Anachronisms

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Not obvious one like Roman soldiers using iPods or whatever.

I've just been watching The Social Network and there seemed to be very little sense of period with regard to the computers in it. It's set in 2003 and there are loads of flatscreen monitors and shiny macbook pros, and I think in the second scene Zuckerberg has a netbook. .

I'm a bit baffled as to why they didn't try harder, especially as presumably loads of nerds were going to watch this film. Or did they just not care, and wanted cooler looking tech?

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Also, surely no-one said "app" in 2003.

[Consignia]

Also, surely no-one said "app" in 2003.

The term has been around longer than when Apple got it's grubby hands on it. I've certainly been using it since the early 90's.

[Famous Mortimer]

What about deliberate ones? Alex Cox apparently had loads of them in "Walker" to link the situation back then with what was happening in Nicaragua at the time he was filming...although a small part of me thinks he was watching some dailies, noticed that a load of his extras were all wearing digital watches and decided to go with it.

[Nelson Swillie]

One of the best is in the 1983 film Pieces. The prologue is set in the year 1947, yet there's a push button telephone.

[SavageHedgehog]

What about deliberate ones? Alex Cox apparently had loads of them in "Walker" to link the situation back then with what was happening in Nicaragua at the time he was filming...although a small part of me thinks he was watching some dailies, noticed that a load of his extras were all wearing digital watches and decided to go with it.

I thought it would have worked a lot better if he'd made more of them, and gradually developed them through the movie; I seem to remember the anachronisms start appearing about an hour in, to little effect, out of nowhere.

[Saucer51]

I don't know whether it was something to do with Keeley Hawes character tripping, but there were a whole host of anaks in Ashes to Ashes.

Quadrophenia - a great film but riddled with anaks:

http://www.moviemistakes.com/film1031

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not obvious one like Roman soldiers using iPods or whatever.

I've just been watching The Social Network and there seemed to be very little sense of period with regard to the computers in it. It's set in 2003 and there are loads of flatscreen monitors and shiny macbook pros, and I think in the second scene Zuckerberg has a netbook. .

I'm a bit baffled as to why they didn't try harder, especially as presumably loads of nerds were going to watch this film. Or did they just not care, and wanted cooler looking tech?

Not all of it is set in 2003, a lot of it is set in the past few years. There's just not a lot of effort made to explain the transition to different time periods.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Also, surely no-one said "app" in 2003.

It was definitely around in the late '80s when Amiga users were laughing at the PC's lack of "Killer apps".

[mjwilson]

Not obvious one like Roman soldiers using iPods or whatever.

I've just been watching The Social Network and there seemed to be very little sense of period with regard to the computers in it. It's set in 2003 and there are loads of flatscreen monitors and shiny macbook pros, and I think in the second scene Zuckerberg has a netbook. .

I'm a bit baffled as to why they didn't try harder, especially as presumably loads of nerds were going to watch this film. Or did they just not care, and wanted cooler looking tech?

I seem to remember that the Social Network looked pretty much spot on in the scenes set in the olden days - certainly everyone was using appropriate old versions of Netscape etc at various points.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Yeah I know all the stuff where he's suing people is set later (2006 I think) I was talking about the beginning scene. It didn't look very 2003 to me - I remember computers still being pretty clunky then, chunky laptops with disc drives and really heavy non-flatscreen desktop monitors. I dunno, maybe it was different at Harvard, but I do remember tech stuff being different then - lots of people were still on dial up, and hardly anybody even *had* a laptop, and for me that opening scene totally failed to conjure that up. It may as well have been 2010.

There was only one good period detail - one of the twins referencing the Sopranos.

[Famous Mortimer]

My flatmate had a laptop which looked alright in 1996, and he was a not-hugely-wealthy student. Can't remember how chunky it was, mind.

[An tSaoi]

Gangs of New York has loads of that sort of thing.

Prior to the street battle in 1846, Priest Vallon recites a portion of the Prayer to St. Michael. The prayer was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.

When the rich folk are playing snooker, the remaining balls on the table are blue, pink, and black. The blue ball didn't exist in snooker until the early part of the 20th century.

In one scene where Bill is in the Mayor's office, the mayor is sitting behind his desk and holding a bunch of papers, and on the upper right hand corner of the papers is a paper clip. Paperclips were not invented until 1899.

In a scene set in 1862 or 1863 Bill the Butcher says: 'An Irishman will do for a nickel what a n**ger will do for a dime'. The first nickel 5 cent piece was coined in 1866. At the time of the scene the 5 cent coin was a small silver coin called a half-dime.

When Amsterdam kills the man that shot Bill the Butcher in the shoulder at the theater, you can see bananas on the floor. Bananas were traded in the U.S. only after the Civil War.

When Monk's funeral procession is going down the street, the dog on Bill's porch appears to be a Doberman. The Doberman did not exist until the 1890s. Any importation from Germany to the US was not until the early 1900s.

The movie refers to Anthony, Orange and Cross Streets as being at the Five Points. By the time the events in the movie take place, they had been renamed Worth, Baxter and Park streets, respectively.

When Bill, Amsterdam and Tweed are standing on the docks, Bill mentions his father died in battle in 1814, 49 years before the movie takes place. Later, Bill tells Amsterdam that he's 47 years old. That means Bill's father died before he could have been conceived.

In the scene when Bill is throwing knives at the girl, right after he comes off the stage, the Flag that drops as the band comes out has 50 stars in it.

Okay, some of those are just nitpicky in the extreme, but there are very basic mistakes in there too. And after Daniel Day Lewis went to all the trouble of not even accepting modern medical attention while shooting (or wearing modern underwear, presumably).

[Consignia]

Yeah I know all the stuff where he's suing people is set later (2006 I think) I was talking about the beginning scene. It didn't look very 2003 to me - I remember computers still being pretty clunky then, chunky laptops with disc drives and really heavy non-flatscreen desktop monitors. I dunno, maybe it was different at Harvard, but I do remember tech stuff being different then - lots of people were still on dial up, and hardly anybody even *had* a laptop, and for me that opening scene totally failed to conjure that up. It may as well have been 2010.

There was only one good period detail - one of the twins referencing the Sopranos.

Is it not set in Harvard University, a place of affluence? Back when I was in university in 2003, we all had fast internet access over the university WAN in the halls. I'd think America would be even more a head of the time. I could also see kids there having stylish laptops around then. LCD panels too.

[Gulftastic]

Quadrophenia - a great film but riddled with anaks:

http://www.moviemistakes.com/film1031

And they don't even mention the obviously 70's mods they roped in to pad out the crowd scenes. One of them is wearing flared jeans, FFS!

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Zuckerman's not affluent though, is he? I mean, it's sort of the point of the film - that he's a suburban Jew surrounded by moneyed WASPs.

I still think that in 2003, even for the rich,  the majority of laptops looked like this .

[Consignia]

Well, I haven't seen the film, so I can't say. All I'm saying is that it's not as unlikely as you'd think considering the setting. He is a CS student, right? That one you point out there is a business laptop, there were snazzier smaller ones out there at the time, I certainly had one.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Actually I've just looked it up and the netbook Zuckerberg has is the VAIO PCG-TR3A, one of the first ultraportables. It was available in 2003, but it cost about £2500.