Question: I know that some shows/films changed their cityscape shots between scenes after September the 11th but did Friends? I noticed in an old episode from series 6 the Trade Center Towers are still standing. I thought they might have changed it for the later episodes, but are there any plans to go back and edit episodes featuring shots of the Twin Towers?
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Question: Is there any reason that for the re-make it was changed from Santa speaking to a little girl in Dutch to him speaking to a girl in sign language? It seemed like it would be less convincing this way, since it would not be uncommon for any department store Santa to know sign language.
Answer: The original Dutch girl was a World War II orphan. That wouldn't make sense in the newer remake. And why wouldn't a Santa know sign language? It would seem more common than Dutch.
Question: Why does the principal (Mr. Duvall I believe) have a cast on his right hand? I don't recall seeing him fracture or injure it. Was there something I might have missed?
Answer: He has carpal tunnel syndrome. He mentions it when he's talking to Tina Fey after she gets coffee spilled on her and she talks about how she got a divorce.
Answer: The real-life reason for this is that the actor broke his hand before filming started, so they wrote it in as a "carpal tunnel" condition that the character had.
Question: In the movie and in early episodes when they travelled through the stargate they arrived on The Other Side nearly frozen. This no longer happens. I was just wondering if any explanation was ever given as to why this no longer happens, or did they just drop that plot point?
Answer: It's a side effect from stellar drift. Once they compensated for it, it goes away.
Question: If the creation of Robocop 2 called for a brain, then how come when they removed Kane's' brain from his skull did they also take the eyes?
Answer: Just so it would look creepy in the jar (or maybe they thought they were worth keeping, then decided against it). Notice when Robocop pulls Kane's brain out of the 'bot later, the eyes are no longer there.
Question: When Lightning is crushed by the statue at the end of the movie, he sends out dozens of bolts of energy before he dies. The final wisp of electricity forms a Chinese character. Does anyone know what it means?
Answer: It's the symbol for "carpenter" after the director John Carpenter.
Question: What tune is being played during the mall scene, and again when Cab Calloway introduces Jake and Elwood on stage? (I've heard it many times before, most recently in promos for the 2004 Major League All-State Game.).
Answer: It's 'Can't Turn You Loose,' often refered to as the Blues Brothers Theme.
Also done much earlier by Otis Redding.
Question: In the song "Into the West," what is silver glass?
Answer: The surface of the water colored by "the pale moon..."
Question: In the beginning of the movie Peter sees a billboard of MaryJane and becomes distracted by it. Because of this he almost runs into the guy who owns the pizza parlor. Why didn't his Spider-sense warn him that he was in trouble? Not only is his Spider-sense running around the clock, but he doesn't begin to lose his powers until later on in the movie.
Answer: It's well established in the comics that even though Peter does have the Spidey-sense full time, he has to be paying attention to it in order for it to be effective. If he's sufficiently distracted (ie. by the love of his life) and the threat minimal (ie. a non-fatal bump with another human), it may simply not get through to him.
Answer: It may also be their version of "it's not set off if the person is a friend or someone close", the same reason in the comics The Jackal never set it off, the Villain was actually one of his professors and a friend.
Question: Trinity tells Neo to trust her because he knows what's in the end of the street. What's in the end of the street?
Answer: Neo has "been down that road before" for all of his life. It is the road of the mundane, of accepting reality at face value and refusing to take any action to change either oneself or one's environment. Neo's relatively recent search for Morpheus was part of breaking out of this mould. At the end of that road is an empty existence and eventual death after a life of normalcy and conformity.
Question: Why did Sarah Michelle Gellar leave the show?
Answer: She wanted to devote more time to her movie career and her new husband Freddie Prinze Jr.
Question: What happens in the end, is the French captain dead? And why does Jack Aubrey decide not to sail to the Galapagos but follow Acheron?
Answer: The French captain is most likely the man who claimed to be the doctor or any other man. Aubrey realizes that the captain is not dead and could engineer a coup, so he turns his ship to chase the Acheron.
Question: Why is it Norringtons initial response to Jack saving Elizabeth to kill him?
Answer: Because Jack is a pirate and Norrington hates pirates.
Question: Before Cale starts to rebuild the ship so he can pursue Corso, he says, "Good, 'cause we launch yesterday." I have no idea what he meant by that statement.
Question: After the massive battle on Endor the Rebels try to make it look like the stormtroopers have won so the ones inside the shield generator will come out. What I don't understand is who's the Imperial guy that appears on the monitor telling them it's over and they need reinforcements? Aren't all the Imperials outside meant to be dead at this point?
Answer: Look close, it's Han Solo with his hand covering his mouth with the radio so as to not give away his identity. You can even recognize his voice. Apparently, he got inside the walker that Chewie highjacked, took an imperial officers uniform from somewhere, then radioed to the base to get them to come out so he could ambush them.
And a few seconds later, he had the time to go out of the AT-ST, remove his uniform and be on the ground for the ambush?
It's only a few seconds of screen time. Within the film itself, several troops gathered to meet them at the door, which could have taken a couple minutes. That's plenty of time for Han to have removed the helmet and gloves (only his head and hand are visible, so he likely didn't put the full uniform on) and the climbed back down to the ground.
You only see his head. It doesn't take long to remove a helmet.
It wasn't an entire uniform, just the jacket helmet and glove. And more than a few seconds had passed as the troops inside needed to be assembled and then exit the bunker.
If you look closely, you can see it's about a half-second of footage on a loop. Where they got it is another question.
Question: When Forrest and Bubba are talking in Vietnam before and after Bubba says "I wanna go home" after getting shot. There is purple smoke coming from behind them into the camera shot. What is this smoke?
Answer: Just a smoke grenade. They used color smoke grenades in Vietnam as a signal to evacuation helicopters to show exactly where the troops were.
Question: I noticed from the previews that this movie looks very different. What is it? Is it a digital camera that has been used? Or no lighting effects used? The movie really has a "behind the scene" feel.
Chosen answer: It was shot with a digital camera. IMDB is a great place to answer questions like this. Go to *Technical Specifications* in the *Other Info* section of the menu on the left hand side of the screen. In an interview in American Cinematographer, Michael Mann said that as far as he was aware, this was one of the first movies to attempt to make a "look" out of digital video rather than trying to make Digital Video look like film. This approach meant the movie could be shot in the low-light scenes of urban desolation Mann wanted - because Digital reacts much better to low light than film. The approximately 20% of the picture that was shot on film was mostly, according to Mann, the portion set in the "Fever" nightclub - because this is the scene with the brightest lighting states, a condition in which Digital Video does not perform as well.
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Answer: No I don't think so. Earlier episodes show the Trade Center Towers in some of their shots but after 9/11 Friends started using new cityscape shots, which makes sense.
Tobin OReilly