April 01, 2005
Movie Quiz #1: The Answers.
Shot 1:
"Kiri kiri kiri kiri," Eihi Shiina coos as she plays with needles, in Takashi Miike's Audition (1999).
Shot 2:
See what happens when you disobey your teacher? From Kinji Fukusaku's Battle Royale (2000). Most everyone guessed the first two correctly, even if they hadn't seen it.
Shot 3:
This was the hardest one to identify. The scene occurs during the opening credits: the beautiful Meiko Kaji, bound up in prison, sharpening a spoon into a deadly weapon by scraping it against the cold stone floor, in Shunya Ito's Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972). The film in shot #5 borrows shamelessly from it (the theme song, for starters). Yeah, yeah, it's supposedly an homage, but still...
Shot 4:
C3PO and R2D2 -- sorry, two peasants named Tahei and Matakishi -- clamber up over a rocky hill only to find, to their chagrin, that Toshiro Mifune got there well before them, in Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958).
Shot 5:
Sonny Chiba figures out who Uma Thurman is using the Hattori Hanzo sword for, but dare not say his name, so he writes it instead, from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003).
Shot 6:
While it's her ass that occupies the opening credits, it's a bored Scarlet Johanssen's knee that we see here overlooking Tokyo, from Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003).
Shot 7:
A few seconds after seeing this image, the video will end, and the phone will ring, and you will die in seven days, from Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998).
Shot 8:
From the concluding nightclub shootout (one of many) in Seijun Suzuki's eye-popping, ultra-stylish gangster thriller Tokyo Drifter (1966). My friend Boyong thought it was something from the set of the Spandau Ballet video for "True."
Shot 9:
Two elderly parents, Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, visit their children, but who are simply too busy to spend time with them. They are summarily shipped off to a resort, where they are kept awake by all the drunken carousing (and the heat), in Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953). If there's one movie you should see on this list, make it this one.
Congratulations to Bull Schanen from New Zealand, who guessed 8 out of 9. He wins -- okay, "wins" -- the privilege to name the theme for the next series of mp3 downloads. And lots of bragging rights, of course!
A new quiz begins tomorrow.