Criticise my favourite book, show or movie

 I love this topic from Long and Short Reviews. For many years my favourite film was "Heavenly Creatures", and I still do love it. More recently I discovered "Hell House LLC" and its sequels, and those now take precedence. However, the one point of criticism I have for "Hell House LLC" also applied to "Heavenly Creatures" - the director's cut is better. yet harder to find.

"Hell House LLC" uses the mockumentary/found footage format to great effect and manages to evoke real dread, even though from an analytical perspective it's probably quite simple. It does, however, tread a fine line with how much it reveals of what's really going on, and possibly falls slightly on the side of not revealing enough. The director's cut does a better job, as it reveals a little more without going over the top, and as a result is scarier than the original - however, the director's cut has only just become available on Shudder after waiting ages for it, and the DVD and blu-ray are US only.

The film also has one issue which annoyed me the first time I saw it - every haunted house film has to have a good reason why they're not leaving the house, particularly when it's found footage, but in "Hell House LLC" they literally turn the camera off for this conversation and then switch it back on to say "You're right, we can't leave." The reason is revealed in a later film, but this seriously irritated me at the time. 

I'm interested to see what everyone else is going to come up with!

Something I believed, but found out wasn't true

 I'm back on the Long and Short Reviews hop after a short break, and this topic took a bit of thought since I was trying to avoid the standard Santa/Tooth Fairy/etc stuff. However, it did remind me of something that was a fond memory from when I was a kid.

We, like a lot of suburban neighbourhoods, had our own Santa who would come round the local streets on a float. As a kid I didn't believe that the various Santas in shops were the real one, since even I had noticed that there were several of them, but for some reason I did believe that the one on the float was the real one. Needless to say, it took me a couple of years before I realised that if I told him I wanted something but neglected to tell my parents about it, I wasn't getting it.

I did also, at one point, leave a note under our Christmas tree as I'd forgotten to ask for something and wanted to see if Santa had one going spare. The next morning there was another note under the tree saying he'd run out and to ask again next year. No, I didn't immediately realise the note was in my dad's handwriting, although I really should have. 

So what did you believe that you found out wasn't true?