Yes, that’s what I meant by “ages” 
But they said it only “turned on” when the mothership arrived in orbit, so I wasn’t sure if they’d been hacking the code for 40 years or not.
As a general rule, cockpits aren’t particularly roomy - they’re just big enough for the job at hand. Being tall or wide is a disadvantage, and most pilots I know are average size or shorter. If you’re short you can sit on a cushion or put an extension on the rudder pedals, but if you’re really tall you’re sort of screwed.
There have been some tall fighter pilots, but the majority are on the short side. That’s OK, they usually more than make up for it with their larger than average egos. 
Mega-nitpick: In THe Sixth Sense Bruce Willis and the kid take a bus ride to the wake for a young girl. On the bus they look out the window and gaze at an urban mansion.
For those who know where that mansion is and hwo they are psssing it, well, there are no bus routes on that go down that street, and they’re going the wrong way down a one-way street.
On the movie Rocky, the title character goes for a jog and covers a remarkable amount of ground. Italian Market, East River Drive, Art Museum steps, Riverfront. These things are miles from each other. That’s one hell of a long jog. Of course, it could be a compilation of several jogs.
I’ve been told that Quicksilver is full of Kevin Bacon instant teleportations throughout silicon valley.
I’ve seen far too many shows and movies allegedly set in Philadelphia that have the streets signs as white on blue, rather than the distinct white on green.
Any movie that is alleged to take place in an East Coast city that shows L.A. style wide alleys that are sufficient to drive through with ease. Sorry folks, we don’t got 'em much over here.
- A basic knowledge of the way viruses and bacteria work badly damaged my “suspension of disbelief” for the recent *Dawn Of The Dead * remake and 28 Days Later.
In both these films, contracting a disease turns you into a raving, howling drooling insane homicidal maniac with super-endurance and immunity to pain. The only difference between the two are that in 28 Days Later, they seem to sleep during the day, and in Dawn Of The Dead, they cannot be killed except by a shot to the head.
The original DOTD “zombie syndrome” was not a disease. It was… no one knew. The dead would arise as zombies, that’s all.
…but turning it into a disease ruined it. There is no disease that has an incubation period measurable in less than minutes; it’s simply not possible for any pathogen to infect your body and reproduce that fast and spread that fast. In DOTD, a good bite would kill you, then reactivate you in less than two minutes; in 28 Days Later, it was about thirty seconds. What the hell?
Admittedly, this was just a plot device, but it really hurt my ability to handle the rest of the movie.
- The remake of the classic film noir murder mystery DOA, starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. In this film, a man has been poisoned; he has only a few days to live. There is no cure. He spends this time trying to find out who has killed him… and why. Great premise, right?
The movie was made in San Marcos, Texas, where I lived at the time, largely on the campus of Southwest Texas State University; the Quaid character is a college professor, and Ryan is a coed. Unfortunately, when using exterior shots, they didn’t bother matching up the buildings with what they actually were, which will tend to croggle anyone who knows anything about the university (although, in fairness, anyone who DOESN’T know the place would never notice).
Two examples:Meg Ryan lives in a girls’ dormitory, but the exterior shots of the dorm show the campus library. If you look closely, you’ll notice that from the outside, the windows are trapezoidal, but when we cut to the indoors, the windows are square.
A funeral is held in a building that was actually the Theatre Department. Quaid crazy-glues his hand to Ryan’s, to keep her from escaping, and the two are pursued through the building by someone with a nail gun. They climb up onto the roof of the theatre department, and find a ladder leading down. They climb down the ladder…
…and emerge from an alleyway onto Sixth Street, in Austin, thirty miles away. AAAK!
Now that I think about it, my knowledge of local geography also ruined a horror movie for me… Piranha.
In the film, piranhas infest a local river and randomly eat tourists… and are approaching the grand opening of a local resort. Insert basic plot from Jaws here.
This film, too, was shot in San Marcos, Texas, at a local tourist trap on the river, Aquarena Springs.
Fish scientist Bradford Dillman, in a bid to prevent further carnage, at one point takes a boat up the river to a nearby estuary and dives in to crank a valve that will trap the fish where they are, instead of letting them swarm out and infest America’s entire freshwater system, right?
He begins at Aquarena Springs, on the San Marcos river. At this point, we begin cutting back and forth between Dillman’s mad boat ride and the horrible carnage at Aquarena Springs.
- Bradford Dillman leaves Aquarena.
- Tourists are eaten. Paul Bartel urges everyone to be calm.
- Bradford Dillman rips up the San Marcos river.
- Tourists are eaten. Paul Bartel urges calm.
- Bradford Dillman rips up the San Marcos river at a point some five miles from his previous location, but in the other direction, judging from what’s behind him.
- Tourists are eaten. Paul Bartel begins to panic.
- Bradford Dillman rips up the Guadalupe River, a completely different river from earlier, some fifteen miles away.
- Tourists are eaten. Paul Bartel is panicking.
- Bradford Dillman rips up the Comal River, an offshoot of the Guadalupe, some ten miles from his previous location, but headed the opposite direction.
- Paul Bartel totally loses it, and I seem to recall he gets eaten.
- Bradford Dillman arrives at Canyon Lake, which is not possible in real life, since Canyon Lake empties via massive floodgates; there are no rivers that lead INTO it, only out. He then dives in and saves the day.
If you don’t know the local geography, you’d never notice. If you do, it’s rather disturbing to see Dillman teleporting all over the Texas hill country in his magic boat…
Whoopsie. In case anyone from San Marcos wants to go and rent the movie, I should probably mention that the building WAS the campus library at the time. It’s now the administration building…
I take it you don’t actually speak German.
I only had three years of the ol’ Deutsch, but “glue” is “Kleber” and “factory” is “Fabrik”.
I generally try to avoid any movie about autism or disabilities. I’ve worked with people with autism for 20 years, I serve as a consultant, etc.
Most movies about people with autism give them “special powers”. There is a hideous movie with Tommy Lee Jones where a girl with autism balances on the roof of her house, disguises herself with paint (in two minutes!) to blend in with a window so that no one can see her, etc.
And recently I caught a snippet of a movie on Wifetime where a mother was told by a public school district that they would not provide services to her kids with classic autism. Schools try that stuff sometimes, but they MUST provide special education services to elegible students.
There are a few exceptions. I watched “Rainman” with a bunch of cow-orkers and though the character was very atypical, we all thought Dustin Hoffman had many mannerisms down perfectly.
And any actor portraying someone with mental retardation generally just talks slow and lets his or her mouth hang open.
Feh!
Whistlepig
“Dance for me, Little Boots!”
At the end of the movie, they show Caligula with his daughter, Julia Drusilla. They show her birth, which took place circa 39 AD. She died in 41 AD right after Caligula and Caesonia, but the movie shows her at least four or five years old. Of course the whole movie is laughable, but that’s just one nitpick out of many.
Well, any military movie is usually riddled with plot holes and horrible uniform errors…which just kills the realism. Oh, and that urban legend about how they have to change something…no basis.
Anyway, on Road Trip, which takes place at the fictional Ithaca University, it bugs me that they film the overhead scenes at what looks like Harvard. Having attended Cornell University in Ithaca, I am amazed they didn’t use Cornell or Ithaca College as a filming location. Even if they didn’t want to use the campus, the terrain is nothing like what Ithaca is actually like. It just bugs me to film somewhere else when the setting has TWO universities to choose from.
In “Contact” Dr. Arroway broods on a cliff and behind her we see the Very Large Array, located in Socorro, New Mexico. That’s a neat trick because she’s sitting in Arizona - I recognized the location as Canyon De Chelly.
If you’ll forgive me for swithching to television…I laughed at the episode of “CSI” featuring an eyeball in a raven’s nest. The birdwatchers who find it seem astonished to behold a raven; they act like they’ve sighted a Bachman’s Warbler. First off, Corvus corax is not a rare bird, and anyway the avian actor is clearly a mere Common Crow, Corvus brachyrhnchos. Where’s Nick “Birdman” Stokes when you need him?
Of course “CSI” is notorious for absurd ‘Las Vegas’ location shots, but even when they show actual desert scenes I’m not impressed. One look at the vegetation, e.g. California Buckwheat (Erigonium fasciculatum) and it’s obvious that the cast and crew just took a little hike in the hills around Santa Clarita.
And let’s hear it for my friend the Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia). In reality it grows only in the U.S. Southwest between 2,000-6,000 feet above sea level but on film it thrives in every desert, at every elevation, all over the planet (and offplanet, according to “Star Trek:Voyager”). We have seen the Universe, and it looks like Southern California.
Some of these are not errors, or can be explained;
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- No rule about extracting surving sons.
I thought the movie portrayed this as an exceptional case, something that required an active decision by people in charge, in order to avoid bad PR that would hurt public morale.
- No rule about extracting surving sons.
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- The 8-man squad engaging in firefights while moving through enemy territory.
I assume you’re pointing out when they attacked the machine gun next near the radio tower. True, it was a bad idea. But the Sergeant actually says so, and tries to get the Captain to reconsider. He just doesn’t listen, and the casualty they get as a result leads to mutiny. That’s not unrealistic; it’s how real soildiers under pressure might behave.
- The 8-man squad engaging in firefights while moving through enemy territory.
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- Ryan being behind Utah Beach, not Omaha
The movie does show them moving across the countryside, but doesn’t designate a direction. They may have simply walked to the area behind Utah Beach (Caveat: I don’t know how close Utah and Omaha Beaches were.) The point is, the movie never says they are walking straight inland.
- Ryan being behind Utah Beach, not Omaha
US Navy Seals…
Firstly, wedding scene. NO female engaged to a guy in the military and no clergy accustomed to miliraty weddings would let them get away…once paged they have 30 minutes to respons…the bare bones do you do you kiss kiss can take 3 minutes, and signing the paperwork is done by others while the groom heads off…
Locations…
Lets see, lives in Virginia Beach, goes to portsmouth to cross from portsmouth to norfolk via the james river bridge…then he jumps into the james river [yech, i would be afraid I would melt…] to swim through and past downtown norfolk, past NAS norfolk and NOB norfolk, to swim down the waterfront to get to the amphib base…I dont think so…
Lived with a seal at the time, got laid on the roof of the para tower and in ops when he was standing watch [hey, young, crazy and we are not going there 
] Op center the seals uses does not look like the movie at all…their day to day job areas [para tower and ops building] dont look anything like in the movies either=)
Seriously officer and chief heavy little unit! all chiefs, no indians!
Most of the people in the theater in norfolk when we watched it were rolling in the aisles from laughing at all the screw ups in the movies=)
Hubby [20 year retired submariner] laughs at sub and navy movies=) though he did like das boot - he said that was pretty realistic.
I am horrified by most medieval movies, renaissance movies - too many years research for my hobby of historical recreations…what they do with clothing is unspeakable!
I’m 6’5" and I’ve flown the US Marine’s official F/A-18 simulator at Miramar (basically a real F/A-18 cockpit inside a huge dome.) I didn’t have any space constraints at all.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Independence Day but I think the Fresh Prince was flying the same plane. At 6’2" he shouldn’t have had a problem at all.
[QUOTE=Tiramisu]
For me it’s anything veterinary related.
The one that comes to mind is Terminator 3. In the veterinary office treatment room there was a locked glass-fronted cabinet that contained flea control products, antibiotics and controlled drugs, i.e. phenobarbital. This cabinet was easily broken into by John Connor who then proceeded to take handfuls of phenobarb for pain from his motorcycle accident.
- Controlled drugs must be kept in a locked cabinet but not one that is that easy to break into. They are usually kept in an all metal double-locked narcotics cabinet or a safe that is not kept in plain site. These are DEA regulations and both DEA and DPR do periodic inspections of veterinary hospitals to check on storage and recording of controlled drugs.
[QUOTE]
I’ve been in veterinary offices where packaged vials of ketamine, a very fun Schedule III dissociative anaesthetic, were sitting out in plain view on a table. Believe you me, if my parents weren’t there I could have made off with it with no trouble. The only problem I could see would be the vet not noticing that it’s gone–and as long as my cat didn’t need it for an operation that day, that could be easily overcome by pulling the vial out of the box and leaving the box where it was sitting. Especially if I had a friend to help me–and believe me, I would have no trouble finding a friend to snag a free vial of ketamine. If my parents were not with me on that particular trip to the vet, that ketamine would have been on my stove cooking into powder within hours and in my nose that night.
Sure, biker films are supposed to be cheesy, but Mask and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure were the only films with people cast as bikers that didn’t leave me wondering how an entire film crew could have such a limited understanding of human behavior.
Isn’t it obvious? The fish were escaping underground through the Edwards Aquifer!
(…and the Upper Guadalupe runs into Canyon lake just east of Spring Branch, but I get your point.)
I should note that I have no doubt that the regulations that were mentioned regarding controlled substances in veterinary offices exist and are as stated, I’m just saying that I have personally seen an otherwise reputable veterinary office where a popular controlled substance was left out on a counter. It may have just been for that day, or they might have just performed a surgery in which they used ketamine in that room before, I don’t know.
My special knowledge is birds and bird calls.
It’s always amusing to detect a bird from a distant continent calling in the background of a movie. For example, virtually every “jungle” movie, regardless of whether it’s set in the Amazon, Congo, or Borneo, uses the call of the Australian Kookaburra for jungle-type atmosphere. The Linnaean Society in NY used to have an annual competition for the “Greatest Range Extension in a Movie or TV Show” from bird calls or birds shown on screen.
One of the most spectacular errors - in fact, so bad I’m sure it had to be tongue-in-cheek - is in the movie Charley’s Angels,
when the Angels figure out that Bill Murray’s character is being held in a specific part of the California coast because they hear a “Pygmy Nuthatch” callling in the background when they make contact with him over the air
Now,
- The Pygmy Nuthatch doesn’t occur in that area
- It’s call doesn’t sound like that
- The bird that they actually show is a Troupial, an orange-and-black bird from Brazil (while the Pygmy Nuthatch is a tiny dull gray-brown bird).
Another “error” - one I also think must have been deliberate, because it fit so well - was in the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The movie is set in a future “global-warming” world in which the Ice Caps have melted. In a scene set somewhere in the middle of North America, you can clearly hear a Screaming Piha calling in the background, one of the most characteristic bird sounds of the Amazonian rainforest. I have to believe this was some kind of inside joke on the part of whoever did the sound for this scene, to indicate that the US was now tropical. But only a handful of ornithologists or bird-watchers probably ever got the joke.
Whoopsie. Well, yeah, but the fish weren’t IN the Guadalupe, they were in the SAN MARCOS River… :smack:
Remember, this is not that long after the loss of the USS Juneau, with all five brothers of the Sullivan family. As I recall the story from having been to the USS The Sullivans, there was a HUGE public shit storm about killing an entire LARGE family. There was a public reaction that the Navy and the War department should have done something to make sure that at least one of the five brothers would have survived the war. Not a reasonable position, in my mind, but a historically accurate one. I’d assumed watching the movie that Ryan’s family was from the same district or state, as I think they recalled the loss of the Sullivans and the Juneau when talking about the decision to bring out Pvt. Ryan.