Movie and TV Clichés - Now in Book Form!

What, me, Inspector?

Movie and TV Clichés: now an exciting mini ebook:

Here's a sample:

Bad acting: look left, right, and at the ceiling – now sigh. (I don't have time for all this right now, Inspector.)

More bad acting: look at the ceiling and laugh gaily. (Me? A suspect? How ridiculous!)

Clunky exposition: If Cousin Everard hadn’t come all the way from Saskatchewan we’d never be eating in the Maison Pierre! (Rumpole)

ACTION PAINTING When a tortured artist picks up a paint-laden brush and looks in a mirror he will slowly: a) paint all over his face b) put the brush in his mouth.

BE BOULDER When running away from a careering boulder or exploding fireball, run straight ahead instead of leaping to the side. The same technique can be used with a stampeding herd of dinosaurs, a cavalry charge or a stream of lava.

CASH PRIZES Clutch cash in untidy handfuls instead of smoothing it out into neat bundles - see Pretty Woman. Sometimes you shove it at someone, while saying: “Take it! Take it! I don’t want it!”

DEATH OF THE DINOSAURS Herds are always setting off on a doomed trek into a desert as the rivers dry up.

FAUX FATHERS How to expose a fake priest: quote Thoreau and attribute it to Thomas Aquinas. (Murder She Wrote)

GARBAGE Anyone who has a dustbin upended over their head ends up smothered in baked beans, picking noodles out of their hair.

HANDBAGS AT DAWN When the beautiful woman finally admits she is the murderer, the detective solicitously helps her into her fur coat before taking her down to the police station - but she never takes her handbag.

JAPANESE GARDENER Watch out for that man clipping the hedge – especially if he raises his head with a meaning look.

MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE? They never dance but sway from foot to foot while telling each other large swathes of plot.

PERIOD DIALOGUE In bad period drama an older woman will constantly address a younger one as “child”.

SAIL AWAY In American films, going sailing is a sign of integrity.

TELEPHONE ETIQUETTE When making a phone call while pretending to be someone else, always hold your nose to disguise your voice.

WAKE UP! A man is sitting at a desk, apparently asleep. You tap him on the shoulder – he slumps to the floor, dead.

YOU’RE UNDER ARREST Arresting officers say “Anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

More here, and links to the rest.

Howlers 10

Estate Agent speak
Construed in the 60s, a flay within waling distance of the fashionable immunities of Church Street, converted in this vicarage, in a quite residential neighbourhood, comprimises of carpet flooring, everything is separated from a central hallway, leaving room contains kitchen. Live in harmony with your environment in the shape of a long rear garden, we are delighted to offer to the market this two bedroom split level marionette. Double glaze windoe to rear, plummed for washing machine, communial car park area to front of the property, recently renovated within the last three months, carpeated throughout.

Say it in American
chalked full for chock full: chalked full of unnatural chemicals (Web)
Guy Fox day: Guy Faukes day
bombfire night: bonfire night
I took it for granite: granted
feeble for foetal: He curled up in the feeble position.
trickle treating: trick or treating


cognitive dissonance for contradiction (People rationalise away contradictions to avoid cognitive dissonance.)

collard doves for collar doves: You’re thinking of collard greens.

colonial: confusing with feudal or imperial? (Britain rules the waves, influential country, setting up more embassies in foreign blah blah we are the world police etc ‏@Sharpzilla)

descent for dissent: There has been a continuous murmuring of descent. (Dissent means disagreement.)

dinaphorous for diaphanous

edged for etched: Fear was edged on the cat’s face.

eschews for exemplifies: “Hayley [Mills] is very impressive, with that wide eyed wonder look she eschews…” (imdb) (Eschews means avoids.)

faith for fate: He suffered a similar faith.

foreboding for forbidding: “The forecast is foreboding” BBC 2014-02-13 (Forecasts are always foreboding. That’s what forecasts do.)

gambit for remit: “That’s not within your gambit.” Dragon’s Den

larva for lava: “the larva that buried Pompeii” (Times)
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lip-singing for lip-synching (It’s short for “synchronising”.)

marred for mired: The Turin Shroud is forever marred in controversy. (Cable TV caption) (For ever? How do you know?)

Niandathol Man for Neanderthal man

obeisance for obedience: “The infallible, all-knowing, all-seeing leader, expecting absolute obeisance…” Skeptic, January 2014 (Obeisance means genuflecting or kowtowing.)

pawn off for palm off

pin-clean for clean as a new pin (You’re thinking of “pin-sharp”.)

plain for plane: operate on a high artistic plain

planet for plane: “When he moved on from this earthly planet…” (Flog It! 2013) (It's from a spiritualist idea of planes of existence.)

prize of place for pride of place: Make sure they're prize of place!

quixotic for paradoxical: “To castigate a man, on the one hand, for his use of sexist language and then to turn on him for lack of chivalry may seem quixotic.” (Angela Carter)

site for sight: in plain site

The press has made us a laughing stalk. (More easily confused in the US.)

toe-path for tow-path: High tide at Richmond, toe-path impassible in places. (The horse walked along it while towing the barge in the days before they had engines.)

travesty for tragedy

unerring for eerie or unsettling: “You’ve all probably seen that slightly unerring sight…” (World’s Weirdest Weather)

vigorous for rigorous: Such woodland would still have to go through a "vigorous planning process". DOE spokesbod quoted by the BBC Jan 2014

More here, and links to the rest.