imdb - The Screengrab

Keyword Theater: The Winter Edition

Elsewhere in this fine blog, my esteemed colleagues Andrew Osbourne and Scott Von Doviak are posting their picks for the big hits and dismal failures coming to a theater near you in 2009. Frankly, as much as I'd like to play along, I exhausted myself almost to death just trying to catch up with all the movies I needed to see at the end of 2008, and I'm in no shape to guess whether or not the next year's worth of cinema is going to sink or swim. I'll just say good luck to the fellas, and crawl into my cave for a while; wake me when the next Coen Brothers movie is released.

But before I settle in for my long winter's nap, I thought I'd at least leave you with a new installment of a feature that proved pretty popular last time around. Thanks to the dedicated crazies who post at the infinitely useful Internet Movie Database, movies that haven't even been completed yet have their own "keywords" -- little descriptive words or phrases containing a movie's themes or content that you can use to search IMDB. For reasons of their own, some of the crazies get awfully specific with their use of keywords, and that means big fun for you, as we provide you with the following list of ten releases due out in winter of 2009, identified only by specifically selected IMDB keywords. Using your knowledge of abnormal psychology, check under the cut and see if you can guess which movie is which based just on the kooky keywords! Answers, as always, are at the end.

Keyword Theater: The Summer Edition

We here at the Screengrab absolutely adore IMDB, the Internet Movie Database. It's the film writer's best friend, an indispensible tool that we scarcely know what we'd do without. Its comprehensive movie schedules let us plan our filmgoing weekends, its incredibly detailed entries tell us all we need to know about movies, actors and directors; and its highly amusing message boards allow us to while away the hours reading what two angry people with poor grammar skills think of whether or not Nutty Professor II: The Klumps was racist.

One of IMDB's oddest, yet most appealing, features is the "keyword search". Let's say you want to see a movie about surfing: just type 'surfing' in the keyword search field, and up will come a list, sortable in any number of ways, of movies, TV shows, video games, and direct-to-video porn films in which someone is seen riding a surfboard. The problem is that, much like Wikipedia, IMDB's keyword searches are user-controlled, so the resulting entries can give you a rather, er, idiosyncratic view of what qualities in a film IMDB readers think are important.

To help you pass the time on a long Wednesday afternoon, we've prepared a list of ten summer 2008 releases, identified by their IMDB keywords. Can you guess the movie? And can you fathom the depths of the mind that created such an odd set of descriptors for it? Answers are under the cut -- enjoy!

1. "Avant Garde", "Sheep", "Nun", "Airplane Accident", "The Three Stooges"

2. "Black Eye", "Casino", "Screwball", "Marriage Counseling", "Courtroom"

3. "Independent Film", "Nazis","Paris France", "Severed Hand", "Burnt Face"

4. "American Abroad", "Niagra Falls", "Professor", "Humor", "Hat"

5. "Country House", "Swings", "Flower Petals", "Axe", "Psycho Thriller"

6. "Slacker", "Unlikely Hero, "Confidence", "Kids and Family", "Snow Leopard"

7. "American", "Shoe", "Ineptitude", "Phone Booth", "Character Name in Title"

8. "Very Little Dialogue", "Dark Comedy", "Part Live Action", "Space", "Robot"

9. "Federal Bureau of Investigation", "Cigar Smoking", "Soul", "Nazi Experiment", "Demon"

10. "Girl Power", "Heavy Rubber", "Moody", "Ice Cream Parlor", "Torso Cut in Half"