – his train is describes as “steaming into” the Gare d’Austerlitz terminus in Paris. At that date – he might well have started his journey behind a steam locomotive; but the main line from Austerlitz terminus, far down toward the centre / south-west of France, had been electric for many years. I suppose one could plead “artistic licence” – trains can be described as steaming around, for the sake of effect, even if they’re not hauled by a steam loco; nonetheless, this point annoys me.
I assume that would be inadequate for somebody in severe danger of bleeding to death, which IIRC was the case in the book. I’d need to go back and reread it to check.
Are you sure it was WW1? There were wars in the 1890s. The Spanish-American war or the Philippine-American war would fit for an American. The Boer War would fit for a Brit.
I’m not a teenage boy, but I sometimes wear pajamas to bed in the summer – it can still get cold at night – and put on slippers as soon as I get out of bed. My bedroom window is also about waist-high on the inside, but maybe 10’ off the ground on the outside. Er, because we’re built on a slanting ground, not because I’m 20’ tall.
Hadn’t parts of the country also been rendered uninhabitable by whatever disaster destroyed the United States? That was my impression at least, and I see Wiki mentions that Panem was founded after some apocalyptic event brought down the US.
Yes. Podunk is the terminal station, way out in the sticks. A station where many lines come together and end is also a terminal, and that’s how the term is usually intended. You go to the “terminal” to catch a train on any of several lines out of the city. Because London was largely built before trains, each company ran its line into the city as far as it could manage and built a “terminal.” At one time there were twenty or thirty, so if you wanted to cross through London, you had to come in on one line, jaunt to the other terminal, and ride out on another line. (Kind of like Amtrak and North Boston/South Boston today… unless it’s changed in the last couple of years, you can’t get from NYC to Portland on one track.) Even today not all the radiating lines in London are connected. Grand Central was the replacement for a similar situation on Manhattan, and they managed to build it before it became impossible to do so.
None of which really matters here. It’s not named Grand Central Station. It’s formally and repeatedly named Grand Central Terminal or GCT. The former is as wrong as talking about the big statue out on Liberty Peninsula.
It always annoys me when a movie or TV show has a scene where one character is hanging off a cliff or something and another person pulls him/her up with one arm. Pulling up even a light person with one arm is exceedingly difficult.
I don’t know - would it? I go to an Anglican church (same brand, different label AFAIK) and I never saw anyone do confession. I would bow to contrary experience if anyone has any.
“A priest is a person who has been affirmed by the larger community as one designated to convey the means of grace to Christians in the community. Only bishops may ordain priests and deacons. Priests baptize and preside at the Eucharist, preach the Word of God, and hear confessions. It is the priest who pronounces forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ if the bishop is not present … Episcopalians may make private confessions to a priest and indeed some should, but private confession is not obligatory in the Episcopal Church. A general confession of sins is part of each Eucharist. The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis came to make private confession a part of his Christian life as he grew in his faith. We would do well to follow his lead.”
I work in local television and movies about television news NEVER get it right. Hell, even tv shows about television news rarely get it right.
In Bruce Almighty Jim Carrey is a reporter who’s super excited about doing a live shot during “sweeps week.” A) No reporter gets worked up about doing live shots. They do them all the time and B) sweeps periods last a month, not a week.
Up Close and Personal, Morning Glory and others feature live cameras without any cable connection to a remote van or satellite truck. Until very recently, this was technically impossible.
Also in Morning Glory a reporter goes out to cover a live story with only a photographer… no live truck operator or producer. Field producers were cut from most local news long ago and live truck operators are also disappearing (photographers have taken up that duty in addition to shooting video.) But a national network newscast would never operate this way.
In “The Newsroom”, at times they’ll structure their newscasts or add/cut stories right before air while casually sitting around the control room… and that’s a network newscast. In even the smallest markets, rundowns are carefully developed in editorial meetings well in advance with management, assignment editors, anchors and even some reporters present. At best, stories may be dropped for time by producers during newscasts if other stories go longer than expected.
I was just thinking about something similar to this. This isn’t really in one piece of fiction, it’s more like a trope, but when someone is so desperate that they have to run into a Catholic church to pray. It’s never a Protestant church or anything else, and the priest is always right there standing by ready to give a helpful piece of advice. It’s like TV and movie priests spend all their time hanging out near the altar just ready for some desperate hero to come in out of the rain, they’re never in the rectory, visiting a sick parishioner in the hospital, or doing anything else.
In their defense, if this is a defense, they’re not trying to get it right. You can tell they’re writing these scenes so they have the fewest characters and the most drama they can. News in movies or TV is rarely written properly either because it’s just there to advance the plot or sum up a character’s problems.
