MovieOS is Universal

Posted on by grahams

The Wall Street Journal is running an article on portrayals of computing and the Internet in film. I had plenty of discussions at CSH about the lame treatment of these topics by Hollywood. We even had a term to refer to the mystical graphical operating systems used in these films: MovieOS. Well, last night, I learned that these gripes are not limited to computer nerds.

was watching “The Ninth Gate” (despite my strong admonition) when I got home from the film club, and she instantly went off into a tirade. Some of the choice highlights were:

  • “No real rare book dealer would smoke around his collection!”
  • “Look at this guy, he’s supposedly the worlds most reputable rare book dealer but his books are piled up next to a live fireplace!”
  • “Come on! Nobody would store a book with it’s spine facing UP! ALL THE PAGES WOULD FALL OUT!”

I was telling this story to this morning, and he told me of a guy who was complaining about the portrayal of lead miniature painting techniques in “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. So clearly, these feelings are universal among geeks, and aren’t limited to the computer variety.

6 thoughts on “MovieOS is Universal”

  2. I read an article a while ago about people who are really into typefaces who get upset when anachronistic fonts are used in movies. They’re all, “But Helvetica hadn’t been invented in 1945! How can people be so stupid?” So yes: geeks is geeks.

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  3. I had issues with the book dealer in “The Ninth Gate”, too. 8^)

    My big gripe with movies though is gravity. I mean, raise your hand if you ever dealt in rare books. Now, raise your hand if you’ve had any direct experience with gravity.

    Now, take a long cylindrical craft. Make a beeline with it toward the center of the Earth—The Core, if you will. You would expect that gravity would operate along the length of the craft so that if you were to be walking around inside the craft, you would have to walk perpendicular to the direction of the ship’s motion. You’d be silly and wrong by Hollywood standards though.

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  4. As a member of the theatre community I have so say that after I watched “Waiting for Gufman” I had to laugh cause it was dead fucking on.

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  5. Russian

    You don’t have to be a geek to despise every Russian reference/speech/anything in the movies. For example, I am sure some already know that the final scene of the Fantastic 4, when the ship is sailing away with the statue of the bad guy, the ship’s name is literally “A Foot’s Big Toe” in Russian. I fell out of chair after I noticed that.

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