Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: This is a question regarding the scene where Ali tells Dr. Gordon over the phone to not believe Adam's lies. How does Ali know about Adam in the first place? From what you gather, it is only Detective Tapp that knows Adam since he was the one who paid Adam in secret to follow and take pictures of Dr. Gordon. So, was it Zep that told Ali about Adam? If so, how did Zep know about Adam? From Jigsaw? Any further details would be appreciated. Thanks.

mrbench71

Chosen answer: Yes. You pretty much guessed correctly. We can assume that Jigsaw told Zep to tell Ali to tell Dr Gordon, "do not believe Adam's lies..." Don't forget that Jigsaw spends hours planning his tests so it would be safe to say that he had planned it all in the beginning.

Question: I wonder, what was the point of having a gunfight with the armored man at the beginning of the film?

Answer: It was put in the film to introduce the concept of Rianne and Lorna being pregnant and to bring in the joke about the news article about Roger, not to mention giving the film an action-heavy opening.

Question: At which point do you see Barbossa's hat and boots?

Answer: When Jack gives tia the monkey, she releases him and he runs away and lands on a pair of boots. Mostly likely Barbossa is lying in a bed, healing, hidden by a curtain and they are his boots.

Answer: The first shot of Jack the Monkey. He's sitting next to them.

Phixius

Question: When the caravan that is moving the grain is captured by Robin Hood, he ties the men together and they are forced to walk back to the town ("17 miles" or so). Shouldn't they have used the metric system to state the distance they have to travel to the town? I thought stating the distance to be traveled in miles was just for the sake of the joke for American viewers.

nanderson

Chosen answer: A "mile" is not American in origin. The British adapted it from the ancient Roman term, "mille passuum," meaning one thousand paces or strides. Each pace was the length of five Roman feet, resulting in a mile that was approximately 5,000 feet long. This measurement fluctuated up until the Tudor era, when Parliament established the current measuring standard, though the metric system, which was developed by the French in the late 1700s, has since replaced it in Europe and elsewhere. Britain still uses mile as a standard measure of distance on road signs and for speed limits, etc.

raywest

Question: If he is blind how do you explain the accurate shots with the arrow?

Answer: A large study was done after the atomic blasts in Japan in WW2 after the surrender on the effects to victims' eyesight. Over 70% of the people that indirectly looked at the light were not completely blind. They suffered from cataracts, and out of those studied over 50% could see during the day - mostly shades of black and shadows / silhouettes of people and objects. Those that survived became very keen to see movement as long as they were in bright light, also heightened since of smell and feeling vibrations. This would explain why Eli never traveled at night and was not totally blinded by a nuclear flash, if he was completely blind - night would give him a much larger advantage. You notice he always travels when the sun comes up so he can see silhouettes of people and objects moving. Also when Solara interred his room at Carnegie's hall she said "it's bright in here" Eli had all the lights on so he could see anyone entering the room / cell. Also he wears sunglasses because obviously he does not want his cataracts to get worse. If you watch the movie again there are many tells to support that he is only partially blind and had mild to moderate cataracts. You can also see his eyes on the boat to Alcatraz, showing his cataracts.

He was born blind, at the start he smells the hijackers and moves into the dark to level the playing field.

How would he know where the dark is?

He was not born blind. He was blinded during armageddon, but after finding the Bible was given his sight back in order to complete the task given to him by God. Once his task was completed he once again lost his sight.

Nope! He was given his sight back by God in order to complete the task he was given, only to lose it once again after it was completed.

Answer: Believe he is partially blind. You don't need to be completely blind to need to learn braille.

He is not blind. He sees cars coming runs into the house and immediately checks the windows.

Answer: He was blind before the flash. That's how he could read braille, and had a braille bible. Remember, he asked Solaris' mother when she lost her sight - she said before the flash. That's why she also could read braille. He was totally blind. God gave him the ability to do what he did.

Answer: I think everyone missed something that is completely obvious. He is absolutely 100% blind. He always reacts. He never starts at first. During the gunfight he never once fired upon someone unless he was shot at first. During the bridge fight, he did not attack anyone until they screamed or were close enough to where he was feeling them. When he found the body hanging in the closet and he felt it with his hands from head to foot and felt the boots. Same thing with the car with the skeleton. He felt all the way down and realised it did not have boots. Every fight scene and everything he did in this movie was a reaction to somebody else doing something first.

Answer: He is 100% blind and if you pay close attention to the movie, it is proven and shown. He only reacts to his senses, the scene where the man is hanging, Eli smells him; he does not see him. The scene with the hijackers, he goes under the bridge, soo he can hear their movement using echolocation. The shootout scene if you listen very closely when Carnegie is speaking to him, Eli clicks his tongue using echolocation again. The scene with the couple as he is walking up to their home, he makes the clicking noises again and bangs of the door with the gun to listen to the sound. In the shootout scene, Eli only shoots at those who were firing at him; which was in the direction of the gunshot sounds. The scene where he gives up the book and is shot, he stands up and looks around with confusion because he does not know who else is there, and he blindly swings his knife around to try to fight back. He was able to do what he did due to God's protection and guidance.Hence "Walk by Faith not by Sight".

Answer: It's clear from examining his eyes in various shots throughout the film that he is not blind for most of it. He was almost certainly blind before his journey began, then is sight was restored so he could complete the task. There are several scenes where his eyes can be seen. They are brown and when he talks to people, he looks them in the eye. At the end of the film, his eyes go gray, showing he is blind again.

Um...no...sorry good theory, but he just has heightened senses, and I believe isn't 100% blind but is mostly like 80-90%.

If you disagree, then please present evidence to refute my theory, rather than simply stating an opinion. Do you disagree that his eyes are brown throughout the film, then go gray at the end? Do you disagree that he looks people directly in the eye? Do you disagree that he is able to aim and shoot at distances a blind person wouldn't be able to?

The idea is that he was blind to begin with. The fact they didn't show his eyes grey is that it would reveal that fact and make the movie look stupid. The way they approach it is the surprise at the end that it turns out he is blind, not that he had gone blind again. If wasn't blind during the movie there would have been no point in showing him blind at the end, nor would it be logical he has a braille bible that he knows by heart.

lionhead

We'll just have to disagree. My take was that he was blind previously (hence his ability to read braille and his use of his other senses) but was given sight to complete his task, then lost his sight just before death.

Answer: He can hear their wings flapping, and he is guided from above. His other senses are extraordinarily sensitive and honed.

Answer: The woman who wanted Monica's wedding dress from the blow-out sale retaliated by booking the Swing Kings for the same day as Monica and Chandler's wedding. She would only let Monica have the band if Monica agreed to give up the dress. Monica honored the agreement to ensure that Chandler got his favorite band for the reception - if she'd kept the dress after booking the band, the deplorable woman would have retaliated in some other way. Monica simply found another dress.

raywest

Answer: The first answer is 100% correct, but in S8 E1, the band they actually have at the wedding is called ‘Jungle Swing'.

If you haven't yet, you should totally submit this as a Mistake / Plot Inconsistency. Nice catch.

The End (2) - S6-E18

Question: I recently submitted a question about whether everyone died on the plane or on the island. The answer I got was unsatisfactory. The answer was they did not all die in the plane crash but on the island where the events in the show really did happen. If this is the case, everyone in purgatory at the end makes no sense. If they all died on the island, then where were other characters like Michael, Ecko, etc. Also how did Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Ben, etc. end up dead and in purgatory at the end of the series? Last we saw them they were still alive on the island. Are we to assume that everyone died at the end of last season when the bomb went off? I need more info here.

SAZOO1975

Chosen answer: None of the main characters died in the plane crash. Many died on the island after the crash (Jack, Charlie, Sun, Jin, Daniel, Juliet, others), some lived on the island for an apparently long time after the crash (Hurley, Ben, Bernard, Rose) but some lived lives off the island after the crash (Sawyer, Kate, Claire, Miles, Aplert, and Lapidus). Remember that Christian tells Jack that "time has no meaning here," (in Purgatory). When everyone meets at the church, they are at the end of their lives however long that may have been and will now "move on" together. They look like they did on the island because that is the way they best remember each other.

Guy

That has to be the clearest explanation of the ending I've ever read.

Ssiscool

Question: About an hour in, when he is opening the Fed Ex packages, we see him open a divorce decree and set it aside. I assumed this was in relation to the package picked up towards the beginning in Russia at the cheating husband's place, and we see at the end the artist girl is apparently now divorced. Yet he supposedly never opened her package. Wouldn't it have been the signed the divorce papers?

Answer: The divorce decree in the package that Chuck opens is not from the woman in Texas who was married to the cheating husband in Russia. I watched the YouTube clip, and the name on the divorce papers is someone named Michael Street, who lives in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is unrelated to the story. The couple from Texas are named Dick and Bettina Petersen.

raywest

Answer: The director joked on the DVD commentary about there being a solar-powered satellite phone in the last package. The joke being that if Hanks had just opened that last package, he would have been immediately rescued by calling for help. However, the comment was only in jest, and was never meant to be taken seriously. It was never shown what was in that last package.

raywest

Question: Can someone tell me what Nicolas Cage says at the bowling alley, when he says Mindy will get two knives? It's something like "You know what? You're gonna get two-two? One? Two? That's what you get", and the word seems something like "ballsome". Thanks for the help.

fingolfin81

Chosen answer: He says "balisong". The butterfly knife was invented by the Filipinos, and "balisong" was what they called it.

Phixius

Question: When they are all in Davy Jones' Locker, Tia Dalma says to Jack something along the lines of "Don't pretend you didn't enjoy it at the time." What did she mean by this?

Answer: This is never explained, and it can be interpreted any number of ways. It's mostly just meant to be a funny piece of dialogue, as well as hinting that there is a prior sexual relationship between the two that didn't end so well. Although Tia apparently tried to kill Jack, probably in a very unusual way, she still seems attracted to him.

raywest

Question: I know the storyline is not the most important part of this film, but why is Face making the final plan for the climax at the LA harbour and not Hannibal?

Answer: Throughout the movie, Face has shown to be impulsive, and constantly deviating away from Hannibal's plan, in fact Face several times screws up because he hasn't followed the plan. Come the end of the movie however, and Face proves to Hannibal that he can tone down the impulsiveness, come up with a plan, stick to it, and see success, and Hannibal's comment to Face after he makes that plan are along the lines of "Good work kid".

GalahadFairlight

Question: Can some one explain a couple things about this movie for me? I was confused to if the events really happen or are they just in the kids mind? Also, how long is he gone for because it seems it should be days because of what happens, but when he gets home it seems only hours have passed.

Awesomo

Chosen answer: In the book it was just his imagination; he was gone for years in his mind but only a an hour or so in real life. It is presumably the same basic idea in the movie.

Phixius

Question: How and when did Thomas Craven get poisoned? He was already sick before he got tasered, kidnapped and taken to the Northmoor facility.

BF

Chosen answer: Possibly from getting his daughter's blood on him, when he accepted a drink from the Northmoor executive, or from handling his daughter's radioactive belongings. Given the depth of the coverup, they may have even anticipated that she'd come to him and broken into his house and poisoned him before the story even began.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: One of the lines in "Without Love" states that "Without love, life is Doris Day at the Apollo". What does that mean?

Answer: First I need to explain that the Apollo Theater, an amazing music venue, is in upper Manhattan (NYC), in the predominantly black neighborhood of Harlem. The movie 'Hairspray' takes place in 1962, and at that point in time very few white musical artists had performed at the Apollo (between 1950s and early 60s), and those who did were famous rock-and-roll musicians, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets (1957). Now as for Doris Day, by 1962 she was a lovely popular American actress/singer, who, as the saying goes, was "as white as white bread", and to imagine someone like Doris Day appearing on stage at the Apollo Theater is an amusing incongruity and just not quite right. So the words "without love, life is Doris Day at the Apollo," means life would just not be right at all without love.

Super Grover

Thank you. My director is making our cast look up stuff we don't know. So as Penny I felt like I needed to know so thank you for cleaning that up for me.

I hope you have fun playing Penny, and that your entire cast and crew enjoy putting on your stage production of Hairspray. Break a leg, sweetie.

Super Grover

Question: Okay, so help me out here. When someone still plugged into the Matrix dies from say, cancer or is hit by a car, does that mean the real world counterpart of that person has been completely drained of energy by the machines? When a human has served its purpose to the machines, do they alter the Matrix to make that person die? I'm very curious to know how how death works in the Matrix.

Brad

Chosen answer: Insofar as can be told from what little we know, the human body will continue to produce energy indefinitely, at least until it dies of old age or from some other cause - there appears to be no precedent for an individual to be fully drained by the machines. If an individual dies in some abnormal manner within the Matrix, such as a car crash, their body will die on the outside and will have to be disposed of. Otherwise, their body will presumably age normally until they expire of natural causes. As for how cancer might operate, we have no information. To theorise, as the digital body represents the actual body with reasonable accuracy, should an individual plugged into the Matrix develop cancer in their real body, then it's a plausible hypothesis that their digital self will demonstrate the same symptoms - the real and virtual afflictions will proceed at the same rate and the digital self will expire when the real body passes away.

Tailkinker

Question: The children in Teddy's hallucinations were bloody but they died by drowning. Is this just an inference to Andrew's guilt that his children's "blood is on his hands" because he didn't seek treatment for Dolores' mental illness? Or is it Scorsese being overly dramatic and adding a lot of blood where it doesn't belong? Also, how exactly did Andrew kill Dolores? Did he use his service revolver, even though we don't hear the shot?

MovieFan612

Chosen answer: I think the recurring blood comes from the blood of his wife when he killed her. there was a lot of blood you see, in his psychosis that means a lot and has taken over a large part of his hallucinations, just like Dachau camp. Yes, he did shoot his wife Dolores, in the belly. You can see it in the end of the movie.

lionhead

Question: After Harry gets Slughorn's memory, he watches it with Dumbledore. Dumbledore says "This is beyond anything I imagined" after the viewing. But then he goes on to say that he's been hunting for the horcruxes. I don't understand his remark when he's been finding and destroying them, since he must know what they are. How else can you look for something if you don't know what it is? (01:50:20)

Knever

Chosen answer: Dumbledore did not know that Tom Riddle was planning to create seven Horcruxes, which was more than he expected.

Super Grover

Show generally

Question: My understanding of The Daleks is that they draw their power from their vertical shoulder slats. The new paradigm Daleks have no shoulder slats, so where are they drawing their power from?

Josman

Chosen answer: Don't know where you got that information from, but there doesn't seem to be much around to support it. Models of Dalek shown in very early episodes of the original series got their power from external sources, but since then they have operated entirely on unspecified internal power sources concealed within their armour. No reason to think that the new Daleks are any different.

Tailkinker

Question: After the MCU explosion there is a scene where the Joker has his head sticking out of the back seat of a police car and police are chasing him. What is this? He can't drive from the back seat, so what exactly is happening?

swamphawk

Chosen answer: The Joker's henchmen are driving the car.

Brad

Answer: This one always bugged me too. So, I guess the cop cars following were actual Gotham police? Or just additional henchmen? If they were police, how on earth could they have managed to lose the car the joker was in?

The other police cars are being driven by the Joker's henchmen. This will help make it easier for him to flee and it would also be foolish for him to stick his head out the window if he was being pursued by actual cops, as he would be an easy target at that point.

Phaneron

Question: I searched a lot and kept expecting to see this discussed: Why doesn't Gordon arrest Ramirez after the hospital explosion? At this point he's done a mea culpa to Dent re not taking his advice on MCU corruption; he's received a trusted text message about Ramirez & Berg; and he's experienced Berg's betrayal first-hand. Yet he talks about Dent being missing in front of her, then entrusts her with critical operational duties. Even though they're close and in disaster conditions, his utter failure to call her out on anything is bizarre given what's already happened.

Answer: Denial, plain and simple. Gordon can't accept the fact that someone he trusted so implicitly turned out to be crooked.

Phixius

Answer: At this point, what proof does Gordon have? The text message that you speak of points out Ramirez and Berg as people who have relatives in the hospital, nothing more. Berg wasn't necessarily a crooked cop, he was just pushed to the edge when he tried to kill Reese because he wanted to ensure his wife's safety. You can see in the moments leading up to it that he's having a really hard time with this. Coincidentally Ramirez's mother was indeed in the hospital, and Ramirez took bribes to help with the Medical bills. To my recollection, Gordon has nothing linking Ramirez to the explosion of the hospital.

jshy7979

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