Question: How did the movie win Best Picture? I thought there was a separate category for foreign films.
MikeH
21st Feb 2015
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
21st Feb 2015
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
21st Feb 2015
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
Question: Why was Oz considered a con man? He was simply doing magic tricks, which everyone should know aren't real.
Chosen answer: I believe you are taking a very modern day perspective. In our era of technology, scientific advancement, and general skepticism about everything, we are pretty jaded and cynical about things like magic and paranormal phenomena. At that time and place, audiences were far more willing to accept the possibility of true magic and sorcery, and weren't as prone to disbelieving what their eyes tell them. A "con" (short for "confidence") man is one who attempts to gain the trust of another, subsequently using deception, fraud and/or trickery for their own personal gain. I don't think it's unfair to label Oz this way, particularly at the beginning of the film.
2nd Feb 2015
Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Question: Why was there blood on Travers Goff's shirt when he died? I thought he died of tuberculosis. And what was the knife for?
2nd Feb 2015
American History X (1998)
Question: At the start of the film, Danny is given the paper and told he has to hand it in the next morning. At the end, Danny is at school ready to hand it in. Does that mean that aside from the black-and-white flashback scenes, the movie took place over 24 hours? It's hard to believe so much happened in such a short amount of time.
Chosen answer: Yes, apart from the flashbacks the whole movie is set over 24 hours.
2nd Feb 2015
The Fugitive (1993)
Question: In real life, when are cops allowed to shoot people? I find it hard to believe Samuel Gerard would have been allowed to shoot Richard repeatedly in the torso just for running away from him. I know the glass was bulletproof in that scene, but Gerard didn't know that.
Chosen answer: Richard is a convicted murderer on the run. A police officer would be justified in shooting him to prevent him from injuring anyone or taking a hostage.
Answer: The Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner affirmed that law enforcement officers have the right to kill fleeing felons if they have a reasonable belief that allowing the subject that they're pursuing to escape would possibly cause more harm to others.
Answer: Samuel Gerard was not a police officer. He was a U.S. Marshal, and they are not governed by the same rules as police. Also being a U.S. Marshal Gerard would surely have known that any glass in any government building would be bulletproof for just such an occasion.
2nd Feb 2015
The Truman Show (1998)
Question: How could people sneak into the show? It's in a large dome, and I assume there's lots of security.
Chosen answer: A motivated individual can find a way. One could get hired as an extra, or as a crew member. And one could certainly simply elude security. The larger the operation, the easier it is to find holes in the system. We have certainly seen many instances of that in real life, in museums, theme parks, celebrity residences, national landmarks, etc. Why not in a fictional, dome-enclosed town?
2nd Feb 2015
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Question: Why did Spielberg make Temple of Doom a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark? I read somewhere that he didn't want to make the Nazis the villains again, but that wouldn't be a problem since the Nazis never went to India or China.
Answer: This is conjecture, but it seems the general function of setting Temple of Doom before Raiders of the Lost Ark is that it helps set audience expectations that the two movies are self-contained episodes. For instance, Karen Allen has said she wasn't disappointed about not being asked to return because she'd already been told that the next installment was being set in the past before her character is reunited with Indy. Conversely, since we're already aware Raiders makes no mention of the events of Temple of Doom, we know we shouldn't necessarily expect any further installments to continue directly from prior movies' storylines regardless if they are set forward in time.
Chosen answer: It was actually George Lucas who wrote the story, made it a prequel, and has stated it was because he didn't want the Nazis to be the villains again. The idea most likely seems if it wasn't a prequel, the Nazis could still be after Jones, even in China or India. But alas, there is really no other insight as to Lucas' prequel decision.
2nd Feb 2015
The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie (2004)
Question: The movie was released in 2004 and Season 4 was released in 2005. In the movie, SpongeBob is the manager of The Krusty Krab 2 and Plankton got the formula but went to jail. So then how come from Season 4 onwards there's only one Krusty Krab, SpongeBob's still just a fry cook in the original Krusty Krab and Plankton's free and is still trying to get the formula?
Chosen answer: The movie is not in continuity with the series.
2nd Feb 2015
American History X (1998)
Question: How does curb stomping someone kill them? It will obviously destroy their teeth, but it doesn't look very fatal.
Answer: The stomp is to the neck. It breaks the neck and causes death.
Chosen answer: "Curb stomping" is a form of assault in which a victim's mouth is forcefully placed on a curb after which the head stomped from behind. Depending on the force of the stomping, the practice may, indeed, cause severe injuries and sometimes death. Any time you have a person's head being crushed between a hard, immovable object and an object moving with force, it is not unreasonable to posit that death can result - either immediately from the trauma, or later due to internal injury and bleeding.
2nd Feb 2015
Goodfellas (1990)
Question: When Jimmy and Henry torture the man into giving them money for a gambling dept he owes to Paulie, we then find out he had a sister who was an FBI informant. Henry says "She gave up everyone. Jimmy, me, even her brother." What did her brother do that was illegal? I thought he was just the victim.
Chosen answer: Gambling, especially with a mobster bookie was and is still illegal in the US.
2nd Feb 2015
Matilda (1996)
Question: Did Miss Trunchbull really kill Miss Honey's father? If she did, why was she never arrested for it?
Chosen answer: Yes she did. Whatever way she killed him she made it look like a suicide so that's what the police ruled it as. No reason to arrest her if they ruled it a suicide.
2nd Feb 2015
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Question: In the book, it's revealed that Katie spent 6 months in hospital after the cursed opal necklace attacked her. How was it so harmful? It does seem fairly sharp, but there's no blood or cuts in her neck.
2nd Feb 2015
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Question: Does "pattycake" also mean something sexual? We were obviously at first supposed to think Jessica and Acme had sex, but if they were, why would she say "pattycake" and why does Maroon say "You're not the first guy whose wife went pattycake on him"? Am I missing out on something?
Chosen answer: According to the director, Pattycake is the toon equivalent to sex.
25th Jan 2015
Face/Off (1997)
Question: How could they possibly remove Archer's bullet scar? If they could, wouldn't that just create a bigger scar?
Chosen answer: Surgical scar removal is a real thing, usually involving skin grafts or lasers. Keloid scarring is a result of the body aggressively attempting to heal/repair itself after trauma or injury (in this case, the gunshot). With proper surgical techniques, the body isn't traumatized to the point that deep scarring occurs. Of course, just like with the face surgery, the movie exaggerates the results of the scar removal.
I thought he kept it.
He says he wanted to keep it at the beginning of the movie, but when he is about to have his face changed back at the end of the movie, he says he doesn't need it anymore.
25th Jan 2015
Face/Off (1997)
25th Jan 2015
Face/Off (1997)
Question: Why were Pollux and Archer sent straight to prison without a trial?
Chosen answer: It's obvious that enough time hasn't passed for a trial of such magnitude to take place, meaning that the brothers have been remanded in custody to await trial. They should have been arraigned but we don't see that onscreen.
Answer: The speech Walton gives when Archer arrives implies it's a top secret Guantanamo Bay type of prison where due process doesn't exist.
22nd Jan 2015
Anger Management (2003)
Question: Is there another version of the movie? Because when I saw it on TV some scenes were cut or changed. It wasn't to remove swearing or anything, it was completely random, for example they cut Dave asking Buddy if he can eat Fiddle Faddles, and they changed Chuck's line "That's a letter I'm writing to Geraldo Rivera" to "That's a letter I'm writing to my father." This version is the version they use on the website Subzin, a website for finding movie quotes. Can someone please explain this version? What it is, how it's different, where it's used, etc.
Answer: It's really not uncommon for movies to remove bits and pieces when broadcast on TV. Movies aren't just cut for content, they're also cut for timing. (Ex. "Shanghai Knights" used to be absolutely butchered when shown on cable - there were entire scenes missing, which created glaring mistakes.) It's also not uncommon for TV versions or foreign releases to change or remove cultural references, or use alternate takes depending on the language used. Depending on where you live, it could very easily just be that the version you're seeing is one of these alternate versions that was then also trimmed down to fit a TV timeblock.
22nd Jan 2015
Goldfinger (1964)
Question: How exactly did Tilly die? I know she got hit in the neck by Oddjob's razor-rimmed hat, but it doesn't make sense. Why didn't it cut her head off or at least cut her? There wasn't even a mark or blood. If it didn't even cut her, how did she die just from getting hit by it?
Chosen answer: Oddjob's hat has a metal brim that's razor sharp under the cloth. It's possible for the hat to have hit her neck in a way that she didn't get cut (I've commented elsewhere about the number of factors that have to be just right to sever a head with a single blow), but the metal object hurled with Oddjob's strength was enough to snap her neck.
21st Jan 2015
Skyfall (2012)
Question: Why would M betray Silva like that? What was so bad about hacking the Chinese? If what he did was really that bad, why couldn't she just fire him or even sue him? Why would she try to have him killed? Everyone always talks about how horrible Silva is and how sad is is that M died, but why is there no mention of how despicable M's actions were?
Chosen answer: MI6 agents operate in a very grey area legally speaking. Plenty of the things Bond has done over the years could even be classed as acts of war against foreign powers if they were discovered. For this reason, all agents know that if they are caught or captured their government will disavow all knowledge of them or their actions, meaning they're on their own. That's why we learn in Die Another Day that Bond had a cyanide capsule to commit suicide if caught (which he threw away years ago). M was Silva's mentor, meaning he took it very personally when she followed protocol and cut him loose after he hacked the Chinese and was discovered.
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Chosen answer: There's a separate section just for foreign films to highlight them and give a wider selection recognition, similar to animated movies, but they're not excluded from the best picture category, which is open to every feature.