It’s been a month since we last checked in with some answers to your questions and concerns about our Cinematrix movie grid, and in that time, we’ve continued to learn a great deal about the regular players of our game. For example: You’ve all seen the 1994 Macaulay Culkin movie Richie Rich, which has a title that is sometimes problematically (for our purposes, but also as relates to aesthetic taste) styled as Ri¢hie Ri¢h. We apologize for, and share, your frustration.
The copy editor’s nightmare of Richie Rich/Ri¢hie Ri¢h is just one of the many occasions you had this month to reach out and for us to reflect. The following is a sampling of our most frequently asked questions, fervently rendered objections, hot-button topics, and deeply nerdy arguments.
➼ Correction: “Infinity†isn’t a number
We had been counting any movie with “Infinity†in the title as a correct answer for “Number in Title†but have recently been informed by our illustrious fact-checking team that it is “mathematically not a number.†You’ll have to think of something else when that category comes up again for any of the zillion people in Avengers: Infinity War. (“Zillion†is also not a number.)
âž¼ Clarification: We exist in the context of all that came before us
Our grids didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
Intermediate Rules Review
Tips and Tricks
Let us explain some of our game's little quirks.
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Punctuation Counts
Good news for copy editors, bad news for everybody else: It will very often matter how you punctuate a film’s title. Sometimes you can get away with it, with the search box autofilling the correct answer you meant to type — like, for instance, if you typed “The 40-Year-Old Virgin†(the grammatically correct way to type that phrase), the search box would auto-populate “The 40 Year Old Virgin,†which is the correct answer, per the Movie Database, even if it’s grammatically wrong. Okay, strike what we said before: This is bad news for copy editors too.
But anyway, the search bar will not always bail you out, as people learned on the July 7 grid, when Kevin Kline x Title Begins with Vowel naturally had people typing “In and Out.†But the 1997 movie where Kline plays an Indiana schoolteacher forced out of the closet by an old student’s Oscar acceptance speech (we really did have such films back then) isn’t called In and Out. It’s called In & Out. But because there exists a 2017 French body-swapping comedy called In and Out, the game will allow you to guess that one, and you will be wrong.
Other movies with punctuation quirks that could trip you up:
• The Eddie Murphy–Nick Nolte cop movie is 48 Hrs., not 48 Hours.
• The 1996 Mike Leigh movie is Secrets & Lies, not Secrets and Lies.
• The Fast and the Furious movies will ruin your life if you’re not careful.
• And then there’s this nonsense:
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The Identical-Title Problem
This has come up several times and will probably come up several more, so it’s worth ironing out the particulars of it. To begin with: Movies often have the same title as other movies. Cinematrix, as it is currently structured, is built to account for that. Basically, if there are multiple movies called Into the Woods (and there are), the title will only appear once, but the game knows to apply the correct version of Into the Woods to the square for which you’re guessing. And then there are the cases where the same actor is in two separate movies of the same title. Jamie Lee Curtis is in two movies called Halloween. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts are all in two movies called Ghostbusters. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette are in two movies called Scream. Whoopi Goldberg is in two movies called The Color Purple. Again, the system will know which version of The Color Purple you want to use in a box that says “1985–1994.â€
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“Why Not Just Provide Years for Movies?â€
We get this response a lot to the problem of movies with identical titles. The answer is simply that providing movies with their release years in the menu would give away the answer for any year-based grid category.
Michael, we don’t mean to put you on blast, but this email is a wonderful visual aid. “Bill Hader†x “One-Word Title†is the square in question. There is a 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King’s It (the one with Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Clown). There’s also a 1990 version (with Tim Curry as Pennywise). In this case, the 2017 It is the only one our game registers, because the 1990 one is a miniseries, and while we count TV movies, we don’t count miniseries. However, Bill Hader isn’t in the 2017 It; he (along with all the other adult versions of the kids) is only in It Chapter Two.
➼ Clarification: Spike Lee’s movie is just called 25th Hour
While the book written by David Benioff (yes, that David Benioff) was titled The 25th Hour, Spike Lee’s film adaptation dropped the “The.†It was cleaner. Thus, 25th Hour will count for “Based on a Book,†but not for “Title Begins with ‘The.’†(The 25th Hour is a different film entirely.)
Come On, Y'all
Well, Now You’re Just Being Silly
File these under “you tried it.â€
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Cities and States Need to Be Actual Cities and States
You guys really will try anything to get a rare correct answer. On the July 10 grid, we had a square that was “Sarah Jessica Parker†x “City or State in Title.†We got a ton of emails demanding restitution for the fact that SJP movies Sex and the City, Sex and the City 2, and State and Main were incorrect answers. Folks, it has to be an actual city, not just the word “cityâ€! It has to be an actual state, not just the word “stateâ€! That city or state can be fictional, but it still has to be named. (Sit me down over several beers and you can maybe rope me into a debate over whether the “City†in “Sex and the City†refers specifically to New York City, but I will ultimately decide that that’s a stretch.)
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“The†and “And†Only Count As Words When They’re Words
This one came up just this week! The category was “‘And’ or ‘&’ in Title.†The definition read, “Any movie whose title contains the word ‘and’ or the symbol ‘&’.†Oh, the myriad ways you all tried to argue that words containing the three-letter sequence “a-n-d†should count. San Andreas! Southland Tales. We finally relented and amended the definition to include what seemed obvious: “and†needs to be the actual word “and.â€Â Ditto for “Title Begins with ‘The.’†We’re not looking for Thelma and Louise.
âž¼ Clarification: Wes Anderson is a goofball
Just because he gave his film a title card that reads, “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun,†does not make that the official title. As a reminder, for titles, we go by what appears on the Movie Database (TMDb). So while Noah Baumbach styled his 2017 movie title as The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), the official title is simply The Meyerowitz Stories. That said, Birdman really is officially titled Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the same as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. If this all sounds capricious and impossible to keep track of when trying to decide to play a movie as a two-word or four-word title, don’t worry. Just start typing the title in the search box, and the title that appears is the way we’re counting it.
âž¼ Correction: Queen Latifah does appear in 22 Jump Street
We do our best to catch uncredited appearances, but sometimes they slip through the cracks. 22 Jump Street should have been accepted as a correct answer for Queen Latifah in both the “$100 million+ Worldwide Box Office†and “Release Date: 2005–2014†categories. (She did not, however, appear in any version of Annie, though some of you sure thought she did!)
Let them fight
Deep Thoughts and Internal Debates
Well, Sonic is blasted in from another world.
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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Detective Pikachu?
Lest you think that we sit here in the break room at Cinematrix Central just blithely making judgment calls based on a whim, sometimes we go deep down the existentialist rabbit holes of, say, what counts as an animated movie. Such was the case the day we decided to put Ryan Reynolds on a grid with “Animated Film.†The question “Is Detective Pikachu an animated film?†seems simple enough, but I’m here to tell you it will bring your Slack chat to the brink of madness. Our category definition reads, “Movies in which the world and characters are not intended to resemble live action, and/or that contain animated places or characters that are acknowledged as being different from the live-action world.†The latter half is meant to include movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Enchanted. The question then became, “Are the Pokémon in Detective Pikachu different from the rest of the world of that film?†A window into our madness:
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Is The Lego Movie a Superhero Movie?
Ah yes, how to define a superhero movie. The great question of our time. The proliferation of superheroes in movies means they’ve become impossible to corral into one succinct definition. “Costumed vigilante� There isn’t much costume to Wolverine in Logan. “Superpowered crime fighter� Batman famously has no superhuman abilities. For a while, we got hung up on whether Wanted is a movie about superheroes or just a movie about a bunch of assholes who can bend bullets and see the future through use of a magic loom. And then someone brought up The Lego Movie. Again, to the Slack:
[Ed. note: You have to admit I was cooking there.]
âž¼ Clarification: Kung Fu Panda doesn’t count as a “Character Name in Titleâ€
The titular panda has a name (Po) and is not referred to as “the Kung Fu Panda†in the movie. He’s just a panda that does kung fu! If it were called The Dragon Warrior, we could talk about it. But on the subject of “Character Name in Titleâ€:
Pop Quiz!
Think you've got what it takes to edit the Cinematrix? Using that last correction, and our category definition below, can you decide which of the following movies count as a "Character Name in Title"?
Correction of a previous clarification: Justice League won … something … at the Oscars, but thanks to good sense it doesn’t actually count as an Oscar.