Question: What happens to Nick? We never see him after the island.
scwilliam
4th Jan 2007
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
4th Aug 2006
Lady in the Water (2006)
4th Aug 2006
War of the Worlds (2005)
Question: Several other answers and corrections state that the reddish liquid sprayed by the tripods was what essentially grew the red vines. However I thought I heard someone in the film say something along the lines of "using us (i.e. blood) as fertiliser". Can someone please clarify?
Answer: Since the tripods tended to spray the red fluid shortly after pulling a human into themselves, it seems a good assumption that the red fluid is essentially blood. Given this, it seems likely that the "spore" of the vines is spread in the red fluid.
13th Jun 2005
Independence Day (1996)
Question: In the special edition there's a lot of mentioning of Randy Quaid's younger son being ill and having to take his medication. It's implied that the mother died of the same illness. What is he ill with?
Answer: The reference to the boy's adrenal cortex, and the few symptoms that appear, sound like Addison's Disease.
24th Jan 2006
The Village (2004)
Question: How many towers were in the valley? Only one is shown in a distant shot, but most scenes show it right up to, and overlooking, a thickly forested area. However, there is one view where the trees in the near background had bare, upright branches.
Chosen answer: There were two towers, one at the north end of the valley, and one at the south end.
20th Mar 2006
Uptown Girls (2003)
24th Jan 2006
Signs (2002)
Question: What was the red area on the alien's back which Merril hit with the baseball bat? A major organ? Its heart?
Answer: He seems to have deliberately struck where a bipedal creature's spine would have been the most vulnerable. The color was a wound caused by water being poured on it earlier.
24th Jan 2006
King Kong (2005)
24th Jan 2006
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Question: I have to question what killed the speedboat's crew at the beginning of the movie. I don't think the Pteradons would be that fast in attacking and they were locked in the cage. I doubt the Spinosaurus would go that far out to sea and kill the people that quickly. What other dino(s) could have done it out at sea and so fast (and were so messy eaters)?
Answer: This passage isn't very satisfying. There certainly were a large number of predatory marine reptiles, but they would have difficulty with a speeding boat, and if they were out in the water, why would they stay just around the island? The Pterosaurs would have been visible, even if they were loose to attack. The Spinosaurus and other terrestrial dinosaurs might paddle across shallow water, but they're not going to grab people off a moving speedboat. Effective scene but hard to correlate to the local lifeforms.
It was pterosaurs. They were already hanging out in the fog. Apparently some were already loose. It even specifically says it's them in either a deleted scene towards the end of the movie, or an alternate ending, when the group gets to the shore and sees the crashed speedboat. It says something like grant recognizes (yes, paleontologists know what pterosaur footprints/tracks look like), or deduces that the prints/scratches/damage appear to be from pterosaurs.
Answer: It was pterosaurs. They were already hanging out in the fog. Apparently some were already loose. It even specifically says it's them in either a deleted scene towards the end of the movie, or an alternate ending, when the group gets to the shore and sees the crashed speedboat. It says something like grant recognizes (yes, paleontologists know what pterosaur footprints/tracks look like), or deduces that the prints/scratches/damage appear to be from pterosaurs.
24th Jan 2006
Signs (2002)
Question: Do the individual aliens have cloaking abilities? It seemed at that the dogs were reacting to something that the people could not see. Were they smelling cloaked aliens? Were they going crazy to protect their human owners and that was misinterpreted as an attack on the people? I thought they are walking around at least invisible at times to do their work without detection. I may be wrong on that.
Answer: The aliens were not cloaked, not invisible. They had a chameleon-like ability to change their appearance to match their background. Recall the alien's fingers turning plaid when he held the boy. They seem to be that green color when not camouflaged. The better senses of the dogs did allow them to detect the aliens. However, one of the effects of alien presence noted in the movie was a change in personality; that is what happened to the dogs.
20th Jan 2006
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Question: How do they know that Gretkov must be arrested?
Answer: Pamela Landy and her team both talked to the Russian Minister of the Interior and went to Moscow. Surely it didn't take the Russians long to figure out who Abbot and Conklin's associate was...assuming they didn't already know.
29th Dec 2005
Freaky Friday (2003)
Question: When the family are going out the door to go to the wedding rehearsal, Tess shouts 'Shotgun.'. What does "shotgun" mean? I'm sure I've heard it in other American films.
Answer: It is a claim to ride in the front passenger's seat, rather than in the back seat. On an American western stagecoach, the guard sat up top with the driver, carrying a shotgun, although that position was only referred to as "shotgun" in westerns, not at the actual time. See here for more info: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrideshotgun.html.
27th Jul 2005
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Question: In the final scene with Bourne and Landy, we find out Bourne's real name is David Webb. As this scene was only added after previews, was the audience originally going to find this out?
Answer: The original final scene, Jason walking through the snow, was described as "dismal". Something slightly more upbeat had to be added, paralleling the happy ending of "The Bourne Identity".
15th Aug 2005
The Bourne Identity (2002)
27th Jul 2005
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Question: This is more of a book question really. According to the Tale of Years Pippin and Merry left their offices in the Shire to their sons when they left for Gondor and Rohan for good. Pippin's son Faramir is in his family tree, but looking at the Brandybuck family tree Merry does not even have a wife. Is there some other text by Tolkien which gives more details on this, was the child perhaps left out of the family tree because it was a "bastard" child? Is his son, or the mother, mentioned by name anywhere?
Answer: The discrepancy lies with Tolkien's late addition of information on Meriadoc's wife. She was Estella Bolger, sister to "Fatty" Bolger. Tolkien did not add her into the family tree until after the first edition, so it has taken years for the name to get into all versions.
24th Jul 2005
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Question: Why is it so important that Landy's phone is engaged when Bourne asks the receptionist at her hotel to ring her? There must have been a reason why he specifically made sure that she is already on the phone before getting the receptionist to ring her, but why? I know that when the receptionist dials, Bourne looks over and finds out Landy's room number, but what was so important about it being engaged when he did this?
Answer: So that the operator couldn't tell Landy that someone is asking to speak to her, and alert her that someone is interested in her.
It's so that Bourne could get Landy's room number and ensure that she was in the room so that he could track/follow her.
22nd Jul 2005
The American President (1995)
Question: When Sydney and the President are having dinner alone at Sydney's place (I think) around Christmastime, there is a beautiful song playing softly in the background. It is being sung by what sounds like two or three sopranos. Does anyone know the name of this song and its composer?
Answer: The aria is "Viens, Mallika" from "Lakmé", composed by Léo Delibes.
6th Jul 2005
Casablanca (1942)
6th Jul 2005
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
Question: Throughout the movie, Bourne is being hunted down because he killed the president of Russia, and Bourne says he's innocent, but at the end, he tells the president's daughter he killed them. Was the assassination ordered by Treadstone when it was operating? I really need an explanation of this, as it's really confusing me.
Answer: The president of Russia isn't involved in any way. Conklin and Abbot, Bourne's controllers, were involved in a criminal conspiracy which Neski, a Russian government official, was keeping a file on. Bourne was sent to kill Neski as his first, but off-the-record, assignment. When the "Neski file" was being sold to the CIA later, Abbot sabotoged the sale and framed Bourne for the killing with the help of a crooked Russian businessman.
6th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Question: Why did the aliens need the human blood, and why did they spread it around? Also, when Ray and Rachel are in Boston, he breaks a white thing off a statue. What was it? And why was it dying?
Answer: They didn't spread blood around. That was a red fluid seeding the planet with the red vine. The red vine was the first stage in making the Earth suitable for Martians. At the statue, Ferrier broke off a piece of the red vine - dead and brittle. It was the first clue that Martian life wouldn't survive on Earth.
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Answer: He is not mentioned again. We can only assume that he is off doing some sort of Greenpeace-like thing.
scwilliam