Know Your Picture Characters Entry #57

June 6th, 2011 by Wordsman

A. オペラ座の怪人 B. 猫 C. 美女と野獣 D. 惨め者達 E. 家賃

F. 屋根の上のバイオリン弾き

Not quite enough answers this week to stage a full musical, but we might be able to put together one of those quirky off-Broadway shows.

To the tune of “Gaston”:

When I was a lad I took Japanese class every spring, summer, winter and fall
And in those classes we learned katakana, so I basic’lly can read them ALLLLLLLLLL!

We at the Wandering Wordsman have ruled that looking up the list is not cheating, which is lucky for you, as we are bound to pursue any criminal to the ends of the earth, like the relentless Javert.  Presumably the list helped Theoman pick out #8 on the long-run list, Beauty and the Beast, as letter C, while he was busy scorning A and F.  But was he telling the truth or merely bluffing when he claimed to be able to identify B as #2, Cats?  I guess we’ll never know.  We will also leave it up to the world to wonder whether you got it because you saw the character for “woman” or because you realized it was the only one on the list to come in the form “_____ and _____”

To the tune of “Master of the House”:

Master of the site
Tripping up the folks
Puzzling their minds and telling awful jokes
Setting up his traps
Laying out the bait
Mocking their misfortune when they can’t think straight

We agree with Shirley that F is certainly long enough to deserve to be Les Mis, but unfortunately it is not.  Here we have #14, Fiddler on the Roof.  This is one of the three that actually uses what I wrote as its Japanese title; the others are C and A, the unstoppable Phantom.  Those miserable ones are hiding over at D, trying to stay away from the misguided revolutions, racist forced relocations and angry mobs that are running rampant through this puzzle (and you thought Chicago was bad!)  Next to them, and not much better off, E represents the struggles of the poverty-stricken to get enough together to pay the Rent.

By the way, last week’s bonus answer was: Memorial Day->”Memory”->Cats->Musicals

I rather liked that puzzle idea, but I’m guessing you won’t be too happy about having to do musicals two weeks in a row, so we’re modifying the topic slightly.  This time around it’s Best Picture Winners.  Every movie on the following list has won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and, unlike last week, everything listed here actually goes by this title in Japan.  I know that’s a lot of choices, so I’ll narrow it down for you a little: none of the choices is from the past fifteen years, and none are more than sixty years old.

A. 戦場にかける橋 B. 波止場 C. 羊たちの沈黙 D. 普通の人々

E. 許されざる者 F. 夜の大捜査線

Posted in Know Your Picture Characters | 5 Comments »

5 Responses

  1. A Fan Says:

    I think WW is a little confused. Javert and “Master of the House” have nothing to do with “Beauty and the Beast.” Javert was the famous “Mn in the Iron Mask,” and D’Artagnan was the “Master” of the 3 Musketeers “House.”

    Anyway, this week is pretty easy. WW decided to trick us by picking the worst “Best” pictures in his somewhat arbitrary 45 year time-frame:

    A. Forrest Gump

    B. Greatest Show on Earth

    C. Around the World in 80 Days

    D. Out of Africa

    E. The Last Emperor

    See next comment.

  2. A Fan Says:

    Think how much more respected the Academy Awards would be if the Best Pictures for the years in question had been:

    A. Pulp Fiction (or any of the other nominees–“Gump” and “Africa” are the years where someone from Price Waterhouse got the voting totals reversed.)

    B. High Noon

    C. (well, 1956 was just a bad year, maybe “The King and I”?)

    D. Witness (or any of the other nominees

    E. “Broadcast News” (or even “Moonstruck”)

  3. TheomanZero Says:

    I’m pretty lost here, so I’ll just go by first impressions and say that A is One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

  4. Shirley Says:

    Gee, W.W., thanks for narrowing it down. Sure makes it a lot easier.

    A- Bridge Over the River Kwai.. It begins and ends with the sound of that great whistling of the perfect song for that perfect movie and there’s even a river running through it in the middle.

    B. Schindler’s list, almost too disturbing to contemplate tho we must. So best to keep it short.

    C. My Fair Lady. Not a whole lot of heft to it, but wonderfully lyrical songs and you can almost hear them in the kanji.

    D. The Sting. Not a whole lot of heft here either, but there is a stinger thing next to last character. Oh, that delightful Scott Joplin music, reflected in the delightfully jaunty kanji.

    E.Chariots of Fire, again the perfect song booking ending two athletic characters almost identical, but slightly differing. One, the second, is running and the fourth is clearly a high jumper.

    F. On the Waterfront couldah been a contendah, but it was more, quite simply the best. The kanji has one lone brave man standing against the power of the establishment, risking life and limb for the powerless dock workers.

  5. Dragon Says:

    Well, once I’d looked up the best picture list, I decided to go backwards and pick the first one that I’d actually seen. Which was…Gandhi. I don’t think any of these are Gandhi, because they all look too long. Then it was The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady, but you did musicals last week. So apparently I’m going with Lawrence of Arabia. The symbol for “no” (meaning “of,” at least sometimes, to the best of my knowledge) is one of the only Japanese characters I actually know, and I see it in three of them. Except Lawrence is a name, meaning it would probably be written in katakana (right?) and I’m not sure if any of those are. Except maybe C? Whatever, I’m going with C.

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