Well, that last one was depressing, wasn’t it? Sorry about that… how about a game to try and break out of the funk?
John at SF Signal put this little exercise together:
I went to IMDB and looked up 15 movies. Listed below are four official “Plot Keywords” for each movie.
Your job: Name these movies!
- Stripper Dancing With Snake / Owl / Broken Finger / Killer Robot
- Future / Visceral / Claustrophobic / Impregnation
- Messiah / Wuxia Fiction / Young Boy / War
- Skin Care / Future Noir / Paraplegic / Perfection
- Saving The World Mission / Extraterrestrial / Space Travel / Alien Space Craft
- Advertising / Attempted Murder / Clairvoyant / Eye Surgery
- Very Little Dialogue / Surrealism / Astronaut / Talking Computer
- Prophecy / Cat / Subway / Cyberspace
- Sunglases / Tabloid / Cat / Spoof
- Cryogenics / Post Apocalyptic / Horseback Riding / Beach
- Human Versus Computer / Gladiator / Frisbee / Video Game
- Revenge / Spacecraft / Sandstorm / Midlife Crisis
- Evolution / Prejudice / Wheelchair / New York City
- End Of Civilization / Bikini / Big Ben / Inventor
- Robot / Scientist / UFO / Washington Monument
Give it a try, kids, then check yourself against my answers after the break.
My answers:
- Blade Runner
- Gattaca
- Minority Report
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Matrix
- Planet of the Apes
- Tron
- X-Men
- The Time Machine
- The Day the Earth Stood Still
I’m not too proud to admit that even I have no idea what some of these (presumably) well-known SF movies might be, but I blame the clues more than my own abilities. For instance, what the hell is wuxia fiction (item #3)? Short of consulting Google (which would be cheating), I have no choice but to admit defeat. Still, I guess 10 out of 15 is fairly good, isn’t it? How did you do?
I’ll update this entry in an hour or so with all the correct answers…
Update: I’ve placed John’s correct answers in the comments below. Scroll down to see them, and thanks for playing…
Considering the answer for #3, I didn’t want to make it too easy… 😉
I think 10 out of 15 is pretty good. Creating the quiz was easy…coming in blind makes it harder. The original link had me scratching my head until it hurt.
Now that I’ve seen the answers, John, I understand your tactics. The “wuxia” thing definitely threw me — I need to bone up on my HK cinema, I guess. 🙂
I am positively ashamed of myself for not getting numbers 2 and 12, though… they seem so obvious in retrospect.
Okay, here are the answers as revealed by John in the comments on his original post:
As I mentioned in the comment above, I’m ashamed of myself for not getting Alien or Wrath of Khan. As for Men in Black and Independence Day, meh. I’m hard-pressed at this point to remember the details of either…