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 year are David and Jennifer transported to?

SOLUTION: Answer: 1958

PROBLEM: In Southampton in 1916, HMHS Britannic, a sister ship of RMS Titanic, has been refitted as a hospital ship for soldiers fighting in the Gallipoli Campaign. Among the nurses who are to serve aboard her is Lady Lewis (Jacqueline Bisset), who is being delivered to Greece via Naples, where her husband has become Ambassador for Great Britain. Traveling with her is Vera Campbell (Amanda Ryan), an operative of British Intelligence posing as Lady Lewis' governess. Campbell is unnerved by the voyage, having survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic four years previously, losing her husband as well.A German spy has boarded the Britannic posing as the ship's chaplain, Chaplain Reynolds (Edward Atterton), and soon discovers that the Britannic is carrying small arms as was believed - although he is unaware that Captain Bartlett (John Rhys-Davies) has placed the small arms aboard as a means of protection against mutiny. Under the articles of war, Reynolds considers his actions against the Britannic to be legal and initiates a series of sabotage attempts to either take over the Britannic or sink her, including inciting the Irish stokers, all members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, to mutiny.Each sabotage attempt is foiled by Vera Campbell - with the eventual co-operation of the ship's crew. Unaware that Campbell is responsible, Reynolds finds himself growing attracted to Campbell whilst the voyage continues. As the two of them spend time together, they fall in love and Campbell has sex with Reynolds before discovering his true identity.Reynolds blows a hole in the port side bow of the ship. The Britannic, mortally damaged, tries sailing for Kea island seven miles away, but the beaching operation causes the hospital ship to sink even faster. Campbell discovers that William, one of Lady Lewis's children, has disappeared. Reynolds helps her and they manage to get the boy to the lifeboat before it is lowered. Another massive explosion causes Reynolds to be trapped in a flooding room. Campbell helps Reynolds escape and the two of them make their way through the ship, swimming through flooded rooms, vents, grates, and corridors. They make it outside and notice a lifeboat filled with 29 evacuees getting pulled into the still spinning propellers. They watch in horror as the boat's front makes contact with the blades causing the evacuees to get thrown into the spinning blades as the lifeboat is smashed to pieces. Reynolds ties Campbell to a line that was thrown from Lady Lewis's lifeboat. Despite her protests that they both can be pulled to safety, Reynolds throws her into the sea after kissing her. Reynolds commits suicide as he is also sucked into the propellers. A few moments later, the ship groans and as she begins to roll onto her starboard side bow first, the two forward funnels and deck machinery topple into the sea as she sinks beneath the waves and disappears. A warship, HMS Victoria, arrives to rescue the survivors. Vera quotes the poem "Roll on, Thou..." from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron., Question: Who has boarded the Britannic posing as the ship's chaplain?

SOLUTION: Answer: A German spy

PROBLEM: The film is divided into five segments (the five seasons of the title), each segment depicting a different stage in the life of a Buddhist monk (each segment is roughly ten to twenty years apart, and is physically in the middle of its titular season).SpringWe are introduced the of the very young Buddhist apprentice with his master on a small floating monastery, drifting on a lake in the serene forested mountains of Korea. The apprentice and his master live a basic life of prayer and meditation, using an old rowboat to reach the bank of the lake where they regularly go walking, for exercise and to collect herbs. One day, in a creek amongst the rocky hills, the apprentice torments a fish by tying a small stone to it with string and laughing as it struggles to swim. Shortly after, he does the same to a frog and a snake; his master quietly observes on all three occasions, and that night ties a large, smooth rock to the apprentice as he sleeps. In the morning, he tells his apprentice that he cannot take off the rock until he unties the creatures he tormented - adding that if any of them have died, he will "carry the stone in his heart forever". The boy struggles with the load on his back through the forest, and finds the fish, lying dead on the bottom of the creek, finds the frog still alive and struggling where he left it, and finds the snake in a pool of blood, presumably attacked and killed by another animal, unable to get away. The master watches as the boy begins to cry heavily upon seeing what he has done to the snake.SummerThe apprentice (now in his teenage years) encounters a mother and daughter (dressed in modern clothes, indicating that the film takes place in modern times) walking along the forest path, looking for the lake monastery. The apprentice silently greets them and rows them across the lake to the monastery, where it is revealed that the daughter has an unspecified illness (she displays symptoms of a fever) and has been brought to the Buddhist master by her mother, hoping that she will be healed. The master agrees to take in the teenage girl for a time, and the mother leaves. Over the next few days, the apprentice finds himself sexually attracted to the girl, but is too shy to say anything; however, when he finds her sleeping in front of the Buddha statue, he is unable to resist groping her chest. She wakes up and slaps him, and in a guilty panic the apprentice begins to pray incessantly, something his master notes as strange. The girl seems to forgive him however; eventually, the two wander off into the forest alone and have sex. They repeat the act over the next few nights, hiding their relationship from the master, until he discovers them asleep and naked, drifting around the lake in the rowboat. He wakes them up by pulling the plug out of the boat. Rather than expressing anger or disappointment, he merely warns his apprentice that "lust leads to desire for possesion, and possesion leads to murder", but does tell him that the girl will have to leave. The apprentice reacts emotionally to this, and in the middle of the night runs away from the monastery in pursuit of the girl, taking the monastery's Buddha statue with him.FallMany years later, in "Fall" (or "Autumn"), the aging master returns from a supply run to the local village, and by chance glimpses a warrant for the arrest of his former apprentice, wanted for the murder of his wife. Foreseeing the apprentice's return, he modifies the teenage monk garments by hand, and soon afterward the adult apprentice appears in the spiritual door at the lake's edge, still full of anger and carrying the bloodstained knife with which he stabbed his wife. Unwilling to go on, he seals his eyes, mouth and nose in a suicide ritual and sits in front of the newly returned Buddha statue, waiting for death; the master discovers him, and beats him ruthlessly, professing that while he may have killed his wife, he will not kill himself so easily. He ties his bloodied apprentice to the ceiling and sets a candle to slowly burn through the rope, then begins painting "Heart Sutra" on one side of the monastery deck, by dipping his cat's tail into a tin of black paint. The apprentice eventually falls, and beginning his repentance, cuts his hair off and starts carving the Chinese characters out of the wood. As he carves and the master paints, two detectives arrive at the monastery and try to arrest the apprentice, but the master asks them to let him finish his task. The apprentice continues without stopping, and collapses into sleep immediately upon finishing. Seemingly influenced by the soothing presence of the master, the detectives help the old monk paint his apprentice's carvings in orange, green, blue and purple. The apprentice finally wakes up, and is taken away by the detectives. After they leave, the master, knowing he is at his end, builds a pyre in the rowboat. He seals his ears, eyes, nose and mouth with paper in the same suicide ritual and meditates as he is suffocated and burned to death. One can see the tracks of his tears in the paper seals as flames engulf him.WinterThe middle-aged apprentice returns to the frozen lake and to his former home, which has been drifting uninhabited for years. He finds his master's clothes, laid out just before his death, and digs his master's remains out of the frozen rowboat, setting them to rest in the Buddha statue under a waterfall. He finds a book of choreographic meditative stances, and begins to train and exercise relentlessly in the freezing weather. Eventually, a woman comes to the monastery with her baby son and a shawl wrapped around her face. She seeks to leave her son with the monk and flee, but as she tries to leave in the middle of the night, she stumbles into a hole in the ice the monk dug earlier and drowns. Finding her body the next day causes him to tie the monastery's large, circular stone to his body and climb to the summit of the tallest surrounding mountain holding another statue, which he places there....and SpringFinally, returning to "Spring", the cycle is completed: the new master lives in the monastery with the abandoned baby, now his apprentice. The boy is shown to torment a tortoise and, wandering into the rocky hills, echoes his predecessor, forcing stones into the mouths of a fish, frog and snake., Question: What does the apprentice do wrong?

SOLUTION:
Answer: <No Answer>