Pop Culture

14 Replies to “Pop Culture”

1. The commenter on the trailer is making too much hay out of this. The Iliad (and Odyssey) was first transcribed probably some time in the sixth century B.C., about 1,500 years earlier than the medieval manuscript that this commenter thinks is its first transcription (which he wrongly calls an “edition”). The book which the guy gives to JLo is probably intended to be a first edition of that particular translation of the Iliad (of which there are very many). Translations of literary works have first editions, they’re called first editions, and they can be worth a lot of money.
   I’m not trying to make excuses for the makers of a movie which is, no doubt, a piece of garbage, but the guy who put the video together has simply made himself look foolish while trying to look clever.

2. Stuff like that drives me NUTS. Why does every movie that requires a scene set in a manufacturing facility require that sparks of a type that can only come from a cutting torch be used to indicate welding? Worse, there would be no welding of any sort occurring on the outer parts of a near-finished aero-space project. (I’m lookin’ at you, Interstellar.) Or the obligatory drive west across that always goes through Vegas, even though the jog up from I-40 is almost two hours out of the way (Rain Man). How many movie trips from LA to Vegas have involved a two-lane highway, when I-15 is a straight shot. It never ceases to astound me how geographically challenged the producers of movies can be, especially when some geographical errors are so needless. Two minutes with a road atlas and problem solved.

3. I work in software engineering and enterprise IT with a side specialization in security.
   I stopped being offended by movies getting computers wrong decades ago because the fact is that in real life library science, large scale manufacturing, land navigation and computer networking are staggeringly dull and largely incomprehensible to people who don’t work in those fields. If you want rigorous accuracy, watch a documentary. Filmmakers have to get ideas across (like “this manufacturing facility is busily Making a Thing and and this is Very Dramatic”) to an audience mostly composed of people ignorant of the subject in a few seconds of screen time. They use visual shorthand – tropes – to do this. Also, nine times out of ten a thing on screen isn’t that thing, it’s a metaphor for something else. There’s a whole Mythic Vegas that bears no relation to the real thing that every movie uses. Just because a movie is set in the present doesn’t mean it’s any less fantastic than Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Complaining about that is fundamentally misunderstanding movies.

4. Thanks Dan for clarifying that movies are bull$hit even though it is already a well known fact.
   You make light of it but the problem is many people regard movies as a source of information just slightly less reliable than the MSM – pretty low bar. Oh well, all part and parcel of the intentional dumbing down of society. Makes it easier for the Ruling Class ya know.

5. I know it’s reality, but it gets back to the Stephen King adage on “suspension of disbelief.” Movie special effects have to get better all the time because you want the audience to suspend their disbeleief. This why, for example, Interstellar used scale models for so many effects instead of CGI. Scale models will always look more realistic than CGI. Thus, it makes no sense for a movie like Interstellar to expend so much effort on scale models, yet didn’t take the couple of hours that would have been required to find a way to illustrate a “trope” such as the building of a giant rocket that didn’t look a whole lot like people using cutting torches and disc grinders on the nozzles of a giant rocket.
   Compare the original True Grit to the remake. Ridgway, Colorado was a good stand-in for Fort Smith, Arkansas back in 1970. But, if you want that same movie to get a 2012 audience to suspend their disbelief, you have to find some landscapes that actually look like what eastern Oklahoma would have looked like back in 1885 or 1890. Don’t even get me started on the convoluted trail of Thelma and Louise.

6. “… But, if you want that same movie to get a 2012 audience to suspend their disbelief, you have to find some landscapes that actually look like what eastern Oklahoma would have looked like back in 1885 or 1890…”
   Geez, I don’t know about all this suspending disbelief stuff. Hollywood seems to be able dress up modern girlie men who cant even grow a beard and successfully cast them as WWII soldiers; replete with the silly tones, inflections, and terminology of modern metrosexuals.

7. Are we seeing the same video?

8. I got something completely different out of this. Guy walks into the room and film shows the price of 3 articles of clothing he’s wearing reaching a total of $ 1735.00. He rummages through garage sales and buys her a first edition (heh) book for a buck which captures her heart. The message is both of these people are nuts and the trailer cut off the ad for the mental institution that can help them out, this is Hollywood after all. Glad to help out.

9. Mine shows guy walking into room with JLo in apparently cringe-worthy out-take from some film, offers her a first edition of some translation of the Iliad. Snarky comments then appear on screen.

10. All you eagle eyes out there should re-look at the clip JL at one point has her blouse up on her shoulders and in the next scene it is hanging off her shoulder.

11. At this point, Bill, you’ve descended into Trekkie “but what Captain Picaaaard said in episode 6×08 of TNG totally contradicted what Scotty said in episode 2×14 of TOS” territory. Nobody who doesn’t live in eastern Oklahoma gives a damn, and I’d wager 99% of the people who do live in Oklahoma don;t give a damn either. Movies are about characters, not geography.

12. Back when people had those dumb pet Rocks i thought the whole thing was rediculous and then the idiots with those silly pyrimid hats thinking it would boost their brain power it only proved they were suckers and proving P.T. Barnum was right

13. Spoiler! Jennie’s blouse is on her shoulder in one shot, the next (from behind her back) it is mid arm.

14. Dang, you beat me to it!