Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: I know there is one quick shot of a real iguana when Robert Davi puts it on the couch, but are all the other shots fake? And why did they use a fake iguana and not a real one in the rest of the shots?

tattoojunkie

Chosen answer: Reptiles are difficult to train and handle, and can hold up filming by being uncooperative. Using a reptile model would simply be easier and faster. Long hours on a movie set is also stressful on animals. There may be other shots with the real iguana, but I can't say for sure.

raywest

Question: This is actually a few questions about the same thing: Why did Matt Damon say 'the nose played' so often? What was so important about his fake nose? Also, here's another question: why was he wearing a fake nose in the first place?

Answer: Linus was trying very hard in all three movies to prove himself to Danny, Rusty, and his parents. The nose is obviously his innovation, and he wants to show that it's a great disguise entirely of his own creation... even though it's pretty obviously superfluous, as it seems that no one recognizes him anyhow.

Answer: It's also a nod to Steven Sodeberg, the director. He's got a similar honker.

Answer: The "nose plays" relates the size of a man's nose equating to the size of their genitalia.

Question: I can see at the end of the movie that it tries to convey a message, but what is it?

Answer: It can mean 2 things. 1) It can mean that they were wishing they can turn back time that's why the clock was going counterclockwise. 2) It can also mean that they were talking about Benjamin because the clock was going counterclockwise.

Answer: It may be an evening affair.

Chosen answer: It's possible. Some brides will agree to get married on a weekday in order to have it at the location they really want. Some places book way in advance and are hard to book.

Shannon Jackson

Answer: Sometimes it is cheaper to hold a wedding on a weekday rather then the weekend.

Enemy at the Gate - S5-E20

Question: Sheppard (under orders from Jack O'Neill) is sent to Earth to operate the chair weapon in case the Wraith make it there. Why wouldn't O'Neill man the Earth chair himself? He's the one that operated it in the first place, and Sheppard has lots of experience with the Atlantis chair. Pulling Sheppard from Atlantis leaves a very inexperienced and nervous Beckett to fly and defend the city, as well as leaving Atlantis without its military commander.

Answer: Because Sheppard instinctively operates Ancient technology very well. He is better at it than any one else Earth has ever found. O'Neill has to think hard and work at it. Sheppard is the best choice with the fate of the Earth at stake.

Grumpy Scot

Question: Jack's title of 'The Pumpkin King' always left me a tad perplexed. Is it in fact a legitimate title of authority, signifying he's the ruler of Halloween Town or of a sub-community of those who dwell within, or is it more of a stage name, referring to his status as the planner and main star of the Halloween holiday?

Answer: Jack is certainly the leader of the realm, with even the mayor deferring to him on important matters. Whether the "Pumpkin King" is actually an official title or simply an affectionate nickname given to him by the rest of the community is unrevealed.

Tailkinker

Question: Technology-wise, in the scene where he is on the phone and the French police are tracking him down, how does he make that possible? A two-way radio "wired" to the cell phone? Only in Hollywood, or could it be possible?

Answer: Actually, what Bryan Mills did was perfectly possible. He strapped a mobile phone to the two way radio, and used the other two way radio to talk. By speaking into his radio, it transmitted it to the other radio, where the mobile speaker could hear and transmit his voice. The French police would have been able to triangulate the source of the mobile phone signal from the particular 'cell' (i.e. area) that the mobile was using - while that would lead them to the phone position, he'd be elsewhere talking on the other half of the radio.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: Yea but how did he answer the call? A very long stick?

Question: If Pahud thinks that Paul Blart is with his girlfriend, why does he make him his "homie"? Wouldn't he hate Paul for taking his girlfriend?

Answer: Paul explains to Pahud that it's a misunderstanding, and Pahud then makes Paul Blart his homie.

Question: Anna Ramirez tells Jim Gordon that the Joker card pinned to the fake Batman's body has three sets of DNA on it: Judge Surrillo's, Commissioner Loeb's and Harvey Dent's. So they go and make sure of their safety while ordering Wuertz to find Dent (who is incidentally working for the Joker). But while Dent is speaking to Rachael, Bruce knocks him unconscious and hides him in a broom cupboard. How did Bruce know that The Joker was targeting Dent? He had no contact with Jim Gordon as he was not in the Batsuit. Did he just randomly anticipate the Joker's threat on Dent?

Answer: Bruce was very likely keeping an eye on the security from the building and possibly the police scanners. The benefit he was hosting had all the high profile people attending from Gotham, including Harvey Dent. There was a good chance Joker would crash it, and even listening to police frequency for a few seconds would have given Batman enough notice that something was very wrong and that Harvey was in danger. Ultimately, they don't show how he knew, so there is no way to know for sure besides saying - he is Batman, the world's greatest detective.

oldbaldyone

Answer: They are at a fundraiser for Harvey Dent (who is by the way NOT working for the Joker at all!). It is not a long stretch to assume that when armed terrorists come storming into the fundraiser, that Dent will be a major target for them, if not the prime one. Bruce simply does not take the chance to wait and find out if it's a robbery or an assassination attempt, but gets Dent to safety at once.

Twotall

I think he meant that Wertz was working for the Joker.

As someone else pointed out, you misunderstood the original question. The statement was that Wuertz was working for the joker. You also haven't explained why Bruce knew *anything* about an impending attack... He grabbed Sent before the bad guys entered the penthouse. I guess he must've gotten an alert from a security camera or something.

Question: I have often wondered about the Jedi rule forbidding marriage. (Yes, I know that there are rare exceptions, but in general, no marriage so you have no emotional attachments to get between you and your duty as a Jedi.) It is shown over the Star Wars saga as a whole, that sensitivity to the Force is, at least in part, genetic. Anakin and all his decedents are strong with the Force. When Qui Gon first sees that young Anakin is strong with the force, he asks, "Who is his father?" Therefore, wouldn't forbidding Jedi to have families selectively breed out sensitivity to the Force? Such a rule would seem to doom the Jedi to a fate similar to that of the American Shakers, who forbid all sex, even in marriage. How could the Jedi continue for thousands of years, if they leave no progeny?

Answer: Technically yes, as the force is evidenced to be hereditary. However, the force can naturally manifest itself into a being who has no force-sensitive heritage. Also, in the expanded universe it is established that romantic relationships are forbidden and sexual ones are frowned upon, thus the Jedi policy seems to be that they rely on the naturally occurring force users as opposed to offspring of Jedi.

Question: Mickey Mantle was on a home run streak that year and then got hurt. I am just curious to know, if Mickey Mantle had been the one to break the record, if there would be such an uproar over it.

Answer: Actually Maris was MVP the previous year, 1960.

Answer: Probably not. Mantle was loved by the fans and the sports writers, plus he was a good layer. Maris never really had a good season before, or after, so a lot of people did not think he deserved to be the one to break the record.

pross79

Question: Is there any relationship or plot dependency on the Clock Maker family and Benjamin Button's birth parents?

Answer: It's setting up the story, so you could interpret it your own way. But as far as I can tell, there is no specific relation, just setting the story up.

KSG

Answer: Yes. The wife of the clock maker is the same person as the mother of Benjamin Button through adoption.

Where did you get this information? Queenie (who adopted Benjamin) was a nursing home worker married to Tizzy Weathers, and not married to Mr. Gateau, right? My understanding was the clock that ran backwards was revealed the same time Benjamin was born (or at least the same year, 1918).

Bishop73

Question: When Coraline comes back to save her parents, why is the other mother's face all cracked looking, and her body taller and thinner?

Answer: Throughout the movie, she starts looking less like Coraline's mother and more like the creature she really is. This is never explained, but it could mean her powers are weakening, she is putting less effort into them, or that Coraline is getting better at seeing the truth.

Answer: It's because the other mother feeds off the childrens souls, without Coraline's soul, she'll die of starvation so because she is so hungry, she is cracking up and falling apart.

Answer: At the end of the movie when Coraline is crawling in the tunnel the Baldam yells "I'll die without you..." The dolls lure the children in, the children have fun, and then they let her see the buttons. This allows the Beldam life and continues to find her next victim, Coraline. Without Coraline, the Beldam really is left to die.

Answer: This happens because the Beldam (Coraline's other mother) feeds off souls as seen when she gets trapped in that room for not listening to her mother she can see the other soul of a little boy and 2 little girls. Those souls are souls the Beldam has already eaten, so from there we know that those souls had a doll that looked like them too. Now the Beldam is after Coraline's soul because she needs food, and so by not being able to get Coraline to sew buttons in her eyes or stay in the world with the other mother her powers start to fade, and everything goes back to what it was before. So it's clear that Coraline's other mother was the Beldam all along and that's what the Beldam looks like at the end of the movie.

Answer: The first we see of the "Other Mother", is when Coraline enters the other world. This is the Beldam taking the form of Coraline's mother. As the movie progresses, the Beldam is losing energy without food, and by that, she is losing her powers too. Without powers, she can't shapeshift into Coraline's mother, so you see as she becomes grimmer, skinnier, and overall more broken. This mortified look might as well be her original form.

Question: What is meant by the film's MPAA rating which states, rated PG for "mild cartoon language"?

Answer: Some parents might not be comfortable with the language the cartoon characters use, as some of what they say is akin to swearing.

Answer: A $50 Bill.

Chosen answer: $247.19 and a coupon for free HBO.

Grumpy Scot

Answer: $1.

Question: There's a scene in the Leaky Cauldron where an anonymous customer is reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and stirring a spoon in his coffee cup without touching it. Is this just a random display of magic, or is it some kind of inside physics joke? I seem to remember some example (maybe about entropy?) in Hawking's book that included reference to a coffee cup, but it's been a really long time since I read it. Does anyone know what, if anything, this scene is supposed to signify?

Answer: It is a bit of an inside joke, but not as significant as you make it out to be. The plot in "Azkaban" involves time travel, and the book, written by the famous British scientist, fits in with that premise. The magic being used to stir the coffee is probably just that - a demonstration of magic. It also draws attention to Ian Brown of the band Stone Roses, who makes a cameo appearance as the coffee drinker.

raywest

Question: More of a book question, but which sub-species of Hobbit are the four ones in the fellowship? I've heard that Sam is of a lesser species than the other three. I've also heard that either Pippin or Merry is a different species; how does that work with them being cousins?

Answer: To think of the three divisions of hobbits as separate species is incorrect, they are simply tribal variations, with none being any "lesser" than the others. The three types, the Fallohides, the Harfoots and the Stoors, hailed from different regions, but since all three sub-groups settled in the Shire, the hobbits have intermingled and intermarried over the centuries, making the differences considerably less clear, to the point where they can simply be considered one group, the Shire-Hobbits. Certain Hobbit families, however, do tend to retain a relatively strong blood link to a particular division - the Tooks and the Brandybucks, for example, tend to retain the height and the impetuous nature of the Fallohide hobbits. The Baggins family is of unclear bloodline, but Frodo would also carry a strong strain of Fallohide blood from his mother, Primula Brandybuck. The Gamgee family are likewise of uncertain bloodline, but Sam's relatively stocky build and affinity with the soil and agriculture would suggest Stoor-ish blood.

Tailkinker

Question: I am resubmitting my question because the posted answer is incomplete and/or irrelevant. In FOTR, Bilbo says something like "There has always been a Baggins living at Bag End, and there always will be." Presumably he thinks Frodo, and Frodo's descendants, will always live there, but Frodo goes to the Undying Lands, leaving no heirs behind. In the book, Sam and Rosie move into Bag End, but this does not happen in the movie - at the end of ROTK, you can see that the hobbit hole Sam goes home to is not Bag End. My question is, why did the filmmakers change these 2 things? In other words, if Bilbo's line is included to make it important who ends up in Bag End, why not show who does end up there in ROTK? If it is not important who lives there (thus explaining why Sam and Rosie don't appear there), then why have Bilbo make a fuss over it in FOTR? Someone answered that "Bilbo is simply stating the way things have always been", but this is not what I'm asking. I'm not asking "why would Bilbo say this?", I'm asking "why did Peter Jackson think it was important to have this line in the movie?" Why make a scene about who Bilbo thinks will end up in Bag End, and then not show who does end up in Bag End? I want to know what dramatic or story-telling purpose the juxtaposition of these 2 scenes (Bilbo's line and showing that Sam and Rosie do not move into Bag End) serves.

Answer: I think the point is that, at the time he speak the line, Bilbo has NO WAY to know the events that are to come. Clearly, he thinks that the Baggins' will always live at Bag End. How can he possibly know the way things will turn out? Even in the book, at the beginning of the story, Bilbo has no way to know that Sam and Rosie will move into Bag End and that Frodo will not. Also, you might be attaching far too much significance to this one line. We cannot assume that the line was included for the express purpose of "making it important who ends up in Bag End". All that matters is Bilbo is making an assumption that Baggins' will always live there.

wizard_of_gore

Answer: Peter Jackson and the writing team made an effort to put lines of all the books in the movies. Can't remember if this line was actually in the book or if that was some kind of implicit statement. But I think Jackson chose not to place Sam in Bag End because it could be unpopular for the audience (at least some). It gives you no hope that Frodo will be back. It would be like admitting he was dead, and he would never ever come back. On another point of view you might consider that keeps the integrity, honesty and simplicity of Sam's life as gardener, and not as someone who is now part of the upper class. Not sure but I think we also do not know exactly when Sam actually took Bag End in his possession and actually started living there. I would imagine, if I was him, I would keep Bag End in neat condition but prefer to live in my cosy known family house. As his family grew bigger with Rosie, then he would move to Bag End for more space. They had thirteen children and you only see 2.

Milady_Elessar

Question: What do the curls on Navy officer's white wigs signify? Some have one curl on each side, while others have two, and so on. Are they an indication of rank?

raywest

Chosen answer: They are an indication of rank, however I am unsure what each one represents. But they do represent a rank.

Ssiscool

Question: What does Lord Beckett mean when he says to tell Davy Jones, "To give no quarter"?

raywest

Chosen answer: In this case it implies showing no mercy or clemency, to leave no one one alive and take no prisoners, no offer to retreat for the enemy, the Black Pearl, which Cutler Beckett knows would surely make Jones very happy.

Super Grover

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