criterionforum.org

Minkin wrote:I've been using Sporcle for years - its a great way to challenge yourself on all variety of topics.

Since this is the Criterion Forum after all, how do we do on these:

Name the Criterion Covers (by portion of their cover) parts 1, 2 and 3 - part 3 is perhaps the best of those.
Name the Criterion releases 1-100

There's also hilarious quizzes like:
Can you pick the things Meat Loaf actually WOULD do for love?

I can't find the covers quizzes in the app.

movielocke wrote:Name the Criterion Covers (by portion of their cover) parts 1, 2 and 3 - part 3 is perhaps the best of those.
I can't find the covers quizzes in the app.

Weird. I'm guessing "unpublished games" aren't available on there. You're able to type fast enough on your phone to do a Sporcle quiz?

Part II:

This thread has proved reasonably popular, so I made a tally of the scores in my opening post. I can post a new quiz for us all to do every four or five days and see how we get on. Let's have a second round and do one of Minkin's suggestions, as this is a Criterion-based forum after all:

Minkin wrote:Name the Criterion releases 1-100

I'm ashamed to say I got only 52. Does only buying DVDs for five-and-a-bit years give me some wiggle room? Now's a chance for those completists to show their is some value to their spine number obsession!

I got an 88 on the 100 directors quiz (which was really fun!)
I got a 77 on the first 100 Criterion releases (and felt really dumb seeing the 23 that I could not recall)

72 on the Criterion quiz. Some of the titles I blanked on were pretty frustrating!

71 of the Criterions...and around half a dozen I should have gotten right.

71 directors, 89 on Criterion titles

Minkin wrote:

movielocke wrote:Name the Criterion Covers (by portion of their cover) parts 1, 2 and 3 - part 3 is perhaps the best of those.
I can't find the covers quizzes in the app.

Weird. I'm guessing "unpublished games" aren't available on there. You're able to type fast enough on your phone to do a Sporcle quiz?

Yes.

I got 98 on both

The Criterion quiz wasn't too bad--just think of movies by the listed directors that are either OOP, look terrible, or had to be reissued because they looked terrible.

91 for the directors and 87 for the titles.

On the covers part one and 2 I got 49 of 50 on each

Spoiler

I missed stranger than paradise because I couldn't think of an thing other than strangers in paradise, and I missed cul de sac on the second quiz.

86. That was much, much harder.

On the Sporcle 100 Directors quiz, I got 97. Missed

Spoiler

István Szabó (I have to admit I've literally never heard of any of the 3 films listed), William Dieterle, & King Vidor

On the Criterion 100 Spines quiz, I also got 97! Missed

Spoiler

The Blob, Fiend Without A Face, & Double Suicide

OK, I'll try and keep up with the quizzes for fun! On that note I got 100 for the Criterion releases 1-100 quiz. It'll be the only time that happens!

Spoiler

I had the most trouble with the Beastie Boys set, trying variations of "An Anthology" until I remembered that "Video" went in there somewhere!

EDIT: I should note that whenever I'm stuck waiting for a meeting to start with just a pen and paper and nothing else to do, I just casually start jotting down as many of the Criterion releases as possible, which has developed to putting them in spine number order as an extra challenge. I cannot go beyond 180 with confidence, and I still mix up the order of titles sometimes, but that means the first 100 or so Criterion DVDs are well ingrained!

Lemmy Caution wrote:Sure sounds like a lot of folks need to see Mephisto -- a terrific film, with a great performance by Klaus Maria Brandauer, and one of my all-time favorite endings.
It even won an Oscar. Get cracking.

I do hope that at some point Criterion might do an István Szabó boxset of his three 'problems of rising to power and influence' films from the 1980s: Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Hanussen. All three are magnificent (the only thing I can really think to compare them to would be Sokurov's trilogy on historical leaders) and need greater exposure.

In a different vein (though Taking Sides bridges the two themes!) I also quite like Meeting Venus, which I often think makes a good double bill with Robert Altman's The Company!

I liked

Spoiler

Szabo's Confidence

.

85 on the 1-100 list. Only seen 25 of them.

I actually played the Criterion 1-100 quiz last week, and I think I scored somewhere in the high 80s or low 90s. I tried it again today and got 98/100. The ones I still blanked on were:

Spoiler

Fiend Without a Face and Double Suicide

I got them all with more than half the time left to go, but more than a minute of that was me racking my brains for a name that was just out of reach:

Spoiler

Landis

80 for the Criterion titles. Not too shabby, it seems.

Fine then, since I helped to promote this, I guess I should probably play as well!

86 on the Directors quiz. I'm absolutely terrible at remembering any of the classic studio directors - they all blend together in my head.

91 on the Criterion 100 quiz. Within the last five seconds I suddenly remembered

Spoiler

the two WC Fields releases

Feel free for other people to find more quizes on Sporcle - quite a few of them might be too easy for this crowd (things like matching the director's names), but there's plenty of other interesting quizes (I guess if we get bored, there's also Criterion 101-200, 201-300, etc ).

Since I'm on a role - some future recommendations: Cannes Palm winners (since 1975) , or the BFI's Top 100 British Films or the more difficult - winners of Cannes 1st & 2nd place (up until 2011) - but feel free for other people to suggest a quiz(es)

97 on the directors, 76 on the Criterion 1-100. Should have got at least half-a-dozen more on the latter (reading all the questions would have helped in that regard).

Some of you guys are too good. I've got a killer up my sleeve for Part III.

Not even as close to being as good as last time around: I could only come up with a measly 74/100. It makes you realise how obscure some of the films Criterion released back then were!

Spoiler

I missed out on most of the Fellini's (I'd never even heard of Variety Lights) and Bergmans, as well as many of the Asian films.

Part III:

The first of the big three European film festivals has come and gone already so let's see how many Winners of the Golden Bear you can come up with.

I'm hoping the average score for this one will be lower; I got 23. I'd be interested to know how many of the more obscure films people get. Upon clicking on the "Full Results" button after doing the quiz, I got five from the right-hand column of the lesser known films.

Very bad result with the Golden Bear for me. I got only 16. Of the more obscure films, I only got Siodmak's "The Rats" and Hauff's "Stammheim", and the latter one I only knew because I remembered being angry that year about the bear going to that film instead to Jarman's "Caravaggio".