Jim Regan -- Site Reviews
FilmWise -- for movie buffs serious about their trivia
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Empty calories this week. For Hollywood, the summer is a generally a time for lightweight releases - special effects over plot, action over acting. And that's not always a bad thing. So, in the tradition of summer lightweights, we offer an 'entertainment-and-nothing-but' film site - a chance to get serious about trivia, at FilmWise.
FilmWise had its genesis in a couple of friends trying to outguess each other as to the origins of movie screenshots. The website that resulted from that game (launched fittingly on the night of the 2001 Oscar broadcast) has the same spirit, but a much more sophisticated execution, and represents an impressive amount of effort for a two-man operation - as trivia tests are administered in three formats.
The first, and most labor-intensive of these games is Invisibles. Each week, in a demonstration of the wonders of Photoshop, actors are digitally removed (leaving their clothing in place) from scenes from popular films. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess the films in question.
If you do take your best shot, your score will be calculated and compared to the average of all previous visitors. (Which can actually be mildly reassuring. When I saw the average score on one test was 1.1 out of 8, I didn't feel quite so bad about my 2.) If you're lazy and impatient, (as I was on most occasions) you can simply move straight on to the answers.
In either case, you'll also be shown the original screenshots - so you can properly chastise yourself about missing obvious clues. All previous weekly tests are archived, (some based on such themes as "Guitar Fever" and "The Swimsuit Edition") so there are about 30 chances to try your hand at filling in the 'blanks'.
Next are the Visual Quizzes. More screenshots, and all theme-based this time - such tests as "Name the Hitchcock Cameo," or challenges to guess the films that belong to images of dogs, space ships, and newspaper front pages. More complex assignments include finding a common theme in a group of pictures from four movies, "Movie Combos," (more Photoshop wizardry, which places elements from two films in the same shot - think, 'The Full Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and the interactive, "Distorted Reality." In this last example, players are confronted by heavily pixellated images - clicking on a button sharpens the focus incrementally, and the challenge is to see how few clicks you need before you can guess the film. (Hint: Squinting helps - though that may be considered cheating.)
Finally, we have the Text Quizzes. as with the Visual Quizzes, these collections are all theme-based, and include such topics as characters' last words, movie voice-overs, and lines that immediately preceded kisses (or punches). While the Text and Visual Quizzes don't have interactive scoring, (strictly honor-system here) they both offer a daily test (and archives) along with the more comprehensive challenges.
There are a few PG-ish contests in the Visual Quizzes, but fair warning is always given. In addition, the text games use verbatim quotes, so if the line in the movie had strong language, so will the quiz. (Nothing severe, though - and if you saw the movie, then you've already heard the "#@*%**" anyway.)
There's a addictive quality to these little challenges. The first one is taken fairly casually. Then, when you check the answers and see how many you should have had right, there's an incentive to take another, (and take it more attentively) in order to reassure yourself that you're not a complete cinematic idiot. And the cycle picks up from there - repeated failure encourages 'one more try,' while success invites additional reassuring confirmation. Though, if you're consistently getting perfect scores, you may want to investigate a more balanced leisure-time schedule.
FilmWise can be found at http://www.filmwise.com/.