Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: In one of the Orca scenes, when Quint shot a line and barrel into Jaws from the rear of the boat, the barrel then had to travel over the boat and almost hit Brody in the head. If you look closely, you can see his glasses getting ripped off by the barrel. Was this staged or an actual near-miss, just inches from his head?

Answer: We cut from Hooper fighting to untie the cleat, to the shot of the barrel launching past Brody's head. At the start, the camera has Brody in profile. In stop motion, you can briefly see that he's wearing the arms of his glasses on the (outside) of his ears - so they're not hooked to his face. He looks over his right shoulder (toward the approaching barrel) then whips his head left, toward the camera, and slings off his glasses, for a great effect.

Question: I was just curious, is there any significance behind why Samuel L. Jackson is the piano player in the church at the beginning of this film? Is it some kind of in-joke or did he just get that part by auditioning? Seems like a very small part for such a good actor.

Answer: He was brought in as a cameo because QT likes bringing in actors from his other movies. It is possible that Rufus is either a nod to or actually is Jules from Pulp Fiction, who said at the end of the movie that he was going to become a drifter. In Kill Bill Rufus was referenced as a drifter. Also, Tarantino has publicly stated (on the El Rey program "The Director's Chair") that he loves Sam Jackson on the set, he just enjoys his company; so it's probably just a buddy-buddy arrangement.

Question: As we know, the magnifying glass in Olaf's tower started the Baudelaire fire. This is the same tool that Klaus uses to burn up the marriage certificate. If the magnifying glass was powerful enough to cause the Baudelaire mansion to burst into flames, which was 37 blocks away, why didn't the stage burst into flames as well?

Answer: A magnifying glass concentrates all the light that goes through it at its focal point, and it is this focal point that needs to be placed on the object which one wants to set on fire. The distance of the focal point to the lens depends on the magnifying glass characteristics, and it is more than likely that Count Olaf chose a glass where the focal point would be situated exactly "37 blocks" away from his house, that is, at the Baudelaire's mansion. When trying to set on fire an object much, much closer, the glass would concentrate much, much less energy, and would only be able to set on fire easily burnt objects, such as thin paper.

AnthonyA

Question: After we learn Mr. Orange is the "rat", we see him talking to a co-worker in a diner, which looks really familiar. Is this the diner that Honey Bunny and Pumpkin attempted to rob in Pulp Fiction?

Answer: Yes. They were filmed in different locations in the diner.

Chosen answer: Tim Curry (as Wadsworth) states he knew about the secret passages because the house belongs to a friend of his. Tim Curry (as Mr. Boddy) says at the end of the movie that they "Could stack the bodies in the cellar and could all leave one by one." Which infers that Mr. Boddy has no intention of returning to the house. Either way, there is no definite way to tell who the house belongs to considering all the lying going on.

columbonet

Answer: Because Chip made a lab error in a previous job, and Abby and Dinozzo were instrumental in revealing/correcting the mistake which got Chip fired. Hence the grudge against Dinozzo and Abby. So, he framed Dinozzo for a murder and attempted to kill Abby at the end of the show.

Answer: He was only after DiNozzo. He only tried to kill Abby because she found him out and got too close.

Question: For years I've wondered about the scene where Hal meets Rosemary's doctor friend Dr. Sahid (in the children's hospital). Unless there's a cut or deleted scene I'm not familiar with, there's no relevance to the plot with meeting the doctor since he's never seen in the rest of the movie (therefore not knowing if his real appearance is different) - everyone else in the whole movie that Hal never met before ends up with a different appearance after the spell wears off (including men). Can anyone answer this?

Answer: I think he was in the movie to reinforce that she is a genuinely nice person and that she had a wide circle of friends who appreciated her.

Question: How old is V in the movie and in the comic? is that V's real face in the comic or just Evey's imagination?

Answer: V is probably in his early to mid thirties, it is never mentioned, nor is his face ever seen.

MasterOfAll

Question: When Bruce escaped the pit, did he throw the rope down so the rest of the prisoners could escape? I know they helped him, but isn't letting them go free a bad thing (they're prisoners for a reason, some of them could've been rapists like the ones that killed that little girl's mother)? And how did Bruce get to Gotham so fast? Do we know what country the pit is in?

Answer: Yes, he threw the rope to let the prisoners out. It may have been a dumb move on his part, although there is the potential that numerous prisoners there were also wrongfully imprisoned by Bane, and Bruce is intimately familiar with the criminal world and mindset - he may have simply judged that the remaining prisoners in the pit were worth freeing. Bruce has connections all over the planet, any company, or one could have dropped off billionaire Bruce Wayne back off at the states. It is never mentioned where the prison is located.

MasterOfAll

Answer: As far as the country the Pit is in, it's never stated in the film, only that it's in the ancient part of the world. In the comics, Bane was born and lived in the prison Peña Duro, although it doesn't share much with the Pit other than being where Bane was in prison. Peña Duro Is located in the fictional country of Santa Prisca, which is located in the northern part of the Caribbean.

Bishop73

Answer: It should be noted that the Pit was now Bane's. While it's a prison in the sense that the people can't escape, it wasn't specifically filled with criminals convicted of a crime in a legal setting. They were Bane's enemies who had been put there to be tortured. While it's likely some of Bane's enemies were criminals, they were probably free before Bane put them there. Remember, before Bane bought or took over the Pit, Ra's al Ghul had killed the prisoners as revenge for the murder of his wife. Although they also might not have been criminals convicted legally and would have been the Warlord's enemies.

Bishop73

Answer: While the actual pit was a set and Hollywood magic, the exterior of the prison [once Batman escaped] is Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India. A set of circular stones mark the supposed "entrance" to the pit. However, the interior of the prison, which had all of the wall/stairs, have a real life inspiration. Chand Baori, was built in the ninth century, and has 3,500 steps across 13 stories. Apparently, the priests who lived there also liked to chant as they descended the steps to reach water, which sent vibrations through the stairs. (Per Cracked. Com, "5 Mind-Blowing True Stories Behind Famous Movie Locations).

Invader_Gir

Although this is interesting, this not an answer to the question. I'd recommend to post this again as trivia.

lionhead

I originally wrote it to answer the second part of the question, as I also wondered where it was set in, but I went overboard with the details. I submitted it to trivia.

Invader_Gir

Left for Dead - S1-E10

Question: I don't know the episode, but didn't Mike Franks have a son who died, and the woman who was in the cab was holding a blonde baby boy? After that Mike Franks just had a daughter in law and a granddaughter.

Lori Field

Chosen answer: Season 4, Episode 8. "Iceman" is where Mike Frank's son Corporal O'Neill is introduced.

Answer: Their ages are never made clear within the film. In the comic Evey is 16 when the story begins. However, since Natalie Portman was in her early 20s at the time the film was made, it can be presumed that Evey is also in her late teens or early 20s as well; since V was an adult during his imprisonment at Larkhill roughly 20 years before the events of the film, he most likely is at least in his early 40s.

zendaddy621

Question: I've always had an sequence issue with the saved package that Chuck delivers to the lady "Bettina" in the truck at the end. To me it could either be the return divorce papers from Russia, or just happens to be some other delivery, since she appears to be a regular FedEx customer. Either way doesn't matter here for me. The issue/questions is, if the plane that crashed over the Pacific left the FedEx hub in Memphis, TN then why is a package that is destined for somewhere in Texas taking the long route way over the Pacific, rather than just go from Memphis to Texas the short way? The "Dissolution of Marriage Agreement" (1:02:23), shows from Law office in Santa Fe, NM destined for Jakarta Indonesia (over the Pacific). Has anyone else reconciled this delivery route dilemma?

Greg2644

Chosen answer: Memphis is the "hub" for FedEx. It is a waste of time and energy and money if they send every package exactly where it is destined to go, directly. Instead, every single package goes to one place, where they are grouped and sorted do that they can fill trucks with packages all going to the same destination. In the movie, he brings it back to the original sender of the package, he does not bring it to whom it was originally being sent, which is why he brought it back at the end.

Answer: This package cannot be the same one she sent in the beginning scene. It had pink wings on it! The one Chuck found had golden wings on it. Remember she told the fed ex man to come back on Thursday she had another one to send. This one had to be the one Chuck found.

Answer: Yes, it was being shipped and Chuck returned it to Texas. That's why they play Elvis' Return To Sender.

So this could have been the signed returned divorce papers in a new package with golden wings and not her original sent package with pink wings?

Answer: 1st and foremost any packages she would receive would not have the wings, only packages she sends would have them.

Answer: So that leads me to believe these were not the divorce papers. She was the sender of the 2nd package.

Question: When Rachel tells Alfred to give Bruce the envelope and he says "how will I know" and she says it's not sealed. What does she mean by that? Is she implying that he can read it? I know I may have answered my own question but I just need to be sure.

Answer: Yes, she is implying he should read the letter so that he knows the right time to give it to Bruce.

Question: Why, if Eddie came up to visit Clark from down south somewhere, did his gas give out in Gurney, which is north of Chicago?

Answer: It's possible he got lost, or took a way around traffic. Gurnee leads directly to Chicago on I-90/94.

Greg Dwyer

Answer: I don't know. In Vacation, they lived in Coolidge, KS. But they lost that house.

Chosen answer: Quicksilver in the comics listens to music at super speed because his mind always works that fast. Presumably, it's the same here.

Greg Dwyer

Show generally

Question: There were a few times during the series when the police would be looking for information from, say, a group of prostitutes on the street, or a group of men involved with buying/selling drugs in an alley, or some low level criminal they were questioning. Detective Briscoe would pull out one of his business cards, and announce something like, "this is a get out of jail free card" for the person who would come forward to tell them where to find the person they were looking for, or to identify a photo. I always wondered, would some future police officer or detective investigating some new crime really honor that? What if it was a more serious crime? Or even if it was just another simple drug or prostitution bust, and not something more serious, wouldn't that later officer lose the leverage of that arrest, and maybe the possibility of finding a "bigger fish" or whatever they were trying to do?

Michael Albert

Chosen answer: If the prostitute with the card was arrested, she would likely ask to speak to Briscoe. Briscoe would visit, recognize her, and have her released because of it, if it was simply prostitution or a drug Possession charge. Those crimes mean nothing when looking for a murderer or rapist.

Greg Dwyer

Question: How can Bond beat Le Chiffre in the final hand? He has $40.5 million and the other 2 have $5 and $6 million, leaving Le Chiffre with more than Bond, or am I wrong?

Answer: No. Mathis mentions there is $115 million in the pot. Subtract the $24 million it started with and the $11 million from the other two players and you have $80 million. If Bond has $40.5 million, Le Chiffre has $39.5 million. Technically, if Le Chiffre won, Bond would have gotten $1 million back to play again.

Greg Dwyer

Question: The "eye doctor" tells John not to take the bandages off until the 12 hours is up or else he'll go blind. If this is so, how come he didn't go blind after removing the bandages early?

Josh Appelbaum

Chosen answer: He did go blind but only in one eye. That is why he loses his depth perception for a bit (when emptying out the bag of eyeballs he misses by a lot). He only lets them scan one eye so his other one is good. This makes sense with the foreshadowing earlier in the movie: when buying drugs from the eyeless guy in the alley area at night, he says some quote about a one eyed man.

Answer: Medical advice isn't always correct. There's no evidence that John went blind in one eye. When emptying the bag of eyeballs they stick to the inside of the bag, so they don't simply drop out as he was expecting. He doesn't let the spiders scan only one eye; the spiders only scan one of everyone's eye, as can be seen when the arguing couple get scanned.

Chosen answer: The song is called "Dark as a Dungeon" and was written and first performed by singer-songwriter Merle Travis in 1946. It has been performed by a wide array of artists, including Tennessee Ernie Ford, Harry Belafonte, Dolly Parton, Queens of the Stone Age, Kathy Mattea and Amy Grant. But it was made most famous when it was performed and recorded by Johnny Cash during his concert at Folsom Prison in 1968. According to Wikipedia: "It is a lament about the danger and drudgery of being a coal miner in an Appalachian shaft mine. It has become a rallying song among miners seeking improved working conditions."

Michael Albert

Question: Why is it necessary for Draco to confirm that the real Harry has been captured by the bounty hunters? Lucius and Bellatrix have each dealt with Harry before.

Answer: Lucius and Bellatrix were unable to confirm Harry's identity because Hermione had jinxed his face to disguise him just before the snatchers captured them. They are fairly certain it is Harry, but as Bellatrix says, if they summon Lord Voldemort, and they are wrong, he will kill them all. Of all the Death Eaters at Malfoy Hall, no one knows Harry better than Draco, having spent more time with him because they were schoolmates. Lucius and Bellatrix have to be absolutely sure that this is Harry Potter.

raywest

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