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"
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