by
nellynexus
@ Tuesday, Jun. 10, 2008 - 12:21:32
There are so many and since I am meant to be revising I will have to complete this potentially lenghtly blog later but I have just read one of the best rants ever!!! Its associted to film for one, and picks on the little things which is always funny!!! I will copy and paste for your convenience - but when you realise what great, funny and intelligent people read empire (like me and the author of the side splittingly truthful blog below) you will take out a subscription ( and if your quick you will get a Clint Eastwood DVD Collection which I would't mind owning but hey when you're subscriber you don't mind!).
"Today’s whinge is brought to you in association with The Truth. The Truth (note the capitals) is a commodity in short supply both on screen and off these days but it’s the former that’s currently stuck in my craw. You see, when I sit down in that darkened auditorium to watch a movie, whether I acknowledge it or not I'm entering into a tacit agreement with the filmmaker. They agree to dazzle me with glorious sights of awe and wonder (or drab mediocrity, depending on the choice of film) and in exchange I agree to suspend my cynical disbelief and refrain from pointing out the obvious factual deviations – that, for example, there’s no such thing as a giant sea creature, let alone ones with the wherewithal to single out and vandalise major tourist attractions. Generally speaking this is an arrangement that works quite well. There are, however, moments when this glorious symbiosis breaks down entirely and one of the parties (most often me) gets so worked out that they try to burn the entire cinema down around them using only the power of their indignation.
Allow me to me clarify: I’m not talking about times when a character goes back in time or when an obvious hottie is supposed to come across as ugly just because she’s wearing glasses and a pair of dungarees. No, what really makes me want to hurl dead animals at people is when they take liberties with the little things.
They’re only details, I know, but they’re what grounds a film with the audience, what allows us to connect with events on screen. We all know there’s no such thing as zombie strippers but we can accept (and enjoy) their appearance in a film as long as you don’t also try to tell us that a circle is square or that Pepsi tastes like Coke. The worst examples of this (and most likely to prompt a killing spree from geeks such as myself) are those involving technology. I can only assume that no Hollywood writer has ever used a computer, let alone taken time to find out what they are and how they work. It’s lazy writing at its most unforgivable (something I recognise) and needs to stop. Examples of this most egregious of crimes are legion but here are a few of the most upsetting off the top of my head:
1. Unspeakably grainy VHS footage of that looks like it was taken on a dark night, through thick fog, possibly from another planet with Vaseline smeared on the lens is miraculously enhanced to give a high resolution, crystal clear image of the subject. What devilry is this? Where is this extra detail coming from? Anyone who’s tried to increase the resolution of a tiny picture will know that the result most often looks like some kind of impressionist work of art. In movies, though, it lets you read number plates from 8 miles away and identify a hidden witness by reconstructing a reflection of their crotch on the side of a crisp packet. Utter bloody nonsense.
2. If we in the office are still to find a way to make Macs and PCs play nicely without splurging weird characters all over the place, how exactly are we to believe that they can happily interface with alien technology? In Independence Day Jeff Goldblum not only purports to hook an iBook up to an alien mothership but writes a virus on it that brings down the whole alien fleet. Madness! Even assuming the ship had a free network port - or some kind of unsecured xeno wi-fi - and their entire technology was actually built on Apple software, you think they don’t have alien firewalls? Or anti-virus software? If Dr Norton can come up with the concept, you’d think a galaxy-conquering super race would be equally on the ball.
3. The Internet in general. Where to even start? Well, we could begin with Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise manages to get real-time streaming video in full screen resolution using Netscape 3.0! Failing that why not look at The Net, a film entirely about the Internet but with no understanding of what it is or how it works. Click a symbol? In the corner of a website? Oh please. It’s called a link and the worst it can do is download unwanted malware or send you to some pop-up-infested porn site.
And while we’re kicking The Net, what’s with all that ‘we’ll delete every record you ever existed’ rubbish? If it takes the government six months to realise you’ve paid off your student loan, do we really believe they’re going to notice if someone deletes your birth certificate? The home office can only dream of that level of efficiency.
4. Hacking. Cinematically, this practice is portrayed as a gauntlet of tricksy countermeasures that need to be disarmed on the fly, virtual doors that need to be opened and weird graphical interfaces that draw you into a test of reflexes and nerve. Not, in fact, the reality of: write script, run script, go and play World of Warcraft.
I know, I know, all of this is trivial in the grand scheme of things but it just bothers me - small-minded pedant that I am. And I haven’t even dredged up the likes of Terminator 2, when he hacks into ATMs with some bloody card on a wire. Or Jurassic Park, when Lex identifies some ridiculous 3D file manager as ‘Unix’. Or Die Hard 4.0 in its entirety. Press escape and your computer will explode? No it bloody won’t. Though I might."
