Things the Movies Have Taught Us (LOL)

[DALederle]

Okay, this is tongue in the cheek and after it's posted the rest of you can jump in and add to it! Or at least I hope you will.
One thing I've learned from the movies is:
All Romans talked with a British accent.
All barbarians talk with a Scottish accent.
Women in the old west jumped in and wore blue jeans every chance they got (at least once a day).
The bad guy draws first but always loses the gun fight.
William Wallace wore a clan kilt?
And his army knew the great swear word before it was invented six hundred years later.
The only bad guys wear business suits and are either members of our own government or own a private business.
Women donned armor and fought as equals with men.
No one ever dies of smoking or drinking.
When you die if you want to come back it's okay, as long as there is a body to slip you into. (Talk about dejavu)
If you are lost at sea you will wash up on a deserted island (that might be inhabited by "creatures" that threaten you)
Desert islands always have monsters.
If monsters are found someone will take them back to London or New York!

This is only a partial list but I want others to be able to add in what they have "learned" from the movies too.

Dennis A. Lederle (LOL)

[Kirbstone]

I lived in Germany for eight years and to get up to speed with the colloquial speach Germans use to each other I avidly watched German TV...soaps &c, but also well known movies all dubbed into spoken German, to get rid of subtitles.
At first I marvelled at this, but after a while I realised that the dubbing industry, though vast Worldwide, employed just a small band of people doing voice-overs in any particular language, so to my considerable annoyance widely different English speaking actors spoke with the same voice e.g. Matt Damon and John Wayne!! There are of course other such examples too numerous to remember.

[crfriend]

Ah, yes -- at the movies:

• Superman may be bullet-proof, but he'll still flinch if you throw the empty revolver at him
• Anvils make the most wonderful *clang* when dropped on somebody's head (Looney Tunes)
• You can change the entire meaning of a silent film by fiddling with the intertitles (Lang's Metropolis vs. the Giorgio Moroder makeover)
• "You're going to need a bigger boat!" can be humourous (Jaws)
• The outcome of wartime actions do look different through the lens of the loser. (Das Boot)
• it's possible to truck decomposed dynamite through a rain-forest. (Sorcerer)
• "I'm just a corrupt public official." (Casablanca)
• "Round up the usual suspects." and "I was misinformed." (ibid)
• Just because it's been there for years doesn't mean it can't fly! (Men In Black)
• Animation is not just for children. (Pink Floyd's The Wall)
• "How do you know he didn't invent the thing?" (Star Trek IV)
• The future ain't what it used to be. (2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The year we made Contact
• "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" (Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb)
• "Always look on the bright side of life." (Monty Python and the Meaning of Life)
• Redemption is possible, even if it does land you in jail. (The Blues Brothers)
• "I hate Illinois Nazis." (ibid)
• Artificial intelligence isn't evil. (Short Circuit and Electric Dreams)
• Artificial intelligence is evil. (Colossus: The Forbin Project and The Terminator)
• Hand grenades are an efficient fishing tool. (The Triplets of Bellville)
• "No no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to." (Brain-surgery scene from Buckaroo Banzai and The Adventires Across The Eighth Dimension)

[DALederle]

Also:
Tarzan can kill any animal on land or in the water with only a knife!
Humgowa is the one word you need to know to command every animal in Africa to do your bidding!
Godzilla's really just misunderstood.
Always look a T-rex in the eye!
Security guards alway get killed!
The lone minority always gets killed.
Zoombies can be cute????????????????????????and fun?????????????????????????????
There is gold at the end of the rainbow!
Wishing can make it happen!
You never have to count your six shots the gun reloads as you fire it!
A single horse out runs four harnessed to an unloaded wagon!
Come on, everyone, what else can we think off!

Dennis A. Lederle

Happy Halloween

[Since1982]

Of all the movies I've ever watched, only one thing continues to confound me. Seems that all movie producers have deeply rooted in their psyches that at the end of any kind of movie, comedy (the only one that this act makes sense at), drama, action, horror, zombies, paranormal, out in space, or teenagers, the last minute of the movie is filled with riotous laughter from everone still alive...No matter what just happened or how many characters just died, whomever lived has a huge guffaw with whomever else lived. especially if nothing funny or light hearted is said. Example: the last scene in "Abyss"..If there was ever a movie that really didn't have a place for laughter, it was the Abyss, but there it was anyway. Go figger. If I found out I was going to live, after coming up miraculously when I should have been dead, dead, dead from the "Bends" and rapture of the deep. I think I'd be cheering as loudly as possible, but not laughing.

[crfriend]

If I found out I was going to live, after coming up miraculously when I should have been dead, dead, dead from the "Bends" and rapture of the deep. I think I'd be cheering as loudly as possible, but not laughing.

Laughter is one of the most powerful "releases" known to mankind -- perhaps the most powerful -- which is one of the reasons that it crops up sometimes at seemingly the most inopportune times (e.g. funerals). Humans can react in funny ways when faced with, and surviving, incredible stress and terror so laughter is one way to release the tension of the moment, and it can happen spontaneously and unthinkingly. Even the very grim line of, "You're going to laugh about this someday." has more than a dollop truth to it.

I've been in more than a few circumstances where the old adage of, "If you don't laugh about this you're going to wind up crying." has been spot on. It's a way of escaping the immediacy of what just happened and allowing one's self the luxury of time in which to go back and revisit the experience to, hopefully, learn something from it "from a distance".

[Milton]

Things I've noticed:
A machine gun has no effect but a small hand gun will hit the target with one bullet at 1000 yards.
No matter what she has been through the main actresses never get dirty clothes, messed hair or smudged makeup.
When the brake pipes have been cut on a car it is impossible to stop using engine braking or hand brake.
All cars that fall over a ledge burst into flames.
If a car turns over at speed, the occupants will be able to get out unscathed.
Electricity is made up of a substance that is liquid and sparkes like a firework.
English is spoken throughout the universe. (I just saw a Bond movie where a french taxi driver in Paris has his car stolen. He shouts to his countrymen "Hey, someone has stolen my car!" not "Alors, quelqu'un a vole ma voiture!")
All planets have the correct amount of oxygen for us to breath.
No one can hear you if you don't want them to, and no one has peripheral vision, so you can hide around corners or behind doors.
And finally - (please excuse me on this ), if an actress bares her bosoms then the camera will either be behind her or something will unavoidably get in the way!!

and so on...

FJ

[Since1982]

Milton said: All cars that fall over a ledge burst into flames.

Not really, case in point, Steven Seagal's "Fire Down Below" against Crime Boss Kris Kristophersson who sent a huge Mack truck to run Steve over and ended up going over a 1,000 foot ledge and splatting upside down at the bottom of the cliff and Lo and Behold, the driver DIDN'T climb out the window and walk away. Actually, I thought he WAS gonna walk away when the truck didn't explode in flames on contact. But, other than that ONE rare instance, nearly all movie/cliff/vehicle crashes end in a ball of fire, which really confound me when the reason for crashing is .. "They ran out of gas"..

Dennis said: and was edited by Skip

One thing I've learned from the movies is:
All Romans talked with a British accent. Well, sure. Rome of the period they were IN CHARGE, owned the British Isles.
All barbarians talk with a Scottish accent. Well, sure. All early Scots WERE barbarians.
Women in the old west jumped in and wore blue jeans every chance they got (at least once a day). Well sure. You couldn't expect Dale Evans to wear a big clumsy dress with 10 petticoats on a horse chasing Roy Rogers, could you?
The bad guy draws first but always loses the gun fight. Well sure, the bad guy always shoots at the sky, what do you expect?
William Wallace wore a clan kilt? Well sure, that was the Hollywood Clan.
And his army knew the great swear word before it was invented six hundred years later. Of course they did, but it wasn't a swear word then. In early times the F word meant "to hit" so "I'm gonna F___ you up" meant "beat you up".
The only bad guys wear business suits and are either members of our own government or own a private business.
Women donned armor and fought as equals with men. Well sure, Joan Of Arc needed to IMPRESS the French Army so they would follow her lead.
No one ever dies of smoking or drinking. Of course not, Movie booze is colored water or coke or in the case of gin or vodka, WATER!
When you die if you want to come back it's okay, as long as there is a body to slip you into. (Talk about dejavu)Of course, In today's Hollywood, there are more zombies than actors....or maybe the actors ARE zombies.
If you are lost at sea you will wash up on a deserted island (that might be inhabited by "creatures" that threaten you)
Desert islands always have monsters. Not if you're Robinson Crusoe!
If monsters are found someone will take them back to London or New York! I don't think so...all the baddest biggest movie monsters were taken to Tokyo.

Edited by Skip farther editing is welcome!

[Big and Bashful]

No matter what the vehicle is, if it crashes off a road going round a bend on a mountainside road, you just know there is going to be a fireball involved as it reaches the bottom of a cliff, closely followed by one wheel rolling away from the crash. A bit like the smoking shoes often left after blowing people up.

This is especially true of vampire movies and others of that ilk.

[Kirbstone]

I can't yet extract short qoutes, but it has been printed here that t'he Romans of the period were IN CHARGE of the British Isles'.

Both the Irish and the Scots would rightly take issue with this. Yes, the Scots were highly effective 'Barbarians' and successfully routed the Romans so they had to actually build a defensive wall right across the island of Britain which they could defend. Hadrian's Wall may be inspected to this day. This left the Scots to their own devices, where the Romans were very definitely NOT in charge.
As to that other Island, Ireland....The Romans knew about it, called it Hibernia, may have visited it in small parties, but never occupied it, so we have no Roman artfacts in Ireland at all.

[Since1982]

Did you say

As to that other Ireland, Island

...my bad..cuckle chuckle cookle clumple bing!

[DALederle]

But even when the barbarians are huns or germans or vikings they talk with a scottish accent! Have you seen "How To Train Your Dragon" yet! My granddaughter really enjoyed it!
LOL
There are so many goofy things that were put into films and later on people come to believe them.
That was my main point.
Hitler's propaganda minister believed in that concept.
After a while fiction becomes fact to some people.
My mother, who died in 1977, had a hard time seperating the fact the Star Trek wasn't real while the moon landing were going on. She used to wonder why every thing she saw on the real moon landing were so primitive compared to what they showed you on Star Trek.
It's just scary, sometimes, what people will see and can't tell what's real or not.

Dennis A. Lederle

[Kirbstone]

My mamma eventually passed away in 1994 at age 82. No great age, but we never celebrated her 80th, or subsequent birthdays, because she was away with the fairies deeper and deeper into Alzheimers for some years previous to that.....A most unpleasant condition, poorly understood.
When she was beginning to be affected she came up with amazing interpretations of what she saw on TV and elsewhere, which she was utterly certain of, and changing the subject was the only escape.
She loved to sing and dance to popular inter-wars tunes, and at her last Christmas visit she asked me to play her 'Love letters in the Sand' on the piano,which she sang to....but no fewer than five times ! She couldn't remember that we had just been playing/singing it, and it was going round & round in her mind. All very sad.

[Since1982]

Your mom sounds similar to my mom. Mine died from complications of Alzheimers in 1999 at the age of 84, namely pneumonia. I get between $1,500.00 and $2,500. every 3 months from both BMI in Nashville, Tenn. and from Republic Music Co. In New York USA from her catelog of songs she wrote back in the 50's. The one the money is still coming from is called "The Garden Of Eden" written in 1957 and sung by Joe Valino in the USA and by 5 different artists in the UK including an instrumental by Winifred Atwell. Most of the royalties are from the UK and Ireland in Juke Box play. The rest are worldwide. 2nd most from all the Scandanavian countries, and 3rd by France.

What you said about Alz is right on. I'd rather go from nearly anything else than alzheimers. At the end, she screamed my name 24/7 except when she was asleep. Or I was asleep from fleurazapam. Her doctor told me what day and time she was going to pass on. I asked him how he knew that...he said, "just mark my words!" And she did. If she hadn't been in such pain and dementia I'd have gone to the police. So I didn't make a stink. He died 2 years later. From pneumonia. I wished him a good afterlife with Satan.

[DALederle]

I know that most people are afraid of Alzheimer's disease. But what my grandmother went through was even worse, in my opinnion.
She died from Parkinson's disease.
For those now aware of it, your body shuts down. You lose control of you muscles and most body functions and then, slowly, waste away.
I watched this strong, robust woman, sho used to babysit me as a child, who could hold her own with any of us, men included, as she was forced to just lay in bed, helpless while her body just atrophied into nothing.
And the worse part was she was still mental acute. You could see it in her eyes. She was alive and knew everything that was going on around her but couldn't even stand up or walk as far as the livingroom any longer. One of my mother's sisters, Aunt Marg, became a LPN so she could take care of Grandma to the end.
I guess there's just no good way to go.
I don't believe anyone dies peacefully in their sleep, as some people phrase it.
Sorry for your loses, anyone who has suffered!

Dennis A. Lederle