Monday, January 22, 2007

It's amazing the crap that the film industry gets utterly WRONG. Then again, when someone has a budget that is millions of dollars, you would think they would bother to pony up - I dunno - say, a $1000 or $5000 consultant fee to ask a seasoned expert to analyze technical things in their films which make the film-makers and prop people look like idiots.

I have this weird spatial sense , and I rarely get lost. It amazes me when someone driving the car can't remember which way we are supposed to go. I know about 20 good ways to get between A and any other point in Dallas. So when the Discovery Channel did that fictionalized "documentary" on a category 5 tornado hitting Downtown Dallas (Par-tee!), I watched with interest. Apparently, the city emergency services were in our hideous City Hall (a structure strange enough to be featured in Robocop) which is at the South side of downtown on Marilla Street. A guy--let's call him Bill--is a city meteorologist, but his wife (Jane) is in a pickup truck which breaks down east of downtown under the I-45 overpasses which are the eastern border of downtown. Bill is hanging on and trying to hold down the fort at City Hall, but Jane calls and is freaking out, so he runs out and hops in his car to save her and their wee bairn. However, when he is shown hauling ass toward her, he inexplicably is on I-30 by the Sylvan exit, which is about 3 miles west of downtown proper. Anyway, it just drove me nuts that instead of going the 1-ish mile (I'd take Young or Cadiz from City Hall to I-45) on outer downtown thoroughfares, he'd drive off practically to Fort Worth to get the scenic vista of tornado-meets-downtown on the way back in. SO, yeah, someone should have paid ME to help them line up their shots in a way that made sense. Yeah, I know. Nobody cares.

You see why I'm not good at cleaning house?

Husband is an engineer-type, and I've always enjoyed the snorts of derision that issue forth from his person when corny, got-it-wrong-to-the-degree-of-bullshitty-stuff on computers is used in movies - One of the most special of which was that tard-fest called The Net starring Sandra Bullock. SB has been in some real stinkers, but she's always fun to watch, so why not? Anyway, there's some "computer" stuff in that movie that is beneath pitiful - worth it for the unintentional giggles, alone!

Then there's Billy Bob Thornton's (horrid, in my opinion) much ballyhooed Monster's Balls. At one point, the inveterate racist BBT has come around to realizing that he's attracted to Halle Berry, whose husband he's just executed at the penal facility at which he works. He has a real Barney Fife moment when he takes HB's car to a mechanic for repair. As he's walking away from the garage--the big man--BBT sends all credibility(?) to hell when he says to the mechanic "Be sure to check those plugs and points." Now, her car is a late 80s/early 90s ride of Asian extraction. All production passenger cars are made with electronic ignitions, these days, and there ARE no points. Made after the 1970s? Pretty much no points in that dog. The points to which he would be referring if the car had points, would be breaker point distributors. The bps controlled the flow of the 20-40 thousand volts of electricity from the battery and ensured they were distributed to each spark plug at the right time. Advent of electronic ignitions mean that points is one less thaing Billy Bob Thornton has to worry his purty little haid about. Someone shoulda told him.

Next there's something in War Of The Worlds that just sticks in my craw and it has to do with the whole electromagnetic pulse, which happened at the time the aliens were beaming down. No one has seen anything but lightning, but all cars stopped working because of EMP. Tom Cruise is walking by an auto repair garage and a guy is standing by a minivan holding up a blackened starter:

Helpless mechanic: Ray, can you believe this? Starter's fried, whole damn thing!
Tom the Omniscient: Well have you tried changing the solenoid?

OK. There's a lot here to discuss here. First of all, the solenoid was actually ON the starter he was holding up, so if the "whole damn thing" is fried, well, that would include the solenoid, right? Anyway, at the suggestion of Tom, neighborhood Ombudsman, the mechanic has a Eureka! moment and turns to get back to work. Later in the film when getting out of town fast seems prudent, Tom drags his kids back to that garage where they hop in the now-functional minivan and ride off into an uncertain world. I realize that this is a movie and the premise is already incredibly thin, etc., suspension of disbelief and all that, but puh-lease! There are some universal truths that one has to ignore to buy this kind of premise in a film.

Perhaps the principal idiocy of the film is that a guy like Ray, that character, would stop to see what's going on with a mere alien invasion rather than finding his precious vintage Mustang Fastback where his teenage boy had abandoned it on the road. Let's be honest - he'd be out finding his car before saving babies from a burning hospital.

Another of these truths is the fact that anything in your car with a coil (starter coil, ignition coil) or a computer would be fried by the EMP. This means you can't just run into a shop and grab another one off the shelf and replace it and heigh-ho the vehicle back to life. Unless your car runs on Yabba-dabba-doo Caveman power a la Fred Flintstone, your chariot will not respond to your command after exposure to an EMP. Would-be escapees like the hallowed Tom & entourage would be well-served to keep a rickshaw in the garage. Bicycles? I could respect an escape on bicycles. How about an off-roading mountain bike chase? Mountain bike chases are underdone in modern cinema, aren't they? I've never seen one.

I KNOW, I just spoil everything, don't I? You'd laugh if you knew the crap films I find utterly wonderful. Am I being too picky?

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really miss our TV time together. A

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean. Since I'm a gun guy and most action movies have no clue I find myself picking them apart and not being able to enjoy the flick.

How hard is it to remember that most revolvers only hold five or six shots?

phlegmfatale said...

A - Seriously, sister. We could shred some television, couldn't we?

hammer - You know, improper firearm use in film is probably the lamest and most common error

Anonymous said...

You sound like the old submarine sailors on a couple of BBSs I frequent when they start a rant about all the shit we know is wrong about a submarine movie. Now talk about some erroneous shit that gets laid on the viewers.

phlegmfatale said...

Myron - what do the old submarine sailors think of Das Boot? Film-wise - it's a brilliant piece of drama - how is it on technical detail? I think it's a Werner Herzog film.

Anonymous said...

phlegmy, most of us love it. That may be due to the fact that even though the crew is German, we as submarine sailors have empathy for them as fellow submariners. We like to think only submariners understand submariners and why we did what we did. And the skipper, as portrayed by Jurgen Prochnow, is not only a good sailor, he is very human. And treats his entire crew with respect. Except perhaps for his XO who is a hard-core Nazi. Plus not knowing much about U-boats it's easy to just relax and not try to spot the technical mistakes.

When the movie first came out, a fellow I worked with who was a destroyer sailor in the Atlantic in WWII came into my office one Monday morning telling me about this great German submarine movie he had seen that weekend. He told me I had to see it. Not because they caught hell, but because it was a great movie.

When I first set up my big screen and surround sound, this was the first DVD I watched. The first depth charges went off and my little Shih Tzus and Siamese cats all four were trying to get in my lap. Windows rattled, shit fell off the book shelves, it was great.

Jay Noel said...

I think engineers are working on a vehicle powered by Yabba-dabba...but not doo.

Anonymous said...

See "Plan Nine From Outer Space". See any old episode of the first BBC productions of "Doctor Who" or "Startrek"...or the portrayal of teenagers in any movie from the 1950s to 2000.
Why?
Because I love these rants. And I totally empathize.
I get pissed if they get hairstyles wrong for a period or use a word that wasn't in use at the time.

Zelda said...

My husband is a bit of a gun nut too. I can't even watch action movies anymore, first because of the plots, but secondly because even if the plots were any good, I wouldn't be able to follow them over Jethro's ridicule.

Anonymous said...

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With the best regards!
David

Lyllia said...

Hi! Came here through Zelda's blog...

I have to agree with you. For me, the biggest blooper of this kind was on Everybody Loves Raymond. (Maybe because the show ran for so long and no one tried to fix the issue)

Outside, the parent's house was shown to be a two story home, but inside there were no stairs to that second floor.

Outside, Raymond's house was shown as a one-story with dormer windows protruding out of the attic space. Inside, there were stairs leading to the bedrooms, yet their bedroom windows were not dormer-style windows.

Anonymous said...

(O)

Reel Fanatic said...

Monster's Nads was just a flaming pile of crap .. anyone who voted for Halle Berry to win the Oscar for that should be strapped to a chair and forced the movie over and over until their heads explode .. rat bastards

Anonymous said...

guess everyone has a pet peeve. Mine is for movies about classical times that don't get the armor and equipment right. There used to be an old adage in military history. A country could ether be a great sea power or a great land power, but not both. Napoleon or Hitler are examples. I extrapolate that out to movies and TV; you can ether have a great story that flows and keeps your attention, or you can get all the minute details right, but not both.

The last flick that did get the details right was Alexander. The armor and battles are so real, you might as well be watching a documentary, but the film bombed. See what I mean? Rome on HBO does a great job, but it's made in Italy where they know these things. Gladiator and King Arthur pissed me off no end. Recently found a thing called Beowulf and Grendel that kicks ass details wise. Dark ages stuff done really well, but not a dazzling film otherwise. See what I mean?

The old 1950s or 60s Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis thing, The Vikings, has a lot of cool detail, and a great story. Check it out. As bizarre as it may seem, the Lord of the Rings movies have a huge amount of historic armor details that knocked me out. Those flicks will never be surpassed.

And Das Boot is a great classic. Check out something called Sahara with Bogie, or The Beast with Jason Patrick, for cool details concerning tanks (in WW2 and Afghanistan, respectively).

phlegmfatale said...

myron - super cool! I loved that movie. You said all four were trying to get in your lap - is that as opposed to the usual 2 at a time? :) Ain't pets grand? They think we are the Masters of everything. Pretty cool, that.

phoenix - I stand corrected!

lj - I LOVE Ed Wood films - at least they KNOW they are schlocky and hunker down and wallow in it. Hammer films were great, too - a mish-mash of styles - Empire dresses, big boofy beehives and Cleopatra eyeliner - oh my!

zelda - well, how dare they insult Jethro's high standards, or mine, for that matter. I'm guessing, though, he has no problems with Tombstone?

Welcome, David.

lyllia - thanks for dropping by. Wow, I'd have to agree with you - I haven't watched that show, but the continuity errors you describe on Raymond would drive me nuts.

darkmind !

reel fanatic - I am SO in accord with you - Halle's performance was like a shitty acting class embarrassment - I think it was just so crazy-bad that it actually impressed Hollywood. I have a rant brewing about who gets the Oscar every time. I'll serve it up here sometime soon.

fathairybastard - Yes, Rome is superb, but that era is very well-docmented, isn't it? I really wanted to see Beowulf & Grendel - I'll have to dig it up - where did you find it? OMG - there was so much in King Arthur that was laughable - for example - Keira Knightly using her bow later in the same day after her dislocated fingers were moved back into place? Pleeeeeze. On the other hand, that film was full-to-bursting with dirty, sweaty beefy men, and for that reason, I probably only will ever watch it about 20 or 30 more times. I'm only human.

Oh, and I really liked The Vikings. Nice.

Anonymous said...

I'm that way with science stuff in movies.

However, I'm not sure I understood much of anything you talked about in this post. Solenoid? Isn't that something that comes from the sun?

Anonymous said...

Oh, the horrors of firearm errors! My Dearly Beloved and I want to find those "endless" magazines they use in the movies, talk about your high capacity.
And while they're at it, have them send us some of that "miracle" pistol ammunition that will blow a 6'2" 210# man back 5 feet. Yeah, gotta get me some of THAT stuff.
But Zelda and the others should count themselves lucky. My DB complains during Westerns if the holsters and other leather accoutrements aren't era appropriate.

Barbara Bruederlin said...

There is nothing more fun then picking up on all the plot holes or logic holes in a film! Or, barring that, reading about how someone else does it!

Nicely said, Missy!

phlegmfatale said...

kelly - I believe it - smart gal like you WOULD catch the science gaffes - refrences to Petri Flasks and the like?

hollyb - I take it he takes a dim view of cowboys in gold lame hotpants with shiny vinyl holsters? Yeah, well, it's all gotta be larger than life, I suppose.

barbara - Aw shucks, I was just going on - I'm a silly creature to dwell on such things, obviously. :)

Anonymous said...

Husband didn't understand why I was so upset when he erased King Arthur from the DVR. I found it extremely enjoyable. A

phlegmfatale said...

For all its embarrassing errors, casting department went a long way toward redeeming this entire production. Well done!

Anonymous said...

I think it started when I spotted a modern diaper or safety pin in the Ten Commandments - yes, Moses was a modern baby. It doesn't bother me so much in movies most of the time because I'm just trying to follow the stories (I am super slow in that department) but TV series. With Raymond, the two families are supposed to be living across the street from each other, but both houses have back doors on the left side of the set - that could put the back door of the parents' house facing the street.... But it could be a matter of perspective. That 70's Show - I really liked until some of the fashion and music references started to get watered down.

But having read this post, Phlegmmy, I realize that ignorance IS bliss when it comes to TV and movie-viewing. I can get back to enjoyable costume- and decor-viewing.

Anonymous said...

The other thing with War of the Worlds is that they then showed someone using a camcorder that should've been messed up with the EMP.

Anonymous said...

You know I liked King Arthur enough to buy it (same with B&G), but I watch it and go "sheesh" about every 10 or 15 minutes through the film. Same with Gladiator, though that one is mostly correct. Makes me even crazier when the get it almost right and then there's one or two details that stink. What can you do? By the way, another one that is Technically correct is Kingdom of Heaven. Excellent gear and everything, but the egalitarian values of the hero are a bit too modern. Again, what can you do?

Anonymous said...

Snorts of derision - what a great phrase. I'll credit you every time, but I'm using it in future.