•Flamethrowers. Seem to consist of the “shoot propane flame jet” and “squirt weak stream of burning gasoline, which burns off in seconds” varieties. The real things aresomewhatmore impressive/horrific. (Note: Don’t worry, that’s just training footage, and a distance photo of a patrol boat firing at an off-camera target.)
Now, I understand why this is the case—using more realistic flamethrowers in live-action filming would be incredibly unsafe, possibly technically impossible, and probably illegal in a lot of places. Though one could do better with CG effects or pure animation…if they cared to. Most don’t. The kerosene-tossing scene from The Thing from Another World still looks more intense than most hollywood flamethrowers.
Hey, maybe it’s ghoulish, but it is a “pet” peeve. And it does belie the true horror of these weapons in action, which probably isn’t that great, either.
•The “Designated Girl Fight,” i.e. the “in an action scene featuring a female villain, tapping in a female hero solely so the male good guys don’t have to fight a woman.”
Heh. How about “actors who don’t know how to use a fire extinguisher”?
Director: “CUT! CUT! Idiots! You point it at the base of the fire!”
Actually, “actors who clearly don’t know how to use their tools” is one of my peeves. This is most obvious in older films, mostly in cases involving firearms, where it’s clear that the actors have never fired a real weapon in their lives. C’mon, you don’t fire a pistol by thrusting it toward your target each time you pull the trigger! Fortunately, this has gotten better (aside from the “gangsta grip” of holding a handgun sideways). But the one that always sticks out to me, mainly because I’m a musician who has played a wide variety of instruments over the years, is the actor who is supposed to be a musician and yet doesn’t even hold the instrument correctly. For lead characters they usually do a good job of at least coaching the actor so he/she can fake it convincingly; it’s usually background characters, like the band playing in a bar. Seriously, if it’s just background musicians, how hard can it be to find actual musicians, in Hollywood, to play the parts of the bar band?
Watched Earthquake! over the weekend. (Gawd, what a horrible move)
Walter Mathau in a comic relief role, playing a drunk at a bar. he earthquake hits, people are tossed like salad, the pool table moves with enough force to pin someone against the wall. Walter is having trouble bring his shot class full of whiskey to his lips…yet doesn’t spill a single drop!!
That’s an ongoing peeve of mine - there are certain ways you act and certain things you do when it is truly cold outside (and visible breath is one of them - not having your neck and chest exposed is another - it drives me crazy to see people acting like they’re cold, with their scarf hanging loosely around their exposed neck). There are tons of people from somewhere else in Hollywood - surely some of them are from cold places.
I can’t stand the Wilhelm scream any more. When I first learned about it, it was a cool little in-joke that I got to be part of. Now it takes me out of the movie every time I hear it, which is a pain because it more or less always happens in tense, action driven scenes when I’m getting really into it.
That stock “schwing” sound sharp objects make just by existing. It could be a sword being drawn from a leather scabbard, a kitchen knife from a wooden block or a pocket knife being unfolded; they always go “schwing” and it never makes sense and it always drives me crazy.
The pointless comic relief character. I absolutely can’t stand these; they kill tension, break the mood of dramatic scenes and otherwise sabotage the movie at every turn. If there’s a character who has no impact on the plot, no character development, provides no development for any other character and exists only to say something funny whenever you point the camera at him or her (Kat Dennings in Thor comes to mind) then you shouldn’t have this character in your movie, especially if none of their jokes are actually funny.
A couple that are a little more niche:
Badly portrayed video games. When someone in a movie or TV show plays a video game, there are pretty good odds that they’ll just be flailing away at random buttons like a little kid trying to emulate his big brother playing a game, that the game will look horrible and unfinished like it was made by two guys in a basement over a weekend, that it will make sounds like Pac-Man or Frogger even if it’s supposed to be a modern game or that it will have a ridiculous name like Blood Kill or Slaughter Blaster III.
Nerds and gamers being treated as acceptable targets for general ridicule. (This is a large part of why I can’t get into The Big Bang Theory.) People in TV shows and movies who play video games or role playing games, read sci-fi or fantasy books or comic books, understand math beyond an elementary school level or show the least bit of proficiency with computers beyond checking email and browsing the internet are almost always portrayed as awkward losers or overgrown children.
For the love of god, SHOW THEM DANCING! Stop with the quick cuts, the audience reactions, the judge shots, the flashy lights, random passersby, etc.
Show them dancing. Show their routines. Put a goddamn camera in the center of the auditorium, point it at the stage, and STOP Quick Cutting! I want to watch them!
My wife likes “Grey’s Anatomy”. I’ve come to enjoy it as well, except for two pet peeves:
They roll the opening credits FIFTEEN MINUTES into a 55-minute episode. I find this pretentious, like they think it’s the Gandhi epic film or something.
The god-awful music – that is, full songs, not incidental background music – which they blare over the action and dialogue once or twice a show. I get it that it’s a signature device for that show, but it’s a sucky device … made worse by the fact that the songs themselves are almost always atrocious … soft pop or pseudo-indie balladry from obscure, earnest young “musicians” who sound like they were chosen because they’re the producer’s niece or whatever.
I hate the “start movie/TV episode with cliffhanger, then ‘[X time] ago…’” It’s lazy writing and entirely pointless. It’s just time-padding. We end up seeing a scene twice, for no reason. See Iron Man as an example.
I understand if it’s the first episode of the season. I understand if you’re going to be touching on a plot point that you haven’t covered recently. But I have to wonder if they show these previouslies to people who have NEVER WATCHED THE SHOW and then asked them to write down what happened previously, and see if their understanding of what has gone before has any bearing on reality.
