Tia Carrere in Wayne’s World!
Sorry, am I missing some vital information here? This is 300 you are talking about isnt it? Stylised graphics? Muscle bound spartans chopping heads off? A tent full of freaks? A tree full of bodies? Attack rhinos? Millions against hundreds? Arrows blocking the sun?
And Leonidas climbing a cliff causes you trouble?
Perhaps I was watching the wrong film…
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Tia Carrerre has a note from good permitting her to do whatever she wants. Well, she used to, anyway. I think Natalie Portman has it now.
It was a mistake, and it took me out of the movie:
the first X-Men movie, outside the train station. Magneto uses his magnetic control powers to snatch the guns out of all the cop’s hands and then point them back at the cops. So far, okay.
But he shoots one of the cops and stops the lead bullet right at the man’s forehead.
The first written reference to the Spartan pit comes from Herodotus:
(from Histories, book 7, chap. 133)
And Thucydides, in The History of the Peloponnesian War, tells us that the Spartan pit (or gorge–it’s not entirely clear) was called Kaiadas, and was where they cast convicted criminals. (cite).
So 300 is a bit off in its telling of the story–I seem to recall that in the film, the heralds were sent by Xerxes just prior to the battle of Thermopylae, when in fact they had been sent by Darius on a previous occasion.
However, it does sound like the Spartans really did have a pit or well into which they threw people–and what’s more, the Athenians appear to have had a similar set-up. We must assume, though, that neither pit was actually bottomless (and I’d have to imagine they’d have guardrails or something around the hole to prevent pedestrians from stumbling in by mistake).
But, yeah, the movie clearly wasn’t intended to be entirely historically accurate, and I think it’s best just to suspend disbelief while watching it.
I’d love to read about the excavations at Sparta–do post the links if you find them again.
The one thing I liked about the last Futurama movie was when Farnsworth was explaining something super obvious and Amy says something like, “Guh, don’t condescend to us.” Well, that and the Tyrannosaurus bringing down the UFOs in the Scary Door episode.
Besides the pass from The Big Guy, Tia deserves a pass because she was doing her own vocals. Yeah, she actually put out a few albums. So she may not have been playing guitar, but she was singing.
One movie actually did something so right that it took me out for a second. It was The Fugitive, in the scene where Gerard and his team are chasing Kimball into the tunnel. The team is hauling ass, but only as they approach what they assume is the target do they lock and load, pointing down and away from everyone else (right or left, depending on where they are in the clump of marshals). I thought it was nice to include a bit pf proper firearms safety. 
I thought it was Charles Xavier that stopped that particular bullet.
Xavier isn’t telekinetic. It was Jean Grey that did the bullet-stopping.
Who the hell was looking at her hands?
Something that’s a little better done but still obvious to me, and tends to take me out: there’s some laboratory/command center/what have you where busy people are busy doing things they are thoroughly familiar with, and we’re introduced to what they’re doing by some clueless layman character introduced from the outside who keeps saying some variation of “who is that?” “what is she doing?” “why is she doing that?”
Somebody mentioned lens flare in animation. I notice that, as well as when some CGI cartoon does the shaky “camera” thing.
Also in some medieval or wild west battle scene when the camera gets spattered with blood. If I was in the middle of that battle and blood flew into my eyes, I wouldn’t be seeing a spatter overlay, I’d be seeing nothing, 'cause, like, there’s blood in my eyes.
:smack:
I always took it that Magneto was “escalating,” as in, “Back off or I let the bullet go ahead and kill this cop!”
Priest 1: Is that Leonidas climbing up the cliff?
Priest 2: Yep.
Priest 1: Didn’t anyone tell him about the stairs?
Priest 2: Walter did, last time.
Priest 1: And?
Priest 2: Leonidas said, “Stairs are for pussies.” Then he set Walter on fire.
Priest 1: Goddammit, I fucking hate Greeks.
Miller, that’s dead-on perfect!
ExTank, that was exactly my interpretation of that scene.
My thinking as well. Didn’t Magneto say something like “Don’t push your luck Charles. I don’t think I can stop them all.”
Yes, Magneto said that, but I think that was a misread line or a flaw in the script. There was no reason for him to cock and fire a weapon and then halt the bullet. Xavier glances at Jean when Magneto says that, and her look says “I can’t stop them all.”
As I’ve mentioned in a couple of recent threads, I’m in the process of watching the entire Sherlock Holmes television series starring Jeremy Brett. Included in the boxed set of episodes are three or four television movies.
We just watched The Master Blackmailer. There’s a scene which was mildly touched upon in the book, but in the movie it is expanded:
[spoiler]Holmes, disguised as a plumber, gets romantic with a housemaid in order to learn the goings-on within the villain’s household. Things get a lot steamier than he plans and he finds himself rolling around on the ground with her. This scene is played well by Brett, for the plumber character is clumsy and stammering and awkward when trying to get intimate with the girl; is this part of the plumber disguise or is Holmes’s own asexuality showing itself? Well done, Brett.
However, it’s very uncomfortable to see Holmes having anything to do with a woman, and it does indeed bring you out of the film.[/spoiler]
Ooh, I thought of another one, in the vein of “just because it’s a fantasy movie anything goes”. In Prince Caspian, I have no problem with the minotaurs or the swashbuckling mouse or the liqueur which instantly heals any wound-- Those are part of the premise. But those rapid-fire catapults the Telmarines were using? It doesn’t do much good to put a counterweight on both ends of a trebuchet arm. And were the drive chains and cogs on them made out of wood? Yeah, that’d work really well.
Shawshank Redemption was…at one point…one of my favorite movies. And it’s still a good one. But the final ‘escape’ scene has tarnished over time.
First off - 16 years of digging with a little piece of poster-paper as the only shield between Andy and the guards finding out? Didn’t they ever roust his cell? Or move cells? Especially after the big blowup with the Warden where the warden threatened him?
And then, his escape is discovered before breakfast. That’s usually what…6am or 7am in the joint, at the latest? How far could he get in that time? Where did he shower and put on the suit? It was the middle of the night in a thunderstorm, for crying out loud.
Then he waltzes into a small-town, local bank in the early 1960’s that probably opens at 9am. That’s plenty of time for the warden to assemble a search team and go straight to the banks…since that’s where the warden knows the evidence is going to be. Add in the fact that Andy needs to go to ‘over a dozen banks’ and you’re talking well after lunchtime before he has made his full rounds.
He drops the letter to the paper in the first banks’ outgoing mail, which means it’s probably another day or two before the DA comes after the warden at Shawshank. So basically the warden had an entire, free day or two and he couldn’t figure out…after opening his safe…where Andy would go?
In short, the timing of the whole morning escape/discovery/bank sequence makes no sense. Especially since the warden knows where the smoking gun is (the banks) and could probably be there within 15 minutes, if he desired.