It's even worse than this. When everytime you're "good" at something, you notice movies get it wrong, after some point you start to wonder, maybe they also get it wrong for all the things you're not good at, you just don't notice it. So basically, it could be that movies get everything wrong.

The most annoying thing for me is hearing reporters talk about science or computers. By the time they get done "summarizing" a research result it bears only the faintest resemblance to reality, and often has been construed to mean the very opposite of the original published paper.

Then I realize that these same people report the business and political news, and realized that I probably don't have a clue what's actually going on in the world.

This is absolutely true. I had the opportunity to complain about this once to a big name Hollywood producer, and he told me that the rule of thumb that most movie makers use is, "If we don't know the difference, our audience won't either."

Occasionally they hire experts to be sure they get it right, but that is more the exception than the rule, and mostly happens when a feeling of realism is considered important for the part.

It was so absolutely nice that NUMB3RS hired actual applied math geeks to write the equations that their statistician uses to solve crimes.

If only they had hired a computer geek to write the crap about the Turing test. ;_;

Yeah, if I remember correctly "NUMB3RS" likens IRC to pirates trading illegal drugs in international waters.

Michael Crichton called this "the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect":

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/65213

Exactly. My pet peeve is military depictions in movies. I can't recall a movie that's gotten even the basics right. I may be nitpicking, but it does detract from the viewing experience.

And I can't immerse in the Game of Thrones because Nigth's Watch members stroll around in the snow without hats. Any person who was in the cold temperature for the prolonged time would recognize it as complete nonsense. Every time I see it, I get this feeling "this looks wrong", and then, "oh, they are without hats again!"

Black Hawk Down, Jarhead come to mind as modern examples of basically correct (though the behavior of some of the Delta force in BHD is overly exaggerated).

> Black Hawk Down

Yeah, that was a good movie, but Ridley Scott is so much better than most Hollywood directors that it's not a fair comparison. (Never saw Jarhead)

A friend of mine once complained he couldn't watch "Pensacola" (or "JAG", I'm not sure) because they couldn't even salute right.

As someone with no knowledge of military, I have no idea of the rookie mistakes made by hollywood. Care to give some examples?

Totally sympathise, I have the same with archery in movies. I can normally ignore the typical Hollywood stuff in LOTR or whatever, but really can't take it when they pretend to be modern + realistic (current worst case: Blade Trinity).

Did you watch hunger games, and how did that archery look? Apparently the actress spent 6 months+ practicing but I'd be interested to hear an informed point of view.

Actually, she just spend a few weeks practising with an Olympic competitor, i.e., nowhere near 6 months. I'm not an expert on these things, but it seemed to vary from scene to scene. Someone commented on the trailer and explained how it's very accurate, but there were a few shots in the movie where what the expert explained seemed missing (like "kissing" the string).

I practiced archery for about 5 years in my mis-spent youth, and it sure didn't seem right. If she spent 6 months on that, she didn't have good instructors, or she paid no attention at all.

(It wasn't horrible, but it was not worth 6 months of learning)

Haven't seen it yet, sorry. I've read the book but wasn't excited enough to make a beeline for the movie. Probably will see it sometime though.

From what I've seen of various shorts about the movie, the archery looks pretty good. I don't think she spent 6 months practising but she obviously spent some time on it with a good coach (a US Olympian, so she knows her stuff). The only thing they get wrong is that longbows aren't as accurate as they're portrayed, but that happens in every movie with an archer and it's just artistic license really.

Jeremy Renner, who plays Clint Barton ("Hawkeye") in the Avengers, claims he undertook extensive archery training in preparation for his role. Then, on set, they had him do things that "looked cool" rather than "were right" so it didn't really translate as he had expected.

He also said he sustained an archery related injury while filming which A) shouldn't happen if he'd had the proper training and B) would also affect his ability to use proper form while shooting.

I've been working to make a conscious effort over the past decade to willingly suspend my disbelief at the movies and just enjoy the entertainment for what it is trying to be, rather than what it is failing at. I've enjoyed movies much more the times I've been successful at it. Other times, like the "I guess we'll just make the new OS free since a copy of it leaked on the internet" scene in the new Tron, I couldn't get over, and I let it completely ruin the movie for me. (I found later that if I just start about 20 minutes into the movie and enjoy it as an awesome Daft Punk music video then I really love Tron: Legacy).

The stupidest little nitpick that I have, which shows up in nearly every movie and television show, is that someone makes an outgoing call, gets hung up on, and then the foley team adds in a new dial tone. I don't know why I continue to let it bug me, but I do. Joss Whedon complained in one of his commentaries (Joss Whedon does the best commentary tracks, by the way, check them out sometimes if you care about this stuff at all) that he always has to go back and cut out about 70% of what the foley artists try to add to every scene. Sounds exhausting, for everyone.

That scene didn't really bother me in Tron; I cut them a bit of slack for the use of a convincing Unix shell (also Emacs: http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178), but Tron's never been about realistic computing. And yeah, I was sold on the music + cooler lightcycles.

I have listened to some of Joss's commentary (Serenity and Firefly, unsurprisingly), although I hadn't heard that particular part. It does sound exhausting, but I guess refusing to budge on that sort of thing is what makes him a great writer/director.