Best movie questions of 2009

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Chosen answer: He failed at hunting and believes staying with the herd has damaged his predatory instincts.

BaconIsMyBFF

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The Proposal picture

Question: I was just wondering why, at the end of the movie, the name of the company changed from Colston to something like Ruiz and Hunt. I mean, Margaret's last name was "Tate" so her leaving shouldn't have caused a name change. (I apologize if the names are incorrect, I've only gotten to watch it once at a friend's house, so the movie isn't readily available for me to check).

Jazaray

Chosen answer: The building is named Ruik and Hunt, the publishing company is Colston, which is housed inside the building. The company never changed names.

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Chosen answer: Nothing specific, the carving of mystical symbols is just meant to be a means of furthering his power.

Purple_Girl

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Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show picture

Question: They take a bunch of fireflies and put them in a jar with a lid to use it as a lamp, is this really possible? How many of them would be needed?

tipar

Answer: First, you'd have to figure out how much light production you would qualify as being sufficient to consider the fireflies in a jar a "lamp." Lights are often rated in footcandle, lumens, or lux. Without getting into what all that means, you could probably hike a path in the dark with just 25 lumens, which is a little less than 2.5 footcandles. (By comparison, a bedroom may have 20-50 footcandles but an outdoor parking area may only have 1-5 footcandles and street lighting may be 1-3 footcandles). With that in mind, it also depends on the species. The most common firefly in the US produces 1/40 a candle. So 40 fireflies for 1 footcandle and 100 to have a "lamp" to hike with. It should also be noted males light every 5 seconds and females light ever 2 seconds, so you would need more if they're not all lighting up at once.

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Paul Blart: Mall Cop picture

Question: If Pahud thinks that Paul Blart is with his girlfriend, why does he make him his "homie"? Wouldn't he hate Paul for taking his girlfriend?

Answer: Paul explains to Pahud that it's a misunderstanding, and Pahud then makes Paul Blart his homie.

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Bruno picture

Question: Like Borat, Bruno was mostly unscripted, and most of the people were real people secretly filmed without their knowledge. So does that mean the sex scenes at the swinger party were unsimulated? If they were, how was the movie not rated NC-17?

MikeH

Chosen answer: The MPAA's rating guidelines are all over the place, and tone and context matter. The scene in question appears to be real, but there's not really anything explicit shown, and since it's all played for laughs, the MPAA was probably more lenient on it.

Phaneron

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Angels & Demons picture

Question: When Langdon and the Italian cop are trapped inside the sealed room of the Vatican archive and the air is shut off, how long could they actually survive in a space that size? In the movie, they start to suffocate almost immediately. (There is no long time lapse because the movie's plot depends on defusing the bomb within a few hours).

raywest

Chosen answer: In reality, they would have perished from CO2 poisoning long before the room ran out of breathable oxygen causing them to simply suffocate. Without knowing the exact dimensions of the room it is impossible to give any time more specific than "several hours" for this to happen in a room as big as that one appeared to be.

Phixius

I just re-watched the movie, and as Langdon and Vittoria enter the room, it's mentioned to them that the oxygen levels are always kept at a bare minimum to protect the ancient tomes and documents stored there. That helps to answer my own question about why Langdon and the cop were so quickly affected when the power was shut off.

raywest

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Daybreakers picture

Question: Why didn't Chris want the cure to spread in the end?

Answer: Just like the humans, he had a fear of becoming extinct.

Answer: The vampires were now everywhere, with very few humans left in their blood farms. Their food supply was dwindling and it was getting to the point that they were facing extinction by starvation. The only way to keep life going was for the vampire disease to be cured and everybody to turn back human.

Quantom X

Then why didn't he want it to happen?

He successfully created a substitute.

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The Blind Side picture

Question: Do the real Mr. and/or Mrs. Tuohy have a cameo in this film?

Answer: Just the photographs during the closing credits.

Phixius

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Hotel for Dogs picture

Question: Wouldn't the city have found out that someone was using the hotel when there was electricity being used but no-one to pay for it?

Answer: Not until there's a 3 month period where the electricity usage is much higher than normal. Even then, it takes another few months to get it noticed, and another couple of months to send someone out to investigate it.

rswarrior

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Obsessed picture

Question: It seems whenever this movie is played on TV, the start of the scene where Sharon is yelling at Derek in the house edits out the part at the start where Sharon yells "What? WHAT!?" and throws and breaks a dish. Why is this edited out? It always starts at the line she says right after that.

Answer: There is no set format for a feature-length film's running time in theaters (some bodies state a minimum of 40 minutes, some 80). They are edited to fit TV scheduling. Scenes are often cut short or deleted entirely to eliminate objectionable content, but also so the film can begin and end on the hour or half hour (i.e. It starts precisely at 8:00 p.m. And ends at 10:00 pm) so that the next program can run. It also has to allow time for commercials and station breaks during the airing. This often leaves the original movie rather chopped-up. That is probably what happened with this particular film.

raywest

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17 Again picture

Question: If Mike's ex-wife (Scarlet) recognizes him from when they were teenagers, wouldn't the coach remember him too? He was the star player.

Answer: I've not seen the movie, but an ex-wife would be closer to her ex-husband than a coach to his old student, no matter how good.

JonTheRandom

Answer: It's also possible that the coach might have noticed a resemblance, but he would have simply written it off as an odd coincidence, much like Scarlet did earlier in the film.

zendaddy621

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Halloween 2 picture

Question: At the ending of the director's cut, it shows that Laurie, Michael, and Loomis are all dead. But, the following scene is the ending of the theatrical cut with Laure in the insane asylum. Could somebody clarify this?

Answer: When the movie was made there were two possible endings filmed with one being selected for the theatrical release. Filmmakers often pre-screen a film to a test audience to gauge their reaction. This can decide whether or not changes will be made to the finished film, including an alternate ending. The director's cut here is simply showing audiences both scenes that were filmed as an "extra" feature. Other movies have included this, as well as showing deleted scenes.

raywest

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The Ugly Truth picture

Question: Are there differences between the theatrical, DVD, Blu-Ray, and TV versions of the movie?

jordan215

Chosen answer: No alternate versions of the movie have been released. The version you watch is the version everybody watches. It probably would be edited for free-to-air TV, but almost all movies are.

MikeH

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Chosen answer: Nothing has been said and no indications are given as to what is in the cooler.

Ssiscool

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Where the Wild Things Are picture

Question: Can some one explain a couple things about this movie for me? I was confused to if the events really happen or are they just in the kids mind? Also, how long is he gone for because it seems it should be days because of what happens, but when he gets home it seems only hours have passed.

Awesomo

Chosen answer: In the book it was just his imagination; he was gone for years in his mind but only a an hour or so in real life. It is presumably the same basic idea in the movie.

Phixius

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Race to Witch Mountain picture

Question: What's the name of the song the woman is singing at the restaurant in Stony Creek?

Answer: It was either Southern Night or Boogie Woogie Saturday Night.

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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus picture

Question: What's up with Percy (the midget)? He was with Dr. Parnassus decades ago, when he won a bet with the devil to win the heart of a woman he craved, but he hasn't aged a day since. Or was that another midget and Dr. Parnassus has a tendency to pick midgets up to live in poverty by his side, and these two just happen to look identical? Both were obviously played by the same actor (Verne Troyer) and some make-up would easily disguise this, so I'm guessing this is intentional.

Answer: Percy's backstory is never touched upon, but he certainly appears to have been with Parnassus for a substantial period of time, longer than his visual age would suggest. Possibly he himself has done his own deal with the Devil, or some other power, to extend his life, but, if so, the film never elaborates on it.

Tailkinker

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The Taking of Pelham 123 picture

Question: How was it possible for the hostage to livestream the event, have the laptop open, and even though the hijackers were walking up and down the carriage, no one noticed this?

Paulspurs

Answer: The hijackers did notice it. There's a scene where they notice it: look at the girl on the screen and then laugh. They get kicks from toying with people, which is why they didn't smash the laptop and just let the guy keep using it.

You're probably right.

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The Invention of Lying picture

Question: I know everybody tells the truth, but why does everyone say what they are thinking? If you don't say what you are thinking it doesn't mean you are lying.

Answer: It's an imaginary world with its own logic. You could theorize that people were raised this way. Also, you could imagine that since they have to say bad things to answer most questions, why not say bad things all the time, i.e. if your wife asks if you like her dress, you have to say you hate it, so why wait to be asked. Really, the film makers did it because it's funny. If you made a movie where people only spoke when they had something nice to say, it would be very boring.

Myridon

Answer: It seems like in this world, people are not just incapable of lying, they also have no concept whatsoever of keeping things to themselves, and secrecy. Therefore, everyone says what they're thinking without the slightest hesitation.

Catwalk

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