h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or alternatively - go diving in hallucinatorily clear blue water in an attempt to recover Drugs...

I don't think you can count Trainspotting as a cliched film!! Did you know most of it was filmed in my native Glasgow, because the Edinburgh tourist board didn't want parts of its city to be asociated with the film... but its alright if Glasgow gets a bad rep is it?? (Note to people going on Holiday to scotland, glasgow is way better)'

And when the psychotic gunman _does_ arrive, and gradually works his way along the cubicles (always starting at the wrong end), there's rarely anyone else sitting there having a dump. If there is, it'll be a small librarian-type guy with regulation Woody Allen glasses, who runs away, but never calls the police. If the gunman does decide to first check under the doors for feet, he either sees the victim (though generally, being slightly telepathic, they lift up their feet just in time), or nothing at all.
Oddly enough, I don't recall seeing any potential killer just look to see which cubicles are 'engaged' before starting his door-kicking.

On most spaceships, bodily functions are out. I don't think they ever (Red Dwarf excluded) blow their noses, shower or bathe (except maybe in asses milk on the holodeck). They don't wash their hands even if they run a catering department. I don't think they even have toilets, (or laundrys)
That said, most spaceships do have great hair salons, and women called 'Counsellor' have a wardrobe that extends into the next star system.

Despite the amazing knowledge, intelligence, and sensory capabilities of the onboard computer systems, no-one's yet found away to make the autopilot steer the hell away from any boulder swarm, corrosive cloud, vortex, wormhole, or mysterious energy source. If such a curiosity is found, it's traditional to take the ship straight through it, rather than testing the waters firts with an unmanned probe.

In Truelies the poor Librarian type is left sitting there for the whole huge gun fight as they destroy the loos, just so Arnie can apologise to him as he chases after the bad guy...

We can only assume that all hackers who are destined to save/doom/warn/etc. the world write their own software and never distribute it. (But can you imagine: Alian Attack Clock, Prehistoric Park Computer Interface, Cool E-mail Animations v2.0)

Regettably,
Lord Xeen

I presume you've seen Austin Powers?

Tall blondes are in serious danger of getting their stilettoes caught in gratings.

Women in high heels can always break the heels off with ease, (or get the hero to do it for her) in order to escape the bad guys.

All Gestapo officers are five feet tall, and wear floor-length leather coats and small round glasses. In compensation, they're usually allowed to survive until the final big fight scene.

If undressing in her bedroom with the curtains closed, a woman will generally try to position herself between a light source and the window.

I think you guys have missed this one so far, but I'm not sure. In any given horror movie, the psycho killer guy will generally walk along at a very slow, yet strangely menacing pace. Whoever the pursuee is, they will generally be running top speed the entire time. The funny part is, as soon as they stumble, not 5 or 10 seconds afterward (unless they have dropped something critical to the plot, of course ), the psycho killer will catch up to them. Generally, though, the psycho has to miss the first one or two swings of the axe, scythe, hammer, fist, etc., so the victim can get up and run away again, while the psycho plods methodically along behind.

ask and you shall receive
(and thank you for being nice!)

_Sort of_ covered that one a couple of days ago, but using the running through woods / pursued by stumbling zombies variant. The missing-sitting-duck-with-scythe part is a welcome addition. (I guess the failed swings also give the option for another one of the good guys to turn up and start wrestling the psycho)



Hero is shot in the chest, and collapses, but then gets back up - he turns out to have either a cigarette case or bible in his inside jacket pocket. (Modern variant - hidden bulletproof vest that no-one else on his side knew about.)

the worst examples of this are the 3 musketeers and point break, and lethal weapon

Classic Horror Film Cliche No 4: The Psychotic Killer(TM) has slaughtered everyone else, except for one guy and one girl (everyone else wandered off one by one and ended up dead). There's a thuderstorm, the lights go off and the boy and the girl are getting nervous, suspecting that there's something terribly wrong:

-Where is everyone?
-I don't know. They've been away for a long time. Let's go look around and see if we can find them.
-Okay, I go this way and you go that way!

The guy always ends up dead. The girl fight screaming and scratching the Psychotic Killer(TM), and someone who wasn't quite dead yet, shows up the last minute and kills The Psychotic Killer(TM).

What's annoying though, are the films in which a rich aristocratic Englishwoman goes to some african country, to teach them how to be civilised. When in reality these countries where civilised while the English were still running around naked and eating mud.

Of course, the English in those days were the Welsh. The English were in and around Saxony.

Whilst I do agree with your dislike of those films, many of which are watched more for their period costumes than for their dubious and frequently patronising plots, and which use Africa as little more than a free piece of scenery, I'm not exactly sure what period of history you're talking about with your little 'naked and eating mud' quip. Could you put a date on it?
Would that have been before or after we cleared the country for agriculture, or constructed countless monuments from Cornwall to the Hebrides.? And how much civilisation do you think someone _needs_ to realise that clothes are a damn good idea even in a northern European summer, never mind in winter.?

The date would be about 5000 BC, the times of the zulus, the egyptions etc. When buildings such as the Pyramids were constructed, which puts those monuments of yours to shame, i'm afraid.

which is a short while before you cleared the country for agriculture.

Look, this is a forum about films, Try to keep to the subject.
In case you didn't notice, I was basically agreeing with your point about the films, I just took issue with your inaccurate closing remark, and in an entirely defensive manner.

Anyway, civilisations are all about groups of humans living and working together with some kind of common purpose. I'm afraid it's not possible to measure one against another purely on the size of the population, or the height of the buildings, however beautiful they may be. It's simply that you can tell there must have been some civilisation from the fact that they bothered to build anything of significance. All over the world for the last 10000 years or so, civilisations have risen and fallen. While no-one really knows much about what it was like to live in any of those societies, there are, unfortunately, people in all countries who think their history is better than everyone else's.

I choose to respect my ancestor's history, and respect that of other peoples as well. All I ask in return is some kind of reciprocity. However, in this particular case, I fear I may be wasting my time.

The thing with the Great Civilisations is that the monuments weren't a gauge for the standard of living of the hoi polloi.

To say that, for example, Egypt was civilised while the English were running around naked and eating mud betrays exactly the sort of arrogance as the posh Englishwoman who tries to 'civilise' the natives.

Just as there was abject poverty and things like Cholera in London at the height of the British Empire, the lot of the bog standard Egyptian during the time of the Pyramids was not something that you or I would care to experience.

To get back to the point, how about the situation, most often seen in the X-Files, where they go into a spooky room with torches, but never think to switch on the lights?

That's one of the problems with old abandoned warehouses - no-one ever pays the electricity bill. (Anyway, it _does_ give Scully the chance to wander around with her trademark open-mouthed scared expression on again. I always thought _that_ was the point.)
Also, when it's dark, it's harder for everyone to realise it's the same set they used in the previous series (Just like when everyone's creeping around in silence, it's harder to notice it's the same script as well.)