Answers

QUIZ WHIZ

1. C

1927’s silent war film Wings, starring Clara Bow and Charles Rogers and directed by William A. Wellman, was the first recipient of the Best Picture award; the category was titled Outstanding Picture in 1929.

The musical The Broadway Melody (1929) won the award in 1930 at the 2nd Academy Awards ceremony, while Gone with the Wind (1939) and Ben-Hur (1959) won the trophy in 1940 (12th Academy Awards) and 1960 (32nd Academy Awards) respectively.

2. D

The acronym for the artificial intelligence personality J.A.R.V.I.S. in The Avengers universe stands for Just A (alternatively: Another) Rather Very Intelligent System and is adapted from the name of the Stark family butler, Edwin Jarvis.

3. B

Pixar has released 19 feature films so far: Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Cars 2 (2011), Brave (2012), Monsters University (2013), Inside Out (2015), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Finding Dory (2016), Cars 3 (2017), and Coco (2017).

4. A

The Beatles are considered the highest-selling artists of all time, with sales of 271.1 million total available certified units and estimated sales of as many as 500 to 600 million records.

Elvis (212.4 million certified, 500 to 600 million estimated) and MJ (184.6 million, 300 to 350 million estimated) are considered the second and third best-selling artists respectively. Taylor Swift (181.6 million certified) hasn’t cracked the top ten yet and is even trailing behind Rihanna (229.4 million certified).

5. B

“Despacito” is Spanish for “slowly”.

6. D

Originally titled ‘In Other Words’, ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was written by Bart Howard and recorded by Kaye Ballard in 1954. The 1964 cover of the track by Sinatra became closely associated with the Apollo missions to the Moon; a recording of the song was played on the 1969 Apollo 10 mission which orbited the Moon, and the track was then played on the Moon on a portable cassette player by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin after he stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969.

7. C and D

Both John Cusack and Matthew Broderick turned down the part (and thank heavens for that!) before Cranston was cast in the by-now-iconic role.

8. A

The primary cast of HBO’s fantasy drama Game of Thrones - Peter Dinklage, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke, and Kit Harington - are reportedly making £2,000,000 per episode for the show’s 2017 to 2018 run.

The cast of Friends made $1 million per episode from 2002 to 2004; several cast members of The Big Bang Theory are getting $900,000 per episode (2017 - 2019); while Charlie Sheen earned $1.8 million per episode for his final season of Two and a Half Men (2010 - 2011).

9. C

There have been 629 episodes over 29 seasons of The Simpsons, the longest-running sitcom and animated program in American television history. Created by Matt Groening, the series stared in 1989 and has been renewed for a thirtieth season, extending the show to 2019.

10. B

Pop band Vital Signs’ patriotic song ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ was released in 1987 before appearing on the group’s debut album, Vital Signs 1, in 1989.

11. B

English-Pakistani singer Annie Khalid featured on A1’s single ‘Just 3 Words’ in 2012. The song served as the first single from the band’s fifth album, Rediscovered (2012).

12. D

Based on estimates, comedy thrillers Na Maloom Afraad (2014) and Na Maloom Afraad 2 (2017) are thought to have grossed around PKR34 crore collectively; road comedies Karachi Se Lahore (2015) and Lahore Se Aagey (2016) have made around PKR 31.9 crore; and animated children’s movies 3 Bahadur (2015) and 3 Bahadur: The Revenge of Baba Balaam (2016) have earned nearly PKR13.4 crore.