Quiz: How Well Do You Know the 2024 Oscar Nominees?

1

Maestro opens with an extravagant shot that starts on a young Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) as he’s awakened with the news of his big break, filling in for the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. What thunderous score do we hear as L.B. rips open the curtains, grabs his robe, runs down the hall and, magically, steps into a balcony box inside Carnegie Hall?

A. “Symphonic Suite” from On the Waterfront
B. “Prologue” from West Side Story
C. “I Get Carried Away” from On the Town
D. “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys

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2

Filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki, who brought back Japan’s famous monster franchise with Godzilla Minus One, is the first director to be nominated for a visual effects award. 

A. True
B. False

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3

We may never know if Sandra Hüller’s character in Anatomy of a Fall killed her husband or if he fell from the attic window of their chalet in the Alps. But co-writer and director Justine Triet felt Hüller needed to know in order to play the role, and filled her in before filming began.

A. True
B. False

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4

The technology behind Pixar’s Elemental — which features a sprawling metropolis that’s home to four tribes (consisting of air, earth, fire and water characters) who coexist with varying degrees of peace — is so advanced that it resulted in what? 

A. A render farm that required the equivalent of 200 computers
B. A limit in the number of characters to 10 in a shot because of the work involved
C. Hiring twice as many simulation and shading artists
D. Several Pixar artists publishing academic papers on their work

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5

Vegan Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t wear animal products, which meant Napoleon’s costume team had to re-create the French military leader’s famous bicornes without wool felt. David Crossman and Janty Yates came up with a fabric constructed from which material? 

A. Polyester felt and faux suede 
B. Tree bark from Uganda
C. Cork harvested from Portugal 
D. Vegan leather made of polyurethane

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6

With their “toyetic” marketability, the pink houses in Barbie Land (above) were carefully crafted and scaled down by this mathematical percentage, the accurate proportion of a real Barbie doll to a Dreamhouse: 

A. 38%
B. 32%
C. 23%
D. 11.5%

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7

What film did Greta Gerwig reference for the scene when Barbie and Ken arrive in Los Angeles to illustrate how clearly out of place they would feel? 

A. Back to the Future
B. Trading Places
C. Deliverance
D. Midnight Cowboy

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8

According to actor Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers director Alexander Payne likes actors who bring this to a role:

A. “A need for human connection”
B. “An ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and ordinary in the extraordinary”
C. “The funny to the sad and the sad to the funny”
D. “Almost a delusional confidence”

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9

Even though they spend little time together in Oppenheimer, what kind of relationship did Christopher Nolan see between Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and “the father of the atomic bomb” (Cillian Murphy)? 

A. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker
B. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg
C. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas
D. Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter

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10

The chief antagonist in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is a rogue artificial intelligence known as The Entity, said to be indestructible and rapidly evolving. Sound designers had to find an audible way to convey that something sinister was underfoot. What is the source of the Entity FX that the sound team created using oscillators, filters and modulators? 

A. The hum of a tiger mosquito
B. Static from an AOL dial-up connection
C. Glass splintering in an explosion
D. A glitchy home-theater sound bar

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11

Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos tricked the cast into thinking they were shooting a camera test. The scene shot that day not only made it into the film, but was a jumping-off point for Emma Stone’s madcap performance. Which scene was it?

A. Bella (Emma Stone) is introduced to Max (Ramy Youssef) and socks him in the nose, then laughs uncontrollably. 
B. At the dining table, Bella childishly flings kippers at Max.
C. Her first time outside, Bella runs into a deserted area of a wooded park and rolls in the leaves.
D. In a restaurant, Bella is instinctively drawn to the music and does an impromptu dance of her own making with Duncan (Mark Ruffalo). 

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12

The Boy and the Heron is drawn from Hayao Miyazaki’s childhood during World War II, when his family leaves a firebombed Tokyo for the countryside. In the movie, Mahito, essentially his younger self, embarks on a quest through a magical realm. Which character is meant to represent Miyazaki as he is today?

A. Parakeet King, who commands an army of birds
B. Grey Heron, who encourages Mahito to explore the unknown
C. Great Uncle, who rules the magical realm 
D. Noble Pelican, who suggests they feast on the Warawara

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13

Which of these facts from the best screenplay categories is not true? 

A. The majority of Christopher Nolan’s script for Oppenheimer was written in the first person of the title character.
B. Celine Song wrote her screenplay for Past Lives first in Korean, then in English.
C. Cord Jefferson seriously wanted to call his movie Fuck! That was the title of his script for American Fiction when he sent it out.
D. When they began writing Barbie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s working title for the script was Littler Women. 

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14

The standard frame rate for movies is 24 frames per second. For the “oil dance” sequence that opens Killers of the Flower Moon, a series of slow-motion shots with Osage men rejoicing as a geyser of oil erupts around them, to what speed did DP Rodrigo Prieto crank up his camera?  

A. 350 fps
B. 500 fps
C. 700 fps
D. 1,000 fps

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15

Actors like to say they were born to play their parts. That might be true for some — but which of the following is not true?  

A. Dominic Sessa, who plays a rebellious student in The Holdovers, attended one of the New England boarding schools where the movie was shot.
B. Colman Domingo was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the same town as the civil rights activist he plays in Rustin.
C. Benny Safdie, who plays the father of the hydrogen bomb in Oppenheimer, almost became a physicist after taking quantum mechanics in high school and visiting major laboratories. 
D. When she shot Nyad, Annette Bening was the same age as the film’s subject when she swam from Florida to Cuba.

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16

There was no trace of any crew on the set of The Zone of Interest. A network of surveillance-style cameras, which ran simultaneously, were embedded around the home to capture the Höss family going about their daily routines, oblivious to the concentration camp next door. How did writer-director Jonathan Glazer keep referring to the production? 

A. “Big Brother in the Nazi house”
B. “Lifestyles of the Reich and Infamous”
C. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith at No. 26”
D. “Leave It to Rudolf”

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Answer Key

1

A

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2

B He is the second director. Stanley Kubrick won the award for his 1968 feature 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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3

B

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4

D Pixar animators said they didn’t know if Elemental was possible because their “artisticals” were way beyond the existing technology.

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5

B

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6

C (23%)

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7

D She thought of the Midnight Cowboy sequence where Jon Voight walks through Manhattan.

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8

C

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9

A

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10

D Sound editor James Mather said he was at home streaming the opening minutes of Rogue Nation when his sound bar experienced a digital glitch. He recorded it with his phone and later shared the file with director Christopher McQuarrie, who loved it.

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11

B

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12

A Parakeet King was modeled on Miyazaki’s personality, expressions and the way he moves. It’s his favorite character in the film.

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13

D

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14

C

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15

B Domingo was born in Philadelphia, about an hour east of West Chester, Pennsylvania.

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16

A

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