Deliberate mistake: During the flight Hughes takes with Katherine Hepburn, they talk to each other in normal, conversational voices. A twin-piston-engined aircraft of that vintage (or any vintage for that matter) is LOUD. We should be able to hear roaring engines, and the two should have to shout at each other to be heard.
The Aviator (2004)
1 deliberate mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Beckinsale, Ian Holm
Continuity mistake: When Hughes and Odie are talking about mounting a camera on a biplane and removing one of the wings, the shots alternate between a back view of their heads and a front view of their faces. Odie's head position has no relationship to the one it had in the preceding angle in most of the cuts.
Ava Gardner: You listened to my phone calls?
Howard Hughes: No! No! No! Honey I would never do that! I'd never do that! I... I just read the transcripts, that's all.
Trivia: At the Academy Awards, Cate Blanchett became the first Oscar winner to win her award for playing another Oscar winner.
Question: The colors in this film are otherworldly, (almost like the colors in a black and white movie that has been artificially colorized) and could not have been natural or achieved with any net or filter. I'm fairly certain that there is no method of stylized pre-exposure, and digital colorization, while possible, would have been painstaking on such a grand scale. How did they accomplish it?
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Answer: The first sections of the film are shot in two-strip and three-strip technicolor, a common practice in the early versions of color filmmaking that were happening at the time. The scene on the golf course between Howard and Kate Hepburn is a prime example. As far as the later sections of the film, never underestimate the power of digital effects. :)