Skip to main content

From Shirley MacLaine's past lives to a composer's flamingo carpet: the Observer culture quiz

Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our critics

Shirley MacLaine is a firm believer in reincarnation. Which of the following does she not claim as one of her past lives?

An orphan raised by elephants

The Moorish peasant girl mistress of the Emperor Charlemagne

A Tahitian pearl diver who perished in a shark attack

Who was the first African American to win an Academy Award?

Dorothy Dandridge for Carmen Jones

Paul Robeson for King Solomon's Mines

Hattie McDaniel for Gone With the Wind

A UK No 1 by which artist namechecks author Vladimir Nabokov?

David Bowie

The Police

Cockney Rebel

Which whisky company uses a modified version of a Landseer painting as its logo?

Famous Grouse

Glenfiddich

Johnnie Walker

Who ordered her husband a pink carpet made of flamingo feathers with a border of peacock plumes for his 66th birthday?

Alma Mahler

Cosima Wagner

Anna Magdalena Bach

Christopher Plummer starred as Captain von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, but he hated working on the film. What was NOT his nickname for it?

The Sound Of Mucus

Edelweiss and Worse

S&M

Which TV series, later renamed, debuted in the UK in 1983 with the name Woodentop?

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Taggart

The Bill

Who requested “up to 800 singers”, four brass bands and a full orchestra including 50 violins for one of his works?

Tchaikovsky

Beethoven

Berlioz

Which of the following artists has not painted a label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild?

Matisse

Dalí

Chagall

Alexandra Palace, June 1946, and the BBC resumed television broadcasting, which had been suspended since September 1939, with the line: “Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?” But what had been the primary reason for its suspension?

Fears that the strength of the transmitting signal would lead bombers unerringly to north London

At least 50 specialist engineers were required to work on radar

Actors and presenters were seconded to propaganda and newsreel work, which could be shown more safely in cinemas

Helen Mirren was a teenage star at the National Youth Theatre in which part ?

Cleopatra

Lady Macbeth

Juliet

What is the name of the barber’s in Victoria Street, which was opened in Corrie in 2019?

Cheeky Blinders

Lock Stars

Trim Up North

Of whom was it said that he went to Oxford “like a high-pressure executive arriving to take over a dying business”?

Peter Brook

Hugh Grant

Kenneth Tynan

“All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body.” Who said this of the Palace of Westminster?

Augustus Pugin

John Ruskin

Charles Barry

Who wrote: “And when you kissed Robert Mitchum / Gee, but I thought that you’d never catch him”?

Jonathan Richman

Lou Reed

Dory Previn

Who said “less is a bore”?

Charles Jencks

Robert Venturi

John Pawson

Who is “All good already, so moved on, it’s scary” as per her UK No 2 chart hit, released in late 2019?

Lady Gaga

Dua Lipa

Ariana Grande

The 60s outfit Three Dog Night are named for an indigenous Australian expression. To what does it refer?

A night so cold you need three dogs for warmth

A long night-time hunting trip

A party so loud only three dogs could drown it out

15 and above.

Excellent work. Who's the critic here, us or you?

9 and above.

Pretty good stuff, you sturdy cultural footsoldier, you.

0 and above.

Some series cultural catching-up needed, we fear.

5 and above.

Some of the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. Better luck next time!

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2AbpxT9
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more