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: The film opens with Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay) running, alone, along a bleak country road somewhere in rural England. In a brief voiceover, Colin tells us that running is the way his family has always coped with the world's troubles, but that in the end, the runner is always alone and cut off from spectators, left to deal with life on his own.Colin is then shown with a group of other young men, all handcuffed. They are being taken to Ruxton Towers, a detention centre for juvenile offenders, an approved school. It is overseen by "the Governor", who believes that the hard work and discipline imposed on his charges will ultimately make them useful members of society. Colin, sullen and rebellious, immediately catches his eye as a test of his beliefs.An important part of the Governor's rehabilitation programme is athletics, and he soon notices that Colin is a talented runner, easily able to outrun Ruxton's reigning long-distance runner. As the Governor was once a runner himself, he is especially keen on Colin's abilities because, for the first time, his charges have been invited to compete in a five-mile cross country run against Ranley, a nearby public school with privileged pupils from upper-class families. The Governor sees the invitation as an important way to demonstrate the success of his rehabilitation programme.The Governor takes Colin under his wing, offering him outdoor gardening work and eventually the freedom of practice runs outside Ruxton's barbed wire fences. A series of flashbacks shows how Colin came to be incarcerated: his difficult, poverty-stricken family life in a lower class workers' complex in industrial Nottingham. Without a job, Colin indulges in petty crime in the company of his best friend, Mike (James Bolam). Meanwhile, at home, his father's long years of toil in a local factory have resulted in a terminal illness for which he refuses treatment. Colin is angered by the callousness of his mother (Avis Bunnage), who he knows already has a "fancy man", and who Colin finds has neglected to give his father a herbal concoction for pain and (as Colin believes) brings about his father's death.Colin rebels by refusing a job offered to him at his father's factory. His father's company has paid Â£500 in insurance money, and he watches with disdain as his mother spends it on clothes, a television and new furniture. When his mother moves her lover into the house and after an argument when she tells him to leave, Colin and Mike take to the streets. Colin uses his portion of the insurance money to treat Mike and two girls they meet to an outing in Skegness, where Colin falls in love with his date, Audrey (Topsy Jane), and confesses to her that she is the first woman he's ever had sex with. She eventually extracts a half-hearted promise from Colin that he might look for work, implying his feelings for her are such that they might marry.But one night, while prowling the streets of Nottingham with Mike, the two spot an open window at the back of a bakery. There is nothing worth stealing except the cashbox, which contains about Â£70. Mike is all for another outing to Skegness with the girls, but Colin is more cautious and hides the money in a drainpipe outside his "prefab". Soon the police call, accusing Colin of the robbery. He tells the surly detective (Dervis Ward) he knows nothing about it. The detective produces a search warrant on a subsequent visit, but finds nothing. Finally, frustrated and angry, he returns to say he'll be watching Colin. As the two stand at Colin's front door in the rain, the torrent of water pouring down the drainpipe dislodges the money, which washes out around Colin's feet.This backstory is interspersed in flashbacks with Colin's present-time experiences at Ruxton Towers, where he must contend with the jealousy of his fellow inmates over the favouritism shown to him by the Governor, especially when the Governor decides not to discipline Colin, as he does the others, over a dining hall riot over Ruxton's poor food. Colin also witnesses the kind of treatment given to his fellows who are not so fortunate â beatings, bread-and-water diets, demeaning work in the machine shop or the kitchen.Finally, the day of the five mile race against Ranley arrives, and Colin quickly identifies Ranley's star runner (played by James Fox). The proud Governor looks on as the starting gun is fired. Colin soon overtakes Ranley's star runner and has a comfortable lead with a sure win; but a series of jarring images run through his mind, jumpcut flashes of his life at home and his mother's neglect, his father's dead body, stern lectures from detectives, police, the Governor, the hopelessness of any future life with Audrey. Just yards from the finish line, he stops running and remains in place, despite the calls, howls and protests from the Ruxton Towers crowd, especially the Governor. In close-up, Colin looks directly at him with a rebellious sneer, an expression that remains as the Ranley runner passes to cross the finish line to victory. The Governor is intensely angry.At the end, Colin is back in the machine shop, punished and ignored by the Governor. But he seems calm â even content â with his loneliness, because he has refused to submit to authority., Question: Who does the Governor take under his wing?

SOLUTION: Answer: Colin

PROBLEM: Detective Ulisse Moretti (von Sydow) is investigating a series of murders in Turin in 1983 known as The Dwarf Murders. The main suspect, a giallo novelist named Vincenzo de Fabritiis, turns up dead and the case is considered closed. However, seventeen years later, a similar series of murders begin and draw the since-retired Moretti back into the case. Moretti teams up with Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), whose mother was murdered in the 1983 spree, to determine if de Fabritiis is still alive or was actually innocent of the crimes for which he was accused. As the murders continue, the investigating duo discovers that the murderer is arranging their murder to an old nursery rhyme about the killing of animals., Question: Who plays Ulisse Moretti?

SOLUTION: Answer: von Sydow

PROBLEM: A television announcer reports sightings of a red fireball around the world. Facetiously, he calculates its path will lead it to California. Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), a wealthy but highly troubled woman with a history of emotional instability and immoderate drinking, is driving on a road in an American desert that night. A glowing sphere settles on the deserted highway in front of her, causing her to veer off the road. When she gets out to investigate, a huge creature exits the object and reaches for her (the viewer sees only an enormous hand falling upon the screaming woman). Nancy escapes and runs back to town, but nobody believes her story due to her known drinking problem and recent stay in a sanatorium. Her philandering husband, Harry Archer (William Hudson), is more interested in his latest girlfriend, town floozy Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers), but pretends to be the good husband in the hope that Nancy will "snap" and return to the "booby hatch", leaving him in control of her $50 million.Nancy bargains with Harry, asking him to search the desert with her for the "flying satellite," agreeing to a voluntary return to the sanatorium if they find no evidence. As night falls, they find the spacecraft. The alien creature, now seen as an enormous male humanoid, emerges. Harry fires his pistol at it, but the gunfire has no effect on the creature. Harry flees, leaving Nancy behind.Nancy is later discovered on the roof of her pool house, but is delirious and must be sedated by her family physician, Dr. Cushing (Roy Gordon). The doctor comments on some scratches he finds on Nancy's neck, and theorizes that she was exposed to radiation. Harry, egged on by his mistress Honey, plans to inject Nancy with a lethal dose of her sedative, but when he sneaks up to her room, he discovers that she has grown into a giant. (In a scene paralleling that of Nancy's first encounter with the alien, the viewer sees only an enormous prop hand as the film characters react in horror.) Cushing and Dr. Von Loeb, a specialist he has called in, are at a loss how to treat their patient. They keep her in a coma with morphine and restrain her with chains while waiting for the authorities. The sheriff and Jess (Ken Terrell), Nancy's faithful butler, track enormous footprints leading away from the estate to the alien sphere. Inside the sphere, they find Nancy's diamond necklace (containing the largest diamond in the world) and other large diamonds, each in a clear orb. They speculate that the jewels are being used as a power source for the alien ship. The huge alien reappears, and the sheriff and Jess flee.Meanwhile, the gigantic Nancy awakens and breaks free of her restraints. She tears off the roof of her mansion and, clothed in a bikini-like arrangement of bed linens, makes her way to town, to avenge herself on her unfaithful husband. When she rips the roof off the bar to get at Harry, she spots Honey. She drops a ceiling beam on her rival, killing her. Harry panics, grabs Deputy Charlie's gun, and begins shooting, but she picks Harry up and walks away. Gunshots have no apparent effect on her. The sheriff fires a riot gun, which causes a nearby power line transformer to blow up, killing Nancy. The doctors find Harry lying dead in her hand., Question: What does Nancy drop on her rival, killing her?

SOLUTION:
Answer: ceiling beam