People always seems to have fully-charged cell phones. Bastards.
Defribrillators being used to start hearts. Actually, it’s the other way around: they stop them.
How little people in TV and movies talk about TV and movies.
Unless, of course, the escalation of danger against the hero or victim depends on the battery being dead. So it goes out right at the moment of greatest peril.
What, are their voices too high?
::d&r::
In one of the Dies the Fire book, one character is talking about trebuchets to another, then mentions it’s not pronounced trebucket but trebushay. But you see, IRL the characters are saying it, not reading it.
Here’s a horror movie one I wish they’d retire: Person 1 is looking for Person 2. Person 1 shouts Person 2’s name over and over but 2 doesn’t say anything, leaving Person 1 to wander around, usually in the dark. Suddenly Person 2 shows up surprising Person 1, and despite plainly being close enough to hear their name being called, never hears/says anything while Person 1 was shouting
Another one: If the setting is LA or anywhere in Southern California, they almost always have to show:
- Palm trees
- The beach
- Bikini-clad roller skaters on the beach
- Convertibles driven by people wearing shades
Sort of related to this, we now have the TV show Taxi Brooklyn
How about the tired old trope of humans only using ten percent of their brains? I’m actually surprised Luc Besson is using this currently for Lucy and even more surprised to hear Morgan Freeman spouting that nonsense (I guess Through the Wormhole taught him nothing). I’d have thought they both would know better, and Besson especially should have been able to come up with a better reason for Lucy’s abilities. I might have been able to block it somehow and suspend disbelief if it was only mentioned in passing or something, but in the trailer Freeman bangs on about the whole percentage myth way too much. It makes a movie written and directed by Luc Besson and starring Scarlett Johnansson and Morgan Freeman sound ridiculous instead of awesome.
I also immediately noticed this when I saw the trailer. Pretty annoying, but I’ll probably rent the DVD when it comes out.
My vote goes to 555-prefix phone(y) numbers.
Remind me not to be transported to your hospital if I ever have a myocardial infarction. :eek:
This was spoofed in a recent comic book (can’t remember the title.)
“Bob! Come back…” To self: “Right. Forgot. That doesn’t work.”
In the movies, even mundane minimum-wage people live in spacious lofts with open floor plans, structural beams, fabulous arching windows featuring panoramic views of the city/ocean/whatever.
3 adults always ride in the front seat of a car, never turn out the headlights when they stop, and never have spare tires or knowledge to change them.
You know, just like real life!
I’m sick of the rich team always being the arrogant, snobby bad guys too.
For once, can we have the rag tag outfit be the bad guys?
If this hasn’t been mentioned already - or even if it has: when one character doesn’t see or hear another character (usually a sneaky villain) because the second character is just out of frame. Hearing and sight don’t work like that! I mean, you can do some great surrealist humor with that kind of thing, but not in a drama!
This happens in A Stranger Among Us, a film with Melanie Griffith that is universally considered bad, but which I love like I love sour cream & onion potato chips. She’s a tough cop who goes undercover in the Chasidic community in Brooklyn to solve a murder.
There’s a funeral (murder, dontcha know) and the Rebbe says to the Chasidic crowd at the cemetery, “Let us now say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.”
For me its ‘Don’t do it! It’s not worth it’ crap.
Saw a TV involving a guy who broke out of prison and was hunting down and killing people who had abusing him in prison.
He killed (including torture) 2 people including an ex-guard while trying to find the mail guy (ex-con) who had abused him, all the while being chased by our good guys.
Bad guy and good guys arrive at the final scene together. Bad guy has gun pointed at the ex-con who had abused him. AND THE GOOD GUYS TALK HIM OUT OF KILLING. Of course using the ‘it’s not worth it’ contrivance so that the good guys show that they are actually…good, I guess…and stop a killing.
But I if a guy broke out of prison in order to kill a guy…and committed 2 counts of murder with special circumstances to find the guy… how could he possibly be talked out of it??? The final killing is not worth it, but the two previous WERE? Does he get a break if he only commits 2 murders and not 3?
I’m really tired of the female lead’s wisecracking girlfriend who has a spiky hairdo; also, the overweight IT guy with a beard and a J-Fro.
There are far too many romantic male leads who are brooding and aloof outsiders; they tend to seek advice from a confidant who is a homespun character in a cowboy hat that delivers nuggets of wisdom in the form of rustic one-liners.
Oh, and let’s not forget the white girl ballet dancer, who could make it in the hip-hop world, if somebody would give her a shot.
Better yet, the Latina hip-hop dancer, who could make it in the ballet world, if somebody would give her a shot.
Meh, they have to use something. What’s your idea?
Lazy writers. They don’t have to use or show any phone number. “I’ll forward the number to you.” Or “I’ve sent you the phone number.” The three decades or whatever of Lawn Order never needed the 555 number, that I recall.
There are only two numbers covering the entire city of Los Angeles, according to NCIS: 911 and 555-555-5555.
Of course, 555,555,555 is also the NCIS Los Angeles body count for each episode.
I have no formal medical knowledge. I was taught that defibrillators only worked on hearts that were in an abnormal rhythm, in fibrillation, where the muscles weren’t contracting in the proper sequence to pump blood. The shock from the defibrillator actually stops the muscles in the heart to try and ‘reset’ them so when they resume, they are back in the proper rhythm.
Is that wrong?
My pet peeve are the characters carrying loaded, or should be loaded guns, meaning they should have a bullet in the chamber. Just before they get ready to go, they have to rack the slide on the their pistols or work the action on their shotgun. In real life you would have the shell that was in the chamber falling on the floor.
One more comment about ceiling fire sprinklers (I got this from my Dad 25 years ago, so if it’s wrong, I’m not taking the fall alone):
He would watch people in movies fumble around for a lighter or a book of matches or what have you, wasting precious seconds, then he would yell, “Take off your shoe and knock off the sprinkler head with the heel.”