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: The film opens to the sound of a gramophone playing Axxon N, "the longest-running radio play in history". Meanwhile, a young prostitute, identified in the credits as the "Lost Girl", cries while watching television in a hotel room, following an unpleasant encounter with her client. The Lost Girlâs television displays a family of surrealistic anthropomorphic rabbits who speak in cryptic statements and questions. Occasionally, there are laugh track responses within these Rabbit scenes. These three elements become recurring motifs throughout Inland Empire.The main plot follows an actress named Nikki Grace (Dern), who has applied for a comeback role as Sue in a film entitled On High in Blue Tomorrows. The day before the audition, Nikki is visited by an enigmatic old woman (Zabriskie) who says she is her neighbor; she predicts that Nikki will get the role, and recounts two folk tales. One tells of a boy who, sparking a reflection after passing through a doorway, "caused evil to be born." The other tells of a girl who, wandering through an alleyway behind a marketplace, "discovers a palace." The old woman presses Nikki for details on her new film, asking whether the story is about marriage and involves murder. Nikki denies both, but her neighbor disagrees. Disregarding Nikki's offended response, the old woman comments on the confusion of time, claiming that were this tomorrow, Nikki would be sitting on a couch adjacent to them. The film then pans to where the neighbor is pointing, and we see Nikki and two girlfriends sitting on the couch. Her butler (Ian Abercrombie) walks into the living room with a phone call from her agent, announcing that she has won the role. Ecstatic, Nikki and her friends celebrate while her husband Piotrek (Peter J. Lucas) ominously surveys them from atop a nearby staircase.Some time later, Nikki and her co-star Devon Berk (Theroux) receive an interview on a talk show. The host (Ladd) asks them both whether they are having an affair, to which each of them respond negatively. Devon is warned by his entourage that Nikki is out of bounds, due to her husband's power and influence. Later, on the set being built for the film, Nikki and Devon rehearse a scene with the director, Kingsley Stewart (Irons). They are interrupted by a disturbance, but upon investigation Devon finds nothing. Shaken by the event, Kingsley confesses that they are shooting a remake of a German feature entitled 47. Production was abandoned after both leads were murdered, creating rumors of the film being cursed.Immersed in her character, while the film is being shot, "Sue" / Nikki appears to begin an affair with Devon / "Billy". A strange scene follows based on what the old woman had described: Nikki appears in a mysterious alley walking to her car, carrying a bag of groceries, but then she notices a door in the alley marked Axxon N, and enters. It leads her back to soundstage where the earlier rehearsal took place. She witnesses that rehearsal from across the roomââshe herself was what had interrupted it earlier. This time, when Devon seeks to discover who's observing them, she disappears from the rehearsal scene, and flees among the half-built backgrounds and into the house of a character named Smithy (possibly her husband in the film's story, but this is never made clear). Despite the set being merely a wooden facade, Nikki enters to find an illuminated suburban house inside. Devon looks through the windows, but sees only darkness, not hearing her frantic cries of his character's name, "Billy."At this point, the film takes a drastic stylistic turn. Various plotlines and scenes begin to entwine and complement each other. The chronological order is often confused or nonexistent. Inside the house, Nikki sees her husband (whether it's "Smithy" or Piotrek is unclear) in bed. Hiding from him, she enters a different room and encounters a troupe of prostitutes. One of the women advises her to burn a hole through silk with a cigarette and look through the hole. Nikki complies and witnesses several strange happenings, many of which seem to revolve around her, or alternate versions of herself.Prior to these scenes, the woman who plays Billyâs wife tells a policeman that she had been hypnotised to murder someone with a screwdriver, but finds the screwdriver embedded in her own side. A mysterious organization claims to have captives from Inland Empire. A parallel plotline involves Polish circus artists in the present day, as well as Polish prostitutes in ÅÃ³dÅº during the 1930s, who are confronted by strange pimps while murder permeates their city. Nikki, having become one of the group of present-day prostitutes, wanders the streets while her companions ask, "Who is she?" Both Nikki and her prostitutes frequently ask people to look at them and "say whether you've known me before." In a parallel plotline, Sue climbs the dark staircase behind a nightclub to deliver long monologues to an unidentified man touching upon her childhood sexual abuse, disastrous relationships, and retaliations. Her husband Smithy seems to be connected with both the pimps and the organization, and then is hired by a circus from Poland because he is said to be "good with animals." There is much talk of the Phantom, an elusive hypnotist. Convinced sheâs being stalked by a red-lipped man, Sue arms herself with a screwdriver.Finally, Sue walks down Hollywood Boulevard, and is startled to see her doppelgÃ¤nger across the street. Before Sue can investigate, Doris arrives and attempts to kill her, having been hypnotized by The Phantom. Sue is brutally stabbed in the stomach with her own screwdriver, causing her to stagger down the street and eventually collapse next to some homeless people on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. One woman remarks that Sue is dying, then proceeds to debate with another, younger homeless woman about taking a bus to Pomona. Her companion talks at length about a friend named Niko, a prostitute whose blond wig makes her look like a movie star, thus allowing her to walk through the rich district without drawing attention. The older woman comforts Sue by holding a lighter in front of her face until she finally dies, promising her "no more blue tomorrows." Off-camera, Kingsley yells "Cut!" and the camera pans back to show this has merely been a film scene.As the actors and film crew wrap for the next scene, Sue slowly arises, Nikki once more. Kingsley announces that her scenes for the film are complete. In a daze, Nikki wanders off set and into a nearby cinema, where she sees not only On High in Blue Tomorrowsâencompassing some of the subplots of the filmâbut events that are currently occurring. She wanders to the projection room, but finds an apartment building marked "Axxon N". Eventually, Nikki confronts the red-lipped man from earlier, now known to be the Phantom. She shoots him, which causes his face to morph first into a distorted copy of Nikki's own face, and then an even more distorted face bleeding from its mouth.Nikki flees into a nearby roomâRoom 47, which houses the rabbits on television, though she fails to see them. Elsewhere in the building, Nikki finds the Lost Girl, who has been watching and crying all along. The two women kiss, before Nikki fades away into the light along with the rabbits. The Lost Girl runs out of the hotel and into Smithy's house, where she happily embraces a man and child.Nikki is then seen back home, smiling at the old woman from the beginning of the film. The concluding scene takes place at her house, where she sits with many other people, among them Laura Harring, Nastassja Kinski, and Ben Harper. A one-legged woman who was mentioned in Sue's monologue looks around and says, "Sweet!" Niko, the girl with the blonde wig and monkey, can also be seen. The end credits roll over a group of women dancing to Nina Simone's "Sinner Man" while a lumberjack saws a log to the beat., Question: What is the name of Nikki's co-star?

SOLUTION: Answer: Devon Berk

PROBLEM: The aftermath of a Jigsaw game is discovered by a SWAT team. The victim, Troy, was meant to rip chains from his body in order to escape from a bomb. Lieutenant Daniel Rigg calls Detectives Mark Hoffman and Allison Kerry to the scene. Kerry, who is guilt-ridden over the disappearance of Eric Matthews, points out that the room's only exit was welded shut, breaking Jigsaw's modus operandi of giving his victims a chance to survive. That night, while reviewing the videotape, she is abducted and awakens in a harness that is hooked into her ribs. She manages to retrieve the key from a suspended beaker of acid and unlock it before the timer expires, but it tears her rib cage apart anyway, killing her.Now bedridden from cancer, John Kramer instructs Amanda Young to abduct Dr. Lynn Denlon from her hospital. She is brought to Kramer and instructed to keep him alive until the other victim has completed his game. As Kramer explains the rules, Amanda locks a collar around Lynn's throat that connects to Kramer's heart rate monitor and will detonate if Kramer dies or Lynn moves out of range. The other victim, Jeff, awakens in a box in an abandoned meatpacking plant and learns from a microcassette recorder that he must undergo tests which will lead him to "the man responsible for the loss of his child". Jeff has become unstable and vengeful in the three years since his son Dylan was killed by a drunk driver, and is now estranged from his wife and neglects his daughter Corbett.Jeff's first test leads him into a meat freezer. He finds Danica Scott, the only witness of Dylan's death, who refused to testify in court; she is naked and chained at the wrists between two poles which begin spraying ice-cold water at random intervals. She manages to convince Jeff to help her, but freezes to death before he can retrieve the key. His second test leads him to a vat, at the bottom of which Judge Halden, who gave Dylan's killer six months in jail, is chained at the neck. The vat slowly fills with liquefied pig corpses, but Jeff reluctantly incinerates Dylan's belongings in order to retrieve the key and save Halden. His third test brings him before Timothy Young, Dylan's killer, who is strapped to a machine that will twist his limbs and neck in turn until they break. The key is tied to the trigger of an enclosed shotgun. Jeff eventually tries to free Timothy, but taking the key discharges the shotgun and accidentally kills Halden, and Jeff is unable to stop the machine before Timothy's neck breaks.During an improvised surgery, in which Lynn removes a piece of Kramer's skull to relieve pressure on his brain, he hallucinates about another woman and declares his love out loud, distressing Amanda. She leaves, and flashbacks show her time with Kramer, as well as her abduction of Adam, which left her guilt-ridden to the point she gave him a mercy killing out of guilt some time after his game. In the present, she reads a letter addressed to her which drives her to hysterics. As Lynn confesses to Kramer that her ordeal has given her new appreciation of her family, Amanda returns with the news that Jeff has completed his tests, but refuses to remove Lynn's collar. She reveals that she no longer believes in Kramer's philosophy, and has designed her traps simply to kill, including Troy's and Kerry's. She also fought with Eric Matthews after he escaped the bathroom by breaking his foot; she implies killing him, but Kramer believes she left him to die.Refusing to listen to Kramer's warnings, Amanda shoots Lynn in the back just as Jeff arrives. He retaliates by shooting Amanda in the neck with a gun provided by Kramer during his tests. As Amanda slowly dies, Kramer reveals that Lynn's test was actually hers: aware of her modus operandi, and unwilling to allow a murderer to inherit his legacy, he decided to test "her will to keep someone alive"; to this end, he told her nothing about Jeff and Lynn, including their marriage. Kramer then addresses Jeff, offering to call an ambulance for Lynn if he accepts one final test: he can choose to kill Kramer or forgive him. Jeff tells Kramer he forgives him, but then slashes his throat with a power saw. The door to the sickroom seals itself as a dying Kramer plays a final tape, which tells Jeff that he has failed his test by killing Kramer, the only person who knows Corbett's whereabouts; to save her, Jeff must play another game. The tape ends as Kramer dies, and the collar promptly detonates and kills Lynn, leaving a screaming Jeff trapped in the sickroom with the three corpses., Question: What does Amanda put around Lynn's throat?

SOLUTION: Answer: Collar

PROBLEM: Note: This synopsis may be too short to form a synopsis. Please add to it.When a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces returns to his small hometown in rural Washington State hoping to realize a childhood dream of working in the local lumber mill, he discovers that much has changed, as the normally tranquil town is now besieged by drugs, outbreaks of violence and a general feeling of malaise and terror, with many pointing a finger at the influence of a crooked casino where his ex-girlfriend now works as a dancer. Seeking to wreak vengeance, with a four-foot-long 4-by-4 in his hand, and righteousness in his heart, the highly-trained soldier, now the county's sheriff, and his deputy, realizes it's time to bust some heads with a very hard piece of wood., Question: Where does the movie take place?

SOLUTION:
Answer: Washington state