Growing up, I always thought life as an adult would look a lot like this (assuming, of course, that one managed to dodge the ever-present dangers of amnesia and quicksand). I don't know where it all went wrong. (@fem_mb)
90s-00s-era movies taught me that mathy geniuses write problems on mirrors and windows. If you write on a mirror or window you will probably get a Nobel Prize. (@snackowska)
There’s a lot of “I love you, Dad” in American films, isn’t there? (@swansonian. Usually after Dad has bullied son throughout Acts I and II.)
People don’t speak like that. Every sentence is designed to elicit a zinger or exposition point in response. the editing is frenetic. Intercutting from different locations, colour/black and white, mad angles that make no sense. The whole film is a montage. V/o ‘You’re being followed by the FBI’. <Shows him being followed by the FBI.> V/o ‘people are going through your trash!’ <Shows people going through his trash.> Manic cutting between different timelines and B&W is not clever and sophisticated. It’s incomprehensible and stupid. And pointless. (Adam Rutherford on Oppenheimer. He adds that the post-bomb scene goes on too long, and there are too many characters who look alike. On Feynman playing the bongos: “It’s not cute, you’re an annoying jerk.”)
People used to bully me to watch The Apprentice. “You’d love the clever editing!” I hate "clever" editing. Plus I hear that we see what is passing through Oppenheimer’s mind. I hate that too.
Don’t ever mention Great Falls, Idaho – not even in your sleep! (Smooth as Silk, 1946. About two sisters trying to make it in New York.)
It's the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words 'strong female lead'. That makes me roll my eyes. I’m already out. I’m bored. Those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things. (Emily Blunt quoted in the Daily Telegraph)
Why do the plots of cash-in Hollywood prequels to children's literary classics always involve a messianic prophecy? (@AlexPaknadel)
Vanilla Sky director Cameron Crowe has complained that his ending wasn’t vague enough. (Heraldweekly.com. There was a similar vogue for incomprehensible endings in the 60s. I used to try and work it out, only to be told sneeringly: You’re not supposed to know what it means. Or which bit is a dream sequence.)
One of the dancers in Weird Al's "Fat" music video was a guy who was simply delivering pizza to the studio. (@MondongoFacts. And others on this template.)
Suckered into watching another Stephen Poliakoff. It’s like they have a York Notes commentary track switched on. (@Grindrod)
Most Netflix shows have a gay scene. Also, when portraying families, they portray the man as dumb and needing help while the woman is the clever one who saves the situation. (@dan_geezy)
Cape wearing TV demons and their interminable plotting and scheming in obviously styrofoam underground lairs. (@misfitpoise)
Everything they wear is always so damn dark. Historical dramas portray everyone in the past dressing like they’re bikers. Contemporary art always shows a multitude of colorful clothing, even the lower classes had colorful clothing. (@ForestandFlame, 2020)
History films:
1. WW2 German officials are ALWAYS in an impatient bad mood
2. Victorian Men between 50-70 disapprove of EVERYTHING
3. Victorian women between 50-70 have a permanent cold and are always in a dithering panic
4. In WWI the only instrument was an echoey slow piano
(@ChrisFarrelly)
I told a friend I was compiling a list of drama cliches and he said, “I want your report on my desk in the morning”. His office was empty when I got there but I noticed a framed picture of him standing by a yacht with the boat's name plainly visible, so now I have access to all his computer files. (@brooligan)
Following this conversation, no doubt you both got up from your table in the restaurant, leaving your meal barely touched and having thrown a few random dollar bills on the table. (@PuckstownLane)
Back in the office, a feisty woman storms into your meeting, followed by a bleating secretary: "I tried to stop her Mr Smith really..." "Never mind, Miss Jones, shut the door when you go out." CUT to Miss Jones listening with her ear pressed to the intercom. (@richmondie)
The worst parodies are where people have never watched/read the thing they are parodying and everything they know about it is from other parodies. (@americanwombat)
About once a year I seem to read an article about how horror films are "no longer about naked girls being chased through woods by a man with a knife" while struggling to think of a single commercially or critically successful horror film from the last 30 years with that set-up. (@SSheil)
Even the other German agents do not know the true identity of the chief. They know he is part of the network, but he claims to be "taking orders" from the chief. He, of course, is actually the chief. (Imdb on British Intelligence, 1941)
I am watching the worst programme in the world ever… it’s called Harrow it’s on Disney+ and it’s tragically bad. It’s about an edgy pathologist who has family issues and doesn’t play by the rules... it features every cliche with added Aussie whimsy! It’s magnificent. (@MatofKilburnia)
May I wearily point out that there were other women in history besides queens and consorts, because I’ve lost count of the recent historical dramas about sad-but-defiant-royal-women-whose-husbands-are-jerks. (@greg_jenner)
Remember in old movies where a newspaper editor would say "We got pictures of the senator having cocktails with a showgirl in a nightclub. He's through!"? (B.A.Richardson)
Look, these are the rules. When elves are on screen, wafting ethereally about, you have soaring, beautiful voices or perhaps strings. When it’s hobbits gambolling through their settlements... then it’s a tin whistle, or maybe a fiddle. When it’s dwarves, hefting axes inside a hollowed-out mountain, you get lusty Wagnerian singing, ideally in German. Which is odd, because these dwarves are Scottish... The elves sound incredibly, preposterously English, like Lord Haw-Haw or Jacob Rees-Mogg... It’s just so damn reverent. Not just the elves, because they can’t help it, but everything. Nobody is sexy. When it isn’t aweing you with celestial lights and a thousand people singing “ahhhh”, the threat of twee hangs extremely heavy. No humour is risked except for the unthreatening and frankly excruciating pseudo-humour of dwarves being peeved. Hugo Rifkind, The Times Sept 2022 (And Lenny Henry, as a hobbit, is Irish... I wasn’t the only one who asked why the various groups weren’t given American regional accents.)
“What are you doing here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“Isn’t this your day off?”
“Didn’t you get my text?”
(@DavidFMVaughn)
American audiences won't watch a movie about racism unless the racists are in some way redeemed in the end, no matter how silly or contrived. (@mekkaokereke)
Though some UK actors do good American accents, UK TV often uses broad Southern and Southwestern American regional accents for dumb or villainous Americans, New York accents for smart Americans, and Western Canadian accents for sympathetic Americans (often real Canadians.) (@IanThal)
My favorite kind of movie is where some English person gets all upset and goes "I really MUST protest!" (@stonedhouse4)
Watched Smokey and the Bandit last night. Those late 70s/early 80s US road movie comedies were absolutely massive, but now seem largely forgotten. See also: Convoy, Every Which Way but Loose, The Cannonball Run. Any more? Ingredients: Trucks, country music, flared denim, comedy pets on the passenger seat, more trucks, bar fights, Deep South sheriffs saying "sonofabitch", nudie suits, more trucks, more country music, "Breaker breaker, got ourselves a..." etc, cars flying into ravines. More trucks. (@Bob_Fischer)
Not one but TWO remakes of the original Wizard of Oz in the making - one a "modern reimagining", the other one a "fresh take". (@EduardHabsburg)
More here, and links to the rest.
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