Blatant TV or Film Blunders.

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by _zedagive

Godfather 1: When Sonny beats up his bother-in-law Carlo, he throws a punch that obviously misses by a foot, yet the actor throws his head as though it connected. Very cheesy.

Originally Posted by RP

Ever seen James Caan's son on Hawaii Five-O? Cheesy acting must be in their genes...

Whoa now. The "Godfather" thing is totally on the director. (Although the editor (& various other people) should have caught that & pointed it out to Coppola.)

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by RP

Ever seen James Caan's son on Hawaii Five-O? Cheesy acting must be in their genes...

I rather liked that series, but I guess am not all the discerning with action series

I realize the real life Detectives , Spy's , etc. counterparts, for the most part probably do not go off solo and get themselves into the sticky situations common to the fictional ones. And while I do occasionally find myself saying "oh come on,,,they can't be that stupid". For the most part I ignore it.

And I am guessing the real life situations of people doing those things would be fairly boring, lackluster and anticlimactic

And I tend to watch them to escape reality , not experience it

[RP]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I rather liked that series, but I guess am not all the discerning with action series

I liked the show as well but preferred the episodes in which Scott Caan did not appear. He always looked like he was puffing out his chest and trying to get his chin higher than his nose...

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by RP

I liked the show as well but preferred the episodes in which Scott Caan did not appear. He always looked like he was puffing out his chest, gritting his teeth and trying to get his chin higher than his nose...

Well puffy chest aside, (maybe small man syndrome) because when your 5'5" and your co stars , O'Loughlin 6'1" , Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim both 5'9" ,, looking up may be a constant state of being

[dirkronk]

Interesting. I've always been sensitive to obvious anachronisms and "oops" moments in movies and on TV. Just for grins, I used the search function here and found this post I wrote in 2012! (BTW, most people responding at the time had the attitude of "What do you expect...it's a TV show...get over it." Hey. Call me a stickler.)


OK...is anyone else bothered by this as much as I am?

I recorded the new show Vegas and we watched it tonight. It's set in 1960. Not "the '60s"...it clearly showed the date 1960 in the opening scene and we didn't slide forward several years. Of course, it didn't give a month, but keep that "1960" thing in mind.

Now, first anachronism: our protagonist is a rancher, he's rounding up a herd of cattle and he and his hands are all on horseback. Unlikely. Yeah, you herd cattle in really hilly country or land riddled with arroyos even today and you definitely want to do it with horses (have friends who ranch in Llano Basin country here in Texas who do it that way). But every bit of land shown in the TV show is typical high desert flat or rolling hill stuff, and any rancher who wasn't dirt poor even back then would've done that kinda work with an old pickup, maybe a war surplus jeep. So, unlikely...but give that one a pass, because it's at least conceivable that it was an all-horse outfit.

Second anachronism: Vegas itself. We've got the Golden Nugget on display, though the other casinos are mostly fake names. However, they show enough of Fremont Street...the main street for the big casinos and hotels back then...and it's obviously MUCH earlier than 1960. (I was in Vegas in July of 1960 on a family road trip, and we cruised up and down that drag, so I know it was a lot more built up than the TV show is letting us think.) Still, they've gotta be shooting in another town or possibly sets, so I'll even cut 'em some slack there.

But the third anachronism is, to me, unforgivable. Remember, it's 1960 and we don't know the month. But one of the first cars we see is a 1961 Continental. Possible, I suppose, if it's at least late October. New car shows (say, at state fairs, etc.) could have new models as early as first part of October, but most dealerships didn't get them to deliver to buyers until late October or in November sometime. OK, then a little later in the episode, we see a 1961 Cadillac. Same concern, but I'm letting it slide because I'm still looking for hints that we're supposed to be late in the year. Then about halfway through the show, we have a long shot of a police car: only problem, it's obviously a full size 1962 Ford (Custom, maybe Galaxy). You can NOT mistake the taillights and rear fenders on the '62. Then a few minutes later, a female character drives up in her car...a 1963 Thunderbird. I mean, come ON. Their technical advisors obviously aren't even TRYING...assuming the show even has any.

And of course, I'm commenting on all this, and my wife thinks I'm making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. But really...I actually like the show, based on the first episode and the characters introduced. I just don't know if I can "suspend disbelief" well enough to get past the time-warping gaffes.

Of course, I had problems with the way the screenwriters totally screwed up every tradition of the Arthurian legend when doing the scripts for the SyFy series Merlin, too. So maybe it's just me.

FWIW.

EDIT: I looked farther down in the old thread and found my own explanation for sensitivity to the car thing (item 3 above)...

I was only 10 in 1960, but I was already getting pretty avid about cars, car design, etc., by that time. And here's the thing: 1960 was a pivotal year...one when American auto makers (with only a couple of model exceptions, as with Ramblers) were transitioning from upright, tallish and sort of bulbous shapes typical in most 1950s designs into low, long and lean designs...and everybody, but EVERYBODY was doing fins. Giant fins, usually. I went on my big "out west" trip in a brand new 1960 Plymouth Fury: baby blue, white leather (or possibly "leatherette") interior, and gigantic fins. Cadillacs had equally large single fins in 1960, followed by smaller double (upper and lower) fins in 1961. Ford and Chevy had started fins in 1957 (Plymouth had chunky fins in 1956) and by 1960 both had horizontal rather than upright fins. Plymouth (and Dodge & Chrysler) had transitioned to "long and lean" early, in 1957, and Chevy followed in 1959 along with most other GM models, with Ford finally getting there in 1960. In any case, the majority of cars on the road in the year 1960 were 1950s models, and all new and late model cars (one to four years old) would have had the fin thing going on.

Now, within the next two to three years, fins would be totally dead and stylistically laughable (when Mercedes Benz came out with fins in the early or mid 1960s, w-a-y late to the party, it suffered in US sales largely because people didn't want an outdated look in a new and imported car).

BUT onto this fin-dominant scene, the next model year (1961), came the Lincoln Continental that we see in the first scenes of Vegas: startling in its plain, clean, formal, slab side styling...and "suicide" rear doors. Essentially the opposite of most flamboyant car styles of the time. As a result, in the context of the show, it's utterly out of character and thus calls attention to itself in all the wrong ways. For me, that made it a bad choice as an "in your face" prop to represent the year we open on.

But there I go, gettin' all picky again. I guess the real question is, how many folks out there recall these aspects of car design (either from YOUR youth or just because you came along later but were curious about the evolution of American car styling)? For me, it was so much a part of growing up that I can't really divorce myself from the knowledge.

Oh well...

Dirk

[Cabarone]

Originally Posted by _zedagive

Godfather 1: When Sonny beats up his bother-in-law Carlo, he throws a punch that obviously misses by a foot, yet the actor throws his head as though it connected. Very cheesy. Happens at about 0:29.

Still one of the best butt-whoopin's in cinematic history...

As for Top Gun, I worked at an Air Force base when it came out. A lot of my coworkers were former airmen and went scene by scene picking it apart...reminded me of the SNL sketch when William Shatner was guest speaker @ a Trekkie Fest...

[1neeto]

Originally Posted by RP

I liked the show as well but preferred the episodes in which Scott Caan did not appear. He always looked like he was puffing out his chest and trying to get his chin higher than his nose...

Being from Hawaii, it was easy to notice blunders from that show. The most common was how they could teleport from one side of the island to the other by driving one block. [emoji23]

And I don’t get the hate towards Scott Caan. I think Danny was a great character. The series did go downhill for me after Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim left the show.

[CoryB]

It’s in multiple movies and TV shows, but I’ve never been able to get tire squealing noises going around a corner on a dirt road. It is a constant in the Dukes of Hazzard.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by CoryB

It’s in multiple movies and TV shows, but I’ve never been able to get tire squealing noises going around a corner on a dirt road. It is a constant in the Dukes of Hazzard.

LOL, I'll have to watch out for that.

How about when a car is going around a corner and speeding away and you can tell the video was sped up to make it look fast ... looks terrible and fake.

[Dirk Hofman]

[1neeto]

Originally Posted by Dirk Hofman

Hilarious!

[sevargnhoj]

Originally Posted by CoryB

It’s in multiple movies and TV shows, but I’ve never been able to get tire squealing noises going around a corner on a dirt road. It is a constant in the Dukes of Hazzard.

We used to laugh at that all the time when we were young until we discovered that tires will actually squeal when you do "burnouts" in fine sand. It was quite a surprise.