10 Lame Hollywood clichés

• Computers going cheep

- they always bip, beep and chirp with every keystroke, mouse click or window scroll. If you've ever worked on a computer for more than five minutes you'd realise how incredibly annoying and distracting this would be. Ask yourself, have you ever used any program that has such a feature? Maybe Windows Scriptwriter 2.0 does. . . 


• Exploding cars
- lead bullets are not renowned for their spark-inducing characteristics. Even steel-tipped bullets make sparks at temperatures way above the ignition point of gasoline. For god's sake, even a lit cigarette is extinguished when dropped into a pan of petrol, (but don't try this at home lest you're entering this year's Darwin Awards). Even burning car wrecks seldom explode unless given just the right conditions.


• The Sidewalk Olympics
- there you are, minding your own business strolling down the pavement / alley way / shopping mall. Yet no matter how fast and erratic the runaway car you always manage to leap out of the way at the very last second. Often into the adjacent river / pond / flowerbed. You should be a Hollywood stuntman!


• Street vendor insurance premiums
- must be astronomical! Where there be car chases, there shall also be hot dog salesmen wheeling their carts into the street. It used to be two guys with an enormous pane of glass. In a similar vein, iHollywood's Second Law of Brawling states that an indoor fight cannot take place without the close proximity of a priceless vase.


• Balsa wood chairs and tables
- chairs, even collapsable ones, are designed to hold people. And especially in America some very heavy people. You can jump up and down on them, stack them 50-high, rest a plasma TV on them without so much as a creak. Tables even more so. Have you ever tried to break one up for firewood? Yet place one in the hands of a brawling cowpoke and they instantly turn into balsa wood.


• A bunch of Charlies
- there's always a walk-on one-line part for a character called Charlie. "Hey Charlie! Take this guy downtown." "Charlie, hand me that wrench." Charlie's friends Frank and Bill get about an awful lot as well.


• Pane in the glass
- safety glass doesn't come cheap, that's why it's seldom used in the humble home, or even your local bar. (Sugar glass is even more expensive). Yet somehow it's not uncommon to belt through a dozen windows of Pilkington's plane panes and emerge with a few scratches. 


• I'm cool. I hold my gun like this!
- point a hand gun at someone and you're a wanker. Point it at a 90 degree angle and apparently you're a cool wanker. A cool wanker is still a wanker.


• The Dukes of Physics
- Bo 'n Luke Duke are not just simple country boys. In fact they have managed to circumvent a couple of laws of physics. 
In conflict with over a hundred years of tyre development they, and countless Hollywood compatriots, can somehow produce squealing tyres on dirt and gravel roads. Even Ken Block can't do this, and he's pretty handy behind the wheel. Watch his YouTube videos and listen to him tearing up a dirt track. The only squealing you'll hear is from his passenger. 
Similarly, if you live in a neighbourhood like mine with speed bumps and potholes you'll know what damage they can do to your suspension. But miraculously the Dukes, James Bond and Bruce Willis can hurl a car from a ten story building and crash to the ground without breaking a sweat, their spine or their shock absorbers. The big rig in Terminator 2 displays Transformer like abilities in auto-repairing it's obviously knackered axles to emerge fully functional in the next shot.


• Zoom in, rotate, enhance
- thanks to Brian Trudell for finding and reminding me about this one.
(For a short cut and explanation by way of compilation, go to the YouTube clip in the link below).
In a nutshell: no matter how grainy the original image or video clip, Hollywood can always zoom 30,000% into a crappy polaroid and give you a pin-sharp close-up in full HD resolution. Ridley Scott's Bladerunner: Dekkard, takes a snapshot of a room and zooms into a reflection in a mirror, then around a doorway to reveal a tiny pin-sharp clue. Clever stuff indeed. But cleverer still is brother Tony Scott's 'Deja Vu' with Denzel Washington. Here we have a (beeping) computer that takes a few satellite images and extrapolates a fully HD resolution, photo realistic environment that he can rotate around and zoom into an eyeball. Not only that, but it can produce full THX certified 5.1 surround sound. And if that wasn't enough, Denzel can then physically jump into this magical environment and save the day... just in the nick of time of course!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk