Movies & TV Quizzes

About Movies & TV Quizzes

Movies and television are the world's common language, and the Academy Awards have been keeping score since 1929, when a silent World War I drama called Wings took the first Best Picture prize. Since then the top award has gone to sweeping epics (Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings), intimate character studies (Marty, Ordinary People, Moonlight), musicals (West Side Story, Chicago), thrillers (The Silence of the Lambs, No Country for Old Men) and, in 2020, the first film not in the English language, Parasite.

A handful of records define the ceremony. Three films share the mark for most Oscars won, with 11: Ben-Hur in 1960, Titanic in 1998 and The Return of the King in 2004, which went a perfect 11 for 11. Three films have swept the "big five" of Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land share the record of 14 nominations. Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director, in 2010; Chloe Zhao the second, in 2021; Steve McQueen the first Black filmmaker to direct a Best Picture winner, in 2014.

Then there are the stories around the statue: Marlon Brando sending an activist to decline his Oscar for The Godfather, George C. Scott calling the ceremony a "meat parade," the 2017 envelope mix-up that briefly gave Best Picture to La La Land instead of Moonlight, and famous upsets like Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan and How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane.

These quizzes cover the movies, the shows, the stars and the record book, from the silent era to the streaming age. Read the clue, make your pick, and get the full story afterward.