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    Movie/TV clichés

    ¡Véndovos Mareo! wrote:
    Originally posted by ian.64
    She may be annoying, she may be intrusive – but she gets results. Incidentally (and I don’t mean to derail the thread), I’ve been on a Murder, She Wrote kick for about a month now. It’s driving my girlfriend batty, but there something about a septuagenarian in pearls solving crimes that really does it for me. It’s nowt kinky, mind, I think it’s because it's so gentle/lightly clichéd that I can watch it in a kind of trance. The Cabot Cove coma. It also reminds me of being ill/skiving from school. I’d like to see her broaden her remit, though; maybe tackle some yardie/gangland pliers ‘n’ blow-torch executions.

    That's what I thought what was most peculiar of Murder She Wrote, the very clean and antiseptic nature of the crimes: almost no pools of blood, with the bodies just lying there with little or no wounds on their persons. The clean-up units must have got things sorted, post-murder, in about ten minutes. Not for Jessica Fletcher the task of finding out who severed the torso of the attorney with his head placed in a bin-liner. Prime-time family viewing, of course (if murder was something the whole family could watch), but most of the victims in MSW must have walked around with a paper cup's worth of blood in their bodies.
    You need to look at the show's target demographics. Old folks are not too keen on gore.
    Are you kidding? Why do you think stuff like 'criminal minds' is on all afternoon? Old folks love their blood 'n' guts. You walk into any old folks' home now and I bet they're watching Grissom, knee-deep in some grizzly hammer-based blood-bath.

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      Movie/TV clichés

      Boris Carpark wrote: How to illustrate to the audience what the character has recently been doing.

      DIY - Home improvement?
      Paint on the cheek bones.

      Mending the car?
      Grease artfully smeared on the forehead.
      (Carrying spanner optional)
      Notice that while his face is covered in paint/grease, his clothes and hands will always be immaculate.

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        Movie/TV clichés

        ¡Véndovos Mareo! wrote:
        Originally posted by Boris Carpark
        How to illustrate to the audience what the character has recently been doing.

        DIY - Home improvement?
        Paint on the cheek bones.

        Mending the car?
        Grease artfully smeared on the forehead.
        (Carrying spanner optional)
        Notice that while his face is covered in paint/grease, his clothes and hands will always be immaculate.
        Sex:
        Man: breathless, guilty doing-long-division face, shirt-buttons fastened in the wrong order, tie askew.

        Woman: hair skew-wiff, giggle jag, scatter-brained...possibly while wearing a man’s shirt, buttons fastened in the wrong order, tie askew (if it’s Dianne Keaton).

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          Movie/TV clichés

          Slightly Brown wrote:
          Sex:
          Man: breathless, guilty doing-long-division face, shirt-buttons fastened in the wrong order, tie askew.
          Well, that's me at work any day of the week.

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            Movie/TV clichés

            ¡Véndovos Mareo! wrote:
            Originally posted by Slightly Brown
            Sex:
            Man: breathless, guilty doing-long-division face, shirt-buttons fastened in the wrong order, tie askew.
            Well, that's me at work any day of the week.
            No-one likes a boaster.

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              Movie/TV clichés

              Nearly Xmas?
              Why sure it is, look, I'm a usually staid character wearing an amusing novelty jumper or sweater!
              Also, look its cold, see? I'm wearing a scarf even though its clearly august when the episode was filmed.

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                Movie/TV clichés

                And come Xmas Eve, the tree will be festooned with mysterious square packages. Among these, some gifts will inexplicably remain unwrapped - mostly toys, such as railway engines and giant dolls - carefully signposting the audience to the fact that there will be children in this film, and probably quite soon.

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                  Movie/TV clichés

                  I watched all of the first season of The Hour over the past few days, and for an allegedly great show, they relied a lot on the cliche of having the relevant news come on as soon as someone put on the radio or TV. It wasn't even in the middle of a sentence, either.

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                    Movie/TV clichés

                    A pearler from a Spooks we're just watching:

                    Harry: We can't ignore the Chinese

                    Ruth clicks remote and large map of China comes up on their big screen.

                    Not a detailed map - a large outline, blocked in red, with a yellow star on it. In case the Spooks had forgotten what China looked like.

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                      Movie/TV clichés

                      Sits With Remote wrote: A pearler from a Spooks we're just watching:

                      Harry: We can't ignore the Chinese

                      Ruth clicks remote and large map of China comes up on their big screen.

                      Not a detailed map - a large outline, blocked in red, with a yellow star on it. In case the Spooks had forgotten what China looked like.
                      This sort of laziness is gleefully sent up in the Simpsons with the frequent use of Homer's cake eating "stock photo" whenever he is on the news.

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                        Movie/TV clichés

                        Oh, & also.
                        Computer Hacking.
                        Piece of piss isn't it?
                        Rattle a keyboard unconvincingly, a quick stab at a password & hey presto, you're into the Pentagon or someone's bank account or whatever.

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                          Movie/TV clichés

                          Plus, whenever anyone types it always seems like they hit at least a billion keys – without pause. This strike-rate also never resembles the word or sentence that appears on the screen. As such, the word “hello” sounds like three tons of gravel being poured on a tin roof. Whoppi Goldberg in Jumpin’ Jack Flash in an excellent example of this.

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                            Movie/TV clichés

                            The main character will regularly ask for three or more sugars when ordering tea or coffee.

                            Surgeons usually prefer to listen to non-mainstream music, loud, when performing difficult operations.

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                              Movie/TV clichés

                              The main character will regularly ask for three or more sugars when ordering tea or coffee

                              Alternatively, anyone asking for tea or coffee will get one poured in such a way that suggests they'll be drinking from a cup with only 5mm of beverage in it.

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                                Movie/TV clichés

                                A group of characters argue over who'll volunteer to do a risky, possibly life-threatening task. But not so loudly as to blot out the weedy-sounding 'I'll do it' emanating from the unassuming-looking bloke standing behind them all, who has to say it again and possibly again for that moment of poignant, heart-warming sympathy.

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                                  Movie/TV clichés

                                  A storyline, usually circuitously and in order to take advantage of it being HBO or Showtime, necessitates a visit to a strip club.

                                  Rather than picking a quiet corner to hold their meeting, our characters then congregate in front of the stage, so that a topless woman moves in and out of shot. None of the characters show the slightest interest in the show, even though the strippers are in considerably better shape than in a real life strip club.

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                                    Movie/TV clichés

                                    Which tells us all we need to know, etc...

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                                      Movie/TV clichés

                                      In any film or TV drama set in the 1970s (for example), absolutely everybody's house will be luridly decorated in the most stereotypical styles of the decade. Absolutely no trace of any earlier fashions will be permitted to remain, as if there had been a bout of enforced redecoration in January 1970 on a scale unmatched since the Reformation.

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                                        Movie/TV clichés

                                        jwDidi27 wrote: A storyline, usually circuitously and in order to take advantage of it being HBO or Showtime, necessitates a visit to a strip club.

                                        Rather than picking a quiet corner to hold their meeting, our characters then congregate in front of the stage, so that a topless woman moves in and out of shot. None of the characters show the slightest interest in the show, even though the strippers are in considerably better shape than in a real life strip club.
                                        I think Golan and Globus invented that.

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                                          Movie/TV clichés

                                          Central Rain wrote: In any film or TV drama set in the 1970s (for example), absolutely everybody's house will be luridly decorated in the most stereotypical styles of the decade. Absolutely no trace of any earlier fashions will be permitted to remain, as if there had been a bout of enforced redecoration in January 1970 on a scale unmatched since the Reformation.
                                          Similarly, a movie set in the '50s will feature nothing but '50s cars, all perfect and glistening like they've just come from a cruise night. No shitty old ones from the '30s or '40s still pottering about, rusty and wood-bumpered...

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                                            Movie/TV clichés

                                            Central Rain wrote: In any film or TV drama set in the 1970s (for example), absolutely everybody's house will be luridly decorated in the most stereotypical styles of the decade. Absolutely no trace of any earlier fashions will be permitted to remain, as if there had been a bout of enforced redecoration in January 1970 on a scale unmatched since the Reformation.
                                            I do sort of remember it that way, though. Not so much my house because my parents had loads of antiques, but certain kinds of places - especially doctors' waiting rooms - went all-in with "contemporary" or "modern," as it was usually known. If there were bits and pieces from the 40s and 50s, they were hard to notice amid all of the louder 70's stuff.

                                            I've been in houses even *recently* that look a lot like the sets of The Brady Bunch.

                                            That 70's Show actually did a decent job of representing the era without going too far. Unlike the short-lived That 80's Show or that one that's on now about being a kid in the 80s, T70S wasn't about the trappings of the era, but about how just-barely-middle-class suburban kids managed to entertain themselves in the pre-cable TV, pre-computer days.

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                                              Movie/TV clichés

                                              You know what you don't see these days? Blue-lit sex scenes, as here at 0.28:



                                              (Not a film, or a TV show, but a music video. Diss the song and I will be very, very angry).

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                                                Movie/TV clichés

                                                ...you two...with me...

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                                                  Movie/TV clichés

                                                  You just don't get it, do you?

                                                  You're a real piece of work, you know that?

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                                                    Movie/TV clichés

                                                    It ain't a scene of mournful tragedy unless it's in slo-mo.

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