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Page last updated at 11:16 GMT, Monday, 12 October 2009 12:16 UK

Film bluffing: Your crib sheets

Following our guide to bluffing your way through six classic films, a selection of your own crib sheets on how to pretend you've seen something you haven't.

Our selection was Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Gone With the Wind and The Great Escape. Here are 10 more summarised by readers.

Warning: Plot details are revealed below.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is set in a dystopian world full of criminal youths

In a line: Set in a dystopian future, a sociopathic Beethoven fan undergoes aversion therapy to lessen the prison sentence for murder and attempted rape.

Plot summary: Based on the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess. We follow the narrator, 15-year-old, psychopathic, classical music-loving Alex as he describes his love for Beethoven's 9th and ultraviolence. He eventually runs afoul of the law and is sentenced to prison where he volunteers for aversion therapy in exchange for early release. The therapy makes Alex nauseous when exposed to violent situations, a reaction also triggered by Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Buzzword bingo: Ultraviolence, horrorshow, droog.

Key line: "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!"

Key scene: Alex strapped to a cinema chair, his eyes propped open with metal clamps, forced to watch footage of Hitler, begins screaming in absolute horror as it dawns on him the soundtrack is his beloved Ludwig Van.

Submitted by Entheomancer, Monague, Canada

CASABLANCA
Casablanca
Casablanca features a piano player called Sam... as in "Play it again, Sam"

In a line: Romance, intrigue and war in a city where everyone wants to escape, but no one can leave.

Plot summary: Rick has a cool indifference nearly legendary in Casablanca under the Nazi-sympathising Vichy government. But the murder of two Nazis and theft of their exit visas, before the arrival of a wanted resistance leader and Rick's old flame, not only intensifies the city's unrest, but forces Rick to reconcile the man he was with the one he has become.

Buzzword bingo: La Marseillaise, letters of transit, propaganda, film noir

Key lines: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

"We'll always have Paris."

"Colonel Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects."

"Here's looking at you, kid."

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Key scene: Nazi officers start singing a German patriotic song. Laszlo asks the band to play the French national anthem. Upon Rick's permission they start playing it and follow Laszlo, drowning out the Nazis.

Submitted by Nadja, Boston, USA, and Sushant Joshi, Delhi, India, and Fred Cairns, Bourne End, Bucks, UK


EMPIRE OF THE SUN

In a line: Poor little rich kid defies the odds to survive WWII occupied China.

Plot summary: Young aristocrat Jim Graham is separated from his family when the Japanese invade China. Armed with only boyish charm and his insatiable curiosity, he struggles to survive as he finds his way to an internment camp where he finds admiration for the captured American pilots and their Japanese counterparts.

Buzzword bingo: Internment, survivalist, occupation.

Key lines: Learned a new word today. Atom bomb. It was like God taking a photograph.

Key scene: Mrs Victor dies in the night, and the next morning Jim looks up eastward to see the light pulse from the Hiroshima bomb - and takes it to be Mrs Victor's soul travelling to Heaven.

Submitted by The Lost Packet, Nottingham

THE GRAPES OF WRATH
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is set in the US depression of the 1930s

In a line: Evicted farmers go through hell to get to the other side.

Plot summary: During the Dustbowl in the 30s, a family of American Mid-western farmers evicted from their land heads west to the promised land of California for work, and find out the hard way that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

Buzzword bingo: Wagons, ranch, labour.

Key line: "Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man than a live one."

Key scene: Arriving in a migrant camp on the way to California, the family is forced to consider that their future is not as bright as they had hoped.

Submitted by Campbell Moore, Ottawa, Canada

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

In a line: Wrongly convicted prisoner makes friends, and enemies, with a view to redemption.

Plot summary: Andy Dufresne, convicted of two murders, is sentenced to life in Shawshank. Making friends with Red he goes about finding hope where there is none.

Buzzword bingo: Hope, redemption, justice.

Key line: "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."

"Hope, is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing really dies."

Key scene: After decades of planning and much toil Andy reaches the outside and throws his hands in to the falling rain now that he is finally free.

Submitted by Stephen, Cardiff and Joanne Lancaster, Rhymney, Gwent

APOCALYPSE NOW
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is inspired by Conrad, Frazer, Weston and Eliot

In a line: Vietnam War epic, loosely based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Plot summary: A troubled, special forces veteran embarks upon a river trip with a motley crew of drug users and surf champions to kill a rogue colonel who has deserted his post to run a private army behind enemy lines.

Buzzword bingo: AirCav, Huey, Naam, Nung River.

Key lines: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

"Charlie don't surf."

Key scene: A fleet of Air Cavalry attack helicopters swoops in on Viet Cong beach positions, playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries over their broadcast systems.

Submitted by Dick Evans, Letchworth, Hertfordshire

TWELVE ANGRY MEN
12 Angry Men
The 12 men in question are the jury in this tense courtroom drama

In a line: A sole juror turns around a jury bent on convicting a young boy of murder

Plot summary: A jury are sent out to deliberate on a murder trial. All are sure the boy committed the murder except Juror Number 8. By analysing what was said in the trial, one by one the jurors change their mind to not guilty.

Buzzword bingo: Prejudice, justice, switchblades.

Key line: "You don't really mean you'll kill me do you?"

Key scene: The key piece of evidence is that the murder weapon is a very unusual knife bought by the boy earlier on the day of the murder. This fact alone seems to prove the boy's guilt until Juror Number 8 produces an identical knife from his pocket and sticks it in the table next to the murder weapon.

Submitted by Paul Matthews, Hastings, East Sussex.

THE THIRD MAN
The Third Man
The Third Man is a tale of intrigue in post-war Vienna

In a line: Black marketeer on the run from the occupying forces in post-war Vienna.

Plot summary: Down-at-heel writer Holly Martins has offer of work in Vienna from old friend Harry Lime. Unbeknown to Martins, Lime is a big-time black marketeer whose doctored penicillin has killed several sick children. Martins reluctantly joins the hunt, and falls for Lime's girl Anna at the same time. Film's climax takes place appropriately in Vienna's sewers.

Buzzword bingo: Stark, uncompromising.

Key line: "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Key scene: Lime and Martins' confrontation on the fairground Ferris Wheel.

Submitted by John Bedigan, North Shields, England

ALIEN
Alien
Alien is, well, about an alien

In a line: Ultimate parasite hitches a lift on a space freighter.

Plot summary: Intergalactic miners are wakened from their hypersleep by a distress signal from a planet they pass. They investigate and find a mummified craft with egg-like structures. One of the miners gets a crab-cum-hand thing attached to his face. It disappears as mysteriously as it attached itself but later, something suddenly bursts through the host's gut after a meal. It proceeds to eliminate everyone on board with the help of an android crew member.

Buzzword bingo: Hypersleep, parasite, molecular acid, cryogenics.

Key line: "It's a robot. Ash is a god damn robot."

Key scene: Ripley has managed to escape to the shuttle but has forgotten Jonesy the cat. She just has to go back and get it.

Submitted by Brian Gunn, Muscat, Oman

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
2001
2001: A Space Odyssey charts the ascent of man

In a line: Computer goes mad on space mission and kills everyone.

Plot summary: Monkeys throw a bone in the air because of a black slab. We find a black slab on the moon and near Jupiter and send astronauts to go investigate. They all die, and it takes forever. In three separate scenes, Kubrick takes us from four million years ago to the near future in a spectacularly photographed depiction of man's first meeting with aliens. No explanation is given to the audience of the technicalities of the plot, and much of the action involves no words, leading many to reject Kubrick's masterpiece as too confusing.

Buzzword bingo: Masterful, trippy, slow.

Key lines: "I just can't do that Dave."

Key scene: Dave, the last astronaut alive slowly switches off the computer, Hal, as it asks him to stop in a memorable calm clear voice.

Submitted by Sue, Huntingdon, UK and T Massingham, Gloucester



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