Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 December 19

= December 19 =

Hilarious arithmatic sketch. 14*5 = 25
While searching for something else, I came across this hilarious sketch involving a man repeatedly trying to convince his parents that that five shares of 25% is 5% each.

Can someone please tell me what film this is from? I don't even recognize any of the actors, but then I never was good at identifying actors. Thanks! APL (talk) 05:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It's from Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951). Ma and Pa were played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride respectively, and Billy was Emory Parnell.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   05:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah! Thank you very much for your quick response. APL (talk) 05:25, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * And thank YOU for that video. I rofled.  Hard. -- Jayron  32  05:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

What's that weird division method they use in the beginning? The one with two carved lines and "5 doesn't go into 2"? TomorrowTime (talk) 10:33, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You may be used to seeing something like this:

___ 5)25
 * But that's not how everyone has always drawn their long division. For instance, here is a different notation from both mine and the film's.  Dismas |(talk) 11:11, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, the long division you linked to is how we used to do it in primary school here in Slovenia :) TomorrowTime (talk) 12:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Top Gear races
Often, in Top Gear's stupendous races across Europe or Japan, where Jeremy is in a car and Hammond and May use some other form of transport....in these races, towards the end, you'll often see Jeremy engaging Sport mode, retracting the rear spoiler, and "giving it everything", and anything else he can do to speed up.

However, given that he's always followed by a diesel-powered camera car, which doesn't have optional rocket fuel, wouldn't all of this be completely pointless? Vimescarrot (talk) 11:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Firstly, they all have to comply with the speed limits (although I seem to recall they do not have them on autobahns in Germany). Secondly, they are primarily telling a story, so the clips are scripted, filmed, and edited together, with that in mind. In other words its artistic licence. 89.243.188.42 (talk) 19:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Well they don't have to comply with speed-limits if they get segments of roads closed for filming. 89.243 is right that it's all about making a good feature. My understanding is that the show continues to claim that the races are not scripted/staged, and that what happens is real - from what I see it feels that that's maybe a bit of a white-lie. The show's races are (for me) brilliant, but the sheer logistics of filming all those scenes mean there's a large amount of organisation going on behind the scenes. ny156uk (talk) 23:44, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I remember reading - though I can't find the reference at the moment - that the official story is that they do the race once, actually racing, filming what they can. Afterwards, they run certain stretches again to get the good shots etc. Whether that is how they actually do it, or if it is just a standard answer since it so obviously can't be completely real, I don't know. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 23:52, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's in the production notes on the Top Gear site, here's the Veyron v Plane one with the passage - "One thing people always ask about these cross-Europe epics is: how do you get the pretty shots of the car going by when it's meant to be a race? The answer is that once the race is over the rest of the crew spend two or three days retracing the route to get the arty shots the director wants. In this case, the day before the race he also went up in the filming helicopter and got some extra shots of James' plane, just in case they didn't get enough stuff during the race itself." Nanonic (talk) 00:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Nightwish?
A friend of mine recently lent me a USB with some music on it. One of the bands on it was Nightwish, and while I really enjoyed it, there were serveral songs that I couldn't find on any of the pages for Nightwish I looked at. These songs are: A Final Dream, Excalibur, Long lost love, Lord of the Rings, Lothlorien-Lord of the rings, and Moondance. Does anyone know if these are Nightwish songs, who sang them if they aren't, and what's going on? Library Seraph (talk) 17:48, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Moondance" is covered relatively often as an instrumental, and the Nightwish website does indicate that their album Oceanborn has an instrumental song by that name. You might consider asking this question on their forum. Even if the songs don't turn out to be by them, if they're a similar style perhaps someone will know them? APL (talk) 23:42, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to get my answer here, if it's not to much trouble. I can't believe I missed moondance, I'm sure I checked everything Library Seraph (talk) 21:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not too much trouble, but you will get a higher chance of sucess in that forum, as a very low % of people on this board are Nightwish fans (and of those, some like myself aren't able to view enough sites to research this for you when in work) whereas on a Nightwish forum, everyone there knows and talks Nightwish... Gazhiley (talk) 11:18, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Foreign Cartoon
I have no idea how to search for this, but I remember watching this foreign mini cartoon about a man eating an egg in an egg cup, and in the end, he was also being eaten as though he himself were in an egg. I remember that he went to go eat his own egg, and that he heard a voice from within it. Instead of stopping, he got a malicious look on his face, and began to crush the egg on purpose, while the voice from within started shouting "Stop!" Then, the room around him started caving in on itself, and his dialog was the same as that of the voice from his egg. It aired either on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon maybe about 1994/1995. Does anyone know what this cartoon is called, and if I can find it on the internet somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.16.88.224 (talk) 23:38, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Foreign is relative. Wiki is international. So, when you say foreign, do you mean non-English, non-American, or what? (Edited to sound less accusatory) I mean this only to narrow down the search. Aaronite (talk) 06:10, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
 * WHOIS reveals that the IP is from Massachusetts, so I expect that "foreign" means "non-American". Nyttend (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like The Killing of an Egg by Paul Driessen. You can see it on YouTube. -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 05:43, 26 December 2009 (UTC)