Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2008 November 23

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November 23

Cartoon Caracter ??

What cartoon caracter is this, This guy has this caracter in his avatar and signature (It's the guy with the yellow hair) http://www.neoseeker.com/members/profiles/ssjgoten/ 85.220.101.206 (talk) 01:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks similar to the Pip-Boy from Fallout. Nanonic (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

(He's called Vault Boy but I can't see the image to agree or disagree with you) Gunrun (talk) 09:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I'm pretty sure that's Vault Boy. He's the mascot of a fictional corporation named Vault-Tek, in a fictional universe where artistic style never progresses past the 1950s.(Then nuclear war happens.) The Vault-Tek corporation, and hence Vault Boy, is a major part of the back-story in the Fallout (series) games. Fallout III was just recently released, so you're seeing Vault Boy show up a lot on the internet these days. APL (talk) 15:16, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Grey's Anatomy music

What was the song at the end of the episode two weeks ago? I think the title of the episode was these ties that bind? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.183.240.224 (talk) 01:50, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Check out imdb's uncredited soundtrack listing of that episode. I don't know whether the list is chronologically sorted (or complete), but the last item is "Trouble Is a Friend" by Lenka Kripac. ---Sluzzelin talk 04:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Tuning a toy guitar

I asked a while back about how to make a very cheap toy guitar my son plays with playable. I can tighten the strings now and they don't slacken quickly (except when he decides he wants to see how far he bend the strings). Now, I'd like to see if I can tune the guitar to something that doesn't sound awful. There are two problems. First, the guitar is one of the few instruments I've never learned to play. Second, this is a toy, so I doubt it has any proper design to it. I tried to tune it as I believe it should be tuned. I tuned each string (except one) such that the 5th fret of the lower string is the same note as the upper string. The one different one is tuned to the fourth fret. However, this is impossible. Once the lower 3 strings are tuned, the upper three have to be so tight that the will certainly break. If I tune the top three, the bottom three have to be so loose that they fall off the bridge. If it matters, the bottom two strings have black thread on them. The middle two have cyan thread on them. The second to top one has green thread. The top one has purple (almost black) thread on it. I think it was strung with the wrong strings - but I don't know that the thread colors mean. My plan is to tune the top three an octave below what they should be when I have the bottom three tuned. Does that make sense? Any help would be nice. I'm tired of listening to him strum this extremely out of tune guitar all day. -- kainaw™ 04:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Ditch the toy and get a real (cheap) guitar ? This one is $40: [1]. You could also get a used one off eBay. How old is your son ? If he's old enough to do something besides randomly plucking strings, I think a real guitar is in order. Short of that, I was going to suggest the octave shift (just as you figured out for yourself). StuRat (talk) 05:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

He is 1. So, he can't hold a real guitar (yet). He just mimics what he sees on TV. I considered a ukulele, but I figure why buy that and then confuse him when he is big enough to hold a real guitar. I think I figured out the octave tuning - 3rd fret on the lowest string tuned to the open 4th string. Then, continue tuning normally up from there. -- kainaw™ 05:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If he's 1, I wouldn't worry about standard tuning. Why don't you just tune the strings such that they don't sound awful? Like a major chord when all the strings are open. Avoid thirds in the lowest (pitch-wise) strings, as that tends to sound muddy. Start with the three thickest strings, and tune them such that the first and third are an octave apart, and the second is a fifth above the deepest. Then tune the remaining ones to notes that are part of the major chord you have chosen. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 08:03, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried that and it sounds better. I tuned to E G A# A# E G. Sounds much better. -- kainaw™ 14:03, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Your son is already playing his first diminished chord - e dim. ;-). --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

World War II movie scene

My 82 year old mother is obsessed with trying to remember the name of a movie in which there is a very brief (probably less than a minute) scene where a group of resistance fighters during World War II are hiding (possibly in a cave) while soldiers are searching for them. A woman is holding her baby and the baby begins to cry. The mother is desperately trying to keep the baby's cries stifled since it will give away the location of the entire group. She accidentally smothers and kills the baby. I recall the scene, too, but do not remember the name of the movie nor any of the actors. It seems in my memory to be a movie made before 1990 and maybe even much earlier than that. My mother seems to think there is a connection to Yugoslavia in the plot line. I have googled assorted words about "mother smothers baby" etc, but have not found the movie. I have called a few movie stores, but no luck. If any movie buffs out there could help, I would greatly appreciate it since my mother has been asking me about this for over a month and can not seem to let it go.Wikiquest (talk) 06:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The final episode of M*A*S*H, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", has a similar scene in it. Although it takes place in a bus and not a cave. And there is no mention of Yugoslavia. Dismas|^(talk) 07:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

This sounds so familiar, but I can't place it. I remember(?) it was a soldier who smothered the child, and the mother consoled/forgave him afterward. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I know exactly the scene you're talking about. I'm pretty sure there was a Yugoslav connection, and an island seems to ring a bell. It was either in a cave or a recess in some sort of monastery. I saw this at the movies and I thought it was in the early-mid 1970s, but I could be mistaken. It was the only scene from the film I can actually remember. My brain kept telling me it was a movie with Roger Moore but that leads to a dead end. The first name I thought of was The Wild Geese, but I now discover that was set in Africa. I've searched IMDb plot summaries with all the relevant words I can possibly think of, but keep drawing a blank. Sorry. If it pops into my head while I'm thinking about nuclear physics or something, I'll get back to you. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you looking for Savior (movie)? The baby smothered by the soldier part fits, the Yugoslav connection fits, the-soldier-in-search-of-rebels fits, but it is a movie about the Bosnian War not World War II. The baby survives in fact and the soldier adopts the kid. Chancemill (talk) 12:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

A related scene is also mentioned in dialogue (though not shown in images) in The Pianist (2002):

"They'd prepared a hiding place and so, of course, they went there. But the baby cried just as the police came. She smothered the cries with her hands. The baby died. A policeman heard the death rattle. He found where they were hiding." [2]

---Sluzzelin talk 13:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

My sister thought that it was "The Pianist" also, but I am sure my mother has never seen that movie--too recent. She also didn't watch "Mash" and I am sure it is an actual movie. I would say that the idea of the movie being from the 1970s is probable and I also can not remember any other plot/scene/character, so it probably wasn't an especially great movie. My mother has also mentioned the island connection, but wasn't sure about that. I am sure that the baby dies--no comfort in it surviving and being adopted and the mother is definitely the cause of the accidental death cause I vividly recall thinking at the time I saw the movie how horrible she must feel. I am somehow comforted that there are other people out there that remember this, but can't think of the actual movie. If it does pop into anyone's head, please let me know. I will keep checking back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiquest (talk • contribs) 19:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm positive it was a WW2 movie, and I'd bet many $$ it was from the 1970s, or even possibly the late 1960s. I can picture this scene so clearly, I can almost touch it - but virtually nothing else about the movie. I could not absolutely swear it was set in Yugoslavia - it might have been Albania, Greece or somewhere around there. Whatever it was, it seems to have had a quick run at the cinemas and then died a natural death. IMDb would certainly have it somewhere in their database, but finding it depends on someone writing a synopsis with the words "smother", "suffocate", "baby" etc, and that depends on it being available on DVD (highly unlikely if it sank like a stone), or being screened on late night TV. There are vast numbers of movies that are simply never seen on TV, and become for all intents and purposes unheard of, and this seems to be one of them. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:50, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a familiar plot line; it appears in Quigley Down Under and several other movies. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm...I seem to recall a movie were the soldier has a traumatic dream sequence whereby he is hiding with some civilians and a baby starts crying which will give away their location. The soldier suffocates the baby. Later in the movie there is a flashback and it wasn't a babybut a chicken making the noise and the soldier killed it....weird! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.41.139.85 (talk) 01:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That's the final episode of MASH... The Chicken halucination is a form of transference that Hawkeye does to himself to delude himself into thinking he didn't convince the baby's mother into killing her own baby. See above. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's another possibility. Roger Corman's 1964 film The Secret Invasion (we have no article on this one?), which according to this user review at IMDB: [3] meets all the criteria: Filmed before 1980, set in Yugoslavia in World War II, and features a scene where a baby is smothered by a soldier accidentally while trying to keep it quiet. Interestingly, the basic plot is nearly identical to the Dirty Dozen, except that this film predates it by 3 years... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Don't know if that was what the OP was asking for, but that was definitely the movie I was thinking of. You've saved me a month's worth of head scratching. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

By way of appreciation, I've created a stub. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's the movie I saw. It has the monastery I mentioned above, and I also remember the person holding the baby was a man, not its mother, so that's got to be it. I was obviously getting Roger Moore confused with Stewart Granger. But the date 1964 intrigued me. I know exactly where I saw this movie, a cinema in Brisbane, and I only ever went to that cinema between 1968 and 1972. As far as I can remember, it didn't show movies that weren't in first release. Maybe this film took 4 years to be screened in Australia. Anyway, the mystery is solved. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I just ordered "The Secret Invasion" to watch before passing it on to my mother if it is the correct movie. I appreciate everybody's input.Wikiquest (talk) 05:01, 26 November 2008 (UTC) It is December 8th and I have just introduced my mother to questions on Wikipedia. It WAS THE RIGHT MOVIE!!! Thanks everybody that led us to "The Secret Invasion." The mystery has been solved and we can now sleep at night!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

In which episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers appeared for the first time Tommy as the White Ranger? David Pro (talk) 12:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

A Google search for "first episode white ranger tommy" yields a number of results. This site seems to say that the episode it entitled "White Light Part II". Dismas|^(talk) 01:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)