PROFESSOR HUBERT FARNSWORTH’S ONLY SLIGHTLY FUTURISTIC HOLIDAY MOVIE QUIZ

Good news, friends!

It’s the return of the most popular quiz for which there are NO PRIZES, NO GLORY and NO TIME LIMIT! Just in time for the holiday break, the hallowed halls of SLIFR University have regurgitated yet another staff member to unleash a questionably scholastic movie quiz effort for your amusement, delectation and possibly obsessive attention. That staff member’s name is Professor Hubert Farnsworth, and considering his usual field of quantum physics and the fact that he has beamed here from the 36th century specifically to proctor this little enterprise (cheap sci-fi reference), it is, I suppose, only slightly odd that his questions rely so much on the past and not on the future of our most favoritest artistic medium. But then, how much fun would a holiday quiz be that was loaded with the kinds of questions Prof. Farnsworth originally submitted? Some examples culled from his time/space continuum-abusing travels: Favorite recurring digisexual motif of the holographic vibrofilms coming from Antares in the 32nd century? (Hint: It’s a trick question) Or, worst performance by a Neptunian millipede (non-fiction division)? Now you’re glad we made him write all-new questions, aren’t you? Well, if you aren’t now I suspect you soon will be. Professor Farnsworth has been instructed to keep everything more or less related to the human movie-going experience, so the questions should be well within the average viewer’s capability of answering, being as they are as subjective as ever and lacking the one thing found on most college exams: a single true, definitive answer.

As always, the only rules are that when you submit your answers in the comments thread below, you do so having cut and pasted the questions to go along with them. It’s much more fun and far less confusing to read a string of answers if they are preceded by the questions that inspired them. I will also include my now-laughable but also traditional pledge to actually undergo the quizzing process myself, something I once had lots of time and energy to do, both of which have escaped me handily for the last two quizzes. I continue to make the usual bold proclamations regarding my participation—I’M DOING IT THIS TIME, HONEST!!! This while acknowledging that it seems increasingly difficult for me to sit down and submit to the grueling torture I expect you to happily lap up. There’s something wrong there, isn’t there?

Enough blather. Time to press on. So sharpen your #2s (or fire up your LCD Nambrutron laser-etching devices) and get ready for a holiday quiz to end all this year’s holiday quizzes. Equivocations, ramblings and other long-winded type of answers are heartily encouraged. I give you Professor Hubert Farnsworth’s Only Slightly Futuristic Holiday Movie Quiz!

PLEASE NOTE: Blogger is doing something funky when you attempt to post long comment responses right now. You are likely to see a warning asking you if you REALLY want to navigate away from the page without saving changes. I don't know why this is happening, but since I have been forced by spam lately to moderate comments you have no way of knowing that your comments ARE BEING POSTED, even though you are seeing these weird warnings. I will try to be vigilant about moderating and publishing comments so you'll know sooner that your words are there. To everyone who posted multiple times yesterday, before I was aware of the problem (Thanks, Edward!) and could fix it, my apologies. And my apologies too for the bizarre typos in the quiz which caused people to speculate if I ws asking them to declare the winner of Best Director Ever or who was going to die in 2011. Those have been fixed too (Thanks, Marc and Peter!) and all should now be well and sensical in the classroom once again.

1) Best Movie of 2010

2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie

3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid

5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?

6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne

7) Best Actor of 2010

8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies

9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)

10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six

11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see

12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson

13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie

14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place

15) Best Director of 2010

16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie

17) Favorite holiday movie

18) Best Actress of 2010

19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson

20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most

21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.

22) Best Screenplay of 2010

23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now

24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever

25) Best Cinematography of 2010

26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton

27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)

28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010

29) Favorite shock/surprise ending

30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010

31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only _______________

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

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