SN&R’s 2009 Summer Movie Preview Quiz

Want to know what’s doing at the multiplex this blockbuster season? Take SN&R’s Summer Movie Preview Quiz! It’s guaranteed to be nearly as stupid and disposable as most of what you’ll see in movie theaters for the next few months—if not more so!

Here’s how it works: Having scoured all the ranting blog comments, press releases, online trailers, trade publications and outer limits of movie-critic imagination, we provide you with a mad jumble of quotations, descriptions and random summer-movie factoids, and you try and guess what they’re from.

No, our quiz doesn’t cover all the summer releases, because that’s what the Internet is for. But it is multiple-choice, so you know it won’t be very challenging. Answers are at the bottom; get all 12 correct and congratulate yourself on obviously having nothing better to do this summer anyway.

1. The Himalayan Monal pheasant:

a) Source of the magical quill in professor Minerva McGonagall’s hat in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 15), the latest movie adaptation of a J.K. Rowling boy-wizard best seller

b) Breakfast of choice for Hugh Jackman’s titular hero in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1), the back story of Marvel Comics’ razor-clawed mutant bad ass

c) Bird at the Sacramento Zoo studied by the creators of Pixar’s Up (May 29), the 3-D animated tale of an old geezer (voiced by Ed Asner) who decides to leave city living behind by tying many balloons to his house and floating away from it all

d) First-draft monster, later replaced by “Sleestak,” in Land of the Lost (June 5), a time-travel-adventure comedy based on the cult hit ’70s TV show of the same name and starring Will Ferrell, Anna Friel and Danny McBride

2. “What did you say your unit was called?”

“I didn’t.”

a) Macho banter between Christopher Eccleston and Dennis Quaid, as “Destro” and “Hawk,” respectively, in the latest Hasbro-toy-based action film, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (August 7), from the guy who directed The Mummy

b) Macho banter between Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, as bank robber John Dillinger and FBI agent Melvin Purvis, respectively, in the trench-coats-and-tommy-guns thriller Public Enemies (July 1), from the guy who directed Miami Vice

c) Macho banter between Denzel Washington and John Travolta, as a subway dispatcher and a hostage taker, respectively, in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (June 12), an almost certainly unnecessary remake from the guy who directed Déjà Vu and affront to the guy who directed The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

d) Campy macho banter between Mike Myers and himself, taking advantage of a small role in Inglourious Basterds (August 21), Quentin Tarantino’s giddily gory tale of Jewish-American soldiers scalping Nazis in 1940s France, to make an old-school penis joke

3. The new romantic comedy written and directed by Woody Allen, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Larry David:

a) Bandslam (August 14)

b) Whatever Works (June 19, limited)

c) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (July 1)

d) Goose on the Loose! (August 21)

4. “Ohhhhh, goooood for you. And how was it? I hope it was fucking good, because it’s useless now, isn’t it? Fuck’s sake man, you’re amateur!”

a) Jennifer Garner to Matthew McConaughey during a sex scene in the romantic comedy Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (May 1), in which an apparently Scroogean womanizer gets an admonishing supernatural tour of his ridiculous romantic history

b) Christian Bale’s now-famous rant at cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on the set of post-apocalyptic man-vs.-machine über-franchise update, Terminator Salvation (May 21)

c) The author of this article to himself after missing deadline

d) b and c

5. “I was literally like, ‘What the hell am I doing telling Leonard Nimoy how Spock should say this line?!’”

a) Pediatrician and Baby and Child Care author Benjamin Spock, on letting his own cultural influence get best of him

b) Director J.J. Abrams, in Entertainment Weekly, recalling his experience on the set of his action-intensive new movie version of the original Star Trek (May 8)

c) Alleged recorded transmission from a parallel universe in which William Shatner is humble

d) Leonard Nimoy, in the introduction to his 1977 autobiography, I Am Not Spock

6. This movie probably will be as good as is hoped for by the people mostlooking forward to it:

a) Drag Me to Hell (May 29), in which Evil Dead and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi returns to his horror roots with the story of a loan officer (Alison Lohman) who makes an unfortunate, unholy enemy

b) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June 24), in which Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons—who, in the previous film, fell, and in this one want revenge

c) Julie & Julia (August 7), a comedy-drama from director Nora Ephron, with Meryl Streep as celebrity chef Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell, the amateur cook who documented her experience attempting every recipe in one of Child’s books

d) None of the above

7. “He’s sort of a cross between General Patton and Hugh Hefner.”

a) Terminator Salvation cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on Christian Bale

b) Brad Pitt on Quentin Tarantino, who directed him in Inglourious Basterds

c) Dennis Quaid describing his character “Hawk” in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra to Access Hollywood

d) Jack Black on Michael Cera, who co-stars with him in Year One (June 19), a prehistoric comedy directed by Harold Ramis

8. The bitch-slap-happiest portion of director Ron Howard’s published response to Catholic League president William Donohue’s pre-emptive critique of Howard’s new film Angels & Demons (May 15), a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks:

a) “Whatever, dude.”

b) “And yet you had no problem whatsoever with EDtv.”

c) “This right here is why I’m Jewish.”

d) “Mr. Donohue’s booklet accuses us of lying when our movie trailer says the Catholic Church ordered a brutal massacre to silence the Illuminati centuries ago. It would be a lie if we had ever suggested our movie is anything other than a work of fiction (if it were a documentary, our talk of massacres would have referenced the Inquisition or the Crusades).”

9. This picture:

a) A crucial image in the recurring dream that it’s about time you discussed with your therapist

b) A production still from Diff’rent Strokes: The Movie

c) A production still from Brüno (July 10), another mockumentary comedy from director Larry Charles in which Sacha Baron Cohen uploads one of his characters from Da Ali G Show to the big screen (the previous one being Borat)

d) None of the above, and, in fact, no fucking idea

10. “We were just touching the surface last time in what they’re capable of doing. This time, they really emote.”

a) Debut director Damien Dante Wayans, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, on directing his uncles Damon, Keenen and Marlon in Dance Flick (May 22), a spoof of dance movies

b) Writer-director Judd Apatow, as quoted by Variety, on Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, who co-star in Apatow’s new movie about stand-up comedians, Funny People (July 31)

c) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay, as quoted by The Associated Press, on robots

d) Pixar animators, as quoted by each other, on inanimate objects

11. “I don’t know, maybe I’m in some kind of mood today, but this looks like a whole heapfull of pretentious retread crap. A ‘normal’ couple trying to ‘find their place in this world,’ surrounded by ‘wacky family and friends,’ and thru all this, they find peace and happiness ‘just by being.’ Combining this trailer with the Gigantic makes me want to run out and rent Wild Hogs just to help ground myself in reality.”

a) John Travolta, after having too much to drink at the Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 wrap party

b) A post by “so sorry” on Ain’t It Cool News about Away We Go (June 5, limited), the romantic road-movie dramedy written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, starring Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski, and directed by Sam Mendes

c) The evil voice in your head that doesn’t dare speak aloud

d) Christian Bale on the set of Terminator Salvation

12. Antimatter:

a) Power source for the starship Enterprise warp drive in Star Trek

b) Combustible material central to secret-society plot to blow up the Vatican in Angels & Demons

c) Emphatic opposite of matter, as in, “Does anyone think it matters what this idiot movie critic writes? Oh hell no. It antimatters.”

d) All of the above

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ANSWERS

1: c, 2: a, 3: b, 4: d, 5: b, 6: d, 7: c, 8: d, 9: c, 10: c, 11: b, 12: d.

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