MOVIE QUIZ
Friday is St. Patrick’s Day – which would be even more celebratory (if that’s possible) had “The Banshees of Inisherin” not been shut out at this past Sunday’s Oscars. And Monday is a very early first day of spring, even if it’s still days past what Punxsutawney Phil forecasted.
Correspondingly, the first half of this week’s quiz is dedicated to movies with Irish themes and the second, to films with springtime on their minds.
1. Oscar-winning best picture “The Departed” tells a twisted tale of Irish cops and mobsters in Boston. Four of its stars – Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg – have Irish ancestry, but which one’s mother was born on the Emerald Isle?
2. The 1952 classic “The Quiet Man” is arguably the ultimate St. Patrick’s Day movie option. But the beloved, familyfriendly film had its moment of controversy. Republic Pictures edited out one word from the famous wedding toast in the finished product because of ongoing Irish-english tensions. “May their days be long and full of happiness. May their children be many and full of health. And may they live in peace and … freedom.” What word got cut before “freedom”: Irish, united, national or Catholic?
3. Name the 1994 movie from Schenectady writer-director John Sayles about a young girl who goes to live with her grandparents in a 1946 Irish fishing village after the death of her mother. And encounters selkies.
4. True or false: the teenage skateboarder who asks to audition for the Dublin soul band in 1991’s “The Commitments” is the same person who was previously the cover model for the U2 albums “Boy” and “War”?
5. Which one of the stars of 1995’s “Circle of Friends,” set in 1950s Ireland, was making their feature film debut in it: Minnie Driver, Colin Firth, Alan Cumming or Chris O’donnell?
6. A24, the indie studio and distribution company, led the pack this year with 17 Oscar nominations and nine wins, including a sweep of the top categories with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Whale.” But what 2013 movie with “spring ” in the title – starring former TV teen queens Selena Gomez (“The Wizards of Waverly Place”), Vanessa Hudgens (“High School Musical”) and Ashley Benson (“Pretty Little Liars”) – was the company’s very first major release?
7. In the 1989 comedy “Major League,” Willie Mays Hays shows up at the Minnesota Twins’ spring training uninvited yet makes the team despite his terrible batting performance because he’s a master at stealing bases. Omar Epps takes over the role in the 1994 sequel, “Major League II,” but who played Hays in the original?
8. In the 1947 Roy Rogers western “Springtime in the Sierras,” who gets second billing?
9. True or false: Oscar winner Timothy Hutton played the male lead in “Where the Boys Are ’84,” the sort-of sequel to the original spring break movie, 1960’s “Where the Boys Are,” which starred his father, Jim Hutton, who grew up in Albany.
10. “April Love,” the 1957 musical famed for its hit Oscar-nominated title song, starred singer Pat Boone and what future Oscar-winning actress, who Boone refused to kiss on screen for fear of offending his wife?