What else (other than Star Wars) has Lucas retconned?

In 2004, Lucas released his Director's Cut of THX 1138. There are no changes as big as making Greedo shooting at Han, but the there were still some controversial changes. Here a quote from The O.C. Wikia George Lucas article, Controversy section.

Changes Lucas personally made to THX 1138 for its 2004 DVD release further re-enforced criticism from fans who felt that he was spoiling the integrity of his original films.

As an example, a significant change he made with THX that he didn't do to Star Wars was reordering some scenes. You could see a exhaustive list of changes here and here. Here is the whole Postscript section of the first link (Emphasis mine):

Although the story stays pretty much the same the movie has been extensively changed. I'm sure George Lucas would claim that he couldn't accomplish his original vision back in 1970 due to the technology of the time and budget, so changes and additions could be seen as reasonable. The thing is though, George Lucas doesn't mention on the DVD that there has been any changes made at all, in the interviews, commentary, packaging, anywhere, the only mention is that the movie has been restored, this all seems very strange indeed...


As you can see George Lucas and ILM have done a wonderful job (except for the ones I have mentioned) in updating and widening the scope of THX's world for the masses to enjoy. This is a testament to the original movie that it can still be viewed today without looking too 70s. Some people may not like the changes, preferring instead the original, however, in my opinion they are both excellent. The George Lucas Director's Cut should have been released with the restored original theatrical cut rather than the way it has been released.

The Simpsons - Episode Identification

What was that episode where we hear Bart's thoughts as a man about Homer in voice over while the camera starts taking a close up of Bart as a kid, just before the voice is interrupted by Homer, asking Bart the kid what he is thinking about.

The scene makes fun of many movies with that sort of clichéd scene.

Will The Hobbit be released to video with the High Frame Rate?

Any 1080p50 capable TV will be able to play a 1080p50 HDMI signal from a 1080p50 Blu Ray disc.

So there is no technical reason not to release a high frame rate Hobbit.

"Speeding the film up" is not a relevant technique for digital formats. It is exactly how films used to be transmitted for TV but that was all about aliasing. If the TV station played the film at 24 fps then the 50 field per second cameras would introduce stobing effects, so speeding the projector's motor up and locking it to the field rate made sense.

In the digital domain one has to resample the frames. For 24fps to 25fps a common standard is 3:2 pulldown: "Converting a slower frame rate to a faster one requires duplicating frames or fields. People have been transferring film to video for a long time. For NTSC the film is slowed down to 23.98, and then every other film frame is held for one extra field. (see diagram) This is called 3:2 pulldown. Some of the original film frames now begin on the second field of the video frame. This looks fine while being played, and can easily be removed for conversion to 25 frame PAL or 24 fps for DVD compression. However, if this material is edited without attention to keeping a steady 3:2:3:2:3:2 cadence, a clean frame rate conversion becomes nearly impossible."
http://digitalcinemasociety.org/downloads/FrameRateConversionSimplified-N.pdf

This same approach would be used to resample 48 to 50.

The audio is not normally sampled at the same rate as the video and is typically at 48kHz even when the video is at another rate. The audio and the video are separately multiplexed into the MPEG transport stream and kept in sync using timestamps. Therefore there is no need to resample the audio when resampling the video.

What happened to the Mighty Orbots cartoon series?

According to Wikipedia, the 13-episode series was never released on DVD. It ended early

due to a lawsuit between the show's creators and toymaker Tonka, who
accused them of basing the cartoon on their GoBots franchise (which
was adapted from Bandai's Machine Robo line). The robot depicted in
the show was virtually identical to the robot in the anime for
Bandai's Godmars toy, although the colors were changed.

This may have affected its release.

According to a rather informative review here, poor ratings were its downfall, though its release in other markets on VHS developed a small cult following. T M S Entertainment, Inc./M G M/U A Entertainment Company is the copyright holder according to US Copyright office. If you have access to a VCR, there are a couple of libraries in the US that apparently have it in their collections (set of 13 tapes). You might be able to get your local library to do an inter-library loan for you.

In Primer, did they really need to do the time travelling themselves?

As they begin their exploitation of the stock market, both characters are afraid of bringing about any possible "paradox" situation. They sequester themselves in a hotel room. They do not communicate with anyone until they go "back" (second time through the same day), except to check the stock market. Only when the forgotten cell phone rings when they are not "back" do they allow themselves to play with that dynamic.

Therefore, any concept of sending a machine back in time to make the stock transaction for them would have been contrary to their (initial) conception of how to use this technology as safely as possible. Such a plan would force them to confront the Grandfather Paradox and related issues, which they did not have to do if they simply go back in time themselves (as long as they strictly follow their intended sequestration discipline).

In short, with the information they have at the beginning of the film, there is no proof that using a machine to do it for them would even work - maybe the machine makes them a bunch of money in a parallel universe, not in their own. The way in which both characters eventually seek to answer this question for themselves, lose trust in each other, and then turn on each other, makes the second half of the film so interesting (and confusing)!

Besides, there is the additional burden of designing a machine to extract itself from the time capsule mechanically after the correct delay, so that it does not "loop" forward and backward through time, only to be removed at the time the capsule is powered off.

What does the missing symbol on Quaid's arm symbolize?

Everything indicates that he is not dreaming, except for the symbol, but if it's all a dream Quaid´s should never would have dreamt about Melina before he goes to RECALL and that entire first scene doesn´t make sense.

Now assuming that is all real there is no explanation for the symbol. So in my opinion it has the ending wrong.

There is no reference that the symbol is permanent. it could be as simple as an ink stamp and can be erased easily, so imho everything is real or as you say the first scene would make absolutely no sense.

Where is Lost Girl supposed to be based?

I do not remember the in-story locale of Lost Girl ever being mentioned in the show, it is filmed in Toronto however, and in many scenes notable landmarks (such as the CN tower) can be seen which are never mentioned in and do not play any part in the story.

In addition, various colloquialisms differentiate the show from many American written shows (such as not referring to the police station that Dyson and Tamsin are officers at as 'precincts'.

Do any of the characters ever make mention to where they're located, are the events in Lost Girl based in any real world city?

the big bang theory - Do Sheldon's equations reflect real math/physics research?

As a mere viewer of The Big Bang Theory, I can't answer this question with certainty, but as a physicist, I can offer a couple observations:

• The equations that appear on the whiteboards in TBBT are from widely varied fields of physics and chemistry. They cover a much wider scope than a typical scientist would actually be working on. Of course, Sheldon is not your typical scientist, and I suppose he could be doing some sort of highly cross-disciplinary research incorporating many different subfields of physics, but still, all the various equations don't seem to have much of a logical connection. Anyway, given that Sheldon considers pretty much anything other than string theory to be beneath him, I can't really see him getting involved in that kind of project on a regular basis.


• Many of the equations I recognize as well-established physics, the kind of thing one learns as a beginning graduate student. This doesn't necessarily mean anything by itself, because all research is based on well-established physics, but if the equations on the boards were meant to reflect actual current research projects, I would expect to be going "huh, what's that?" and looking things up a lot more often than I do. The BBT blog discusses some reasons why it's generally not practical to incorporate actual current research into the show.


• There's one particular scene that may be relevant to this: Leslie is over at the guys' apartment (sleeping with Leonard I think), and overnight she fixes an error in Sheldon's math on the whiteboard which he had been struggling with for some time. The thing is, the particular calculation Sheldon was doing (deriving the QCD beta function from renormalization of gluon-exchange diagrams, IIRC) is something that was first worked out back in the 1970s and has been standard physics ever since. It should have been utterly trivial for Sheldon, as an accomplished string theorist (and genius) to do this properly, so I just have hard time believing that he'd been struggling with it. Even if he were, it would not have been hard for him to just look up the proper method and locate the error that way (perhaps his pride prevented him from doing that, but then again a big part of becoming a successful physicist is being able to look things up).

So in summary, I'd say almost certainly no, the equations do not in general reflect current progress in research (though the latest couple blog entries on the show's blog suggest that they're trying this). But they are at a much higher level than most other instances of math in movies and TV, and they are actual scientific equations, so you have to give the show credit for that.

Why stay in Los Angeles?

I always thought it was shocking at the end of American History X that Derek didn't leave Los Angeles and possibly take his family with him. I was under the impression that, after he got out of prison, the black gangs would be trying to get revenge on him for killing two of their members.

To make things worse, he beats up Cameron the night he gets out, and everybody in the white supremacist camp knows about it - one of them (his friend) even tries to shoot him as he's leaving the party. He even mentions a couple times that he thinks he's in mortal danger.

How is he able to walk around in broad daylight without seeming overly concerned for his own safety or that of Danny?

doctor who - What are the chanting lyrics in "Song of Freedom"

At the end of season four of Doctor Who, when Tennant's Doctor is towing the earth back to its proper place, the track playing is "Song of Freedom".

In this track, there are some chanting voices. Does anyone know what they are chanting, in what language? Do the lyrics have any hidden meaning? Or maybe they are only chanting noises, and not necessarily actual words.

Anyone know?

P.S. I wasn't sure if this fit better on Movies & TV or Sci-fi & Fantasy. It's not specifically about the sci-fi plots or technology or species or anything of the show (as far as I can tell), so I opted to put it here. If an admin thinks it'd be better on SciFi&Fant, please move it.

production - Disclaimer of a movie: Can it really save the producers?

First of all, let me say this: do not take this answer as legal advice. I'm not a lawyer.

Let's analyze it a little bit. If you make a movie with that disclaimer and someone sues you, what's likely going to happen in court?

Now, it's true that things (especially legal things) change from country to country, and they change a great deal sometimes, but I think it's safe to assume that your lawyer could use this to help your case in court.
If the president in your movie is corrupted, you're not necessarily saying that the real one is too. You just want to preserve your freedom of creation, by saying "in my movie/story the president is corrupted", that's all. A movie should not be constrained by real world issues up to that point. Sure, there are some limits but those usually coincide with balance and common sense. Some TV series use this disclaimer, such as Cold Case or Law & Order. Unfortunately this is not what is always going to happen, and this is why if you're considering writing a book or making a movie, you should always make sure that the characters are unique enough, not only as characters per se, but also different from real life people that might consider themselves defamed by your work.

And if your movie is about a John Smith that robs a bank in New York, and you don't use the disclaimer, it's very likely every single John Smith will sue you for that. Using the disclaimer will improve your chances of avoiding lawsuits from every John Smith in the city.

But, there's a but.

However, if the two entities (real person and character) share too many things that might have them associated, then the director/creator might face legal consequences.

Creating a character and changing the name might not be enough, as there are many things that could help people associate two people that share other details: social background, ethnicity, particular episodes, appearance, job, etc. If someone knows the person you took inspiration from and, basing on details in the book, they can identify that person in that character you can end up being in trouble.

This is why the disclaimer is useful but doesn't make anyone invincible. And it should be clear that the disclaimer doesn't deny people from suing you. It can definitely happen, but it can be useful both before lawsuits (people won't care, after all, you said all characters are fictional), and during lawsuits. Yes, it should be used because it helps, but only meaning that it might help you in case of lawsuits, not that people will be 100% prevented from suing you.

You can read a bit more about it in its relevant Wikipedia page. To reiterate, the page states that it

is done to reduce the possibility of legal action for libel from any person who believes that he or she has been libeled via their portrayal in the work (whether portrayed under their real name or a different name)

however, very important (emphasis mine)

The wording of this disclaimer differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and from country to country, as does its legal effectiveness.

As a lawsuit filed against Dick Wolf shows, we can see that such a disclaimer won't protect you and won't deny people from suing you if they deem it necessary.

men in black 2 - What happened to Scrad?

In Men in Black II, Johnny Knoxville's character Scrad, the two-headed alien henchman for Seelena leads a bunch of aline thugs to Jeebs' basement where Agent K has just been deneuralized.

In the ensuing fight he disappears, never to be seen again in the film which is strange considering he played a significant role in the story.

What happened? Victim of the cutting room?

reference - Is "Elf" meant to be set in the same universe as the Rankin/Bass "Rudolph" Christmas special?

So, this article mentions this:

"We looked at movies like 'Big' and 'Being There,'" the Favreau says.
"(Those were) movies with similar concepts that were played very real
and very emotional -- and they were good movies, not just funny
movies."

To that end, the director (who is most famous for writing and starring
in "Swingers") tried to give the movie an old-fashioned sensibility,
hoping to capture the spirit of Christmas classics past, in part by
using in-camera techniques instead of special effects to make
Ferrell's co-stars like Bob Newhart seem elfin in size and also by
paying tongue-in-cheek homage to perennial holiday favorites like
"Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty the Snowman" with his own
stop-motion-animation sequences.

But that isn't really a quote, per se. However, in this interview we find

"...so my pitch was to do it for a price instead of making it this big
CGI extravaganza we would sort of use the old fashion methods, make
the sets small, make it feel like a nostalgic, old Christmas movie,
make it feel like an old Christmas special, actually. Like the Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Rankin/Bass one. That was part of it. We
justified it creatively by making the world that Buddy (Will Ferrell)
came from was sort of this '60s TV special Christmas world."

I think it's safe to say that Favreau was trying to capture that nostalgic feel.

Why doesn't Borden know which knot he tied?

It's possible that one of the twins deliberately tied the Langford double knot, knowing Julia won't be able to break free from it in time, in order to sabotage Angier's act and eliminate the business competition - so that the only great magicians remaining in town would be the Borden brothers.

This ruthlessness in business, this willingness to sacrifice both human and animal life for the sake of fame and profit, is paralleled both in the story of Edison's men destroying the fruits of Tesla's hard work, and thus eliminating the competition, and in Angier's own story of destroying himself by drowning, over and over in agony, for the sake of putting on a sensational show. If these men were willing to sacrifice the lives of beautiful birds, their fingers, the happiness of their romantic partners, their own happiness, and even their own lives to sabotage each other's acts and prove the more successful in this business of creating illusions, why wouldn't at least one of the Bordens have it in him to sacrifice the life of an innocent and beautiful woman and the happiness of his business rival in order to nip his competition's success in the bud and come out on top.

Maybe this Borden was a plant from the start, wishing to work with Angier in order to ruin him, just as Olivia was a plant sent to work with Borden in order to ruin him. Maybe he tied the wrong intentionally, after having tested it on his own and determined that it is not possible for anyone to wiggle out of it in time, and maybe he convinced Julia beforehand to be daring and not to protest when he ties it. We can't discount this possibility. This whole movie is about the ruthlessness of business, about how vicious people can become towards one another and how cruel even towards their own selves when they value business success, fame and profit more than life itself.

Zoom actor in while background out? How is this effect called and made?

It's called Dolly Zoom (but there are a couple of alternate names for it)

From MediaCollege:

A dolly zoom is a cinematic technique in which the camera moves closer or further from the subject while simultaneously adjusting the zoom angle to keep the subject the same size in the frame.

The effect is that the subject appears stationary while the background size changes (this is called perspective distortion).

Invention of the dolly zoom is credited to cameraman Irmin Roberts.

The technique was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo being the best-known example), and was used by Steven Spielberg in Jaws and ET.

From Wikipedia:

The dolly zoom is commonly used by filmmakers to represent the sensation of vertigo, a "falling-away-from-oneself feeling" or a feeling of unreality, or to suggest that a character is undergoing a realization that causes him or her to reassess everything he or she had previously believed.

After Hitchcock popularized the effect the technique was used by many other filmmakers, and eventually became regarded as a gimmick or cliché.

This was especially true after director Steven Spielberg repopularized the effect in his highly regarded film Jaws, in a memorable shot of a dolly zoom into Police Chief Brody's (Roy Scheider) stunned reaction at the climax of a shark attack on a beach (after a suspenseful build-up).

Examples on YouTube:

Alien Director's cut - What does Ash drink in the movie?

Here is a nice interview with a large portion of the original filmmakers, in which they discuss how Ash is drinking milk.

From what I can ascertain, the androids in this film series can indeed drink fluids - but in this case it seems to be a precursor for a later gag in which Ash sweats a white fluid in an approximation of an 'android orgasm'.

From an interview with Ridley Scott:

Interviewer: Just before assaulting Ripley, the robot starts to sweat....

Ridley Scott: This is one of the humorous touches in the film. At the end of the previous scene, you've seen it drink milk, or some liquid with which it feeds its circuits. The drop that appears on its forehead is an alarm signal, a way of warning the audience that something is going wrong
.... and I always thought that it was interesting that er, do humanoids have sexual urges, what would be nice is that this is the closest he gets to sexual relationhsips (smirk)

(Shepperton Studios 1978 documentary (The Making of Alien ) )

video game adaptation - What went wrong with Super Mario Bros?

Behind the scenes there were lots of problems.

---

Mario’s Film Folly: The True Story Behind Hollywood’s Biggest Gaming Blunder

Directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel’s vision for the film was much darker than the Nintendo game series.

Rocky Morton:

• Nintendo let us do whatever we wanted. They just put a crushing deadline on the project. The movie had to be made by a certain date, otherwise there were all these financial penalties, which added a lot of extra stress to the project.

[....]

As the production rushed toward principal photography, the directors and producers struggled to agree on a script to match the movie’s new direction. More rewrites were issued.

[...]

Not everyone shared Morton and Jankel’s vision for the film. The studio was expecting a lighthearted kids film, and most of the cast and crew had signed on with similar expectations.

The tensions between these two visions began to tear apart the production. The studio felt that the movie was too dark, pressuring Morton and Jankel to lighten the tone. Lightmotive brought in the writer from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to write yet another version of the script.

[...]

By this point, at least nine writers had worked on the film, and rewrites would continue long after the cameras started rolling. The script ballooned into a rainbow of confusion as the production crew was continually handed new color-coded daily edits.

[...]

According to a 1992 Chicago Tribune article, the crew began calling the directors derogatory names behind their back. One of their favorites was “Rocky and Annabel, the Flying Squirrel Show.”

[...]

Everyone had different ways of dealing with the frustrating production schedule. John Leguizamo [...] started drinking. [He...] started doing shots of scotch with Hoskins between scenes.

During a scene in which Leguizamo was driving a van, the actor was reportedly drunk and braked too hard, causing the sliding door to smash shut on Hoskins’ hand. During certain sequences of the film, Hoskins can briefly be seen wearing a pink cast.

[...]

Over budget, behind schedule, and managing a cast and crew that was either drunk, working off-script, or completely belligerent, Super Mario Bros. had run completely off rails.

[...]

After principle photography ended, the film’s producers tried to cut Morton and Jankel out of the picture.

[...]

Click the link to read the full article. It has much more details.

---

Bob Hoskins (Mario) regrets doing the film:

The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots.

From John Leguizamo's (Luigi) autobiography Pimps, Hos, Playas, And the Rest of my Hollywood Friends:

But [the directors] kept trying to insert new material. They shot scenes with strippers and with other sexually-explicit content, which all got edited out anyway.

Why did Vincent Vega diss Butch?

Ok, so the general feeling about this is that Vincent was in a bad mood and was just having a pop for no real reason. Some way or another he was aware of Butch's deal with MW and decided to mouth off about it to release some of his anger and frustration.

But I believe there is an important reason for QT adding this little exchange in, mightily important in fact.

Butch has taken his cash off MW and is prepared to throw the fight. Throughout the whole chat with MW he shows no emotion, just a cool, laid back attitude. He has nothing against MW and just wants to do his job and collect his cash.

However, after the slur from Vincent, look at his reaction again. His face drops, he is shaken, his pride hurt to the core. He then watches intently as Vincent is welcomed by MW with a big double hug. Vincent is obviously MW's main man. Butch continues to throw glances and is obviously still hurt and deep in thought. There is no doubt in my mind that in that moment he makes the decision not to throw the fight. He has now associated all his hurt and anger from Vincent's insult with MW. Maybe he's thinking about all that talk of pride that MW has just spouted, how it means nothing, how he should ignore it, yet all the while he has probably been laughing about him with Vincent.

Now he's angry, angry with both of them, hurt and his pride already dented before the fight has even begun. No, now he will not throw the fight. He'll prove Vincent wrong and make fools out of both him and MW.

This 10 second piece of the movie is possibly the most important of all, as it sets in motion a dramatic sequence of events that leads to life changing consequences for all three characters.

What is the Significance of the train wreck in Hugo?

The train wreck is part of Hugo's dream. He has recently shown the drawing the automaton created to Méliès, who, in a state of sudden emotion, ejected Hugo from his home.

Hugo has felt that there is a part of his father's life which he can only access through repairing and understanding the origin of the automaton, and this rejection has left him reeling. This hurts all the more because even though Méliès is gruff with him, he has accepted Hugo as an apprentice, and is the closest thing Hugo has to a father figure.

He dreams of a train wreck, happening as he's attempting to retrieve the key from the track - the key that might give him a connection with his father, or perhaps more importantly access to a new father. The train wreck symbolizes that everything he's worked to resolve the mystery is crashing down, and in fact it is the key that makes him human. Without it he feels he has no place in society, and no right to happiness, as he's seen so many other orphans suffer at the hands of the stationmaster.

The reason it is that specific crash is that it originally occurred at that station, and so Hugo would have been familiar with the story, and probably have seen pictures of it. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly relevant about that accident and the film or Hugo, just that it occurred at the station the film is set in.

A movie about a boy growing up in a TV studio

I am looking for a movie about a boy/child that grows up thinking he is in the real world, but actually he is living between walls of a tv-studio.
The world saw him grow up and stuff. I think later on he finds out that this is not the real world. I think this happened when he was sailing on his boat and bumped against a wall.

What movie is it?