Galaxy 2014 MELA quiz

MELA QUIZ
( Ze Boring Title Slide )

This doesn’t imply equal value to the questions or equate their perceived toughness
So its really a pointless graph

SOME COMMENTS
• Pool with highest cumulative score of both
teams wins
• Four rounds in total – a differential written
round, a LVC and two infinite pounce rounds
• Feel free to request for a hint
• Quizmaster is God (duh). Any arguing shall
encourage the holy fury

Round 1
• 6 Questions
• Differential Scoring-
– One Team : 30 points
– Two Teams: 25 points
– Three Teams: 15 points
– 4 or 5 Teams : 10 points
– More than 5 teams: 5 points
• Bonus +20 for getting 5 or more correct in
total

1. Identify the lyricist of this new AR Rahman album

2. At age 92, _______ is perhaps India's greatest living legend in
the field of painting and art. Early in his art career, he was awarded
the Prix de la critique in Paris, becoming the first non-French artist
to receive the honor. Other list of awards to him include:
1981: Padma Shri; the Government of India
1981: Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1981: Kalidas Samman, Government of Madhya Pradesh
2007: Padma Bhushan; the Government of India
2013: Padma Vibhushan; the Government of India
He became India's priciest modern artist on 10 June 2010 when his
seminal work, 'Saurashtra' sold for INR 16.42 crore ($3,486,965) at
a Christie's auction.

3. These are excerpts from " X Abstracted: Film Experiments in the Cartoons of Shamus
Culhane" about the cartoon mini film The Loose Nut:
"The Loose Nut (1945) is one of the best and most aggresive X cartoons Culhane
directed. It has no musical numbers but Culhane was able to capture the unchecked
psychopathic glee of X."
"At the end of The Loose Nut, there is another explosion- a fantastical sequence to watch
frame-by-frame, a montage of shots that are edited faster than anything by Pudovkin or
Tashlin. These are contorted versions of X – first thin and extended, then with swirling
eyes seen up close, then grabbing his head, his swollen feet kicking out. It is the
convergence of animation and Soviet montage, where the space between each frame is
not a continuance of motion but rather an edit between disparate images. And yet the
strobing sequence is understood as animation because it portrays the violent interior of a
cartoon blast, a place where one can imagine such a fractured temporality."
X's character and design would evolve over the years, from an insane bird with an
unusually garish design to a more refined looking and acting character in the vein of the
later Chuck Jones version of Bugs Bunny. X was originally voiced by prolific voice actor
Mel Blanc, who was succeeded by Ben Hardaway and later by Grace Stafford, wife of
Walter Lantz.

4. Several common words have their origins to
give almost solely to pop culture. Though Online
Etymology Dictionary speculates that the word
is an alteration of the 1940s term ______
(meaning "stupid or crazy person"), Seuss’s
1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo contains
the first printed usage of the word X, as a
strange little animal one might like to keep
locked up:
”And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo
And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo
A Nerkle a X and a Seersucker, too!”
By the 1960s, this word picked up popularity across the USA to being synonymous
to a drip or a square as according to Newsweek. However, the mainstream usage
of the word must be credited to Happy Days. What’s the word?

5. According to its introduction on Amazon,
________ is intended as “a propaganda-styled
comic series aimed at capturing the main-stream
consciousness of China. The stories will reflect and
give insight to China’s current political stance,
social environment, and cultural differences by
blending complex characters, historical
information, geographic locations, comic satire,
and over-the-top explosive action!”
Apparently, in addition to building up a world
superpower out of China, Mao also wanted to
create China’s own superhero. And…his original
name was “The Liberator”. To the dismay of this
Mao-era superhero, ____________’s first mission
is to protect President Obama during his visit to
China. The comic series shares its name with a
1950's mediocre movie starring John Payne and
Gail Russell (poster on the right).

6. The band X emerged out of Richmond as an end result of two separate projects merged
into one - the punk band named Death Piggy and the production of the intended space
pirate movie "Scumdogs of the Universe". The vocalist and bassist of Death Piggy, _____, had
an idea of taking costumes from Scumdogs of the Universe and using it on stage as a get up
for Death Piggy opening for itself as a barbaric band from Antarctica. Thus, X was born as a
joke group and soon the members of Death Piggy noticed that more and more people came
to see X and would leave after X's show ended. They phased out Death Piggy in favour of X.
In the coming years, the band saw a consistently changing line-up, increasingly varied
historical and sci-fi references and the development of an edgy unique theatrical stage show.
Stacey Anderson of The New York Times described the group as “less a band of blood-
spewing, priapic demon beasts than a darkly hilarious spoof on death metal — though they
are certainly a band of blood-spewing, priapic demon beasts.”
Dressed as an intergalactic aliens Oderus, Balsac, Beefcake, Flattus Maximus and Jizmak di
Gusha, this band doused audiences with countless amount of fake blood and slime while
disembowling, dismembering and mock-murdering celebrities, political figures and tabloid
trash played by support crew.
This twice Grammy nominated band is also credited for promoting other heavy metal acts
through the past 25 years, including fellow Richmond band Lamb of God. Identify X.

1.Kapil Sibal
2.Syed Haider Raza
3.Woody Woodpecker
4.Nerd
5.Captain China
6.Gwar

Round 2
• 16 Questions
• Infinite Pounce – clockwise rotation
• +10/0 on the direct
• +10/-5 on the pounce
• Part points on close enough answers

Identify this guy and
give us why he was on
the news a while back.

Edgar Martirosyan – The pizza
delivery guy from the Oscars

Identify the artist and the inspiration for the paintings

Picasso; Dream of The Fisherman’s Wife

Blind Blues Musicians ( “ You gotta be
blind to be good at the blues “ )

The Lord of Light is a sci-fi fantasy novel
by Roger Zelazny which won
the Hugo award for best novel in 1968.
The story revolves around a band of
men who have become powerful,
immortal and rulers of the world as Gods
of the Hindu pantheon and how they are
opposed by one who was known as
Siddhartha and now as Mahasamatman
a.k.a 'Sam'.
The novel was set to go on to become a
film (and much more) but under
unfortunate circumstances the
development was cancelled. Funnily
enough, the
under development script, after being
rebranded, was an instrumental part of
________. What?

The Bush-X feud began in 1990 when the First Lady Barbara Bush told
reporters the " X is the dumbest thing they have ever seen!". This
unprovoked attack did not go unnoticed when a few days later, an angry
letter was sent to Mrs. Bush signed by Mrs. X defending herself and the X
family. Two weeks later, Mrs. Bush apologized on this matter for her "loose
tongue".
However, the next shot was fired by her husband, Bush Sr- who demanded
in front of delegates at the Republican National Convention that
"The next value I speak of must be forever cast in stone. I speak of decency,
the moral courage to say what is right and condemn what's wrong, and we
need a nation closer to the Waltons than the X. An America that rejects the
incivility, the tide of incivility and the tide of intolerance. "
X retaliated with a member issuing the statement: 'Hey, we're just like the
Waltons. We're praying for an end to the depression too.'
Since then, Bush Sr. has been targetted by X on numerous occasions,
though teasing other presidents have also been exhibited by X.

Here is Y talking about how he came to the idea of X, which he widely regards as his magnum
opus- an unlikely pick amongst other much, much more commercially popular works ( though the
series still accounts for more than 30 million copies in total sold ):
" JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings was madly popular in those days and I suppose I was at least a
halfling hippie. The X like most long fantasy tales by men and women of my generation were born
out of Tolkien's. Although I read the books in 1967 and 1968, I held off writing. I wanted to write
my own kind of story and had I started then I would have written his.“
" Then in an almost empty theatre in 1970 I saw a film directed by Sergio Leone, called The Good
The Bad and The Ugly. I realized that I wanted to write a novel which contained Tolkien's sense of
quest and magic with Leone's almost absurdly majestic Western backdrop... What I wanted more
than the setting was the feeling of the epic, apocalyptic size."
Naturally, Y identifies Roland (the main character of series) as being inspired from Clint
Eastwood's character. The series was also inspired by the poem " Childe Rolande to the X Came "
by Robert Browning.
The X series spans 8 books over 30 years in the making and has abundant references in several of
Y's other works like characters, locations and philosophies. The challenging proposal of converting
it to film has been looming since 2007 with several boards such as Warner Bros passing on the
project after spending a year or two on it.
Identify the series X and the author Y

The Dark Tower Series;
Stephen King

This statue in Oviedo, Spain had been
erected in 2002 after filmmaker X was
honoured with a Prince of Asturias
cultural award in the city in 2002. X didn’t
know of its existence until the cast of his
next movie discovered it accidentally on
their night out after filming in Oviedo.
"We went out one night in Oviedo and we
ran into this bronze sculpture of X. They
love him. We took pictures with the
sculpture, hugging it, and gave the photos
to X," Contactmusic quoted one of the
female stars saying.
Thanks to very recent controversy though,
the city folk of Oviedo staged a public
protest, defacing the statue. Identify X.

After the partition of India in 1947, _____
returned to his home in Pakistan, but returned
to India some time afterward to permanently
reside there. When he was about 21 years old,
he moved to Benaras where he accompanied a
courtesan named Hirabai on the Sarangi and
started to perform in public.
He did not approve of the partition, saying: “If
in every home one child was taught Hindustani
classical music this country would never have
been partitioned.”
The most song where his voice could be heard
is on a digitally sampled track for Dilli-6 (under
the musical direction of AR Rahman).
Identify this Hindustani classical vocalist

In the corner between Northwest 46th Street and 15th Avenue,
in Ballard, Seattle, wedged between a Trader Joe’s and an LA
Fitness, lies a little cottage. Surrounded by towering concrete
walls on three sides, the hundred-year-old house belonged to
late Edith Macefield, a stubborn old woman, who famously
turned down $1 million in 2006 refusing to sell her home to make
way for a commercial complex. In doing so, she became
something of a folk hero cheered by residents who were tired of
watching the neighbourhood disappear under condominiums
and trendy restaurants. The developers were eventually forced
to build the five-storey building around her 108-year-old
farmhouse.
"I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't
mean anything," she was quoted saying to the Seattle P-I.
What well known motif did this case inspire? (picture on next
slide)

This is a eulogy for X written by his Cambridge colleague Paul Neil Johnstone. Identify X
X Unravel Your DNA Unravel Your Soul
O X-
Sweet X-
Edulcorated X-
Today we celebrate
Your Life
As we remember
Your Death
You were
A
Revolutionary
A
Rebel
A
Giant -
Both literary and
Literally
You got into Cambridge because
Of an essay that
significantly figured the
Beatles
(There are
People who
Love you
For that)
You
Redefined a trilogy as
A five part
Series
(There are
Even more
People who
Love you
For that)
And imagine -
If you hadn't been born
On that fateful Marchday
I wouldn't be as bally famous for my shit poetry that
could make that homosexual Jewboy Stephen Fry
choke on his fries as I am today

Douglas Adams
Paul Neil Johnstone (Paula Neil
Jennings) wrote the ‘worst
poetry’ in the universe

The construction of __________ began in 1882 with X becoming involved in
1883. His definitive art style shaped the structure's architecture but to
much dismay, X died in 1926 - with only one quarter of the project
complete. Since then, the construction of ________ progressed slowly,
relying on private donations which was interrupted by the events leading
upto World War 2. The progress of its completion today is estimated
roughly at midpoint, with several architectural challenges still remaining. It
is anticipated that _______ will be completed in 2026, on the centenary of
X's death.
Despite its incomplete status, it is frequented by 2.5 million visitors
annually and has gained the pedestal of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Describing _________, art critic Rainer Zerbst said, "It is probably
impossible to find a building anything like it in the entire history of art" and
Paul Goldberger called it, "The most extraordinary personal interpretation
of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages.“
Id X and fill the blank.

Sagrada Familia (in Barcelona)

This is a very long question ( 3 slides) and is worth two
questions, so read this slowly :
"Mad about you" is an American sitcom that aired on NBC in
1992 starring Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a newly married
couple in New York City. The show went on for 7 seasons
straight.
The funny thing about this TV series is its' notable "crossover
paradoxes" with other TV series. The basic premise of these
paradoxes usually lies in the fact that because a crossover has
occured the two TV series must exist in the same universe. The
paradox would then arise in a separate part of one of the TV
series by a contradiction of events.

In one episode of Mad About You, Jamie(Hunt) causes a blackout
leading to a blackout also being seen in the series X and the
short lived Madman of the People- all 3 episodes airing on the
same night.
A more significant crossover with X lies in the recurring
character (both series) U - a flaky waitress (future porn actress
and Governor of New York) at Riff's Bar in the series Mad About
You, who was seen on in X. This implies a shared universe.
The contradiction in this arises when the character of Alan Brady
from the Dick Van Dyke shows up on an episode Mad About You.
Later, the characters of X are seen watching The Dick Van Dyke
show, basically contradicting the shared universe concept.

However the crossover paradox with the series Y is more direct.
when Paul signs over the lease of his old bachelor pad to Z, a
regular character of Y. This implies the shared universe. However
as a running gag in Y, _____ is always severely annoyed by his'
fiancee Susan's fondness for watching Mad About You (which
meant separate universes).
Name the TV series X and Y - and for bonus - the characters Z
and U.

X- Friends
Y - Seinfeld
Z - Kramer
U - Ursula Buffay

The Fool is a Dutch art collective which was active in 60s and 70s,
made the following psychedelic album cover art for the _______
album. Though the artist/band loved it for the centerfold instead, it
was felt that it could simply be another piece of 60s acid art. It was
rejected for the more well known cover and centerfold.

The Sergeant Pepper Album
Cover

StealY.com is a website that posts the location of each piece of artist
Y, tracks the damage each piece has sustained and encourages
people to "get it before MoMA gets it". The headline for the site,
"BETTER OURS THAN THEIRS" is a play off of the title of Y's project
"BETTER OUT THAN IN", which in turn is a reference to a quote by
impressionist Paul Cezanne.

Round 3
• Long Visual Connect
• Tri-effective scoring scheme :
– If your grand connect to be absolutely correct you will
be awarded according to the maximum allotted to the
question
– If your answer to be partly correct, you will be
awarded half the maximum points allotted to the
question. Completing the answer on a further
question will give you subsequently the half of the
maximum of that question
– Negatives apply ( even after getting it partly correct )
– One guess per question is allowed for ( even after
suffering a negative earlier in the round )

Round 4
• 16 Questions
• Infinite Pounce – anticlockwise rotation
• +10/0 on the direct
• +10/-5 on the pounce
• Part points on close enough answers

Commercially speaking, Cher's Believe remains as one of the best selling
singles of all time, having sold 11 million singles worldwide- making it the
best selling single in 1998 and 1999.
The success behind the single lay in the efforts of Andy Hildebrand, who not a
long while before the singles' release, worked in Exxon as engineer. He was
initially designing a software to analyze underground sound waves in an
attempt to pinpoint oil reserves as he came upon the idea of ______, as part
of a bet. Hildebrand left Exxon and developed _________ further, which
producer Mark Taylor used in parts of Cher's song as a mischevious
experiment.
Taylor said "This was the most nerve-wracking part of the project, because I
wasn't sure what Cher would say." But Cher loved it so much that when her
record company requested that the oddity in her song should be removed,
she replied "Over my dead body."
The massive success of Believe would motivate other artists to imitate the
technique and this would breifly come into popularity as "Cher's effect".
What was the secret behind Cher's breakthrough success?

Starlings are small to medium-sized birds considered to
be one of the most destructive invasive species in North
America. They were introduced to the Americas by
wealthy drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin in the late
19th century. He acted as a part of the American
Acclimatization Society, and released some hundred
starlings in New York City’s Central Park in 1890 and 1891.
By 1950 starlings could be found coast to coast, north
past Hudson Bay and south into Mexico. Their North
American numbers today top 200 million.
Why is the starling and Eugene's act a part of the MELA
quiz?

Released as a part of a flock of
all the birds ever referenced in
Shakespeare works

On June 11, 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment concluded their
weekly television show, Monday Night RAW, with one of their strangest
scenes ever. The company’s owner, Vince McMahon, was shown leaving
the arena at the end of the live show and climbing into a limousine—
which suddenly exploded! For the next two weeks, WWE programming
would pretend that McMahon was “dead” and that the FBI was
investigating what happened.
What followed was even more strange. The plan for the June 25 edition
of RAW was to do a fake “tribute show” for Vince McMahon. When
viewers tuned into RAW that night, they were surprised to see the
supposedly “dead” McMahon standing in the middle of the ring,
pretending that the scene with the exploding limousine never
happened.
What happened earlier that day ie 25th June 2007 that derailed the
entire storyline and perhaps led into one of the controversial episodes
of RAW- which would later hit the show with outrage from fans?

Chris Beniot murdered his family
and commited suicide

An excerpt from the article in the Prescott Courier dated June 25th, 1974
accurately describes the history of X ( a rather unique thing to do ) as a world
record:
"For years tourists have been trying to get through it as quickly as possible - to
see those three things and then to go out shopping again. Before World War II
the record for X was 7 min 14 sec. But after the war, as the clothes got lighter
and cameras got smaller, people kept cutting down the time. In 1948, a man
known as the Swedish Cannonball, paced by his wife, did it in 6m14sec.
But on June 18, 1954, Peter Stone under perfect tourist conditions literally flew
through [the task of X].... and back out the waiting taxi. President Eisenhower
personally sent him a telegram: " I rejoice with all Americans at your amazing
feat. Yor're what the United States is all about". "
The feat of X was referenced in two separate films - Bande A Part(1964) and
Dreamers(2003).

Hatsune Miku is a humanoid persona developed by Crypton
Future Media, which possesses Yamaha's Vocaloid singing
synthesizer. The persona is portrayed in Japanese media as a
16-year old girl and even performs concerts through
holographic projections.
On September 12 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of
Hatsune Miku totalling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number
one selling software of that time. In August 2010, over 22,000
original songs had been written for Hatsune Miku. Later reports
confirmed that she had 100,000 songs in 2011 to her name.
However, Miku's impact is not just limited to japanese media,
thanks to one particular video featuring Miku's onomatopoeic
vocal work. What?

An interesting tidbit in the movie 'Dedh
Ishqiya' has literature aficionados piqued-
In the scene where both Naseer and
Arshad’s hands are tied and they are
watching Madhuri and Huma having fun,
getting physical. And then we see just a big
shadow on the wall which suggests physical
intimacy between Madhuri and Huma’s
characters. The suggested homo-eroticism,
the shadow play and the background story
of Madhuri's character is a tribute to
________, so much so that the movie has
even been phrased as a smart adaptation of
the short story.
The original story, written in 1942 - is much
more controversial, as it captures the
allusions of homo-erotic acts between
Begum and her masseuse through the eyes
of a small girl. Identify the story and the
author.

The X are an invitation-only society who award membership and the
accompanying customary "_______ Shilling" to their members, who specialize in
a specific scholarly study or are eminent enthusiasts. The group convenes for a
fancy dinner once a year in New York, and hosts other "specific" activities open
to the public.
Here is a brief, incomplete list of members through its history:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Anthony Boucher
August Derleth
Jan Burke
Laurie R. King
Fletcher Pratt
Isaac Asimov
Neil Gaiman
Red Smith
Jean-Pierre Cagnat
X was also one of the names (along with Churchill's Secret Army and Ministry of
Ungentlemanly Affairs) that was used to refer to the Special Operations
Executive, an organization to conduct espionage and reconnaissance in occupied
Europe.

In ancient times, groups of singers, musicians and painters, called
chitrakattis, moved village to village to tell the village dwellers, the great
stories of Hindu mythology. Progressively, during the course of history,
they illustrated their accounts using large bolts of canvas painted on the
spot with rudimentary means and dyes extracted from plants. Thus, the
art of _____ was born. As an art form it found its apogee in the wealthy
Golconda sultanate, Hyderabad and has suffered a decline since then. It
has two distinctive styles named on the basis of region where they
emerged from - Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam styles.
The name _____ came from Mughals who had travelled down to
Coromandel and Golconda and patronized the artisans for the use of
fermented jagri-dipped bamboo quills.
In modern times the term is also used to refer, incorrectly, to the making
of any cotton fabric patterned through the medium of vegetable dyes by
free-hand painting and block-printing, produced in many different regions
of India.

X was born in 1840 into a middle class family and had only avergae
musical talents while growing up. X called Brahms as a 'giftless self-
inflated mediocrity hailed as genius!'. Intriguingly both of them
were born on May 7th.
X gave up a promising prospect at the civil service to study with
composer Rubenstein and soon became the talk around the city.
Although gay, X entered into a disastrous marriage of convenience
which lasted only 2 months. His three great ballets rank 1st, 2nd
and 6th of the top ten most performed ballets ever.
Whenever he would perform, this composer would his chin with his
left hand, thinking that his head may fall off.

A puzzle and the consequent theorom which inspired mathematicians to
look for more such intriguing mind switching mysteries can be stated as:
We have a mind switching machine which can swap the minds of two
individuals, but the machine has a serious limitation: It will not work more
than once on the same pair of bodies. After a group on n-people have
indulged in a mind swapping frenzy, is there a way of re-shuffling minds
by introducing new bodies? If so, how many bodies would they need?
The puzzle was setup and solved by Ken Keeler, a PhD in Mathematics
from Harvard and came to be formally known as Keeler's theorom.
However, Keeler's work did not win him a fields medal or any great
academic distinction but instead a Writers Guild Award and his theorom
was more popularly termed as the __________ theorom. What?

The song "________ Man" is a blues standard which was inducted into the Blues
Hall of Fame in 1984, was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998, is a part
of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll list and
on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest songs of all time. The song was originally written
by Willie Dixon and performed by numerous artists since.
Dixon told Paul Zollo in a 1988 interview: "People believe in mystic things. Like
people today believe in astrology. That's been going on for generations, since
biblical days. People all over the world believe in it. Even before Jesus was born,
according to the Bible. The wise men saw the stars in the East and were able to
predict about things. All of these things are mystic. They say, '_________ people
are telling fortunes.' You know, like the wise men of the East. They call them
'voodoo men' or '________ men.' They used to call them 'hoodoo folk' and 'two-
head people.' They got many names for everybody."
According to Wikipedia, the name of the song comes from a sexually provocative
dance ________ becoming wildly popular after the Chicago World Fair in 1893.
Since the dance was performed by women, a "__________ man" either watched
them or ran the show.

The game XY has the following official message when starting out:
A Y is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more
instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ
animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas Y
have human characters.
The game XY began as a Half-Life 2 mod before expanding to a standalone game.
The game pushes into the limited relationship of the game designers and game
players- what each's expectations are. The game has been critiques as being
everything "from a witty and powerful narrative on games today" to "being too
intelligent for its good", this game has more than 18 different endings (mostly
involving looping back to the start or getting killed/committing suicide),
frequently invoking themes of existentialism, freedom of choice and if there
really is any meaning to anything.
Quoting the game in its typical sensibility, here is a part of the Confusion ending:
"When every path you can walk has been created for you long in advance, death
becomes meaningless, making life the same. Don't you see? You were dead the
instant you pressed the "play" button."

Errol Morris is a director and producer who has helped spur on a rebirth of non-fiction
films in the 80s, having won an oscar for his documentary "The Fog of War". But this
question is not about him. Errol's association with Y can be first seen in his unfinished Ed
Gein project. Morris was researching a serial killer epidemic in the town of Plainfield, and
wanted to know if the rumors that Gein had stolen his mothers corpse (as depicted in
Psycho) were true. Y offered to dig up the corpse of Gein's mother to check this out, but
Morris chickened out.
In another instance with Morris, Y had promised to eat his shoe if Morris completed the
project "Gates of Heaven" , to challenge and encourage Morris, whom Y perceived as
incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. Y cooked it in goose fat and ate
his own shoe.
Y's eccentricities do not end here- he once hypnotized his entire cast and had them
perform their lines for the shooting of "Heart Off Glass (1976)". Other incidents include
threatening his actor Klaus with a gun to complete the film, driving a steamboat up a
mountain top in a Peruvian forest and releasing 11000 rats in the city of Delf, Germany.
American film critic Roger Ebert said that Y "has never created a single film that is
compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons or uninteresting. Even his failures
are spectacular." Yet Y remains largely unnoticed by mainstream award hours, having but
one oscar nomination to his credit.

In the early days (around 1850) , if you saw a Y, you would expect him to be a
British civil servant or a banker. Y were common in the Victorian era working
class as well.
The image of Y first appeared in X's painting of 1926 titled Rêveries du
promeneur solitaire, in which Y is seen from the back, against a dark evening
landscape. Used in several dozens of paintings throughout X's career, the Y
appears in various guises. Y is sometimes depicted from the back, sometimes
from the front, partly obscured by objects, as a dark contour faintly visible
against the night sky, or fossilized into a block of stone. Often Y is no more than a
silhouette, providing a frame in which another subject is depicted. What is
common to all of them is the fact that Y remains impersonal, an individual
transformed into a universal object.
As Suzi Gablik described him: "X's Y is more like a figure in a book than a human
being, but a figure with all the inessential elements left out... Impassive and aloof
Y fixes the world in his gaze, but often his face is turned from view, dislocated, or
otherwise concealed or obliterated by objects, as if expressing a universal
disinclination, for which there exists no complementary inclination"

X – Rene Magritte
Y – Boulder hatted man/men

In 1961, legendary director Billy Wilder directed a comedy called
One, Two, Three. The film starred James Cagney as a high-ranking
Coca-Cola executive working in Europe who is assigned to watch
over his boss’s 17-year-old daughter. He is soon shocked to discover
that she has secretly gotten married to a communist. One, Two,
Three was meant to be a lighthearted comedy- but due to
__________, the entire plot was undermined. As a result, Wilder
was forced to add a disclaimer to the beginning of the film which
acknowledged these real-life events and made it clear that the
_________ until after shooting had already started.
The film drew disappointing box office numbers since the audience
no longer found the subject matter appropriate, while critics
panned Wilder for crassly exploiting real life events.
What was the reason behind this epic fail in cinema?

Construction of the Berlin Wall

Galaxy 2014 MELA quiz

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Galaxy 2014 MELA quiz