I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone.-Brazil (1985)

I'm going on vacation today. I'll be gone for a week, so this is an expanded edition of movie trivia.

1. Whose giant door bore a sign reading: "Bell Out of Order, Please Knock"?
2. What Cary Grant film was about U.S. flyers in the Sout American port of Barranca?
3. What film offered the dying words: "Can you see the gray over there where our castle is? I'll wait for you until you come"?
4. Who played Paul Newman's younger brother in Hud?
5. What was the name of the inflatable automatic pilot in Airplane!? (spelling counts)
6. What film contained the line: "I'll live to seee you-all of you-hanging from the highest yardarm in the British fllet"?
7. What film had Dustin Hoffman say: "I'm sorry that I was late, but I was trying to make a living, okay?"?
8. What city was the setting for Garbo's Ninotchka?
9. What 1945 movie saw Ray Milland thrown out of a nightclub for stealing a woman's purse?
10. What allegedly drove Ben Gazzara to murder in Anatomy Of A Murder?

I'll post the answers when I get back.

ETA: Answers in the comments.

Spring!

Spring has finally arrived in Virginia, which means I take an obscene amount of flower pictures...

Tower, this is Ghost rider requesting a flyby. -Top Gun (1986)

I'm on airport shuttle duty for my parents tonight, so without further ado, the questions:

Q: What did Alvy Singer feel was the only cultural advantage California had over New York in Annie Hall?

Q: What was the pre-release title of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid?

Q: What Robert Altman film included 27 songs?

Q: What Hitchcock film opened at 3:15 p.m. in Davidson's Pet Shop?

Q: How many times did Indiana Jones lose his hat in Raiders Of The Lost Ark?

ETA: Answers now posted in the comments.

A sad, sad day

Today I experienced a profound loss due to the horrific deaths at Virginia Tech. I spent 7 years at Virginia Tech, some of the best and most life changing of my life. I lived on the 4th floor of West Ambler-Johnston my sophomore year, I had class in all of the classrooms on the second floor of Norris Hall. I could picture all of the locations, as events unfolded and were described in the news media- both television and print. The University is a part of my identity, and today it was attacked. My heart goes out to the students and families that are and will be more directly affected by this event than I. It will take a lot of courage to go back to class, I can't imagine what it will be like for the students and professors, I wish them all the courage they will need. From now on, this will be part of the collective identity of those associated with Virginia Tech-as Marshall in neighboring West Virginia, as Kent State in Ohio, and as Columbine in Colorado all know- and that is a sad realization for me. In the coming days and weeks and months anything good that happens at Virginia Tech will be overshadowed by this senseless tragedy, the successes of many will be colored by the act of one. If we've learned anything from September 11, 2001 though it is that we are resilient, that once we begin to heal time will fade the scars. Until then, courage. A Hokie forever, Anne

This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather. -Groundhog Day (1993)

I've found the self referential-possibly made up-question in the Silver Screen edition of Trivial Pursuit. Q: What game was invented 40 years to the day after the world priemere of Gone With The Wind? Now onto the more serious fare.

1. What 1972 movie ended with the line: "Andrew, don't forget-be sure to tell them it was just a bloody game"?

2. What two cities provided the settings for Meet Me In St. Louis?

3. What 1949 film's climax took place in the Vienna sewer system?

4. What film opened with William Holden floating face-down in a swimming pool?

5. How many screws unscrewed themselves from the floor grate in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind?

ETA: Answers in the comments.

The Big Book Post

The 50 books challenge/resolution has been around for a while...the basic idea being to read 50 books in one year...but it's new to me this year. I'm only sort of halfway going to do it though--we'll see how many I get to. Now that I've set the bar sufficiently low I'll get around to the books, it's week 15 and I'm woefully behind having made it through only 8 books so far. Number 5 is at fault for the behindedness.

#1. Death's Acre: Inside the Body Farm, the legendary forensic lab
by Bill Blass and Jon Jefferson
Jan.1-Jan.5, 2007
I read this book after being fascinated by Stiff: the Curious Lives of the Human Cadaver by Mary Roach over the summer. I don't have a weak stomach--at least when I'm reading--so I find this topic endlessly fascinating. This book had a nice blend of forensic problem solving, anthropology, biography, and scientific method.

#2. His Excellency: George Washington
by Joseph J. Ellis
Jan.5-Jan.18, 2007
The theme of this book was: George Washington had demons, flaws, and was generally human...these turned out to be a) He wanted power, but didn't want to appear to want power; b) He worried about what people thought of him; c) He married up (see social climber); d) He edited his diaries so as to look better in the eyes of history. Despite all the flaws, Ellis manages to make him sympathetic, if a little stiff. Ellis makes Washington look best when describing his presidency- that he knew he was setting precedents, and that the most important thing for the country was to manage to stay together. A good book even though the subject matter wasn't all that new.

#3. Life Of Pi
by Yann Martel
Jan.10-Jan.25, 2007
The first two-thirds were really good, then the ending fell apart. The writing was good enough to make an unbelievable plot seem possible, until (and this doesn't seem like a fair criticism for a fiction novel) he started making things up. The beauty of the first two thirds was that everything that happened seemed possible, albeit unlikely, then Martel broke a sort of pact I believe all author's have with the reader-he broke his own set of rules, or maybe just changed them to get out of the plot alive. Fantasy is great, but if you are going to start telling a story with a real life setting, and suddenly decide you need an algae island populated by meerkats that becomes poisonous after dark.

#4. George Washington
by James MacGregor Burnsand Susan Dunn
Jan.19-Feb.1, 2007
Nothing new, nothing surprising, but a good overview-you know if you have to write a 9th grade history paper.

#5. John Adams
by John Patrick Diggins
Feb.1-Feb.13, 2007
After reading the George Washington volume in this series I am glad I read the 'overview' book before I get to David McCullough's John Adams which I have on my pile to read. John Adams may have been the most underappreciated of the founding fathers-so I'm really interested in reading a more in depth book about him.

#6. The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
Jan.26-Mar.29, 2007
This book is the reason I'm so behind-because I felt like killing the main character through much of the book for being so naive. I liked Bleak House a great deal, so I had high hopes for this book. Also, it is given high praise in one of my favorite books Anne of the Island for all of the great food descriptions. I really liked Sam, which I suspect is the point- he was making fun of the upper and middle classes while the real intelligence is in the lower class hero. It was Dicken's first novel and alot of later themes are evident- the backwards legal system for example. I enjoyed reading the book when I was reading it, but wasn't motivated to pick it up most of the time because it lacked an overarching storyline that I was interested in finding out the resolution too.

#7. Pigs Have Wings
by P.G. Wodehouse
Mar.30-Apr.3, 2007
I realize by now I sound like I've hated every book I've read this year-although not true-the sound is about to change. P.G. Wodehouse is the master of the comic novel, sure you can see all or most the plot devices and twists coming, but the execution and language are so good it doesn't matter. If reading Dickens was like eating cold oatmeal then reading Wodehouse is like eating Pop Rocks. If you haven't read Wodehouse, then do it now, it doesn't matter which one.

#8. Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
Apr.3-Apr.6, 2007
This book deserves its reputation for the last paragraph alone. The title of the book tells you what will happen, the anticipation is part of the beauty, the ending is the kick in the stomach. It is a surprisingly short book-an economic use of words as one review put it-just don't read the ending first.

I'm trying to understand our world. I don't deal with petty materialists like you. -Pi (1998)

It's movie trivia time again. Here's this weeks batch:

Titles
Q: What film had Peter Lorre saying to Bogie: "You will please clasp you hands together at the back of your neck"?

Q: What film did Alfred Hitchcock appear in, standing outside an office wearing a cowboy hat?

On Screen
Q: What television network did the astronauts watch their interview on in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Q: How many jurors voted for a conviction on the first ballot in Twelve Angry Men?

Production
Q: Who was originally cast to play Ben's father in The Graduate?

When books and travel collide

Recently The Washington Post travel section had two articles on book related travel. The first is about the Library Hotel in Manhattan, a hotel with books in every room and room numbers based on the Dewey Decimal System. The second, is about bed and breakfast's with books in the rooms spread across the states. I like to travel, and I like to read, but I'm not sure I've reached the point where I want to go somewhere just to read. The Library Hotel seems like it would be fun to stay in, just to see what books were put in the particular subject of your room, but I doubt that I would actually read a book from the room while I was there. I'm a somewhat compulsive reader, and once I start a book I want to finish it. Plus, if I go somewhere, I usually want to see the place- not that I don't read on vacation- but I'm probably going to bring my own reading material. I like that there is this option though. Finally, the spring book preview. I don't read too many books as soon as they come out, but of this list I'll probably eventually read (like in 3 years...) Generation Loss, by Elizabeth Hand and Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, by Robert Dallek. Note, a login id is required for washingtonpost.com, but it's free and no one is stopping you from making up an identity just for them.