Recently I've seen a trend with actors/actresses where they make declarative statements while shaking their heads (in a no fashion). It's really strange body language when they have a line like, "I love you so much" while shaking their head no. Watch for it...
I can't remember what I was watching last week, but somebody paid for a cab. It might have been Hap and Leonard.
(I apologize in advance if I offend anyone who might be reading this and is actively employed in the film industry.) How about all those production credits at the BEGINNING of a film? They take forever and are, nowadays, little films in and of themselves. It's worse when you watch the film on television or on a BD/DVD, particularly the ones who will not let you skip the endless credits. I get it...we must give credit where credit is due, films are expensive, sometimes they are made by several independent companies. I assure you, as the consumer, I just want to be entertained and the production credits are NOT entertaining.
I swear to god, I want to start a production company called Too Many Logos Films. If they invested money in the film, they deserve to have their company names featured. That's part of what they paid for.
If it's a feature, they get their names at the head of the film. This is like everything else, negotiated through contracts.
I was watching "Prometheus" and here we have this super-tech world of robot operations, but Naomi Rapace makes a big show of slamming the high-tech hypodermic into her arm and grimacing in pain when injecting a sedative. Come on, rebuilt you piece by piece, but they haven't perfected a way of getting a simple shot that doesn't hurt? If I'm wrong don't the shots in Star Trek still always hurt for a comedic? I think it's just wasting that all-too-human reaction to getting a shot makes directors overlook the likely reality.
Those scenes in movies or TV shows in which a man & woman are having a conversation about their relationship, and the woman claims something along the lines of: "the reason I fell in love in love with you in the first place is because you're not like all the other guys." Said no woman, ever.
Actually in some movies (Spartacus. Ben-Hur) it will be to emphasize the idea that the Romans are the bad guys and the American accented guys (slaves) are the good guys. Also with "Star Wars".
A number of baseball movies "Eight Men Out", "The Winning Team" where the final outs in games pitched by Dickie Kerr and Grover Cleveland Alexander are strikeouts. Kerr won on groundouts to third and one to second. Alexander's ended with Babe Ruth thrown out trying to steal second with 1925 AL Home Run champion Bob Meusel batting...one of the most famous endings to a World Series. 'pride of the Yankees"..geez Gehrig joins the Yankees in 1923 and stares at the lockers of Koenig, Combs and Dickey..none were on the team. He ends his streak by taking himself out of a game in Chicago. Games played streaks don't end that way and it was in Detroit (ironically with his predecessor Wally Pipp in attendance). In his speech he actually used the "luckiest man" line in the beginning, not the end (only a few lines on the newsreel exist and no reporter thought to record it verbatim, we have various accounts of what newspapers later wrote). The John Goodman film about Babe Ruth has him retiring after hitting three home runs in a game. He wanted to but Braves management convinced him to play another week to draw more people. "A league of Their Own" you don't win a game when the catcher drops the ball because she hits the ground with it. Virtually all films dealing with Catherine of Aragon (first wife of Henry VIII) have her with dark hair because "hey, she is Spanish and that's their hair color). Catherine had reddish blonde hair (the 1972 miniseries "Six Wives of Henry VIII) has it right. "The White Princess" extends this to her mother Isabella.
It depends. The contract specifies the size and position of the company credits, where it appears in the film, and how long it has to appear. And some companies get single card credits, meaning nobody else's name can appear on the screen when theirs are there. That also goes for the cast and crew.
Jeez, Marc dude, do you have a second career you're not telling us about? In fact, don't answer that, I'm afraid to ask any further ...
I just have a great imagination. The end credits are generally looked upon as a legal responsibility, not entertainment at all. I think 99% of most TV producers believe, "eh, the moment the preview of our next episode has ended, the audience has already bailed and changed channels." They don't believe that anybody is actually reading the end cards -- they're just there because in the contract, it says "Company Blah-Blah gets 2 seconds of a full-screen isolated title card that must be X% of the available area, followed by Distributor XYZ's 2-second logo, followed by Studio A's 2-second logo." BTW, there's some interesting thoughts about end title segments in this Wikipedia article: Closing credits - Wikipedia I agree with them: the bigger problem is the fact that many cable channel and local stations shrink the end titles and nobody can read anything, or they run them at 3 times normal speed, or they shrink them and run them at 3 times normal speed. Haaaaaarible.
How about that stupid trope where someone has been dating 2 equally incredible people and are really torn between which one to choose? Yeah, because that ever happens in real life.
In Ben Hur, Stephen Boyd is the villain because he convincingly seethes with resentment and other things. I never knew he was from Ireland until I read an internet obit long after his death(also played a 'playboy' in 'Best Of Everything'). Jack Hawkins plays a patrician benefactor in the same film, not exactly a bad guy.
Actually, it happened to one of my roommates in college. He was the stereotypical pretty-boy, looking kind of like Robert Urich, but he said that he wished that he looked more like Carry Grant. He had two girlfriends, unbeknownst to either of them, that he was trying to decide which he would marry. They were both extremely attractive; and both willing. One of them told him that he had really beautiful feet. He seemed to think that this was rather important, and was quite proud of it. His decision between the two g/fs was primarily focused on looks. He told me that his older brothers repeatedly warned him to always look at a woman's mother, and base your decision on how she looks. He can't be the only superficial, narcissistic, lucky Greek-god around.
Sadly (or happily depending on your persective) even the great director Ozu made an entire film with flatulence as a narrative subtext. Japanese farts are generally less 'gassy', shorter and more high pitched than European or American fartage. Hard to disern if all the farts are authentic, or done in post.
