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: When the main star of disillusioned director Viktor Taransky's new movie walks away, Taransky is forced to find a replacement or never work again. Unfortunately for him, nobody wants to work with him any more.Viktor tries a new computer program on a hard disk he inherited from his acquaintance Hank Aleno. Viktor uses the program as a last, desperate attempt to finish the film. The system allows him to use a computer-generated woman to play the movie's central character. Viktor names his synthetic actress "Simone", a name derived from the computer program's title, Simulation One. Seamlessly incorporated into the movie, Simone gives a fantastic performance. The studio, and soon the world, starts to ask "who is Simone?"The movie is a great success, and Viktor markets her as a real person. He gives phone and camera interviews, but it becomes difficult to maintain. Two people doggedly pursue him and force him to showcase Simone "live" after they discover that he used stock photography as a background during the interview instead of being on that site as he claimed she was. Simone ascends to even greater heights, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.After a while, Viktor decides to kill her. He has her star in a film of her own about zoophilia, hoping to disgust audiences. However, they continue to love her work. He then uses a computer virus to erase the program and dumps all of the DVDs and computer-related information into a trunk and throws it out to sea. During the funeral, the police come, open the coffin where there is only Simone's poster. He is taken to the police station and is shown a security camera video where he is seen putting the trunk into the motorboat. He is arrested for her murder. In his defense he admits that Simone was just a computer program, and that he put all the program discs in the chest and dropped it into the sea. Viktor's wife and daughter enter his studio, find the program, and realize that Viktor's actress is only a simulation (he forgot a virus floppy disk in the computer). They revive Simone and he is freed from custody. The film ends with Simone and Viktor holding an interview about their new "baby" before a post-credits sequence shows Viktor creating fake footage of Simone in a supermarket, which one of her pursuers sees, believing it real., Question: Who does Viktor Decide to Kill?

SOLUTION: Answer: Viktor decides to kill Simone.

PROBLEM: Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) and his sister Rose (Katharine Hepburn) are British Methodist missionaries in the village of Kungdu in German East Africa at the beginning of World War I in August/September 1914. Their mail and supplies are delivered by a small tramp steamer named the African Queen, helmed by the rough-and-ready Canadian boat captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), whose coarse behavior they tolerate in a rather stiff manner.When Charlie warns them that World War I has broken out between Germany and Britain, the Sayers choose to stay on, only to witness the Germans burn down the mission village and herd the villagers away. When Samuel protests, he is beaten by a German soldier. After the Germans leave, Samuel becomes delirious with fever and soon dies. Charlie returns shortly afterward. He helps Rose bury her brother, and they set off in the African Queen.Charlie mentions to Rose that the Germans have a gunboat, the KÃ¶nigin Luise (German for "Queen Louisa"), which patrols a large lake downriver, effectively blocking any British attacks. Rose comes up with a plan to convert the African Queen into a torpedo boat and sink the KÃ¶nigin Luise. Charlie points out that navigating the Ulanga River to get to the lake would be suicidal: to reach the lake they would have to pass a German fort and negotiate several dangerous rapids. But Rose is insistent and eventually persuades him to go along with the plan.During their journey down the river, Charlie, Rose and the African Queen encounter many obstacles, including the German fort and three sets of rapids. The first set of rapids is rather easy; they get through with minimal flooding in the boat. But when they pass the fortress and the soldiers begin shooting at them, the bullets pierce the top of the boiler and cause one of the steam pressure hoses to disconnect from the boiler. This causes the boat's engine to stop. Luckily, Charlie manages to reattach the hose to the boiler just as they are about to enter the second set of rapids. The boat rolls and pitches crazily as it goes down the rapids, leading to more severe flooding in the boat. However, they make it through.While celebrating their success, the two find themselves in an embrace. Embarrassed, they break off, but eventually succumb and strike up a relationship. The third set of rapids comes up. This time, there is a loud metallic clattering noise as the boat goes over the falls. They dock on the river bank to check for damage. When Charlie dives under the boat, he finds the propeller shaft bent sideways and a blade missing from the propeller. Luckily, with some expert skills and using suggestions from Rose, Charlie manages to straighten the shaft and weld a new blade on to the propeller, and they are off again.All appears lost when Charlie and Rose "lose the channel" and the boat becomes mired in the mud amid dense reeds near the mouth of the river. First, they try to tow the boat through the muck, only to have Charlie come out of the water covered with leeches. All their efforts to free the African Queen fail. With no supplies left and short of potable water, Rose and a feverish Charlie turn in, convinced they have no hope of survival. Before going to sleep Rose prays that she and Charlie be admitted into Heaven. As they sleep, exhausted and beaten, heavy rains raise the river's level and float the African Queen off of the mud and into the lake which, it turns out, is just a short distance from their location. Once on the lake, they narrowly avoid being spotted by the KÃ¶nigin Luise. The KÃ¶nigin Luise departs, but Charlie believes that she will return as she makes her normal rounds of the lake.Over the next two days, Charlie and Rose convert some oxygen cylinders into torpedoes using gelatin explosives and improvised detonators that use nails as the firing pins for rifle cartridges. They then push the torpedoes through holes cut in the bow of the African Queen as improvised spar torpedoes. The KÃ¶nigin Luise returns as Charlie predicted, and Charlie and Rose steam the African Queen out onto the lake in darkness, intending to set her on a collision course with the KÃ¶nigin Luise before diving overboard and making their way to safety to the Belgian Congo on the west side of the lake. A strong storm strikes as they head toward the KÃ¶nigin Luise. Unfortunately, the torpedo holes they cut are not sealed, which allows water to pour into the African Queen, causing her to sink lower and lower. Eventually the African Queen capsizes, throwing them both into the water. Charlie loses sight of Rose in the storm.Charlie is captured and taken aboard the KÃ¶nigin Luise, where he is questioned by the captain. Believing Rose to have drowned, he makes no attempt to defend himself against accusations of spying, and the German captain sentences him to death by hanging. However, Rose is captured and brought to the KÃ¶nigin Luise just after Charlie's sentence is handed down. Charlie hollers her name, then tries to protect her by pretending not to know her. The captain questions her, and Rose confesses the whole plot proudly, deciding they have nothing to lose anyway. The captain sentences her to be executed as a spy, too. Charlie asks the German captain to marry them before executing them. After a brief marriage ceremony, the Germans prepare to hang them, but there is a sudden explosion and the KÃ¶nigin Luise quickly capsizes and sinks. The KÃ¶nigin Luise has struck the overturned hull of the African Queen and detonated the torpedoes. Rose's plan has worked after all, if a little belatedly, and the newly married couple happily swims to safety on the west shore of the lake., Question: Who manages to straighten the shaft?

SOLUTION: Answer: Charlie

PROBLEM: In 1906, Saxton (Christopher Lee), a renowned British anthropologist, is returning to Europe by the Trans-Siberian Express from China to Moscow. With him is a crate containing the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature that he discovered in a cave in Manchuria. He hopes it is a missing link in human evolution. Doctor Wells (Peter Cushing), Saxton's friendly rival and Royal Society colleague, is also on board but travelling separately. Before the train departs Shanghai, a thief is found dead on the platform. His eyes are completely white without irises or pupils, and a bystander initially mistakes him for a blind man. A monk named Father Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza), the spiritual advisor to the Polish Count Marion Petrovski (George Rigaud) and Countess Irina Petrovski (Silvia Tortosa), who are also waiting to board the train, proclaims the contents of the crate to be evil. Saxton furiously dismisses this as superstition. Saxton's eagerness to keep his scientific find secret arouses the suspicion of Wells, who bribes a porter to investigate the crate. The porter is killed by the ape-like creature (Juan Olaguivel) within, which then escapes the crate by picking the lock.The creature finds more victims as it roams the moving train, each victim being found with the same opaque, white eyes. An autopsy suggests that the brains of the victims are being drained of memories and knowledge. When the creature is gunned down by police Inspector Mirov (Julio PeÃ±a), the threat seems to have been vanquished. Saxton and Wells discover that images are retained in a liquid found inside the eyeball of the corpse, which reveal a prehistoric Earth and a view of the planet seen from space. They deduce that the real threat is somehow a formless extraterrestrial that inhabited the body of the creature and now resides within the inspector. Father Pujardov, sensing the greater presence inside the inspector and believing it to be that of Satan, renounces his faith to pledge allegiance to the mysterious entity.News of the murders is wired to the Russian authorities. An intimidating Cossack officer, Captain Kazan (Telly Savalas), boards the train with a handful of his men. Kazan believes the train is transporting rebels; he is only convinced of the alien's existence when Saxton switches off the lights and Mirov's eyes glow, revealing him to be the creature's host. The creature has absorbed the memories of Wells' assistant, an engineer, and others. It seeks the Polish count's metallurgical knowledge too, in order to build a vessel to escape Earth. Kazan fatally shoots Mirov, and the alien transfers itself to the deranged Pujardov.The passengers flee to the freight car while Pujardov murders Kazan, his men, and the count, draining all of their minds. Saxton rescues the countess and holds Pujardov at gunpoint. Saxton, having discovered that bright light prevents the entity from draining minds or transferring to another body, forces Pujardov into a brightly lit area. The creature/Pujardov explains that it is a collective form of energy from another galaxy. Trapped on Earth in the distant past after being left behind in an accident, it survived for millions of years in the bodies of protozoa, fish and other animals, but cannot live outside a living being longer than a few moments. The creature begs to be spared, tempting Saxton with its advanced knowledge of technology and cures for diseases. While Saxton is distracted by the offer, the creature resurrects the count's corpse, which attacks Saxton.Saxton and the countess flee the creature, but it now resurrects all of its victims as zombies. Battling their way through the train, Saxton and the countess eventually reach the caboose, where the other survivors have taken refuge. Once there, Saxton and Wells work desperately to uncouple themselves from the rest of the train. The Russian government sends a telegram to a dispatch station ahead, instructing them to destroy the train by sending it down a dead-end spur. Speculating that it must be war, the station staff switch the points.The creature takes control of the train as it enters the spur. Saxton and Wells manage to separate the last car from the rest of the train. The creature tries to find the brakes to try and stop the train, but fails to even get it to slow down as it rams through the barrier and plunges down the cliff, destroying it as soon as it hits the bottom. The caboose rolls precariously to the end of the track before stopping, inches away from the edge of the cliff. The survivors quickly depart from the caboose while Saxton, Wells and the countess gaze over the ravine to witness the inferno consuming the train and its unearthly inhabitants. The final scene shows the image of the earth., Question: Who does Saxton rescue?

SOLUTION:
Answer: The countess