Question: What caused the main explosion?
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Question: In Book 6, Dumbledore mentions that the Defence Against the Dark Arts Job is cursed, and that no one has had it for more than a year since he refused it to Voldemort. But in Movie/Book 1, it seems that Quirell has been at the school for a while (Hagrid knows him, and knows that he's the DADA teacher; all the older students seem to know him and there is no mention that this is Quirells first year of teaching). Explain.
Chosen answer: According to Rowling, Quirrell was the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts (which is why all the older students know him) before moving to teach Defence Against The Dark Arts in the year that Harry started there. Immediately after meeting Quirrell in the Leaky Cauldron, Hagrid makes a reference to Quirrell having taken a year off from teaching to "get some first-hand experience", encountering such dark creatures as vampires and hags along the way, which would strongly support the idea that he's not previously been the teacher in that subject.
Question: Does Chip really have as many siblings as there are cups in the kitchen? Seems a bit too many, and also they aren't seen as real children at the end of the movie.
Answer: The servants in the castle are transformed into enchanted objects because of the spell, but there are still plenty of other objects in the castle which were not originally people.
Question: Why don't Amanda and Jessi like each other in the second part of season 2? In the episode "Ghost in the Machine", Jessi was interested in Kyle because Madacorp programmed her to go after him. But why doesn't she like Amanda later on, after she is free from Madacorp?
Answer: Jessi is jealous of how close Amanda is to Kyle. Kyle and Jessi have a psychic link and Jessi feels no one should be closer to Kyle than she is.
Question: Is it just me, or do the Expelliarmus, Everte Statum and Rictusempra spells all do exactly the same thing- knock the opponent backwards? And why doesn't Expelliarmus disarm the opponent?
Question: What is the awesome music being played while Qui-Gon Obi-Wan and Darth Maul are fighting? It is played during lightsaber duels in Episodes 2 and 3 as well.
Chosen answer: The song is called "Duel of the Fates". Incidentally, the words being sung are Sanskrit. John Williams chose them purely for the way they sound and their meanings, whatever they are, are completely irrelevant to the song or the events.
Question: What kind of accent does Daniel Day-Lewis speak with?
Chosen answer: Daniel Day-Lewis based his voice for and characterization of Daniel Plainview in part on old recordings of the director, writer, and actor John Huston. An article by Christopher Goodwin in the Sunday Times (of London) revealed Paul Thomas Anderson sent Day-Lewis documentaries about Huston while Day-Lewis was preparing to play the role.
Just watched it. Sounds exactly like Huston in Chinatown.
Question: Regarding this question and answer: "In some scenes, why do the Serenity crew members speak Chinese? [One of the premises of the show is that the two major Earth societies that survived, and ultimately merged, were the Chinese and Americans. As a result the common language includes much Chinese. Clothing, signage, and building designs also have a heavy Chinese influence.] Answered by MovieGuy." Survived what?
Chosen answer: It's never made entirely clear. What we know is that at some point, the Earth became unable to sustain those who lived there, resulting in a mass exodus to a new star system. At that point in the Firefly timeline, the two existing superpowers were the Americans and the Chinese. Whether other present-day nations might still have existed is never mentioned.
Question: I've noticed that on the show, people use "gorram" a lot. Is that phrase used as a euphemism for "God damn"?
Chosen answer: Yes, this was done to allow them to swear without causing a problem with the censors. They also swear quite a bit in Chinese.
Question: When a vampire sires a human, why is necessary for the human to drink some of the vampire's blood?
Chosen answer: If all that was necessary was for a vampire to drink from a human, then every person the vampire fed from would rise as a vampire, resulting in colossal over-population. There has to be an exchange - the factors that make a vampire what they are have to pass into the newcomer - the only way to do this is through the blood.
Question: In a flashback, Darla and Drusilla imply that they engaged in a threesome together with The Immortal. Considering that Darla is Dru's grandsire (and a siring line seems to follow the line of a human family), doesn't that seem a bit incestuous?
Chosen answer: Dru is the only vamp to refer to her grandsire as grandmother. Since they were not blood relatives in life it wouldn't be considered incestuous. But if was you'd have to keep in mind that they have no souls, therefore, no conscience.
Question: When Sam is turning into an infected, and Neville is holding on to her, she is trying to kill Neville and the shot goes to a close-up of him, and after the close-up he lets go of Sam and she just rolls away motionless. What I don't know is, did Neville break her neck or did he suffocate her or did the medicine he gave her kill her?
Answer: He strangles her.
Question: After the burglar comes in and is carrying on a running monologue as he continually enters and exits, he says something about it being time to hand over the ammonia bottle to a younger man. I don't understand the reference about the ammonia bottle - could someone enlighten me?
Chosen answer: I have the script/play and the reference is merely a part of a continuous ranting dialoge that the burglar is riffing on about being so digusted in being a burglar that he laments quitting the 'job' and "handing over the ammonia bottle" to a younger man. Passing on the 'family business" as it were. The ammonia bottle refers to what burglars use in their trade.
Question: Who sent Bond the upside-down Queen of Cups?
Question: SPOILER: Is it me, or is the monster trying to kill our heroes? It attacked the bridge with them on it, killing Jason, it went straight after Hud at the end, and the spider-monsters were following them in the tunnel. What's the deal?
Chosen answer: The main monster is terrorizing the entire city. It only seems that the movie's main characters run into him a lot is because while most people are running away from the monster, they're running toward it to save the girl. And the spider-crab parasites are shown falling off of the monster by the hundreds, so they're probably all over the city by now. Since the backstory for the creatures and monster is that they come from the deep sea, the parasites might enjoy the subway tunnels because the environment is sort of like "home" for them.
Question: In some scenes, why do the Serenity crew members speak Chinese?
Chosen answer: One of the premises of the show is that the two major Earth societies that survived, and ultimately merged, were the Chinese and Americans. As a result the common language includes much Chinese. Clothing, signage, and building designs also have a heavy Chinese influence.
Question: Since season four ended with Cordelia in a coma, was Spike written into this season to fill the void created by her absence?
Chosen answer: In short. No. Joss Whedon had originally want to do a spin-off of Buffy starring Eliza Dushku and James Marsters. Dushku turned it down to do Tru Calling so Marsters went onto Angel.
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Chosen answer: News reports indicate an oil tanker has overturned in the harbor. We can presume this is just beyond the Statue of Liberty, possibly in the area of upper Bayonne, NJ. Considering there are lights and other electrical devices aboard, as well as static electricity, almost anything could have sparked an explosion aboard, the concussion of which tore the head off the statue and hurled it and other debris onto Manhattan island.
johnrosa