Question: The largest sandstorms ever recorded are less than a mile high (reaching only about 5000 feet in altitude). Isn't 5000 feet considered low altitude for a Fairchild C-119G "Flying Boxcar," which could easily climb over such a storm in a matter of minutes?
raywest
13th Jul 2017
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
13th Jul 2017
The Big Lebowski (1998)
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.
13th Jul 2017
Suspicion (1941)
Question: Very last scene after they turn the car around and you see the back of their heads, to me it doesn't look like Cary Grant or Joan Fontaine? Is it them or their doubles?
Answer: Hitchcock had a different ending on the movie, but the studio and test audiences hated it. Grant ends up splitting up with Fontaine. Hitchcock was pressured into a happy ending, but weeks had passed since the end of filming and the two popular stars were off on other projects. Two actors were hired to as stand-ins for the added footage of the car turning around and the two going happily home together.
14th Jul 2017
Forrest Gump (1994)
Question: I don't understand why Jenny left Forrest's house after having sex with him and saying that she loved him. Could someone please offer thoughts on this?
Answer: It seems more like Jenny realises that she is a screw up and doesn't deserve the love of Forrest. She left to get herself together in order to be worthy of him.
Answer: Forrest had mental issues. Jenny slept with him because she thought she loved him (and she realises later that she did), but didn't think that Forrest loved her back because he wasn't capable of understanding that kind of love (and she realises later that he did). She then remembered that her dad sexually abused her when she didn't understand what was going on, and she felt like she was behaving the way her dad did (remember Forrest's look of fear and discomfort?). Jenny then felt guilty and ran away because she didn't know how to deal with the guilt.
Answer: People who were abused often have issues with trust, and they can have difficulty forming healthy, stable relationships. They are often drawn to problematic relationships - for example, Jenny's boyfriend, Wesley - because these situations are familiar to them.
13th Jul 2017
Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Question: Maybe I missed it but is there a particular reason why Christian won't let Ana touch him?
Answer: Because he's extremely neurotic and is unable to have intimate relationships with women other than purely sexual ones. He also did not want to be touched in the area where he'd been physically scarred by his birth mother's abusive boyfriend.
That was her pimp/client, not her boyfriend. She was a prostitute.
12th Jul 2017
Nerve (2016)
Question: How exactly could players of the game have their identities erased? They were watched by billions of people all over the world including their families and friends so if they were to return home, the people who they grew up with should still recognize them.
27th Jun 2017
American Beauty (1999)
Question: Did Ricky have a mental disability? He is pretty strange, and it was mentioned that he was in a mental hospital, I thought maybe he had aspergers or autism.
Answer: There's no mention that he had a mental disorder. He likely suffers from the emotional abuse his father inflicted on him throughout his entire childhood, which included sending Ricky to a military academy and forcibly committing him to a psychiatric facility (for unknown reasons). This probably contributed to Ricky's later eccentric behavior and drug use.
27th Jun 2017
Forrest Gump (1994)
Question: What did Jenny's boyfriend, Wesley, mean when he referred to Forrest as a "baby-killer"?
Answer: Baby-Killer was a term that anti-war protestors used to describe soldiers who fought in Vietnam. This was because a lot of innocent babies were killed by soldiers during the Vietnam War along side men, women, and children. Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre.
27th Jun 2017
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Question: How did the British manage to populate Port Royal (i.e. What is now Jamaica etc.) by so many ordinary people who were evidently dirt-poor already? Surely they were not all pirates and surely there were no shuttle ships. What was their motivation to move to the Caribbean, compared with the 19th and 20th century immigration waves to the U.S.?
Answer: The British motivation was to colonize areas of the world that could produce the raw resources England needed or could trade (lumber, tobacco sugar, etc.) These were exported back to their own country and traded to other nations for huge profits. Private English citizens could immigrate, obtain land, and sell what they produced to the trading companies that began operating there. The local population provided a cheap labor force to work on the plantations. The Caribbean was also a strategic military location. The Port Royal in the POTC movies is a fictional version of the real Port Royal and therefore, is not an historically accurate depiction.
23rd Jun 2017
Xanadu (1980)
20th Jun 2017
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Question: Newt manged to capture all of the escaped beasts except the billwig. Why did he give up on it? Because it's just a little insect? or he had already many of the species in the case?
19th May 2017
The Godfather (1972)
Question: Were the pictures from newspapers used in the montage during the War with the other families real pictures from the 30's when the real Italian Mobs were around?
30th May 2017
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)
7th Jun 2017
Die Another Day (2002)
Question: Is it possible to stop your heart as it seems that James Bond did in this film when he is in hospital, or not? My partner believes that it's not possible.
7th Jun 2017
National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)
Question: In the opening credits, Clark's passport has the name "Clark W Griswald" instead of Griswold. Was this just intended because Clark can never seem to do anything right, or even get it fixed when it's wrong? (like the Wagon Queen Family Truckster he ended up buying even though that's not the car he ordered...?).
7th Jun 2017
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
Question: Did Han Solo know that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader?
Chosen answer: No, he did not have any knowledge regarding that. Luke or Leia would have told him at some point after Vader's death, but that is not shown in the film.
Considering Leia's aghast reaction to Luke's explanation on Endor ("Your father!"), he hadn't mentioned it to her before, and I can't possibly believe he would tell anyone else before her. (On a side note, it amuses me to wonder just how long it took before Leia put two-and-two together about what this all means about HER father; the implications don't seem to have hit her before this scene is over).
7th Jun 2017
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
Question: How does Syrena get into the Fountain of youth cavern? Jack goes through the ceiling of the cave after being helped up, and the rest of the crew follows the same way with the ground being solid underneath them. Since this should be the only entrance to the cavern and there does not appear to be any water connected to the location where they enter, how does she get in to give the chalices to Jack?
7th Jun 2017
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
Question: Jack seems to be in the habit of getting smacked across the face by a woman a lot. In a deleted scene, it shows Jack getting smacked in the face by a mermaid. Why was this scene deleted from the movie?
Answer: Although this has been a running gag throughout the series, the filmmakers probably felt it quite didn't fit into the storyline or else thought the joke had simply worn itself out. It may also have been intended to be used for promoting the film and in theatrical trailers.
It should have been kept in. I thought it was funny.
7th Jun 2017
127 Hours (2010)
Question: Aron tells Kristi and Megan that Blue John Canyon is actually named after Butch Cassidy's cook, Blue John. Is this true?
Chosen answer: The actual name is Bluejohn Canyon. According to online tourist info for Utah, "It appears to have been named after a minor Robbers Roost outlaw by the name of John Griffith. Griffith had one blue eye and one brown eye and thus was saddled with the nickname "Blue John." It is recognized that he kept stolen horses in the area, perhaps watering them at nearby springs. In the fall of 1899 Griffith is reported to have put in at Hite with a small boat with the intention of reaching Lee's Ferry. He was never heard from again."
Question: Vampires can never kill their own kind or it would result in the vampire's death but isn't locking Claudia and the vampire woman in the room and letting the sun destroy them technically the same thing as killing them? She "killed" Lestat and her and the vampire woman were thrown into a room where the sun would rise and burn them to death so, in a way, aren't any of Armand's followers killing their own kind?
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Chosen answer: This would most likely be a case of "pilot error." He didn't do what he should have and that led to the accident. If he had flown above the sand storm and didn't crash, then there'd be no movie to watch.
raywest ★