'The Sheep Are Quiet': Movies in Other Words Quiz

Answer: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Yes, that sweaty, ophidiophobic, two-fisted archaeologist and master of numerous dead languages and deadpan wisecracks in the face of deadly peril, Henry Watson Jones Jr. Jones is simply Johnson in Welsh. The etymology of 'Hoosier' (resident of Indiana) is uncertain. Using states for nicknames seems to be a mainly American predilection - I've never heard of an East-Anglia Eastwood, Ontario O'Hara or Queensland Quinn, but we have Tennessee Williams, Minnesota Fats, Washington Irving, and Louisiana May Alcott - wait ... what?

This was the second instalment of Stephen Spielberg's hugely successful tribute to the 'matinee cliffhanger' genre which had inspired his youthful moviemaking ambitions. It's ostensibly a prequel to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' set in 1935. This outing was widely criticized for excessive violence and offence to Hindus, causing outrage in India.

Synopsis: Intrepid Indy (Harrison Ford) together with his 11-year-old sidekick Shorty Round (Ke Quan) and current flame Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) find themselves in remote northern India, arriving in characteristic fashion by burning plane and inflatable raft down a raging rapid, while on the run from Chinese gangsters. The trio is drawn into mysterious village child kidnappings and the theft of a sacred temple stone. Investigations lead them deep under a mountain to the heart of a horrific human-sacrifice cult practising child slavery. After numerous obligatory escapes from the jaws of death (a riproaring underground railroad chase, climbing a cliff above crocodile-infested waters, while shot at by Thuggee archers, among others), they succeed in destroying the cult, freeing the children and returning the sacred stone.

Answer: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Notable for ground-breaking effects, jaw-dropping for the time, a cameo by French 'nouvelle vague' auteur Francois Truffaut, and for putting Montana's awesome Devil's Tower on the itinerary of cinematic pilgrims. And in my house at least, impromptu mashed-potato sculpting competitions at the family dining table.

Synopsis: Ordinary-Joe midwestern linesman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) experiences strange visions after a 'second-kind' experience (a UFO sighting). His obsession alienates him from his family and leads him to Montana, where he encounters other telepathically 'chosen ones' there to witness the first major alien flying-saucer landing (the 'third kind'), despite government security efforts to keep the event top-secret. The linesman makes an emotional decision to accept an invitation from the alien visitors.

Answer: Titanic

The Titans were the children of Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky) and progenitors of the ancient Greek Olympian pantheon - the parents of the gods.

Synopsis: Unwilling bride-to-be Rose De Witt-Bukater (Kate Winslet) is charmed away from her callous, arrogant steel-tycoon fiance Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) by the carefree spontaneity of artistic, vagabondish Jack Dawson (Leonardo Di Caprio), during one short week aboard the ill-fated historic ship. Just when they resolve to elope as soon as the ship docks no matter the consequences, the iceberg strikes, changing those romantic consequences more dramatically than they could ever have imagined.

How many realize that director James Cameron was a bona-fide deep-sea explorer who personally went 4000m to the bottom of the Atlantic for authentic undersea footage, and helped devise a real robot to probe the shipwreck's contents, all before he even got a green light on the movie project? He's also descended solo into the Mariana Trench. Those are what I call 'credentials'. But as far as I know, he didn't travel to a distant planet to scout locations for 'Avatar'. Some would argue he hit bottom with that one (but not me). Lucky for him he didn't direct 'Everest'!

Trivia: Jack's portrait of Rose and other doodlings seen in the film were sketched by Cameron himself.

Answer: Midnight Cowboy

John Schlesinger's realization of James Leo Herlihy's gritty urban tale depicting an odd-couple 'bromance' (what used to be called 'buddy pics') won numerous awards (three Oscars, six Baftas), not least for its memorable soundtrack (Harry Nilsson, Toots Thielemans, John Barry). It not only introduced the considerable acting talents of hunky baby-faced blue-eyed Jon Voight, whose equally talented daughter soared to even greater baby-faced blue-eyed stardom, but cemented the reputation of Dustin Hoffman as one of Hollywood's leading anti-hero character actors with his powerful portrayal of 'Ratso' Rizzo.

Synopsis: Lusty, vain Texan stud Joe Buck (Voight) hits the 'Big Apple' naively determined to make a fortune from his desirable body. He soon discovers it doesn't work that way and becomes down and out. His only friend is a feisty, tubercular small-time conman (Hoffman) who teaches him street savvy. Joe commits a violent crime to finance Ratso's dream of moving to Florida, but the trip and the movie end in tragedy.

Trivia: the first X-rated movie to win an Academy Award; Hoffman's street altercation with a taxi-driver ("I'm walkin' here!") is real.

Answer: Dr No

This is the one that kickstarted Bondmania and rocketed Sean Connery to superstardom, not to mention the 'Bond girl' phenomenon in the shapely form of Ursula Andress, emerging regally from the Jamaican surf in what by today's standards was a quite demure bikini (sold at auction in 2001 for $US59,755 - thanks quiz author CmdrK). How much is that per sq. cm? French-speaking Andress's character, Honey Ryder (who are they kidding?), was voiced by Nikki van der Zyl, who also voiced a couple of other minor characters.

And that smoking, signature John Barry theme - still echoed as a motif in modern soundtracks, it wouldn't be a Bond film without it. What kind of pretentious, tuxedoed twerp orders a martini shaken rather than stirred anyway? (James, if you're reading this, it's just a quiz, OK?)

Synopsis: 007 is assigned to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of an MI5 agent who was on to a plot to disrupt rocket launches from Cape Canaveral. Surviving island flame throwers, planted tarantulas and various other attempts on his life (and using his 'licence to kill' liberally), he ends up on 'Crab Key' where he and Honey are captured by SPECTRE agent Dr No (Special Executive for Counter-espionage, Terrorism and Extortion). Predictably, Bond not only destroys Dr No but singlehandly blows up the whole island with the arch-villain's nuclear reactor. All's well that ends well, except maybe for the Caribbean environment.

Answer: The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Big stars (Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward), big box office (at $12.5 million gross, one of that year's most profitable), big mountain (the highest - and largest - in Africa), big locations (Nairobi, Cairo, the French Riviera) big-name author (larger-than-life Ernest Hemingway, who got $125,000 and a mandatory happy ending).

Synopsis: Apparently dying from a poisonous thorn infection, writer-adventurer Harry Street (Peck) deliriously reminisces outside his Kenyan safari tent in company of his loyal wife, Helen and a solitary hyena which ominously keeps vigil nearby. Most of his memories concern his old flame Cynthia (Gardner) and their romantic adventures in bohemian between-wars Paris, and later the Spanish Civil War front, where she is mortally wounded. Eventually he recovers from his illness and experiences 'closure' over his great loss, realizing his newfound love for Helen. The hyena slinks away and he is flown out to a new chapter in his eventful life.

I never saw it. Neither did Ernest, so he said, but contradicting himself in an "Esquire" interview he claimed the hyena was the best actor in the picture. Knowing these performers, I would call that a cheap shot (unfortunate expression considering the author's fate).

Answer: Casablanca

Unquestionably the most celebrated and highly-regarded romantic drama in Hollywood film history. I'm of the 'good but nothing out of the ordinary' school. Born a generation or so later, I never quite understood Bogie's popular appeal, despite his sound acting credentials and his reputed off-screen good-natured persona. Not so for the subtly sensuous Ingrid Bergman. Crisp, no-frills screenplay (Oscar for the Epstein brothers and the disputed contribution of Howard Koch), but the leads' famed chemistry just didn't bubble up in my test-tube.

Synopsis: During World War Two, American expatriate cafe-owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) relocates from Paris to Morocco just before the Nazi occupation. There he tries to forget the love of his life Ilsa (Bergman), who suddenly and inexplicably vanished just before the evacuation.

Before long, Ilsa shows up with husband, Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Heinreid). She explains that when she fell in love with Rick she had thought Victor had been killed, but suddenly learned he was alive and rushed to his side. Rick, at the expense of his own feelings for Ilsa, tricks the pro-Nazi French police by telling them he is leaving on a plane to Lisbon with her, but substitutes Victor in his place, so the heroic couple are spirited away to safety.

Trivia: Dooley Wilson, who crooned the euphoric 'As Time Goes By', was a drummer and his piano self-accompaniment is mocked up. In 2014, the piano Wilson pretended to play was auctioned at Sotheby's for $3.4 million. I wonder how much the hill of beans would go for these days?

Answer: Jurassic Park

No more zoomed-in iguanas and papier-mâché robots for us. This truly landmark blockbuster has that sense of childlike wonder and scientific discovery that no amount of 'improved' gee-whiz cgi/sfx can 'effect'. Having already read the book, I was disappointed with the radical character and plot changes and missing events, but since author Michael Crichton was on board for the screenplay, who can complain? Certainly not him, getting half a mil for jettisoning more than half the novel.

And that gem of a John Williams theme! I once made a compilation of excerpts from great 19th century classical symphonies and stuck this in the middle. Played back, it sounded right at home.

Synopsis: Plodding palaeontologist Alan Grant and his partner Ellie Sattler (Sam Neill and Laura Dern) are paid a surprise visit on a Wyoming dig from wealthy eccentric Dr John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and invited to join a team of experts to inspect (and approve) an ambitious theme park on a Costa Rican island, where dinosaurs have been cloned using DNA from the blood in mosquitoes trapped in ancient amber. They are joined by a lawyer (Martin Ferrero) and a mathematician specializing in chaos theory (Jeff Goldblum). Hammond's own grandchildren also join them.

Things go haywire when the project's systems engineer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) is bribed to smuggle out dinosaur embryos by a competitor. He shuts down the island's security system temporarily to create a window to do so, but is devoured before he can restore it. From then on, it's people vs dinosaurs in a heart-stopping life-and-death game of survival. During the crisis, Dr Grant, as protector of the grandchildren, learns how to relate better to young people, much to Ellie's satisfaction.

Answer: A Streetcar Named Desire

A 'Tennessee' Williams tour-de-force. Complex, brilliantly conceived characters, stark and brooding, claustrophobic, dripping with almost unbearable tension and latent threat. Could I watch it again? No, couldn't bear it!

Synopsis: The apparently refined but somewhat secretive Blanche Dubois (Leigh), having lost the family's Mississippi estate to creditors, goes to live with sister Stella Kowalski and her husband Stanley (Kim Hunter and Marlon Brando) in a cramped New Orleans tenement. Tensions build quickly between the loud overbearing Stanley and the affectedly superior Blanche. To complicate matters, Stella is pregnant. Blanche sets her hopes for the future on Stanley's mild-mannered poker buddy Mitch (Karl Malden). She constantly nags Stella to leave Stanley.

Stanley avenges himself by digging into Blanche's past and exposing some scandalous secrets which ruin her chances with Mitch and lead to her complete mental breakdown. The antagonism reaches breaking point when Stanley rapes Blanche while Stella is in hospital giving birth. Blanche is committed to a mental institution and Stella leaves Stanley.

Trivia: first film to receive three acting Oscars (Leigh, Hunter, Malden); first of four consecutive Best Actor nominations for Marlon Brando in his 'breakthrough' role (lost to Bogart in 'African Queen' that year, won for 'On the Waterfront' in 1954); it also won for set design and was nominated in eight other categories; Jessica Tandy was an outstanding Blanche on Broadway, but was passed over for the bigger box-office drawcard in Leigh, who had rocked the role in London's West End. It's interesting that Hollywood's two most memorable 'southern belles' should be played by the same Englishwoman, but Vivien was no ordinary Englishwoman.

Answer: Crocodile Dundee

Paul Hogan, or 'Hoges', as he is affectionately known in Australia, a former Sydney Harbor Bridge painter and rigger, had been a TV sketch-and-standup national institution for almost two decades and in his mid-forties when this deliberate attempt to exploit the foreign market with an 'authentic bush hero' stereotype was created, and emerged as the second-highest-grossing movie of that year, after 'Top Gun'.

Hogan's laconic, earthy charm and rugged 'lived-in' good looks won over a wide demographic both domestically and abroad. In his own words: 'It's like the image the Americans have of us, so why not give them one?'

Synopsis: New York feature writer Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) travels to the Australian outback to track down and interview a local legend, Mick Dundee. Put off at first by his directness and uncouth behavior, she warms to him after he rescues her from a large crocodile, and in gratitude offers him an all-expenses-paid visit to New York, courtesy of her newspaper-owning father. There follow numerous comic 'culture-clash' situations involving muggers, rappers, pimps, hookers, hotel staff, and Sue's caddish beau Richard (Mark Blum). Love wins out in the end both for the lead characters and the players (Hogan went on to marry Kozlowski in real life).