Film 2005

General knowledge quizzes
Test your knowledge of the 2005 Oscar winners
(multiple-choice quiz)
Test your knowledge of famous quotations from films
(match the quotes and the films)

Language games
Check your vocabulary about film and the cinema
(interactive crossword puzzle)
Check your knowledge of different kinds or genres of film
(Hangman spelling game)

Introduction

Films fans, can you remember:

• who got the Oscar for best actor this year?
• in which movie a muscular Austrian-born actor famously left a police station saying, "I'll be back..."?

If you can, maybe you're ready to test your knowledge of the cinema with our interactive general knowledge quizzes and your film and cinema vocabulary with our language quizzes.

If not, have a look first at the information below, and then try the quizzes.

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Popularity of the British Cinema

Many people say they are film fans, but watch most films at home on TV or DVD. What about you? Do you most films at the cinema or at home?

A sad story for the British cinema is told by statistics of box office sales of cinema admission tickets, taken from the British Film Institute website.

Look at Figure 1, below.

In the middle of the last century, especially in the forties and early fifties, you can see that in the UK, going to the cinema was incredibly popular. But by the end of the sixties, cinemas had lost almost all of their audience.

Figure 1. UK Cinema Admissions 1933-2003 (statistics taken from the British Film Institute. For more information see http://www.bfi.org.uk/facts/stats/alltime/uk_admissions.html)

Why did UK cinemas lose their audiences? There are two main reasons:

• the increasing popularity of TV
• the lack of investment by cinema owners

The film industry, especially in Hollywood, fought to keep cinema audiences, with technological innovations providing excitement and spectacle in ways that TV couldn't deliver, including the use of:

• colour
• wide-screen
• 3D effects
• stereophonic sound

But the novelty of these new effects soon disappeared, and audiences continued to stay away from cinemas.

Fortunately, since the early eighties, although audience numbers are still much less than during the forties, the situation has started to improve.

Look below at Figure 2 UK Cinema Admissions 1983-2003, and you will see that in the last 20 years cinema audiences have almost trebled.

Figure 2. UK Cinema Admissions 1983-2003 (statistics taken from the British Film Institute):

Why the increase in audience numbers?

Well, it seems that one key reason is improvement in the cinemas themselves. If you visit Oxford's new Ozone Multiplex, beside the football stadium, for example, parking is easy, there is a large choice of films, and the seats are large and comfortable.

Also, for cinema-goers with a serious interest in film, including less commercial films and foreign films, there are specialist and "art-house" cinemas like the Phoenix Picture House.

More information

• 100 years of cinema exploitation in Britain - a historical profile (Ian Christie, British Film Institute)
• More Screens, More Choice: Film Centres and Multiplexes (Allen Eyles, Screenonline, the definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history)

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Quizzes

Online, interactive practice activities relating to FILM and THE CINEMA on the SCOOL website:

Language games

1. Check your vocabulary about film and the cinema with an interactive crossword puzzle
2. Check your knowledge of different kinds or genres of film with a Hangman spelling game