There's a pretty good writeup over yonder about the ways in which Hollywood always gets computer technology wrong. The thing is, they get other subjects even wronger. I used to think that movie makers were particularly messed up when it came to the subjects I knew best, particularly Bible topics and to a lesser extent math and science. Later when I studied computer science I found out how badly they mangle that too. But I've since taken a more critical look and have become convinced that Hollywood actually gets all subjects wrong without discrimination. Medicine, law, foreign cultures, perhaps even movie-making, I'm now convinced they mung everything until it's no good.
Whatever you think you know because you learned it in a movie is probably wrong, possibly very wrong.
They will know it when they see it…
15 hours ago
2 comments:
You mean to tell me that you can't fly a plane using whisky as a fuel, and that rhinos don't come and stamp out fires? Wait, I suppose that would be Johannesburg getting it wrong, not Hollywood...
There are engines you can run on ethanol, although I doubt if those are the sort of engines normally used in ultralight aircraft, all else being equal, and even if one was, you'd have to use terribly potent whiskey, somewhere in the 190 proof range methinks. There are people who burn Everclear in camp stoves and say that it burns "very clean" and leaves no dark marks on the undersides of their pans.
But if you were going to carry something that strong under the seat, you might just about as well carry denatured alcohol, because you'd never want to drink it straight anyhow, even if you customarily go in for relatively strong drink. Jack Daniels, for instance, is widely considered too strong to drink straight unless you're serious about getting drunk, and it's less than 50% ethanol.
The rhino thing I never really understood, as far as why the director chose not to leave it on the cutting room floor. The best I can figure is he couldn't think of a better excuse to get the woman's dress caught in the tree, but in other parts of the film he shows enough imagination that that oughtn't to have been a problem, so beyond that I'm not really sure. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to let the character say the line "Bloody rhinoceros" later in the film? Dunno.
Still, if hollywood had done the film, I bet you can think of a few worse things they might have done to it. One supposes that he would have wrestled an hyena when the first got down out of the tree, among other things, and I'm certain there would have been overall much more gunfire. (It might be mildly amusing sometime to watch the film with a group of people and stop it every few minutes to speculate about what Hollywood would have done to the current scene.)
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