I stopped watching CSI when Grisolm gave one of his throw-away facts of
Since that was the first episode I ever saw, I haven’t seen much CSI.
Which reminds me of the opening scene in Thunderbirds where the boy wonder is bored out of his skull in math class, and they have to come up with some tripe about Leonardo da Vinci introducing three extra variables into “the Pythagorean Theorem”. Like it would have been so hard to come up with some boring but genuine maths… :rolleyes:
In the movie No Way Out, a chase scene takes place in Washington DC in which Kevin Costner’s character runs into the Georgetown Metro Station, boards the train, and exits into the Old Post Office Pavillion station.
There are no Metro Stations in either of those locations.
It seems to me that these fictionalized subway stations aren’t really correctly classified as “mistakes.” They’re intentional, so they’re “made up,” but someone didn’t commit an error of fact.
My mother had a broken arm last spring and I was assisting her while also watching my two-year-old niece. To keep the toddler entertained, we’d play movies and she became obsessed with Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. It was insipid on first viewing, but repeated viewings made it so horrifically intolerable that we eventually “lost” the DVD just to save our sanity.
We were willing to overlook cartoon elements, such as the animals acting in ways that animals don’t act. However, the geography in what was meant as some kind of “homage” to the west was atrocious. It would be like making an homage to NYC and then using landmarks from Boston. We could easily recognize the actual landmarks that the animation had been based on, but between scenes they’d be hundreds or thousands of miles apart.
Of course, the fact that the horse ends up being an eco-terrorist who sabatoges the Transcontinental Railroad is pretty WTF all by itself.
Weird, weird movie.
But “Archers! Arch!” would have been much funnier.
Except that there was a reactor accident. Nor, likely, a reactor. It was an attempt (likely thrown together at the last minute, as they’d never expected him to be able to cross the bridge) to keep Truman from leaving the town. I don’t know that the film makers intentionally used the wrong sort of suit, but it does make the whole scene look a lot more like something from a hokey TV show. Which is precisely the point of the whole movie.
Gas Turbine. The turbine transmits power to the wheels. The flame was just exhaust.
Can’t be bothered to weed through all the responses, so I’m going to post another one.
I honestly think about this situation alot: Person A calls the authorities (for some reason) and it turns out the authorities are in hot pursuit of person A. They then try and make the phone call last the magical 30 seconds (though it varies) to be able to make an accurate trace. Seems to me this is misinformation to paint a picture of false security; one can now call anybody and regardless if the phone call gets intercepted if you hang up within the alloted time you won’t get traced. My honest opinion, of course.
That’s actually the easiest one to explain. We used blow up Death Stars with my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than a small moon.
(Actually it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a 20 megaton nuke exploding in the hanger bay might have caused a chain reaction that blew up the motherships reactor.
Yeah! I went on a tour of a Russian submarine when I was in Germany on vacation. I couldn’t get over how cramped it was. I thought a Manhattan appartment was bad!
Let’s not forget his wife divorcing him, booting him out of his house, shacking up with another guy and getting custody of their son. I’m not familiar with matrimonial property law in the territory at the time, but if it was anything like British law, I’m reasonably sure that once they married what was hers became his, no fault divorces among 19th Century Catholics were um, uncommon, adultery was frowned upon, and once separated from her husband she would have been lucky to even see her son again: all in all she would have been tarred, feathered, run out of town on a rail and then burnt in effigy for contemplating even a quarter of what she did.
That actually made sense in the old days of electro-mechanical telephone switching systems, such as the step-by-step switch. Tracing a call involved a technician running around a building, making note of the positions of various switching devices. When the caller hung up, it was game over. That all became obsolete with the introduction of electronic telephone switching systems.
There is a good example of this in Black Christmas (the original from 1974). A suspenseful scene involves trying to keep the mysterious caller on the line long enough for the tech at the phone company to check everything, and they actually intercut the phone call with shots of the guy running around the giant switching room. I always thought that was a lot more interesting than just showing the person on the phone with someone in the background making “keep stalling!” gestures. We’ve seen that a million times, but this movie actually bothered to show us what we’re waiting for. OMG will he check all the switches in time? Nicely done.
CSI Miami. The stars are lab people who go to crime scenes, question witnesses , and make arrests.
Last week they were looking at a computer showing a criminal flleeing on the streets by a GPS system. Next scene blondie is in her hummer leading the chase.
There’s an episode of “Curb your Enthusiasm” in which Larry cuts the hair off of a doll owned by the dughter of a (CBS?) television executive.
They establish that he is cutting the hair with a swiss-army-type multi tool that he has in his pocket - then we see him several times cutting with and holding a small pair of child’s safety scissors. It was glaring to me- maybe there was an explanation there that was edited out.
I know this is pretty lame, but I never notice continuity errors so I was proud of myself.
The entire plot of Mission Impossible 2 revolved around someone getting infected with a virus, and the rest of the cast getting the anti-virus. And in a Six-Degrees-of-Tom-Cruise game; Dustin Hoffman also had the same problem in the movie *Outbreak * when Rene Russo got a viral disease.
Hey Hollywood! There NO SUCH THING as a medical anti-virus! There are vaccines, and treatments, but no miracle cures called “anti-virus”.
A really idiotic plot point I see in a lot of erotic thrillers involves a group of rich people who develop secret organizations where they have people (generally, women, but in Passion Network, both sexes) to have sex with them, then have to use things like kidnapping and murder to conceal what they’re doing.
HELLLLLOOOO! YOU’RE FUCKING RICH!!! Just give attractive people who are so inclined lots of MONEY to have sex with you – there’s a whole industry out there for that very thing, I understand. There are LOTS of women out there who’ll have sex for what a very rich person would consider POCKET CHANGE! Happily. There’s almost no risk of discovery and even then, the penalties are negligible compared with the penalties for kidnapping and murder, which carry some HEAVY time.
If you’re going to use this old white chestnut of a white slavery plot, at the VERY least set it in some place where prostitution is REALLY fucking illegal, like Saudi Arabia. Do SOME kinda hand-waving. Because in most Western nations, nobody’s gonna buy that line …
But then it’s less of an erotic “thriller” and more, “so, I hired a prostitute.” Maybe they could just join a big swingers’ club, and the thriller part could be guessing which members got which STD from whom. “Col. Mustard gave Mrs. Peacock chlamydia in the parlor without a condom!”
I doubt that this is really obvious to those who have never been in the military, but I see uniform errors all the time. It’s not all that difficult to get insignia or hair length or uniform items correct. It’s not a military secret - heck, you don’t even have to hire a high-priced military consultant - just go to a recruiting station and ask the non-coms at the desk!
I also get aggravated at the military-or-government-conspiracy-cover-up-silent-enforcers-storming-into-your-house/office/school. I spent over 11 years on active duty, 3 or 4 years as a drilling reservist, and I’ve worked as a civilian for the Dept of the Navy since 1985. While I can’t pretend to be an absolute authority and I certainly haven’t been exposed to every department or agency, I can promise you that most employees are people. Not emotionless automatons or mindless drones (except maybe at the DMV 
) Honestly, for the most part, we’re just doing our 8 hours. I even had the opportunity to work with some folks from Special Forces commands and ignoring some of the places they work and the, um, unusual things they’re called upon to do, they’re pretty much just people like the rest of us.
I can’t watch ET because of the stupid scene where the anonymous gov’t officials descend upon the house in the middle of the night, speaking to no one, bundling ET away by flashlight.
Even my friends who were in the CIA were like normal people, although my cousin in NSA was a bit of a flake. sheesh…
Sorry, I couldn’t let this thread go any further without mentioning a glitch in the film U-571 that bugged me when I saw it - a real immersion-killer, at least to someone like me, someone who is interested in WWII history, and in particular in the technology and operations of submarines. Maybe others would miss the glitch.
The problem I have is simple: none of the film makes any historic sense at all, from the first scene to the last. It would be easier to list the things they accidentally got right, such as the fact that water is wet or that submarines sometimes go underwater for a while.
Maybe it would be the subject for another thread: the quasi-serious movies with the most gaffes. I’d start one up, but I’m still a little new here, and somewhat nervous about making my own gaffes in posting.
Can someone explain to me why Superman is crippled from being on the Kryptoburg to the point that thugs can beat him up, but he is later able to touch the Kryptoburg with his bare skin and fly the thing into orbit?
-Joe