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Roman Soldiers Don't Wear Watches: 333 Film Flubs-Memorable Movie Mistakes

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Roman soldiers, as we all know, didn't wear watches at the height of the Caesars' power. Not because they couldn't afford even an inexpensive digital watch, mind you, but simply because the watch -- heck, even the mechanical clock -- hadn't yet been invented. Yet, as Bill Givens will cheerfully point out in his extremely amusing (and for some film producers, dismaying) collection of film flubs, some ancients were way ahead of themselves. Modern watches, wedding rings and other anachronisms make their little unexpected cameos in such set-in-ancient-times epics as The Ten Commandments, The Viking Queen, and Spartacus.

Givens' Roman Soldiers Don't Wear Watches: 333 Film Flubs -- Memorable Movie Mistakes is a compilation of continuity errors, slips of dialogue, film-flipping flaws, and other unexpected mistakes that often pop up during production. Some of them have been published in other volumes of his successful "Film Flubs" series, but quite a few are new.

Many moviegoers are by now familiar with some of the realities of filmmaking, such as the fact that films are shot out of sequence, that many "takes" of a scene are shot, and thousands of feet of film are cut and spliced together in an editing room. Much care is taken to make sure the movie's final cut tells the story properly and that the scenes have no distracting flubs, but quite often things do slip by, even in movies that are considered among the very best, including Casablanca, Star Wars, Dances With Wolves, Pretty Woman, and Scent of a Woman.

Not every gripe is about honest mistakes (such as Mark Hamill's calling Princess Leia "Carrie" near the end of A New Hope -- chalk that one up to overexcitement in the actor's part and a temporary lapse in the sound editor's) or silly anachronisms such as a wristwatch on a Roman soldier's wrist in 44 BC. Some are careless lapses in attention to detail, as in the Sound of Music when the Von Trapps are fleeing from Austria to escape the Nazis. Instead of heading toward Switzerland and freedom, they are driving north, straight toward Germany. Some are accidental "cameos" by crewmembers -- such as the guy with the handheld camera in 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys, glimpsed as the brothers fight after a fake telethon. Others are even worse, such as setting a film's scene in one season while it is quite clearly another.

Although most of the entries in this book are short -- often introduced with bon mots such as "How's That Again, Sam?" and "Is a Bird Bath the Fountain of Youth?" -- Givens does scrutinize big crowd pleasers (Apollo 13, Terminator II, Jurassic Park) in chapters with the heading Picking on the Biggies. Here Givens has great fun pointing out flubs (such as wrong markings on the Saturn V rocket in Apollo 13, wrong dates and even the premature existence of USA Today in Forrest Gump, and just about everything in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves) in some really big moneymakers and/or critical darlings.

Some of the strangest flubs, such as the switch in direction of the "blood" on young Indy's chin in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or attacking birds without shadows in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, are shown in black and white photos.

Givens, who is an entertainment reporter and TV writer, clearly has a love for the movies in general, so none of this is written with any mean-spiritedness or malice. Like Damien Boma in Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan, his approach is lighthearted and funny while at the same time being factual. His intended audience is not, of course, the Hollywood insider or the technical expert. Rather it is for the average filmgoer who loves the medium, yet spots such bizarre little things as California license plates in a movie that's set in Illinois (1978's Halloween) or a crewmember's hairy arm where none should be (Butterfield 8).

How can you publish a book about movie flubs and include so few photos? "Roman soldiers" would have been a lot more fun if instead of telling us about the supposed mistakes in films, it showed us. If ever there was a need for a companion DVD, this book was it.

Aside from a few really interesting flubs, the book is actually quite repetitious. Scars and bloodstains appear and disappear or switch places. Bodies appear and disappear. But after a few dozen pages of this, I had had enough. I would have like to have heard from the film editors who use various techniques -- like film reversal -- that give rise to these flubs. It's not enough, for instance, to tell me that in a particular shot in the movie, "The Birds," that the attacking creatures cast no shadows. Why not? Were they included via double exposure? The book does not say.

Too, a number of the book's items were not flubs. In a James Bond film, a house appears to explode twice. Is this a flub, or a movie technique to allow the audience to experience the same event from multiple angles? And is it really a flub when a couple seems to switch sides while walking down the street -- or are we to assume that we are not witnessing every second of their perambulation? And is it a flub when a filmmaker deliberately includes material that he/she expects the moviegoer not to perceive?

That said, there were a few flubs that rose to the level of worthwhile -- the Invisible Man's footprints should have been barefoot, not shod. The book did include a few descriptions of near-flubs, in which directors repaired errors before they hit the theaters. The story of how Cecil B DeMille managed to have Jesus write in the sand while standing in a tiled Temple was ingenious and interesting. More stories along thse lines would have made the book worthwhile.

As a whole, the book was a disappointment and a bore. The flubs were mostly small and of interest only to the geekiest cineaste. A missed opportunity to expose the film-making process.

this is a must have for anyone that loves movies, it's fun to try and find some of the mistakes they talk about in this book.

I must say that Bill has got what it takes. Even a musician puts out a greatest hit now and then. But Bill has added some new songs to his "Greatest Hits Book". I have enjoyed every page of this book. Bill has once again stayed in the realm of my standards as to a GREAT "G" rated book. I even enjoyed looking back at the past as Bill has taken the best and put it all together for his new readers out there. Encluding much new findings, this book is surely one to own. If you are in to finding out little know facts about your favorite movies that most people are never aware of then this is it. You will never waste a dime of your hard earned money on this book. You will get much more entertainment for the dollar here than if you had gone to the movies tonight and bought everybodies popcorn. Once again Bill Givens has done it again and I will always be first in line for any new books he releases. You to will become an addict to Bill's books after reading this one. Bill, I have given your book the highest 5 star rating but we both know that it is an 11 on the scale. This is GREAT "G" rated reading that will keep you amused not for days, weeks, but for years. If you don't believe me then buy this book and find out for yourself. I promise you will thank me later. Bill, please keep up the good work. Thank You.