Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: If Nizam and Dastan were both holding onto the knife at the end when they got sucked up by the sand, why is it that only Dastan remembers what happened?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: The knife can only carry one person, and Dastan had the better grip.

Phixius

Question: When they come across the girl crying over her mother's body, one of the guards says she has the sickness, and when they arrive in the city, they come across an old man who has the laughing sickness - what sicknesses are they referring to?

Answer: It is not specifically identified, but it appears to be the degenerative neurological disease called kuru. It is fatal and believed to have been spread in ancient sub-tropical cultures by cannibalism. Its symptoms resembles the encephalopathy disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow), which is also called the laughing sickness, and is contracted by eating contaminated flesh.

raywest

Answer: Kuru only happens when you eat your relatives and the disease was discovered and studied in Papua New Guinea where eating your dead relatives was a way to carry them with you. There are books about it, fascinating stuff. Eating strangers is safe, not that I recommend eating anyone. The disease the girl has is smallpox brought by the Spanish, thus the ships at the end of the movie are not the first Spanish to visit the area. The laughing sickness could be straight up madness considering the horrible times everyone is living through, or a side effect of the limestone quarrying.

Question: What is the name of the principal's rocking horse? Harley or Harvey?

Answer: It was Harvey. She says, "One year was a rocking horse, and I named it Harvey."

raywest

Question: What's going on with Tommy in the final scene when he's hugging Trish in the hospital? Is he possessed or what?

Orlando Rocha

Chosen answer: He's not possessed. Dealing with Jason made him go crazy. In part 5, we find out he was in a mental hospital for a while, then gets sent to a home for troubled kids.

Chosen answer: The Nokia 9300 is a Nokia Series 80 Symbian Smartphone introduced in 2004. It is used as a normal though bulky mobile phone in closed mode; when it is flipped open it can be used like a very small notebook computer with a 640 x 200 screen. The phone also has speakerphone functionally, which is activated automatically when the phone is flipped open. - Wikipedia.

Question: I just want to know the name of a song. When Cruise goes into his house to tell his wife it's bugged there's a jazz song playing. You know, the one where he turns up the volume and whispers in her ear. Then she takes off running. Who sings that song? I can't find it anywhere!

mp73

Chosen answer: M-O-N-E-Y by Lyle Lovett.

Question: What is the name of the song that's playing when Josh is dropping the his girlfriend home? I tried using shazam but I got nothing.

Answer: It's Counting Crows' cover of "The Ghost In You".

Bishop73

Question: What is the first carol sung in the car?

Answer: If you're referring to the opening scene, they're finishing up "Oh Come All Ye Faithful"

Bishop73

Question: In some of the scenes they are driving on the left side. I thought that all of Europe drove on the right?

Answer: Currently, there are 161 countries and territories world-wide with right-handed traffic, and there are 75 with left-side traffic. The 75 include several countries which were once part of the British Empire. Of these, seven are European, including the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the film, any driving in the UK would be on the left side of the road.

Michael Albert

Show generally

Question: In which episode did Jackie enter Roseanne's kitchen still dressed from traffic duty with white gloves on, then proceeded to do a hysterical, flippant routine about doing traffic duty, with sweeping hand movements, repeating something like "you must listen to the glove"? I laughed myself silly!

Answer: Season 3 Episode 2 "Friends and Relatives".

Question: How do the lemons discover Leland Turbo?

Answer: They heard him recording the message to Finn and found his words suspicious.

Question: After Chakal is killed and his bandits retreat, Joaquin covers his eye with a handkerchief. Later, his eye is covered by an eye patch. What happened to his eye?

John Ohman

Chosen answer: Even though the explosion was blocked by the bell, he was still able to get the medal of everlasting life on Manolo. Since he was unable to get away fast enough he was blown back by the explosion since he was too close. The blast most likely hit him right in his face and scalded his eye.

Question: I have two questions about this film. Firstly, was the black woman Hushpuppy was dancing with at the strip bar her biological mum? And secondly, were the huge pigs (whatever they are called) that appear at the end really there. Or were they simply imagined by Hushpuppy? Because the other kids responded to them, but they seemed way too oversized to be real.

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: Both questions are left open-ended. It is unlikely, but not impossible, for Hushpuppy to have found her mother (although I believe the music playing at that moment is a hint that she is a look-alike). The beasts are supernatural creatures; up to you whether they are literal or in her mind.

Question: On the DVD in wide screen, when the flying fish bombard the boat, bigger fish are after them. the bigger fish come out of the normal film area into the black bars above and below movie. How and why did the film makers do this?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: This movie makes a lot of meta-commentary on the medium of digital film; the question of whether Pi's story is real or not mirrors the fact that most of his story is visualized with a green-screen and CGI. The fish leaping "off the screen" plays along with the reality vs. film theme. Plus, they did it because they could, and because it looked cool in 3D.

Question: So let me get this straight. After reading the questions and answers, and scratching my head for a while, I concluded this, after the corruption occurs and the jet engine enters it. The universes unravel because of the corruption. So to fix it these "time travelers" decide to give a reason for the engine to fall through the wormhole by making Donnie send it through, thus fixing the corruption. Is this even on track? I saw somebody say something cause and effect. So could this be simplified by saying they made it have a cause for the effect or vice versa in their universe to save it? I feel like there has to be some kind of time always has a flow and can't be interrupted kind of thing, but I'm really not smart enough to adequately understand that. Somebody also mentioned something about the events had to happen a certain way or they didn't happen at all. I may have misinterpreted what the person meant by that, but I would like to share my take on that. It's funny cause the only credibility to that is the film portrays the characters reacting oddly at the end (you know what instances I'm referring to). However, if this wouldn't happen then it would open up an infinitely large door of possibilities. Events like in this movie could occur everyday, but we don't remember. I could imagine, tons of scenarios and they all be credible and unprovable either way. I think it would have been cool to go in that direction cause you could have an infinite number of different Donnie Darko movies, but that's just my thoughts. If you get what I'm trying to say here. It's weird to think about cause it seems there's no purpose to think like that, but is there a purpose if your thinking about it in the first place? What is that purpose, that is the real question? I apologize in advance if this is too lengthy.

Answer: It is a matter of interpretation, but I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that Donnie or anyone is causing the jet engine to time travel - he causes his mother and sister to be on the plane, but not the storm or wormhole. Rather, he is simply experiencing the time loop and eventually understanding that it will end in his death.

Question: HRH thought it was suspicious that Draco wanted to stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas break. As they learned, he wasn't committing the attacks against Muggle-borns after all, so is there some other reason why he stayed?

Answer: There would be a reason he stayed, though it's never known what it is. It's usual for a certain number of students to stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas break. In Draco's case, it is likely his parents were traveling or had other business to attend to and Draco either didn't want to go with them, or else his mother and father preferred he not come. Draco's father may also have asked his son to stay over to keep an eye on Harry's activities, although he never told Draco what was going on.

raywest

Question: I know this would end the movie, but when Jack is running alongside the bus, trying to get on before it reaches 50, why doesn't he shoot one of the tires? This would've taken the bus to a stop.

Answer: Shooting out car tires is a bit of a movie myth, and bus tires are much more heavily reinforced, so it would be very difficult to hit and puncture a tire successfully. It would also be very dangerous to fire a gun at a small, rapidly-moving target on a busy highway, and a person shooting at the bus would almost certainly make the driver speed up to get away. Finally, one of the tires does blow out at the airport, which makes virtually no difference to the bus's speed or motion.

Sierra1

Question: Something that I can't figure out: Was there a reason why the Philosopher's Stone needed to be removed from the bank vault in the same week that Harry came to Hogwarts?

Answer: The timing was more a matter of convenience than absolute necessity. Dumbledore learned that one of Voldemort's servants might soon attempt to steal it. So, since Hagrid had to collect Harry from his Aunt and Uncle then take him to Gringott's among other places anyway, Dumbledore instructed Hagrid to get the stone for him while he was there.

Phixius

Question: There is a scene in Robert Graysmith's kitchen where you can see a container of Old Bay Seasoning on the top of the stove. I am from Maryland and I found it unusual that they would have it out in California, especially before the internet came into being. Did I see that wrong? I couldn't find the answer anywhere else.

Answer: Old Bay seasoning has been available on the West Coast for many decades. I can remember my mother using it as far back as the 1960s. That was in Washington state.

raywest

Question: I don't recall Gretchen ever meeting Rose, yet they seem to recognise each other at the end. Is it implied that they had met in the TU?

Answer: They don't recognize each other specifically. Gretchen knows Rose as a woman whose son just died, and Rose might just assume Gretchen is a neighbor. It's possible that they feel some connection, but it is not made explicit.

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