Film.com article: Historical inaccuracies in movies
As further compensation for my failure to produce a “Snide Remarks” column this week, check out today’s entry at Film.com, “Hollywood Is Terrible with History.” It contains gems such as this:
If you watch closely in the famous chariot-race scene in Ben-Hur, you can clearly see that one of the “chariots” is actually a Volkswagen Beetle.
The only thing keeping it from being a “Snide Remarks” column is that it doesn’t say “Snide Remarks” at the top of it.
October 15th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Oh, man. The one about Robin Williams really had me laughing!
October 16th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Clobbergirl has a nice backatcha to someone slamming Eric’s article.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I think Eric should start a new feature on the site like “Kids Letters to Raven Symone” in which he shares his favorite idiotic comments on his film.com articles. We have a few candidates on this article already!
October 16th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
The one that had me rolling was about the “nylon guitar string” sold in 1956. I’m always a sucker for the clever non-sequitor joke that comes out of nowhere. It’s like when Christopher Guest in “Waiting for Guffman” starts bringing out his “My Dinner with Andre” ACTION FIGURES! Hilarious stuff.
Also, this goes without saying…some folks need to have a satire chip implanted in their clueless melons. I mean c’mon people! Please get some help…
October 17th, 2007 at 10:00 am
To be clear, just because something is satire doesn’t mean that it’s good, clever, or funny. And even though someone doesn’t appreciate one particular piece of satire, it doesn’t mean that they don’t understand or get satire. It probably means that they just don’t think that particular piece is very good.
That being said, I just had to mention that for some reason, whenever Eric even mentions “Titanic” in any writing, I already think it’s funny.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:58 am
It’s not that they didn’t like it as satire. They were criticizing the facts for being incorrect. If they understood that it was truly satire then they should expect the facts to not be accurate.
October 19th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Okay, well to me, most people seemed like they were disappointed that it was satirical and not serious. I think they were looking forward to a serious piece. The one that said “you fool” would be the only one that I consider to completely not get that it was intended to be humorous.