The thread on noticing dead bodies breathing made me think of this. I hope I do not seem insulting but it seems to me that paying TOO much attention to things like that actually works to make the tv or movie watching experience less and thus is a bad habit. It can’t be the only bad habit people have though. So I thought I would what other bad habits or compulsions people have that lessens their enjoyment of tv and movies and even books.
Watching TV or DVDs while surfing the internet. 
I am one of those people who notice goofs in movies and TV shows. E.g., people walking around the same corner twice in a row. A person holding a pen in different hands depending on the shot. Etc.
This generally don’t ruin things at all. Quite the opposite, it makes the show much more interesting. I really get drawn in. I appreciate the story and the production.
Some really stupid things bother me, especially Science related things that people get wrong because they were too lazy to do the research. Light-years are distances folks.
OTOH, in books, bad editing drives me mad. I am fairly poor at spelling and grammar, and when I notice something is wrong, it’s really, really wrong. They don’t even seem to bother running books thru spell checkers anymore.
Combine the two: I just finished a book: Geekspeak : how life + mathematics = happiness. Science/Math stuff. The guy kept getting his formulas wrong. Sheesh.
As something of a visual effects geek, which I also do for a hobby, I tend to notice matte paintings, which I usually respond to by calling out* “Matte painting, matte painting” and pointing at the screen.
*Not in cinemas, just at home
It doesn’t really ruin it for me, but I also notice continuity errors etc. in movies. My wife doesn’t like it when I point them out.
Speech impediments and accent mistakes. I’m studying speech therapy and now I start noticing all the minor articulation errors of newscasters (one of our local anchors has a very slight /s/ distortion that drives me nuts) and microanalyzing people’s accents, particularly actors who are faking non-native accents.
Here’s an example: I like to watch Hawaii Five-0. Alex O’Loughlin, the lead actor, is Australian. He fakes an American accent on the show, usually very well. The main differences between American English and Australian English are diphthongs and vocalic /r/ (er, ar, or, etc.). So every now and then, I’ll hear a slight distortion on a word, and I’ll have to start analyzing the error, like “Oh, yeah, ‘powerful’ has a diphthong and then a vocalic R in sequence, that would be hard, he didn’t get the back of his tongue all the way up.” It’s good listening practice, but I can’t turn it off! And then it takes me out of the show because I’ll remember it’s an actor faking an accent. I’m always trying to hear mistakes. They’ve been more frequent recently, probably because it turned out he was on drugs.
Not very often, but I will sometimes skip ahead to read the end of the book very early on. Especially when I really like it and I’m afraid that I’m going to be in for some kind of big let down later.
In movies, I’m really aware of huge plot holes, which is a pretty big problem because there are so many of them in so many movies. Probably half of them are of the “how did he find them” or “how did he know the be there at the right time” kind of thing. Movies are chock full of people who somehow show up at the best or worst possible times for no apparent reason.
Two other things that maybe I’m too aware of – bad chase scenes and bad ambushes. Many (most?) chase scenes have wildly varying distances between the chaser and chasee. Ugh, and how many ambush scenes are there when the camera pans entirely around the person about to be ambushed and no one is there, but a second later someone appears out of thin air to attack.
As far as I can tell, on The Mentalist Simon Baker, who is Australian, and Owain Yeoman, who is Welsh, have impeccable US accents on the show; flawless, even.
It’s well documented how well Australians have been nailing the accent in the last few years (there’s barely a show on TV where there isn’t an Australian or UK lead), but someone from Wales? Unprecedented. Even Anthony Hopkins can’t do it.
checking the dope for threads on them. i’m very forgiving when it comes to my entertainment, and you nitpicking OCDs ruin it for me.
In the original series, I never noticed Jack Lord’s Martian accent, so he did a good job too.
I find that, now that I watch so many internet reviews, which shorten the synopsis portion to only the good parts, I have a much lower tolerance for slow parts of movies. And now that I watch people riffing on bad movies, I find I personally can’t sit through nearly as many bad movies as I used to–I need the jokes to keep me entertained.
I’ve done several different martial arts since I was a teen. I have to turn my brain off for most fight scenes in movies, otherwise I’m constantly critiquing. “Should have gone for the dislocation. Missed the obvious throw there. Why the fuck isn’t he just elbowing that guy? Jesus Christ, dude, if you stand any closer he can give you a kiss before taking your pistol away.” The silly stuff in the video of Star Wars prequel fights that’s been making the rounds lately is stuff I noticed when I first saw the films.
I notice stuff like how people are restrained, too. I can count on the fingers of one hand about how many times I’ve seen someone properly tied up or handcuffed in a movie or TV series. Sometimes it’s so bad that it looks like the actor or actress has to actually hold the bonds in place so they don’t just fall right off.
My wife likes CSI and Criminal Minds. While I can just watch Criminal Minds for the characters and have fun, I have to consciously keep my fucking mouth shut most of the time when I’m watching any of the versions of CSI. Even without knowing most of the real procedures, the logical leaps and torturous bullshit make my teeth itch. I’m not a particularly step-by-step thinker, but I can still find holes in any of their explanations without trying hard most of the time, so it’s got to be really bad for people who do any kind of lab work.
Too many years working as a translator, plus degrees in Chemistry.
I like NCIS for some fluff before the evening news - but I want to throw bricks at the screen any time there’s a gunny on. The idiots translate “gunnery sergeant” as sargento de artillería, which isn’t a grade: it’s a branch of service! Gunny <> artillery sergeant.
Scientific terms, oh my God. And my Og. And my Ogette. Most usually, they keep the order of the words in English, but sometimes they just jumble them around in some very, very strange ways that IUPAC and IUPAP would never approve of.
This isn’t the translator’s fault, it’s the writers: who the FUCK refers to an HPLC as a “high performance liquid cromatograper”? Oh yes: cute chicks in a ton of makeup and a white coat. Sorry, forgot I was watching a scicop.
I read TVtropes. That’s bad enough in and of itself. Also, I consume some of my entertainment while on the internet or doing other stuff.
Anyone trying to do an Irish accent
Any Irish actor doing another accent - 'cept Pierce Brosnan, he’s not too awful to listen to
Anything that has horses in it - yeah that mare is a boy horse, horses don’t neigh every five seconds, and I’ve never heard a horse neighing while galloping. Also if a horse has it’s mouth wide open when it’s being ridden, it’s in pain! :mad:
Woman with perfectly coiffed hair, despite them being miles from the nearest salon. Long hair will not usually stay up in a bun without the aid of grips, bobby pins and other assorted accessories (well mine doesn’t)
I’ve a friend who’s an expert in medieval weapons, she goes mad when she’s watching people wearing armour incorrectly, or using swords “all wrong!!”
Another friend has an extensive knowledge of law, anything with legal guff in it drives her insane
Yes! If there are too many errors, I just can’t go on. I’m reading a book right now that I’m liking a lot, except that people keep getting “disorientated”. It’s like being jabbed in the eye every time I run across it.
I have a terrible attention span for movie-watching. I will almost always look up the film on IMDB while I am still watching it, to see who the actors are or what mistakes to watch for.
I have a hard time reading comic books sometimes because I stress out (in a very mild way) over whether I should look at the picture first or read the speech bubbles.
After watching an episode of “Columbo” about a projectionist, for a long time I couldn’t help noticing the cue dots that indicate when to switch reels. That was a bit annoying.
A wrong fact, particularly one that could be easily checked. (Yes, Bernie Mac, I’m talking about Atlantic City area code–It’s 609, not 201).
And people who refer to musical theatre “soundtracks.” Only movies have soundtracks; musicals have cast recordings.
I proofread automatically everything I read. It gets annoying.
Grammar goofs in print or on TV make me grind my teeth. Right now, the biggest one that drives me buggy is “between you and I.” ARRRGGHHHH!! I want to pound people over the head with English grammar textbooks!
Continuity problems are aggravating.
And I grew up with a retired AF father who used to yell at the TV during war movies. His biggest gripe was the radio operator who said, “Over and out.”
Then I married a military man. Now HE is yelling at the TV for “over and out.”
When stuff gets too preposterous, I just quit watching. On the list of “never again” programs, I stopped watching “Prison Break.” I refuse to watch “Fringe.” And “Alcatraz” is my most recent one.
~VOW