The .net readership has always been fond of puns, so last month we did a contest to reward the best pun-maker with an iMac and Virtual Private Server from Heart Internet. Since it was Oscars week at the time, we asked you to come up with Oscars/web design puns. The terrible examples we gave you for inspiration were "Angular.js Lee", or "Death of a Shadow DOM".
We thought that picking a winner for this might be tricky, but fortunately one entry stood out from the rest: that of pun-master Nick Cernis who supplied no less than 10 web-design-themed film titles. Our favourite is "Who iframed Roger Rabbit", but "Firebugsy Malone" and "Doctype Zhivago" came close. Nick even came up with plots for each film, which we reproduce here in full, as they are fantastic.
1. "All Quiet on the WebKit Front"
Story: WebKit team starts world war with ultimatum: join us or die.
Ref: All Quiet on the Western Front, won Best Picture in 1930
2. "Firebugsy Malone"
Story: Gangster submits police to ruthless inspection and performance analysis.
Ref: Bugsy Malone, nominated for Best Music in 1976
3. "Doctype Zhivago"
Story: Russian poet woos ladies with loose doctype.
Ref: Doctor Zhivago, won Best Music, Cinematography, and Writing in 1965
4. "Journey to the Center of the href"
Story: Brave band of developers search for truth and typos in a really long link.
Ref: Journey to the Center of the Earth, nominated for Best Effects, Sound, Art Direction in 1960
5. "Website Story"
Story: Musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Two developers attempt unpopular merge and meet terrible conflict.
Ref: West Side Story, won Best Picture (and 9 others) in 1962
6. "Who iframed Roger Rabbit"
Story: Web designer works to free animated bunny wrongly imprisoned in iframe.
Ref: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, won Best Effects and Film Editing in 1989
7. "IE6 Age"
Story: Horror movie set in 2002. Three web designers fight to escape dominant, marauding browser on journey to promised land.
Ref: Ice Age, nominated for Best Animated Feature, 2003
8. "The Lord of The Shims: The Two Wrappers"
Story: Epic fantasy tale. Short fellow journeys to volcano to destroy USB stick holding hideous browser workarounds that suck life from all who wield them.
Ref: The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, won best Sound, Visual Effects in 2003
9. "Node Country for Old Men"
Story: Sleep-deprived JavaScript developer accidentally steals two million bitcoins from Texan webhost when restarting node.js app.
Ref: No Country for Old Men, won Best Motion Picture (and 3 others) in 2008
10. "Browser Independence Day"
Story: Will Smith foils alien invasion by exploiting known browser vulnerability that remote host should have patched ages ago.
Ref: Independence Day, won Best Effects in 1997
Well done, Nick. Superb punning.
A notable mention (but no prize) also goes to the person who combined "Robert De Niro" and "responsive web design" to produce "Robsponsive Web De Signo". Yep.
