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The Plumber Problem

hypercritical.co

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#201

Post by stickfigure »

kens wrote: post #186
stickfigure wrote: post #53

Funny, I got plumber-problem'd by this article. > In Speed 2, a plot point involves a laden oil tanker about to collide explosively. My wife, native to a major oil port city, couldn’t follow the plot because she could tell the tanker was empty just by looking at it, so she didn’t understand why everyone was saying it would explode. Wait a minute. Full oil tanks don't explode, but empty oil tanks full of hydrocarbon v…

No, oil takers have an inert gas system to ensure that the tanks are not explosive, empty or full. They pump non-flammable flue gases into the tanks to displace oxygen. (This was a plot point in the novel "The Devil's Alternative" which I read probably 40 years ago but my brain remembers random things :-) Details: https://www.marineinsight.com/marine-safety/protection-again...

Apparently the inert gas systems are not always properly maintained:

https://www.offshore-energy.biz/pablo-tanker-explosion-expos...

(Googling "oil tanker explosion" produces quite a few similar events)

Re: The Plumber Problem

#202

Post by hef19898 »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #23
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

one of the pitfalls of hobbies like historical reenactment is precisely this. Nobody does armour or most material goods correctly in visual media, and once that’s a salient fact for you it really kind of breaks the spell.

Not to mention the actual combat. It's hard to take a swordfight seriously when both parties seem preoccupied with swinging at their opponents sword.

That's what historical stage combat always looked like so, I can live with it. To an extend, that is.

What really gets me so, is large battles. For some reason, it is cool to just break formation and charge a tightly packed enemy some 200 meters away. While screaming as loud as possible. Or the helmets in the last duel, hell, collored cloths over armor and insignias have exactly been developed in medival Europe to identify famous nobles and knights without seeing their faces... Plenty of occassions to show some famous actors in other scenes.

All of that is toped by the really bad writing we have in last cpuple of years. I mean TV took off with things like Breaking Bad. And the we got season 8 of Game of Thrones, to pick just one famous example...

Re: The Plumber Problem

#203

Post by CamperBob2 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #179
CamperBob2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no money in unbiased news. I have to believe that's not true. When Bill Gates or Warren Buffett sit down at their breakfast table, do they get fed the same diet of pablum that I do, as an Apple News subscriber? I doubt it. They presumably pay a ton of money for access to unfiltered, unbiased global intelligence. But I have no idea how to get the newsfeed that people like that must have access to, regardless o…

Would that be something like the Bloomberg terminal?

Bloomberg is indeed the first source that comes to mind when I think "Pay a lot more than most people for a premium newsfeed," but then, on my list of trusted news sources, Bloomberg is ranked somewhere between Russia Today and the Brothers Grimm. Their reporters are literally paid to move the markets [1].

1: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...

Re: The Plumber Problem

#204

Post by soultrees »

iamthemonster wrote: post #81

I witnessed the converse of this in the recent Mario Brothers movie. There is a scene where steam piping is about to overpressure and it shows a pressure safety valve lifting. Well that pressure safety valve is an accurately drawn ASME I BPVC open-bonnet PSV with test lever. The open bonnet is to expose the spring to air so it is kept cool and therefore has the correct force downwards on the seat. If you specify a cl…

There are services that exist to hunt down any scene details like this and at this point is pretty standard. The thinking behind it is that even though most people won’t notice or care, the ones that dk notice will care, and if it’s wrong then it could be the single defining thing that pulls them out of the story. That and the pressure of the film industry in general and bringing bad press to a film. There’s always someone who notices every mistake and then they take to twitter over and on the other end of that message is some poor art director or continuity coordinator who’s losing their shit.

Perfect example, you seem to be someone specialized in a field that would exist somewhere in the same vector map as plumbing. Not plumbing but pipes, so therefore it’s in the studios interest to ensure the specialized feel recognized as well. Had it been so obviously fake CSI Miami style, you might not feel the same about the movie, or maybe you’d not care and still enjoy the movie but you sure wouldn’t be in HN singing it’s praise. So it’s all upside for the studio to ensure you don’t get pulled out of the story or at the very least don’t talk to your friends who also live in the same vector map as you. Not saying it’s wrong as it’s cool to see effort put into the creation process but it’s definitely thought of ahead of time.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#205

Post by hef19898 »

hindsightbias wrote: post #162

There was an era where CGI was used to simulate somewhat real or imagineable behavior. If it’s a fantasy movie, I don’t care about bizarre effects. But something like Fast and Furious it’s just completely ridiculous to me. It’s just boring and lazy. Films like Grand Prix or Ronin have spectacular car scenes w/o being stupid.

The first F&F movies did it well, except the millions of gears, but otherwise it wasn't too bad.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#206

Post by Izkata »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
dilyevsky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik that was in the original script but was removed because it was considered too complicated for general audience to understand.

Specifically, IIRC, it was in test cuts of the film, and identified as baffling by test audiences. I don't think anything substantive in the films is inconsistent with it (and the behavior of the agents throughout the films is suggestive of it), just the in-character exposition. Which, to get really meta, you can explain as the filmmakers incorporating the inability of audiences to grasp, and projecting it into the f…

The live action films I don't think so, but a few of the shorts in the Animatrix were supposed to be an accurate history archive from the creation of the first machines all the way through the war and the creation of the Matrix. The shorts both included it and kind-of came up with an explanation:

During and before the war, the machines were mostly solar-powered, so blocking out the sky was a last-ditch effort by humans to stop the machines that almost worked. But the machines developed a new form of fusion that used human bio-electricity as some sort of activation or catalyst. They weren't being used as energy directly.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#208

Post by hef19898 »

thedanbob wrote: post #100
dbrueck wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this drives me crazy. I particularly hate the trope where the plot hinges on two characters having a huge misunderstanding that would be resolved by a 5 second conversation.

Or the "problem that would be resolved by a 5 second phone call" trope. I always thought it was funny how long it lasted even after cell phones became ubiquitous.

Two films that got that right, in a creative and almost realistic way, are Cellular and Phone Booth. The exceptions that proof the rule?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#209

Post by watwut »

dragontamer wrote: post #80
ta573957294 wrote: post #54

In the movie 300, after Leonidas and the 300 decide to march North towards Thermopylae. The valley & mountains in the background are REALLY from Sparta, Grecet. The producers made had sent crews to take enough photos and videos of the valleygt to accurately portrait the landscape. It was eerie to watch the movie (I grew up in Sparta) and see the mountains all around as they really are. BUT (big but here) they march S…

Honestly, my brain turned off the moment I remembered that Spartains were known for their heavy armor and not for dressing up like Chippendales dancers / male strippers.

They worked on their six packs hard, who wants to hide that under clothing?

Re: The Plumber Problem

#210

Post by watwut »

munificent wrote: post #96
ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Marvel movies are the worst about this for me. The adult characters use adult mannerisms and delivery, but the actual dialog and what they're saying is so cartoonishly simple and childlike that I can't suspend my disbelief when watching grown adults talk and act that way. It's easier for me to believe in superpowers than to believe in people that have the psychological complexity of houseplants.

I can't watch superheroes or read American comic pretty much for that reason.
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