Know Your Picture Characters Entry #77
A. 科恩兄弟 B. 贾森雷特曼 C. 朗侯活
D. 昆汀塔伦蒂诺 E. 皮特多克特
Nine out of ten doctors do not recommend trying to read Chinese based only on one’s knowledge of Japanese; the tenth doctor is a sadist. But Theoman proved them all wrong, because he recognized the Japanese word for “brothers” or “siblings” and he clung to it like a man tossed overboard in a storm hanging onto a piece of driftwood. Fortunately, it carried him to shore: A is the Coen brothers, whose best movie is, in fact, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, whatever A(nother) Fan might tell you. But Fargo‘s their second best, so I guess he wasn’t too far off. And neither was Theoman, who scored an impressive 40% this week, also picking out D as Quentin Tarantino, whose Chinese name has a disappointingly small number of characters that have anything to do with violence. That third one in there is a tower, which I guess would hurt a lot if it fell on you? I might be stretching a bit here.
A(nother) Fan likes to have backups; if he can’t be right about the characters (and, for 4/5, he wasn’t) he can at least be right about which film was best. Or can he? Pete Docter no longer lives in Bloomington; he lives at E, and, appropriately enough, has a character meaning “special” appear not once but twice in his name. WALL-E was better than Up, and I can’t remember Toy Story well enough to make a definitive judgment, so I guess he wins that one. And he’s right about Tarantino as well, in quality if not in location. And being a member of whatever generation he is (not mine, presumably) paid off, as it allowed him to recognize Opie. He can have credit for Up in the Air as well, so long as he acknowledges that it’s kind of interesting that the first character of Jason Reitman’s name in Chinese is also the name of one of my Chinese teachers.
But maybe we should move away from Chinese for a bit. As has been pointed out to me, I am not a real Chinese speaker; I just play one on the internet. Let’s go back to nihongo (Japanese) for a while. Everyone know what day it is today? Good. If you don’t, go hide in the corner in shame for a while. Then, when you come back out, your task will be to find the word that completes this sentence: “Linus awaits the Great _______.”
A. 瓜二つ B. 瓜田 C. 南瓜 D. 胡瓜 E. 西瓜 F. 西洋南瓜
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3 Comments »
October 31st, 2011 at 5:50 pm
There was a character in Soul Eater who was pumpkin-themed, but she always just said “pampukin”, so that doesn’t help me here. I’ll just claim Linus awaits whatever D is.
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:30 pm
My first thought was just gratitude for an easy puzzle since I’m out of practice. Then I started examining them. They all have one figure in common. Odd. But in two the figure is in front and in the rest it is last. What could that imply? Another kanji has two more figures the same. Meaning what? A is an outlier, not quite like the others. Why? Wow, this is heavy.
Mysteries within mysteries! Creepy. Oh, I get it. Halloween. Pumpkins. The great pumpkin. E could just be pumpkin and F, the longer, could be the Great Pumpkin. Hah! Piece of Cake. Or have I just had too many pain pills?
November 4th, 2011 at 8:46 am
My computer has decided not to show me the characters–there are just rows of squares.
However, this is unlikely to affect my accuracy much.
The best Charlie Brown special, of course, is the Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, but the original Great Pumpkin one certainly has its moments, including Snoopy’s trek through WWI France after his Sopwith Camel is downed by the Red Baron.
The animation is somewhat mournful, in classic Peanuts fashion, until releived (temporarily) by some comic business. Just like life, eh?
So it must be B.