Question: There is said to be a curse on the Defence Against The Dark Arts teaching job, something like the professor will die within one year of teaching that subject. In a previous question somebody stated that Professor Quirrell was only starting to teach that subject the year that Harry started Hogwarts. But during the feast after the first years have been housed, Harry asks Percy Weasley who "that man" (Snape) is. He tells him that it is Snape, Professor of potions and then goes on to say "Everyone knows Defence Against The Dark Arts is what he really wants. He's been after Quirrell's job for years" This implies that Professor Quirrell has been teaching that subject for years. How is Quirrell an exception to the curse?
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Question: How did the first facehugger get through Kane's helmet? In 'Alien' the people searching the alien craft wore helmets, in 'Aliens', Newt's parents didn't wear helmets. Can anyone explain the discrepancy?
Chosen answer: It burned its way through Kane's faceplate by excreting some acidic substance - that's why it appears melted. As for the helmets discrepancy between the two films, when the Nostromo landed on LV-426, the planet's atmosphere wasn't capable of supporting human life, forcing Dallas, Kane and Lambert to wear full suits. By the time Newt's family locate the derelict ship, fifty-seven years later, the human terraforming process has been running for twenty years, altering the atmosphere enough to make it breathable.
Question: I'm watching all of West Wing in order. I thought I remembered the scene of the drunk Ainsley meeting the president occurring before she's actually introduced to the audience in the TV program and subsequently hired. In which episode does the drunken dancing occur? Thanks for the help.
Chosen answer: We're first introduced to Ainsley in season 2, episode 4, 'In This White House', during Sam's appearance on the show Capital Beat, where as Josh puts it, "Sam's getting his ass kicked by a girl (Ainsley)." Then later, during the same episode Leo hires Ainsley. It's not until episode 13, 'Bartlet's Third State of the Union', that it comes to Sam's attention that Ainsley still hasn't met President Bartlet, even after she's been working there a few months. Later in this episode, when Sam goes to Ainsley's office he finds her wearing a White House gym robe (she had sat on the bench's wet paint just as CJ had earlier), drunk, dancing and singing. A moment later President Bartlet shows up at her basement office and that's when Ainsley first meets him. Priceless.
Question: How come Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) didn't recognize Saito (Ken Watanabe) on the plane, especially if the two are supposed to be bitter business rivals?
Answer: Saito's rivalry is with Fischer's father, not with Fischer himself. With Fischer and his father not being on particularly good terms, it's hardly unreasonable that Fischer might be unfamiliar with his father's competitors. Equally, it's not particularly clear that Saito and Fischer Snr are necessarily bitter rivals - the whole reason for the inception is that Fischer's company is so much more powerful that Saito's that Saito needs Fischer to break up his father's corporate empire so that he isn't pushed out of the market. Saito may have a bee in his bonnet about Fischer Snr, as you'd expect from a smaller competitor looking at a more powerful opponent, but it's quite likely that Fischer Snr gave little thought to Saito, dismissing him as being little threat to his empire. In which case, there'd be even less reason for Fischer to recognise him on the plane.
Question: Towards the end, before the confrontation with Kimble and Nicholls, the guy who was tracing Kimble's phone records tells the Marshalls that Kimble telephoned Sykes on the night of his wife's murder. But obviously it wasn't Kimble calling Sykes, it was Sykes using Kimble's phone. But why would Sykes be calling himself?
Chosen answer: He didn't. A key plot point is that Nichols borrowed Kimble's car on the night of the murder. The call to Sykes, which is expressly stated by the marshals as being on Kimble's car phone, was from Nichols, presumably arranging to meet so that he could give Sykes Kimble's keys to get into his house to lie in wait for him.
Thank you for explaining it. I've seen it several times and never realised how it went down.
And Tommy Lee Jones tells Kimble that they knew Nichols called Skyes from his car, but how? Wouldn't the more logical answer have been that the US Marshals thought that Kimble called Sykes from his car to tell the killer his wife was home alone? There is no way the US Marshalls would have known that the Kimble let Nichols borrow his call - that's the mistake in the movie! It actually should have made the Marshalls suspicious of Kimble, not exonerate him.
The Marshals know Kimble let Nichols borrow his car because Kimble told the police when he was initially interviewed following the murder. He gave a detailed account of his actions and whereabouts that night and mentioned that Nichols had borrowed his car. It didn't seem suspicious to the police at the time because Richard claimed he fought with a one armed man he didn't recognize; a story the police did not believe because there was no evidence of this and Kimble's wife "identified" her attacker as Richard. Gerard puts everything together when he realises that Nichols lied about knowing Lentz.
How did Sam figure out that Nichols borrowed the vehicle and made the call to Sykes and gave him keys, etc? I know in the laundry he reveals that he knew this but when/how did he figure it out?
Answer: This is more of a question really. What kind of defense attorney did this high dollar, Dr. Kimble hire who do not show their defendant pictures of the one-armed men the police question? How do his attorneys not ask him "OK, which of these one-armed men did you fight with in your house?"
The prosecution is not required to inform the defense of every person the police interview or question. They are only required to give the defense whatever evidence they have against the accused. Simply questioning someone in a perceived dead only counts as evidence against the accused if the prosecutor mentions it in court. If the prosecutor were to say "We interviewed a one-armed man named Sykes and he says he doesn't know you", then Kimble's defense would be required to be given access to Sykes. We can assume this never happened.
The Chicago police DID question Sykes after the Kimble murder. Review the scene where Sykes returns to his apartment after Kimble has been there. Girard starts asking Sykes questions, at first Sykes says he doesn't know anything about Kimble but then "remembers" that he had been interviewed by the police right after the Kimble murder. However, Sykes says that he gave the police an alibi, with 15 people supposedly confirming that Sykes was on a business trip and not in Chicago. The movie then implies that Sykes had been a Chicago cop and lost his arm "in the line of duty." Remember that the Chicago police focused on Kimble pretty quickly. Their investigators may have interviewed Sykes, but they likely didn't even come close to considering him as a potential murderer. Even with Sykes likely matching Kimble's description of the one-armed man, the police likely saw Sykes as a former cop... A former cop who had an alibi confirmed by 15 people. As I understand it, prosecutors don't have to tell defense attorneys about everyone that the cops question. They only have to tell the defense about potential witnesses that might be called in connection to the criminal trial. In this scenario, Sykes wouldn't have been part of the criminal trial (Again, supposedly on a business trip confirmed by 15 people on the night of the murder) and thus Kimble and his lawyers would never have known about his existence.
Question: How is the predalien able to kill the predators that are on the spaceship where it births, when it shows in the first AVP that there are at least 15 predators on it, not a single one is able to kill it?
Chosen answer: The predator that was sent to kill the predalien, knowing full well what it was going after, was still only able to do so by pinning the predalien down and blowing itself up. Add to that the element of surprise, where the predators 1)did not know there was a predalien on their ship and 2)how powerful the predalien was, and it becomes all too easy for the predalien to pick the predators off.
Question: How did Jack get the Doctor's severed hand?
Answer: He might have requisitioned or stolen it from Torchwood London, or he might have been ready down below once it'd been severed, searching for "the right Doctor" and not knowing that the newly-regenerated Doctor was the one he was looking for.
Question: Can anyone please explain to me the end of this movie? Why did 'they' send an agent into the Cube? Was it just to get information from the hacker girl? Or to get her necklace? Why wouldn't they just kidnap her and shoot her with sodium pentathol? And who are the men at the end, and why do they shoot their own agent?
Answer: They sent the agent in to retrieve some sensitive information from the blind girl. The girl hid inside the hypercube as she knew they wouldn't come after her and by the time they figured out where she was it was too late to stop her and so they sent the agent in. They shot their own agent as the information she has is that sensitive that they can't let anyone know anything about it (even the fact that it exists).
Question: If they are in a dream and they can imagine and create things (like, for example weapons, or modify the environment) why can't they imagine to create a bunker where the subconscious guys can't shot at them? Or, some kind of any other protection? Or mega-destructive weapons so they don't need to drive and escape all the time in the first layer?
Answer: Possibly the more you change in the dream, the more aggressive and powerful your target's subconscious becomes. Like how in the beginning of the movie, when Cobb warns Ariadne to stop changing things, and then all of a sudden a large group of people, including Mal attacks her. Still, this maybe because of Cobb's subconscious training being so advanced.
Answer: Aside from the obvious "the movie would boring if that were so," if they change too much in the dream, it would collapse. They only have one chance of making it work, so they can't afford to change anything drastic that might be noticed.
Question: When Gail and Dewy are trying to find the killer, Dewy says "white male, 3'0 clock" and Gale says "your clock or my clock?", what are they talking about?
Answer: It's a way of indicating direction. If you consider yourself to be standing in the centre of a clock face, with 12 o'clock directly in front of you, then the different times indicate different directions, so when Dewey says that the man he's spotted is at 3 o'clock, he's referring to somebody standing directly to his right. Gale asks him to clarify whether he means his 3 o'clock or her 3 o'clock because they're not facing in the same direction, and thus their 3 o'clocks are not the same.
Question: In the first class section of the plane, after everyone has woken up from the dream and the mission is accomplished, shouldn't Robert Fischer be suspicious as to why he dreamed of everyone of his cabin mates?
Chosen answer: (1) Most people forget most if not all of their dreams shortly after waking, so he probably wouldn't even remember they were there (the only thing he had to remember was the idea of breaking up the company, which the team planted very deeply); and (2) a common theory of dreaming is that it's simply your brain "reorganizing" itself, so it's not unusual to have recent people, places or events incorporated into your dreams (like the people surrounding him).
Question: Can someone explain how the link between the human and the Avatar is actually completed? There does not seem to be a physical link. Does it have a range?
Answer: While the precise details are never spelled out, each avatar is created by combining native Pandoran DNA with the DNA of the intended user, hence the avatars resembling their human selves. This allows a neural link to be created, using unspecified technology, between the human brain and the genetically similar brain of the avatar, allowing the user complete access to the senses of and control over the avatar body. If there is a maximum range over which this can be achieved, it is not mentioned at any point in the film, although the fact that all those using the avatars are present on Pandora would seem to rule out the link functioning over interstellar distances.
Question: In the scene with the traps, they find a dead man. His ribcage is open, have that anything to do with an alien attack?
Chosen answer: Not entirely sure which scene you are referring to, but the Predator has an explosive shoulder weapon. In the first Predator movie, the character Blain is killed by this weapon, leaving his chest ripped open.
He's referring to the scene where after they survived the traps, they came into the camp of the soldier who set them. Adrian Brody even said the guy didn't set the traps for them, but for something bigger. The dead soldier had his chest ripped open.
Question: When Commodus lies on the bed with Lucilla, was he going to kiss her?
Answer: Depends on what you mean by "kiss". There are two ways one can describe his motives when he moves in on her. 1) he simply wants to give her a platonical good night kiss. 2) he wants a kiss that leads to something more. Commodus' signals toward Lucilla throughout the movie shows very strong passionable attraction from his side. Either way, whatever motives Commodus' "kiss" was, Lucilla despises her brother so much she leaves. And the conclusion, yes, he was going to kiss her.
Question: Can we assume that Brian or Stuart had Amanda's body shipped back to the U.S.?
Answer: It's never made clear, but that would be the logical assumption. It's possible that the other Albanians had already disposed of Amanda's body before the police got to the house. After rescuing Kim, Brian likely cooperated with the French authorities regarding the sex slave operation and would have attempted to locate Amanda's remains and also make sure arrangements were made for the other girl he rescued.
Question: Why don't the machines use geothermal energy? What do the humans in the real use to make their clothes? Where do the humans in the real get their food from? Why don't the machines just kill humans when they are unplugged instead of letting them become soldiers for Zion? Why don't the machines just attach a gadget to a hover craft, that when it returns to Zion will either blow up or spread a virus (al la 2nd renaissance part 2)? Why don't the humans in the real plug into the matrix and just carpet bomb the entire planet thereby destroying the machines energy source and they can just repopulate the earth naturally? How come Neo has superpowers in the real world? Without sunlight where do humans in the real get vitamin D?
Answer: 1: The machines have found an acceptable fuel source with the Matrix and haven't bothered to pursue geothermal energy (Converting to geothermal may be one of the "levels of survival we are willing to accept."). 2: Their clothing seems to be mainly natural fibers, so it could be that they have cotton, flax, or hemp crops under grow lights underground. 3: They eat either from the aforementioned crops or the synthetic protein that the ship crews eat. 4: The machines have accepted that some people will always reject the Matrix and have orchestrated the creation of Zion as a sort of Trash Folder to deposit and occasionally purge their rejects. 5: See 4. 6: Since Zion is set up by the machines each time, we can safely assume that they're not going to give the humans of Zion the technological means to destroy them. By the time they might develop such means on their own, the purge happens. 7: Neo is The Chosen One, sometimes miracles happen for people like that. 8: See 2 and 3.
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Chosen answer: Firstly, yes, there is said to be a curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching position, but the teachers do not "die within one year of teaching that subject" as a result of it. You see, Voldemort applied for the DADA position twice, once after Tom Riddle's graduation from Hogwarts and was refused, then years later as Lord Voldemort, and was refused again by Dumbledore. After Voldemort's second refusal to the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching post, no DADA teacher held the position for more than a year due to a curse that Voldemort placed on the position. Dumbledore stated "You see, we have not been able to keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for more than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort."When Snape first became a teacher at Hogwarts, he requested the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, but was denied it and made the Potions Master. Then every year, as each of the subsequent DADA teachers left the school, Snape reapplied for that position, but was denied year after year. By the time Harry came to Hogwarts, Professor Quirrell, who held the position of the Muggle Studies teacher for some years, had been made the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor after his year off (traveling to Europe, where Voldemort got hold of him). So when Percy says, "He's been after Quirrell's job for years" it means that for many years Snape has been after the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, which is Quirrell's new teaching position that term.
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