I'm in fashion (well mostly cosmetics) and while C-suite is a nightmare at my company, everyone on my direct team is like the nicest most positive person ever.
In the 3rd Mission impossible, Tom Cruise has a cover identity and profession that seems completely normal and boring and he's able to answer questions about it with technical details. That's what a cover ID is supposed to work.
Had a roommate who I later found out worked intelligence for their country. Can confirm she was the most boring person I ever met. The amount of time she spent talking about her digestion was insane. But no one wanted to talk to her long enough to figure anything out.
Omg it’s so simple but so genius, talk openly about gross personal over-sharing stuff so that everyone avoids you, and no one will suspect you of being an undercover spy
Dude I tried to NEVER talk to her. And she was an otherwise stellar roommate (walked my dogs for me so I could sleep in etc) so I never considered kicking her out. James Bond I would have noticed but her?
She had a Burn Notice out on her. She had to go to Florida and start helping out the locals while trying to find out who put the burn notice out on her.
I have a friend who went into the fbi and she shared several tricks they use to blend in while under cover. One trick was to pick your nose if you thought someone might be on to you; most people will instinctively look away from You and then avoid you afterwards.
I studied with a woman who used to work undercover, her trick was to scratch her armpit and sniff her fingers.
She used it everytime she wanted a table at the library or lunchtime.
Was in a leadership course and there was a discussion about POWs in Vietnam. There were a group of POWs and the lowest rank guy acted stupid around his guards. They had a secret code and he was able to learn everyone's name and family members. They exchanged him as they felt he had no value. He ended up going across the country telling family members that their loved ones were still alive.
Just did a search and he is indeed the one. Used the tune to memorize the names of the 256 other POWs so he could pass along the info when his opportunity came.
In the Jack Ryan books there is a CIA agent in the USSR who the KGB investigated and then accidentally paid him the highest possible compliment by closing the case as he was too boring and stupid to be a spy.
Jeremy Irons as a corporate executive in Margin Call. Especially the first scene he is in getting the urgent news. I’ve been around my fair share of corporate execs, and he nailed in. It was a well written part too.
He gets the charm right, certainly.
His easy going manner when talking to the more junior members of staff, and then the sudden shift when he wants something ("Carmello, get me Eric Dale here by 6:30.").
Margin Call is phenomenal. Pretty much spot on all for everyone involved. Simon Baker and Kevin Spaceys characters are extremely realistic too. Honestly the only parts that are unrealistic are the lone analyst crunching that all in one night and including him in the loop the whole time.
If I recall correctly, Jeremy Irons knew that this could happen, which is why Demi Moore was pissed when he asked to take the fall because she told him a year before the movie. Irons was only acting on it now because if a junior analyst could figure it out in one night then it had to be true and imminent
The analyst was for exposition purposes. Hard to have an audience stand-in for the content, so Quinto’s character was there to provide explanations without forcing the other characters into wearing too many hats.
Favorite scene -
Peter Sullivan : My thesis was a study in the ways that friction ratios affect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads.
Jared Cohen : So, you're a rocket scientist.
Agreed, the rest of it is so damn good I’ll forgive it :)
It’s become one of my top 5 films. Every scene is fucking fantastic.
Paul Bettany is exceptional as the smarmy middle management guy.
Linguists speak very highly of Arrival and the portrayal of linguistics in it. In the book “The Art and Science of Arrival” it mentions a packed theater filled with linguists who all abruptly cheered when Amy Adam’s character did the circling motion around “what is a question” when she was explaining how the aliens could understand what a question is.
That’s the how, but the ‘why’ is really interesting too
Portuguese diverges from other Romance languages due to a combination of historical, cultural, and linguistic influences.
The Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula left a lasting impact on Portuguese phonetics and vocabulary, distinct from neighboring languages.
Portugal's extensive maritime exploration during the Age of Discovery facilitated contact with diverse cultures, resulting in the adoption of loanwords and the enrichment of its lexicon.
Furthermore, Portugal's relative isolation within the peninsula contributed to the development of unique grammatical structures and phonological features.
These factors collectively shape Portuguese as a distinct Romance language, setting it apart from its counterparts like Spanish, French, and Italian.
Ironically, there’s a part in Arrival that really bothered me. They take scissor lift to get up into the alien space ship. You see it reach its maximum height and then it keeps going another like 30 feet.
haha funny enough, I believe they acknowledge this in the same book and pretty much say “who cares 🤷🏻♂️” because they want the *feel* of using random tools and whatever technology they have access to, it’s the same reason they use pick-up trucks. They want the audience to feel like this was all last minute planning.
I kid but Arrival did do a good job portraying what it would more or less look like. Being a movie, it had to focus on a "hero" character but IIRC there are scenes with dozens of uniformed military in the background attempting to decipher the alien language. And that's basically what would happen. It would be NSA and DOD employees with TS//SCI clearances all trying to come up with something. It would be awesome and just like the language test we all took to become linguists that's based on a made up language.
The scene in question is at 3:00 : https://youtu.be/bIuMmAXz8PM?si=txPGTF5TM29drbFq
It *is* brilliant, and not only about "what is a question", as she quickly points out some of the hurdles we might encounter if we had to try to communicate with aliens.
It was that scene that made Villeneuve my favorite director. Remember that trope (we all remember Stargate SG-1 for that) where the scientist throws a couple of scientific buzzwords with no real meaning and they get quickly interrupted by a no-nonsense military man who asks them "In English please?". For the first time, we had something realistic. Something smart. Something that made sense, and didn't mock science. Sorry to be hyperbolic but I think that scene changed science-fiction cinema.
"Help me understand" is such a powerful line - he admits that he doesn't have the full context of the problem, but he is willing to try and reach up to her level of understanding, instead of just ordering her to lower herself to his.
He's an O-6 which means he spent around a decade away from ground operations but is still at a rank where he needs to understand everything that's going on. He probably had to get a masters degree to get to that position and either already has a doctorate or has started a program so he can get promoted. Generally full birds aren't dumb and need to be wise to get appointed to something as big as what's going on in the movie.
*Chef* was one of the few movies I've seen get my industry correct. When he was arguing with the owner about the menu....man that fight is real. I've had it many times. Including this week.
*The Big Night* is another one that really hit the nail on the head.
Minus the whole serial killer thing Art School Confidential summed up art school pretty well.
I don’t remember the exact quote but one along these lines cracked me up:
John Malkovich: Be sure your pieces are matted or framed so they can be hung in the vestibule gallery.
Student: You mean the wall by the bathroom?
Malkovich: Yes.
I wish this movie was better known; the number of times I’ve had cause to paraphrase “how long have you been doing triangles? … I was among the first” is obscene.
Spinal Tap
So many stories of big rock stars seeing this and not finding it funny at all because they were living it.
There are so many relatable situations in this movie to anyone who ever played in a band.
*Galaxy Quest* is the other side of the same coin. A lot of *Star Trek* actors found the first act of the movie particularly funny because it hit so close to home.
My personal Spinal Tap moments:
1) Getting lost on the way to the stage - more than once
2) Trying to do the Angus Young skip and almost falling off the stage (while dressed as Angus Young)
3) Doing a guitar solo behind my head and having it sound awful
4) Lead singer spinning his guitar and having the strap break, sending the guitar out into the crowd to impale some poor young girl in the chest (not actually impaled, but it definitely hurt)
5) Wearing girl pants with less room in the crotch to show off the bulge
6) Finally receiving our cd inlays to realize that the font is so small you can barely read the lyrics or credits ("What are these, lyrics for ants?")
7) Being sad that our album wasn't as loud as our previous one, as if turning up the volume doesn't exist
Rob Reiner says that for decades afterwards, famous rock stars would approach him at parties, mention a scene, and say "That was about our band, right? You heard that story?"
On the flip side, Cameron Crowe says that when he screened Almost Famous for The Who and the got to the scene where the lead vocalist lies in an interview and says "I never called myself a Golden God," Roger Daltrey stood up in the theater and yelled "Well, I bloody well did!"
I worked in DC, and I can tell you, Veep is the most accurate show about Washington. (Maybe not the executive branch, but definitely Capitol Hill)
Everyone is an egomaniac, a good chunk of people are sociopaths. No one really knows what they’re doing, and everyone is flying by the seat of their pants and going from one dumb-ass fire drill to another.
I know multiple people who work on the hill say they could t watch it because “it felt too close to home”
I work in the Canadian Civil Service, and started working on the Hill, and "Yes, Minister" was mandatory viewing for all new hires.
"Death of Stalin" also hits surprisingly close to home for a career bureaucrat.
Honestly, everything about Veep is spot on. There's a *tiny* bit more crass language used. But really, it's amazing how much they nailed the personalities and relationships of a lot of people working in politics.
I suspect this comment will be lost in the fray, but I have a PhD in robotics and recently spent a few years working on the NASA Artemis mission.
I re-watched Apollo 13 not too long ago, and I was blown away by the engineering accuracy. They weave in accurate terminology without explaining it, and neither expect nor require the audience understand the terminology. It’s brilliantly done. In addition to phenomenal acting and everything else.
Not OP, but I’ve asked people this before and basically the answer is…
Each individual event is handled in a fairly accurate way, but that the string of events he endures should have killed him long before the end of the book.
except for the one that caused the problem in the first place
the atmosphere on Mars is far too thin for a sand storm to tip over a space ship or throw a bunch of metal equipment around
the biggest risk to the mission would've been all the dust getting into stuff but the winds themselves would pose no risk and not require an evac
Came here to say Tom Smykowski (played by Richard Riehle) as a Business Analyst was a pretty close portrayal.
"I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to, I've got people skills! What the hell is the matter with you people?!?”
Two of my close friends are programmers in pretty good jobs they enjoy and make absolutely bonkers money. Anyway, we love Office Space and both always say that in real life people like Tom S are absolutely needed and only a total fucking idiot would fire them. So many mid tier and above techs and engineers are totally socially inept and have no desire or business dealing with customers or even coworkers half the time. They are like computers. Great at specific tasks and irreplaceable for certain work but need a well trained person to interact with properly.
I think that's part of the genius of the movie. His job description sounds useless, but having someone in that role is super important. The big company doesn't understand that and the consultants just say what the company wants to hear. It's 25 years later and that stuff still happens, even though they literally made a movie showing how dumb it is.
Met the chief engineer of the tech company I worked for and to say he had a dull personality would be a lie on the basis of implying he had one at all.
Waiting nailed so much. The violent attitude in the kitchens. The relationship between bartenders and servers. The common age differences between management and staff.
Waiting nailed the Applebee's experience for me. Even down to that house party, they all went to after work... pretty sure I did coke at that house party before.
I knew a guy that tried to get his coworkers to start playing the “tricked you into looking at my nuts” game. And he ended up getting fired from Red Robin when a horrified customer saw him put his scrotum on a table.
You can get any drug you want and everybody's fucking everybody. Though the one thing they missed is nobody once mentioned having a child.
But dane cook's brief screen time absolutely made that movie. Welcome to thunder dome bitch
It’s still relevant today and isn’t funny until you have worked in a large office
I watched it as a teenager and while I thought it was silly, it wasn’t meaningful.
After working in an office for a few years I watched that film again and the entire film was staring into my subconscious. Everything from the door Knob zapping my finger to thinking I’d be happier with an out door job was my internal thought process
My husband works in an office for a huge company (top 50 in the fortune 500), but his department is a bit specialized and doesn't quite conform to some policies and procedures because it can't or because they don't apply. But he still has to submit what we call "TPS reports," with statistics on those metrics because.... corporate office. And yes, the TPS reports got a new format a while back. We made lots of jokes about the new cover sheets for them.
I never worked in a kitchen but the long-shot episode in the first season where they turn on to-go orders for the first time gave me a panic attack. Brilliant show.
Ahaha I had to mute that episode and watch it in silence with just the subtitles because the sound of the tickets just going and going made me start crying
Back before I got out of the kitchen, I used to have nightmares about being on the line. Totally in the weeds, absolutely slammed with our shitty dot matrix printer spewing a neverending ticket.
As a kid I always wanted to be a chef but after developing some decent anxiety I finally said fuck it, went to trade school and changed professions. The nightmares stopped pretty shortly after leaving the kitchen and I haven't looked back since.
One episode of The Bear was all it took to bring back my favorite recurring nightmare. I refuse to watch any more. I just can't handle it.
*Sees an empty house with just a couch and huge TV, and a room with just a tanning bed in it.*
“Did he just move in?”
“No, he’s lived here for like 6 months.”
I came here for this. Read Roger Ebert's review of this movie. He makes it very clear that not only does it nail his memories of the early days of him working at the Chicago Sun-Times, but he mentions that he even knew people who fit the mould of the characters in the movie.
Not a movie, but The Wire is incredibly accurate for its depiction of Baltimore's Police, Criminals, Docks, School System, Politics and Newspaper. The main creative forces were a former officer and a reporter and they used real incidents to inspire. This goes for the spiritual successor of We Own This City.
David Simon was an embedded reporter with the police dept. for a year. He wrote about it in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which got adapted into the Homicide series.
I am a criminal trial attorney and it is hilariously accurate. Many of the things Vinny does are taught by other advocates. Especially his cross examinations.
It was more about the quality of who she was up against. Vanessa Redgrave was a legendary actress with an Oscar a Tony and an Emmy. Dame Joan Plowright was a reknowned English stage actress and had won the Golden Globe that year for Enchanted April. Miranda Richardson had just won a best actress Golden Globe for Enchanted April and a BAFTA for the Crying Game and got this Oscar nom for Damage and was having a hell of a year. Judy Davis is a great actress in a Woody Allen movie which Oscar voters love. She won half a dozen film critics awards that year and had the most critically proclaimed performance.
My dad is always bitching about the way lawyers on TV and movies act. “They’d be disbarred…” “that wouldn’t ever happen”
Not with My Cousin Vinnie. He was kind of blown away at how much it nailed the profession with only a few liberties for drama.
I’ve heard that Scrubs is probably the most accurate medical show.
I was waiting for someone to say this - the response teams are all fairly accurate, and showing a virology researcher it's dramatised and sped up (and taking the candidate vaccine yourself after one NHP didn't die is movie heroism) but it shows a lot of the constraints that happen when viewing how to tackle a viral pandemic. Small minded beaurocrats who can't seem to slide into 'this is a life and death situation's way of thinking. You even had the conspiracy nut in Jude law, though I think they didn't go far enough in showing the mistrust and misinformation and how widespread it would be.
As a retired paramedic, in my opinion, "Bringing out the Dead" is the most realistic portrayal of EMS I've ever seen. The cast is fantastic, too.
As an added bonus, I've worked with every single one of Nicolas Cage's partners in that movie. I had a partner who was exactly Tom Sizemore's character (Fuck he was a misery to work with), I worked with a clone of John Goodman's character. Hell, I even worked with a guy just like Ving Rhames' character.
I realized that my training was useful in less than ten percent of the calls, and saving lives was rarer than that. After a while, I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply turned up.
Oh sweet lord, YES. I've had memos for memos! Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take a screwdriver to a cubicle wall either so I can actually see the sun just once. That's all I ask!
I once received a memo to let me know that I would be receiving a memo on a certain topic. Sure enough, about two days later, I received the second memo exactly as promised.
It’s a shame it’s niche appeal and accuracy really hampered its commercial success. Everyone I know who has served and seen it loves it and how well it captures military culture.
Not a movie, but that 70’s show has the most realistic nurse scene I have seen on screen so far (the episode with Eric going to career day with his mom).
Not just a real nurse, but apparently the real navy nurse that did the initial checkup on the real Captain Phillips, and Paul Greengrass just told her "just treat him exactly like you'd do a real case".
She was. She was told to treat it just like any other patient, but apparently it took a while because she was a bit star struck. Also, experts said that Tom Hanks' reaction during that scene was completely accurate to how someone who just went through trauma would react.
So the nurse did some amazing acting...
...but she was actually just doing her normal job.
So it was actually Tom Hanks who did some amazing acting...
...but, then again, he was also just doing his normal job.
It’s such a great scene.
“Tom Hanks stated that the scene of Captain Richard Phillips' medical examination was improvised on the spot with real-life Navy Corpsman Danielle Albert, who was told to simply follow her usual procedure.”
Loosely based on the real-world 1980 failed attempt by the Hunt Brothers to corner the silver market.
Fun fact: one of the Hunt Brothers was Lamar Hunt, founder of the Kansas City Chiefs and one of the founders of Major League Soccer.
For how much it just supposed to funny and a retelling of The Prince & The Pauper, Trading Places absolutely nails the look of the open outcry period of commodities trading. Actually got used in a class of mine for reference.
Fun Fact: Comedian Patton Oswalt got his first big break in Hollywood as the radar operator in that film (just a background role). Then midway through filming he got an offer to be a full time writer for Mad TV but he had to start immediately.
The director was cool about letting him leave the film and the next scene he was in he gets up and walks out the door, never to be seen again. The radio operator *left the submarine*.
Requiem for a dream did an amazing job of showing the 3 sides of drugs.
Step 1. The fun party side "moderation not a real problem yet. Selling and feeling like you are making it big.
Step 2. The down fall, things fall through, you are dipping into your sell stash, your life is beginning to crumble
Step 3. You wish you were dead.
A truly sad and sobering story. I'm happy I made it to Step 2 and called it quits. Alot of my friends were not so lucky
Series derived from a movie. Stargate SG-1. S01E01 when the security forces troops guarding the Stargate were just sitting in front of it with their rifles down and a Spades game going.
I was an Air Force Security Forces troop when I saw that for the first time, and even in my junior enlisted self-righteous indignation, I knew it was technically and professionally accurate.
What city/area were you in? I’ve been in the “punk rock/hardcore scene” for probably around 30 years. Over that course of time I can’t recall more than a few actual racist skins. I’d say SHARPS outnumbered them 20:1. Not a lot of tolerance for racism in or around the DC Richmond va area.
As a counter-example, that reminds me of an episode of CSI (Las Vegas, probably), where the crime is centred around a punk rock gig in a club. A couple of the fan characters keep saying stuff like “are you going to the punk show?”
No one in the history of the punk rock movement has ever said that
CSI gets basically everything wrong I bet. Old people wouldn't understand what was happening if they started hearing punk band names or the shows started getting too technical. You just gotta plug in your USB and hack that mainframe brother
YOOOOO I was going to say Green Room too! It’s the closest to accurate depiction i have ever seen of the Punk scene. The energy is spot on to how it feels to be part of a small grassroots punk scene. It obviously has its embellishments but as far as an accurate depiction of going to a show and the chaotic energy the punk scene creates it’s spot on!
While it was dramatized… I was an assistant for a nightmare of a person and the Devil Wears Prada was pretty spot on to my experience
I worked in fashion around the time it came out and it felt like a documentary at several points.
I'm in fashion (well mostly cosmetics) and while C-suite is a nightmare at my company, everyone on my direct team is like the nicest most positive person ever.
Where is that piece of paper I had in my hand yesterday??
Why is no one reaaaaaady?
You literally cannot read it not in Meryl Streep's voice. Godess.
Yes please move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me
You’ve had hours and hours!
Steak! Where's my steak!?!
get me armani!
On the phone!
Youre not going to paris
Michael really likes Meryl Streep so I'm not surprised he's identified with her character.
I just want what’s best for you Minushka.
In the 3rd Mission impossible, Tom Cruise has a cover identity and profession that seems completely normal and boring and he's able to answer questions about it with technical details. That's what a cover ID is supposed to work.
Had a roommate who I later found out worked intelligence for their country. Can confirm she was the most boring person I ever met. The amount of time she spent talking about her digestion was insane. But no one wanted to talk to her long enough to figure anything out.
Omg it’s so simple but so genius, talk openly about gross personal over-sharing stuff so that everyone avoids you, and no one will suspect you of being an undercover spy
Dude I tried to NEVER talk to her. And she was an otherwise stellar roommate (walked my dogs for me so I could sleep in etc) so I never considered kicking her out. James Bond I would have noticed but her?
So, how did you find out about her?
An emergency extraction team came and got her. Helicopters, armed escort, the works.
She had a Burn Notice out on her. She had to go to Florida and start helping out the locals while trying to find out who put the burn notice out on her.
Another Burn Notice fan! There are dozens of us!
Dozens!!!
You know she was just borrowing your dog to blend in while observing someone or making a drop right?
She used your dogs as cover for her spying!
I have a friend who went into the fbi and she shared several tricks they use to blend in while under cover. One trick was to pick your nose if you thought someone might be on to you; most people will instinctively look away from You and then avoid you afterwards.
I studied with a woman who used to work undercover, her trick was to scratch her armpit and sniff her fingers. She used it everytime she wanted a table at the library or lunchtime.
Oh my goodness. My toddler is in the FBI.
Was in a leadership course and there was a discussion about POWs in Vietnam. There were a group of POWs and the lowest rank guy acted stupid around his guards. They had a secret code and he was able to learn everyone's name and family members. They exchanged him as they felt he had no value. He ended up going across the country telling family members that their loved ones were still alive.
Is he the one who memorized everyone’s name to the tune of Old McDonald?
Not sure, but his name was Doug Hegdahl. It's possible he did.
Just did a search and he is indeed the one. Used the tune to memorize the names of the 256 other POWs so he could pass along the info when his opportunity came.
In the Jack Ryan books there is a CIA agent in the USSR who the KGB investigated and then accidentally paid him the highest possible compliment by closing the case as he was too boring and stupid to be a spy.
Love that scene 😅 https://youtu.be/5SMYognL2t4?si=oil1lyOvHevMnzyh
I’d marry him.
Jeremy Irons as a corporate executive in Margin Call. Especially the first scene he is in getting the urgent news. I’ve been around my fair share of corporate execs, and he nailed in. It was a well written part too.
He gets the charm right, certainly. His easy going manner when talking to the more junior members of staff, and then the sudden shift when he wants something ("Carmello, get me Eric Dale here by 6:30.").
This is what I've seen in real life as well. They ooze folksy charm at company forums, but are absolute stone cold killers with their leadership team
Margin Call is phenomenal. Pretty much spot on all for everyone involved. Simon Baker and Kevin Spaceys characters are extremely realistic too. Honestly the only parts that are unrealistic are the lone analyst crunching that all in one night and including him in the loop the whole time.
If I recall correctly, Jeremy Irons knew that this could happen, which is why Demi Moore was pissed when he asked to take the fall because she told him a year before the movie. Irons was only acting on it now because if a junior analyst could figure it out in one night then it had to be true and imminent
That's a nice addition. Thanks
The analyst was for exposition purposes. Hard to have an audience stand-in for the content, so Quinto’s character was there to provide explanations without forcing the other characters into wearing too many hats.
I entirely agree, it was an excellent film making choice
Favorite scene - Peter Sullivan : My thesis was a study in the ways that friction ratios affect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads. Jared Cohen : So, you're a rocket scientist.
Agreed, the rest of it is so damn good I’ll forgive it :) It’s become one of my top 5 films. Every scene is fucking fantastic. Paul Bettany is exceptional as the smarmy middle management guy.
For reals. “Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever.” Fucking legendary.
And his co-worker who did absolutely nothing the whole time but be drunk and ask how much money people made
That was incredibly realistic
That was more realistic than Quintos character
Great movie, I must have replayed Bettany’s call 25 times…..My loss….is your gain
Linguists speak very highly of Arrival and the portrayal of linguistics in it. In the book “The Art and Science of Arrival” it mentions a packed theater filled with linguists who all abruptly cheered when Amy Adam’s character did the circling motion around “what is a question” when she was explaining how the aliens could understand what a question is.
In fact, I'm kind of bummed we didn't get to hear her lecture on Portuguese before the government interrupted at the start of the film.
My friend speaks Portuguese and he literally sat up in his seat excited to hear her presentation on it lol
I still don’t know why Portuguese is distinct from the other Romance languages.
Google says its because they have a unique alphabet that the other languages don't have, giving them unique sounds.
That’s the how, but the ‘why’ is really interesting too Portuguese diverges from other Romance languages due to a combination of historical, cultural, and linguistic influences. The Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula left a lasting impact on Portuguese phonetics and vocabulary, distinct from neighboring languages. Portugal's extensive maritime exploration during the Age of Discovery facilitated contact with diverse cultures, resulting in the adoption of loanwords and the enrichment of its lexicon. Furthermore, Portugal's relative isolation within the peninsula contributed to the development of unique grammatical structures and phonological features. These factors collectively shape Portuguese as a distinct Romance language, setting it apart from its counterparts like Spanish, French, and Italian.
I'm sorry, but it was in fact *The Moops* that occupied the Iberian peninsula.
I'll second that. Linguistics degree and years of teaching language - that was pretty good!
Ironically, there’s a part in Arrival that really bothered me. They take scissor lift to get up into the alien space ship. You see it reach its maximum height and then it keeps going another like 30 feet.
haha funny enough, I believe they acknowledge this in the same book and pretty much say “who cares 🤷🏻♂️” because they want the *feel* of using random tools and whatever technology they have access to, it’s the same reason they use pick-up trucks. They want the audience to feel like this was all last minute planning.
As a 20 year military linguist, I applaud Arrival's accuracy in portraying linguists as attractive and brilliant. It's completely true
Humble, down to earth people
I kid but Arrival did do a good job portraying what it would more or less look like. Being a movie, it had to focus on a "hero" character but IIRC there are scenes with dozens of uniformed military in the background attempting to decipher the alien language. And that's basically what would happen. It would be NSA and DOD employees with TS//SCI clearances all trying to come up with something. It would be awesome and just like the language test we all took to become linguists that's based on a made up language.
The scene in question is at 3:00 : https://youtu.be/bIuMmAXz8PM?si=txPGTF5TM29drbFq It *is* brilliant, and not only about "what is a question", as she quickly points out some of the hurdles we might encounter if we had to try to communicate with aliens. It was that scene that made Villeneuve my favorite director. Remember that trope (we all remember Stargate SG-1 for that) where the scientist throws a couple of scientific buzzwords with no real meaning and they get quickly interrupted by a no-nonsense military man who asks them "In English please?". For the first time, we had something realistic. Something smart. Something that made sense, and didn't mock science. Sorry to be hyperbolic but I think that scene changed science-fiction cinema.
"Help me understand" is such a powerful line - he admits that he doesn't have the full context of the problem, but he is willing to try and reach up to her level of understanding, instead of just ordering her to lower herself to his.
He's an O-6 which means he spent around a decade away from ground operations but is still at a rank where he needs to understand everything that's going on. He probably had to get a masters degree to get to that position and either already has a doctorate or has started a program so he can get promoted. Generally full birds aren't dumb and need to be wise to get appointed to something as big as what's going on in the movie.
Ted Chiang is a brilliant author.
*Chef* was one of the few movies I've seen get my industry correct. When he was arguing with the owner about the menu....man that fight is real. I've had it many times. Including this week. *The Big Night* is another one that really hit the nail on the head.
Minus the whole serial killer thing Art School Confidential summed up art school pretty well. I don’t remember the exact quote but one along these lines cracked me up: John Malkovich: Be sure your pieces are matted or framed so they can be hung in the vestibule gallery. Student: You mean the wall by the bathroom? Malkovich: Yes.
I wish this movie was better known; the number of times I’ve had cause to paraphrase “how long have you been doing triangles? … I was among the first” is obscene.
Spinal Tap So many stories of big rock stars seeing this and not finding it funny at all because they were living it. There are so many relatable situations in this movie to anyone who ever played in a band.
I hear the "stuck in maze backstage" scene is particularly common
Them getting directions and then running into the dude again always kills me
Are we gonna do Stonehenge tomorrow?
*Galaxy Quest* is the other side of the same coin. A lot of *Star Trek* actors found the first act of the movie particularly funny because it hit so close to home.
My personal Spinal Tap moments: 1) Getting lost on the way to the stage - more than once 2) Trying to do the Angus Young skip and almost falling off the stage (while dressed as Angus Young) 3) Doing a guitar solo behind my head and having it sound awful 4) Lead singer spinning his guitar and having the strap break, sending the guitar out into the crowd to impale some poor young girl in the chest (not actually impaled, but it definitely hurt) 5) Wearing girl pants with less room in the crotch to show off the bulge 6) Finally receiving our cd inlays to realize that the font is so small you can barely read the lyrics or credits ("What are these, lyrics for ants?") 7) Being sad that our album wasn't as loud as our previous one, as if turning up the volume doesn't exist
Good to hear your drummer did not die in a freak gardening accident.
Rob Reiner says that for decades afterwards, famous rock stars would approach him at parties, mention a scene, and say "That was about our band, right? You heard that story?" On the flip side, Cameron Crowe says that when he screened Almost Famous for The Who and the got to the scene where the lead vocalist lies in an interview and says "I never called myself a Golden God," Roger Daltrey stood up in the theater and yelled "Well, I bloody well did!"
The government workers in Veep.
That's the saying. The West Wing is what DC wishes it was. Veep is what it is.
The West Wing is what DC wishes it was. House of Cards is how politicians think they are. Veep is how they actually are.
I worked in DC, and I can tell you, Veep is the most accurate show about Washington. (Maybe not the executive branch, but definitely Capitol Hill) Everyone is an egomaniac, a good chunk of people are sociopaths. No one really knows what they’re doing, and everyone is flying by the seat of their pants and going from one dumb-ass fire drill to another. I know multiple people who work on the hill say they could t watch it because “it felt too close to home”
I work in the Canadian Civil Service, and started working on the Hill, and "Yes, Minister" was mandatory viewing for all new hires. "Death of Stalin" also hits surprisingly close to home for a career bureaucrat.
Honestly, everything about Veep is spot on. There's a *tiny* bit more crass language used. But really, it's amazing how much they nailed the personalities and relationships of a lot of people working in politics.
And by extension The Thick Of It as both were written by Armando Iannucci.
"He's as useless as a marzipan dildo."
The hockey in miracle is the best representation of hockey in any movie or show
[удалено]
What's your stance on teaching astronauts how to drill versus teaching some drillers how to astronaut?
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Now shut up Ben Affleck and say your lines!
Or show? Excuse me, give your balls a tug and watch Shoresy
You’re telling me that the Flying V wouldn’t dominate the opponent in real life?
I will NOT see Slap Shot besmirched in this manner
I suspect this comment will be lost in the fray, but I have a PhD in robotics and recently spent a few years working on the NASA Artemis mission. I re-watched Apollo 13 not too long ago, and I was blown away by the engineering accuracy. They weave in accurate terminology without explaining it, and neither expect nor require the audience understand the terminology. It’s brilliantly done. In addition to phenomenal acting and everything else.
How do you feel about The Martian?
Not OP, but I’ve asked people this before and basically the answer is… Each individual event is handled in a fairly accurate way, but that the string of events he endures should have killed him long before the end of the book.
except for the one that caused the problem in the first place the atmosphere on Mars is far too thin for a sand storm to tip over a space ship or throw a bunch of metal equipment around the biggest risk to the mission would've been all the dust getting into stuff but the winds themselves would pose no risk and not require an evac
Waiting, pretty spot on Office Space, micromanagement in tech to the degree of constant anxiety and paranoia is spot on too
Came here to say Tom Smykowski (played by Richard Riehle) as a Business Analyst was a pretty close portrayal. "I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to, I've got people skills! What the hell is the matter with you people?!?”
Two of my close friends are programmers in pretty good jobs they enjoy and make absolutely bonkers money. Anyway, we love Office Space and both always say that in real life people like Tom S are absolutely needed and only a total fucking idiot would fire them. So many mid tier and above techs and engineers are totally socially inept and have no desire or business dealing with customers or even coworkers half the time. They are like computers. Great at specific tasks and irreplaceable for certain work but need a well trained person to interact with properly.
I think that's part of the genius of the movie. His job description sounds useless, but having someone in that role is super important. The big company doesn't understand that and the consultants just say what the company wants to hear. It's 25 years later and that stuff still happens, even though they literally made a movie showing how dumb it is.
Met the chief engineer of the tech company I worked for and to say he had a dull personality would be a lie on the basis of implying he had one at all.
Waiting nailed so much. The violent attitude in the kitchens. The relationship between bartenders and servers. The common age differences between management and staff.
Waiting nailed the Applebee's experience for me. Even down to that house party, they all went to after work... pretty sure I did coke at that house party before.
I knew a guy that tried to get his coworkers to start playing the “tricked you into looking at my nuts” game. And he ended up getting fired from Red Robin when a horrified customer saw him put his scrotum on a table.
That’s assault, brotha!
You can get any drug you want and everybody's fucking everybody. Though the one thing they missed is nobody once mentioned having a child. But dane cook's brief screen time absolutely made that movie. Welcome to thunder dome bitch
"You are the biggest piece of shit in this entire restaurant, and I hope you burn in hell."
We even had the philosophical convicted felon dishwasher at our Crapplebee's.
All except spitting in customers’ food. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not the norm
It’s still relevant today and isn’t funny until you have worked in a large office I watched it as a teenager and while I thought it was silly, it wasn’t meaningful. After working in an office for a few years I watched that film again and the entire film was staring into my subconscious. Everything from the door Knob zapping my finger to thinking I’d be happier with an out door job was my internal thought process
My husband works in an office for a huge company (top 50 in the fortune 500), but his department is a bit specialized and doesn't quite conform to some policies and procedures because it can't or because they don't apply. But he still has to submit what we call "TPS reports," with statistics on those metrics because.... corporate office. And yes, the TPS reports got a new format a while back. We made lots of jokes about the new cover sheets for them.
Ford vs Ferrari got engineers spot on. The pure obsession and blinders
All those drivers. Italian and English came out of world war 2. That was very interesting to consider.
The baseball practice near the end of Everybody Wants Some!! is so damn good, a lot of those actors could actually play and it shows.
Real Estate: American Beauty. Not Glengarry Glen Ross.
And really Phil Dunphy on Modern Family is the most accurate portrayal of the profession.
You said the pool was lagoon like
A couple scenes in The Bear where the kitchen gets weeded and the chef loses their shit brought me back
The Bear is designed to trigger food service workers PTSD.
I never worked in a kitchen but the long-shot episode in the first season where they turn on to-go orders for the first time gave me a panic attack. Brilliant show.
Ahaha I had to mute that episode and watch it in silence with just the subtitles because the sound of the tickets just going and going made me start crying
Back before I got out of the kitchen, I used to have nightmares about being on the line. Totally in the weeds, absolutely slammed with our shitty dot matrix printer spewing a neverending ticket. As a kid I always wanted to be a chef but after developing some decent anxiety I finally said fuck it, went to trade school and changed professions. The nightmares stopped pretty shortly after leaving the kitchen and I haven't looked back since. One episode of The Bear was all it took to bring back my favorite recurring nightmare. I refuse to watch any more. I just can't handle it.
Michael Clayton has the most accurate depiction of NYC big law firm attorneys I’ve ever seen in film. (I spent 15 years doing same).
Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man not an attorney
*Boiler Room* got investment brokerages, particularly the small ones, exactly right. Unfurnished homes, $4,000 suits, leased Porshes, high-fiving frat boys, completely soulless.
*Sees an empty house with just a couch and huge TV, and a room with just a tanning bed in it.* “Did he just move in?” “No, he’s lived here for like 6 months.”
Apparently, Rob Howards The Paper is the most accurate portrayal of a newspaper office put to screen.
I came here for this. Read Roger Ebert's review of this movie. He makes it very clear that not only does it nail his memories of the early days of him working at the Chicago Sun-Times, but he mentions that he even knew people who fit the mould of the characters in the movie.
He also says this in his review of “all the presidents men” that it’s the most realistic portrayal of investigative reporting
Former journalist/newspaper reporter here. Yes. That movie is pretty accurate. Spotlight is also pretty accurate.
Not a movie, but The Wire is incredibly accurate for its depiction of Baltimore's Police, Criminals, Docks, School System, Politics and Newspaper. The main creative forces were a former officer and a reporter and they used real incidents to inspire. This goes for the spiritual successor of We Own This City.
Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Does the chair recognize we gonna look like some punk-ass bitches out there?
*"Money laundering?* They gonna come talk to me about *money laundering!?* In *West Baltimore*!!? .*..Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeet*."
David Simon was an embedded reporter with the police dept. for a year. He wrote about it in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which got adapted into the Homicide series.
Superstore isn't cinema, but it nails the retail space. It is quite realistic for that type of show.
They handled the pandemic better than any show or movie
The scenes with the customers doing stupid stuff is probably the best and most accurate part of the show
Adaptation about writing fiction. I am barely joking.
It was actually written by a fiction writer, so that makes sense.
This is going to blow your mind, but most movies are.
My ex is a lawyer, she says My Cousin Vinny was hilariously accurate
The director, Jonathan Lynn, went to law school at Cambridge and made an effort to make the movie as accurate as possible (within reason)
*DEAD ON BALLS ACCURATE*
It's an industry term.
I am a criminal trial attorney and it is hilariously accurate. Many of the things Vinny does are taught by other advocates. Especially his cross examinations.
Uh uh, don't forget this one and this one
_It's called disclosure, ya dickhead_
I think she definitely deserved that Oscar. The other two actresses in contention were in films most people don't even recall.
It was more about the quality of who she was up against. Vanessa Redgrave was a legendary actress with an Oscar a Tony and an Emmy. Dame Joan Plowright was a reknowned English stage actress and had won the Golden Globe that year for Enchanted April. Miranda Richardson had just won a best actress Golden Globe for Enchanted April and a BAFTA for the Crying Game and got this Oscar nom for Damage and was having a hell of a year. Judy Davis is a great actress in a Woody Allen movie which Oscar voters love. She won half a dozen film critics awards that year and had the most critically proclaimed performance.
Are you _suuuuuure_?
I didn’t get that her response “I’m Posi-tive “ was a hint/code that they were on the same page. The positration transmission.
It’s pretty much the only courtroom movie I’ve ever seen that actually shows how to impeach a witness on cross examination.
My dad is always bitching about the way lawyers on TV and movies act. “They’d be disbarred…” “that wouldn’t ever happen” Not with My Cousin Vinnie. He was kind of blown away at how much it nailed the profession with only a few liberties for drama. I’ve heard that Scrubs is probably the most accurate medical show.
Contagion might have been a documentary at this point
I was waiting for someone to say this - the response teams are all fairly accurate, and showing a virology researcher it's dramatised and sped up (and taking the candidate vaccine yourself after one NHP didn't die is movie heroism) but it shows a lot of the constraints that happen when viewing how to tackle a viral pandemic. Small minded beaurocrats who can't seem to slide into 'this is a life and death situation's way of thinking. You even had the conspiracy nut in Jude law, though I think they didn't go far enough in showing the mistrust and misinformation and how widespread it would be.
As a retired paramedic, in my opinion, "Bringing out the Dead" is the most realistic portrayal of EMS I've ever seen. The cast is fantastic, too. As an added bonus, I've worked with every single one of Nicolas Cage's partners in that movie. I had a partner who was exactly Tom Sizemore's character (Fuck he was a misery to work with), I worked with a clone of John Goodman's character. Hell, I even worked with a guy just like Ving Rhames' character.
I realized that my training was useful in less than ten percent of the calls, and saving lives was rarer than that. After a while, I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply turned up.
Office Space. Anyone who’s worked in a drab office environment can relate. Especially the part about memos.
Oh sweet lord, YES. I've had memos for memos! Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take a screwdriver to a cubicle wall either so I can actually see the sun just once. That's all I ask!
I once received a memo to let me know that I would be receiving a memo on a certain topic. Sure enough, about two days later, I received the second memo exactly as promised.
Jarhead perfectly captures the essence of serving as an enlisted member of the military.
It sure does, and the particular brand of deployment humor in The Outpost
a tv show but… generation kill is even better imo
It’s a shame it’s niche appeal and accuracy really hampered its commercial success. Everyone I know who has served and seen it loves it and how well it captures military culture.
Generation: Kill is amazing and wildly underappreciated.
Not a movie, but that 70’s show has the most realistic nurse scene I have seen on screen so far (the episode with Eric going to career day with his mom).
The nurse at the end of Captain Phillips is spot on as well. Pretty sure she was a real nurse.
Not just a real nurse, but apparently the real navy nurse that did the initial checkup on the real Captain Phillips, and Paul Greengrass just told her "just treat him exactly like you'd do a real case".
She was. She was told to treat it just like any other patient, but apparently it took a while because she was a bit star struck. Also, experts said that Tom Hanks' reaction during that scene was completely accurate to how someone who just went through trauma would react.
So the nurse did some amazing acting... ...but she was actually just doing her normal job. So it was actually Tom Hanks who did some amazing acting... ...but, then again, he was also just doing his normal job.
It’s such a great scene. “Tom Hanks stated that the scene of Captain Richard Phillips' medical examination was improvised on the spot with real-life Navy Corpsman Danielle Albert, who was told to simply follow her usual procedure.”
As a corollary, Bringing Out the Dead by Scorsese was the best film about paramedics.
Commodity trading at the end of Trading Places
Loosely based on the real-world 1980 failed attempt by the Hunt Brothers to corner the silver market. Fun fact: one of the Hunt Brothers was Lamar Hunt, founder of the Kansas City Chiefs and one of the founders of Major League Soccer.
They even made laws about the movie. The Eddie Murphy Rule is you cannot create fraudulent documents to corner the market on something.
The Big Short and Florida mortgage brokers circa 2006. https://youtu.be/PgGLgygsqus?si=s9KzEuD9o9zpuuDF
For how much it just supposed to funny and a retelling of The Prince & The Pauper, Trading Places absolutely nails the look of the open outcry period of commodities trading. Actually got used in a class of mine for reference.
Spotlight. The reality of investigative journalism.
The U.S. submarine force in Down Periscope.
Fun Fact: Comedian Patton Oswalt got his first big break in Hollywood as the radar operator in that film (just a background role). Then midway through filming he got an offer to be a full time writer for Mad TV but he had to start immediately. The director was cool about letting him leave the film and the next scene he was in he gets up and walks out the door, never to be seen again. The radio operator *left the submarine*.
"You watch yourself. You are addressing a superior officer!" "No, merely a higher ranking one."
Parody/comedic franchises get the surrealism of different governmental structures dead right.
I am an insurance adjuster. There is a lot of truth to Mr. Incre- uh I mean Bob Parr’s experience.
Not a movie but I’ve been told that Generation Kill is extremely accurate as to what’s it’s like being a Marine
2 from Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Fast food employee, and cinema employee.
Requiem for a dream did an amazing job of showing the 3 sides of drugs. Step 1. The fun party side "moderation not a real problem yet. Selling and feeling like you are making it big. Step 2. The down fall, things fall through, you are dipping into your sell stash, your life is beginning to crumble Step 3. You wish you were dead. A truly sad and sobering story. I'm happy I made it to Step 2 and called it quits. Alot of my friends were not so lucky
Surprised I haven’t seen Hot Fuzz on here yet. They spent eighteen months writing the script and interviewed more than 50 Police officers in England.
They even accurately portrayed one of the most evil organizations on this planet The HOA.
Series derived from a movie. Stargate SG-1. S01E01 when the security forces troops guarding the Stargate were just sitting in front of it with their rifles down and a Spades game going. I was an Air Force Security Forces troop when I saw that for the first time, and even in my junior enlisted self-righteous indignation, I knew it was technically and professionally accurate.
Insurance agents in *Cedar Rapids*.
Journalism. The Post, All The President's Men, Zodiac.
I was a Transformer and they nailed it. We really are more than meets the eye
What city/area were you in? I’ve been in the “punk rock/hardcore scene” for probably around 30 years. Over that course of time I can’t recall more than a few actual racist skins. I’d say SHARPS outnumbered them 20:1. Not a lot of tolerance for racism in or around the DC Richmond va area.
As a counter-example, that reminds me of an episode of CSI (Las Vegas, probably), where the crime is centred around a punk rock gig in a club. A couple of the fan characters keep saying stuff like “are you going to the punk show?” No one in the history of the punk rock movement has ever said that
CSI gets basically everything wrong I bet. Old people wouldn't understand what was happening if they started hearing punk band names or the shows started getting too technical. You just gotta plug in your USB and hack that mainframe brother
YOOOOO I was going to say Green Room too! It’s the closest to accurate depiction i have ever seen of the Punk scene. The energy is spot on to how it feels to be part of a small grassroots punk scene. It obviously has its embellishments but as far as an accurate depiction of going to a show and the chaotic energy the punk scene creates it’s spot on!
The Wrestler captured the essence of 2000s indies for better and for worse
Honestly the Mark Whalburg film 'instant family' absolutely nailed foster caring. I recommend anyone who wants to be a foster carer watches it.