TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you will be shown an extract from a movie plot. You need to read the extract and create questions that can be answered from the extract. The questions should be well-formed and grammatically correct. The questions should be completely answerable from the given passage and should not require any external knowledge. Subjective questions are not allowed. Create questions that result in factoid answers. A simple rule of thumb to decide whether a question is factoid or not is to see if two different people with average reading/comprehension skills would come up with the same answer after reading the passage.
PROBLEM: In 1893 London, popular writer Herbert George Wells (Malcolm McDowell) displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests. After he explains how it works (including a "non-return key" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a "vaporizing equalizer" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms), police constables arrive at the house searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to one of Herbert's friends, a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), leads them to conclude that Stevenson might be the infamous killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.Stevenson has escaped to the future, but because he does not have the "non-return" key, the machine automatically returns to 1893. Herbert uses it to pursue Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine has ended up on display at a museum in San Francisco. He is deeply shocked by the future, having expected it to be an enlightened socialist utopia, only to find chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a worldwide history of war, crime and bloodshed.Reasoning that Stevenson would need to exchange his British money, Herbert asks about him at various banks. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets liberated employee Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who says she had directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel.Confronted by his one-time friend Herbert, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society to be pleasingly violent, stating: "Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Now... I'm an amateur." Herbert demands he return to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson instead attempts to wrest the time machine's return key from him. Their struggle is interrupted and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase on foot. Herbert follows him to the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room and mistakenly gets the impression that Stevenson has died from his injuries.Herbert meets up with Amy Robbins again and she initiates a romance. Stevenson returns to the bank to exchange more money. Suspecting that it was Amy who had led Herbert to him, he finds out where she lives. Herbert, hoping to convince her of the truth, takes a highly skeptical Amy three days into the future. Once there, she is aghast to see a newspaper headline revealing her own murder as the Ripper's fifth victim.Herbert persuades her that they must go back â it is their duty to attempt to prevent the fourth victim's murder, then prevent Amy's. However, they are delayed upon their return to the present and can do no more than phone the police. Stevenson kills again, and Herbert is arrested because of his knowledge of the killing. Amy is left alone, totally defenseless, and at the mercy of the "San Francisco Ripper."While Herbert unsuccessfully tries to convince the police of Amy's peril, she attempts to hide from Stevenson. When the police finally do investigate her apartment, they find the dismembered body of a woman. The police release a broken-hearted Wells. However, he is contacted by Stevenson, who has actually killed Amy's coworker and taken Amy hostage in order to extort the time machine key from Wells.Stevenson flees with the key â and Amy as insurance â to attempt a permanent escape in the time machine. While Herbert bargains for Amy's life, she is able to escape. As Stevenson starts up the time machine, Herbert removes the "vaporizing equalizer" from it. As Herbert had explained earlier, this causes the machine to remain in place while its passenger is sent travelling endlessly through time, with no way to stop; in effect he is destroyed.Herbert proclaims that the time has come to return to his own time, in order to destroy a machine that is he now knows is too dangerous for primitive mankind. Amy pleads with him to take her along (despite the repressed lifestyle she will face in Victorian England). As they depart to the past, she says that she is changing her name to Susan B. Anthony. The end credits reveal that the two later married.

SOLUTION: What year was it?

PROBLEM: Max Renn (James Woods) is the president of CIVIC-TV (Channel 83, Cable 12), a Toronto UHF television station specializing in sensationalistic programming. Displeased with his station's current lineup (which mostly consists of softcore pornography and gratuitous violence), Max is looking for something that will break through to a new audience. One morning, he is summoned to the clandestine office of Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), who operates CIVIC-TV's unauthorized satellite dish which can intercept broadcasts from as far away as Asia. Harlan shows him Videodrome, a plotless television show apparently being broadcast out of Malaysia which depicts the brutal torture and eventual murder of anonymous victims in a reddish-orange chamber. Believing this to be the future of televisionâ(staged) snuff TVâMax orders Harlan to begin unlicensed use of the show. Appearing on a talk show, Max defends his station's programming choices to Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a sadomasochistic psychiatrist and radio host, and Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), a pop-culture analyst and philosopher who will only appear on television if his image is broadcast into the studio, onto a television, from a remote location. O'Blivion delivers a speech prophesying a future in which television supplants real life.Max dates Nicki, who is sexually aroused when he shows her an episode of Videodrome and coaxes him into having sex with her while they watch it. Max goes once again to Harlan's office, where Harlan tells him that the signal delay which caused it to appear to be coming from Malaysia was a ploy by the broadcaster and that Videodrome is being broadcast out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Max tells Nicki this and she excitedly goes to Pittsburgh to try and audition for the show under the guise of a business trip, but never returns. Max contacts Masha (Lynne Gorman), a softcore pornographer, and asks her to help him find out the truth about Videodrome. Through Masha, Max learns that not only is the footage in Videodrome not faked, but it is the public "face" of a political movement. Masha further informs him that O'Blivion knows about Videodrome.Max tracks down O'Blivion's office to The Cathode Ray Mission, a mission where homeless people are provided food, shelter, and clothing, and encouraged to engage in marathon sessions of television viewing. He discovers the mission is run by O'Blivion's daughter, Bianca (Sonja Smits), with the goal of helping to bring about her father's vision of a world in which television replaces every aspect of everyday life. Later, Max views a videotape in which O'Blivion informs him that "the Videodrome" is a socio-political battleground in which a war is being fought for control of the minds of the people of North America. Shortly thereafter, Max begins experiencing disturbing hallucinations in which his torso transforms into a gaping hole that functions as a VCR. Bianca tells him these are side-effects from having viewed Videodrome, which carries a malicious broadcast signal that causes the viewer to develop a malignant brain tumour. O'Blivion helped to create it as part of his vision for the future, but when he found out it was to be used for malevolent purposes, he attempted to stop his partners; they used his own invention to kill him. In the year before his death, O'Blivion recorded tens of thousands of videos, which now form the basis of his television appearances.Max is contacted by Videodrome's producer, the Spectacular Optical Corporation, an eyeglasses company that acts as a front for a NATO weapons manufacturer. The head of Spectacular Optical, Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson), has been secretly working with Harlan to get Max exposed to Videodrome and to have him broadcast it, as part of a conspiracy to morally and ideologically "purge" North America, giving fatal brain tumours to "lowlifes" fixated on extreme sex and violence. Convex then inserts a brainwashing video tape into the "VCR" in Max's torso. Under Convex's influence, Max murders his colleagues at CIVIC-TV, and later attempts to murder Bianca O'Blivion. Bianca manages to stop Max by 'reprogramming' him to turn against Videodrome. On her orders, Max kills Harlan and Convex. Afterwards, Max takes refuge on a derelict boat in an abandoned harbor, where Nicki appears to him on a television. She tells him he has weakened Videodrome, but in order to completely defeat it, he has to ascend to the next level and "leave the old flesh". The television then shows an image of Max shooting himself in the head, which causes the set to explode, splattering the deck of the ship with bloody, human intestines. Imitating what he has just seen on TV, Max says "Long Live the New Flesh", and then shoots himself.

SOLUTION: Who plays Brian o'blivion?

PROBLEM: Young Chris Chandler, a student at Drake University, gets a new roommate, Dan, and becomes friends with him. Meanwhile, the fraternities are pledging and a student said to have been interested in Doma Tau Omega is found dead on the campus.Chris, who has no high opinion of fraternities, gets to know a student of psychology, Megan, who invites him and Dan to a party of Doma Tau Omega, saying that she does not want to go there alone. However, when they arrive at the party, Chris seems to be interested only in the leader of DTO, Devon Eisley, and approaches him. After waiting for Chris a long time, Megan and Dan leave the party. Chris, meanwhile, is made drunk by Devon, who then makes him a member of DTO by drinking a bit of his blood while, in turn, Chris has to drink a bit of Devon's.Shortly after that, Chris is introduced to parties in the DTO house, where he and Devon drink blood from a girl called Sandy in a way reminiscent of sexual intercourse. Dan is unsettled by the change in Chris since joining the fraternity, and breaks into the DTO house. Investigating the book of DTO, Dan is shocked to find photos of Devon throughout the decades of the fraternity's history, completely unchanged. He persuades Megan to go with him to ChrisÂ´ room, which they find totally ravaged. They decide to look for Chris at the fraternity house.At the DTO house, Devon tells Chris that he lives eternally as long as he transforms his soul into a new body every century, and that this time, Chris would be the one whose body is used. The student found dead on campus was made to commit suicide, as he was afraid to participate in the ceremony and threatened to go public. Chris tries to flee but is knocked out by the other DTO members, Barry and Jordan. Dan and Megan try to enter the fraternity house, but their way is blocked by DTO member Mikhail who threatens them with an axe. Dan grabs the needle used by the fraternity members to get blood from their victims and thrusts in into Mikhail's neck, killing him.In the house, Dan and Megan meet Berry, Jordan, Devon and Chris, who are already beginning the ceremony. Megan reveals herself as a decoy who has worked for Devon over the last 70 years and was tasked with luring Chris. She threatens Dan with the axe, saying that she will kill him if Chris tries to resist the ritual. Chris stops fighting and kneels down in front of Devon. While everyone is concentrating on Chris, Dan suddenly breaks free of Megan. He takes the axe, and attacks Devon with it. Devon, the other fraternity members and Megan all die, leaving Chris and Dan standing amongst the carnage. Dan asks why Chris did not die, and Chris answers, "I told you I would never join a fraternity." The two leave the house.

SOLUTION:
Who invites Chris and Dan to a party?