Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Help me out if I'm wildly off: The Ugandan gangster attacks LeChiffre in his hotel, who Bond later kills. LeChiffre then continues with the game and panics when Mr. White demands the money. I was under the assumption that LeChiffre only owed money to the gangster and therefore needed to win the game to pay him back. Why does he continue with the game after the gangster is killed?

Brad

Chosen answer: Le Chiffre operates as the banker for Mr White's entire organisation. The Ugandan is only one of many individuals and groups for whom Le Chiffre provides financial services; killing him does little to solve the problem of the missing money. Plus there's the question of trust - if Le Chiffre can't keep the money safe, then Mr White's organisation have no use for him and, as we see in the movie, will readily eliminate him. Le Chiffre's desperate to recover the money to prove his trustworthiness and save his own life.

Tailkinker

Question: After touring the cinema, why does Goebbels become so angry when someone mentions Lillian Harvey. Who is she?

Answer: Lilian Harvey was a British-born actress who made her career in Germany. While under Nazi scrutiny for having too many friends in the Jewish community, she'd helped a Jewish friend escape the country before escaping herself and performing for Allied troops. So yeah, Goebbels hated her. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilian_Harvey)

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Why does the train where the action takes place have the locomotive as the last car? When two trains pass each other at one moment, the others locomotive is at the beginning.

Billcow

Chosen answer: Trains that shuttle back and forth on shorter stretches don't usually turn around at the terminus. They simply go "backwards". So, in one direction the loco is in the front, on the way back it's at the end of the train.

Ioreth

Question: What happened to Special Agent Starling and why isn't she in Red Dragon? And how come the new agent didn't know who Hannibal Lecter is (recognition), when nearly the whole of America (let alone the FBI) had heard/seen at least a picture of him?

Answer: Red Dragon is a prequel to Silence of the Lambs. The events took place while Clarice Starling was still at the FBI academy. At the very end of the film, Chilton tells Lecter that a woman (Starling) from the FBI wants to meet with him. Also, when Special Agent Will Graham first met Dr. Hanibal Lecter while investigating another case, Lecter had not yet been convicted of any crime. Therefore, no one knew him to be anything other than a noted psychiatrist.

raywest

Show generally

Question: This is actually for Doctor 1 but I couldn't find it anywhere. I heard it somewhere that they were going to do only 10 series, but when Doctor 1 fell ill they put in the idea he can regenerate. Is this true? Also is this why a lot of the later episodes were destroyed?

Shadow5

Chosen answer: The show was intended to be ongoing, with no particular plan as to how many series might be involved. But you are indeed correct that William Hartnell's failing health was the principal factor that led to the concept of the regeneration being introduced, with Hartnell himself suggesting Patrick Troughton as his successor, a suggestion that was taken up. This is not, however, why many episodes from that era are missing. At the time, it simply wasn't standard policy to keep episodes indefinitely after transmission, due to the limitations in storage space, and thus many early episodes were simply wiped.

Tailkinker

Question: I'm no expert on apes so can someone tell me if the conversation in sign language that Caesar has with the orangutan is possible? We know that apes can be taught to sign and hereby communicate basic concepts and identify objects. But the orangutan, which has not had the benefit at this point in the film of the mind altering drug, communicates that humans do not like smart apes and, by extension, it has kept its ability to sign secret. This is complex behaviour that requires the ape to understand human motivations and decide to deceive its captors. Is this possible?

Answer: It's not necessarily a sign that the orangutan understands human motivations. It could be, and probably more likely *is*, a sign that the ape has shown its intelligence previously during its stay in the habitat, was abused by the humans as a direct or indirect result, and was subsequently conditioned to play dumb.

Phixius

Question: Mearing says that the Xantium brought the second wave of Autobots. Which wave does she mean? Because so far, there have been three waves: Optimus, Jazz, Ironhide, Bumblebee and Ratchet, Sideswipe, The Twins, Arcee, Chromia, and Flareup and lastly, The Wreckers, Brains, Dino and Wheeljack. Which one didn't arrive by ship, and how did they arrive?

Friso94

Chosen answer: Optimus, Jazz, Ironhide, Bumblebee and Rachet all arrived on Earth via separate pods which carried them in Transformers (2007). Sideswipe, The Twins, Arcee, Chormia and Flareup are wave one, introduced into Revenge Of The Fallen. The Wreckers, Brains, Dino (Mirage) and Wheeljack are wave two, introduced in Dark Of The Moon.

Aidan2011

Answer: All the Autobots after the first movie like sideswipe, the twins, the wreckers and even Wheeljack are all from the second wave but were just in different places doing different things. When the wreckers are first introduced it is mentioned that they came down with the second wave but just never leave site. So they weren't seen during the second film because they spent their time on site with the ship. As for the others, Wheeljack is a top scientist and was probably too busy making weapons etc somewhere. Brains and Dino could have been ex Decepticons who changed to the Autobots side after the second movie or if they were Autobots from the start where just somewhere else at the time. Brian's being pretty small probably didn't want to be involved in the battles etc. and could have been helping the humans or Wheeljack somewhere, and seeing a Dino has an Italian accent could have been doing other work elsewhere in the word.

Question: Does Emmanuelle Mimieux know of the Bastard's plan to blow up the cinema and do the Bastards know that Emmanuelle Mimieux is going to burn it down, or are the plans not connected at all?

Answer: They're unconnected. As happens often in Tarantino's films, their storylines are completely separate until they intersect at that point.

Captain Defenestrator

Chosen answer: There's a behind the scenes feature on a Friends DVD that shows an example: In "The One After Vegas"(Season 6 premiere), Chandler's line was originally "I don't think they're as much dating as they are drunk." Matthew Perry thought the line wasn't funny and came up with the alternative seen in the episode: "I don't think they're as much dating as they are two bottles of vodka walking around in human form."

Brad

Chosen answer: No, she wasn't in the movie.

rswarrior

Question: Cobb tells Ariadne that his wife buried something deep inside her and never let it out. What was he referring to?

Answer: She buried the truth that she was living in a dream. She'd chosen to make the dream life her real life. She did it by hiding the totem (which is what they use to distinguish reality from dream) in a safe box.

Garlonuss

Question: What (if any) is the significance of the "OZ" graffiti that pops up throughout the film? It became quite distracting as I thought it would pay off at the end of the film.

Answer: The 'OZ' sprayer is a very disturbed man who claims to be an artist but the courts think otherwise. You can found his OZ (which he claims to be read OLI!) everywhere in Berlin and Hamburg. It has absolutely nothing to do with the movie but you can't film a wide open scene in Berlin without taping it.

Answer: Mise en scene. OZ / OLI is firstly a name. Asking what or rather who OZ / OLI is, is the point. One of the main questions of the film is what constitutes a person's identity.

Question: Were the CGI artists running out of time at the end of the movie? I ask because towards the end there is an increase in reusing footage, and masking the Transformers off with dust, explosions, sheets of fabric, pillars and some more uninteresting stuff. What's the reason behind this? This only starts after the forest battle, before that, everything looks just fine.

Friso94

Chosen answer: It was probably as much to do with cost as it was with time. Although, there's no real way to know which scenes the CGI was actually made for, and which scenes it was borrowed for since they could very likely have animated a sequence for the climax then use elements of it for much earlier scenes. No reason to assume they'd work on the effects in the order we see them in the movie.

Phixius

Question: At the beginning when Sam is having his premonition and he saves Molly, why does she die in the plane crash at the end? And why did Sam die similar to the guy in the first "Final destination" movie? It couldn't have been him cause Sam and Molly witness him being removed from the plane before they took off.

Answer: To answer your second question, Sam's death is not like any other death's from the first final destination movie. If you are talking about Alex, he was hit by a falling brick off-screen. To answer your first question, near the end, Peter though that Candice had deserved to live more then Molly, and attempts to kill her. Sam kills Peter before he has a chance to stab molly. The gun dropped by peter lands on the stove, and shoots off in the air. This is a sign that Sam saved Molly from dying, thus, putting her on Death's list, and making it all right to kill her on Flight 180.

This is in response to the answer. Your answer is dismissive to the nuance of premonition as depicted by the movie. This is extremely crucial: Premonition, as visioned by every protagonist, is the event that would have happened if the protagonist didn't intervene. Every events in premonition is supposed to be absolutely true. As such, in the premonition, Sam saves Molly. This means if the events weren't intervened by Sam, he would still have saved Molly, while the rest (Sam, Candice, Peter) would have died anyway. So Molly should be safe all along. It wouldn't even be wrong to say that 'death' hadn't even planned to kill Molly at the bridge. So your point about Molly being next in the list because Sam killed peter and death skipping Sam now to go on Molly isn't even valid. So if Molly was clean in death's perspectives all along, why did she die at the end? (because she didn't cheat the design, she wasn't even supposed to be in the list of death's order; as I mentioned earlier, it was never the intention of death to kill Molly as evidenced by the saving of Molly in Sam's premonition).

How did we see Sam and Molly on flight 180 if it's final destination 5.

But Molly didn't die in his vision so she wasn't on the list to begin with so how can he skip someone's death that's not on the list and he kill his friend so why did he still die on the plane with Molly?.

Answer: Molly was never meant to die on the bridge because her and Sam were meant to die on Flight 180, just like how Nick, Lori and Janet were meant to die at the Cafe at the end of The Final Destination. It was basically just a cruel twist of fate that they would be on the exact same plane from the original movie. And Sam dying similarly to Alex doesn't really seem to have much of a purpose, unless maybe as a little throwback to how Alex died in his premonition, or is just a coincidence.

Answer: Molly was never on death's list. Peter killing the detective he then got his remaining years, then Sam killing Peter transferred those years to Sam, so when Sam and Molly were on the plane when the plane explodes that was the time for them to die, I'm not saying they were meant to die on that plane, they were just meant to die at that time. Just like when Nathan accidentally killed Roy who had signs of a brain aneurysm, so Roy would have dropped dead any day, hence when Nathan got Roy's life he died at the memorial, though in a more shocking way.

Question: During the lunch scene, Ismay says that Titanic was the largest moving object made by man. Was that true? At least, at the time?

Answer: Yes, it was. At the time, the big cruise lines were all trying to outdo each other with the largest and most opulent cruise ships. The Olympic class ships were the White Star Line's entry in the size race, with Olympic, the first built, taking the title in 1911, before losing it to her sister ship, the Titanic, the following year.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: No they most certainly did not. That wouldn't remotely be considered a particularly respectful homage! They picked Alzheimers because it's specifically a brain condition, which can then be explored in the movie as a plausible way of explaining the intelligence raising properties of the drug used.

GalahadFairlight

Question: Why would Andy get Hadley arrested? He saved him from the sisters. And what happened to Hadley after he got arrested? Was he put in Shawshank?

jawsant

Chosen answer: Hadley was a cruel, brutal man who repeatedly beat inmates, in some cases so badly that they died. He was directly responsible for, or an accomplice to, multiple crimes up to and including premeditated murder. By any standards, the guy deserves arrest, conviction and punishment. He may have saved Andy from the Sisters, but that was purely because Andy was useful to both him and the warden with his financial acumen. Hadley stepping in was purely down to self-interest, not any interest in inmate welfare. After all, the Sisters have clearly targetted other prisoners prior to Andy, without any apparent reaction from the prison staff. As for Hadley's eventual fate, it's not revealed.

Tailkinker

Answer: Andy could have also at least have strongly suspected that Hadley shot Tommy.

Actually, when he visits him in "the hole" Norton told Andy that Hadley is the one who shot Tommy.

Chosen answer: A cycle is equivalent to approximately 1.5 minutes. A megacycle is about 2.6 hours. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Cycle.

LorgSkyegon

Question: When Mr Warbucks goes to the orphanage to adopt Annie, he already has the adoption papers with him. But shouldn't the papers be at the orphanage since Annie was only going to be staying with him for a two weeks and he only decided that morning that he wanted to adopt her permanently?

Answer: The orphanage would certainly have adoption papers handy, but Warbucks is super-wealthy. His lawyer is undoubtedly quite used to procuring legal documents for Warbucks on a moment's notice. It just seemed the fastest way to go about it to him: have the paperwork as filled out and ready to go before he ever got there so all he'd need was Hannigan's signature, as pointed out in the song "Sign".

Phixius

Chosen answer: A lot of these scenes are shot over the shoulder of one or the other character, if you watch closely, the one whose back is to the camera is often a double. For the most part, they'd film one character's part, reset and have Lisa Kudrow change clothes, then film the other one's part. It's the same technique used in "The Parent Trap" (Lindsay Lohan) and a couple of Eddie Murphy movies ("The Nutty Professor" and "Norbit", that I know of).

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