I didn't say every little detail like hunt down remote, turn on tv, switch channel, wait for commercial break to be over, wait for hosts to crack a couple corny jokes with each other, and then cover the event.

I just don't like how the hero can turn on the TV and the news anchors are implying that the hero has tuned in right as its breaking; yet the friend has apparently been watching. It's one of those funny oddities that I'm fully ok suspending my sense of disbelief and be ok with a monster rampaging about, only to have something as mundane as this rub me the wrong way.


Donno, maybe our Hero happened to catch the channel where the on-the-scene reporter got stuck in traffic and so they are just starting to cover the event whereas the friend's channel had a faster/luckier guy get there first.

555 telephone numbers.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

One thing that has always bugged me in movies is that 3 seconds is enough time to tell someone everything they need to know on the phone. I know that it's not very interesting to see someone stay on the phone for two minutes saying, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right. Got it, thanks!" but being able to get a full exposition about something in the time it takes most people to say, "Hello, is Bob there?" is really pushing it.

Also, has anyone else noticed that no one ever says, "Goodbye" on the phone in movies or on TV? It's always, "Right. Got it, thanks!" [click].

People being late for school buses is another one that gets me. You always see the parents saying, "Hurry up, you'll be late for school," and then you hear the school bus honk the horn outside, like they're waiting for the kids. I don't know about anyone else, but if I wasn't at the bus stop when the school bus arrived, the bus would just go right by, and wouldn't stop and wait to see if I was late.

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Yes, they laughed at Einstein, but only because of his silly hairstyle; no one was actually laughing at his science.

What about the cliché seriel killer/troubled detective plot lines, a-la 'Silence' or 'Seven'. One gruesome seriel murder being tracked by one grizzled and world-warry detective. Because, you know, the FBI is too busy investigating .mp3 file-sharing to have a team of people working on a simple seriel killing case.

But fortunately, the one person that is on the trail always has the specific knowlege to find and know the importance of the one clue that finally reveals the killer's identity... 'caus as you know, if you're in the FBI you must also be an expert in all aspects of forensics.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Guns that make a "click" sound when they are brandished at someone, even if we can clearly see the person is not doing anything that could have caused the gun to go "click".

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

And I'm sure the perfectly synchronized timepieces everyone seems to have has been mentioned before.

And diseases known to kill in 24 hours actually take EXACTLY 24 hours to kill.

"Bruce! We only have three minutes left to adminster the antidote!"
"Don't worry, Erin! My watch is perfectly synchronized!"

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

That's not so much a cliche as a convenience. Real phone numbers could lead to legal headaches for filmmakers.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yes, that does seem to be one of the golden rules of Hollywood. Drawing a weapon, or just pointing one at someone/something, causes it to make that cocking sound. It'll do it, even if you can plainly see that the wielder's hand/hands never leave the grip.

Of course only pump action shotguns are allowed, and they have to have the rounds continuously chambered too. There was one movie I watched where the guy pointed it and pumped it. The other person ducked around a corner so the first guy runs around it and pumps it again. I can't remember how many times this happened, but by the time that scene was over there was no way there were any shells left in the gun. Unless this is some sort of advanced shotgun that unloads back into the magazine if you don't fire in X amount of time.

At this point its both a cliche and a convenience. Can't they use some other fake prefix sometimes? And it's served to make it really stand out when someone uses a real number, like they've done a couple of times on "24".

I think it would be an obvious move to purchase a real number and use it for advertising - anyone who calls gets an actor in-character saying "thanks for watching" or something.

Then after a while the production company recycles the number in another movie/TV show and uses a different recording.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

The details of gun-workings have never bothered me, but then I grew up with westerns featuring the alephnull-shot revolver. In Cliche'World, a gun will always have enough bullets unless it is necessary for the plot to have it run out.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Ah, guns. Fun things. I love that every time somone draws their weapon, they have to chamber a round...even if they chambed a round 3 minutes ago when they drew the gun. I never knew cops, heros, villians, and zombie hunters were all so saftey consious that they walk around with an unchambered weapon.

As for the sounds...I saw a show the other day that really took the cake. I'm sure it goes on all the time, but the hero had a sword, and every time he turned around, it made the unsheathing sound. you know, the "shhhhhhink!". I guess it really was humid, as the air was so think it was obviously scraping against the blade. (it might have been one of the Harry Potter movies, but don't hold me to that).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

If a real sword makes that sound when unsheathing, it must've been sheathed in concrete.

(And if all swords really made that sound, it would've resulted in a lot of dead ninjas. "I am silent, I am one with the..." Shhiiing! "Oh, crap!")

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Again, and with reference to your later comments, I just cannot see how that can get on someone's nerves.

To my mind it's one of those things you simply accept, along with characters resembling people you've seen in other films because they are played by the same actors.

But who knows what gigs you about any particular trope? I throw popcorn at the TV when the forensics genii run an unpurified, usually underivatized sample through a single quadrupole GC/MS and get back a correlated structure.

Isn't anyone using LC/MS/MS? Or an ion trap? Or a MALDI/TOF?

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Not really. 555 is the only exchange (that I'm aware of other than 0XX and 911) that is never assigned to customers in North America by convention, no matter what telco, cellco, or whatnot you happen to have. Canadian telcos use it (555-1212) the same way US telcos use 411. All others are fair game.

It's a bit like claiming that the 127.0.0.1 ip is cliché. It's not cliché, it's reserved for a reason.

As for movies using it, it's just as well. Telcos (and clients) have had more than enough headaches after Jenny (867-5309) got popular. Movie production houses know better than to open themselves to known liability risks.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

Besides which I wouldn't have been able to hear the bus's horn from my house anyway. Our bus stop was about a block and a half away.

(Incidentally, the 867 exchange here in Olympia is actually controlled by the Evergreen State College, my alma mater. Last I knew, it was given to a fax machine, which wouldn't be bothered by stupid freshmen calling it at two in the morning.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Way overdone. In my Stephanie Stone series, I fool around with this a lot. When Stephanie calls Sandy, he'll always tell her about other cases with no relevance to the mission, and nothing on TV is ever connected to the case, except to offer backstory. She never learns anything from the news.
Aside from picking out the correct amount of money, how about the ability to open a book to the right page, or spin a globe and put out your hand to stop it so that your finger is pointing right to the spot.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

One of my pet peeves is the jumps in logic in some of the scripts, e.g., when a bad guy gets away with a one or two word clue as to where he's going, the hero immediately gets the location right (no matter how many or type of locations have the same one or two words).

One movie that did something like this did it right: the Bond film For Your Eyes Only. A parrot (yet another peeve) got a couple of words about Mr. Bad's destination, which Bond dutifully forwarded to HQ for help. He next encounters Q in a church with the following results:

NOTE: possible, but not probable spoilers follow.

Note, the second: Some words changed to preserve plot points or simply because I couldn't remember.















Bond: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Q: That's putting it mildly, Double-O Seven. Your communication put Whitehall in a state of shock! Do you have any idea how many St. Cyril's there are? There are ### in Greece alone! Heaven only knows to which Mr. Bad took the McGuffin!

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"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." - Florence Ambrose