Episode 13 Great Movie Mistakes

Welcome along to Great Movie Mistakes.

This show blows a hole in the carefully constructed veneer of Hollywood perfection.

Our team of continuity experts or geeks

have locked themselves away in the archives to track down the best howlers on the silver screen.

So here are those mistakes, the ones that have made all that hard work very nearly worthwhile.

Braveheart, and here's some angry Scots

indulging in their traditional national sport...slaughter.

Mel can't make up his mind what weapon to use, though.

Here, he's got a small pickaxe.

Now it's disappeared.

Beg your pardon, it's a large sword. Sword.

No, it's a pickaxe again.

My mistake. It's a sword.

God only knows what he's going to use by the time he gets there.

Here's Mel again, frolicking through woodland like what people did then.

Then all of a sudden, whoa!

There's a sword in his hand.

No. You're not drunk. Well, Mel might be.

It just magically appears. Watch.

Weird. Still, at least he's got something he can cut his hair with now.

-Thank you, Colonel.

-This is Valkyrie.

In which Tom Cruise tries to boost his flagging popularity by playing a German. Hmm.

Cruise's character Stauffenberg hands Herr Hitler the revised version of Operation Valkyrie.

See how Hitler grabs the folder with his right hand and in the next shot,

he's holding it with his left hand.

Come on, Hitler. Ah!

Rewind.

See? A sloppy error from one of the most reviled men in history.

And just to be clear, I'm talking about Hitler. Not Tom Cruise.

This is Hairspray, and the tubby girl you can see is John Travolta,

dressing like he does whenever his wife goes out.

Keep your eye on the road outside Mr Pinky's.

There's no sign of a car, and then wallop!

There's a pink one right next to them.

Then it's gone again. Now it's back. And it's gone.

Like John, I'm deeply confused.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Tim Burton loves a bit of fantasy.

Except what he calls fantasy, others call lies.

Watch here. They should get thrown backwards, not forwards.

Yeah, let's see that again.

Get your actors to dress up in funny clothes and make-up by all means,

Mr Burton, but please don't tinker with the basic laws of inertia.

Next, The Devil Wears Prada.

And that's Anne Hathaway picking up her early morning bagel.

And as we now enjoy some shots of ladies in swish outfits, something very odd is happening to that bagel.

# She's got the power to be, the power to give, the power to see

Yeah, it's turned into a pair of brown leather gloves.

Or was I dreaming that?

Because the bagel's back again.

The moral here, never fully trust a bagel.

And finally, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe,

or TLTWATW as I like to call it.

Here's Mr Tumnus, famous for having hooves where his feet should be.

But look, those hooves are leaving great big man-shaped footprints in the snow.

Just look at 'em.

Tumnus' footprints are even more dodgy than him

inviting a defenceless young girl into his home for dinner.

Honestly, Mr Tumnus.

Sex And The City was that funny old time in the TV schedules when men everywhere would mysteriously find

themselves stood in the kitchen gazing listlessly into the fridge.

But for their better halves it was a chance to dip into the lives of four women who were spunky, kooky, sassy

and other words that don't really mean anything.

The characters think nothing of spending thousands on clothes and shoes

to look their glamorous bests.

Shame the makers of the film didn't bother to do the same.

Watch these errors.

You have to eat a little breakfast.

Sex And The City, the movie.

I've loved SJP's long, long face ever since her movie debut

in the Godfather, when she played that horse's head left in the bed.

In this scene we've got teapot problems.

It's Art Deco,

then the next second it's normal.

Then we go back to Art Deco, and you've guessed it,

there's just time for it to go back to normal.

The irony is that Carrie doesn't even like tea.

Her preference would be for Tizer.

SHE SCREAMS

Similar balls up here with the napkin in Charlotte's hand.

It's not there.

Then it is.

..She just got engaged. And she has been going out with the man...

Then it's not.

APPLAUSE

And it's back again. Stop applauding her error, you dimwits.

In this dressing-up scene,

Carrie's kind but ageing friends are out on the lash.

But when she emerges in her iconic ballet outfit, watch the door behind her.

Is it open or is it closed?

Because it can't be both, as that would be then clopen, and that's not even a word.

In the film Spider-Man, Peter Parker gains his powers because he's bitten by a spider,

which apparently is a realistic way of conferring abilities. A similar thing happened to me.

I was also recently bitten by a spider, but all it gave me were the powers of a 37-year-old man.

And not a very good one. As well as the onset of nasal hair and a faint midlife crisis,

it's given me the powers to pick out continuity errors in films.

Like so.

In this scene, Peter Parker shoots a web and smashes his lamp up

like some arachnid vandal.

< Peter?

-His busybody aunt comes to check. on him.

-What's going on in there?

And embarrassed by the state of his teenage bedroom, he refuses to let her in.

-You're acting so strangely, Peter.

-OK, thanks.

But when she leaves, the lamp is back where it started.

That mars an otherwise perfectly believable film.

Harry! >

We're about to see an extra that loves Peter Parker so much,

it's disturbing. Look how much she's hanging around.

She walks past there...

Harry says you're a science whiz. I'm something of a scientist myself.

I read all your research on nanotechnology.

..and there...

-Yes, I wrote a paper on it.

-Impressive.

..and there...and there.

Thank God she's gone. I was beginning to worry for Peter's safety.

No, there she is! Deeply sinister extra.

She belongs in a secure ward for stalking behaviour.

Here's Spidey and MJ swinging through New York

like some sort of urban Tarzan and Jane.

No wonder MJ loves him. But hang on...

..that's clearly a lifeless mannequin.

Look, OK, maybe mannequins dressed in Lycra are her thing. Kinky.

We all know that newspapers never make mistakes.

So how do we explain this?

In the left column, there's a quote from police spokesman John Young,

"We've heard of Good Samaritans,

"but in 20 years, I've never seen anything like this."

And then, on the right, he says it again.

"We've heard of Good Samaritans,

"but in 20 years, I've never seen anything like this."

I don't know what to say about that, I really don't.

Although I have a fair idea of what John Young would say.

Here's a tip. Never play cards

with James Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle.

Check out his sleight of hand.

Watch the third picture. Got it?

Now see what happens when he puts it down.

It's a different picture. Who's the real superhero in this film?

Here's Peter being rescued by an infant.

But what's this under her jim-jams?

Looks like kneepads to me - the only sure fire way to stop anyone

kneecapping you as you sleep. Clever girl.

Now for some errors that are only for the truly eagle-eyed.

Sure, some people might say it's nerdy or geeky or sad of the team even to have spotted them.

Is it sad? Is it sad to strive for perfection in movie-making?

Is it sad to want to enjoy that one true error-free film?

Is it sad to rewind and replay every scene of every film you ever watch in the hope of spotting any error

and then writing it down in your special book just to crow about it on BBC 3?

Oh, it is?

Right.

BELL CHIMES

Now then. Big Ben would only chime like this on the hour,

but as all you sighted viewers will appreciate in this clip from sci-fi flick Jumper,

the clock reads half past,

which is as far from on the hour as you can get.

I know all that because I learnt it at school!

Forrest Gump.

Listen to the day he says she died.

'You died on a Saturday morning.'

Saturday.

Now look at the gravestone.

It says March 22nd, 1982...

which as any diary fans will know was a Monday!

Jenny's dying is very sad, Forrest,

but lying about it won't bring her back, and believe me, I've tried.

The Shawshank Redemption now.

One of the all-time great movies about redemption

and about Shawshanks, probably.

But if this is the hole that Andy Dufresne escaped through, how can he have reattached the poster?

If he was inside the tunnel, it would be impossible to stick the poster to the wall.

Unless he broke back in, stuck it back up again and jumped over the wall to escape a second time.

Yes, yes, that's probably what he did. Yeah.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

Set in 1957, this movie somehow shows us a country, Belize,

which didn't exist until 16 years later.

It should be called British Honduras.

It feels wrong to have a go at Hollywood for this, though. When it comes to showbiz archaeology,

they gave the world Indiana Jones, and we gave it Time Team. Boo.

The same Indy film here. Set, you'll remember, in 1957.

But have they invented digital readouts in 1957?

Our survey says...

UH-UH!

The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and here's one for super-nerds.

As Cal and Dave play video games and cast aspersions

on each other's sexuality, there's a clanger to be spotted.

..I kind of want to get back out there, but I think I like guys...

That's right. They're playing Mortal Kombat Deception

and Cal's using a Nintendo 64 controller.

But that game was only ever released on PlayStation 2,

Game Cube and X Box! Oh!

Austrian fashionista Bruno now.

And here he is with the latest celebrity must-have.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN:

When Bruno takes baby OJ out of the box, the subtitle reads:

But as anyone who took GCSE German will have noticed,

there's just been a translation gaffe.

Listen, Bruno says "vierzehn".

Which means 14, not 13.

Call the fashion police now.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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