Name That Movie!

Last night we went to the second of the weekly "Name That Movie!" games that Jen, late of Question Derby and other trivia games, is hosting. It's a one-hour weekly game in the downstairs area under the Savoy, which is half movie theater and half bar/lounge, and looks very nice and cozy.

The game is twenty clips from movies, or the trailers for movies, and your job is to identify the movies. They're presented in alphabetical order, so you get some extra help in knowing about what letter the movie might start with from its place in the list. In this particular week, there wasn't a single genre movie; the nearest we got is Earthquake. But apart from that, there was a pretty broad variety. Here's what got played; I've also noted the most notable actor or other thing we saw in the clip.

1. About A Boy: Hugh Grant
   
2. Arthur: Liza Minelli (the clip we got didn't show Dudley Moore)
   
3. Bye Bye Birdie: Anne Margaret
   
4. The Cider House Rules: Michael Caine
   
5. D.C. Cab: Mr. T
   
6. Earthquake: The L.A. skyline
   
7. The English Patient: Juliet Binochet
   
8. Extract: Jason Bateman
   
9. Funny Girl: Barbra Streisand
   
10. He Got Game: Denzel Washington
    
11. The Hurt Locker: Iraq
    
12. The Italian Job: A bunch of Mini Coopers
    
13. Legal Eagles: Robert Redford
    
14. Love Story: Ryan O'Neal
    
15. Night On Earth: Armin Mueller Stahl
    
16. No Country For Old Men: Javier Bardem
    
17. The Out Of Towners: Jack Lemmon
    
18. Ruthless People: Danny DeVito
    
19. Sabrina: Humphrey Bogart
    
20. Take The Money And Run: Woody Allen
    

Our team was just me and Siobhan. We won with a score of 16 out of 20; the next highest was 12. I suspect that if we had Siobhan and Joe there at the same time, we'd probably get 19 or 20. Just to see how well I'd do, knowing Siobhan would be much better, I counted my own answers; had we been separate, I would have gotten 11, with which I'm quite happy. (And Siobhan would have gotten 15. She didn't know The Italian Job. I'd never seen the original, which is what we saw, but I half-saw the remake, and the chase scene with the Mini Coopers was so striking in that one (and kind of out of place) that when I saw a chase scene in an old heist movie featuring a line of Mini Coopers, I figured it had to be that, and it falling in the right place in alphabetical order clinched it.)

The ones we didn't get were D.C. Cab (Mr. T as a cab driver, discovering that the couple that he'd picked up were engaging in activities that might be appropriate to her employment as a prostitute, but not particularly appropriate to happening in the back of his cab); Extract (apparently a groin-impact-humor-based movie about someone in a beer factory suing due to the injury to his ummentionables, with Gene Vincent as his lawyer); Night On Earth (another scene in a cab, with Armin Mueller Stahl as the cabbie who apparently didn't knowing how to drive one); and Sabrina (Bogart saving a very young Audrey Hepburn from carbon monoxide poisoning).

The game was somewhat hampered by technical difficulties that I'm sure Jen will have ironed out soon, this being only the second time. She started about a half hour late while she struggled with the video system. Twice, she forgot to cut off the video before popping out of the clip, letting us see the titles; thus, everyone got He Got Game and Love Story as freebies (and last week she gave away two the same way). Some of the clips were a little jerky (she was streaming over the Net, mostly from YouTube) and often had bad aspect ratios or poor quality. A few times, the sound really could have used a boost; I couldn't make out anything they were saying in The English Patient, most notably. I feel sure these problems will be resolved in future weeks.

There wasn't a huge crowd there but there were about seven or eight teams, some of them only one or two people. The game was fun, but it would definitely be more fun if we had a few more people there on our team, since it's a social thing as much as a game. The venue also suits it being social, with nice little nooks for people to gather in. One group brought a young child, though Jen did warn us that she did play adult clips sometimes (the clip from Ruthless People certainly included dialogue about adult matters).

The special for the night was a dollar off Switchback, but as I don't know what Switchback is, I assume it's something alcoholic and not my problem. They offered free popcorn (well, included with the $2.50 entry fee) and we also bought some premium sodas ($2.50 each).

The prize was a 20% off coupon for dinner at the Black Door, plus two free admissions to the Savoy, but the catch was they had to be used this weekend. And the Black Door is too full to just stop in; you need a reservation, so how can you use a coupon like this, if you don't know you're going to win far enough in advance to make a reservation? We ended up giving both coupons to someone else.

I'm of two minds about whether it was worth it. It happens to happen on Fridays, which doesn't work as well for me as if it were any other day of the week, since I work from home that day. Any other day, we could head straight from my office and save some road time, but on Friday, I have to put on shoes I otherwise don't need to wear, and Siobhan needs to leave early to come home and get me and come back to town. Even so, it might well be worth it. It was fun, but it would be a lot more fun if we had a few more people there. With just us, it's right on the edge; it could be worth it if I feel like going out and not worth it if I don't. If a few of our friends were also going, then it'd be definitely worth it.