MovieChat Forums > Good Advice (2001) Discussion > Three am is almost 11 am in Japan? How?

Three am is almost 11 am in Japan? How?

posted 3 years ago by avortac4 (3746)
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Charlie Sheen's character 'has to go to work' at 3 am (the time announced by his girlfriend), because he has to call Toukyou 'before they close'.

Now, if it's 3 am in New York, it would be 5 pm in Toukyou (I know people erroneously write this as Tokyo, but that's wrong).

From the Japan footage (not sure where it is, it could be somewhere outside Toukyou, or a district in Toukyou), we can CLEARLY see a giant, red clock showing it's about 10:52 am in Japan. In any case, it doesn't look like 5 pm AT ALL (Japan's rush hours are something else, plus the sky is too bright - after all, 5 pm would be evening time, the sun would set in an hour or so maybe).

Where in the world would it be around 3 am, when it's around 11 am in Japan? Charlie's character would have to be somewhere in mid-, or possibly western / northern Europe at least!

Am I missing something, or is it impossible to reconcile the things shown and told in this movie, when it comes to what time Charlie's character is calling Toukyou?

HOW can it be 3 am anywhere in America, when it's 10:52 (or so) am?? Even the time in California is not even close to what it would be in Europe.

By the way, why does Charlie's character greet someone japanese with 'Asahi, Akashou-san', with TERRIBLE intonation and pronunciation? Asahi is a beer brand, not a greeting.

Asa would mean 'morning', 'hi' would mean day, but if he wants to say 'good morning' (and if it's going to be 5 pm, why would he?), he would have to say something like 'Ohayou gozaimasu'. Was that too hard for Charlie to learn?

Also, 'Akashou' doesn't sound like a japanese last name. The closest I can think of is 'Akashi', maybe.

Is the whole japanese segment faked with some stock footage and a couple of asian-looking actors? The cigarette-smoking guy doesn't even seem japanese, judging from his mannerisms, english accent, intonation and behaviour.

He also doesn't thank the woman for the phone, by saying 'arigatou gozaimasu', or even 'doumo', which is VERY strange omission in the japanese culture.

I hate lazy moviemakers that depict supposed japanese scenes, and can't do it right on ANY level.

By the way, they are showing London with Big Ben, that displays the time as 3:15 pm or so (let's round it to around 3 pm).

London and Toukyou have 9 hours time difference, which would place Toukyou's time at MIDNIGHT.

How can it be 3 am in USA, around 11 am in Japan and around 3 pm in London SIMULTANEOUSLY??!

Who was responsible for this?? They should've been fired once for every time zone they got wrong!

Furthermore, New York would be 5 hours behind London, so this means it should be around 10 am in New York.

It's shown to be dark, so NOTHING adds up here!

I don't know Charlie's character's city (haven't been paying attention, as it's so boring), but you can use any american timezone you want, and I will bet 100 dollars the timezones STILL don't match up.

WHAT the hell were they thinking??! Do they think their audiences don't understand the concept of timezones?

I guess they (like american audiences, possibly) think timezones are 'if it's night in USA, it must be daytime elsewhere, and vice versa, and that's all anyone needs to know about it'.

Even a toddler would know this kind of simplistic thinking is too childish and stupid for a movie, especially if you want to have any kind of immersion, but whatever.. SOMEONE SHOULD GET FIRED FOR THIS, damnit!

I have to stop watching movies, I can't stand these stupidities.

Why is Charlie's character's monitor in screensaver-mode, although we are shown him to be furiously working? Why would he ask someone on the phone 'are you in or out' BEFORE he even disables the screensaver?

Is this the first time he touches his computer's keyboard all day? It's already bright outside, and he's supposedly been making business deals for hours. Yet the monitor fell asleep? WHAT?

Also, the guy says something about ten thousand shares, but he has ALREADY pre-entered '100,000' as 'quantity', and the page he's supposedly editing has NO names besides the corporation and the share name. Obviously there's some weird (and probably too short) account number, but come on.

This is the year 2001, they should be using some kind of better software than some 'text page' proprietary style with way too big fonts.

They would be using some kind of standardized trading software that has the normal window buttons, where you can close the window and whatnot. There's no way pretty much any software would look like THAT in 2001! That looks like some obsolete DOS piece of crap software rather than anything an office would actually use after Windows XP, Windows NT and Windows 2000 were already old.

What were they thinking when making this movie?

Also, Charlie's character is shown to hit a couple of keys and it the screen DOESN'T CHANGE AT ALL, nothing appears or is edited on the screen!

Furthermore, what is the point of him STANDING UP? How can you use a computer effectively?

[–] avortac4 (3746) 3 years ago

I mean, if you have to reach down for the keyboard, look at it to be able to type the correct things? How do you even select a column or box where you are typing (there's a cursor on the screen, but nothing's blinking, nothing looks 'selected', he doesn't use the mouse at all even to select a box), how do you know which box is selected? What the heck kind of key does Charlie's character press to disable the screensaver anyway? Wouldn't people just normally press SPACE or move the mouse?

Does he even HAVE a mouse?? This is 2001, I remind you, people were using graphical operating systems, not some DOS crap with keyboard shortcuts! (Those keyboard shortcuts would still be marked somehow, even if they used a piece of DOS software, nothing is marked)

The more I look at this scene, the less sense it makes. Why does he have a rollerdeck, when he has a COMPUTER?!

Just kill me already.

The character has NO reason to stand up, he should sit down at least before starting to ask if the guy on the other end is 'in or out', so he can use the computer effectively, but no. Let's just use a computer standing up, although that early CRT monitor is clearly optimized for sitting position, and would be a bit hard to see from that angle.

Also, how do you edit '100,000' into '10 000' with about three keypresses, when two of the first ones do absolutely nothing, and he doesn't even go near 'backspace', 'del' or 'space'? It almost looks like he's randomly hitting function keys. He does say 'done' after doing this, so he must've SOMEHOW changed everything AND pressed enter with only three illogical keypresses.

The other guy's desk seems to have a keyboard and a mouse, but .. where's the computer? Where's the monitor? He ALSO has a rollerdeck!

Their office has a STRANGE mixture of old and new monitors. Not completely impossible, of course, but this is supposed to be a big firm that can afford these new, slim TFT monitors, and yet we see desks with no computers, and one desk has a computer without any monitor, others have these big, old, bulky, heavy CRT monitors that are NOT connected to anything (power source OR computer)..

It's like the makers of these movie didn't understand how computers work AT ALL!

"Yeah, just put all this computer stuff wherever, it'll look good in the movie, no one is going to notice we really didn't connect up most of it". What kind of prop guy/gal was this? Look at those CRT monitors, not even ONE of them have even ONE cable connected to them, let alone TWO, which is the minimum amount if you want the monitor to display something. One for power, one for the computer.

Who made these decisions for this movie? What were they thinking?

[–] avortac4 (3746) 3 years ago

Wow, I can't believe they got ONE timezone-related thing right. I guess someone DID research one for the script.

When it was 5 am in New York, it would've been 1 pm in Kuwait, and Charlie Sheen's character says something along the lines of '5 am, when you were in your moderately blah sleeping, it was afternoon in Kuwait'.

I am impressed. After bungling EVERYTHING else before that statement, they actually got something right!

As an interesting sidenote, it's funny to see both Murdock and Q in the same movie with Charlie Harper..

Q's laptop isn't connected to anything, though. Why would a boss waste the 2001 era's laptop batterylife of maybe 1 hour max. by just letting the laptop sit there on his desk and do nothing? Just connect it to a charger, damnit! Why waster precious batterylife when you can just connect it to an charger, which is connected to an outlet?

Would a boss really just have a tiny laptop instead of a proper desktop computer? In a realistic scenario, a boss like that would have both, and probably another computer there as well (each for a different purpose). But sure, battery-wasting laptop is all Q gets... I hope he at least complains to the continuum about it.

When we see Charlie's character's monitor from behind again, it looks like nothing is connected to it, and keyboard, mouse and the computer itself are nowhere to be seen. To be fair, we don't get a full view of the desk, so they could plausibly be off-camera, but damn they do an amazing job with cord management in any case!