Game with no name

A game where Mark had to guess what film Simon or the listeners were describing from a sequence of single words or phrases describing key sequences. It was started when a listener (Michael Adams) wrote in describing The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe as "dull, then suddenly scary, then dull again." Simon immediately picked it up as the potential for a new game, inviting Mark to guess which film would be "wet, boring, wetter, more boring, about as wet as it's possible to get, still boring" - the answer being The Piano.

Mark did very well at guessing the first few and had a 100% record until being challenged with "sheep, snow, more sheep, ooh - ouch, lost shirt, found shirt" (the answer being Bareback Mountain).

There was a whole bunch of controversy when one listener sent in "blood, blood, more blood, ear, everyone dies" as a clue. Mark correctly guessed Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but he pointed out that it was not a good clue because Steve Buscemi's Mr Pink is alive at the end. There was then a flood of correspondence saying that, if the volume is turned up, it is possible to hear the sound of Mr Pink being shot to death - only for that interpretation to itself be corrected by someone who had the special edition DVD on which Tarantino explains that Mr Pink is merely wounded.

The game briefly mutated into one where Mark had to guess an actor from their back catalogue - "smug, angry, smug, smug, angry, athletic, angry, angry, smug, smug, smug, angry, smug" (Tom Cruise) and then just "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong" (Mark Kermode predicting the Oscars).

When he was on Newsnight Review a couple of weeks after the game had started, Mark described a production of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf as "funny, funny, funny, funny, funny, funny, stop" and admitted it must have got into his psyche.

Somewhat inevitably, the Film Review Show itself eventually got itself described in a submission, from listener Barry Aitken - “Talk, talk, talk, introduce movie clip (no clip), talk, talk, talk, introduce clip, talk, talk, Exorcist, talk”

The game was never referred to as "the game with no name" on the Film Review Show - it was just called "our new movie game" or somesuch - but we needed something to title this Witterpedia page with and "the game with no name" bespeaks a pleasing euphoniousness.