Corrected entry: Throughout series 1, there is a World Map on the classroom wall. It still lists the Soviet Union. The show was made in 1993, a full 2 years after the Soviet Union breakup.
J I Cohen
10th Aug 2004
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1993)
28th Jul 2004
Rat Race (2001)
Corrected entry: The rocket car technicians get excited when the rocket car breaks the old speed record, the problem is, you need two consecutive passes within an hour with an average speed to set a record. They would not be excited about how fast the car went, they would be concerned about getting the multi-million dollar vehicle back.
Correction: They are excited because the car has just shown it is capable of beating the record, even if it would not officially stand. They would probably be concerned after their excitement dies down.
19th Aug 2004
The Prince and Me (2004)
Corrected entry: Shouldn't Eddie, being from Denmark, speak with a Danish accent, not an English one?
Correction: Many Scandinavians speak English with near-perfect British or American accents.
Corrected entry: When the Interceptor starts clubhauling, Captain Barbossa gives the command "hard to port, rack the starboard oars." The film is set in the 1700's but the word "port," meaning left wasn't invented until the late 1800's early 1900's.
Correction: It is true that the word port was not *officially* adopted by the British and US navies (to replace the archaic larboard, which was easily confused with starboard) until the 1840s. However, the term was first recorded in the 1540s, and would have long been in common use by the 1700s. See http://www.etymonline.com/p8etym.htm and http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorp.htm.
18th Apr 2004
The Simpsons (1989)
A Streetcar Named Marge - S4-E2
Corrected entry: When the producer asks the auditioning men to take off their shirts, he says, using French, 'Déshabillez votre chemise,' which is blatantly wrong, as it means 'Undress your shirt' instead of 'Take off your shirt.'
Correction: The producer is a pretentious fool. He probably can't actually speak French (at least not fluently), he is just trying to appear sophisticated. It is in keeping with the character that he would get the phrase wrong, and this was very possibly intentional.
8th Aug 2004
Stargate SG-1 (1997)
Touchstone - S2-E14
Corrected entry: In this episode, Hammond says that a permanent iris will be welded over the Beta gate. In Nemesis (Season 3), he says "I want the beta gate unpacked and ready for use as soon as humanly possible." What happened to the words 'Permanent Iris".
Correction: In this case, the words "as soon as humanly possible" can be reasonably assumed to mean 'as soon as you can cut the iris off'. It was designed not to open, not to be indestructible.
6th Aug 2004
Collateral (2004)
Corrected entry: When the police officer relays the taxi's licence plate over the radio, he uses the phonetic "queen" to relay the letter Q. As a trained police officer, he should know that the phonetic "Quebec" should be used for that letter.
Correction: Last year, I was stopped by a police officer who struggled with the phonetic alphabet while calling in my licence plate (something she must have done several times a day). Trained professionals forget things, or get confused, just like the rest of us.
9th Aug 2004
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Corrected entry: While working on Jim Carrey's memory, Mark Ruffalo opens a bottle of Rolling Rock beer with a bottle opener. Rolling Rock has a twist-off cap.
Correction: Some people find that kind of twist-off cap hard on their hands, and use an opener. Also, it is possible he did not realize it was a twist-off cap, if he does not drink that brand of beer regularly.
26th Jun 2004
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Corrected entry: At the end, Axel Foley checks out of the hotel at night which would have incurred an extra nights fee for late check out. Admittedly this didn't affect Axel as the police department was footing the bill but he may as well have just stayed the extra night. Also given the long drive ahead of him, why leave in the middle of the night?
Correction: This is just a disagreement with a perfectly reasonable decision made by a character. It is not a plot hole.
19th Jun 2004
My Fair Lady (1964)
Corrected entry: Prof. Higgins, a world-renowned expert on the English language, makes three grammar/usage errors that would flunk him out of any 9th-grade English class. First: The song "Why Can't the English" contains the line, "By rights they should be taken out and hung . . . " (Pictures are hung; people are hanged.) Second: In "Let a Woman in Your Life," he sings, "I'd be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling than to ever let a woman in my life." ("Equally as" is redundant, "to ever let" is a split infinitive and "than" should be "as." ) Shudder.
Correction: These "errors" are in songs. Allowances are made in the English language for the demands of verse.
17th Jul 2004
Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
Corrected entry: Fogg states that Hong Kong is a British colony. This film takes place in 1872/3, and Hong Kong didn't become a British colony until 1899.
Correction: Hong Kong became a British Colony in 1842 under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking. The 1898 (not 1899) 99-year lease was only for the New Territories. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hong_Kong#British_colony.
17th Jun 2004
Me, Myself & Irene (2000)
Corrected entry: In the movie Charlie's commanding officer has the rank of colonel. However, in non-military commands such as law enforcement and security companies the rank is reffered to as Commander instead of Colonel. I work for a security company and my commanding officer has the rank.
Correction: Like many American police forces, the Rhode Island State Police has Colonels. See http://www.risp.state.ri.us/message.php.
6th Jun 2004
Troy (2004)
Corrected entry: There are numerous historical mistakes in the art. Much of it is Minoan, not Greek, or Greek of a later period than the Trojan War of the 11th or 12th century BC.
Correction: While modern archaeological evidence suggests that Troy lost a war (not necessarily *the* war) around 1180 BC, the Iliad was almost definitely a work of fiction, not a historical record of events, and was not necessarily set when the historical events happened. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy, and http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html/.
19th May 2004
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
Corrected entry: Gar is trading in iridium which is claimed to have a very short half life, allowing Tuvok to deduce how far away Gar could have gotten it. In reality, iridium is a stable metal and has no half life.
Correction: There are many radioactive isotopes of iridium. See http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/Ir.html.
9th May 2004
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Corrected entry: The equipment that's supposed to protect Riggs and Murtaugh from the ill effects of the loo bomb is more than insufficient: just a vest, no helmet, no face shield, and nothing for Murtaugh's rather endangered private parts. Furthermore, if the mechanism was triggered by the removal of Murtaugh's weight from the seat there would certainly have been a way to simulate the weight mechanically. (00:54:00)
Correction: That equipment would most likely have been all they had that would not require Murtaugh to get up to put it on, and was probably more to make him feel safer than to protect him. After all, he was sitting on top of a considerable amount of plastic explosive. What could save him if that went off? For all they know the bomb could be triggered by a change in the initial weight (ie. adding or removing something to fool it). Not worth the risk.
5th May 2004
The Music Man (1962)
Corrected entry: In the beginning Harold asks for a wagon on Sunday at the livery stable. But later when he is asked if he wants to go to the hotel he says he is not sure if he is going to stay. Now why would he need a wagon on Sunday if he won't be there?
Correction: Because it would be easier to pre-book the wagon, and cancel later, than to get one last-minute.
20th May 2004
Troy (2004)
Corrected entry: This movie is spoken in English however, when the Greeks invade the beach at Troy and the camera pans over the ships you can hear another language spoken that sounds like Ancient Greek. This seems illogical considering none of the primary and even secondary actors even attempted a Greek accent and this movie was not one that proclaimed the need for subtitles.
Correction: This is just the submitter disagreeing with what was probably an intentional decision by the film makers (or garbled dialogue).
19th May 2004
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Corrected entry: Skynet supposedly survives Judgment Day because it spread itself to computers all over the world. In a full nuclear exchange between USA and Russia, at least 20,000 warheads (on the Megaton scale) would detonate at various locations throughout the world within the hour, and the 20,000 EMPs generated would without doubt destroy almost every above-ground computer in the entire world. EMPs have larger blast radii than the nuclear explosion itself; ten could wipe out the entire electrical grid of the US. Only a few military computers at the bottom of deep bunkers would survive, but Skynet didn't rely on any "supercomputers", right?.
Correction: It didn't rely on supercomputers, but it could make use of them. Anyway, there are many EMP-hardened civilian computers in things like power stations, air traffic control, and secure data-storage units. And surely a few normal computers would survive, especially in remote places like the Falkland Islands. Remember, the internet was originally designed to withstand a nuclear war, thus preserving vital communications.
18th May 2004
Back to the Future (1985)
Corrected entry: In the scene where George is walking into the cafe to talk to Lorraine, in the background someone asks for a Cherry Coke. In 1955, there was no Cherry Coke.
Correction: Pre-made Cherry Coke did not exist, but 'Cherry Coke' (a Coke with a shot of cherry syrup added) was a common soda-fountain item for many years before Coca Cola introduced the 'official' product. See http://www.senior-spectrum.com/columnists/grace_121603/ and http://www.historylink.org/_output.CFM?file_ID=3499.
Corrected entry: After the initial attack by the Acheron, Aubrey goes down below to see how deep the water is. The guy standing in the water says "2 ft, 6 in." This is a BRITISH ship in the early 1800s!
Correction: I don't see the mistake here. If the submitter is saying that some archaic unit would have been used, they should have specified it. If they are saying that metric units would have been used, they could not be more wrong. In the early 1800s, even the French still regularly used their customary units (the metric system wasn't fully adopted until the 1840s), and feet and inches are widely used in Britain to this day.
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Correction: An out-of-date map on the wall of a classroom? Hardly unusual.
J I Cohen