TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you will be shown an extract from a movie plot and a question. You need to provide the correct answer for it. Short answers containing words that are present in the passage are preferred.
PROBLEM: Corbett stars as Matt Andrews, a geologist who is asked to investigate why there have been two large sinkholes affecting the city of New Orleans. Jessica Steen plays his girlfriend Allison Beauchamp, assistant to the Mayor, who has to decide whether the problems with the sinkholes will spread far enough to require that the remainder of Mardi Gras be cancelled, which would be an economic disaster to the city.Matt has a number of personal issues because of a disaster which happened at a mine he was advising on its operations. Although cleared of responsibility for the accident, he still blames himself, which may be causing him to be overcautious. Matt admits the potential problem of the sinkholes becoming so serious as to endanger the city could occur next week, or not for three hundred years. Based on the lack of real evidence of immediate danger, and because some evidence that she should have received has been destroyed by the mayor's political flack, Allison has decided not to close the festival, only to have the disaster metastasize, like a cancer devouring the city's underground.The only answer is to obtain a binary liquid which when combined produces a foam that will fill the huge sinkhole cavern. The foam will expand to hundreds of times its size, and becomes as hard as concrete. Due to an emergency, while Matt is underground inspecting the caverns, he becomes partially trapped, and has to ask to have the foam started (which will kill him if he can't find an escape) because if they don't start the flow of the liquid immediately, the ground underneath downtown New Orleans will collapse similar to the effects of soil liquefaction and thousands to tens of thousands of people will be injured or killed. The last few minutes of the film become a race against time as Matt attempts to find an exit before the foam overwhelms him.The film points to an event that would happen five years after the movie was made. Matt points out the sinkholes, if they do fail and open up, could be as serious a disaster to the city as if its levees collapsed, an event that did happen as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005., Question: What celebration is taking place during the movie?

SOLUTION: Answer: Mardi Gras

PROBLEM: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigators arrive in the San Fernando Valley after what appears to be a flying saucer crash, causing massive interference with tele-radio transmissions. During their investigation, they receive eyewitness reports of what appears to be a man dressed in a bizarre outfit, which appears to be radioactive and thus a public threat.Their investigation uncovers this man is actually a humanoid creature from outer space, who is invisible without his suit. They start a massive manhunt for the radioactive invisible alien running loose.The action culminates in Los Angeles where the invisible alien has been tracked. He becomes trapped inside the famous Griffith Observatory. The woman lab assistant discovers that he can be seen using ultraviolet light. The alien attempts to communicate by tapping out a code, but no one can understand the code. Now breathing heavily because his breathing gas reserves are running low, he is trapped high-up on the Griffith telescope's upper platform. Because he can no longer survive without his breathing gas, he falters and then falls to his death. His body briefly becomes visible before completely evaporating, Question: who attempts to communicate by tapping out a code, but no one can understand the code?

SOLUTION: Answer: the alien

PROBLEM: Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. With the impending departure of star players Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, Beane needs to assemble a competitive team for 2002, but must overcome Oakland's limited payroll.During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand, a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess players' value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted him (out of high school), Beane having been a Major League player before becoming general manager. Though scouts considered Beane a phenomenal prospect, his career in the Major Leagues was disappointing. After some prodding, Brand admits that he would not have drafted him until the ninth round and surmised that Beane would probably have accepted a scholarship to Stanford instead. Impressed, Beane hires the inexperienced Brand to be the Athletics assistant general manager.Oakland team scouts are first dismissive and then hostile towards Brand's non-traditional sabermetric approach to scouting players. Most notably, Grady Fuson aggressively confronts Beane, causing him to be fired. Grady then takes to the radio airwaves and doubts the team's future. Rather than relying on the scouts' experience and intuition, Brand selects players based almost exclusively on their on-base percentage (OBP). Beane signs the ones Brand suggests, such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford, past-his-prime outfielder David Justice, and injured Scott Hatteberg. Beane also faces opposition from Art Howe, the Athletics' manager, who does not agree with the new philosophy. With tensions already high between the two due to a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane's and Brand's strategy and plays a lineup he prefers.Early in the season, the Athletics fare poorly, leading critics to dismiss the new method as a failure. Beane convinces the owner to stay the course. He trades away the lone traditional first baseman, Carlos PeÃ±a, to force Howe to use Hatteberg at that position, threatening to make similar deals if Howe won't cooperate. The A's win 19 consecutive games, tying for the longest winning streak in American League history. Beane's young daughter implores him to go to a game against the Kansas City Royals, where Oakland is already leading 11â0 after the third inning and appears set to win a record-breaking 20th game in a row. Like many baseball players, Beane is superstitious and avoids games in progress, but upon hearing how well the game is going on the radio, he decides to go. Beane arrives in the fourth inning, only to watch the team falter and eventually allow the Royals to even the score at 11. Finally, the A's do win, on a walk-off home run by Hatteberg.After celebrating that, however, the A's again lose in the postseason, this time to the Minnesota Twins. Beane is disappointed, believing nothing short of a championship should be considered a success. He is contacted by the owner of the Boston Red Sox, who realizes that the sabermetric model is the future of baseball. Beane declines an opportunity to be GM of the Red Sox, despite the $12.5 million salary, which would have made him the highest-paid general manager in sports history. He returns to Oakland, while an epilogue reveals that two years later, the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, using the model pioneered by the Athletics., Question: Who disregards Beane's and Brand's strategy?

SOLUTION:
Answer: Howe