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: This cold war film begins with a beautiful and affective montage of recently divided (though not yet wall-bifurcated) Berlin. The story proper gets going as a young GI is kidnapped by the East Germans (released in 1954, it's way too early for mention of anything called the KGB or Stasi). The initial dramatic conflict is between a U.S. military officer (Gregory Peck), who realizes that getting the kid out will be a delicate operation indeed, and said kid's blunderbuss father (Broderick Crawford), who immediately flies to Germany desiring a quick extraction, arguing for either a commando raid or a cash payoff. (Some similarity here to the last few episodes of TV's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.") Anyway, Crawford's character is an industrialist of some importance. So, Crawford assumes upon his arrival in Berlin that he can take charge of the situation, and marches straight into Peck's office with nary a word to the secretary or the two American officers standing outside the door. They don't stop him; they know Peck is expecting him. One of the officers says to the other, "How does he have all this influence?" "He plays golf," says the other."Oh."Eventually Peck gets Crawford to cool his jets, largely by letting him witness a demonstration of the spy game's high tensions. When two elderly agents suspect that their cover is blown, they attempt suicide rather than be taken back to the East.Now another problem arises for Peck-- his ear in the East is a female ("Hoffy," played by one Anita Bjork) with whom he naturally has a romantic involvement, but who, it turns out, he cannot trust. Thankfully for the Yanks, Peck finds out about her treachery without revealing that he's on to her, and through a subtle double-cross gets her to effect a prisoner swap, which naturally doesn't take place the way he initially described it to her (and through her to her Comintern bosses). (This all takes place in and around a military hospital that has cool, old-style Berlin, dumb-waiter style perpetually moving elevators, that we won't see again, far as I know, until the film version of Len Deighton's "The Ipcress File," starring Michael Caine.)So, naturally the would-be swap winds up with the GI back on capitalist soil, the commies empty-handed, and the dissimulating female shattered and exposed, deprived of both Peck's love and her personal freedom (that's to say, she is taken off to jail). And Broderick Crawford finds out that a son's love is far more important than golf.

SOLUTION: What kind of swap does Peck organize to reveal that Hoffy cannot be trusted?

PROBLEM: The film tells of six central characters, their failures, obsessions and darkest desires. Set at a US Army post in the South in the 1940/50s, it features Major Weldon Penderton (Brando) and his wife Leonora (Taylor). Other central characters are Lieutenant Colonel Morris Langdon (Brian Keith) and his depressed wife Alison (Julie Harris), the Langdons' houseboy Anacleto (Zorro David), and Private Ellgee Williams (Robert Forster).Major Penderton assigns Private Williams to clear some foliage at his private officer's quarters instead of his usual duty of maintaining the horses and stables. Penderton's wife, Leonora prepares to go horseback riding with Lt. Col. Langdon. Their affair is revealed, as well as Leonora's strong bond with her horse Firebird. Williams is shown to be sympathetic to all the horses in the stable. One day while riding, Langdon, Leonora and Penderton see Williams riding nude and bareback on one of the military horses. Penderton is critical of this to Leonora but his secret interest in the free-spirited Williams is clear.Leonora and Penderton have an argument that same night, in which Leonora taunts Penderton and strips naked in front of him. Williams watches them from outside the house, and from then on spies on them. He eventually breaks into the house and watches Leonora sleep at night. (She and Penderton have separate bedrooms.) As he continues this practice, Williams starts to go through Leonora's belongings, especially her lingerie and perfume.Penderton takes Leonora's horse and rides wildly into the woods, passing the naked Williams at high speed. Penderton falls off, catching his foot in the stirrup, and is dragged for a distance. In a fit of uncontrollable rage, he beats the horse. Williams appears still naked, and takes the horse. As Penderton stands mute in the woods, Williams brings the horse back to the stable to tend its wounds. Penderton returns to the house, locked in his room while the party goes on outside. Upon finding out about her horse, Leonora interrupts her party and in front of the guests repeatedly strikes her husband in the face with her riding crop. Penderton becomes infatuated with Williams and starts to follow him around the camp.After her newborn infant died, Alison Langdon mutilated herself while deeply depressed. Alison's only bonds now are with her effeminate Filipino houseboy Anacleto, who delivers a riveting performance, and with Capt. Murray Weincheck, a cultured and sensitive soldier who is being harassed out of the army by his superiors. Aware of her husband's adultery, Alison decides to divorce him. However, after witnessing Williams in Leonora's room, she becomes traumatized. When she tries to leave him, Langdon commits her to a sanatorium. Langdon tells Leonora and Penderton that Alison was going insane. Soon, Penderton is informed that Alison died of a heart attack, but she may have committed suicide, possibly assisted by Anacleto who disappears soon after her death.One night Penderton looks out his window and sees Williams outside the house. He thinks Williams is coming to see him, but watches the younger man enter his wife Leonora's room. Penderton goes to the room and shoots Williams dead. The film ends with the camera wildly veering back and forth between the dead body, the screaming Leonora, and Penderton. The opening line of the novel and the film is restated: "There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed."

SOLUTION: Who does Alison see in Lenora's room?

PROBLEM: Sally (Susan Sarandon) is a young waitress in an Atlantic City casino who has dreams of becoming a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo. Sally's estranged husband Dave (Robert Joy) returns to her one day with the intention of selling a large amount of cocaine that he had stolen in Philadelphia and meets Lou (Burt Lancaster), an aging former gangster who lives in Sally's apartment building and runs numbers in poor areas of the city; he also acts as a caretaker for Grace (Kate Reid), an elderly invalid. Dave convinces Lou to sell the cocaine for him, but as Lou sells the first batch, Dave is attacked and killed by the mobsters from whom he had stolen the drugs.Lou is left with the remaining cocaine and continues to sell to impress Sally, whom he has long pined for, with money. Sally and Lou make love one day, but she returns to her apartment to find it trashed; she has been tracked down by Dave's killers, who beat her to find out if she has the drugs. They leave, but Lou laments not being able to protect her. Sally is fired from the casino when her late husband's criminal record is discovered. Lou sells the remainder of the cocaine, while both Sally and the mobsters discover Lou's affiliation with Dave. The mobsters corner them one night, but are killed when Lou produces a gun and shoots them. He and Sally then steal their car and leave the city. That night, from a hotel outside Atlantic City, they watch the TV news reporting on the killing. A police sketch of the suspect is shown. It looks nothing like Lou. Lou is overjoyed with relief and pride. He confesses to Sally that this was the first time he had ever killed anyone.At a motel during the night, Lou takes the phone to the bathroom to call Grace and brag about the killings. Sally also wakes and steals the money with the intention of sneaking off; Lou witnesses this, allowing her to leave and giving her the car keys so she can escape to France, rather than go to Miami with Lou. Lou returns to Atlantic City to be with Grace and continue selling a portion of the cocaine that he had stashed away.

SOLUTION:
WHY DID LOU TAKE THE PHONE?