james bond - Why would Q attach the computer of a known cyberterrorist to the MI6 computer network?

While I don't remember that specific scene (not sure I've even seen the movie), this sounds once again quite like something the writers made up just for the story. As such it's rather hard to answer why Q would do it (because it's the same reason: just for the plot).

Unless you've got some really nasty bug in your operating system or some insecure autorun policies set, there shouldn't happen anything once you connect a drive (and you don't try to execute something on it). Everything on it is just inactive/passive data.

There could be additional safeguards built into the hardware (similar to drive encryption), but once again that's unlikely to cause any side-effects outside; at least nothing software only (other than potentially reading wrong information).

If he intended to execute something on the drive, then yes, you're right, it's very careless.

Although, to be honest, I'd try to create a copy of the drive (so it's unable to destroy the data on it itself) and then mount that in a virtual machine (so it won't be able to destroy my soft-/hardware). It's not just about disconnecting from the network (you'd most likely do it on isolated hardware to begin with; so you wouldn't have to worry about disconnecting first).

In the Doctor Who episode Hide how does the Alien become trapped?

Time travel is not restricted to humanoid species (take the dalek for example) so the creature could have ended up there the same way Hila Tukurian got trapped there. It could also be a side effect of the experiments Hila was doing or some completely unrelated experiment of the alien itself. The Doctor only said they got separated by events, war, politics or other things.

neuroscience - How does this illusion work?

If you zoom in on the image, you can see that it is not just composed of black vertical lines, but also has pixels with different gray tones in the white areas. When you move your head sideways, you perceive the gray tones more.

If you were to remove the black lines, you could see the face clearly. Initially I thought that by blurring the gray shapes when your head moved, they became more visible as they seemed larger. On reflection though I think that actually what's happening is that the high contrast between the black lines and the mostly white background causes your perception to adjust so it doesn't easily see the mid tones. This is because we have a low dynamic range in our vision (relative to absolute brightness, but compared to camera CCDs we have a high dynamic range) - we have to adjust the light sensitivity to compensate for the overall brightness of the image. This is called brightness adaptation. There's a good free textbook for further reading about this at Utah U's Webvision.

When you move your head, the black and white lines blur together which makes the overall brightness appear to be the average brightness of the black and white. So against that background your light sensitivity increases and the areas where the pixel tone is different from the average - the gray pixels of the face - start to stand out.

By reducing the brightness you can see the faint image in the background much more clearly...

How did Rose make Jack immortal?

The problem wasn't so much that she resurrected him, as how she did it. She controlled time itself and wrapped it around him, giving him life with a power that she didn't understand. Imagine it as someone who has a prosthetic limb and needs to learn to control it. She tried to place something (his life) gently back into time and instead punched out violently. Time around him solidified as if it were that paste that goes solid with kinetic energy.

She made it so that his death was something that just couldn't happen, wrapping him in time energy that jumpstarts his system whenever he dies, almost like an antivirus seeking out a problem with a program and fixing it. Of course, over time that energy would wear down and eventually dissipate, in this case by his own choice which allowed him to finally die. Exposure to time travellers would likely drain some of the energy too, as would the vortex he guarded in Torchwood.

It never got explained but I like to think that the whole Face of Boe thing came about due to cellular mutations introduced in his system over the course of millions of reconstitutions over the years. Having the effect turn off (like it did in Miracle Day, for example) every so often would allow him to be mutated from radiation enough that over centuries he could become as he was when he died. That's my personal view on things.

Why is it always raining in Total Recall?

The film’s split into two hemispheres – one being the Colony and the other being the United Federation Of Britain.

So over in the Colony, which is mainly full of proletariat, the weather’s more symbolic of the more downtrodden existence that the people there have. So it’s always dark and rainy.

And then in the UFB, which is very unlike Britain, the skies are sunny and clear and things are a little bit more optimistic.

Is this character really a bad guy?

While he may not be the main antagonist in the scheme of the film. That role belongs to the Admiral for all his misdeeds during the flow of events.

Khan is still an antagonist no matter how you look at it.

Back in the 1990's, the Eugenics War occurred where it was a battle for superiority of normal humans vs these seemingly indestructible genetically modified super-humans. In the end, the super-humans lost and because of their rebellion, were sentence to float about space for the rest of their time in a cryogenic state, including their leader of the rebellion, Khan.

When the Admiral released Khan, his intention was for Khan to help ignite the Klingon war using his designs for warships like the Vengence. Meanwhile, Khan only agreed to the Admiral's demands because he knew the Admiral would kill the remaining super-humans if he didn't comply. All the meanwhile, Khan is putting his plan into place to get his comrades free and re-ignite the Eugenics Wars using this new technology of the era.

The only reason Khan complies with Kirk's demands is because he learns that his comrades will be destroyed when these missiles detonate upon impact. Which is also the only reason he saves Kirk as the warning was sent out to him long before the land party departed, alerting Khan to the fact that his old friends might be in danger.

From then on it becomes Khan using the crew of the Enterprise and make them sympathetic and curious as to the situation at hand, which is why the Admiral wanted Kirk to just fire the torpedoes and be done with it.

Khan then uses Kirk to get aboard the powerful war vessel that he helped the Federation design and once he is able to subdue everyone on board, unleashes literal hell up on the crew of the Enterprise with his intended target Earth, after getting his comrades.

biochemistry - What is the maximum potential sucrose concentration of plant sap? What keeps plants below this potential?

I am interested in identifying the maximum potential dissolved sucrose (%w/w) that plant sap could have, and which (biological, physical, chemical) factors constrain the observed sucrose concentrations.

For example, sugar maple has one of the highest sucrose contents at 6%, and the solution also contains fructose, glucose, organic acids, minerals (K, Ca, Mn, Zn, Na, Cl), amino acids, volatile organic compounds, phenols, enzymes (according to Wikipedia), and most sap flow occurs when temperatures cross the freezing point each day.

Is there a way that I can calculate this theoretical maximum from "first principles" of organic- or bio-chemistry, or is this a question better suited for empirical study?

this is a biological application of my question at physics.SE

From where does Detective Bobby Goren draw his wealth of knowledge?

Besides just being a well read guy, his former mentor Declan Gage (who is involved in at least two episodes, one being the great final of the 7th season) is a profiling expert (or even pioneer), which explains his excellent knowledge in profiling and psychology.

Other than that I don't think he has been anything else than an investigator, or at least I cannot remember it to be stated in the show at any point. But he sure was in college.

Why is the number of pills in the bottle not consistent in 'A Study in Pink'?

There are the same number of pills in each bottle. All the pills in one bottle are poisoned. All the pills in the other bottle are not. The victims only choose the bottle. Once they've chosen the bottle, all the pills in the bottle are the same (either all poisoned or all benign, depending which bottle they picked).

With each victim, a pair of pills is consumed: one from the poisoned bottle and one from the non-poisoned. (Obviously, the cabbie takes a pill from the non-poisoned bottle each time.)

By the time it gets to Sherlock, there is only one pill left in each bottle, because all the others have been consumed. This doesn't change the game at all: he's still choosing the poisoned bottle or the non-poisoned bottle.

the walking dead - Why don't they cover themselves in zombie guts more often?

I'm going to convert my comment into a better answer. Unless it's explained in the comic series, there is no explanation. But, if we look at certain facts from the show we can speculate as to the reason to a point that could make sense.

• The first attempt failed (started to rain)


• That type of scene may have been too much for audiences. It was pretty grotesque.


• The group encountered a herd while on the freeway and hid under cars. They were left alone meaning that covering themselves with guts isn't necessary. More on this below.


• Once they reached the farm, there was no reason to use this technique as they only encountered one or two stragglers until the very end but at that point, they could only run.


• In season 3, they reached the prison and again, there wasn't any reason to use this technique. They wanted to clear the zombies from the yard, not sneak past them.


• In season 3, Michonne shows us that you can "disarm" a zombie and use them to protect yourself. It's long lasting and effective without requiring you get all gooey.

The show has a set of rules for Zombies but there are several articles that point out that the show doesn't follow the rules at all times. In this article Are The Walking Dead's Zombies Following the Show's Own Rules? the author specifically points out the guts scene with contrast to the freeway scene. Rule #6 says "Zombies have poor eyesight but they do have a strong sense of smell." If that's the case why were they able to get by just hiding under cars? The response was

"The smell thing that we saw in the first season is really just a
rudimentary sense [the zombies have] that we don't smell like a dead
person in some way, so they have some sense of smell that enables them
to differentiate people from zombies. But they're not bloodhounds, you
don't see them walking around and sniffing, following their nose or
something. So hiding under a car is going to work."

Which seems to contradict rule #6. I bring this up because if we examine the way the story is going, the show is no longer about zombies, but human interaction and society in a post-apocalyptic world. So it's ok if the rules are broken because zombies are just there every now and then to remind us how scary the world is.

Another question would be, why not wear zombie guts when going on runs? It would make runs far safer. If we go back to rule #6 and it's contradiction, it would suggest that only a small amount of guts should be sufficient to deter the walkers. But, this isn't a 2hr movie, it's an ongoing series so making every scene safe would be boring.

In the end, I say 3 points to consider an answer are

• There wasn't another reason to do this


• Zombies don't matter as much as they did in the first few episodes of season 1


• Fear factor for audience

Of course, this is only speculation on my part.

Edit: Thinking about the contradiction to rule #6 again, even if it did start to rain on their first attempt, if they were able to hide under cars, why would a little rain cause them to become noticeable. A little guts should have been enough for them to get by. Food for thought.

Edit 2: Having reread the response to rule #6 contradiction, proximity could be a factor here. Covering yourself in guts may only be necessary when in very close proximity as they were in that scene, but hiding under cars and using disarmed zombies at a distance will keep them away. But, if proximity is the answer, why did Andrea get followed when walking back to Woodbury? She was further away from them than the group when they were under the cars AND with the noise of the truck, they should have been distracted away from her. We've seen members of the gorup walk past a single walker and not have any trouble.

Is there a good resource which analyzes many parody movies for "what is being lampooned"?

Good parody movies (e.g. Airplaine, Hot Shots) lampoon a whole bunch of things, in nearly every scene.

Is there a good resource which analyses some of the main ones scene by scene and notes a full list of what is being parodied?

Please note that I'm looking for a detailed analysis, NOT an IMDB-high-level "references these 5 movies" bullet list.

E.g. it needs to have a level of detail like this:

• "Hot shots Part Deux", in a scene where Topper Harley says "Out of all the jungles in all the countries in the world, you had to come into mine", he was lampooning a famous "Casablanca" quote "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine".

_{I used specifically this example because someone I know who deeply appreciates parody movies but wasn't raised on American culture was deeply shocked to find out that this was, indeed the lampooned material (since the person never saw Casablanca).}

neuroscience - SPINAL CORD: Do the axons from white matter synapse with the cell bodies in grey matter?

Here is a great diagram (from here) that outlines all of the different white matter tracts running up (blue) and down (red) the cord.

The portion in the center, as you have found in your research, is the gray matter. In there are the different interneurons (cells that exist in the network to integrate information from descending controls and do further processing on it) and all of the different motor neurons. The corticospinal tract descends to the appropriate level (for example, a neuron in charge of moving your arm, to keep it simple, will have a cell body in the brain, and descend to the thoracic level), enters into the gray matter and either synapse on an interneuron or directly onto a motor neuron).

The sensory neurons are a slightly different animal. Some (pseudo-unipolar cells) have what are basically two "legs", one that runs out into the periphery, which will take the signal from something like a Pacinian corpuscle in the skin, propagates a signal to the cell body, which is outside of the spinal cord in the dorsal root (see below), and the other "leg" runs all the way up the dorsal column into the medulla of the brainstem.

^{from here}

So that should give you some idea of the two major tracts. To see some of the finer detail, you can look into the different layers (laminae) that the gray matter is composed of, so that you can trace the connections all the way in.

Ending of "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" (2009)?

I just watched "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" and I was wondering about the ending.

Immediately after Nicholas Cage's character snorts a line from the bag of uncut heroin and sits next to his Father's wife to watch the football game, it cuts to a scene in which he's walking into the police station, sitting down at his desk. One right after the other, all the loose ends get tied up. The money he owes his girlfriend's client is forgiven, the game turns around and his bookie gives him $15,000 in winnings, the speeding ticket magically gets taken care of and then the captain comes in and shows him evidence that will convict the heroin dealer. They then proceed to bust the heroin dealer and Nicholas Cage's character takes the high road and makes sure he's arrested instead of having an "accident". Later we find his girlfriend is pregnant, they have a house and his whole family has given up alcohol. We even find out that the man he saved at the beginning of the film is clean and getting his life on track.

There are hints that he's still his bad self. He's snorting dope, he's harassing kids that are coming out a night club, etc, but overall it's very much a "Disney ending", with everything working out well for the lead character.

My question is this: Is this ending real or is it really the last fevered fantasy of Nicholas Cage's character as he's dying from a heroin overdose?

There are many references to the uncut heroin being too strong to take without being cut. Nicholas Cage's character mentions it to his girlfriend right before she tells him she's going to a meeting with his father. The gangsters tell him that he needs to cut the dope "unless you wanna kill the motherfucker". We see Nicholas Cage's character clearly snorting a line with the bag sitting next to it before the "Disney ending" starts.

The ending also feels much too saccharine, especially for someone like Herzog. Also notice that when the "Disney ending" starts, the criminals that come in are talking about highly illegal activity, like murder, theft, gambling, prostitution and drug use, all while sitting at his desk without regard to discretion. There is even a scene where his bookie hands him $15,000 in cash, shows him the contents with his partner sitting in the desk next to him, clearly within earshot and line of sight of his partner sitting in the next desk.

Another interesting fact is that Nicholas Cage's character is leading the arrest of the heroin dealer even though he's been pulled to the sidelines and had his weapon confiscated.

Even the last scene, where he is sitting at the base of a large aquarium tank full of fish, can be interpreted a few ways. Perhaps it can be interpreted as "swimming with the fishes". There is also a reference to sleeping and dreaming, suggesting a tie to the original poem he found by the murdered child ("My friend is a fish. He live in my room. His fin is a cloud. He see me when I sleep.") with also the standard metaphor of death and sleep.

I thought of this immediately when viewing the film and found it obvious, but from looking online, I don't find another reviewer who acknowledges this theory. Most seem to accept the ending at face value. I only found one review who even considered this possibility only to then casually dismiss it to deride Herzog for tacking on a Hollywood ending to what was an otherwise dark film.

I also can't find any interviews with Herzog on the matter, but directors are often known to not talk about what kind of meaning their films have.

Does anyone have conclusive evidence that this is the case? Does anyone have any references that would support this theory?

Movie where kids exchange their mom at a carnival

I'm trying to remember the name of a movie where a group of kids end up trading their mom for a different mom (or maybe they were orphans?) at something that looked like a carnival. Each kid got 1-2 coins to try different mothers. They end up getting different women that they don't care for, and run out of coins.

At the end of the movie they end up imagining a new mom, and she somehow comes to life.

I remember seeing it on tv, it may not have had a theatrical release. I think I saw it around early to mid 90's.

Does anyone recognize this movie?

Why did Marcellus Wallace throw Tony Rocky Horror out of a window?

The only people who know the reason are Marcellus and Antwan "Tony Rocky Horror". So here's my theory, but needs little explaining. After Zed incident, Marcellus tells Butch the only people that will ever know about the "incident" are himself, Butch and Zed (though not for much longer once he tortures him to death.) Sound familiar?

I think Tony Rocky Horror (and that references Rocky Horror Picture Show, cult classic about a transvestite) must have come onto Marcellus and he threw the guy out of a window to be sure he never did it again. Is one of his crew and didn't actually do anything invasive, so let him live, unlike Zed, a stranger that full on raped him and he knew needed a waaaay worse lesson.

Who is Mr. Gold in the movie Revolver?

The movie isn't an analogy to chess. The movie is about the illusion that imprisons every one of us.

Deep beneath the films violence, blood and grit, lurks a spiritual and enlightening message - a message echoed throughout time by revered figures such as Buddha and Bodhidharma, a message also echoed in Kabbalah (which is probably where Guy Ritchie drew his inspiration from, as his then-wife, Madonna, is heavily into Kabbalah). And that message is this: we are not our ego; the ego, far from being our friend, is responsible for most of our pain and misery; the ego is a product of the mind and creates the illusion of separation, the ego is a prison, a prison that very few people recognise as such.

To answer your question: Mr. Gold is everyone's ego. In Jake's case, Mr. Gold is the part of Jake who wants to kill Macha.

so i married axe murderer - Is the female "Ralph" character playing along?

It's important to bear in mind that although Mike Myers' character is under the mistaken belief that his fiancee/wife, Harriet, is hiding the fact that she is an axe-murderer, what Harriet is really trying to hide is her shame that, as she believes, she has been dumped by all of her many previous fiancees (who, in fact, have actually been murdered - they didn't dump her at all).

But she has come to believe she is so unattractive that any man who gets to know her intimately will dump her, so she beomes pathologically terrified of Myers finding out she's had so many previous engagements.

She therefore persuades her girl friends to conspire with her to hide that from Myers. This is a comedy, and the joke is that Ralph is an unlikely name for a girl; but, nonetheless, at one point Harriet does try to pass off her unintentional mention of 'Ralph' as a reference to a girl she knows. To convince Myers, she then has to get one of her female friends to pretend to be Ralph.

the dark knight rises - Why did Nolan want to end the Batman series?

There are numerous magazine articles and interviews with Nolan in which he states that he always conceived his Batman films as a three-act story. He and his brother had the basic arc mapped out from the beginning, it was just a case of putting meat on the bones when the time came to write the next script.

Quoting Nolan:

Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film an great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story ... I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these thing don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. That’s what we do.

BTW - DC and Warner really want to move on with their attempt at a Justice League movie, and Nolan's Batman does not fit into that scheme in any way; the character would need to be rebooted in order to allow the more fantastical elements of the JL stories to be told - right now he is too grounded.

Did The Doctor use a full regeneration cycle?

The Deadly Assassin (1976) is the first time any limitation on the process is mentioned, and it becomes a major plot point in almost all stories dealing with The Master from that point forward, including in the 1996 attempt to revive the series.

However...all of that predates the Last Great Time War.

The modern series has yet to nail down any limitation on the process, although it's more or less stated in "Let's Kill Hitler" that River has used up all her remaining regeneration energy, implying that there is some limitation.

If The Master can be entirely reincarnated (twice; once off-screen by the Time Lords in hopes he would help fight the Time War; once in "The End of Time"), then it seems feasible to assume that any prior limitations on regeneration might have been altered or even lifted entirely.

The upshot, therefore, is that @FredH's comment above is pretty much spot on: if the writers choose, then the Doctor can go on regenerating indefinitely. They could choose to explain the change as an artifact of the Time War; or something the Doctor figured out afterward without the Time Lords looking over his shoulder to stop him; or simply decide not to say anything at all, on the grounds that most of their viewership are not familiar with the Classic Series and won't necessarily care.

Why didn't James believe Beckham was alive in The Hurt Locker?

What's the reason the boy looking like Beckham was killed?

The boy looking like Beckham was killed because it was a manner in which the terrorists planted bombs inside dead bodies so that when people came to collect the bodies, they would detonate - thus killing even more people.

The boy was a random boy and was not killed because he looked like Beckham. So there is no linkage there.

Who killed the boy looking like Beckham?

Terrorists.

Why was he covered with an unexploded bomb?

See answer to your first question above.
If you have seen the film No Man's Land, a similar technique is used which also becomes the focal plot point of that film.

Why James didn't believe Beckham was alive?

I believe that James hadn't seen Beckham for quite sometime and the dead boy looked similar to Beckham. Added to this, being in a war zone can be quite stressful and hence it is only normal that your mind makes you be on an edge and really alert to your surroundings. Hence even a small suspicion is blown out of proportion. (Guilty unless proven innocent in this case)

Why does Obi-Wan say that he'll become more powerful if Vader kills him?

I know this is an old post but I feel I must provide another perspective, because it seems to me that many people miss the fact that Vader actually strikes an empty cloak. The Jedi, Obi-Wan has vanished before the strike.

I'll describe the scene for you: As our heros approach the falcon (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie and the droids) the stromtroopers are distracted by the duel and abandon their post. The heroes rush out to the falcon when Luke spots Ben and Vader. At this point Ben has already uttered the quote from the OP and now as he spots Luke, he pauses, smiles, raises his sabre to a vertical position, holds it in front of his face and closes his eyes in concentration. Vader swipes, but suddenly there is no more Ben. He has completely vanished. This is in stark contrast to all other sabre duels, where the bodily remains are always left behind.

a youtube clip (the video is perhaps a few seconds shorter than a would've liked though, becuase afterwards Vader even steps on the cloak and prods it with his toes, because he is confused that Obi-Wan has vanished)

And from the script itself (albeit an early draft, but this scene is consistent with what we still see in the film today). Emphasis, mine:

The old Jedi Knight looks over his shoulder at Luke, lifts his sword
from Vader's then watches his opponent with a serene look on his face.

Vader brings his sword down, cutting old Ben in half. Ben's cloak
falls to the floor in two parts, but Ben is not in it. Vader is
puzzled at Ben's disappearance and pokes at the empty cloak. As the
guards are distracted, the adventurers and the robots reach the
starship. Luke sees Ben cut in two and starts for him. Aghast, he
yells out.

LUKE: No!

So, to answer the question: why does Obi-Wan say he will become more powerful? Because that is part of his vision and his plan. In order to provide ongoing guidance to the rebellion's last hope, Luke, this is what must happen. Does Vader actually kill him? That is debatable, but in light of previous duels between Obi-Wan and Anakin, perhaps Ben has decided that neither one of them can defeat the other because they are too well matched against each other. He simply gives in to the force, transcends to his next spiritual being and lives on.

Why does Banner finally allow the Hulk to come out?

Banner's basic problem isn't anger. It's trust.

He not only learns how to trust himself as the Hulk, but he also learns to trust the Avengers - that they will protect the people from the Hulk if necessary, They will be his shield when needed, his direction when needed, and, in the latest movie, his path back to being Banner.

He's still very conflicted, but he was able to trust the people around him and himself more due to recent experiences, and thus felt comfortable in his role as the Hulk under extenuating circumstances.

In The Age of Ultron he finds, though, that he can still be controlled or misdirected, by the scarlet witch in this case, and hurt both the people he trusts, and those around him. As much as he trusts the Avengers, he loses trust in himself.

There's also a hint of mistrust in the Avengers as well. It's easy for him to guess whether the feelings he has for Black Widow are real, but are the actions and feelings she's expressing real, or simply a method to keep him under control, to direct him as a tool for others to use?

How could Joe end up in the field?

I guess this is more a question about the nature of time travel more than anything else.

At the end of the movie, Joe shoots himself in a field and changes the course of history. What I'm curious about is how Joe ended up in the field given the change in history.

If his future self had never existed he'd never have gone on the mission he did and thus he never would have ended up in the field. It seems as though once he'd killed himself, he couldn't have killed himself because what led to that event was the existence of his future self. So theoretically, time and space should have just folded in on itself and popped out of existence.

What do you think? Is there something I'm missing that would explain a dead Joe in a cornfield and how we would have ended up there without their having been a future version of himself to try and stop?

Movie with a cat and an anti-smoking organisation?

At some time in the 80s I've seen part of a movie of which I don't know the name. Since I couldn't see it to the end, since then I've always wondered how it continues (and also what was in the jacket; see below).

The movie starts with a cat, and some girl's voice saying "help me". The cat gets then caught and ends up at an anti-smoking organization, and the movie then focuses at a man consulting the organization. That organization has some "electro-cage", which they demonstrate with the cat, and which makes whoever is inside "dance" through electric shocks. They say that it the man smokes again, they'll put his wife into that cage, if it happens again, his daughter, and if it happens yet again, they'll send someone to rape his wife. To the question of what happens if he smokes yet again afterwards, he opened his jacket, but I couldn't recognize what was inside; it must have been something that answered the question. The man tries not to smoke, but ultimately fails to do so, and they put his wife in the cage. Then the cat escapes, and the voice of the girl again says "help me". That's the part of the movie I've seen. While the smoking story seemed like it ended, the "help me" afterwards makes me believe that this wasn't the end of the movie (that is, the part I've not seen is probably more than just the closing credits).

Since it's so long ago, I might mis-remember some detail. However I know that it was played from a video tape (can't tell if it was recorded from TV, or a bought tape).

Does anybody know that movie?

Professor Moriarty's motivations in the Sherlock Holmes movies

The purpose of the bomb was threefold:

1. To conceal the fact that a single person in the room was to be killed


2. To inflame passions in the country's involved to ratchet up tensions for Moriarty's desired worldwide conflict


3. To destroy any trace evidence that any of the above had occurred.

When the explosion is shown from the outside of the building, it is clear that the bomb created a great deal of heat and open flames as well as a powerful explosion. It also clearly destroys all of the windows facing the protagonists. In fact, the room and building should have still be on fire when the protagonists entered given the size of the explosion shown and any human remains should have mangled or destroyed making Holmes' deductions impossible.

The remote control from the first film seems to to fit in with the numerous weapon's technologies been built by Moriarty's vast web of companies. When for some reason the second film's narrative diverged from the ending of the first, the need to explain the remote and how it could have been used (decades before any such device was built in reality) seems to have dropped in favor of telling the new story.

biochemistry - For how long and how cold should I perform ethanol/isopropanol precipitations of RNA or DNA?

I always did mine at -80 C, but I never compared the results to other protocols (I don't fix what's not broken). But, I was curious about the same thing, so I looked around. I found one paper discussing this: Paithankar and Prasad, Nuc Acids Res 19(6):1346 (1991)

It shows that at low concentrations, EtOH at RT actually outperforms the precipitations at both 4 C and dry ice/ethanol bath. That difference is quite big at 100ng/ml DNA and lost when there is more than 10 ug/ml DNA. For typical extractions, based on this data, I'd do it at RT.

On the other hand, Hilario and Mackay say in their book that:

for genomic DNA isolation, different DNA precipitation temperatures
and incubation times have little effect on recovery rates. One can
directly centrifuge after adding ethanol without the -20 C incubation,
and, it -20 C ethanol is not available, room temperature ethanol can
be used.

They do not, however, provide any citation for that statement.

What's the title of this German movie about a couple moving in to a new house?

It's a German drama about a young couple that is moving into a new house. The man is kinda short and has a mustache, the girl is pretty. The man's brother and another female friend is joining for a few days, which causes some serious problems.

I won't spoil the end.

film techniques - Do contemporary cinemas really project at 25fps?

This is one of those interesting questions which gets more complex (and harder to answer) the more you learn about it. Unfortunately I cannot answer definitively how theater projectors work. I'll explain why I don't think that question can be answered. And I'm going to reference 100fps.com a bit.

First, I don't think the question can be answered now, because projector hardware is kinda stuck. Look at how few screens in your area converted to 3D in the past few years. Yes, most theaters likely have 1 or 2 screens capable of 3D, but the expense of converting them all just isn't supportable. Because of costs like this, most theaters are using projection methods which are likely very out of date; so even if newer/better projection methods exist, it's likely you're still seeing older methods. But this question likely couldn't be answered in the past, because of different video standards. American cinema companies developed one set of film standards, while european companies developed another. This carries into broadcast encoding technologies for TV, and pretty much every corner of video.

One great bit of discussion can be found here. It looks at the question of how the human eye perceives video images, and some of the trade-offs necessary to make movies look fluid. Note in particular this observation:

The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film
motion as being fluid at about 18fps, because of its blurring.

This makes the main page at 100fps.com more relevant to the question of how cinema can get away with such low frame rates, as the main page is focused on interlacing (and image de-interlacing). Cinema blurs the images in each frame (by combining time slices) it gives the illusion of smoothness to motion.

As near as I can tell, most theaters in the US run at 24 frames per second, with 2 or 3 exposures per frame. The higher exposure rate prevents the eye from seeing the black shutter. The interlaced frames make the image look smooth. By comparison, most theaters in Europe show 25 frames per second, still with 2 or 3 exposures per frame. This low frame rate (by modern video game standards) works because the images are not crisply rendered computer images. So motion blur works to make it look better.

Some further reading: NTSC on Wikipedia, PAL on Wikipedia, Projectors:Shutter on Wikipedia, and the Flicker Fusion Threshold.

american reunion - How did Jim's mom die?

One, we liked how that matured the franchise in a certain way, where it’s not just about sex and losing your virginity and the smaller things in life you see in the earlier films;

When you get to be in your 30s, some serious things can happen to you, and we wanted to explore that with a relationship that you know and love.

Jim and his father have always had this relationship where his dad is giving him advice and helping him along in life, and when you reach your 30s, you no longer see your parents as just “mom” and “dad”—you see them as actual, real people. You start giving them advice, and we loved that role reversal.

identify this movie - WW II romantic comedy with the line "Thanks for the add"

I'm racking my brain trying to remember an American made (ca. early 1940s?) war film about Americans at war, perhaps with some romantic comedy aspects to it.
Main reason for interest: Mess scene in film where NCO says, "Thanks for the add".

Most people assume that the expression is very recent with its origins in internet lingo (for e.g., in MySpace), but evidently it goes back way beyond.

Which Martial Arts does Jason Bourne know?

The Bourne Directory says:

Jason Bourne is a masterful expert in Kali martial arts. He is seen using it in the movies and video game.

Further, amongst his weapons are listed are:

• Jeet Kune Do


• Krav Maga


• Kali Martial Arts

Finally, the page about the game Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy says:

As a third-person espionage action game, players move from fistfights to firefights to car chases to experience sequences that aim to seamlessly blend Bourne's signature Kali martial arts with intense shooting and the ability to escape and evade deadly situations.

Explanation of the Muppets/Sesame Street split/merge

Sesame Street began in 1969, under the direction of the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop). Jim Henson was contracted to provide the puppets for that show.

At that time, Jim Henson was also producing a number of specials starring other Muppet characters (Kermit, for example, had been created for a local TV show in 1955, and Rowlf for a commercial in 1962).

In 1976, The Muppet Show began. Most of that show's major characters, except for Kermit and Rowlf, were new creations either for the show itself or for a special intended as a pilot the previous year.

In 2000, Sesame Workshop bought the Muppet characters that had been appearing on their show from the Henson company.

In 2004, Disney bought the Muppet Show, its characters, spinoffs, movies, and a few precursor specials (along with the word "Muppet") from Henson (along with Bear in the Big Blue House).

Fraggle Rock and some other specials not starring either of the above-mentioned sets of characters (except in small roles) remain under the Jim Henson Company's ownership.

What is the meaning of the "fly scene" in Breaking Bad?

I think it's about little things escalating to big things. The episode starts with Walt noticing .14% of each batch coming up short. He's detected Jesse's skimming but doesn't know it yet. The fly represents nagging doubt. A little minor annoying thing, which leads to a bigger thing (losing his shoe) which leads to a bigger thing (falling off the mezzanine). What problem, little today, if neglected will escalates? A downfall starts tiny.

Walt has his secret betrayal too, about Jane's death, which he almost discloses after Jesse drugs his coffee with sleeping pills. One more candidate for Walt's undoing.

By the way, this is what is known as a "bottle" episode. Small setting, small cast, small budget. Like a fly in a bottle.

spectroscopy - Infrared Astronomy for non transiting objects?

Yes it is. As long as light is produced by a source and then passes through a medium, we can perform spectroscopy on it. When considering a planet like Uranus, most of the light that it emits is actually reflected light or re-emitted light from the Sun. Uranus produces very little light by its own merit. For light that is directly reflected (by that I mean the light from the Sun goes into the atmosphere, hits molecules, and gets scattered out of the atmosphere again), this is directly equivalent to the standard transiting planets you mention in your question. For light that is re-emitted, you still see absorption spectra, but the black body background has changed. In this scenario, the light is absorbed lower in the atmosphere and re-emitted at a longer wavelength, but that emitted light must still try to leave the atmosphere and will experience some absorption along the way, creating absorption lines.

Cracks in the wall inconsistencies

Yes, there are inconsistencies, but they are for the most part tolerable ones. It is perhaps a moment that stretches credulity when the Doctor puts his hand into a crack but it is not bad drama for all that when he pulls out a damaged piece of the TARDIS (from the future).

Making a quick list it is easy to see that a crack behaves something like a window. You can i) see and hear things (at other places and times) through a crack ii) you can pass things (across space and time) though a crack iii) you can be sucked through a crack (think decompression) and cease to exist or be remembered having had every trace of your impression on spacetime removed and perhaps iv) you can make your way from one place and time to another by passing through a crack. The Vampires of Venice episode seems to allow for the latter possibility with the vampires (i.e. Saturnine creatures) having fled through a crack that permitted their escape to Earth from some terrible threat that they labeled "the Silents".

The strangest thing witnessed in connection to a crack is when in the Cold Blood episode a white light envelops Rory's dead body as it is drawn into a crack (as seen from where the Doctor and Amy stand). There apparently is something non-random and intentional happening here, but it is unclear whether we are looking at a form of technology controlled from the other side of the crack or whether some entity is able to use energy from the crack to achieve certain ends. Rory's reappearance in The Pandorica Opens as a self-aware individual (albeit Auton) who remembers everything about Amy and the Doctor is incredibly strange, so much so that the Doctor labels him a miracle, something he says he has never seen before. The way these elements are connected is unclear but it is reasonable to suppose that a connection exists.

Why was Monica Geller overweight in her younger years?

Monica was fat in her younger years because she ate too much.

• In The One Where Rachel Tells... Ross says:

  
  
  

  
  

  I grew up with Monica. If you didn't eat fast, you didn't eat!

  
  




• In The One With The Pediatrician we learn that Ross used to go to a therapist, because

  
  
  

  
  

  Monica: ... he used to have this recurring nightmare. It really freaked him out.
  
  Rachel: Wow, what was it?
  Monica: That I was going to eat him.

  
  




• In The One With Phoebe's Cookies it is revealed that Monica was once sent to fat camp:

  
  
  

  
  

  Ross: He still tells the story about how Monica tried to escape from fat camp.
  
  Monica: I wasn't escaping!
  
  Ross: Then how did you get caught in the barbed wire?
  
  Monica: I was trying to help out a squirrel.
  
  Ross: You were trying to eat it!

  
  

Monica lost the weight because of an incident during Thanksgiving 1987, when she overhears Chandler say to Ross:

I just don't want to be stuck here all night with your fat sister.

That prompted Monica to lose weight, which she successfully managed by Thanksgiving 1988.

identify this movie - Bus teleports into the middle of the desert

I don't remember much of the movie but there was a scene where a bus teleports into the middle of the desert and the bad guy rips off one of the poles and uses it to direct fire out of his hands.

It was a sci-fi-ish movie. That's the only thing I remember about it. I saw it back in 97/98 which means it was released about 94/95.

What is the point of the ending scene in In The Mood For Love?

First of all, the movie was incredibly difficult for me to follow. Contrary to the way Wong Kar wai directed 2046, which was just as confusing in places but always backed up by narration, In The Mood For Love is pure dialogue.

I had to watch it about 10 times before I really followed what was going on and the ending still makes me go, WHAT?

CAMBODIA, 1966

The presidential corps waits at Pochentong Airport. Prince Norodom
Sihanouk and Queen Sisowath Kossamak come forward to greet General De
Gaulle.

It's ten kilometers from Pochentong to Phnom Penh.

200,000 people line the route.

A welcome unprecedented in the history of the kingdom.

He remembers those vanished years.

As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something
he could see, but not touch.

And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

What's the point of all that historical detail about Cambodia? Is there a point?

film techniques - Is a helicopter used to shoot such scenes?

The Aerial Shot:

An exciting variation of a crane shot, usually taken from a helicopter. This is often used at the beginning of a film, in order to establish setting and movement. A helicopter is like a particularly flexible sort of crane - it can go anywhere, keep up with anything, move in and out of a scene, and convey real drama and exhilaration — so long as you don't need to get too close to your actors or use location sound with the shots.

The following link will give you a complete detail about camera angles and shots

http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html

What wrong did Tobin Frost do?

We are not really told exactly why Frost went rogue. But we can infer that this was because he was made a scapegoat:

From IMDb:

Tobin Frost: I already am in your head. They're going to isolate you, Matt. They're going to be real nice to you at first. They're going to put their arm around you and tell you things like, "You did a decent job, son. We'll take it from here." That's when you know you're screwed. Forget about me, they're going to focus on you. They're going to try and make a connection between you and I. So that if this all goes wrong, they'll have something to fall back on in their little Senate hearings. I'm not your only enemy tonight.

When Weston asks Frost why he went rogue, he replies that it was because of all the lies. He mentions a specific case where (I don't remember exactly) someone in his charge is killed as he was about to reveal information about corruption in the CIA. Rather than doing something about it, Frost chose to keep quiet and thereby compromises his own integrity. He now wants Weston to do better.

In the epilogue, Weston tells his CIA boss (Sam Shepard) that he doesn't have any list. When he leaves, he tells Shepard that he'll take it from there and subsequently, releases the list to the press. Shepard is one of those on it.

If you really squint your eyes, you might be able to see a glimmer of an argument for Frost also referring to Weston's private life with his French girlfriend. He wanted Weston to not compromise his personal life for the sake of the CIA. In the final scene, the couple are reunited.

faq - How to identify a movie from a screen shot?

Movie identification questions with only a screen shot are not considered high quality questions, but they are indeed questions.

I would like to know what steps can be taken to identify a movie from a screen shot on my own.

For example, I found this screen shot while browsing some facebook pages and I would like to know what movie it's from. How do I identify this movie on my own? Is it even possible?

The movie Prometheus and Alien android designs:

First of all, the main point to consider is that the Alien (and later Alien/Predator) universe is not an entirely pre-thought and consistently grown universe, with the stories well tied into each other. There were different producers, directors and story-tellers taking turns on the story and including additional stuff (like the merge with the Predator-franchise). And with the resulting advantage of a conglomerate of entirely different genres and styles comes the disadvantage of sacrificing some coherence and overall consistency of the story. Rather than continuing some established universe, future sequels rather took their pick at interpreting and contuing the story, referencing previous events and characters as they see fit (or not at all), neccessarily introducing some problems with previous story aspects in the course. But we might be able to provide a little rundown of how the character of Weyland and the androids developed in the movies:

---

The first Alien movie did likely not have any future sequels in mind right from the start, let alone the appearance of the original creator of the androids and the fact of them being modeled after him. Those androids were just modeled in some varied way (as the crew of the Nostromo also didn't know about Ash being an android at all). Thus this aspect was just not thought about yet. Then in Aliens the role of the synthetic human was played by Lance Henriksen. I think also at this point there was likely not yet a consideration of the androids being modeled after any real life person, but just in a normal diversified way.

Then at the end of Alien³ we have Lance Henriksen play the head of the Weyland company. But it seems that was rather introduced into the story as a reminiscence (for both Ripley and the audience) to the original Bishop, chosen for Ripley to better draw a connection to someone she already had a connection to (in the same way as the T-800 was selected to kill John Connor due to his previous relationship with him, to draw a connection to an entirely different movie franchise). It is IMHO not clear if this was really the head of the Weyland company (as he stated, I think) or just another of those androids modeled after the original Weyland and just claiming to be him (though, IMDb lists him as "Bishop II"). But disregarding if the role from Alien³ was really supposed to be Weyland or not, the fact that the androids were modeled after the original Weyland was not introduced, let alone thought about, before the creation of the story for Alien³ and the fact that not neccessarily all of the androids were modeled after him (be it in past movies, or also in Alien: Resurrection) was just a minor inconsistency to be accepted, or rather a coincidence for Ripley to stumble across one of the "Weyland-style" models.

Then there came the merge of franchises with AVP: Aliens vs. Predator. This built upon the previously introduced fact of at least Bishop being modeled after Weyland and used this to make Lance Henriksen reprise the role of the original Weyland in the present (our present, when AVP is set). But this was IMHO rather made as a neat reference to the previous movies than to really strengthen the fact of all androids being built after Weyland.

Then there is also the newest installment of Prometheus which was itself made as a (maybe/maybe not) prequel to the first Alien movie and Ridley Scott has clarified that it is not related to any of the following movies (or at least any of the AVP movies) in any way. So there isn't any connection of Prometheus' Weyland to his depictions in the previous movies, let alone the fact of him modeling his androids after his likeness.

---

So to sum up, the out-of-universe answer is that this aspect wasn't thought out right from the beginning and this is just one of those little inconsistencies resulting from the heterogenous nature of the Aliens/Predator universe. If you would like to have some possible in-universe reason, then it might very well be that not all of the androids were modeled after Charles Bishop Weyland or his descendants, but only some of them.

What is the first occurence of film within a film within a film?

One example is Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002):

In a self-parody of the Austin Powers series, there
is a film within the film in the opening. Austin
Powers is featured in a bio-pic called Austinpussy (a parody of the James Bond film Octopussy) directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise as Austin Powers, Gwyneth Paltrow as Dixie Normous, Kevin Spacey as Dr. Evil, Danny DeVito as Mini-Me, and John Travolta as Goldmember.

And at the end:

The heroes arrest Goldmember, who turns
to the camera to reveal the entire string of events was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise as Austin, Kevin Spacey as Dr. Evil, Danny DeVito as Mini-Me, and John Travolta as Goldmember. Austin, Foxxy, Dr. Evil, Mini-Me and
Nigel are in the audience of a Hollywood theater
watching the film.

---

You may also be thinking of Scream 2 and 3 (1997 and 2000), which although weren't examples of a film-within-a-film-within-a-film, each had a film-within-a-film:

In the latter two films of the Scream horror trilogy, a film-within-a-film format is used when the
events of the first film spawn their own horror
trilogy within the films themselves. In Scream 2, characters get killed while watching a film version
of the events in the first Scream film, while in Scream 3 the actors playing the trilogy's characters end up getting killed, much in the
same way as the characters they are playing on
screen.

friends - Where are Monica and Chandler's apartments?

No. 90 Bedford Street, on the southeast corner of Bedford and Grove Streets, stood-in as the exterior of her building.

In the ground floor of their building was the coffee shop, Central Perk, where the gang spent the other half of their time. There is a ground floor food establishment at 90 Bedford, but Central Perk is a little more down-to-earth than today’s real-life counterpart, the Little Owl restaurant.

Why did Chandler Bing get into the advertisement field?

On Christmas Day, Chandler quits his job so that he can fly home to
New York to be with Monica. Monica helps Chandler secure a job in
advertising through an old college friend of hers. Much to Chandler's
dismay, the job is as an intern, which leaves him in the awkward
position of working alongside people who are significantly younger
than he. However, his more mature approach eventually pays off for him
compared to the other interns, and he secures a full-time job in the
business as a junior copywriter when he only expected to receive an
assistant position. The company concluded that he would be better
suited for a more senior role. (Source)

Episode Of Moonlighting where David has to reapply for his job

It could be Season 4 Episode 6 - Cool hand Dave part 2.

In this conclusion of a two-part story, David (Bruce Willis) attempts to escape from a chain gang in order to be reunited with his pregnant sweetheart Maddie (Cybill Shepherd, who is represented only by her voice in this episode). It looks like David's only hope for freedom is to follow the "musical" advice of his fellow inmates. Meanwhile, with one of the Moonlighting stars out of circulation, the nervous ABC executives begin auditioning potential "David Addison" replacements!

He was'nt bored of his job though he was in prison. However in Season 2 Episode 9

Maddie sells the agency to a wealthier rival firm, which upsets David, who announces his intention to start up his own agency. Maddie realizes she has made a mistake and convinces her rival to give the agency back to her.

These are the only two episode I've seen where his role/job is 'seriously' in jeopardy. That being said I only started season 5 last week so I could be wrong.

film techniques - Kill Bill colour changes to Black and White

No, I don't think it got anything to do with "gross level" - maybe the blood is not red, but body parts still fly around.

My own common sense tells me the goal of this technique is to put more focus on those scenes, draw the viewer attention.

This way those scenes are also much more "artistic" and give the movie whole new layer.. many times those things make the difference between "just another movie" and a cult movie.

Couldn't find any official explanation, so I stick with the above two reasons.

Is Skyfall preparing the ground to some major change in the franchise?

Not at all, rather on the contrary.

They rather reintroduced classic characters, but adapted them to the new modern rebooted Bond, like Q (who is now rather a hacker than an inventor) or Moneypenny (who is much stronger and more self-confident than the languishing little secretary she was before the reboot). In the end Bond is a different character himself (and not just another actor), as introduced no later than Casino Royale.

It is true that the modern Bond is much more vulnerable (both physically and emotionally) and the stories center much more around Bond himself and his development. But those "major changes" rather started with Casino Royale and Skyfall is more of a step towards classic Bond movies (while still retaining the modernizations of the "Craig-era").

And I didn't find any hint that there could be a final episode. Bond had his difficulties in this movie (see this related question), but at the end he's more confident and ready to go on than ever before (and this related question). And in the end there will never be a final episode. If you cannot continue a storyline in a reasonable way, you just do a reboot (which is especially common nowadays).

What you may experience is, that the story of the movie centered much more around the internals of MI6 and directly involved major characters in dramatic events, especially M dying. This indeed somehow new ground may spark the deduction that if M can just die throughout the movie, then why not Bond also? But in fact the final scene somehow shows (and Mrs. Dench may forgive me for saying that) how replaceable M actually is and that it requires a bit more than his/her death to endanger the further continuation and overall immutability of James Bond's adventures. It is just that the new Craig-movies have a much closer relation to each other and a higher overall story-consistency. Or call it a more dynamic cross-movie development of the story and characters, compared to the rather ground-up start of virtually each of the pre-Craig movies (in fact Bond's wife and her death is the only major cross-movie story development of the pre-Craig era, I think). But this fine-grained development doesn't neccessarily need to imply major changes in the overall franchise (and in Skyfall it certainly didn't).

And like said, the emphasis on Bond's own character and development and his physical and emotional weakness are not a novum of Skyfall but rather of the modern Craig-Bond at a whole, it's just emphasized a bit more in this movie. But neither does it give me the impression of discovering totally new ground compared to the previous movies. It even promises more traditional directions, even if not dropping all the modernizations, in the future (personal disclaimer: I like both the "Craigian" modernizations as well as the more "traditional" Bond-movies).

And last but not least, I just found this related article which may provide some additional thoughts about Skyfall making a statement for retraditionalizing the franchise. Although I for myself wouldn't go that far, it provides some interresting views.

How old is James Bond?

As jamesbond.wikia.com states

Because the James Bond Film Franchise has lasted nearly sixty years, the characters do not age in relation to release of the first film. Rather, Bond is always mid-aged. Likewise, in Ian Fleming's stories, James Bond is in his mid-to-late thirties.

That means he always aged from mid-to-late thirties. With an exception of Moonraker

In Moonraker, he admits to being eight years shy of mandatory retirement age from the 00 section—45—which would mean he was 37 at the time.(source)

But it's the case for the novel, I am not sure about the movie, because I didn't watch it.

If you go with the actors age, George Lazenby was the youngest Bond at 29 years when he was hired for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Moore is the longest-serving James Bond actor, having spent 12 years in the role (from his debut in 1973, to his retirement from the role in 1985), and having made seven official films in a row. Moore is the oldest actor to have played Bond: he was 45 in Live and Let Die (1973), and 58 when he announced his retirement on 3 December 1985.(source)

Why were American accents common?

In Total Recall (2012), most of the world was rendered uninhabitable. Two regions remain habitable, the UK and Australia. So you'd expect accents appropriate to those areas to be common. However, in the film, almost everyone has American accents. I would normally brush this off as a result of it being a Hollywood film, but one of the exceptions hints there may be more to this.

When Lori (Kate Beckinsale's character) reveals herself to be an undercover cop, she switches from having an American accent to having an English accent. The English accent then persists through the end of the film. This implies that to be a convincing wife to Douglas, she needed to have an American accent, so there's some in-universe importance of accents.

So my question is, why were American accents so common, instead of UK and Australian accents?

Why did the aliens let a 50 year old ship into the Mothership?

In the movie Independence Day Captain Hiller (Smith) and David (Goldblum) fly an alien-ship that had been in our possession since the 1950s (explicitly mentioned more than once in the movie) into the Mothership to upload the virus, nuke the ship, and fly out of it.

When they near the alien Mothership, the smaller ship's pilot is overridden and David says something along the lines "I was counting on it".

But how is it possible that the aliens did not notice that the ship coming back was a much older one and arguably of a different make too. And, if they indeed had noticed, why did they take it in? Wouldn't a ship lost 50 years ago coming back seem suspicious?

Do Jake's powers have any real limitation?

From the Adventure Time wiki:

In the episode "The Limit," Jake's Stretchy Powers are put to the test. It is revealed that while Jake can stretch his body to incredible lengths, he does have a limit. As he approaches this limit, his body becomes dangerously thin. Once his mass is distributed along a certain length of his body, it becomes difficult for him to support himself; at one point, Jake was forced to walk along the ground. If he were to stretch beyond his absolute limit, it is presumed that he would completely thin out and die.

It's also worth noting that Pen Ward has said in an interview that Jake uses his powers lazily and doesn't know their full extent.

soundtrack - Why are most sounds dubbed in afterwards for movies, instead of being recorded live?

The typical big budget movie has 50–150 people standing just outside but close to the shot:

• actors not in the shot


• stand ins


• stunt performers


• extras


• cinematographer, camera crew, dolly crew


• script supervision


• lighting crew, grips, electricians, light controller


• hair and makeup


• wardrobe and assistants


• props


• greenery


• set supervisor


• continuity


• capturing sound (!)


• stunt supervision


• assistant directors: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd


• production assistants


• behind-the-scenes photographers


• still photographer


• runners


• producers and studio execs—usually by the director at the video tap monitors


• etc., etc.

Further away are tradesman who do

• set construction: carpenters, finish, set construction supervision


• set painting


• riggers


• equipment movers


• more electricians and a generator operator


• plumbers


• drivers


• and a huge set of electrical generators

Someway into calling the roll, there will be a call for quiet—possibly including briefly ringing bells and/or flashing red lights coming on around the sound stage—at which time all hammering, drilling, pounding, sawing, etc., air compressors, and air conditioning are silenced.

The transition is profound—from total bedlam to near silence—but there are still dozens and dozens of people breathing, drinking, chewing, or moving—much more slowly than normal—and further away talking quietly (if they dare). All that activity adds up to background noise that even the most directional microphone can't help but capture.

Then there is the inevitable unavoidable sounds: actors (or the camera) on turntables for revolving shots: the turntable always makes some creaking and grinding noises. Or fake elevator doors have the wrong sound. Or the subfloor on a sound stage is always two layers of 3/4 inch plywood over a frame 4 feet above the floor. Even if the flooring is granite, an actor walking over that just doesn't sound right.

The general acoustics of a sound stage also aren't conducive. A conference room won't really have a ceiling: it is open or missing for lighting and perhaps so the boom folks can reach in to get a good microphone angle on an actor. The windows aren't really there—to avoid troublesome reflections, and so the acoustic ambiance of almost any onset room will sound slightly wrong.

For comedy, most directors and actors prefer capturing the sound live for its more spontaneous and natural effect. But for drama, it is easier and more compelling to ADR and/or foley in a soundproof room with only one or two people present to eliminate all the subliminal distractions.

Also, films which are dubbed into other languages need to have the set's apparent acoustic ambiance separate so that its sound can be layered with the dubbed audio.

identify this movie - Elderly couple manipulate people in order to steal their bodies

I have once seen a movie (or a TV episode, but probably not) with the following plot:

In the beginning, a reporter is making a story on immortality and does interview with a an elderly couple who claim that they can live forever by moving their souls into new bodies. Later, several tragedies happen to him and his family that derail his life and put him into depression. In the end, he finds out that the couple he interviewed are actually capable of stealing bodies as long as soul of the victim is broken and not ready to fight back. So all things that happened to him were part of their plan to use him as a new body for the husband's soul. There is no happy end.

It is all I remember as I watched it 10 or more years ago. I tried several queries on IMDB and Google, but no luck. I am not sure about country where it was made — most probably it is USA, but potentially might be UK/Europe.

Can anyone identify the movie in question?

Spider-man's webshooters

In the film it appears that he orders the webbing from Oscorp. However later in the film he does say that he invented the formula himself (IIRC talking to Gwen, so he could be trying to impress her).

Speculation: I think Parker followed the age old scientific trick of starting with a known base (Oscorp's formula) and improving upon it thus allowing for a more web like shot.

From the comics universe spider-man actually does invent the webbing himself.

star wars - Empire Strikes Back - Scene in Dagobah with Darth Vader

I read in one book that the Jedi hid a powerful Sith weapon powered by the dark side on Dagobah in the cave. Yoda the last of the Jedi counsel made Dagobah his home to keep watch over the weapon so that it wouldn't fall back into their hands. This explains why the cave was strong with the dark side, but it wasn't explained in the films.

The main plot of that film was that Luke could not alter his fate. He was destined to confront Darth Vader. Yoda keeps telling him to keep his mind focused on training, and not to worry about his friends. Which ultimately is his weakness and results in him meeting Darth Vader.

Yoda's fear is that Luke will not survive a confrontation with Darth Vader, but Yoda fails or underestimates the value of Luke's friends to save him from his fate. The goal of Yoda's training is to teach Luke that he is not ready to meet his fate.

Despite Yoda's teachings Luke doesn't seem to be afraid of his fate. Thus the phrase from Yoda "you will be". It's just another example of how Yoda is aware of Luke's fate, and Luke is ignorant of the risks.

When Luke enters the cave he sees Darth Vader. He is confronted by his fate, and when Luke strikes down Vader to reveal his own face in the mask. It demonstrates that Luke's self-confidence in his skills to beat Darth Vader will ultimately result in his death.

The idea is simple. If he fights Vader he will die, if he takes a path that leads to the dark side he will die. Staying with Yoda and finishing his training will delay his fate.

Yoda was trying to teach Luke a lesson. Luke needed to stay and complete his training. Yoda knew Luke was destine to face Darth Vader and that confrontation would kill him, because Luke wasn't ready (or worse he would turn to the dark side). Yoda was trying to protect Luke from his own fate, but at the same time understood he could do little to change his fate.

When Luke has Yoda raise his x-wing out of the swamp onto dry land, then this marks the point were Yoda gives in. He no longer seems able to steer Luke away from his fate, and Yoda dies. Yoda's death represents Luke's commitment to his fate. He can no longer continue his training. He has no choice but to face Darth Vader.

At this point. He sets on a path to full fill the vision in the cave. Face Darth Vader and die. At least, by a movie viewer's perspective at this stage in the film. That's the expected outcome, but his friends save him in the end and we learn why his fate is so closely connected to Vader.

Who is the woman in the silver Mercedes?

Early on in the first season of NCIS, many episodes end with Agent Gibbs being picked up by a red haired woman in a silver Mercedes;

It is mentioned frequently that Gibbs is into red haired women, but during this period of time it's also established that he's just broken up with his latest wife and I don't remember there being any mention of who this woman is.

Who is the woman in the silver Mercedes? Is this ever explained?

Why all the profanity in Deadwood?

According to TV critic Charlie Brooker in his glowing review on his BBC programme Screenwipe (clip, ~9m50s):

Actually the constant bad language is a deliberate stylistic choice. People in the wild west didn't really speak like that, they used cusswords like nincompoop or tarnation, which would have been shocking at the time but strike us today as impossibly tame.

But the creators decided to make the townsfolk contemporarily foul-mouthed to maintain that anarchic, underclassy feel in the present day. And it works. The people of Deadwood talk f---ing tough.

Wikipedia agrees:

From its debut, Deadwood has drawn attention for its extensive profanity. It is a deliberate anachronism on the part of the creator with a twofold intent. Milch has explained in several interviews that the characters were originally intended to use period slang and swear words. Such words, however, were based heavily on the era's deep religious roots and tended to be more blasphemous than scatological. Instead of being shockingly crude (in keeping with the tone of a frontier mining camp), the results sounded downright comical. As one commentator put it "… if you put words like 'goldarn' into the mouths of the characters on 'Deadwood', they'd all wind up sounding like Yosemite Sam."

Instead, it was decided that the show would use current profanity in order for the words to have the same impact on modern audiences as the blasphemous ones did back in the 1870s. In fact, in early episodes, the character of Mr. Wu seems to know only three words of English — the mangled name of one character ("Swedgin"), "San Francisco", and his favorite derogatory term for those whom he dislikes, "cocksucka". Wu is fond of the Cantonese derogatory term "gweilo" which he applies to the camp's white males.

The other intent in regards to the frequency of the swearing was to signal to the audience the lawlessness of the camp in much the same way that the original inhabitants used it to show that they were living outside the bounds of "civil society".

The issue of the authenticity of Deadwood's dialogue has even been alluded to in the show itself. Early in the second season, E.B. Farnum has fleeced Mr. Wolcott of $9,900, and Farnum tries to console the geologist:

EB: Some ancient Italian maxim fits our situation, whose particulars escape me.

Wolcott: Is the gist that I'm shit outta luck?

EB: Did they speak that way then?

The word "fuck" was said 43 times in the first hour of the show. It has been reported that the series had a total count of 2,980 "fucks" and an average of 1.56 utterances of "fuck" per minute of footage.

Who is the copycat in the Hannibal series?

Yes, Hannibal is the copycat. This becomes more explicit later in the series, as it becomes clear that Hannibal is

taking details of existing cases from his access to FBI agents, and is committing further copycat kills.

The cinematography shows that this is what's happening. However in S1E10, Buffet Froid, we see Hannibal doing this.

British/English show about a dozen martial arts fighters

Think it was like 10 years ago the first time i saw on the tv.

Their were like around 12 fighters with all different martial arts styles

Every episode they had to do a challenge, the winner and the loser had to face eachother in a 1vs1 situation

Think it was 6 girls and 6 boys and as far as i remember they were in a shoalin temple with only rice and water as food and water

Why do British sitcoms have so many fewer episodes than American ones?

A lot of this depends on the TV schedule, and if the season was filmed before it ran on TV. Some networks will purchase a season in it's completed form. This covers the costs of production and film crew. It's much more expensive to hire a crew for 12 weeks, then for 12 days. So you could film 12 episodes quickly and air them on TV over a weekly schedule to recover costs.

Some shows like Friends become so popular the network can afford a full-time production crew. So they switch from pre-filming seasons to producing shows weekly. Keeping a crew on hand to produce each weekly show. Some shows can have operating costs over $1 million per episode.

Stargate for example ran for 10 years, and resulted in a full-time crew with their own production studio just for filming Stargate. Where as the first season of Terra Nova was all filmed at once, and after it ran it was cancelled.

There are a lot of popular British shows that have full-time schedules, but most of what you were watching were less known or popular. As a result, they were likely pre-film in smaller batches.

Why did Grandfather insist on Albert knowing Emilie's name before giving him the horse?

Towards the end of the film "War Horse," Albert is attempting to bid on the horse, Joey, before it is auctioned off by the military. Also present at the auction is Emilie's grandfather (unnamed), who ultimately wins the horse with a high bid.

At first, Grandfather tries to leave with Joey, but the horse insists on returning to Albert's side. Initially, Grandfather only offers Albert his father's military regalia, which Albert had tied to the horse before it was sold to the army in the first place.

Finally, Grandfather relents on giving the horse to Albert, but not after emphatically offering that "[His granddaugher's] name was Emilie." This seems to be the final condition for handing over the horse. Albert nods in understanding, and the exchange is made. As Grandfather is walking away, he again repeats "Her name is Emilie" (which, as an aside, I have seen interpreted as an admission that she's alive).

Why is Grandfather so insistent upon Albert knowing her name? Was it an attempt to guilt Albert into giving him the horse after all? Or, if she was in fact dead, did he use it to humanize a victim of war? Or was it simply to clue us into Emilie's status and illustrate the lengths to which Grandfather would go to get the horse for her?

heroes - Video of Nikki killing thugs in Episode 1

Still going through Season 1, so please bear with me.

When Nikki looks the video camera which was running when she had killed the thugs in Episode 1, all she sees is static. However, when she spends the night with Nathan, the camera footage is fine. Is the static phenomenon explained later in the series?

What happened to Bruce Wayne/Batman's knee?

Early in The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is seen limping with a cane. Some characters allude to an injury sustained from a fight, but we never see this in The Dark Knight. At the conclusion of that film, we see Batman surviving his run-in with Harvey Dent and escaping while running away.

What happened to Bruce Wayne/Batman's knee in between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

Note: we know the injury is real because we see Bruce requiring a knee brace of some kind prior to him suiting up as Batman.

Purpose of the "Purge All" button in Cabin in the Woods

The only thing that I can think of is that this is designed to purge - i.e. destroy or remove all the 'nightmares' in the complex. It would have to be used in conjunction with whatever you needed to kill everything, poison gas or whatever supernatural 'thing' you need to do the job.

That said, you would need to have this 'agent' available, plus to leave the 'big red button' active seems rather careless. Any decent engineer would design failsafe mechanisms to prevent the button being used by unauthorized people, and in the event that it was to destroy everything, you would want it to only be active when the 'agent' was being used too.

identify this tv show - Which Carebears series had Mimi in it

I think her name is Mimi. From what I remember of the series of carebears, there was this dark dimension and the bad guy was a cloaked guy and he had a minion called Pugsley (think that's how you spell his name).

When it comes to Mimi, from what i can remember she was the bad guy's niece who had had a scream that would break glass and he was deadly terrified of her screaming and now and again her and Pugsley would be sent off on this bike thing with propellers.....also i think she was very very ticklish

Can someone explain what 'Franklyn' is about?

Franklyn

I see this film to be a debate about religion, faith, fate, delusion, trauma and loss. Each of the three central characters have experienced some sort of trauma or loss
in their past. Preest/David lost his younger sister as well as having experienced the trauma of war as a soldier; Milo had lost his father as a child and then, more
recently, had his fiancee leave him very close to the day of their planned wedding. Amelia had probably, though it wasn't explicitly said, been abused by her father as
a child and her and her mother had left him as a result.

David/Preest's father was a man of religion and had said that the death of his daughter - David/Preest's sister was the will of god. Preest was unable to accept this
and he blamed his father for the death of his sister. This, along with the trauma of war, had triggered a psychotic episode in him. He wanted to avenge the death of
his sister and because he saw the death of his sister as so unjust, he took issue with religion as a whole. The line in the film "if god is willing to stop bad things
happening but unable, then he is not omnipotent, if he is able but unwilling then he is malevolent, if he is neither willing or able then he is not a god" explains
Preest's inner torment perfectly.

Milo has recently been through a break-up just before he was due to get married. He then starts to see a childhood friend/love interest, Sally. She is not real. He
first saw Sally just after his dad died - a very traumatic experience - and began to see her again after the break-up of his relationship with his fiancee - another
traumatic experience. He tells his friend the story of the story-teller who's stories became reality. At the end of the film when he meets Amelia, who looks exactly
like his imaginary friend, Sally, it begs questions of fate. It also means that the story-teller is in fact Milo - What he believed became reality.

Amelia is slightly less significant in the film but she needs to be there for Milo's story to make sense. She is also incredibly beautiful so I don't mind her being
in the film!

The caretaker at the hospital chapel, however, I cannot figure out the significance of. Is he God? Is he just a guy? Why did he disappear in the last scene?

Generally, though, I think this film just asks a load of questions rather than attempts to answer any. I think this is pretty wise, as the subject matter is so far-reaching and deep. It doesn't do anything as silly as to say that God planned anything, It doesn't say that Milo meeting Amelia is anything other than coincidence. It doesn't say that Preest is wrong or right to question religion. It doesn't try to be too clever or too profound. It simply asks questions that we all ask as human beings.

film industry - Is there any evidence of "Big Twist" movies having poor post-cinema sales?

I have watched many movies such as Sixth Sense, where there is a major twist that if known prior to watching the movie can potentially spoil the enjoyment of viewing. I tend not to watch this type of movies again, or certainly no more than once, and wondered if this is a common reaction.

Is there any evidence that would suggest that comparatively, this type of films, whilst they may do well at cinema, have relatively poor post-cinema sales (I am thinking of the ratio between box-office and DVD/BluRay sales). So, for any budding directors, is this the type of movie to shy away from?

evolution - Why is glucose our primary source of energy?

I thought this was a great question. In particular because it hints at two questions. The first is 'why carbohydrates are used to store energy' in general. The second being 'why glucose rather than other carbohydrates?' in particular.

Glucose metabolism (and glycogen storage) is a core gene pathway - its found in bacteria archaea and eukaryotes. So probably the most that we can readily say about question one is that as @rwst points out this pathway has proven to be useful at a critical juncture of the formulation of living things on earth. If you look at glucose metabolism pathways, you can see that glycerate compounds and pyruvate are the actual intermediates that are used to create energy. The first thing about these molecule worth noting is that they have a good mix of carbon and oxygen, which would make it easier to extract energy - creating CO2 from these compounds may even predates the existence of atmospheric oxygen. So glucose and fructose (which is actually derived from glucose in the metabolic pathway) are actually storage molecules themselves, easily broken down to smaller molecules.

As to the second question: there are quite a few ways to arrange oxygen around the carbohydrate ring. why glucose? The advantages of glucose is probably a subtle one. The structural properties of glycogen might be a reason that the use of glucose monomer is so important for glycogen. There is no evidence that I can find for this, so its always possible that glucose was just the first hexose carbohydrate to be biologically used. Its sort of hard to imagine that the structure of glucose does not play some sort of role in cell structure though.

What is the CBI in the Mentalist?

This group is based off an existing one that works in California. The current name for the group is the Bureau of Investigation (BI). CBI was its former name that is used by the show. This is not the only group of its kind, I know my home state of North Carolina has a similar group (State Bureau of Investigation) whose purpose is similar to that of the FBI but on the State level.

Like the US government system the police system breaks out into many levels to ensure co-operation between states or local government. I believe the current police structure is: Local PD, County Sheriff, State Investigators (SBI, BI, etc), Federal Investigators (FBI).

I received my facts about the CBI from the article below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Bureau_of_Investigation

film industry - What's with the trend of releasing movies outside the US first?

I have not seen many examples of Hollywood movies shown first in the rest of the world before the USA, but it is certainly the case that simultaneous release around the world is now normal when it used to be rare. If the trend has continued beyond 'simultaneous' to now opening in the rest of the world first, it is probably for the same reason.

There are several factors affecting this, for instance with digital technology, it is becoming easier and quicker to distribute movies. However the main reason I think is preventing piracy cutting into profits.

It used to be that Hollywood movies would be released weeks or even months before release in the rest of the world. I think this partially came down to hitting the biggest market first and building a reputation before going abroad, but it also used to be very hard to pirate a movie. You would have often to film a movie in a theater, and the quality would be normally pretty bad.

Nowadays, with vastly better technology, it is far easier and cheaper for high quality copies of movies to be made and quickly distributed worldwide. Studio's have to hit the worldwide market much faster to prevent pirated copies of the movie diluting their profits, especially around the world.

Why don't Marty's parents ever mention how similar he looks to the Marty of 1955?

It doesn't matter

His parents never mention the similarity in the movie because:

1. Before the 1955 part of the movie, it would be somewhat of a spoiler.




2. After the 1955 part of the movie, it might have worked, but it would have been "cute dialog of convenience" and not really realistic there.

Ultimately, if you accept the underlying premise of Back to the Future which is that if key events stay more or less the same, the future will be unchanged, then you have to accept that whether his parents saw the similarity or not is irrelevant. This is good news. You can either choose to believe they never noticed a similarity, or you can choose to believe that at some point in Marty's alternate youth, his parents showed him a picture of this guy he bears an uncanny resemblance to, and none of them including alternate past Marty had any idea it actually was him yet, and then they went about the rest of their lives normally. Whether either theory is correct is irrelevant, because according to the rules of the BTTF universe, it doesn't actually change anything.

props - Who's on the cover of this issue of Playgirl in 30 Rock?

This still is from 30 Rock season 3 episode #14, "The Funcooker":

30 Rock is known for its attention to detail and its endless pursuit of even minor jokes and sight gags, so I am willing to bet that the face on the cover of this magazine is some crush of Liz's that is mentioned at some point, either in previous or subsequent episodes. (Is it Astronaut Mike Dexter, by any chance?)

So. Can anyone figure out who's on the cover of this magazine? Is it a reference to anything, within or outside of the 30 Rock canon? Bonus points: is this a real issue of Playgirl?

oceans eleven - Which characters played the parts of the lineup discussed by Rusty and Daniel?

Source

The Boesky: Saul playing Lymon Zherga, the whale who asks Benedict to
put his jewels, which are actually TNT, in the vault. if you've seen
Wall Street (with Michael Douglas), you'll know about Gordon Gekko, who was loosely based
on Ivan Boesky, a wall street trader who was involved in securities
fraud. That's where they got the idea of Lymon Zherga, an uber-rich
bankroller with insider information.

Jim Brown: the fight between Frank Catton, who's impersonating a
blackjack dealer, and Linus Caldwell, who's impersonating a
representative from the Nevada Gaming Commission, a fight meant to
distract Benedict so Linus could pick Benedict's pocket, getting the
security codes to the vault. after watching enough ESPN classic games
with my dad, I learned all about Jim brown, who many people hail as
the greatest football player of all time. the fight between two
characters is called a Jim Brown because it's a physical
confrontation, one of the cornerstones upon which the sport of
football is built.

Miss Daisy: references the SWAT truck the con men used as their
getaway car. Driving Miss Daisy (with Morgan Freeman) is a movie about a woman who has to
get a chauffeur to drive her around. Under the guise of the SWAT
truck, George, Brad, and the gang can escape without a hitch.

Two Jethros: refers to the Malloy Brothers, Turk and Virgil,
the hillbilly, gear-headed types who are hired to
look after Miss Daisy. In the movie, they provide general two man work
like the distraction they pull with the balloons covering the security
camera on the casino floor so Livingston can get into the video
surveillance room.

Leon Spinks: the distraction in the form of disrupting the boxing
match. An episode of NCIS had the director going
home to Chicago to investigate the death of his boxer friend. In the
episode, they mentioned this boxing match where Leon Spinks beat
Muhammad Ali, and it was a total upset that no one expected. No one
expected the power to go out in the middle of the match in the movie,
either, and it created absolute chaos, which was great for our con
artists.

Ella Fitzgerald: the idea to loop a tape of a robbery over
Benedict's security system, a robbery which had actually been staged
the previous night as a distraction while the real robbery takes
place. It comes from a 1970s commercial for Memorex where a recording of Ella Fitzgerald's
voice breaks a glass, then the voice over says, "Is it live or is it
Memorex?". The concept is that Benedict doesn't know if the robbery
he's seeing is the robbery that's actually happening.

One more post regarding this on the webz:

When Danny and Rusty (Pitt) first discuss the personnel they'll need to pull off the elaborate robbery, Rusty says, "Off the top of my
head, I'd say you're looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy,
two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella
Fitzgerald ever!" The references don't become clear until much later,
when each conspirator's role is revealed. "Boesky," as in Wall Street
fraudster Ivan Boesky, is an apparent reference to Reiner's con man
Saul. "Jim Brown" (as in the 'Dirty Dozen' star) seems to refer to the
confrontational distraction provided by blacklisted blackjack dealer
Bernie Mac. "Miss Daisy" seems to be the getaway vehicle. The "two
Jethros" are the hillbilly-like gearheads played by Caan and Affleck.
"Leon Spinks" refers to the boxing match upset, caused in this case by
a power blackout. And "Ella Fitzgerald"? It has to do with the
videotaped robbery passed off as the real thing, a reference to
Fitzgerald's famous audiotape commercials in the 1970s in which a mere
recording of the jazz singer's high notes was enough to shatter a
glass, prompting the slogan, "Is it live, or is it Memorex?"

And this was confirmed by Steven Soderbergh

"First of all, [screenwriter] Ted Griffin and I completely made the
terms up. We felt we had to come up with some funny, Damon
Runyon-esque turns of phrase that weren't arbitrary we did sit down
and think them out. So, Carl Reiner is the Boesky, as in Ivan, the
powerful, rich magnate, inside kind of guy. Jim Brown is the
confrontation Bernie Mac has with Matt Damon the 'don't mess with me
or you're in for it' moment. The two Jethros are Casey Affleck and
Scott Caan, the idea being 'we're going to need gear heads, car
fanatics...some people who are total hillbilly under-the-hood guys.' A
Leon Spinks is the disruption of the boxing match: A sporting event
with some controversy to it that's what Leon Spinks means to me. The
Miss Daisy association is driving; that was the SWAT van, a ruse
involving transportation. The Ella Fitzgerald is the tape of the fake
vault, which they're going to play back and have [Andy Garcia's
character] Benedict think it's live. 'Is it live, or is it Memorex?'"