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: It is Christmas 1911 and Arthur Winslow, a retired London banker, is making final preparations for a dinner to seal the engagement between his daughter Catherine, an outspoken supporter of the controversial cause of women's suffrage, and Captain John Watherstone. The family and guests are toasting the upcoming marriage when Arthur discovers that his youngest son Ronnie, a 13-year old cadet at the Royal Naval College at Osbourne, is unexpectedly home. Ronnie has been accused of the theft of a postal order. An internal enquiry, conducted without notice to his family and without benefit of representation, finds him guilty and Mr. Winslow is "requested to withdraw" his son from the college (the formula of the day for expulsion). Ronnie proclaims his innocence and his father believes himenough so that he demands an apology from the College. When the college refuses to reinstate Ronnie, Arthur decides to take the matter to court. With the help of his daughter and Desmond Curry, a solicitor and friend of the family, Mr. Winslow decides to hire the most highly sought after barrister in England at the time, Sir Robert Morton, known also to be a shrewd opposition Member of Parliament.The government is unwilling to allow the case to proceed. The Naval College is a representative of the Admiralty and the Crown, and as such British law presumes they are infallible and above question; their judgment can be legally questioned only with the permission of the Attorney General. However, after heated debates in the House of Commons, the government yields, and the case does come to court.Catherine had expected Sir Robert to decline the case, or at best to treat it as a political tool; instead, he is coolly matter-of-fact about having been persuaded of Ronnie's innocence by his responses to questioning (in fact, a form of cross-examination, to see how young Ronnie would hold up in court) in the presence of his family. Catherine, left-wing suffragette, is not so enthusiastic towards Morton who she considers too heartless for a case like this. Catherine is also disturbed by Sir Robert's establishment views: he is a conservative opponent of womens suffrage. "He always speaks out against what is right," she complains. However, she admires his legal skills. Morton on his part is obviously quite taken with her from the moment he glimpses her peering down at him from the ladies' gallery at the House of Commons.In the meantime, the case creates media hysteria and puts a heavy toll on the Winslow family their funds are rapidly depleted in order to cover legal expenses. Mr. Winslow's physical health deteriorates under the strain and the happiness of the Winslows' home is destroyed. Arthur's wife, Grace, begins to wonder if the real issue is justice or a father's stubborn and foolish pride. Forced to make economical sacrifices, Grace Winslow is unwilling to take the drastic measure of dismissing, Violet, who has been the familys maid for over twenty years. The eldest son, Dickie Winslow, has to leave Oxford due to the lack of money destroying his chance at a career in the Civil Service. Instead, he is compelled to find employment in his fathers bank. Catherine's marriage settlement is also gone. Her fiancé John Watherstone breaks off the engagement in the face of opposition from his father (an Army Colonel), forcing her to consider a sincere and well-intentioned offer of marriage from Desmond, whom she does not love. Sir Robert has also declined appointment as Lord Chief Justice, rather than drop the case. The least affected is Ronnie, who happily has been transferred to a new school.At trial, Sir Robert (working together with Desmond Curry and his firm) is able to discredit much of the supposed evidence. The Admiralty, certainly embarrassed and presumably no longer confident of Ronnie's guilt, abruptly withdraws all charges against him, proclaiming the boy entirely innocent.When their resounding victory arrives, not a single member of the Winslows family is present at court. It is Violet, the maid, who tells Mr. Winslow and Catherine what had happened at court. Shortly after, Sir Robert appears in the Winslowss home to share the good news. The film ends with a suggestion that romance may yet blossom between Sir Robert and Catherine, who acknowledges that she has misjudged him all along., Question: How long has Violet been a maid for the family?

SOLUTION: Answer: Twenty years

PROBLEM: As a boy, a reclusive and antisocial Sufferton resident, Max Seed, was disfigured in a school bus crash that killed everyone else involved in it. In 1973, Seed began torturing and murdering people, filming some of his victims starving to death in his locked basement, and ultimately racking up a bodycount of 666. In 1979, Seed is arrested by Detective Matt Bishop in a siege that claims the lives of five of Bishop's fellow officers. Seed is sentenced to death by electric chair, and incarcerated on an island prison, where he is a model inmate, only acting out when he kills three guards who try to rape him.On Seed's execution date, the electric chair fails to kill him after two shocks. Not wanting Seed to be released due to a state law that says any convicted criminal who survives three jolts of 15,000 volts each for 45 seconds walks, the prison staff and Bishop declare Seed dead and bury him alive in the prison cemetery. A few hours later, Seed digs his way out of his grave and returns to the prison, where he kills the executioner, doctor, and warden before swimming back to the mainland. The next day, while investigating the massacre, Bishop realizes Seed was responsible when he discovers the serial killer's empty cemetery plot.Over the course of several months Seed kills dozens of people, with one long shot showing him beating a bound woman with a lumberjack's axe for five straight minutes. One day, a videotape showing Bishop's house is sent to the detective's office. Knowing this means Seed is going to go after his family, Bishop races home, finding his wife, Sandy, and daughter, Emily, gone, and the four officers charged with guarding the house dismembered in the bathroom.Driving to Seed's old residence, Bishop is lured into a basement room containing a television and a video camera, and locked inside. The television turns on, and depicts Seed with Sandy and Emily. Emily informs Bishop that Seed wants Bishop to shoot himself. When Bishop hesitates, Seed kills Sandy with a nail gun, prompting Bishop into shooting himself in the head, believing that doing so will make Seed release his daughter. Instead, Seed takes the daughter to the room containing her father's corpse, and locks her in it. As Emily sobs for her parents, the film ends., Question: How many police officers were dismembered?

SOLUTION: Answer: four

PROBLEM: In 1846, Benjamin Barker, a barber, arrives in London, accompanied by sailor Anthony Hope. Fifteen years earlier, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to penal transportation by the corrupt Judge Turpin, who lusted after Barker's wife Lucy. Barker adopts the alias "Sweeney Todd" and returns to his old Fleet Street shop, situated above Mrs. Nellie Lovett's meat pie shop. He learns that Turpin raped Lucy, who then poisoned herself with arsenic. The couple's daughter, Johanna, is now Turpin's ward, and is the object of Turpin's lust. Todd vows revenge, and re-opens his barber shop after Mrs. Lovett returns his straight razors to him. Anthony becomes enamored with Johanna, but is caught by Turpin and driven away by his corrupt associate, Beadle Bamford.Todd denounces faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli's hair tonic as a fraudulent mix and humiliates him in a public shaving contest. A few days later, Pirelli arrives at Todd's shop, with his boy assistant Tobias Ragg. Mrs. Lovett keeps Toby occupied while Pirelli identifies himself as Todd's former assistant, Davy Collins, and threatens to reveal Todd's secret unless Todd gives him half his earnings. Todd kills Collins to protect his secret, and hides his body in a trunk.After receiving advice from Bamford, Turpin, intending marriage to Johanna, visits Todd's shop for grooming. Todd shaves Turpin, preparing to slit his throat; they are interrupted by Anthony, who reveals his plan to elope with Johanna before noticing Turpin. Turpin leaves enraged and Todd vents his rage by killing customers while waiting for another chance to kill Turpin, and Mrs. Lovett bakes the victims into pies. Todd rigs his barber's chair with a pedal-operated mechanism that deposits his victims through a trapdoor into Mrs. Lovett's basement bakehouse. Anthony searches for Johanna, whom Turpin has sent to an insane asylum upon discovering her plans to elope with Anthony.The barbering and pie-making businesses prosper, and Mrs. Lovett takes Toby as her assistant. Mrs. Lovett tells an uninterested Todd of her plans to marry him and move to the seaside. Anthony discovers Johanna's whereabouts and, following Todd's suggestion, poses as a wigmaker's apprentice to rescue her. Todd has Toby deliver a letter to Turpin, telling him where Johanna will be brought when Anthony frees her. Toby has become wary of Todd and tells Mrs. Lovett of his suspicion.Bamford arrives at the pie shop, informing Mrs. Lovett that neighbors have been complaining of the stink from her chimney. He is distracted by Todd's offer of a free grooming and is murdered by Todd. Mrs. Lovett informs Todd of Toby's suspicions, and the pair search for Toby, whom Mrs. Lovett has locked in the bakehouse. He has hidden himself in the sewers after seeing Bamford's body drop into the room from the trapdoor above, as well as finding a human toe in a pie. Meanwhile, Anthony brings Johanna, disguised as a young sailor, to the shop, and has her wait there while he leaves to find a coach.A beggar woman enters the shop in search of Bamford, and Johanna hides in the trunk. She recognizes Todd, but upon hearing Turpin coming, Todd quickly kills her and sends her through the trapdoor. As Turpin enters, Todd explains that Johanna had repented and is coming to him, then offers a free shave in the meantime; as Turpin finally recognizes Todd as Benjamin Barker, Todd stabs him several times before cutting his throat and sending to the bakehouse as well. Johanna comes out of her hiding place still disguised as a boy, and Todd prepares to slit her throat as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. However, hearing Mrs. Lovett scream in horror in the basement as a dying Turpin grabs her dress, Todd lets Johanna go.Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife Lucy, whom he believed to be dead, and that Mrs. Lovett misled him about her death. Todd pretends to forgive her and dances with her before hurling her into the bakehouse oven, then cradles his wife's dead body in his arms. Toby climbs from the sewers and Todd allows Toby to slit his throat with his own razor. Toby leaves the basement as Todd bleeds to death over his dead wife., Question: Who raped Lucy?

SOLUTION:
Answer: Judge Turpin