Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Who wants to be a film expert?

In case you missed it, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is doing a special Movie Week--every question is about movies--sponsored by Netflix and powered by Skype. But where would they be doing a movie program packed to the gills with corporate sponsors without Ben Lyons? Well, pretty much exactly where they are, but they invited him and Ben Mankiewicz anyway, continuing the duo's ABC/Disney getting to know you tour.

These two fit into the show as a new lifeline called "Ask an Expert". They were included via Skype, calling in from a bedroom with several bookshelves behind them--obviously, it must have been Mank's house. Sad thing is, they were no help whatsoever. The contestant zipped through several questions winning $50,000 but then asked for their help on the $100,000 question: Which of four movies used the fictional airline Oceanic?

Mank gave it his best shot but couldn't answer. Lyons just made fun of how bad the movies were that were among the possible answers. Apparently, playing hours of Scene It? is not enough to improve his movie knowledge--he may have the watch Millionaire Movie Week all week to fill in a few blanks.

Now, I'm not saying that I knew the answers, but when they are stumped on their first question, I wonder whether ABC/Disney's strategy is really working here.

5 comments:

Ranielle said...

See... It's when I hear about questions like that, and know that I know the answer, that I think I really need to parlay my accumulated, seemingly useless trivial knowledge of movies into being a contestant on a game show. Or taking over Ben Lyons' job.

Anonymous said...

So what was the answer know-it-all bigshot Scott?

Scott said...

Executive Decision. You're welcome.

Anonymous said...

The two film critics from At the Movies not being able to answer something like that? Wow. Richard and Roger would have knocked it out of the ballpark. Had a lot of fun with it, too. If they had agreed to do a commercial appearance like that it in the first place, that is.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure Richard and Roger or Gene for that matter could have answered that. You all are full of yourself.