Movies We've Just Watched discussion
Favorite Movie Goof
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Meridee
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May 21, 2008 12:28PM
My very favorite movie goof is in the Wizard of Oz when Glinda the Good Witch is kissing Dorothy goodbye and she whacks herself in the crown with her wand. She sets all the little attachments jangling and swaying.
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I am the world's worst about noticing goofs. But the ones I tend to notice are poofier hair-dos on women and a glass/plate that goes from full to empty to full again.I get so distracted when a scene uses more blood/food/liquid than would normally be possible.
For example: I was watching Baby Boom the other day and there's a scene where the baby throws spaghetti on the couple and the kitchen walls. What was splattered everywhere would fill a huge pot, but I'm sure what was on the little girl's plate is a small amount of spaghetti.
Or the finger-cutting scene in The Piano. A lot of blood squirts on the girl's dress, much more than would be projected from the mother's finger at such a distance. You can actually tell that someone had some red corn syrup in a mustard bottle and started squirting it when qued to do so.
I have two big favorites. One in in the original Star Wars when the storm troopers break into the control room, the storm trooper on the right hits his head on the door frame! And you can hear a sound! My other one is in Raider's of the Lost Ark before the end one of the Nazi officers eats a bug and just continues in the scene! I think it is a fly that flies into his mouth and never comes out! yuck!
I like the one in North by Northwest, by Alfred Hitchcok. In the cafeteria scene toward the end, when Eva Marie Saint pretends to shoot Cary Grant, a kid in the shot holds his hands over his ears before the gun is fired.
In Nightmare on Elm Street (#2) when the girl is driving a convertible, the wind is blowing her hair the wrong way. In the first one, Nancy's grey spot was on her left & in Dream Warriors it was on the right (or vice versa). There are other Nightmare ones I noticed that last time I watched it, but now I can't remember. Not a movie, but in the season finale of Supernatural, Ruby had bloody teeth one minute & clean pearly whites the next - with nary a sink or cup of water in sight.
I just remembered one from The Departed. When the police captain (Martin Sheen?) is thrown off the roof, blood splatters on the pavement before his body hits. We got a good laugh out of that one. Kept rewinding it. At least I think it's a goof. Sometimes we rewind and we thought we saw something we didn't.This isn't a movie, but in a Linkin Park video where cops are beating a crowd with batons, you can actually see the soft baton bending when it strikes a person. I recently saw a movie where this happens but I can't remember what it was.
Tressa - I always thought that Baby Boom scene was stupid. As if a baby could hurl that much spagetti at that force at someone. Dumb!In Commando, there is a car chase scene with a a bad guy in yellow porsche. The car wrecks and its on it's side. They show it again and its right side up!
Rob - Dr. Butcher M.D. - really? I busted out laughing at this title.
In "My best friend's Wedding" there is a scene in a hotel where Julia Roberts is talking to the room service guy.I dont remember the contex of the scene too much, Julia is having a mini crisis, she has been smoking and she lies down facing up towards the camera. We see her with a HUGE piece of cigarette ash on her hair, cut way to the room service guy, back to Julia and no ash, back to room service guy, back to Julia with ash on her hair.......etc etc etc....you would have thought the editor would have cought that.
The Wizard of Oz is full of little quirks too.
Take a look at Dorthy's hair length from scene to scene. On the farm is reaches her shoulders, when she lands in Oz it's down to her chest, in a few scenes it almost reaches her waist.
In "Old Gringo" Jane Fonda is on a wagon carrying the body of Gregory Peck, she is crossing the river (Rio Grande) from Mexico to the US. (I'm a geography as well as movie nerd) The river is flowing the wrong way....right to left instead of left to right or West to East.
In the Omega Man (70's version of I am Legend) Charlton Heston is the only man alive in Los Angeles, yet in a few scenes we can clearly see trafic moving on the freeways.
Another typical movie mistake happens with the US flag. Until 1958 the US flag had 48 stars, yet in many movies set in the early-middle 20th century they will fly a modern flag with 50 stars.
I've noticed Dorothy's braids grow and shrink throught her journey to Oz. In the Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald's hair is different in almost every scene. Apparantly she restyles her hair every 5 minutes during detention.
My Best Friend's Wedding - I think I've seen the ash in Julia Roberts hair now that I think about it. I've not seen that movie in a couple years.I remember the hype about the ghost in Three Men and a Baby poster. I thought it was cardboard cut out of Ted Danson that was behind the curtain?
I'll have to watch more close to the Wizard of Oz next time I see it. I've never heard about the suicidal little Oompa Loompa--oops, Munchkin.
In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett wakes up cheerful and refreshed, she opens her eyes, stretches and yawns with a happy satisfied look on her face. (Presumedly she and Rhett have had a glorious night of love making) This follows the famous scene where Rhett grabs her in his arms and carries her up the steps....Ive always been botherd by the silver tray full of food next to Scarlet on the bed. Did Rhett bring it up as an apology?, did he think she needed to replenish her energy after a night of passion? Did Mammie bring it up and seeing Scarlett exhausted, leave the try on the bed? Perhaps Melanie left the try full of food?
Somehow it doesnt really make sense to leave a try full of food on a bed with someone sleeping in it.
In White Christmas, the first dance number between Danny Kaye and Vera Allen, Vera trips over Danny's foot toward the end of it and just keeps going. In Spaceballs Barf's eyespot is a different shape in nearly every scene.
I've never noticed it, but there's a story about Young Frankenstein, that Zero Mostel changed the position of his hunchback hump in nearly every scene and Mel Brooks didn't notice until filming was half done. He didn't care enough to go back and refilm it.
And this is a little-known movie no one's probably ever heard of, Mr. North. My mom worked in the wardrobe department of this film. In the courtroom scene David Warner's lapels change sizes. The wardrobe people were watching horrified that one lapel was obviously much wider than the other but the director was on a tight schedule and didn't want to stop filming long enough to fix it until the lunch break. It just goes to show that even a movie with super smart people working in it (my mom's one of the greatest continuity-spotters of all time), stuff happens.
In Spaceballs Barf's eyespot is a different shape in nearly every scene. I've never noticed it, but there's a story about Young Frankenstein, that Zero Mostel changed the position of his hunchback hump in nearly every scene and Mel Brooks didn't notice until filming was half done. He didn't care enough to go back and refilm it.
This sounds like something Brooks would do for a laugh.
That's funny about the tray of food on Scarlett's bed. What if she tossed and turned and the food was slung all over the bedding? But, come on, this is the movies where everyone wakes up with perfect makeup and hair. And they sleep like corpses on their backs all night long.
I can't stand waste and am always perturbed when movie moms make a grand slam breakfast of eggs, toast, waffles, cereal, milk, coffe, and juice, and the dad and kids kiss her on the cheek and rush out the door while grabbing a banana. Argh!
Terminator 2 has a few funnies. The one scene i like wes Arnold breaks out Sarah from the hospital. They run into the T1000 (Robert Patrick) When they run onto the elevator and the T1000 run to it, Arnold shoots his shotgun into his face. Before the shot is fired, the camera shows his head split from behind. That is always funny. All the visible strings in the opening of Face Off are great too
It has been a long time since I saw youg frankenstine but dosent the Doctor notice and sorta mention the fact that the hump has moved?
From imdb.com:The shifting hump on Igor's back was an ad-libbed gag of Marty Feldman's. He had surreptitiously been shifting the hump back and forth for several days when cast members finally noticed. It was then added to the script.
Click to see more info
I just love that! thanks Rob and April :) It is so fun when you start talking abut a movie that you have not seen for a while. It makes you stop and think how long ago was that and even sometimes did I see that?
In Pylon, adapted from a Faulkner novel, Troy Donahue gets blown out of the cockpit of a plane. Or does his dummy stand in, stuntman.So obvious there.Other than that, in the flic DEATH ON THE NILE, one of the opening scenes begins with two of the characters upstairs in an attic. There is a full length viewing mirror, and there reflected in it is one of the production assistants kneeling on the floor.
In FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, there is a scene in which Julie Christie is dancing. The camera cuts to her partner, then back to her. The cameraman put two different color filters over the camera and there is a film shift from red to blue.
But then for those of us visual people the ultimate was the photo goof in Macy`s catalog number 19. Or was it 21? The model`s testes are hanging out of his swimsuit.They had to make a mad scramble to call back all those catalogs.
My favorite anachronism: in GONE WITH THE WIND, during a daylight outdoor scene of mass panic in Atlanta, in one of the many gas streetlamps can be seen a lightbulb.
My favorite will always be the first one I ever noticed: in the 1976 film Massacre at Central High (still a favorite of mine!), which I saw for the first time in '79 or '80, there's a visible boom mike in a scene about halfway through. Despite being as nitpicky as I generally am about cinematography and sound and that sort of thing, I generally don't pick up on those sorts of goofs unless they're really blatant. Besides, why bother when I have IMDB to do it for me? heh.
I like the boom mike shadows a lot. You can see some really blatant ones in GRAND HOTEL and THE MALTESE FALCON.
I don't normally pick up on gaffes. But I remember seeing 9 TO 5 on television, and the boom mike dropped into the shot not once, but like a 1/2 dozen times. It got so bad that my friend and I lost track of the movie and just started looking for the boom. This one would only be recognizable to those who live where I do, but...in TORTILLA FLAT (at least I think that's which film it is), the characters get off a train in "Beaumont, Texas". There's nothing but desert and rocks and ghost town. Well, I have news for those people. I grew up around Beaumont and we're nowhere NEAR the desert. Beaumont is part marshland, part pine forests and flat as a dinner plate. Oh and it's a thriving city, and was back in the 40s as well. A obvious case of lack of research. Reminds me also of a TV show set in Galveston, and the intro had mountains in the background. MOUNTAINS! On the Texas Gulf Coast. The closest mountains to Galveston are about 800 miles away.
^ In the Tv show Heros, when it shows The Burnt Toast Cafe it clearly states that it is in Midland, Texas HA I live in Midland and we don't have that landscapeI also love it in The Office, whenever they go up to the roof you can clearly see that the surounding landscape is Californian hills
CindyThose kind of goofs happen all the time. In MYSTIC PIZZA, the pizza parlour is actually the STONINGTON PIZZA, 7 miles away. In the scene where one of Julia Roberts goes to the fishing docks to meet with her lobsterman boyfriend, the boat actually takes off upstream on the Mystic River. Sorry, lobsters are strictly saltwater critters.
And as for the actual downtown Mystic, you get to see that for all of 1.5 seconds of a single throwaway scene.
And for those of you who are OUR GANG enthusiasts, our wifekiller in real life would do a running chase scene in his early 80`s Boston TV detective role that started at the Boston Gardens and ended up 3 miles away. I have yet to meet a police office sprint 3 miles at top speed, or anyone else for that matter.
A guy I used to work with lived for quite a while in Vegas, and one day we happened to start talking about this very subject, and specifically Con Air. He said in order for the plane to crash into the buildings like it did in the movie, it would have had to bounce all over Vegas. They were not 1) any where near that order, and 2) most were not even on the Vegas Strip.
In the 1964 sappy soap opera "The Sand Piper" Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, there is a scene in which Liz is hitchhiking from Big Sur up to Monterey.However in the movie she is clearly seen with the ocean to her left, which would mean she was actually hitchhiking South instead of North.
I dont really mind these kind of geographic goofs, I think they are done because unless you live in the area, most people will never know the difference. I consider a goof to be something that clearly sticks out that should not be there like dolly tracks, boom mikes, discontinuity of scenes where the character's clothes are different from shot to shot.
In the sword and sandals epics of the 50's, I always enjoy looking at all the Roman soldiers or slaves who forgot to remove their watches or sneakers.
this sort of scenic faux pas happens a lot. i see car chases all the time in LA, for example - one minute they are driving down sunset, the next they're in the valley, the next shot they're driving through the LA river - no way you can get there from here kind of bad continuity.
Movies shot in NYC do the same thing, botching the geography like crazy. The only one that really tries to get it right is the original TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, interestingly.
