Question: Who is the pipe smoking man in the black and white photo taped to Nedry's computer monitor? Some computing pioneer?
Brian Katcher
22nd Nov 2021
Jurassic Park (1993)
Answer: Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. One of the fathers of the atomic bomb. I don't know why Nedry would have his picture up and you can draw your own conclusion, but it does seem to be a reference to how good science can lead to destruction.
Answer: He also said, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
21st Oct 2020
Quantum Leap (1989)
Star-Crossed - June 15, 1972 - S1-E3
Question: Al tells Sam that he's there to prevent the professor and his undergraduate student from having a shotgun wedding and ruining both their lives. That implies she got pregnant. Sam succeeds in keeping them apart. Um, does that mean he prevented someone from being born?
Answer: He means he's there to prevent there ever being the need for a shotgun wedding-that is, to stop the affair before there is a possibility of the girl getting pregnant.
Which would erase the child from history. That's my point.
Answer: Not necessarily; it could also mean that someone such as Jamie Lee's (the student) father discovered that the professor was having a sexual relationship with her and coerced the two into getting married.
This doesn't answer the question. You just described what a shotgun wedding is.
I think their point is that the "shotgun" aspect might not be due to a pregnancy, simply a forced attempt to legitimise an otherwise scandalous relationship.
My point was that a "shotgun wedding" doesn't always happen because an unmarried girl becomes pregnant; it can also happen because someone "stole her virtue", i.e had sex with her without being married or at least engaged to her. There's no reason to believe that Jamie Lee was, or would become, pregnant as a result of the affair or subsequent marriage.
The term "shotgun wedding" means a forced marriage due to unexpected pregnancy. It's sometimes even used when the woman is pregnant but it's planned or the wedding isn't "forced." In common colloquialism (especially in the 80's when the script was written), it doesn't refer to a force marriage just because of premarital sex (which the term "make an honest woman" is used for).
No, in the 1926 Sinclair Lewis novel 'Elmer Gantry', they talk about shotgun weddings, when a groom is forced to marry a woman because he took her virginity. Obviously, the term usually refers to a pregnant bride, but I see zendaddys point.
29th Jul 2020
General questions
Anyone recognize this horror movie/TV show from 1990 or earlier? A surly preteen is walking down a street, when he's accosted by a strange man who says the boy is upset because it's his birthday and his parents forgot. The boy runs off, but obviously the comment hit home. He walks into an abandoned building to find a party with cake and presents all set up for him. He keeps calling for his family to come out, but instead, strange toy robots come clanking out of the darkness. When the boy opens the cake box, there's a severed human head inside which smiles and says 'hi', causing the boy to scream and run off. I was babysitting when I watched this and it was upsetting my charge so I turned it off, and I never got to see the ending, and it always bothered me.
Answer: The movie is called Spookies.
Thank you.
10th Jun 2020
The Simpsons (1989)
Warrin' Priests Part 2 - S31-E20
Question: Is there a reason Bart was so conspicuously absent from these two episodes? Homer even asks where he's been.
Answer: He was probably irrelevant to the plot so he was not included.
It's called lampshade hanging. By drawing our attention to it the producers are letting us know they are aware it is an issue.
Yes, but even when the family is having dinner together, he's not there.
15th May 2020
The Monuments Men (2014)
Question: Why was Preston a private and not an officer like the rest?
Answer: Preston was loosely based on the real-life Lincoln Kirstein. Prior to WWII, he was a noted writer and an influential person in the cultural arts in America. When the war broke out, he enlisted in the army with the rank of private. He eventually joined the Army's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives unit, later known as the Monuments Men. He was selected for his abilities, regardless of his military rank. The movie reflected that.
17th Mar 2020
Cheers (1982)
12th Mar 2020
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Question: Why did Blackthorn have Reordan killed? The man was an evil genius and would have been a huge help with Blackthorn's plans.
Answer: Blackthorn was an egomaniac, there was only room for one diabolical madman.
2nd Feb 2020
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Question: Wouldn't Watson have noticed that Blackthorn's neck wasn't broken after he was 'hanged'?
Answer: There are two types of hanging - the long drop which is intended to break the neck causing a quick death, and a short drop which doesn't break the neck and causes slower death by asphyxiation. There is no reason to check for a broken neck, just whether the person is dead.
Answer: He didn't check the neck, he only checked the pulse.
4th Dec 2019
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989)
Question: When the Joneses crash land the plane they stole from the zeppelin and steal that guy's car, where are they? Turkey? Hatay?
3rd Nov 2019
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Question: What does the French soldier scream at Cole before he shoots him?
Answer: Cole is screaming "Stop!" so you can't hear what the soldier is saying. If you mean all of it, it's in the line of asking what he is doing there, calling the captain to have a look, ask him where his clothes are, and telling him to speak French.
12th Oct 2019
Joker (2019)
Question: Does Arthur kill Sophie when he realises he's hallucinated their relationship? I know there may not be a concrete answer to this.
Answer: Yeah it's completely up to the viewer to believe he killed her or not. I don't think he did, he liked her, just like Gary. I think he visited to see if it was all in his head, with that confirmed he just left.
Answer: Todd Philips actually answered this in an interview on IndieWire; "As the filmmaker and the writer I am saying he doesn't kill her. We like the idea that it's almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, 'How crazy is he?' Most people that I've spoken to think he didn't kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course he didn't kill this woman down the hall."
18th Sep 2019
General questions
There was a movie about a mad scientist who was trying to create a clone of his dead wife. He had a handsome young lab assistant. When the assistant's girlfriend falls into a coma after an accident, the scientist offers to clone her as well. The assistant declines, saying a clone wouldn't be the woman who fell in love with him; the girlfriend later recovers. The scientist realises he'll never be able to recreate the past and ends up marrying a much younger woman.
Answer: Sounds like the 1985 film "Creator", starring Peter O'Toole, although I can't be certain about the lab assistant and his girlfriend. But a young woman who agrees to donate her egg and the scientist fall in love. There's also the 2017 film called "Andover" where a scientist clones his dead wife, although that film has less in common with your description than the first.
Yep, 'Creator' was it. Thank you.
19th Jul 2019
Doc Hollywood (1991)
Question: Why do the Owens go to the doctors to have their mail read? Even a small town like Grady would have a librarian, not to mention they certainly have friends who can read.
Answer: That's just the long-standing relationship they had with Doc Hogue and assumed it would continue with Dr. Stone. Hogue was more than a doctor to the town folk. He was a strong father-figure that everyone felt they could go to for a variety of reasons. Also, this is a comedy film, so the characters and their situations are deliberately cliched and quirky.
14th Mar 2019
The Fugitive (1993)
Question: Kimble's wife suffered from severe head trauma. Wouldn't his defense attorney demand her 911 transcript be stricken, as her serious brain damage could have caused her to say anything?
Answer: His attorney could have done that, but I doubt such a strategy would have been successful, for two reasons. First, proving that she was just "saying anything" would be difficult at best, given that she wasn't just spouting random nonsense...she was speaking directly about what had happened. The prosecutor would have pointed out that she had been coherent (i.e., in control of her thoughts/speech) enough to a) dial 911, b) stay on topic, c) relay information, and d) name her killer (or so they believe). And second, given this high burden of proof, going with "this murder victim was just babbling as a result of the brain damage she suffered when she was brutally clubbed to death" probably wouldn't have gone over well with a jury.
13th Nov 2018
General questions
I'm looking for a documentary on the U.S. Constitution that would have come out in the late 80s, when it had its bicentennial. It was comedic and aimed at a junior high/high school audience. I remember that Rhea Perlman and Whoopi Goldberg played waitresses at the Constitutional Convention, though their IMDB pages don't show anything. There was a clip from the 60s Batman TV show where The Penguin runs for office. There was also a sketch about fatigued soldiers in Vietnam staying awake by quizzing each other over the Constitution, and suddenly realizing that at the time, none of them were old enough to vote. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Answer: I think this is "Funny, You Don't Look 200: A Constitutional Vaudeville." It used to be available on VHS, maybe it still is.
4th Jul 2018
The Truman Show (1998)
Question: Marlon mentions having been very sick and hospitalized for a long time when he was a boy. Is this supposed to be when they switched a child actor for someone who was willing to commit to the show indefinitely?
Answer: Yes and no. Yes because they could have found someone who looked remarkably similar to the child actor that played him and if he had been "sick" for a long time (depending on the illness he "had") it would have explained why he looked slightly different. No because of him being Truman's best friend. Unless the studio found an actor who did look almost identical to the child actor, Truman would have been able to figure out his best friend was a different person.
Answer: It's probably a way of giving characters a break from the show, a way of writing them off-screen for a short while.
3rd Dec 2017
Justice League (2017)
Question: Bruce Wayne tells Clark that in order to get back the foreclosed Kent family farm, he bought the bank that owned it. Why didn't he just buy the house directly? It was for sale.
Answer: Bruce Wayne is not only rich and powerful, he's also dangerously vindictive. If you cross him or his friends, he'll pull the rug out from under you, at best, and destroy you, at worst. At the end of "Batman vs Superman," Bruce Wayne realises how horribly wrong he was about Superman; he even feels a kinship because both of their mothers were named Martha, and he was finally able to "save Martha" (something that had haunted Bruce Wayne for his entire life). I'm thinking, once Bruce Wayne discovered that Martha Kent's house was foreclosed, he acted to not merely save the farm but to punish the bank that foreclosed it. So he bought the bank and probably ruined a few financial careers in the process, out of sheer vengeance.
Answer: It was partly done as a joke. But it seems less likely that Bruce would just buy his friend a farm. What most likely happened is Bruce bought the bank and then in essence cancelled the foreclosure, turning the Kent farm back to Martha. Then Martha would continue making her mortgage payments to the bank.
Answer: Like all billionaires, Bruce Wayne wants to make more money. It's much more lucrative to buy an entire bank, and the foreclosure would be cancelled at the same time.
3rd Dec 2017
Justice League (2017)
Question: In the first scene, who was the shadowy man on the roof who asks Batman if this is happening because Superman died? Is it the burglar he was fighting with? If so, why is he chatting with a man he just tried to shoot?
1st Dec 2017
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Question: After Rory lights the guy on the bar on fire, why does he just casually hang around afterwards? The guy was there with friends.
Answer: The implication is it's a hard as nails boozer where no-one calls the cops no matter what. Rory is a well-known face and no-one would want to mess with him.
Answer: Would you want to mess with a guy who just casually lit someone on fire without batting an eye?
No, but I'd call the cops.
24th Jan 2017
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Question: Is cousin Tilly Bailey, the secretary at the Building and Loan, Uncle Billy's daughter?
Chosen answer: We know that Tilly (Matilda) Bailey is not Uncle Billy's daughter, because when Billy "loses" the deposit money and rushes back to BBB&L, George tells him that Harry's on the telephone and we hear Tilly say, "Hurry up Uncle Billy, long distance from Washington," so presumably she's George's cousin and Uncle Billy's niece. (When there's the run on the bank we see her desk, and there are a few photographs of men, one of which may be her father).
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Answer: After the explosion of the first Atomic Bomb, Oppeheimer was quoted as saying, "I'm not an evil man, but I have done evil things."