Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 January 7

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January 7

Monopoly World Tournament

Does anyone know information on the Monopoly World Tournament? I remember reading somewhere that there is an official Monopoly World Tournament and a US National Monopoly Tournament, and they alternate every two years, I think. However, I have had a very difficult time finding any information about this. Can anyone help? Thanks!

SJCarlson22 (talk) 07:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

History of the board game Monopoly says they're now only going to be staged every four years, but the next one is this year. Doesn't say where or when, nor does the Hasbro official site. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Delayed yellow-card from advantage played in Football (soccer)

I was playing Fifa 08 yesterday, as you do, and made a bit of a rash challenge - the ref waved played advantage and the opposition continued. When the ball went out of play the player was booked for the challenge. My question is this...Is there any records of a professional player being sent-off for 2 bookable offenses within one section of play (i.e. a yellow card challenge which has an advantage then a second yellow for another challenge during that period of advantage)? I guess it might end up being a straight-red in reality but thought i'd ask anyway. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 10:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking through the BBC's football blog archives, I found this very scenario being presented to Keith Hackett, referee chief for the English Premier League. Although he doesn't mention any specific examples of it actually happening, he does explain the regulations that a referee should follow if such a situation occurs;

"...referees should take extreme care when applying advantage. That is why we constantly train referees that possession of the ball is not always an advantage...In this situation the referee is now in an extremely difficult situation and will have to call on all his skills to apply answer a). He must issue two yellows cards and the red and send the defender off. Good refereeing techniques can avoid this."

You can find the entire discussion on the BBC's website here [1]. 87.115.26.157 (talk) 16:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

obscure music project

In the mid-1980s, I saw something about Danny Aiello doing a response song (and video) to Papa Don't Preach by Madonna. The song must've been Papa Wants What's Best For His Little Girl. It also must've been from a father's perspective about a man warning his daughter about teenage pregnancy, and ordering her to give her baby up for adoption when it's born. Who knows anything about that type of thing?72.229.129.53 (talk) 12:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I remember that as well. This page : [2] has a small paragraph about the song near the middle. Danny also has released a couple of cd's since then. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

If that's the case, I can't seem to find a copy anywhere.72.229.129.53 (talk) 19:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

So far I have found some cd's on Amazon here: [3], but the song you are looking for is not on these discs as far as I can see. I'll do some more looking. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 21:12, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Very well.72.229.129.53 (talk) 02:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I think I have exhausted my google skills with no ultimate success. I can't seem to verify if the track was ever released in a physical purchasable format. Anyone else out there want to take a shot? cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 16:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

I have just started watching this series, and I have now watched seasons 1, 2, and 3. These are the episodes with Detectives Goren and Eames. I am curious about something. Are there ever any episodes in which the crime is not actually solved? Every episode that I have seen (so far) involves the crime being solved and easily "sown up" by the episode's end. I was just curious if this ever changed in any later episodes. Did the writers ever have the detectives not solve a crime ... or even solve it but "get the wrong perp"? Or is every single crime in every single episode neatly solved and sown up by the episode's end? I am just curious about this. It's a great series ... but a bit formulaic if every single crime is always solved every single time ... (and in 45 minutes, no less!). Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC))

Joseph, you might just as well have asked this question about every cop show ever made in the history of television. Generally speaking, crimes that might take weeks or even years to solve in real life are solved within 45 minutes on TV. There must be some exceptions, I guess. I can't speak for this show in particular. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course there are exceptions. Sometimes shows have a two-part episode, and then it takes 90 minutes. However did you fail to realize that? <grin>

The original show Law & Order, which Criminal Intent is a spinoff of, features both the solving of a crime and the resulting prosecution in each episode. There have been many episodes where the prosecution is unsuccessful and some where the prosecutors learn that they have been prosecuting the wrong person, and I think there have been some where in the end they know only that the crime was committed by either one of two people. --Anonymous, 08:21 UTC, January 8, 2009.

Even though it only takes 45 minutes on TV, the elapsed time on the show could be much longer. In the show Cold Case, for example, it's often decades that pass before a case is solved. StuRat (talk) 20:02, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. The "45 minutes issue" was not really the issue at hand, as I certainly understand that "TV time" does not equal "real life time". The issue that I was really getting at was whether or not these detectives ever fail ... or do they formulaically solve every single crime presented to them, every single time? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC))

I remember when Perry Mason lost his one and only case. It made headlines. Now, this was about a defence (or defense, since he was an American) attorney who, except for this one case, always got his clients off their charges (and, usually, did Detective Tragg's work for him by identifying the real culprit in the process). But the corollary is that the police almost never fingered the real culprit to begin with, and had to depend on Perry and his team to find out who really done it. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not certain about Law and Order C.I., but Miami Vice was certainly a program that didn't always follow the formula. There were episodes where the criminals were not caught and abrupt endings were common. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 21:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The episodes which feature the recurring character Goren nemesis Nicole Wallace (Olivia d'Abo) probably come closest to leaving things unresolved. --LarryMac | Talk 21:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input ... much appreciated! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC))

Film Credits

Many years ago the cast of a film was shown at the beginning, with a simple "The End" at the end. It appears sometime in the late 1960's or early 1970's the cast list was switched to the ends of films, along with many more behind-the-scenes personnel (e.g. "Best Boy", "Catering Services Provided by:") than had been listed previously. How did the change come about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.120.95.34 (talk) 19:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed this, too. I recently watched the 1967 movie In Cold Blood, which was right in that time frame, and ended abruptly, without credits. This was a bit of a shock, but perhaps that was the intent. I believe that many movies had extended credits at the end far earlier than this, however. StuRat (talk) 20:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I would also assume that more and more people (i.e., the Best Boys and the Caterers that you cite) began to "demand" screen credit in their contracts. I assume it's a pretty big deal to them, both personally and professionally, to be included ... and rightly so. (It provides them with a legacy in perpetuity, as well.) Furthermore, I imagine that this contract demand is at little or no cost to the film producer. Thus, a win-win situation. The only "loser" in the entire process is the film-goer who is faced with seeing an endless sea of mostly meaningless names at the end of the film. And, as we all know, such viewers are free to leave the theatre and/or to stop the CD. Which pretty much everyone does. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:47, 7 January 2009 (UTC))

In the early days of film, credits could last a minute or less. In the 1950s, credits on TV were contradictory: movies had credits at the beginning and TV shows had credits at the end (to make sure the show grabbed an audience in the first two minutes from competing channels). Obviously, this competition impacted on the TV presentation of movies. Another reason for the shift to the end was that movie credits began to get longer during the 1960s. Now film credits have so many names, they can last as long as five or seven minutes. They increased because of union regulations, contracts, copyrights, nepotism, lengthy CGI names, etc. as noted in this New York Times article from 2004. It would be interesting to know the first movie to put credits at the end. Pepso2 (talk) 20:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

There are many old B&W movies from the 30s and 40s I've seen on TV that start with the main credits, and end with the list of players and the roles they played, right after "The End". So, mentioning the actors (but not the other people involved) twice has a long history. I can understand why they might have started doing that - people had just sat through the movie and were curious about who was that stunning woman/man who played the doctor. (They'd be less likely to have wondered, at the end, about the production designer, for example.) Such information is not available from just the names of the actors in the opening credits. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Starting in the 1930s, Universal re-listed the main cast at the end after the memorable phrase "A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating." A good brief article on all this is here. —Kevin Myers 23:40, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

We have a bit of information at Closing credits. --Thomprod (talk) 23:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there any other product where so many people are explicitly credited with its production? Most of the people being credited for films have next to no creative input at all, so copyright concerns seem neglibible. --Tango (talk) 22:10, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned, it is contractual that certain credits appear before a movie begins (overlay during an opening scene is allowed) and certain credits must appear at the end of the movie. Some legal credits are also placed at the end of the movie to avoid lawsuits. It can be humorous, such as a biographical movie ending with the standard "This story is purely fictional and is not based on any living or deceased person. Any similarity to a person, living or deceased, is purely coincidental." Of note, some movies purposely break the rules. Tarantino purposely delayed the opening credits on Pulp Fiction, knowing he would get fined, and stated that the artistic product was worth the fine. Also, not all people are listed in closing credits. For example, much of the crew that worked on Die Hard 3 was not listed in any credits because they only worked on the South Carolina sets. South Carolina is not a film union state, so the workers were not union and did not require listing. Now that I'm thinking about it, The Holy Grail did a good job of using the opening credits to meet requirements (with a lot of humor) and ended with a sudden cut to black. So, now that I'm under a Monty Python influence, nothing more I can say will make sense. -- kainaw™ 01:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

As a footnote to what I wrote above, it would be interesting to screen See How They Run (1964), the first made-for-TV movie, and find if credits are at start or end. Maybe the television movies signaled the break with tradition. Pepso2 (talk) 17:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Another clue would be tracking down when "trailers" started to show up before the movies. It used to be credits - movie - trailers. Now, it is previews - movie - credits. -- kainaw™ 19:09, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm, thanks! I had always wondered in the back of my mind why they were called "trailers" when they didn't trail anything. Dismas|^(talk) 17:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

See our article Film trailer. --Thomprod (talk) 21:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if The Long, Long Trailer had a long trailer. Anyway, skip the trailer and go straight to the movie. It's hilarious. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:13, 10 January 2009 (UTC)