Question: Why did Merope use her father's name as her son's middle name, after the way he treated her?
raywest
19th Apr 2015
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Answer: Merope did not seem to know many people outside of her home and the nearby village. Apparently, she never went to Hogwarts. Perhaps she had no better ideas for a middle name. She may have also felt obligated to use her father's name, regardless of how she was treated. I've actually known a few parents who selected a name because they felt pressured by family expectations.
19th Jul 2014
The Godfather (1972)
17th Apr 2015
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Question: Why did Voldemort choose Narcissa to verify that Harry was dead? I read this scene in the book, but there was no explanation.
10th Apr 2015
The Reader (2008)
Question: When Hannah has her back to the camera, as she fills the bath, naked, we can see about 3-4 red long to medium scars/wounds. Is there any reason for these scars/wounds?
10th Apr 2015
Jurassic Park (1993)
Question: How did the scientists know what breed of dinosaur they were creating? They couldn't tell which dinosaur's blood they extracted from the mosquito, could they?
Answer: In the book it states that they don't really know what dinosaur they're making each time. Just that if it works out it does, if not, back to the drawing board and filling gaps to make it work.
8th Apr 2015
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Question: Voldemort asks Snape if the elder wand truly listens to him. Voldemort thinks that it listens to Snape because he killed its last owner, Dumbledore. Voldemort has his snake kill Snape. If Voldemort's theory was correct, that the wand listens to Snape and killing him would be the answer, wouldn't the wand belong to the snake? This is probably a stupid question but it would make sense to me. The snake is a living thing, Voldemort himself doesn't kill Snape so it would go to the snake, right?
Chosen answer: Voldemort was not correct. He mistakenly believed that Snape was the wand's master, but it was actually Draco Malfoy who commanded it, though neither he nor anyone else knew that. When Draco disarmed Dumbledore when they were atop the Astronomy Tower, the wand, sensing Dumbledore was defeated, changed its allegiance to Draco. It was after that event occurred that Snape killed Dumbledore. Even though Draco never physically possessed it, the wand remained under his control until Harry disarmed him. It is not necessary to kill the Elder's wand's master in order to win control of it. Also, if an animal killed the Elder Wand's master, it is unlikely the wand would respond to it. It would have to be a human or a humanoid-being.
Your last sentence, of course, becomes far more complicated in light of the Fantastic Beasts series' revelation that Nagini WAS once a human being. Given that this is the case, if Snape really had been the master of the Elder Wand, could Nagini have become its next master upon killing him? Hopefully, J. K. Rowling will answer this question someday.
Well either way it won't worked for Snape because he wasn't the master of the Elder wand at that point. He didn't even know that the Elder wand belong to Draco and then to Harry. He wasn't interested in the Elder wand as a matter of fact.
I think it's more important that regardless whether Nagini was a human once or not, at that point Nagini was a Horcrux and a vessel of Voldemort's soul without having a soul herself (if she ever did), unlike Harry. So Nagini killing Snape is the same as Voldemort himself killing him.
8th Apr 2015
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
2nd Apr 2015
General questions
I'm searching for the name of a movie I saw when I was about 11 yrs. Old (I'm 52 now), it was a black and white movie, maybe British. It involves a young boy (he sang in a Catholic boys choir) and he sees a man (I think he was in the military) and he kills someone in the boys apartment building. The boy witnesses the murder while he is hiding in the closet. I hope someone out there knows the movie.
Chosen answer: It's the 1959 British film, "Tiger Bay" starring John Mills, Haley Mills, and Horst Bucholz.
2nd Apr 2015
The Patriot (2000)
Question: Who was the baby in Charlotte's arms in the closing scene? Why was the baby not alluded to previously?
Answer: At the end of the film, it is implied that Charlotte and Benjamin Martin have married and had a child together. It wasn't alluded to earlier because it is meant to show that a person's life can start over, even after tragedy and loss.
Answer: Additionally, in the film Charlotte says to Benjamin "I am not my sister," alluding that they were different people as Benjamin gets closer to her. As colonials were religious given the time, in the Bible in Leviticus 18:18 it says "do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living." Since his wife was dead, this no longer applied and they believed in starting over, as the above post states.
25th Mar 2015
General questions
What disaster film involved earthquakes, a fire, a childbirth and someone shooting a man dead regarding the loss of a son?
Chosen answer: This sounds like the 1974 film, "Earthquake, " starring Charlton Heston.
29th Mar 2015
Poltergeist (1982)
Question: What exactly did the ghosts want with Carol Anne?
Answer: They were partly attracted to Carol Anne because she she was born in her house.
24th Mar 2015
Burn Notice (2007)
Question: How do Jesse and Sam intend to continue as P.Is, when their faces were broadcast over the state news? Undercover/stealth work is torpedoed by that.
26th Mar 2015
The Good Girl (2002)
Question: Is there any significance to Justine looking almost the same - wearing a jacket over jeans, with her hair tied back - for much of the movie?
16th Mar 2015
General questions
I am looking for a Casanova movie where the first Casanova sails off with his wife/girlfriend that he fell in love with and his apprentice / wannabee Casanova 'takes over' being Casanova and no one knows the real / first Casanova has gone with his love.
Answer: It's a 2005 movie, Casanova, starring Heath Ledger. Casanova's Big Night was a B/W comedy.
9th Mar 2015
School of Rock (2003)
Question: When Roz says people think she's a bitch, we can't hear the word bitch. Was the word intentionally mouthed by her or was it muted by the movie's editor? From her body language, facial expression and lip movement, it looks like she actually said it, and possibly yelled it. But why would they want to mute it when it's rated PG-13 and there are worse words said in the movie? And why would they mute it instead of doing something that makes more sense like cutting out or changing the word? And why would Roz refrain from swearing when it's just her and Dewey in the car?
16th Mar 2015
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Question: Why did McGonagall send all the Slytherins to the dungeon? It was only one Slytherin who wanted them to turn in Harry, and many times in the series people say not all Slytherins are bad.
Chosen answer: Not all Slytherins were bad, but many were and they would fight against Harry. McGonagall did not have time to pick out which ones were allies or enemies. It was simply more efficient to lock them all up at once. Also, even though there were good Slytherins, they would know that taking sides against Voldemort and failing to fully support him could result in later retaliation against them or their families.
16th Mar 2015
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
Question: Draco said in the previous book/movie that Voldemort would kill him if he didn't kill Dumbledore, so why didn't Voldemort kill him after he refused and Severus had to do it instead?
Answer: Draco didn't refuse outright, though he did not want to kill Dumbledore. Voldemort threatened to kill Draco's family if he failed. Draco did make attempts, but they were half-hearted ones that failed. Snape stepped in before Draco was forced into killing Dumbledore. Voldemort would have killed Draco eventually, but keeping him alive was useful in his controlling both Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy (Draco's parents) and also Bellatrix Lestrange (Draco's aunt). Killing Draco early on would have turned them against him.
13th Mar 2015
General questions
There was a movie that I believe had John Shea in it. In the movie, a woman becomes angry at a driver for almost running her down and throws something at the car. The driver responds by actually putting the car in reverse and knocking the woman to the ground. The woman lives but ends up with amnesia. While her husband helps her recover, she not only begins to remember the accident but starts to accuse him of sexually molesting their daughter.
9th Mar 2015
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Question: Why is Sean happy that Will rejected the job interview to go to California? I know he thinks love is important, but his goal was to stop Will from wasting his potential.
Chosen answer: Will is not wasting his potential. Sean knows that Will has overcome many of his emotional difficulties and with his exceptional abilities, there will be many other job opportunities, regardless of where he lives. Sean believes it is far more important for Will to pursue a lasting relationship with a woman for the first time in his life.
Will had multiple job offers - someone of his intelligence could pick up any job he wanted hence he wasn't disappointed.
9th Mar 2015
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Question: Why did Will lie about having twelve brothers? What did he think it would achieve? And why would someone as smart as Skylar believe it?
Chosen answer: It's just part of his personality. He had become used to keeping people at a distance and made up stories so they didn't know what he was actually like. There's no reason for Skylar not to believe him at first. Large families with ten or more children are not unheard of, particularly if the parents have been married more than once.
Answer: The judge pointed out that Will "went through several foster homes." Whether the foster parents had their own biological children and/or other foster kids, Will could have easily had twelve "brothers" who were the functional equivalent of biological brothers. Using his own operational definition of "brother", Will had twelve, so was not lying. However, using a more common definition of "brother", Will was not exactly telling the truth. Will can be said to have told her a "white lie" - only telling her what he wanted to and omitting the details. This can be a type of defense mechanism, giving her the impression that he - like almost everyone else - grew up in a family with his siblings. In a way, he was protecting himself by hiding the way in which he was raised. Because it wasn't typical for Will to become attached to whatever girl he was seeing, he saw no need to reveal his past (although, unknown to him at the time, this relationship would turn out differently than previous ones).
Why would she think that he was making up something like how many brothers he has? Not only did Will go through the names of his twelve "brothers", he was able to convincingly repeat the twelve names after she asked him to. IF he had not been able to quickly repeat a sequence of twelve boys' names, it would have been a giveaway that he was lying. Common sense was more significant than intelligence in discerning whether or not Will was telling the truth. (But common sense often does not match reality).
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Answer: There's no explanation. I thought it was more an act of defiance to prove that no matter how badly her family treat her, young Tom Riddle will always be related to his mother's clan.
raywest ★
This is an interesting interpretation. Maybe she did.