note (and query)

[tigriswolf]

So, I'm watching Stuart: A Life Backwards on youtube.  (Taking a short break to post this.)

Anyway, Benedict Cumberbatch has the coolest name ever.

Also, I've noticed that it distracts me watching people drive on the wrong side of the car in movies set in England.  Or Europe as a whole, I guess.  I'm not sure about the driving habits in other places.

Does it distract y'all (anyone who drives on the other side of the road) when watching movies where people drive on the other side of the road?  (I'm thinking that sentence makes no sense outside of my head, sorry.)

Back to the Tom Hardy movie!

Comments

[jenna_marianne]

I've had that happen too. Have you seen Rock'n'Rolla? There's this very intense scene between One Two and Handsome Bob, and I spend part of it confused about how Tom Hardy was being all emotional and *not looking at the road, oh god they're going to crash* and then realized, duh, the other guy is driving. :P

[tigriswolf]

I want to see it, but it's not available yet.

It always bothers me when people look away from the road while driving in movies or on TV.

[roseblight.livejournal.com]

Being Australian I find at this point I'm so used to seeing reversed traffic on television that it doesn't bother me. Like measurment systems, you just internally convert it and move on.

[tigriswolf]

It's only recently that I started noticing it. I'm not sure why it never caught my attention before.

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Nope, Europeans drive like Americans, but on smaller roads. Even Ireland, which is weird when you cross the border.

Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and bits of Middle East drive right-hand. :)

I tell you what's the weirdest thing about swapping sides of the car - coming back to Britain from somewhere like California or Luxembourg and going to the wrong door to drive home. Whoops! Ah well, I've only tried to drive on right-side of the road in Britain a few times ...

[tigriswolf]

I've only ever been to Canada, and that was before I could drive. I have gone to the driver's side when it wasn't my car and I wasn't the one meant to be driving, but at least the steering wheel never changed sides. *hee*

So how is it decided which side the wheel is on? The difference between those listed above and everywhere else, I mean.

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

I've always thought it was something to do with the French revolution. Previously, the left-hand-lane driving tactic had developed from the horse-riding days of yore, allowing knights and brigands and other highway users to draw their swords across the body and at each other.

I think Europe was the same until Napoleon had a hissy fit and decided to change it. America, being quite buddy-buddy with La France, copied.

Wikipedia supports me! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic)

[layne67.livejournal.com]

I've got Benedict Cumberbatch's Van Gogh : Painted With Words, can't wait to watch it. And yup, his is a very cool name!

Does it distract y'all (anyone who drives on the other side of the road) when watching movies where people drive on the other side of the road?

No, not really.

[tigriswolf]

I've decided I want to watch Sherlock because he was awesome in Stuart: A Life Backwards. Also, now I want to buy a DVD copy for myself and the only ones I've found so far won't play here.

[layne67.livejournal.com]

So have you seen it? BBC's Sherlock I mean. I'm so into Sherlock, his intensity was so HOT!

[tigriswolf]

No, not yet; it's supposed to be in the mail and on its way.

[rionaleonhart]

I'm English, and most of the time seeing people drive on the right doesn't distract me too much, both because we import so much American television that I'm used to it and because I can't drive myself.

HOWEVER.

In the film version of The Da Vinci Code (I feel I need to clarify that I watched this against my will; Dan Brown and I don't really get on), there's a flashback scene in which the female lead, then a child, is sitting in the back of the car. Her mother, sitting in the front-right seat, turns around to coo at her, and as she turns back the car is hit by a lorry.

When I first watched it, I thought the crash was entirely their fault. NO WONDER THEY CRASHED; THE DRIVER WAS CRANING AROUND TO LOOK AT THE BACK SEAT.

It took me a while to remember that this was set in France and so her dad, front-left, would have been driving.

(EDIT: Also, in real life, I was once in the back of a friend's car; her parents were in the front. Her mother, in the front-right seat, ducked down below the dashboard to retrieve something from her bag. I panicked. It took me a moment to realise that the car was left-hand drive.)

[tigriswolf]

I've never been in a car with a right-side drive; I can't even imagine how odd it'd be. I think it'd be confusing to move back and forth between them.

[loveandthetruth.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really bother me when I'm watching. (Although I'm intensely aware of all the times the drive is talking to whoever is in the shotgun seat and does not glance back at the road often enough D:)

But, even though I don't drive, when I'm in the car I often end up wondering about driving left hand. Or contemplating the logistics of driving left hand on the right side of the road, or right hand on the left side.

[tigriswolf]

It bothers me a great deal that in movies and on TV, the driver spends over half the time looking away from the road. In real life, I hardly ever look away.

(Of course, that could be because road construction is a never-ending phenomenon here, or the deep ditches on either side of the road.)

[loveandthetruth.livejournal.com]

It's seriously distracting.

Yes, Dean, I know you love your brother and you're in the middle of an intense conversation with him about right and wrong and not making deals with demons, but if you don't look at where you're driving right now you're both going to die a horrible bloody death and then what?!? D:

[piratelf.livejournal.com]

It distracts me in that I will think, "Why is THAT character driving?" then I realize it isn't that one, it's the one next to that one, which generally makes more sense. But then if I go on a Brit TV binge, I get confused as to who's driving when I watch American TV. Especially if you only see them enter or exit the car, not actually drive.

So, yes, it absolutely screws me up, too.

[tigriswolf]

*hee*

Why would they show the entering/exiting but not the driving?

[piratelf.livejournal.com]

Usually either they exit a car at the beginning of a scene or enter a car at the end of a scene, so that the production doesn't have to do the whole 'green screen of passing traffic look we're really driving in a car' thing.

[sea-yeah.livejournal.com]

I'm in the UK and it doesn't distract me - maybe because I'm used to it from watching so many American movies. However, what completely distracts me is a fake British accent and by this I don't mean people who can't do a good accent - it's when they deliberately put on an 'American British' accent. The worst ones are when British actors have to put it on because that's have the accent is perceived in the US.

I hate it - it just completely jars me out of the film and I start to rant about it. Just like I'm doing now - sorry!

[tigriswolf]

That's like me and a fake southern accent. Almost always, they're totally wrong.