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Glaring mistakes in movies, esp. sports films

tarheelinfl

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Nov 5, 2002
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No watches on Roman soldiers!
The Natural:
In the game when Hobbs hits 4 HRS, the PA keeps announcing him batting in the bottom of the inning.
The Knights were at Chicago and would bat in the top of the inning!
Bull Durham:
Not as bad, but all the umpires were old, you don't see many or any old umps in the minors.We have a AA team here and every ump I've seen in 6 years have all been young (early 20s)
 
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The Sting--set in the 20's, but in the late scene in the alley, a Corvette can be seen driving across the lot in the background. Or so I've been told.
 
I don't know if it was a mistake or if the line was not meant to be taken literally...

In Fast Times from Ridgemont High when Mike Damone was giving Rat his dating pep talk and said "whenever possible put on side two of Led Zeppelin IV", they immediately cut to Rat on his date and he's blasting "Kashmir", which is from the Physical Graffiti album, not IV.
 
I don't know if it was a mistake or if the line was not meant to be taken literally...

In Fast Times from Ridgemont High when Mike Damone was giving Rat his dating pep talk and said "whenever possible put on side two of Led Zeppelin IV", they immediately cut to Rat on his date and he's blasting "Kashmir", which is from the Physical Graffiti album, not IV.

I always thought that was intentional to show what a schmuck Rat was.
 
Bull Durham:
Not as bad, but all the umpires were old, you don't see many or any old umps in the minors.We have a AA team here and every ump I've seen in 6 years have all been young (early 20s)
To be fair, Bull Durham was set in the 80s not today. Maybe there were old umpires in the 80s working games.
 
If we are talking all movies, then Menace 2 Society. In the scene where Kane and Dog go into the liquor store, you can see the whole movie crew, camera men etc in the mirrors that run along the top of the wall. Also, after Kane takes the Daytons off the guy in the drive thru, the scene that opens with a close up on the hood of his mustang, you can see the camera and the camera operator clear as day.
 
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I really do my best to watch movies and enjoy them, but sometimes the editing is so awful, that I end up watching for the inconsistencies instead of plot or acting. Like... "hey, he was missing a finger on his left hand, now he's missing one on his right hand?"
 
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In The Goodbye Girl, there's a scene where a drunk Dreyfuss leans out a window, knocking over a table in the process. When he comes back into the room, the table is back up with flowers and stuff on top of it.
 
"In Fast Times from Ridgemont High when Mike Damone was giving Rat his dating pep talk and said "whenever possible put on side two of Led Zeppelin IV", they immediately cut to Rat on his date and he's blasting "Kashmir", which is from the Physical Graffiti album, not IV."

Yeah that was done on purpose, the movie is based on the experience of Cameron Crowe who is one of the leading Zeppelin experts on the planet.
 
I remember a movie with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, not a sports movie and the name escapes me but it's set in the 80's and pitt's character is wearing a blue padres hat that wasn't part of their uniform until the 90's.
 
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In Necessary Roughness, there's one scene where Kathy Ireland has to shower after the rest of the players. When she's finished she comes out wrapped in a towel and starts getting dressed, but in the next scene she's dropped her towel and is slowly walking towards the camera.
 
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It sounds like you are going for continuity errors, and this isn't one, it's more of a deliberate mistake. But it's one of the most egregious I know of, and it actually makes me angry.

In the movie "Cinderella Man", Russell Crowe's (Jim Braddock's) foe is Max Baer. In the movie, Baer is depicted as a fierce, scary, and cruel fighter and horrible person. He is depicted as being remorseless for having killed two men in the ring.

Baer was a vicious puncher, but that was not at all his personality or nature. He was basically known as a "clown prince" of boxing. One of the two men the movie claims he killed in the ring, Eernie Schaaf, actually fought four more times before dying after a bout with Primo Carnera. While boxing historians have speculated that the beating Baer gave him several fights prior could have contributed to his death, that's totally unproven and unfair to hang on him in the movie.

As for the first guy, Frankie Campbell, that actually did die after a bout with Baer, Baer was wracked with guilt and provided the family of the fallen fighter with money.

Many people say that Baer fought with a fair bit of ambivalence after the death that led to him clowning more than attacking in the Braddock fight and others. He lost four of his next six fights after killing that man in the ring before finally getting his mojo back.

He was also a great Jewish sports hero that inspired millions at a very important time, including when he destroyed Hiter favorite Max Schmeling in 1933 in front of 60k in Yankee Stadium, wearing a Star of David on his trunks. Years before Joe Louis destroyed Schmeling more famously.

In other words, that movie turned a fun, sensitive, heroic, and well-liked guy into an absurd Hollywood villain for no really good reason. It's totally unfair, as Baer was a real person, with his own story, not to mention living family members. I find it totally egregious and unforgivable.

And it's not like we know NOW that Baer was a good guy. We've always known him as a good guy, the movie literally changed everything we knew about Baer. If they were so insistent on having a fake villain, they should have changed the name to a fictional heavyweight, instead of besmirching a real person.

From a profile written decades before Cinderella Man:

"Max hated fighting," says Mary Ellen Baer, his widow. "How he ever hit anybody, I'll never know. He wouldn't even strike his own children. All he wanted to do was entertain people. I can't imagine a person as soft as he was becoming champion of the world. He was so kind. He had no mean streak at all."

"He was one lovable bastard," says Tom Gallery, who promoted some of Baer's fights in the Los Angeles Olympic in the early '30s. "He's the last person you'd ever expect to be a fighter. Why, he'd be clowning around 10 minutes before a fight. But, oh, what he could have been."

"It is incongruous that such a gentle, ingratiating man should have been a fighter," says Alan Ward, former sports editor of the Oakland Tribune, who was on the boxing beat at the start of Baer's career in the San Francisco Bay Area. "I remember when he was training for an important fight up at Frank Globin's resort at Lake Tahoe. My God, now that I think about it, it might even have been the early part of his training for Carnera. Anyway, he did about three weeks of pretty tough work. He had his brother Buddy with him and his trainer, Mike Cantwell. Max was actually working hard. This was for the championship, mind you. Then one night the phone in my room rang and it was Max. 'Let's go to Reno,' he says. I protested, but after all, it wasn't too far and I was a newspaperman, so I said O.K. Well, we hit some spots. Max wasn't much of a drinker, but he liked the atmosphere in the clubs. Word got out that he was in town, so he had an audience wherever he went. All night long he entertained, dancing and singing. At daybreak he was leading the band at one of the all-night places—I believe it might have been a brothel. All this while training for a big fight. When we got back to Globin's, there like the portrait of doom stood his trainer, Cantwell. Max went out and did his roadwork without saying a word."
 
I remember a movie with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, not a sports movie and the name escapes me but it's set in the 80's and pitt's character is wearing a blue padres hat that wasn't part of their uniform until the 90's.

That movie is set in the early 90s, when the hat is first being worn.
 
One that got me was re-watching the original Vacation, at the beginning they are buying the family truckster, in Chicago, and you can see huge palm trees all in the background of the shot, not to mention huge mountains. Not sure they are in the suburbs of Chicago.
 
One that got me was re-watching the original Vacation, at the beginning they are buying the family truckster, in Chicago, and you can see huge palm trees all in the background of the shot, not to mention huge mountains. Not sure they are in the suburbs of Chicago.

That's about as likely as the mountains in the background during "I Dream of Jeanie" episodes.

Last time I was in Cocoa Beach it was flat as a pancake.
 
Being a musician, I really hate when someone is supposed to be playing guitar or anything else and it's obvious they don't know a lick about it. I don't thin kit would be too hard to teach somebody a couple guitar chords to make it look more realistic.

Or somebody who is supposed to be a great athlete but you can tell is terrible. These aren't really errors per se but things that drive me crazy.
 
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In Inception...... good God do you LR old timers remember that thread from many years ago after it was released. So, did we ever find out that the totem, at the end, will stop spinning?


Not a movie, but I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie-- to this day I don't know what the hell happened to the youngest daughter (Carrie). It's almost like they just wrote her out of the script, never mentioning her or what happened to her.
 
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That's about as likely as the mountains in the background during "I Dream of Jeanie" episodes.

Last time I was in Cocoa Beach it was flat as a pancake.

Hell Dukes of Hazard was shot outside of LA.
All the outside shots from The Office are SoCal too. When they're driving around "Scranton" and you can see Mt Baldy...
 
It sounds like you are going for continuity errors, and this isn't one, it's more of a deliberate mistake. But it's one of the most egregious I know of, and it actually makes me angry.

In the movie "Cinderella Man", Russell Crowe's (Jim Braddock's) foe is Max Baer. In the movie, Baer is depicted as a fierce, scary, and cruel fighter and horrible person. He is depicted as being remorseless for having killed two men in the ring.

Baer was a vicious puncher, but that was not at all his personality or nature. He was basically known as a "clown prince" of boxing. One of the two men the movie claims he killed in the ring, Eernie Schaaf, actually fought four more times before dying after a bout with Primo Carnera. While boxing historians have speculated that the beating Baer gave him several fights prior could have contributed to his death, that's totally unproven and unfair to hang on him in the movie.

As for the first guy, Frankie Campbell, that actually did die after a bout with Baer, Baer was wracked with guilt and provided the family of the fallen fighter with money.

Many people say that Baer fought with a fair bit of ambivalence after the death that led to him clowning more than attacking in the Braddock fight and others. He lost four of his next six fights after killing that man in the ring before finally getting his mojo back.

He was also a great Jewish sports hero that inspired millions at a very important time, including when he destroyed Hiter favorite Max Schmeling in 1933 in front of 60k in Yankee Stadium, wearing a Star of David on his trunks. Years before Joe Louis destroyed Schmeling more famously.

In other words, that movie turned a fun, sensitive, heroic, and well-liked guy into an absurd Hollywood villain for no really good reason. It's totally unfair, as Baer was a real person, with his own story, not to mention living family members. I find it totally egregious and unforgivable.

And it's not like we know NOW that Baer was a good guy. We've always known him as a good guy, the movie literally changed everything we knew about Baer. If they were so insistent on having a fake villain, they should have changed the name to a fictional heavyweight, instead of besmirching a real person.

From a profile written decades before Cinderella Man:

"Max hated fighting," says Mary Ellen Baer, his widow. "How he ever hit anybody, I'll never know. He wouldn't even strike his own children. All he wanted to do was entertain people. I can't imagine a person as soft as he was becoming champion of the world. He was so kind. He had no mean streak at all."

"He was one lovable bastard," says Tom Gallery, who promoted some of Baer's fights in the Los Angeles Olympic in the early '30s. "He's the last person you'd ever expect to be a fighter. Why, he'd be clowning around 10 minutes before a fight. But, oh, what he could have been."

"It is incongruous that such a gentle, ingratiating man should have been a fighter," says Alan Ward, former sports editor of the Oakland Tribune, who was on the boxing beat at the start of Baer's career in the San Francisco Bay Area. "I remember when he was training for an important fight up at Frank Globin's resort at Lake Tahoe. My God, now that I think about it, it might even have been the early part of his training for Carnera. Anyway, he did about three weeks of pretty tough work. He had his brother Buddy with him and his trainer, Mike Cantwell. Max was actually working hard. This was for the championship, mind you. Then one night the phone in my room rang and it was Max. 'Let's go to Reno,' he says. I protested, but after all, it wasn't too far and I was a newspaperman, so I said O.K. Well, we hit some spots. Max wasn't much of a drinker, but he liked the atmosphere in the clubs. Word got out that he was in town, so he had an audience wherever he went. All night long he entertained, dancing and singing. At daybreak he was leading the band at one of the all-night places—I believe it might have been a brothel. All this while training for a big fight. When we got back to Globin's, there like the portrait of doom stood his trainer, Cantwell. Max went out and did his roadwork without saying a word."
Similar criticisms were leveled at another boxing-related movie, "Hurricane". I remember some of his former opponents were not too happy the way their matches were portrayed in the film. The filmmakers took a lot of liberties with the truth to make Carter more sympathetic. The fight sequences implied he dominated guys only to be cheated by unscrupulous fixers of his rightful wins. In reality, he wasn't that good and many of those fights were lopsided losses to guys who were made to look like bums in the movie. Bob Dylan's "He coulda been champion of the world" line was a bunch of hooey.
 
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Similar criticisms were leveled at another boxing-related movie, "Hurricane". I remember some of his former opponents were not too happy the way their matches were portrayed in the film. The filmmakers took a lot of liberties with the truth to make Carter more sympathetic. The fight sequences implied he dominated guys only to be cheated by unscrupulous fixers of his rightful wins. In reality, he wasn't that good and many of those fights were lopsided losses to guys who were made to look like bums in the movie. Bob Dylan's "He coulda been champion of the world" line was a bunch of hooey.

Yeah, I almost mentioned that as well, but I thought I went full-Tribe enough as it is. You're exactly right. If I remember Joey Giardello either sued or threatened to sue the filmmakers for implying that Carter dominated him in their fight LOL.

Of course, that's possibly secondary to the fact that Carter was actually guilty and murdered those people.
 
Not a movie, but I've seen mistakes in a couple of MASH episodes.
In one there are several books on a table, and one is a copy of JAWS!
In another you see a Spider Man comic book.
 
In Pride (the movie about the black kids picking up swimming in Philly), they have the actors dive into the water and take a few strokes (they're awful at actually swimming), then the camera switches views and suddenly the swimmers are doing perfect technique (it was Cullen Jones, black USA swimmer who's an Olympic gold medalist, being a "stunt double"), then they switch camera views again for the last few strokes before the end of the lap and it's back to the actors' own swimming abilities. That was cringe-worthy to see as someone with a swimming background.
 
Commando lol. Watch at the end when Ahnold pushes the little yellow Porsche from off its side. Drivers side all banged up, then watch when they drive away, magically fixed.

 
If we are talking all movies, then Menace 2 Society. In the scene where Kane and Dog go into the liquor store, you can see the whole movie crew, camera men etc in the mirrors that run along the top of the wall. Also, after Kane takes the Daytons off the guy in the drive thru, the scene that opens with a close up on the hood of his mustang, you can see the camera and the camera operator clear as day.
I saw that movie multiple times. I would venture to say only a minority of LR posters have seen it.
 
"In Fast Times from Ridgemont High when Mike Damone was giving Rat his dating pep talk and said "whenever possible put on side two of Led Zeppelin IV", they immediately cut to Rat on his date and he's blasting "Kashmir", which is from the Physical Graffiti album, not IV."

Yeah that was done on purpose, the movie is based on the experience of Cameron Crowe who is one of the leading Zeppelin experts on the planet.
This link has some interesting background on that scene, and why "Kashmir" was used. Seems it wasn't intentional to use the wrong song, but it was the only Zeppelin song the band allowed him to use so the filmmakers just went with it:

http://legendsrevealed.com/entertai...ont-high-even-though-it-didnt-fit-the-script/
 
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