Question: I read somewhere that for Phil to be as good as he is on the piano in the jazz club scene he would have had been trapped in that day for about 10 years. Is it known anywhere (DVD, directors, actors) that say about how long Phil actually repeated the same day?
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Answer: Harold Ramis flat out said it was about 10 years. I think the final numbers calculated by some groups said it needed to be just over 8 years, to learn and do all the things he did. I'm not sure how they actually calculated it, but I'll go with the writer and directer of the movie for 10 years.
Chosen answer: In season 11 episode 7 "Friends Without Benefits", it was revealed Meg's heart was literally born in the wrong place and ended up in her head and her heart beats were shown beating on her head. Meg just wears the hat to cover it up. As for Chris, it's pretty much just a simple character decision. The real explanation is most likely that's it's a lot easier to animate characters with a near-permanent appearance.
The One with All the Poker - S1-E18
Question: After playing poker for the second time and winning over the girls, the guys say something like "Thanks for teaching us cross-eyed Mary." I assume it is a poker technique, however as a poker player, I've never heard about it. Is anyone familiar with it?
Chosen answer: I've been unable to locate any information about an actual poker game or technique called "cross-eyed Mary." The only reference I can find to "Cross-Eyed Mary" is a track on the 1971 Jethro Tull album "Aqualung." It's unlikely Joey is referring to the song, so I am guessing it's just something the show creators made up, possibly implying that Monica's aunt taught them a new variation/technique/trick so they could win and they still ended up losing, teaching it to the guys in the process.
Answer: It is largely believed that a player's eyes can give away a good or bad hand and that good poker players need to have a "poker face" - not moving eyes or making facial gestures. If a poker player has cross-eyes, the implication is that other players will not be able to "read" that person's face or be able to discern if the player has a good hand or is bluffing.
Question: Even though Elsa is the one who needs to be isolated due to her powers, why does Anna have to stay in the castle too? Why is Anna never able to leave the castle until she is older?
Answer: She probably didn't want to leave the palace if she knew her sister couldn't leave either. Besides, she is a small child, and the castle is where her parents live. She's too young to just go out on her own.
Question: Why would the loco derail if the siding switch was set to the siding where the freight train went?
Answer: It wouldn't derail, it would break the bolt on points - the part of switch that moves, causing the points.
Question: Kevin Carroll was impersonating Alan York, Janet York's father. When Janet is in the hospital and her "father" visits her, shouldn't Janet have been able to tell that that wasn't her real father?
Answer: That's why he killed her. When he entered her hospital room she was drowsy and didn't realise straight away that he was not her real father - he suffocated her before she could tell anyone.
Question: I get that the story is played out through a father and child's imagination, but there's three questions about that. 1. The film's first scene takes place eight-and-a-half years before Emmet's story began and presumably right before Finn was born. How was that played out when Finn wasn't even around back then? 2. When Emmet ends up in our world, he tries to and fails to talk to Finn and his father, sees everything they do, and struggles to move on his own until Finn notices him on the floor. How is that all that possible? 3. Why is the dad referred to as "The Man Upstairs" when he just wants to glue his stuff and Finn just wants to play? Vitruvius said that "The Man Upstairs" chose Emmet to be the hero. So, shouldn't Finn be the one known as "The Man Upstairs"?
Answer: 1. The eight years earlier mention could be just part of Finn's back story for his game. 2. Though the story is set to the imagination of Finn, this scene shows that the characters are real. Think Toy Story. 3. The dad is called "The Man Upstairs" because he is literally upstairs when we first hear him. And because he's the one who built their world.
Question: Why does Jack insist that his pint of bitter be in a THIN glass? I've tried doing some Google research on the question and haven't come up with a satisfactory answer. One person says it's a Northerners vs Southerners custom, one says it's in case he needs to use the glass as a weapon, another says he's just being a jerk to the barman as he'd already started to pull it, and a fourth says it's just because that's how Carter ordered it in the novel. Nobody seems to know for certain, though. I'm hoping that maybe someone's seen an interview with Michael Caine or Ted Lewis and has the real answer.
Answer: It's a show of sophistication. Working class men in pubs and clubs (north, south, and London) typically drank from beer mugs. By insisting on a thin glass Jack is making a public display, of socially distancing himself from the average beer drinking peers, showing he has refined himself from his working class roots.
This is 180° wrong. Thick pint pots with handles were just becoming fashionable when this was made, by ordering a straight "thin" glass he is opting for traditional over trendy.
This is 100% rubbish. The new design of the dimpled mug glass in the 70s was a continuation of the fluted mugs of the 1920s. Northerners, particularly Yorkshire, preferred their beer in jugs, not straight glasses.
Not true at all: everyone I knew in the 70's and 80's always preferred their beer in a normal "thin" pint glass, not the thick, chunky dimpled things. Rightly or wrongly, we always felt it tasted better from a proper glass.
Chosen answer: Its the northerners V southerners for that time period - northerners drank from jugs (the pint glass with the handle) and southerners drank from tall pint glasses that are more commonly used today. Jack, being from London, wanted it in a tall glass.
Answer: Absolutely not. This is gangster. Carter knows if he has a thin straight glass he can tap it on the bar and he has a makeshift weapon. You can't do that with a dimpled 'glass' with a handle, which is a mug by the way.
Nobody smashes a glass on the bar first - the face or head is used to "glass" someone. Agreed, it's not called a jug, but a mug usually has a hot beverage, although alcohol can be served in a beer mug, tankard, or dimpled beer glass. The handled glass would most likely knock you out before breaking on your head! I think it's more likely the North/South divide rather than cutting your hand breaking it on the bar.
Answer: The reason is to imply that he wants a full pint of beer, "in a thin glass" wasn't in the script, it was Michael Caine's addition and just reinforces the character's image of an 'alpha male'.
It's still gonna be a 568ml (British) pint regardless of the shape of the glass! Northerners generally preferred more of a head of froth than anyone South of Watford, and I believe that "bitter" or "heavy" laterally came in a glass with a handle and lager more commonly in a straight glass. Personally, I'd be reluctant to take the time to break a pint glass on the bar, possibly cutting my hand in the process, while your opponent has already broken theirs over your head and followed up in your face.
Answer: Jugs can survive being chipped on the rim and difficult to spot, any chip on a thin glass would produce an obvious crack and not be used, so you could cut your mouth on a chipped jug. Nothing to do with class, just thickness of glass.
Question: At the end when the evil Alpha dragon runs away, you see that Drago Blood Fist was still on the dragon. The large dragon retreated, going underwater and is not seen again. So did that kill Blood Fist? did he drown?
Question: When Jasmine works out that Prince Ali is Aladdin (the boy from the market), why does she get angry at him? Shouldn't she be happy that he's actually alive, considering Jafar told her earlier on that Aladdin had been sentenced to death and killed?
Question: When Jules and Vincent go to the students' flat at the beginning of the movie, Jules asks the guy on the couch to tell him where the briefcase is. He begins by saying "You. A flock of seagulls. Where is it?" What does he mean by calling him "a flock of seagulls"?
Chosen answer: It's a reference to his hairstyle; A Flock Of Seagulls was a new wave band from the early 1980s who were as well known for their frontman's unusual hairstyle as their sound. You can learn more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Flock_of_Seagulls.
Question: Do the other children at Melody's birthday party know she's a mermaid? They must do if the snotty boys and girl joined Melody and all the other mermaids in the end.
Answer: Melody was only a mermaid for a short amount of time and they never saw her that way. By the end of the movie when she used the Trident to take the walls down, she was in normal human form, and so was her mother. The fact that other mermaids were around might have been a shock, but Melody could've just explained that off-screen. Either way, she was still kind enough to let them join.
Answer: Either possibility is true. They may not have known she was, which is why it was never said among them before, or they did and didn't say anything.
Question: In Horace Slughorn's house, what was that dragon blood dripping on the ceiling about? He has a dragon?
Answer: Slughorn knew Dumbledore was on his way and what he wanted. He made the house a "disaster" area in hoped it would fool Dumbledore into thinking Deatheaters were there. He put the dragon blood there hoping Dumbledore believed someone had been killed and would leave. But when Dumbledore realized it was dragon's blood, not human, he knew what Slughorn was up to.
Question: Perhaps I'm just grasping at straws here, but isn't there still a possibility that the woods are inhabited by monsters? No one was able to explain what killed the livestock.
Answer: There were no real monsters. Noah Percy, who was not an elder, killed the livestock. He had found his father's monster costume that was hidden under the floorboards. He secretly began wearing it and acting like one of the creatures that the elders were pretending to be in order to frighten younger members to keep them from leaving the village. Noah was mentally handicapped, and it was like a game to him, but it became more deadly over time. The elders did not know until the end of the movie that it was Noah who had killed the animals.
I believe the dad, Walker, explained to Ivy that it was the Elders. He also said the 1st ones that started popping up was likely one of the elders but he wasn't sure which one.
Question: Does anyone know what town/city the scene at Snape's house was filmed in?
Answer: The scene is set in the fictional village of Cokestown. Based on some Internet research, there does not appear to be an actual town where this was filmed. According to Helen McCrory, the actress who played Narcissa Malfoy, the street scene was filmed before a blue screen. Most likely, the aerial view consisted of CGI composite shots to simulate a late-19th Century Northern England industrial town. Snape is supposed to have lived in an area of abandoned row houses on Spinner's End street. There was also information that some footage may have been filmed near Black Country near Birmingham, Tyneside or the Clyde area in Scotland.
Question: Is there a way to know what was going on in the TV footage that Forest is in? For example when He shows Johnson his wound and Johnson walks away laughing, or when he has the confrontation with Kennedy, what was going on with the actual footage they used?
Chosen answer: (1) The effects artists involved in "Forrest Gump" used footage of President Lyndon Johnson giving an award to Sammy Davis Jr., and superimposed Hanks over Davis to make it look like the president was giving Gump a medal. (2) Forrest appears with John Lennon on "The Dick Cavett Show." This was morphed with footage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first appearance with Mr. Cavett, which aired September 11, 1971. They were the only guests on the show that evening. But In the film, Forrest Gump's image is superimposed over Yoko Ono’s (original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78L_v3_ufQ0). In the "Forrest Gump" film, Cavett plays himself, made up to look younger. (3) I believe the archival footage of President John F. Kennedy is actual footage of Kennedy honoring a championship football team, with Tom Hanks digitally inserted. But I do not know which team nor the year. In all instances, when Forrest Gump is digitally composited into historic events, the special effects team recreated that archival footage with actor Tom Hanks. They combined their new work with the actual clip via CGI and clever editing. Finally, in post-production, they modified mouth movements of the historical figures so that they appear to be saying the new dialogue.
Question: I am struggling to figure out what the title of the movie, Watership Down, has to do with the movie itself at all. Can someone please explain what the title refers to?
Chosen answer: Watership Down is the name of a real hill in Hampshire. In the context of the film and the book, it is the location where Fiver and the other rabbits set up their new warren after leaving Sandleford.
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Chosen answer: Harold Ramis, who wrote and directed the film, had said the in the original draft Phil spent a total of 10,000 years trapped in his timeloop. They ended up scaling that back quite a bit for the final version, but it's still in the ballpark of 100 to 1,000 years. Quite a broad window, I know, but the point is it's easily plenty of time for Phil to have become a master pianist along with all the other skills he appears to have mastered.
Phixius ★