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: David (Maguire) and his twin sister Jennifer (Witherspoon) lead different high-school social lives. Jennifer is shallow and extroverted; David is introverted and spends most of his time watching television. One evening while their mother, Sherry (Jane Kaczmarek), is away, they fight over the TV. Jennifer wants to watch a concert on MTV, but David wants to watch a marathon of Pleasantville, a black and white 1950s sitcom about the idyllic Parker family, who live in the squeaky-clean suburb of Pleasantville, Iowa. During the fight, the remote control breaks, and the TV cannot be turned on manually.A mysterious TV repairman (Knotts) shows up, quizzes David about Pleasantville, then gives him a strange remote control. The repairman leaves, and David and Jennifer resume fighting. However, they are then transported by the remote into the Parkers' black and white Pleasantville living room in 1958. David tries to reason with the repairman (with whom he communicates through the Parkers' television), but he succeeds only in chasing him away. With the remote no longer functioning, David and Jennifer must now pretend they are Bud and Mary Sue Parker, the son and daughter on the show.David and Jennifer witness the wholesome nature of the town, such as a group of firemen who only rescue cats stuck in trees, as there are no fires to fight. David tells Jennifer they must stay in character and not disrupt the lives of the town's citizens, who do not notice any difference between Bud and Mary Sue, and David and Jennifer. To keep the show's plot Jennifer dates a boy from high school, but, due to her impatience, Jennifer skips all forms of storybook romance and has sex with himâa concept unknown to him and everyone else in town.Slowly, Pleasantville begins changing from black and white to color, including flowers and the faces of people who have experienced bursts of emotion and personal transformation (usually through sex). Though against Jennifer's disruption at first, David eventually joins in when he begins to see the shows characters as real people and not just avatars. David introduces Mr. Johnson (Daniels), owner of the cheeseburger joint/soda shop where Bud works, to colorful modern art via a book from the library, sparking in him an interest in painting. Johnson and Betty Parker (Allen) fall in love, causing her to leave home, throwing George Parker (Macy), Bud and Mary Sue's father, into confusion. The only people who remain unchanged are the town's fathers, led by the mayor, Big Bob (Walsh in his final performance), who sees the changes eating at the values of Pleasantville. They resolve to do something about their increasingly independent wives and rebellious children.As the townsfolk become more colorful, a ban on "colored" people is initiated in public venues. Eventually, a riot is touched off by a nude painting of Betty (painted by Johnson) on the window of Mr. Johnson's soda shop. The soda shop is destroyed, books are burned, and people who are "colored" are harassed in the street. As a reaction, the town fathers announce rules preventing people from visiting the library, playing loud music, or using paint other than black, white, or gray. In protest, David and Mr. Johnson paint a colorful mural on a brick wall, depicting their world, prompting their arrest. Brought to trial in front of the town, David and Mr. Johnson defend their actions, and their passion begins to influence the non-colored members of the population into becoming colored. David also eventually arouses enough anger and indignation in Big Bob that the mayor becomes colored as well. The mayor runs off, effectively ending the segregation.With Pleasantville and its populace now in full color, Jennifer and David both reflect on how their actions in changing Pleasantville have changed their own views on how they perceive the real world and their place in it, noting that it had been far more difficult for them to become colorful as opposed to the other townsfolk, and the circumstances that eventually allowed them to. Jennifer stays to finish her education, citing that her poor academic record in the real world would not allow for college. David uses the remote control, now working again, to return to the real world, and surprises his mother with his newfound maturity. The mysterious TV repairman, who had been outside the house in his truck the whole time, smiles as he drives away., Question: What is the concept the town does not know about?

SOLUTION: Answer: sex

PROBLEM: In a cheap motel near Peckham California, a maid discovers a man's corpse in one of the rooms. The dead man, Professor Grabowski, is associated with the Brandt Research center, and an autopsy reveals he died of a massive coronary during sexual intercourse. Another similar death is discovered almost immediately, this time a younger man. This causes the federal government to send in Agent Neil Agar (William Smith) to get to the bottom of things. He gets the background on the deaths by consulting with local police captain Peters.In the small town the Brandt Facility is doing research with genetics and atomic power. Grabowski's assistant, Julie Zorn (Victoria Vetri), becomes Agar's contact in the investigation. More men turn up dead of sexual exhaustion, including a 21 year old man, and the locals become highly agitated. It seems there are a lot of aggressive male types in Peckham, and Julie tells Neil that the scientists at Brandt are no different than the others, preoccupied with sex and enjoying a promiscuous lifestyle that includes partner-swapping. Other Brandt luminaries are not so fortunate, such as geneticist Stan Williams, whose wife treats him in a cold and shrewish manner.When Brandt's Dr. Murger suggests that he has a theory about the strange deaths, he is subsequently run down by a car, driven by an unseen person. When Agar investigates, he discovers that Murger had a male lover and was not interested in women sexually at all. The socially distant Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford), who is in charge of some mysterious research in bee culture, becomes a key suspect for Agar. Harris makes a move on Brandt scientist Herb Kline, inviting him over to her house, seducing him, and having sex with him. During intercourse, her eyes suddenly turn completely black, and Kline suffers a fatal heart attack just like the other men. After Kline's death, his wife receives a phone call from an unidentified female, luring her to Dr. Harris's lab, where Harris and a number of other women overpower her and force her through a strange process where she is stripped nude, covered in a mysterious substance, and placed in a chamber adjacent to a colony of bees, which cover her. Harris has a large machine setup that bombards her female victims with radiation, transforming them into women who have the ability to kill men by having sex with them.The next day, Captain Peters goes to visit Mrs. Kline to inform her of her husband's death, but instead of reacting with grief, she becomes sexually aggressive and attempts to seduce him. Fortunately, he leaves. Stan Williams isn't so lucky; his recently transformed wife seduces him and manages to kill him. In an ironic twist, he strangles her as he dies and they both wind up dead. Agar manages to piece the puzzle together himself, but before he can apprehend Dr. Harris, she lures Julie into her lab and begins the transformation process on her. Agar arrives in time to stop the procedure, firing a bullet into Harris's machine and breaking it. The lab begins to explode, and the bee girls slowly die, including Dr. Harris. The film ends as Agar and Julie begin a romantic interlude., Question: Which character is in charge of the mysterious research?

SOLUTION: Answer: Dr. Susan Harris

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 does the girl in the second folk tale discover?

SOLUTION:
Answer: a palace