Know Your Picture Characters Entry #58

June 13th, 2011 by Wordsman

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

A Fan feels strongly about his movies and somewhat less strongly about the sanctity of the Academy’s Best Picture award.  He should perhaps have saved some of his second batch of guesses, though, as I reserve the right to present a “Should’ve Been Best Picture” puzzle at some later date.  I like to think that none of the ones I put up were too terrible, and this hope is somewhat backed up by the fact that none of his first batch of guesses can be found on this list.  I feel like I should give him something, though, so I will say that he was closest on D, which is Ordinary People.  It certainly sounds boring, anyway.

Theoman gave me the benefit of the doubt in terms of taste, but unfortunately it didn’t pay off.  His kanji knowledge, which had served him quite well the past few weeks, failed him, and his “one” sailed far over the cuckoo’s nest, missing the list entirely.  We’ll give him partial credit for getting the right number of words in A, and, in fact, they both have the same fourth word.  The word is “the.”

We at the Wordsman are rather distressed to learn that Dragon has never seen Chariots of Fire, The Sting, or either of the good parts of the Godfather trilogy.  She is an expert on Gandhi, though, which allowed her to figure out that it is not on this list.  Unfortunately, Lawrence of Arabia is not either.  C is Silence of the Lambs–a good movie, but one which, unlike some of the others she missed, it may be forgivable to pass over.

So at this point you’re probably thinking that no one got anything correct this week.  And you would be absolutely . . . WRONG!  Shirley decided to put together a list that was basically the opposite of A Fan’s, and she struck paydirt straight off the bat: A is The Bridge on the River Kwai, though the Japanese title is the somewhat less specific “Bridge on the Battlefield.”  None of the rest of her guesses was correct, but hey, the way everybody else was swinging, one out of six ain’t half bad.  And she even identified another picture that appeared on the list: On the Waterfront (or, in Japanese, simply “Waterfront”) is B, not F.

Finally, at E, we have Unforgiven.  And F?  Well, you wanna know what they call me?  They call me Mister Wordsman.  And if you can’t figure it out from that, it’s your own fault.

But let’s do something a little less complicated this week.  I’m going to pull a challenge pretty much straight from my old first-year Japanese textbook, and we’re going to try to identify types of buildings.  If you can’t stop thinking about your favorite films after last week’s challenge, you can look for the movie theater.  If you prefer something a little more old-fashioned, check out the library.  In case of emergencies, look for the hospital, and in case it’s, uh, Sunday, try to find the church.  The post office is there too, and so is the embassy, because if you’re in another country, it sure can’t hurt to know where that is.

A. 映画館 B. 教会 C. 大使館 D. 図書館 E. 病院 F. 郵便局

NOTE: I will be somewhat busy next weekend, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the vast majority of my readership will as well, so there will likely not be a KYPC update next Monday.

Posted in Know Your Picture Characters | 3 Comments »

3 Responses

  1. TheomanZero Says:

    I recognize some of these from studying Japanese, but again, that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. I don’t immediately recognize C, and I don’t recall learning about embassies, so that’s my guess.

  2. Dragon Says:

    Wait, maybe I have seen Chariots of Fire. I just can’t remember anything about it. And I think once I saw just the end of The Sting and was really confused.

    Anyway, C is hospital. See, the first character looks kinda like a cross. You know, the Red Cross. That’s a universal symbol, right? Even in ancient Japan?

  3. Shirley Says:

    B. I looked up pagoda in the dictionary where it was defined as a temple or a memorial. B. has a pagoda-like thing as its last character. B, pagoda/ aka/church.

    D. There appears to be a movie screen starting the D. kangi. I couldn’t quite figure out what was playing. The closest thing might be Inception, except the kanji would have been written long before the movie was filmed. Both are beyond my
    comprehension. Still, That’s how I’m calling it.

    C. There is a little guy in C. who looks like he could use one of those two hospital beds.

    E. Simply because I find myself drawn to E. and I love libraries, I’m saying E. is a library.

    A. looks so official. Embassy.

    F. That leaves both post office and F. which certainly looks as much of a mystery as our postal delivery times. So I may as well try guessing to the bitter end.

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