Question: Does anyone know the number plate of the Mystery Machine?
Question: Was Mrs. Collins' son ever found?
Answer: No. He was murdered at age nine. The movie uses creative license to bring up the suspicion that he could have somehow survived to create a dramatic hope in the end. Moreover, the killer was very unstable and retracted his testimony more than once. There is no solid proof of the boy surviving the killings. The police even found partial evidence of Walter Collins at the burial site. See the Wikipedia article for more information.
Question: What is the meaning of the flashing lights at the end of the movie (after the camera pans from Alex reading the book at the park)?
Chosen answer: The flashing lights are to create a sense of uneasiness again. Gaspar Noe uses low frequency sound to create nausea, headaches, and disorientation in the beginning and uses it again here to make the viewer feel sick after the mood changes dramatically. Also it symbolizes the chaos that occurs in the universe & how life can easily spiral out of control as it does in the movie.
Question: Has there ever been any explanation as to why Freddy was killing children?
Answer: In the book version of the first three movies, he took a saying from his abusive foster father: "Children are useless." He made it "Children are better off dead." He also killed one trying to rob him and felt a rush of adrenaline from it that he didn't want to lose, so he got addicted to killing.
Question: In the opening scenes when Poirot confronts the rabbi, priest, and imam - the priest is Catholic / Western Rite. But from the setting of their dispute in Jerusalem, shouldn't the priest be Orthodox / Eastern Rite?
Answer: Not necessarily. Jerusalem is a meeting place of many religions and faiths - and there's nothing to suggest that the Catholic priest isn't there on holiday.
Except it's stated that priest was negotiating market use (with the imam and rabbi). He was a local.
Question: Did Patrick really kill anybody or was it all in his mind? He killed a homeless man but there's no news report about it on TV. He murders Paul but is told Paul is in London. He severely beat and bloodied two prostitutes but no cops show up to arrest him. He murders Elizabeth and Christie but when he goes back to the apartment later, it is empty and put up for sale.
Answer: The situation is intentionally left vague. The homeless man being murdered wouldn't necessarily make the news in the time (there were over 4000 murders in 1989-90 when the book and movie are set). He and his friends are so alike that they continually mistake each other for others. The prostitutes would likely be loathe to call the police because they might be arrested themselves and he would likely get off with a much better lawyer.
Question: What's the name of the piano solo music which can be heard throughout the movie? Since the movie has no soundtrack, can someone please give me its name and the place where it can be found?
Answer: The Movie has a soundtrack, and that lovely piano solo music is actually the theme song, composed by composer David Shire. You can find it here, on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Conversation-David-Shire/dp/B000N4P5XA/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1202051411&sr=1-1.
Question: The game they play near the start (the knock on wood game) seems pretty interesting. Is the point of it not to get caught moving or is there another goal? Also, can someone help me with the Spanish translation? I can't hear what the Spanish for Knock on Wood is. Thanks.
Chosen answer: It's a Spanish version of Red Light, Green Light where you'd try not to get caught moving. I haven't watched the film in a while but I believe she says "Uno, dos, tres, toca la pared". Hope that helps!
Question: If you read the book version of Contact you know that the stuff about transcendental numbers and the Artist's Signature was left out of the movie. This makes no sense to me, since it's not only the real ending, it's the whole POINT of the story. Without this information, the story's fundamental question (does God exist?) is not answered in the movie. Does anyone know why this was left out?
Answer: If anything, I think the film's producers deliberately left godly topics unaddressed (and questions dangling, unanswered) because they didn't want to alienate any particular audience. However, we know the producers of "Contact" certainly did vilify religion through the sinister scenes with Joseph, the evangelical extremist. At the same time, the film created empathy for the president's glib theological adviser, Palmer Joss. So, I don't think the film was shying away from religious topics, and I think it was pretty fair to the religious viewpoint, for the most part. But this movie wasn't about religion; it was about a primitive, materialistic, self-centered and aggressive species (humanity) reluctantly acknowledging the existence of vastly more intelligent and even godlike entities throughout the cosmos. Even the first-contact entities, advanced as they are, acknowledge other entities much more ancient and much more advanced (the virtual architects of the space/time conduit). The implication was that we live in a universe that may be populated with many intelligent entities that answer every human criteria of godhood. Ellie's narrow-minded atheism was surely shaken to its foundation by her experience; and, while she didn't "convert" to archaic earthly religions, she was spiritually a different person upon her return. The film, however, is open-ended and fence-straddling and doesn't presume to definitively answer the question of the existence of god, leaving it up to the audience to decide.
Answer: The film chooses to focus on Ellie's personal journey and how she deals with and comes to terms with what happens - it doesn't really involve God at all, other than the inclusion of Palmer Joss as a religious advocate, choosing to restrict itself to the much less theologically controversial theme of a straight first contact scenario, without the religious overtones. Given the depth of feeling on religious matters in the US, it's hardly surprising that the filmmakers preferred to leave this particular hot topic out. While Carl Sagan died during production of the film, he both co-produced and was involved in the story process, so he was clearly not concerned about this change.
Question: What is the name of the dance tune when Tom Cruise is drunk in the club with his mask on the back of his head?
Answer: I think the one you mean is 'Afrika Shox' by Leftfield & Afrika Bambaataa which is track 10 on the fantastic soundtrack.
Question: Why did Angela / Peter refuse to eat much food at first, and also refuse to play volleyball? She / he could probably do those things without the secret being revealed.
Answer: Watch his first scene at his aunt's. He doesn't speak at all. Clearly Angela/Peter has had a withdrawn personality since the death of his father and older sister. So doing activities with other kids is one thing he wouldn't do, as for eating, a lot of kids don't at first if they miss home.
Question: At the beginning, what was the old nun trying to do with the cross key in the dark room with the door that says "God ends here"?
Answer: The nun was trying to find the relic. The deceased nuns had no actual idea where it was. That's the whole reason Irene was summoned by the Vatican because she had visions about "Mary pointing the way" also the "ghost nuns" more than likely have something to do with her clairvoyance as well.
Answer: Are you talking about before she opens the door? She's just making the sign of the cross, but using the same hand she's holding the key in.
I'm asking about what she was going to do in the dark room, what her plan was, what the cross key was for.
It was to open the chamber that kept the vial of the blood of Christ so they could try to send Valak back to Hell.
The gateway to the relic was near the state of Mary, and it wasn't located inside the chamber seeing that Burke and Irene found the relic before crossing the passage leading to the chamber with the sign "God ends here." If there's someone who must have known where the relic was, it has to be the abbess. Then, why didn't she take it if she was going to?
From everything I understood, the cross key opened the chamber that had the blood of Christ. The room with the sign "God ends here" was not the chamber I was speaking about. I was only addressing the question about what the key was for.
Question: So is Charles, Grace's husband, dead too or is this another example of the worlds of the dead and living colliding?
Chosen answer: He is dead, but he has accepted it. He spirit is going to Heaven or Hell and has stopped to say goodbye to his wife and children on the way.
Question: Why does Dr Gordon decide to work with John? And why does he put himself, his daughter and wife in extreme danger?
Answer: He, his wife and his daughter were abducted before he decided to work with Jigsaw. He didn't put them in danger. As for why he decided to work with Jigsaw following his ordeal, like other characters in the franchise, he either developed a level of Stockholm syndrome or he concluded that Jigsaw's methods were right, or a combination of both.
Question: All realistic indication by the end of the movie points to the fantasy actually being real, based on strong evidence. (Such as the magical door and chalk, etc.) Is there any strong theories that the fantasy is not real? I know is is ultimately up to the viewer to decide, I am just curious as to whether or not there is any concrete proof the fantasy might not be real.
Answer: Evidence from the film: 1) The image of a ram appears frequently in the house, including over the mother's bed and the twisted growth of the tree. An image such as this suggests that the fawn was created from common images. 2) The first image is of the magical realm. The the following show Ofelia reading a fantasy book. This inidicates that the movie will be mostly from the point of view of a child who spends time developing her imagination. 3) The images of fascist, war-torn Spain are bleak aand desaturated while the images of the magical realm are bright. Even the monochromatic images of el Fauno are supersaturated. This filming technique suggests that Ofelia creates the fantasy. 4) At the end of the movie, the General cannot see Ofelia talking to el Fauno. Therefore, at least for him, the kingdom is fantasy. The proof exists for both. The flower at the end of the film has been cited as evidence that the magical world certainly exists but only for those who choose to see it. This means that the kingdom is both real and not real - a paradox.
Question: At the very end of the scene in which Walter and the Dude are spreading Donnie's ashes at the coast, a dark and unidentifiable figure appears for a few seconds in the upper right screen, apparently hiking a trail along the cliff. Was this an accidental walk-on by an actual hiker, or was it written into the script? With all the star-power in this film, I thought every bit of background action was supposed to be meticulously crafted.
Chosen answer: There's no way of knowing. If the hiker was that far away, it could have been someone who happened to stray into the scene by accident. The filmmakers may or may not have noticed, but if they did, may have felt it added to the realism. I did this myself during the filming of a street scene for the TV show, "Northern Exposure." Filming was underway before I realised I was in the midst of it. I just kept walking like I was supposed to be there.
Question: Where did Mary Lee live before moving into Ross' old apartment?
Answer: Rosery Road.
Question: Towards the end of the film, Heather steals the Seal from inside of Leonard, and we see him burn up. But the shot goes noticeably out of focus when this happens. What gives? The scene appears to be CG, so it makes no sense for it to go so badly out of focus. Were they just trying to cover up a dodgy effect?
Answer: I believe your theory is correct, it appears to go out of focus to help cover up some unconvincing CGI. The final explosion looks very cartoonish.
Question: How did the monkeys get onto the space ship and why were they so aggressive?
Answer: On the way from the Moon to Mars, the Cepheus interplanetary vessel receives an automated distress signal from a Norwegian bio-medical space station (that studies and conducts experiments on Earth animals in the deep-space environment). Apparently, a couple of very powerful and temperamental adult baboons escaped from their cages and killed everyone aboard the space station, feeding on their bodies. When the Cepheus answers the distress signal and arrives at the space station, the baboons attack and try to eat Captain Tanner and Roy McBride, also.
Answer: In the cartoons, it's AC-712. The film was probably faithful to this.
Tailkinker ★