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: At the Central Park Zoo, Marty the zebra is celebrating his tenth birthday, but longs to see the rest of the world from outside his pampered life at the zoo, believing that he can find wide-open spaces to run around in, like in Connecticut. Marty's best friend, Alex the lion, attempts to cheer up his friend by singing Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" with him. Still unsatisfied, Marty gets some tips from the zoo's penguins: Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private. The penguins are similarly trying to escape the zoo. Marty's friendAlex the lion, Melman the giraffe, and Gloria the hippopotamusrealize Marty's folly and try to follow him. The four, along with the penguins and the chimpanzees Mason and his silent friend Phil, eventually find themselves at Grand Central Station, but are quickly sedated by tranquilizer darts when Alex's attempt to communicate with humans is mistaken for aggression. The zoo, under pressure from animal-rights activists, is forced to ship the animals, by sea, to a Kenyan wildlife preserve. During their travels, the penguins escape from their enclosure and take over the ship, intent on taking it to Antarctica. Their antics on the bridge cause the crates containing Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria to fall off the boat and wash ashore on Madagascar.The animals are soon able to regroup, initially believing themselves to be in the zoo at San Diego, California. Upon exploring, however, they come across a pack of lemurs, led by King Julien XIII, and quickly learn their true location. Alex blames Marty for their predicament and attempts to signal for help to get back to civilization. Marty, on the other hand, finds the wild to be exactly what he was looking for, with Gloria and Melman soon joining him in enjoying the island. Alex eventually comes around, though his hunting instincts begin to show; he has been away from the pampered zoo life of prepacked steaks for too long. The group is accepted by the lemurs, though King Julien's adviser, Maurice, cautions them about Alex's predatory nature. King Julien ignores Maurice's concerns and persuades the group to help the lemurs fend off the fossa, who hunt the lemurs as prey. While initially Alex scares the fossa away and is worshiped by the lemurs, compelled by hunger, he later enters a feeding frenzy and attacks Marty. Realizing that Alex is now a threat to them, King Julien banishes Alex to the far side of the island, where the fossa live. Marty begins to regret his decision to leave the zoo, seeing what Alex has turned into, and realizing how hard it is to survive with so many predators around the island.The penguins, having been to Antarctica and found that it "sucks", land the boat on Madagascar. Seeing this as a chance to return Alex to New York, Marty rushes after his friend against the wishes of the others. Marty attempts to convince the now grizzled, starving Alex to return, but Alex refuses in fear of attacking him again, despite Marty using the "New York, New York" song. The penguins, Gloria, and Melman go to find Marty, but are trapped by the fossa. At the last minute, Alex finally overcomes his predatory nature and scares the fossa away from the lemur territory forever. The lemurs regain their respect for Alex and the penguins help him satisfy his hunger through sushi instead of steak. As the lemurs throw a bon voyage celebration for the foursome, the penguins decide not to break the news that the ship has run out of fuel, and that they are still stuck on the island., Question: What zoo do the animals think they have arrived at?

SOLUTION: Answer: San Diego Zoo

PROBLEM: Queen Gorgo of Sparta tells her men about the Battle of Marathon, in which King Darius of Persia was killed by General Themistocles of Athens ten years earlier. Darius' son, Xerxes, witnesses his father's death, and is advised to not continue the war, since only "the gods can defeat the Greeks". Darius' naval commander, Artemisia, claims that Darius' last words were in fact a challenge and sends Xerxes on a journey through the desert. Xerxes finally reaches a cave and bathes in an otherworldly liquid, emerging as the 8-feet tall "god-King". He returns to Persia and declares war on Greece to avenge his father.As Xerxes's forces advance towards Thermopylae, Themistocles meets with the council and convinces them to provide him with a fleet to engage the Persians at the sea. Themistocles (the Athenian general) then travels to Sparta to ask King Leonidas for help, but is informed by Dilios that Leonidas is consulting the Oracle, and Gorgo is reluctant to side with Athens. Themistocles later reunites with his old friend Scyllas, who infiltrated the Persian troops and learned Artemisia was born Greek, but defected to Persia as her family was raped and murdered by Greek hoplites and she was taken as a sex slave, and subsequently left for dead in the streets. She was rescued and adopted by a Persian emissary. Her lust for vengeance gained the attention of King Darius and he made her a naval commander after she killed many of his enemies. Themistocles also learns that Leonidas has marched to fight the Persians with only 300 men.Themistocles leads his fleet of fifty warships and several thousand men, which include Scyllas, Scyllas' son Calisto and Themistocles' right-hand man Aeskylos to the Aegean Sea, starting the Battle of Artemisium. They ram their ships into the Persian ships, charge them, slaughtering several soldiers before retreating from the sinking Persian ships. The following day, the Greeks feign a retreat and lead a group of Persian ships into a crevice, where they become stuck. The Greeks charge the Persian ships from the cliffs above and kill more Persians. Impressed with Themistocles' skills, Artemisia brings him onto her ship where she has sex with him in an attempt to convince him to join the Persians as her second-in-command. He refuses, causing her to push him aside and swear revenge on him.The Persians spill tar into the sea and send suicide bombers to swim to and board the Greek ships with their flame bombs. Artemisia and her men fire flaming arrows and torches to ignite the tar, but an Athenian manages to kill one of the Persians, who falls into the tar carrying a torch, causing ships from both sides to explode. Themistocles is thrown into the sea by an explosion and nearly drowns before being rescued by Aeskylos, and stands by Scyllas' side as he succumbs to his injuries. Believing Themistocles to be dead, Artemisia and her forces withdraw. After recovering from his injuries, Themistocles learns that only a few hundred of his warriors and six of his ships survived the disastrous attack executed by Artemisia.Daxos, an Arcadian general, tells Themistocles that Leonidas and his 300 men have been killed after Ephialtes betrays the Greeks to Xerxes. Themistocles returns to Athens and confronts Ephialtes. The deformed Spartan traitor reveals that Xerxes plans to attack and burn Athens to the ground. Ephialites is regretful of his actions, and is welcoming death. Themistocles spares him instead, so he can warn Xerxes that the Greek forces are gathering at Salamis. He then visits Gorgo in Sparta while she is mourning Leonidas' death to ask for her help, but she is too overcome with grief. Before leaving, Themistocles returns Leonidas' sword, which had been delivered to him by Ephialtes under Xerxes's orders, and urges Gorgo to avenge Leonidas.In Athens, Xerxes' army is laying waste when Ephialtes arrives to deliver Themistocles' message. Upon learning he is alive, Artemisia leaves to ready her entire navy for battle. Xerxes suggests a more cautious plan but she still leaves for battle, ignoring Xerxes' advice. The remaining Greek ships charge into the Persians ships, and the two armies battle, beginning the decisive Battle of Salamis. Themistocles and Artemisia fight, which ends in a stalemate with both receiving severe injuries.At this moment Gorgo, who had been narrating the tale to the Spartans, arrives at the battle along with ships from numerous Greek city states including Delphi, Thebes, Olympia, Arcadia, and Sparta, all of them uniting against the surrounded Persians. Daxos leads the Arcadian army while Themistocles urges Artemisia to surrender. Xerxes, watching the battle from a cliff, turns his back on her, acknowledging his invasion has ended in defeat. Artemisia tries to kill Themistocles one last time but is killed as he stabs her through the stomach. Themistocles and Gorgo take a moment to silently acknowledge one another's alliance as the remaining Persians charge while Dilios leads the assault. The three then charge at the opposing Persians with the whole Greek army., Question: Who sends suicide bombers?

SOLUTION: Answer: The Persians.

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: Who does the apprentice meet along the forest path?

SOLUTION:
Answer: a mother and a daughter