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jasperscribbler
Reviews
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Did no one spot this huge chronological error? *spoiler*
I've searched the goofs page and all 18 pages of user comments and found no mention of the goof my wife and I commented on during the movie and on the drive home.
The international hunt for clues is triggered by deciphering a code on a diary page ripped from the diary on the night Lincoln was killed. That was in 1865. The message is interpreted as referring to the Statute of Liberty and revised to mean an earlier version done by the same sculptor and located in Paris. Another clue on a model of the statue in Paris leads to more clues and so on until they find the vastly geographically displaced remnant of an Indian culture (as others point out).
Trouble is, Lady Liberty had not even been designed yet in 1865. Check the Wikipedia entry for Statue of Liberty. The first model was built in 1870. The one depicted in the movie was dedicated in 1889.
Similarly, the chain of clues originating with the 1865 diary code includes reference to desks made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute. The Resolute was not decommissioned until 1889 and the gift of a desk to the American president was made in 1890.
These are hardly the only historical errors in a movie that makes a pretense toward turning on historical facts. Still, the entire plot proceeded from a reference in 1865 to things not yet in existence.
Oops! glaring one to appear.
Panorama Blue (1974)
World's greatest first porn movie
I was visiting a friend in the college town of Kearney, Nebraska, in the mid-70s when this film played at the downtown movie theater, which apparently was going through that phase of playing anything that might bring in a buck as an alternative to closing. I'd never seen a porn flick before. Only typical R movies. My friend and his roommate suggested going, so we went.
It blew me away and put me on my long path of degradation. In fact, I can't say anything I've seen since has been as fun. Sexier, sure. More explicit, definitely. But this was sheer fun. Of course, I couldn't admit to my friend that it was not only fun but a turn-on. We were too cool for that, and too Midwestern.
Most porn tediously shows people supposedly having sex. Everybody involved in Panorama Blue seemed to be having grand fun as well as fun sex--except that guy groping the bit-titted actress without ever getting past second-base.
I've looked for a copy of this movie since discovering porn video, but I've never even seen it listed. Alas.