Corrected entry: The scene about the snake scale; snakes don't have scales - they have skin.
Rlvlk
6th Apr 2008
Blade Runner (1982)
31st Mar 2008
Into the Wild (2007)
Corrected entry: The cause of Chris's death in the film is attributed primarily to eating by accident the wrong plant and as a result, getting poisoned. While this is a theory, it is one which an autopsy showed no evidence of. The official cause of death was starvation.
Correction: This isn't a documentary of his life. It is a dramatization.
29th Mar 2008
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Corrected entry: The Secret Service massively under-reacts to Leary shooting at the president. Their policy is to keep their weapons off safety so that if they have to they can shoot quicker. They should have opened up on him with a hail of gunfire even if Horrigan was in the way. Watch the Reagan shooting and see how they normally react.
Correction: No one opened fire after Reagan was shot. They surrounded Reagan, threw him into the car and tackled Hinckley.
The original mistake is correct. Reagan was immediately taken away and Hinkley was tackled by a number of policemen and agents. Evacuation happens in the movie but no-one goes after Booth, only 1 agent pulls his weapon and does not fire at the assassin! The outer ring of agents is completely missing so there is no-one to react.
24th Mar 2008
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Plot hole: How was Cole supposed to get on a plane without having any identification documents?
Suggested correction: Pretty easy to do pre-9/11.
I flew for most of my business career. Starting in the middle 80s, you had to have proper identification to get a boarding pass which let you on the airplane. each flight had a manifest with names and addresses of the passengers. Even with the post 9/11 changes, I think the current procedures are pretty sloppy compared to the 90s.
12th Mar 2008
Father Ted (1995)
Corrected entry: I don't want to sound picky, but in the lyrics of "My Lovely Horse," fetlocks cannot actually blow in the wind. They're part of the horse's leg. Wonderful song, though.
Correction: Fetlock: 1 a: a projection bearing a tuft of hair on the back of the leg above the hoof of a horse or similar animal. b: the tuft of hair itself 2: the joint of the limb at the fetlock. Definition 1b would blow in the wind. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fetlock.
18th Feb 2008
Transformers (2007)
Corrected entry: When Sam's dad jumps into the claw foot tub, you can see it move. Even when empty, claw foot tubs are too solid and heavy to move the way it did in the movie.
Correction: They do make clawfoot tubs out of acrylic and fiberglass that weigh under 175lbs.
18th Feb 2008
Jumper (2008)
Corrected entry: When Griffin and David steal the Mercedes from the showroom, it should not be fueled at all and would thus be unable to drive around the streets, even with teleportation.
Correction: Cars are delivered to dealers with fuel in them, just not with a full tank. Cars are driven off the production line, onto rail cars, to semi trailers, transport boats, etc., and then offloaded at the dealers. All this requires fuel.
18th Feb 2008
Employee of the Month (2006)
Corrected entry: Given that all retail stores are closed on Thanksgiving, there's no possible way for them to each win 15 stars to have the tie breaker.
Correction: Retail stores closed on Thanksgiving day...right. Maybe 5-10 years ago. Many major chains are now open on Thanksgiving day with bigger discounts than "Black Friday".
26th Jan 2008
Sunshine (2007)
Corrected entry: In order for a star to die, it must first go through a "Red Giant" stage, after which it would either become a dwarf star or implode, thereby creating a black hole. Nevertheless, Earth would be destroyed in the Red Giant stage because the stars growth would envelop the planet.
Correction: The trivia section of imdb.com says the sun is not dying "in the normal sense". It is a bit wordy: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/trivia.
15th Jan 2008
The Jungle Book (1967)
Corrected entry: Some of the monkeys have prehensile tails. No Old World monkeys possess this trait, only some species of New World monkeys.
Correction: And no monkeys, in our universe, can speak like they do in this cartoon universe.
31st Dec 2007
Forrest Gump (1994)
Corrected entry: Shouldn't Forrest be an officer? He graduated college then went into the army: shouldn't he be an officer then, not an enlisted person?
Correction: College doesn't guarantee you a commission into the Army, there are many factors including tests and interviews that could have easily disqualified him, as well as the fact he could have simply declined the position.
10th May 2003
The Last Castle (2001)
Corrected entry: When Aguilar is shot, he is hit on the right side of his head, but when they show his body, there is blood on his left temple.
Correction: From the POV of the guard, you see the body fall into the bulldozer's blade. The head injury to the left temple could be from hitting the blade.
19th Nov 2007
Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964)
Corrected entry: When Mars' two moons are shown in the scene after he eats the cooked sausages, they are both shown as spheres like our own moon, a "best guess" by the background painter. We now know from NASA photos that they are actually both jagged and irregular shaped moons.
Correction: Mariner 9 took the first close up shots of Mars' moons in 1971. The movie was made in 1964 using the best available data at the time; as such, this cannot be considered a mistake, unless you're seriously suggesting that they should have gone back, years later, and reshot the relevant scenes to take the new data into account.
5th Nov 2007
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Corrected entry: When the beast changes back into a human at the end, he looks the exact same as in the painting of himself that he destroyed; yet he was meant to have been cursed for 10 years or so, according to Lumiere. His appearance would have changed somewhat in that time.
Correction: You are dealing with a magical curse. You cannot predict\prove what would happen when the curse is lifted because it is fantasy.
5th Nov 2007
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Corrected entry: The beast is about Belle's age, maybe only a little older; yet in the opening scene where we see him be cursed, he is the same age as he is throughout the rest of the film, 10 years after he had the curse placed on him; in that opening scene telling of his misfortune, he should have been a young boy, not a man.
Correction: You are dealing with a magical curse. You cannot predict\prove what would happen when the curse is lifted because it is fantasy.
20th Oct 2007
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Corrected entry: If it is indeed a GPS receiver used by the police to track the couple's location and movement in the interior of The Louvre, the device would not have functioned indoors as GPS needs a line of sight to the sky. The more plausible part is when Sophie later puts the device in a bar of soap and tossed it out the window onto a passing truck, then it would receive satellite signals that the police would track it moving away. I would have agreed with the indoor scene if the device was a radio beacon, but if I remember right, even the book said it was a GPS.
Correction: There are GPS devices that will lead you right to the door you need in office buildings. Satellite radio works indoors too.
11th Sep 2007
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Corrected entry: Throughout the series of the Hannibal Lecter films, his name remains the same. He is a wanted man. He would have been arrested and questioned at the very least between the end of 'Hannibal Rising' and the beginning of 'Red Dragon'. This would probably have convicted him. The 1950's police may have had limited technology but they would have his name at least on record. Even if the 1950's police thought Hannibal had been killed in the explosion in 'Hannibal Rising', they would have to assume he was still alive when they couldn't find his body (or body parts for that matter). I guess its a bit like the London serial killer 'Jack the Ripper' who was killing his victims a lot earlier than Hannibal was. They had hardly any technology, no evidence and no idea who he was, but I'm sure that if someone was calling himself 'Jack the Ripper' 20-30 years later, he would be 'brought in for questioning.
Correction: How would they track down his name? Get on the internet? Access the Interpol network? This all would have had to be done by hand, either over the phone or in person. But it would still entail a hand search of some old records. World War 2 ended in 1945 and it has taken over 40 years to track down and prosecute some of the Nazi prison guards just because the information is so hard to follow. And just how common is the name Hannibal Lecter? And he was presumed dead at the end of this movie. Police do not keep open files on dead suspects.
5th Sep 2007
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Corrected entry: How is it that Shinzon (Picard's clone), has the same accent? Accents are learned environmentally, and are not genetic. It's stated that Shinzon was shipped off at an early age when the plans to replace Picard were scrapped. So where did he learn the accent?
Correction: In order to replace Picard, he would have to educated like Picard. Whatever means were used to educate the clone could have included the accent (if you are beaming thoughts into someone's head, it shouldn't be to hard to adjust the accent on that inner voice they hear).
8th Aug 2007
Die Hard (1988)
Corrected entry: The electromagnet locking down the vault could not have simply deactivated if the power was cut. The steel used in the construction of the vault would have developed into a permanent magnet (remanence) thus preventing the vault from being opened. Removing this remanent magnetism is very difficult, one of the simpler ways is to heat the material to its curie point, which around 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius) in 9.0% carbon steel, the terrorists did not do this or any other method to remove the remanent magnetism.
Correction: If the electromagnetic lock instantly turned the steel vault into a permanent magnet, then it would render the lock and the vault useless. No one could ever enter once the lock was activated. Electromagnetic locks are used in many high security areas and that is how they work: Turn off the power to the magnet and the door opens.
18th Aug 2007
The Monster Squad (1987)
Corrected entry: The opening scenes with Van Helsing take place 100 years before the story begins, so 1887. The events of Dracula are accepted as having occurred in 1897. So either Van Helsing didn't get sucked into the portal, took part in the book's events, and hung around for 90 more years to pull Dracula into the vortex at the end of the film (unlikely). OR he did get sucked into the vortex, and came back out to drag Dracula in, but that means he could not have taken part in Bram Stoker's novel.
Correction: A snake's skin is made of scales. http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Exhibit/Topics/snake_skin.cfm.
Rlvlk