What surprised me most about the quiz was how many different answers there could be to one question. I also see that, in some cases, I didn’t quite phrase the question correctly, which led to some confusion. Since it was our first quiz (I think, eleven years is a long time Oscar watching) I felt fine about the mistakes, however I promise next time it will be less ambiguous. I will tell you what I was thinking of as the answer.
1. Name the movie: Four Oscar nominations, one win, but not Best Picture.  Hint: Someday Oscar winner in smallish but pivotal role.  Dead giveaway: Critics were meh but the Golden Globes embraced it, forever altering its course in the race.  (Extra credit, name the Oscar winner too). Scent of a Woman, many of you got this very right. The actor was Philip Seymour Hoffman playing one of the rats.
2. Three Oscar nominations. Theme: God and Man. Helter Skelter meets Lawrence of Arabia.¬† Dead giveaway: God still hasn’t won an Oscar. The Stunt Man.
3. Twelve Oscar nominations. Won the Best Pic but lost one big one. Dead giveaway: The titular character played by actor in his prime. Hasn’t quite been the same since. This film would rescue the Oscars this year. Gladiator
4.¬† Name the Oscar year: An epic, a big hit, a weepy, an arty, and an unlikely winner. Dead giveaway: it is brought up again and again and again, every year. Arguably among the most ruminated upon of all Oscar races. Reds, Raiders, On Golden Pond, Atlantic City and…Chariots of Fire.
5. Name the Oscar year: Three of the most famous female roles in Oscar history. They don’t make them like they used to but these films are timeless. Dead giveaway: The Best Picture winner features a cameo by a legend.¬† 1951, All About Eve (Norma Desmond, Margo Channing, Eve Harrington – and actually you could throw in Billie Dawn)
6. Name the Oscar year: When a certain major critics group canceled, a sweeping epic won. Would it have won anyway? I was reminded of this by Peter Travers, of all people, who had it on his Twitter yesterday – 1963 (for the films released in 1962). Lawrence of Arabia won.
7. Name the Oscar year: some consider this to be among the best years ever for Best Picture nominees, again with ten. The Best Picture winner was one time out of five chances for what director to have won an Oscar for Directing? Well you know the director is Alfred Hitchcock. So that makes the Oscar year 1941. We’ll be heading back into ten nominee land now so we’ll be looking a lot a Oscar’s early years. John Ford won in directing. Hitch was nominated for Rebecca, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window (and didn’t win! Wasn’t even nommed for Best Pic), and Psycho. I think this is exactly the kind of thing that hooks me into the Oscars all these years — the kind of epic fail of their history.
8. Name one film that won all of the Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture. Extra credit: name them all. So Return of the King was one, and still holds the record. Gigi, The Last Emperor, and The Best Years of Our Lives were others.
9. Name the Oscar year: Four out of the five Best Pic winners began with or had “the” in the title. The only one that didn’t won. Dead giveaway: one of the easiest year to predict. Actually, I found out that you could have a year where the “the” came at the beginning but I was actually thinking of 1993/1994, Schindler’s List as the winner – and the nominees all had “the” in the title: In The Name of the Father, The Fugitive, The Piano, The Remains of the Day.
10. Name the Oscar year: Mark Harris wrote the book detailing the culture and change surrounding which five movies? That would be Oscar year 1968. In the Heat of the Night beats Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Graduate.
I really hope you had as much fun playing as I did. The next time we do this we’ll have an actual prize.
