Question: What is Mr. Scrooge's business exactly, and what does Bob Cratchit do?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.
Question: What is the orchestral music playing while Howard is chasing the ball through the Mall of America?
Answer: "Russian Dance" from the ballet "The Nutcracker" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Opie Joins the Marines - S2-E26
Question: How can Andy meet Sergeant Carter here if they met in the pilot episode of Gomer Pyle, USMC?
Answer: There's no indication they were meeting for the first time, in fact they seem to know each other as Sgt. Carter addresses Andy only as "Sheriff". Gomer Pyle just says his two favorite people are "meeting face to face", and obviously in the pilot episode Sgt. Carter wasn't one of Pyle's favorite people yet.
Question: After Voldemort's death, is anyone able to teach Defense Against Dark Arts for more than a year?
Answer: Yes. According to J.K. Rowling in interviews, the curse Voldemort had cast on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position preventing any teacher lasting more than one year, was finally broken upon his death, and from then on any instructor lasted beyond twelve months.
In the movies it is never mentioned that Voldemort cursed the DADA post or even applied for this position.
It is mentioned in the books.
Question: Does Voldemort look the way he did before he was defeated by one-year-old Harry, or is his appearance a side effect of the graveyard ritual?
Answer: He did have distorted looks before going after Harry due to the Horcruxes he created, however, the main reason he looks the way he does is because he drank unicorn blood to stay alive.
Question: HRH thought it was suspicious that Draco wanted to stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas break. As they learned, he wasn't committing the attacks against Muggle-borns after all, so is there some other reason why he stayed?
Answer: There would be a reason he stayed, though it's never known what it is. It's usual for a certain number of students to stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas break. In Draco's case, it is likely his parents were traveling or had other business to attend to and Draco either didn't want to go with them, or else his mother and father preferred he not come. Draco's father may also have asked his son to stay over to keep an eye on Harry's activities, although he never told Draco what was going on.
Question: I know this would end the movie, but when Jack is running alongside the bus, trying to get on before it reaches 50, why doesn't he shoot one of the tires? This would've taken the bus to a stop.
Answer: Shooting out car tires is a bit of a movie myth, and bus tires are much more heavily reinforced, so it would be very difficult to hit and puncture a tire successfully. It would also be very dangerous to fire a gun at a small, rapidly-moving target on a busy highway, and a person shooting at the bus would almost certainly make the driver speed up to get away. Finally, one of the tires does blow out at the airport, which makes virtually no difference to the bus's speed or motion.
Question: There is a scene in Robert Graysmith's kitchen where you can see a container of Old Bay Seasoning on the top of the stove. I am from Maryland and I found it unusual that they would have it out in California, especially before the internet came into being. Did I see that wrong? I couldn't find the answer anywhere else.
Question: Something that I can't figure out: Was there a reason why the Philosopher's Stone needed to be removed from the bank vault in the same week that Harry came to Hogwarts?
Answer: The timing was more a matter of convenience than absolute necessity. Dumbledore learned that one of Voldemort's servants might soon attempt to steal it. So, since Hagrid had to collect Harry from his Aunt and Uncle then take him to Gringott's among other places anyway, Dumbledore instructed Hagrid to get the stone for him while he was there.
Question: In some of the scenes they are driving on the left side. I thought that all of Europe drove on the right?
Answer: Currently, there are 161 countries and territories world-wide with right-handed traffic, and there are 75 with left-side traffic. The 75 include several countries which were once part of the British Empire. Of these, seven are European, including the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the film, any driving in the UK would be on the left side of the road.
Question: When they come across the girl crying over her mother's body, one of the guards says she has the sickness, and when they arrive in the city, they come across an old man who has the laughing sickness - what sicknesses are they referring to?
Answer: It is not specifically identified, but it appears to be the degenerative neurological disease called kuru. It is fatal and believed to have been spread in ancient sub-tropical cultures by cannibalism. Its symptoms resembles the encephalopathy disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow), which is also called the laughing sickness, and is contracted by eating contaminated flesh.
Answer: Kuru only happens when you eat your relatives and the disease was discovered and studied in Papua New Guinea where eating your dead relatives was a way to carry them with you. There are books about it, fascinating stuff. Eating strangers is safe, not that I recommend eating anyone. The disease the girl has is smallpox brought by the Spanish, thus the ships at the end of the movie are not the first Spanish to visit the area. The laughing sickness could be straight up madness considering the horrible times everyone is living through, or a side effect of the limestone quarrying.
Question: How did the Stabbington brothers get Flynn to go on the boat, and steer it? It is shown that when he is at the place and the guards arrest him, he is sort of asleep.
Chosen answer: They surely clobbered him badly enough that he fell unconscious, and he didn't wake until the guards saw him. Also, they tied him up in the correct position and gave him a good push.
Question: Why do the guard do execution rehearsals with a man who's not going to be executed? At first I thought the rehearsals were so the person being executed would know what to expect. The guards know how to run an execution, so why would they need to practice without the one being executed?
Chosen answer: They do it for the same reason people practice anything. It is to stay on top of how to perform a certain function or activity. The man is just a volunteer. Correction officers (prison guards) who do executions would particularly have to make sure they can perform flawlessly. The state and/or federal government would closely regulate and monitor this. If anything was botched, there would be severe legal repercussions, possible job dismissals, and even lawsuits by families of the condemned prisoner. Also, executions are not performed on a regular basis at any one penitentiary, so constant practice would be essential to maintain an adequate skill level. Most likely, regular drills are required by law. There would also be changing or rotating staff that needs to be trained and/or retrained. There's been much publicity recently about several executions using lethal injections being done improperly, so it is hardly surprising the procedures would constantly be reviewed and practiced.
Chosen answer: The general consensus is that Big Bird is a canary; however, according to Wikipedia, he's also been described as a condor as well as an ibis. The one constant factor is that regardless of his species, Big Bird is always eight feet, two inches tall and flightless.
Question: Why didn't Percy hit Wild Bill when he was strangling Dean? He enjoys hurting people, so what was the problem in that scene?
Chosen answer: Percy is a coward and froze in the heat of the moment. He has no idea how to deal with dangerous people, only helpless ones who are behind bars, like Del.
Question: In this episode they are digging the hole to get through to 'Scylla', when digging the hole the concrete bar drops or something. Brad goes in to the pipe help but he can't get out in order to get them to Scylla, so therefore he is left in there to die. That tunnel though is the source of the water to L.A. So there would be a dead body in the water and everyone would be drinking water where a dead guy was, am I right? Or did I miss out on something?
Answer: They got Brad's body out.
Answer: Yes you are right, the entire city of LA was drinking water contaminated by a dead body.
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Answer: Mr. Scrooge is a moneylender and Bob is his clerk. Moneylendering is different than something like a bank loan because interest rates are much steeper and usually the last resort for poor people who can't get bank loans. In essence he's a loan shark.
Bishop73