Countdown Trivia Quiz

Answer: 10

In the movie "10", Dudley Moore plays George Webber, a forty-two year old guy with the unusual habit of rating each female he sees on a scale from 1 to 10. Then he meets Jenny Hanley (played by Bo Derek), the first girl he rates at least a 10 (in fact he rates her 11 on a scale from 1 to 10). He follows her around, until she decides to make love to him. Then she reveals she has an unusual way of making love: she needs classical music at the background, and more especially Ravel's Bolero.

Answer: Johnny Depp

According to the eponymous movie, "The Ninth Gate" is a very rare book written with the help of the Devil himself. A collector (Frank Langella) acquires what seems to be one of the remaining three copies of the book, and asks an expert in ancient manuscripts (Johnny Depp) to verify the authenticity. Then the collector hopes to use the engravings in the book to summon the Devil.
Johnny Depp (born 1963) started his career in the horror movie "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). He broke through with TV work on "21 Jump Street" and his first movie successes came with "Edward Scissorhands" (1990) and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993). His best known role is that of the pirate Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.
Brooks, Auberjonois and Lofton are the three first billed actors on the TV series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine".

Answer: Chemical pollution caused unusual growth.

In the opening sequence to "Eight Legged Freaks", we see a distracted truck driver evading a rabbit and losing, in doing so, one of the barrels with toxic waste his truck carries. The barrel falls into a drainage ditch, and we can see a warning sign on the barrel. The contents spread out through the ditch. The next scene shows us an amateur entomologist catching an enlarged butterfly and pondering on what might have got into the water.
The stars in "Eight Legged Freaks", other than the spiders, are David Arquette (who plays a mining engineer) and Kari Wuhrer (as the female sheriff). They take up the task of protecting the villagers against those huge spiders. Scarlett Johansson has a role as the sheriff's daughter.
Ellory Elkayem, the director, also was responsible for writing the story and the screenplay - together with Randy Kornfield (story only) and Jesse Alexander (screenplay only).
The red herrings refer to other movies. The muggles are non-wizards in the "Harry Potter" franchise. The radiation incident refers to "The Fantastic Four". Wayne Szalinski is the inventor in the movies "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" (1989) and three sequels.

Answer: Ingmar Bergman

In Bergman's movie "The Seventh Seal", Max von Sydow plays a knight returning from the Crusades with his squire (played by Gunnar Bjornstrand). When the knight and the squire reach their homeland, they notice that many of their compatriots have died due to the plague. Then Death (a role by Bengt Ekerot) informs the knight that his time to part from this world has come. The knight then challenges Death to a chess match, with his own life and his squire's on the stake.
Bergman (1918-2007) was nominated for nine Oscars, but never won one - except a special achievement award in 1971. By the way, none of the other great directors I've mentioned here ever won an Oscar.
Max von Sydow also played a role in several other of Bergman's movies, among others "Ansiktet" (1957) and "Bröllopsdagen" (1960).
Max von Sydow has never worked with Akiro Kurosawa, François Truffaut nor Federico Fellini.

Answer: Haley Joel Osment

All these actors have started their careers quite young. Haley Joel Osment (born 1988) debuted in 1994 with a TV movie and "Forrest Gump". When he was eleven, he broke through with "The Sixth Sense". For his role as Cole Sear, Osment was nominated for an Oscar and for a Golden Globe.
In "The Sixth Sense" Bruce Willis plays a psychiatrist (Malcolm Crowe) who takes care of Cole Sear (Osment), a young boy who insists he sees dead people walking by. Malcolm does not only worry about Cole's condition. Malcolm's wife is not pleased at all with him spending so much time with Cole and Cole's mom...
Macaulay Culkin (born 1980) made fame with "Home Alone" (1990) and "Home Alone 2" (1992). Roddy McDowall (born 1928) had a role in more than a dozen productions before his first major role in "How Green Was My Valley" (1941). Justin Henry (born 1972) debuted in "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979).

Answer: Karen Black

In "Five Easy Pieces", Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea, a manual labourer on oil rigs. When Robert is informed about the bad health condition of his father, he travels with his girl friend (the waitress Rayette, played by Karen Black) to Washington to see his upper class family.
Karen Black (1939-2013) played in almost 200 movies and TV productions. Her first major role was in "Easy Rider" (1969). For her role in "Five Easy Pieces", she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. Later on, she won a Golden Globe for her role in "The Great Gatsby" (1974).
Scarlet Johansson (born 1984) and Eva Green (born 1980) are quite impossible choices for a movie role in 1970. Betty White (born 1922) would not be very convincing as Nicholson's young girlfriend in 1970.

Answer: Sudan

The first scenes in "The Four Feathers" show us some British cavalry officers training for battle and en route to India. There two colonels discuss about an appointment to Sudan. One of the British officers, Harry Feversham, leaves his post just at the brink of a major battle. Only his superior knows Harry goes on an undercover mission, his three best friends and his fiancee think he's just a coward. So they send him a white feather each.
The novel by A.E.W. Mason was the subject of several movies. The best known are the British version directed by Zoltan Korda in 1939 (starring John Clements as Harry Faversham and June Duprez as his fiancée) and the US version directed in 2002 by Shekhar Kapur (starring Heath Ledger as Harry Faversham). The British remake in 1977 (directed by Don Sharp and starring Beau Bridges and Jane Seymour) is quite interesting as well, for it incorporates some original footage from 1939 without it being conspicuous.
The Vietnam War has spawned several movies such as "Platoon" (1986) and "Hamburger Hill" (1987), but was set in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Korean War (1950-1953) inspired "M.A.S.H." (1970). The Gulf War against Saddam Hussein's Iraq (1991-1992) inspired the movies "Courage under Fire" (1996) and "The Hurt Locker" (2008), for instance.

Answer: Melquiades Estrada

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" is a title that almost summarizes the whole plot. Estrada (role by Julio Cedillo) is a Mexican illegal immigrant, shot in the desert somewhere in Texas. The shootist quickly covers the body, and soon afterwards Estrada gets an official funeral in the town cemetery. But then a ranch foreman (Tommy Lee Jones) decides that Estrada deserves to be buried in Mexico, and he smuggles the body over the border.
Guy Carrell is the artist with a phobia for being interred alive in the 1962 movie "Premature Burial". This character is portrayed by Ray Milland.
Father Gerald is the character played by Rowan Atkinson in "Four Weddings and a Funeral", who recites almost every sentence the wrong way. I quote "Do you take this woman to be your awful wedded wife?"
In "Funeral in Berlin" (1966), Michael Caine plays Harry Palmer, a spy who has to help the Russian Colonel Stok to defect.

Answer: Sandra Bullock

"Two Weeks Notice" tells the story of an attorney (played by Sandra Bullock) who feels she has to do too many menial tasks for her client (played by Hugh Grant). So she gives him an ultimatum: she only will stay for two weeks and will then walk out on him.
Sandra Bullock (born 1964) started her career in 1987 in the movie "Hangmen". Her first great success was in "Speed" (1994). She won her first Oscar for "The Blind Side" (2009) and was nominated for an Oscar in "Gravity" (2013)
"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (1998) had an almost entirely male cast. A very small role was reserved for Vera Day.
Kirsten Dunst plays one of the leading roles in the 2014 thriller "The Two Faces of January". She plays the wife of a con man (Viggo Mortensen) who wants to get rid of a dead police officer before fleeing the country.
Cate Blanchett played Galadriel in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Answer: Jack Nicholson

In "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest", Jack Nicholson played a petty criminal named Randle Patrick McMurphy. After another arrest, he pleaded insanity to avoid doing time in prison. Unfortunately, he was sent to a mental hospital in which sane people are made mad as a hatter...
Jack Nicholson was nominated for the fifth time for an Oscar, and this time he won. His first Oscar nomination was for "Easy Rider" (1969), followed by "Five Easy Pieces" (1970). Later on, he would win a second Oscar for "Terms of Endearment" (1983) and a third one for "As Good as it Gets" (1997).
Nicholson played several roles in which his character's mental health can be questioned. Remember his role as Jack Torrance in "The Shining" (1980) or as the Joker in "Batman" (1989).
Stallone, Statham and Lundgren are three of the main actors in the franchise "The Expendables" (first movie 2010, sequel in 2012 and third part in 2014).