Hobbitrebel and special effects

Finding Fault

Editor's Note: There is more proof than ever that people who become obsessed with certain pieces of literature really have no lives. Check out: www.moviemistakes.com. It is a fun web site, and no doubt provides an excellent service by keeping the movie industry from getting too sloppy or insulting. That aside, those who submit many of these ‘mistakes’ are the people who worry us.

These people have no lives. We can understand somebody armed with a video or DVD, who has watched the flick over and over; we get somebody like that noticing some minor gaffes. However, consider The Two Towers and Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets. There are more than 150 mistakes officially listed for TTT and more than 140 for the second Harry Potter installment.

What are those people doing with their lives? They cannot ALL have bootleg copies, right? How can they sit through these cinematic wonders and notice things like Ron Weasley’s hair being oh-so-ruffled ruffled in the back of his head in one scene and when they cut back to the young actor seconds later, it is now slightly smoothed down?

From the TTT:

When the Berserker Uruk-Hai with the torch runs to the bomb to detonate it, Aragorn yells at Legolas to stop him. Legolas fires an arrow with green short fletch (feathers), then you see the berserker hit by a long white fletched arrow, the kind the Lothlorien elves use. A second time, Aragorn yells to Legolas to kill him, and then again, the arrow shot by Legolas is not the same type as the one that hits the Uruk-Hai.

Gee, here’s a thought: Legolas the elf was running low on arrows and was getting all sorts of different kinds of arrows from any Middle Earth source he could access. Maybe this elf just isn’t as picky as you viewers. Of course, the character was trying to help save Middle Earth so maybe, just maybe, he was too BUSY KILLING ORCS to think about color coordinating his shots???

Our very fav was:

In the scene with Aragorn tracking the hobbits footsteps away from the Orc battle, Aragorn's equipment is reversed - his sword is on his right hip, his dagger is on his left, etc.

Maybe the King in Waiting is a switch fencer you morons. Maybe it is easier to run in the mountains and across rocks and plains with your sword on one side and then fight with it on the other. Maybe all that hardware simply got heavy.

Or maybe, just maybe, you people have no lives.

We asked The Scottish Geisha to comment, being that she has Little Patience for the small matters in life. After insisting that she read every single ‘mistake’ listed on the site for TTT, she did so, thoroughly we might add. She then put down the list, raised a finely arched brow, sighed and said: “They missed one. Eowyn enters Helm’s Deep carrying nothing. However, in the shot that follows she enters the centre of Helm’s Deep wearing a sort of baskety-form of a backpack on her back. They missed that, don’t you know.”

Ah yes, of course. We are certain the Scottish Geisha, as we speak, is demanding that this outrageous snafu be listed on the site so don’t even bother trying.

TTT and LOTR Movie Mishaps...

But Does Anybody CARE????

Some Obsessions Are Less Harmful Than Others....My Precious

More Theatrical Gaffes

Make no mistake; some folks take their movie mistakes VERY seriously while others of us are actually too caught up in the action/plot/theme/acting to notice. That, of course, makes us clueless heathens but we digress.

Some of the bloopers, we admit, are pretty funny. Hands down, one of the funniest one has to be the following:

In the scene where Sam and Frodo are in the field with the scarecrow, you can plainly see a car cruising past in the distance, from right to left. This holds the dubious distinction of being the first urban myth (of sorts) spawned by this site — some people swear blind there's a car there, others insist there's nothing at all. All I can say is watch it and make up your own mind. If there is a car, they'll delete it for the DVD release, so get in there quickly! Further comment - there are two different shots which show the car moving from right to left. One starts at the top right distance, and in a shot a few seconds later the car has traveled down the road a bit and is more easily visible. Complicating matters is that the dust thrown up by the car looks similar to smoke from a chimney in the right distance, making some people think it is just the chimney. But chimneys don't move, and the smoke from the chimney is separate from the moving vehicle. [It is deleted on the DVD, but you can still see an obvious bit of image fakery on the hill just left of the smoking chimney. One can see the hill, tree, and surrounding area move up and down and shimmer slightly where someone has done a cut and paste to cover up the auto. The "car inclusive" scene appears on the National Geographic documentary Beyond the Movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.]

We really didn’t believe it so we had one of TLL.net staffers haul out their original LOTR video and, sure enough, if you spend twenty minutes replaying that particular scene in slo-mo, eventually, sort of, you can finally, maybe, discern that there is something rather well, un-Middle Earth in the far, far distance. Hell, it is so far away that it actually may technically be outside of the boundaries of Middle Earth proper but we’d have to double check on that. Somebody also dug up a copy of the National Geographic documentary video and, yup, sure enough yet again, it’s there. Again, provided you watch the scene about two gazillion times and slo-mo of course.

Sigh.

Will nobody leave those poor souls toiling away at WingNut alone?

Oh, and since most clearly won’t, of course, check out the top 20 movie faux pas of all times. Turns out for you die hard Harry Potter fans there is a real show stopper cinematic blunder involving the character of Draco’s father, played by that: the camera loves him to death, Jason Issaacs:

At the beginning of the scene near the end of the movie with Lucius Malfoy fuming at Dumbledore in his office, Malfoy's hair is fanned back behind his shoulders. The lighting in the room illuminates the back of his neck, where you can see his real, short brown hair.

Does this mean, choke, that he’s not a real blond?

Gasp.

Never (Bored) Of The Ring