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As Operatic as Charles Francois Gounod

Years Later, We Dined on Alfredo Garcia The Only Thing Missing From That Gorilla Epic is Shatner Screaming

The Last Picture Game Show: Cinephiliac's Contest GIVEAWAY!


WEEK 8! Welcome to the final battle, cultural gladiators.

If it weren't for the one dude turning in perfect scores every single week (sweet skeelz, Corbett!), I would humbly yield that my film quizzes were too tough to be any fun. "Bride of Double Feature Mash-Ups" was sadistic of me to craft and masochistic of y'all to play, so let me reward you for enduring this animalistic affair with me: When Next Monday's New Game For All New Prizes begins, I promise to go a little easier on everyone ... at least for a few rounds. Here's the recap:

Reprising the role he first played as a teen in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, the shaving-creamy Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as the now thirty-something Antoine Doinel in Love on the Run (1979). So why is he sitting on the couch where Peter Sellers once sat, playing Lionel Mandrake in 1964's Dr. Strangelove? I didn't care what you loved or worried about, as long as you gave me Dr. Strangelove on the Run. (Favorite guess: The Bedford and Board Incident)

Near the beginning of Cassavetes' 1977 Opening Night, fading actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) memorably gestures "yeah, what are you looking at?" in her dressing-room mirror. And though you can't see her, an incarcerated Charlotte Rampling is dancing topless for her Nazi lover/tormentor Dick Bogarde in The Night Porter. Shake it up, pour over ice, and you just got served Opening Night Porter. Could you imagine what a gut-punch that flick would be? (Favorite guess: Women on the Verge of a Nervous BreakDownfall)

In the midst of his awesome week, Filmbrain upbraided me for cheating on this one, but it's because he didn't bother reading my rules about partial-word hinges. (Still, I should apologize for this oh-come-on of a stumper.) That black-and-white pup is the cute and hungry Flike from Vittorio De Sica's 1952 pension-class weepie, Umberto D., a masterful work that marked the end of formal Italian neo-realism (I should warn newcomers: A dog scampering over a bridge will make you lose your shit). Put the innocent little fella in a Vietnamese field with trigger-happy Robert De Niro from The Deer Hunter... heeeeeeeeere's Umberto D.eer Hunter (period not necessary, but aesthetically pleasing to me).

GAME 2, FINAL ROUND:
Sound Bytes For Blackmail


Is the suspense killing you, as it already buried me? All that separates three of you from winning some wicked-awesome DVDs (and I swears I ain't from Boston) could very well be the waveforms oscillating in your ears. The audio clips below come from a trio of films with, oh yes, something major in common. Please RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE each of the following MP3s and tell me, where have we heard these before? Plug in those headphones, my world wide friends:

#1 (RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE)#2 (RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE)#3 (RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE)


NAME EACH MOVIE. Earn (1) point for every correct answer, and don't forget to include your name when you send your entry to lastpicturegameshow@gmail.com. (Entries must be received by Sunday, December 11th @ 11:59pm EST.) If you haven't yet entered The Last Picture Game Show, you're pretty much screwed. BUT! Come back next Monday (12/12) when the counters are reset and the freshness seal is broken for the all-new Game 3. Good luck!

Click to COMMENT

11 Critics Rave!

Well it was a good fight. Next time, she is mine.

Alex [12:23AM, 12/05/2005]

Don't give up, Alex, you're still in the running to win a prize this week!

Aaron! [12:28AM, 12/05/2005]

I can't help thinking the director of #3 was trying desperately to prove him/herself still relevant with that film; it strikes me as a bit less than the usual effort.

Still pondering #1 and 2. The first one sounds awfully familiar....

Tuwa [02:48AM, 12/05/2005]

Oh! I know! mwahahahahahahahahaaaaaa.

Tuwa [03:01AM, 12/05/2005]

Name dropping 19th century French composers, eh? You hipsters are all alike. . .

Filmbrain [10:18AM, 12/05/2005]

What, clue-givers?

Aaron! [04:49PM, 12/05/2005]

Confound it! I danced around freaking Umberto Deer Hunter for days, thinking what movie could have Umberto or D in the title that isn't Umberto D? I finally second guessed myself and went with Umberto Dog Soldiers (also Walken), because, you know... dog.

nilblogette [07:41PM, 12/05/2005]

No worries. My entry will be placed as soon as I restart the ol' computer. And being hard is part of the fun.

Alex [08:01PM, 12/05/2005]

was that a clue I posted? Sorry, I didn't intend it to be; feel free to delete it if you want.

Tuwa [10:43PM, 12/06/2005]

No, Tuwa, you're perfectly fine. I was telling 'Brain that "name-dropping 19th century French composers" was indeed a clue.

Aaron! [10:59PM, 12/06/2005]

I see. In that case, what I thought tied them all together is probably not; there's probably something more I missed. ^_^

Tuwa [06:23AM, 12/07/2005]

Join the Conversation:

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!


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Cinephiliac cannot be found in any English dictionary, as only a "cinephile" (film enthusiast) would suffer from "cinephilia" (obsessive love of cinema). To better understand, "Cinephiliac" suffers to the bone from "cinephilia." Cinephiliac is the not-so-secret codename for what will inevitably become the Greatest Film Rental Library (read: "video store") in Brooklyn, NY. We will endorse the preservation of film culture and provide the best in cinema, renting DVDs not often available from larger chains and smaller "mom-and-pop" stores; We will specialize in film festival award winners, independent releases, avant-garde and cult classics, foreign films, documentaries, special interest, arthouse favorites and other critically acclaimed titles, new and old. Large scale studio releases will be only be made lightly available to secondary markets of less discriminating tastes. Cinephiliac exists to attract, entertain, enrich and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers. Cinephiliac is the brainchild of entrepreneuer (and professional film critic) Aaron Hillis, who is still offering Phase I investment opportunities throughout 2005 and 2006. To request online access to Aaron's business plan, address all inquiries here. Aaron Hillis vividly remembers the first R-rated movie his parents ever allowed him to watch, the 1986 sci-fi/action epic Aliens, which features a myriad of gory "chest-bursting" effects that aren't exactly Mom's idea of family entertainment. "My folks weren't worried about the violence having a negative effect on me," Aaron recalls, "because even as a fourth grader, I was basically explaining to them how the filmmakers created these fantastic illusions that existed outside of reality!" Growing up with this undeterrable passion for the cinema led Aaron to study Motion Picture Production and Film Theory at Arizona State Univsity and U.T. Austin (University of Texas), but it wasn't until the summer of 2002, while living in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn, NY), that he began to make his living through the movies: "It was pretty wild. Not only did I stumble onto a regular gig writing DVD and film reviews for Premiere Magazine, but I was concurrently being asked to take full reign as manager of an indie video store in my neighborhood." After 16 months of managing the Hole-in-the-Wall Video store, where he increased annual profits from 7% to 31% through creative marketing and unique innovations, Aaron finally got the gumption to reap the rewards of opening his own store. Cinephiliac will build upon prototype business strategies already proven successful for Aaron, such as concentrating on quality movies instead of simply mainstream commercial releases, a previously unmet demand in the area. "The most important thing for me is enlightening people to the vast diversities of film culture they might not even know about. Most filmgoers would rent better titles if they simply knew they existed, things you won't find at Blockbuster, Netflix or an 'In-Demand' cable service. When customers come into my store, I want them to experience the happy medium between film school and their favorite hangout." When he isn't dissecting the works of Jean-Luc Godard or Russ Meyer, Aaron used to take the form of an illustrator, a part-time DJ, a full-blown coffee addict and a doting boyfriend. His latest Premiere reviews are available to read here. CLICK the titles below for pop-up reviews of Aaron's Top Ten Films of 2003: 1. Lost in Translation 2. Spider 3. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 4. Pistol Opera 5. Finding Nemo 6. Kill Bill: Volume 1 7. The Man Without a Past 8. Capturing the Friedmans 9. Irreversible 10. Hukkle - Honorable Mention (11-20, alphabetically): All the Real Girls . Bad Santa . Friday Night . Girlhood . The Good Thief . Raising Victor Vargas . The Revolution Will Not Be Televised . School of Rock . Swimming Pool . 28 Days Later If only I had seen them during 2003: American Splendor . Big Fish . Bus 174 . City of God . Cold Mountain . demonlover . Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary . The Fog of War . In America . The Son . The Station Agent . Ten . The Triplets of Belleville . 21 Grams . Unknown Pleasures . Whale Rider - (Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona [AZ] class of 1995) - the investment opportunities here are a sure thing for investors looking for either small-risk, mid-risk, large-risk vestings, tax-deductible, high interest rates compound (compounded) monthly (that's every month, unless we're The Da Vinci Code cracked by Connie Chung), and GreenCine Daily (GreenCine.com), David Hudson aka D W Hudson is simply the bomb, but Court Street, Smith Street, Columbia Street, and Union Street near Cobble Hill, Red Hook, and Boerum Hill is the place to be for this venture capitalists or should I say venture capital or even venture capitalism! VHS is dead to us rare DVD fanatics, but we will carry all titles by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Terry Gilliam, Samuel Fuller, Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell (and Pressburger), Jan Kadar Elmar Klos, film theory and criticism, Robert Flaharty, Cristi Puiu and the Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Werner Herzog World Cup, ecstacy of truth (like the ecstasy of truth), Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov into Robert Altman, Hal Hartley, Carl Theodor Dreyer (Carl Th. Dreyer), Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Woody Allen, George W. Bush's favorite aspect ratio, Dorota Kedzierzawska, Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Home Vision and Image, Cinemascope in 2007, El Topo vs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (brothers Dardennes), Larry Cohen, Philippe Garrel stars Louis Garrel, Julien Duvivier, Cult Epics, Hiroshi Inagaki vs. The Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian!), Herk Harvey, David Gordon Green by way of Gaspar Noe, Luis Bunuel, Sergio Leone noir, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michael Haneke is and isn't Hidden (Caché), Nicholas Roeg, Karl Rove, Terry Jones (Monty Python), Philip Kaufman, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, IRA terrorism via DV filmmaking, Neil Jordan, Paul Morrissey, Peter Jackson's King Kong meets Andy Warhol in Technicolor (Superman Returns), Spike Lee, David Lean, Jiri Menzel, Peter Medak, Film Bloggers Explode, Mario Monicelli, John Lurie, Tom Waits on YouTube, Jim Jarmusch, Patrice Chéreau, Federico Fellini (they're all naked!), Merchant Ivory, Bill Murray, Allison Anders, 43rd New York Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh or the lovely Coleman Hough, Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Shohei Imamura, Uncle Alfred Hitchcock destroys Lucio Fulci, World Trade Center, Marcel Camus, Robert Bresson, Peter Brook, when little-known Fernando Arrabal returns, Wes Anderson and the Phallic Vagina imagery, Mario Bava, Kevin Smith, director George Clooney, 2006: The Puppet Theater of Paul Thomas Anderson, Cannes Film Festival, Fishkill documentary entitled Fish Kill Flea (coming soon), Ingmar Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, Shohei Imamura, Noah Baumbach, Aki Kaurismaki, Francois Ozon, grips and gaffters, 9 Songs: Franz Ferdinand, Beat Takeshi Kitano, Marie Antoinette over Satantango: Bela Tarr, Christopher Guest, Asia Argento (completely nude in a blockbuster documentary?), then we ask Albert Maysles, film projectors of 1920, Mitsuo Yanagimachi reads Albert Camus, Peter Weir, Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy in North Korea, Bertrand Tavernier, Heath Ledger in my neighborhood (Douglass Street), Seijun Suzuki, Francois Truffaut, Gregory La Cava, Laurence Olivier, D. A. Pennebaker, Remy Belvaux, Jean Renoir, Sundance devours the South Korean New Wave, Michelangelo Antonioni, every single Japanese Shochiku, Kurt Momberger is M.I.A., Rene Clair, Henri-Georges Clouzot clips, Jean Cocteau, Joe D'Amato meets Rob Reiner, Jean-Paul Civeyrac goes Through the Forest, Carol Reed, Alain Resnais, Bohdan Sláma (Slama), DVD Beaver, Lynne Ramsay (hot sex on the inside), Brian De Palma (Brian DePalma), Sergei Eisenstein, Red State vs. Blue State, Lars von Trier eats Dogville's Manderlay, Osama bin Laden visits Jonathan Demme, Peter Davis, Alex Cox, David Cronenberg, Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Winterbottom, Harry Potter, Jacques Tati portrait of international awards, the nunsploitation of Neil Jordan, Stanley Kubrick, Roger Corman and Funny Ha Ha, Michael Almereyda, Stan Brakhage, Ronald Neame, not from Spider-Man 3: Stanley Donen, The Criterion Collection, Jules Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, Aldo Lado is no Dario Argento, Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples), Dobson High School's Merritt Corless, after Ken Pringle tracked me down, Barbet Schroeder, Sam Peckinpah, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Vilgot Sjoman, Douglas Sirk, a drunken Hong Sang-soo fights a sober Im Sang-soo, Mike Judge goes Blue Underground, Cannes Film Festival videos, Paul Verhoeven, Kankuro Kudo eats John Woo (do you remember Elvis Woo?), Park Chanwook over Preston Sturges and more auteur theory than you Fantoma can shake an F-train--Fahrenheit 9/11, Howard Dean or at. Sooner or later, everyone pictures Michael Moore goes Sexplastic! Well hello, New Video Group or simply New Video (Docurama, A"E, A&E, New Video NYC, Scholastic) Glenn Kenny and Filmbrain and Cinetrix and Christian Parkess and Rob Karimi (Bobby Karimi, sike9!) and Peter Debruge and the cutest, Jennifer Loeber aka Jennifer Exit. Download: http://www.archive.org/download/George_Bush_Doesnt_Like_Black_People/GeorgeBushDoesntCareAboutBlackPeople.mp3 (George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People)