Corrected entry: In the final scene, Thomas Crown is sitting directly behind Catherine. Whether he got on the plane before or after her, how is it that she didn't notice him until he offers her the handkerchief?
Tailkinker
12th Jan 2005
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
6th Jan 2005
The Fifth Element (1997)
Corrected entry: In 1914, the Mondochiwans advise the priest in 300 years evil will return. When Korbin turns on the light, the display says it's March of 2263. They are past the 300 year mark by 49 years. (00:17:25)
Correction: They were being approximate. It's hardly likely that the ultimate evil would provide them with a precise timetable - all they know is roughly when.
3rd Jan 2005
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Corrected entry: In the scene with the main characters fighting John, the pub landlord, the jukebox comes on playing Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Shaun shouts "Who turned that on?" and Ed replies "It's on random," which is a reference to earlier in the film. But there is no reason for the jukebox to switch on other than to provide music for the fight. If it was on random why didn't it switch on earlier?
Correction: The power to the pub has only just come on - the jukebox starts up automatically at that point. When they initially arrived there, the power was off.
2nd Jan 2005
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Corrected entry: When Kirk, McCoy and Dr Taylor escape from the hospital with Chekov, they are "beamed out" of the elevator and "beam" back in at the park next to the Bounty. My understanding is that the transporters can "beam" people from the transporter itself to another place, or from another place back to the transporter, but not from another place to yet another place. I realise that this is required in the movie, because when they arrive back at the Bounty, Kirk tries to tell Dr Taylor she can't come with them, which would have been awkward if they were on board at the time, but it is still a small mistake.
Correction: Transporters are quite capable of doing what's depicted in the film - it's generally referred to as a site-to-site transport. It's not something that happens terribly often in the films and series, for the simple reason that it's not often required and it takes up a lot more power than a simple transport to or from the transporter pad itself. But they've always been capable of doing it.
Correction: We have seen this in TNG, DS9 and I believe Voyager. Most commonly it's a Doctor with a critical patient being beamed from their current location, directly to Sickbay, The Infirmary, etc.
1st Jan 2005
Alien Vs. Predator (2004)
Corrected entry: The antarctic is for the predators a very bad place to have a "training facility". In predator 2 and in the comic magazines they always says that the predators looks for warm places with conflicts. Even, in one magazine they go to some cold place and a human finds them in the boiler room.
Correction: Hardly a mistake - it's obvious why this is the case. This is more than just a training facility - it's the location for a ritual to prove themselves by going up against their most deadly prey, showing themselves to be the best. By putting the pyramid in a cold region, away from the heat they prefer, it simply increases the difficulty of the challenge even further.
28th Dec 2004
Star Trek (1966)
Corrected entry: Just after Kirk is "accelerated" by the Scalosians, he draws and fires his phaser. Even if the burst was a mere microsecond in length, wouldn't the instruments he hit be fried?
Correction: It's unlikely. Phasers are rarely used at their highest setting - combined with the very short beam time, this would be enough to spare the instruments any damage.
27th Dec 2004
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Corrected entry: The first or second time you see a Nazgul riding the winged beast (in Osgiliath), the winged beast's mouth is big enough to fit a person in whole. Later on when Eowyn cuts the winged beast's head off (just before she fights the witch king), the winged beast's mouth is a lot smaller.
Correction: Not the case - when the Fell Beast attacked Theoden, it takes a sizable amount of his horse into its mouth. The size of the creature doesn't alter between that moment and when Eowyn fights it. The mouth of the Fell Beast is quite long, allowing it to open much wider than the size of the head would suggest, but it doesn't change.
27th Dec 2004
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Corrected entry: The Ringwraiths can feel the presence of the Ring at all times as stated by Gandalf, but the Witch King is unable to feel the Ring's presence at its front door or even when he flies right over Frodo in Minas Morgul.
Correction: They can feel the presence of the Ring, yes, but that doesn't mean that they can zero in on it - it doesn't work like a homing beacon unless somebody's actually wearing it. A Nazgul can be within feet of the Ring and be unaware of it, as we see on at least one occasion during the film. The Witch-King can feel the Ring, but he has no way of knowing how close it is.
26th Dec 2004
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Corrected entry: When Mr Zerga's case is being brought into the vault, it is seen placed on top of Yens box, and then seen, at the control room, on the screen. When Benedict is looking at the screen while talking to Rusty on the cellophane, there is no black case on top of the boxes. How come had no one of the security man noticed that the case (probably at the fake vault) is missing, after specifically following it before Zerga's "death"?
Correction: They're not watching the vault continuously - they have to switch to the vault cameras when Benedict arrives. With their rather agitated boss in the room, they're not going to be focused too strongly on the screen. Livingston switches over to the tape of the 'robbery' after only a few seconds - it's simply the case that none of them noticed in that short period of time. Once the 'robbery' is revealed, they've got other things to worry about.
21st Dec 2004
Total Recall (1990)
Corrected entry: When Douglas Quaid explains to Melina that the reactor discovered on Mars was built by "aliens," shouldn't he have said "natives"?
Correction: Strictly speaking, 'natives' would have been more accurate, yes, but if you take 'aliens' to mean non-humans, which is a common interpretation, his statement is quite reasonable.
17th Dec 2004
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: Khan claims to have remembered Chekov from "Space Seed", which ran during the series first season, but the character of Chekov wasn't created until the second season of the series.
Correction: Chekov only appeared in the show starting with the second season, true, but that doesn't mean that the character wasn't already working on the ship during season one. His sudden appearance was merely the result of him getting a promotion to the primary bridge crew - Khan simply met Chekov elsewhere on the ship at some unseen point during his time on the Enterprise.
14th Dec 2004
Phone Booth (2002)
Corrected entry: After the first three shots that the sniper fires (robot, ear, guy with the bat), he threatens several times to shoot the wife, the girlfriend, the cop, etc. He repeatedly 'cocks' the rifle (four times) without firing a shot. Cocking the rifle chambers a round, which doesn't go anywhere until fired.
Correction: He's using the sound for psychological effect. Note that the sniper has two rifles present - the one that he leaves behind for the police to discover, and the one that he's carrying in the case at the very end. His main rifle is aimed and ready - the other is most likely the one that he's using for the cocking noise - he can cock that one as many times as he likes.
6th Dec 2004
Alien (1979)
Corrected entry: The newborn alien that bursts from John Hurt's chest is next seen full-grown, munching on a crew member who is searching for Jones the cat. Assuming that it needs to kill to eat, how did the alien suddenly appear full-size without any nourishment?
Correction: In the script, the Alien was caught eating all the crew's food that it could find in one of the food lockers, so it does indeed eat. One of the crew shot their flamethrower into the locker and the Alien then broke through a vent and into the air ducts. Also, the time between Kane dying and Brett dying was at least several hours. In the cuts scenes you see them first searching for the small Alien directly after it emerged from Kane. They then had to put Kane's body in it's shroud; clean up the awful mess in the dining room' perform the funeral ceremony and finally make the cattle prods and motion-detector. All of that would take a fair amount of time. It's not like the Alien grew to full size in only 20 minutes.
Correction: There's one big false assumption there - that the creature kills to eat. The extended cut of the film shows that in at least two cases, members of the crew were taken alive to create new eggs, and in other cases, the bodies are left apparently uneaten. The aliens in the film series have always shown the ability to grow to full size extremely quickly; the mechanism is unknown but it doesn't involve eating other lifeforms as no alien has ever been shown to attack before reaching full growth. The most likely explanation is that the additional mass required is simply taken from whatever the alien finds around it (metal, rock, whatever) and is incorporated into the body structure in some unexplained manner (possibly involving the breakdown of such matter via the acidic blood and its reconstitution in a form that the alien can make use of by some organ within the alien body).
29th Nov 2004
Red Dwarf (1988)
Corrected entry: After the crew recover from the Despair Squid and Kryten is telling everyone why they where who they were in the hallucination he said that Rimmer was half-brother with Lister so that he [Rimmer] could not blame his parents and upbringing for his failures as his brother was successful. This makes no sense as Rimmer really does have three brother who all went on to become successful graduates of the Space Corp, yet he does still blame his parents,so his despair hallucination is flawed.
Correction: Rimmer's despair hallucination does take on many elements of his real existence, but it amplifies them even further - in the hallucinatory 'reality', his brother is apparently one of the most powerful people in the world, while he himself appears to be a down-and-out - in the real world he at least had employment, even if it wasn't exactly a great job. As we see in "Terrorform", Rimmer's self-loathing is pretty high anyway - the hallucination merely took that and boosted it to the point where he would commit suicide.
28th Nov 2004
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Corrected entry: More fresh water in the ocean wouldn't trigger a global cooling trend. Salt water actually allows the oceans to be cooler without freezing.
Correction: The point is that the alteration in the salinity of the water has stopped the North Atlantic current from flowing and bringing warmer water up from the equatorial regions, triggering the climate shift and the cooling effect. The actual heat capacity of the water doesn't have anything to do with it.
29th Nov 2004
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
Corrected entry: How can Evil Bill spit on the human version of himself? He's a robot with no possible means of producing bodily fluids such as saliva.
Correction: A robot designed to mimic a human being would have methods of producing bodily fluids for authenticity. The robot presumably has a store of liquid on board for such purposes, which could be topped up when required through drinking.
23rd Oct 2004
Angel (1999)
Corrected entry: When Angel, Fred, and Gunn are trying to find where Lorne's performing, they come across his headliner ad at the Tropicana, which states "17th Straight Week." At the end of the last season Lorne was just leaving for Vegas, and the previous episodes have established that Angel and Cordelia have been missing for three months. Assuming Lorne started performing the week he arrived in Vegas, his show should be in its 14th straight week.
Correction: Firstly, three months is probably an approximation - it could be a week or two more than that. Secondly, some time must have passed between Angel's rescue and the trip to Las Vegas - he's had time to fully recover from his ordeal, look for Cordelia (there's the events of the episode "Ground State", for example) and so on. This could easily take at least a couple of weeks, which makes the 17 week notice quite possible.
11th Nov 2004
Die Another Day (2002)
Corrected entry: Why does Bond look so shocked when Moon calls him by his real name? Moon just blew up his helicopter, about half a dozen guys have grabbed him, and there's a gun at his head. Clearly, Moon's figured out Bond isn't who he's pretending to be. In fact, why doesn't Bond realize even before Moon blows up the helicopter? He's looking right at Moon and Zao while they talk and cast furtive glances at him.
Correction: Just because Moon and Zao are talking furtively, it doesn't automatically mean that his cover's blown - he may well have felt concern at that point, but if he showed any nervousness, it would be out of character for who he's trying to play. After the destruction of the helicopter, obviously Bond knows that his cover has been blown somehow, but there's no way that Moon should actually know his name - after all, he's a top covert agent for British Intelligence, so his name would hardly be common knowledge. For Moon to call him by his real name is still going to be one hell of a shock, as it tells Bond that Moon has a source of information within British Intelligence - basically that there's a mole somewhere who's just sold him out. A certain amount of shock is quite reasonable.
9th Nov 2004
Wilde (1997)
Corrected entry: Oscar Wilde is seen giving testimony during his trial. In Britain, defendants were not allowed to give evidence at their own criminal trials until 1898, and Wilde's trial was around 1895/6.
Correction: There is a substantial amount of historical evidence that Wilde did indeed give testimony at his trials.
9th Nov 2004
True Lies (1994)
Corrected entry: When the Crimson Jihad is making its video while in the Florida Keys, the statement is made that "We will rain down fire on 1 U.S. city each week" unless their demands are met. The very next day, they are in Miami with the second nuke and claiming that they are all ready to die for their cause. Who would be left to 'rain down fire' if they all died in that building?
Correction: Quite a lot changes in between them making the video and the scenes in Miami - they've lost all the other nuclear weapons. As such, it really doesn't matter if all of them die, as they've got no other weapons to "rain down fire" with.
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Correction: She's very upset - in that sort of state, people often don't notice what's going on around them. She probably dimly registered that there was somebody sitting there, but didn't pick up on the fact that it was him.
Tailkinker ★