Wednesday, May 19, 2010

DENNIS COOPER'S FOREIGN FILM POP QUIZ


UPDATED 5/20/10 6:21 p.m.


Once again it’s my pleasure to introduce a little more hump day fun into your office experience, thus making your day even less productive, but perhaps more enjoyable, than it would have been otherwise. By way of David Hudson and the newly renamed Daily MUBI comes a link to Dennis Cooper’s blog DC’s and his “Foreign” Film Pop Quiz-- the quotes in the title give a clue as to the deliberate misnomer in operation here. Dennis provides a look at 27 posters created in countries, one presumes, other than the country of the film’s origin. What to do with them? Here’s Dennis:

“Each poster advertises a known -- and in many cases very well known -- American or European film. Some films are recent, some are older. Your task is to guess the names of as many of the movies as you can. You can incorporate the guesses of earlier commenters into your guesses if you like… The person who guesses the most film titles correctly by the time I post tomorrow will win a prize. The prize is that I will make a blog day about anyone or anything the winner chooses.”

The image seen above is one of those posters, and one of the easier titles to coax from the imagery, much of which is stunning and elliptical and, in some cases, outright bizarre. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be fun. Let me know how it goes! I’ll post answers to the ones I can get (not close to all 27, a cursory glance assures me) later in the day. (Come on, psaga, you know you wanna give this one a shot...)

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UPDATE 5/20/10 6:21 p.m.
I've taken a stab at the posters and left my answers in the comments thread below. I promise I did not peek at any of the answers that may have been deposited at Dennis Cooper's blog-- if I had, my try would have been much more complete than it ended up being. SO take a look at what I've got and see if you can help me fill in some of the blanks!

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7 comments:

Uncle Gustav said...

"Once again it’s my pleasure to introduce a little more hump day fun into your office experience, thus making your day even less productive, but perhaps more enjoyable, than it would have been otherwise."

That's awfully considerate of you, Dennis.

But... wait!... What office?!? I'm retired!

SUCKA!

Doug at Melodrama Tonight said...

As we say in the library business, no book is old until you've read it. And a movie is not old until you've seen it so often it holds no more surprises or pleasure for you. Doug Faribank's "Robin Hood" is a newer movie than the Ridley Scott version if you've seen the latter but not the former.

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Damn you, Flickhead... damn you!

Here are my answers with the gaps left where they occur. ???s accompany those that I'm not entirely sure of.

1)
2) THE SHINING
3) SHUTTER ISLAND
4) SCOOBY-DOO
5) TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
6) STAR 80
7) I can suss of 20th CENTURY FOX and ROBERT ZEMECKIS on this poster, but nothing rings a bell
8)
9) THE PIANIST
10) JAWS
11) GHOSTBUSTERS
12)
13)
14)
15)
16) LAST MAN STANDING (???)
17)
18)
19) CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/THIRD KIND
20) A.I. (???)
21) THE BOOK OF ELI
22)
23) PLANET OF THE APES
24) ALIEN
25) ALIEN (???)
26) SILENT HILL (???)
27) 50 FIRST DATES

I promise, I did not look on Dennis's comments or use any outside sources (search engines, IMDb) to come up with these. Anybody wanna help me fill in the gaps?

Dennis Cozzalio said...

Doug at MT: I just cannot muster the energy to see Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. I'd much rather watch Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks again.

Uncle Gustav said...

Tee hee!

p.saga said...

Damn you, Dennis! I have homework to do here.

I only guessed five of these (which match your list) and mostly by studying the actor names. If they had been exclusively westerns it might've been a different story. This book tops my summer reading list... http://icanhaz.com/western-amerykanski

David B. said...

I can fill in a few gaps:

1. Star Wars
14. The Elephant Man
15. Equilibrium
16. Die Hard