Sierra1

16th Feb 2014

Airport (1970)

Question: Near the end of the film, the plane stuck on the ground is pressurised before it can move out of the way. Why is it pressurised if it's on the ground and not in the air?

kh1616

Chosen answer: Patroni isn't referring to the cabin pressure, he says to "pressurize the manifold" - part of the engine start procedure of a Boeing 707, which I believe involves a ground crew pumping gas (nitrogen?) from a cart into the intake manifold.

Sierra1

Pressurize - as in the manifold, to turn on bleed air from the APU - on board Auxiliary Power Unit - a small jet engine that provides electrical and pneumatic air to operate aircraft systems including starting engines.

Question: If the island sinks underwater at regular intervals, then what happens to the tiny elephants, giant bees, etc (and the whole ecosystem) while the island is underwater?

Answer: There is a deleted scene on the DVD/Bluray where they attempt to give an explanation. Kailani asks "What happens to the animals when the island sinks? They can't all die!". Alexander replies "Even the mammals develop quasi-amphibian characteristics. They just burrow below the ground's surface and absorb the oxygen through their skin."

Sierra1

Question: After Gimli finds Merry's knife sheath among the dead orcs, Legolas bows and says a few words in Elvish. What are they and what do they mean?

Answer: "Hiro hyn hîdh ab 'wanath." ("May they find peace in death").

Sierra1

Question: When Sky Captain's base is attacked, he blasts off with his P-40 from a hangar with the letters E and L between the wings. What does that stand for?

Answer: Pretty sure it's FL, standing for Flying Legion.

Sierra1

Question: Maybe I missed something, but didn't Jack murder a guy in the beginning of the film and was about to get life in prison before he escaped? How is it that at the end, he flies back home with John and meets with his sister and they live happily ever after as if nothing happened? Is he not a fugitive from Russia?

Carl Missouri

Chosen answer: It can probably be assumed that they didn't just turn up to Domodedovo Airport and board a plane in the normal way. As Jack is a CIA agent, it is likely that the Agency had some way of getting the McClanes out of Russia via covert or diplomatic means.

Sierra1

Double Sting - S1-E13

Question: In this episode, Jessie, ticked off that he had to pay the boy's bail, says that the mortgage payment has to be made to Jason Higgins. I thought that J.D. Hogg held the mortgage to the Duke farm. Has my memory got a hole in it?

Answer: Hogg didn't own the farm and hold the mortgage until that episode. He says that he "bought aII Jason's hoIdings Iast week", but the Dukes didn't know about it and thought they still had to pay Higgins.

Sierra1

13th Feb 2014

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Question: Towards the end when the briefcase has been recovered and Hobbs asks what the reward should be, Dom replies "1327." What do these numbers refer to? Shaw's former hideout? Or an amnesty law code or something?

mNemesis

Chosen answer: It's the house number of Dom's old house in Los Angeles, from the first film. Hobbs says "name your price", so I guess Dom was asking him to buy his old house back (the gang are having a BBQ there in the next scene).

Sierra1

1st Jun 2013

Run Lola Run (1998)

Question: I don't understand the scene in the casino. She screams and the roulette ball hits her number. What happened here?

Loesjuh1985

Chosen answer: In the casino scene, Lola breaks the "rules" several times. She doesn't have enough money for a 100 mark chip, she defies the dress code, and the scream is a manifestation of her willpower overriding the laws of chance and probability itself to make the ball land on the number 20 twice in a row.

Sierra1

14th Jun 2013

St. Trinian's (2007)

Chosen answer: She wasn't in one of the groups (Geeks, Emos, First Years, Posh Totties and Chavs), she was an outsider. The girls later give her a makeover as each one of the cliques, but she ended up as herself and said she "felt like a St Trinian".

Sierra1

7th Feb 2014

Das Boot (1981)

Question: During the film one of the officers was holding a bottle of Becks beer. Was the label on the bottle age/era appropriate?

Answer: The label is absolutely correct, but at this time Beck's Beer was only for export and not regularly available in Germany.

Answer: I compared a clip of the scene to a vintage postcard from 1940 which had a photo of a bottle of Beck's, and it looks completely accurate in the film as far as I can see regarding the label, foil on the neck and bottle shape of the 1940s.

Sierra1

Chosen answer: The agent on the plane watching Indy was not Toht, and was played by ILM staffer Dennis Muren, although they look similar. The Nazis were spying on Indy but this doesn't mean they didn't know where the Ravenwoods' bar was.

Sierra1

4th Feb 2014

General questions

Which Pink Panther movie had Sellers using disguises that included an inflatable dog and an inflatable doll?

Answer: The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) has Professor Balls presenting Ted Wass, Clifton Sleigh, with disguises including an inflatable dog and doll - it wasn't Peter Sellers though as he had died in 1980.

Sierra1

6th Aug 2013

Blade Runner (1982)

Question: What effect did they use to get the actors' eyes to glow, revealing they are replicants?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: A two-way mirror at a 45 degree angle in front of the camera with the camera pointing at the see-through side. A light was shone at the reflective side and reflected into the actor's eyes on the optical axis of the lens.

Sierra1

10th Jul 2013

Goldeneye 007

Question: After killing Xenia in the Jungle level, you get to dual wield an RCP 90 and a grenade launcher. Other than when using cheat codes, why is this the only time you can wield 2 different weapons at the same time?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: In normal gameplay, yes, this is the only level where you can dual wield two different weapons.

Sierra1

4th Feb 2014

General questions

This US film is from the early 1950s or perhaps late 1940s, and is in B&W. A young woman is murdered, and during the investigation the film shows how several characters remember the victim. Striking differences in how they each remember her!

Answer: The Woman in Question (1950), directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Jean Kent and Dirk Bogarde.

Sierra1

31st Jan 2014

Star Trek (2009)

Chosen answer: Phasers fire nadion particle bursts or bolts, which are fictional but are presumably similar to photons, and would therefore have mass and kinetic energy - so depending on the power output of the phaser, it should impart a not insignificant momentum change.

Sierra1

1st Feb 2014

Father Ted (1995)

Answer: Ted was using his real hands to control Father Jack's wheelchair using a remote control - the fake arms were so no-one would see him cheating.

Sierra1

31st Jan 2014

Moonraker (1979)

Chosen answer: Drax explains to Bond that he stole the shuttle (built by his own company for NASA and on loan to the UK) because one of the shuttles in his fleet going to his space station developed a mechanical fault.

Sierra1

19th Jan 2014

The Wolverine (2013)

Question: The scene with the bear, the hunter in the bar, and the poisoned arrows was taken from a particular comic book. Anyone know which one?

Arokthis

Chosen answer: It was the first issue of the Wolverine comic, the 1982 limited series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller.

Sierra1

9th Jan 2014

The Matrix (1999)

Question: In the first movie, in the theatre, I could swear that there was a scene of Zion. It was quick, but it was a modern, high tech view of what Zion supposedly looked like, deep within the earth, out of the range of the AI machines. I remember being disappointed when the 2nd movie came out, and Zion was instead portrayed as a smart but rough kind of camping out place, with obvious dirt issues. Can anyone confirm that they saw such a high tech scene of Zion in the theatrical release? I know the DVD doesn't have it. Things like this do occasionally happen - in the last original cast Star Trek movie, "Undiscovered Country" the Klingon who tries to kill the President and Captain Kirk at the end, and falls to his death, is "de-masked" to reveal a co-conspirator in the theatrical release and the first DVD release, but in subsequent DVD releases, including the Blu-Ray, this scene was removed.

jabdesigns

Chosen answer: I've seen The Matrix many times (20+) in the theatre, and I have not seen any such imagery of Zion. There is no artwork in the book "The Art of The Matrix" which shows it either and no mention in the shooting script. It seems unlikely that Zion would be "shiny" and high-tech as the appearance of Zion in the sequel films matches the decor and dress sense of the Nebuchadnezzar and her crew in the first film - grungy and "used". There are some modern looking Zion scenes in Reloaded with the traffic control operators, but they are working in a virtual construct.

Sierra1

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.