I am looking for a documentary about prehistoric sharks. The signoff has the line (against a backdrop of such), "sharks so bizarre/strange, if they had never been, would we have dreamed them?"
dizzyd
16th Oct 2023
General questions
16th Oct 2023
General questions
I am looking for a documentary from the '80s or '90s about a stranded baby beluga left by the tide. What is its name and how did it end?
3rd Feb 2021
General questions
The name of a movie about a French girl who runs away from home after she just got out of prison, gets tricked into getting robbed by the guy who drove her to Paris and falls in love with an American soldier? It's set close to WW2.
Answer: Possibly "Suite Française" (2015). Sounds pretty close to the description.
It was made somewhere between the 50's and 70's, and was in color (true color, not colorized).
1st Feb 2021
Spies Like Us (1985)
Question: Dan Aykroyd tricks the Russians into revealing themselves by saying something in Russian. What does he say specifically?
31st Jan 2021
Apollo 13 (1995)
Question: Why couldn't the crew put on their spacesuits, then go out and assess the damage?
Answer: That would involve depressurizing the command module and LEM. Given that a substantial percentage of their on-board O2 supply just got vented into space, wasting more at that point to only confirm what they already knew wasn't worth the trouble.
Answer: Even if they could go out and assess the damage, they didn't have the tools, materials, or knowledge to actually be able to fix it.
31st Jan 2021
General questions
I remember a comedy Western about a bandit leader who is tempted into going straight by a rich blond heiress, she gets him caught, he tries to go straight but reverts. There is an attempt to catch him by a retired sheriff who sets letters to catch him on fire, at one point he says "I learned never trust a beautiful woman or a lonely midget'. He finally escapes by wearing the heiress' petticoats?
Answer: That's the TV Movie Evil Roy Slade (1972).
21st Sep 2020
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Question: Are there canonically any Jedi with lightsabers that are yellow, orange or just plain white? Mace Windu got a distinguishing purple one at Samuel L Jackson's request, and pink ones I suppose aren't viewed to be intimidating enough.
Answer: Ahsoka Tano uses white lightsabers later in life: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano%27s_white_lightsabers, reflecting her choice not to affiliate with the Jedi or Sith. While yet to be confirmed, Rosario Dawson is strongly rumoured to be playing the character in season 2 of The Mandalorian, and we may well see her with white lightsabers in live action then.
Answer: In Clone Wars we see Yellow (also in episode IX), Yellow-Green, Light Blue, Black and White. In the canon videogames you even see Orange, Cyan and Magenta.
1st Sep 2020
Stargate: Atlantis (2004)
Question: The crew happen upon a crashed Wraith vessel from 10,000 years ago, with a hibernating Wraith inside, Problem is, why haven't other Wraith already found it sometime before then? They've been ruling the Galaxy, with a surplus of people and machines, for thousands of years - it's not like it was hidden at the bottom of the ocean like Atlantis, its distress beacon was working.
1st Sep 2020
Dune (1984)
Question: Is there any reason they can't introduce sand worms to other planets in the Duniverse, there to proliferate and produce a greater, more widely distributed quantity of the spice? The newborn worms are called sandtrout, by virtue of being more or less the size of such. Should be easy enough therefore to capture some, surround them with sand in the spaceship to imitate their homeworld, and take them to some other planet the Empire is willing to give up for any other use, then let them grow and produce spice? Much greater abundance, much surer supply (the proverbial eggs in one basket), much closer at hand for any other world in the Universe?
Answer: In the books people were trying this with no success, at least by the end of book 3 which is as far as I got. The implication was there was a complex eco-balance needed which they were failing to achieve. It is a big part of book 3 that the smugglers were capturing the sand trout and selling them to offworlders, since this is how Leto II got them to perform his metamorphosis. Perhaps in later books they succeeded at starting another location.
Isn't it so they only discovered the sandworms were the source for the spice by the time Leto II takes charge and turns into one? After which he turns Arrakis into a paradise with only a small patch for sandworms to produce spice in.
1st Sep 2020
Dune (2000)
Question: Is there any reason they can't introduce sand worms to other planets in the Duniverse, there to proliferate and produce a greater, more widely distributed quantity of the spice? The newborn worms are called sandtrout, by virtue of being more or less the size of such. Should be easy enough therefore to capture some, surround them with sand in the spaceship to imitate their homeworld, and take them to some other planet the Empire is willing to give up for any other use, then let them grow and produce spice? Much greater abundance, much surer supply (the proverbial eggs in one basket), much closer at hand for any other world in the Universe?
Answer: There could be a number of reasons: introducing non-native species can be devastating to an environment; the sandworms may only be able to survive in certain conditions that other planets lack; they may be unable to reproduce once introduced to a different environment; moving the number of worms needed to produce an adequate supply may be cost-prohibitive; it may be decades before the worms are old enough to produce the spice, the new environment might change the quality and chemical composition of the spice that is produced; political conflicts, and so on.
Answer: If Spice is even half as useful as the novel says, those are all trivial inconveniences compared to the payoff that would make it worth a try.
Next to the fact the unique conditions of Arrakis is what makes the spice melange (not just the worms, but also the planetary conditions) you have to also understand that having the spice production on one planet makes it much easier to control. Whoever controls the spice controls the universe. It wasn't until much later (hundreds of years after the death of the god emperor) they were able to replicate the spice, but before that they didn't even know how the spice was even made. A large reason for this is they had no AI (forbidden) to help analyze the spice melange.
Fine, I accept the monopoly theory.
17th Mar 2020
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Question: When the main body of the toys and the "false" Buzz, and then also the "real" Buzz are climbing up the elevator shaft to rescue Woody, how do any of them know which specific floor/vent intake to get off at?
18th Jun 2019
Ratatouille (2007)
Question: Is it understood or implied that the old woman at the beginning is Anton Ego's mother? It comes together when he flashes back to his boyhood; literally the way mother used to make?
Answer: It is his mother. It's not that Remy made it exactly like his mother did. It's along the lines that as a food critic in Paris, he's used to eating only very high quality haute cuisine. A dish as simple as ratatouille is something that he loves from childhood but probably hasn't had in decades.
25th Feb 2019
Titanic (1997)
Question: Over the course of the film we learn all the middle portion of Rose's life, but how did she get through life without any paperwork such as a birth certificate? Getting married, driving/flying, all need documentation the "renamed" version of herself wouldn't have.
Answer: Record keeping at the turn of the 20th century was still incomplete and inaccurate. Many people were born without a birth certificate being issued. Tens of thousands of immigrants entering the country often lacked those types of papers, and many had their surnames changed when they arrived. It was also much easier to get alternate documentation to prove one's identity or, in certain situations, may not have required proof, as it does now.
31st Oct 2018
Monsters University (2013)
Question: Is Mike's dream where he says "But you are a princess and I am a stable-boy" a nod to "The Princess Bride", which has essentially that plot with a cameo by Billy Crystal?
Answer: Yes, the line "Mmm, I know, you're a princess and I'm just a stable boy..." is absolutely a nod to The Princess Bride. Though Billy's role, with all his genius improvised ad-libbing, is quite a bit more than a cameo.
18th Jun 2018
The Green Mile (1999)
Question: Why is Paul on active prison guard duty with a debilitating medical condition, as opposed to some form of sick leave, or at the very least a desk job? On several occasions we see him either made vulnerable or even out-and-out helpless.
Answer: He's one of those people who is dedicated to his job and will say he is OK even when he isn't, and keep working. He will power through and not let anyone know how sick he really is.
They are in the midst of the Great Depression. No one wants to give their employer the opportunity to fire them. They are all fighting to keep their jobs.
31st Mar 2018
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Question: Why didn't Mrs Whatsit turn into a winged centaur as she did in the book? What made them alter the magic creature into a living leaf?
Answer: Like any other such change from the source material, it's just artistic license.
Answer: The biggest critical complaint about this film is that director Ava DuVernay and her screenwriters essentially gutted Madeleine L'Engle's award-winning children's book and turned it into nothing more than Disneyesque eye candy, discarding many important elements of L'Engle's story and arbitrarily refitting it with lightweight (and boring) motivational platitudes. In other words, DuVernay made the movie her soapbox for "social messaging" and tossed out much of the wondrous (and even miraculous) detail that made L'Engle's original book a huge success. Consequently, this movie was a colossal financial failure.
Interestingly, Disney had adapted this story for the screen before (in 2004), and the earlier version did include the flying centaur (albeit a bad CGI rendering). Unfortunately, the 2004 version was also a box-office failure for Disney, and for the same reason as the 2018 remake: Disney removed the magical and spiritual qualities that gave L'Engle's original story its depth.
Disney's previous adaptation was released in 2003 as a TV movie, so it wasn't a "box-office failure", it was just a terrible movie.
21st Mar 2018
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Question: To prevent spoilers/plot leaking to the public, Tim Burton made five endings to keep people guessing. Is there anywhere I can see any of the other four?
Answer: There were five different endings to the movie and late actor Michael Clarke Duncan saw them all. So far, no website seems to have all five endings. Just the one we're familiar with.
Answer: You might be mistaken, there was only ever one ending shot for this film: the ending we all saw at the Lincoln Memorial. There were different planned endings (one was a similar ending to the theatrical but set at Yankee stadium with apes playing baseball) that were each rejected for various reasons. The ending we see is the one that is in the script.
20th Feb 2018
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005)
The Siege of the North (Part 2) - S1-E20
Question: When Aang is told by Roku that he must ask questions of the centipede monster, why can't Roku ask the centipede monster the questions, then relay the answers to Aang? Roku is already in the spirit world, and would have course have much more experience in these matters. Aang is already taking on enormous burdens simply by knowing his full identity at 12 instead of, as they say several times, 16, then having to train by going on this enormous journey.
Answer: As the Avatar, Aang's main function is to be the bridge between the spirit world and human world. Roku, being a former Avatar knows that Aang has to learn how to interact with spirits. He's certainly under a heavy burden but that's mainly his fault for running away from his responsibilities in the first place. Difficult or not, this is simply a lesson Aang must learn.
2nd Nov 2017
Game of Thrones (2011)
Question: Just what size relationship would the dragon eggs be compared to the adults? In season one, we see the eggs as being roughly the size of eggplants or a child's football, at the start of Season 7, the dragons thereof have grown to 747 (whale?) size. Just how big would the laying mother have been? Even if she reproduced in the equivalent of a teenage pregnancy, the size of the dragons in past seasons, her offspring would have been dust motes compared to her. If Season 7 represents them fully-grown (and think about it if they are not!), the dragon's biological mother would have been truly gargantuan compared to her offspring.
Answer: In the universe shown in this series, dragons can technically grow indefinitely. They continue to grow throughout their lives. They will stop growing, however if they live in captivity in a confined space. There is therefore no standard size for an adult dragon.
Answer: The dragon of Aegon the Conqueror, the first king of the Seven Kingdom Balerion the Black Dread was so massive it could attack the megacastle of Harrenhal by itself. Free dragons not locked up in confinement can grow to whatever length it can. This is why Drogon is larger than his brothers Viseriyon and Rheagal.
12th Aug 2017
Starship Troopers (1997)
Question: Is there any reason the humans can't simply use nukes, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, or bioweapons,, any kind of especially powerful, destructive bomb, shot from long distance, dropped from a plane, or better still, orbit, to fight the bugs? Yes, of course there are big downsides to any such action, but this does not strike me as a society restrained, patient, enlightened or with sufficient foresight to care about those.
Chosen answer: They do use nukes (to clear out bug caves) and fuel-air bombs (like they do before landing troops). It's possible biological and chemical weapons don't work on the bugs because of their physiology. Only nukes and Thermobaric weapons work.
Answer: Nukes, chemical, and bio weapons would render the planets uninhabitable. Not a goal when they want to colonize.
I have already stated these people are not that far-thinking.
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Answer: If you're looking for a 50's movie, maybe "Act of Love" (1953) with Kirk Douglas and Dany Robin? A French woman (Robin) starts to fall in love with an American soldier (Douglas), who loves her in return. She does go to prison, bust she's an orphan so I don't think she runs away from home when she gets out. He gets transferred out of Paris and ends up missing the chance to marry the woman.
Bishop73