April 15, 2005
Movie Quiz #2: The Answers.
Because of the unprecedented number of submissions for the last movie quiz (I'm being sarcastic), the next quiz will be way easier.
Here are the answers (they're all part of the Criterion Collection, by the way):
Shot 1:
In Mark Rosman's The House on Sorority Row -- just kidding. Vera Clouzot faints when she discovers that something that should be in the pool isn't, in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 film Diabolique. Simone Signoret (standing off to one side) is probably more celebrated as the steely mistress, but Clouzot's performance as the nervous teacher is the better of the two. (I was only partly kidding about The House on Sorority Row: the slasher flick borrows this whole plot twist. Rosman would later go on to direct Hilary Duff in a couple of features.)
Shot 2:
The Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) wanders through a ballroom (in a riveting hour-long scene) in Luchino Visconti's magnificent The Leopard (1963). (I was initially hesitant to use this shot, figuring that it was too small to recognize Lancaster -- I was going to go with a vidcap of Lancaster and the gorgeous Claudia Cardinale dancing -- but people got it.)
Shot 3:
Serial killer and pedophile Peter Lorre is stuck, in Fritz Lang's 1931 film M. (There's the title, written on his back!)
Shot 4:
Nicolas Cage waves off the oncoming F-18s, in Michael Bay's The Rock (1996). It's big, dumb, loud, and a hell of a lot of fun. Almost everyone got this; maybe I should have used this pretty one instead.
Shot 5:
Homayon Ershadi drives around the outskirts of Teheran in his Range Rover, looking for someone to rescue him or bury him, in Abbas Kiarostami's 1988 film Taste of Cherry. Absolutely sublime (the hairs on my arm are standing up, just thinking about it).
Two people identified all five films correctly, but one person sent their answer in earlier (sorry Brandon). Congratulations to thick pigeon, who wrote, "Thank goodness for 3rd world piracy!" I suppose that means pirates have good taste, but poor Abbas...
A new quiz, with a musical twist, appears tomorrow.