Ah, cinema. We laugh, we cry, we enter the worlds of the characters and become one with them. And yet, there are always things in the world of cinema that for years we have always turned a blind eye to. Why? Because we've become accustomed to doing so. We've been raised to believe that this is just 'how things are' in the world of cinema. Here's a list of five things that will make your head spin.
1) The British Accent
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The classic Doctor Zhivago is the first to come to mind, but why is it that if an English language film takes place in a European country where the language of the characters isn't English, the characters have a British accent? Are we to assume that British English is the universal European dialect? Surely if filmmakers don't want to shoot the film in one of those high-falootin' foreign languages, Hollywood could at least teach the actors to LEARN an accent, right? Be it the Russian Revolution, World War II or a sword and sandal epic about Jesus hanging with his people (sorry, bad pun), it's a little, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah...."racist".
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2) The VCR
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We've all grew up using the VCR, we've all taught our grandmothers how to use the VCR, we all watched things we weren't supposed to be watching using the VCR. When, oh when, did a VCR ever make a fast-paced sound when it fast forwarded or rewound a videotape during playback? But for 20 years every time a film had a character fast forwarding or rewinding a tape, we all heard the chipmunk screeching coming from the TV and no one questioned it. Was this a gimmick that became standardized in the industry, or is it safe to assume that directors in Hollywood have never used a commercial home video player before? This special effect really bugs because movies are supposed to provide a look to future generations about what our world was like at one time. Now, thanks to these buffoons in Hollywood, everyone 40 years from now watching films from the 80s and 90s is going to think that VCRs made this noise when they never did. Way to go.
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3) The Telephone
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It's 2018, and nearly every time we see a character putting a phone to their ear, all of a sudden we hear what their ear is hearing on the other end of the line....except not really because the 'telephone sound' filter being used is the same one from the 1960s which makes the phone sound like it's, well, from the 1960s. Phone signals are digital now Hollywood Moguls! Quit living in the past. And quit being tightwads as well. If you can afford to show one side of a phone conversation, you can probably afford to show the other side as well. Fail.
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4) Period Costumes
This is allegedly Cleopatra, with 1934 fashion.
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This is also allegedly Cleopatra, with 1963 fashion.
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Here is Michelle Pfeiffer sporting a very 1980s version of a 1960s look in GREASE 2.
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And here is Melinda Dillon sporting a very 1980s version of a 1940s look in A CHRISTMAS STORY.
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Now fashion in films is very hard to translate 100% to the decade in which a film was made, but honestly. How hard did the hair and makeup people of these four examples try to represent the era the character was supposed to represent? Could you even DO a perm like Melinda Dillon's in the 1940s?
