Presenting Professor Hubert Farnsworth's Only Slightly Futuristic Holiday Movie Quiz via the always entertaining Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.
1) Best Movie of 2010
Winter’s Bone
2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie
Repulsion
3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Rock beats Statham
4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid
5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?
It shouldn't, but it does. One of the banes of the internet age: If a film isn't exactly what a person wants it to be, be it cast or director, or if pre-production leaks don't pass these preconceived musters, then you hate the film already, proclaim it as such as loud as you can -- and you haven't even seen the damned thing yet. Hell, in most cases it hasn't even been FILMED yet. And that seems kinda ass-backwards to me. Me, I'm a nuts and bolts film fanatic, sure, and wild tales of filmmaking have led me to many a treasured classic and anti-classic. But, if at all possible, I usually like to wait until after actually seeing the film before forming an opinion. If my interest is piqued enough, then I'll dig to see what effect it might or might not have on my overall opinion. So I find foreknowledge to mostly be counter-productive; as, like most folks, once I have a preconceived notion set it's hard to shake.
6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne?
With somewhat surprising ease,
Powell and Loy win in a landslide.
Powell and Loy win in a landslide.
7) Best Actor of 2010
Casey Affleck The Killer Inside Me
8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies ?
Stars sure aren't as bankable as they used to be, are they?
9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)
DVD: Joon-ho Bong's Mother (2010)
Blu Ray: N/A
Theater: Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World (1951)
10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six
Standing up and shouting at the top of my lungs that there is much, much worse out there to see than this, folks. All that hub-bub over that? Please.
11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see?
London to Brighton (2006)
12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson?
Pepper, you're going undercover as Feathers.
13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie
King Kong (1933). Where does Merian C. Cooper end and Carl Denham begin exactly?
14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place
The Naked City
15) Best Director of 2010
Ji-woon Kim The Good, The Bad, The Weird
16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie
The one where something bad happens to Ben Stiller's privates. Or was that Jim Carrey's?
17) Favorite holiday movie
Invasion U.S.A. (1985) Chuck Norris saves Christmas.
18) Best Actress of 2010
A tie (Yes, a tie; this is my list, deal with it.)
Jennifer Lawrence Winter's Bone
Noomi Rapace The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson
Nope. Not gonna chose. And I gotta pine axe handle womp'n stick that says you can't make me.
20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most ?
Jean Simmons
Grace and Beauty Personified.
Grace and Beauty Personified.
21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.
Flash Gordon (1980) wouldn't be half as deliriously awesome with a standard symphonic soundtrack.
22) Best Screenplay of 2010
Winter's Bone -- I'm sensing a pattern here.
23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now
I seem to be defending the merits of the original Tron to my fellow programs a lot lately, rather vehemently.
24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever
Harrison Ford getting his Boris Badenov on in K-19 the Widowmaker. Seriously, if you're not gonna go The Hunt for Red October route, and you're not gonna do subtitles, what is the point of even having a Russian accent if you're saying your dialogue in English?
25) Best Cinematography of 2010
Mo-gae Lee and Seung-Chul Oh: The Good, The Bad, The Weird
26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton
Wilde. Those eyes. Cat's eyes. Damn. Wow.
27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)
Criminal Woman: Killing Melody (1972)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
The Evictors (1979)
28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010
Randy and Evi Quaid. What?
29) Favorite shock/surprise ending
Right now, the ending of Bong's Mother is still resonating in my head. But my all time favorite is a toss-up between Ben taking one to the head in Night of the Living Dead and Chuck Heston finding out what Soylent Green really is.
30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010
I didn't stay at home, and instead of reading a book, I went to a theater and was rewarded with seeing Jerry O'Connell not only getting his wiener bitten off by some killer fish, but then said appendage being regurgitated back up and then eaten again -- in glorious 3-D! -- in the remake of Piranha. (And I'm pretty sure in the DVD release there'll be a deleted scene where the fishes eventually poop out what's left.)
31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only…
Abandon the notion of 3-D just for the sake of 3-D. Especially post 3-D conversions.