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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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    Posted: July 18 2022 at 14:20
I don't know how it is with you, but for me some stupid mistakes can totally ruin a movie. I will give an example.

I absolutely loved the premise of "Shadow of the Vampire", that Max Schreck who plays the vampire in "Nosferatu" really was a vampire. I was really willing to go with that. Then at one point John Malkovich who plays Friedrich Murnau, the director of the movie, used the word "Scheisskopf" during a diatribe. Ouch, this was totally impossible!

"Scheisskopf" is NOT a German expression; it is nothing but a literal translation of "sh*thead". But some expressions can't be translated literally. No German would ever say "Scheisskopf". A German speaker would have said "Scheisskerl", which would literally translate as "sh*tguy" (which of course is not an English expression).

So the character of Murnau was no longer credible in the movie, and thus the whole concept collapsed for me.


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Friede, there is one above all others which really gets under my skin, partly because it was a gaff made by one of my favourite directors, normally known for his attention to detail. Furthermore, the mistake is so glaringly obvious that I cannot fathom how no member of the cast or crew spotted it... unless it was deliberate.. and I simply can't see why?

Bela Tarr: The Man From London: The cafe scene which centres on a game of chess, with the board set with a black square in the bottom right hand corner.... Ermm
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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Jared Jared wrote:

Friede, there is one above all others which really gets under my skin, partly because it was a gaff made by one of my favourite directors, normally known for his attention to detail. Furthermore, the mistake is so glaringly obvious that I cannot fathom how no member of the cast or crew spotted it... unless it was deliberate.. and I simply can't see why?

Bela Tarr: The Man From London: The cafe scene which centres on a game of chess, with the board set with a black square in the bottom right hand corner.... Ermm

I haven't seen this movie yet, but this mistake would ruin it for me too. I used to be a really good chess player; I regularly trained with Romuald Mainka and Eckhard Schmittdiel, who today are chess grandmasters. I was the only woman in the club, by the way. That was at the beginning of the 90s when I was in my early twenties and had my first own flat, where we regularly met to train. I was really thinking of becoming a professional chess player then; Judit Polgár who became a chess grandmaster at age fifteen in 1991 was a huge inspiration for me.

I stopped playing chess and switched to bridge when I met Jean in 1993; I didn't play any chess in almost thirty years.


Edited by BaldFriede - July 18 2022 at 15:15


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In lots of old Turkish movies, ridiculousness galore.

The first that sprang to my mind was a scene where a car was plunging off cliff in a movie. It was a metallic toy car that didn't even have doors! The close shot made it clear, but the actual ludicrous thing was I saw a HUMAN FINGER pushing it! Oh, that means, it wasn't a cliff after all. LOL

Another one was a storm scene. The rain was coming from the horizontal lines and I saw on the edge of the TV screen A HAND HOSING, if for a brief time! LOL

Such unacceptable things were happening in Turkish movies for 3 reasons, I suppose. The first is we are horrible when it comes to "technics". The second is, they were really making puny amounts of money from such films and they had to finish filming hastily so as to make another soon after. And the third is, before the digital age, filming was expensive. I assume that we were importing all the stuff for filmmaking and that should be expensive. So the fewer rolls of film were used, the better.

Edited by Archisorcerus - July 18 2022 at 15:54
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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Jared Jared wrote:

Friede, there is one above all others which really gets under my skin, partly because it was a gaff made by one of my favourite directors, normally known for his attention to detail. Furthermore, the mistake is so glaringly obvious that I cannot fathom how no member of the cast or crew spotted it... unless it was deliberate.. and I simply can't see why?

Bela Tarr: The Man From London: The cafe scene which centres on a game of chess, with the board set with a black square in the bottom right hand corner.... Ermm

By the way: A very common mistake in movies in which professional chess is a major topic is a player getting mated (sometimes even made worse by this player being surprised by this). Any professional chess player would surrender the game several moves before the mate.


Edited by BaldFriede - July 18 2022 at 16:07


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JD View Drop Down
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Well, I guess it's all in how you approach such media offerings.
For me, movies are just one example of a visual entertainment medium. I set my expectations accordingly.
For me it's usually keyboard's, and in some cases any other type of musical instrument playing taking place, even in the background. As a former FOH and studio engineer my visual input is tightly tied to my aural input and when those things don't gel on the screen...I just shake my head.
That being said, I absolutely admire any actor who takes the effort to learn an instrument they are going to be playing in movie/TV presentation. That keeps it real for me. All the other continuity stuff...I'm able to pick much out but just pass it through JD's 'ol "It's Not A Documentry" filter and move on.
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For me it's mostly gear anachronisms in musical biopics, for instance in Jesteś Bogiem, which takes place in the late 90s, there's a ton of newer technology, like mid 2000s TVs, modern microphones, computer programs, et al.
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I put those kind of things under the 'Bad Props" heading. It also includes clothes, cars, watches, etc. etc.
again...Not A Documentary !
But in support of Friede's OP, when characters use 'modern' language or sayings that don't fit the time period or geographical locale, (insert 1 head shake here), then there are the bad accents or no accents at all (think Hunt For Red October).


Edited by JD - July 18 2022 at 16:41
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Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

I don't know how it is with you, but for me some stupid mistakes can totally ruin a movie. I will give an example.

I absolutely loved the premise of "Shadow of the Vampire", that Max Schreck who plays the vampire in "Nosferatu" really was a vampire. I was really willing to go with that. Then at one point John Malkovich who plays Friedrich Murnau, the director of the movie, used the word "Scheisskopf" during a diatribe. Ouch, this was totally impossible!

"Scheisskopf" is NOT a German expression; it is nothing but a literal translation of "sh*thead". But some expressions can't be translated literally. No German would ever say "Scheisskopf". A German speaker would have said "Scheisskerl", which would literally translate as "sh*tguy" (which of course is not an English expression).

So the character of Murnau was no longer credible in the movie, and thus the whole concept collapsed for me.
I don't really let stupid mistakes like that ruin a movie for me, Not even if the mistake was in my own language. A LOT of movies are ruined for me with their plotholes, bad script/directing/acting, implausable characters/character development - or illogical, idiotic out of character behaviour... Sympathetic characters so obviously written in, just so they can kill them off and make you feel things etc...

As a teenager watching crap movies on VHS with friends, I often ruined the movie for everyone else as I couldn't shut up about all the mentioned things*. Still do (but mostly just get up and leave), come to think of it. -But actors can say buttw**k, idiotcrap, sausagehead... in whatever language as long as it's done convincingly. 

*once I remember spotting the trampoline our "hero" was jumping from in some B-movie ninja-flick, but it wasn't much of an experience to ruin (except for loudly trying to ruin it for the rest of the guys in the room).
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Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

I haven't seen this movie yet, but this mistake would ruin it for me too. I used to be a really good chess player; I regularly trained with Romuald Mainka and Eckhard Schmittdiel, who today are chess grandmasters. I was the only woman in the club, by the way. That was at the beginning of the 90s when I was in my early twenties and had my first own flat, where we regularly met to train. I was really thinking of becoming a professional chess player then; Judit Polgár who became a chess grandmaster at age fifteen in 1991 was a huge inspiration for me.

I stopped playing chess and switched to bridge when I met Jean in 1993; I didn't play any chess in almost thirty years.

I was captain of the school chess team for several years and played in several Gloucestershire County Competitions, so although like you, I haven't played chess in over 30 years, this did particularly grate with me. I was actually going to post about the irony of Bela Tarr and Judit both being Hungarian, but thought better of it.

I guess I was so surprised because it's the sort of thing I'd expect from a Hollywood comedy, whereas the films I watch are mostly from auteurs like Tarr who ordinarily pay great attention to detail within screen shots. That said, I don't let such a thing stop me from watching an otherwise great film (although some way off his best).... whereas the cat torture scene in Satantango is something I do have to skip through.. Ouch
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Originally posted by Archisorcerus Archisorcerus wrote:

In lots of old Turkish movies, ridiculousness galore. 

I adore the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan; one of the finest directors working in the world today.

meanwhile, Reha Erdem's 'Times & Winds' is pure poetry

I also find Asli Ozge's 'Men On The Bridge' very moving
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Originally posted by JD JD wrote:

I put those kind of things under the 'Bad Props" heading. It also includes clothes, cars, watches, etc. etc.
again...Not A Documentary !
But in support of Friede's OP, when characters use 'modern' language or sayings that don't fit the time period or geographical locale, (insert 1 head shake here), then there are the bad accents or no accents at all (think Hunt For Red October).


I prefer no accents at all to bad accents... those just pull me out of the immersion completely.
Actually, one of my biggest pet peeves is people talking with phony accents when there's not even a reason for it. The most recent example of this that I came across was a video game (Amnesia: Rebirth) and I wouldn't say it got ruined for me but it still bothered me a lot: the main character is French and most of her lines are either monologue or dialogue with other French speakers, so instead of having her just speak French or just having the actress (who's from the UK, naturally...) speak in her own native language, they had her speak English with an obvious fake French accent, even though in-universe the character is actually supposed to be speaking French.
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I can overlook many flaws in movies and they normally won't bother my enjoyment. My pet peeve seems to be bad science or historical inaccuracies. Admittedly I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I know there are many. Having said that, even these are not enough to stop me from enjoying a movie; only taking a notch down to only a fair/good movie as opposed to a great one.
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Originally posted by progaardvark progaardvark wrote:

I can overlook many flaws in movies and they normally won't bother my enjoyment. My pet peeve seems to be bad science or historical inaccuracies. Admittedly I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I know there are many. Having said that, even these are not enough to stop me from enjoying a movie; only taking a notch down to only a fair/good movie as opposed to a great one.

That would be "Braveheart" then. As this article points out it might just be the most historically inaccurate movie ever:
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Originally posted by Mirakaze Mirakaze wrote:

Originally posted by JD JD wrote:

I put those kind of things under the 'Bad Props" heading. It also includes clothes, cars, watches, etc. etc.
again...Not A Documentary !
But in support of Friede's OP, when characters use 'modern' language or sayings that don't fit the time period or geographical locale, (insert 1 head shake here), then there are the bad accents or no accents at all (think Hunt For Red October).


I prefer no accents at all to bad accents... those just pull me out of the immersion completely.
Actually, one of my biggest pet peeves is people talking with phony accents when there's not even a reason for it. The most recent example of this that I came across was a video game (Amnesia: Rebirth) and I wouldn't say it got ruined for me but it still bothered me a lot: the main character is French and most of her lines are either monologue or dialogue with other French speakers, so instead of having her just speak French or just having the actress (who's from the UK, naturally...) speak in her own native language, they had her speak English with an obvious fake French accent, even though in-universe the character is actually supposed to be speaking French.

This. Absolutely this. All this. This. This. This.

Much of the time there is simply no need for accents. Chernobyl was an awesome tv series that would never have had the impact if the actors attempted SSR accents.

I liked that The Hunt For Red October had no accents. I could be wrong, but I really can’t imagine either Sean Connery or Sam Neill pulling off credible Russian accents. And Russian accents weren’t needed, in a similar way that a French accent wasn’t needed in Mira’s example, or the above Chernobyl example. Where the audience understands that everyone is speaking the same language to each other, we don’t need to hear fake accents to remind us of that. A fake accent can be distracting, or even ruinous. Hunt for Red October still showed that difference between nationalities, by having the American characters speak with an American accent, and the non-American characters speak with a non-American accent.

I’m far more likely to cringe at hearing a bad accent, than question why someone is not speaking with an accent.

I mean, if people are worried about the accuracy of accents, then why does no one question why in, eg Seinfeld or Friends, pretty much no one speaks with a New York accent? There is no one US accent, apart from on tv and in film, where the actors often speak an accepted American blend that has no actual geographic base, unless someone needs to show, eg, that they are from a Southern state (or from Minnesota and North Dakota, if you’re watching Fargo). Similarly, the RP accent of so many English actors is not a particularly real English accent.
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Originally posted by Jared Jared wrote:

Originally posted by Archisorcerus Archisorcerus wrote:

In lots of old Turkish movies, ridiculousness galore. 

I adore the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan; one of the finest directors working in the world today.

meanwhile, Reha Erdem's 'Times & Winds' is pure poetry

I also find Asli Ozge's 'Men On The Bridge' very moving

Cool! I wouldn't deem them as "old Turkish movies" though.
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