Monday, February 05, 2018

Monday's Movie & Musical Clichés

There's a long-running thread at Quora relating to disliked movie clichés - most of the entries were TL;DR (too long; did not read) for me, on my way skimming through the website. A short one with several images to support it struck me as a good example, it came from one Daniel Andrew Lockwood:
In almost EVERY movie that has trains, somehow, for some reason, the lead character ends up on top of it. If there’s a good guy and a bad guy they end up in a fight on top of it.
Ain't that the truth?


A few regular groan-inducing clichés, in films and TV dramas, for husband and me include:

Scenes where a character is brutally attacked, hit on the head falls to the ground then is kicked mercilessly, but soon after can get up and act as though it was just a few grazes and bruises - instead of what must have obviously caused broken bones, internal bleeding or worse.

Scene where female character decides to chop off her long locks, for one reason or another - using a pair of kitchen scissors, possibly quite blunt. She hacks away indiscriminately. Next time we see her, she looks as though she'd spent a half day at some celebrity hairdressing salon.

My own pet hate: The Dog in Film rule: if there's a dog in a film, the cuter the better - the dog will die, one way or another.

Hacking with ease: character searching for password to access someone's personal computer data - a few random guesses and he's in! Or hacking into websites of huge corporations, this takes a bit longer but there's always a whizz-kid expert who can do it in a hour or so.

Husband's pet groan moment: in horror movies, character looks in a mirror, usually bathroom cabinet mirror, looks away for a moment - then the villain appears, in the mirror behind him/her.

An ever present scene these days, supposedly titillating, I guess, but because it's so common now it has become slightly ridiculous; we even start a count as to how long it will take for two characters to get into bed together, naked, or take some other, more athletic pose up against a wall etc. and perform sweatily for the camera! This often happens well within the first 20 minutes.


Finally, because it is Music Monday, a rundown of the top ten most used, and over-used, songs in movies. The video is 14 minutes long, but it held my interest - do give it a whirl:




6 comments:

Anonymous said...

the countdown - quick flashes of a digital clock/timer headed toward zero and Armageddon - maybe an asteroid collision - maybe a nuclear bomb

Twilight said...

Anonymous ~ Yes! The ever-present doomsday clock - lest we forget! ;-)

Kaleymorris said...

That video is hilarious!

Twilight said...

Kaleymorris ~ :-) Yes. It made me nostalgic for films like those, daft though some of the soundtracks were. What do we get now? Creeping crapification! :-/

Wisewebwoman said...

Ah you forgot the ever ready available parking spot in front of bank/church/police station/hospital/school.

Count them some time.

Also a personal favourite is the woman never takes off her bra for sex scenes and also leaves a peculiar thongy thing in place (ouchies!!) and the careful winding of sheets around the naughty bits and oh yes, everybody has underwear on, rolling out of bed in the morning. Tidy passion scenes I call them.

XO
WWW

Twilight said...

Wisewebwoman ~ Oh yes! I have remarked on that very thing - had forgotten about it thanks for the reminder! Isn't it always soooo convenient even in a big busy city - quite the opposite in real life, even in a little rural town!

Re the bra and sex scenes - in older movies yes, I agree. I believe we've reached the next stage now though. We've seen some scenes recently, probably more TV dramas than theatre-type movies though, where absolutely nothing is left to the imagination, and the tidy scene becomes distinctly untidy. ;-)