One they don’t mention - reverently closing recently killed people’s eyelids, often by waving one’s palm over their face. How TF does that work again?
Also the “Hello?” [repeatedly slams the button that hangs up the phone] “Hello?” thing they do.
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Coffee cups. Once you notice it the first time, you will notice it every time. Most of the time, for some reason I will never fathom, they use completely empty coffee cups on set, and you can fucking tell. And an actor lifting an empty cup to their lips and fake drinking is really obvious. Why can’t they fill them with sand or something to give it some weight? It drives me nuts, seeing some character talking, with their hand holding an allegedly full cup of coffee just gesturing all over the place. Like, even with a lid, you’d be flinging coffee all over the place. Stop it!
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ALSO - One can apparently, if driving stick in a stupid action movie, ALWAYS dramatically slam into YET ANOTHER HIGHER GEAR if needed!
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your car doesn’t have Ludicrous Drive™?
how do you get anywhere?
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“You need to hear this in person. Yes, I know it’s a drive across town to get here, and then to get back. I don’t care, I have two sentences I have to say to you and it will only look dramatic to a hypothetical third person if we’re in the same room. There’s not much time so get going.”
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ALWAYS rains at funerals, car doors stop bullets, punches to the head are no problem for the hero but instantly knock out anyone else, EVERYONE HAS BLUE EYES
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The amount of work-day travel by car in NYC and LA is completely unbelievable. Somehow you can go between boroughs for 5 minutes in one place, then you’re in a completely different borough a few minutes later, and then back into Midtown, and then the Bronx, then back to Jersey…like, what?
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If it has gasoline in it, and you shoot it with a bullet, IT WILL EXPLODE IN A HUGE GASOLINE FIREBALL.
If it doesn’t have gasoline in it, and you blow it up with C4 or TNT or dynamite, IT WILL ALSO EXPLODE IN A HUGE GASOLINE FIREBALL.
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I really like it too!
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A combination of #12 and #2…
Films set in big cities or small towns (except ones that do it to make a point, like Pleasantville), where the lack of diversity is unbelievable. It’s like watching the only POC in a horror movie, thinking they’re only there for one reason, and wondering how soon they’ll be killed. In the former scenario, the audience is left wondering where everyone else went, or if the folks behind the movie had ever been to places like that IRL.
What I’ll be watching soon is more Michelle Buteau. Just when I thought I was over Netflix, Michelle Buteau is trying to pull me back in! Here she is promoting season 2 of Survival of the Thickest with Stephen Colbert:
During this interview with Desi Lydic on The Daily Show, her comments about diversity and the importance of joy in these trying times really made my day!
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I thought this would be about how people in movies rarely use the toilet.
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That actually used to work with old time electric telephones on their own circuits and connections made by operators. (“Operator? Get me Pennsylvania 65000!”)
Data packets on a computer network, not so much.
Tradition? Lazy writing?
But then everybody picks up the receiver and dials numbers from memory and only ever has to wait for the other side to answer for dramatic reasons.
BTW, same thing with driving straight ahead and doing the ‘left hand down a bit… right hand down a bit…’ Before cars had proper suspensions/shock absorbers you had to do this, ever so slightly, to keep it going straight and prevent it from swaying like a boat. Today, it just looks silly.
Which reminds me of another bugbear of mine. Modern films set in a period where everyone smokes and using contemporary filter cigarettes.
When Erich von Stroheim played Rommel in Five Graves to Cairo he insisted that there was a film in the Leica he had on him. Because the audience would notice if he acted taking a picture and the rewind button wouldn’t move when working the transport lever. Now that’s attention to detail.
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My personal #1 is being in seriously cold places for extended periods without a fucking hat.
I’m looking at you, Game of Thrones.
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In movies whenever someone is using a telescope they always, ALWAYS, grab the eyepiece when they are looking through. Congratulations, you can’t possibly see anything now because of the wobbling!
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Or the POV view through the binoculars that appears as a matte of two slightly overlapping circles? Are we cross eyed?
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Last night I watched Der lachende Mann - Bekenntnisse eines Mörders (The Laughing Man - Confessions of a Murderer). It is a 1966 East German documentary about Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, a German mercenary in Africa. The bulk of the film is pretty straightforward interview where they give him a bottle of Pernod and let him talk.
The whole thing is on Youtube, but unfortunately the English subtitles are atrocious.
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Or the hero of a medieval movie charging into battle with his long beautiful locks flying in the breeze, the only one without a helmet.
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One that sticks out to me is silencers in movies. Guns with silencers are still loud as hell, just like 20% less loud. The real life exception is if someone is suppressing a gun that is firing subsonic ammunition, but clearly in movies people are using big fuck off guns that are somehow whisper quiet.
The other is people detonating explosives in enclosed spaces they are also in, and somehow being fine. Even without ear protection.
Another i can think of is fantasy movies with people shooting bows that seemingly have like 5lb draw weight. Bows with a lot power would be crazy hard to draw back, and they wouldn’t be able to indefinitely hold it drawn waiting for the perfect shot.
Edit: God i can’t stop
Leather armor
Swords worn on the back
Dual wielding swords instead of being sensible and using a shield
Being able to somehow one hit kill a man in full armor with a sword
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Yeah, there’d be more than enough for an entire thread of it’s own…
Some actors playing craftsmen… That’s NOT how you use [insert tool], you imbeciles!
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There’s probably a dozen or more having to do with cellphones.
One that takes me out of a movie or show is a character picking up and reading another’s phone without having to use anything like a pass code.
Another is how often someone clumsily interrupts a scene by having their phone “ring” (seems to me that most people leave that off now, or set it to buzz).
And when that does happen, it’s often some character-appropriate ringtone. Who still downloads quirky ringtones anymore?
Others:
Characters playing an instrument beautifully, yet you can tell they have no idea how to do so. Or, the angle switches to another so that you can’t see their hands, because the actor can’t actually play that instrument.
Continuity errors. I often spot them, then take someone else out of the movie by going back to point it out – “Look at how that glass magically lost half of its wine!” (I’ve been trying lately not to do that.)
(Sorry if any were already covered in the Cracked article, its print was too small for me to be bothered by.)
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