Minute A Day About Movies

Final Friday Five, the monthly mini-quiz
Quiz No. 5 | Minute No. 106 | May 28, 2010

The Quiz
The Answers (highlighted below)

1.  Name the singer-actor who had a #1 album on the music charts and won an Oscar for acting, but was not featured at MAD About Movies this month?

Jamie Foxx.  Foxx won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Ray Charles in Ray (2004), and his album Unpredictable topped the Billboard charts in 2005.

2.  Five black-and-white films from the past two decades are listed below.  Name the one color film.

Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)
Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky)
Celebrity (1998, Woody Allen)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr)
Dogville (2003, Lars von Trier)
The White Ribbon (2009, Michael Haneke)

3.  This month director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (call him “Joe”) won the top prize at Cannes for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.  It was the first time a film from his country won the Palme d’Or.  What is his country?

Ethiopia
India
Indonesia
Sri Lanka
Thailand

4.  Match the information below for the three films adapted from 1950s teleplays.

Film title (year):  Television series (teleplay year), Writer, Lead actor on television, Lead actor on film
Marty (1955):  _____, _____, _____, _____
12 Angry Men (1957):  _____, _____, _____, _____
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962):  _____, _____, _____, _____

Television series:  Studio One (1954), The Goodyear Television Playhouse (1953), Playhouse 90 (1956)
Writer:  Rod Serling; Paddy Chayefsky; Reginald Rose
Lead actor on television:  Jack Palance, Rod Steiger, Robert Cummings
Lead actor on film:  Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Ernest Borgnine

Marty (1955):  The Goodyear Television Playhouse (1953), Paddy Chayefsky, Rod Steiger, Ernest Borgnine
12 Angry Men (1957):  Studio One (1954), Reginald Rose, Robert Cummings, Henry Fonda
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962):  Playhouse 90 (1956), Rod Serling, Jack Palance, Anthony Quinn

5.  What is the “Sinatra Doctrine”?

a.  The policy of the Rat Pack to have Frank Sinatra sing the first and last song of every concert appearance.
b.  The policy of the Catholic Church that allowed Sinatra to remarry in the church despite his first, second, and third divorce.
c.  The policy of the Kennedy administration to go easy on Sam Giancana during its crackdown on organized crime because of the mobster’s ties to Sinatra, a friend of the Kennedy family.
d.  The policy of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s to allow Warsaw Pact nations to determine their own internal affairs.
e.  The policy of Woody Allen’s character in Bananas after the rebels have made him president and he declares that everyone is now going to do it “My Way!”

The Sinatra Doctrine was the term used by Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, to describe new freedoms for countries behind the Iron Curtain.  The reference was to Sinatra’s song “My Way.” (“Every country decides on its own which road to take.”)  Soon after the doctrine was announced in 1989, Communist governments in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were ousted.