Know Your Picture Characters Entry #93
A. 命の木 B. 家政婦 C. 金玉 D. 芸術家 E. 子孫 F. 戦火の馬
G. パリの真夜中 H. 物凄く煩くて、有り得ないほど近い
And the Oscar for Technical Accuracy goes to . . .
Theoman, of course. Not much of a shocker here. Sure, he’s not perfect, and I certainly wouldn’t put him in charge of casting: he has an unfortunate tendency to hire artists to do all the cleaning work and to take on maids to design all his scenes. Other than that, however, his record is solid. Luckily for him, at KYPC, the Oscar for Technical Accuracy is awarded at the main event and not at that special separate nerd ceremony they always have for the technology stuff.
The award for Most Subjectivity goes to . . .
A(nother) Fan, surprising no one. If movies are involved, you’d better believe he has an opinion and is willing to share it. So what if his accuracy suffered because he was more concerned with badmouthing Tree of Life than he was with spotting it at A (supposedly his first runner up). Oh wait . . . actually, his accuracy wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t half good, either, but it was close. Turns out that his knowledge isn’t limited to films he approves of, either. He spotted Moneyball at C, The Descendants at E, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at H. And here’s a funny story about ELIC: this challenge was somewhat inspired by seeing a friend of mine looking up movie titles in Japanese in order to prepare a lesson for class. I saw him looking at one and, reading only the beginning (“Extremely loud”), assumed this was a review of the movie rather than its title. Though based on A(nother) Fan’s low opinion, perhaps it was both.
The moral of the story is: don’t simply rank things in the order they come to you. While this system puts ELIC in its “proper” place, it also says that The Descendants is better than War Horse, The Help is better than The Artist, and Tree of Life is better than all of them.
The award for Most Easily Recognizable Answer goes to . . .
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Oh, the horror, it actually won something! Not much of a surprise here, since the title has twice as many meaningful words as any of the others do. Technically, everyone also got Moneyball correct, but we’re going to assume based on Shirley’s comments that she was more sure about ELIC.
Finally, the award for Best Original Screenplay goes to . . .
Shirley. Whether or not she actually gets the answers right (this time she picked up as many correct answers as A(nother) Fan), we can always count on Shirley to give us the most detailed description of how she arrived at them. She weaves a tale of deception and subterfuge at C, Moneyball. She tells us how the life of a maid can be like a war at B, The Help. She reminds us of John Williams’ powerful score with her reference to musical instruments at F, War Horse. She . . . says something about horses that I don’t entirely understand at D, The Artist (can’t expect to catch every little detail in a silent movie, right?) And she was the only one to mention anything about Ernest Hemingway at G, Midnight in Paris.
But hey, to me, you’re all winners. And I actually mean that. Anyone who’s played KYPC for as long as you folks have knows that three out of eight is nothing to sneeze at.
Still, awards aren’t everything. There are other ways to judge a film’s value. See if you can identify the top six films from the IMDB Top 250 List that were never nominated for Best Picture.
A. 新たなる希望 B. 暗闇の騎士 C. 七人の侍 D. 帝国の逆襲
E. 殴り合い会 F. 良い者と悪い者と醜い者
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March 5th, 2012 at 11:57 am
A. The Dark Knight
B. Fight Club
C. Seven Samurai
D. The Empire Strikes Back
E. Inception
F. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
March 5th, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Theoman should check his Best Picture nominations a bit more carefully. “Inception” was nominated (and probably deserved it).
Unfortunately, that means I’ve only seen three of the six, but when has that ever stopped A(nother) Fan?
A. City of God–a 3-word title, so I’ll go with one of the longer kanji titles. Never saw it.
B. Fight Club. Saw an episode of “Iron Chef America” last night, in which the challenger ran a restaurant called the “Hot Hot Fish Club.” The Chairman asked him, “So, is the first rule of the Hot Hot Fish Club that no one can talk about Fish Club?” The challenger appeared not to get the reference.
C. Seven Samurai. Always good to copy at least one Theoman answer. Of course, it was remade as The Magnificent Seven (and arguably as the Dirty Dozen). Never saw it, though.
D. “No, Luke, I am your father!” As many people have probably pointed out, if you actually watched the Star Wars movies in Lucas’s revisionist order, the first three would basically constitute a massive spoiler for that sublime moment in Empire Strikes Back. (However, the reviews back in 1980 largely gave it away at the time.)
E. Dark Knight. For about 90 minutes, this really was a Best Picture level movie. Too bad it had another hour yet to run.
F. In college, I had alongrunning debate with a friend over whether Lee Van Cleef was “the Bad” or “the Ugly.” I correctly said he was “the Bad,” but my friend had a fair point, which was “how can you be uglier than Lee Van Cleef?” Anyway, it was before Wikipedia (or the Internet, for that matter), so it took a long time to settle the argument.
March 5th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
And just to be clear, every time I see that IMDB list with “Shawshank Redemption” at number one I wnat to throw something. A decent movie, yes, but (a) not even the Best Picture of its own year (among the nominees, better than Forrest Gump, but not as good as Four Weddings, Quiz Show, and can’t even dream about Pulp Fiction); and (b) not even the best adaption of a Stephen King non-horror story: (“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”)
March 5th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
And one more thing and then I’ll stop:
The best way to measure why Forrest Gump is the worst Best Picture winner ever is the aggregate delta between it and the other four nominees.
Not only is it the worst of the five movies (itself a rare feat for a Best Picture winner), but the other four are all really, really good movies. Pulp Fiction was the best movie of the 1990’s. Quiz Show was maybe the most underrated movie of the 1990’s. Shawshank Redemption is the favorite movie of whoever the hell votes on that IMDB poll.
Four Weddings is the best of the British movies of that era that are all a lot like it, including Notting Hill, Bridget Jones Diary and Love, Actually.
March 11th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
I did the best I could, but realize my best is none too good. The trouble is, every time I found a movie that might qualify, I usually found that it didn’t. It almost seems like they (the movie makers) would have to have been trying in order NOT to get a nomination. But I did come up with 4 that seem worthy of recognition but didn’t get any. I have listed one that was nominated for a BAFTA (whatever that is) mention. I”m assuming W.W. meant Academy awards.
A. The Big Lebowski. On the strength of being a Coen brothers production starring Jeff Bridges which ought to be enough right there. But also, simply unforgettable. The kanji is just as weird as the movie.
B. The General. I’ll guess that the Academy Awards hadn’t started yet, or surely this great comedy would have had one if there were any justice in the world. You can see the General just tearing down the tracks and Buster in the middle of the kanji desperately stoking it’s furnace.
D. The Life of Brian. I feel a little uncomfortable about calling this one “D” since my reason is that there are three figures that could be hanging from a cross. Somehow making a little light of this feels blasphemous or something. To say nothing of callous. There were those who said that about the movie itself. I’m sorry, but that is my reason.
F. Kind Hearts and Coronets. It did receive a BAFTA nomination,but not the Academy one. Can you believe that? How could it not? There are 8 figures in the kanji and Alex Guiness played 8 different parts. So!