Continuity mistake: At the orientation breakfast, when Stan Fields begins to speak, a very blonde Miss Arkansas moves between the very front table and the very back table in the subsequent cuts. (00:41:16)
Continuity mistake: When trying to retrieve the audio feed into Gracie's earpiece, in the first shot Clonsky has the female connector in his right hand and male connector in his left hand and puts them together. Yet in the close-up of his hands the female connector is in his left hand and male connector is in his right hand. (00:41:50)
Continuity mistake: There is a scene where Cheryl is bringing hot chocolate to Gracie. Cheryl knocks, and Gracie looks through the peephole. In this shot, you can see that the hallway is white with a door on the far right. However, when Gracie opens the door, the hallway has changed completely; the walls are now a peachy color and there is a painting on the left. (00:43:10)
Continuity mistake: When Cheryl, Miss Rhode Island, is bringing Gracie hot chocolate, you can see the top cap on the thermos is loose, camera then zooms on Gracie, then back on Cheryl, and suddenly the top cap is fully snapped on. (00:43:20)
Continuity mistake: When Miss Rhode Island takes the hot chocolate to Gracie's room, the number on the door is 103. When Gracie goes to Victor's room later in the movie, it is also room 103. (The script writer points it out in his commentary with Sandra Bullock on the DVD.) (00:43:40)
Continuity mistake: While Gracie and Cheryl are talking in Gracie's hotel room, the telephone on the nightstand between the two beds is on the right side of the lamp, and Miss Texas is lying down with the burgundy robe over her matching nightgown. When Gracie gets into bed, in this shot the telephone is now on the left side of the lamp and Miss Texas doesn't have the robe on. (00:44:45)
Continuity mistake: When Gracie is letting Miss Rhode Island out of her room after they drink the hot chocolate, she is holding the blue mug that she was drinking from. As she turns off the light and walks toward her bed, the mug is now on her nightstand. (00:45:45)
Continuity mistake: When Gracie walks down and up the stairs, she gives her weapons to Vic. Look at the handcuffs on Vic's finger. First they're around his finger, held in the palm of his hand, in the next shot they're outside his hand, in the next shot they're in his palm again, then in the next shot they're outside his hand yet again. (00:47:15)
Continuity mistake: When she is practising in the blue dress in the middle of the night, while she is removing her weapons etc., her long blue gown sash falls off both her shoulders and is hanging on her arm, but a second later, it is hanging on one shoulder. (00:47:15)
Continuity mistake: When Victor is talking to Matthews and Gracie about her not having any talent, it shows Gracie in the background stuffing two doughnuts down her dress. Victor gets both of these back from her, but it never showed her hiding the third doughnut that the dog smelled. The way the scene worked, there was a shot of Gracie stuffing the two doughnuts down her dress, and then a shot of her walking up to Victor and Matthews, so there would've been no time for her to stash the third one. (00:48:05)
Continuity mistake: Gracie sings "You want to smooch me" to Matthews, and he takes a Milky Way candy bar and bites into it. There is a back shot of Matthews, then a front shot and then a back shot again. In the front shot the wrapper and the bite he takes differs from the previous and following back shots. (00:50:05)
Continuity mistake: At the talent preliminary held at the Alamo, while Stan says his intro there is a back shot of the audience in front of him with the judges station seen. After Stan shakes his hips a front shot of the audience is seen. The position of the judges' station is very different in both shots, as well as the audience. (00:51:35)
Continuity mistake: While Gracie is performing with her water glasses, Kathy tells Victor, "I thought I made it very clear you were responsible for making her look credible Victor." However on the Region 1 DVD, the subtitles say, "I thought I made it very clear you WEREN'T responsible for making her credible." (00:53:05)
Continuity mistake: When Gracie is doing her water glasses performance, she sees the cowboy with a gun. In the first shot of the gun and when Matthews tells Gracie to wait until they have a visual, though the guns are long and silver in all shots, the gun's hammer and muzzle are noticeably different in these shots. (00:53:30 - 00:54:15)
Continuity mistake: While performing the water glasses Gracie says, "He's definitely the shooter." The next close-up of gun man shows him standing to the left of yellow shirt man, right in front of the display easel, with a particular crowd around them. Gun man's next shot now shows him behind yellow shirt man and no display easel anywhere. His next shot, once again he's to the left of yellow shirt man, in front of the display easel and a man with a stetson and a dark blue denim shirt sits there. Next shot, the display easel and denim shirt man are gone. In the next side wide shots, the display easel is back. (00:53:55)
Continuity mistake: The guy that was only trying to light a cigarette, did not have a cigarette in his mouth until it magically appears right before Grace tackles him. (00:54:10)
Continuity mistake: When Gracie is leaping off stage after yelling, "Gun! Gun! Everybody down!" there are two wide side shots of the leap. Those shots are one sequence that was split to put the close-up in the middle. In the 1st, her hand is already on the shoulder of the man in the yellow shirt. Then there's a close-up of Vic's, Kathy's, and Stan's reaction to the leap, but their eyes are still in the air facing towards the stage as we see Gracie flying past their faces. In the 2nd wide shot, she's back to where she was in the 1st shot. (00:54:15)
Continuity mistake: When Gracie is doing her talent show with the glasses, she sees the gun guy, runs, then dives off the stage at him. But in the replay they show on the TV in the next scene, she hits her table full of glasses when she runs and causes some to fall off even though that never actually happened. (00:54:15)
Continuity mistake: Kathy and the rest discuss Gracie's gun/cigarette man incident. In the wide shots and in the close-ups of Stan, Kathy and Gracie individually, items on the glass table, items on Kathy's desk, the easel near the pink flowers, and the short and tall lamps, change positions between these shots. (00:55:00)
Continuity mistake: After watching the news, Kathy is discussing Gracie's mistake regarding the gun guy, Gracie's lips are an irridescent pearly pink, but in the close-ups as Kathy is threatening Gracie, her lips are now a matte rosy pink. The close-ups were done in pick ups. (00:55:00 - 00:56:15)
Answer: It is an image Victor Melling conjures in an effort to elicit a calm, zen-like state for Grace. He is trying to assist her to focus on the competition, rather than her fear of walking the stage in a two piece swimsuit.
Michael Albert