MOVIE QUIZ
Next Tuesday is Valentine’s Day and, sure, there are some romantic movies coming out if that’s your desire (“Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” anyone?). But if you can wait a day, you can see a new story about one of your childhood loves, “Winnie-the-pooh: Blood and Honey.”
Did we mention it’s a gory slasher film? That’s right, Pooh and Piglet are now serial killers out to avenge their abandonment in the Hundred Acre Wood on a now-grown Christopher Robin. Oh, bother, indeed. (Disney may own the rights to their own version of the lovable bear, but the original A.A. Milne books became fair game in 2022.)
More mature retellings of classic children’s tales is the theme of this week’s quiz.
1. Neil Jordan’s private eye update “Marlowe” is out this week, but in 1984, his “The Company of Wolves” was a dark and amorous reimaging of “Little Red Riding Hood.” What three-time Oscar nominee, five-time Tony winner and 18-time Emmy nominee starred as Granny?
2. “Little Red Riding Hood” again got subverted in 1996’s black comedy thriller “Freeway,” about a teenage delinquent (Reese Witherspoon) trying to reach her grandmother’s house while evading serial killer Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland). Co-stars Dan Hedaya and Brittany Murphy appeared in another modern remake of a classic tale the year before. What was it?
3. Less well-known than his “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty” or “Puss in Boots,” 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault’s “Donkeyskin” became the 1970 musical “Donkey Skin” starring what iconic French actress?
4. Considered one of the greatest films ever made, 1948’s ballet drama “The Red Shoes” is based on a fairy tale of the same name by what Danish writer?
5. True or false: In the 1946 classic “Beauty and the Beast,” the model for the Beast’s makeup was the actor’s own pet Alaskan husky.
6. 2010’s “Black Swan” was inspired by the ballet “Swan Lake” which had been adapted from various Russian and German folk tales. Which one of its quartet of actresses was NOT nominated for any individual award for the film: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey or Winona Ryder?
7. What 2005 Terry Gilliam movie starred Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in a highly fictionalized biography of two of "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke ditched the vampires for her follow-up, 2011's "Red Riding Hood," but couldn't quite shake the werewolves. The Big Bad Wolf bedeviling crimson-cloaked Amanda Seyfried in this dark and brooding retelling is of the cursed variety controlled by the moon. the most famous fairy tale authors of all time?
8. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton starred as the fully grown title siblings in 2013’s “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” based on the German fairy tale. But one of their supporting castmates shares the same name as a Nobel Prizewinning German novelist whose masterpiece “The Magic Mountain” also contains fairy tale elements. Name him.
9. What 1941 screwball comedy has obvious parallels to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” with the main character being renamed “Sugarpuss” and her finding a safe place among seven older professors (and one younger, love interest academic)?
10. “Into the Woods,” a mix-and-match combination of many fairy tales that explores what happens after “happily ever after,” began life on the stage in 1987, a musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. In the starstudded 2014 movie version, which literary heroine is NOT one of the characters: Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood or Rapunzel?