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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 170 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Degrees of Separation
Teachers. "Teachers" was directed by Arthur Hiller. This movie is about a teacher (Nolte) who tries to make a difference in the student's lives but is frustrated by the obstacles to achieve it. When he about is to give up and fights the school board, he realizes he has made a difference and one of the main character students is Eddie(Macchio.) Other actors include Judd Hirsch, JoBeth Williams, Lee Grant and Richard Mulligan.
| Furlong was only 13 years old when filming his first feature "Terminator 2". The huge hit made him an overnight star, although his raw acting skills had little to do with it. Dazzling special effects and a future California governor named Schwarzenegger did the trick nicely. Two years later, though, Edward found himself in a movie where it proved that this kid really did have some acting chops. It was a heartfelt family picture starring an Oscar winning actress. Which 1993 movie was it? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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A Home of Our Own. "A Home of Our Own", while largely unnoticed at the box office, was really quite effective without being overly manipulative. An uprooted family (sans father) attempted to start a new life and moved into a veritable shack at the onset of this effort. They rebuilt the structure, formed uncharted familial bonds, and each grew up in the process of it. Edward Furlong played Shayne Lacey, a typical, rebellious (and generally angry) teenager in the precarious situation of being the "man" of the family, with Kathy Bates portraying his unstoppable mother. It was, without question, a "feel good" movie, and Furlong's talent for exhibiting angst came through loud and clear.
| The lovely Beatrice Straight (1914-2001) played an angel in "Two of a Kind", and boasted a long film career, possibly highlighted by her Oscar win for 1976's "Network". She was more often than not in secondary roles, but in 1979 she scored the part of a mostly beastly mother in a film where she went to great lengths to ensure that her son (Stephen Collins) didn't marry his beloved lady friend. It being a romance and all, let's just say Mama's goose got cooked at the end of the day, despite all that unfriendly plastic surgery and a brutal car accident. Which movie is this one? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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The Promise. All of the films mentioned starred Kathleen Quinlan, but "The Promise", based on a novel by Danielle Steele, was the one in which she was horribly disfigured (nearly dead) after a fiery car crash. Since her boyfriend's rich Mother didn't like the girl to begin with, it came easy for her to concoct a plan to have the woman's destroyed face medically rebuilt, after exacting a promise that she'd go away and leave the heartbroken son (who thought his lover had been killed) alone forever. The new face was impossible to resist so the young lady accepted straightaway. Do you think she and the old boyfriend met up again later? I wonder if he didn't recognize her at all? Now that we're asking questions: I wonder if they fell in love all over again? No need to ask, is there?
| Stephen Collins, now forever associated with the well-rounded character of Reverend Eric Camden in TV's "Seventh Heaven" (1996-2006), made several feature films. One was a remake of an old tear-jerker in 1990, called "Stella", with Bette Midler and Trini Alvarado. Stella was a single mother raising a precocious daughter (again), but I'm wondering how Stella supported herself and her daughter in that version? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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She was a waitress.. Stella Dallas has been portrayed by Belle Bennett (1925, a silent film) and Barbara Stanwyck (1937), and unfailingly gets put through the wringer each time. Very uncouth to begin with, she had a very trying time just getting by on her own, and being a mother proved especially challenging - but she was very staunch about doing her best. A widow in earlier incarnations, Midler's version was just 'unwed' and, of course, Bette at her brashest. Collins, incidentally, played the young girl's father.
| Trini Alvarado, born in 1967, was a "hot property" in her youth, expected to become an actress of great depth and glory. Unfortunately she had the audacity to grow up, and the adult roles were few and far between. Let's say, without any pause, she's never given Jodie Foster a run for her money. But in 1980 she scored a coveted part in a film with Tim Curry and someone named Robin Johnson. It was a "friends from different sides of the track" story, and hoped to do for punk rock music (using the term loosely) what "Saturday Night Fever" did for disco in 1977. It fell way short of that goal. What movie was it? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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Times Square. First, I actually liked this movie. The story was mostly illogical and the music was some strange hybrid of any assortment of genres (but not quite annoying). The friendship between the two girls was hard to swallow, but, once swallowed, it digested just fine. The problem with the film was that it didn't have any real heart to it. Robert Stigwood, the fellow responsible for "Fever", hoped the music would fill in the gaps, but it didn't. Miss Alvarado continued her career, but what about her friend Ms. Johnson? Her career came to a screeching halt before it really got started.
| Tim Curry is a survivor, and there's no other way to describe him. He's played essentially every peculiar thing you can think of (almost) and has a knack for, while not always being 'good', being 'memorable', whatever he's up to. In 2004, he appeared in a very well-received role. Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Linney were in the film with him. What best describes the movie in question? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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Sex, science, and sensibilities. That was "Kinsey", where Neeson played renowned sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and Curry played an associate, Thurman Rice. The film took a predominately twisted view of both the doctor and his work, often insinuating (if not downright accusing) him of using it as little more than a platform for his own curiosities and desire for gratification. Laura Linney played Kinsey's wife, and managed to earn an Oscar nomination for her work. It was a murky film and certainly not the sort of thing that everyone would find fractionally appealing or worthwhile. Good acting, though!
| Jodie Foster, Sean Bean, Greta Scacchi and Peter Sarsgaard were in the 2004 thriller "Flightplan". In it, a mother was taking her husband's corpse to America for burial, accompanied by their 6-year old daughter. The child vanished, and from there, the chaos and mysteries abounded. In the film, how did the husband/father perish (or so we are led to believe as the film begins)? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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He had intentionally jumped to his death.. The movie was not only intense and terrifying, it added the claustrophobic atmosphere of an airplane just to make it worse. One minute there and the next minute gone, Jodie was even told that her daughter was never there at all and had, in fact, died at the same time her father did (when he jumped he took her with him?). Our heroine had no business with any of it, and took on everybody to both get some answers, AND get her child back. Interestingly, this role was not originally intended to be played by a woman and the parental genders were in the reverse. Jodie could, as it went, clearly hold her own as well as any guy could have, and one would never even think the part as being gender important at all.
| Beau Bridges, Rob Lowe, Jodie Foster, Wilford Brimley and Nastassja Kinski (and others) made a movie in 1984 about a definitively eccentric family, led by a father who liked dancing bears. All in all, it was a curious film more than anything else, with dwarfs and stuffed/preserved pets, blindness and a great deal of sexual tension. Oh, yes, Sigmund Freud even made an appearance. Based on the novel by John Irving, what was the name of this quirky but fascinating tale? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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The Hotel New Hampshire. The Berrys were a kooky bunch, but the 'parables of life' notion was covered many times over using them. Parts of it were notably gruesome (incest and rapes, etc.), while other parts were whimsical and lovely (the little girl who longed to be tall, but was doomed to be short in stature but enormous with wisdom for life, for example). Irving is a pretty hard author to translate into just one film since there are so many things going on in his novels. This movie's biggest weakness was in trying to cover everyone, and everything. In the end, we never got to know any one of the characters enough to warm up to them. It was, though, a pretty good piece of cinema despite a tendency towards confusion.
| Michael Madsen's film starred him with Edward Furlong. The tagline for the movie was "Four robbers, two killers and way too many guns...". Which shoot-'em-up was this? | 10 Degrees of Edward Furlong
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Living and Dying. The movie involved a group of bad guys trying to get the best of another group of almost-as-bad guys, who then turned the tide and became just as bad as the other bad guys. The audience was led to find themselves rooting for one side as the heroes who would have, in any other film, be seen as villainous and despicable thugs. So, in 1991 Furlong was a mixed-up lad with an android for an ally, being protected so as to grow up and save the entire civilization. Fifteen years after that, he played a heat-packing criminal up to no good whatsoever. Somewhere in between those parts he managed, in real life, to be arrested for two traffic violations in a four hour period - the first for driving with no license, and the second for being drunk and causing a collision. He fathered a child, too, and ended up in court facing charges of assault against the youngster's mother. Hollywood loves its bad boys and maybe, just maybe, that is the role that Edward Furlong was born to play. At any rate, I hope he doesn't burn out and die in the process. He's supposed to save the world, after all! That eventual governor of California said so once in "Terminator 2" - albeit long before Mr. Schwarzenegger got that day job.
| (1999) This drama revolves around the interrelated lives of nine individuals in San Fernando Valley. The common thread between them is the game show "What do Kids Know?". Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Phil Parma, the caretaker of the ailing producer of the show. The producer asks Phil to track down his son Frank T.J. Mackey, who is played by Tom Cruise. | Ten Degrees of Frances McDormand
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Magnolia. Tom Cruise was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in "Magnolia."
| (2001) Tom Cruise stars as David Aames, a wealthy, handsome, spoiled playboy. After a car crash with Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), the jealous girlfriend whom he can't seem to get rid of, David's face is disfigured, plus, he begins having "lucid dreams," or trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. Appearing often in these dreams (or is it reality?) is Sofia Serrano, played by Penelope Cruz, a beautiful and enticing woman to whom David is attracted. | Ten Degrees of Frances McDormand
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Vanilla Sky. "Vanilla Sky" is a remake of the 1997 Spanish film "Abre Los Ojos" ("Open Your Eyes"). Penelope Cruz played the same role in both films.
Sean Penn. Penn plays a great role in this movie, which is worth seeing if you are a fan of action movies. A fight ensues over some money (of course) and Penn and J. Lo are left fighting for it.
Flirting with Disaster. Patricia Arquette and Ben Stiller play a young married couple named Nancy and Mel Coplin, who have just recently had a baby. They embark on a cross-country trip to try to locate Mel's birth parents. On the way, they meet up with Paul and Tony (Richard Jenkins and Josh Brolin), a gay couple who work for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Tony is an old friend of Nancy's and he and Paul end up tagging along with them.
The Big White. The film stars Robin Williams as Paul Barnell, a down-on-his-luck travel agent living in Alaska, who stumbles upon an idea to get him out of the hole he's in. He finds a dead body in a dumpster outside his office and plans to pass off the body as that of his brother Raymond, whom he has no contact with, and then collect on a life insurance policy. Things start to go bad when Raymond (Woody Harrelson) shows up out of nowhere and starts making things very uncomfortable for Paul. Also, he has to deal with two hitmen, played by Tim Blake Nelson and W. Earl Brown, who want to get the missing body back. Harrelson and Nelson each also starred in "The Thin Red Line".
Born on the Fourth of July. Cruise stars in Oliver Stone's film about the true story of Ron Kovic, a soldier paralyzed in the Vietnam War. It chronicles his life from a young boy to a teenager, eager to see some action and serve his county, to a physically and psychologically broken man who eventually became a vocal leader in the anti-war movement. Whaley plays Timmy, a childhood friend who also served and was wrestling with his own demons in the aftermath of the war.
Pulp Fiction. Whaley has a small part in Quentin Tarantino's film, playing Brett, a low-level drug dealer, working for the gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Brett is interrogated, and eventually killed, by Jules and Vincent (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta). Willis plays Butch Coolidge, a prize fighter who incurs Wallace's wrath after he agrees to throw a fight, but then secretly bets heavily on himself and actually wins.
Tears of the Sun. Bruce Willis plays a special-ops lieutenant who must lead his elite team into the jungles of Nigeria to rescue a doctor, played by Monica Bellucci. His orders from his captain (Tom Skerritt) are to ignore the civil conflict going on around them and just rescue the doctor, but she refuses to go unless he agrees to rescue 70 refugees as well.
The Gift. In Sam Raimi's film, a woman with ESP named Annie (Cate Blanchett) is asked to use her gift to help locate a missing girl. Ribisi plays a friend of Annie's, an emotionally unstable man named Buddy. Greg Kinnear plays Wayne Collins, a wealthy man who may have key information regarding the whereabouts of the missing girl.
Flicka. Bello plays Nell McLaughlin, mother to 16 year-old Katy (Alison Lohman) who befriends a wild horse that she names Flicka. Her dreams of some day running her father's (Tim McGraw) ranch in Wyoming is met with skepticism by her parents.
White Oleander. Lohman plays Astrid Magnussen, daughter of Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her lover, played by Billy Connolly. Astrid moves from foster home to foster home while trying to keep in touch with her mother through the mail and visits to the prison.
A Thousand Acres. The movie is about a man named Larry (Jason Robards), who suddenly decides to retire from running his 1,000-acre farm in Iowa. He announces that he plans to divide his farm into three parts, giving shares to each of his daughters Ginny (Jessica Lange), Rose (Pfeiffer), and Caroline (Leigh). That's fine with Rose and Ginny, who are married farm women, but Larry's youngest and most favored daughter, Caroline, a lawyer, questions the wisdom of the plan.
Miami Blues. Baldwin plays a sociopath named Fred Frenger, just released from prison, who hooks up with Susie (Leigh), a prostitute who is attending Dade Junior College. Fred beats up a cop (Fred Ward) and steals his gun and badge, using them to go on a one-man crime wave in Miami.
| In the mid-1990s, Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner played the same character in separate films. Which character did both Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner play? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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Wyatt Earp. Kurt Russell played Wyatt Earp in 1993's "Tombstone", which focused on the Earp brothers' battle with the Cowboys, and the ensuing gunfight at the OK Corral. The movie also starred Val Kilmer, Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, and Dana Delany. "Wyatt Earp" (1994) was a detailed telling of Earp's life, which starred Dennis Quaid and Gene Hackman in addition to Kevin Costner in the title role. Russell and Costner later starred together in "3000 Miles to Graceland" (2001), where they both dressed as Elvis Presley to rob a casino.
| Kevin Costner starred in "The Upside of Anger" (2005) (with Joan Allen), as well as in "For Love of the Game" (1999). What sport did his characters in both films have in common? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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baseball. In "The Upside of Anger", Denny (Costner) was a former baseball player who hosted a radio show. He and his neighbor, Terry (Joan Allen), became close after her husband left her. "For Love of the Game" had Billy Chapel (Costner) pitching his final game for the Detroit Tigers, while he reflected on his other great love, a woman who was no longer in his life. Two other baseball-themed movies which starred Costner are "Bull Durham" (1988) and "Field of Dreams" (1989).
| Joan Allen played Elena Hood in "The Ice Storm" (1997). The actor who played her husband Ben, also played Henry Squires, the husband of Bonnie Bedelia's character, in "Violets are Blue..." (1986). Which actor was it? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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Kevin Kline. "The Ice Storm" took a look at two unhappy couples in the mid-1970s. Ben (Kline) was having an affair with their neighbor, Janey, while his unhappy wife Elena longed for times gone by. In "Violets are Blue...", Henry (Kline) and his high-school girlfriend Gussie (Sissy Spacek) rekindled their love when she returned to their hometown after many years, putting his marriage to Ruth (Bonnie Bedelia) in jeopardy.
| Bonnie Bedelia played John McClane's wife in the series of "Die Hard" films. What was her character's name? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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Holly. In "Die Hard" (1988), John McClane's (Bruce Willis) estranged wife Holly was the reason he was at Nakatomi in the first place. He was visiting his family for Christmas and met Holly at her office. In the midst of the office Christmas party, Hans Gruber and his men took everyone hostage. Having reconciled, John was meeting Holly's plane at Washington's Dulles Airport in "Die Hard 2" (1990). Before her plane could land, a group of mercenaries took control of the airport, preventing all planes from landing until they achieved their goal. With Holly's plane running out of fuel, John sprang into action to get the bad guys. In "Die Hard: With a Vengeance" (1995), Holly and John were apparently having problems again, and she was only mentioned several times when John kept trying to phone her.
| Bruce Willis played an oil driller who was hired, along with his crew, to fly into space to save the Earth from an approaching asteroid. The commander of the space shuttle which accomplished this mission was played by William Fichtner. Which movie was this? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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Armageddon. With only a short time to fly to the asteroid and perform their task, NASA sent two space shuttles. One crash landed, but the one with Harry (Bruce Willis) on it managed to land safely after overshooting its landing site. Its safe landing was undoubtedly due to the skill of its pilot, Col. William Sharpe (William Fichtner). "Armageddon" (1998) also starred Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler and Billy Bob Thornton.
| As Dr. Kent Clark in "Contact" (1997), William Fichtner shared no screen time with David Morse, but did work with Ellie, the daughter of Morse's character, on the SETI project. What disability did Kent have? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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blindness. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) made radio astronomy her career after having been introduced to it as a child by her father, Ted (Morse). She and Kent were on the same research team working at the VLA in New Mexico when a signal from space was received. Kent's keen hearing helped pick out some of the embedded signals. I loved his comment to Michael Kitz, the National Security Advisor, when Kitz came to the VLA, "Nice to smell you again, Mr. Kitz", after which he commented on Kitz's choice of Polo cologne.
| In "Jerry Maguire" (1996), Laurel (Bonnie Hunt) became the sister-in-law of Jerry (Tom Cruise) when he married her sister, Dorothy. Bonnie and Tom also appeared together in "Rain Man" (1988). What was the profession of Bonnie's character in "Rain Man"? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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waitress. Shortly after Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) left Walbrook with Raymond, they were at a diner for breakfast. Ray, who had read the phonebook the previous night, saw the nametag of their waitress (Sally Dibbs, played by Bonnie Hunt) and recited her phone number. When they were leaving, Sally dropped a box of toothpicks, and Ray knew exactly how many were on the floor.
Maverick. Tom Cruise played the character of Maverick, whose real name was Pete Mitchell, in "Top Gun" (1986). Maverick learned a few things about himself when he attended an elite fighter pilot school for naval aviators. Mel Gibson played the title character, Bret Maverick, in "Maverick". This Maverick was on his way to a high-stakes poker game, but still needed to collect a portion of the entrance fee. His efforts were complicated by a young lady also trying to obtain enough money for the game, as well as by a nosy lawman.
| Mac (Mel Gibson) was a drug dealer who had supposedly retired from the business. His good friend Nick (Kurt Russell) was a cop who wanted Mac to go straight, but at the same time wanted to catch the drug kingpin he thought Mac was going to be making a deal with. Which movie was this? | 10 Degrees of Kurt Russell
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Tequila Sunrise. Both men had to make choices between their friendship and getting what they really wanted. To complicate matters, both men fell in love with Jo Ann (Michelle Pfeiffer), the owner of a local restaurant. Raul Julia played Carlos, the friend of Mac's who was also the drug kingpin Nick wanted to capture.
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