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- # Ladyhawk
- -The moon goes from gibbous to full to gibbous again over three succesive days
- more or less as it should. Then, only three days later it's new. Or, is this
- movie set in some fantasy world with multiple moons? The people in this movie
- also had the strangest pronunciation of Aquila that I ever heard.
-
- # Lethal Weapon:
- -When Roger is complaining about his life being over and xxx years on the
- force and not a scratch on his record, the car he's driving is moving
- but the shifter is in park.
- -Riggs handcuffs himself to the depressed businessman. They jump off the
- building but they're not handcuffed to each other anymore.
- -Riggs describes his "special" bullet as a hollow point, but the one he put in
- his pistol earlier wasn't.
-
- # Little Man Tate
- -In the scene where Fred is having his last talk with the Harry Connick Jr.
- character, the strap on his on his breifcase changes positions from his
- shoulder to his arm, depending on the angle of the shot.
-
- # Look Who's Talking
- -While John Travolta and Kristie Alley drive around in search of a
- missing child, Travolta has sunglasses on in the shots taken from
- outside the car but not those taken inside.
-
- # The Lost Boys
- -There is a scene where actor Jason Patric is flying uncontrollably in
- his room. In his scramble to control himself, he accidentally knocks
- his phone off the hook. This is quite clear. We then
- cut to the next room, where the phone rings. Corey Haim picks it up,
- and begins to talk...only to have Patric talk on his phone. Of course, my
- question is how could the phone ring? Wouldn't it have been a busy signal?
- -There are two or three scenes where the camera simulates the vampires
- flying into and out of their lair. One of the scenes is clearly just
- the previous one played backwards (as the camera flies over the ocean
- the waves head *OUT* to sea)
-
- # The Maltese Falcon:
- -There's a fire on a boat (La Paloma) in the port of San Francisco.
- The fire fighters have Los Angeles Fire Department uniforms on.
- What a long drive to put out a fire!!!
-
- # Magnum Force
- -When the boss bad cop takes Dirty Harry prisoner, he makes him throw his gun
- in
- the back seat, not out the window. Later, when left alone in the car, Harry
- flees without getting the gun and is unarmed throughout the climactic battle
- royal (which, incidentally, hinges on a homicide detective's ability to
- outride several full-time motorcycle cops).
-
- # Manhattan
- There is a scene in Manhattan, where someone is running down
- a sidewalk being filmed out of a moving car. You can see a reflection
- of the camera (and cameraperson) in some of the windows of the cars
- that are between the camera and the subject. [this is the kind of
-
- # Manhunter
- - when the second police car crashes into the ditch, the driver cracks his
- head on the windscreen (complete with sound effects). In slow motion, it is
- obvious that the windscreen was smashed, and then the stuntman threw his
- head against it.
-
- # Marked for death
- -There is a scene where Stevan Segal is sitting in a truck parked next to the
- curb, watching some bad guys in a black four-door. The street is covered
- with leaves. Later when he starts up the truck and drives toward the bad guys
- car the street is clean with barely any leaves on it.
-
- # Meet Me in St. Louis
- -While Judy Garland sings "The Trolley Song" a friend visiting the set
- shouts "Hiya Johnny!", not "Hiya Judy, as widely reported.
- -In some early scene you can see that there is feather/down snow
- floating all over the set, left over from the upcoming winter scenes.
- -When Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien are singing "If You Like-a Me",
- Margaret's slippers change from pink to blue.
-
- # Memphis Belle
- -In the opening minutes of the film, a B17 is returning to its British base
- after a mission and attempts a crash landing, siding over the camera
- placement.
- During this shot, look at the engines on the port side of the plane (right
- side of the screen): the inboard engine has two of three blades remaining and
- there is only one left on the outboard engine. But when the plane finally
- slides to a stop, the propeller blades have miraculously reappeared.
- -The Memphis Belle had P51 mustangs escorting the bombers several
- months before they appeared in the European theatre. (movie takes place in
- May,
- 43 - mustangs showed up in the fall)
-
- # Mermaids
- -Bob Hoskins discusses how "AstroTurf" will ruin baseball.
- Movie is set in 1963, AstroTurf was not introduced until 1967 or so.
-
- # Midnight Express
- -There is a shot of one of the walls to the prison, from the outside.
- There is a path that starts at the lower left of the wall and goes
- to the right, climbing. Along the bottom of the wall there are a
- few scraggly trees. Now, the protagonist (or someone)
- goes running up the path, from left to right. Your attention is
- meant to be focused on him, but if you watch the bottom of the screen, you
- will see the boomman running in time with the actor, sticking his
- microphone in the general direction of the action. It is plain as day.
- -In the scene where Hayes is alone(?) in that "wheel room", I recall the
- boom mike being PLAINLY visible. This is not one of those times where
- it simply "dips" down from above. In this scene, you can see the entire
- rig.
-
- # My Girl
- -When Thomas J. (Caulkin) and Veda (Chlumsky) are fishing, Thomas J.
- catches a fish and proceeds to say, "I hate touching the fish." While
- the hook falls out of the fish's mouth twice before Veda grabs the fish and
- removes the hook. No wonder the fish died!
-
- # Narrow Margin
- -There's a chase scene in the early part of the movie through a Canadian
- wood. Their vehicle hits a low branch and it thoroughly cracks the upper
- half of the windshield. Towards the end of the chase, for one shot, the
- windshield is miraculously gone! and then reappears for the next shot...
-
- # The Natural
- -At the end before Roy Hobbs hits the home run, look how the blood pattern
- on his uniform changes from shot to shot. It gets bigger and smaller and
- the number of spots changes.
- -When he is in his slump, he goes to Wrigley and it is supposed to be the
- first inning when he bats the first time. However, the scoreboard shows
- the Cubs up 1-0. They would not have batted yet since it is at Wrigley. Then
- in the ninth when he hits the home run and breaks the clock; everybody
- acts like they are leaving but why don't the Cubs bat in the bottom of ninth.
- -In the scene where Redford and Close meet in the diner, watch for
- the mysterious moving/disappearing/reappearing glass.
-
- # Never Say Never Again (James Bond)
- -There is a scene where Bond and Felix swim across to have a look at
- the villain's yacht - when Bond first gets into the water he has no
- head mask with his scuba diving suit, but when he exits, he is seen
- taking it off - guess somebody forgot about Connery's toupee.......
-
- # The Never Ending Story
- -Atreyu is washed up on a beach, face down. He raises his head, looks around,
- then stands up. During this movement, there is a cut from a tight to a wide
- shot. In the tight shot, Atreyu's chest is covered with sand. In the wide
- shot his chest is clean.
- -Hathaway has just left Rockbiter. We see him (from above) walking towards
- that building on top of the hill. All around him there are the remains
- of the devastated city. On his right there are some rocks strewn about.
- Suddenly the ground opens up. The camera switches to a ground-level
- shot. On his right there is now a "wall" of rocks (extending way up into
- the air). The camera now switches back to an aerial shot. The wall is
- gone and the "strewn about" rocks are back. Looks like the matte painters
- and set designers didn't agree on this one.
- -(38:19 into the movie)
- You can play "spot the stuntman" with this scene. If you can single-
- frame the film, go about 9 frames in to this "second", and there is a
- full-face image of the stuntman just before he falls from the tree.
- -Watch the bottom of the asteroid flying by. Its support pole apparently
- gets in the way as the asteroid rotates and ends up "masking" a vertical
- section of the asteroid. Looks like the effects department goofed up this
- time.
-
- # Nightmare on Elm Street
- -Nancy, after talking to her father, is seen walking past a tree, and
- in her hand is what seems to be the exact same tickets that her boyfriend
- gives her in the next scene!!!
-
- # Ninja III (The Domination)
- -At one point, the ninja is standing on top of a police car. He then stabs
- on policeman through the top of the car and punches the other, also through
- the top of the car. This makes two large holes in the roof which magicaly
- no longer there in the next shot when the car goes into a lake.
-
- # No Way Out
- -Kevin Costner's character escapes two assasins while running along the
- C&O canal in Washington D.C. by ducking into a Metro station and getting
- on a BALTIMORE Metro train just as it leaves.
-
- # North and South
- -In one battle scene, the camera pans across the battle field... and
- gets a shot of another camera filming away.
-
- # North by Northwest
- -Cary Grant complains that he only has one suit for his stay in
- Chicago. Yet when he heads out into the prairie, he has a different
- colour suit on.
- -There is a scene in a cafe where Cary Grant is approached by Eva Marie Saint.
- They talk and she draws a gun and shoots him. Before she does however
- there is a shot of a crowd scene. Included is a little boy, who was
- obviously at the scene rehearsal, putting his fingers in his ears.
- -Many backdrop tops and light reflections.
-
- # An Officer and a Gentleman
- -In the fight at the end of the film, Lou Gosset throws a punch that Richard
- Gere blocks. Gere then grabs Gosset's arm. If you single step this scene, you
-
- can see that in one shot, Gere is holding Gosset by the wrist, and in the next
- frame (from a different angle) he is holding him near his elbow.
-
- # One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- -As Jack Nicholson is strangling Nurse Ratchet, his cap falls off and
- is surprisingly back on his head seconds later.
-
- # Operation Petticoat
- -At the end of the movie, as Cary Grant is coming off the gangplank from the
- submarine, Tony Curtis's character's kids actually call him Mr. Grant rather
- than Admiral Whatever.
-
- # Outland
- -Sean Connery is involved in one of those fights where they are outside
- with spacesuits on. As he is struggling, you can CLEARLY see his bare
- arm where the sleeve of the spacesuit is supposed to be attached to
- the glove. Considering the way people are blowing up whenever they are
- exposed to space elsewhere in the film, this probably wasn't intended.
- -At one point Connery gets a bad guy cornered and "interrogates" him
- with his custom shotgun. Both men are approx. 4 meters apart and still
- Sean manages to miss the baddie twice. Some special non-expanding ammo?
-
- # Out of Africa
- -During one scene in the movie, Robert Redford and Meryl Strep are sitting
- down at a table outside. Redford's character is shown pealing and eating
- an orange. The camera cuts back to Redford often, sometimes eating and
- orange and sometimes peeling another. If you count, it would seem as if
- he has eaten 5 or 6 oranges in the span of about 3 minutes. And on Oscar
- was awarded to this fool.
-
- # Oxford Blues
- -When Rob Lowe arrives in Oxford with his sports car, driving through
- town and shouting "I do not believe this!" the shots are of locations
- in Oxford spliced together in random order. For example, he drives
- into a dead end inside New College and reappears on Oriel Square,
- where he asks directions to Oriel!
- -He gets his car stuck in an artificial wall. You can see the fittings
- shake on impact. In reality that car could make it through the street
- with no trouble.
- -Everybody including Rob Lowe wears scholar's gowns. In reality only
- about 3 percent of Oxford's students are entitled to wear scholars
- gowns, and Rob and his boatie friends don't seem likely scholars.
- -There is no architecture course at Oxford.
- -Admissions and students' course schedules computerized/centralized?
- -Virtually no one has a roommate. To be assigned a roommate in college,
- even in the "rowing room," would be an imposition, not an honor.
- -Rob breaks up an intimate late-night tete-a-tete between Amanda Pays
- and Julian Sands at Brown's coffee bar in the Covered Market. Brown's
- is always bustling and the whole Covered Market complex closes at 5:30 p.m.
- -It would be very unusual for a university fellow to be a rowing
- coach. Usually the coaches are just veteran student rowers, or for
- the really good crews, professionals brought from outside.
- -Rowers do not occupy high table at any college, not even Oriel. The
- fellows do. Most students in Oxford are so cynical/apathetic about
- rowing (and also hungry) that a suggestion of a walkout would be
- laughed out of college.
- -In the punting scene (long boat with pole), Rob Lowe moves the boat
- in circles, a mark of an inept novice. He probably needed to be
- towed back to shore.
- -Sconcing is banned in Oxford and certainly would not be done in
- formal hall with all the fellows of the college looking on.
- -Boat-burning takes place only after eights, not after ad hoc
- coxless pairs grudge matches against Harvard.
-
- # Pacific Heights
- -Melanie Griffiths is sneaking around Michael Keaton's room. We see his
- open briefcase on the table. The next scene shows Melanie sitting at
- the table and opening the (inexplicably closed) briefcase.
- -I believe that they were depicted as a young couple just starting out.
- Well, Pacific Heights is the most exclusive neighborhood in San Francisco
- and I doubt even the meanest little house would go for much under $1M U.S.
- Thanks to San Francisco Chronicle for pointing this one out.
-
- # Pale Rider
- -The snow in town appears and disappears each day. Also it is clearly winter in
- the town, but not in the panner's settlement or the miner's valley (this may
- be explainable by them being some distance from the town).
- -Prospector Michael Moriarty finds a chunk of gold about the size of a football
- and dances through the streambed waving it around over his head.
- ("Styrofoam. There's STYROFOAM in them thar hills!")
-
- # Parenthood
- -During the scene where Jason Robards talks to his
- wayward son in the garage in front of his prized green car, the entire
- film crew is visible in the reflection of the car.
- -The horse that the kids ride is a docile looking, skinny
- chestnut colored horse. Then Steve Martin gets on the horse
- an rides him down the street and attempts to jump him over a
- hedge - the horse is now bay coloured, and with a lot more energy..
-
- # Pee Wee's Big Adventure
- -When Pee Wee is chaining his BIKE up next to the clown (outside the bike-
- store), he opens up a small "basket" on his bike to pull out the chain. Of
- course, he pulls out about 75 feet of chain, so what is desired is that old
- "joke" about something very large fitting in something very small. However
- one thing spoils it... in the "wide view" shot, it is clearly seen that the
- "basket" has a hole in it. Looking at the bottom-right of the screen, one can
- see the chain going up through the hole in the basket, through the basket and
- being pulled by PW...
-
- Ed Note: This is due to the fact that the 'safe area' was not covered
- in the home video version
-
- # The Perfect Weapon
- -When Jeff is listening to the song 'The Power', the radio station
- identifies itself as "FM 109". (FM dials only go as high as 108).
-
- # Pet Sematary
- -While daddy Dale Midkeff kneels by his son's grave, the nearby
- flowers change from purple to yellow.
-
- # The Pink Panther
- -There's a scene where David Nivens's character romances the Princess and
- gets her drunk on champagne while she's laying on a tiger rug. While
- they're talking and drinking she's been holding a lit cigarette. She
- passes out, still holding the cigarette; her hand flops down on the rug.
- Niven then tries to pick her up in order to carry her into the bedroom,
- and eventually wraps her up in the rug and drags it in. During this
- procedure, the cigarette is gone; it probably should have lit
- the rug on fire. I was watching carefully to see if he had taken it out
- of her hand, but it just disappeared.
-
- # Plan 9 from Outer Space
- -The grass wrinkles.
- -Day changes to night and back and forth in the same scene, many times.
- -Bela Lugosi appears in only a few shots (he died early in production)
- and in all other shots his character is played by Ed Wood's wife's
- chiropractor
- with his arm in front of his face. Furthermore, he was blond and made no
- attempt to color his hair like Lugosi's. (Ed Wood being, of course, the
- famous
- bad-movie director [Plan 9, Glen or Glenda, etc]).
-
- # Porky's II
- -Set in the 50's, the movie poster showed a cheerleader wearing
- Nikes. Don't know if this reoccurs in the movie.
-
- # Predator
- -When Mac and the major are hiding under the log (just before Mac gets it),
- you can see a microphone pinned to the underside of the log.
- -After the commandos have toasted the enemy camp and the major is going through
- the papers, Dutch (Arnie) leaves the office in a vest and comes back wearing
- a jacket and smoking a cigar. Immediately afterwards they are leaving the
- camp and Dutch has lost the jacket.
- -Later when Anna runs off and the guy-with-glasses gets it, one of the two
- cable wraps tying her wrists together is clearly hanging below the other.
-
- # Presumed Innocent
- -Check out the tape recorder shoved into ???'s face (Can't remember who,
- I was so blown away by it) after ??? emerges from the courthouse making
- a few statements to the press. The tape recorder is an obvious "prop" that
- nobody thought to put a tape in. I about cracked up watching him talk into
- an empty tape recorder.
-
- # Pretty Woman
- -On the movie poster, Gere's hair is brown. In the movie it's grey.
- -It's not Julia Roberts' body on the movie poster.
- -While they are having breakfast - watch the donut/roll/pancake Julia Roberts
- is eating - it keeps switching -very bad editing!
- -In the scene where Gere and Roberts are dining with Ralph Bellamy,
- the meals they have in front of them (esp. the sorbets) chop 'n change.
- -Julia Roberts starts undressing Richard Gere, Gere's tie and collar and zipper
- go from being untied and unbuttoned to being tied and buttoned, then
- back again, all in a matter of seconds (but not the zipper).
- -Also, Julia takes off his shoes and socks. A few seconds later they
- are magically back on his feet again.
-
- # Pump Up The Volume
- -There is one shot of the exterior of Hubert Humphrey High where you can
- clearly
- see what is presumably the actual name of the school on a wall behind Slater.
-
- # The Princess Bride
- -In the beginning when the grandfather arrives with the book. He opens
- the book, the camera angle switches, and the book is closed and gets
- opened a second time.
-
- # The Prize
- -Watch Paul Newman's hands when he jumps to the cargo net on the ship; you can
- see a pair of gloves briefly appear when his hand reaches for the railing,
- and just as quickly disappear as he swings over. Didn't want to hurt his
- dainty little hands, no doubt. Whatta wimp.
-
- # Rambo, First Blood Part II
- -When Rambo fires the rocket launcher through his helicopter's (missing)
- windshield to blow up the Russky's helicopter, the backblast would have
- fried all of the MIAs (and the helicopter).
-
- # Raiders of the Lost Ark
- -In the scene where Indy and Marion emerge from their entombment
- in the crypt after crashing through a wall with a statue. Indy pushes a
- massive stone block out of the outside wall - and you can see from the block's
- shadow that when it hits the ground, it bounces!
- -In the same scene, I noticed that when Indy and Marion run down the slope
- from the wall, there is an unconcious man sitting under the hole left by
- the rock. His presence is left unexplained (or is it an intentional joke?).
- -Note the tell-tale reflection of the glass pane that keeps Harrison Ford
- safe during his tete-a-tete with the cobra.
- -When Indiana Jones escapes from a pyramid through the wall by pushing
- out one of the big stones from it, you can see from the shadow of the
- stone how the 'stone' bounches up from the ground.
- -Indy goes to Marion's bar to get the medallion. She tells him to get
- lost. After he leaves she sits down and pulls the medallion, which she is
- wearing on a chain around he neck, out of her blouse. Straight-on shot of
- Meriam looking at the medallion with the chain still around her neck. Cut
- to a profile shot where she is still looking at the medallion and the chain
- is no longer around her neck.
- -When the truck explodes, you can see the pole shooting out of the bottom
- of it to make it tip over as if the explosion was real.
- -When Indy finds Marion in the tent after he thinks she is dead, he unties
- the gag in her mouth. He then ties it back catching a lot of her hair in
- it. The camera changes, and there is no more hair caught in the gag.
- -When they go to see the old man about the writing on the medalion,
- he tells them that the staff should be 6 kadams to which Indy states
- that is about 72 inches. Then the old man says to remove 1 kadam.
- Simple math dictates that the staff should be 60 inches or 5 feet tall.
- When Indy is later in the map room, he inserts the staff into the
- hole and the mounted medalion is over his head. I don't think Harrison
- Ford is less than 5 feet tall.
- -When Indiana leaps aboard the German submarine on its way to the
- island to open the Ark, he is on the outside. Then the Uboat captain
- shouts "tauchen, tauchen" meaning "dive, dive"!
-
- # Red Dawn
- -The Colorado Rockies conveniently have just enough of a dusting of snow that
- winter to provide a nice Valley Forge atmosphere of shared patriotic hardship.
- Try "snow ass-deep to a tall horse."
-
- # Return of the Jedi
- -When Luke is explaining to Threepio about the 'magic', Artoo is NOT tied up.
- (Letterboxed version only)
- -There is one point in the climatic battle scene where a tie fighter
- magically appears in the middle of the Falcon.
- -As Threepio is trying to get his frinds untied, we see Chewbacca poke his head
-
- onto the set BEFORE he is actually cut loose (letterboxed version ONLY)
- -After the battle on Tantooine, there is a flypast of many TIE fighters past
- the Death Star. As 3 of them approach, they magically disappear. It's about
- 30m into the film.
-
- # Roadhouse
- -Before Patrick Swayze punches the tall, goofy guy in his boss's office,
- you can see some of the blood come out of the guy's nose before he's
- punched!!!
-
- # Robin and Marian
- In the very last scene, after Robin(Sean Connery) has shot his last
- arrow, you see three apples on a window board. Two are rotten, the
- third one seems to be a Golden Delicious. It`s doubtful whether this
- variety was known in 13th century England...
-
- # Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
- - When Robin returns to England and throws himself on the ground, he offers his
- hand to his Moorish slave. In a subsequent shot, he is offering his other
- hand.
- -The Sheriff asks his maids to see him tonight, one at 10:00, the
- other at 10:15. In the 12th century, they didn't have clocks.
- -There is one scene where the thieves are casting arrowheads out
- of *lead*!
- -there is a plaque in the wall of the castle near where he and Marion are
- standing. It happens just before the bad guys come to give chase.
- -When Sherwood Forest is initially shown (a distant shot) it appears to be
- an coniferous forest, and yet when Robin and party are shown within, the
- forest has become deciduous!
- -When the outlaws' hideout in Sherwood Forest is attacked 'by surprise' there
- are a large number of heavy cataputs, which 'shell' the hideout. Given the
- density of the forest and the size of the catapults it probably would have
- taken over a week to get them in position.
-
- # Robocop
- -When the disgruntled ex-city official is blasted out of the window of
- City Hall, he falls out of screen. During the replay of the scene for
- the "news" immediately afterward, the stunt man's feet are seen popping
- up into view as he bounces on the padding and rolls to take the impact.
- [This may have been intentional]
- - In the scene where Clarence is showing off his new "toy" gun to his
- pals, he gets back in his Brand New SUX to have the rear view mirror fall
- down.
- -After Clarence Boddicker spills his guts and rats of his boss Dick Jones,
- Robo goes to arrest Jones. To get to Jones's office, Robo rides in an
- elevator that takes him up past the 90th floor. In the office Robo meets
- up with ED209. To escape, Robo walks down a flight of stairs that the
- Enforcement Droid cannot. Has anyone noticed that he immediately opens
- the door there and is amazingly on the ground level of the building?
-