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Movies and television shows are full of blunders, some more noticeable than others, and each with their specific guild of victims. Ornithologists fume when British period dramas are overdubbed with American birdsongs. Government employees will tell you that the supposed main White House staffer in Contact has a nonexistent job. Archeologists hate movie shipwrecks, and marine biologists are already mad about the zombie sharks in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean installment, which, as cartilaginous fishes, should not have ribs—even ghostly ones.
But these are merely occasional grievances. There's one group of experts who can barely flip on the television without being exposed to egregious, head-on-desk mistakes: chess players.
"There are a ton of chess mistakes in TV and in film," says Mike Klein, a writer and videographer for Chess.com. While different experts cite different error ratios, from "20 percent" to "much more often than not," all agree: Hollywood is terrible at chess, even though they really don't have to be. "There are so many [errors], it's hard to keep track," says Grandmaster Ilja Zaragatski, of chess24. "And there are constantly [new ones] coming out."
[...] Peter Doggers of Chess.com notes another Dramatic Checkmate move: the felled king. "Tipping over your king as a way of resigning the game is only done in movies," he says. (See Mr. Holland's Opus, in which Jay Thomas slaps his king down after being owned by Richard Dreyfuss).A normal chess player will just go in for a good-game-style handshake. "This falling king thing has somehow become a strong image in cinematography," he says, "But chess players always think: 'Oh no, there we go again...'"
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 23 2017, @02:55PM (2 children)
-- Young adults with no apparent source of income living in luxurious apartments in New York and San Francisco.
All the characters on Friends and How I Met Your Mother have jobs.
Phoebe is a masseuse, Monica is a chef, Joey is an actor, Chandler works in an office, and Ross is a paleontologist at a museum.
Ted is an architect, Robin is a news anchor, Lily teaches kindergarten, and Marshall and Barney work in offices.
I would assume that, if not explicitly stated, most episodes are set after 5pm or on weekends.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:15PM (1 child)
There's no way in hell they could afford *luxurious* apartments on those paychecks. Perhaps the news anchor, *maybe* (maybe) the architect, but definitely not a masseuse, actor (he's not an A-list one obviously), paleontologist, kindergarten teacher, or random office drones.
However, the OP did call this a "movie lie", and Friends was not a movie, but a TV show.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:50PM
I wasn't contesting the "luxurious" part; I was contesting "no apparent source of income." Fair enough.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"