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The story begins by introducing George, Harris, Jerome (always referred to as "J."), and Jerome's dog, a fox terrier called Montmorency. The men are spending an evening in J.'s room, smoking and discussing illnesses from which they fancy they suffer. They conclude that they are all suffering from "overwork" and need a holiday. A stay in the country and a sea trip are both considered. The country stay is rejected because Harris claims that it would be dull, the sea-trip after J. describes bad experiences of his brother-in-law and a friend on sea trips. The three eventually decide on a boating holiday up the River Thames, from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford, during which they will camp, notwithstanding more of J.'s anecdotes about previous mishaps with tents and camping stoves.
They set off the following Saturday. George must go to work that day, so J. and Harris make their way to Kingston by train. They cannot find the right train at Waterloo Station (the station's confusing layout was a well-known theme of Victorian comedy) so they bribe a train driver to take his train to Kingston, where they collect the hired boat and start the journey. They meet George further up river at Weybridge.
The remainder of the story describes their river journey and the incidents that occur. The book's original purpose as a guidebook is apparent as J., the narrator, describes passing landmarks and villages such as Hampton Court Palace, Hampton Church, Magna Carta Island and Monkey Island, and muses on historical associations of these places. However, he frequently digresses into humorous anecdotes that range from the unreliability of barometers for weather forecasting to the difficulties encountered when learning to play the Scottish bagpipes. The most frequent topics of J.'s anecdotes are river pastimes such as fishing and boating and the difficulties they present to the inexperienced and unwary and to the three men on previous boating trips.
The book includes classic comedy set pieces, such as the story of two drunken men who slide into the same bed in the dark, the Plaster of Paris trout in chapter 17, and the "Irish stew" in chapter 14 – made by mixing most of the leftovers in the party's food hamper:
I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say.
— Chapter 16
Other memorable sections include chapter 3's description of the author's Uncle Podger creating chaos while hanging a picture, and chapter 4's discussion of "Advantages of cheese as a travelling companion". | After rejecting other ideas, what kind of trip did the men decide to take? | [
"A boat ride up the River Thames",
"A boating holiday."
] |
Following a delinquent childhood and youth, Davies renounced his home and his apprenticeship with a frame-maker. At the age of twenty-two, having borrowed money from the executor of his grandmotherâs estate, he sailed to America. This was the first of more than a dozen Atlantic crossings, often made by working his passage aboard a cattle boat. Between 1893 and 1899 Davies travelled the highways and railroads, tutored by hardened men of the road. He took advantage of the corrupt system of "boodle jails" in order to pass the winter in Michigan, staying a series of different jails. These were jails in which a tramp could make an illicit arrangement with a law enforcement officer to stay in the jail without being an actual prisoner. Here, with his fellow tramps, Davies would enjoy the relative comfort of "card-playing, singing, smoking, reading, relating experiences and occasionally taking exercise or going out for a walk." Regular work was never an option and Davies subsisted largely by begging. After crossing the Atlantic one last time, from Britain to Canada, at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, Davies fell while hopping a train. His foot was crushed and his leg had to be amputated below the knee. He later wrote of the effect the accident had on his life: "All the wildness had been taken out of me and my adventures after this were not of my own seeking."
The book was praised by Osbert Sitwell for its "primitive splendour and directness", while Bernard Shaw himself commended the prose to "literary experts for its style alone", describing Davies as "the incorrigible Supertramp who wrote this amazing book." | What type of boat was Davies usually on when he made his trans-Atlantic crossings? | [
"cattle",
"A cattle boat."
] |
One New Year's Eve, Trotty, a poor elderly "ticket-porter" or casual messenger, is filled with gloom at the reports of crime and immorality in the newspapers, and wonders whether the working classes are simply wicked by nature. His daughter Meg and her long-time fiancĂŠ Richard arrive and announce their decision to marry next day. Trotty hides his misgivings, but their happiness is dispelled by an encounter with the pompous Alderman Cute, plus a political economist and a young gentleman with a nostalgia, all of whom make Trotty, Meg and Richard feel they hardly have a right to exist, let alone marry.
Trotty carries a note for Cute to Sir Joseph Bowley MP, who dispenses charity to the poor in the manner of a paternal dictator. Bowley is ostentatiously settling his debts to ensure a clean start to the new year, and berates Trotty because he owes a few shillings to his local shop which he cannot pay off. Returning home, convinced that he and his fellow poor are naturally ungrateful and have no place in society, Trotty encounters Will Fern, a poor countryman, and his orphaned niece, Lilian. Fern has been accused of vagrancy and wants to visit Cute to set matters straight, but from a conversation overheard at Bowley's house, Trotty is able to warn him that Cute plans to have him arrested and imprisoned. He takes the pair home with him and he and Meg share their meagre food and poor lodging with the visitors. Meg tries to hide her distress, but it seems she has been dissuaded from marrying Richard by her encounter with Cute and the others.
In the night, the bells seem to call Trotty. Going to the church, he finds the tower door unlocked and climbs to the bellchamber, where he discovers the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants who reprimand him for losing faith in man's destiny to improve. He is told that he fell from the tower during his climb and is now dead, and Meg's subsequent life must now be an object lesson for him. There follows a series of visions which he is forced to watch, helpless to interfere with the troubled lives of Meg, Richard, Will and Lilian over the subsequent years. Richard descends into alcoholism; Meg eventually marries him in an effort to save him, but he dies ruined, leaving her with a baby. Will is driven in and out of prison by petty laws and restrictions; Lilian turns to prostitution. In the end, destitute, Meg is driven to contemplate drowning herself and her child, thus committing the mortal sins of murder and suicide. The chimes' intention is to teach Trotty that, far from being naturally wicked, mankind is formed to strive for nobler things, and will fall only when crushed and repressed beyond bearing. Trotty breaks down when he sees Meg poised to jump into the river, cries that he has learned his lesson and begs the Chimes to save her, whereupon he finds himself able to touch her and prevent her from jumping.
At the end of the book, Trotty finds himself awakening at home as if from a dream as the bells ring in the New Year of the day Trotty originally climbed the tower. Meg and Richard have chosen to wed, and all of her friends have spontaneously chosen to provide a wedding feast and celebration. The author explicitly invites the reader to decide if this "awakening" is a dream-within-a-dream. The reader must choose between the harsh consequences of the behavior of the upper classes in Trotty's vision, or the happiness of the wedding. | Why does Trotty believe bad things about his social class? | [
"Through endless news stories about the poor and crime.",
"that's what he's been told"
] |
Mrs Bouncer, a London lodging-house keeper, is letting an apartment to a double tenantry – to Box, a printer on a daily newspaper, and to Cox, a journeyman hatter, the former occupying the room during the day, the latter during the night. They invariably meet on the stairs of the lodging-house when one comes in from work as the other is going out, but neither has any idea that Mrs Bouncer is letting his room to the other. Cox, suspicious that Mrs Bouncer has been using his flat during the day, complains to her that his coal keeps disappearing and there is "a steady increase of evaporation among my candles, wood, sugar and lucifer matches." He also complains that his room is continually full of tobacco smoke. Mrs Bouncer gives various excuses – among others, that Box, who, she says, occupies the attic, is a persistent smoker, and that his smoke must come down the chimney. Cox departs for his work at the hat shop, and on the stairs passes Box who is returning from the night shift at the newspaper.
Box has brought home with him a rasher of bacon, which he at once prepares to cook. He lights the fire, is indignant that his matches have been used and his candles burnt low; for, being at home only during the day, he suspects Mrs Bouncer of these depredations. Leaving his bacon to cook, he retires to bed for a short nap. Cox then returns, having been given the day off by his employer. He has bought a mutton chop and, going to cook it on the gridiron, finds the fire already lit and the rasher of bacon on the gridiron. He removes it, puts his chop in its stead, and hurries into an adjoining room for a plate. The slamming of the door awakens Box, who, recollecting his bacon, leaps from the bed, and finds the chop where he had left the rasher. He angrily seizes the chop, flings it from the window, and leaves the room to fetch a plate. Cox re-enters, and, in lieu of his chop, discovers the rasher, which follows the chop out of the window. Box and Cox meet, each imagining the other to be an intruder, each pulling from his pocket the last week's receipt for rent, and each clamouring loudly for redress from the landlady. Mrs Bouncer is forced to explain the mystery, and she throws herself on the kindness of Box and Cox by promising either of them a handsome second floor back room, which she hurries off to prepare.
Frustrated, Box asks, "Hark ye, sir – can you fight?" Cox answers, "No, sir." Box: "No? Then come on!" Agreeing, however, that they have no quarrel with each other, and that the whole mess is Mrs Bouncer's fault, Box and Cox converse civilly. It emerges that Cox is about to be married to a widow, Penelope Anne Wiggins, a prosperous proprietress of bathing machines at Margate and Ramsgate. Box is astonished, as he too had once been engaged to Mrs Wiggins, but, he reveals, he had struck on an ingenious plan to escape her clutches: he had pretended to commit suicide by drowning. Cox is equally reluctant to marry her. The two argue about which of them is obliged to do so, and eventually they call for pistols. When Mrs Bouncer goes to bring them, Cox cries, "Stop! You don't mean to say ... that you keep loaded fire-arms in the house?" "Oh, no", says Mrs Bouncer, "they're not loaded". Cox: "Then produce the murderous weapons instantly!" Meanwhile, the two agree to cast dice; the loser must marry Penelope Anne. Both have loaded dice, and at each successive throw they continue to throw sixes. The dice are then changed for shillings. At every toss each man's coin lands on heads, as both contestants are using double-headed coins.
The impasse is broken when a letter arrives from Margate stating that Penelope Anne has drowned in a boating accident, and has left her property to her intended husband. Box and Cox now argue their claims to the bathing machines, but finally they agree to split the fortune. Now a second letter arrives, which states that Penelope Anne is quite safe and is on the road to London to claim her lover. Escape is now hopeless, and Box and Cox are in despair. A vehicle arrives, a knock resounds at the door, and Box and Cox place their backs to the door. Penelope Anne goes away again, leaving another letter revealing that she has decided to marry Mr Knox, an admirer nearer her own age. Box and Cox are delighted, and their happiness is completed by the realisation that they are brothers, who have been long separated (Box: "Have you such a thing as a strawberry mark on your left arm?" Cox: "No!" Box: "Then it is he!"). They reject the second-floor back room and determine to reside permanently in the same room, and under the tenancy of the same landlady. | What is Box's occupation? | [
"Mr. Box works for a newspaper during the evening.",
"He is a journeyman printer for the newspaper. "
] |
Shann Lantee is lucky to be alive. He had snuck out of the small Terran base on the planet Warlock in the Circe system to find two artificially evolved wolverines, Taggi and his mate Togi, and bring them back to the base before anyone notices that they are missing. While he is gone a force of Throgs, implacably hostile insectoid aliens, attacks the base and kills all of its occupants. Shann moves across country with the wolverines and sees a downed scoutship explode and destroy a Throg flying disc.
A wounded Throg confronts Shann, but a well-aimed rock kills it. Shannâs rescuer is Ragnar Thorvald, who survived the crash of the scoutship and turned it into a booby trap. Together the two men leave the scene and begin living off the land in a way that implies a native people, not Terrans. Days later they make a night raid on the base, now occupied by Throgs, and they and the wolverines barely escape. On a raft they head for the distant sea, where they expect to find refuge.
After evading a Throg search party, they reach their goal. Thorvald displays a coin-like disc that suddenly turns him into a zombie. Shann knocks the disc away and Thorvald comes back to himself. Now he knows whither they should go. The men build an outrigger canoe and they and the wolverines go to an island, where Thorvald strands the other three.
Shann seeks to escape from the island, to return to the mainland with the wolverines. But he finds that he sabotages his own work, apparently under the control of another being. He sets a trap and soon finds a small dragon-like humanoid caught in it. The creature can communicate with him and control him telepathically and she takes him to a cavern to meet three other Warlockians, who want to find out who and what he is.
In a fog-filled cavern Shall must confront old memories somehow made physically real as long as he believes in them. He has to remain focused on what is true in order to survive. During the ordeal he reunites with Thorvald, who refers to the natives as Wyverns. Together the two men escape from the cavern and Shann saves a young Wyvern from a sea monster.
Now the Wyverns give Shann a mission. He must extract a Throg from a cave in which it has taken refuge. Shann manages to get the Throg out but is captured by the team sent to pick it up. The Throgs take Shann back to the Terran base and compel him to call the colonization ship that is coming, to lure it down so that the Throgs can kill the passengers and crew. Shann manages to warn the ship and to draw a Patrol cruiser to the base, dooming the Throgs. Before the Throgs can begin torturing Shann to death, Thorvald and the Wyverns envelop them in a fog that realizes their worst fears and kills them.
After his wounds have healed Shann discovers that he and Thorvald are to form the core of an embassy established on Warlock to maintain contact with the Wyverns. | Who became Shann's rescuer? | [
"Ragnar Thorvald",
"Ragnar Thorvald"
] |
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.
"The Open Boat" is divided into seven sections, each told mainly from the point of view of the correspondent, based upon Crane himself. The first part introduces the four charactersâthe correspondent, a condescending observer detached from the rest of the group; the captain, who is injured and morose at having lost his ship, yet capable of leadership; the cook, fat and comical, but optimistic that they will be rescued; and the oiler, Billie, who is physically the strongest, and the only one in the story referred to by name. The four are survivors of a shipwreck, which occurred before the beginning of the story, and are drifting at sea in a small dinghy.
In the following four sections, the moods of the men fluctuate from anger at their desperate situation, to a growing empathy for one another and the sudden realization that nature is indifferent to their fates. The men become fatigued and bicker with one another; nevertheless, the oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing toward shore, while the cook bails water to keep the boat afloat. When they see a lighthouse on the horizon, their hope is tempered with the realization of the danger of trying to reach it. Their hopes dwindle further when, after seeing a man waving from shore, and what may or may not be another boat, they fail to make contact. The correspondent and the oiler continue to take turns rowing, while the others sleep fitfully during the night. The correspondent then notices a shark swimming near the boat, but he does not seem to be bothered by it as one would expect. In the penultimate chapter, the correspondent wearily recalls a verse from the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" by Caroline Norton, in which a "soldier of the Legion" dies far from home.
The final chapter begins with the men's resolution to abandon the floundering dinghy they have occupied for thirty hours and to swim ashore. As they begin the long swim to the beach, Billie the oiler, the strongest of the four, swims ahead of the others; the captain advances towards the shore while still holding onto the boat, and the cook uses a surviving oar. The correspondent is trapped by a local current, but is eventually able to swim on. After three of the men safely reach the shore and are met by a group of rescuers, they find Billie dead, his body washed up on the beach. | Which of the crew is the strongest? | [
"Billie.",
"Billie"
] |
The play adapts the story of ChitrÄngadÄ and Arjuna from the Mahabarata and begins with Chitra beginning a conversation with Madana, the god of love, and Vasanta, the god of springtime and eternal youth. They ask Chitra who she is and what is bothering her, to which she replies that she is the daughter of the king of Manipur and has been raised like a boy as her father had no male heir. She is a great warrior and hero despite being born as a woman, but has never had the chance to truly live as a woman or learn how to use "feminine wiles". Chitra explains that she had met the warrior hero Arjuna after seeing him in the forest while she was hunting for game. Despite knowing that he had pledged several vows including one for twelve years of celibacy, Chitra fell instantly in love with him. The following day she tried to approach him and plead her case, but Arjuna turned her away due to his vows. Chitra begs with the two gods to give her a day of perfect beauty so she can win over Arjuna and have just one night of love with him. Moved by her pleas, the two gods give her not just one day but an entire year to spend with Arjuna.
The next scene opens with Arjuna marveling over the perfect beauty he has seen. Chitra, the beauty of which he mentions, enters and Arjuna immediately strikes up a conversation with her. He requests to know what she is searching for, to which Chitra coyly replies that she is seeking the man of her desires. The two go back and forth until Chitra admits that she is looking for him, which prompts Arjuna to say that he will no longer hold to his vows of chastity. Chitra finds that rather than make her happy, hearing this makes her extremely unhappy since he is not falling for her true self and tells him not to offer his heart to an illusion.
Later the next day, Chitra admits to Madana and Vasanta that she had spurned Arjuna due to him falling for what she saw as a false image of herself. The two gods scold her as they had only given her what she had asked of them. Chitra replies that despite their gift, she sees the perfect beauty as a being separate from herself and that even if she had slept with Arjuna, it would not be the true her that he loved- only her beauty. Vasanta advises Chitra to go to Arjuna and spend the year with him and that at the year's end Arjuna will be able to embrace the true Chitra once the spell of perfect beauty is gone. Chitra does so, but throughout their year together she assumes that Arjuna will not love her once the year is up. After much time has passed, Arjuna begins to grow restless and longs to hunt once again. He also begins to ask Chitra questions about her past, wondering if she has anyone at home that is missing her. Chitra remarks that she has no past and that she's as transient as a drop of dew, which upsets Arjuna. With the year approaching its end, Chitra asks that the two gods make her last night her most beautiful, which they do.
However around the same time Arjuna hears tales of the warrior Princess Chitra and begins to wonder what she might be like. Never having told him her name, Chitra assures Arjuna that he would never have noticed Chitra if he had passed by her and tries to coax him into bed. Arjuna declines, saying that some villagers have informed him that Maripur is under attack. Chitra assures him that the city is well protected, but to no avail. Arjuna's mind is occupied with thoughts of the princess, to which Chitra bitterly asks if he would love her more if she were like the Princess Chitra he admires. Arjuna replies that since she has always kept her true self a secret, he has never truly grown to love her as much as he could and that his love is "incomplete". Noticing that this upsets her, Arjuna tries to console his companion.
The play ends with Chitra finally admitting to Arjuna that she is the princess of which he spoke of and that she begged for beauty in order to win him over. She admits that she is not a perfect beauty, but that if he would accept her then she would remain with him forever. Chitra also admits that she is pregnant with his son. Arjuna meets this news with joy and states that his life is truly full. | What was Chitra doing when she first saw Arjuna? | [
"hunting in the forest",
"Hunting for game"
] |
In the near future, weapons master James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) has created a nanotech-based weapon - nanomites designed to devour metal and other materials, capable of destroying anything from tanks to cities. The nanobots can only be stopped by activating the kill switch. His company M.A.R.S. sells four warheads to NATO, and NATO troops led by American soldiers Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are asked to deliver the warheads. Their convoy is ambushed by the Baroness (Sienna Miller), whom Duke recognizes to be his ex-fiancee Ana Lewis. Duke and Ripcord are rescued by Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Snake Eyes (Ray Park), Breaker (Sa誰d Taghmaoui), and Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). They take the warheads to The Pit, G.I. Joe's command center in Egypt, and upon arriving, rendezvous with the head of the G.I. Joe Team, General Hawk (Dennis Quaid). Hawk takes command of the warheads and excuses Duke and Ripcord, only to be convinced to let them join his group, after Duke reveals that he knows the Baroness.
McCullen is revealed to be using the same nanotechnology to build an army of soldiers with the aid of the Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), planning on using the warheads to cause worldwide panic and bring about a new world order. Using a tracking device, McCullen locates the G.I. Joe base and sends Storm Shadow (Byung-Hun Lee) and the Baroness to retrieve the warheads, with assistance from Zartan (Arnold Vosloo).
After a fight, Storm Shadow and the Baroness retrieve the warheads and take them to Baron DeCobray, the Baroness's husband, for him to weaponize. Making their way to Paris, the Joes pursue the Baroness and Storm Shadow, but are unsuccessful in stopping them from launching one of the missiles. The missile hits the Eiffel Tower and releases the nanomites in it, destroying the tower and some of the surrounding area before Duke manages to hit the kill switch, but in so doing, he is captured and taken to McCullen's base under the Arctic.
The Joes locate the secret base and fly there, as McCullen loads three missiles with nanowarheads, which are aimed for Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, DC, the world's three most important cities. He intends to do this to strike fear into the hearts of every man, woman, and child on the planet, after which they will turn to the person with the most power in the world, the President of the United States. After Snake Eyes takes out one missile, Ripcord destroys the remaining two using a stolen M.A.R.S. prototype Night Raven jet, while Scarlett, Breaker, and Snake Eyes infiltrate the base. Snake Eyes duels and prevails over Storm Shadow. Duke learns that the Doctor is Rex Lewis, Ana's brother, believed to have been killed by a mistimed airstrike during a mission led by Duke (also the origin of the alienation between Duke and Ana). Rex had encountered Doctor Mindbender (Kevin J. O'Connor) in the bunker and was seduced by the nanomite technology, taking too long to retrieve the data and getting caught in the bombing, which disfigured him. After freeing Duke, the Baroness is subdued, as the Doctor reveals he has implanted her with nanomites, which has put her under his control for the past four years. Attempting to kill Duke, McCullen ends up being burned, so the Doctor and he flee to an escape vessel. Duke and the Baroness pursue him while the Joes fall back; when the Doctor activates the base's self-destruct sequence, which involves 'blowing the ice cap' to create blocks of ice which then nearly crush the Joes.
The Doctor assumes the identity of the Commander, having healed McCullen's burned face with nanomites, encasing it in silver and naming him "Destro", which places McCullen under the Commander's control. They are captured by G.I. Joe soon after. On the supercarrier USS Flagg, the Baroness is placed in protective custody until they can remove the nanomites from her body. Meanwhile, Zartan, having had his physical appearance altered by nanomites, infiltrates the White House during the missile crisis and assumes the identity of the President of the United States of America (Jonathan Pryce), thus completing a part of McCullen's plan to rule the world. | What kind of weapon did James McCullen created? | [
"Nanotech base weapon.",
"Nanotechnology"
] |
In the last two days of 1999, Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone. As a group of criminals rob a Chinese restaurant, the event is recorded by a robber wearing a SQUID, an illegal electronic device that records events directly from the wearer's cerebral cortex, and when played back through a MiniDisc-like device, allows a user to experience the recorder's memories and physical sensations. Lenny Nero, a former LAPD officer turned black marketeer of SQUID recordings, agrees to buy the robbery clip from his main supplier, Tick. Elsewhere, a prostitute named Iris, who is a friend of Lenny's ex-girlfriend Faith Justin, is being chased by LAPD officers Burton Steckler and Dwayne Engelman as she flees to the subway. Iris manages to escape on a rapid transit after her wig is pulled off by Engleman, revealing a SQUID recorder headset.
Lenny pines for Faith and relies on his two best friends, bodyguard and limousine driver Lornette "Mace" Mason and private investigator Max Peltier, for emotional support. Mace has unrequited feelings for Lenny from the past, from when he was still a cop and stepped in as a dependable father figure for her son after her boyfriend was arrested on drug charges, but disapproves of his SQUID-dealing business. While Lenny and Max are drinking together at a bar, Iris drops a SQUID disc through the sunroof of Lenny's car, but his car is towed away before he sees it. He is then picked up by Mace, who eventually agrees to take him to a nightclub where Faith is going to sing. In the club, Lenny receives a SQUID disc from a contact and then tries to get Faith away from her new boyfriend, music industry mogul Philo Gant, but to no avail.
While in the car with Mace, Lenny plays the disc the contact gave him and watches Iris being brutally raped and murdered by an attacker at the Sunset Regent hotel. As they approach the hotel, Iris is taken out on a stretcher. The next day, Lenny and Mace take the disc to Tick, who cannot identify the source of the recording, but recalls that Iris was looking for Lenny. Mace deduces that Iris may have left something in Lenny's car, and the two go to the impound and find Iris's disc. Steckler and Engleman appear and demand the disc at gunpoint, but Lenny and Mace escape in her car before being forced to stop at a dock. Steckler pours gasoline on the car and sets it on fire, but Mace drives it into the harbor, extinguishing the flames. When they reach the surface, the cops have left.
Mace takes Lenny to her brother's house and watches Iris' disc. They discover that her death is tied to a cover-up of the murder of rapper Jeriko One by Steckler and Engleman, who disapprove of his politically-charged music. Lenny, Mace, and Max also learn that Tick has been rendered brain-dead from forcefully being exposed to highly amplified SQUID signals. Lenny concludes that the assault on Tick was committed by the same person who killed Iris and fears Faith will be next. Back at the nightclub, Lenny and Mace confront Faith, who tells them that Philo hired Iris to spy on Jeriko. As midnight approaches, Lenny and Mace sneak into a private party at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel that Philo is hosting for the city's wealthy elite. Lenny also gives Iris' disc to Mace so that she can deliver it to deputy police commissioner Palmer Strickland.
Upon entering Philo's penthouse suite, Lenny finds another SQUID disc and Philo's body on the floor, whose brain has been damaged in the same manner as Tick's. After watching the disc, Lenny discovers that Max and Faith have become lovers and that they forced Philo to run an amplified recording of them having sex. Max and Faith then enter the room, explaining that they set Philo up because he wanted to have Faith killed for what she knew about Jeriko's death, and that he now intends to frame Lenny for Philo's murder. After a hand to hand fight, Lenny throws Max off the balcony to his death. Meanwhile on the street, Mace is pursued by Steckler and Engelman, but manages to subdue them with the help of Strickland. Lenny finds Mace and the two share a passionate kiss as the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century around them. | What did Iris do for a living? | [
"She was a prostitute.",
"prostitute"
] |
The book is set following the abortive Martian attack depicted in Fighters from Mars, much more devastating and global than in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, though in both works the onslaught is thwarted when the aliens die from bacterial illness. Determining that the Martians will inevitably return, Earth's leaders, including U.S. President William McKinley, Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Emperor Mutsuhito, unite the world against the common threat and plan an attack on Mars. American inventor Thomas Edison leads a group of scientists studying derelict Martian equipment; they are able to develop an anti-gravity device powered by electric repulsion as well as a disintegration ray.
Using this new technology, the allies construct an armada of space ships for the attack. Edison takes some ships to the moon on a test run; using the first known fictional depiction of space suits, the explorers uncover evidence of an extinct civilization of giants. The armada heads on, discovering a solid gold asteroid being mined by the Martians. The humans fight two space battles against the Martians, suffering heavy casualties but ultimately winning thanks to the superiority of Edison's ray gun compared to the Martians' electric weapons. The humans take a captive, from whom they learn the Martian language.
The humans reach Mars, but in spite of their superior forces they have lost half their men to the Martians' overwhelming numbers. The Martians envelop the planet in a smoke screen, and the humans retreat to the moon Deimos. During a raid on Mars for supplies, the earth men find Aina, the last of a population of human slaves whose ancestors were captured from Kashmir in a Martian raid 9,000 years before. During this raid, the Martians also constructed the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphynx in Egypt, the latter of which is a statue of their leader. Aina advises Edison that meeting the Martians in battle would be fruitless, and that they should instead attack the dams that channel water from the polar ice. Since most of Mars' cities are under sea level, the flood spreads rapidly, killing most of the Martians and destroying their civilization. Edison and company force a peace with the surviving Martians, and return home to great celebration. | What U.S. President helped to unite the world leaders to battle the Martians? | [
"President William McKinley",
"William McKinley"
] |
In 2020, the Mars I spacecraft, en route to planet Mars, is commanded by Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) with fellow astronauts Nicholas Willis (Kavan Smith), Sergei Kirov (Peter Outerbridge), and RenĂŠe CotĂŠ (Jill Teed). Upon arrival, the team discovers a crystalline formation in the Cydonia region, which they suspect is an extrusion from a subsurface geothermal column of water, useful to future human colonization. After reporting this to the World Space Station, they hear a strange sound on their communications system, which they assume to be interference from their planetary rover. While they scan the formation with radar, a large vortex kills them.
After the vortex subsides, a large humanoid face is exposed in the adjacent mountain. ISS having received Luke's message, a second ship is readied for a rescue mission - the Mars II containing Commander Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), Co-Commander Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), and mission specialists Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen) and Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O'Connell). As the ship enters Mars orbit, micrometeoroids breach the hull. During repair, the external fuel tanks are overlooked, causing a leak and later explosion. The crew then board the REMO ("Resupply Module") orbiting Mars. Tethered to the others, Woody launches himself at the module, but he is unable to properly land on it. Terri tries to rescue Woody, who is her husband; but, knowing she would run out of fuel before reaching him, Woody removes his helmet, killing himself to save her. When the survivors arrive on the surface of Mars, they find Luke living on the produce of a greenhouse, whereupon he reveals that the crystalline structure looks humanoid and that the noise represents a map of human DNA in XYZ coordinates, but missing a pair of chromosomes. To complete the sequence, the crew dispatches a robotic rover to reproduce the completed signal. Following the transmission, an opening appears in the side of the mountain, which Jim, Terri, and Luke enter, while Phil remains at the repaired emergency return vehicle with orders to launch, with or without them, at the agreed time.
The opening seals behind them, disrupting radio communication with Phil, and a three-dimensional projection depicts the planet Mars, covered with water, being struck by a large asteroid and rendered uninhabitable. A Martian then reveals that the natives of Mars evacuated their world in spacecraft, one of which landed on Earth to create humans, who could one day land on Mars and be recognized as descendants. An invitation is offered to one astronaut to follow the Martians to their new home. Jim accepts the invitation and is launched in an oxygenated capsule, while the others return to Phil, and subsequently to Earth. | What type of formation did the team discover in the Cydonia region? | [
"crystalline formation",
"A crystalline formation. "
] |
Young neighbours and fellow-writers Ashe Marson and Joan Valentine, newly met and both in need of a change of direction, find themselves drawn down to Blandings, for various reasons attempting to retrieve a scarab belonging to an American millionaire, absent-mindedly purloined by Lord Emsworth. Once within the Castle's idyllic walls, despite impersonating servants, romance cannot help but blossom; meanwhile, Freddie Threepwood, engaged to the millionaire's daughter, is worried about some incriminating letters.The novel begins with Ashe Marson, a young writer employed by the Mammoth Publishing Company, the creator of the popular "Gridley Quayle" detective novels, doing his daily exercises. Joan Valentine, a young girl living in the same apartment building, looks on and laughs at him. Thus she and Ashe meet, discover that they work for the same publishing house, and Ashe is encouraged to look for a new opportunity among the newspaper ads.
Meanwhile, Freddie Threepwood, the younger son of the 9th Earl of Emsworth, is engaged to be married to Aline Peters, the daughter of American millionaire J. Preston Peters. Freddie pays a visit to his friend R. Jones, hoping to "recover" some letters he sent in the past to a certain chorus girl, feeling they might be dangerous in her hands, especially following the recent embarrassment of his cousin Lord Percy Stockheath. He pays Jones ÂŁ500 to sort things out for him.
Clarence Threepwood, the elderly Earl of Emsworth, and Freddie Threepwood's father, calls on J. Preston Peters, Aline's father, who is a passionate collector of Egyptian scarabs. Peters shows him the most precious piece in his collection: a 4th dynasty Cheops. Mr. Peters is called to the telephone, and Lord Emsworth absently-mindedly puts the scarab into his pocket.
Aline Peters has lunch with her old friend George Emerson, a Hong Kong police officer who wishes to marry her. He proposes to her once more, and tells her that, having befriended Freddie Threepwood, he has been invited to Blandings.
Mr Peters discovers the disappearance of his scarab, and suspects the Earl, but cannot confront him for fear of endangering his daughter's marriage. The Earl has already forgotten everything that happened, and thinks the scarab was a gift of Mr Peters.
R. Jones finds the address of Freddie's ex-sweetheart, Joan Valentine, who tells him she has long since destroyed any letters she may have had from Freddie. As he is leaving, Aline Peters, a close friend of Joan, arrives on a visit, allowing the suspicious Jones to listen at the door. He hears Aline's father is offering ÂŁ1,000 to anybody that can retrieve his scarab. Joan decides that she will go herself to Blandings Castle, posing as Aline's maid, recover the scarab and scoop the reward.
Ashe, following Joan's advice, scours the adverts in the newspaper, and seeing one which grabs his attention, he goes along to an interview with Mr. Peters, who is looking for somebody to pose as his valet and steal the scarab. Ashe, showing Peters some pep, gets the job.
Ashe tells Joan about this, and they both take the train to Blandings. During the trip Joan warns Ashe of the highly complicated system of etiquette observed among servants of a large house. She hopes her words will persuade him to give up his quest and remove himself as her competitor for the reward, but he resolves to do his best.
After their arrival, Ashe meets Baxter, the Earl's efficient and suspicious secretary, on the way to Mr Peters' room, addressing him in a highly un-valet-like manner. He finds that Mr Peters, like Beach, the butler at the castle, has problems with his stomach, so persuades him to do some exercise and stop smoking cigars.
At night, Ashe and Joan are both trying to get at the scarab when the watchful Baxter hears them. Ashe, with his prepared excuse of reading to the insomniac Mr Peters, helps Joan escape. Next morning, Ashe and Joan decide to become allies and, after flipping a coin, that Ashe will take first try at steaing the scarab.
Aline is following the same diet as her father, composed mainly of legumes, and George, worrying she is suffering from malnutrition, prepares a feast to bring to her at night. As he makes his way to her room, he and Ashe collide in the dark hall of the castle and start a noisy fight. Baxter rushes in, but by the time the lights come on, Ashe and George have fled, leaving Baxter surrounded by food and broken china. He is blamed for waking everyone, and roundly criticised by his employer, Lord Emsworth, for sneaking food in the middle of the night.
The next night is Joan's turn, but she finds the scarab is already gone. The following morning, Ashe finds that Freddie needs money to pay R. Jones for the letters to Joan; he confronts Freddie, who confesses to the theft, and Ashe gets the scarab and gives it to the rightful owner, Mr Peters.
George Emerson, recalled to Hong Kong, sadly wishes Aline good luck with Freddie; Aline, her mothering instinct finally aroused by his disappointment, decides to leave Freddie and elope with him. Ashe and Joan finally realise they are made for each other, and enter Mr Peters' employ. Lord Emsworth agrees to let Freddie return to London, on condition he doesn't make a fool of himself again. | Who is Alines father? | [
"Preston Peters",
"J. Preston Peters."
] |
A recently released psychiatric patient named Tom Sykes creates a home for himself in the attic of the Dreyer family's newly built house. He uses electronic devices to spy on them. The Dreyer's beloved dog Rudolph is murdered by Tom in an attempt to defend his family from the titular hider. After that, Tom really begins to get down to the business. He starts to focus his attention on the mom, Julie, going so far as to watch her skinny dip in the pool. He interferes secretly in the relationship between Julie and her husband, Phil, planting bogus evidence of secret love affairs. He befriends the Sykes' son Neal and teaches him fighting techniques. After two explosive arguments, Phil leaves the house and moves into a hotel. Seeing this as an opportunity, Sykes pretends to be a visitor who lives on Willmington St. a couple of blocks over. His attempt to insinuate himself into their lives works at first, although the creepy neighbor (and huge Philly fan) Gene is the only one who distrusts him. Sykes murders two people who had accidentally discovered his bizarre goings-on and finally Julie becomes sufficiently suspicious to reject his advances. Tom loses it, and he tries to kill Julie. Phil shows up and is severely injured defending her while Julie gets a gun and shoots Tom in the chest. This does not kill him, and Tom gets up and tries to kill both Julie and himself, but the police (summoned by Gene) shoot Tom dead from the doorway. | What does Tom do to the two people who discovered what he was doing? | [
"He killed the two people. ",
"He kills them."
] |
In Aix les Bains in the early 20th Century Celia Harland, a beautiful (of course) young English girl down on her luck is befriended by a rich widow, Madame Dauvray, an addict of "spiritualism", and stages seances for her benefactrix, while knowing full well that the supposed manifestations from the spirit world are entirely bogus. This set-up supplies the opportunity for a criminal gang master-minded by Madame Dauvray's maid, with their eyes on the widow's jewellery collection, to engineer an introduction for one of their number, Adele TacĂŠ ("Rossignol") whose taunts of disbelief goad the old lady into allowing a seance to be held which, unsuspected by either Celia or her patron, will be the cover for murder and robbery. The crux of the plot is that Celia, as medium, will be made their innocent victim, on whom suspicion is to be planted. By her professed scepticism, Adele manoeuvres the girl into consenting to be bound hand and foot and secured to a pillar during the performance, such that she is incapable of escaping or preventing Madame Dauvray's being strangled by an intruder in the course of the seance; and is thereafter abducted to Geneva, still trussed, gagged and helpless, with various clues being left behind to incriminate her as accomplice in the murder. Inspector Hanaud of the Paris SĂťretĂŠ (in several of his novels, Mason's equivalent of Christie's Poirot) unravels the conspiracy and rescues Celia when on the brink of being drugged and dumped into Lake Geneva. | What Madame Dauvray was addicted to? | [
"Spiritualism",
"spiritualism"
] |
The film is set in Los Angeles, where drug kingpin Judah Earl (Richard Brooks) has mechanic Ashe Corven (Vincent PĂŠrez) and his eight-year-old son Danny (Eric Acosta) killed after they witness a gang of Judah's thugs murdering a fellow drug dealer.
Sarah from the first film (Mia Kirshner) is now an adult, working in a tattoo parlor by day, and painting surreal images of death and resurrection in her apartment at night. She is haunted by disturbing dreams about Ashe and Danny, and after a day's work in the tattoo parlor, Sarah is visited in her apartment by a large crow as she contemplates a ring that Eric Draven gave her years before.
Sarah follows the crow to the harbor at night on All Saints' Day, and witnesses Ashe's resurrection and frantic escape from his watery grave. She takes him to her apartment. When Sarah tells Ashe he is dead, he panics and runs screaming into the night, ending up at his own home, where he relives the final moments of his life.
Sarah arrives there to find Ashe brooding, and she explains to him why he has been resurrected by the Crow so he can take revenge against the criminals who killed him and Danny. With the guidance of the crow, Ashe starts killing Judah's henchmen, one by one. Ashe first visits Spider-Monkey (Vincent Castellanos) in a drug warehouse and interrogates him as to who else was involved in the murders. Ashe then kills him by blowing up the building. Another of Judah's lackeys, Nemo (Thomas Jane), is spending the night at a peeping booth. Ashe appears in the booth, kills him, and leaves him with a doll stuffed in his pants, and a paper crow in his mouth.
Judah has in his employ a blind prophetess named Sybil (Tracey Ellis) who is able to ascertain Ashe's link to Sarah and to the crow that is the source of his powers. Judah captures Sarah in order to draw Ashe to him and steal his power.
One of the murderers, Kali (Thuy Trang), goes to Sarah's apartment to draw Ashe out. While battling her, Ashe realizes that Kali is the one who killed Danny; enraged, he throws her against a wall that breaks her leg, and then out a window, leaving a crow-shaped blood pattern. Ashe then pursues Judah's right-hand-man, Curve (Iggy Pop), in a motorcycle chase. Ashe shoots Curve's motorcycle, which blows up and throws Curve onto the road. Ashe then drags Curve into the nearby river, leaving him to die as local parishioners cast down flower petals in the shape of a crow.
On the day of the annual Day of the Dead festival. Judah captures the crow and impales its wings with knives before killing it. He then ingests the crow's blood, stealing Ashe's power. Suddenly mortal, Ashe nearly dies from the shock, but is revived after seeing a vision of Danny telling him to keep fighting. Ashe must now attempt to rescue Sarah by seeking out Judah in his lair, an abandoned church. Judah gets the best of the weakened Ashe in the ensuing fight. Judah ties a rope around Ashe and savagely whips him, intending to hang him.
Sarah rushes up and stabs Judah in the forehead, causing Judah to drop Ashe. Judah pulls out the knife and starts moving toward Ashe. Sarah gets in the way, and Judah stabs her in the stomach. Ashe gets up and impales Judah on a metal pipe, but this does not kill Judah either. While Judah is still impaled, Ashe calls upon a murder of crows, which devour Judah. Sarah dies in Ashe's arms, a tableau reminiscent of a painting she had completed earlier in the film. Ashe returns to death, knowing that he can rest in peace with Sarah, and his son. | What information does Ashe gain from Spider-Monkey? | [
"The names of the other people who were involved in the murder.",
"who was involved in the nurders"
] |
Protagonist Jack Holloway lives a solitary life in a wilderness of planet Zarathustra, itself "owned" by the Chartered Zarathustra Corporation (under Victor Grego), which installed basic services and colonial outposts initially, and now reaps the benefits of new discoveries, such as the valuable 'sunstones' mined by Holloway until he befriends a tiny, feline-like humanoid, nicknamed 'Little Fuzzy', and its traveling-companions. Upon discovery that the 'Fuzzies' intelligence may qualify them as a sapient species, the Company intervenes against them, on grounds that such a discovery would declare the planet a protected aboriginal zone, and deprive the Chartered Zarathustra Company of rights to the resources there. Leonard Kellogg, one of Grego's staff, kills a Fuzzy and thus provokes a court case to decide whether the Fuzzies are sapient. In the midst of the proceedings, the Terran Navy commander reveals that his people have been studying Fuzzies, and prove that Fuzzies have at least the mental capacity of a ten-year-old human child. At once, the Charter of the Zarathustra Company is invalidated, and Kellogg commits suicide in his cell.
The second book, Fuzzy Sapiens, deals with the newly 'Charterless Zarathustra Company' and its gradual cooperation with the planet's new governor to ensure control over the planet, while the Fuzzies attach themselves to individual human guardians including the Company's staff. It becomes clear that criminals are using the irregular status of the government and of the company to attack it and steal sunstones.
The third book, Fuzzy Bones by William Tuning, suggests that the remarkable demand by all Fuzzies for the ration-pack 'Extraterrestrial Type Three' (aka 'Extee 3' or 'estefee') does not coincide with the composition of Zarathustran soil. A third significant Fuzzy character is developed called Starwatcher. Little Fuzzy, Diamond, and Starwatcher become the clear leaders in working with humans.
Golden Dream fits with these three books in terms of the general plot and relationships.
After these two official sequels, the original third book by Piper himself offers an alternative future, wherein Little Fuzzy himself is separated from Jack Holloway and introduces a band of wild Fuzzies to the combined society. | Why are the government of Zarathustra and the now Charterless Zarathustra Company cooperating with each other? | [
"Criminals are taking advantage of the unstable government and company to attack and steal sunstones.",
"They cooperate to control the planet."
] |
Richard Johnson's The History of Tom Thumbe of 1621 tells that in the days of King Arthur, old Thomas of the Mountain, a plowman and a member of the King's Council, wants nothing more than a son, even if he is no bigger than his thumb. He sends his wife to consult with Merlin and in three months time she gives birth to the diminutive Tom Thumb. The "Queene of Fayres" and her attendants act as midwives. She provides Tom with an oak leaf hat, a shirt of cobweb, a doublet of thistledown, stockings of apple rind, and shoes of mouse's skin.
Tom cheats at games with other boys, and, because of his many tricks, the boys will not associate with him. Tom retaliates by using magic to hang his mother's pots and glasses from a sunbeam, and, when his fellows try the same, their pots and glasses fall and are broken. Thereafter, Tom stays home under his mother's supervision. At Christmas, she makes puddings, but Tom falls into the batter, and is boiled into one of them. When a tinker comes begging, Tom's mother inadvertently gives him the pudding containing her son. The tinker farts while crossing a stile but Tom calls out about the farting and the frightened tinker drops the pudding. Tom eats himself free and returns home to tell his mother and father of his adventure.
His mother thereafter keeps a closer watch upon him, but one day he accompanies her to the field to milk the cows. He sits under a thistle but a red cow swallows him. The cow is given a laxative and Tom passes from her in a "cowturd". He is taken home and cleaned. Another day, he accompanies his father for the seed sowing and rides in the horse's ear. Tom is set down in the field to play the scarecrow but a raven carries him away. His parents search for him but are unable to find him.
The raven drops Tom at the castle of a giant. The cruel giant swallows the tiny boy like a pill. Tom thrashes about so much in the giant's stomach that he is vomited into the sea. There, he is eaten once more, this time by a fish, which is caught for King Arthur's supper. The cook is astonished to see the little man emerge from the fish. Tom then becomes King Arthur's Dwarf.
Tom becomes a favourite at court, especially among the ladies. There is revelry; Tom joins the jousting and dances in the palm of a Maid of Honour. He goes home briefly to see his parents, taking some money from the treasury with the king's permission, then returns to court. The Queene of Fayres finds him asleep on a rose and leaves him several gifts: an enchanted hat of knowledge, a ring of invisibility, a shape-changing girdle, and shoes to take him anywhere in a moment.
Tom falls seriously ill when a lady blows her nose, but is cured by the physician to King Twaddell of the Pygmies. He takes a ride in his walnut shell coach and meets Garagantua. Each boasts of his many powers, but when Garagantua threatens to harm Tom, he is cast under an enchantment and Tom hurries home to safety. King Arthur listens with amazement to Tom's many adventures. Richard Johnson's 1621 narrative ends here but he promised his readers a sequel that has never been found, if published at all. In 1630 a metrical version in three parts was published that continues Tom's adventures.
Other versions paint a different picture to Tom's end. Dinah Mulock continued the tale and noted that Tom exhausted himself with jousting but recovered in Fairyland. When he returned to Arthur's court, he accidentally landed in a bowl of the king's frumenty. Tom enrages the cook and is threatened with beheading. He seeks refuge in the mouth of a passing slack-jawed miller. Sensing tiny voices and movements within him, the man believes he is possessed. He yawns and Tom emerges but the Miller is so angry he tosses Tom into a river where he is swallowed by a salmon. The fish is caught, taken to the King's kitchen, and Tom is found and kept in a mousetrap until the king forgives him.
The court goes hunting and Tom joins them upon his steed, a mouse. A cat catches the mouse and Tom is injured. He is carried to Fairyland where he recovers and dwells for several years. When he returns to court, King Thunston now reigns. Charmed by the little man, the king gives Tom a tiny coach pulled by six mice. This makes the queen jealous, as she received no such gifts, and she frames Tom with being insolent to her. Tom attempts to escape on a passing butterfly but is caught and imprisoned in a mousetrap. He is freed by a curious cat and once more wins back the favour of his king. Sadly, he does not live to enjoy it as he is killed by a spider bite. Tom is laid to rest beneath rosebush and a marble monument is raised to his memory with the epitaph:
Here lies Tom Thumb, King Arthur’s knight,
Who died by a spider’s cruel bite.
He was well known in Arthur’s court,
Where he afforded gallant sport;
He rode at tilt and tournament,
And on a mouse a-hunting went;
Alive he fill’d the court with mirth,
His death to sorrow soon gave birth.
Wipe, wipe your eyes, and shake your head,
And cry, ‘Alas! Tom Thumb is dead. | Who is ruler when Tom returns to court? | [
"King Thunston.",
"King Thunston"
] |
Tina Gray, a teenager, walks through a boiler room dressed in a nightgown. She is stalked and attacked by a disfigured man wearing a blade-fixed glove. She awakens from the nightmare, but her mother points out four mysterious slashes in her gown.
The following morning, Tina is consoled by her friend Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen. Later, Nancy and Glen sleepover with Tina following her mother's out-of-town departure. The sleepover is interrupted by Tina's boyfriend Rod, who tries to have sex to reconcile after arguing. Falling asleep, she sees the man and runs. Awakened by Tina's thrashing, Rod witnesses her being fatally slashed by an unseen force. He flees as Nancy and Glen find Tina, mistakenly blaming Rod. Nancy tells her father, Lieutenant Don Thompson, of Tina's death.
The next day, Rod proclaims innocence to Nancy, but Don arrests him. At school, Nancy falls asleep in class and finds the man, calling himself Freddy Krueger, chasing her in the boiler room. Nancy burns her arm on a pipe and awakens in the middle of class, excusing herself. She notices the burn mark on her arm and is concerned. At home, Nancy falls asleep in the bathtub and nearly gets drowned by Freddy. Nancy goes to Rod, who tells her what happened to Tina, and Nancy believes Freddy is responsible for Tina's death.
Nancy has Glen watch over her as she falls asleep. She tries to find Freddy and sees him preparing to kill Rod. He turns his attention on her; she runs and wakes up when her alarm clock goes off. Nancy and Glen go to the jail and discover Rod has been hanged in his cell by his bed sheet in an apparent suicide. At Rod's funeral, Nancy's parents become worried when she describes the man in her dreams. Her mother, Marge, takes her to a dream clinic. In her dream, Nancy is attacked again and grabs Freddy's hat. When the staff wake her up, she has a gash in her arm and she somehow has Freddy's hat with her.
At home, Marge bars the windows and begins drinking heavily. Eventually, she tells Nancy that Freddy was a child murderer released on a technicality. In a form of vigilante justice, the parents in the neighborhood burned him alive. Realizing that Freddy desires revenge, Nancy convinces Glen to help her. She plans to take Freddy into the real world and set up booby traps in her house. Concerned over her influence, Glen's parents prevent the two from meeting. Glen falls asleep at their appointed hour, and Freddy kills him.
Alone, Nancy puts her drunken mother to bed and convinces her father across the street to break into the house in twenty minutes. In her sleep, she locates Freddy at the last second and pulls him out of the dream. In the real world, Nancy runs from Freddy, who trips on the booby traps. She lights him on fire, locks him in the basement, and rushes to the door for help. The police arrive, and they realize Freddy has escaped the basement. In Marge's bedroom, they see a still-burning Freddy smother her. After Don puts out the fire, Freddy and Marge have vanished. Despite her father's words, Nancy believes she is still in danger.
Freddy attacks Nancy once again. Realizing he is powered by his victim's fear, she calmly turns her back on him, reducing him to nothingness. She steps outside into a bright morning where all of her friends and mother are still alive. She gets into Glen's car to go to school when the top comes down and suddenly locks them in. As the car is driven uncontrollably down the street, Marge is grabbed through the window of their front door and is dragged through it to her apparent death. | Who is really responsible to Tina's death? | [
"Freddy Krugger",
"Freddy"
] |
The play opens one year after the suicide of Rosmer's wife, Beata. Rebecca had previously moved into the family home, Rosmersholm, as a friend of Beata, and she lives there still. It becomes plain that she and Rosmer are in love, but he insists throughout the play that their relationship is completely platonic.
A highly respected member of his community, Rosmer intends to support the newly elected government and its reformist, if not revolutionary, agenda. However, when he announces this to his friend and brother-in-law Kroll, the local schoolmaster, the latter becomes enraged at what he sees as his friend's betrayal of his ruling-class roots. Kroll begins to sabotage Rosmer's plans, confronting him about his relationship with Rebecca and denouncing the pair, initially in guarded terms, in the local newspaper. Rosmer becomes consumed by his guilt, now believing he, rather than mental illness, caused his wife's suicide. He attempts to escape the guilt by erasing the memory of his wife and proposing marriage to Rebecca. But she rejects him outright. Kroll accuses her of using Rosmer as a tool to work her own political agenda. She admits that it was she who drove Mrs. Rosmer to deeper depths of despair and in a way even encouraged her suicideâinitially to increase her power over Rosmer, but later because she actually fell in love with him. Because of her guilty past she cannot accept Rosmer's marriage proposal.
This leads to the ultimate breakdown in the play where neither Rosmer nor Rebecca can cast off moral guilt: she has acknowledged her part in the destruction of Beata but she has also committed incest with her supposedly adoptive father while suspecting that he was in truth her natural parent. Her suspicion is harshly confirmed by Kroll when he attempts to come between her and Rosmer; they can now no longer trust each other, or even themselves. Rosmer then asks Rebecca to prove her devotion to him by committing suicide the same way his former wife didâby jumping into the mill-race. As Rebecca calmly seems to agree, issuing instructions about the recovery of her body from the water, Rosmer says he will join her. He is still in love with her and, since he cannot conceive of a way in which they can live together, they will die together. The play concludes with both characters jumping into the mill-race and the housekeeper, Mrs. Helseth, screaming in terror: "The dead woman has taken them". | How does Rosmer want Rebecca to prove her love? | [
"Rosmer wants her to commit suicide like Ms. Rosmer did. ",
"by committing suicide"
] |
The book chronicles a three-week fishing trip through central Nova Scotia, and is an excellent account of the unspoiled Nova Scotia wilderness that existed at the time, which has been largely diminished since. The group encounters moose (which Eddie tries to capture and bring back alive), beaver, and numerous trout, the first of which is now very scarce in the region, and legions of mosquitos, moose flies, black flies, noseeums, and midges, all of which are regrettably abundant to this day.
Many of the areas described in the book, then virtually unexplored and uncharted, are now well known to back-country campers in Kejimkujik Park and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. The descriptions of the central Nova Scotia woods contained in the book are beautifully written and uncannily accurate, and while the trout which brought Paine and Breck to Nova Scotia are less abundant, due in part to acid rain and increased fishing pressure, they still provide good sport for anglers.
Paine, a famous New England novelist and biographer, initially had some difficulties with the lack of modern amenities in camp life, but soon came to love the rugged beauty and solitude of the woods. As advice to other potential campers, he has this to offer:
"...if you are willing to get wet and stay wet - to get cold and stay cold - to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten - to be hungry and thirsty, and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go!
The wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart. And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth while!" | For whom do the trout provide good sport for? | [
"Anglers",
"The trout provide good sport for the group."
] |
Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environmentâriver, sun, windâand imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible." Just after managing to land their canoe for the evening on the shifting, sandy islands just downstream across the Austria/Hungary frontier, the main character reflects on the river's potency, human qualities and will:
Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.
Blackwood also specifically characterizes the silvery, windblown willows as sinister:
And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.
At one point the two men see a man in a "flat-bottomed boat". However, the man appears to be warning the two, and ultimately crosses himself before hurtling forward on the river, out of sight. During the night and into the next day and night, the mysterious, hostile forces emerge in force, including large, dark shapes that seem to trace the consciousness of the two men, tapping sounds outside their tent, shifting gong-like sounds, and the appearance that the willows have changed location. In the morning the two discover that one of their two paddles is missing, there is a slit in the canoe that needs repair, and some of their food has disappeared. A hint of distrust arises between them. The howling wind dies down on the second day and night, and humming calm ensues. During the second night, the second man, the Swede, attempts to hurl himself into the river as a "sacrifice," "going inside to Them," but he is saved by the first character. The next morning, the Swede claims that the mysterious forces have found another sacrifice that may save them. They find the corpse of a peasant lodged in roots near the shore. When they touch the body, a flurry of living presence seems to rise from it and disappear into the sky, and later they see the body is pockmarked with funnel shapes as had been formed on the sands of the island during their experience. These are "Their awful mark!" the Swede says. The body is swept away, resembling an "otter" they thought they had seen the previous day, and the story ends.
The precise nature of the mysterious entities in "The Willows" is unclear, and they appear at times malevolent and treacherous, and at times simply mystical, almost divine: "a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly," and a world "where great things go on unceasingly...vast purposes...that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul." These forces are also often contrasted with the fantastic natural beauty of the locale, itself a vigorous dynamic. In sum the story suggests that the landscape is an intersection, a point of contact with a "fourth dimension" â "on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows." | What do the men hear outside of their tent? | [
"Tapping and Gong-like sounds",
"tapping and gong sounds"
] |
Scientist Dr. Sebastian Caine (Bacon) has developed a serum that can make a subject invisible. His team of scientists, which includes ex-girlfriend Dr. Linda McKay (Shue) and Dr. Matt Kensington (Brolin), eventually enable the serum to work on a female gorilla and restore the animal back to visibility. Sebastian once again becomes obsessed with Linda while unbeknownst to him, she has become involved with Matt. Instead of reporting his success to the military, Sebastian lies to the oversight committee, which includes his mentor Dr. Howard Kramer (Devane), convincing his team to go right into human testing. The procedure is performed on Sebastian. It is successful and Sebastian turns completely invisible. He then enjoys sneaking around the lab in order to scare and play pranks on his fellow co-workers. They become worried that he is taking it too far. After three days, however, he is unable to revert to visibility.
Sebastian is quarantined in the laboratory due to his condition and the other researchers construct a latex mask for him to wear around the lab. Unable to cope with the isolation, he defies instructions and heads to his apartment to bring some things back to the lab. There, he happens to notice his neighbor disrobing and goes to her apartment where he rapes her. Linda warns him that if he leaves again, she and Matt will tell the committee about the experiment. Ignoring their threat, Sebastian assembles a device that runs a video loop of his heat signature in his quarters. He leaves the lab again and spies on Linda and Matt, becoming enraged when he sees them having sex.
The team soon discover that they have been watching a recording and that Sebastian has been escaping without their knowledge. Linda and Matt go to Dr. Kramer's house and confess their experiments. After they leave, Kramer attempts to warn the military but Sebastian, who has followed Linda and Matt to the house, cuts off Kramer's phone connection before drowning him in his swimming pool. The next day, Sebastian waits until all of the team is in the lab and then disables the phones and the elevator codes except for his own. He removes his clothing and latex mask and invisible, begins his killing spree, with Janice being his first victim.
Linda and the others hide in the lab, while Matt and Carter take tranquilizer guns to hunt for Sebastian, using thermal imaging goggles. While on top of a pipe, Sebastian throws Carter toward a steel bar, which hits his carotid artery, and leaves him mortally wounded. Matt tries to shoot Sebastian, but is almost killed until Linda drags him to safety. After Carter dies from his injuries, Sarah heads to the freezer to get blood for a transfusion but is killed by Sebastian. He then kills Frank with a crowbar when he lets his guard down, and locks an injured Matt and Linda in the freezer-store room, leaving them to freeze to death. Linda then constructs an electromagnet using a defibrillator and other equipment, to open the freezer door. She then gathers parts to assemble a flamethrower. Sebastian goes to the lab and creates nitroglycerin and puts it in a centrifuge with a timer which is meant to destroy the facility after he leaves; he smashes the keyboard so nobody can stop the machine.
Just as he enters the elevator to leave, Linda appears and fires the flamethrower at him. Sebastian barely manages to escape the flames and the two fight. Just as she is about to lose, Matt appears and hits Sebastian with the crowbar. Sebastian recovers and approaches Matt and Linda from behind with the crowbar but Matt deflects the blow, throwing Sebastian into a nearby circuit box, apparently electrocuting him and rendering him partially visible. Linda and Matt find the nitroglycerin about to explode and decide to climb up the elevator shaft to escape. The two are almost out when an injured and partially visible Sebastian appears. He fights with Linda, and forcibly kisses her one last time, before she grabs the elevator cable and knocks the car loose, sending Sebastian falling to his death into the explosion in the shaft below. Linda and Matt emerge from the burning laboratory and medics take them away in an ambulance. | After how many it was unable to revert to visibility? | [
"Three days",
"Three."
] |
In the small town of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is an 11-year-old boy who speaks with the dead, including his late grandmother (Elaine Stritch) and various ghosts in town. Almost no one believes him and he is isolated emotionally from his family while being ridiculed by his peers. His best friend, Neil Downe (Tucker Albrizzi), is an overweight boy who is bullied himself and finds in Norman a kindred spirit. During rehearsal of a school play commemorating the town's execution of a witch three centuries ago, Norman has a vision of the town's past in which he is pursued through the woods by townsfolk on a witch hunt. Afterward, the boys are confronted by Norman's estranged and seemingly deranged uncle Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman) who tells his nephew that he soon must take up his regular ritual to protect the town. Soon after this encounter, Prenderghast dies from a sudden stroke. During the official performance of the school play Norman has another vision, creating a public spectacle of himself which leads to his father Perry (Jeff Garlin) grounding him. His mother Sandra (Leslie Mann) tells him that his father's stern manner is because he is afraid for him. The next day, Norman sees Prenderghast's spirit who tells him that the ritual must be performed with a certain book before sundown that day; then making him swear to complete the task, Prenderghast's spirit is set free and crosses over. Norman is at first reluctant to go because he is scared but his grandmother tells him it is all right to be scared as long as he does not let it change who he is. Norman sets off to retrieve the book from Prenderghast's house (having to take it from his corpse).
He then goes to the graves of the five men and two women who were cursed by the witch, but finds that the book is merely a series of fairy tales. Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a school bully, arrives and prevents Norman from reading the story before sundown. Norman attempts to continue reading from the book, to no effect. A ghostly storm resembling the witch appears in the air, summoning the cursed dead to arise as zombies, who chase the boys along with Norman's 17-year-old sister, Courtney (Anna Kendrick) and Neil's older brother, Mitch (Casey Affleck) down the hill and into town. Having realized that the witch was not buried in the graveyard, Norman contacts classmate Salma (who tells them to access the Town Hall's archives for the location of the witch's unmarked grave) for help. As the kids make their way to the Town Hall, the zombies are attacked by the citizenry. During the riot, Norman and his companions break into the archives but cannot find the information they need. As the mob moves to attack Town Hall, the witch storm appears over the crowd. Norman climbs the Hall's tower to read the book, in a last-ditch effort to finish the ritual, but the witch strikes the book with lightning, hurling Norman from the tower and deep into the archives.
Unconscious, Norman has a dream where he learns that the witch was Agatha Prenderghast (Jodelle Ferland), a little girl of his age who was also a medium. Norman realizes that Agatha was wrongfully convicted by the town council when they mistook her powers for witchcraft. After awakening, Norman encounters the zombies and recognizes them as the town council who convicted Agatha. The zombies admit that they only wanted to speak with him to ensure that he would take up the ritual, to minimize the damage of the mistake they made so long ago. Norman attempts to help the zombies slip away so they can guide him to Agatha's grave, but is cornered by the mob. Courtney and the kids confronts the crowd and convinces them to back off, arguing that their rage, fear, and misunderstanding make them no different than the cursed townsfolk from long ago. Judge Hopkins (Bernard Hill) guides Norman's family to the grave in a forest. Before the grave is reached, Agatha's magical powers separate Norman from the others. Norman finds the grave and interacts with Agatha who has become a vengeful spirit/poltergeist in the spirit dimension, determined to stop the cataclysmic tantrum she has been having over the years. She asks him to leave her be, but Norman holds his ground, telling her he understands how she feels as an outcast. Norman endures her assault and eventually convinces her that her vengeance is accomplishing nothing and persuades her to stop. Norman tells her that there must have been someone who was kind to her.
Agatha recalls happy memories with her mother. At last, having finally encountered someone who understands her plight, she is able to find a measure of peace and cross over to the afterlife. The storm dissipates, and she and the zombies all fade away. The town cleans up and regards Norman as a hero. In the end, Norman watches a horror film with the ghost of his grandmother and his family, who have grown to accept Norman for who he is. | What does Norman need to perform the ritual? | [
"He needs a special kind of book.",
"A book from Mr. Prenderghast's house"
] |
Dick Sand is a fifteen-year-old boy serving on the schooner "Pilgrim" as a sailor. The crew are whale hunters that voyage every year down to New Zealand. After an unsuccessful season of hunting, as they plan to return the wife of the owner of the hunting firm, Mrs Weldon, her five-year-old son Jack Weldon and her cousin, Bénédict, an entomologist ask for a return passage to San Francisco. Several days into the journey they save five shipwrecked passengers from another ship and a dog who was with them at the time (Tom, Actéon, Austin, Bat, Nan, Hercule and Dingo (the dog)). Towards the end of their passage, they notice a whale and the crew, hoping for some profit after a bad season, decide to hunt it. Captain Hull reluctantly leaves Dick responsible for the ship. But the hunt goes awry and all the crew members are killed. Now Dick is left in charge of the ship with no experienced sailors to help him. He tries to teach the five survivors of the shipwreck and tries to reach the coast of South America, but Negoro, the ship's cook manages to trick them, breaking one of their compasses and their speed measuring device and eventually, after making sure the rest were lost, leads them to equatorial Africa. | What kind of animal do they hunt? | [
"whales",
"Whale"
] |
Three escaped convicts led by Lednov kill three cowboys in Nevada and steal their clothes. They ride on looking for revenge against a rancher, Clay Phillips, who is warned by friend Jed Graham to get out of town.
Clay and younger brother Steve head toward Sonora, California with a herd of horses. They come across four stranded saloon girls, Mary, Marcia, Elaine and Helen, with a broken wagon wheel.
Helen's fiance turns up to take her home. Elaine, who is depressed and ill, flees. Steve saves her and they end up at the Wyatt ranch, where it turns out Elaine is a long-missing daughter. Back on the trail, Helen decides to stay with an Irishman named Fowler who has struck gold.
An argument later leads Mary to steal Clay's wagon, which act is quickly discovered by Clay and Steve. During the short chase, the wagon becomes detached from the horses and plummets into the adjacent creek. Clay dashes into the water and retrieves a semi-conscious and soaking wet Mary, who quickly comes to. Clay's concern for her well-being suddenly returns to anger as Mary, seeing the rest of her clothing floating away downstream, is concerned about that instead of Clay's wagon that she just destroyed. This only solidifies Clay's resolve that she not continue with him and Steve onto Sonora and so puts her on a passing stagecoach to the next town.
In the meanwhile, Lednov, in pursuit, comes upon the camp of Helen and Fowler and so roughs up Helen and kills Fowler to make her reveal where the Phillips brothers have gone. Upon finding them, a gunfight ensues, in which Clay and Steve are victorious, though Steve is wounded. Needing medical attention, Clay takes him to the town doctor where Mary appears and returns to Clay's arms. | Who is a long missing daughter? | [
"Elaine.",
"Elaine"
] |
The Peach Blossom Spring was written during a time of political instability and national disunity. The story describes how a fisherman haphazardly sailed into a river in a forest made up entirely of blossoming peach trees, where even the ground was covered by peach petals. When he reached the end of the river (or spring in some translations), the source turned out to be a grotto. Though narrow at first, he was able to squeeze through and the passage eventually reached a village with animals and people of all ages.
The villagers were surprised to see him, but were kind and friendly. They explained that their ancestors escaped to this place during the civil unrest of the Qin dynasty and they themselves had not left since or had contact with anyone from the outside. As a result, they had heard nothing of subsequent changes in political regimes.
The fisherman was warmly received by the hospitable villagers and stayed for over a week. Upon leaving, he was informed that it was worthless to reveal this experience to the world. However, he marked his route on his way out with signs and later divulged the existence of this idyllic haven to others. They tried to find it repeatedly but in vain. | During which dynasty the villagers ancestors escape to the village? | [
"Qin dynasty.",
"The Qin dynasty."
] |
In 1987, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) procures a job as a Wall Street stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild, employed under Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), who quickly entices him with the sex and drugs-fueled stockbroker culture and teaches him that a stockbroker's only job is to make money for himself. Jordan soon finds his career terminated following Black Monday, and takes a job at a boiler room brokerage firm on Long Island that specializes in penny stocks. Thanks to his aggressive pitching style and the high commissions, Jordan makes a small fortune.
Jordan befriends his apartment neighbor Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), and the two found their own company. They recruit several of Jordan's friends, whom Jordan trains in the art of the "hard sell". The basic method of the firm is a pump and dump scam. To cloak this, Jordan gives the firm the respectable name of "Stratton Oakmont". After an exposĂŠ in Forbes, hundreds of ambitious young financiers flock to his company. Jordan becomes immensely successful, and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. He has an affair with a woman named Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie). When his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti) finds out, they divorce and he marries Naomi, soon having a daughter, Skylar. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont. Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours upon securing the IPO of Steve Madden (Jake Hoffman). This brings him and his firm to the attention of the FBI, mainly agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler). To hide his illegitimate money, Jordan opens a Swiss bank account with corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley), who is a British national and thus outside the reach of American authorities. He uses the wife and in-laws of his friend Brad Bodnick (Jon Bernthal), who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.
Donnie gets into a public brawl with Brad, and while Donnie escapes, Brad is arrested. Jordan also learns from his private investigator (Bo Dietl) that the FBI is wiretapping his phones. Fearing for his son, Jordan's father (Rob Reiner) advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordan's lawyer (Jon Favreau) negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. Jordan, however, cannot bear to quit, and talks himself into staying in the middle of his farewell speech. Jordan, Donnie and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Aunt Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan decides to travel to Switzerland immediately to settle the bank account. In order to bypass border controls, he forces his yacht captain to sail to Monaco, and the ship is capsized in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to take them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine. Jordan takes this as a sign from God and decides to sober up.
Two years later, the FBI arrests Jordan because Saurel, arrested in Florida on an unrelated charge, has informed on Jordan. Since the evidence against him is overwhelming, Jordan agrees to gather evidence on his colleagues in exchange for leniency. Fed up with Jordan's lifestyle, Naomi tells Jordan she is divorcing him and wants full custody of their children. Jordan loses his mind and tries to run off with Skylar in his car, but ends up crashing it in the driveway. The next morning, Jordan wears a wire to work. Jordan slips Donnie a note warning him about the wire. The FBI discovers the note, and Jordan is arrested for breaching his cooperation deal. The FBI raids and shuts down Stratton Oakmont. Despite this one breach, Jordan receives a reduced sentence for his testimony and serves three years in a minimum security prison. After his release, Jordan makes a living hosting seminars on sales technique. | What caused the plane crash that was flying Jordan Belfort to Geneva? | [
"A bird flew into the engine. ",
"a seagull flies into the engine"
] |
The novel picks up soon after where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The year is 1910 and Tarzan is 22 years old. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies.
Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence. In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in the French ministry of war. Tarzan is assigned to service in Algeria.
A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterward Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane's. But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard.
Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders, Tarzan becomes their chief.
The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of ape-like men, and is condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. To Tarzan's surprise, the priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman who speaks the ape language he learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the sacrificial ceremony is fortuitously interrupted, she hides Tarzan and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates a treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri.
Meanwhile, Hazel Strong has reached Cape Town where she meets Jane and her father, Professor Porter, together with Jane's fiancĂŠ, Tarzan's cousin William Cecil Clayton. They are all invited on a cruise up the west coast of Africa aboard the Lady Alice, the yacht of another friend, Lord Tennington. Rokoff, now using the alias of M. Thuran, ingratiates himself with the party and is also invited along. The Lady Alice breaks down and sinks, forcing the passengers and crew into the lifeboats. The one containing Jane, Clayton and "Thuran" is separated from the others and suffers terrible privations. Coincidentally, the boat finally makes shore in the same general area that Tarzan did.
The three construct a rude shelter and eke out an existence of near starvation for some weeks until Jane and William Clayton are surprised in the forest by a lion. Clayton loses Jane's respect by cowering in fear before the beast instead of defending her. But they are not attacked, and discover the lion dead, speared by an unknown hand. Their hidden savior is in fact Tarzan, who leaves without revealing himself, not realizing whom he was rescuing. Jane breaks off her engagement to William.
Later Jane is kidnapped and taken to Opar by a party of the Oparian ape-men who were pursuing their escaped sacrifice, Tarzan. The ape man learns of her capture and tracks them, managing to save her from being sacrificed by La. La is crushed by Tarzan's spurning of her for Jane.
Tarzan and Jane make their way up the coast to the former's boyhood cabin, where they encounter the remainder of the castaways of the Lady Alice, safe and sound after having been recovered by Tarzan's friend D'Arnot in another ship. "Thuran" is exposed as Rokoff and arrested.
Tarzan weds Jane and Tennington weds Hazel in a double ceremony performed by Professor Porter, who had been ordained a minister in his youth. Then they all set sail for civilization, taking along the treasure Tarzan had found in Opar. | Who throws Tarzan overboard a ship bound for Capetown? | [
"Rokoff and Paulvitch.",
"Rockoff and Paulovitch"
] |
In 1992, in Bogota, Colombia, a drug lord's assassin named Fabio Restrepo (Jesse Borrego) tells his boss, Don Luis Sandoval (Beto Benites), that he wants to leave crime behind. Even though Restrepo gives Don Luis a group of computer disks that he claims contains information about Don Luis' business, Don Luis is incensed that Restrepo thinks he can leave. Don Luis sends his henchman Marco (Jordi MollĂ ) and a group of killers to kill Restrepo and his family. Fabio gives his nine-year-old daughter Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) a SmartMedia computer memory card with the information Don Luis wants and tells her it's her "passport"; he also gives her the address of her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis), a criminal in Chicago, who will take care of her. The last thing he gives her is something that he says will keep her safe: his mother's cattleya orchid necklace. After saying their goodbyes, Fabio and his wife Alicia (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) leave to battle Marco and his men but both are gunned down as Cataleya watches. Marco tries to manipulate her into giving the information, but when he asks what she wants, she stabs him in the hand with a knife and replies "To kill Don Luis", and escapes. She makes it to the U.S. Embassy and gives the information in exchange for a passport and passage to the United States. She escapes from the airport through a bathroom window and takes a bus to Chicago. Once she finds Emilio, Cataleya asks him to train her as a killer.
Fifteen years later, a 24-year-old Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) has become an accomplished assassin. Her uncle serves as her broker, providing her with contracts. She is assigned to kill the notorious gangster Genarro Rizzo (Affif Ben Badra), who is currently in police custody. Implementing an elaborate plan, she gets herself arrested while dressed in a disguise. She manages to escape from her cell with tools she hid in her disguise, travel through the ventilation system, kill Rizzo, and return to her cell. The next morning she is released. As with her previous murders, she leaves her signature, the Cattleya flower, which is a message to her ultimate target, Don Luis. After learning about this Colombian orchid, FBI Special Agent James Ross (Lennie James) can now link this case to more than twenty other cases. As a last resort, the FBI decides to inform the public about Cataleya's calling card. Don Luis, who is currently in a witness protection program overseen by CIA Agent Steve Richard (Callum Blue), realizes that Fabio's daughter is in the U.S. and orders Marco (whose hand still hurts) and his operatives to find her.
Emilio is furious when he learns Cataleya has been killing with a "signature" since she has thereby put her relatives in grave danger. Cataleya's newest target is William "Willy" Woogard (Sam Douglas), a millionaire who fled to the Caribbean with $50 million from his Ponzi scheme. She sneaks into his house and shoots him, and he falls inside his shark tank, where the sharks maul him to death. Under the name "Jennifer", Cataleya later visits her lover, Danny Delaney (Michael Vartan), and spends the night with him. Danny snaps a picture of her while she sleeps. That morning she meets with her uncle, Emilio, who furiously tells her that eight people were slaughtered in Miami, one of them being his friend. Emilio then retires his niece from her work.
Danny shows her picture to his friend Ryan, but when Danny leaves to stop his car from being ticketed, Ryan forwards the photo to his sister-in-law, a police clerk, to find out who she is. Now in the police computers, the photo is recognized by the body/morph recognition software as that of the woman who was in the same prison as Genarro Rizzo the night he was killed. Detective Ross is notified, and the FBI quickly trace her location and they are supported by a SWAT team as they leave for her apartment. After Cataleya says goodbye, she goes home, but gets a call from Danny, who confesses that he took a picture of her. Upon seeing the SWAT team enter the apartment, she manages to escape through the garage and goes to Emilio's home, only to discover that Mama, Pepe (Angel Garnica), and Emilio have been tortured and killed by Don Luis's men, leaving her devastated.
Cataleya ambushes FBI detective Ross in his home in order to find out where Don Luis is. She threatens to kill Ross's family members one by one if he doesn't try harder to help her. Fearing for the safety of his family, Ross meets with CIA agent Steve Richard, who is unhelpful at first, but after Cataleya fires a warning shot through his "bulletproof" office window with a large-calibre sniper rifle, Richard gives up Don Luis's current location. Cataleya then goes to a Louisiana land surveyor and threatens him for the floor plans of Don Luis' mansion. Cataleya assaults Don Luis's premises with heavy weaponry and wipes out all the guards, then confronts Marco and, after a violent hand-to-hand battle, stabs him in the neck. Don Luis escapes in a van, but is stopped by a garbage truck. Cataleya calls him on Marco's cell phone, but Don Luis laughs and says that he will kill her and she will never find him because he is never where Cataleya wants him to be. Cataleya responds that he is exactly where she wants him to be. Pepe's two attack dogs are right behind Luis' seat and on her command they violently maul Luis to death. Danny is interrogated by the FBI, but when Ross leaves, Danny gets a cellphone call from Cataleya, who gives him her real name, and he tells her he loves her. Ross' technical team alerts him that Danny is on the phone, but Ross realizes that Danny cannot be charged with any crime, so he is released. Cataleya boards an interstate bus headed for an unknown destination. | What is the one mistake Danny made that almost caught Cataleya? | [
"He snapped a picture of her while she slept. Than Danny's friend, Ryan, sent the picture to the police for identification.",
"Shows her picture to his friend Ryan"
] |
The poem, which in detail bears almost no resemblance to the actual history or cultural setting of the Crusades, tells of the initial disunity and setbacks of the Christians and their ultimate success in taking Jerusalem in 1099. The main historical leaders of the First Crusade feature, but much of the poem is concerned with romantic sub-plots involving entirely fictional characters, except for Tancredi, who is identified with the historical Tancred, Prince of Galilee. The three main female characters begin as Muslims, have romantic entanglements with Christian knights, and are eventually converted to Christianity. They are all women of action: two of them fight in battles, and the third is a sorceress. There are many magical elements, and the Saracen side often act as though they were classical pagans. The most famous episodes, and those most often dramatised and painted, include the following:
Sofronia (in English: Sophronia), a Christian maiden of Jerusalem, accuses herself of a crime in order to avert a general massacre of the Christians by the Muslim king. In an attempt to save her, her lover Olindo accuses himself in turn, and each lover pleads with the authorities in order to save the other. However it is the arrival and intervention of the warrior-maiden Clorinda which saves them (Canto 2).
Clorinda joins the Muslims, but the Christian knight Tancredi (in English: Tancred) falls in love with her (Canto 3). During a night battle in which she sets the Christian siege tower on fire, she is mistakenly killed by Tancredi, but she converts to Christianity before dying (Canto 12). The character of Clorinda is inspired in part by Virgil's Camilla and by Bradamante in Ariosto; the circumstances of her birth (a Caucasian girl born to African parents) are modeled on the lead character (Chariclea) from the ancient Greek novel by Heliodorus of Emesa.
To prevent the crusaders from cutting timber for siege engines, the Muslim sorcerer Ismen protects the forest with enchantments, which defeat the Christian knights, even Tancredi (Canto 13). Eventually the enchantments are broken by Rinaldo, and the siege engines built (Canto 18).
Another maiden of the region, the Princess Erminia (or "Hermine") of Antioch, also falls in love with Tancredi and betrays her people to help him, but she grows jealous when she learns that Tancredi loves Clorinda. One night she steals Clorinda's armor and leaves the city, in an attempt to find Tancredi, but she is attacked by Christian soldiers (who mistake her for Clorinda) and she flees into the forest, where she is cared for by a family of shepherds, with an old man who weaves baskets (Cantos 6-7).
Later in the poem we find her again in the company of Armida's ladies, but Erminia abandons her Muslim people and goes over to the Christian side. When Tancredi is dangerously wounded in combat, she heals him, cutting off her hair to bind his wounds (Canto 19).
The witch Armida (modeled on Circe in Homer and the witch Alcina in Ariosto's epic) enters the Christian camp asking for their aid; her seductions divide the knights against each other and a group leaves with her, only to be transformed into animals by her magic (Canto 5).
Armida comes across the sleeping Rinaldo, the greatest of the Christian knights, and abducts him in her chariot (Canto 14). He has the same name as a Carolingian paladin count who is a character in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso [III, 30]; he is the son of Bertoldo and was the reputed founder of the House of Este. She intends to kill him but she falls in love with him instead and takes him away to a magical island where he becomes infatuated with her and forgets the crusade. Carlo and Ubaldo, two Christian knights and close companions of Rinaldo, seek out the hidden fortress, brave the dangers that guard it and find Rinaldo and Armida in each other's arms. By giving Rinaldo a mirror of diamond, they force him to see himself in his effeminate and amorous state and to return to the war, leaving Armida heartbroken (Cantos 14-16).
Rinaldo is deposited on a shore where he finds a shield and sword, and the "Mago d'Ascalona" ("Wizard of Ascalon") shows him a vision of the future in the shield, including the glories of the House of Este (Tasso drops in several prophecies of the time between 1099 and his own at various points). Rinaldo resolves to pursue the crusade with all his might (Canto 17).
Armida is grief-stricken and raises an army to kill Rinaldo and fight the Christians, but her champions are all defeated. She attempts suicide, but Rinaldo finds her in time and prevents her. Rinaldo then begs her to convert to Christianity, and Armida, her heart softened, consents (Canto 20). (This sequence echoes a similar storyline in Ariosto: the witch Alcina ensnares the knight Ruggiero, but the spell is broken by a magic ring that the good sorceress Melissa brings him; earlier antecedents include Calypso's attempt to keep Odysseus on her island Ogygia and Morgan le Fay taking Ogier the Dane off to a faraway island.)
After the enchantments on the forest are broken, finally the Crusaders breach the walls and take the city, with some Muslims remaining in the Temple Mount. But an Egyptian army is known to be arriving in a few days (Canto 18). When they arrive there is a great battle outside the walls, which the Christians win, completing their quest (Canto 20). | Who is Sofronia's lover? | [
"Olindo",
"Olindo"
] |
Androcles, a fugitive Christian tailor, accompanied by his nagging wife, is on the run from his Roman persecutors. While hiding in the forest he comes upon a wild lion who approaches him with a wounded paw. His wife runs off. Androcles sees that the cause of the animal's distress is a large thorn embedded in its paw, which he draws out while soothing the lion in baby language.
Androcles is captured and is sent to the Colosseum to be executed with other Christians in gladiatorial combat. They are joined by a new Christian convert called Ferrovius, who struggles to reconcile his Christian principles with his violent inclinations. The Roman captain guarding them is attracted to the genteel convert Lavinia. Eventually the Christians are sent into the arena, but Ferrovius kills all the gladiators before they can harm any Christians. He is offered a job in the Praetorian Guard, which he takes. The Christians are to be released, but the crowd demands blood. To satisfy them, Androcles offers himself to be savaged by lions. But the lion that is supposed to kill him turns out to be the one that Androcles saved, and the two dance around the arena to the delight of the crowd. The emperor comes into the arena to get a closer look, and the lion attacks him. Androcles calls him off and the emperor is saved. He then declares an end to the persecution of Christians. Androcles and his new 'pet' depart together. | Why does Androcles offer himself up to be sacrificed? | [
"The crowd still wants blood since the Christians were spared",
"The crowd demanded blood"
] |
Each of the lives is very different from the others, although there are common threads—for example the recurrent appearance of William Ewart Gladstone and Arthur Hugh Clough. Each story is set against a specific background.
In Cardinal Manning's story, the background is the creation of the Oxford Movement and the defection of an influential group of Church of England clergy to the Catholic Church. This aspect is covered in depth to explain the movement and its main protagonists, particularly Manning's hostile relationship with John Henry Newman. Strachey is critical of Manning's underhand manipulations in attempting to prevent Newman being made a Cardinal.
The background features of Florence Nightingale's story are the machinations of the War Office, and the obtuseness of the military and politicians. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Strachey depicts Florence Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who is both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements.
Dr Arnold is hailed as an exemplar who established the Public School system. Strachey describes this as an education based on chapel and the classics, with a prefectorial system to maintain order. He points out that it was not Arnold who was responsible for the obsession with sport, but does make it clear that Arnold was at fault in ignoring the sciences. Although Arnold was revered at the time, in retrospect Strachey sees his approach as very damaging. Strachey also mocks Arnold's efforts at moral improvement of the general public, for example his unsuccessful weekly newspaper.
Gordon’s is the story of a maverick soldier and adventurer, whose original military achievements in China would have been forgotten. He was a mercenary who got into and out of conflicts on behalf of various dubious governments, but much of his experience was in the Sudan. The final disaster was when the Egyptian occupation of Sudan was almost completely overthrown by fundamentalist rebels, and someone was needed to retrieve the situation in Khartoum. The job fell to Gordon, whose instincts were to do anything but withdraw, and he became embroiled in a siege. The British government was put in an almost impossible dilemma, and when eventually they did send a relief expedition it arrived just two days too late. Strachey based Gordon’s story on his diaries and letters to give an account of a strong individual almost at odds with the world. | What city did Gordon get assigned to so that he could restore order? | [
"Khartoum",
"Khartoum"
] |
When neither the Whigs nor the Tories are able to form a government on their own, a fragile compromise coalition government is formed, with Plantagenet Palliser, the wealthy and hard-working Duke of Omnium, installed as Prime Minister. The Duchess, formerly Lady Glencora Palliser, attempts to support her husband by hosting lavish parties at Gatherum Castle in Barsetshire, a family residence barely used until now. Palliser, initially unsure that he is fit to lead, then grows to enjoy the high office and finally becomes increasingly distressed when his government proves to be too weak and divided to accomplish anything. His own inflexible nature does not help.
A significant sub-plot centres on Ferdinand Lopez, a financially overextended City adventurer of undisclosed parentage and doubtful ethnicity (possibly Jewish), who wins the favour of Emily Wharton. She marries Lopez despite her father's objections in preference to Arthur Fletcher who has always been in love with her. As in Trollope's earlier Palliser novel Can You Forgive Her?, in which also the heroine has to choose between two suitors, the enticing and charismatic suitor is revealed to have many unpleasant traits (here Lopez's ethnic background is also presented as a factor against him), and Emily soon has cause to regret her choice. Lopez meets the Duchess at one of her parties and Glencora unwisely encourages him to stand for Parliament. He campaigns against Arthur Fletcher, Emily's popular former suitor, as well as a local tradesman, and withdraws from the contest when he sees he has no chance of winning. He then insists that the Duke reimburse him for the election expenses, since the Duchess had led him to believe that he would have the Duke's endorsement.
The Duke is furious with Glencora, who has disobeyed his explicit order not to interfere in the election, but his strong sense of personal honour forces him to give in to Lopez's shameless and desperate demands. This causes a minor political scandal when it becomes known, as it appears to many people that Palliser has used his great influence and wealth to buy a seat in Parliament for a supporter. This causes the Duke great unhappiness, but he is spiritedly defended in the House of Commons by old colleague Phineas Finn, eponymous hero of Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux, two earlier books in the Palliser sequence.
Lopez's high-risk gambles lead to financial ruin and, after trying to persuade the comparatively wealthy Lizzie Eustace (protagonist of The Eustace Diamonds) to run away with him to Guatemala, a proposition she somewhat contemptuously rejects, he takes his own life by throwing himself in front of a train at Tenway Junction, partly out fear of disgrace and partly to spare Emily whom he has genuinely loved even if he treated her badly. After a period of mourning, Emily is persuaded, without too much difficulty, to marry Arthur Fletcher.
Eventually the coalition government breaks apart and the Duke resigns, with both regret and relief, and withdraws into private life, hoping to be of use to his party again one day. | Why does Ferdinand give up his attempt to join parliament? | [
"He knows he cannot beat Arthur Fletcher.",
"He doesn't believe he will win"
] |
The story centers on two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline Lestrange, who are marooned with a galley cook on an island in the South Pacific following a shipwreck. The galley cook, Paddy Button, assumes responsibility for the children and teaches them how to survive, cautioning them to avoid the "arita" berries, which he calls "the never-wake-up berries."
Two-and-a-half years after the shipwreck, Paddy dies following a drinking binge. The children survive on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise. They live in a hut and spend their days fishing, swimming, diving for pearls, and exploring the island.
As the years pass, Dicky and Emmeline grow into physically mature young adults and begin to fall in love. Ignorant of their human sexuality, they do not understand or know how to express their physical attraction to one another. Eventually they consummate their relationship. The author, Henry De Vere Stacpoole, describes their sexual encounter as having been "conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless, and without sin. It was a marriage according to nature, without feast or guests."
Dicky becomes very attentive toward Emmeline, listening to her stories and bringing her gifts. Over several months they make love often and eventually Emmeline becomes pregnant. The couple does not understand the physical changes happening to Emmeline's body and have no knowledge of childbirth. When the day comes for delivery, Emmeline disappears into the forest and returns with a child. They discover over time that the baby requires a name and they call him Hannah because they have only have ever known an infant called by that name.
Dicky and Emmeline teach Hannah how to swim, fish, throw spears, and play in the mud. They survive a violent tropical cyclone and other natural hazards of island life.
Back in San Francisco, Arthur, father of Dicky and uncle of Emmeline, believes the two are still alive and he is determined to find them; after he recognizes a child's tea set belonging to Emmeline which was retrieved by a whaler on an island. Arthur finds a captain willing to take him to the island and they set out.
One day Dicky, Emmeline, and Hannah row their lifeboat to the place where they had once lived with Paddy as children. Emmeline breaks a branch off the deadly "never-wake-up" berry plant as Dicky cuts bananas on the shore. While in the boat with her son, Emmeline fails to notice that Hannah has tossed one of the oars into the sea. The tide comes in and sweeps the boat into the lagoon, leaving Emmeline and Hannah stranded. As Dicky swims to them, he is pursued by a shark. Emmeline strikes the shark with the remaining oar, allowing Dicky time to climb into the rowboat safely.
Although they are not far from shore, the trio cannot get back without the oars and they are unable to retrieve them from the water because of the shark. The boat is then caught in the current and drifts out to sea, all the while Emmeline still grasps the branch of the arita tree.
Sometime later, Arthur Lestrange's ship comes across the lifeboat and finds the three unconscious but still breathing. The arita branch is now bare but for one berry. Lestrange asks, "Are they dead?" and the captain replies, "No, sir. They are asleep." The ambiguous ending leaves it uncertain whether or not they can be revived. | How does Paddy die? | [
"He drank too much.",
"binge drinking"
] |
The story mainly takes place in two Ontario locales. In flashbacks, the main character, usually but not always called Alan (he appears to have been alphabetized rather than named, and will answer to any masculine name beginning with A), and his brothers (also alphabetized) grow up outside of the remote town of Kapuskasing. The novel opens with Alan's purchase of a home in the Kensington Market neighborhood of modern-day Toronto.
There are two main plotlines. Alan befriends Kurt, a thirtysomething punk who operates a dumpster-diving operation. Kurt uses computer components that he retrieves from the trash and turns them into Wi-Fi network access points. Kurt's goal is to blanket the entire neighborhood with free and secure Internet access by attaching his access points to buildings in a wireless mesh network with the permission of their owners. Kurt's plan doesn't really get off the ground until he forms a partnership with Alan, who puts a more professional face on the operation and sweet-talks many local owners into allowing the access points to use their space and a small amount of their electricity.
The second plotline features fantasy elements. Unbeknownst to most of the other characters, Alan and his brothers are not quite human. Their father is a mountain and their mother is a washing machine. Alan's eldest brother can see the future, his second-eldest is an island, his younger brother is undead, and his three youngest brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Alan is the most normal-seeming of his family. Outwardly, he looks human, but he heals at an incredible rate, and if part of him is cut off, it will grow back, and the cut off part can be made to form a new copy of him, much like an earthworm does.
Another plot strand concerns Alan's neighbors, a household of students and artists which includes Mimi, a troubled young woman who like Alan is not quite human. Born with wings on her back and no family history, she lives with her abusive boyfriend Krishna, a musician/bartender who can spot beings like Alan and his family, and hates them. Krishna amputates Mimi's wings every three months; she stays with him because she believes he's the only one willing and able to make her "normal." | Who does Kurt form a partnership with? | [
"Alan",
"Alan"
] |
From a prison cell where he has been charged for murder, David Aames (Tom Cruise), in a prosthetic mask, tells his life story to court psychologist, Dr. Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell).
In flashback, David is shown to be the wealthy owner of a large publishing firm in New York City which he inherited from his father, leaving its regular duties to his father's trusted associates. As David enjoys the bachelor lifestyle, he is introduced to Sofia Serrano (PenĂŠlope Cruz) by his best friend, author Brian Shelby (Jason Lee) at a party. David and Sofia spend a night together talking and fall in love. When David's former lover, Julianna "Julie" Gianni (Cameron Diaz), hears of Sofia, she attempts to kill herself and David in a car crash. Julie dies but David survives, his face grotesquely disfigured, leading him to wear a mask to hide the injuries. With no hope to use plastic surgery to repair the damage, David cannot come to grips with the idea of wearing the mask for the rest of his life. On a night out with Sofia and Brian, David gets hopelessly drunk and Sofia and Brian leave David to wallow in the street outside.
David is awakened the next day in the street by Sofia, who apologises for deserting him the night before, and takes him home. The two continue to see each other, and David has his face surgically repaired despite being told it was impossible before. Though his life seems perfectly content, David finds oddities, such as brief visions of his distorted face, and a man (Noah Taylor) at a bar that tells him David can control the world and everyone in it, if he wanted to. One day, when he goes to Sofia's apartment, he finds Julie there instead; all of the previous mementos of Sofia now show Julie's face. Angry and confused, David suffocates Julie, and is later arrested and placed in a mental institution, finding his face has reverted to its previously disfigured state.
David completes telling his story to Curtis, who proceeds to then visit David further for more sessions to try to help him recuperate. During one interview Curtis tells David the staff reported him calling out "Ellie" in a bad dream and asks who she is. David later sees a nearby TV advertisement for "Life Extension", a company that specializes in cryonic suspension, and realises he'd actually called out "L","E". Under Curtis' and a police officer's guard, David is taken to the Life Extension offices, where the salesclerk Rebecca (Tilda Swinton) explains they freeze people just after the point of death, until a cure for their ailment is available in the future, keeping their brain active by placing them in a lucid dream state. David becomes anxious and breaks free of Curtis, realizing he is in his own lucid dream that has gone wrong, and calls for tech support.
David finds himself in the empty lobby of the offices, and the man whom he saw earlier at the bar appears, claiming to be David's tech support from Life Extension, which is now known as the Oasis Project. They ride up in an elevator to the top of an impossibly tall building, the height triggering David's severe acrophobia. The man explains that David has been in cryonic sleep for 150 years. David had opted for Life Extension's services after struggling with his breakup with Sofia and his disfigurement, and after securing the publishing company to its associates, proceeded to kill himself with a drug overdose; Life Extension preserved his body and, as David directed, put him into his lucid dream starting from the drunken night when Sofia left him, under the "vanilla sky" from a Monet painting. However, during his sleep, the dream went horribly wrong and attempted to incorporate elements from his subconscious, such as substituting Julie for Sofia and creating a father-figure in Curtis. As they arrive at the top of the building, the man offers David a choice: either to be reinserted into the corrected lucid dream, or return to the real world by taking a literal leap of faith off the roof that will wake him from his sleep. David decides to wake up, ignoring the vision of Curtis that his subconscious has brought to life to talk him out of it. David envisions Sofia and Brian to say his goodbyes. Conquering his final fear, David jumps off the building, his life flashing before his eyes, and whites out immediately before hitting the ground. A female voice commands him to "open your eyes" (a recurring theme in the movie), and the film ends with David opening his eyes. | Why did Julie want to kill herself? | [
"She found out about Sophia",
"Because David left her for sofia"
] |
A mysterious man, Griffin, arrives at the local inn of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves; his face is hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose; and he wears a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, and unfriendly. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. While Griffin is staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles (that he calls his luggage) arrive. Many local townspeople believe this to be very strange. He becomes the talk of the village.
Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin has run out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands that he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs.
There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain records of his experiments. When Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, Griffin chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him. Marvel escapes to a local inn and is saved by the people at the inn, but Griffin escapes. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this "invisible man," then requests to be locked up in a high-security jail.
Griffin's furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. He takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity: the Invisible Man is Griffin, a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics. Griffin recounts how he invented chemicals capable of rendering bodies invisible, and, on impulse, performed the procedure on himself.
Griffin tells Kemp of the story of how he became invisible. He explains how he tried the invisibility on a cat, then himself. Griffin burned down the boarding house he was staying in, along with all the equipment he used to turn invisible, to cover his tracks; but he soon realised that he was ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempted to steal food and clothes from a large department store, and eventually stole some clothing from a theatrical supply shop and headed to Iping to attempt to reverse the invisibility. Now he imagines that he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing his plan to begin a "Reign of Terror" by using his invisibility to terrorise the nation.
Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is waiting for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the "Reign of Terror". Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organise a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note that he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin.
Griffin uses Kemp's gun to shoot and injure a local policeman who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry come to his aid. Griffin is seized, assaulted, and killed by a mob. The Invisible Man's naked, battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies. A local policeman shouts to have someone cover Griffin's face with a sheet, then the book concludes.
In the final chapter, it is revealed that Marvel has secretly kept Griffin's notes but is completely incapable of understanding them. | How did Griffin test his invisibility chemicals? | [
"He used them on a cat before using them on himself.",
"On a cat and himself."
] |
Jupiter is fondling Ganymede, who says that Jupiter's wife Juno has been mistreating him because of her jealousy. Venus enters, and complains that Jupiter is neglecting her son Aeneas, who has left Troy with survivors of the defeated city. Aeneas was on his way to Italy, but is now lost in a storm. Jupiter tells her not to worry; he will quiet the storm. Venus travels to Libya, where she disguises herself as a mortal and meets Aeneas, who has arrived, lost, on the coast. He and a few followers have become separated from their comrades. He recognises her, but she denies her identity. She helps him meet up with Illioneus, Sergestus and Cloanthes, other surviving Trojans who have already received generous hospitality from the local ruler Dido, Queen of Carthage. Dido meets Aeneas and promises to supply his ships. She asks him to give her the true story of the fall of Troy, which he does in detail, describing the death of Priam, the loss of his own wife and his escape with his son Ascanius and other survivors.
Dido's suitor, Iarbas, presses her to agree to marry him. She seems to favour him, but Venus has other plans. She disguises Cupid as Aeneas's son Ascanius, so that he can get close to Dido and touch her with his arrow. He does so; Dido immediately falls in love with Aeneas and rejects Iarbas out of hand, to his horror and confusion. Dido's sister Anna, who is in love with Iarbas, encourages Dido to pursue Aeneas. Dido and Aeneas meet at a cave, where Dido declares her love. They enter the cave to make love. Iarbas swears he will get revenge. Venus and Juno appear, arguing over Aeneas. Venus believes that Juno wants to harm her son, but Juno denies it, saying she has important plans for him.
Aeneas's followers say they must leave Libya, to fulfil their destiny in Italy. Aeneas seems to agree, and prepares to depart. Dido sends Anna to find out what is happening. She brings Aeneas back, who denies he intended to leave. Dido forgives him, but as a precaution removes all the sails and tackle from his ships. She also places Ascanius in the custody of the Nurse, believing that Aeneas will not leave without him. However, "Ascanius" is really the disguised Cupid. Dido says that Aeneas will be king of Carthage and anyone who objects will be executed. Aeneas agrees and plans to build a new city to rival Troy and strike back at the Greeks.
Mercury appears with the real Ascanius and informs Aeneas that his destiny is in Italy and that he must leave on the orders of Jupiter. Aeneas reluctantly accepts the divine command. Iarbas sees the opportunity to be rid of his rival and agrees to supply Aeneas with the missing tackle. Aeneas tells Dido he must leave. She pleads with him to ignore Jupiter's command, but he refuses to do so. He departs, leaving Dido in despair. The Nurse says that "Ascanius" has disappeared. Dido orders her to be imprisoned. She tells Iarbas and Anna that she intends to make a funeral pyre on which she will burn everything that reminds her of Aeneas. After cursing Aeneas' progeny, she throws herself into the fire. Iarbas, horrified, kills himself too. Anna, seeing Iarbas dead, kills herself. | Who is disguised as Aeneas' son in order to get close to her with his arrow? | [
"Cupid",
"Cupid"
] |
The novel follows the life and career of Henry Coningsby, the orphan grandson of a wealthy marquess, Lord Monmouth. Lord Monmouth initially disapproved of Coningsby's parents' marriage, but on their death he relents and sends the boy to be educated at Eton College. At Eton Coningsby meets and befriends Oswald Millbank, the son of a rich cotton manufacturer who is a bitter enemy of Lord Monmouth. The two older men represent old and new wealth in society.
As Coningsby grows up he begins to develop his own liberal political views, and falls in love with Oswald's sister Edith. When Lord Monmouth discovers these developments he is furious and secretly disinherits his grandson. On his death, Coningsby is left penniless, and is forced to work for his living. He decides to study law and become a barrister. This proof of his character impresses Edith's father (who had previously also been hostile) and he consents to their marriage at last. By the end of the novel Coningsby is elected to Parliament for his new father-in-law's constituency and his fortune is restored.
The character of Coningsby is based on George Smythe. The themes, and some of the characters, reappear in Disraeli's later novels Sybil, and Tancred. | Who does Eton befriend at school? | [
"Oswald Millbank",
"Oswald Millbank"
] |
Sally Nash and Joe Therrian are a Hollywood couple celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary shortly after reconciling following a period of separation. He is a novelist who is about to direct the screen adaptation of his most recent bestseller; she is an actress he has opted not to cast in the lead role, despite the fact it's partly based on her, because he feels she's too old for the part. This decision, coupled with an ongoing dispute about their barking dog Otis with their strait-laced, non-industry neighbors, clean-and-sober writer Ryan and interior decorator Monica Rose, has resulted in an undercurrent of tension between the two as they prepare for the arrival of their guests.
Among them are aging actor Cal Gold, Sally's co-star in the romantic comedy film she presently is shooting, his wife Sophia, and their two young children; director Mac Forsyth, who is helming Sally and Cal's film, and his anorexic, neurotic wife Clair; photographer Gina Taylor, whose relationship with Joe prior to his marriage and ongoing close friendship since troubles Sally; business manager Jerry Adams and his wife Judy; eccentric violinist Levi Panes; Jeffrey, Joe's roommate - and lover - at Oxford; and up-and-coming actress Skye Davidson, whom Joe has cast in the role Sally believes deservedly is hers. In an effort to dispel the simmering animosity between them and their neighbors, Sally and Joe have invited the Roses as well.
The early part of the evening is devoted to charades and lighthearted entertainment. Following a series of toasts offered by the guests, Joe distributes the ecstasy Skye brought them as a gift. As it begins to take effect, the night deteriorates, accusations are made, secrets are revealed, and relationships slowly unravel. Complicating emotions triggered by the drug are the disappearance of Otis and a phone call from Joe's father bringing tragic news about his beloved sister Lucy. | Who is Sally's costar? | [
"Cal Gold",
"Cal Gold"
] |
The plot revolves around Sylvia Barrett, an idealistic English language teacher at an inner-city high school who hopes to nurture her students' interest in classic literature (especially Chaucer and writing). She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year of teaching, frustrated by bureaucracy, the indifference of her students, and the incompetence of many of her colleagues. The title of the book is taken from a memo telling her why a student was being punished: he had gone "up the down staircase". She decides to leave the public school (government funded) system to work in a smaller private setting. She changes her mind, though, when she realizes that she has, indeed, touched the lives of her students.
The novel is epistolary; aside from opening and closing chapters consisting entirely of dialogue the story is told through memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in the trash can, essays handed in to be graded, lesson plans, suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box, and most often by inter-classroom notes that are a dialogue between Sylvia and an older teacher. Sylvia also writes letters to a friend from college who chose to get married and start a family rather than pursuing a career. The letters serve as a recap and summary of key events in the book, and offer a portrait of women's roles and responsibilities in American society in the mid-1960s.
An inter-classroom note in which the older teacher is translating the jargon of the memos from the office includes the memorable epigram "'Let it be a challenge to you' means you're stuck with it." Calling a trash can a circular file comes from the same memo: "'Keep on file in numerical order' means throw in waste-basket." | What intrudes on her first year at the high school as she tries to instruct her students? | [
"Bureaucracy, the indifference of her students and the incompetence of her colleagues frustrate her. ",
"Bureaucracy."
] |
The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancĂŠe Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I. The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk. Many years of humility and doubt follow. He is ordered to become a hermit. Despite his being removed from the world, he is still remembered for having so remarkably transformed his life. One winter night, a group of merry-makers decide to visit him, and one of them, a divorced woman named Makovkina, spends the night in his cell, with the intention to seduce him. Father Sergius discovers he is still weak and in order to protect himself, cuts off his own finger. Makovkina is stunned by this act, and leaves the next morning, having vowed to change her life. A year later she has joined a convent. Father Sergius' reputation for holiness grows. He becomes known as a healer, and pilgrims come from far and wide. Yet Father Sergius is profoundly aware of his inability to attain a true faith. He is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust. He fails a new test, when the young daughter of a merchant successfully beds him. The morning after, he leaves the monastery and seeks out his cousin Pashenka (Praskovya Mikhaylovna), whom he, with a group of other boys, had tormented many years ago. He finds her, now in all the conventional senses a failure in life, yet imbued with a sense of service towards her family. His path is now clearer. He begins to wander, until eight months later he is arrested in the company of a blind beggar who makes him feel closer to God. He is sent to Siberia, where he now works as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant, teaching the gentleman's young children and working in the gardens. | How come Father Sergius believes himself unable to attain true faith? | [
"he is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust",
"he is tortured by bordem , lust and pride"
] |
In the Mojave Desert in 1982, a man named Nix has gathered a cult in an isolated house, where he plans to sacrifice a young girl that he has kidnapped. Nix calls himself "The Puritan" and has the ability to use real magic. A group of former cult members, including Swann and Quaid, arrive to stop him. After the initial confrontation with the cultists, Nix's assistant, Butterfield, escapes, and Swann is attacked magically by Nix. The kidnapped girl shoots Nix through the heart with Swann's gun. Swann fastens an ironwork mask over Nix's head, who appears to die, and declares that they will bury Nix so deep that no one will ever find him.
Thirteen years later, New York City private detective Harry D'Amour is investigating a case in Los Angeles. D'Amour has a long-standing interest in the occult, and has some renown from his involvement with a recent exorcism. During the investigation, D'Amour discovers a fortune teller shop owned by Quaid, where he is relentlessly attacked by a man with unusual strength. D'Amour finds Quaid suffering from multiple stab wounds. As he dies, Quaid warns D'Amour that âThe Puritanâ is coming.
Swann, now a famous stage illusionist, lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with his wife, Dorothea. When informed that Nix's followers have murdered Quaid, Dorothea suggests they hire D'Amour to investigate the murder. D'Amour agrees, and she invites him to Swann's magic show. Swann performs a new death-defying illusion which goes wrong, and he is killed on stage.
D'Amour goes to The Magic Castle, where he hears Nix being described as a legend, and that Nix was believed to have taught Swann. After getting into the Repository, a special room in the Magic Castle that supposedly contains every magic secret known to man, he discovers that Swann's "illusions" involved real magic.
Later, at Swann's house, Dorothea reveals that she was the girl that Nix kidnapped, and that she married Swann because of a sense of obligation. Dorothea and D'Amour make love; afterwards, D'Amour is attacked by a man engulfed in fire. Suspecting a ruse, D'Amour opens Swann's coffin and finds that the body inside is fake. Valentin, Swann's assistant, explains that he helped Swann fake his death. D'Amour agrees to allow Valentin and Swann's ruse to continue. At the funeral, D'Amour follows a suspicious looking man who turns out to be Swann, who, in jealousy, attacks D'Amour with magic. D'Amour convinces the emotionally hurt Swann to help him put an end to Nix's cult.
Butterfield kidnaps Dorothea, using her as a hostage to force Valentin to recover Nix's body. After finding Nix's corpse, Butterfield stabs Valentin and takes the corpse back to the old house in the desert. There, his cultists have returned to witness Nix's resurrection and follow him once again. Butterfield removes the iron mask and Nix regains consciousness. Swann and D'Amour, acting on information given by the dying Valentin, arrive. Swann attacks Butterfield and tells D'Amour to rescue Dorothea. Nix, instructing his followers to prepare to receive his wisdom, opens a hole in the ground beneath him and Dorothea and turns the earth into quick sand that swallows the cultists, declaring that only Swann is worthy of receiving his knowledge.
D'Amour finds Nix and Dorothea just as Nix is dropping her into the hole and rescues her. As they flee, D'Amour and Dorothea are attacked by Butterfield, whom D'Amour kills. Swann agrees to act as Nix's disciple in an effort to stall for time, but Nix sees through the ruse and attacks with magic. Dorothea finds D'Amour's gun and shoots Nix in the head. Nix then begins to transform into a hideous creature. Swann uses magic to help D'Amour deliver a final blow to Nix, who falls into the hole, which is now filled with lava. Dorothea holds Swann in her arms as he succumbs to his injuries. D'Amour sees that Nix, hideously injured but alive, is summoning a whirlwind, which ends up sealing the hole. Dorothea and D'Amour escape the house and walk into the desert. | What is Swann's new occupation? | [
"Stage Illusionist.",
"illusionist"
] |
Former SWAT officer Jeff Talley is a hostage negotiator in Los Angeles. One day, Talley negotiates with a man who has taken his wife and son hostage after learning his wife was cheating on him. Shortly after Talley denies a SWAT commander's request to give snipers the order to open fire, the despondent man kills his wife, son, and himself. Traumatized, Talley moves with his family and becomes police chief in Bristo Camino, a suburban hamlet in Ventura County, California.
A year later, Talley finds himself in another hostage situation. Two teenagers, Dennis and his brother Kevin, and their accomplice Marshall "Mars" Krupcheck take hostage Walter Smith and his two children, teenage Jennifer and young Tommy, in Smith's house after a failed robbery attempt. The first officer to respond is shot twice by Mars just before Talley arrives. Talley attempts to rescue the officer, but she dies in front of him. Traumatized and unwilling to put himself through another trauma, Talley hands authority over to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department and leaves.
Smith has been laundering money for a mysterious criminal syndicate through offshore shell corporations. He was preparing to turn over a batch of important encrypted files recorded on a DVD when he was taken hostage. To prevent the incriminating evidence from being discovered, the syndicate orders someone known only as the Watchman to kidnap Talley's wife and daughter. Talley is instructed to return to the hostage scene, regain authority, and stall for time until the organization can launch its own attack against Smith's house.
Dennis forces Kevin and Mars to tie up the children, while he knocks out Walter and finds a large amount of cash. In an attempt to end the standoff and secure the DVDs himself, Talley meets with Dennis and agrees to provide a helicopter in exchange for half of the money. When the helicopter arrives, Dennis and Kevin bring the money to Talley and prepare to leave, but Mars refuses to leave without Jennifer, with whom he has become infatuated with. Talley says the helicopter will only carry three additional people and insists that Jennifer stay behind, but the deal breaks down and the boys return to the house. Talley learns that Mars is a psychopathic killer who could turn on the hostages and his own accomplices at any moment. Mars does, in fact, kill Dennis and Kevin, just as Kevin is about to release the children.
The syndicate sends fake FBI agents to recover the DVD and they storm the house; Talley is instructed to not go near the house. Jennifer stabs Mars and locks herself and Thomas in the panic room. Hearing their screams, Talley breaches the house and is attacked by Mars, who then kills most of the fake agents using his pistol and multiple Molotov cocktails. Mars is then shot in the side by the only surviving agent. The agent tracks down Talley and the children, and demands the encrypted DVD. After Talley gives him the DVD, Mars reappears, distracting the agent long enough to be killed by Talley. Mars then prepares to throw his last Molotov, but collapses to his knees, weakened by his injuries. He makes eye contact with Jennifer, then drops the Molotov and immolates himself.
Talley escapes with the children by shooting the indoor glass waterfall, which extinguishes the fire. He and a recovered Walter then go to a rundown inn where Talley's wife and daughter are being held captive by the Watchman and his crew. Smith, feigning hatred for Talley, is freed in exchange for the family. While demanding that the Watchman kill Talley, Smith shoots the Watchman. This allows Talley to kill the other gunmen and rescue his family. | What does Talley offer Dennis in exchange for half the money? | [
"A helicopter",
"to provide a helicopter"
] |
The story deals with the two friends Harry Norman and Alaric Tudor, who work at the Weights and Measures Office, and with Alaric's cousin Charley, who works in Internal Navigation. Harry falls in love with Gertrude Woodward, the eldest of the three beautiful daughters of a clergyman's widow, while Alaric pursues Linda, the second daughter. Gertrude rejects Harry's marriage proposal, and Alaric, rising in the ranks of the civil service, pursues and gains Gertrude's hand. Harry is unable to forgive Alaric, but eventually he marries the second daughter, Linda, and later becomes a country squire. Alaric meanwhile, becomes a Commissioner, but he falls under the influence of an unscrupulous member of Parliament, Undy Scott, who talks him into various schemes of dubious legality and morality, which eventually lead to his downfall. Charley Tudor is considered a rake, who spends his time at London's public houses and gin palaces. However, he dreams of a cleaner life, and loves Katie, the youngest sister, who falls in love with Charley after he rescues her from drowning in the Thames. Charley is also engaged to an Irish barmaid, and Katie's mother considers Charley an unsuitable husband, and forces him to swear never to speak to her. | What does Katie's mother ban Charley from doing? | [
"Talking to Katie ever again.",
"Makes him swear he will never be able to speak to Katie again"
] |
Mark Lewis meets Dora, a prostitute, covertly filming her with a camera hidden under his coat. Shown from the point of view of the camera viewfinder, tension builds as he follows the woman into her home, murders her and later watches the film in his den as the credits roll on the screen.
Lewis is a member of a film crew who aspires to become a filmmaker himself. He also works part-time photographing soft-porn pin-up pictures of women, sold under the counter. He is a shy, reclusive young man who hardly ever socialises outside of his workplace. He lives in the house of his late father, renting most of it via an agent, while posing as a tenant himself. Helen, a sweet-natured young woman who lives with her blind mother in the flat below his, befriends him out of curiosity after he has been discovered spying on her on her 21st birthday party.
Mark reveals to Helen through home movies taken by his father that, as a child, he was used as a guinea pig for his father's psychological experiments on fear and the nervous system. Mark's father would study his son's reaction to various stimuli, such as lizards he put on his bed and would film the boy in all sorts of situations, even going as far as recording his son's reactions as he sat with his mother on her deathbed. He kept his son under constant watch and even wired all the rooms so that he could spy on him. Mark's father's studies enhanced his reputation as a renowned psychologist.
Mark arranges with Vivian, a stand-in at the studio, to make a film after the set is closed; he then kills her and stuffs her into a prop trunk. The body is discovered later during shooting by a female cast member who has already antagonised the director by fainting for real at points which are not in the script. The police link the two murders and notice that each victim died with a look of utter terror on her face. They interview everyone on the set, including Mark, who always keeps his camera running, claiming that he is making a documentary.
Helen goes out to dinner with Mark, even persuading him to leave his camera behind for once. Her mother finds his behaviour peculiar, aware how often Mark looks through Helen's window. Mrs. Stephens is waiting inside Mark's flat after his evening out with her daughter. She senses how emotionally disturbed he is and threatens to move, but Mark reassures her that he will never photograph or film Helen.
A psychiatrist is called to the set to console the upset star of the movie. He chats with Mark and is familiar with Mark's father's work. The psychiatrist relates the details of the conversation to the police, noting that Mark has "his father's eyes." Mark is tailed by the police who follow him to the newsagents where he takes photographs of the pin-up model Milly (two versions of this scene were shot; the more risquĂŠ version is credited as being the first female nude scene in a major British feature, although even on the racier version, Milly only exposes one breast for a few seconds). Slightly later, it emerges that Mark must have killed Milly before returning home.
Helen, who is curious about Mark's films, finally runs one of them. She becomes visibly upset and then frightened when he catches her. Mark reveals that he makes the movies so that he can capture the fear of his victims. He has mounted a round mirror atop his camera, so that he can capture the reactions of his victims as they see their impending deaths. He points the tripod's knife towards Helen's throat, but refuses to kill her.
The police arrive and Mark realises he is cornered. As he had planned from the very beginning, he impales himself on the knife with the camera running, providing the finale for his documentary. The last shot shows Helen crying over Mark's dead body as the police enter the room. | Who killed a prostitute named Dora? | [
"Mark Lewis",
"Mark Lewis."
] |
Sir Philip, who had married for money and quarrelled with his brother-in-law, determined on the declaration of war in 1702 to join the Duke of Marlborough's army in Flanders as a volunteer. Receiving no tidings of him for many months, Lady Jemima resolved to consult a doctor from Padua, who had the reputation of being able to show his visitors their absent friends, and what they were doing. Accordingly she and her sister, disguised as soldiers' wives, went to him secretly, when he at once told them their real names and the information they desired. Having enjoined absolute silence, and changed his dress to that of an eastern necromancer, he led them into a room hung with black and lighted with torches, containing a large mirror behind an altar, on which were two swords, an open book, and a human skull. Gradually the mirror ceased to reflect these objects, and they saw the interior of a foreign church, in which Sir Philip was about to be married to a beautiful girl, when a group of officers entered, one of whom advanced towards the bridal party, arid swords were drawn on both sides. The scene then vanished, and the mirror again reflected the contents of the room. Restoratives were now offered to the ladies, and they were conducted to their carriage, the professor handing Lady Bothwell a composing draught for her sister.
A few days afterwards news arrived from Holland that Sir Philip's nuptials with the daughter of a rich burgo-master were actually about to be celebrated, when Major Falconer, who happened to be in the town, and had come with some brother officers to witness the ceremony as an amusement, recognised and denounced the would-be bigamist, accepted a challenge from him, and was killed. Lady Jemima never recovered from the shock, the Italian disappeared to escape arrest as a Jacobite, and Sir Philip having, in his old age, sought in vain a reconciliation with Lady Bothwell, eluded pursuit as a murderer and died abroad.This is a ghost story. While travelling through the western counties, the general's attention was attracted by a picturesquely situated old castle, and, on inquiry at the inn where he changed horses, he learnt that its owner was a nobleman who had been his schoolfellow. He accordingly determined to call upon his lordship; and, having been persuaded to be his guest for a week, he was conducted at bedtime to an old-fashioned room, hung with tapestry, but comfortably furnished, and well lighted by two large candles and a blazing fire. The next morning Lord Woodville was informed by his servant that the general had been wandering in the park since an early hour and when he appeared at the breakfast table his countenance was haggard, his clothes carelessly put on, and his manner abstracted; moreover, he announced that he must depart immediately. Drawing him aside from the other visitors, his host pressed him for an explanation, and, after declaring that he would rather face a battery than recall the events of the night, he reluctantly narrated what he had undergone.
Just as he was falling asleep he heard the rustling of a silk gown, and the tapping of high-heeled shoes, and then the figure of a woman passed between the bedstead and the fireplace. At first her back was towards him, but she slowly turned, and he distinctly saw the features of a corpse, bearing traces of the most hideous passions. He started up, and she sat on the bed, advancing her face within half a yard of his, upon which all his courage forsook him and he swooned. On recovering his senses she had disappeared, but he was afraid to move until daybreak, when he hurried from the room thoroughly unnerved. Lord Woodville was deeply impressed, for the chamber had the reputation of being haunted; and as he conducted the general through his picture gallery, he suddenly started as he caught sight of a portrait, exclaiming, "There she is!" and it proved to be the likeness of an ancestress whose crimes were incest and murder.Armstrong had been known during his father's lifetime as the Laird's Jock, or son; and being possessed of great strength and courage, had distinguished himself in the use of a two-handed sword, bequeathed to him by a Saxon outlaw, in many of the single combats which took place between the English and Scottish borderers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
He had, however, grown old, and was bed-ridden, when his only son accepted the challenge of an English champion. But his heart swelled with joy at the news, and having entrusted the lad with his celebrated weapon, he insisted on being wrapped in plaids and carried to the spot selected for the encounter, attended by his daughter. His followers gazed sadly on their chieftain's withered features and shrunken form; but when the combatants met, and the Englishman brandished the sword over his fallen antagonist, the old laird, reanimated for an instant with his former vigour, sprang from the rock on which he was seated, and, having uttered a cry like that of a dying lion rather than a human being, sank into the arms of his clansmen broken-hearted, not at the death of his boy, but at their wounded honour, and the irreparable loss of his weapon. | Where did news of Sir Phillip's nuptials arise from? | [
"Holland.",
"Holland."
] |
Ben Sanderson (Cage) is a Hollywood screenwriter whose alcoholism costs him his job, family, and friends. With nothing left to live for, he heads to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. As he drives drunkenly down the Las Vegas Strip, he nearly hits a woman, Sera (Shue), on the crosswalk. Sera chastises him and walks away. Sera is a prostitute working for an abusive pimp, Yuri Butso (Julian Sands), a Latvian immigrant. Polish mobsters are after Yuri, so he breaks his relationship with Sera in fear that the Poles may hurt her. Yuri is murdered (off-screen) shortly afterwards.
On his second day in Las Vegas, Ben goes looking for Sera, introduces himself and offers her $500 to come to his room for an hour. Sera agrees but Ben does not want sex. Instead, they only talk and form a bizarre romantic relationship and Sera invites to Ben to move into her apartment. Ben instructs Sera never to ask him to stop drinking. Sera asks Ben not to criticize her occupation. At first the two are happy, as Ben is "totally at ease with this (Sera's prostitution)." However, each becomes frustrated with the other's behavior. Sera begs Ben to see a doctor which makes him furious. While Sera is out working Ben goes to a casino and returns with another prostitute (Mariska Hargitay). Sera returns to find them in her bed and throws Ben out. Shortly afterward Sera is approached by three college students at the Excalibur hotel and casino. She initially rejects their offer by stating that she only "dates" one at a time, but eventually acquiesces when she is offered an increased price. When she enters their hotel room, the college students change the deal and request anal sex, which Sera refuses. When she attempts to leave, she is brutally attacked and raped. The next morning, she is spotted by her landlady returning home battered and is evicted. Sera receives a call from Ben, who is on his deathbed. Sera visits Ben, and the two make love. He dies shortly thereafter. In the final scene, Sera explains to her therapist that she accepted Ben for who he was and loved him. | WHO WAS YURI BUTSU TO SERA? | [
"HER PIMP",
"Her pimp."
] |
Three years after the destruction of the Death Star, the Rebel Alliance has been driven from their former base on Yavin IV by the Galactic Empire. The Rebels, led by Princess Leia, set up their new base on the ice planet Hoth. The Imperial fleet, led by Darth Vader, continues to hunt for the Rebelsâ new base by dispatching probe droids across the galaxy.
While investigating a potential meteor strike, Luke Skywalker is captured by a wampa. He manages to escape from its cave with his lightsaber, but soon succumbs to the brutally cold temperatures. The ghost of his late mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, instructs him to go to the Dagobah system to train under Jedi Master Yoda. He is found by Han Solo, who uses the warmth of his dead tauntaun to keep Luke warm while he sets up a shelter. Han and Luke make it through the night and are rescued by Zev Senesca.
On patrol, Han and Chewbacca discover the meteor Luke had planned to investigate is actually a probe droid, which alerts the Empire to the Rebelsâ location. The Empire launches a large-scale attack, using AT-AT Walkers to capture the base. Han and Leia escape on the Millennium Falcon with C-3PO and Chewbacca, but their hyperdrive malfunctions. They hide in an asteroid field, where Han and Leia grow closer. Vader summons bounty hunters, including the notorious Boba Fett, to assist in finding the Falcon. Luke, meanwhile, escapes with R2-D2 in his X-wing fighter and crash-lands on the swamp planet Dagobah. He meets a diminutive creature who is revealed to be Yoda; after conferring with Obi-Wan's spirit, Yoda reluctantly accepts Luke as his pupil.
After evading the Empire, Han sets a course for Cloud City, a floating colony in the skies of the planet Bespin. Cloud City is run by Han's old friend, Lando Calrissian. Unknowingly, the Millennium Falcon has been tracked by Boba Fett; shortly after they arrive, Lando leads the group into a trap and they are handed over to Darth Vader. Vader plans to use the group as bait to lure out Luke, intending to capture him alive and take him to the Emperor. During his training on Dagobah, Luke sees a premonition of Han and Leia in pain and, against Yoda's wishes, leaves to save them.
Vader goes back on his agreement with Lando and takes Leia and Chewbacca into custody. He intends to hold Luke in suspended animation and, as a test, freezes Han alive in a block of carbonite. Vader hands the frozen Han over to Fett, who intends to leave for Tatooine to deliver Han to Jabba the Hutt and claim the bounty on Solo's head. Lando, who was forced into cooperating with the Empire, initiates an escape and frees Leia and the others. They try to save Han but are unable to stop Fett. They then flee Cloud City in the Falcon.
Luke arrives at Cloud City and falls into Vader's trap. The two engage in a lightsaber duel that leads them over the city's central air shaft where, as his mentors warned, Luke proves to be no match for Vader who severs Luke's right hand, causing him to lose his weapon. After Luke refuses to join Vader against the Emperor, Vader reveals that he is Luke's father. Horrified, Luke falls through the air shaft. He is ejected beneath the floating city and makes a desperate telepathic plea to Leia, who senses it and persuades Lando to return for him in the Falcon. R2-D2 repairs the Falcon's hyperdrive, allowing them to escape the Empire.
Later, aboard a Rebel medical frigate, Luke's amputated hand is replaced with a robotic prosthetic. Lando and Chewbacca set off for Tatooine in the Falcon in order to save Han. As the Falcon departs, Luke, Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO look on and await word from Lando. | What does Darth Vader freeze han alive in? | [
"A block of carbonite. ",
"Carbonite"
] |
King Beli of Sogn (a traditional district in Western Norway) had two sons and a daughter named Ingeborg. Helgi was his first son, and Halfdan his second. On the other side of the fjord, lived the king's friend Thorstein (Þorsteinn Víkingsson) whose son Frithjof (Friðþjófr) was called the bold (hinn frœkni). Frithiof was the tallest, strongest and he was the bravest among men.
When the king's children were but young their mother died. A goodman of Sogn named Hilding (Hildingr), prayed to have the king's daughter to foster. Frithjof was the foster-brother to the king's daughter as he was also raised together with Ingeborg (Ingibjörg) by their foster-father Hilding.
Both Beli and Þorsteinn died in war whereupon Helgi and Halfdan took over the kingdom. The two kings were jealous of Frithjof's excellent qualities and so they denied him Ingeborg's hand. They took her to Baldr's sacred enclosure Baldrshagi where no one dared hurt another and where no woman and man had intercourse. Still Frithjof visited Ingeborg and they continued to love each other. This caused Helgi and Halfdan to send Frithjof away to Orkney to take tribute and while he was away they burnt down his homestead and married Ingeborg to King Ring, the aged king of Ringerike.
When Frithjof returned with the tribute, he burnt down Baldr's temple in Baldrshagi and went away to live as a viking. After three years, he came to King Ring and spent the winter with him. Just before the old king died, Frithjof's identity was apparent to everybody and so the dying king appointed Frithjof earl and made him the care-taker of Ring's and Ingeborg's child.
When Ring had died, Frithjof and Ingeborg married and he became the king of Ringerike. Then he declared war on Ingeborg's brothers, killed one of them and made the second one his vassal. | Who did her brother's marry Ingeborg to? | [
"King Ring of Ringerike.",
"To King Ring"
] |
"I am going to write down some of the history of Harry Penrose, because I do not think full justice has been done to him..."
The novel follows the career of a young officer, Harry Penrose, written from the viewpoint of a close friend who acts as narrator. A sensitive, educated young man, Penrose had enlisted in the ranks in 1914, immediately after completing his second year at Oxford. After six months in training he had been prevailed upon by his relatives – like most educated volunteers – to take a commission as an officer.
Penrose slowly asserts himself; the war takes a toll on his personality, but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism. However, his creeping self-doubt grows by degrees; he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme, knowing he cannot face another night patrol, and earns the wrath of his commanding officer – an irascible Regular colonel – over a trivial incident. The colonel piles difficult, risky work on him – remarking to the narrator that "Master Penrose can go on with [leading ration parties] until he learns to do them properly" – and Penrose submits, working doggedly to try to keep from cracking. After a long period of this treatment, by the winter of 1916, Penrose's spirit is worn down; when the narrator is invalided home with an injury in February 1917, his last support is gone. He is wounded in May at Arras – a friend remarking in a letter that "you'd have said he wanted to be killed" – and they meet again in London in November. Penrose has been offered a safe job in military intelligence; he comes within a moment of taking it, but at the last minute resolves to return to France.
Returning to his battalion, he is detailed for a party to the front line by the colonel within an hour; when the narrator arrives six weeks later, he discovers Penrose is under arrest for cowardice in the face of the enemy. It transpired that each time the party advanced, it had to break for the ditches to avoid shellfire, then regroup and move further; after some time, Penrose decided to fall back and wait under cover for the shelling to halt. Seeing a dugout down the road, they make a run for it under shellfire – to find it occupied by a senior officer, himself sheltering from the shelling, who promptly reports that "he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party running down the road – demoralized" and is ordered to arrest him and return. Penrose is court-martialled on these charges, and convicted; the court's recommendation for mercy is ignored, and he is shot one morning, a week later, by a party of men from his own company.
Penrose is presented in a glowing light throughout – "never anything but modest and dutiful; he always tries his best to do his bit" – but, ultimately, is failed by the system. He faces his trial honestly, without pleading circumstances ("The real charge was that I'd lost my nerve – and I had. And I didn't want to wangle out of it like that") but it is clear that whilst he is strictly guilty of the charge ("on the only facts they had succeeded in discovering it could hardly have been anything else") justice, by any sense of the word, had not been done to him.
"...[and] that is all I have tried to do. This book is not an attack on any person, on the death penalty, or on anything else, though if it makes people think about these things, so much the better. I think I believe in the death penalty – I do not know. But I did not believe in Harry being shot.
That is the gist of it; that my friend Harry was shot for cowardice – and he was one of the bravest men I ever knew." | Where was Penrose when he was wounded in May 1917? | [
"Arras",
"Arras"
] |
Gibbon begins with an account of his ancestors before moving on to his birth and education, which was partly private and partly at Westminster School. He matriculated as a student at Oxford University, an institution which he found at a low ebb.
To the university of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.
Of one of his tutors Gibbon says that he "well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform." Gibbon's father took alarm on learning that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and, in order to bring him back to the Protestant fold, sent him to live with a Calvinist minister in Lausanne. Gibbon made good use of his time in Switzerland, meeting Voltaire and other literary figures, and perfecting his command of the French language. He also fell in love with a Swiss girl, Suzanne Curchod, but his wish to marry her was implacably opposed by his father. "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." On returning to England he published his first work, the Essai sur l'ĂŠtude de la littĂŠrature. The next major event Gibbon mentions was his taking a commission in the Hampshire militia, an experience which he tells us was later to be of advantage to him:
The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.
He then details his travels through France and on to Lausanne, where he formed a friendship with John Holroyd, later Lord Sheffield, which was to last for the rest of his life. Gibbon crossed the Alps into Italy and eventually reached Rome. He had for some time wanted to begin writing a history, without being able to choose a subject, but now, he tells us, the exciting experience of walking in the footsteps of the heroes of antiquity gave him a new idea:
It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
After returning to England Gibbon engaged in several other literary exercises before finally beginning to write his Roman history. The Memoirs now give a detailed account of the years he spent producing its successive volumes, and of the many hostile criticisms his work attracted. These labours were diversified by his experiences as a Member of Parliament, and his writing, at the request of the Government, a "MĂŠmoire justificatif" asserting the justice of British hostilities against France at the time of the American Revolutionary War. During the course of writing the Decline and Fall Gibbon moved back to Lausanne. Gibbon's Memoirs end with a survey of the factors he considered had combined to bring him a happy and productive life. | What school did Gibbon attend? | [
"Westminister",
"Oxford University."
] |
The comedian Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) ended a year ago. Growing up in New York, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity.
Annie and Alvy, in a line for The Sorrow and the Pity, overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan; McLuhan himself steps in at Alvy's invitation to criticize the man's comprehension. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy. Instead, they discuss his first wife (Carol Kane), whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who didn't like sports and was unable to reach orgasm.
With Annie, it is different. The two of them have fun making a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the unusual men in her past. He met her playing tennis doubles with friends. Following the game, awkward small talk led her to offer him first a ride up town and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in "mental subtitles" as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annie's singing audition for a night club ("It Had to be You"). He suggests they kiss first, to get it out of the way. After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is "a wreck", while she relaxes with a joint.
Soon Annie admits she loves him, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When she moves in with him, things become very tense. Eventually, he finds her arm in arm with one of her college professors and the two begin to argue whether this is the "flexibility" they had discussed. They eventually break up, and he searches for the truth of relationships, asking strangers on the street about the nature of love, questioning his formative years, until he casts himself in Snow White opposite Annie's Evil Queen.
Alvy returns to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis, bad sex, and finally an interruption from Annie, who insists he come over immediately. It turns out she needs him to kill a spider. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together come what may. However, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they fly out to Los Angeles, with Alvy's friend, Rob (Tony Roberts). However, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing her to her record producer, Tony Lacey (Paul Simon), he unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal. Back in New York, he stages a play of their relationship but changes the ending: now she accepts.
The last meeting for them is a wistful coda on New York's Upper West Side, when they have both moved on to someone new. Alvy's voice returns with a summation: love is essential, especially if it is neurotic. Annie sings "Seems Like Old Times" and the credits roll. | What does Alvie and Annie decide on the return trip from Los Angeles? | [
"That their relationship is not working.",
"Their relationship is a failure"
] |
John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. He receives a phone call from Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men who are after him. During the phone talk, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a brutalized, ritualistically murdered woman, along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as the group of men (known as the Strangers) show up to investigate the room.
Eventually Murdoch learns his own name, and finds he has a wife named Emma (Jennifer Connelly). He is also sought by police inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) as a suspect in a series of murders committed around the city, though he cannot remember killing anybody. While being pursued by the Strangers, Murdoch discovers that he has mind powers—which the Strangers also possess, and refer to as "tuning"—and he manages to use these powers to escape from them.
Murdoch explores the city, where nobody realizes that it is always nighttime. At midnight, he watches as everyone except himself falls asleep as the Strangers stop time and physically rearrange the city as well as changing people's identities and memories. Murdoch learns that he comes from a coastal town called Shell Beach, a town familiar to everyone, though nobody knows how to leave the city to travel there, and all of his attempts to do so are unsuccessful for varying reasons. Meanwhile, the Strangers inject one of their men, Mr. Hand (Richard O'Brien), with memories intended for Murdoch in an attempt to predict his movements and track him down.
Murdoch is eventually caught by inspector Bumstead, who acknowledges he is innocent, and by then has his own misgivings about the nature of the city. They confront Dr. Schreber, who explains that the Strangers are endangered extraterrestrial parasites who use corpses as their hosts. Having a hive mind, the Strangers have been experimenting with humans to analyze their individuality in the hopes that some insight might be revealed that would help their race survive.
Schreber reveals that Murdoch is an anomaly who inadvertently awoke during one midnight process, when Schreber was in the middle of imprinting his latest identity as a murderer. The three embark to find Shell Beach, but it exists only as a poster on a wall at the edge of the city. Frustrated, Murdoch and Bumstead break through the wall, revealing outer space on the other side. The men are confronted by the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, who holds Emma hostage. In the ensuing fight Bumstead and one of the Strangers fall through the hole, revealing the city as an enormous space habitat surrounded by a force field.
The Strangers bring Murdoch to their home beneath the city and force Dr. Schreber to imprint Murdoch with their collective memory, believing Murdoch to be the final result of their experiments. Schreber betrays them by inserting false memories in Murdoch which artificially reestablish his childhood as years spent training and honing his psychokinetic skills and learning about the Strangers and their machines. Murdoch awakens, fully realizing his skills, frees himself and battles with the Strangers, defeating their leader Mr. Book (Ian Richardson) in a psychokinetic fight high above the city.
After learning from Dr. Schreber that Emma's personality is gone and cannot be restored, Murdoch exercises his new-found powers, amplified by the Strangers' machine, to create an actual Shell Beach by flooding the area within the force field with water and forming mountains and beaches. On his way to Shell Beach, Murdoch encounters Mr. Hand and informs him that the Strangers have been searching in the wrong place—the mind—to understand humanity. Murdoch turns the habitat toward the star it had been turned away from, and the city experiences sunlight for the first time.
He opens the door leading out of the city, and steps out to view the sunrise. Beyond him is a pier, where he finds the woman he knew as Emma, now with new memories and a new identity as Anna. Murdoch reintroduces himself as they walk to Shell Beach, beginning their relationship anew. | Who is the leader of the Strangers? | [
"Mr. Book",
"Mr. Book"
] |
A prologue establishes the courage and journalistic integrity of Bergman (Pacino) and Mike Wallace (Plummer) as they prepare to interview Sheikh Fadlallah for 60 Minutes.
In Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) arrives home from his office at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, reluctantly telling his wife Liane (Venora) that he has been fired.
Bergman approaches Wigand for help translating technical documents. Wigand agrees, but Bergman is intrigued when he cites a corporate confidentiality agreement and refuses to discuss anything further. Wigand is later summoned to a meeting with the B&W CEO, who threatens legal action and cessation of severance benefits if he does not sign a more restrictive confidentiality agreement. Wigand angrily leaves, and accuses Bergman of betraying him.
Bergman visits Wigand's home and vigorously defends himself. Wigand is reassured but hesitant to reveal anything that might threaten his family's medical coverage, apparently possessing very damaging information.
The Wigand family move into a more modest house, Wigand now working as a teacher. One night his younger daughter Barbara sees someone outside. Wigand finds a fresh footprint in the garden, and receives a sinister phone call.
Knowing that Wigand's confidentiality agreement obstructs any potential story, Bergman contacts Richard Scruggs (Feore), an attorney representing the State of Mississippi in a lawsuit against the tobacco industry, believing that Wigand could be shielded from legal sanction if he were compelled to break confidentiality and testify. Scruggs expresses interest.
Some time later Wigand receives an emailed death threat against him and his family, and finds a bullet in his mailbox. He contacts the FBI, but the agents who attend are hostile, confiscating his computer. Wigand, furious over the threats, demands Bergman arrange an interview.
In the interview, Wigand states that B&W intentionally make their cigarettes more addictive, and that he was fired after refusing to support this. Bergman later arranges a security detail for Wigand's home, and the Wigands suffer marital stress.
Wigand is served with a Kentucky court order prohibiting his testimony in Mississippi, but eventually decides to testify anyway, over the objections of B&W attorneys. On returning to Louisville, Wigand discovers that Liane has left him and taken their daughters.
Bergman, Wallace and Don Hewitt (Hall), the creator and executive producer of 60 Minutes, meet with CBS News' legal counsel, Helen Caperelli (Gershon). Caperelli invokes and describes a legal theory, tortious interference, whereby one who induces someone to break a legal agreement may be sued for "interfering." By this theory, CBS exposes itself to legal action from B&W if Wigand breaks confidentiality in his interview.
Eric Kluster (Tobolowsky), the president of CBS News, decides to omit Wigand's interview from the segment. Bergman objects, believing that CBS Corporate wishes to avoid jeopardizing the pending sale of CBS to Westinghouse, which would enrich both Caperelli and Kluster. Wigand is appalled, and terminates contact with Bergman.
An investigator probes Wigand's personal history, their findings published and circulated to the news media as a 500-page dossier. Bergman learns that The Wall Street Journal will soon use this in a piece questioning Wigand's credibility. Bergman believes that Wigand is being smeared, and arranges for Jack Palladino (playing himself), an attorney and investigator, to evaluate it. The editor of the Journal agrees to delay his story while his reporters examine Palladino's findings.
Infighting at CBS News about the segment prompts Hewitt to order Bergman to take an immediate "vacation." During this, the abridged 60 Minutes segment airs. Bergman, with difficulty, completes a call to Wigand, who is both dejected and furious, accusing Bergman of manipulating him. Bergman defends his own motives and praises Wigand and his testimony.
Bergman is urged by Scruggs to air the full segment, their own lawsuit under threat by a lawsuit from the governor of Mississippi. Bergman is powerless to help, and privately questions his own motives in pursuing the story.
Bergman contacts an editor at The New York Times, disclosing the full story and events at CBS. The Times prints the story on the front page, and condemns CBS in a scathing editorial. The Journal dismisses the dossier as character assassination, and prints Wigand's deposition in full. Hewitt accuses Bergman of betraying CBS, but finds that Wallace now agrees that surrendering to corporate pressure was a mistake.
60 Minutes finally airs the original segment, including the full interview with Wigand. Bergman tells Wallace that he has resigned, believing 60 Minutes' credibility and integrity is now permanently tarnished.
The film ends with text cards summarizing the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, and the careers of Wigand and Bergman after the events of the film. | What happens to Wigand after his daughter Barbara sees someone outside? | [
"Wigand finds a footprint outside and receives a sinister phone call. ",
"He finds a footprint outside and gets a disturbing phone call."
] |
Clarence and Emmeline Mumford are a middle-class couple, living in suburban Sutton on the outskirts of London with their two-year-old son. Reading the newspaper, they become aware of a young woman seeking a place as a "paying guest", or lodger. To supplement their income they respond to the advertisement and meet the prospective tenant, named Louise Derrick, who is in need of a place to live due to disagreements with her immediate family. Louise, who is poorly educated and bad-tempered, is being romantically pursued by two men: Mr Bowling, who is courting Louise's stepsister Cecily, and Tom Cobb.
The Mumfords do not get on well with their "paying guest", and attempt to persuade her to leave. This does not happen, and a series of events further disrupts the Mumfords' lives, including a private meeting between Louise and Clarence Mumford, which makes Clarence's wife jealous. Louise briefly and half heartedly seems to encourage Bowling's wooing of her, now that his courtship of Cecily is over, but Cobb makes a surprise trip to the Mumfords' home to pursue Louise. Louise, tripping on a chair Cobb had knocked over during the confrontation, accidentally starts a fire in the drawing room of the property, injuring Louise, who is then confined to bed for several weeks.
Eventually, Louise's time as the Mumfords' "paying guest" comes to an end, and she marries Cobb. | What two men pursue Louise Derrick's affections? | [
"Mr Bowling and Tom Cobb.",
"Mr Bowling and Tom Cobb"
] |
The book begins with Anne and Gilbert's wedding, which takes place in the Green Gables orchard. After the wedding, they move to their first home together, which Anne calls their "house of dreams." Gilbert finds them a small house on the seashore at Four Winds Point, an area near the village of Glen St. Mary, where he is to take over his uncle's medical practice.
In Four Winds, Anne and Gilbert meet many interesting people, such as Captain Jim, a former sailor who is now the keeper of the lighthouse, and Miss Cornelia Bryant, an unmarried woman in her 40s who lives alone in an emerald-green house and deems the Blythes part of "the race that knows Joseph." Anne also meets her new neighbor, Leslie Moore, who lost her beloved brother and her father, and then was forced by her mother to marry the mean-spirited and unscrupulous Dick Moore at age 16. She felt free for a year or so after Dick disappeared on a sea voyage, but Captain Jim happened upon him in Cuba and brought him home, amnesiac, brain-damaged and generally helpless, and now dependent on Leslie like a "big baby." Leslie becomes friends with Anne, but is sometimes bitter towards her because she is so happy and free, when Leslie can never have what Anne does.
Anne's former guardian Marilla visits her occasionally and still plays an important role in her life. Marilla is present when Anne gives birth to her first child, Joyce, who dies shortly after birth (as Montgomery's second son did). After the baby's death, Anne and Leslie become closer as Leslie feels that Anne now understands tragedy and painâas Leslie puts it, her happiness, although still great, is no longer perfect, so there is less of a gulf between them.
Later in the story, Leslie rents a room in her house to a writer named Owen Ford, who is the grandson of the former owners of Anne's House of Dreams, the Selywns. Owen, who is looking to write the Great Canadian Novel, finds the inspiration he was looking for in Captain Jim's shipboard diary, and transforms it into "The Life-Book of Captain Jim." While Owen is finishing the novel, he and Leslie independently realize they have feelings for each other, but both know they cannot do anything about them. Owen leaves the Island and Leslie is even more miserable being trapped in her marriage to Dick.
Gilbert examines Dick Moore and suspects that if Dick underwent surgery on his skull, he might recover his faculties. Anne and Miss Cornelia are both opposed to the surgery, fearing that Leslie's life will become infinitely harder if Dick returns to himself, but Gilbert feels obligated to let Leslie know there is a chance for Dick. Leslie consents, and Dick undergoes the surgery in Montreal; when he awakens, he reveals that he is actually Dick's cousin George, who accompanied Dick to Cuba and was with him when Dick died of yellow fever twelve years before. George resembles Dick strongly because their fathers were brothers and their mothers were sisters, and both had the same peculiar eye coloring abnormality (heterochromia) by which Captain Jim recognized "Dick" in Cuba years before.
Leslie, abruptly set free by this news, returns home, and considers taking a nursing course to get on with her life. Owen Ford returns to the Island to court Leslie after Miss Cornelia informs him of what has happened, and they become engaged. While this is going on, Anne gives birth to her second child, a healthy son. He is named James Matthew, for Anne's guardian Matthew Cuthbert and for Captain Jim.
At the end of the book, Owen Ford's book is published, and Captain Jim dies with a smile on his face after reading his advance copy. Miss Cornelia, thought to be a confirmed spinster, announces that she has decided to marry Marshall Elliott, who may be a Grit but at least is a Presbyterian; she says she could have had him at any time but refused to marry him until he shaved his beard off, which he had refused to do for twenty years until the Grits came into power. Finally, Anne, Gilbert, Jem and their new housekeeper, Susan Baker, move to the old Morgan house in the Glen, later to be named Ingleside. Anne is greatly saddened to leave the House of Dreams, but knows that the little house is outgrown and Gilbert's work as a doctor requires him to live closer to town.
This book introduces Susan Baker, the elderly spinster who is the Blythes' maid-of-all-work. | What does Anne call her first home? | [
"House of Dreams.",
"house of dreams"
] |
Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Pratolungo, arrives to serve as her paid companion, Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, her shy and reclusive neighbour, also wealthy, who devotes himself to craftsmanship in precious metals.
After being attacked and knocked unconscious by robbers, Oscar is nursed by Lucilla and falls in love with her, and the couple become engaged. Their plans are jeopardized by Oscar's epilepsy, a result of the blow to his head. The only effective treatment, a silver compound, has the side-effect of turning his skin a permanent, dark blue-grey. Despite her blindness, Lucilla suffers a violent phobia of dark colours, including dark-complexioned people, and family and friends conceal Oscar's condition from her.
Meanwhile, Oscar's twin brother, Nugent, returns from America, where he has dissipated his fortune pursuing a career as a painter. Oscar is devoted to his brother, who is as outgoing, confident and charming as Oscar is diffident and awkward. Knowing of Lucilla's blindness, Nugent has arranged for her to be examined by a famous German oculist, Herr Grosse. Herr Grosse and an English oculist each examine Lucilla but disagree on her prognosis. Lucilla elects to be operated on by Herr Grosse, who believes he can cure her. After the operation, but before the bandages are taken off, Madame Pratolungo pressures Oscar into telling Lucilla of his disfigurement, but his nerve fails and, instead, he tells her it is Nugent who has been disfigured.
Nugent is secretly infatuated with Lucilla and now manipulates her into believing that he is Oscar. As Lucilla gradually regains her sight, Herr Grosse forbids family and friends from undeceiving her, since the shock might imperil her recovery. Oscar goes abroad, resigning his fiancee to his brother in despair. Madame Pratolungo intervenes decisively with Nugent, appealing to his conscience and threatening him with exposure if he continues with his plan to marry Lucilla under Oscar's name. He promises to go abroad to find his brother and return him home.
Nugent soon returns to England and tracks Lucilla to the seaside, where, on Herr Grosse's orders, she is staying with her aunt, away from her immediate family. He pressures her to marry as soon as possible, without her family's knowledge, and works to poison her trust in Madame Pratolungo, who is away in Marseilles attending to her wayward father. Detecting but not understanding the change in her supposed fiance, Lucilla becomes distraught, over-strains her eyes and begins to lose her vision.
In the novel's denouement, Madame Pratolungo locates Oscar with the help of a French detective. His experiences have revealed an unexpected strength of character, and she conceives a new respect for him. The two of them race home to England to stop the marriage while there is still time. Held virtually prisoner at a Dubourg cousin's house, Lucilla is again totally blind. With the help of a kindly servant, she escapes to meet them, immediately recognizes the true Oscar, and is told the full story by Madame Pratolungo. A penitent Nugent returns to America, where he later dies on a polar expedition. Lucilla and Oscar settle in Dimchurch to raise a family, with Madame Pratolungo as her companion. Perfectly content in her blindness, she refuses Herr Grosse's offers to attempt another operation. | Why do you think Lucilla was content with her blindness? | [
"She was comfortable being blind because she was blind her whole life.",
"Because her time with sight was so unpleasant. "
] |
In October 2003, 19-year-old Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright. Returning to his dorm, Zuckerberg writes an insulting entry about Albright on his LiveJournal blog and then creates a campus website called Facemash by hacking into college databases to steal photos of female students, then allowing site visitors to rate their attractiveness. After traffic to the site crashes parts of Harvard's computer network, Zuckerberg is given six months of academic probation. However, Facemash's popularity attracts the attention of Harvard upperclassmen and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their business partner Divya Narendra. The trio invites Zuckerberg to work on Harvard Connection, a social network featuring the exclusive nature of Harvard students and aimed at dating.
After agreeing to work on the Winklevoss twins' concept, Zuckerberg approaches his friend Eduardo Saverin with an idea for what he calls Thefacebook, an online social networking website that would be exclusive to Ivy League students. Saverin provides $1,000 in seed funding, allowing Mark to build the website, which quickly becomes popular. When they learn of Thefacebook, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra are incensed, believing that Zuckerberg stole their idea while keeping them deliberately in the dark by stalling on developing the Harvard Connection website. They raise their complaint with Harvard President Larry Summers, who is dismissive and sees no value in either disciplinary action or Thefacebook website itself.
Saverin and Zuckerberg meet fellow student Christy Lee, who asks them to "Facebook me," a phrase which impresses both of them. As Thefacebook grows in popularity, Zuckerberg extends the network to Yale University, Columbia University and Stanford University. Lee arranges for Saverin and Zuckerberg to meet Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who presents a "billion dollar" vision for the company that impresses Zuckerberg. He also suggests dropping the "The" from Thefacebook, just calling it Facebook. At Parker's suggestion, the company moves to Palo Alto, with Saverin remaining in New York to work on business development. After Parker promises to expand Facebook to two continents, Zuckerberg invites him to live at the house he is using as company headquarters.
While competing in the Henley Royal Regatta for Harvard, the Winklevoss twins discover that Facebook has expanded to Oxford, Cambridge, and the LSE and decide to sue the company for theft of intellectual property. Meanwhile, Saverin objects to Parker making business decisions for Facebook and freezes the company's bank account in the resulting dispute. He later relents when Zuckerberg reveals that they have secured $500,000 from angel investor Peter Thiel. However, Saverin becomes enraged when he discovers that the new investment deal allows his share of Facebook to be diluted from 34% to 0.03%, while maintaining the ownership percentage of all other parties. He confronts Zuckerberg and Parker about it, and Saverin vows to sue Zuckerberg for all the company's shares before being ejected from the building. As a result, Saverin's name is removed from the masthead as co-founder. Later, a cocaine possession incident involving Parker and his attempt to place the blame on Saverin finally convinces Zuckerberg to cut ties with him.
Throughout the film, the narrative is intercut with scenes from depositions taken in the Winklevoss twins' and Saverin's respective lawsuits against Zuckerberg and Facebook. The Winklevoss twins claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea, while Saverin claims his shares of Facebook were unfairly diluted when the company was incorporated. At the end, Marylin Delpy, a junior lawyer for the defense, informs Zuckerberg that they will settle with Saverin, since the sordid details of Facebook's founding and Zuckerberg's own callous attitude will make him highly unsympathetic to a jury. After everyone leaves, Zuckerberg is shown sending a friend request to Albright on Facebook and then refreshing the webpage every few seconds as he waits for her response.
The epilogue states that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss received a settlement of $65 million, signed a non-disclosure agreement, and rowed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, placing sixth; Eduardo Saverin received a settlement of an unknown amount and his name was restored to the Facebook masthead as a co-founder; the website has over 500 million members in 207 countries and is valued at 25 billion dollars; and Mark Zuckerberg is the world's youngest billionaire. | When the site first started what did the visitors on site do? | [
"They rated how attractive they thought the female students were.",
"they crashed Harvard's computer network"
] |
The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. (Wasimbu's father Muviro, first mentioned in this story, goes on to play a prominent role in later Tarzan novels.)
Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy but all Germans, and sets out for the battle front of the war in east Africa. On the way he has a run-in with a lion (or Numa, as it is called by the apes among whom Tarzan was raised), which he traps in a gulch by blocking the entrance. At the front he infiltrates the German headquarters and seizes Major Schneider, the officer he believes led the raid on his estate. Returning to the gulch, he throws his captive to the lion. Tarzan goes on to help the British in the battle in various ways, including setting the lion loose in the enemy trenches, and kills von Goss, another German officer involved in the attack on the Greystoke estate.
He then becomes embroiled in the affairs of Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and believes to be a German spy, particularly after he learns she possesses his mother's locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane. His efforts to retrieve it lead him to a rendezvous between Kircher and Captain Fritz Schneider, brother of the major Tarzan threw to the lion previously, and the actual commander of the force that burned the estate. Killing Schneider, Tarzan believes his vengeance complete. Abandoning his vendetta against the Germans he departs for the jungle, swearing off all company with mankind.
Seeking a band of Mangani, the apes among whom he had been raised, Tarzan crosses a desert, undergoing great privations. Indeed, the desert is almost his undoing. He only survives by feigning death to lure a vulture (Ska in the ape language) following him into his reach; he then catches and devours the vulture, which gives him the strength to go on. The scene is a powerful one, a highlight both of the novel and of the Tarzan series as a whole.
On the other side of the desert Tarzan locates the ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader a troop of native deserters from the German army, by whom she had been taken captive. Despite his suspicion of Bertha, Tarzan's natural chivalry leads him to grant her shelter and protection among the apes. Later he himself falls captive to the tribe of cannibals the deserters have sheltered among, along with Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, a British aviator who has been forced down in the jungle. Learning of Tarzan's plight, Bertha heroically leads the apes against the natives and frees them both.
Smith-Oldwick becomes infatuated with Bertha, and they search for his downed plane. They find it, but are captured again by Usanga, who attempts to fly off in it with Bertha. Tarzan arrives in time to board the plane as it takes off and throw Usanga from the plane. Smith-Oldwick and Bertha Kircher then try to pilot it back across the desert to civilization, but fail to make it. Seeing the plane go down, Tarzan once more sets out to rescue them. On the way he encounters another Numa, this one an unusual black lion caught in a pit trap, and frees it.
He, the two lovers and the lion are soon reunited, but attacked by warriors from the lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley. Tarzan is left for dead and Bertha and Smith-Oldwick taken prisoner. The Xujans are masters of the local lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. They are also completely insane as a consequence of long inbreeding. Recovering, Tarzan once more comes to the rescue of his companions, aided by the lion he had saved earlier. But the Xujans pursue them and they turn at bay to make one last stand. The day is saved by a search party from Smith-Oldwick's unit, who turn the tide.
Afterward, Tarzan and Smith-Oldwick find out that Bertha is a double agent who has actually been working for the British. Tarzan also learns from the diary of the deceased Fritz Schneider that Jane might still be alive. | Who destroyed Tarzan's plantation? | [
"German troops from Tanganyika.",
"German troops."
] |
Harry Tasker leads a double life, performing covert missions for the U.S government under a counter-terrorism task force called "The Omega Sector". Agents Albert "Gib" Gibson and Faisal assist him in these missions under the command of Spencer Trilby. However, Harry's wife, Helen, and his daughter, Dana, believe he is a boring computer salesman who does a lot of "corporate" travel. Harry's latest mission in Switzerland reveals the existence of a terrorist group known as the "Crimson Jihad", led by Salim Abu Aziz. Harry suspects that antiques dealer Juno Skinner has ties to Aziz. After visiting her, Harry is attacked by Aziz and his men, and then loses him in a pursuit, meanwhile missing the birthday party that his wife and daughter have arranged for him.
Harry heads to Helen's office the next day to surprise her for lunch, but overhears her talking to a man named Simon. He uses his connections in Omega Sector to learn that Simon is a used car salesman, pretending to be a covert agent to flirt with Helen. Harry and other Omega agents, disguised, kidnap Helen while she is at Simon's trailer and then frighten Simon into staying away from her. Harry, using a voice masking device, interrogates Helen and learns that (due to his constant absence) she is desperately seeking adventure. Harry thus arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to seduce a mysterious figure in his hotel room (in actuality, Harry himself, who hopes to surprise Helen) and plant a tracking bug on him. However, Aziz's men burst in, kidnap the couple, and take them to an island in the Florida Keys.
Aziz reveals he possesses small nuclear warheads hidden inside antique statues shipped by Juno, and threatens to detonate them in major U.S. cities unless the U.S. military leaves the Persian Gulf. He then orders the couple to be tortured; Harry (under a truth serum) reveals his double life to Helen, and then they escape to watch as Aziz has the warheads loaded onto vehicles, and prepares one of them to detonate on the island in ninety minutes. Harry leaves Helen to hide as he attacks Aziz's men, but Helen is captured by Juno and taken with the convoy on the Overseas Highway. Harry is rescued by Omega agents and pursues the convoy, sending two Harrier Jump Jets to stop it and destroy part of the bridge. Harry rescues Helen from Juno's limo before it falls over the destroyed section, and then return to the mainland before the first bomb goes off.
They quickly learn that Aziz and his men have taken control of a downtown Miami skyscraper via helicopter and have kidnapped Dana, threatening to detonate the remaining bomb. Harry takes one of the jets to reach the skyscraper quickly. Faisal poses as part of a requested camera crew for Aziz to make his demands, providing enough distraction for Dana to steal the ignition key and flee the room. Aziz chases Dana onto an overhead crane where Harry arrives. Harry is able to rescue Dana while he and Aziz struggle in the cockpit. Aziz eventually becomes ensnared on the end of one of the plane's missiles, which Harry fires at the passing terrorist helicopter â destroying it and the remaining bomb on board. Harry, Helen, and Dana are then safely reunited.
A year later, the Tasker's family integrity has been restored, and it is revealed that Helen has become another Omega Sector agent. Harry and Helen are called to embark on a new mission together at a formal party, where they encounter Simon seducing one of the female guests. Helen and Harry intimidate Simon into fleeing, and the film ends with the couple dancing the Tango in celebration. | What destroyed the bridge after Harry rescues Helen? | [
"Two Harrier Jump Jets.",
"Harrier Jump Jets"
] |
The story opens with a quick overview of Santa's castle in the Laughing Valley. Its focus soon switches to the five Caves of the Daemons in nearby (though unnamed) mountains. These creatures are pagan daemons rather than Christian demons, in that they are not servants of Satan or necessarily evil. Four of the five, the Daemons of Selfishness, Envy, Hatred, and Malice, certainly are bad, but the fifth, the Daemon of Repentance, is a more ambiguous figure.
The Daemons of the Caves resent Santa Claus because children under the influence of his gifts rarely visit their caves. They decide to frustrate his efforts and counter his influence. (The Daemon of Repentance goes along with the plan, since children cannot reach his remote cave without passing through the caves of his compatriots beforehand.) The Daemons first try to tempt Santa Claus to their own vices; they visit him one by one, and attempt to lure him into selfishness, envy, and hatred. Santa Claus merely laughs at their clumsy efforts. (The obvious model for these episodes is the Temptation of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels.) Failing at temptation, the Daemons instead kidnap Santa Claus; they lasso him as he is riding in his sleigh on Christmas Eve, and bind him in their caverns.
Santa Claus is accompanied on his rounds by a fairy, pixie, knook, and ryl, who travel under the seat of his sleigh; once the four realize that Santa is gone, they endeavor to complete his mission and deliver the gifts. They generally succeed, though with some mistakes; they deliver a toy drum to a little girl and a sewing kit to a little boy. Overall, though, they manage to save Christmas. Then they report Santa's absence; the queen of the fairies in the Forest of Burzee knows what has happened. An army of magical creatures is mustered to rescue the missing hero. Meanwhile, though, Santa is released from captivity by the Daemon of Repentance, who has repented the kidnapping. Santa meets the army on its way, and turns it back from attacking the daemons.
(In the seventh chapter of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, titled "The Great Battle Between Good and Evil," Baum depicts a combat between massed magical forces. Here in the short story he avoids that spectacle, a strategy he would employ again in the climax of the sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, in 1910.) | Where do the four travel in the sleigh when they accompany Santa on his rounds? | [
"Under Santa's seat in the sleigh",
"Under the seat of his sleigh . "
] |
Popular Democratic President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is preparing to run for re-election. The President and his staff, led by Chief of Staff and best friend A.J. MacInerney (Martin Sheen), attempt to consolidate the administration's 63% approval rating by passing a moderate crime control bill. However, support for the bill in both parties is tepid: conservatives do not want it, and liberals think it is too weak. If it passes, however, Shepherd's re-election is presumed by his staff to be a shoo-in, and Shepherd resolves to announce the bill, and the Congressional support to pass it, by the State of the Union.
With the President of France about to arrive in the United States to attend a state dinner in his honor, Shepherd—widowed when his wife died of cancer three years earlier—is placed in an awkward predicament when his cousin Judith, with whom he had planned to attend the dinner, gets sick.
The President's attention soon focuses on Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), just hired by an environmental lobbying firm to persuade the President to pass legislation committing his Administration to substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions. During their first meeting, Shepherd and Wade are immediately intrigued by each other. At this meeting, Shepherd strikes a deal with Wade: if she can secure 24 votes for the environmental bill by the date of the State of the Union, he will deliver the last 10 votes. Whatever his personal feelings toward Wade, he expresses this to his staff, especially the pragmatic A.J., as a sound political move. He believes Wade will not be able to get enough votes to meet her side of the deal, thus releasing Shepherd from responsibility if the bill fails to pass.
Later that evening, in a series of phone calls, Shepherd invites Wade to the state dinner. During the State dinner and subsequent occasions, the couple fall in love. When the Republican presidential hopeful Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) learns "the President's got a girlfriend," he steps up his attacks on Shepherd and Wade, focusing on Wade's activist past and maligning Shepherd's ethics and his family values. The President refuses to respond to these attacks, which drives his approval ratings lower and costs him crucial political support, without which his crime bill seems doomed to failure.
At the White House Christmas Party, Wade is dejected about her meeting that day with three Congressmen from Michigan about the environmental bill and how it was a dismal failure; in the process, she inadvertently mentions to the President and A.J. that the Congressmen in question said the only bill they were more interested in defeating than the President's crime bill was Wade's environmental bill. Shepherd and A.J. are conflicted by this information as Wade clearly had no idea of the implications of this casual conversation, much less that they might actually use this information in their favor and against her environmental bill.
Eventually, Wade does manage to get enough votes to meet her part of the deal. However, in the meantime, Shepherd's team discovers he is exactly three votes short, with no other apparent options to acquire them except by shelving the environmental bill, thus solidifying the support of the three Congressmen from Michigan—which he agrees to do. This results in disaster for Wade as she is immediately fired from her lobbyist job for failing to achieve her objectives, as well as seemingly jeopardizing her political reputation. She visits the White House to break up with Shepherd and says that she has a job possibility in Hartford, Connecticut. He tells her politics is making choices, his number-one has always been the crime control bill, and that he does not want to lose her over this. She congratulates him on getting the leverage to pass a crime bill that in no way will help fight crime. She concludes, "Mr. President, you have bigger problems than losing me—you've just lost my vote."
On the morning that he is to deliver his State of the Union Address, and after an argument with A.J., Shepherd makes a surprise appearance in the White House press room and rebuts Rumson's attacks on Wade's past and his own values and character. He declares he will send the controversial environmental bill to Congress with a massive 20% cut in fossil fuels—far more than the 10% originally envisioned—and that he is withdrawing his support for the weak crime bill, promising to write a stronger one in due time. In his speech he even promises gun control, in an attempt at root-and-branch solving of America's problems. His passionate and erudite defense of those things in which he believes, in contrast to his earlier passive behavior, galvanizes the press and his staff.
Shepherd declares he is "going over to her house and I'm not leaving until I get her back," but Wade enters the Oval Office before he can leave. The couple are reconciled and the President, accompanied by Wade, leaves to give his State of the Union Address. The movie ends with Shepherd entering the House chamber to thunderous applause. | Who does Sydney Ellen Wade work for? | [
"An environmental lobbying firm.",
"An environmental lobbying firm. "
] |
The Rosaura subplot has been subjected to much criticism in the past as not belonging to the work. MenĂŠndez y Pelayo saw it as a strange and exotic plot, like a parasitical vine. Rosaura has also been dismissed as the simple stock character of the jilted woman. With the British School of Calderonistas, this attitude changed. A. E. Sloman explained how the main and secondary actions are linked. Others like E. M. Wilson and William M. Whitby consider Rosaura to be central to the work since she parallels Segismundo's actions and also serves as Segismundo's guide, leading him to a final conversion. For some Rosaura must be studied as part of a Platonic ascent on the part of the Prince. Others compare her first appearance, falling from a horse/hippogriff to the plot of Ariosto's Orlando furioso where Astolfo (the name of the character who deceives Rosaura in our play), also rides the hippogriff and witnesses a prophecy of the return of the mythical Golden Age. For Frederick de Armas, Rosaura hides a mythological mystery already utilized by Ariosto. When she goes to Court, she takes on the name of Astraea, the goddess of chastity and justice. Astraea was the last of the immortals to leave earth with the decline of the ages. Her return signals the return of a Golden Age. Many writers of the Renaissance and early modern periods used the figure of Astraea to praise the rulers of their times. It is possible that Rosaura (an anagram of auroras, "dawns") could represent the return of a Golden Age during the reign of Segismundo, a figure that represents King Philip IV of Spain. | Which immortal was the last to leave earth? | [
"Astraea",
"Astraea"
] |
A married couple Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne), their sons Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and Foster (Andrew Astor), and infant daughter Cali have recently moved into a new home. One night, Dalton is drawn to the attic when he hears creaking noises and sees the door open by itself. He falls from a ladder while investigating and sees a figure in the shadows. Hearing his terrified screams, Renai and Josh rush to his aid and declare the attic "off limits" to the children. The next day, Dalton falls into an inexplicable coma.
After three months of treatment without result, Renai and Josh are allowed to take Dalton home. Soon after, paranormal activity begins to occur; Renai begins hearing voices over the baby monitor when no one is in Cali's room, Foster says that Dalton sleepwalks at night, Renai sees a frightening figure of a man in Cali's room, who vanishes when Josh comes and the burglar alarm is repeatedly triggered for no reason with the front door open. After Renai finds a bloody hand print on Dalton's bed, she questions Josh about the house, but he ignores her. That night, Renai is attacked by the figure from Cali's room, and the Lamberts decide to abandon the house and move elsewhere.
In the new house, Renai sees the ghost of a dancing boy who leads her to Dalton's room. Josh's mother, Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), visits them one day, and says she had a dream in which a figure in Dalton's room replies "Dalton" when she asks what it wants; at the same time, she sees a monstrous red-faced demon standing behind Josh and screams, while Dalton's room is ransacked and Dalton himself is found lying on the floor.
Lorraine calls demonologists Elise Reiner (Lin Shaye), Specs (Leigh Whannell), and Tucker (Angus Sampson). Upon entering, Elise senses a presence in the house and upon entering Dalton's room, she sees something on the ceiling; to which Specs draws the demonic, red-faced figure Lorraine saw.
Elise explains that Dalton is not in a coma; he was born with the ability to travel mentally to the astral plane. He has traveled too far and become lost in a purgatory realm called "The Further", a place inhabited by the tortured souls of the dead. Without his mental presence, Dalton's body appears comatose and spirits can use it to enter the physical world. Josh is skeptical until he realizes that all of Dalton's drawings are of the demonic entity drawn by Specs.
Elise performs a seance to communicate with Dalton, but they contact the demon who threatens them before using Dalton's body to attack them until it is stopped by Elise. She reveals that her acquaintance with Lorraine is decades old, because she previously performed the same service on Josh when he was eight years old (he was terrorized by the parasitic spirit of an old woman). Josh also possesses the ability to astral project, and Dalton inherited this trait from him. Elise tells Josh that the only way to rescue Dalton is to go into the Further.
Elise puts Josh in a trance and he is able to project himself to their previous house. He goes to the attic and finds a red door, but is attacked by the mysterious figure that attacked Renai. After defeating him, Josh enters the Demon's lair, where Josh finds Dalton chained to the floor. After a tearful reunion, Josh frees him, but they are caught by the demon. Josh tries to fight it, but they are forced to flee with the demon in pursuit. Returning through the red door, Josh confronts the old woman that haunted him as a child. The old woman dissolves into darkness after Josh shouts at it to leave him alone. When Josh and Dalton return to their bodies they wake up in their new home and the spirits seem to disappear.
As they celebrate the apparent end of their ordeal, Elise starts packing her equipment with Josh, when she senses that something is wrong (she notices Josh's hands look old and dirty, similar to the old woman's), and proceeds to take a photo of Josh. Josh goes into a violent rage, as he doesn't like to have his picture taken and strangles Elise to death. Renai is horrified when she discovers Elise's dead body and searches for Josh to inform him of her sudden death. Renai picks up the camera and sees that the image Elise took of Josh is the old woman that haunted him as a child, implying that Josh has been possessed. Josh suddenly puts his hand on her shoulder, and she turns around and gasps. | How does Lorraine know Elise? | [
"She helped Josh when he was possessed as a child.",
"Lorraine hired Elise on as a demonologist. "
] |
Hasari Pal (Om Puri) is a rural farmer who moves to Calcutta with his wife (Shabana Azmi) and three children in search of a better life. The Pals do not get off to a very good start: They are cheated out of their rent money and thrown out on the streets, and it's difficult for Hasari to find a job to support them. But the determined family refuses to give up and eventually finds its place in the poverty-stricken city.
Meanwhile, on the other end of Calcutta, Max Lowe (Patrick Swayze), a doctor disillusioned by an easy job in a Houston hospital, has arrived in search of spiritual enlightenment after the loss of a patient there. However, he encounters misfortune as soon as he arrives. After being tricked by a young prostitute, he is roughed up by thugs and left bleeding in the street without his documents and valuable possessions.
Hasari comes to Max's aid and takes the injured doctor to the "City of Joy," a slum area populated with lepers and poor people that becomes the Pals' new home and the American's home away from home. Max spends a lot of time in the neighborhood, but he does not want to become too involved with the residents because he is afraid of becoming emotionally attached to them. He soon, however, is coaxed into helping his new-found friends by a strong-willed Irish woman (Pauline Collins), who runs the local clinic.
Eventually, Max begins to fit in with his fellow slum-dwellers and become more optimistic. There are many around him whose lives are much worse, but they look on each day with a hope that gives new strength to the depressed doctor. | Why does Hasari Pal move his family to Calcutta? | [
"They are in search of a better life.",
"In search of a better life. "
] |
In the autumn of 1959, shy Todd Anderson begins his senior high school at Welton Academy, an all-male, elite prep boarding school. He is assigned one of Welton's most promising students, Neil Perry, as his roommate and is quickly accepted by Neil's friends: romantic Knox Overstreet, overachiever Richard Cameron, best friends Steven Meeks and Gerard Pitts, and mischievous beatnik Charlie Dalton.
On the first day of classes, they are surprised by the unorthodox teaching methods of new English teacher John Keating, a Welton alumnus who encourages his students to "make your lives extraordinary", a sentiment he summarizes with the Latin expression carpe diem ("seize the day"). Subsequent lessons include having them take turns standing on his desk to teach the boys how they must look at life in a different way, telling them to rip out the introduction of their poetry books which explains a mathematical formula used for rating poetry, and inviting them to make up their own style of walking in a courtyard to encourage them to be individuals. His methods attract the attention of strict headmaster Gale Nolan.
Upon learning that Keating was a member of the unsanctioned Dead Poets Society while he was at Welton, Neil restarts the club and he and his friends sneak off campus to a cave where they read poetry and verse, including their own compositions. As the school year progresses, Keating's lessons and their involvement with the club encourage them to live their lives on their own terms. Knox pursues Chris Noel, a girl who is dating a football player and whose family is friends with his. Neil discovers his love of acting and gets the lead in a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, despite the fact that his domineering father wants him to go to medical school. Keating helps Todd come out of his shell and realize his potential when he takes him through an exercise in self-expression, resulting in his composing a poem spontaneously in front of the class.
Charlie publishes an article in the school newspaper in the name of the Dead Poets Society demanding that girls be admitted to Welton. Nolan uses corporal punishment to coerce Charlie into revealing who else is in the Dead Poets Society, but he resists. Nolan also speaks with Keating, warning him that he should discourage his students from questioning authority.
Neil's father discovers Neil's involvement in the play and tells him to quit on the eve of the opening performance. Devastated, Neil goes to Keating, who advises him to stand his ground and prove to his father that his love of acting is something he takes seriously. Neil's father unexpectedly shows up at the performance. He takes Neil home and tells him he is forcing him into military school. Unable to find the courage to stand up to his father, a distraught Neil commits suicide.
Nolan investigates Neil's death at the request of the Perry family. Richard blames Neil's death on Keating to escape punishment for his own participation in the Dead Poets Society, and names the other members. Confronted by Charlie, Richard urges the rest of them to let Keating take the fall. Charlie punches Richard and is expelled. Each of the boys is called to Nolan's office to sign a letter attesting to the truth of Richard's allegations, even though they know they are false. When Todd's turn comes, he is reluctant to sign, but does so after seeing that the others have complied.
Keating is fired and Nolan takes over teaching the class. Keating interrupts the class to collect personal articles; before he leaves Todd shouts that all of them were forced to sign the letter that resulted in his dismissal and that Neil's death was not his fault. Todd stands on his desk and salutes Keating with the words "O Captain! My Captain!". Over half the rest of the class does the same, ignoring Nolan's orders to sit down. Keating is deeply touched by their gesture and realizes his teaching has made a lasting impact. He thanks the boys and departs. | Who is Todd Anderson's roommate? | [
"Neil Perry.",
"Neil Perry"
] |
In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children, who has recently been injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), expects to win, but Erin's explosive courtroom behavior under cross-examination loses her the case, and Ed will not return her phone calls afterwards. One day, he arrives at work to find her in the office, apparently working. She says that he told her things would work out and they did not, and that she needed a job. Ed takes pity on Erin, and she gets a paid job at the office.
Erin is given files for a real-estate case where the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is offering to purchase the home of Donna Jensen, a resident of Hinkley, California. Erin is surprised to see medical records in the file and visits Donna, who explains that she had simply kept all her PG&E correspondence together. Donna appreciates PG&E's help: she has had several tumors and her husband has Hodgkin's lymphoma, but PG&E has always supplied a doctor at their own expense. Erin asks why they would do that, and Donna replies, "because of the chromium". Erin begins digging into the case and finds evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is seriously contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, but PG&E has been telling Hinkley residents that they use a safer form of chromium. After several days away from the office doing this research, she is fired by Ed until he realizes that she was working all the time, and sees what she has found out.
Rehired, she continues her research, and over time, visits many Hinkley residents and wins their trust. She finds many cases of tumors and other medical problems in Hinkley. Everyone has been treated by PG&E's doctors and thinks the cluster of cases is just a coincidence, unrelated to the "safe" chromium. The Jensens' claim for compensation grows into a major class action lawsuit, but the direct evidence only relates to PG&E's Hinkley plant, not to the senior management.
Knowing that PG&E could slow any settlement for years through delays and appeals, Ed takes the opportunity to arrange for disposition by binding arbitration, but a large majority of the plaintiffs must agree to this. Erin returns to Hinkley and persuades all 634 plaintiffs to go along. While she is there, a man named Charles Embry approaches her to say that he and his cousin were PG&E employees, but his cousin recently died from the poison. The man says he was tasked with destroying documents at PG&E, but, "as it turns out," he "wasn't a very good employee".
Embry gives Erin the documents, which include a 1966 memo proving corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, did nothing about it, and advised the Hinkley operation to keep this secret. The judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount of $333 million to be distributed among the plaintiffs.
In the aftermath, Ed hands Erin her bonus payment for the case but warns her he has changed the amount. She explodes into a complaint that she deserves more respect, but is astonished to find that he has increased itâto $2 million. | Who gave Erin incriminating documents? | [
"Charles Embry",
"Embry"
] |
Party-animal Rick Gassko (Tom Hanks), who makes his living as a school bus driver, decides to finally settle down and marry his girlfriend Debbie Thompson (Tawny Kitaen). After gathering his buddies to give them the news, his shocked friends (led by Adrian Zmed) decide to throw him the bachelor party to end all bachelor parties. The bride's wealthy, conservative parents are not at all happy with her decision and her father decides to enlist the help of Debbie's ex-boyfriend Cole Whittier (Robert Prescott) to break them up and win her back.
While Debbie worries and goes off to her bridal shower thrown by her friends, Rick heads off to the bachelor party and promises to remain faithful. Both parties start off on the wrong foot thanks to a little sabotage by Cole. As the bachelor party starts to heat up, Debbie and the girls decide to get even with Rick and his friends by having a party of their own. Both parties eventually collide leading to Debbie accusing Rick of infidelity.
Both parties end up becoming one big drunken orgy and the bachelors' hotel room ends up getting trashed much to the chagrin of the hotel's ever-frustrated manager (Kenneth Kimmins). Adding to the confusion is Rick's friend, Brad who has become despondent over his wife breaking up with him. At various points during the movie, he riotously botches every suicide he attempts. He even tries slitting his wrists with an electric razor to which Rick says, "Well.....at least your wrists will be smooth and kissable."
Rick convinces Debbie of his love and faithfulness just as the party is raided by the police. In the ensuing melee, Rick and Debbie become separated and Cole kidnaps Debbie leaving Rick and his friends to chase after them culminating in a showdown between Rick and Cole, which includes a chase through a 36-screen movie theater. Rick and Cole have a humorous fist fight just below the movie screen which is showing a 3D movie. The fight is in direct synchronization to the on-screen fist fight. A female audience member gets punched in the face but attributes it to a 3D movie effect. Rick wins and he and Debbie embrace. After the wedding, Rick and Debbie are driven to the airport for their honeymoon in Rick's school bus driven by a laughing Brad. | How do Debbie and Rick get to the airport? | [
"In a bus",
"In a school bus."
] |
After miraculously recovering from a bullet wound to the head, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) returns to Vermont in 1992, suffering from periods of amnesia. While walking, he sees a young girl, Jackie (Laura Marano), and her alcoholic mother (Kelly Lynch) in despair beside their broken-down truck. Starks and Jackie quickly form a certain affinity; she asks him to give her his dogtags and he does so. He gets the truck started for them and continues on his way. Shortly after, a man driving along the same highway gives Jack a ride and they get pulled over by a policeman. The scene changes: Starks is found lying on the deserted roadside near the dead policeman, with a slug from the policeman's gun in his body. The murder weapon is on the ground nearby. Although he testifies there was someone else at the scene, he is not believed because of his amnesia. Starks is found not guilty by reason of insanity and is incarcerated in a mental institution.
Starks is placed in the care of Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), a psychiatrist, and his staff. In December 1992 Starks is forced to undergo an unauthorized treatment designed by Becker: he is injected with experimental drugs, bound in a straitjacket and then placed inside a morgue drawer as a form of sensory deprivation. While in this condition, he is somehow able to travel 15 years into the future and stay there for a short time. He meets an older version of Jackie (Keira Knightley) at a roadside diner where she works. He suspects this happens because it is the only memory he can ever fully hold on to. Seeing him standing forlornly, she takes pity on him and offers him shelter, just for the night. While in her apartment, Starks comes across his own dogtags and confronts her. Jackie tells him that Jack Starks died on New Year's Day in 1993, and so he cannot possibly be who he says he is. She becomes upset and asks him to leave. Subsequently, Starks is transported back to the future on several occasions in the course of his treatment and, after earning Jackie's trust, they try to figure out how to make use of the time-travelling so as to remove Jack from the hospital and save his life.
Early on 1 January 1993, knowing that his time is quickly running out, Starks is briefly taken out of the hospital by Dr. Beth Lorenson, who he has finally convinced of his time travel experiences and his knowledge of future events. She drives Starks to the home of Jackie and her mother, where he gives the mother a letter he has written, which outlines Jackie's bleak future and warns the mother that she is fated to orphan Jackie when she falls asleep with a cigarette and is burned to death. When he returns to the hospital, Starks slips on the ice and hits his head. Bleeding profusely, he convinces two of the more sympathetic doctors to put him into the jacket one last time.
Starks returns to 2007, where he finds that his letter has made all the difference. Jackie now has a better life than in the previous version of 2007. She is no longer a waitress, she is now dressed in a nurse's uniform, and she has a noticeably more cheerful outlook. They reprise their first 2007 meeting: she sees Starks standing in the snow and initially drives past him, but backs up when she notices his head wound. She stops and offers to take him to the hospital where she works. While they are in the car, Jackie receives a call from her mother â still alive and well. They drive on, the screen fades to white, and a voice-over reveals that the link to the "previous" future is not lost when Jackie says "How much time do we have?", a question she has asked him before. As the credits start to roll, the answer to the question is given by the words of the song: "We have all the time in the world" sung by Iggy Pop. | On Jack's last trip to the future, what is Jackie's job? | [
"A nurse.",
"nurse"
] |
In October 1962, U-2 aerial surveillance photos reveal that the Soviet Union is in the process of placing intermediate-range ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and his advisers must come up with a plan of action to prevent their activation. Kennedy is determined to show that the United States will not allow a missile threat. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advise immediate U.S. military strikes against the missile sites followed by an invasion of Cuba. However, Kennedy is reluctant to attack and invade because it would very likely cause the Soviets to invade Berlin, which could lead to an all-out war. Citing The Guns of August, Kennedy sees an analogy to the events that started World War I, where the tactics of both sides' commanders had not evolved since the previous war and were obsolete, only this time nuclear weapons are involved. War appears to be almost inevitable.
The Kennedy administration tries to find a solution that will remove the missiles but avoid an act of war. They settle on a step less than a blockade, which is formally regarded as an act of war. They settle on what they publicly describe as a quarantine. They announce that the U.S. naval forces will stop all ships entering Cuban waters and inspect them to verify they are not carrying weapons destined for Cuba. The Soviet Union sends mixed messages in response. Off the shores of Cuba, the Soviet ships turn back from the quarantine lines. Secretary of State Dean Rusk (Henry Strozier) says, "We're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked." The administration continues to order spy plane pictures, but one of Kennedy's advisers, Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner), calls the pilots to ensure the pilots do not report that they were shot at or fired upon, because if they were, the country would be forced to retaliate under the rules of engagement.
John A. Scali, a reporter with ABC News, is contacted by Soviet "emissary" Aleksandr Fomin (Boris Lee Krutonog), and through this back-channel communication method the Soviets offer to remove the missiles in exchange for public assurances from the U.S. that it will never invade Cuba. A long message in the same tone as the informal communication from Fomin, apparently written personally by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, is received. This is followed by a second, more hard line cable in which the Soviets offer a deal involving U.S removal of its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The Kennedy administration interprets the second as a response from the Politburo, and in a risky act, decides to ignore it and respond to the first message, assumed to be from Khrushchev. There are several mis-steps during the crisis: the defense readiness level of Strategic Air Command (SAC) is raised to DEFCON 2 (one step shy of maximum readiness for imminent war), without informing the President; a nuclear weapon test proceeds (Bluegill Triple Prime) and a routine test launch of a U.S. offensive missile is also carried out without the President's knowledge.
In a bid for time while under intense pressure from the military for an immediate strike, President Kennedy authorizes attacks on the missile sites and an invasion of Cuba, to commence the following Monday. An Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane is sent over Cuba to gather intelligence for the attack, but is shot down, killing the pilot. After much deliberation with the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, Kennedy makes a final attempt to avoid a war by sending his brother, Robert F. Kennedy (Steven Culp), to meet with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on Friday night. Bobby reiterates the demand that the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba, and in return promises not to invade or assist in the invasion of Cuba. Dobrynin insists that the U.S. must also remove all Jupiter missiles from Turkey, on the border of the Soviet Union. Bobby says that a quid pro quo is not possible, but in exchange for Khrushchev removing all the missiles from Cuba, there will be a secret understanding that the U.S. will remove all of its "obsolete" missiles from Turkey within six months as part of a pre-scheduled plan. The Soviets announce on Sunday that they will remove their missiles from Cuba, averting a war that could have escalated to the use of nuclear weapons. The film ends with President Kennedy dictating a letter of condolence to the family of the reconnaissance pilot, Rudolf Anderson, who was shot down over Cuba as part of the preparations for the invasion, and the Kennedy brothers and O'Donnell outside of the Oval Office as actual audio of President Kennedy's commencement speech at American University played in the background. | What did Kennedy authorize to buy more time? | [
"Invasion of Cuba, and attacks on missile sites.",
"Attacks on missile sites and invading Cuba but not untill the following Monday."
] |
At a Sunset Boulevard mansion, the body of Joe Gillis floats in the swimming pool. In a flashback, Joe relates the events leading to his death.
Six months earlier, down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe tries selling Paramount Pictures producer Sheldrake on a story he submitted. Script reader Betty Schaefer harshly critiques it in Joe's presence, unaware that he is the author. Later, while fleeing from repossession men seeking his car, Joe turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion. After concealing the car, he hears a woman calling him, apparently mistaking him for someone else. Ushered in by Max, her butler, Joe recognizes the woman as long-forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond. Learning he is a writer, she asks his opinion of a script she has written for a film about Salome. She plans to play the role herself in a comeback. Joe finds her script abysmal, but flatters her into hiring him as a script doctor.
Moved into Norma's mansion at her insistence, Joe resents but gradually accepts his dependent situation. He sees that Norma refuses to face the fact that her fame has evaporated and learns the fan letters she still receives are secretly written by Max, who tells him Norma is subject to depression and has made suicide attempts.
Norma lavishes attention on Joe and buys him expensive clothes. At her New Year's Eve party, he discovers he is the only guest and realizes she has fallen in love with him. He tries to let her down gently, but she slaps him and retreats to her room. Joe visits his friend Artie Green to ask about staying at his place. At Artie's party, he again meets Betty, who he learns is Artie's girl. Betty thinks a scene in one of Joe's scripts has potential, but Joe is uninterested. When Joe phones Max to have him pack his things, Max tells him Norma cut her wrists with his razor. Joe returns to Norma.
Norma has Max deliver the edited Salome script to her former director, Cecil B. DeMille, at Paramount. She starts getting calls from Paramount executive Gordon Cole, but petulantly refuses to speak to anyone except DeMille. Eventually, she has Max drive her and Joe to Paramount in her 1929 Isotta Fraschini. The older studio employees warmly greet her. DeMille receives her affectionately and treats her with great respect, tactfully evading her questions about Salome. Meanwhile, Max learns that Cole merely wants to rent her unusual car for a film.
Preparing for her imagined comeback, Norma undergoes rigorous beauty treatments. Joe secretly works nights at Betty's Paramount office, collaborating on an original screenplay. His moonlighting is found out by Max, who reveals that he was once a respected film director. He discovered Norma as a teenage girl, made her a star and was her first husband. After she divorced him, he found life without her unbearable and abandoned his career to become her servant.
Although Betty is engaged to Artie, she and Joe fall in love. Norma discovers a manuscript with Joe's and Betty's names on it. She phones Betty and insinuates what sort of man Joe really is. Joe, overhearing, invites Betty to come see for herself. When she arrives, he pretends he is satisfied being a kept man, but after she tearfully leaves, he packs to return to his old Ohio newspaper job. He disregards Norma's threat to kill herself and the gun she shows him to back it up. He bluntly tells her the public has forgotten her, there will be no comeback, and the fan letters are from Max. As Joe walks away, Norma shoots him three times. He falls into the pool.
The flashback ends. The house is filled with police and reporters. Norma, having lost touch with reality, believes the newsreel cameras are there to film Salome. Max and the police play along. Max sets up a scene for her and calls "Action!" As the cameras roll, Norma dramatically descends her grand staircase. She pauses and makes an impromptu speech about how happy she is to be making a film again, ending with: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." | What kind of car does Norma own? | [
"A 1929 Isotta Fraschini.",
"1929 Isotta Fraschini"
] |
Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) is a well meaning, but hopelessly clumsy and destructive security guard, at the National Gallery in London. His reputation for sleeping on the job compels the board of directors to attempt to fire him, but they are thwarted by the chairman (Sir John Mills) who is sympathetic to him. In order to get rid of Bean, the board send him to Los Angeles to represent them at the unveiling of the portrait Whistler's Mother. The famous painting has been purchased for $50 million by the Grierson Art Gallery with a grant from General Newton (Burt Reynolds).
Bean's visit is arranged by the gallery's curator, David Langley (Peter MacNicol), who, impressed with the National Gallery's false profile of "Dr. Bean", agrees to accommodate Bean in his house for two months, much to the chagrin of his wife Alison (Pamela Reed), son Kevin (Andrew Lawrence) and daughter Jennifer (Tricia Vessey), who subsequently leave for Alison's mother's house.
After some initial mishaps with the airport police and leaving the gallery's owner, Mr. Grierson (Harris Yulin) slightly doubtful about Bean's intelligence after meeting him in person, David begins to question his decision, and his worst fears are realised when Bean accidentally ruins the painting shortly after it arrives. Fearing that he will lose his job and possibly face criminal charges for the damage, David becomes despondent and gets drunk, even though his family returns out of pity.
Bean, however, comes up with a plan to save David's career by sneaking into the gallery at night and replacing the damaged painting with a poster that he alters to make it resemble a genuine painting with egg whites and Alison's nail varnish. The plan works and the painting is a success, but Bean is unexpectedly called to give a speech about the painting with General Newton, countless journalists and reporters watching. Bean, however, manages to improvise a sentimental and deep monologue about the painting and wins the crowd's praise and approval.
Just then, however, David is visited by Lieutenant Brutus (whom Bean had crossed more than once earlier on) and is initially perplexed with the police presence, assuming that the police might have discovered the issue with the priceless painting. Brutus however tells David that his daughter Jennifer has been in a motorcycle accident.
They rush to the hospital, but Brutus and the police stop prematurely to deal with a mugging, in which Brutus is shot. David shares an uneasy reunion with Alison beside the unconscious Jennifer's bed, while Bean is mistaken for a medical doctor and forced into a surgery room to help remove the bullet from Brutus's chest, which he manages to do unorthodoxly. While still in the doctor's garments, Bean comes across David, who asks him to help awaken Jennifer.
Once alone with Jennifer, Bean begins fooling around the defibrillator and zaps himself, accidentally causing him to wake Jennifer. Bean uneasily reveals himself to David and Alison and asks that he be allowed to stay with them another week, which they gladly accept. Bean goes on to spend quality time with David and his family until he leaves.
Eventually, David takes Bean to the airport for his flight home, where they part ways as friends. Once at home in London, Bean takes one last look at his room, which he has decorated with photographs with the Langleys and the original Whistler's Mother that was damaged and then stowed away, before going to bed. | What is David's reaction to his lost confidence? | [
"He gets drunk and despondent. ",
"He gets very drunk"
] |
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with an Italian man named Gino, a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law Philip to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but he arrives too late. Lilia has already married Gino and becomes pregnant again. She gives birth to a son, but dies in childbirth. Caroline decides to go to Tuscany again to save the child from what she perceives will be a difficult life. Not to be outdone, the Herritons send Philip again to Italy, this time accompanied by his sister Harriet, to save the family's reputation. In the public eye, they make it known that it is both their right and their duty to travel to Italy to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. Secretly, though, they have no regard for the child; only public appearances.
Philip and Harriet meet Caroline in Monteriano. Both Philip and Caroline eventually fall under the charm of Italy, which causes them to waver in their original purpose. They further learn that Gino is fiercely devoted to Lilia's infant son. As they admit defeat in their mission however, Harriet kidnaps the baby, but the baby is accidentally killed when the carriage it is in overturns. Gino, hearing the news, attacks Phillip, but the two are reconciled after Caroline's mediation. Gino's physical outburst toward Philip in response to the news makes Philip realize what it is like to truly be alive. The guilt felt by Harriet causes her to lose her mind. Finally, as Philip and Caroline return to England, he realizes that he is in love with Caroline but that he can never be with her, because she admits, dramatically, to being in love with Gino. | What happens to Harriet? | [
"She loses her mind because of guilt",
"loses her mind from guilt"
] |
Charlemagne's army is fighting the Muslims in Spain. They have been there for seven years, and the last city standing is Saragossa, held by the Muslim King Marsile. Threatened by the might of Charlemagne's army of Franks, Marsile seeks advice and his wise man, Blancandrin, councils him to conciliate the Emperor, offering to surrender and giving hostages. Accordingly, Marsile sends out messengers to Charlemagne, promising treasure and Marsile's conversion to Christianity if the Franks will go back to France.
Charlemagne and his men, tired of fighting, accept his peace offer and select a messenger to Marsile's court. Protagonist Roland, Charlemagne's nephew, nominates his stepfather Ganelon as messenger. Ganelon, who fears to be murdered by the enemy and accuses Roland of intending this, takes revenge by informing the Saracens of a way to ambush the rear guard of Charlemagne's army, led by Roland, as the Franks re-enter Spain through the mountain passes.
As Ganelon predicted, Roland leads the rear guard, with the wise and moderate Oliver and the fierce Archbishop Turpin. The Muslims ambush them at Roncesvalles, and the Christians are overwhelmed. Oliver asks Roland to blow his olifant (the word is an old alternative to "elephant", and was used to refer to a hunting horn made from an elephant tusk) to call for help from the Frankish army; but Roland proudly refuses to do so. It is for this reason that Roland is often accused of pride by critics of the 'Song of Roland'.
The Franks fight well, but are outnumbered, until almost all Roland's men are dead and he knows that Charlemagne's army can no longer save them. Despite this, he blows his olifant to summon revenge, until his temples burst and he dies a martyr's death. Angels take his soul to Paradise.
When Charlemagne and his men reach the battlefield, they find the dead bodies of Roland's men, who have been utterly annihilated, and pursue the Muslims into the river Ebro, where they drown. Meanwhile, Baligant, the powerful emir of Babylon, has arrived in Spain to help Marsile, and his army encounters that of Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, where the Christians are burying and mourning their dead. Both sides fight valiantly - when Charlemagne kills Baligant, the Muslim army scatters and flees, and the Franks conquer Saragossa. With Marsile's wife Bramimonde, Queen of Saragossa, Charlemagne and his men ride back to Aix, their capital in France.
The Franks discover Ganelon's betrayal and keep him in chains until his trial, where Ganelon argues that his action was legitimate revenge, not treason. While the council of barons assembled to decide the traitor's fate is initially swayed by this claim, one man, Thierry, argues that, because Roland was serving Charlemagne when Ganelon delivered his revenge on him, Ganelon's action constitutes a betrayal.
Ganelon's friend Pinabel challenges Thierry to trial by combat, in which, by divine intervention, Thierry kills Pinabel. The Franks are convinced by this of Ganelon's treason, thus, he is torn apart by having four galloping horses tied one to each arm and leg and thirty of his relatives are hanged. | Where is Charlemagne fighting the Muslims? | [
"They are fighting in Spain.",
"Spain."
] |
In 1876, Prince Leopold Mountbatten, Duke of Albany (Hugh Jackman), is a stifled dreamer. His strict uncle Millard (Paxton Whitehead) has no patience for his disrespect for the monarchy, chastising him and telling him he must marry a rich American, as the Mountbatten family finances are depleted. After his uncle told him that on his "thirtieth birthday he had become a blemish to the family name", Leopold counters that the new nobility is to be found in those who pursue initiatives, hence his interest in the sciences.
One day, the Duke finds Stuart Besser (Liev Schreiber), an amateur physicist (and descendant of Leopold) in his study perusing his schematic diagrams and taking photographs of them. He had seen him earlier at Roebling's speech about the Brooklyn Bridge, after he was laughing at the word "erection." Leopold follows Stuart and tries to save him from falling off the unfinished bridge, only to fall with him into a temporal portal between centuries that Stuart has used to travel to 1876.
Leopold awakens in 21st century New York City. He is at first confused and thinks that he has been kidnapped. Stuart says that he has created formulae to forecast portals in the temporal universe and that Leopold must stay inside his apartment until the portal opens again a week later. As Stuart takes his dog out, he is injured by falling into the elevator shaft, and is eventually institutionalized for speaking about his scientific discovery. (According to Stuart's books, Leopold's unintentional time travel to the 21st century has caused a disruption of all elevators, on account of his leaving the 19th century before he could register for a patent.)
Leopold is intrigued by the cynical and ambitious Kate McKay (Meg Ryan), Stuart's ex-girlfriend, who comes to the apartment for her Palm Pilot stylus. He observes that she is a "career woman" and that her field, market research, is a fine avocation for a woman and states that he once dated a librarian from Sussex. Kate dismisses him and demands that he take Stuart's dog for a walk. Leopold is overwhelmed to see that Roebling's bridge is still standing. Back at the apartment, he befriends Charlie (Breckin Meyer), Kate's brother and an actor between gigs, who believes him to be an actor as well, steadfast to his character.
Kate and Leopold become romantically involved as they dine and tour New York.
When shooting begins on the commercial in which Leopold has agreed to act, he finds the product, diet margarine, disgusting. He cannot understand how Kate would have him endorse a flawed item without qualms, and declares that "when one finds oneself participating in an endeavour entirely without merit, one withdraws." Echoing his uncle, Kate says that sometimes one has to do things one doesn't want to. He chides her about integrity. She retorts, "I don't have time for pious speeches from two hundred year old men who have not worked a day in their life". Their dalliance seems at an end.
Stuart escapes from the mental hospital, and sends Leopold back to his own time. That night, while Kate is accepting her promotion at a company banquet, he and Charlie are racing to meet her. Moments before she goes on stage, they arrive and produce pictures from Stuart's camera that show her in 1876. Stuart says that he had thought he disrupted the spacetime continuum, but actually "the whole thing is a beautiful 4-D pretzel of kismetic inevitability".
Kate chooses a life with Leopold over her career, and the three of them escape to the Brooklyn Bridge. There, catching the portal before it closes at midnight, Kate vanishes into 1876, where Leopold appears resigned to be pragmatic, as Kate and his uncle had advised him, and marry Miss Tree for her family fortune; but, just as he is about to announce his intention to become engaged to Miss Tree, as he opens his mouth to speak, he sees Kate and announces her name, Kate McKay, as his bride-to-be.
In the closing scene, they kiss and the camera is drawn outward showing a grandfather's clock depicting 12:15. | As the family finances are being depleted, what is the solution offered by Uncle Millard? | [
"Leopold must marry a rich American",
"To marry a rich American"
] |
Set in puritan Kent in 1657, the story focuses on the intrigues of Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse "as stiff a Roundhead as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritanic government", who is determined to secure the vast fortunes of his lovely ward, Lady Sue, for himself.
Sue presents a girlish figure; she is young, alert and vigorous. The charm of her own youth and freshness even means she looks dainty and graceful in clothes that disfigure her elders. She enjoys the adulation which her appearance guarantees, laughing and chattering with the women and teasing the men.
She does of course have plenty of admirers, including young Richard Lambert who worships her with protective reverence.
Sir Marmaduke who has plans to woo and win Lady Sue disguised as the exiled French Prince of OrlĂŠans, resents this faithful espionage and lays a plot to lure young Lambert to a gaming-house in London. Richard knows that gambling is an illicit pastime and that he is breaking the law, but is compelled to take his seat at the table by his employer.
Richard is then duped into taking part in a brawl and is summarily arrested leaving the way open for Marmaduke to carry out his cowardly deception and he soon tricks Sue into marrying him.
Sir Marmaduke persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain.
Though set in a completely different kind of background, the plot has some resemblance with the Sherlock Holmes story "A Case of Identity". | Where does this take place? | [
"Kent",
"In Kent"
] |
Prologue: In a country house, Fanny O'Dowda, the daughter of the Count O'Dowda, is putting on a play she has written. She has hired professional actors and invited major critics. Fanny, who has studied at Cambridge, is keeping her authorship secret. She expects that her father the Count will disapprove of the play, as he hates the vulgarity of modern life. He has only just returned to Britain from living in Venice.
Fanny's play:
Act I. The Gilbeys, a genteel couple in Denmark Hill, are worried about their missing son Bobby. A vulgar street-girl called Dora Delaney (known as "Darling Dora") enters. She tells them that she and Bobby had been sent to prison. They were arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour and assaulting a police officer. The Gilbeys are mortified. What will they say to Mr Knox, Gilbey's business partner, and his wife? The Knoxes' daughter is betrothed to Bobby.
Act 2. The Knoxes learn that their daughter Margaret has been in prison when she returns home after being away for a fortnight. On the night of the Boat Race she and a young French officer called Duvallet she was with got into a fight with the police. Margaret feels liberated by the experience and wishes to tell everyone about it. The Knoxes are mortified. What will they say to the Gilbeys?
Act 3. At the Gilbey household Bobby asks Juggins the footman how he can break up with Margaret without hurting her. Since his arrest he finds Margaret's dull respectability stifling. Margaret arrives and tells him of her imprisonment. Bobby is shocked, saying "It's not the same for a girl". Dora and Duvallet appear, to Bobby's embarrassment. When Margaret realises that the woman Bobby was with was Darling Dora, she is outraged. She had shared a cell with Dora, and now Bobby is treating her like she should be excluded from polite company. The Knoxes are announced. The four youngsters hide in the pantry with Juggins. The older couples, realising that they no longer need to keep up a facade of respectability, start to relax, though the pious Mrs Knox says that if they change the manners in which they have been brought up they will soon have nothing left. Meanwhile Margaret decides she no longer has any interest in Bobby. She really loves Juggins, the footman. Juggins reveals that he is the son of a Duke. He became a footman to atone for once mistreating an honest servant. Now that he has proven himself to be an honest working man, he feels worthy to marry Margaret.
Epilogue: Fanny's father is shocked by the play saying that it "outrages and revolts his deepest, holiest feelings". The critics have a variety of views, but wonder who the author may be. The aesthete Gilbert Gunn insists that's so full of tired clichÄs "as old and stale as a fried fish shop on a winter morning" that it must be by Harley Granville-Barker. Another critic, Vaughan, is convinced that only Arthur Pinero could have written it, since it betrays "the author's offensive habit of saying silly things that have no real sense in them when you come to examine them". Flawner Bannal, a critic from a tabloid, thinks it was written by Bernard Shaw, as the paradoxical statements about the English by the French character are a dead giveaway. Vaughan dismisses this because the characters are too believable: "That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw." One critic, Trotter, realises the truth. Fanny admits that she was the author, and the critics all join in praise of her. Trotter thinks that the account of imprisonment has an air of authenticity to it. Fanny confesses that, yes, she has been in prison, for her activities as a militant suffragette. Fanny's father now has to adjust to the fact that his daughter is both a malefactor and a playwright. | Who was Dora arrested with? | [
"Bobby",
"Bobby"
] |
The gypsy Esmeralda captures the hearts of many men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire, but especially Quasimodo and his guardian Archdeacon Claude Frollo. Frollo is torn between his obsessive lust for Esmeralda and the rules of the Notre Dame Cathedral. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her, but the hunchback is captured by Phoebus and his guards, who save Esmeralda.
The following day, Quasimodo is sentenced to be flogged and turned on the pillory for one hour, followed by another hour's public exposure. He calls for water. Esmeralda, seeing his thirst, approaches the public stocks and offers him a drink of water. It saves him, and she captures his heart.
Later, Esmeralda is arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Phoebus, whom Frollo actually attempted to kill in jealousy after seeing him trying to seduce Esmeralda. She is sentenced to death by hanging. As she is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down by the bell rope of Notre Dame and carries her off to the cathedral under the law of sanctuary, temporarily protecting her from arrest.
Frollo later informs Gringoire that the Court of Parlement has voted to remove Esmeralda's right to sanctuary so she can no longer seek shelter in the cathedral and will be taken away to be killed. Clopin, the leader of the Gypsies, hears the news from Gringoire and rallies the citizens of Paris to charge the cathedral and rescue Esmeralda.
When Quasimodo sees the Gypsies, he assumes they are there to hurt Esmeralda, so he drives them off. Likewise, he thinks the King's men want to rescue her, and tries to help them find her. She is rescued by Frollo and her phony husband Gringoire. But after yet another failed attempt to win her love, Frollo betrays Esmeralda by handing her to the troops and watches while she is being hanged.
When Frollo laughs during Esmeralda's hanging, Quasimodo pushes him from the heights of Notre Dame to his death. Quasimodo later goes to Montfaucon, a huge graveyard in Paris where the bodies of the condemned are dumped, where he stays with Esmeralda's dead body and dies of starvation. About eighteen months later, the tomb is opened, and the skeletons are found. As someone tries to separate them, they crumble to dust. | Who is pushed off Notre Dame and killed by Quasimodo? | [
"Frollo",
"Archdeacon Claude Frollo"
] |
Middlemarch is written as a third-person narrative, centering on the lives of the residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards â the years preceding the 1832 Reform Act. The narrative is variably considered to consist of three or four plots of unequal emphasis: the life of Dorothea Brooke; the career of Tertius Lydgate; the courtship of Mary Garth by Fred Vincy; and the disgrace of Bulstrode. The two main plots are those of Dorothea and Lydgate. Each plot happens concurrently, although Bulstrode's is centred in the later chapters.
Dorothea Brooke appears set for a comfortable and idle life as the wife of neighbouring landowner Sir James Chettam, but to the dismay of her sister Celia and her uncle Mr Brooke, she marries The Reverend Edward Casaubon. Expecting fulfilment by sharing in his intellectual life, Dorothea discovers his animosity towards her ambitions during an unhappy honeymoon in Rome. Realising his great project is doomed to failure, her feelings change to pity. Dorothea forms a warm friendship with a young cousin of Casaubon's, Will Ladislaw, but her husband's antipathy towards him is clear and he is forbidden to visit. In poor health, Casaubon attempts to extract from Dorothea a promise that, should he die, she will "avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire." He dies before she is able to reply, and she later learns of a provision to his will that, if she marries Ladislaw, she will lose her inheritance.
The young doctor Tertius Lydgate arrives in Middlemarch. Through his voluntary hospital work he meets the town's financier, Mr. Bulstrode, and through him Bulstrode's niece, the mayor's beautiful daughter Rosamond Vincy; Rosamond is attracted to Lydgate, particularly by what she believes to be his aristocratic connections. They marry, and in Lydgate's efforts to please Rosamond is soon deeply in debt and forced to seek help from Bulstrode. He is partly sustained through this by his friendship with Camden Farebrother.
Meanwhile, Rosamond's brother, Fred, is reluctantly destined for the Church. He is in love with his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth, who will not accept him until he abandons the Church and settles on a more suitable career. At one time Fred had been bequeathed a considerable fortune by Mr Featherstone, but Featherstone later rescinded this will. However, Featherstone, on his deathbed, begs Mary to destroy this second will. Mary refuses and begs Featherstone to wait until the morning when a new legal will can be drawn up, but he dies before being able to. In debt, Fred is forced to take out a loan guaranteed by Mary's father, Caleb Garth. Then, when Fred cannot pay the loan, Caleb Garth's finances become compromised. This humiliation shocks Fred into reassessing his life, and he resolves to train as a land agent under the forgiving Caleb.
John Raffles, who knows of Bulstrode's shady past, appears in Middlemarch with the intent to blackmail him. In his youth, the church-going Bulstrode engaged in questionable financial dealings, and his fortune is founded on a marriage to a much older, wealthy widow. Bulstrode's terror of public exposure as a hypocrite leads him to hasten the death of the mortally-sick Raffles, though word has already spread. Bulstrode's disgrace engulfs Lydgate, as knowledge of the financier's loan to the doctor becomes known, and he is assumed to be complicit with Bulstrode. Only Dorothea and Farebrother maintain faith in him, but nonetheless Lydgate and Rosamond are encouraged by the general opprobrium to leave Middlemarch. The disgraced and reviled Bulstrode's only consolation is that his wife stands by him as he too faces exile.
The peculiar nature of Casaubon's will leads to suspicion that Ladislaw and Dorothea are lovers, creating an awkwardness between the two. Ladislaw is secretly in love with Dorothea, but keeps that to himself, having no desire to involve her in scandal or to cause her disinheritance. He remains in Middlemarch, working as a newspaper editor for Mr Brooke; when Brooke's election campaign collapses, he decides to leave the town and visits Dorothea to make his farewell. But Dorothea has also fallen in love with Ladislaw, whom she had previously seen only as her husband's unfortunate relative. However, the peculiar nature of Casaubon's will led her to begin to see him in a new light. Renouncing Casaubon's fortune, she shocks her family again by announcing that she will marry Ladislaw. At the same time, Fred, who has been successful in his career, marries Mary.
The "Finale" details the eventual fortunes of the main characters. Fred and Mary marry and live contently with their three sons. Lydgate operates a practice outside of Middlemarch but never finds fulfilment and dies aged fifty; leaving Rosamond and four children. After he dies, Rosamond marries a wealthy physician. Ladislaw engages in public reform and Dorothea proves to be contented as a wife and mother to their two children; their son inherits Arthur Brooke's estate. | What country does Dorothea honeymoon in? | [
"Rome",
"Rome"
] |
Starting out as a harrowing wartime sea adventure, Burroughs’s story ultimately develops into a lost world story reminiscent of such novels as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). Burroughs adds his own twist by postulating a unique biological system for his lost world, in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis. This system is only hinted at in The Land That Time Forgot; presented as a mystery whose explication is gradually worked out over the course of the next two novels, it forms a thematic element serving to unite three otherwise rather loosely linked stories.The novel is set in World War I and opens with a framing story in which a manuscript relating the main story is recovered from a thermos off the coast of Greenland. It purports to be the narrative of Bowen J. Tyler, an American passenger with his Airedale Terrier Nobs on a ship sunk in the English Channel by a German U-boat, U-33, in 1916. He is rescued by a British tugboat with another survivor, Lys La Rue. The tug is also sunk, but its crew manages to capture the submarine when it surfaces. Unfortunately, all other British craft continue to regard the sub as an enemy, and they are unable to bring it to port. Sabotage to the navigation equipment sends the U-33 astray into the South Atlantic. The imprisoned German crew retakes the sub and begins a raiding cruise, only to be overcome again by the British. A saboteur continues to guide the sub off course, and by the time he is found out it is in Antarctic waters.
The U-33 is now low on fuel, with its provisions poisoned by the saboteur Benson. A large island ringed by cliffs is encountered, and identified as Caprona, a land mass first reported by the fictitious Italian explorer Caproni in 1721 whose location was subsequently lost. A freshwater current guides the sub to a stream issuing from a subterranean passage, which is entered on the hope of replenishing the water supply. The U-boat surfaces into a tropical river teeming with primitive creatures extinct elsewhere; attacked, it submerges again and travels upstream in search of a safe harbor. It enters a thermal inland sea, essentially a huge crater lake, whose heat sustains Caprona’s tropical climate. As the sub travels north along the island’s waterways the climate moderates and wildlife undergoes an apparent evolutionary progression.
On the shore of the lake the crew builds a palisaded base, dubbed Fort Dinosaur for the area’s prehistoric fauna. The British and Germans agree to work together under Tyler, with Bradley, the mate from the tug, as second in command and Von Schoenvorts, the original sub commander, in control of the Germans. The castaways are attacked by a horde of beast men and take prisoner Ahm, a Neanderthal Man. They learn that the native name for the island is Caspak. Oil is discovered, which they hope to refine into fuel for the U-33. As they set up operations, Bradley undertakes various explorations. During his absence Lys disappears and the Germans abscond with the submarine.
Tyler leaves the other survivors to seek and rescue Lys. A series of adventures ensues among various bands of near-human primitives, each representing a different stage of human advancement, as represented by their weaponry. Tyler rescues Lys from a group of Sto-lu ("hatchet men"), and later aids the escape of a woman of the Band-lu (spearmen) to the Kro-lu (bowmen). Lys is lost again, and chance discoveries of the graves of two men associated with Bradley’s expedition leaves Tyler in despair of that party’s fate. Unable to find his way back to Fort Dinosaur, he retreats to the barrier cliffs ringing Caspak in a vain hope of attracting rescue from some passing ship. Improbably reunited with Lys, he sets up house with her, completes the account of his adventures which he has been writing, and casts it out to sea in his thermos. | What body of water did the ship sink into in 1916? | [
"The English Channel",
"English Channel"
] |
Ace Ventura is a Miami private investigator who specializes in the retrieval of tamed or captive animals. Despite the occasional successes, he struggles to pay rent and repair his battered 1970s Chevrolet Monte Carlo. He keeps dozens of different animal in his apartment, and his eccentricities make him the laughing stock of the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Two weeks before the Miami Dolphins football team is due to play in the Super Bowl, the team mascot, a bottlenose dolphin named Snowflake, is stolen. Besides notifying the police, Melissa Robinson, the team's Chief Publicist, also hires Ace to find Snowflake. Ace discovers a rare triangular-cut orange amber stone, which he speculates to be part of a 1984 AFC Championship Ring. Ace tracks down the players in the team photo and sees their ring, but is dismayed to find every ring intact.
Roger Podacter, Miami Dolphins' Head of Operations, mysteriously falls to his death from his apartment. At the crime scene, Miami Police Lieutenant Lois Einhorn concludes the death to be a suicide. However, Ace proves it was a murder, embarrassing and infuriating Einhorn. Ace learns of a former Dolphins player named Ray Finkle, who also owned a ring but did not appear in the team photo, as he was added later in the season. Finkle missed the field goal kick at the end of Super Bowl XVII, which cost the Dolphins the championship and ruined his career. Ace visits Finkle's parents and discovers that he blames Dan Marino for taking the snap incorrectly, causing him to miss the kick. Finkle became so obsessed with the loss and Marino that he became insane and was committed to a mental hospital. However, despite Ace warning Melissa to send extra protection, Marino is still kidnapped. Ace visits Einhorn and explains his theory: Finkle kidnapped Marino out of revenge due to blaming him for his career having failed. Also, he took offense to the Dolphins giving Snowflake his number and teaching it to kick a field goal, and presumes he killed Podactor after he found him snooping around. Einhorn compliments him on his finding, and tells him to let the police finish the job. Ace declines, saying it is his job to find Snowflake.
Ace and Robinson go to the mental hospital where Finkle was committed. Ace searches Finkle's belongings and discovers a newspaper article about a missing woman named Lois Einhorn. Studying this, Ace realizes that Lieutenant Lois Einhorn is, indeed, Ray Finkle. Soon after, Ace makes himself vomit and sets his clothes on fire, feeling disgusted that he made out with Finkle.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Ace follows Finkle to an abandoned yacht storage facility, where he finds Snowflake and Marino. Ace subdues Finkle's henchmen, but before he can rescue Marino, Finkle holds him at gunpoint. When the police arrive, Finkle claims that Ace is the kidnapper and orders them to shoot him. Ace strips Finkle and with a little help from Marino, exposes his true identity, as it turns out he didn't perform the penectomy and vaginoplasty to perfect the disguise. Podacter discovered this during an earlier rendezvous with Finkle, so Finkle murdered him. Finkle attempts to kill Ace, but Ace subdues him and takes off his ring, a 1984 AFC Championship ring missing a stone. Finkle is then arrested and charged with murder.
Marino and Snowflake return in time for the Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and Philadelphia Eagles. At halftime, Ventura sees an albino pigeon (worth a $25,000 reward), but Swoop, the Eagles' mascot, shoos it away before he can catch it. Enraged, Ventura beats the mascot while he is thanked on the JumboTron for saving Marino and Snowflake. Ventura briefly stops fighting Swoop and smiles as the audience cheers for him. | What's the name of the Miami Dolphins' mascot? | [
"Snowflake",
"Snowflake"
] |
During a martial arts tournament, the American finalist Drew Carson (Reese Madigan) is humiliated by his opponent, ruthless and sadistic kickboxer Trevor Gottitall (Trent Bushey) who pantses him during the match. To add to the insult, Drew's teacher Master Kwan (Kim Chan) confesses that he is not—as he had claimed—a Shaolin monk, and therefore he had not passed on the actual knowledge of Shaolin kung fu to Drew. Determined to learn the actual art to prevent another such situation, Drew departs for China and arrives at the Shaolin Temple. At first, the monks do not let him enter, but with the help of a pretty tea shop waitress, Ashena (Alice Zhang Hung), and an old monk (Henry O) who gives him a decisive advise, he waits outside of the temple for a week, after which he manages to be admitted. The old monk also turns out to be the abbot of the temple, Master San De, and he and his stern taskmaster train Drew and a number of other young apprentices in the ways of the Shaolin.
At first Drew causes much trouble as his American teenage temperament clashes with the tranquility within the temple and with his fellow student, Gao (Daniel Dae Kim), but under the rigorous physical and mental training he both improves his fighting skills and learns the meaning of discipline, humility, and patience. He makes friends with Gao and also manages to pass the two final tests: the Test of Spirituality, and the Test of the Chamber. Accepted as a full-fledged member of the Shaolin Monastery, he accompanies—along with Ashena—a delegation of his fellow students and the abbot to a martial arts tournament in Shanghai.
At the tournament, Drew encounters Trevor once again. Trevor taunts Drew before proceeding with this match against Gao. Gao initially gains the upper hand, but Trevor resorts to his dirty fighting techniques and injures Gao. With Gao pinned against the ropes, Trevor demands a match against the "American Shaolin". Drew rises, but sits down again, refusing to fight Trevor on the principle of non-violence and selflessness. Infuriated, Trevor continues to beat up Gao and hurls him out of the ring. Encouraged by Master San De, Drew finally enters the ring to fight Trevor. Trevor immediately used dirty tricks again, but Drew prevails and even offers his hand to the defeated Trevor. The crowd voices their support for Shaolin, and Master San De declares that "this is the future of Shaolin". | Who encourages Drew to fight? | [
"Master San De",
"Master San De"
] |
In 1963, teen-aged Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives in New Rochelle, New York with his father Frank Abagnale, Sr. (Christopher Walken), and French mother Paula (Nathalie Baye). When Frank Sr. is denied a business loan at Chase Manhattan Bank due to unknown difficulties with the IRS, the family is forced to move from their large home to a small apartment. Paula carries on an affair with Jack (James Brolin), a friend of her husband. Meanwhile, Frank poses as a substitute teacher in his French class. Frank's parents file for divorce, and Frank runs away. When he runs out of money, he begins relying on confidence scams to get by. Soon, Frank's cons increase and he even impersonates an airline pilot. He forges Pan Am payroll checks and succeeds in stealing over $2.8 million.
Meanwhile, Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), an FBI bank fraud agent, begins tracking Frank. Carl and Frank meet at a hotel, where Frank convinces Carl his name is Barry Allen of the Secret Service, and that he was also after the fraud. Frank leaves, Carl angrily realizing a minute too late that he has been fooled. Later, at Christmas, Carl is still at work when Frank calls him, attempting to apologize for duping Carl. Carl rejects his apology and tells him he will soon be caught, but laughs when he realizes Frank actually called him because he has no one else to talk to. Frank hangs up, and Carl continues to investigate, suddenly realizing (thanks to a waiter) that the name "Barry Allen" is from the Flash comic books and that Frank is actually a teenager.
Frank, meanwhile, has expanded his con to include the identities of a doctor and lawyer. While playing Dr. Frank Conners, he falls in love with Brenda (Amy Adams). While asking her father's permission to marry her, he admits the truth about himself and asks for help with the Louisiana State Bar exam. Carl tracks him to his engagement party and Frank is able to sneak out a bedroom window minutes before Carl bursts in. Before leaving, Frank makes Brenda promise to meet him in Miami two days later so they can elope. Frank sees her waiting for him two days later, but also notices plainclothes agents waiting to arrest him, realizing he has been set up and escapes on a flight to Europe.
Seven months later, Carl shows his boss that Frank has been forging checks all over western Europe and asks permission to go to Europe to look for him. When his boss refuses, Carl brings Frank's checks to printing professionals who claim that the checks were printed in France. From an interview with Frank's mother, Carl remembers that she was actually born in Montrichard, France. He goes there and locates Frank, and tells him that the French police will kill him if he does not go with Carl quietly. Frank assumes he is lying at first, but Carl promises Frank he would never lie to him, and Carl takes him outside, where the French police escort him to prison.
The scene then flashes forward to a plane returning Frank home from prison, where Carl informs him that his father has died. Grief-stricken, Frank escapes from the plane and goes back to his old house, where he finds his mother with the man she left his father for, as well as a girl who Frank realizes is his half-sister. Frank gives himself up and is sentenced to 12 years in prison, getting visits from time to time from Carl. When Frank points out how one of the checks Carl is carrying as evidence is fake, Carl convinces the FBI to offer Frank a deal by which he can live out the remainder of his sentence working for the bank fraud department of the FBI, which Frank accepts. While working at the FBI, Frank misses the thrill of the chase and even attempts to fly as an airline pilot again. He is cornered by Carl, who insists that Frank will return to the FBI job since no one is chasing him. On the following Monday, Carl is nervous that Frank has not yet arrived at work. However, Frank eventually arrives and they discuss their next case.
The ending credits reveal that Frank has been happily married for 26 years, has three sons, lives in the Midwest, is still good friends with Carl, has caught some of the world's most elusive money forgers, and earns millions of dollars each year because of his work creating unforgeable checks. | Who tracks Frank? | [
"Carl ",
"Carl Hanratty."
] |
Dr. Dan Potter is the replacement for Dr. Harry Merton, a psychiatrist at Dr. Leo Bain's psychiatric haven. Dr. Bain operates the haven through very lenient methods. The 3rd floor patients (paranoid former POW Frank Hawkes, pyromaniac preacher Byron "Preacher" Sutcliff, obese child molester Ronald Elster, and homicidal maniac Tom "Bleeder" Skaggs) initially treat Dr. Potter with mixed hostility. The men on the 3rd floor wake up and begin to carry out their plan. After Hawkes successfully creates a blackout, Sutcliffe and Elster kill Curtis and the four escape in a doctor's car. They drive to a store in the middle of a raid to pick up new clothes and weapons. Skaggs then slashes an innocent bystander and runs away, the others take the murdered man's van and drive off. Dan arrives at the hospital to learn from Bain about the four escaped patients and of the people they killed.
The babysitter Bunky arrives at Dan's house during the blackout and invites her boyfriend Billy to have sex. After hearing a noise, Billy is dragged and killed underneath the bed by Preacher, and Bunky is strangled by Ronald. Dan arrives home with Nell, Toni and Tom (who unbeknownst to the family and the viewer, is the fourth escapee) when they see cops all over the house. Lyla is fine as she told them about Ronald, but the police haven't found out about the murdered Bunky and Billy. During dinner, Barnett is killed by Hawkes' crossbow and he attacks the family. With the phone line out, the family then barricades the windows from the crossbow bolts. Meanwhile, Bain is told by the telephone operator that the phone line to the Potter residence is out of order, causing him to drive over to the house where he is slashed and axed by Preacher. Dan tries to scream to the men outside and tells them that he did not murder Dr. Merton, but he gets no reply. Suddenly, Barnett's dead body is thrown by Ronald through a window, and the group stacks furniture against it as Hawkes shoots his crossbow through the broken window. Preacher sets a fire in the basement, prompting Dan to the basement where he injures Preacher and extinguishes the fire. After doing this, Ronald attacks the group before getting killed by a meat cleaver.
While Dan starts up Bain's car, Tom's nose bleeds (revealing his identity to the group) and strangles Toni. Dan runs back inside and grabs Tom away from his sister and Nell stabs Tom, killing him. Suddenly, Preacher comes out of the basement and Dan struggles with him, where he manages to stab Preacher and throws him back into the basement. As Dan, Nell, Lyla and Toni gather together for comfort, Hawkes appears standing in the kitchen doorway with his crossbow aimed right at them and cities "It's not just us crazy ones who kill". Suddenly, the electricity comes back on and Hawkes sees Dr. Merton interviewed in a news report on television. Evidently upset, Hawkes breaks the TV and leaves the house and escapes into the night. Hawkes then walks through the town and enters the club. While Hawkes watches the punk rock band perform, a drugged girl walks up to Hawkes where he pulls out his pistol and points it at her neck. She looks at it and laughs, and so does Hawkes. | Who stabs and kills Tom? | [
"Nell",
"Nell"
] |
Nick Marshall, a Chicago advertising executive and alpha male, who grew up with his Las Vegas showgirl mother, is a chauvinist. He is skilled at selling to men and seducing women. Just as he thinks he's headed for a promotion, his manager, Dan, informs him that he is hiring Darcy McGuire instead, to broaden the firm's appeal to women.
Also, his estranged 15-year-old daughter Alexis is spending two weeks with him while his ex-wife Gigi goes on her honeymoon with her new husband Ted. Alexis is embarrassed by Nick, and resents his being protective when he meets her boyfriend.
Desperate to prove himself to Darcy and Dan, Nick attempts to think of copy for a series of feminine products that Darcy distributed at the day's staff meeting. He slips and falls into his bathtub while holding an electric hairdryer, shocking himself. The next day, Nick wakes up and comes to realize that he can hear the innermost thoughts of all women. This proves to be an epiphany for him as he realizes that most women, especially at work, dislike him and consider him to be sleazy. When he goes to his old divorce therapist, Dr. Perkins (who also disliked him), she realizes his gift and encourages him to learn to use it to his advantage.
Nick eavesdrops on Darcy and sabotages her ideas to use as his own. As he spends more time with Darcy, he realizes he is attracted to her. When he tries to get closer to his daughter, she resents him for trying after so many years of neglect. He is able to bond with her by helping her shop for a dress for a prom dance. Using his gift, Nick detects that her boyfriend, who is older than Alex, plans to sleep with her and then dump her, but she does not want Nick's advice.
Nick and Darcy begin to spend more time together, and ultimately they kiss. When he manages to trump Darcy out of her idea for a new Nike ad campaign aimed at women, he later regrets his selfishness, especially as it leads to her being fired. Nick persuades his boss to give Darcy her job back by saying that it was all Darcy's idea.
Over time, Nick succeeds to rekindle some of his female acquaintance/ relationships especially at work. Nick loses his gift during a storm while trying to find a company secretary, Erin, who (telepathic ability revealed) is contemplating suicide. He stops her just in the nick of time and offers her a position for which she previously applied. When Alex's boyfriend dumps her for refusing his sexual advances, Nick consoles her and is able to restore their relationship. Nick finally visits Darcy and explains everything. She forgives him and agrees to save him from himself, to which he responds "My hero." | What item of clothing does Nick help Alex pick out? | [
"A prom dress",
"A dress"
] |
Place: A 19th-century Sicilian village
Time: Easter morning
Before the action takes place, the young villager Turiddu had returned from military service to find that his fiancée Lola had married the carter Alfio while Turiddu was away. In revenge, Turiddu had seduced Santuzza, a young woman in the village. As the opera begins, Lola, overcome by her jealousy of Santuzza, has begun an adulterous affair with Turiddu.
The main square of the village
Offstage, Turiddu is heard singing The Siciliana – "O Lola, lovely as the spring’s bright blooms" (O Lola c'hai di latti la cammisa). To one side is the church; to the other is Lucia's wine shop and the house where she lives with her son, Turiddu. The villagers move about the square, singing of the beautiful spring day (Gli aranci olezzano sui verdi margini – "The air is sweet with orange blossoms") and a hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some villagers enter the church, and others wander off still singing.
Santuzza, having slept with Turiddu and suspecting that he has betrayed her for Lola, is distraught and approaches Lucia as she comes out of her house. Santuzza asks for Turiddu, but Lucia replies that he has gone to another town to fetch some wine. Santuzza tells her that he was seen during the night in the village. Lucia asks her inside to talk, but just at that moment Alfio arrives on his wagon, accompanied by the villagers. He praises the joys of a teamster's life and the beauty of his bride. Alfio asks Lucia for some of her fine old wine. She tells him it has run out and Turiddu has gone away to buy more. Alfio replies that he had seen Turiddu early that morning near his cottage. Lucia starts to express surprise, but Santuzza stops her.
Alfio leaves. The choir inside the church is heard singing the Regina Coeli. Outside, the villagers sing an Easter Hymn, joined by Santuzza. The villagers enter the church, while Santuzza and Lucia remain outside. Lucia asks Santuzza why she signalled her to remain silent when Alfio said that he had seen Turiddu that morning. Santuzza exclaims, Voi lo sapete – "Now you shall know"), and tells Lucia the story of her seduction by Turiddu and his affair with Lola. Lucia pities Santuzza, whom the villagers are considering excommunicating for her seduction. Santuzza cannot enter the church, but begs Lucia to go inside and pray for her.
Turiddu arrives. Santuzza upbraids him for pretending to have gone away, when he was actually seeing Lola. Lola enters the square singing. She mocks Santuzza and goes inside the church. Turiddu turns to follow Lola, but Santuzza begs him to stay. Turiddu pushes her away. She clings to him. He loosens her hands, throws her to the ground, and enters the church. Alfio arrives looking for Lola. Santuzza tells him that his wife has betrayed him with Turiddu. Alfio swears to take vendetta (revenge) which causes Santuzza to repent for having disclosed the affair and begs Alfio to stop to no avail.
The square is empty as the orchestra plays the famous Intermezzo.
The villagers come out of the church. Turiddu is in high spirits because he is with Lola and Santuzza appears to have gone. He invites his friends to his mother’s wine shop where he sings a drinking song, Viva, il vino spumeggiante – "Hail to the bubbling wine!". Alfio joins them. Turiddu offers him wine, but he refuses it. All understand that trouble is in the air. The women leave, taking Lola with them. In a brief exchange of words, Alfio challenges Turiddu to a duel. Following Sicilian custom, the two men embrace, and Turiddu, in a token of acceptance, bites Alfio’s ear, drawing blood which signifies a fight to the death. Alfio leaves and Turiddu calls Lucia back. He tells her that he is going outside to get some air and asks that she be a kindly mother to Santuzza if he should not return: Un bacio, mamma! Un altro bacio!—Addio! – "One kiss, mother! One more kiss! – Farewell!".
Turiddu rushes out. Lucia, weeping, wanders aimlessly around outside her house. Santuzza approaches and throws her arms around her. The villagers start to crowd around. Voices are heard in the distance and a woman cries, "They have murdered Turiddu!" Santuzza faints and Lucia collapses in the arms of the women villagers. | Why did Lola marry Alfio instead of Turiddu? | [
"Turiddu was away in the military.",
"He was away in the Military."
] |
A man is seated in a diner who is revealed as Harold Speck, a traveling salesman. He is joined by a gentleman who asks question which make him uncomfortable. After leaving the diner, Harold is found dead, with his eyelids cut off and clutching a symbol which appears to be a circle with a line through it, which leads to FBI Agents Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) and Fran Kulok (Carrie-Anne Moss) being brought in on the case. There appears to be history between Mackelway and Kulok. We learn Kulok has been married but it didn't work out. Before that she was with Mackelway. Flashbacks of Mackelway's recent suspension reveal he received a six-month suspension and psychological evaluation for beating a suspected serial killer, Raymond Starkey (who was in fact a serial killer and went to prison for his crimes). Mackelway receives a series of taunting faxes from someone who may be the killer. Meanwhile, kids go missing and we catch glimpses of a big truck.
As the investigation proceeds, the agents begin to become aware of the possible existence of "Suspect Zero", a "super serial killer" responsible for hundreds of deaths across all 50 states who leaves no evidence behind to link his crimes together. Another body is found in the trunk of a beaten up car, also with his eyelids cut off and cut with the crossed circle mark. The ownership of the car is traced to a halfway house where the manager admits Kulok and Mackelway to a room that was occupied by Benjamin O'Ryan for seven years. The room is filled with obsessive-compulsive sketches of the crossed circle design, a Bible which contains sketches of missing persons, and a book on ritual. Questioning the other occupants of the halfway house, Mackelway is told by one of them the design represents a Zero, not a circle.
The killer sends information to Mackelway which leads him to Benjamin O'Ryan (Ben Kingsley), who believes himself to be a former member of the FBI. The agents must decide if O'Ryan is the key that will allow them to catch Suspect Zero or if he himself is Suspect Zero.
A man kidnaps and begins to rape a girl he followed out of a bar. O'Ryan pulls him out the car window and kills him. When the FBI including Kulok and Mackelway arrive, they find that the body belongs to the serial killer. Starkey, who Mackelway had put away earlier, who had been released from prison.
Evidence uncovered reveals that O'Ryan was part of a secret government experiment (Project Icarus) attempting to cultivate telepathic abilities in individuals (remote viewing) for military purposes. The experiments gave O'Ryan the ability to see the actions of serial killers. These disturbing visions constantly torment O'Ryan and drive him to find the killers and kill them. O'Ryan seeks out Mackelway because Mackelway shares his abilities to some degree. O'Ryan begins to see through Mackelway's eyes, too. Then Mackelway starts seeing through O'Ryan's eyes and Mackelway starts seeing through the serial killers' eyes. Mackelway's boss is not convinced by his theories that O'Ryan is chasing the killer rather than being the killer; Kulok is not sure either.
The actual Suspect Zero is another man who travels around the United States with a refrigerated truck. He targets children, whom he abducts and transports to his ranch to be killed. Mackelway pieces together evidence linking these crimes by recognizing that victims had signs of freezer burns while being transported from their place of kidnap to their resting place. Mackelway chases a suspect truckdriver to a carnival only to find that the child he saw in his vision as 'captured' is free; the truckdriver appears to be his father. Suddenly O'Ryan appears and captures Mackelway. Mackelway wakes tied in front of a mirror as O'Ryan tries to scare him but Mackelway is not frightened. O'Ryan spares him and they drive together while O'Ryan divulges his history with Project Icarus.
Eventually, Mackelway and O'Ryan find Suspect Zero at his ranch. There are many bodies buried in shallow mounds of earth. Chasing him, both vehicles crash off the road. Kulok manages to free the child in the truck trailer, who had been kidnapped from a swing. After a struggle outside, Suspect Zero is killed when Mackelway crushes his skull with a rock. O'Ryan then tries to convince Mackelway to end his suffering by killing him. When Mackelway refuses, O'Ryan pretends to attack him, prompting Kulok to shoot him to defend her partner. | What does Suspect Zero travel in? | [
"A refrigerated truck.",
"He travels in a refrigerated truck."
] |
In 2004, a satellite detects a mysterious heat bloom beneath Bouvetøya, an island about one thousand miles off the coast of Antarctica. Wealthy industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) discovers through thermal imaging that there is a pyramid buried 2000 feet beneath the ice. He attempts to claim it for his multinational communications company, Weyland Industries, a subsidiary of the Weyland Corporation, and assembles a team of experts to investigate. The team includes archaeologists, linguistic experts, drillers, mercenaries, and a guide named Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan).
As a Predator ship reaches Earth's orbit, it fires a beam that creates a passage through the ice towards the source of the heat bloom. When the team arrives at the abandoned whaling station above the heat source, they find the passage and descend beneath the ice. They locate the mysterious pyramid and begin to explore it, finding evidence of a prehistoric civilization and what appears to be a sacrificial chamber filled with human skeletons with ruptured rib cages.
Meanwhile, three Predators arrive and kill all the humans on the surface. They make their way down to the pyramid and arrive just as the team unwittingly activates the structure. The Alien Queen awakes from cryogenic stasis and begins to produce eggs. When the eggs hatch, several facehuggers attach themselves to humans trapped in the sacrificial chamber. Chestbursters emerge from the humans and quickly grow into adult Aliens. Conflict erupts between the Predators, Aliens, and humans, resulting in several deaths. Two Predators are killed by an Alien, and Weyland is killed by the remaining Predator, while allowing Alexa and archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa (Raoul Bova) enough time to escape. The two witness the Predator kill a facehugger and an Alien with a shuriken before unmasking and marking himself with the blood of the facehugger. After Alexa and Sebastian leave, another facehugger attaches itself to the unmasked Predator.
Through translation of the pyramid's hieroglyphs, Alexa and Sebastian learn that the Predators have been visiting Earth for thousands of years. It was they who taught early human civilizations how to build pyramids, and were worshiped as gods. Every 100 years they would visit Earth to take part in a rite of passage in which several humans would sacrifice themselves as hosts for the Aliens, creating the "ultimate prey" for the Predators to hunt. If overwhelmed, the Predators would activate a self-destruct device to eliminate the Aliens and themselves. The two deduce that this is why the current Predators are at the pyramid, and that the heat bloom was to attract humans for the sole purpose of making new Aliens to hunt.
Alexa and Sebastian decide that the Predators must be allowed to succeed in their hunt so that the Aliens "do not reach the surface". Unfortunately, Sebastian is captured by an Alien, leaving only Alexa and the Predator to fight against the Aliens. The two form an alliance and use a self-destruct device to destroy the pyramid and the remaining Aliens. Alexa and Scar reach the surface, where they battle the Alien Queen. They defeat the Queen by attaching its chain to a water tower and pushing her over a cliff, dragging the Queen to the ocean floor. Scar, however, is impaled through the torso by the Alien Queen's tail and succumbs to his wounds and dies.
A Predator ship uncloaks and several Predators appear. They retrieve their fallen comrade and an elite Predator presents Alexa with one of their spear weapons in recognition of her skill as a warrior. As the Predators retreat into space, a chestburster with a hybrid form of an Alien and a Predator erupts from Scar's chest, beginning the events of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. | What does the team first discover about the pyramid? | [
"It belonged to an ancient civilization that practiced human sacrifices. ",
"signs of ancient life"
] |
The first part of Faust is not divided into acts, but is structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings. After a dedicatory poem and a prelude in the theater, the actual plot begins with a prologue in Heaven, where the Lord challenges Mephistopheles, the Devil, that Mephistopheles cannot lead astray the Lord's favourite striving scholar, Dr. Faust. We then see Faust in his study, who, disappointed of science with natural means, attempts and fails to gain knowledge of nature and the universe by magical ones. The dejected Faust contemplates suicide, but is held back by the sounds of the beginning Easter celebrations. He joins his assistant Wagner for an Easter walk in the countryside, among the celebrating people, and is followed home by a poodle. Back in the study, the poodle transforms itself into Mephistopheles, who offers Faust a contract: he will do Faust's bidding on earth, and Faust will do the same for him in hell (if, as Faust adds in an important side clause, Mephisto can get him to be satisfied and to want a moment to last forever). Faust signs in blood, and Mephisto first takes him to Auerbach's tavern in Leipzig, where the devil plays tricks on some drunken revellers. Having then been transformed into a young man by a witch, Faust encounters Margaret (Gretchen) and she excites his desires. Through a scheme involving jewellery and Gretchen's neighbour Marthe, Mephisto brings about Faust's and Gretchen's liaison. After a period of separation, Faust seduces Gretchen, who accidentally kills her mother with a sleeping potion Faust had given her. Gretchen is pregnant, and her torment is further increased when Faust and Mephisto kill her enraged brother in a sword fight. Mephisto seeks to distract Faust by taking him to the witches' sabbath of Walpurgis Night, but Faust insists on rescuing Gretchen from the death sentence she has been given after going insane and drowning her newborn child. In the dungeon, Faust in vain tries to persuade Gretchen to follow him to freedom. At the end of the drama, as Faust and Mephisto flee the dungeon, a voice from heaven announces Gretchen's salvation. | Who does Gretchen accidentally kill? | [
"Her mother.",
"She kills her mother with a sleeping potion."
] |
Hermann, an ethnic German, is an officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian Army. He constantly watches the other officers gamble, but never plays himself. One night, Tomsky tells a story about his grandmother, an elderly countess. Many years ago, in France, she lost a fortune at cards, and then won it back with the secret of the three winning cards, which she learned from the notorious Count of St. Germain. Hermann becomes obsessed with obtaining the secret.
The countess (who is now 87 years old) has a young ward, Lizavyeta Ivanovna. Hermann sends love letters to Lizavyeta, and persuades her to let him into the house. There Hermann accosts the countess, demanding the secret. She first tells him that story was a joke, but Hermann refuses to believe her. He repeats his demands, but she does not speak. He draws a pistol and threatens her, and the old lady dies of fright. Hermann then flees to the apartment of Lizavyeta in the same building. There he confesses to have killed the countess by fright with his pistol. He defends himself by saying that the pistol was not loaded. He escapes from the house with the aid of Lizavyeta, who is disgusted to learn that his professions of love were a mask for greed.
Hermann attends the funeral of the countess, and is terrified to see the countess open her eyes in the coffin and look at him. Later that night, the ghost of the countess appears. The ghost names the secret three cards (three, seven, ace), tells him he must play just once each night and then orders him to marry Lizavyeta. Hermann takes his entire savings to Chekalinsky's salon, where wealthy men gamble for high stakes. On the first night, he bets it all on the three and wins. On the second night, he wins on the seven. On the third night, he bets on the ace â but when cards are shown, he finds he has bet on the Queen of Spades, rather than the ace, and loses everything. When the Queen appears to wink at him, he is astonished by her remarkable resemblance to the old countess, and flees in terror. In a short conclusion, Pushkin writes that Lizavyeta marries the son of the Countess' former steward, a state official who makes a good salary. Hermann, however, goes mad and is committed to an asylum. He is installed in Room 17 at the Obukhov hospital; he answers no questions, but merely mutters with unusual rapidity: "Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!" | What causes the elderly Countess's death? | [
"She dies of fright when Hermann interrogates her about the secret cards",
"died of fright"
] |
During the 1st century AD, a force of the Parthian Empire destroys a vexillation of a Roman auxiliary cohort sent to construct a fort on the banks of the Euphrates in the Kingdom of Palmyra. The garrison is slaughtered. Meanwhile, with tensions rising between Rome and Parthia, the Legio X Fretensis, Legio III Gallica and the Legio VI Ferrata are drilling for war in Syria. Prefect Macro and Centurion Cato are drilling the Second Illyrian, an auxiliary cohort, attached to the Legio X Fretensis for the looming war.
Cato and Macro were sent to Syria by Narcissus to gather proof that the governor of Syria, Longinus was planning to use the Syrian legions to usurp the Emperor Claudius. During their time in Antioch, Crisups, a Roman legionary, murders an auxiliary leading to Crispus' execution, much to the chagrin of the legionaries. A Parthian convoy arrives, delivering the head of Centurion Castor, the soldier who commanded the Euphrates fort, and warns of Parthian intervention, should Rome continue to be seen to be annexing Palmyra. Shortly thereafter, a Roman soldier arrives at the behest of Lucius Sempronius, a Roman ambassador to Palmyra, informing Longinus that Palmyra has descended into civil war.
Artaxes, the son of Palmyran king Vabathus, has raised an army and laid siege to the Palmyran loyalists in the Royal Citadel. Fearing the Parthians will arrive before the Romans can, Longinus sends the Second Illyrian and a cohort of the Legio X Fretensis to reinforce the loyalists. Along the way, the Roman force is aided by Prince Balthus, who covets the Palmyran throne, despite not being Vabathus' first born. The Romans and Balthus' men fight their way through to the city and manage to reinforce the loyalist troops, mainly composed of Greek mercenaries. Following a banquet to celebrate the successful defence of a rebel assault, Amethus, one of Vabathus' sons is found murdered, with Balthus being the prime suspect. Meanwhile, Cato meets Sempronius' daughter, Julia, and the two fall in love after an uneasy start.
After a rebel bombardment, the loyalist food stores are all but destroyed. Cato attempts to bluff Artaxes into standing down, however before Artaxes can respond, Longinus arrives with two legions and several auxiliary units. Longinus privately reveals to Cato and Macro that they were never meant to reach Palmyra, and were meant to die in the desert, removing Narcissus' spies that had frustrated his plans. Against the advice of Cato, Longinus leads the legions into the desert, determined to destroy Artaxes and his Parthian allies. During a night attack, Longinus panics, orders a retreat and leaves the army at the mercy of the Parthian horsemen. On the suggestions of Cato, the army manages to trap the Parthians, destroying their army. Balthus orders his brother, Artaxes, killed, leaving him the sole heir to Vabathus' throne.
Back in Palmyra, it is revealed Balthus had ordered his slave, Carpex, to murder Amethus. Balthus is arrested to be put to death. With no heir, Sempronius reveals that the empire will annex Palmyra and absorb it into the province of Syria. Macro and Cato are released from Narcissus' employment, ending their posting in the East. Sempronius later gives Cato his consent to marry his daughter, Julia. | Who is the governor of Syria? | [
"Longinus",
"Longinus"
] |
In 2084, construction worker Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is having troubling dreams about Mars and a mysterious woman there. His wife Lori (Sharon Stone) dismisses the dreams and discourages him from thinking about Mars, where the governor, Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), is fighting rebels while searching for a rumored alien artifact located in the mines. At Rekall, a company that provides memory implants of vacations, Quaid opts for a memory trip to Mars as a Secret Agent fantasy. However, during the procedure, before the memory is implanted, something goes wrong, and Quaid starts revealing previously suppressed memories of actually being a Secret Agent. The company sedates him, wipes his memory of the visit, and sends him home. On the way home, Quaid is attacked by his friend Harry (Robert Costanzo) and some construction co-workers; he is forced to kill them, using elite fighting skills. He is then attacked in his apartment by Lori, who states that she was never his wife; their marriage was just a false memory implant, and Cohaagen sent her as an agent to monitor Quaid. He is then attacked and pursued by armed thugs led by Richter (Michael Ironside), Lori's real husband and Cohaagen's operative.
After evading his attackers, Quaid is given a suitcase containing money, gadgets, fake IDs, a disguise, and a video recording. The video is of Quaid himself, who identifies himself as "Hauser" and explains that he used to work for Cohaagen but learned about the artifact and underwent the memory wipe to protect himself. "Hauser" instructs Quaid to remove a tracking device located inside his skull before ordering him to go to Mars and check into the Hilton Hotel with a fake ID. Quaid makes his way to Mars and follows clues to Venusville, the colony's red-light district, primarily populated by people mutated as a result of poor radiation shielding. He meets Benny (Mel Johnson, Jr.), a taxi driver, and Melina (Rachel Ticotin), the woman from his dreams; but she spurns him, believing that Quaid is still working for Cohaagen.
Quaid later encounters Dr. Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith) and Lori, who claim Quaid has suffered a "schizoid embolism" and is trapped in a fantasy based on the implanted memories. Edgemar warns that Quaid is headed for lunacy (his description loosely predicting later events) and a lobotomy if he does not return to reality, then offers Quaid a pill that would waken him from the dream. Quaid puts the pill in his mouth, but after seeing Edgemar sweating in fear, he kills Edgemar and spits out the pill. Lori alerts Richter's forces, who burst into the room and capture Quaid, but Melina rescues him, with Quaid killing Lori in the process. The two race back to the Venusville bar and escape into the tunnels with Benny. Unable to locate Quaid, Cohaagen shuts down the ventilation to Venusville, slowly asphyxiating its citizens. Quaid, Melina, and Benny are taken to a resistance base; and Quaid is introduced to Kuato (Marshall Bell), a parasitic twin conjoined to his brother's stomach. Kuato reads Quaid's mind and tells him that the alien artifact is a turbinium reactor that will create a breathable atmosphere for Mars when activated, eliminating Cohaagen's abusive monopoly on breathable air. Cohaagen's forces burst in and kill most of the resistance, including Kuato, who instructs Quaid to start the reactor. Benny reveals that he is also working for Cohaagen, and that he alerted Cohaagen's forces.
Quaid and Melina are taken to Cohaagen, who explains that the Quaid persona was a ploy by Hauser to infiltrate the mutants and lead Cohaagen to Kuato, thereby wiping out the resistance. Cohaagen orders Hauser's memory to be re-implanted in Quaid and Melina programmed as Hauser's obedient wife, but Quaid and Melina escape into the mines where the reactor is located. They work their way to the control room of the reactor, and Benny attacks them in an excavation machine. Quaid kills Benny, then confronts Richter and his men, killing them too.
Quaid reaches the reactor control room, where Cohaagen is waiting with a bomb. During the ensuing struggle, Cohaagen triggers the bomb, but Quaid throws it away, blowing out one of the walls of the control room and causing an explosive decompression. While reaching for the reactor controls, Quaid knocks out Cohaagen, and he is sucked out onto the Martian surface, where he dies due to the lack of oxygen and pressure. Quaid manages to activate the reactor before he and Melina are also pulled out. The reactor releases air into the Martian atmosphere, saving Quaid, Melina and the rest of Mars' population. As humans walk onto the surface of the planet in its new atmosphere, Quaid momentarily pauses to wonder whether he is dreaming before turning to kiss Melina. | Who triggered the bomb? | [
"Cohaagen",
"Cohaagen"
] |
Freddy Krueger is rendered powerless in Hell with Springwood forgetting him. Disguising as Pamela Voorhees, Freddy manipulates Jason Voorhees into killing Springwood teenagers to regain strength.
Lori Campbell lives with her widowed father, with friends Kia, Gibb, Trey, and Blake staying over. That night, Jason stabs Trey and folds him in half, with police suspecting Freddy. Following a nightmare, Blake awakens to his beheaded father before Jason kills him. The next day, police state it to be a murder-suicide, hoping to contain Freddy.
Lori's ex-boyfriend Will Rollins and friend Mark Davis are Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital patients. They take Hypnocil to suppress dreams, due to them having the last contact with Freddy. A news report leads Mark to devise an escape plan. He and Will return to Springwood to tell Lori about Freddy. Mark later learns of the city's plan to eradicate Freddy and realizes they've nullified it. That night, Lori and the others attend a rave at a cornfield. A drunken Gibb believes she sees Trey and follows him to a silo - a dream trap set by Freddy. However, Jason kills her. Dismayed, Freddy realizes Jason's rampage will continue and deny Freddy victims.
Linderman and stoner Freeburg escape the rave along with Lori, and Kia. Lori confronts her father about her mother's death, lying to him. She and Will go to Mark's house, only to discover Freddy attacking Mark. Deputy Stubbs suspects a copycat Jason murderer, but his suspicions fall short. He approaches Lori and her friends, who piece together Freddy's plan. Learning of Hypnocil, they steal stock from Westin Hills, but Freddy possesses Freeburg and disposes of them. After electrocuting Stubbs, Jason is tranquilized by possessed-Freeburg, whom Jason bisects before losing consciousness.
The teens devise a plan to pull Freddy from the dream world into reality and force him to fight Jason. They take the unconscious Jason to Crystal Lake. Meanwhile, Freddy battles Jason in the dream world. He pulls him into a nightmare of him drowning as a child, learning his fear of water. Lori retrieves Freddy but he attacks her, revealing himself as her mother's killer.
Jason awakens and chases the others into a cabin. Linderman is mortally wounded and dies, the cabin ignites, and Lori is awakened, pulling Freddy into real life. Jason fights Freddy while they escape, throwing Freddy through another cabin's roof.
Lori, Will and Kia encounter Freddy. Kia distracts Freddy by taunting him until Jason suddenly kills her. As Lori and Will escape, the two begin to fight. The group attempt to ram a minecart into them, but both are knocked to the boardwalk. There, Jason tears Freddy's arm off while he stabs Jason's eyes. Lori and Will ignite propane tanks that blow Freddy and Jason into the lake. Freddy climbs out, but Jason impales Freddy with his own arm and Lori decapitates Freddy before Jason collapses.
Finally at peace, Lori and Will leave Crystal Lake together. However, Jason emerges holding Freddy's severed head, who winks at the audience and laughs. | What nightmare does Freddy Krueger use against Jason Voorhees? | [
"His childhood drowning",
"Drowning as a child."
] |
Maggie Carpenter (Julia Roberts) is a spirited and attractive young woman who has had a number of unsuccessful relationships. Maggie, nervous of being married, has left a trail of fiancés. She's left three men waiting for her at the altar on their wedding day (all of which are caught on tape), receiving tabloid fame and the dubious nickname "The Runaway Bride".
Meanwhile, in New York, columnist Homer Eisenhower Graham or "Ike" (Richard Gere), writes an article about her that contains several factual errors, supplied to him by a man he meets in a bar who Ike later learns was one of Maggie's former fiancés. Ike is fired for not verifying his source, but is invited to write an in-depth article about Maggie in a bid to restore his reputation. He travels to Hale, Maryland, where he finds Maggie living with her family and on her fourth attempt to become married. The fourth groom-to-be, Bob Kelly (Christopher Meloni), is a football coach at the local high school who is fond of using sports analogies to help Maggie with her concerns. He constantly makes references to Maggie "focusing" on the goal-line in reference to their pending nuptials. As Ike starts going around town to meet her friends, family, and former fiancés, Maggie becomes frustrated and feels he is getting the story wrong again.
Ike begins to cooperate with Maggie on the story, Maggie being interested in getting him to publish the truth, and the two become closer to each other the more time they spend together. During his research for the story, Ike realizes that Maggie is adjusting her interests to mimic those of her fiancés in order to please them. This is signified most prominently by her choice of eggs, which changes with each fiancé. At a pre-wedding celebration for her and Bob, Ike defends Maggie from the public mockery she starts receiving from her family and guests, and Maggie walks outside due to the embarrassment. Ike then confronts Maggie outside about his realization regarding her relationships.
In the midst of the wedding rehearsal, Bob tries to help Maggie deal with her wedding anxieties by walking her down the aisle with Ike standing in as the groom. After Bob gets her to the altar, Ike and Maggie share a passionate kiss and admit their feelings for one another, to Bob's chagrin. As a result, he becomes so jealous he punches Ike in the face before storming out of the church. Soon after, Ike proposes that he and Maggie get married since the wedding is already set to take place. But on the day of the wedding, Maggie gets cold feet, and leaves Ike standing at the altar. Ike chases after her but she hitches a ride on a FedEx truck and gets away.
Later, we see Ike living in New York and Maggie trying to discover herself, trying different types of eggs, and putting her lighting designs up for sale in New York. She shows up unexpectedly at Ike's apartment one night where he finds her making friends with his cat, Italics. Maggie then explains that she had been running because every other guy she was engaged to was only engaged to the idea she had created for them rather than the real her, but with Ike she ran because, even though he truly understood her, she didn't understand herself. She "turns in" her running shoes just before proposing to Ike. The two are married in a private ceremony outside, on a hill, avoiding the big ceremonies that Maggie notes she never actually liked. In the end, they are shown riding away on horseback while everyone in Hale and New York (clued in via cell phone by Ike and Maggie's family) celebrates the fact that Maggie finally got married.
A post credit scene shows Maggie and Ike playing in the snow signifying that the relationship is going strong well after the wedding. | Who proposed for the wedding that actually took place? | [
"Maggie",
"Maggie "
] |
The narrative begins with the formation of the universe, the shaping of the Earth, and the creation of the first people, by the Great Manitou. Then, as the Great Manitou creates more creatures, an evil manitou creates others, such as flies. Although all is harmonious at first, an evil being brings unhappiness, sickness, disasters and death. A great snake attacked the people and drove them from their homes. The snake flooded the land and made monsters in the water, but the Creator made a giant turtle, on which the surviving people rode out the flood, and prayed for the waters to recede. When land emerged again, they were in a place of snow and cold, so they developed their skills of house-building and hunting, and began explorations to find more temperate lands. Eventually, they chose to head east from the land of the Turtle to the land of the Snake, walking across the frozen ocean and first reaching a land of spruce trees.
After a few generations (from this point on, chiefs of the tribe are named), they began to spread into the adjoining territories. Many generations passed (the characteristics of each chief briefly described), until a large part of the nation decided to invade the territory of the Talegawi people, aided by the northern Talamatan. Although the invasion eventually succeeded, the Talamatan later became hostile, but were soon subdued, and a further long period of consolidation began. Slow expansion into the rich eastern lands eventually reached another sea, where, after generations, the first white men arrived in ships.
There the text ends, though Rafinesque did publish an additional "Fragment: On the History of the Linapis since abt. 1600, when the Wallamolum closes" which takes the story up to his own time. This (which incidentally names the composer of the original Walam Olum as one Lekhibit) exists only as a purported translation by John Burns, who has himself never been satisfactorily identified. | Who helped aid the invasion? | [
"Talamatan",
"The Northern Talamatan "
] |
The film opens with archival footage of police raiding gay bars and arresting patrons during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by Dianne Feinstein's November 27, 1978 announcement to the press that Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) had been assassinated. Milk is seen recording his will throughout the film, nine days (November 18, 1978) before the assassinations. The film then flashes back to New York City in 1970, the eve of Milk's 40th birthday and his first meeting with his much younger lover, Scott Smith (James Franco).
Dissatisfied with his life and in need of a change, Milk and Smith decide to move to San Francisco in the hope of finding larger acceptance of their relationship. They open Castro Camera in the heart of Eureka Valley, a working-class neighborhood in the process of evolving into a predominantly gay neighborhood known as The Castro. Frustrated by the opposition they encounter in the once Irish-Catholic neighborhood, Milk utilizes his background as a businessman to become a gay activist, eventually becoming a mentor for Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch). Early on, Smith serves as Milk's campaign manager, but he grows frustrated with Milk's devotion to politics, and he leaves him. Milk later meets Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a sweet-natured but unbalanced young man. As with Smith, Lira cannot tolerate Milk's devotion to political activism, and eventually hangs himself. Milk clashes with the local gay "establishment" which he feels to be too cautious and risk-averse.
After two unsuccessful political campaigns in 1973 and 1975 to become a city supervisor and a third in 1976 for the California State Assembly, Milk finally wins a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 for District 5. His victory makes him the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in California and the third openly homosexual politician in the entire US. Milk subsequently meets fellow Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin), a Vietnam veteran and former police officer and firefighter. White, who is politically and socially conservative, has a difficult relationship with Milk, and develops a growing resentment for Milk when he opposes projects that White proposes.
Milk and White forge a complex working relationship. Milk is invited to, and attends, the christening of White's first child, and White asks for Milk's assistance in preventing a psychiatric hospital from opening in White's district, possibly in exchange for White's support of Milk's citywide gay rights ordinance. When Milk fails to support White because of the negative effect it will have on troubled youth, White feels betrayed, and ultimately becomes the sole vote against the gay rights ordinance. Milk also launches an effort to defeat Proposition 6, an initiative on the California state ballot in November 1978. Sponsored by John Briggs (Denis O'Hare), a conservative state legislator from Orange County, Proposition 6 seeks to ban gays and lesbians (in addition to anyone who supports them) from working in California's public schools. It is also part of a nationwide conservative movement that starts with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida to repeal a local gay rights ordinance.
On November 7, 1978, after working tirelessly against Proposition 6, Milk and his supporters rejoice in the wake of its defeat. A desperate White favors a supervisor pay raise, but does not get much support, and shortly after supporting the proposition, resigns from the Board. He later changes his mind and asks to be reinstated. Mayor Moscone denies his request, after being lobbied by Milk.
On the morning of November 27, 1978, White enters City Hall through a basement window to conceal a gun from metal detectors. He requests another meeting with Moscone, who rebuffs his request for appointment to his former seat. Enraged, White shoots Moscone in his office and then goes to meet Milk, where he guns him down, with the fatal bullet delivered execution-style. The film suggests that Milk believed that White might be a closeted gay man.
The last scene is a candlelight vigil held by thousands for Milk and Moscone throughout the streets of the city. Pictures of the actual people depicted in the film, and brief summaries of their lives follow. | What does White want to prevent from opening in his district? | [
"a psychiatric hospital",
"A psychiatric hospital"
] |
High school student Alex Browning boards VolĂŠe Airlines Flight 180 with his classmates for their senior trip to Paris, France. Before take-off, Alex has a premonition that the plane will suffer a catastrophic engine failure, causing the plane to explode in mid-air, and killing everyone on board. When the events from his vision begin to repeat themselves in reality, he panics and a fight breaks out between Alex and his rival, Carter Horton. This leads to several passengers being removed from the plane, including Alex; Carter; Alex's best friend, Tod Waggner; Carter's girlfriend, Terry Chaney; teacher Valerie Lewton; and students Billy Hitchcock and Clear Rivers. None of the passengers, except for Clear, believe Alex about his vision until the plane explodes on take-off, killing the remaining passengers on board. Afterwards, the survivors are interrogated by two FBI agents, who believe that Alex had something to do with the explosion.
Thirty-nine days later, the survivors attend a memorial service for the victims. That night, Tod is killed when a chain reaction causes him to be strangled in his bathtub. His death is deemed a suicide; however, Alex does not believe that Tod killed himself. He and Clear sneak into the funeral home to see Tod's body, where they meet mortician William Bludworth, who tells them that they have ruined Death's plan, and Death is now claiming the lives of those who were meant to die on the plane. The next day, Alex and Clear discuss what the mortician said at a cafe. Alex believes that if they look out for omens they can cheat Death again, although Clear is skeptical. They encounter the rest of the survivors; and when Carter provokes Alex, Terry storms off in anger and is suddenly killed by a speeding bus.
After watching a news report on the cause of the explosion, Alex realizes that the survivors are dying in the order they were meant to die on the plane. He deduces that Ms. Lewton is next and rushes to her house to ensure her safety. Thinking Alex is up to no good, Ms. Lewton calls the FBI agents, who take him in for questioning. Although Alex is unable to convince the agents of what is happening they decide to let him go. Nonetheless, he is too late to save Ms. Lewton, whose house explodes after she is impaled by a falling kitchen knife.
The remaining survivors reunite and discuss what to do while driving through town. During the discussion Carter learns that he is next on Death's list. Frustrated over having no control over his life, Carter parks his car on railroad tracks, wanting to die on his own terms. He changes his mind at the last minute; but cannot get out when his seat belt jams. Alex manages to save Carter when his seat belt rips, just before his car is smashed by an oncoming train. As Billy warns the others to stay away from Carter he is suddenly decapitated by flying shrapnel from the car wreckage.
Alex deduces that since he intervened Death skipped Carter and moved onto Billy, and realizes that he is next on Death's list. While hiding out in a fortified cabin Alex recalls switching seats with two girls in his premonition, meaning Clear is actually next, and he rushes to save her while being chased by agents. Meanwhile, Clear is trapped inside her car with a leaking gas tank, surrounded by loose live wires. Alex arrives in time to save Clear and grabs the wire, allowing her to escape from the car seconds before it explodes, leaving Alex incapacitated.
Six months later, Alex, Clear, and Carter travel to Paris to celebrate their survival. While discussing their ordeal, Alex explains that Death never skipped him. After seeing more omens he leaves the table, and is almost hit by a bus, which swerves and crashes into a large neon sign that swings down towards Alex. Carter pushes Alex out of the way at the last second, and Alex says that Death has skipped him. When Carter asks who is next the sign suddenly swings back down towards Carter, implying that Death's plan is still in action. | Where does William Bludworth work? | [
"At a funeral home.",
"The funeral home."
] |
Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks), a middle-aged Navy veteran, is fired from his job at a big-box store due to a lack of college education, despite his seniority and exemplary work. Larry, who is divorced and lives alone, cannot find a job and could lose his house. Larry's neighbor, Lamar (Cedric the Entertainer), advises him to enroll in the local community college and get an education.
Subsisting on unemployment benefits and unable to afford to drive his SUV, Larry buys a scooter from Lamar. At the college, he becomes part of a colorful community of outcasts, also-rans, and the overlooked all trying to find a better future for themselves. Two of the classes he takes are speech, taught by Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts) and economics, taught by Dr. Ed Matsutani (George Takei). While he initially struggles in speech class, he does very well in economics.
Mercedes drinks at home after school because she is unhappily married to Dean (Bryan Cranston), a former professor turned writer turned blogger. In reality, Dean spends his days looking at internet porn.
Larry's economics classmate Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) invites him to join a club of scooter riders led by her boyfriend Dell Gordo (Wilmer Valderrama). She also updates Larry's home decor, hair style, and wardrobe. Larry's friend Frank (Ian Gomez), who runs the diner, offers him a job to help make ends meet, as Larry had been a Navy cook.
After a night with Dean goes horribly wrong, Mercedes is left alone at a bus stop, where Larry and his scooter gang notice her. Larry offers her a ride home, which Mercedes reluctantly accepts. On their way home they witness Dean getting arrested for drunk driving. At her front door, they kiss. She wants to have sex as well, but Larry declines, not wanting to take advantage of her inebriated state. When Dean arrives home the following morning he finds all of his possessions on the front lawn.
Realizing there is no way he will not lose his house, Larry uses the knowledge he gained in his Economics class to begin a strategic foreclosure. Mercedes, meanwhile, warns Larry not to disclose the events of the previous night, and remains under the false impression that he is romantically involved with the much-younger Talia. It disappoints Larry, who had been excited about Mercedes' interest in him. He goes back to concentrating on his studies and his new job instead.
Mercedes runs into Talia, who is telling Frances, her English teacher (Pam Grier), that she will be dropping out of college to start a thrift store. Mercedes finds out that Talia and Larry are just friends. Later, Frances comes over to Mercedes' apartment to provide emotional support due to her divorcing Dean.
Finals now come, and Larry is scheduled last. His speech is about his travels around the world while in the Navy. Larry is given a big round of applause by his classmates and an A-plus grade from Mercedes, who is now happier in her life, and has rediscovered her passion for teaching.
A short while later, Mercedes and Frances show up at Larry's diner. She lets him know that he was an excellent student, to which he replies that she was an excellent teacher. When the next term begins, some of the students from Mercedes' speech course register for her Shakespeare class, but Larry is not with them. He is seen taking Dr. Matsutani's second-term Economics class. Mercedes walks to her office and sees a note from Larry on the door, which is an invitation for dinner, with the address to his new apartment. She drives there and they kiss. | How does Larry get a job at the restaurant? | [
"His friend manages it",
"Frank offers him the job since he had been a Navy cook. "
] |
Champagne, a construction developer, disappeared in 1982 while aboard a 45-foot yacht that was sailing off the Olympic Peninsula. He was presumed dead after a 13-hour search by the U.S. Coast Guard.
A $1.5 million life-insurance business policy, taken out by his brother as co-partner in a construction firm with Champagne, paid out $700,000 to his grieving family.
After the accident when Champagne realized everyone thought he had drowned, he stole the identity of Harold Stegeman, an 8-year-old boy who died in 1945. Champagne lived as Stegeman, a Washington restaurateur, for the next 10 years until his arrest for counterfeiting US currency in an Idaho garage. Champagne pleaded guilty to giving false statements during a bankruptcy hearing, a loan application and passport application. In addition, he served 21 months in federal prison for charges of counterfeiting and passport fraud.
Barer, an Edgar Award winner, profiles Champagne in Man Overboard. The first page of the book includes a synopsis of how the new identity began:
"Phil Champagne died Aug. 31, 1982, in a tragic boating accident off Lopez Island, Washington. He was 52. Champagne was survived by his wife of 28 years, four grown children, an octogenarian mother and two despondent brothers. Phil didnât know he was dead until he read it in the paper. All things considered, he took it pretty well." | What offense was Champagne eventually arrested for? | [
"Counterfeiting",
"Charges of counterfeiting and passport fraud."
] |
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