Something that bugged me about The Partridge Family, was that the children’s acting coach got Danny Bonaduce to look really convincing when he fake-played the bass, and both Chrises looked great fake-playing the drums, but he could never manage to get the actress who played Tracy to look like she was really playing the tambourine.
My personal peeve in regard to the OP is anyone other than a doctor pronouncing people dead, and I don’t mean people who are clearly rotting, or decapitated. I mean when someone keels over in the police station, and a cop feels for a pulse, and pronounces the person dead.
CPR! I’m sure they teach it at the police academy.
Pretty much everything involving spaceships, actually, but for me the most egregious are:
Battles where ships supposedly capable of some significant fraction of the speed of light or more, and with weapons that can act over hundreds or thousands of kilometers, engage each other at the relative speeds and distances of 18th-century men ‘o’ war;
‘Asteroid fields’ made up entirely of large rocks (no smaller bits) spaced a couple hundred meters (not thousands of kilometers) apart, and where the rocks bounce off the spacecraft at what look like freeway speeds rather than smashing though it at dozens of km per second. OK, one doesn’t see this quite as much as one used to.
Yeah, I know space would be a lot less photogenic without these clichés, but still.
More realistic looking squibs are more expensive since they are explosives and need a specialist to set up. Instead they use paintballs that spark when they hit. In the old Cagney era gangster movies they had a different approach. Off screen they had a marksman shooting real bullets.
It’s a myth. The US code outlawing the wear of military uniforms has a theatrical exception. The wording of the statute mentions that the portrayal can not discredit the military. In Schacht v. US that provision was struck down as violating the 1st amendment. So when they get it wrong it’s just laziness.
Most cop things are done poorly and often in the same way. The cop dropping his gun in a hostage situation is infuriating. I do like the way they handled it in Blacklist. Our heroine drops her gun to save one person from a mass murderer who will most likely go off and kill thousands with a bio weapon. I’m yelling at the TV about how you never give up your weapon, how you have to think about the potential harm the bad guy is going to do…etc. After the commercial break her boss berates her for everything I was yelling at the TV about. And he says her actions will be reviewed for possible punitive action. Of course we never see this but at least the stupidity is addressed.
I hate when a show or movie uses the “Oh no my work visa expires next week and I need to marry someone for citizenship so I can stay in the country” plot. Because oh my lord, it is not so easy.
Also, medical shows where doctors run all their own tests and scans. Not a chance.
Want to escape from a villain, or dispatch somebody threatening someone else, or want to wrest something valuable away from somebody? Bonk them on the head! From behind, usually. One quick blow will send them into a deep sleep (long enough to get away/save your friend/grab the briefcase and run). They’ll wake up a short time later, frowning and rubbing the back of their head, but none the worse for it!
This is what I was came in to mention. When they show a cat and no matter how passive or friendly kitty is, they feel the need to add the sort of yowling sound that cats normally only make when you accidentally step on their tails. Extra points if the cat shown doesn’t open its mouth during the yowling sound.
Newspaper headlines that don’t fit or are clearly not headlines but instead nice summaries of whatever the filmmaker wants to relate. There are rules to headline writing! Scowl.
I’ve never been chased by a bad guy or a wild animal, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t keep looking back as I was running away. If movies have taught me nothing else, it’s that I’ll trip and fall down a hill because I won’t be looking where I’m going.
And when you bonk them, take care never to tie them up or immobilize them in any way so that they can start running after you again a few seconds later!
What I’m waiting for is for some supposedly smart, tough, ruthless hero to simply get a bad guy down and then break his leg to eliminate him as a threat.
99% of the time you hear a cop on TV reading the Miranda rights, they get it wrong. The most common mistake they make is leaving out the part that says you have the right to have your attorney present during questioning.
Pretty much anything involving locks, lockpicks, etc. is wrong. Heroes pick lock ridiculously fast while using the wrong tools. Locks pop open after being hit with a blunt object. Sometimes after a lock is picked the door opens without turning the handle. Of course I notice these things because I’m a Certified Master Locksmith. I suspect anyone who’s an expert at anything will tend to notice the mistakes which are relevant to their own field.
If we start talking about space travel, I could fill several pages with the mistakes I see there. But I’ll stick to just one. In space, you don’t need fuel to travel in a straight line; you need fuel to change speed or change direction. This is contrary to our experience because terrestrial vehicles burn fuel continuously (mostly due to wind resistance) and when you reach your destination you can just apply the brakes. Since there’s no air in outer space, coasting requires no fuel at all. But you need fuel to get up to speed and you need fuel to stop at your destination. Time and time again, I hear characters in outer space talking about how they don’t have enough fuel to get from point A to point B when what they really should be talking about it not having enough fuel to match velocities with an object that’s moving at a different speed or moving in a different direction.
Taking your kid to see Doctor House is a conundrum. On the one hand he’s a genius, on the other they only have five people working in the entire hospital.
This is mine too. Has there ever been a dream sequence that got this right?
I never see myself in a dream, not even in a mirror. I have no sense of what I look like to other people, how could I suddenly have a very accurate idea in my dream?
The OP doesn’t seem that bad. I would describe myself in casual conversation as 55 even though I’ll be 56 in a week. If you ask me when I left Germany I’d say 15 years ago when it is actually fourteen years and ten months.