The two previous presidents on 24. Wayne Palmer and Noah Daniels. These two are so remarkably uncharismatic that I don’t think they could have won a local school board election much less a Presidential one.
Every scene with them just took me out of the show. The current President is a little better. David Palmer and Charles Logan played the role the best.
Two things really take me out of movies, and one of them is a BIG one…and one of em I just thought of by reading these:
White Teeth: This first struck me in Saving Private Ryan there is a nice and poignant scene where Matt Damon’s character is talking to someone (can’t remember who) and his whole face/body is dirty and war torn, but his teeth are strikingly (and I mean STRIKINGLY) white and straight. In my mind, as a soldier at war for the past however many years there is no way that your teeth would be that perfect. It’s the same in a lot of movies…the character is supposed to be poor/lonely/homeless etc. but their teeth are always nice pearly whites.
Cameos in movies: This really isn’t anyone’s fault, but when I see actors in movies, and I know them from other things and I just can’t separate the two. When my friends and I saw The Village we just joked the whole time at Adrian Brody’s character by saying “haha he has an Oscar”. Same with seeing pretty much anyone from TV playing opposite what I am used to seeing. I am sure I or others can come up with other examples, but I’m thinking of any specifics right now
Yes, this dates me terribly, but, perhaps someone else recalls the 1970’s film: “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea”, Sarah Miles, Kris Kristofferson.
A stunningly beautiful film. That is, until the son of the Sarah Miles character and his strange friends kill the cat.
I don’t even find it amusing when the Simpsoms do it. But, that’s just me.
I think that’s a necessary consequence of fame. I also think you’re not clear on what the word “cameo” means if you think Adrian Brody’s role in The Village qualifies.
Characters who don’t say goodbye after talking on the phone. They have their last line of dialogue and just hang up.
Good point…
I shouldn’t have used the word “cameo”. I should have said something to the effect of “Actors who I recognize from one role (either TV or film) that are playing a totally opposite, or different role”
Man that still sounds like crap…can anyone word that better than I?
You’ve never spoken to my father, then. He always just abruptly hangs up.
When people are fast asleep in bed in the dark and the phone rings, and they turn on the bedside light to answer it and they don’t even shield their eyes from the light. I wouldn’t even turn on the light in the first place until I knew it wasn’t a wrong number, and then you know you’re going to be blinded.
I have friends who do the goth thing, and have fangs and a few of them have a game where they just go about their regular life and see how long it takes for people to notice the fangs … and it is amazing how little people actually look at your mouth unless you are lip reading … I will admit that back when I was working a funky sort of swing shift I was seriously tempted to get fangs and contacts - I think I literally didnt see the sun other than on my days off for almost a year.
Whether it’s the same meow all the time, I don’t know, but directors insisting on a meow every single time there’s a clip with a cat really breaks the scene for me. We *know *cats say meow, we also know they don’t do it every time you happen to see it. Just throw the cat clip in, cut back to the main scene. It’s enough. A cat. We noticed.
I seriously believe that’s a modern man’s rationalization: “They had many kids, many of them died. What did they care?”
Any investigation into any historical or contemporary circumstances show the greatest grief for the greatest sorrow: Losing one’s child. Losing two or three, there are no historical evidence or even hint of people in the medieval Europe or anywhere else going: “Oh, since my children usually die, I don’t care.” There are lots of evidence on the contrary, though, as would be expected.
As a side note, one can’t help to appreciate the Greeks in the Troyan war, as depicted by Homer’s Iliad, how they are sick of being there, longing for their children back home. - Exactly the same feelings the American soldiers in Iraq right now, hoping for an end to the war to get back home to their families. Some things never change.
Anyways, as a Swede, you get thrown out of the movie when you see a Swedish actor in a Hollywood film. One minute you’re in a movie, and the next moment you go: “Whoa! It’s Peter Stormare! Way to go, man! You crazy mutherfucker!” Or, the nex movie: “Fuck, it’s Stellan! Man, he got that Russian accent alright, didn’t he?!”
Exception would be Ingrid Bergman, because she’s bigger than… well, Sweden.
Considering who did the writing Im thinking it could have been much worse.
it could have been some zany space democracy where they elected young girls to be queens for a limited time (until they start to grow breast I presume).
oh wait. never mind.
You’re misunderstanding me. I don’t mean,and never said, that parents in pre-industrial cultures would not have greatly mourned the loss of their children. I said that it would be too common an occurrence for Theoden to think it a change in the order of things, or to remark upon it thus; and that he would not have assayed to express his grief in gender-neutral terms. He’d have said, “No loss is greater than the loss of a son in the fullness of his life” or some such.
For me, it’s any vampire movie where they use facial prosthenics. Yeah, sure, you’re trying to convey the vamp’s bestial/demonic nature. But it’s completely unnecessary. Christopher Lee was scary as hell, with only fangs and red contacts. Bela Lugosi was scary as hell, with only a cape and odd mannerisms. Spend your budget on actors and writers, not on make-up.
Quoth Morbo:
One notable exception to this, for me: In Iron Man, when Tony’s just been rescued, and the first thing he wants back in the States is a hamburger, which arrives in a very prominently-marked Burger King bag, clearly visible to camera. Yes, a blatent product placement like that reminds me of what disgusting money-grubbers the folks on top of the capitalist heap are, but at the same time, Tony Stark himself is one of those disgusting money-grubbing top of the heap capitalists himself, so by taking me out of the movie, it actually managed to bring me back into it, too.
On the topic of nudity, another recent film where a lack of nudity was jarring was X-Men 3. When Wolverine is confronting Phoenix at the end, she’s continually disintegrating his skin (which grows back) and his clothes (which don’t), except for his pants above the knees. OK, so maybe Hugh Jackman didn’t want to do a nude scene-- In that case, you just give him a pair of Speedos and choose your camera angles so we don’t see them, and let us assume that he’s naked. And the movie did have another (non-gratuitous) nude scene with Mystique (Rebecca Romijn)… It’s not exactly fair that we guys (and lesbians) get some nekkid eye-candy, but the ladies (and gays) don’t.
It’s annoying to me when people use a generic product when in real life they would have obviously used a brand name product. Or when the brand names of the products are intentionally hidden from view. This happens with wines and liquor bottles a lot. They are always shot so that the front label is hidden from view.
For some reason this seems to happen when the supernatural is involved.
That is why I loved the one scene in Heroes where Peter looks like he is about to explode in front of the invisible guy. The solution? The invisible dude just punches him in the face, knocks him out, and Peter doesn’t explode.
I hate it when a bunch of people are talking, and then two of them need to ‘talk privatly’. So what do they do? They walk 5 feet, sometimes not even out of the room, and speak in a perfectly loud tone. Dude, just because you went off camera doesn’t mean those other people aren’t still there. Totally jarring.
I have a theory that Indiana Jones didn’t really see anything in Temple of Doom that can’t be explained away by a simpler explanation.
When Mola Ram pulled the guy’s heart out and he was still living? Indy was too far away to get a look at exactly what happened.
When Mola Ram mind controlled Indy? He was drugged with powerful hallucinagenics.
When the Shankara stones started to glow forcing Mola Ram to drop them? He panicked because of the height.
Etc, etc, etc.
Computer screens with 400 point fonts so the audience can see what is on them. Or ones that talk, but those are less common now.
Apartments that are way too expensive for the character, like gigantic lofts in ritzy neighborhoods for kids right out of college.
As for nudity, how about characters alone in their house/apartments who put on a robe to answer the phone?
This is half on topic…cuz it takes me out of the movie, but when it happens I LOVE it.
People typing way too fast at computers. This happens a lot whenever there is the stereotypical “super computer nerd” type guy, whenever he types in a laptop/computer/electronic device he does it at like 10,000 WPM.
Case in point…Live Free or Die Hard…whenever Justin Long’s character or Timothy Olyphant’s character types in a computer it is blindingly fast.
I can’t even type sd;ofhjsdfoisjfpoisjr0wsiujrwsoivjw faster than they can type three sentances, tab a couple times, type some password, then tab again to write another final threat.
For me, it’s perfect hair. When a caveman, a castaway on a desert island, or someone who’s just been lost in a jungle for a week, has the kind of hair that you can only have just after walking out of a very expensive beauty salon. I know it’s standard practice in Hollywood, but it never fails to badly jar my suspension of disbelief.