The 8th Annual Oscar Guess the Plot Quiz

Below are the Motion Picture Academy's nominees for best picture. The actual plot of each film is hidden among a few fake plots. Can you get them all right?



Her

A lonely writer gets help with his personal problems from his new computer operating system. But can she help with his biggest problem, the fact that he's fallen in love with her?

The true story of Catherine Williams, an African American opera singer who was captured and sold into slavery.

The true story of the last Aztec and how she clung to her belief system and her culture until she was ultimately murdered for no good reason.

Claude has been invited to his first dinner party. After he uses the master bathroom, he asks the hostess why her robe hook is labeled her and not hers. She claims it says hers, and the other guests agree. Is it Claude, or is everyone in his new neighborhood crazy?


Gravity

Or, more accurately, Lack of Gravity. After their shuttle is destroyed in space, a man and a woman are left tethered together, floating in the void. The woman doesn't complain, mainly because the guy looks just like George Clooney.

Get ready for the real story about this natural force that's bigger than nature, and stronger than you! Everything you thought you knew about gravity has been completely disproved. Take a wild journey with us in this four hour documentary.

The true story of the slave ship Gravity, which carried countless African-Americans to New Orleans.

As the population of Earth rises, the weight of Earth does as well, until Earth's increased gravity starts pulling the moon closer and closer. Scientist Roger Carpenter has a plan that could save us all: ship all the elephants into space.


Nebraska

Noting that their books don't sell well in Nebraska, a publisher titles their next book Nebraska in hopes of spurring sales in that state. A slight improvement in Nebraska sales is accompanied by a massive drop in all other states and yet another bankrupt publisher.

A guy wins a million-dollar sweepstakes and drives to Nebraska to claim his winnings, taking along his estranged son on what could turn out to be the road trip from hell.

t was the state all of Grace's plastic tchotchkes had been shipped from, and each had been signed Gerald. Is Gerald the man in Grace's dreams? Grace leaves everything behind and road trips across America to find herself and the man who fondles her tchotchkes.

The true story of a colony of former African-Ameican slaves as they try to settle the unforgiving plains.


Philomina

Philomina, an Evil Editor minion, decides it's time to fly to New York City for the first time. She's going to find EE in the bustling crowd and get his autograph. The week she arrives is also the Annual Muttonchop Convention. He's everywhere in every shape and size!

No idea what this one's about, but it sounds like one of them foreign films.

It's an Academy requirement that no Oscar ceremony can go on without at least one movie based on a true story and starring Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, or Maggie Smith. Whichever one it is is searching for her long-lost son.

The true story of a former African-American slave who struggles to establish a university in Nebraska.


Captain Phillips

The plot's not important. What's important is that it's got pirates! Arrrrgh!

Move over Morgan! There's a bigger badder captain waiting to crawl inside all the fine young lasses, and he's going to make you eat parrot stew and strut down the plank in a pink tutu and red heart pasties.

The makers of Phillips Milk of Magnesia decide their product needs a mascot. Enter Captain Phillips, a constipated walrus, who needs fast relief if he's to pilot his schooner across the Bering Sea.

The true story of Jack Phillips, who commanded the slave ship 'Nebraska'.


12 Years a Slave

After signing a three-book deal, author Jessica Lorenz discovers that the fine print in her contract forbids her to write anything in any genre for anyone until her contract is fulfilled. If only she were more prolific.

Hercules has had it with Omphale's demands, and three years have felt like a dozen. When she tells him she's pregnant, he plans to leave like any smart man would, but forgets to put the toilet seat down the night before.

An African-American man is kidnapped from his home town in New York. The next thing he knows he's been transported to the American South in the year 1841 and sold into slavery.

The true story of Simon Cohen, a Yale-educated, Holocaust survivor financier at a bank owned by Harvard grads in Nebraska.


American Hustle

As usual, the top prizes at the International Ballroom Championships are being won by Russians and Ukrainians. But wait, there's a new event this year: American Hustle. And Americans Oxsana Yurivich and Alexei Karsai are looking to take home the gold.

The true story of former African-American slaves who founded a drag club in Pittsburgh.

The thirty-ninth installment of the world's most intriguing twelve hour documentaries about various cities in random countries and their flea markets. Next week: Cleveland (a thirteen hour special!)

Two conmen are forced to work for the FBI, and . . . aw, who cares what happens, it's got Jennifer Lawrence.


Dallas Buyers Club

Members of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders open an online auction site offering game-worn garments, and bringing in 50 times the money raised by their football-playing counterparts' game-worn jerseys and do-rags.

The true story of a Texas organization that purchased African American slaves for use in Georgia.

In the obligatory AIDS-related nominee, a homophobic bull rider starts a club to help AIDS patients (like himself) get their drugs.

Every city Thomas has been to recently seems to have a Sellers Club. But where are all the Buyers Clubs? Thomas must find the last Buyers Club before he gets attacked by the 50 foot woman.


The Wolf of Wall Street

The true story of Peter Lupin, the Nebraskan former African American slave who financed the importation of African American slaves while hiding behind a veneer of abolitionism.

After losing everything in the recession of 2008, a werewolf sets out to take revenge on every banker he can get his fangs on.

Brokers have noticed the cute mangy canine that roams the halls of Wall Street's financial houses, but no one knows it's a hologram. One Tuesday afternoon, it morphs into a nine foot werewolf and clears the trading floor. Enter Victor, the werewolf's programmer, and Wall Street's fiercest wolf.

The rise and fall of some stockbroker. Wall Street criminals may not get what's coming to them in real life, but maybe in the movies . . .


Answers below



Fakes submitted by CavalierdeNuit, Khazar-khum and EE



Answers

Her: Computer love
Gravity: George Clooney
Nebraska: Road trip
Philomena: Judi Dench
Captain Phillips: Pirates!
12 Years a Slave: 1841
American Hustle: Jennifer Lawrence
Dallas Buyers Club: AIDS
The Wolf of Wall Street: Stockbroker

The 7th Annual Oscar Awards Guess the Plot Feature

Below are the titles of this year's Oscar Award nominees. Your job is to guess which plot description is the real one. The fakes were submitted by EE and the Evil Minions. A true film buff should have no trouble getting all nine.



Les Miserables

1. A history of the French people, from Robespierre to Gerard Depardieu.

2. A group of runaway slaves struggle for survival in Paris.

3. Prisoner 24601 escapes and creates a new life for himself, caring for the daughter of a factory worker and frequently breaking into song for no apparent reason.

4. They were the most effective Marquis of the French Resistance in WWII. They hid in the forest. They slept on the ground and foraged for food. Rarely did they have a hot meal or a bath and went weeks without washing their clothes. No wonder they were known as . . . Les Miserables.

5. Prison janitor Jean didn't think his life could get worse. Of course that was before becoming a hostage in riot-turned-jailbreak for which everyone believes he's the mastermind.


Beasts of the Southern Wild

1. It's bad enough living in the south in the summer, but when global warming causes the ice caps to melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures, it's time to head inland.

2. Frat house screwball comedy featuring nerds and jocks and boozing and cheerleaders and zombies.

3. Werejavelinas, werepossums and weredillos- in 3-D!

4. A group of runaway slaves struggle to survive in the hostile Everglades, pursued by hunters and alligators.

5. Porter the porcupine is worried. For three years, rains rarely come. The forest is dying and the woodland creatures are thirsty. One night, Porter sees colored lights in the northern sky. Taking it as sign, he organizes the mammals and birds. They begin a long trek to the northern rain forest. Also, a proselytizing vegan who won’t shut up -- so the cougars eat her.



Amour

1. Hitchens has quietly harbored his affection for Calista for four centuries, sure a gargoyle can't convince a saint he wants more than a one-night stand. When they catch Father Francis obsessively scrubbing stains from the altar, Hitchens grasps for his chance at...Amour.

2. A gripping tale of love between two slaves as they struggle against their oppressive masters.

3. Amour's parents named her in the heat of the groovy sixties. When she loses her job as an accountant for a denture-manufacturing firm and the bank forecloses on her suburban Houston home, Amour is forced to move in with her parents on the commune while desperately searching for another job.

4. A heart-wrenching story of two people in love. What more needs to be said? Oh, right, no sex scenes. Which is probably a good thing, as they're both in their 80s.

5. When their woodland is cleared for a shopping center, Molly the mole and Porter the porcupine are made homeless. Older than the other creatures, Molly and Porter team up. Each has abilities the other lacks. By the time they are settled into a new woodland, they are deeply in love. Can this illicit bi-species love last through the rigors of new homes, new friends and old age?



Lincoln

1. A group of freed slaves build a new nation in Nebraska, and name it after the president who freed them. It never amounts to more than one town, and they move to Texas after two years.

2. Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt, and struggles with his views on capital punishment: "Sure, no one died, but this guy tried to kill me! Either he hangs, or we at least make him my slave."

3. President Abraham Lincoln must decide whether to end the Civil War or keep it going long enough to ram slave emancipation through congress. Think The West Wing, with Honest Abe playing the role of Jed Bartlet.

4. Twelve year old Lincoln Larsen leaves home to commence her physics degree and faces a predatory professor. She has an unexpected ally in an escaped human-extraterrestrial hybrid.

5. After heart surgery, Vito enters the convalescent hospital for several weeks. High school buddies Sam and Jack ‘borrow’ his Lincoln land-yacht for a joy ride to Florida. When they have a flat, they open the trunk and find two corpses sealed in plastic. So, Vito Gambino is one of those Gambinos. They can’t go to the police but if they don’t they might wind up in a car trunk.



Argo

1. Jason and the Golden Fleece, as told by his snarky ship, Argo. Argo would like nothing more than to lounge around the docks and frolic in the bay with the other ships. But that jackass King Pelias sends Jason and his band of Argonauts – ancient Greek for Keystone Cops – on a quest for some old furry rag. Argo has a low opinion of people, and thinks even less of mythical creatures like centaurs and gods -- especially that nitwit Poseidon.

2. The CIA and Canada collaborate on a film called Argo. It's sort of a film within a film, with both films called Argo. Both films are a huge success, though only one of them is a box office blockbuster.

3. A sudden nationwide outbreak of chicken pox leads to dramatic shortfalls in cornstarch supply. Shady deals at Argo Corn Products leaves line engineer on the hook for more than lumpy gravy.

4. An adorable little garter snake argues with his brothers and sisters about whether it's safe to explore the hole in the garden fence.

5. When six-year-old Johnny doesn't return after heading into the swamp on a quest to find what he terms an "argolator," the sheriff's only clue as to what might have happened to him is a partial recording recovered from a pile of gator doo with Johnny's voice saying, "Wow! I just found me an argo--"



Silver Linings Playbook

1. Sure every cloud has a silver lining, or so Joe's been told, but when you're a backup quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars, sometimes it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

2. Former slave Silver Linings writes the first book of defensive plays for Harvard football--just in time for the big game with Yale.

3. If every cloud has a silver lining, then Seattle is the champion. So its newest high school’s team nickname is The Silver Lining. When coach Bud Adams retires from the NBA, he goes there to try out some revolutionary ideas. The Silver Lining win nearly every game but their playbook is stolen just before the state championships. Can the Lining win if the opponent knows all of their secret moves?

4. On the vaporous world of CumuloNimbulex, Thunderhead, the captain of Cloud Team 9, has finally come up with a stratusgy that should let him win the coveted silver medal at the Cloud Olympics. If only he could get the rest of the team to stop goofing off and be cirrus.

5. Recently released from a mental institution, Pat feels he can manage on the outside without medication solely by healthy living and looking for the "silver linings" of every cloud that rains on him. His goals: get his teaching job back and reunite with his wife. The latter one won't be easy, what with the restraining order.



Life of Pi

1. Bound by her sorority blood oath, Teresa lies on the witness stand to protect fellow Pi, Shayna, from life imprisionment. Detective Malarkey knows a fish story when he smells one.

2. It's rough being the shortest kid in the class, but Pi has a good comeback for the kids who laugh and say he's only three feet tall: Actually, asshole, I'm 3.14159 feet tall.

3. Traveling from India to Canada to start a new life, a shipwreck leaves Pi on a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a tiger and a hyena. Three guesses who gets eaten first in the struggle for survival.

4. Pie, the horse from National Velvet, breaks away from mankind's domination and goes on a journey to find himself. He even learns to write his own name--almost.

5. When he played the game, he was the best third baseman ever. But his fame was made with his bat. He hit over .300 ten times and never struck out more than 28 times in a season. For fifty years Pi Traynor kept a daily diary. This biography is based on that diary and reveals how his love of Pie resulted in his memorable nickname.


Django Unchained

1. A year in the life of indie rock group Django Unchained as they tour and inflict their noise on unsuspecting bar patrons around the country and fail to either score a recording contract or any female attention.

2. The Normandy invasion fails and gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt organizes the resistance to the NAZI occupation of Belgium. At night, Django’s jazz band entertains SS-SD officers. Plying them with hard liquor, the group’s girls get their secrets. Then they strike the Gestapo offices and NAZI supply depots.

3. Django's romp through Compton reunites estranged cousins Sheeq and Luce on the eve of a gang war. Also, clowns.

4. A dentist gives up his profession to become a bounty hunter, buys the freedom of a slave named Django, and trains him to be his deputy. Carnage ensues.

5. When Mrs. Dja Dja Django agrees to a little handcuff hanky-panky with husband Djo Djo, she doesn't know he's going to get a sudden urge to make a run to the beer store...with the handcuff key still in his pocket...AND GET PULLED OVER! Boy, is Dja Dja ever going to show Djo Djo where to put that key when she gets unchained!


Zero Dark Thirty

1. George discovers odd marks on the old oak, realizes that they are signposts for the Underground Railroad and knows that he and his family must leave for Canada now.

2. Playwright Zero Jones attends tryouts for his new musical. There he sees Angelina. She's stunning, young and sings like an angel. Zero is in love. But he's fifty, short and overweight. He pays a witch to cast a spell. Instantly, he's tall, trim and young. He has 30 days to win her heart. Can it last when he reverts to himself?

3. A group of neighborhood kids like to play Army, but they have to be safe indoors by what Billy calls "zero dark thirty." Their plan to eliminate nightime will leave the real military wishing they'd kept a better eye on their uranium supplies.

4. In an experiment to determine whether a movie's title has any bearing on its success, an Oscar winning director uses a random word generator to title her latest film.

5. One woman is confident she knows the location of the world's most wanted terrorist. The men aren't so sure, but to prove her wrong and humiliate her, they send a SEAL team in. Turns out she was right. So of course the guys try to take credit.



Answers below


Fake Plots were submitted by
Khazar-khum, Mr. Furkles, EE, James, Jo Antareau, AA, Anon



Answers

Les Miz  3
Beasts...1
Amour....4
Abe........3
Argo.......2
Pbook....5
Pi...........3
Django...4
Zero.......5

The 6th Annual Oscar Guess the Plot Quiz

Each of the following films has been nominated as best picture of the year. Your job is to figure out which of the plots are fakes, created by Evil Editor and his Evil Minions, and which is the actual plot of the film.


1. The Artist

A lonely autistic man paints haunting images of the Holocaust.

In depression-era New York City an artist who was the talk of the town must deal with the fact that no one has any money to buy art.

Silent film about a silent film star who produces a silent film to prove that silent films aren't dead.

Serial killer "The Artist" rearranges victims' faces to resemble Picassos. Corrimer is an art critic-turned-detective, hot on his trail. But now the Artist is stalking the critic due to a scathing critique of the last crime scene.

A world-renowned sand sculptor must move to snowy Colorado to care for his ailing father.

That's what they call him, Jean-Baptist LaClerc. He has painted and screwed his way through most of French nobility, but can he seduce Marie Champlon? Her eyes say 'yes,' but the key to her chastity belt says 'no.' His reputation is at stake, confound it!


2. The Descendants

Aidan and Andrew, a married gay couple in NYC, struggle to come to terms with the deaths of their grandparents in the Holocaust.

With his wife in a coma, a lawyer takes his children to meet the man their mother was having an affair with. Dramedy ensues.

Their grandfather and their father were bosses in the nation's biggest crime family. Now twins Carlo and Carlotta try to make a life for themselves with a home-made pasta business while the family's enemies seek revenge.

Picasso's nude model descended the staircase only once for that iconic picture, but did she descend it again for Picasso's arch nemesis?

Eleven houses in eight countries on four continents and yet, people always figure it out; 'John Smith' and his family are direct descendants of Adolf Hitler's love child. His wife, Zelda wonders if it might be John's mustache. Nah. Better move again.


3. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A young woman from the midwest visits the big city for the first time and comes to regret sitting next to Evil Editor at the all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet.

Jon thinks winning front row tickets to an AC/DC concert is a dream come true. But ten days later, he and his date still haven't recovered their hearing.

After buying their dream house in Georgia through an Internet realty firm, Californians Paul and Marcie move across the country and discover their home is located next to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

After Oskar's father is killed in the World Trade Center attack he befriends an old man who hasn't spoken since he witnessed a bombing in WWII. They become close and Oskar notices the old man is a lot like his father. Hmm...

Jeremiah is sick of his conjoined twin, Jeremy. Jeremy yells when watching sport on TV, which he does constantly when not making appalling jokes and laughing raucously at them. Can Jeremiah find a way to kill the idiot without harming himself or doing time?

Two siblings, both nearly deaf, come of age in frontier America.

A group of high school friends take a road trip to see their favorite band live and from the front row . . . 30 years after the band's heyday.


4. Hugo

An unconventional dark comedy about Hugo Weaving, the man who brought both Agent Smith and Lord Elrond to life.

Charles Beaumont refuses to heed the warnings as Hurricane Hugo approaches Charleston, SC in 1989. When his child is killed by glass from a shattered window, he must spend the rest of the movie feeling guilty and enduring his wife's glares.

An orphan named Hugo is living with his uncle. When the uncle vanishes, it's up to Hugo to get his uncle's mechanical man working.

Hugo the elephant is so big and fat he flattens every circus that'll have him — until the ringmasters all gang up to have him shot. Can Dumbo-crazy toddler Biffy Stumpo save the massively-trunked quadruped? Or will he too be squished to a pulp and everything EVERYTHING end terribly?

A biopic of mad scientist Hugo A Gogo – you know, from the 60’s cartoon, Bat Fink. What do you mean you can’t remember? It was a classic, man, a classic.

The sqeezable soft bear from the Downy commercial makes his silver screen debut in a heart-warming family comedy. Bear does know best.

Never heard of him? No? Who has? It sucks being Igor's little brother. “Igor, fetch more brains.” “Igor, check the contacts.” “Igor throw the switch.” “You? Errrrm... Go scrub the loos, there's a good lad.”


5. Midnight in Paris

Vacationing with his fiancee in Paris, a writer is transported every night at midnight back to the 1920s, where he hobnobs with the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

During WWII, a pair of lesbian jazz singers--one Jewish, the other African-American, struggle to come to terms with both their love and their project to smuggle crippled Polish children to NYC.

Midnight: cute kitty by day, avenging panther by night. Follow Midnight's adventures as she stalks and wreaks bloody vengeance on those Parisians who are far too superior to bother scooping up after their pooches.

The thrilling end to the romantic trilogy that began with "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset."

Is it midnight? Who can tell, with all these bloody lights! Just once, Michele wants his children to be able to see the stars. Calling in every favor he has, he conspires to shut off all the public outdoor lights at once. Will party-pooper Mayor Adele Richard thwart his plan?


6. The Help

Mexican-American illegal immigrants who mow the lawns of suburban soccer moms, and their secret lives.

Maids, footmen and cooks at a 1915 British estate gather nightly in the kitchen to gossip about the family that employs them. Pretty funny if you can understand their accents.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, every 100 years, twelve superheroes are born. The Healer. The Fighter. The Sympath. The Honest. The Courage. What does Melda get? A lifetime of emergency silver-polishing and deviled egg-making.

Fresh out of college, Skeeter wants to be a writer, so she interviews a number of maids working in Mississippi, compiles the interviews into a book, and sells it to Harper Collins. The book is a success and Skeeter goes on to a career in publishing. A fantasy.

Imogen is the angel assigned to help Sahira leave her slum home in Mumbai and rescue her family from grinding poverty. When local bullies discover and kidnap Imogen, Sahira has to help her “help”.

Documentary about the rumored 6th Beatle - the copy editor who was the real driving force of the band's success.


7. Moneyball

It seemed like a good idea at the time to drop an enormous ball of cash in the poorest area of DC. Several trampled politicians later, Senator Mitchel has been arrested on multiple charges and his cellmates have come up with a new nickname for him. Guess what it is.

A pair of crooks try to break the bank at Atlantic City while seeking a place that will perform their gay marriage.

The general manager of a hapless major league baseball team devises new methods of scouting players in order to contend with his team's puny payroll. At one point they win 20 games in a row, and would have won the World Series, except it's based on a true story, and they didn't.

After winning the $50,000,000 Powerball lottery, Sheila Stone discovers relatives she never knew she had. When her generosity leaves her bankrupt, she uses her last ten dollars to buy lottery tickets. You'll never guess what happens.

John Nathan just wants to throw the perfect birthday party for his 12-year-old, as part of a ploy to regain the favor of his estranged ex-wife. But when it turns out that bank robbers stashed their ill-gotten gains in the baseball-shaped pinata he just bought, it's gonna be one hell of a party.


8. War Horse

The Trojan War from the horse's perspective.

Battleaxe. Steamroller. All of these apply to Carol's mother-in-law. Husband Lennie tries to convince Carol it's serious, and when they come home to find MIL in a chalk pentagram pulling the heads off chickens, she does. But is there still time to run?

A gay, autistic African-American soldier in WWII obsessively draws images of horses on bombers heading to Germany.

A rocking horse is possessed by demons after a children's birthday party gone wrong. Breaking free from the house, the horse sets off on its mission to start a world war and, hopefully, ensure the destruction of the planet.

Albert's father sells their beloved horse Joey to a British officer during WWI. The officer is killed and Joey is captured by the Germans. After the war, Albert discovers that Joey is being auctioned off and collects money to bid on him. Sadly, he's outbid by an old French guy.

Rock band War Horse are the new Hot Things. Follow their rise to fame and fortune, their boozing and drug taking, the stalker groupie, the tantrums, the leaked sex tapes with nobodies, the manipulative manager and internal rifts over the artistic direction they will next take, the split, the appalling solo releases, and their final degradation – hosts on televised talent quests.


9. The Tree of Life

Three generations of Jewish African Americans struggle to come to terms with their autistic LGBT descendants' marriages.

When he sees a tree being planted in front of a building, Jack O'Brien reminisces about his life as young teenager during the 1950s. Also, the origin of the universe and dinosaurs.

Just as the Circle of Life describes how death leads to more life, the Tree of Life describes how growth leads to the raking of leaves.

The Giving Tree fights back.

Oh, you thought it meant your life? Come closer my pretty, and I will tell you a tale of the last surviving carnivorous cypress in the Bayou. A bit closer. Closer.



Answers below



Fake plots created by Evil Editor, Khazar-khum, Anonymous, Mother (Re)produces, Jo-Ann, Whirlochre



The actual plots are:


1. Silent film about a silent film star who produces a silent film to prove that silent films aren't dead.

2. With his wife in a coma, a lawyer takes his children to meet the man their mother was having an affair with. Dramedy ensues.

3. After Oskar's father is killed in the World Trade Center attack he befriends an old man who hasn't spoken since he witnessed a bombing in WWII. They become close and Oskar notices the old man is a lot like his father.

4. An orphan named Hugo is living with his uncle. When the uncle vanishes, it's up to Hugo to get his uncle's mechanical man working.

5. Vacationing with his fiancee in Paris, a writer is transported every night at midnight back to the 1920s, where he hobnobs with the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

6. Fresh out of college, Skeeter wants to be a writer, so she interviews a number of maids working in Mississippi, compiles the interviews into a book, and sells it to Harper Collins. The book is a success and Skeeter goes on to a career in publishing. A fantasy.

7. The general manager of a hapless major league baseball team devises new methods of scouting players in order to contend with his team's puny payroll. At one point they win 20 games in a row, and would have won the World Series, except it's based on a true story, and they didn't.

8. Albert's father sells their beloved horse Joey to a British officer during WWI. The officer is killed and Joey is captured by the Germans. After the war, Albert discovers that Joey is being auctioned off and collects money to bid on him. Sadly, he's outbid by an old French guy.

9. When he sees a tree being planted in front of a building, Jack O'Brien reminisces about his life as young teenager during the 1950s. Also, the origin of the universe and dinosaurs.

The 5th Annual Oscar Awards Guess the Plot Quiz

Each year we play Guess the Plot with the Oscar contenders. Each of the films below has been nominated as best of 2010. Which are the actual plots?


Black Swan

1. You thought the first duckling was ugly- this one wears a mask 24/7. No! Wait! It's a Ninja Swan, out for revenge on those snobby ducks!

2. Nina the ballerina is thrilled to get the role of Princess Odette but then she starts losing her mind as she changes into Princess Odette's evil sister, the . . . Black Swan.

3. A remake of THE CROW with a transgender heroine playing the part of the once-dead-and-now-returned-to-take-revenge-and-set-things-right supernatural Crow.

4. As Berlin prepares to host an international summit that promises to usher in a new era of peace and understanding between China and the West, hopes are high, but someone wants Hui Chen, the head of the Chinese delegation, dead. Eric Ziegler of the German Federal Intelligence Service, must protect Chen from one of the most feared assassins in the world, an extraordinary young woman known only as "Black Swan".

5. "Black Swan" events are catastrophic or life-changing incidents that catch us by surprise even through they seem perfectly obvious in hindsight. This documentary focuses on the work of Lebanese economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb who first posited that economists contributed to the recent Global Financial Crisis by thinking about it.

6. Drinking, smoking, piercings. Layla's done everything she can to be the black sheep of the family. But when her cousin steals the title with a teenage pregnancy, Layla takes up felonious BASE jumping to become . . . "the Black Swan."

7. A female SS officer seduces high-ranking POW Allied officers to learn their secrets.

8. A Louisiana swan crusades against evil empire oil companies polluting her lake. Corexit poisoning and love ensue.


The Fighter

1. A soldier questions his role in Iraq.

2. It's like Rocky, except the guy is trained by his brother instead of Burgess Meredith and he has better enunciation.

3. A gray haired old man stands up at his town hall meeting and screams unintelligible platitudes, bon mots and non sequiturs for two hours earning himself the title of . . . "THE FIGHTER!"

4. Retired mechanic Todd Wayland restores vintage airplanes. When a property developer drains a nearby swamp and discovers the rusting remains of a World War II fighter, Wayland vows to see it fly again. But can he navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the United States Navy, which owns the wreck? And what about his failing eyesight?

5. Supersonic, invisible to radar, and able to deliver a deadly payload anywhere on the globe, Hailstorm is the first of a new generation of unmanned combat aircraft. Its first test flight is an astounding success except for one thing -- Hailstorm doesn't come home afterward. The Joint Chiefs call on ex-Marine John Bishop. His mission: find America's deadliest secret before it falls into the hands of an international terrorist threat.

6. In a world of fighters and flighters, a flighter takes in a wounded fighter. During his recovery, he learns to become a flighter and the flighter learns to become a fighter. Bloodshed and love ensue.

7. To everyone's amazement, a little boy with end-stage leukemia refuses to die. Then he starts to get better. Then, the patients on either side of him get better. Go, kid! Go!


Inception

1. A soldier questions his role in Iraq.

2. Two idiots fight over an apple. Also, a snake.

3. A thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job to date . . . Inception!

4. It's taken Halley Pepto-Bismol, Lefty Schwartz, and Spot the Wonder Dog nine months to get together after the Big Blackout and lo and behold, its time to figure out who's the Daddy. The inception was successful.

5. An activist Supreme Court rules that life starts at birth only if a woman is married, while out-of-wedlock births are deemed unborn. Evangelical churches are in a tailspin, because although they've been committed in the past to the unborn, they don't want to support the illegitimate unborn. Bloodshed and love ensue.


The Kids are All Right

1. The lives and loves of anti-Iraq war protesters.

2. A Biopic about the children of David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon.

3. One teacher must come to terms with her own stupidity when she realizes her students know more than she does.

4. Two women in a same-sex marriage. Each with a child by the same sperm donor. The kids, teenagers now, contact their biological father. Will he join the family? And which family member(s) will he start sleeping with?

5. The Larkville Herald would like to issue a retraction and apology for Monday's story regarding Ben Hubbard's goat farm.

6. Left-wing parents with right-wing kids face a showdown one stormy night. Bloodshed and conditional love ensue.

7. His cupboard is bare, his sofa is occupied, and there is graffiti in his bathroom. A middle-aged man reaps the rewards of anti-authoritarian parenting.


The King's Speech

1. A rogue chess piece scares the bejesus out of a U boat crew at 40 fathoms.

2. After the tragic great fall of Humpty Dumpty, the ruler must explain his horses and mens' ineptitude.

3. Alvin Duhenny, self-proclaimed King of the Confederacy, gives a four-day speech about how the South will rise again. His base grows and the Supreme Court rules that slavery is no longer illegal. Bloodshed and more bloodshed ensues.

4. It's tough to make a dignified speech after shrieking when you sit down on a cold, metal bench with a kilt, doublet and cape but George the Third will give it the stiff upper lip try.

5. Only a fear of public speaking stands between Herman Horace and his dream of a career as an Elvis impersonator.

6. A retelling of the battle of Agincourt.

7. Speech therapist Lionel Logue takes on the task of curing the king of England of his stammer. He mostly succeeds, although the king still has trouble saying Lionel Logue.

8. Mad King George the Bush writes his own speech. Hilarity ensues.


The Social Network

1. As if it weren't annoying enough that some guy became a billionaire by starting the Facebook social network, now we have to watch a fucking movie about how brilliant he is?

2. A teen mistress of Facebook is yanked back to regency England through a time warp. Gaffe for gaffe, she learns the true meaning of “Social Network.”

3. Fourteen year old Jamia has finally gotten to high school! But who knew it would be so complicated...between trying to finish that lab report (ahem, copy and paste some text from that chemistry website) and trying to fit in, Jamia gets lost. Her "boyfriend" is really her older brother's compliant minion, and she hates all of her "bff"s. Can she skillfully use the Social Network to get her life back together???

4. It's beauty salon days for Muffy's caffee-klatsch Gals. When they witness a murder at Starbucks, one of the housewives thinks she's got a picture of the killer on her cellphone. Can four latte-swillers make it to the Mani-and Pedi's before the cops and the killer find them?

5. A war brews between social networks and antisocial networks. The social networks have the edge, because the antisocial networks suffer from too much infighting. Ultimately, however, the social networks face an obstacle they never anticipated. Power outages and love ensue.


127 Hours

1. Dick "Willy" Cocker can control his pee like no other — but can he win the World Drip-Out Challenge blindfolded?

2. A documentary about the efforts of Peter Jackson and James Cameron to make the longest movie ever shown.

3. Jack Bauer tries to stop time and prevent the magnetic poles from flipping and causing the December 21, 2012 Apocalypse.

4. Five days in the life of one guy in Utah as he thinks about friends, lovers and family, and never moves from the same spot.

5. Two conference organizers uncover the audience-estimated length of the average MLA panel.

6. A New York Times' reporter has to endure the horror of life in the red states when his plane is forced to land in Nebraska.

7. Gary buys a new laptop but runs into trouble. He spends 127 hours with the computer company's tech support trying to resolve the problem. Then he buys a gun at a gun show. Bloodshed and love ensue.

8. Is how long it takes to write the average term paper. Also, it's the average length of an alien abduction. Can you see where this is going?


Toy Story 3

1. Toys are mistakenly delivered to a day-care center instead of being stuffed in a box and put in the attic, thus inspiring feelings of abandonment.

2. A cruel, babykilling weapons maker disowns his gay son for engaging in anti-Iraq war protests.

3. The next generation of latex marital aids is due out just in time for Valentines Day. Mmmmm, chocolate flavored too!

4. A three-hour security camera video of toddlers playing with toys. They play, they fight, they cry, they nap. Poop and pee-pee ensue.

5. A Croatian family with nothing to their name walks all the way to Switzerland in search of someone who will give the three children each a toy.


True Grit

1. Never before has a jaw been clenched this hard.

2. Camp Square Lake has the most beautiful campus, and the kids there seem really happy. When Samantha arrives, she doesn't expect to be told that you get NO showers for the whole summer. By three weeks, even her trusty deodorant can't cover the stench. Plus, the hair on her legs is growing VERY long and she seems to be growing a bush under each arm. When it comes time to make out with her new camp "boyfriend," will he be disgusted by her . . . True Grit?

3. Someone poured sand in the bottom of the water slide and when Stan Stanislavski, the world's biggest water park aficianado comes down, he's going to discover the meaning of true grit!

4. The inspiring true story of a retarded man who revolutionizes the gravel industry.

5. An unflinching girl hacks through dangerous terrain to track down her father's murderer.

6. A bored housecleaner is confronted with a challenging home to clean and its challenging homeowner. Bloodshed and love ensue.

7. Welcome to Schleifit, Ohio, sandpaper capital of the world. Come along for a historical docu-drama as we map the rise of an abrasion industry Giant.


Winter's Bone

1. A moving account of this year's TV documentary smash: Toby the Alaskan stallion and his custom prosthetic.

2. Three years ago, Sam Skatz choked to death on a chicken bone at a barbecue. Now his ghost is haunting the Skating Rink. When Sam's former sweetheart hits the ice on a cold winter's night, can Sam keep the heat of his ghostly passion in check, or will it melt the ice?

3. A young gay man must come to grips with his sexuality at a penguin research center in Antarctica.

4. A dog, a bone, a yard full of snow. Where did he put it? Animation at its lowest. Snow and freezing rain forecast.

5. A woman with SAD attempts to bury Winter's Bone in Oz, to procure eternal summer for Europe. Will the plucky Australians stop her? Also, speedos and bikinis.

6. An unflinching girl hacks through dangerous terrain to track down her father.



Answers below.



Fake plots were provided by Dave F., Khazar-khum, Vivian Davenport, Vicky, Gerhardt Himmelmann, Whirlochre, and anon.





Answers:

2
2
3
4
7
1
4
1
5
6

The 4th Annual Oscar Guess the Plot Quiz

Below are the titles of the 2009 films nominated as best picture. Your job is to guess which of five plots is the actual plot. The other four are fakes provided by the Evil Minions.

Avatar

1. Sam Wazowski lies down for a catnap in what appears to be a tanning bed and wakes up in the body of a graying overweight cartoon character with muttonchops and eye lasers. He soon learns that in order to restore balance to the universe and make Jim Cameron a gazillion dollars he must defeat a renegade alpaca, a giant brown eyeball, and Dave.

2. Geek-queen Charlene gets the chance of a lifetime to play her hero--Lizard Girl--in a made-for-TV movie of her favorite video game, while Oscar, her best friend, plays the first transgender superhero on the small screen. Is this the show that finally knocks American Idol from the top spot?

3. Computer geek Lloyd Burrows has just created a blue-skinned cartoon character as his avatar when an electrical surge not only changes him into his avatar, but transports him into a world of other blue-skinned people. Should he join them in their war against humans, or try to return home?

4. Lonely, obsessive technogeek Phil Ravin is driven to the brink of suicide in his desperate search for an image that will appropriately represent himself on Facebook. Will a chance encounter with beautiful photographer and graphic designer Liesl become his salvation, or just make his stutter worse?

5. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, paraplegic Jake Sully gathers intel as a member of the Marines' "Avatar" program. Will Jake walk again, or is he just being used by the ruthless Colonel Q?


The Blind Side

1. A homeless boy becomes an All American defensive lineman. Sacking quarterbacks is his specialty, and gets him drafted into the National Football League. But what will happen when he runs into a left-handed quarterback, and can no longer rush from . . . the blind side?

2. Brian and his siblings have been pulling off a series of complicated bank robberies to pay for their mother's expensive medical care. But Brian's been keeping a secret from his brothers: he's going blind. Soon, he won't be able to see enough to pull off the jobs. Can they make enough to save their mother's life, or will their leader go blind before he can lead the last job?

3. Biologist Gloria Smitzden discovers a rare breed of vampire bat that seeks out food by heat and smell. Can she discover the bat's blind side before millions of the tiny beasts devour Denver? Also, a revenant.

4. In 1957, the inmates at the Hudson Asylum for the Handicapped group themselves by disability. When a partially deaf black man is accepted, he finds the one part of the cafeteria where he can be accepted is... the blind side.

5. In a world where cars have been replaced with sentient dodecahedrons, perennial loser Harold Mipkis just got suckered into buying a lemon named AL. Every time AL turns left-diagonal-up, he/it crashes into a fire hydrant. Can Harold learn to compensate before the entire city is flooded and his auto insurance goes up?


District 9

1. Private detective Steve Logan, hired to follow a Republican White House aide, stumbles on a square mile area of mass graves in rural Virginia. Can he get to the bottom of who's buried in "District 9," before he gets to the bottom . . . literally?

2. When the star ship bearing aliens nicknamed "The Prawns," showed up, we welcomed them. Now we're sick of them, so we've confined them in a militarized slum called District 9. Maybe if we treat them bad enough they'll move to Mars.

3. When a Congressional hearing uncovers a massive military cover up involving the funneling of billions in taxpayer money to a non-existent district in order to fund illegal black ops, the military’s representative, Col. Dukar, tries to convince Congress that District 9 does in fact exist, it’s just more like, um, District 9 and three quarters, you know, like that Harry Potter thing. Will Congress accept this explanation, or will they press on until the truth is revealed and the corruption laid bare?

4. Sam never believed in reincarnation but when he discovers that his latest incarnation is as a giant cockroach in District Nine, he sets out to build a criminal empire of insects in this post-apocalyptic, nuclear-scarred world.

5. Vice squad cop Harry Polk thinks he's responsible for cleaning up Atlanta's red light district . . . until he discovers all the usual suspects have taken their acts to "District 9," where people can have sex with insectivorous aliens, and where life is cheap.


An Education

1. Unprecedented documentary charting in real time the development of the human male brain from birth until full maturity. (Running Time: 6 Years).

2. When Billy and Bobby invade the high school girls bathroom at PS 35, they get an education in the finer points of those hygiene machines hiding in the closed stalls. Plus, plans for balloon animals.

3. Rebellious boys at an oppressive elite prep school threaten to blow the school up if the administration doesn't lift the ban on nude Graeco-Roman wrestling.

4. 17-year-old Jenny's sole ambition is to be accepted in Oxford. Then she meets David, a man more than twice her age, who convinces her that maybe there are more important things than school and books. Like having sex with an old guy. Romance ensues. Ewww.

5. Working on his sociology dissertation, a treatise on inner-city street life, Paul Hodges learns more in one week with prostitute Vera than he learned in sixteen years of school. Not that that's surprising.


The Hurt Locker

1. Hurt locker is soldier slang for "very bad place," which is what soldiers used to say until they decided it sounded childish. Anyway, this very bad place is Iraq, 'cause it's got lots of bombs that go boom!

2. Pete, the nerdy water boy of St Regis High Schools Boys Football team, gets his dream come true when he locks quarterback and BMOC Jason Masterson in his locker, thus solving his immediate problem of low social status. The real question is, how long will he have to live after Jason gets free? Plus, a dog with incontinence.

3. Iraq War vet, Adam Somerall, realizes that the older you get the less there is to love in this world. In fact, the ONLY thing he loves now is sitting in his dark cramped bedroom closet watching Pauley Shore movies over and over and over on his grainy handheld DVD player for 23 hours a day. Unfortunately for Carol, she loves Adam.

4. Every soldier who's been assigned locker 467 has been killed in action within a week. When Charlie Fowkes gets it, he must decide whether to hope it's a coincidence or whether to go AWOL.

5. As punishment for his crimes against cinema for the gorefest of Alien and the sheer misery of 1984, actor John Hurt is sealed in a metal trunk and lowered to the bottom of the Marianas trench. There, he meets a diminutive cartoon mermaid, and the two of them get started on corrupting the kids.


Inglourious Basterds

1. Determined to never fail another spelling test, ten-year-old computer genius Mikey and his friends set out to hack into dictionary.com.

2. A grupe of studints at a presteejis prep skool rebells agehnst cunvenshun by wershipping ded powetts, scipping math klas, and travaling to 1940s Frants ware thayle be doing wun theeng and wun theeng onlee: mispellin Knotzies.

3. Docu-drama providing a behind-the-scenes look at the day-to-day activities of the U.S. Senate.

4. A skwad uv Amairiken soljers hoo R all Jooish & kawl themselvs "The Basterds" R givn a mishin: tairrorize the Therd Rike by skalping Notseas.

5. A lifetime of blowing off high school, smoking pot, eating cheese treats and playing video games prepares Tommy and Timmy for nothing more than to sit in bars and become infamous, inglourious bastards, or--as they misspell it--basterds, until the aliens arrive and conscript them into the galactic terror squad.


Precious

1. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, the most beautiful girl in the world, Princess Honeysuckle lived in the garden of earthly delights. Lately, she's been reanimated as a salesgirl with big bones at the local mall where she has to deal with vapid blondes, renegade redheads and brunettes with fake boobies. Will she achieve redemption in the makeup world or will she get an AK47 and blow away her rivals? Plus, a shaved schnauzer.

2. An eccentric book collector in Soho stumbles upon an obscure Tolkien masterpiece. As he begins to thumb through the pages, he is magically sucked into an elaborate fantasy world enriched by unique languages, eventually realizing it's the same damn story but told from the perspective of Precious, the ring.

3. Poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed, Precious Jones is the perfect character to spend a couple hours with. Also, incestuous rape and child abuse.

4. The lives of six old men and a dopey kid, gem wholesalers in modern day NYC, are turned upside down when a runaway teenager named Precious Stone knocks on their door. After she tells them about her mentally and physically abusive aunt in Queens, they allow Precious to stay and for the first time in her life she finds happiness. Until the day her aunt shows up disguised as a Jehovah’s Witness and persuades Precious to take a bite of a poisoned apple. Then she dies, 'cause there ain’t no fairy tales in Brooklyn.

5. When a baby is abandoned on the steps of a New York police precinct, and the detectives can't find her parents, they take turns caring for the child, leading to numerous amusing situations. Okay, semi-amusing.


A Serious Man

1. Professor Larry Gopnik's wife is leaving him for one of his colleagues, his son's lazy, his daughter wants a nose job, and his beautiful neighbor torments him by sunbathing nude. Can anyone help him cope and become . . . a serious man?

2. Once, President Barstock was a Serious Man but ever since the tri-sexual, three headed Greevves of Gygax, a small world orbiting Alpha Centauri, zapped him with the cosmic silly ray, he's been partying like there's no tomorrow. Can Shakeela Shortbread find the raygun of serious and un-zap the President? Or are we destined to have a clown for president until the next election.

3. Juan O'Reilly has never laughed in his life. Which is going to make a great game show ("Make Juan Laugh!") until Juan falls in love with his producer and can't stop laughing at her terrible puns...

4. Theodore Prescott Dursk has lived his life the best way he knows how, finding work as a tax accountant, an undertaker, a court stenographer, an annuity consultant, a scholar of ancient Etruscan literature, and a monk. After suffering a heart attack at age 45, Theodore decides it’s time to kick back and have a little fun, and pursues his lifelong dream of becoming a Royal Guard in front of Buckingham Palace.

5. Comedian Gary James has made a career of mocking the elderly and infirm. Now he's 73 and dying of cancer. Oddly, it suddenly doesn't seem so funny.


Up

1. In search of happiness and enlightenment, new age couple Skye and Chad find a mysterious book that reveals the location of Nirvana.

2. Despondent demon, Iscrap, makes up his mind to be all that he can be. Deep in the bowels of hell, he finds a scroll that can redeem him and return his status as one of the Angels. The only thing that's holding him back is that he must go UP in a hellish world where everyone else is going down.

3. An hour in the life of a drug addict as he prepares his next dose of crack, argues with his prostitute girlfriend, and has a debate with the fish crackers.

4. When mild mannered accountant, Richard Johnson, accidentally swallows a genetically modified radiation-saturated pill, he develops superhuman abilities that enable him to satisfy every woman's desires. But on day 729, disaster strikes when Richard walks in on his bathing grandma, and the as-yet-unsatisfied women of the world shudder to think that Richard might not be able to keep it... Up.

5. Sentenced to live in a retirement home, Carl Fredrickson embarks on a solo flight out of the country, little knowing that his aircraft has a stowaway aboard. Also, a bird named Kevin.


Up in the Air

1. Look, up in the air, it’s a bird, it's a plane, no, no, it's genetically engineered cows with wings. Plus a talking dog and a cat with three pairs of buttocks.

2. Ryan Bingham loves his job, traveling the country firing people for corporations that want to downsize. Then his boss hires Natalie, who develops a method of video conferencing that will allow termination without ever leaving the office--essentially threatening Ryan's job. Irony ensues.

3. Sequel to Up. The hour after Up, our hero, now high on crack cocaine, aimlessly falls around his apartment seeking solace for his high from the likes of a bottle of gin, a tub of cookie dough, and the power of scrubbing bubbles.

4. The highly anticipated sequel to Up. This time around, Richard Johnson must battle motion sickness, a sore back, and Al-Qaeda terrorists while servicing all of the world's female flight attendants.

5. George Clooney turns in an Oscar worthy performance in this epic biopic of high flying traveling trapeze artist Leandro Azevedo, the only person on earth to have traveled the entire Amazon without a boat or shoes.


Correct answers below.


Fake plots were submitted by:

Dave F., Blogless Troll,
Sarah from Hawthorne, Evil Editor,
Anon,
Landra G., Dominique,
Whirlochre. Angie

BTW, fake plots are currently needed for all titles in the query queue.

Answers

Avatar: 5
The Blind Side: 1
District 9: 2
An Education: 4
The Hurt Locker: 1
Inglourious Basterds: 4
Precious: 3
A Serious Man: 1
Up: 5
Up in the Air: 2

The 3rd Annual Oscar Guess the Plot Quiz

The nominations are in for this year's Academy Award Ceremony. And while film buffs will be familiar with many of the nominees, the rest of us can have fun once again with our annual Guess the Plot feature. Below are the five best-picture nominees, each followed by its actual plot and some fake plots. Answers are at the bottom.


1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

a. Benjamin survives Treblinka, only to find that his brother Joseph worked as a doctor in the camps. Now it's 1970. Should he turn in his brother, a now-famous surgeon in New York?

b. When below-the-belt dweller Benjamin Button goes missing, no one seems to notice. But soon other buttons higher up the seam are getting popped, and now it's up to rookie private eye, Zoey Needle, to solve this curious case before the unthinkable happens: full frontal nudity!

c. Benjamin Button is found dead in La Patisserie, a New York City bakery, his head baked into a loaf of sourdough. It's up to police detective Colin Woods to investigate, but Woods seems unable to resist the pastries long enough to gather any information.

d. The complete life story of man living in reverse: born an old man, he becomes younger and younger with time, eventually growing into his childhood years. A most curious case.

e. When a button falls off a favorite shirt at the drycleaners, all the clothes in the wardrobe band together to find the fallen fastener in this light-hearted children's adventure.



2. Frost/Nixon

a. Bored with an eternity of nipping at people's noses, Jack Frost decides to give himself an extreme makeover and begin his life anew in the arena of American politics. But after reaching the pinnacle of power as President of the United States, Jack realizes he was happier playing with snowflakes.

b. Something has brought not only the frost, but also a glacier to Nixon, Texas. Climatologist Pablo Excondido discover the source and reveals the secret communist plot to freeze out the USA and drive the population south. Will Mexico and Central America become the next ten states of the Union?

c. Former President Nixon, forced from office, wants to resurrect his political career, so he agrees to several TV interviews with talk-show host David Frost. Hilarity ensues.

d. Once married, two lawyers find themselves on the opposite side of an important environmental case.

e. Having recently resigned from the Presidency in disgrace, Richard Nixon desperately wants to regain the respect of the American people. Getting wind of a plot concieved by Jack Frost, it's Nixon to the rescue as he battles the crafty ice wizard to save Christmas.

f. A modern fable pitting Richard Nixon against Jack Frost in a bid for the position of county commissioner in a small Montana town. Musical numbers, animation, and classic footage of the Watergate hearings create a tale mythic in its sensibility and miniscule in its scope.

g. A history of the global warming debate predates Al Gore, stretching back to President Nixon's efforts while in office to hide evidence of the melting polar ice caps.



3. Milk

a. Leah's mother and father died in the Holocaust. A true story about how she fled the soul-crushing conformity of American Suburbia in the 1950s to work tirelessly to bring donated breast milk to Ethiopean Jews.

b. From his discovery of the rabies vaccine, to making milk safer to drink through his namesake process Pasteurization, this historical epic documents the rise of Louis Pasteur from lab rat to international celebrity.

c. "When you give a child milk, don't forget the cookies" begins the adorable tale of a mouse, a cow and three orphaned urchins who discover new daddies and mommies and brothers and sisters and cow flops.

d. A gay camera shop owner runs for office with his lover as his campaign manager. But can his victory be attributed to illegal campaign contributions from the milk lobby?

e. A Cuban widow fights to make Castro's dream of miniature cattle for the people come true.

f. In a post-apocalyptic world, the last herd of cows grazes in a carefully protected field. But when a local orphanage takes in a new group of youngsters, the demand for milk increases and tensions rise.

g. Most cows forget about their stolen calves. Not Daisy Lou. Her vengeance has already destroyed her home farm and now she's taking on the village.

h. High school dropouts, Kevin and Lojack, decide to pursue their lifelong dream of starting a dairy empire, but they quickly realize they're not into the whole cow thing. Determined to succeed, they hatch a new strategy and head to the mall armed with raw ambition, a new breast pump, and a well-rehearsed spiel guaranteed to persuade new mothers at the Gymboree Store to join their cause.



4. The Reader

a. Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk encounters his former lover. Whether he should try to strike up the romance again is open to question, as she's currently on trial for war crimes.

b. A hard hitting mockumentary detailing the evolution of the most frustratingly useless invention of all time, and the events that led up to a small band of disgruntled consumers exacting their revenge on Sony Corp.

c. Epistle Reader Mildred Goshen is surprised one Sunday when her pastor sprouts horns and a tail. Can Mildred find the "Magicus Volumus" that contains the spell to convert demons into Princess Sparkle Pony dolls?

d. Words come to life under the power of The Reader. Kathryn Lloyd has a gift; anything she reads manifests itself in the material world. Unfortunately, her job as a literary agent unleashes havoc on the world as the contents of thousands of horrible queries come to life.

e. Gabriel, a mute, shy autistic loner, never talks about his experience at Auschwitz. When a gentle black man becomes his new caretaker, he slowly begins to trust his new friend to read his diaries of the Holocaust to him.

f. Reading for the blind can be tedious and Helena decides to spice things up by reading naked. They can't see her, right? Not necessarily. Turns out most of them are faking blindness for tax advantages.



5. Slumdog Millionaire

a. Simon is the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Using his wits he builds a clothing store in New York City, marries a model, and buys into the soul-destroying lifestyle of the 50s. Can his free-spirited children save him, or is he doomed to be The Establishment?

b. The controversial biopic of Lindsay Lohan.

c. An American family takes a vacation to the slums of India and discover just how lucky they are and that starving orphans will eat the food they throw away. Even the yucky stuff.

d. An Indian teenager from the slums becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?", and wins.

e. This surprisingly sophisticated comedy focuses on Ted, a man who makes a fortune, then spends it all adopting and caring for dogs.



Answers below



Fake Plots contributed by Blogless_Troll, Khazar-khum, Dave F.,
Rick Daley, McKoala, PrincessBlord, MHeaggy, EE






Actual Plots: 1: d, 2: c, 3: d, 4: a, 5: d

Evil Editor's 2nd Annual Oscar Awards Guess-the-Plot Quiz

There Will Be Blood

1. Hilarity ensues when a scheduling error forces the Human Pyramid Society to share convention center space with the American Association of Chainsaw Jugglers.

2. Vampire Joanie thinks she's being stalked by vampire hunters. Little does she know that the weird messages, flowers and phone calls are all from one man--Mark--who appreciates the immortality she gave him with her bite. Hilarity ensues.

3. Race car driver Will Belmonte can never say no to a challenge. So when he is mistaken for ace surgeon Dennis Carraway, Will's natural instinct is to call twin sister Jenny to cover for him on the circuit and go with the flow. Lectures are a breeze, lunch with eager medical students a blast and the nurses know what medicine the patients are supposed to take. But then comes the day that Jenny crashes the car Will should have been racing. Jenny is near death on the operating table and across the hospital the call goes out for the only surgeon who can help: Dennis Carraway. Is this one challenge to many for Will? Only one thing is certain: There will be blood.

4. With her days as a Playboy Playmate coming to an end, Brianna has enrolled at the community college. She's closer to her secret heart-throb, Skip Dillon, but she thought phlebotomy was the study of bumps on the head. She's squeamish, but if she drops the course, she'll lose Skip. Why didn't they tell her that . . . There Will Be Blood?

5. A prospector accidentally strikes oil and becomes rich, rich, rich. But rich isn't good enough. He ruthlessly seeks more and more oil and doesn't care whom he steps on to get it. But when he drills on Eli Sunday's property and tries to cheat Sunday out of his share of the profits, it's only a matter of time before . . . There Will Be Blood.

6. An animal rights activist moves to Chicago and begins looking for work. The only places hiring are the slaughterhouses. When she sees what she's expected to do to innocent animals, she goes berserk, butchering half of management before the police manage to subdue her.

7. A touching coming of age story as single parent John Singletary contends with raising his daughter, and has awkward moments finding the right words with which to explain the changes that will come over her body.


No Country for Old Men

1. The FDA bans Viagra and every man over the age of fifty heads for Canada. Hooters immediately moves its operations to the border. Hilarity ensues.

2. After an old hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande, he decides to see how many seedy motels he can stay at before running out of money. Unfortunately, someone else seems to think he has a better use for the money, and the hunter realizes this is . . . No Country for Old Men. Also, frat boys.

3. In 2098, overpopulation and pollution have forced drastic measures upon the world. People must voluntarily report for extermination by age 30. But Frank Miller has other ideas . . . and he's not afraid to try them.

4. When Sunshine Retirement Home decides on a 'lesbian-only' policy, the resident men need to find alternative accommodations. Follow the trials and tribulations of five of these men, as they travel the country in search of the home with the perfect applesauce. Also, odd uses for dentures.

5. After the pandemic, the sorority sisters knew that they held the key to restoring the human race. Holed up in a cabin in Northern Wisconsin, they have made a pact to sacrifice their youthful bodies to the ravages of procreation, for the good of all mankind. Any man wishing to participate must meet certain criteria. This cabin in the woods is . . . No Country For Old Men.

6. The descent into dementia is never pretty. Even less so when it's the President. The Secret Service attempt to keep the President's dignity intact in front of an unwitting populace, but scheming vice-president Victor Brook can't wait for nature to take its course. In the President's wife, Alice, he finds an ally, willing to do anything to preserve her position in the White House. Drugs, sex, murder - Alice is ready, willing and able to do all three - preferably at once.

7. In this 21st century update of the cult classic Logan's Run, a futuristic America has lowered the "legal age" to 21. Upon a citizen's 21st birthday, s/he is taken "drinking" and never seen again. When will these teens get a clue?


Juno

1. Juno decides to have sex with a member of her high school's track team. When she gets pregnant, she and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) decide to take control of the situation by browsing for prospective adoptive parents in the local Pennysaver newspaper. Hilarity ensues.

2. The life of Juno Jenkins, beat poet, actress, junkie, and voice of her generation, is explored in this innovative biopic. Portrayed at various stages of her life by Dakota Fanning, Cate Blanchette, Diane Keaton, Bill Murray and Flipper, the complexity reflects on her work.

3. Mossad agent Ariel Shalom fears that his cover has been blown. Hilarity ensues when he learns that the Puerto Rican guy at the coffee shop has not been saying "Jew, no?" but "You know?" Also, a nymphomaniac who calls herself Juno.

4. Juno is a young, quirky ISP with razor-sharp wit and a penchant for giving her services away for free. But when one of her limited-time offers results in an unexpected server farm crash, she has to decide if she wants to spend the rest of her life replacing hardware, or sell her soul to AOL.

5. A womens' commune in Juno, Alaska is infiltrated by men, desperate to find out why their wives left them. Fitting in is not easy, but with the help of a little judicious make-up and several boxes of tissues, the men achieve their aim. The film unites Dustin Hoffman, John Travolta and Eddie Murphy in a hilarious comedy that's anything but a drag.

6. In this modernization of The Aeneid, Juno is the vengeful mistress from hell, foiling the plans of New York City's new mayor to create a young and vibrant city on its crumbling foundation of corruption, pollution and crime.

7. When Juno the moon goddess is spurned by her husband Jupiter, in favor of a mere mortal, she vows to take revenge on all mortal women by inventing high heels, pantyhose and corsets.


Michael Clayton

1. He was a quiet man. That's what the neighbors said after the cops dug up seventy-four bodies in his cellar. Now Michael Clayton is on the run, and no one in New England is safe. Also, a discount carpet store.

2. The Westhaven Warriors are the worst team in the state. Michael, a gentle, savant retarded man, is recruited to coach. Will his words of wisdom inspire the team to succeed in the cutthroat world of beach volleyball?

3. Jeez, could the director not think of a more imaginative title for this one? Hey, if he's not going to put in the effort, neither am I. No plot for you, Mr. Director. The world's first plotless movie. Oh, hang on, no, not the first. It's sure to make millions.

4. Michael Clayton is a middle-aged man who has a lot less trouble solving problems for his law firm and its clients than he does solving his own personal problems. Which was okay when his personal problems were trivial crap like his divorce and his debts. Now that he's become the target of an assassination attempt can he put his job skills to work in his miserable home life?

5. Michael Payton used his Play-dough to make anatomically correct models of Miss Blodgett and Mr. Geary. He went too far when he made a Claymation cartoon and previewed it at the talent show. They call him Michael Clayton now, and he's the hero of the sophomore class. But will Miss Blodgett's sexual harassment lawsuit spell the end of Michael's college plans?

6. A speculative biopic based on the life of the legendary make-believe legal “fixer,” who may, at some point in the future, brutally slay George Clooney in order to wipe that friggin smirk off his face.

7. Mickey's back, and after three years "away," he's anxious to find out who missed him. But when Michael Clayton knocks at the door of what he thinks is still his family home, and Delia answers, Mickey finds out just how much things can change when you're camping out in the "big house."


Atonement

1. Symphony conductor Max Power survives a life-threatening accident but wakes to find that he has a specific injury to his hearing---he only hears in a single tone. How can he move on?

2. A thirteen-year-old girl becomes jealous of her older sister's relationship with their housekeeper's son. Why should she have all the fun? So she accuses him of a crime he didn't commit. The authorities buy her story! With three lives changed, is there any chance for . . . Atonement?

3. For years, documentary filmmaker Mitchell Mass has traded on his tactics of stalking, editing and manipulation to anger & embarrass his enemies. But he went too far, and now faces trial for murder. Will he ever grasp the horror of what he did?

4. Someone will have to convert, or Hirschel and Heidi's marriage will fall apart. It's Yom Kippur versus Lent, but how can Hirschel prove that one day of Jewish atonement beats out forty days of Catholic guilt?

5. Using a photo of another man and a snappy moniker his mother made up, mild-mannered accountant Cecil Biggins runs a website critiquing the work of struggling writers. Nobody knows that his witty and incisive comments come not from the leather-lined office of a New York publishing company, but the fuzzy-paneled cubicle of an insurance company in Columbus, Ohio. Now, however, one of his writers is about to be published and she wants to meet him to thank him. Hilarity ensues.

6. A tattoo removal shop, Atonement, Inc., falls into a legal entrapment when they remove tattoos from an underage girl, who was a plant arranged by the Trenton, NJ tattoo mafia. However, the owner of Atonement is a tattoo reformer and former member of the Newark Harley Hellraisers. When the young girl turns up pregnant, fingers are pointing in all directions, and her Marine Corp sergeant father decides to bust heads.

7. Derek Bray, small-time con artist and bad boy around town has stretched the doctrine "repent and you shall be forgiven" to its limit. Father Moray, tired of handing out the same old Hail Marys, sets Derek a series of tasks that not only atone for his sins, but change his outlook on life.




Fake plots contributed by blogless_troll, McKoala, Mignon, Khazar-khum, Bill H., Church Lady, Precie, Sarah, Anonymous and EE.




Correct plots below:




Blood: 5
Old Men: 2
Juno: 1
Michael: 4
Atonement: 2

Oscar Awards Guess the Plot 1

Little Miss Sunshine

1. In the early 1990s, entrepreneur Roger Brisbane, embarrassed by the widely publicized scandals of the coke-snorting, sex tape-making whores who usually win his beauty contests, quits the adult pageant business and decides to try the pre-teen pageant circuit in peaceful Boulder, Colorado. After a few months of resettling, life is good. Sure, those Ramseys are a pain in the ass, but it’s not like they cause any real trouble.

2. When a terrorist band in Afghanistan happens upon a war-orphaned six-year-old, they bring her back to their cave and raise her as their own, eventually seeing the error of their ways as the child brings love and meaning into their lives.

3. HD 142022 has grown accustomed to her humdrum life: rotate every 12.5 days, maintain her heliosheath, the usual. But when a class A9 IV swings into her neighborhood, will opposites attract, or is that 7,390 kelvin surface temperature only corona-deep?

4. Ever jealous of the Fantastic Four, four evildoers decide to create their own group of superpowers. When Hard Mr. Rain, Loud Mr. Thunder, Big Mr. Hurricane and Fast Mr. Tornado get together, only Little Miss Sunshine stands between them and world destruction.

5. Mutant zombie cows from the planet Maybley invade the tiny village of Sunshine, Nebraska on the day that Emmeline, daughter of the Mish-Nand king, dies. Do they bring resurrection or merely salvation?

6. A teenager gets more than she bargains for when she starts an Internet porn web site, calling herself "Little Miss Sunshine." How could she have expected the vampire Mortada to be so intrigued by a lady of the night with such a name?

7. A gay Proust scholar, a drug addict, a Nietzsche follower, a chain smoker and an inept motivational speaker cram into a VW bus to transport little Olive cross-country to the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. Hilarity ensues.

8. Between bone-crushing car crashes and rampaging, undead zombies and sex-crazed alpacas, Little Miss Sunshine auditions for the role of Gabriel before co-directors God and Satan. Will she lead the angelic host through the buttery golden gates or tap dance the boogie-woogie over hot coals?

9. In a burst of brilliant pink petticoats, Amelia blooms into the world of fashion, fashionistas and vampires. Can she save her date, Raoul the goat boy, or must they share a dark life together subsisting on anorexic models and aged semi-dames who rule the fashion world?


Babel

1. Gnis kree bloknok glubglub waagi, glubglub waagi baagi boo. Gnis baagi-tragi bleggi-degi plobglub Snarkling knick? Kree glubglub Barbara Bauer joojub koodoo?

2. Nayeeda and Ashia, brothers of the Panther Moonlet, gamble the royal mishnik at the new nightclub Babel where no one speaks the same language.

3. Naruntin gribbles the wmorf-art onto velvet, while zitoinga ornionicates the marple. Sneeple gleeps jingle in absolute terror.

4. Jen digs Brad. Brad digs Jen. Brad marries Jen. Brad divorces Jen. Angie digs Brad. Brad knocks Angie up. Jen seduces Brad. Brad gets caught by Angie. Angie’s pissed at Brad. Jen’s pissed at Brad. There’s only one thing Brad can do.

5. A Moroccan family acquires a rifle to protect their goats. Wait, it gets better. One of them shoots someone. The press screams Terrorism. Disaster follows, mainly in Mexico. And Japan. Not clear what happens to the goats.

6. Big Jimmy Johnson is going to build the best skyscraper on Fifth Avenue--one so high that it might even reach God. But when all his foremen start speaking in different languages, how is he ever going to finish the project and come in under budget?

7. After the success of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' another Flemish painter gets the Hollywood treatment. After a childhood accident damages his hearing, Pieter Breughel descends into a world of silence. Regaining his hearing as an adult is a mixed blessing. Tortured by the high-pitched voices of his maidservants, he creates his ultimate masterpiece . . . Babel.

8. A sprightly love story of star-crossed lovers. He is the prince of Aldebaran and holder of the golden crown. He is the duke of Betelgeuse and guardian of the sacred stones. They meet on the Man-Tastic satellite and fall in love. But he’s a Capricorn and he’s a Taurus and that’s a match definitely not made in heaven.

9. Five hundred languages at deafening levels. That's what UN translator Darla Wyatt had to endure the day that WWIII broke out. Could she translate for the peace talks between the Iranians and the North Koreans? Would she save the world from nuclear holocaust, or would the fate of the planet be doomed due to . . . Babel?


The Departed

1. The second movie in the macabre DON'T FLY trilogy. It comes after Terminal and before Crash.

2. The experience of a long-distance train journey is paralleled with the experience of death. Both involve tunnels, darkness and, ultimately, arrival--but arrival where? A twist ending where you would least expect it.

3. Hilary Swank plays a mousy librarian looking for love in all the wrong places--especially in the Viagracon, a long lost book about erotic ghosts. When she finds the book, it conjures up the man of her dreams. It also turns her into a lesbian. Also: Patrick Swayze as Botox, the friendly ghost.

4. It's Waiting for Godot for a modern audience: two men in a bus station discuss the remarkable physical, psychological, and spiritual makeup of their companion who just left.

5. Rookie travel agent, Alister McBride, discovers that the cruises his boss books for clients are not sailing to Barbados, but directly into the bowels of Hell. When Alister wins a complimentary Employee of the Month trip to Disney World, can he convince his boss he’d rather go on the cruise?

6. When the dead return to the town of Tindervale with pale skin and a lust for brains, Kate Dunn does what any sensible housewife would do: gather them into an army to conquer Des Moines.

7. Airplanes have been taking off from Chicago's O'Hare airport... but they've not been landing anywhere. Can NTSB agent Carrie Munson discover what has happened to... The Departed?

8. Three priests, five family members, and forty friends stand around talking about the recently-deceased Daisy Pushups. For two hours.

9. When a gangster infiltrates the Boston police force, and a police officer infiltrates the gang, it can lead only to hilarity--or to lots of guys getting shot in the head. Maybe both.


Letters from Iwo Jima

1. Dear Ma: Set up a U.S. flag on a pile of rubble today, but some jackhole photographer made us take it down and do it again. Please send clean socks and Wonderbread. Love, Joey.

2. A Japanese general finds a letter home in the pocket of a dead American on Iwo Jima. After reading it, he realizes that maybe all Americans aren't mindless brutal killers after all. Just most of them.

3. Susannah has just buried her father, a veteran wounded early in World War II. Cleaning out his attic, she comes across letters from his platoon buddy Ralph. She does not expect them to be love letters, however.

4. Every war has its unsung heros. One of these is Corporal Hank Simmons, who when asked to help raise the flag at Iwo Jima, declined on the grounds that he was writing a letter to his mother. In a fit of pique, his colleagues raised the flag on top of his letter, piercing it and pinning it to the ground. The movie covers Corporal Simmons' one-man decades-long campaign to have his letter incorporated in the world-famous sculpture.

5. In this adaptation of Dan Brown’s 25th Robert Langdon novel, the ninety year-old symbologist convinces his nursing home companions that the location of Atlantis (the town where Jesus had sex) is encrypted within anagrams of famous Japanese islands. While his companions ponder this, Langdon steals their pudding.

6. She's a lower case 'e' who was just dumped by the word "nuclear" for another 'u'. He's a thirteen-stroke kanji, on a quest to figure out why he contains the radical for "pig." Will it be love at first sight, or will they just butcher each other's languages?

7. Kitty doesn't understand why literary agents don't respond to her queries. Only when she joins her ex-Marine father on a journey to Iwo Jima will she learn where the Post Office maintains the dead letter office for SASEs that lack a return address in the upper left corner.

8. A set of interconnected stories about the soldiers from the famous photo and their girls back home. No one makes it out alive because that's how war movies work.

9. When cleaning out her parents' house after their deaths in an automobile accident, Harriet discovers a box of letters in the attic. Love letters, postmarked Iwo Jima, unsigned. But her father hadn't been there for the battle; he hadn't been on the island at all during the War, so far as she knew.


The Queen

1. The high-heeled version of STOMP! A joyous celebration of dance with spiked heels.

2. This human comedy speculates on what might have taken place in Buckingham Palace in between the death and funeral of Princess Diana. Also, Tony Blair.

3. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Fifth International Drag Queen competition in beautiful downtown Burnank.

4. The starving hive was abuzz: a new drone just arrived, dancing directions to the Promised Field. But when a worker stings him to death, reeking of royal jelly, investigator Buzz Flores uncovers sheets of hidden honeycomb and a coup plot ready to unfold.

5. Hoping to reinvigorate their stalled careers, Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo return for this highly unoriginal sequel of To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

6. The inimitable Freddy Mercury's life story. Bring a hankie.

7. Not even San Francisco is ready for an entertainer who looks like George Foreman in drag and sings like Pee Wee Herman. But will "The Queen" make it on American Idol?

8. Balls said the Queen, if I had two, I could be King. And therein lies the happy romance of the first female electro-ejaculator in the veterinary business and her boss, the head castrator of the animal kingdom. Just wait until she gets done with him!

9. Yet another Dame Judy Dench vehicle, in which the actress plays yet another British queen, Victoria or Kathryn Howard or whomever.



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