In fairness, that one time was shortly before the atomic gorillas escaped from their cages and destroyed half of Milwaukee.
Show of hands…how many of you trekies out there have had fantasies about green skinned slave girls?
no sexual interest my ass…
Even if the phone number is written instead of spoken, the movie might call for a shot of the business card or note for other reasons. I don’t think it would be best in all circumstances to avoid phone numbers altogether. But it may be true that the “555” device is overused. After all, if it were used only in moderation many people might not even realize that all and only movie numbers begin with “555”. If it were rare enough not to attract attention, it would be just as good as using a “real” number.
And I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have someone dictate their number to me when I wrote it down. Recently, I had a big tie up with my insurrance company and got directed to so many different phone numbers, it wasn’t funny, and everytime, someone told me a number. Face it, there’s just some times when it can’t be avoided, and it makes movies more realistic to me when someone doesn’t always mystically have it written down. The 555 thing doesn’t bug me, because it’s a fake number anyway.
The scene that bothered me more is after having his eyeballs replaced, the surgeon goes through the trouble of making a nice tasty sandwich, sets up a series of guide strings so he can find it, and the places it next to a rotting sandwich!?!. I could see if he is trying to be a jerk leaving the rotting sandwich and telling Cruise its fresh, but why would he go through the effort to make a sandwich and provide him a way to find it, only to allow the mixup. The whole scene reaked of Spielburg trying to gross us out for the sake of grossing us out. It really disrupted the rest of the movie for me.
See, now, I’m the jerk who watches this scene and says to myself, “Ha, look how they avoided saying or showing the telephone number!”
Those poor movie guys just can’t win for losin’.
Nope, I’m not buying it.
Oh, come on, you can’t just say that; you have to come up with a scenario in which it is necessary that the phone number is shown
To show the hero’s sight begin to blur as the poison takes effect?
No, they could use the billboard across the street.
For the drop of blood from the injured psycho killer hanging on the girders above to fall upon?
No, it is much more effective when it falls on the herione’s hand.
No, only a number like 545-543-7669 need ever be specified.
Besides, does anyone actually know any phone numbers anymore? All the one I call are programed into my phone.
I just saw a movies today. In general it wasn’t bad, but, sure enough, in a dangerous situation, two people wandered off and then split up!
You just can’t do that; everyone alive on this planet has seen too many movies to ever do that.
I agree the bus jump scene in Speed was very poorly thought out and personally it did totally ruin my “suspension of disbelief” in the movie.
Now something that irritates me immensely. Fight scenes in most modern films, they’re just ridiculous.
This trend happened after the success of the Matrix and its amazing physics defying fight scenes. Thats fine in the Matrix movie universe because the whole premise is that the reality of the computer generated Matrix can be distorted to the human will, making impossible bullet dodging and such possible.
However now all post-Matrix movies feel they have to outdo the fight scenes contained therein and the difficulties start because most of these movies are set in a supposed “real-world” setting so a character doing something blatantly physically impossible ruins the whole suspension of disbelief for me.
The first movie I noticed it in was “Romeo Must Die” where the main character manages to halt in mid air, execute a 180 degree turn, kicking enemies on either side of him, then land…uuuugghhhh…
Blade 2 was ruined for me for partially this reason, apart from the fact that the fight scenes were shot in such a manner that it was virtually impossible to tell what was happening. A pity because the fight scenes in the orginal Blade are some of my favourite ever.
BTW best fight scene ever…the end of Once Apon a Time in China…
I don’t know that you can criticize the fight scenes in Blade 2 the way you can in Romeo Must Die. After all, none of the people fighting in Blade 2 are human: they’re all vampires, or half-vampires, or super-vampires. So, they should be able to pull off moves that would be impossible for humans, because they aren’t humans themselves.
You’re probably correct. I’ve fairly much blocked the Blade sequel from my mind and all I remember is that the action scenes were appalling.
It’s too early in the morning to think of more appropriate examples, I just took the opportunity to rant at that movie 
Are you saying that a long distance number needs specification, or is that a reference that I’m missing? If you mean long distance, then why should that be specified? Sorry… I don’t get it.
As part of the phone number hijack that has happened here, how come no one in movies or TV ever has Caller I.D., and everyone still has an “old fashioned” answering machine instead of voice mail? I know that it’s a dramatic tension-building device but every time someone has done something like brought a lady home and they’re getting busy or something and then his mom calls and kills the mood with her voice on the answering machine… or something like that happens, it always seems so unreal. I guess it’s just a lazy writer’s cliched device, and that’s why it (and a lot of the other things that people have mentioned here) drives me nuts.
ZJ
I don’t mind the old-fashioned answering machines; it just works better for the actor to be moving around, unloading groceries, while the Crucial Message plays, rather than standing still holding the phone to her ear. So I’ll let that one slide.
The phone number is actually a puzzle; I just used ten digits because in my area all phone numbers are ten digit now.
Sturgeon’s Law. If you don’t know what Sturgeon’s Law is, you have no business critiquing science fiction or fantasy And I would point out that in the real world, today, we already have humans who take a sexual interest in animals, in other humans dressed up as animals, in inanimate objects, and other fetishes too numerous to mention. GOOD science fiction will not violate known scientific principles without a good reason, and a good explanation. Right here, right now, we have an incredible amount of technology, yet we don’t put a lot of it to use, for various political/social/religious/economic reasons.
Saying that “anything is possible in scifi” is a total copout.
Look, you want a script in which the visible phone number is essential, you can pay for one. All I’m saying is that it is at least theoretically possible that there might be some scenario in which showing or hearing a phone number would be better than not, and in these cases it’s best to use a fake number rather than subject some Average Joe or Jane to a bunch of prank calls. If you think it must always be preferable to avoid phone numbers altogether then that’s your right, but I don’t see how this is any less contrived than simply using a fake number.
I want to give Joss Whedon some props for realism in “Firefly.” There was a scene involving an explosion in deep space, and he remembered to cut the sound! It was jarring because I was expecting a big KABOOM!
[Marvin the Martian]Where’s the KABOOM!?[/Marvin]
I thought Sturgeon’s Law was “90% of everything is crap.” I don’t really see how it applies to ralph’s post. Did he have another law I’ve not heard of?
How much?
Answering machines are un-modern? I never knew. I keep my answering machine, because I don’t like the inconvenience of voice mail. With a machine, I can walk into my apartment, glance at the little red light, and know if I have any messages. Voice mail performs the same service, but I’d have to pick up the phone, dial a number, and then enter some long authorization code to find out if I had messages. And I don’t have caller ID, either, since I’d rather not pay for it. How is it so implausible that a movie chararacter might be like me?
I thought that the changes were noticed in the future when the timeline was actually changed in the past. The father doesn’t really do anything different before the fire so the change doesn’t happen til he chooses to go the other way. After the fire the mother is at the hospital and saves the killer’s life. That changes the timeline so the son senses the new memories in his sleep. That’s how I percieved it but I’d have to go back over the rest of the movie to be sure that they stuck to that throughout.
He was saying that ALL SF had to have contradictions. I’m saying that those contradictions are crap, and that most (if not all) SF that he’s seen is crap. I think that ralph hasn’t been exposed to much good SF, if he’s ever been exposed to any at all, and so he doesn’t know the difference between the good stuff (which is out there, but hard to find and you have to know what to look for) and the bad stuff (which is unfortunately very easy to find). I was rather hurried in my posting, as it was almost time for the board reset.