Question: Why exactly does the janitor hold that family hostage? What is the point?
Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: Why does the Predator use a cloaking device? As revealed in the film, it's huge and physically superior to humans, so, why hide?
Chosen answer: The same reason human hunters wear camouflage and hide in blinds: If they just stood out in the open with their weapons out, the prey would run away before they get a good shot.
Unexpected - S1-E16
Question: Is Claude's invisibility limited only to the visible light spectrum? Could he perhaps use it to manipulate say, the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums?
Chosen answer: There's no indication that it applies to anything other than the visible light spectrum.
Question: In the graphic novel, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, Warren is speaking to someone on a phone explaining that the inhibitor has had a reverse effect. First, who is he speaking to and what does the person mean when they say it could have "other applications"?
Chosen answer: The person he's speaking to could be either a superior of his or a potential client. The 'other applications' are probably related to chemical or viral warfare.
Question: James lures Bella to the ballet studio with the threat that her mother will be harmed. She hears her mother's scared voice and I'd assume that Bella would be able to tell if it was Victoria and not her mother on the phone. Yet when she wakes up to her mother at the hospital, it's like this never happened. Can anyone tell me what I missed here?
Answer: When James was in Bella's house in Arizona, he had found an old video recording that Bella's mother had made of a very young Bella at the ballet studio. While filming it, Rene' couldn't find Bella, and was frantically calling for her. That was the portion of the tape that James played when he was on the phone with Bella, fooling her that her mother was James' captive. Bella discovered the deception when she arrived at the ballet studio and discovered that her mother was never there or in any danger. When Bella awakens in the hospital, there was no need for any explanation of what happened because her mother believed that Bella had fallen down a hotel staircase.
Answer: The mother was never on the phone with Bella; it was a recording of an old message that James used to lure Bella to the dance studio Mimi's.
Answer: I guess you missed the video recorder! When she thinks she's found her mom at the studio all she finds is a video recorder playing a video of when Bella was a child! He was never near her mother.
Answer: The mother was given a set of memories by the cullens, so that all this was explainable. The cullens could not let the mother know that vampire's existed. I assume that Bella was given similar memories so that she can keep up with the lie, Bella of course remember what had really happened.
Question: When Shepherd Book gets shot and they take him to an Alliance base at first they do not want to treat him but he tells them to look at his Ident card and suddenly they are rushing to help him. What is so special about his ident card or him?
Chosen answer: Very little of Book's past was revealed in either the series or the follow-up movie. He's been shown to know a surprisingly large amount about the criminal underworld, government covert operations, firearms and so forth, which, combined with his apparent priority status with the Alliance, suggests that he, at some point, held a high rank of some nature within that organisation - one theory is that he knows about the covert Operatives (as seen in Serenity) because he used to be one. Ron Glass, with Joss Whedon's blessing, revealed a few details in 2007, including that Derrial Book is not his real name, but was taken from "somebody he killed", that he has at least one artificial body-part, that he is known for "his greatest failure" and that he apparently found God in a bowl of soup. Further details of any of these remain unrevealed. A comic-book series entitled The Shepherd's Tale, which will deal with his back-story, was announced for release in late 2008 but has, as yet, failed to appear.
Answer: To answer the questions further, here's some details from the book "The Shepherd's Tale," which is the official, canonical comic-book. Shepherd Book was born "Henry Evans." As a youth, he ran away from home to escape his abusive father, and he eventually turned to a life of crime before being recruited by the Independence movement. He eventually agreed to become a spy for the Independents, and had one of his eyeballs removed and replaced with a camera that fed directly back to them. He kills a man named "Derrial Book" and assumed his identity, and over time becomes a mole within the Alliance. Years later, Book is dishonorably discharged after an operation he spearheads results in thousands dying, and he becomes a homeless drunk. He eventually "finds god" while eating a bowl of chicken soup in a shelter. He becomes a Shepherd and several years later, finds his way to Serenity.
Question: I need someone from across the pond to help settle an argument between me and my wife. In the episode "i Rock the Vote", Wade Collins repeatedly uses the term "hob knocker." My kids asked, "What's a 'hob knocker'?" I said that it was something they made up that sounds somewhat British, probably insulting, and possibly vulgar. My wife insists that she has heard it somewhere else. So, for the record, what, if anything, does "hob knocker" mean?
Answer: In direction translation it means 'Mischievous Spirit'. 'Hob' as in HobGoblin means clown or prankster, and 'Knocker' was an old age term for Poltergeists in mines. Miners would often complain of hearing knocking sounds down mines when there was no-one else down there, hence 'Knocker'. It's not a regular English expression though.
Question: I remember the first episode of F·R·I·E·N·D·S that I saw was probably the best one, and I would like to know which season and episode number it is. It is one where Ben says "Monka Bang," meaning Monica banged his.
Answer: It's Season 3 Episode 8: The One With The Giant Poking Device.
Question: Where can I download the mp3 file of "Back In Encino"?
Chosen answer: It's not available officially on any of the released albums. Google is your friend in this instance.
Question: Are they completely ignoring the events of the second movie? I was given the impression that Brian and Roman were going to open a garage together with the money they took from Carter. Plus Brian was on the outs with the FBI. Yet in this movie, he's suddenly an FBI agent.
Answer: No it doesn't ignore 2 Fast 2 Furious, Brian even references it a couple of times. In that movie, Brian was promised a 'clean slate' if he helped them out which presumably gives him the option to rejoin a law enforcement agency. That he chose not to open a garage with Roman is pretty much redundant, Brian simply got a better offer, and as he stated in Fast & Furious with his conversation with Mia, "I'm a good liar".
Question: In the first movie there was a song that played every time the creature was about to attack. Does anyone know why the filmmakers decided not to play that song in the second movie?
Answer: The song "Jeepers Creepers" was only relevant to the first movie, and not the second, because it foreshadowed the ending. The song didn't have anything to do with the creature about to strike, it had to do with a vision the resident psychic Jezelle (who only appears in the first film) saw involving the song, a vision that eventually came true. The song was a subtle hint about Darry's fate, which is why it played several times.
Question: Why is someone as wealthy as Kamal Khan using loaded dice in the casino? I mean, what does he actually gain from cheating?
Chosen answer: The satisfaction of knowing he'll win, the thrill of pulling one over on someone; maybe like Goldfinger, he just doesn't like to lose under any circumstances.
Question: When Susan grew after being affected by the Quantonium meteorite, why do no other life forms, such as insects in the grass, not also grow?
Chosen answer: Well, it's a fiction movie; some suspension of disbelief is always needed. There could be a number of explanations: for instance, lifeforms such as insects on the grass, bacteria inside them or even grass itself, being unable to absorb quantonium. It might affect only sentient beings. Or Susan might even be the first being to get in contact with the substance - this would be possible depending on the shape of the meteorite container, the exact means by which quantonium touches her body - which isn't shown... but, first and foremost, this happens because its not happening would leave the filmmakers with a plot issue to be dealt with - so, other beings don't grow simply because they don't.
Question: There is an episode where a travelling stage and it's owner get people to perform on the stage to an invisible audience (which cheers and applauds). The people then end up loving the stage and eventually get turned into puppets with strings coming out of the happy/sad faces at the top of the stage. Since most/all of the episodes of Courage are based on, or parodies of, famous tales, myths, stories and films, where is this one from? It sounds very familiar but I can't quite place it.
Chosen answer: The episode you are referring to is the finale to Season 1, "The Great Fusilli. The episode description is nearly identical to your description. However, I have not been able to find any source of this being a parody. Perhaps this episode was just an original?
Question: After Babe first tries to herd sheep on the farm, Rex talks to Fly and mentions that the two of them are ancestors of someone. Could this mean that he and Fly are related and have been inbred? When the puppies are for sale earlier in the movie, the sign for them says that Rex is a champion; it seems like a farmer would be careful not to inbreed a champion dog.
Question: In the movie Edward, Emmett and Jasper are wearing matching wristbands with a symbol and Rosalie and Alice are wearing the same symbol on necklaces, what is the significance of these items?
Answer: The amulets that are attached to the wrist bands and the necklaces are of the Cullen family crest. http://www.twilightcullencrestjewelry.com/.
Question: This part bugs me every time I watch the film. After Batman has crashed the tanker and the Joker is walking down the street, Batman charges at him with the bike. The Joker refuses to move, and Batman then yells and crashes his bike in an almost comically stupid way. I understand that there's supposed to be some form of turmoil in Batman's mind over whether or not he should just mow the Joker down, and at the end he decides not to, but it just seems so blunt and amusingly done. Is there more to it? Was it even meant to be a spot of comic relief?
Chosen answer: Comic relief? Naah, it looks odd because it's staged. Batman's putting himself into a vulnerable position to let Gordon get the drop on the Joker. Bruce, as a wanted vigilante, obviously can't make a citizen's arrest and he's not going to risk leaving the Joker tied up somewhere until the police get there. So he crashes the bike intentionally, leaving himself vulnerable. He knows that he'll get the Joker's attention that way, which will give Gordon a chance to get close enough to grab him.
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Chosen answer: He's a murdering rapist. The point is he's evil.
JC Fernandez