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: In 1830's England, young medical student Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting), following the drowning death of his beloved brother, bitterly renounces God and vows to find the secret to creating life himself. He crosses paths with the eccentric Dr. Henry Clerval (David McCallum) who shares his quest and takes the younger Victor under his wing. When experiments in reanimating insects and a severed human arm succeed, the two prepare to bring to life a man whom they have assembled from body parts of victims of a mining accident. On the eve of their attempt, Henry discovers that the process will reverse itself and dies from heart failure before he can sufficiently warn Victor. Committed to carrying on his late friend's work, Victor forges ahead and brings to life a creature of incredible beauty and innocence (Michael Sarrazin). The two develop a close, affectionate relationship and Victor looks forward to presenting his creation to society as "the new Adam." Inevitably, the flaw in Clerval's procedure results in the grotesque distortion of the Creature's appearance, causing Victor to callously reject him. The Creature attempts suicide but to his dismay finds he can't be killed. He leaps from the White Cliffs of Dover, and Victor assumes he's seen the last of his bungled handiwork.The Creature, still very much alive, wanders the countryside and befriends an old blind man (Sir Ralph Richardson). He also develops an infatuation with his daughter Agatha (Jane Seymour) whom he observes in secret. In a tragic accident Agatha is killed, and the Creature brings her to his birthplace, seeking Victor's aid. Instead, he finds the lab has been taken over by Dr. Polidori (James Mason), a former colleague of Henry's.Victor meanwhile has moved on, returning his attention to his fiancee Elizabeth (Nicola Pagett) and attempting to live a normal life. His plan is thwarted by Polidori, who uses the Creature to forcibly enlist Victor's help in bringing yet another body to life, this time female. The result is Prima (also Jane Seymour), a stunning beauty with an evil, cold heart. Finding no further use for Victor's creature, Polidori locks him in his laboratory and sets it ablaze, while Victor stands by helplessly.Polidori grooms Prima and schemes to use her to gain entree into the cream of society and seats of political power. Prima's coming-out party is memorably cut short by the arrival of the uninvited Creature. Events come to a head when she viciously attacks him, inciting his jealousy and murderous rage.Their life in a shambles, Victor and Elizabeth charter a boat to escape to America, unknowingly accompanied by both Polidori and the Creature. After a storm and much violence only Victor and his Creature are left on the ship. Wishing to escape humanity, the Creature steers the ship toward the North Pole. Victor and the Creature confront each other for a final time in the Arctic wasteland., Question: Who has Victor's lab been taken over by?

SOLUTION: Answer: Dr. Polidori

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 news does Nikki get by her agent on the phone?

SOLUTION: Answer: she got the role

PROBLEM: While hunting in the Mesoamerican rainforest, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of refugees fleeing warfare. The group's leader explains that their lands were ravaged and they seek a new beginning. He asks for permission to pass through the jungle. Flint Sky comments to his son that the visitors were sick with fear, and urges him to never allow fear.At sunrise the next morning the tribe's village is raided by a group led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo). Huts are set on fire, many villagers are killed, including Flint Sky, and the rest of the adults are taken captive. Jaguar Paw's heavily pregnant wife Seven (Dalia HernÃ¡ndez) and their young son Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio BÃ¡ez) escape by hiding in a small natural pit cave that also serves as a water reservoir, but are left trapped when Jaguar Paw is captured. The raiders then lead the captives on a long forced march through the jungle, having left the children behind to fend for themselves.On the journey Cocoa Leaf (Israel RÃ­os), a badly wounded captive, is killed by the sadistic Middle Eye, eliciting anger from Zero Wolf, who threatens his fellow raider with death if he kills another captive without permission. As the party approaches the Mayan city from which the raiders come, they encounter razed forests and failed maize crops, along with villages decimated by an unknown disease. A little girl (MarÃ­a Isidra Hoil) infected with the illness prophesies Zero Wolf's death and the end of the Mayan world. Once the raiders and captives reach the city the females are sold as slaves while the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid to be sacrificed before the Mayan King (Rafael Velez) and Queen (Diana Botello).As a result of a solar eclipse and the superstitions surrounding it, Jaguar Paw and the remaining captives are spared from being sacrificed by beheading. Instead, they are ordered to be taken away and "disposed of." They are offered freedom if they can avoid being killed during target practice by Zero Wolf and his men. After some tribesmen are killed, Jaguar Paw is severely injured but kills Zero Wolf's son Cut Rock (Ricardo DÃ­az Mendoza) and escapes into the jungle. Zero Wolf sets off with eight comrades to chase down and kill Jaguar Paw. Back in his native jungle, Jaguar Paw now has the advantage, although he is badly injured. Most of his pursuers are gradually killed off via clever conceits and traps laid out by Jaguar Paw until there are only two left to hunt him.The drought breaks and heavy rain begins to fall, threatening to drown Jaguar Paw's family, who are still trapped in the pit cave despite their attempts to escape. Seven gives birth to another son, who is born into the now dangerously rising water. Meanwhile, the two remaining raiders chase Jaguar Paw out of the undergrowth towards the coast. As they reach the beach, all three are stopped in their tracks by the sight of conquistador ships anchored off the coast and Europeans making their way ashore holding up a large cross. Jaguar Paw escapes while the two raiders remain, seemingly mesmerized at the conquistadors' presence. Jaguar Paw returns in time to save his family from the flooded pit. He is overjoyed at the sight of his new baby son.Sometime later, as the reunited family look out over the water at the Spanish ships, Jaguar Paw decides not to risk approaching the conquistadors, insisting his family head back into the jungle. They depart in search of a new home., Question: Who decides not to risk approaching the conquistadors?

SOLUTION:
Answer: Jaguar Paw