I always get thrown off whenever a movie features the current President in some way. I have no problem featuring the pres when you’re going back a decade, but can’t you just make up a fake president? Worse examples are the stock footage of Bill Clinton in Contact and the fake George Bush in Transformers. Especially when it’s played up for a laugh. Let’s leave the jokes to the late night talk shows okay?
And un-Tolkien. John Ronald was too well educated to use a singular “their.”
Wait, I’m supposed to say goodbye on the phone?
This is what I get for trying to learn American customs by watching American movies.
Mine is when the main characters are parts of organizations, but pretty much just do as they please. This is at the top of my mind after having seen The Wrath of Khan, in which nobody EVER phones home to confirm an order (or that they’re on the RIGHT FUCKING PLANET). Plus, Kirk letting a ship that’s not answering hails get close enough to fire? GAH! Anyways, you see it a lot - bureaucracy isn’t terribly exciting, true, but having the main characters just ignore the rulebook with no consequences will bring me out of a movie like nothing else.
What gets me is something similar, when you can tell when a movie set during a historical time period was made by looking at the characters hair. For example, in a movie about pirates made in the 1970s, many of the characters will have long feathered Shaun Cassidy hair.
Another unrelated thing is when an actor says something that you are not used to coming out of his or her mouth, either in character or in person. An example would be in the movie Bull Durham when Kevin Costner proclaims, “I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back…” What the hell- Costner doesn’t talk like that!
Just goes to show you, different strokes and all that. It was totally jarring to me and threw me out of the movie for a few minutes because (1) they made such a big freaking in-your-face deal out of it and (2) no way is an LA billionaire who can have anything he wants after a long, harrowing period of deprivation going to ask for freaking Burger King. In-N-Out, sure. Tommy’s, maybe, but Burger King? Pfooey.
But couldn’t that theory work for every movie ever?
In Copying Beethoven when Luwdig “mooned” Anna?
Could I be mistaken in that we didn’t have that phrase or that particular visual joke back then?
Anyway, whether we did or not, while it didn’t ruin the film, it did give me pause.
Q
I don’t get bother much by product placement. I sometimes note it in passing. The one time I remember that was particularly jarring was in the second Fantastic Four movie (I know, not exactly Citizen Kane). Reed Richards calls for the new jet car he built. It arrives and Johnny notes the Chrysler embelm. “It has a Hemi, right?” “Of course”. For one we saw Richards building the dawn thing. It wasn’t built by Chrysler. Why would it have a Chrysler emblem on it? And it has a Hemi? Hemi refers to the hemispherical shaped combustion chambers in a Hemi engine. So this obviously jet powered vehicle has a combustion engine?
The hair thing I would put more in the mistake category. For me, because of my background, this usually happens when a character is supposed to be in the military. In the movie Spy Game we see Brad Pitt in Viet Nam. He doesn’t look too out of place as a sniper. The hair is too long but he is in the field and trying to blend in. Not washing, eating native foods. Then we see him later in a deadend job in Germany. He is still a Marine in uniform but with Brad Pitt hair. It would never happen. Again in the TV show Las Vegas the charatcer played by Josh Duhamel gets called up as a Marine Reservist. He couldn’t commit to the role enough to get a haircut. There are a bunch of others. There are some many mistakes about the military that it is more rare to see a movie that gets it right.
Good Eye (and brain!), Loach!
Also, a mini-hijack about military head-wear that maybe someone can answer?
When I was in the service, my helmet and my dress hat/cap made me look like a doofus. They both seemed too damn big and I could barely see out from under them.
Do those things get made/tailored so that they fit the actor(s) and not just given a 7 1/4 etc.?
Q
Indeed. A galaxy far, far away wouldn’t be speaking English in the first place, but we kind of have to give them that bit of suspended disbelief.
A weird one for me, but when characters never ever seem to plug in their laptops (Casino Royale, for instance). If I have a plug nearby, usually I’ll just plug the thing into the wall so I don’t have to worry about draining the battery. But that might just be me.
And another vote for “Spotting an actor”. My favorite big example is David Schwimmer playing the duty officer in Flight of the Intruder, explaining to Lieutenant Grafton that he and Tiger Cole will be flying an Iron Hand mission that night. Also, bonus points if it takes me some time to recognize the actor, ie: Ioan Gruffudd (AKA Horatio Hornblower) playing an American officer in Blackhawk Down, or Jamie Bamber (AKA Archie Kennedy, from the same movies as Hornblower) playing the brown-haired, pony-tail-less, distinctly not-English Captain Lee Adama.
Reminds me of the final words in the movie “Barry Lyndon”, the obituary of Sir Charles Lyndon, the “Epilogue” of the film:
“It was in the reign of George the III that the above named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”
I don’t know about that particular phrase, but I’m pretty certain flashing your ass at someone has been a near-universal insult for centuries.
And I don’t have a cite handy, but I remember reading that Beethoven was often a very crude individual, even to the nobility who were supporting him.
Well can I just pop in with a cite:
Written by Herodotus c.450BC.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers were thinking of this when they did the line, but as you say they have degenderised it (is that a word?). I always get jolted out by the line as well, as it always makes me think of Herodotus.
Well, now, I’m in the UK, so it may be because I can’t judge where Burger King stands in the er… food-chain food chain, but it didn’t seem out of place to me.
In the comics I remember reading, Tony Stark drank Dr Pepper – wouldn’t a Whopper go with that?
It didn’t seem out of place to me either. He wanted a burger and he wanted it now. It felt to me like that was the first place they passed.
I get distracted watching movies that take place in the past, when the makeup artists not only make heroine extra attractive but make all the other women extra ugly. See, for example, Catherine Zeta-Jones in Zorro and Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge.
I can usually take product placement with a grain of Morton’s salt. I mean, when I see a scene set in someone’s house, and I see a bottle of Coke and a Domino’s pizza box, I fully realize that Coke and Domino’s paid to have them there, but it’s not like there’s a rogue Fabrege Egg on the coffee table or something. We expect to see things like pop bottles and pizza boxes in someone’s house. Hell, if you walked into my apartment right now, you’d swear I had a placement deal with Fresca and Dorito’s.
However, in two movies I’ve seen lately - Transformers and I Am Legend - the car placement was completely over the top. And I blame the “Low Angle Front Bumber Logo Prominently Displayed” shot. It’s the same one you see in every car commercial and it is featured prominently in both those movies.
I mean there is a cut that might as well come with a big “ADVERTISEMENT” disclaimer, that shows the Camaro (in Transformers) and the Mustang (in I Am Legend) in all their MSRP glory, perfectly spotless, and ready to sell.
What they did to Kris Kristofferson at the end of the move was alright, then?