Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 August 9

= August 9 =

Films written by F. Scott Fitzgerald
During the time when F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Hollywood screenwriter, were any scripts he wrote developed into films? If so, have any of those films been released on DVD?--99.251.239.89 (talk) 02:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to IMDb, he shares screenwriting credit for Three Comrades. TCM has it available on DVD (and on sale too). Some uncredited films, such as Red-Headed Woman, Marie Antoinette, and The Women, are also out on DVD. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Explanations in sci fi
Hi,

I've noticed that in most scifi/post-apocolyptic movies, there's a scene where the "science" behind it all is nicely summarised in a few sentences. I'm wondering if there's a collection of these all together somewhere? Videos would be great, but transcripts would also be awesome. And preferably with forums for scientists (like me) to make snide remarks. Does such a thing exist, or only in my dreams?

Aaadddaaammm (talk) 19:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * For stuff like this, TV Tropes is a much better fit than Wikipedia (because they're wilfully lax about such analyses, whereas we'd demand some dry academic study of the plot elements of bad SF movies). In particular, they have an "Apocalypse How" page which covers these many modes of doom. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Phil Plait's book Death from the Skies is a recitation of various credible(ish) ways of the apocalypses written by an astronomer (I haven't read it, so I can't say whether it's a good recitation thereof or not). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * One of the cleverest things Star Trek ever did (at least in the original series) was not to try to explain, in very much detail, or even at all, the way their technologies worked, such as warp drive, the matter transporter, the tricorder, the onboard computer containing every recorded fact in the history of the universe, etc. If they did try to explain it, someone could shoot it down. Instead, they simply presented it as fact and let the fans try to figure out the explanations. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 12:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The onboard computer was a wikipedia fork. ;-) Fribbler (talk) 12:30, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking maybe the onboard computer was the 23rd century's answer to wikipedia. Except I never heard the computer answer a question with, "Sorry, not notable." Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 02:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The ship's computer also "had" access to NonNotablePedia (47Peta-articles; primitive versions are currently known under names like archives.org + Deletionpedia). By that time, *all* the Wikipedia articles "were" so heavily jargonized by their owners -- and "had" an average of 42 citations after each word -- that only a computer could interpret them. Twang (talk) 07:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)