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» For fun categoryPosted on 9:25am Friday 29th Jun 2012 Listed under: For fun With multi-million dollar budgets one would imagine that every care would be taken to ensure that the celluloid marvels of the Silver Screen would be free from gaffes and howlers. But, with large crews, reshoots and human error an unavoidable part of the process these blunders will always creep in. 20. In Time Movie hot property Justin Timberlake and beguiling Amanda Seyfried get wrapped up in a highbrow thriller but continuity took time off when her Smith & Wesson 945 lost its magazine between shots. 19. Meet the Spartans In the egregious spoof of 300, Britney Spears is pushed into the Pit of Death but you hear her talk and scream without moving her lips. The same experience as seeing her at her live shows then... 18. Iron Man Marvel favourite, Iron Man, catches an SUV thrown at him by evil Iron Monger and holds it vertically. The passengers’ hair is suspiciously untouched by the effects of gravity.
17. Battle: Los Angeles There are three hours to go before the bombs drop. A marine sets his countdown timer on his Casio G-shock GW-9000 Mudman. All well and good except that the watch only has a one hour timer.
16. The Book of Eli The eponymous tome is revealed to be The Bible in Braille. Unfortunately for Eli, the fragment he’s carrying around is far smaller than the 15 or so volumes it would take.
15. The King’s Speech Well-known for many gaffes this flick has one that stands out for design buffs. An early ‘On Air’ sign is written in the Helvetica font, one that would not be invented for 30 years.
14. Chronicle When the three telekinetic teens are playing with Lego, Matt is told to play music from his iPod but you can see that the sound is off and the iPod is actually paused while the music is ‘playing’.
13. X-Men: First Class Anachronistic fish are the undoing of a tense scene. The aquarium in the CIA lounge plays host to blood parrot cichlids: hybrid ornamental fish bred in Taiwan in the 1980s and did not exist in back in 1962.
12. Avengers Assemble Captain America’s alter ego, Steve Rogers, falls foul of some dodgy SFX when he strikes a punch bag so hard it bursts and flies across the gym. The chain it was hanging from remains completely still.
11. The Artist Promising a revival of the silent movie, this touching tale features scenes of filming that include clapperboards. As any film buff knows, the clap is used to synchronise the sound with the film – not something that would be used before the ‘talkies’.
10. Battleship Going unnoticed by the production crew and location scouts, there is a scene where a character is arrested in ‘Hawaii’ but there is a billboard in shot. Billboards aren’t legal on the islands as they spoil the beauty so the location must have been filmed elsewhere.
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Product Placement seems to be a necessary evil in filmmaking today. Sometimes it can be unobtrusive enough not to take your attention away but if you’re a Mac fan in the audience then the sight of the Mac OS X10.4 operating system running on the MacBooks will disturb you as it was never available on the models shown.
8. Man on a Ledge Sometimes, detectives are Holmesian in their deductions and other times like in this film they must be clairvoyant. During the moment when ‘Joe Walker’ nearly meets an untimely death, Detective Mercer calls him ‘Nick’ despite having yet to hear his real name.
7. War Horse Occasionally, directors will deliberately use factual errors as part of dramatic licence. This was the case when a cavalry charge against infantry saw the riders holding their swords aloft and not down where the enemy would be.
6. The Woman in Black An unusual mistake crept into this unsettling shocker. On one day the tide will be out at 5pm but mere days later it will happen at 11pm: an amazing feat of astrophysical impossibility.
5. One for the Money Film adaptations of book series are nothing new but it is surprising that a series now trading on its past glories gets its first movie. Remember the famous Dirty Harry scene where our eponymous hero counts the number of bullets fired? Well, the logic fails badly here when Stephanie fires her five-shooter 12 times without reloading. In a later scene she manages to squeeze off seven rounds.
4. Titanic Calling all metalwork devotees! When Jack is handcuffed to a pipe, the elbow joint is anachronistically a welded join and not the bolted flange as would be expected.
3. Star Trek (2009) Among non-Trekkers, the logarithmic warp speed scale can be confusing but anyone with observational skills would view Chekov’s remark of needing to get to warp 4 with disdain as the display shows their current velocity as warp 4.31.
2. The Hunger Games Dodgy weaponry abounds when Katniss aims an arrow at Cato while having Peeta in a headlock. Her fletchings are on backwards, making her attempt at a straight shot impossible.
1. Prometheus Historians will balk at Charlie’s assertion of the ‘unconnected cultures’ of Sumer, Babylonia and Mesopotamia that are in fact pretty much the same geographical location just from different eras.
All images in this article are used under a fair use policy. All rights reserved. Posted on 11:41am Monday 19th Mar 2012 Listed under: For fun Here's a slightly curious photo taken by Mr. Ben Herbert on our recent Create.net corporate video shoot. But can you guess what Evan is saying to me? 2 bars of Dairy Milk and a packet of Cheese and Onion Walkers to the winner!
Posted on 12:40pm Thursday 22nd Dec 2011 Listed under: For fun It’s a common short hand in the film fan community to slate British film director Paul WS Anderson. He seems to be an easy target – all he does is direct shoddy video game adaptations and ruin much loved franchises. I might be like King Cnut trying to hold back the tide – but I happen not to agree with the overwhelming majority on this, and here’s why. New Technology Paul is a keen adopter of new technology, from creating the first 3D time lapse web video for Deutsche Telekom http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IcyaB0pGQoM to shooting one of the first widely shown film shot entirely on James Cameron’s Fusion Camera System 3D cameras (Resident Evil: Afterlife) Alien Vs Predator Criminally under-rated, wonderfully base monster movie for the internet generation. Significant because it’s written by original Alien scribers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Also (most importantly) because of this quote from the pre-aforementioned Jim Cameron It was actually pretty good. I think of the five Alien films, I'd rate it third. I actually liked it. I actually liked it a lot Shopping Anderson’s first film – a hedonistic joy riding tale set in the mean streets of London, well reviewed and featuring Blade Runner type themes, a great soundtrack and Jude Law’s first starring role. Deathrace A stripped down, greased up tale starring the irrepressible Jason Statham – doing what he does best. Grunting, beating people up and looking mean! Event Horizon Perhaps it’s just me (and this really did get destroyed by the critics) But I found this to be a really scary, well paced freak-a-thon. The fact it has established a good cult following since its release suggests I’m not alone. Mortal Kombat The original and best – and the first video game adaptation that wasn’t totally rubbish. (Mario Bros anyone?) Again, much loved by the fan community, with a healthy cult following. Resident Evil This original Resident Evil film was controversial because it dropped practically everything that made the video game series so atmospheric and visually arresting. But it really made up for that by creating a thrilling, claustrophobic gore fest with some great death scenes. Not King of Directors for hire It has been argued that Anderson heralded the way for the current crop of “directors for hire” – helmsmen employed by the studio purely to direct the latest knuckle chewing remake or reboot. I think that Anderson is head and shoulders of the likes of Jack Snyder, Len Wiseman and John Moore (help!) in that there is a definite voice in his work. Clearly Anderson isn’t a great auteur in the mould of Scorsese, Kubrick or Hitchcock, but his trashy B movies each have a gleeful pop corn munching aesthetic of their own which seems a couple of degrees above the current Z grade Hollywood fare. nb I haven’t seen Anderson’s latest The Three Musketeers – so I’ll have to reserve judgement on that Merry Christmas!! Luke Cairns Posted on 9:37am Thursday 20th Oct 2011 Listed under: For fun I think it was inevitable that the new Tintin would have traditionalists up in arms about Spielberg's new Tintin film. No one has taken to motion capture (unless in the context of a live action film (ie Gollum, King Kong, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.) What's more troubling is Spielberg's current run of form, the super annoying Jamie Bell as the boy reporter and a *Scottish* Captain Haddock with a rocket launcher (!!) And so it seems to have come to pass - have a look at a super scathing review of The Adventures of Tintin in the Guardian here. Posted on 10:07am Thursday 26th May 2011 Listed under: For fun Our friends at Casting Collective are currently looking for chaps over 6'8" (!!) or under 4'10" for a *major* Hollywood blockbuster filming in London and inside the M25 the second half of this year. Casting collective are a fantastic company and the leading providers of background artistes in the UK. Anyone of such freakish proportions (I'm only 6'5"!) should make themselves known! Posted on 8:40am Tuesday 19th Apr 2011 Listed under: For fun An iphone 4...! and a top suite of professional post production software ;) sorry - trick question! Posted on 9:11am Monday 18th Apr 2011 Listed under: For fun A small competition corner this morning. Can you guess the camera that Evan has used to produce this suprisingly compelling short film of his son Bran and some sticky blue squares... Also - what do you think about the quality of this camera? Answers below or submit an email! Answer coming tomorrow
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