Ceci n'est pas une movie?

I have just watched another one of those so-called compilation programmes (Great Movie Mistakes 2: The Sequel, presented by Robert Webb, BBC 3, January 30), and have come to one conclusion: boring. Aside from the (pop) corny name and the disorienting, quick-cut presentation style, what do programmes like GMM2 tell us, except that movie directors are human and do make mistakes. The entire format has raised questions in my mind. Who are these people who have seemingly nothing else to do by scan decades of film footage, and grow orgasmic when they spot a continuity error in the plot? Do they get paid for it, and how much? And are these errors so very deleterious of said movies, great and small, in any case?
So what if Johnny Depp’s dark glasses mirror the camera as he plays Willie Wonka, or Roger Moore is suffering from necktie confusion. Didn’t James Bond have a number of more pressing matters on his mind, like keeping the West secure against the nasty Commies, and the attractive young lady awaiting him in the hotel bedroom?
At one level, the errors will be of use to film historians in centuries to come. At another level, they raise questions about the nature of reality. A movie is a work of art; it is not ‘real’ any more than a book or painting is. The cinema audience knows this, as do the actors and the director. An error in a movie is akin to a pentimento in a painting, those charming blunders that become more apparent on the surface of an oil painting as it ages. But you don’t go into a gallery in search of the perfect painting, any more than a reader seeks the perfect book.
In any work of art, the artist seeks to create an illusion, one that can paradoxically be shattered by the over-earnest search for perfection by the artist. We all know that Leonardo’s grandly-dressed urban lady could not really have stood against a backdrop of fields and mountains, but from all over the world we flock to see the Mona Lisa. In my opinion, the worst thing they ever did during the Renaissance was to tell wannabee artists about Zeuxis and the grapes – but that is a story for another time.