Oscar's Best Pictures: 2000s Trivia Quiz

Answer: American Beauty

Kevin Spacey won for Best Lead Actor and Annette Bening was nominated for Best Lead Actress. It was also the first feature film for Best Director Sam Mendes. "American Beauty" (1999) was about a middle-aged married couple trying to survive suburbia. The supporting cast featured Thora Birch as Spacey and Bening's daughter, Mena Suvari as her friend, and Wes Bentley as the mysterious neighbour.

Answer: Gladiator

Russell Crowe won the Best Actor Oscar; however, it was widely reputed that he was difficult to work with. He was also not the first choice for the role - Mel Gibson and Antonio Banderas were both considered but turned down the role of Maximus. In "Gladiator" (2000), Russell Crowe played a Roman gladiator who returned to Rome to seek revenge for the murder of his family.

Answer: A Beautiful Mind

I put "based" in quotation marks because much has been said about Akiva Goldsman's interpretation of Nash's life, which is semifictional at best. In fact, Goldsman's writing is credited as "written by" instead of "screenplay by" because the Writers Guild of American concluded that Goldsman's omissions were "glaring and peculiar". (WGA's quoted conclusions are from Wikipedia.) They therefore used the credits as a way to note how far off he was from the source material, which was Sylvia Nasar's biography "A Beautiful Mind".

In "A Beautiful Mind" (2001), we met John Nash as a young man and very promising mathematician, but he had to battle the demons within himself.

Answer: Chicago

"Chicago" (2002) was the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar since "Oliver!" (1968) won in 1969. The story of "Chicago" was about two jazz-era female killers - with lots of song and dance.

Answer: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003) was the only one of the three "Lord of the Rings" movies to win the Best Picture Oscar, though all three did receive nominations. In "Return of the King", we saw the final battle of Middle Earth and the destruction of the mystical ring.

Answer: Million Dollar Baby

"Million Dollar Baby"(2004) starred Hilary Swank as a female boxer and Clint Eastwood as her trainer. Although it seems like a "based on a true story" movie, it was actually a fictional movie based on stories by F.X. Toole. "Finding Neverland" (2004) was about real-life author J.M. Barrie, "Ray" (2004) was about real-life singer Ray Charles, and "The Aviator" (2004) was about real-life aviator and director Howard Hughes. All three received Best Picture nominations in 2005.

Answer: Crash

Matt Dillon was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for "Crash" (2005). The film was set in Los Angeles with many interweaving storylines with characters all having to deal with racial issues in one way or another. "Brokeback Mountain" (2005), "Capote" (2005) and "Walk the Line" (2005) all received a couple of acting noms. Philip Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor for "Capote", Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for "Walk the Line", and "Brokeback Mountain" received three acting nominations for Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams.

Answer: The Departed

"The Departed" (2006) was adapted from "Infernal Affairs" (2002), the Best Picture at that year's Hong Kong Film Awards. The films were about moles from the mafia and the police department who went undercover to discover their enemies.

Answer: No Country for Old Men

This was the year of adaptations. Cormac McCarthy's novel was also titled "No Country for Old Men". "Atonement" was adapted from Ian McEwan's 2001 novel "Atonement", "There Will Be Blood" was adapted from the 1927 novel "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair, and "Away From Her" was based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain".
In "No Country for Old Men"(2007), a rural hunter found $2 million and ran away with it, but it put a psychopathic killer on his trail, and then a retiring sheriff on the path of the killer.

Answer: Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle is a British director who received the only Best Directing Oscar for the film. However, Loveleen Tandan was credited as co-director: India, to give the film a "broader cultural compass" (from an interview between Tandan and Kevin Maher for The Times Online).

She was also the casting director and was responsible for finding all the young Indian actors. "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) was primarily set in Mumbai, India and followed a teen from the slums as his life experiences helped prepare him for "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?".