Scenes that disobey the laws of physics for the scare. E.g. The actress is walking along the beach…alone. The camera pivots around her dizzyingly, and 270 degrees around, you suddenly see (with soundtrack to match) the psycho killer! Uh, he’d have had to transport in not to be seen 100 yards away.
And computer over-enhancement…e.g. There are more British ships at the end of the last Pirates of the Caribbean move than could have possibly existed, in the whole world, at that time…ignoring the fact that they were also jus in the neighborhood, and lined up for a fight.
Fried Green Tomatoes, a movie which I adored when it came out.
Whatserface has gone to the local dive bar to find Iggy. Iggy, a woman of perhaps 20 years old, has been living rough out in the woods for the last ten or more years. She comes into town occasionally to gamble, drink, and offend people’s sensibilities.
Whatserface confronts Iggy, who is stretched out, lounging, showing off a very nice pair of legs.
These legs happen to be without a single follicle of hair anywhere on them, and Iggy’s “trousers” were cut to above mid-thigh. And this was in the 1920s. In small town, backwoods, rural US south. Also, Iggy had access to modern perming chemicals, mousse, highlights, full nail care products, and all the moisturizer she could soak in.
In period movies where all the old cars look like new – no dents, rust, or dirt. Surely there are some rusted, dented, dirty classic cars out there somewhere.
I thought about this thread while watching Rambo last night. (Hubby controls the remote.) Rambo’s supposed to be this super tough warrior who’s spent years in jungles, but he twitches like a little girl when he encounters some rats. Actually, the whole movie took me out of the movie. Why head to the town where every cop is looking for you?
As per “obvious” product placement in movies…to me it makes it more real. I WANT to see you drinking Coke, driving a Chevy, typing on an Apple etc. etc. cuz that’s what I do. If you go out of your way to avoid the product than it jarrs me more because I think "Oop, they couldn’t get anyone to sign off on that.
The talk of the “Transformers” Camaro looking brand new all of the time…cuz it was one of 3 working Camaros in the world. Pretty sure they wanted it clean.
Another one I thought of…girls underwear. I love me some girls in their underwear as much as the next guy, but girls do not wear their red bra and red panties every single day. They do not wear their black thongs and black front-clip bras every day either. Correct me if I am wrong ladies, but I have been told that you do not pay THAT much attention on your underwear on a “normal” day.
This was brought to my attention in The Departed. Matt Damon and the chick have sex in her kitchen after a “normal” day, and she is wearing this lacy black thong, black bra and the whole deal. A guy I was seeing that with said to me “Good thing she came prepared…”
In the first Pirates of the Caribbean:Curse of the Black Pearl, when they raise the Jolly Roger toward the end, it is so obviously a nylon flag, that it does jar you out of the movie (such as it is).
Ooh, that’s a good one. I do wear cute underwear as a matter of course just because I like it. But it’s cute underwear that’s also super practical/comfortable. If I wore super lacy stuff that can’t take the violent cycle on the dryer, then yeah, I probably would save those for a date or some such.
I have a similar reaction to just about every movie that show two characters lying in bed next to each other after having sex. 95% of the time, the sheet is placed so that it covers the male actor from the waist down, but the female actor from the chest down. Who does that in real life?
One general thing, in elaboration to what someone said before: “hackers”/“computer people” typing furiously at programs they have never seen before, generally without a command prompt in sight, miraculously stopping the threat. Prime example (again, as previously stated) is Live Free or Die Hard. Justin Long is able to sit down at a terminal containing software that he has most likely never seen before, basically mash his face against the keyboard, and somehow systematically stop the power grid collapse, all without any warning messages, prompts, password authorizations, etc. Sorry, I’ve been through too many programming classes to believe this, ever.
Now that I’m thinking of it, once you get technology involved, it is VERY easy to pull me out of a film. Of course those hard drives are sitting there in their pretty little hacker case without their full shell on! Why not! But of course the only way to shut down the catastrophic impending explosion is to throw that giant red lever!
Another thing that pulls me out of the movie (or TV show) is when a woman in a job that would require being taken seriously, particularly police or police related, is working in some top that is cut quite low, or is in other ways impractical, typically along with spike/high heel shoes. I know some women are quite capable of chasing down suspects and climbing walls with them on, but it seems to me that if you are in a line of work that would require you to cover different types of terrain or run after people, flats might be a better choice.
I have to agree with random cameos, but that is far less likely to throw me than a technology error. The biggest example I can think of is Jimmy Fallon in Band of Brothers. The entire time he is on the screen, all I can think is “Jimmy Fallon is doing a pretty good job. I’m surprised he is acting this well.”.
Hmm. Which is more distracting in a movie, I wonder: a can of Coke, or a can of obviously generic Cola Drink? What about if it’s a billboard or other ad? (This isn’t for when it’s important to the plot, obviously, like the McDonalds stand-in in Dogma, but when you need, say, a billboard in a major city to be destroyed for dramatic effect. Being a big city, said billboard would need to advertise something pretty major. What do you do?)
ETA:
He did so because the natives the stones were stolen from cared (and we’ve already seen how he feels about artifacts from dead people/cultures as an archaeologist; how must he feel about stuff stolen from living, breathing cultures?). If you’re asking why the natives cared if the stones were powerless, then you’re obviously an atheist.
Indeed, and sometimes you just crave the weirdest things. Halfway through Basic Training, I was craving McDonalds. I almost never eat at McDonalds as a rule (no problem with them, there is just usually a better choice available).
So, maybe after being held prisoner for however long, Tony Stark really wanted a Whopper. Could he have gotten Fillet Mignon served to him by some beautiful half-naked cowgirl? Sure. But he wanted a Whopper served to him by some pimply kid in a polo shirt.
I get more distracted by the scenes where the computer wiz finally hacks into the system or figures out some code, and it immediately turns into some crazy graphical display. Usually some 3-d display where you can zoom through various files and get a visual representation of the actual system.
Or they send out a virus that plays some sort of skull and crossbones video.
Or brylcreem on buccaneers in 40’s & 50’s movies. Or clean-shaven men in the middle ages and earlier. It bugs the hell out of me when actors can’t commit themselves to a job enough to get their hair cut, but it bugs me even more when a director won’t commit himself enough to his art to make the actor get a haircut, or not get a haircut, or grow a beard, or just wash the grease out of their hair.
Oh yes. We watched the first couple minutes of The Last Templar last night. Thieves dressed as medieval knights rode horses into a museum (or some kind of hall) and commenced stealing stuff out of display cases (that they shattered with their swords). :rolleyes: A woman in a short slinky cocktail dress and spike heels (yelling something like “Stop that! Who do you think you are?”) ran after them (very slowly so as not to trip), jumped on a horse (because the mounted policemen nearby didn’t think of going after the thieves) and started to chase them. That was all kinds of silliness, but the running in spike heels was what got my attention.
There was an episode of the GREAT show “The Boondocks” where the kids’ grandpa starts dating a girl that the boys think is a prostitute.
One of their reasons given is how fast she can run in 9 inch heels. Even to the point at the end of the episode when it is revealed she IS actually a prostitute the character says “…and she can sure run in those heels”
I think of this every time Ms. Heroine is chasing down Mr. Criminal in her cocktail dress and heels
I’ve been watching the DVD of Sports Night. In one episode Casey reveals that the reason his marriage broke up is that five years earlier he had been offered “Conan O’Brien’s show” before Conan and turned it down.
It’s pretty common knowledge that Lorne Michaels built the show around Conan and never had anybody else in mind. But even if that weren’t true, on the show Casey is in his early 30s. No network would have offered the spot after the Tonight Show to somebody five years younger than that. And on top of all that, Casey at no time in the run of the series is ever indicated as anything other than a sports anchor guy. Not a comic actor or stand-up or sketch player or tv writer. Not even in his wildest dreams would anybody have offered him the show. Aaron Sorkin tried to make him seem bigger than what he was just for the sake of an unimportant line.
The more episodes I watch I realize that Sorkin did similar stunts in way too many shows. A good memory has a lot of warts now.
It is not the fact that a can of Coke, or an Apple Laptop, or an At&t phone is somewhere in the frame, creating what a realistic home or office would look like, it is the unreal way that the product is presented, with the item being a focal point or the camera lingering on the logo. Example: When a guy opens a laptop and the camera is positioned so low that the only thing you see is his eyes, the top of his head, and the Apple logo. It is almost as if the logo is an important point to remember for some sort of foreshadowing purpose.
Eh, there’s a difference between fantastic and just stupid. Superman flying is explained - it doesn’t make any goddamn sense in reality, but there’s an attempt to make it work, so I can suspend disbelief. With 300, they just didn’t make the effort. Meet me halfway here, people.
Actually, though, this is a big one for me - in fantasy movies, there’s way too often an attitude that because it’s not real, anything goes. Not explanations, just random shit happening (I’m looking at you, 80’s). You can get away with a lot if it’s consistent, but too much random-ass stuff just to move the plot, and you lose me.
