Speaking of computers, I find it annoying when characters are shown chatting online and each character actually speaks out loud every word they type. Who does that?
Also when someone is talking on a phone and they repeat out loud everything that the other person says. Nobody in real life does that.
One more thing (that happens ALL the time in TV and movies) is when a character sidles up to a bar and orders “a beer.” They never specify a brand and the bartender never asks. He just fills up a mug of draft. Maybe they don’t want give free advertizing to any real brands but they could at least make up some fake brands.
Oh, and another thing, no one ever DRINKS the damn beer. They always take one sip and then either sit there and talk or suddenly have to leave.
When a woman is taking a bubble bath and gets up out of the bath to pat herself dry or put a robe on without rinsing off, I always think “ah gah YUCK, bitch is gonna be sticky for the rest of the day!” That bothers me more than anything and can sometimes make me hate a movie. It has to be a man thing. I don’t know if it’s the male screenwriter’s fault, or the male director’s fault, but the actresses (I’m lookin’ at you Rachel Weisz) should put their foot down and say, “I would never get out of a bubble bath without rinsing off in real life, and I’m not going to do it in the movie. It makes my character look like a moron.”
In The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine, this issue is addressed. A girl asks for Fairlaine’s (Andrew Dice Clay) phone number, and he replies with a 555 number. She stops him and says, “Wait a minute…555’s not a real number. They only use that in the movies.”
He replies, “No, shit, honey. What do you think this is? Real life?”
Whenever someone is talking on the phone in a movie or television show, they always hold the receiver in front of their chin, so the camera can see their mouth move while they talk. I hate this. Nobody can hear you if your chin is talking on the phone!
This problem has been abated somewhat with the ubiquity of small cell phones, but it still happens.
Then there’s the fact that whenever someone is carrying a styrofoam coffee cup, you can tell it’s empty. The West Wing is a serial offender here. During every obligatory walk-and-talk, every character carries a coffee cup and just lets it swing along in their hands as they walk. Why do they do it that way? BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING IN IT! For God’s sake, at least put some water in there to force the actor to carry it the right way!
And of course, when they take a sip, they tip the cup much too far, and if there was really any coffee in there, they would have burned their face off.
Of all the silly things - this has been bothering me FOREVER. The first time I really took note of it was decades ago, watching a soap opera in which a character had been shipwrecked near a “deserted island” (is there any such thing?) and was presumed dead. Months later she’s found, still only semi-conscious, shown in a cute little halter-style dress the “natives” happened to have in her size while they cared for her in a grass hut. They pull her out of the bed, and I notice her armpits are shaved.
My other one: I saw Running Scared, a silly cop-buddy movie with Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. They’re Chicago cops. At one point, Crystal is told by an aunt that he will probably be late for her funeral. He says, “No, I will be the first one on line.” CHICAGOANS DO NOT SAY 'on" line unless they’re talking about computers. We say IN line.
Nitpick, however: Jimmy Durante’s character, Simler Grogan, the dying motorist, tells of “Three hundred fifty G’s” in Santa Rosita under the Big W. And the initial crowd is only six at the beginning…
Having sex with clothes on. Like the actress still wearing her bra, I guess because maybe she doesn’t want to do a nude scene, but does anyone really have sex without removing everything, or am I maybe just a purist? But we watched “Shopgirl” recently, and not only was Claire Danes wearing her bra during sex, but afterward, you could see that Jason Schwartzman was still wearing his boxer shorts! I mean, c’mon!! I found the Claire Danes bra thing especially odd, because later on she DID have a nude scene or two.
Or when the actors are supposed to be nude, but you can see just a little corner of a swimsuit or something that was supposed not to be seen.
Gratuitous shower scenes. No really. I like boobies as much as the next guy, and I know some personally. but I HATE it when they stick them in for no reason. It’s one thing if it’s a cheezy blood and hooters kind of flic, but it’s a major dissonance in a serious movie. Like if the girl is naked, or nearly so and the guy is still fully clothed. Fuck, either do a scene that makes sense, or don’t.
Strictly talking about pet peeves, the two things that always get to me are “computer software for idiots” and “retro video games of doom”.
The first one is easy to explain - every time a movie does something with computers, it never looks genuine - the GUI has one button to download ALL confidential files to a CD, then conveniently deletes all data on the computer without a single backup. YEAH. SURE.
How about the one in Independence Day where a single virus written on a human invented OS in a single day can somehow destroy the communication of an entire intergalactic fleet from a docking bay terminal. Why the hell do they give a single spaceship direct, unprotected access to the mothership’s mainframe? Man, their version of Norton Antivirus must be so expensive that a space faring fleet cannot afford a single copy. Microsoft, you’ve been warned.
The second one is a little more obscure but I hope any video game fan would be with me - whenever the characters in the movie go to a local arcade, or one of the kids in a movie whips out a modern hand-held gaming system, they’d dub in these blips and bops that dates all the way back to the 80s arcade. Hello? Nothing (with some serious exceptions) in the market right now had sound effects as moronic as the ones that they try to pass as “video game noises”. How much effort does it take for some sound guy to sit around the arcade/a gameboy advanced/a playstation 2 and just mesh buttons for 30 minutes until they get some barely reasonable clip in the sound bank?
Speaking of badly represented video games… remember the X-File episode “FPS”? Worst. Episode. Ever.
Actors who are obviously not the same age as the character they are playing e.g. Mary in The Passion of The Christ. She is clearly only a few years older than Jim Caviezel (OK, 6 years according to imdb). They didn’t try very hard to make her look older, either.
My biggest pet peeve is when visuals and sounds don’t match up, like when a character is playing the violin and the bow is moving completely out of time with the sound that is supposed to be being produced. I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head so I guess it doesn’t really alter my feelings on a movie, but it’s just so jarring.
That and the obvious bad acting, writing etc, but those are pretty easily avoided through reading reviews and such.
This annoys me as well. I think it’s done so that even the most clueless can tell that it’s a video game. The Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory remake is the only example I can think of where they get it right.
