Althouse: Extra bad.

April 5, 2017

Extra bad.

12 comments:

Fernandinande said...: -- barn door open (but I don't see the Hindu cow)
-- ?
-- ?
-- Batman guy falls down - reminded me of a LOTR where a short bearded guy riding a goat knocked over hundreds of orcs by touching them with a stick. The orcs look tough but apparently they were made of styrofoam and cardboard.; 4/5/17, 9:05 AM
Wince said...: So, I suppose the key to being an movie extra is being ordinary, without being extraordinary.; 4/5/17, 9:14 AM
Quaestor said...: The extras in that Bruce Lee movie are introduced later in the scene.; 4/5/17, 9:19 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I was shocked by the "Back to the Future" one. Such an expensive movie and they let the kid get away with beckoning and pointing at his wiener.; 4/5/17, 10:03 AM
Birches said...: I love the Ghostbusters guy. I never thought he seemed out of place.; 4/5/17, 10:12 AM
William said...: I saw all those movies and didn't notice the screw ups until they were pointed out. They made the right decision in not shooting them over. Plot holes, manipulative plot turns, hammy actors--these are the things that subvert a movie. Clumsy extras are just the missing Oxford comma in a great novel.; 4/5/17, 11:06 AM
Fernandinande said...: William said...
I saw all those movies and didn't notice the screw ups until they were pointed out.

I first watched it with the sound off and didn't see anything interesting in the jumping guy or the pointing kid. Stopped after Batman.

The classic continuity goof is (yes, it IS) Barney Fife trying to recite the preamble to the Constitution and his hair alternates several times between combed and messed up.

Did you know? John Derbyshire was an "uncredited thug" in a Bruce Lee movie.; 4/5/17, 11:36 AM
Yancey Ward said...: The only I was already aware of was the one in North by Northwest, which I had noticed decades ago. I have seen all the other movies, too, but had never noted any extras they point to- and I have seen Jaws multiple times.; 4/5/17, 12:44 PM
Anthony said...: By the third Rocky movie they were becoming loose with the fight scenes. There's one swing where Rocky clearly misses Clubber Lange's head by a good foot but it's still acted lit he hit him.; 4/5/17, 12:48 PM
FullMoon said...: Much less noticeable and distracting than product placement. I wish I had never noticed. If you do not know what it is, DO NOT LOOK IT UP; 4/5/17, 12:57 PM
Hunter said...: A podcast I listen to has a bit they call "Shit That Should Not Be" where they like to showcase this type of thing. The one from Back to the Future is certainly memorable, although the craziest might be from the Hulk Hogan vehicle Mr. Nanny, in which... well, just watch.; 4/5/17, 3:56 PM
Edmund said...: The North By Northwest one is even funnier when you notice that in one of the cuts, the kid doesn't have his fingers in his ears.

I also think the Jaws one is bogus. The guy doesn't appear to me to be laughing, perhaps grimacing. It's too short of a cut to be sure.

There are also a bunch of continuity errors in Stripes, most famously where Murray's character is going AWOL, his duffel bag changes position from cut to cut. Probably intentional.

In TV, continuity errors creep in due to the short shooting schedules. In some cases, they don't really care. (A family member worked with a crew that had worked on Charlie's Angels, and said they shot as fast as possible as they knew it was crap TV.) A famous one is from the TV show McCloud in the 70s. McCloud was a NM marshal sent to NYC to work there for a while. In one show, he commandeers a horse and chases after bad guys through Manhattan. He alternates between being in shirtsleeves and wearing his trademark sheepskin jacket - changing as he goes around corners.; 4/5/17, 5:48 PM