Cineplexity, Game 1! Everyone welcome!

[kronovan]

Four Weddings and a Funeral. Or as a friend of mine is fond of calling it 'Four Funerals and a Wedding'.

[CrayolaSmoker]

Charade - The movie really kicks off at the funeral for Audrey Hepburn's husband where some crooks show up to individually verify that the man is dead (mirror under the nose, pin in the hand) and tell Hepburn that they want their money back. Knowing nothing about her husband's strange dealings, she can only turn to to the suave Cary Grant, who may or may not be hiding something from her...

[Unagi]

Scenes:  Wedding or Funeral

Suuuuuuuuure

[Pyperkub]

The Philadelphia Story - It's all about the wedding (or actually two weddings, one in the past, and one which the movie centers around)  - Jimmy Stewart covering the high society wedding, with Cary Grant as the ex-husband, and eventual husband to be.

[Purge]

Scenes:  Wedding or Funeral

Suuuuuuuuure

?

[Unagi]

(just giving ya a hard time Purge - the 'Wedding & Funeral' match-up with 'Hugh Grant' is just so clean.  )


Anyhow....

Arsenic and Old Lace

Mortimer Bruster (Cary Grant) is a newspaperman and author known for his diatribes against marriage. We watch him being married at city hall in the opening scene. Now all that is required is a quick trip home to tell Mortimer's two maiden aunts. While trying to break the news, he finds out his aunts' hobby; killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar. It gets worse.

[PeteRock]

Yep.  Going with Rocky again.

Looks like hentzau wins again with Rocky.    

As much as I hate to admit it, after reading the criteria for the round, how can I go with anything other than what immediately came to mind?  I don't think any level of creativity will take away from the fact that Hugh Grant + Wedding or Funeral = Four Weddings and a Funeral.  It's just too fitting.

kronovan wins the round.

On a side note, is there an agreed-upon length of time considered to be appropriate to allow everyone to get their choices in?  I don't want to be perceived as jumping the gun, but when I've made my decision I would consider it to be unfair to allow others to continue to make selections under the impression that they may have a chance even though their choices are no longer in the running.

[hentzau]

It's up to the judge.  No real set time frame.

(And my training sucks.  Save me!)

[Pyperkub]

Yep.  Going with Rocky again.

Looks like hentzau wins again with Rocky.    

As much as I hate to admit it, after reading the criteria for the round, how can I go with anything other than what immediately came to mind?  I don't think any level of creativity will take away from the fact that Hugh Grant + Wedding or Funeral = Four Weddings and a Funeral.  It's just too fitting.

What??? I thought the Philadelphia precedent had been set with PeteRock judging    

PS - PeteRock, if you haven't seen The Philadelphia Story (the original B&W, with Hepburn, Grant and Stewart), I highly recommend it.

[Purge]

<throws liferaft to hentzau>

The online cineplexity game has a very shallow pool to select from. Bring your cards to class.

[hentzau]

<throws liferaft to hentzau>

The online cineplexity game has a very shallow pool to select from. Bring your cards to class.

I know!  Thats why I stopped going there.  I'll work on bringing cards with me tomorrow. 

[kronovan]

As much as I hate to admit it, after reading the criteria for the round, how can I go with anything other than what immediately came to mind?  I don't think any level of creativity will take away from the fact that Hugh Grant + Wedding or Funeral = Four Weddings and a Funeral.  It's just too fitting.

kronovan wins the round.

Yeah... I have to admit I got lucky that last round by checking back shortly after the next cards were posted and taking the obvious choice. That  being said, no sooner had I posted when I remembered Carey Grant was also one of the 3 actors. If ever there was an actor that's been featured in great movies involving marriages and funerals, its him. If last round had gone to 1 of the Carey Grant movies I'd have agreed with the choice.

BTW does anyone know where I can get Charade at a decent price? About the only copy I can find in my area is selling for a hefty $43. I'm most interested in the Criterion Collection release because of the high transfer quality and the exta interviews with Stanley Donen.

[hentzau]

BTW does anyone know where I can get Charade at a decent price? About the only copy I can find in my area is selling for a hefty $43. I'm most interested in the Criterion Collection release because of the high transfer quality and the exta interviews with Stanley Donen.

Charade.  $11.01 + postage

Criterion, $32 + Postage.

[hentzau]

Score:
Hentzau - 7
Wonderpug - 7
Eduardo X - 6
Unagi - 6
CrayolaSmoker - 3
Kronovan - 3
PeteRock - 2
Purge - 2
Pyperkub - 2
Yellowking - 2
TGB1.1 - 1
Remus West2 - 1
Austin - 1
th'FOOL - 1

Round 43:

Scenes:  Wedding or Funeral
and
Characters:  A Saint, A Samurai, or A Single Parent

Judge:  kronovan

[Unagi]

The Sixth Sense

Cole, the boy, is being raised by his mother (divorced)
There is the scene at that little girls funeral where the tape of her being poisoned is discovered...

[CrayolaSmoker]

Kill Bill - The Bride, left for dead at her wedding in Texas, sets out on an epic quest to kill the man who murdered her unborn child. Along the way, she is aided by Hatori Hanzo (a maker of samurai swords), survives an impromptu funeral after being buried alive, and finally meets the man she is after, who not only has been raising her child as a single parent, but waxes poetic about Superman (who many consider a saint).

[Pyperkub]

Excalibur - the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere as well as the funeral of King Arthur.  Modred (conceived by sorcery) is raised by Morgana, a single parent.  Additionally,  Arthur is knighted in the name of the Saints, and Lancelot can be viewed as both a saint and a samurai. 

[PeteRock]

Grammaton Cleric First Class John Preston (played by Christian Bale) is a single father raising two children in a futuristic dystopian world where emotion has been outlawed, emotion-suppressing drugs have become a government mandate, and sense-offense can be punished by immediate execution.  Upon ceasing his "dose", Preston begins to feel true emotion for the first time in his life and is haunted by memories of the arrest and subsequent execution of his wife.  This execution, which takes place during a modified funeral proceeding held by government legal represenatives, at which Preston was in attendance, eventually leads to Preston's transition from unfeeling Cleric to emotional resistance fighter.  A final influencing factor in Preston's transition is another funeral proceeding and the subsequent execution of a resistance fighter close to Preston's old partner, who he executed personally.

The Cleric's primary line of defense against the resistance is a gun-fighting martial art discipline known as the Gun Kata.  While the Gun Kata does not carry with it the same level of spiritual guidance governing the Samurai, it is still a lethal martial art incorporating a weapon, in this case a gun instead of a sword.  Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element.  The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire.  By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%.  The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.

[kronovan]

Well color me surprised that no one suggested any Japanese films with feudal settings involving samurais, saintly acts and single parents. Which would be almost any Zatoichi movie and many of Kurosawa's. I mean hell, if you want to find samurais committing saintly acts to avenge a widow or a widower and their children, you don't need to look much further than Japanese cinema; but enough of my ranting.

I did like all of the choices. Thinking along the lines of the Japanese cinema it would seem like Kill Bill would be a natural choice, but somehow the Arthurian legend seems more akin to these Japanese stories and films. So this round goes to Pyperkub for Excalibur.
BTW, Am I allowed to award a point to Pete for a fabulous mini essay / review?

[hentzau]

BTW, Am I allowed to award a point to Pete for a fabulous mini essay / review?

No.    And thanks to Purge for making the scoring list look all anal-alpahabetical-scoring-last won-order-like, so I have to do even MORE work formatting this game!   

Score:
Hentzau - 7
Wonderpug - 7
Eduardo X - 6
Unagi - 6
CrayolaSmoker - 3
Kronovan - 3
Pyperkub - 3
PeteRock - 2
Purge - 2
Yellowking - 2
TGB1.1 - 1
Remus West2 - 1
Austin - 1
th'FOOL - 1

Round 44:

Characters:  A Saint, A Samurai, or A Single Parent
and
Actors:   Will Smith, Willem Dafoe, or William Powell

Judge:  Pyperkub

[Eduardo X]

Here's the least action-packed choice: Pursuit of Happiness.

[Purge]

Boondock Saints

Willem Dafoe plays a masculine homosexual FBI agent who is investigating murders in South Boston.

Two Irish brothers and their Italian friend are killing mobsters as an act of god. There is tons of Saint and tons of Willem in this flick. I highly recommend it (although it isn't as good as the hype).

[CrayolaSmoker]

The Last Temptation of Christ - Willem Dafoe plays the saintly son of the ultimate single parent.

[hentzau]

Spider-Man.  You have single parent Norman Osborne (Willem Dafoe) raising son Harry, and saintly Aunt May raising Peter.  I won't try and stretch the samaurai metaphor into Spider-Man, though...

[kronovan]

You can't list the topics William Powell and saint without mentioning the Thin Man and Powell's suave and saintly Nick Charles. Just amazing that 6 Thin Man films were made, all were good and 4 were critically acclaimed. Quite possibly the most successful movie series of all time. One could easily argue that Mryna Loy's Nora Charles is just as, if not more, saintly in this series. As a married couple these 2 defied all conventions of the 30's/40's to bring us the orginal dynamic duo of a saintly husband and wife that always solve the crime and best the police every step of the way.

[Pyperkub]

The Last Temptation of Christ - Willem Dafoe plays the saintly son of the ultimate single parent.

Winnar!  Though I would have liked to see a samurai reach in the film, just for kicks!

[chaosraven]

Well color me surprised that no one suggested any Japanese films with feudal settings involving samurais, saintly acts and single parents.

I had originally posted the Lone Wolf and Cub movies, but didn't remember any *actual* Funerals, and the liasons with the prostitutes weren't weddings...

[hentzau]

Score:
Hentzau - 7
Wonderpug - 7
Eduardo X - 6
Unagi - 6
CrayolaSmoker - 4
Kronovan - 3
Pyperkub - 3
PeteRock - 2
Purge - 2
Yellowking - 2
TGB1.1 - 1
Remus West2 - 1
Austin - 1
th'FOOL - 1

Round 45:

Actors:   Will Smith, Willem Dafoe, or William Powell
and
Production:  Title Contains the Name of a Food or Animal

Judge:  CrayolaSmoker

[Eduardo X]

Teh Spiderman.

[CrayolaSmoker]

The Last Temptation of Christ - Willem Dafoe plays the saintly son of the ultimate single parent.

Winnar!  Though I would have liked to see a samurai reach in the film, just for kicks!

Um... once Willem dies Matthew, Mark, Paul, et. al. are Ronin?

[hentzau]

Mr. Bean's Holiday - Willem Dafoe was the artsy-fartsy self absorbed director.

[kronovan]

Shark Tale in which Will Smith voices the lead character...umm fish. BTW this qualifies for both animal and food...I don't know about anyone else here, but I sit down to a bowl of shark fin soup at least once a week. 

[PeteRock]

Willem Defoe plays Gill, a Moorish Idol (Moorish Idols do fairly poorly in captivity, typically becoming so depressed that they stop eating and slowly starve to death) acting as the self-proclaimed leader of the group of fish living in a dentist's saltwater aquarium.  Gill, like the lead character Nemo, originally lived in the ocean and was captured for the dentist's tank.  Gill devises a plan to reunite Nemo with his father, Marlin, and all of the fish in the dentist's tank work together to accomplish that goal.  And while some may argue that fish are friends, not food, well...
   


And "Nemo" is the actual name of an animal, not just a generic name like "shark" or "spider".   

[Pyperkub]

Men in Black - seeing as how Tommy Lee Jones gets eaten in the movie - you can consider him food to an alien.

[Unagi]

Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid

William Powell plays Arthur Peabody

[Purge]

Production:  Title Contains the Name of a Food or Animal

Easy: Willem Dafoe in Animal Factory.

Note the clue did not say AN animal, therefore it is looking for Animal itself.
Oh, and I highly recommend the film.

[kronovan]

Alright we've got lots of good responses. Now all we need is a judge, just where did that man smoking crayolas disappear to? 

[hentzau]

If he doesn't show up before tonight, I'll step in and judge.  Cause I'm all controlling that way.

[CrayolaSmoker]

Despite fish being friends, not food, I'm gonna have to go with Finding Nemo. Sorry 'bout the delay.

[hentzau]

Score:

Hentzau - 7
Wonderpug - 7
Eduardo X - 6
Unagi - 6
CrayolaSmoker - 4
Kronovan - 3
PeteRock - 3
Pyperkub - 3
Purge - 2
Yellowking - 2
TGB1.1 - 1
Remus West2 - 1
Austin - 1
th'FOOL - 1

Round 46:

Production:  Title Contains the Name of a Food or Animal
and
Actors:  A Cameo Appearance

Judge:  PeteRock