I love movies.

I love words.

I love mind games.

One day, the three passions simultaneously converged and an idea sprang to my mind.

The concept of „acrostic” appeared from the back of my mind – a type of poem or prose, in which the first letter (sometimes, the first syllable) of each line forms a message vertically.

What if I could describe a movie in one phrase arranged as an acrostic, starting from the very letters of its title?

I tried with one and, after some mental torment, it worked. Later, I tried with another and it worked slightly better. I continued and I couldn’t stop thinking and finding other movies to condense in haiku-like descriptions that follow their titles.

Now, I am challenging you to do the same. I am giving you 101 titles and I want you to condense their subject, quality or meaning as acrostics.

This is why the book is structured into three parts.

PART I consists in blank challenges, movies spanning from the beginning of cinema until present, with some basic info (for which I am extremely grateful to the people from www.imdb.com), about years of release, directors and actors.

Your mission will be to compose the acrostics from scratch.

For example, let’s take the wonderful noir movie LAURA (1944), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price and Judith Anderson.

The blank version of the acrostic will look like this:

L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

U _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

PART II can appeal both to those who encounter difficulties in solving some of the acrostics and to those who want an extra challenge, as the acrostics will have two or three lines (depending on the title length) already filled by me.

For example, the acrostic for the same movie I mentioned above would look like this:

L _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A detective falls

U _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Radiated by

A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

PART III consists of my far-from-perfect solutions to the same acrostics and, taken separately, can be read as an anthology of movies in a nutshell.

So this is how the acrostic corresponding to LAURA would look like:

Looking for facts,

A detective falls

Under the spell

Radiated by

A presumed victim.

As for the titles I chose, they vary from old to new, from Oscar winning and nominated creations to action flicks or light romantic comedies, from cult movies to funny animation movies. Hollywood dominates the list, but it is accompanied by foreign masterpieces which usually find their place in any encyclopaedia dedicated to this art.

The titles are not very long, because the resulting acrostic must be just one phrase. Imagine trying to work on DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. Rather discouraging, isn’t it?

Your minds will be stretched in more than just one direction.

You will have to summarize the movie so as to match the number of letters you have.

You will have to understand the essence of a movie, as some don’t have such a straightforward narrative (see THE FOUNTAIN).

You will have to find the proper grammatical category with the proper letter.

You will have to think as an advertising specialist or as a journalist writing headlines or as an abstract poet.

You will have to manage either too few resources or too many (i.e. letters).

But I am positively sure you will have at least as much fun as I had.