Welcome to the entertainment section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/E

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

December 6

What racing sport travels the least millimeters or body/car etc. lengths between clock increments? (at race end)

What racing sport has a photo finish or similar device that can distinguish 1st and 2nd place at the least millimeters or body/luge etc. lengths apart? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:48, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What have you found so far? Lots of sports have photo finish or similar devices. Lots of sports can distinguish finishing places by extremely short distances, in most cases to the millisecond but some narrower as per photo finish. Which article are you trying to improve here? Nanonic (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Horse racing has used 1/10000ths of a second (this apparently isn't new). That article says a length is about 17 hundredths of a second so 0.0001 sec would be about 1/1700ths of a length. Horse length says a horse is about 8 feet long so 0.0001 seconds would be c. 1.4 millimeters. If 1 pixel was that 1.4 mm an image 10,000 pixels tall (a pretty large amount) would be slightly under 50 feet. Searching Churchill Downs gives a representative starting area width of 120 feet which while foreshortened to less in the camera view still shows that 0.0001 seconds is already getting close to the limit of current camera megapixels for horses.

In track and field, the longest Olympic race is 50 kilometers and you have to walk so it should be the slowest. The 2016 Olympics used a second camera. The 50 kilometer racewalk world record had an average speed of 8.77 miles an hour and the last Olympic 50km racewalk had 8.47 mph which both round to 0.4 millimeters. There's about 8 lanes of c. 4 feet (c. 10 meters in all) so track and field is also close to the limit of current megapixels.

I also found that swimming used to be able to seperate finishers by thousandths before a finish of only a few millimeters made them change the rules to call that a tie but they swim faster than racewalking divided by 10 so it isn't swimming. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Alpine skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics and Swimming at the 2016 Summer Olympics, to name two, calculated times to the hundredth of a second. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:42, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an article on close Olympic finishes. The first example, swimming, featured a winning margin of just 4.7 millimeters. CThomas³ (talk) 22:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

December 7

The Pianist - German language

In the Holocaust film The Pianist, why did the Germans (especially Wilm Hosenfeld) spoke to the Polish Jews (especially Władysław Szpilman) in their own language rather than in English or Polish? 31.48.29.211 (talk) 21:50, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yiddish was widely spoken by Jewish communities in eastern Europe; Yiddish and German have some mutual intelligibility [1] so there's a good chance that a Yiddish speaker would be able to make sense of spoken German.

As to why the director chose to use use German speech instead of English, he may have just wanted to show that they weren't using the everyday language of the main characters. Perhaps IMDb - The Pianist (2002): Trivia holds another clue: "A nuance for those who don't speak German: In general, the German officers use the informal version of "you" ("du," etc.) when talking to the Jews, which reflects their views (you wouldn't talk to adult strangers that way); however, Hosenfeld (the officer who discovers Wladyslaw Szpilman in hiding) always uses the proper formal form ("Sie," etc.) because of the way he personally feels". Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't read his memoir, but it looks probable that Szpilman spoke German. He studied with Schnabel, Schreker and Leonid Kreutzer in Berlin (early 1930s, see article), and it would surprise me if it turned out that teachers and pupil had not spoken German with one another. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:15, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That seems likely. Language(s) in the Buna/Monowitz Concentration Camp says "Ashkenazic Jews who knew Yiddish could understand the Germans". Alansplodge (talk) 19:38, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

December 9

Olympic judges

During the 1998 Winter Olympics, some judges were asked to judge some places and things in some areas. One of the things was Titanic. I can't seem to find anything about all that. Where's a good place to start? Anyone know?2604:2000:7113:9D00:E489:B375:36EB:1AC5 (talk) 23:45, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What would the movie Titanic have to do with anything? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:24, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Titanic was in cinemas around the world at the time. The judges were also international. Could those be a little bit helpful?2604:2000:7113:9D00:E489:B375:36EB:1AC5 (talk) 04:43, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying they did movie reviews to help sharpen their skills at judging figure skating? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:52, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. Some National Broadcasting Company and Olympic officials showed the judges around some areas. The judges were being invited to show viewers what they thought of all that was shown to them.2604:2000:7113:9D00:E489:B375:36EB:1AC5 (talk) 05:00, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like another irrelevant entertainment piece NBC typically does (that most people do not really care about) to bloat their Olympics coverage (you can read the NBC Olympic broadcasts article where there are several cited paragraphs referencing how NBC tends to edit its broadcasts to resemble a program meant more to entertain rather than a straight live sports event). And 1998 was way before social media, the popularity of DVRs and so forth, so anybody who did actually care about this sort of stuff did not really have a good way to save it online for public consumption. You could go to youtube and search for something like "1998 winter olympics" to see if you see anything remote. But other than that, I can't help you. Zzyzx11 (talk) 02:34, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

December 11

I'm Lee Hnetinka, How to Make a Video with Images and Audio?

My name is Lee Hnetinka and I need your help guys, I want to know best software's to Make a Video with Images and Audio. If you know, please advise me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leehnetinka86 (talk • contribs) 12:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Leehnetinka86: There is a plethora of software for doing that (some free, some not). See: Category:Video editing software for examples. Also, you might get better advice over at the Computing reference desk (but generally, reference desks are not intended to be advice forums). —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:831:EE2:9FFB:76D0 (talk) 02:52, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Elissa Sursara - more famous in Brazil than Jesus?

Was Elissa Sursara a Brazilian child star? Sources assert she was "more famous than Jesus" in Brazil in the 1990s. Yet basic Google searches find very little about her career in Brazil - in fact it's indeterminate if she even an actress in Brazil at all. This is a mysterious case! -- GreenC 14:36, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

First, that's a blog, so it's not usable as a source. Second, the article is about an Australian, not a Brazilian. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From the blog: After moving permanently to Australia at the age of 16, Elissa, who’s [sic] father suffered an illness, was “unsure of her future in entertainment” (according to her rep) and contemplated which direction in which to pursue her career. Choosing to study whilst making guest appearances on Brazilian television, Elissa remained in Australia with her ill father and family. At age 18, Elissa chose Australian citizenship after holding Dual Brazilian and Australian citizenship to be near her father and mother. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:17, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's not a word about Brazil in the article, and I wouldn't trust that blog one iota. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:42, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not just one source.

Source 2: "..Brazilian beauty Elissa Sursara.. made famous at the age of four as an insanely popular South American child star"

She is also cousin of super-model Adriana Lima who shares a similar background (Brazilian parents moved to Australia). The question is, what was her career in Brazil, if any? (please help with the question not source reliability - once I have more details I can use the info to search for reliable sources in Portuguese) -- GreenC 21:35, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like click-bait hyperbole to me; and a reference to Lenin's "[The Beatles] are more famous than Jesus" controversy.. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:831:EE2:9FFB:76D0 (talk) 21:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lenin? Wasn't he dead long before any of the Beatles were even born? Wymspen (talk) 17:09, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ivan Lenin, not Vladimir. —Tamfang (talk) 02:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There might be some hyperbole. Does it mean no career in Brazil? She herself says her parents are from Brazil. Other sources say they took her back there at age 4 for modeling, presumably with the help of her successful cousin Adriana Lima (about 6 years older). It would make sense the two girls Brazilian mothers (sisters) would be working in concert with their children. The question is how famous was Elissa in Brazil. -- GreenC 22:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This purports to be her own web page. Is that even the same woman as the one pictured in the other sources? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes of course that is her. What "other sources" are you referring? As I said, there are one or two blogs that show a wrong picture, but otherwise have correct biographical details (DOB, relations, career etc) in the text portion. -- GreenC 23:19, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you also check IMDB, you'll find that these various texts about her are suspiciously similar - and that there is very little about Brazil. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Where do YouTubers get their footage from?

Obviously not the ones who shoot their own stuff, but the ones that do 'video essays' and breakdowns of Hollywood movies. There's a ton of YouTube vids that feature hundreds and hundreds of hand-picked clips from all sorts of movies. Where do they get hold of the footage? My best guess is that they rip it from the DVDs, but maybe I'm missing something. That seems like a massive task, ripping all those DVDs. If so, can anyone recommend a decent bit of DVD-ripping software/hardware?? THnks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.132.166 (talk) 21:53, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sure they rip it. See Fair use. 196.213.35.146 (talk) 06:06, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It may not be the herculean task you think it is. For example, a lot of such videos are breakdowns of trailers or other short subjects that would a) already be distributed in "soft" copy and b) be short enough to easily parse. The actual variety of movies used is also not that great. For example, if you wanted to do a video essay on superhero movies, there are a few dozen movies you'd want to draw from at most and, like with a written essay, you'd probably focus on only a few. And, if you just want a quick shot from a movie, you're likely back to the trailer solution. Matt Deres (talk) 15:18, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

December 13

No dice

A company recently marketed a Donald Trump board game, which flopped. How was it played? 86.171.242.205 (talk) 12:37, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]