Question: When Karen is being questioned by her superior in the hospital, he has her written report. But, when did she have time to write it? She met Foley, got thrown in the trunk, got into an accident, then went to the hospital.
Question: I noticed that the island they crashed on was "Mata nui." It sounded familiar to me, and Google told me Mata Nui was a Lego Bionicle figure. Since the movie is from 1998 and Bionicle from 2001, Lego must have been inspired by the movie, or what?
Answer: Motu Nui is a real life island, the name means "large island" in Maori. Most likely that is the source of Lego's inspiration for the name. While it is certainly possible that whoever came up with Mata Nui first heard the name Motu Nui in this movie, it is unlikely. Motu Nui is a fairly well known island and also shares its name with a settlement in New Zealand. A fictionalized island called Motu Nui is also the home of Disney princess Moana, which obviously came out after Bionicle but speaks to how well known the name is.
Answer: Thank you. I must have misheard the name in the movie! I will Google Motu Nui now.
Question: For the card game at Hatchet Harry's: one of the rules is that an open man can't see a blind one. I'm only familiar with "blind" referring to forced bets at certain spots on the table (e.g. the opening antes for Texas Hold 'Em). For this it seems to be a designation of the bet, for example when Harry counters Eddie's 10K, open, with 20K, blind, which is then topped by 20K, open. Could someone explain to me what open/blind means?
Answer: First, keep in mind they're not playing poker. It's similar, but there isn't a check/bet/call. They put in money, and you have to match it, then it's back on the other guy to match or raise. If you "see" the last guys bet, you put in double, and the cards are shown. Yes, "blind" means you didn't look, "open" means you did.
Answer: When you play a poker hand blind (I think it's in 5 card draw poker) you bet without looking at your cards and so you don't get the chance to change any cards. The others that are betting against you (the opens) have seen their cards, exchanged as many of their 5 cards as they want but then have to double your bet amount.
Answer: They're playing "3-card Brag." In this game, to play blind, you're not looking at your cards when betting. There are certain advantages to this because you only have to put in half the bet while blind. When the round gets to 2 players remaining, if one person wants to "see" a player's hand, he doubles the previous bet and the hands are revealed with the best hand winning (in the event of a tie, the player "seeing" loses). If a player is "open", meaning he looked at his hand, he can not double the bet and "see" a blind hand, he can only bet or fold. The round continues until the blind hand sees or there is a fold. At any time a person playing blind can look at their hand and then continues playing as an open hand, without the blind advantages.
Question: I haven't read the novel, so I don't know if it's addressed there, but after Javert interrogates whom he later finds out to be Cosette in her own home, he goes back to find the house empty, and Cosette and Valjean are now living in another house. Is this an additional house that Valjean already owned as a safe house, or did he just rent it?
Answer: I'd say it was a house he rented.
Question: There is a scene where Canton says he believes the creatures were a strange offshoot of the ARCHAEA OTTOIA family. He then describes how big they get based on how deep down they are as well as what they do to their victims. Question is does the Archaea Ottoia really exist? If so is anything Canton said about it true? I tried looking for this creature in the search engine but with no luck.
Chosen answer: According to the DVD commentary, the monsters in the film are a combination of 3 different undersea creatures. All of them are microscopic.
Question: Todd has been raised from birth to be totally emotionless. When he is thrown out of the colony, what caused him to cry?
Answer: Emotions aren't just learned. Some are inborn and can't be fully suppressed.
Question: In the beginning of the movie when the tanker truck gets blown up, why does the fully intact truck just get launched straight up with flames below it? The source of the explosion would be the truck itself, so when ignited, the truck should have simply been blown up into a million pieces, not launched straight up fully intact.
Answer: This was most likely done just to make the scene look that much cooler. Movies do things like this all the time.
Question: What game are the three guys playing at the table where Matthew Lillard slaps Randall Batinkoff for no apparent reason?
Answer: Russian Beer Roulette. The scene is meant to be a recreation/tribute of "The Deer Hunter", where they slapped a lot. Instead of a revolver with one round in the chamber, one beer can is shaken up and put in with unshaken up ones so that the "loser" gets sprayed when opening the wrong one.
Question: According to IMCDB, Bobby rides a John Deere 200-series lawn tractor. Assuming he didn't do anything to spruce it up, how many miles would he realistically be able to ride it before having to fill it up? How fast could he ride it? Does it take regular gasoline or would it need a special fuel mix? I couldn't find any specs on its mpg, although JD says it has a 3.5 gallon tank and a top speed of 5.5 mph.
Answer: Didn't see the movie, but I looked up the specifications for the John Deere model 200 on TractorData. It was the first of the series and manufactured from 1975-1976. It had a Kohler one-cylinder 305cc 8 HP 4-cycle engine that runs on regular gas and a surprising maximum speed in 4th gear of 7 miles per hour! No one seems to rate lawn tractor MPGs, but similar-sized engines running generators at full load might use about 3/4 to 1 gallon per hour. So, he should be able to go at least 3 and 1/2 hours on a tank, or about 25 miles. He could fill up at a gas station without having to add oil to the gas.
Question: The ending apparently had to be reshot, because the original ending leaked out. What was this original ending?
Answer: The original ending features a huge shoot-em-up, involving more than 150 cops, but it was changed to a shoot-em-up on a much smaller scale that involves only Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson and Ron Rifkin.
Question: Was a lot of the dialogue dubbed? It seems that a lot of the actors' voices don't seem to match up with the movements of their mouths.
Answer: Movies tend to gloss over realistic details and compress events to tell the story. It is possible she dictated it into a recorder and someone transcribed it into a written report.
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