From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== This synopsis describes the tour version of the show, currently being licensed as "Seussical the Musical" by Music Theatre International (MTI). ===== The book tells the story of Horton the Elephant, who, while splashing in a pool, hears a small speck of dust talking to him. Horton surmises that a small person lives on the speck and places it on a clover, vowing to protect it. He later discovers that the speck is actually a tiny planet, home to a community called Whoville, where microscopic creatures called Whos live. The Mayor of Whoville asks Horton to protect them from harm, which Horton happily agrees to, proclaiming throughout the book that "a person’s a person, no matter how small." Throughout the book, Horton is trying to convince the Jungle of Nool that "A person is a person no matter how small" and that everyone should be treated equally. In his mission to protect the speck, Horton is ridiculed and harassed by the other animals in the jungle for believing in something they can't see or hear. He is first criticized by the sour kangaroo and her joey. The splash they make as they jump into the pool almost reaches the speck, so Horton decides to find somewhere safer for it. But the news of his odd new behavior spreads quickly, and he is soon harassed by the Wickersham Brothers, a group of monkeys. They steal the clover from him and give it to Vlad Vladikoff, a black-bottomed eagle. Vlad flies the clover a long distance, with Horton in pursuit, until Vlad drops it into the middle of a field of clovers that stretches for hundreds of miles. After an extremely long search, Horton finally finds the clover with the speck on it. However, the Mayor informs him that Whoville, the town on the speck, is in bad shape from the fall, and Horton discovers that the sour kangaroo and the Wickersham Brothers (along with their extended family) have caught up to him. They tie Horton up and threaten to incinerate the speck in a pot of "Beezle-Nut" oil. To save Whoville, Horton implores the little people to make as much noise as they can, to prove their existence. So almost everyone in Whoville shouts, sings, and plays instruments, but still no one but Horton can hear them. So the Mayor searches Whoville until he finds a very small shirker named JoJo, who is playing with a yo-yo instead of making noise. The Mayor carries him to the top of Eiffelberg Tower, where JoJo shouts out a loud "Yopp!", which finally makes the kangaroo and the monkeys hear the Whos. Now convinced of the Whos' existence, the other jungle animals vow to help Horton protect the tiny community. ===== Holmes arrives at Dr. John Watson's residence one evening in a somewhat agitated state and with grazed and bleeding knuckles. Much to Watson's surprise and horror, Holmes had apparently escaped three separate murder attempts that day after a visit from Professor Moriarty, who warned Holmes to withdraw from his pursuit of justice against him to avoid any regrettable outcome. First, just as Holmes was turning a street corner, a cab suddenly rushed toward him and he just managed to leap out of the way in time. Second, while Holmes was walking along the street, a brick fell from the roof of a house, just missing the detective. He then called the police to search the whole area but could not prove that it was anything other than an accident. Finally, on his way to Watson's house, Holmes was attacked by a thug armed with a cosh. Holmes managed to overcome his assailant and handed him to the police but admitted that there was virtually no hope of proving that the man was in the employ of the criminal mastermind. Holmes has been tracking Moriarty and his agents for months and is on the brink of snaring them all and delivering them to the dock. Moriarty is the criminal genius behind a highly organised and extremely secret criminal force and Holmes will consider it the crowning achievement of his career if he can defeat Moriarty. Moriarty is out to thwart Holmes's plans and is well capable of doing so, for he is, as Holmes admits, the great detective's intellectual equal. Holmes asks Watson to come to the continent with him, giving him unusual instructions designed to hide his tracks to the boat train at Victoria station. Holmes is not quite sure where they will go, which seems rather odd to Watson. Holmes, certain that he has been followed to his friend's house, then makes off by climbing over the back wall in the garden. The next day Watson follows Holmes's instructions to the letter and finds himself waiting in the reserved first-class coach for his friend, but only an elderly Italian priest is there. The cleric soon makes it apparent that he is, in fact, Holmes in disguise. As the boat train pulls out of Victoria, Holmes spots Moriarty on the platform, making gestures in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the train. Holmes is forced to take action as Moriarty has obviously tracked Watson, despite extraordinary precautions. Holmes and Watson alight at Canterbury, making a change to their planned route. As they are waiting for another train to Newhaven a special one-coach train roars through Canterbury, as Holmes suspected it would. It contains the professor, who has hired the train in an effort to overtake Holmes. Holmes and Watson are forced to hide behind luggage. The Reichenbach Falls Having made their way to Strasbourg via Brussels, the following Monday Holmes receives a message that most of Moriarty's gang have been arrested in England and recommends Watson return there now, as the detective will likely prove to be a very dangerous companion. Watson, however, decides to stay with his friend. Moriarty himself has slipped out of the grasp of the English police and is obviously with them on the continent. Holmes and Watson's journey takes them to Switzerland where they stay at Meiringen. From there they fatefully decide to take a walk which will include a visit to the Reichenbach Falls, a local natural wonder. Once there, a boy appears and hands Watson a letter, saying that there is a sick Englishwoman back at the hotel who wants an English doctor. Holmes realises at once it is a hoax although he does not say so. Watson goes to see about the patient, leaving Holmes by himself. Upon returning to the Englischer Hof, Watson finds that the innkeeper has no knowledge of any sick Englishwoman. Realising at last that he has been deceived, he rushes back to the Reichenbach Falls but finds no one there, although he does see two sets of footprints going out onto the muddy dead end path with none returning. There is also a note from Holmes, explaining that he knew the report Watson was given to be a hoax and that he is about to fight Moriarty, who has graciously given him enough time to pen this last letter. Watson sees that towards the end of the path there are signs that a violent struggle has taken place and there are no returning footprints. It is all too clear Holmes and Moriarty have both fallen to their deaths down the gorge while locked in mortal combat. Saddened, Dr. Watson returns to England. The Moriarty gang are all convicted on the strength of evidence secured by Holmes. Watson ends his narrative by saying that Sherlock Holmes was the best and the wisest man he had ever known. ===== Chan Wing-yan, a police officer, goes undercover into an organized crime triad; only his direct superior, Superintendent Wong, is aware of his mission and true identity. Around the same time, Lau Kin-ming, a triad member, infiltrates the Hong Kong Police Force on the orders of a powerful gang boss, Hon Sam. Each mole has been planted by the rival organisation to gain an advantage over the other side. Over the course of ten years, Chan experiences great stress from his undercover work while Lau quickly rises through the ranks in the police department. Using Morse code, Chan is able to relay data back to the police. However, Lau alerts Sam, giving him enough time to order his minions to dispose of the evidence. After the incident, both Wong and Sam are tasked with finding the moles in their respective organization. Wong intends to pull Chan out of undercover work for fear of his safety. However, Wong is caught by Sam's men and is killed when he is thrown off a building, having refused to reveal Chan despite a beating from the gangsters. Through this incident, Lau retrieves Wong's cell phone and contacts Chan; both of them agree to foil a drug deal by Sam. The plan succeeds and many of Sam's men are arrested, while Lau betrays Sam and murders him. Everything seems to have returned to normal. However, back at police headquarters, Chan discovers that Lau was the mole and leaves immediately. Chan and Lau meet on the same rooftop where Wong was killed earlier. Chan disarms Lau and holds a pistol to his head as a rebuke to Lau's plea for forgiveness and request to remain a cop. Inspector B arrives on the scene shortly and orders Chan to release Lau. Chan holds Lau as a hostage at gunpoint and backs into the lift, but upon moving his head from behind Chan is suddenly shot in the head by B, who then reveals to Lau that he is also a mole planted by Hon. As they take the lift down to the lobby, Lau kills B out of his desire to eradicate traces of his past, become a "good guy" cop, and end the mole hunt. Stepping out of the lift, Lau shows his identity card to the police to identify himself as one of them. Months after Chan's death, his psychiatrist Lee discovers records revealing Chan's true identity as an undercover police officer; B becomes a scapegoat for Lau as the real mole in the police force and the case is closed. Lau salutes Chan at his funeral. A flashback reaffirms the point at which Lau wished he had taken a different route in life. As Mainland China and Malaysia have restrictions that villains should be punished in the end, another ending is broadcast that Lau is announced that his identity has been uncovered and is arrested as the police arrive, which would make the plots of the sequels incoherent. ===== ===== Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, has returned after 25 years. He quickly becomes friends with high-school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a passionate romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate. Ben has returned to the town to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child. Mears learns that the house—the former home of Depression-era hitman Hubert "Hubie" Marsten—has been purchased by Kurt Barlow, ostensibly an Austrian immigrant who has arrived in the Lot to open an antique store. Barlow is supposedly on an extended buying trip; only his business partner, Richard Straker, is seen in public. The truth, however, is that Barlow is an ancient vampire, and Straker is his human familiar. The duo's arrival coincides with the disappearance of a young boy, Ralphie Glick, and the death of his brother Danny, who becomes the town's first vampire, turned by Barlow. Barlow also turns town dump custodian Dud Rogers and telephone repairman Corey Bryant. Danny turns other locals into vampires, including Mike Ryerson (who turns while staying at Matt Burke's house, sending the teacher to the hospital with a heart attack), Randy McDougall, Jack Griffen, and his own mother, Marjorie Glick. Danny fails, however, to turn his classmate Mark Petrie, who resists him successfully by holding a plastic cross in Danny's face. Within several days, many of the townspeople are turned. To fight the spread of the new vampires, Ben and Susan are assisted by Matt, who conducts research on vampires while recuperating at the hospital, and Matt's doctor Jimmy Cody, along with Mark and the local priest, Father Callahan. Susan and Mark are captured by Straker while exploring the Marsten House; while Mark is able to kill Straker and escape, Susan is attacked by Barlow, who turns her. She is eventually staked through the heart by Ben. When Father Callahan and Mark head over to Mark's parents' house to explain the danger that the family is in, the power is suddenly cut off, and Barlow appears. After killing Mark's parents by smashing their heads together, Barlow briefly takes the boy hostage. Callahan pulls out his cross in an attempt to drive Barlow off, and for a time it works until the vampire challenges him to throw the cross away. Callahan, not having faith enough to do so, is soon overwhelmed by Barlow, who takes the now- useless cross and snaps it in two. Barlow then forces Callahan to drink his vampire blood, making him "unclean". When Callahan tries to re-enter his church, he receives an electric shock, preventing him from going inside. Callahan then leaves Jerusalem's Lot. Jimmy is killed when he falls from a rigged staircase and is impaled by knives set up by the vampires, and Matt succumbs to another, fatal heart attack while in the hospital. Ben and Mark succeed in destroying the master vampire Barlow, but are lucky to escape with their lives and are forced to leave the town to the now-leaderless vampires. The novel's prologue, which is set shortly after the end of the story proper, describes Ben and Mark's flight across the country to a seaside town in Mexico, where they attempt to recover from their ordeal. Mark is received into the Catholic Church by a friendly local priest and confesses for the first time what they have experienced. The epilogue has the two returning to the town a year later, intending to renew the battle. Ben, knowing that there are too many hiding places for the vampires, deliberately starts a brush fire in the woods near the town with the intent of destroying both it and the Marsten House once and for all. ===== Set in A.D. 5406, the story begins on an Earth that has been occupied by the Qax, an amorphous lifeform that profits from information and technology trade, for four centuries. Jim Bolder, a space pilot on the run from creditors, accepts an assignment from the Qax through a human intermediary to determine just what the Xeelee are constructing at the center of the local supercluster. Bolder is provided with a Xeelee nightfighter that can travel faster than light. As Bolder in the nightfighter approaches the Great Attractor, he discovers the Xeelee are constructing a massive ring from its matter, which they intend to use to flee the universe itself. The gravity from the ring pulled galaxies from all over the universe, and their light is blue-shifted, hence the title. But the Qax will not allow this information to be released, intending to keep it—and a possible defense against the Xeelee—for their own profit. Bolder dodges the Qax and launches a "starbreaker" that will gradually cause the Qax homeworld's sun to go nova, requiring them to divert their resources from the occupation of Earth, liberating the planet. Category:1989 short stories Category:Short stories by Stephen Baxter ===== Set primarily on Earth in the year A.D. 3951, Lieserl documents the title character's life from birth until shortly after her physical death. The story explains how the development of nanobots has enabled virtual immortality for humans by virtue of the nanotechnological manipulation of the chemical processes that cause cells to die. Lieserl's body is engineered by such nanobots but, instead of extending her life, the nanobots cause her to age rapidly. Memories and learning are also implanted into her cortex. The combination of these effects results in Lieserl living the equivalent of 90 year life in 90 days. Upon her physical death Lieserl's awareness is downloaded into a number of datastores, granting her a supreme consciousness. These datastores are placed within one mouth, or Interface, of a man-made wormhole which is then suspended within the Sun. The other Interface of the wormhole is left in orbit around the Sun and the pumping away of superheated gas from the Interface within the sun to the other Interface provides a refrigeration effect enabling the datastores holding Lieserl's consciousness to survive. Lieserl is told that her existence is just one of many projects initiated by mankind to ensure the survival of the species. Lieserl's task is to study the sun since it appears to be dying, aging more quickly than was to be expected without some exterior influence. The story ends just as Lieserl begins in her work without revealing the nature of the threat to the Sun. Nevertheless, the final passages of the story contain a foreshadowing of the dark future facing the universe when Phillida, Lieserl's mother, announces that mankind "can live as long as the stars - for tens of billions of years". The novel Ring and the short stories Secret History and The Baryonic Lords, also within the Vacuum Diagrams collection, tell of the premature aging of stars caused by a dark matter life-form named photino birds and, as a consequence, the end of baryonic life within the universe. Although the reason for Lieserl's task is an integral part of Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, the majority of the story is devoted to a study of the character, Lieserl, and the pain she suffers as a result of her accelerated existence. The daily loss of innocence prevents her from achieving minor victories against childhood rivals and causes additional frustrations by making the interesting projects of one day, such as exploring the history and mathematics of the game, snakes and ladders, seem trivial and childlike when she returns to them the day after. Her sexuality is explored, with her puberty passing in a moment and her hopes of romance being dashed as she outgrows a 15-year-old over the course of a single night. These negative experiences leave Lieserl feeling bitter towards her creators, but nevertheless imprint on her a humanity which ensures her long-term devotion to the project for which she was born and a strong desire to ensure the maintenance of the human race. ===== The Pink Panther and an unnamed painter (known as the "Little Man") compete over whether a house should be painted blue or pink. Each time the painter attempts to paint something blue, the panther thwarts him in a new way, and paints the object/area pink. At the end, the exasperated painter inadvertently turns the house and everything around it pink (first by repeatedly shooting at the elusive panther with a shotgun that the panther had poured pink paint into, and then by burying the panther's pink paint cans in the soil outside the house, where they "sprout" and grow pink grass and trees), and the panther moves in. But just before he moves in, he paints the white man completely pink. The painter gets upset and bangs his head against the mailbox outside. The Pink Panther then walks into the house as the sun (also turned pink) sets and the cartoon fades out. ===== The cartoons concerned blond, good-looking, pacifist Roland and the many attempts by the evil, mustachioed Rattfink to ruin his good time. Roland and Rattfink were both voiced by Lennie Weinrib (except in "The Deadwood Thunderball" where they were voiced by John Byner and Dave Barry). Hurts and Flowers (one long, running joke about Rattfink destroying Roland's daisies) concluded with Rattfink getting killed and Roland leaving daisies on his grave. When Roland walked away, Rattfink's ghost rose from the grave to throw the flowers at him. Seventeen cartoons were produced. ===== The cartoon series follows attempts of a blue aardvark named Aardvark (voiced by John Byner,) attempting to catch and eat a red ant named Charlie (also voiced by John Byner,), usually doing so by inhaling with a loud vacuum cleaner sound. The aardvark character is essentially unnamed; in the episode Rough Brunch, he claims his name is simply "Aardvark." Charlie Ant gives his nemesis a variety of names as sly terms of endearment (Ol' Sam, Ol' Ben, Ol' Blue, Claude, Pal, Buddy, Daddy-O). In several bumper sequences of The Pink Panther Show, he is called "Blue Aardvark." ===== A fast-moving blue snake named the Blue Racer (voiced by Larry D. Mann) tries unsuccessfully to catch a stereotypically-Japanese beetle (voiced by Tom Holland), who is a black belt in karate. Both characters spun off from Tijuana Toads in "Hop and Chop" (the Japanese beetle) and "Snake in the Gracias" (the Blue Racer). The goofy crane from Tijuana Toads (Crazylegs Crane, who also repeatedly failed to collar the Racer and the Toads himself) also later appeared in the series as well. 17 cartoons were produced. ===== Sheriff Hoot Kloot is a diminutive, short-tempered lawman who tries to maintain order in a remote western town. He is aided by his loyal horse Fester whom Kloot refers to simply as "Horse." Fester remains Kloot's honest and faithful friend, often giving the Sheriff the benefit of his homespun wisdom while battling various outlaws including Crazywolf, a looney sheep-stealing wolf. Hoot Kloot was later broadcast as part of the NBC Saturday morning cartoon series The Pink Panther and Friends. ===== Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II. Although innocent, he is sentenced to ten years in a forced labor camp. The day begins with Shukhov waking up sick. For waking late, he is forced to clean the guardhouse, but this is a comparatively minor punishment. When Shukhov is finally able to leave the guardhouse, he goes to the dispensary to report his illness. It is relatively late in the morning by this time, however, so the orderly is unable to exempt any more workers and Shukhov must work. The rest of the novel deals mainly with Shukhov's squad (the 104th, which has 24 members), their allegiance to the squad leader, and the work that the prisoners (zeks) do in hopes of getting extra food for their performance. For example, they are seen working at a brutal construction site where the cold freezes the mortar used for bricklaying if not applied quickly enough. Solzhenitsyn also details the methods used by the prisoners to survive; the whole camp lives by the rule of survival of the fittest. Tiurin, the foreman of gang 104, is strict but kind, and the squad's fondness of Tiurin becomes more evident as the book progresses. Though a morose man, Tiurin is liked because he understands the prisoners, he talks to them, and he helps them. Shukhov is one of the hardest workers in the squad, possessing versatile skills that are in great demand, and he is generally well-respected. Rations are meager – prisoners only receive them on the basis of how productive their work units are (or the authorities think they have been) – but they are one of the few things that Shukhov lives for. He conserves the food that he receives and is always watchful for any item that he can hide and trade for food at a later date, or for favors and services he can do prisoners that they will thank him for in small gifts of food. At the end of the day, Shukhov is able to provide a few special services for Tsezar (Caesar), an intellectual who does office work instead of manual labor. Tsezar is most notable, however, for receiving packages of food from his family. Shukhov is able to get a small share of Tsezar's packages by standing in lines for him. Shukhov reflects on his day, which was both productive and fortuitous for him. He did not get sick, his group had been assigned well paid work, he had filched a second ration of food at lunch, and he had smuggled into camp a small piece of metal he would fashion into a useful tool. ===== The story tells of the history of Grumdrig and the creation of the realms. Currently, there are five realms: Knoram, Expodrine, Oobag, Spoltog, and Pemptus. The latter two are still open, but Knoram, Expodrine, and Oobag were permanently closed to the creation of new characters upon the arrival of Pemptus, which, being the newest realm, launched on February 8, 2007. The story mimics convoluted fantasy plots, using archaic and made up words such as "aberdoxy". ===== The story centers around Akaash, a young man from the slums of Bombay who dreams of becoming the next big star in Bollywood. Fate steps in when a rich lawyer and his fiancée, an aspiring documentary filmmaker, arrive to prevent the demolition of Akaash's slum. Akaash quickly falls in love with the lawyer's fiancée, Priya, who happens to be the daughter of a famous Bollywood director. Complications arise as Akaash faces the reality of show business, fame, his love for Priya, and his obligations to his family, friends, and his Paradise slum. The story also deals with the change of name from Bombay to Mumbai and the identity issues that this raises. ===== Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. Kenny Kirkland (Guy Davis) is a budding disc jockey and Master of Ceremonies, and his younger brother, Lee (Robert Taylor), is a hardcore b-boy who dances with Beat Street Breakers (the New York City Breakers). Kenny's best friends are Ramon (Jon Chardiet), a graffiti artist known by his tag, "Ramo", and Chollie (Leon W. Grant), his self-styled manager/promoter. The film begins with the main characters preparing for a house party set in an abandoned apartment building, where Kenny is the featured DJ. An uninvited Lee and his breakdancing friends crash the party, and nearly get tangled into a battle with a rival troupe, the Bronx Rockers (the Rock Steady Crew). The battle of mostly words is broken up by Henri (Dean Elliot), a squatter who lives in the building and is befriended by Kenny, Chollie, Ramon and Luis (Franc. Reyes). Kenny has dreams of performing in New York City's top nightclubs. No club is bigger than the Roxy, and on one visit he crosses paths with Tracy Carlson (Rae Dawn Chong), a college music student and composer. A breakdance battle between the Breakers and Rock Steady ensues and Tracy admires Lee's performance. She then invites him to audition for a television show focusing on dancing. Lee, Kenny and their crew arrive during a dance rehearsal, and Lee gives his performance only to find out he won't be on television. Protecting his brother's interests, Kenny rips into Tracy for leading Lee on; Ramon steals a videotape of Lee's dance as the crew walk out. A remorseful Tracy then shows up at the Kirkland home to apologize. Lee was not home but Kenny was, working on a mix tape. Tracy clarifies her story, saying that she did not promise to Lee that he was going to be on the TV show. She then takes an interest in Kenny's mixing and the two find common ground. Kenny and Tracy then head into the subway, where they meet up with Lee, Ramon and Luis spray painting an abandoned station platform. They pack up and leave when they hear noises, thinking it may be the police; it turned out to be a rogue graffiti artist known as Spit who defaces Ramo's work (and the work of other artists) by spraying his tag over it. As the group take the train back uptown, Kenny and Tracy break away and spend the rest of the evening together, striking up a romance while walking and talking. Chollie talks Kenny into a guest spot at the Burning Spear, a club run by DJ Kool Herc. Kenny not only spins but presents a special Christmas-themed skit performed by the Treacherous Three, Doug E. Fresh and the Magnificent Force. The crowd's positive reaction convinces Kool Herc to invite Kenny back. But both Kenny and Chollie see the regular gig as a stepping stone to their bigger goal. They return to the Roxy, where auditions are being held for new talent. Chollie convinces Kenny to let him do the talking, and waits for the auditions to end before he succeeds in getting the talent scout to check out Kenny at the Burning Spear. The scout keeps his word, and is impressed enough that he offers Kenny a performance on New Year's Eve. Tracy offers to help Kenny out by allowing him to work on a computer keyboard system at her studio. However, Kenny accidentally presses a wrong button and deletes his work. Stubborn and frustrated, Kenny leaves the studio, saying he had enough material for New Year's Eve. Meanwhile, Ramon is feeling pressure from two sources. His father, Domingo (Shawn Elliot), who despises his graffiti, wants him to find honest work, while his girlfriend Carmen (Saundra Santiago), the mother of his son, longs for them to be together as a family. Ramon eventually gets a job in a hardware store, and he then takes Carmen and their baby to live with him in Henri's building. But Ramon does not stop thinking of the subway trains that are his canvas. When he sees a white painted one pass him by, he vows to put his mark on it. Later that evening, Ramon and Kenny find the train and proceed to paint one side of the lead car. As they work on the second side of the car, Ramon hears noises, and they discover the rogue graffiti artist, Spit, defacing the completed side. Ramon and Kenny chase Spit through the tunnel and into a station, and a fight ensues. Spit sprays paint in Ramon's eye, and both men tussle on the roadbed before they roll onto the electrified third rail, which kills them instantly. As the group mourn the death of their friend, Kenny considers not performing for the New Year's Eve show at the Roxy. However, with the help of Tracy and despite initial reluctance from Chollie, Kenny turns his big break into a celebration of Ramon's life. The show is the film's grand finale starting with a rap performance by Kenny while images of Ramon and his work were shown on a screen in the background. Kenny is followed by Grandmaster Melle Mel & the Furious Five and a Bronx gospel choir, and backed by dancers and breakdancers. ===== Robin Sena is a "craft user", born in Japan and raised by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. She is trained to use her craft of fire to hunt down witches. Witchcraft is a genetic trait, dormant within a number of individuals within the human population. Powers can be "awakened" in these dormant human "seeds" at any time, which seems to also drive the awakened witch into various forms of homicidal madness or sociopathy. Trained hunters, craft-users or "seeds" themselves that have not become full witches, are needed to keep watch over "seeds" and hunt those whose abilities become active, serving in secret organizations, such as the parent branch "Solomon" and the "STN-J" branch in Japan, as self-appointed witch police to curtail the use of witchcraft in society, and to keep the witch kind a secret from the public. Even the police, who cooperate with STN-J in abnormal criminal cases, do not know what STN-J does. The series begins when Robin arrives in Japan to gain information for Solomon headquarters about a fabled item that holds the "secrets of the craft," while acting undercover as a new hunter to the STN-J in their efforts to capture witches. "Orbo" is a green liquid that negates witch abilities. STN-J's hunters carry small vials of it on necklaces in the shape of a cross as a form of protection against their targets' craft. Hunters also carry air pistols which fire darts or pellets of Orbo that dampen witch powers when it enters the bloodstream of the target witch. Hunters who are craft-users or seeds can use Orbo without ill effects, although their own powers are reportedly diminished while using it. Robin, a craft-user herself, declines to use Orbo because she feels it is "disgusting". As the series goes on, Robin grows increasingly uncomfortable with her role in hunting and capturing other witches. She begins to question the treatment they receive while incarcerated in the mysterious "Factory". After the discovery of "secrets of the craft," she is entrapped and attacked twice by "witch bullets". Subsequently, the STN-J is attacked, presumably for "secrets of the craft," although the Solomon attack was carried out to find what Zaizen, the director of the STN-J, was planning. Robin begins to worry that she will become a target and grows to suspect that her partner Amon will hunt her. Eventually, Robin does become a target of Solomon and labeled a witch, becoming "hunted". In the end, Robin finds out more about her craft and that of witches than she knew at the beginning. Initially, the series appears to take a "monster of the week" approach. About halfway through the 26-episode season, the characters and the relationships between them are established and the main plot gets underway. ===== When Suzette (Goldie Hawn) is fired from her job as bartender at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, she decides, on the spur of the moment, to travel all the way to Phoenix, Arizona to see her old friend Vinnie (Susan Sarandon). Stranded at a service station without any money to buy some gasoline, she picks up Harry Plummer (Geoffrey Rush), a neurotic, middle-aged author who is on his way to Phoenix to once and for all deal with his father and the negative influence he has had over his life. On arriving in Phoenix, Suzette has a chance encounter with Vinnie's 17-year-old daughter Hannah (Erika Christensen) who, after some recreational drug use, starts throwing up in Harry's hotel room. When she drives her back to her parents' elegant suburban home Suzette at first cannot believe what she sees: Vinnie, who now calls herself Lavinia Kingsley, leads the more conservative life of the perfect wife and mother—a life which at one point prompts one of her daughters to ask Suzette, "Did she ever do anything wrong?" Raymond (Robin Thomas), Vinnie's lawyer husband and an aspiring politician, has no idea about his wife's past either. However, Suzette's sudden appearance brings back all those memories for Lavinia. She cuts her hair and throws off her expensive but boring clothes and, just for one night, relives the old days by going dancing with Suzette. They return to Vinnie's home and down in the basement she retrieves some of the memorabilia of their previous life as groupies, which includes a collection of Polaroids of the penises of numerous "musicians and a few roadies". After smoking a marijuana joint they set off the smoke detector, waking up the household. Ginger has a minor fender bender which has everyone off to the hospital. Vinnie has an identity crisis during a family argument where Hannah blames Suzette for disrupting their lives. Suzette leaves and calls Harry telling him she's going back to L.A. Vinnie follows Suzette and they have a heart to heart that ends up with them sitting atop a "got milk?" billboard sign to watch the sunrise. Suzette and Vinnie go to the hotel room to find Harry has left. Suzette fears the worst as Harry has taken a gun with him. They find Harry going to see his father, in a cemetery. While Suzette tries to talk sense into Harry, Vinnie loses her patience and bumps into him with the car. Suzette takes the gun and shoots the single bullet into the air. Harry finally comes to grips with his deceased, absentee father. In the end, both her husband and her two daughters have understood that Lavinia is only human after all. In her graduation speech, Hannah speaks out against anything that is "fake" and urges her schoolmates, teachers and the parents present to "do it true". The following day, Suzette returns to Los Angeles together with Harry, who has come to consider her his muse. ===== Early in the Second Age of Middle-earth, elven smiths forge nine Rings of Power for mortal men, seven for the Dwarf-Lords, and three for the Elf-Kings. Soon after, the Dark Lord Sauron makes the One Ring, and uses it to attempt to conquer Middle-earth. After defeating Sauron, Prince Isildur takes the Ring, but after he is killed by orcs, the Ring lies at the bottom of the river Anduin for over 2,500 years. Over time, Sauron captures the Nine Rings and transforms their owners into the Ringwraiths. The One Ring is discovered by Déagol, whose kinsman, Sméagol, kills him and takes the Ring for himself. The Ring twists his body and mind, and he becomes the creature Gollum (Peter Woodthorpe) who takes it with him into the Misty Mountains. Hundreds of years later, Bilbo Baggins (Norman Bird) finds the Ring in Gollum's cave and brings it back with him to the Shire. Decades later, during Bilbo's birthday celebration, the wizard Gandalf (William Squire) tells him to leave the Ring for his nephew Frodo (Christopher Guard). Bilbo reluctantly agrees, and departs for Rivendell. Seventeen years pass, during which Gandalf learns that evil forces have discovered that the Ring is in the possession of a Baggins. Gandalf meets Frodo to explain the Ring's history and the danger it poses; and Frodo leaves his home, taking the Ring with him. He is accompanied by three hobbits, his cousins, Pippin (Dominic Guard), Merry (Simon Chandler), and his gardner Sam (Michael Scholes). After a narrow escape from the Ringwraiths, the hobbits eventually come to Bree, from which Aragorn (John Hurt) leads them to Rivendell. Frodo is stabbed atop Weathertop mountain by the chief of the Ringwraiths, and becomes sickened as the journey progresses. The Ringwraiths catch up with them shortly after they meet the elf Legolas (Anthony Daniels); and at a standoff at the ford of Rivendell, the Ringwraiths are swept away by the river. At Rivendell, Frodo is healed by Elrond (André Morell). He meets Gandalf again, after the latter escapes the corrupt wizard Saruman (Fraser Kerr), who plans to ally with Sauron but also wants the Ring for himself. Frodo volunteers to go to Mordor, where the Ring can be destroyed. Thereafter Frodo sets off from Rivendell with eight companions: Gandalf; Aragorn; Boromir (Michael Graham Cox), son of the Steward of Gondor; Legolas; Gimli (David Buck) the dwarf, along with Pippin, Merry, and Sam. Their attempt to cross the Misty Mountains is foiled by heavy snow, and they are forced into Moria. There, they are attacked by orcs, and Gandalf falls into an abyss while battling a balrog. The remaining Fellowship continue through the elf-haven Lothlórien, where they meet the elf queen Galadriel (Annette Crosbie). Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo, and Frodo decides to continue his quest alone; but Sam insists on accompanying him. Boromir is killed by orcs while trying to defend Merry and Pippin. Merry and Pippin are captured by the orcs, who intend to take them to Isengard through the land of Rohan. The captured hobbits escape and flee into Fangorn Forest, where they meet Treebeard (John Westbrook). Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas track Merry and Pippin into the forest, where they are reunited with Gandalf, who was reborn after destroying the balrog. The five then ride to Rohan's capital, Edoras, where Gandalf persuades King Théoden (Philip Stone) that his people are in danger. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas then travel to the Helm's Deep. Frodo and Sam discover Gollum stalking them in an attempt to reclaim the ring, and capture him; but spare his life in return for guidance to Mount Doom. Gollum eventually begins plotting against them, and wonders if "she" might help. At Helm's Deep, Théoden's forces resist the orcs sent by Saruman, until Gandalf arrives with the absent Riders of Rohan, destroying the orc army. ===== The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years. The narrator lives in a small Southern town and, upon graduating from high school, wins a scholarship to an all-black college. However, to receive it, he must first take part in a brutal, humiliating battle royal for the entertainment of the town's rich white dignitaries. One afternoon during his junior year at the college, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave- quarters beyond the campus. By chance, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, who has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep. Trueblood's account horrifies Mr. Norton so badly that he asks the narrator to find him a drink. The narrator drives him to a bar filled with prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital. The mental patients rail against both of them and eventually overwhelm the orderly assigned to keep the patients under control, injuring Mr. Norton in the process. The narrator hurries Mr. Norton away from the chaotic scene and back to campus. Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, excoriates the narrator for showing Mr. Norton the underside of black life beyond the campus and expels him. However, Bledsoe gives several sealed letters of recommendation to the narrator, to be delivered to friends of the college in order to assist him in finding a job so that he may eventually re-enroll. The narrator travels to New York and distributes his letters, with no success; the son of one recipient shows him the letter, which reveals Bledsoe's intent to never admit the narrator as a student again. Acting on the son's suggestion, the narrator seeks work at the Liberty Paint factory, renowned for its pure white paint. He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room, whose chief attendant, Lucius Brockway, is highly paranoid and suspects that the narrator is trying to take his job. This distrust worsens after the narrator stumbles into a union meeting, and Brockway attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room. The narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment, overhearing the doctors' discussion of him as a possible mental patient. After leaving the hospital, the narrator faints on the streets of Harlem and is taken in by Mary Rambo, a kindly old-fashioned woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South. He later happens across the eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings. The narrator escapes over the rooftops and is confronted by Brother Jack, the leader of a group known as "the Brotherhood" that professes its commitment to bettering conditions in Harlem and the rest of the world. At Jack's urging, the narrator agrees to join and speak at rallies to spread the word among the black community. Using his new salary, he pays Mary back the rent he owes her and moves into an apartment provided by the Brotherhood. The rallies go smoothly at first, with the narrator receiving extensive indoctrination on the Brotherhood's ideology and methods. Soon, though, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a youth leader within the Brotherhood, is particularly swayed by his words. The narrator is later called before a meeting of the Brotherhood and accused of putting his own ambitions ahead of the group. He is reassigned to another part of the city to address issues concerning women, seduced by the wife of a Brotherhood member, and eventually called back to Harlem when Clifton is reported missing and the Brotherhood's membership and influence begin to falter. The narrator can find no trace of Clifton at first, but soon discovers him selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood. Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest; at his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech that rallies the crowd to support the Brotherhood again. At an emergency meeting, Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders criticize the narrator for his unscientific arguments and the narrator determines that the group has no real interest in the black community's problems. The narrator returns to Harlem, trailed by Ras's men, and buys a hat and a pair of sunglasses to elude them. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart, known as a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader. Understanding that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity, the narrator resolves to undermine the Brotherhood by feeding them dishonest information concerning the Harlem membership and situation. After seducing the wife of one member in a fruitless attempt to learn their new activities, he discovers that riots have broken out in Harlem due to widespread unrest. He realizes that the Brotherhood has been counting on such an event in order to further its own aims. The narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters, who burn down a tenement building, and wanders away from them to find Ras, now on horseback, armed with a spear and shield, and calling himself "the Destroyer." Ras shouts for the crowd to lynch the narrator, but the narrator attacks him with the spear and escapes into an underground coal bin. Two white men seal him in, leaving him alone to ponder the racism he has experienced in his life. The epilogue returns to the present, with the narrator stating that he is ready to return to the world because he has spent enough time hiding from it. He explains that he has told his story in order to help people see past his own invisibility, and also to provide a voice for people with a similar plight: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" ===== The story of Dogville is told in nine chapters and a prologue, with a one-sentence description of each chapter given in the film, in the vein of such chapter headings in many 19th-century novels. These descriptions are given below. ===== The preface of the novel consists of two real-life newspaper articles from 1975 about terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal." The story opens with gunfire on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea. One man is cast into the waves before the boat explodes, and is later picked up by fishermen, who find him clinging to debris. They also find he has amnesia, apparently as a result of a traumatic head injury, with occasional erratic intrusions or flashbacks to the past, but is unable to make sense of them. The only definite evidence of his former life is a small film negative found embedded in his hip containing the information required to access a bank account in Zurich. When he goes to Zurich to gain access to the bank, a clerk recognizes him. From this the man concludes that his name is "Jason Charles Bourne", that he has relations with a firm called Treadstone Seventy-One Corporation, and that his account holds 7,500,000 Swiss francs (equivalent to $5,000,000 in the novel). Circumstantial evidence leads Bourne to suspect that he should go to Paris, so he wires most of the money there. At the bank and his hotel, men suddenly try to kill Bourne, so he quickly takes another hotel guest, Canadian government economist Marie St. Jacques, as a hostage in order to escape. After escaping from Bourne, St. Jacques reports his whereabouts to men she thinks are police, but they turn out to be Bourne's pursuers and professional killers who try to rape and kill her. When Bourne rescues her at the risk of his own life, St. Jacques decides to help him. They head to Paris to find clues about Bourne's past. Once in Paris, Bourne learns that his attackers' leader may be "Carlos," who is described as the most dangerous terrorist of his time, responsible for numerous killings in many countries and well connected in the highest government circles. For reasons only partly comprehensible to himself, Bourne develops a compulsion to hunt Carlos. As the story develops, Bourne follows clues that bring him closer to Carlos, leading him to places such as a designer clothing store used as relay for Carlos. Though Bourne twice briefly sees Carlos, he does not manage to catch or kill him. To his distress, Bourne also finds mounting evidence that he himself is a rival assassin called ″Cain.″ Meanwhile, he and St. Jacques fall in love. Marie tries to convince Bourne that he is not the killer he thinks he was. It turns out that Cain is an alias that had been assumed by Bourne—whose real name is not even "Bourne"—to hunt down Carlos; Cain took credit for kills as a way of challenging Carlos as part of a top-secret American plot. The plot is called Treadstone Seventy-One, and the truth is known only to eight men selected by covert agencies of the U.S. government; everyone else assumes Cain to be a real person. Due to Bourne's six-month silence (while he was recuperating) and the unauthorized diversion of millions of dollars from the Zurich account, the Treadstone men start to believe that Bourne has become a traitor. They are entirely convinced of his guilt when Carlos has two of his operatives storm the building in which Treadstone is based and kill those inside, and then frames Bourne for the murders. The man now responsible for Treadstone, Alexander Conklin, attempts to lure Bourne into a meeting outside of Paris to kill him. Bourne escapes the trap, but does not succeed in proving his innocence. In Paris, Bourne has managed to convince a French General named Villiers to help him. Bourne realizes that Villiers' wife is a mole for Carlos. When the General hears about it, he finally kills his wife and Bourne takes the blame in order to bait Carlos into following him to the United States. Only after Bourne has left do St. Jacques and Villiers manage to convince Treadstone members that Bourne is innocent, and is continuing to hunt Carlos. In New York, Bourne is confronted by Carlos. They wound each other, but when Carlos is on the verge of killing Bourne, some of the remaining Treadstone members arrive at the scene and force Carlos to retreat. The epilogue sees St. Jacques being told about Bourne's past, most of which had been revealed in fragments already: He had been an American Foreign Service officer stationed in Asia during the Vietnam War as part of an operation codenamed Medusa. When his wife and two children were killed, he joined a paramilitary Special forces unit in Vietnam. During a mission, he discovered and executed the double agent Jason Bourne. He took the name years later when he was recruited for Treadstone. At the novel's end, it is revealed that "Bourne" has recovered from the encounter with Carlos and probably lives together with St. Jacques. He remains the only one to ever have seen the face of Carlos and may be able to recognize him as a public figure, but is unable to do so due to his erratic memory. As a consequence, he is protected day and night by armed watchmen, in the hope he will one day recover enough to identify Carlos. The plot closes with him remembering his first name, David. ===== In 1981, a group of former football coaches and players attend a funeral. Ten years earlier in July 1971, at the integrated T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, an African-American head coach, Herman Boone, is hired to coach the school's football team. Boone is assigned to the coaching team under current Caucasian coach Bill Yoast, who has been nominated for the Virginia High School Hall of Fame. In an attempt to placate rising racial tensions and the fact that all other high schools are "joni" only, Boone is assigned the head coach job. He refuses, believing it unfair to Yoast, but relents after seeing what it means to the African-American community. Yoast is then offered an assistant coach's job by the school board and initially refuses but reconsiders after the white players pledge to boycott the team if he does not participate. Dismayed at the prospect of the students losing their chances at scholarships, Yoast changes his mind and takes up the position of defensive coordinator under Boone, to his daughter Sheryl's dismay. Soon after, the African-American students trying out for the team have a meeting in the gymnasium with Boone, but this turns into a fiasco when Yoast and Caucasian students interrupt it. After this, Boone takes Yoast aside and explains how he will run the team and that black and white does not matter to him, leaving Yoast with renewed faith in Boone. On August 15, the players gather and journey to Gettysburg College, where their training takes place. Early on, African-American and Caucasian football team members frequently clash in racially motivated conflicts, including some between captains Gerry Bertier and Julius Campbell. However, through forceful coaching and rigorous athletic training by Boone—which includes an early morning run to the Gettysburg cemetery and a motivational speech—the team achieves racial harmony and comes out a unified team. After returning from football camp, Boone is told by a member of the school board that if he loses even a single game, he will be dismissed. Subsequently, the Titans go through the season undefeated while battling racial prejudice before slowly gaining support from the community. Gerry even has his best friend Ray removed from the team because of his racism following a game where Ray intentionally missed a block which consequently led to the near-season-ending injury of starting quarterback Jerry "Rev" Harris. Just before the state semi-finals, Yoast is told by the chairman of the school board that he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame after the Titans lose one game, implying he wants Boone to be dismissed. During the game, it becomes apparent that the referees are biased against the Titans; upon seeing the chairman and other board members in the audience looking on with satisfaction, Yoast realizes that they have rigged the game. He then marches onto the field and warns the head referee that, if not officiated fairly, he will go to the press and expose the scandal. After this, the Titans soon shut out their opponents and advance to the state championship, but Yoast is told by the infuriated chairman that his actions in saving Boone's job have resulted in his loss of candidacy for Hall of Fame induction. While celebrating the victory, Gerry is severely injured in a car accident when he drives through an intersection against an oncoming truck; the movie then cuts to the Titans all waiting in the hospital. Although Gerry is now unable to play due to being paralyzed from the waist down, the team goes on to mount a comeback in the fourth quarter and win the state championship. Bertier would remain a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Ten years later, Bertier dies in another automobile accident caused by a drunk driver after having won the gold medal in shot put in the Paralympic Games. It is then revealed that it is his funeral the former football coaches and players are attending, where Julius, while holding the hand of Bertier's mother, leads the team in a mournful rendition of Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. In the epilogue, descriptions show the players' and coaches' activities after the events in 1971. ===== At the end of The Mote in God's Eye, Renner and Bury are secretly enlisted into Imperial Naval Intelligence. They spend the next twenty-five years preventing rebellions against the Empire so that the Imperial Navy can concentrate on blockading the Moties in their star system. While investigating suspicious economic activity on the planet Maxroy's Purchase, Renner and Bury encounter wide idiomatic usage of the phrase "...on the gripping hand". While the source of the phrase turns out to be innocuous enough -- the governor picked up the expression as a crewman on INSS MacArthur on the expedition to Mote Prime -- the memories dredged up are too much for Bury. Driven by nightmares and a deep-seated fear for humanity's safety, Bury must confirm that the Empire is safe from the Moties. Renner and Bury travel to Sparta, the Imperial capital planet, to obtain permission to inspect the blockade. In Mote, it is mentioned that a protostar is forming in the Coalsack Nebula. The Moties had studied it extensively and told the MacArthur expedition that it would ignite in about 1,000 years. Bury and Renner inadvertently discover, much to their horror, that the estimate was deliberately falsified: the object is due to collapse and ignite much sooner. The newborn star will create one or more new Alderson Points for interstellar travel, giving the Moties at least one more exit from their system. The sole currently existing Alderson Point leads to the photosphere of the supergiant red star Murcheson's Eye, which made the blockade much more practical. Armed with this alarming knowledge and carrying influential passengers, Renner and Bury depart aboard Bury's ship Sinbad for New Caledonia, the closest human system to the Mote. There the Imperial Commission decides that ships must be sent to the hitherto ignored star system where the only dangerous Alderson Point will appear. All that can be sent on such short notice are two Imperial warships and Sinbad. They arrive — just in time to observe seven Motie ships emerge from the new Alderson Point. The second half of The Gripping Hand is a tale of shifting alliances, diplomacy and space combat involving the many Motie factions and the Empire, as represented by Bury and Renner. With the aid of the grownup offspring of Lord and Lady Blaine, and a key piece of genetic engineering, Bury and Renner fight to save the Empire by enabling the Moties to biologically incorporate into it peacefully. In the end, the Motie alliance in favor of peaceful co- existence with humans defeats the one determined to expand at any cost. Key to this is a genetically altered parasite that can limit the excessive reproduction rate that had previously condemned the Moties to cycles of uncontrollable expansion, followed inevitably by war and the collapse of civilization. ===== A young mouse named Matthias is a novice monk at Redwall Abbey, where he was adopted as a young orphan, though he dreams of a life of adventure, inspired by the legends of Martin the Warrior, the founder of Redwall. One summer, Redwall Abbey is surrounded by the army of Cluny the Scourge, an infamously evil one-eyed rat. Matthias is guided by visions of Martin the Warrior, while the abbey inhabitants prepare the defense of their home against Cluny's impending attack. Matthias seeks Martin's famous sword, supposedly hidden somewhere within the abbey, helped particularly by Methuselah, an ancient and grizzled mouse who serves as Redwall's historian. Cluny, meanwhile, attempts to gain entrance to the abbey and murders a defector from his horde: Sela the fox. Sela's son, Chickenhound, seeks refuge at Redwall but ends up accidentally killing Methuselah after being caught stealing. Driven from the abbey, Chickenhound is maimed in the wilderness by the venomous adder Asmodeus Poisonteeth, a local terror in Mossflower Wood, the forest that surrounds the abbey. Clues to the location of Martin's sword and shield have been built into the abbey, allowing Matthias to recover the shield, though he discovers the sword has been stolen by a wild sparrow tribe, the Sparras, that dwell on Redwall's roof. He learns from the violent sparrows that the sword was stolen from them in turn by Asmodeus. The king of the sparrows attacks Matthias but dies when the two plummet together off the abbey roof. Matthias recovers and ventures to Asmodeus's lair with his new allies Log-a-Log, a shrew, and Warbeak Sparra, the new and just queen of the aforementioned Sparras. Matthias, Log-a-Log, and two other Shrews succeed in retrieving the sword from Asmodeus's cave, Asmodeus kills the latter two, and Matthias subsequently kills Asmodeus. Alerted to the fall of the abbey by the Sparra tribe, Matthias rushes back to Redwall to save his friends. The Redwall inhabitants have been using boiling water, oil, barrels of hornets, and fire to repel Cluny's horde, but the abbey finally falls when Cluny threatens the family of the gatekeeper, who allows Cluny's forces access to the abbey. Matthias, his allies now including the Mossflower shrews and the whole Sparra tribe, along with the newly captive Redwall population, battle against Cluny's minions. Cluny strikes his poison-barb tail at the father abbot, Mortimer, but Matthias quickly avenges the abbot's injury by dropping the abbey's giant bell on top of Cluny, crushing him to death and cracking the bell in the process. Abbot Mortimer proclaims Matthias the Warrior of Redwall and dies from his wound. The battle ends in victory for the defenders of Redwall. An epilogue reveals that Matthias has married the fieldmouse Cornflower and she has given birth to their son, Mattimeo, an abbreviated version of the name Matthias Methuselah Mortimer. The cracked Joseph Bell has been reshaped into two new bells: the Matthias Bell and the Methuselah Bell. ===== Cameron James, a new student at Padua High School in the Seattle area, becomes instantly smitten with popular sophomore Bianca Stratford. Geeky Michael Eckman warns him that Bianca is vapid and conceited, and that her overprotective father does not allow Bianca or her older sister, the shrewish Kat, to date. Kat, a senior, is accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, but her father, Walter, wants her to stay close to home. Bianca wishes to date affluent senior Joey Donner, but Walter, an obstetrician worrisome of teenage pregnancy, will not allow his daughters to date until they graduate. Frustrated by Bianca's insistence and Kat's rebelliousness, Walter declares that Bianca may date only when Kat does, knowing that Kat's antisocial attitude makes this unlikely. When Cameron asks Bianca out, she informs him of her father's new rule and, as a pretense for allowing her to date Joey, suggests that Cameron find someone willing to date Kat. Cameron selects "bad boy" Patrick Verona, but Patrick scares him off. Michael assists by convincing Joey to pay Patrick to take out Kat, under the pretense that this will allow Joey to date Bianca. Patrick agrees to the deal, but Kat rebuffs his first few advances. Michael and Cameron help him by prying Bianca for information on Kat's likes and dislikes. Armed with this knowledge, Patrick begins to win Kat's interest. She goes to a party with him, which enables Bianca to go as well, much to Walter's dismay. At the party, Kat becomes upset when she sees Bianca with Joey, and responds by getting drunk. Patrick attends to her, and Kat starts to open up, expressing her interest in starting a band. However, when she tries to kiss him, Patrick pulls away and Kat leaves, infuriated. Meanwhile, Bianca ignores Cameron in favor of Joey, leaving Cameron dejected. Bianca soon realizes, however, that Joey is shallow and self-absorbed, and asks Cameron for a ride home. Cameron admits his feelings for her and his frustration with how she has treated him. Bianca responds by kissing him. Joey offers to pay Patrick to take Kat to the prom so he can take Bianca. Patrick initially refuses, but relents when Joey offers him more money. Kat is still angry with Patrick, but he wins her over by serenading her with the accompaniment of the marching band, and she helps him sneak out of detention. They go on a date which turns romantic, but Kat becomes suspicious and angry when Patrick insists that she go with him to the prom, an event she is adamantly against. Bianca is irritated that Cameron hasn't asked her to the prom, and so accepts Joey's invitation, but Walter won't allow it unless Kat goes too. Kat confesses to Bianca that she dated Joey when they were freshmen and, succumbing to peer pressure, had sex with him. Afterward she regretted it and Joey dumped her, so she vowed to never again do anything just because everyone else was doing it. Bianca insists that she can make her own choices, so Kat agrees to go to the prom with Patrick, and Bianca decides to go with Cameron instead of Joey. All is going well at the prom until Bianca learns that Joey planned to have sex with her that night. Angry that Bianca has spurned him for Cameron, Joey reveals his arrangement with Patrick, which causes Kat to leave heartbroken. Joey then punches Cameron, but is in turn beaten up by Bianca for having hurt her, Kat, and Cameron. Bianca and Cameron share another kiss. The next day, Bianca reconciles with Kat and begins dating Cameron. Walter admits that Kat is capable of taking care of herself, and gives her permission to attend Sarah Lawrence College. For an assignment in which the students were required to write their own version of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 141, Kat reads aloud a poem titled "10 Things I Hate About You", revealing that she still loves Patrick. Patrick surprises her with a guitar bought with the money that Joey paid him, and confesses that he has fallen for her. Kat forgives him, and the two reconcile with a kiss. ===== Though its title is similar to The Forever War and both novels deal with soldiers in the future, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and takes place on a different future of Earth in the year 2048. Using remotely controlled robots called "soldierboys" (which are nearly invincible), the Alliance military fights third world guerrillas in an endless series of economy-driven wars. As only first world nations possess the nanoforge technology that can produce anything from basic materials, conflict is largely asymmetric. The novel is told partly in first-person narration by the main character, Julian Class, and partly by an anonymous third-person narrator, who is able to comment on aspects of Julian's personality and background. The main protagonist, Julian Class, is a physicist and a mechanic who operates a soldierboy. Thanks to electronic "jacks" implanted in their skulls, mechanics are remotely linked to the machinery as well as to each other, being able to experience battle through the machines and read the thoughts of other mechanics who are simultaneously jacked in. After attempting suicide, Julian and his lover, Amelia "Blaze" Harding, are made aware of a problem with an automated particle physics project that could potentially trigger a new Big Bang that destroys the Earth and the rest of the universe. Because it's so easy to do, it is speculated that universes could potentially have only the lifespan of the first civilization that attempts such a project. When Julian, Blaze, and another physicist submit their paper to a journal's review board, they find themselves the target of "The Hammer of God", a Christian cult bent on hastening an anticipated end of the universe. As the Hammer of God has a secret presence throughout the government, Julian and Blaze narrowly miss being assassinated. Marty Larrin, one of the inventors of jacking technology, recruits Julian and Blaze in an attempt to use the technology to end war for all time; a little-known secret is that jacking with someone else for a long enough period (about two weeks) will psychologically eliminate the ability to kill another human being. By "humanizing" the entire world, dangerous technology would not be a problem for human survival. They do so, stop the particle accelerator's construction, and the war is eventually ended. ===== Alaska is 868 pages long. Along with the reading, Michener provides a table of contents, a list of acknowledgements, and a Fact and Fiction section. The third item offers the reader an insight into what occurred in real life and what the author invented. ===== Dick York and Elizabeth Montgomery (1968) A beautiful witch named Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) meets and marries a mortal named Darrin Stephens (originally Dick York, later Dick Sargent). While Samantha complies with Darrin's wishes to become a normal suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed marriage and frequently interferes in the couple's lives. Episodes often begin with Darrin becoming the victim of a spell, the effects of which wreak havoc with mortals such as his boss, clients, parents, and neighbors. By the epilogue, however, Darrin and Samantha most often embrace, having overcome the devious elements that failed to separate them. The witches and their male counterparts, warlocks, are very long-lived; while Samantha appears to be a young woman, many episodes suggest she is actually hundreds of years old. To keep their society secret, witches avoid showing their powers in front of mortals other than Darrin. Nevertheless, the effects of their spells—and Samantha's attempts to hide their supernatural origin from mortals—drive the plot of most episodes. Witches and warlocks usually use physical gestures along with their incantations. To perform magic, Samantha often twitches her nose to create a spell. Special visual effects are accompanied by music to highlight such an action. ===== Cinderella is living a dissatisfying life, having lost both parents at a young age, and being forced to work as a scullery maid in her own château. Her stepmother, Lady Tremaine, is cruel to her, and she is jealous of Cinderella's charm and beauty. Additionally her two stepsisters, Drizella and Anastasia, cruelly take advantage of her. In spite of this, Cinderella is a kind and gentle young woman. She is friends with mice and kind to birds that live in and around the château. Meanwhile, at the royal palace, the King is frustrated that his son, the Prince, still is not married. He and the Grand Duke organize a ball in an effort to find a suitable wife for the bored and picky Prince, requesting every eligible maiden attend. Upon receiving notice of the ball, Lady Tremaine agrees to let Cinderella go if she finishes her chores and can find a suitable dress to wear. Cinderella finds a gown that belonged to her mother and decides to refashion it for the ball, but her step-family impedes this by giving her extra chores. Cinderella's animal friends, including Jaq and Gus, refashion it for her, completing the design with a necklace and sash discarded by Drizella and Anastasia, respectively. When Cinderella comes downstairs wearing the dress, the stepsisters are furious when they realize Cinderella is wearing their accessories and tear the dress to shreds before leaving for the ball with their mother. Heartbroken, Cinderella rushes out into the garden in tears, where her Fairy Godmother appears before her. Insisting that Cinderella go to the ball, the Fairy Godmother magically transforms a pumpkin into a carriage, the mice into horses, Cinderella's horse, Major, into a coachman, and dog, Bruno, into a footman, before turning Cinderella's ruined dress into a shimmering ballgown and her shoes into glass slippers. As Cinderella leaves for the ball, the Fairy Godmother warns her the spell will break at the stroke of midnight. The Prince rejects every girl at the ball until he sees Cinderella, who agrees to dance with him, unaware of who he is. The two fall in love and go out for a stroll together in the castle gardens. As they are about to kiss, Cinderella hears the clock start to chime midnight and flees. As she leaves the castle, one of her slippers falls off. The palace guards give chase as Cinderella flees in the coach before the spell breaks on the last stroke of midnight. Cinderella, her pets, and the mice hide in a wooded area as the guards pass. The only remaining piece Cinderella has of her costume is the one glass slipper on her foot. The Grand Duke informs the King that Cinderella, who remains anonymous, has escaped, and that the Prince wishes to marry her. The lost glass slipper is the only piece of evidence. The King issues a royal proclamation ordering every maiden in the kingdom to try on the slipper for size in an effort to find the girl. After this news reaches Cinderella's household, Lady Tremaine overhears Cinderella humming the waltz played at the ball. Realizing that Cinderella is the mysterious girl, Lady Tremaine locks her in her attic bedroom. Later, the Duke arrives at the château, and Jaq and Gus steal the key from Lady Tremaine's dress pocket and take it up to the attic as Anastasia and Drizella unsuccessfully try on the slipper. Lady Tremaine's cat, Lucifer, ambushes the mice, but Bruno chases him out of the house, allowing the mice to free Cinderella. As the Duke is about to leave, Cinderella appears and asks to try on the slipper. Knowing it will fit, Lady Tremaine trips the footman as he brings the Duke the slipper, causing it to shatter on the floor. Much to her horror, and the Grand Duke's profound relief, Cinderella presents the Duke with the other slipper, which fits perfectly. The film ends with a now-married Prince and Cinderella at their wedding, sharing a kiss as they leave. ===== In 1607, the Susan Constant sails from London to the New World, carrying English settlers from the Virginia Company. Along the way, the Susan Constant is caught in a North Atlantic storm and Captain John Smith, who dreams about adventure, saves young, inexperienced crewmate Thomas from drowning. As they approach the New World, the settlers, including John, talk of adventure, finding gold, fighting "Injuns" and potentially settling in the new land. In the Powhatan tribe in Tsenacommacah, North America, Pocahontas, the beautiful daughter of Chief Powhatan, fears being possibly wed to Kocoum, a brave warrior whom she sees as too serious for her own free-spirited personality. Powhatan gives Pocahontas her mother's necklace as a present. Pocahontas, along with her friends, the raccoon Meeko and hummingbird Flit, visit Grandmother Willow, a spiritual talking willow tree and speaks of a dream involving a spinning arrow and her confusion regarding what her path in life should be. Grandmother Willow then alerts Pocahontas to the arriving English. The voyage's greedy leader Governor Ratcliffe, who seeks gold as part of his plan to bring him wealth and status, has Jamestown built in a wooded clearing and immediately has the crewmen dig for gold. John departs to explore the wilderness and encounters Pocahontas. They quickly bond, fascinated by each other's worlds and end up falling in love, despite Powhatan's orders to stay away from the Englishmen after Kocoum and the other warriors engage them in a fight. Meanwhile, Meeko meets Percy, Ratcliffe's pet pug and becomes the bane of his existence. When John tells Pocahontas that he and his men are here to find gold, she tells him that there is no gold. Pocahontas introduces John to Grandmother Willow and avoids two other crewmen, but Pocahontas's best friend Nakoma discovers her relationship with John and warns Kocoum. Ratcliffe also learns of John's encounters with Pocahontas and angrily warns John against sparing any natives he comes across on pain of death. Later, John and Pocahontas meet with Grandmother Willow and plan to bring peace between the colonists and the tribe. John and Pocahontas share a kiss, while Kocoum and Thomas, sent by Ratcliffe to spy on John, witness from afar. Furious, Kocoum, screaming a battle cry, attacks and attempts to kill John, but Thomas intervenes with his musket and kills Kocoum, who destroys Pocahontas's necklace in the process. John orders Thomas to leave just before the tribesmen arrive, capture John and retrieve Kocoum's body. Enraged at Kocoum's death, Powhatan declares war on the English, beginning with John's execution at sunrise. Thomas reaches Jamestown safely at night and warns the English settlers of John's capture. Ratcliffe then rallies his men to battle using this as an excuse to annihilate the tribe and find their non- existent gold. That same night, Powhatan also orders his men to prepare for battle. A desperate Pocahontas visits Grandmother Willow, where Meeko hands her John's compass. Pocahontas realizes John's compass was the spinning arrow from her real life encounter, which leads to her destiny. Morning comes, and Powhatan and his tribe drag John to a cliff overlooking a clearing for execution. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe leads the armed colonists to the cliff to fight Powhatan's warriors. Just as Powhatan is about to execute John, Pocahontas intervenes and finally convinces him to end the fighting between the two groups and to spare John's life. Everyone accepts gratefully and John is released; when the unmoved Ratcliffe orders his men to attack, they refuse to. Enraged, Ratcliffe fires a musket at Powhatan, but John shields him and is hit instead. The settlers, livid at Ratcliffe, turn on him and arrest him for hurting their comrade. John is nursed back to health by the tribe, but must return to England for further treatment if he is to survive. Ratcliffe is also sent back to England to face punishment for his crimes against the settlement. John asks Pocahontas to come with him, but she chooses to stay with her tribe in order to help keep the peace. Meeko and Percy, now friends, give Pocahontas her mother's necklace completely fixed. John leaves without Pocahontas but with Powhatan's blessing to return anytime he likes. The film ends with Pocahontas standing atop a cliff, watching the ship carrying John depart. ===== Prince Edward of Euphrania returns home after meeting the princess Selena of Carolsveld, whom his parents have arranged for him to marry. However, The Prince did not propose to the princess, and angrily denounces arranged marriages ("Why Can't I Be Two People?"). Edward prefers to marry for love while his parents want a political alliance ("What Has Love Got to Do with Being Married?"). Meanwhile, Cinderella's cruel stepmother has banished her to the cellar, and forces her to work as a servant to her and her two vindictive daughters, Isobella and Palatine. Cinderella finds some comfort in remembering happier times ("Once I Was Loved"). Whilst putting flowers by her parents' grave, she inadvertently stumbles upon the prince, and his friend and bodyguard John, who are visiting the Royal crypt. The Prince sardonically talks about his dead ancestors, with whom he will one day be buried ("What a Comforting Thing to Know"). Back at the castle, the King of Euphrania is advised that a marriage between Edward and a Princess from one of Euphrania's neighboring countries (and thus potential enemies) would help prevent war. A ball is seen as the perfect way to help Edward choose his bride ("Protocolligorically Correct"). The Prince hates the idea, though his cousin Montague is delighted ("Bride-finding Ball"). When news arrives that Carolsveld intends to make war on Euphrania, Edward has no choice but to accept. However, fewer than half the princesses accept the invitation, so the local nobility, including Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters, are invited. Because of the lack of dresses at the dressmakers, the stepmother and stepsisters demand that Cinderella sew all three of them elegant gowns for the ball from the fabric of their old dresses. Cinderella has no idea what to do. As luck would have it a fairy godmother, who has a talent for sensing the wishes of those who are pure in heart, arrives and creates three beautiful gowns while Cinderella rests. That night, the stepmother and stepsisters depart for the ball leaving Cinderella alone. Cinderella's fairy godmother returns and informs Cinderella that she too can go to the ball. She transforms Cinderella's shabby dress into a lovely gown, arranges her hair in the period fashion, and a coach and horses are magically prepared. Cinderella is sent off to the ball with a warning that the magic can only last until midnight ("Suddenly It Happens"). It is love at first sight when Cinderella and Edward meet at the ball ("Secret Kingdom"). As the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella races away, leaving behind only her glass slipper ("He / She Danced With Me"). Edward sends his servants out far and wide in search of the woman who fits the glass slipper. The search turns out empty- handed. Edward builds a monument for the slipper and hopes that one day his lost love will turn up. John is also suffering as a result of love: he is in love with a noblewoman, but his position forbids them to be together ("Position and Positioning"). Edward knights John, so John can pursue his romance with Lady Caroline. Finally, frustrated by his fruitless search, Edward breaks the monument, tossing the slipper into the woods where Cinderella finds and starts to dance with it, which catches John's attention and he rushes off to inform the Prince. Cinderella and Edward are reunited and greeted by her stepmother and stepsisters. Edward asks the permission of the stepmother to marry Cinderella and she gives full permission, if only to get Cinderella off her hands. Cinderella tells her stepmother and stepsisters that she forgives them for their abuse. In the throne room, Edward and Cinderella go before the King and Queen. Whilst the King and Queen find Cinderella to be charming, something seems to be troubling the King. He takes the Lord Chamberlain aside and tells him that there is no way his son and Cinderella, a non-royal, can be married. The Lord Chamberlain conveys this to Cinderella, explaining also that a military alliance through marriage must be established with one of the neighboring kingdoms to protect them against war and to secure the safety and future existence of Euphrania. Along with this disheartening news, it is also explained that she will have to be exiled that very night. Brokenhearted, Cinderella asks the Lord Chamberlain to tell Edward that she never loved him, because she knows that Edward will try to find her because of his love for her ("Tell Him"). Edward, knowing he's fighting a losing battle, agrees to marry whomever the King and Queen choose, but says that his marital duties will go no further than the altar. Cinderella, living peacefully in exile, still thinks of Edward ("I Can't Forget the Melody"). Her fairy godmother arrives and asks Cinderella why she isn't at the castle as Edward is getting married that day. Cinderella, surprised, asks who Edward is marrying. The fairy godmother doesn't know, as it's most certainly the wrong woman, but plans to set things right—again. Back at the castle, as the wedding is taking place, everyone is surprised when Cinderella shows up in a wedding gown. The King interrupts the wedding and he and his council meet in private. The fairy godmother joins the discussion and convinces the king to change the law, so that Edward can marry the girl of his choice. In a surprising twist, Edward's cousin and the chosen bride fall in love at first sight, and marry, thus fulfilling the alliance after all. Cinderella and Edward live happily ever after. ===== Everyman Mormon missionary Joseph Young, assigned with his mission partner to Los Angeles, finds the city to be a hostile and unenthusiastic place for their work. The problems worsen when they knock on the door of sleazy porn director Maxxx Orbison and several security guards are sent to dispose of them. Joe defeats all of them singlehandedly with a variety of martial arts skills. Impressed by his performance and bored of his current project's lead actor, Orbison attempts to hire Joe to be the title character and lead of his pornographic superhero film, Orgazmo. Joe is conflicted because of his beliefs, but the salary offered would pay for a wedding in the temple in Utah where his fiancée Lisa has expressed a strong desire to wed. Joe reluctantly accepts despite being given a sign from God. Joe finds the crew of the film intimidating but manages to befriend co-star Ben Chapleski, a technical genius and graduate from MIT who works in the pornographic industry to satiate his overactive libido. He plays Orgazmo's sidekick Choda Boy, who assists Orgazmo with specially designed sex toys, including Orgazmo's signature weapon, the Orgazmorator, a ray gun that forces orgasm upon whomever it is fired. Ben invites Joe to his home later on and shows Joe a real, working Orgazmorator Ben has built, and he and Joe spend an evening using it on unsuspecting citizens for amusement. At a sushi bar owned by Ben's Japanese friend G-Fresh, the two witness a group of thugs vandalizing the bar in an attempt to force out G-Fresh so their dance club next door can expand. Later on, when Ben and Joe are not present, G-Fresh is coerced to leave. Upon finding this out, Joe and Ben don costumes and use their film props and the Orgazmorator to sneak into the club and steal back the contract G-Fresh was forced to sign. Joe is agitated after nearly being shot in the head but Ben is excited by finally getting to be a real superhero. Orgazmo becomes an amazing success, both financially and critically, and Orbison withholds Joe's paycheck to keep him in town long enough to announce a sequel, and asks Joe to reprise his role. Tempted with a doubled salary, Joe is confronted by his fiancée who has found out what he has been doing and leaves him. Facing production difficulties and harassment from Orbison's unsympathetic nephew A-Cup, Joe tries to back out of the project but Orbison refuses. When Joe stands up to him, Orbison has Lisa kidnapped to force Joe into agreement. When Ben finds out the thugs who assaulted G-Fresh are also working for Orbison, he joins Joe in storming Orbison's mansion before Lisa can be forced to perform in one of Orbison's films. Fighting through Orbison's group of henchmen, Joe and Ben meet their match in A-Cup. Joe encourages Ben to unleash his long-repressed Hamster Style discipline of martial arts, allowing Ben to beat A-Cup. After repairing his damaged Orgazmorator, Joe repeatedly shoots Orbison with it, incapacitating him and capturing all the henchmen. Ben blows up the mansion with another device, the "Cock Rocket", destroying Orbison's base of operations. Joe and Lisa reconcile and she gives him her blessing to remain in Los Angeles and continue being a hero alongside Ben. As the film ends, Orbison is seen in a doctor's office being told that after so many orgasms in a row, his testicles have swollen to the size of oranges and that surgical removal is the only option. A now insane Orbison declares revenge on Orgazmo as he will now be the personification of A-Cup's character and Orgazmo's nemesis who is immune to the Orgazmorator: Neutered Man. ===== The plot revolves around a 19-year-old girl, Lisandra, a druid who was raised by animals on the island of Galrasia. She starts having dreams about the Paladin, a hero who mysteriously disappeared a few years ago. This Paladin had in his armour the Rubies of Virtue, twenty magical gems forged by each one of the twenty most powerful gods of the world of Arton. The gems were scattered all over the world after the Paladin's disappearance, and, according to Lisandra's dreams, it is up to her to find them and return them to the Paladin, in order to revive him. At first, with her "cousin" (a cave wolf), she discovers that one of the rubies was in the possession of a man who was cursed into a dragon form. Unable to fight the dragon on her own, she begins a quest to find the great thief Galtran, and so she travels to the city of Valkaria. This is the first time she left her island, and she knows no other human being. So, in the city, her "cousin" draws the attention of the city guard. She explains that it means no harm and she is only looking for Galtran. The guards passing by say that everyone is looking for him. When she says that she wants to hire him, they tell her that she must come with them. The wolf fatally attacks one of the guards to protect her. For wanting to hire a thief and being responsible for the death of a city guard, she is arrested. On the same night, Sandro Galtran (son of the great thief Leon Galtran) comes to rescue Lisandra from the palace's dungeon. After escaping, they go for the Ruby. ===== This episode takes place after the events of the rest of the series. It shows the long-term effect of the Interstellar Alliance from the point of view of one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, and one million years after the founding of the Alliance. * 2262: Three viewpoints are debated on an ISN broadcast: pro-Clark elements try to paint John Sheridan as a madman, others (particularly the outer colonies and Mars) view Sheridan and the Babylon 5 forces as liberators, and a third commentator treats Sheridan in a neutral fashion. * 2362: A live televised debate presents two historians mistakenly believing that the role of Sheridan and Babylon 5 in the war against the Shadows and overthrowing Clark has been mythologized, and that Sheridan was power-hungry. An aged Delenn makes a surprise entry to the debate, saying that Sheridan was a good, kind, and decent man. She chastises the historians for fabricating "facts" to fill in the gaps of their knowledge. * 2762: Amid growing tension between the Interstellar Alliance and xenophobic elements on Human-settled planets, an anti-Alliance faction attempts to set up forged holographic records to show the heroes of Babylon 5 to be megalomaniacal war criminals. These holograms are based on historical data and recorded memories of the original crew, with the forged records overriding their personalities. Sheridan is programmed to make an impassioned speech about conquering Earth before soon-to-be massacred prisoners and Dr. Franklin is programmed to act out a scene showing him talking clinically about horrific experiments involving human children and alien organs. Before Garibaldi is reprogrammed, he stalls by getting the programmer, Daniel, to reveal his faction's plans to launch a sneak attack on civilian population centers as the start of an all-out war while Garibaldi, who is aware that he is a computer program, hacks into the computer network and broadcasts the conversation. Before Daniel can turn off the holograms, an alarm sounds, indicating an imminent missile attack. Daniel runs, knowing that pro-Alliance forces have launched their own attack, moments before a nuclear explosion envelops the anti-Alliance base. * 3262: The resulting war reduced human civilization on Earth to sparsely-populated medieval villages. Two monks in an abbey discuss the greatly mythologized figures from Babylon 5, with the younger monk, Brother Michael, doubting that they even existed. The older monk, Brother Alwyn, speculates that the Rangers, prophesied to return to Earth someday, would probably operate on Earth in secret. When Brother Michael leaves, it is revealed that Alwyn is a Ranger himself, showing that the pro- Alliance faction won the war and has been slowly and secretly building up Earth civilization to avoid the development of resentful, anti-alien factions. A series of Roman numerals can be found at the bottom left of the screen representing the hidden cameras of the Ranger. * One million years later: A man is shown to have watched the above archived footage. He instructs his computer to transmit all data to New Earth. The computer warns that the sun will go nova soon due to atypical solar activity. Before leaving the system, the man transforms into an energy-based life-form that enters an encounter suit similar to the ones used by the Vorlons. As his ship, with a Ranger logo on it, departs the system, the Sun goes nova and is destroyed. * 2262: John Sheridan and Delenn are discussing everything they have done, and if anyone will even remember them in a hundred years. They conclude that they probably won't be remembered, but did what was right anyway. ===== Happy Gilmore is an aspiring ice hockey player who lacks on-ice skills, other than a powerful slapshot. After another failed hockey tryout, Happy's girlfriend leaves him because of his hockey obsession and lack of success. Gilmore's grandmother has not paid her taxes for years, and owes the IRS $270,000 in back taxes. The IRS repossesses her home and gives her 90 days to pay off the past due balance. While repossessing Grandma's furniture, two movers challenge Gilmore to a long-drive contest using his grandfather's old golf clubs. With an unorthodox, slapshot-style swing, Gilmore hits a ball that strikes a house some 400 yards away, winning $40 after the movers bet he cannot do it again. As a result, he starts hustling golfers at the driving range. There, he meets Chubbs Peterson, a club pro and former golf star who lost his right hand after an alligator attack. Chubbs urges Gilmore to enter a local tournament to earn a spot on the Pro Golf Tour. Gilmore, desperate to get his grandmother's house back, accepts after Chubbs informs him of the significant prize money involved. Gilmore wins the tournament and a spot on the tour. He quickly becomes a fan favorite due to his long drives and unorthodox antics, such as asking fans to cheer instead of staying quiet and hiring a homeless man named Otto as his caddy. Gilmore meets arrogant pro Shooter McGavin, who disapproves of Gilmore's lack of golf etiquette. Though Gilmore has a powerful drive, his putting is terrible, and his lack of composure draws the attention of Tour Commissioner Doug Thompson, who seeks to expel him from the tour. However, public relations head Virginia Venit convinces Thompson to reconsider, citing higher TV ratings and attendance and new sponsorship offers from companies geared toward young adults. Venit assures Thompson that she'll work with Gilmore on his anger issues. Gilmore begins to improve his performance and behavior due to Virginia's influence. During a pro-am celebrity tournament in which he is partnered with Bob Barker, Gilmore plays poorly due to a heckler named Donald, who had been hired by Shooter. Gilmore and Barker get into a fistfight and, as a result, Gilmore is fined $25,000 and suspended from the tour for one month. Virginia secures Gilmore an endorsement deal with Subway, allowing him to earn the remaining money needed to take back his grandmother's foreclosed house. However, when Gilmore and the others arrive at the house for the auction, Shooter spitefully outbids Gilmore for the house, before offering it to Gilmore on the condition that he agrees to quit golf. Gilmore initially accepts, but Virginia talks him out of it, telling him that his grandmother would rather see Gilmore be successful than have her house back. Gilmore strikes a deal with Shooter for the upcoming Tour Championship: If Gilmore wins, Shooter will return the house, but if Shooter wins, Gilmore will quit the tour. In order to improve his short game, Gilmore seeks out Chubbs, and the two head to a miniature golf course to practice putting. Gilmore improves and presents Chubbs with a gift: the head of the alligator that bit off his hand. Chubbs is startled by the head and falls out an open window to his death. Now determined to win for both Chubbs and his grandmother, Gilmore plays well, and leads Shooter by the end of the third round. On the fourth and final day, Gilmore seems unstoppable until, as per Shooter's orders, Donald hits Gilmore with his car. Gilmore's injuries rob him of his long-drive ability, which causes him to fall into a slump, putting Shooter in the lead. However, after a surprise visit from his grandmother, who says she just wants him to be happy, Gilmore regains his confidence and rallies to match Shooter's score. On the 18th hole, a TV tower that had been hit by Donald's car earlier falls over, blocking the green. Just as he did at the mini golf course with Chubbs, Gilmore sinks a miraculous trick shot, winning the tournament. Enraged, Shooter steals the winner's gold jacket, only to be beaten up by Gilmore's imposing ex-boss Mr. Larson and a mob of fans. With his grandmother's house recovered, Happy sees a vision of a two-handed Chubbs, Abraham Lincoln, and the alligator; he waves to them as Gilmore's grandmother, Virginia and Otto look on in confusion. ===== Bugs notices high bounties on various animals. $50 (about $ today) on foxes, $75 (about $ today) on bears, but then he becomes offended by the two-cent bounty (about $ today) on rabbits. Bugs has himself mailed to Washington, D.C., where a supercilious game commissioner explains that the bounty is so low because, while foxes and bears are "obnoxious" animals who damage property, "rabbits are perfectly harmless." Bugs vows to prove that "a rabbit can be obnoxious than anybody" and storms out, slamming the game commissioner's door so hard that the glass shatters. Bugs begins his campaign of direct action by attacking a guard on the leg with his own billy club. From there, he pulls stunts like renaming Barney Baruch's private bench to "Bugs Bunny", painting barbershop pole stripes on the Washington Monument, and rewiring the lights in Times Square to read "BUGS BUNNY WUZ HERE". Various newspapers comment about Bugs' actions as he shuts down Niagara Falls (revealing some barrels underneath it). Bugs then sells the entire island of Manhattan back to the Native Americans and is shown walking through it wearing a stereotypical feathered headdress and smoking a peace pipe, asiding to the audience that "they wouldn't take it back unless I threw in a set of dishes". Afterwards, Bugs saws Florida off from the rest of the country, and quotes "South America, take it away!" Bugs then wonders what other kind of devilry he can commit. Bugs heads to Panama and swipes all the locks off the Panama Canal, which are represented as actual locks as he yells "I got 'em! I got 'em!". Bugs then heads to Arizona where he fills up the Grand Canyon. He then concludes his campaign by literally tying up railroad tracks. An outraged Senator Claghorn–esque Congressman speaks before the United States Congress and demands that they take action against Bugs, but is interrupted by Bugs who emerges from the congressman's hat, slaps him and gives him a mocking kiss. The cartoon then shows live-action footage of the entire War Department mobilizing against him. Tanks come rumbling out of their garages, soldiers pour out of barracks, and bugles blow as the news of this is shown. Bugs, now satisfied with the $1 million bounty on his head (about $ today, although the bounty is for him specifically, not rabbits in general), is snapped out of a Tarzan yell by the whole US Army coming after him, much to his horror. Bugs then dives into a fox hole as artillery shells surround the foxhole. Bugs then says "Could it be that I carried this thing too far?" just as the shells explode. It then cuts to Alcatraz Island where Bugs, in his jail cell, finally remarks "Ehhh, could be...!" ===== in a scene from the film Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) is a bartender in a banana republic who recounts his rise and fall to the bar's dancing girl and an American customer. The customer was a trusted bank employee who can no longer return to the United States and his family because he is wanted by the law after falling to temptation and stealing from the bank. McGinty is in a similar situation, but in his case it is due to "one crazy minute" of honesty rather than one of dishonesty. In a long flashback, he explains. McGinty's career begins when he is a tramp who, offered a $2 bribe to vote under a false name in a rigged mayoral election, does it thirty-seven times at different precincts. This impresses a local political boss (Akim Tamiroff), whose name is never mentioned; although they sometimes almost come to blows with each other, McGinty becomes one of the boss's enforcers, then his political protégé. During a public campaign for political reform, the boss, who controls all the political parties in the city, decides to have McGinty elected mayor as a "reform" candidate. He says a credible candidate must be married, but McGinty has no one he wants to marry. His secretary (Muriel Angelus) then proposes a marriage of convenience, which he accepts. Elected mayor, he continues the political corruption established by the boss, rationalizing that the public still benefits from public works no matter who bribes their way into profiting from them. But then he and his more idealistic wife actually fall in love. He begins to take her views on public service seriously, but says he is not powerful enough to act against the boss in any case. But next the boss decides McGinty should be governor of the state, and McGinty is duly elected. Now he feels he is powerful enough, and on his inauguration day he tells the boss that they're through with each other. The boss says that if he goes down then he'll take McGinty with him by revealing his part in the corruption; but then he becomes angry enough to fire a gun at McGinty inside the governor's mansion, ensuring his prompt arrest. In due course McGinty and the boss find themselves in adjacent jail cells, from which the boss arranges an escape for both. The flashback ends with McGinty providing for his wife and her children by telling her by phone about money he has hidden. We finally see that the former political boss is still his boss at the bar, and that they are still given to violent disagreements. ===== Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy is treating an injured Lt. Sulu when the USS Enterprise is rocked by a time distortion and McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine, a dangerous drug. Delusional and paranoid, McCoy flees from the bridge to the transporter room, beaming himself down to a nearby planet. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) leads a landing party to look for McCoy, and they come across an ancient glowing stone archway, which turns out to be the cause of the time distortions. They discover the archway to be sentient, and this "Guardian of Forever" (voiced by Bartell LaRue) explains that it is a doorway to any time and place. While Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is recording historic images from the portal, McCoy escapes through it. The landing party suddenly loses contact with the Enterprise, and the Guardian informs them that McCoy has altered the past, and that the Enterprise, and all that they knew, is gone. The Guardian permits Kirk and Spock to follow McCoy in an effort to repair the timeline. Spock times their passage so as to arrive where McCoy did ahead of when he will arrive, and they find themselves in New York City in 1930, during the Great Depression. After stealing clothes from a fire escape to blend in, they meet a woman named Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), who runs the 21st Street Mission. They are given a place to sleep, along with doing odd jobs to earn money. Spock works to devise a method of interfacing with his tricorder and analyze its recorded images to determine how McCoy has altered history. While they await his arrival, Kirk and Keeler spend time together, and Kirk begins to fall in love. McCoy arrives, and stumbles into the mission, unnoticed by Kirk and Spock, and Keeler nurses him back to health. Spock completes his work and discovers Keeler was supposed to die that year in a traffic accident. Spock learns Dr. McCoy altered the past by saving Keeler's life and. in the altered timeline, Keeler founded a pacifist movement on the eve of World War II. This causes the United States to delay its entrance into the war, allowing Nazi Germany time to develop nuclear weapons they launch in their V-2 rockets to conquer the world. Kirk admits his love for Keeler, and Spock answers that Keeler must die in order to prevent millions of deaths and restore the future. On her way with Kirk to see a movie, Keeler mentions McCoy. Kirk, shocked and excited, tells her to stay where she is and calls Spock to tell him this. The Starfleet trio reunite in front of the mission. Observing this and curious, Keeler crosses the street to join them, and she steps right in front of a fast-moving truck. Kirk turns to save Keeler from the truck, but a shout from Spock freezes him in his tracks. Then Kirk blocks McCoy from saving her, and she is struck and killed. A stunned McCoy can't believe that Kirk knowingly stopped him. With history restored, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are returned to the Guardian's planet where the rest of the landing party is waiting. When the Guardian declares that "many such journeys are possible", a brokenhearted Kirk simply states "Let's get the hell out of here," and the landing party beams off the planet back to the Enterprise. ===== The children are on the bus, following a diversion along a mountain pass. When Ms. Crabtree gets distracted by the kids, the bus veers off the road and nearly goes over a cliff. She leaves to seek help, telling the kids not to leave the bus, because "a big scary monster" will eat them. The kids remain there and remember past experiences (featuring clips from previous episodes), although they usually end with everyone enjoying ice cream (as noted by new animated sequences). When a student tries to leave the bus, a gigantic black monster kills him before disappearing; later on, the black monster returns and kills Kenny. Meanwhile, Ms. Crabtree meets a truckdriver named Marcus. He takes her to a club where Carrot Top is performing and Ms. Crabtree insults him, which appeals to the audience. Marcus takes her to an agent, who finds her funny and hires her as a comedian. By now, she has forgotten about rescuing the stranded children. She soon quits, but she and Marcus remain close. Back in South Park, Mr. Mackey convinces the parents that their children have run away, so they write a song and perform it on television. The children see this on a TV in the bus and are embarrassed. An argument between Kyle correcting Cartman's past experience causes the bus to go over the cliff; it lands in a gigantic tub of ice cream. Cartman suddenly realizes how little sense everything makes and wakes up in his own bed. As he explains his dream to his mother, she offers him beetles for breakfast and ice cream as well. Stan wakes up in his bed, and calls Kyle to tell him about the dream. Ms. Crabtree and Marcus are shown sitting on a log near Stark's Pond - Marcus explains that this is all a kid's dream, but Ms. Crabtree says she just wants to enjoy the moment a little longer. ===== The Enterprise is summoned to Deep Space Station K7 by undersecretary Nilz Baris (William Schallert) to guard a crucial shipment of quadrotriticale grain. The Enterprise crew enjoy shore leave on the station, as does the crew of a Klingon ship arriving at the same time, under the command of Captain Koloth (William Campbell). Interstellar trader Cyrano Jones (Stanley Adams) arrives with goods for sale, among them purring balls of fluff called tribbles. He gives one to Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), who brings it on board the Enterprise. On both the Enterprise and the station the tribbles begin reproducing rapidly. They make soothing cooing noises and are loved by the Enterprise crew, even the stoic Spock (Leonard Nimoy). However, tribbles jump and screech in disgust when around Klingons. On the station, a Klingon insults the Enterprise, her crew, and her captain James Kirk (William Shatner), provoking a brawl between human and Klingons. Baris is terrified of possible Klingon interference with the grain project, and suspects Jones of being a Klingon agent. Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Spock are concerned that the increasing number of tribbles threaten to consume all the food aboard the Enterprise. Kirk realizes that the tribbles on the station could be a threat to the grain shipment. He is too late, however; when he opens an overhead storage compartment, he is buried chest-deep in grain-gorged tribbles. Spock and McCoy discover that many of the tribbles in the hold are dead or dying, suggesting the grain has been poisoned. Infuriated, Baris vows to see Kirk punished for the fiasco, while an equally outraged Koloth demands an apology from Kirk for what he considers disrespectful treatment of his crew. Their arguments are cut short, however, when Baris's assistant Arne Darvin (Charlie Brill) walks into the room and the tribbles react as if in the presence of a Klingon. McCoy reveals Darvin to be a Klingon disguised as a human; Darvin confesses to having poisoned the grain. Cyrano Jones is ordered to remove the tribbles from the station (a task that Spock estimates will take 17.9 years), or he may face charges for transporting dangerous life forms. Just before the Klingons depart, all the tribbles aboard the Enterprise are transported onto the Klingon vessel by Chief Engineer Scott (James Doohan), where, in his words, "they'll be no tribble at all." ===== In 2364, the new flagship of the United Federation of Planets, Starfleet's , travels to the planet Deneb IV for its maiden voyage. Enterprise is to open relations with the simple Bandi people who have somehow been able to tap immense energy reserves and construct Farpoint Station, much to the surprise of the Federation. En route, the Enterprise is met by an omnipotent being who identifies himself as Q, a member of the Q Continuum and declares that humanity is being put on trial—posing in appearance as a Grand Inquisitor—and deciding that their actions in their upcoming mission will be used to judge their worthiness and determine their fate as a race. Before letting the ship resume its course, Q warns Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) that he is destined to fail. As the Enterprise arrives, the crew members explore the offerings of Farpoint Station and establish relations with their Bandi host, Groppler Zorn (Michael Bell). The crew becomes suspicious when items they desire seem to appear out of nowhere moments later, and are unable to identify the power source that feeds the station. Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), an empath, senses a being with powerful yet despairing emotions nearby, and the crew discover a strange labyrinth beneath the station, but Zorn does not offer an explanation. As the Enterprise crew continues its explorations, a large unknown alien craft enters orbit and begins to fire upon an older Bandi settlement near Farpoint Station, and abducts Zorn. Before Picard orders the ship's phasers to be fired at the craft, Q appears to remind him of humanity's trial and prompts Picard to send an away team to the alien craft. The away team discovers the craft has passages similar to those under Farpoint and they are able to free Zorn. Their actions cause the alien craft to transform into a jellyfish-like space creature, and Picard is able to deduce the mystery of Farpoint Station. He confirms with the apologetic Zorn that the Bandi found a similar lifeform injured on their planet and, while attempting to care for it, they also exploited its ability to synthesize matter to create Farpoint Station. The creature now in orbit is trying to help free its mate by attacking those who hold it captive. Though Q goads Picard into punishing the Bandi, Picard refuses, instead ordering the Enterprise to fire a vivifying energy beam onto Farpoint after the station is evacuated. The beam allows the land-bound creature to transform back into its jellyfish-like form, and it flies into orbit to join its fellow being. As the crew watches the reunion of the alien creatures, Q reluctantly tells Picard that they have succeeded in their test, but hints that they will meet again. ===== The USS Enterprise is on an exploratory mission to leave the galaxy. En route, a damaged ship's recorder of the SS Valiant, an Earth spaceship lost 200 years earlier, is found. Its record is incomplete, but it reveals that the Valiant had been swept from its path by a "magnetic space storm," and that the crew had frantically searched for information about extrasensory perception (ESP) in the ship's library computer. The recording ends with the captain of the Valiant apparently giving a self-destruct order. Captain Kirk decides that they need to know what happened to the Valiant, and the Enterprise crosses the edge of the galaxy. There, it encounters a strange barrier which damages the ship's systems and warp drive, forcing a retreat. At the same time, nine crew members are killed and both helmsman Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) and the ship's psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (Sally Kellerman) are knocked unconscious by the barrier's effect. When he awakens, Mitchell's eyes glow silver, and he begins to display remarkable psychic powers. Mitchell becomes increasingly arrogant and hostile toward the rest of the crew, declaring that he has become godlike, enforcing his desires with fearsome displays of telepathic and telekinetic power. Science Officer Spock comes to believe that the Valiant crew members may have experienced the same phenomenon, and destroyed the ship to keep the power from spreading. He advises Kirk that Mitchell may have to be killed before his powers develop further, but Kirk angrily disagrees. Alarmed that Mitchell may take over the Enterprise, Kirk decides to maroon him at an unmanned lithium-cracking facility on the remote planet of Delta Vega. Once there, the landing party tries to confine Mitchell, but his powers have become too great. He kills navigator Lt. Kelso and escapes by knocking out Kirk and Spock, taking with him Dr. Dehner, who has now developed similar powers. Kirk follows and appeals to Dr. Dehner's humanity for help. Before Mitchell can kill Kirk, the doctor attacks and weakens him. Mitchell fatally injures Dehner, but before he can recover from the effort, Kirk uses a phaser rifle to create a rock slide, killing Mitchell. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk makes a log entry that both Dehner and Mitchell gave their lives "in performance of duty". He explains to Spock that he wants his friend's service record to end positively: "He didn't ask for what happened to him." ===== Shattered Galaxy is set in a post-apocalyptic future. A teleportation device was found buried on Earth's surface, though scientists were not able to master its secrets. Various non-living substances were successfully sent through and retrieved, but when a common rat was inserted into the portal, it activated the artifact in an unexpected way: the device immediately teleported itself, as well as all matter in a 2000 kilometer wide radius around it, to the planet Morgana Prime. The player is one of the survivors of this incident. The planet itself was devoid of sentient life, but robotic war machines were found on its surface, and humans have since learned to control them telepathically (allowing the humans themselves to stay out of harm's way). Humans have since expanded to another planet (server) in the Morgana system, Relic, where wars likewise rage. ===== Plaque in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, noting it as the model for St. Ogg's: one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long- haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.. Spanning a period of 10 to 15 years, the novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings who grow up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss. The mill is situated at the junction of the River Floss and the more minor River Ripple, near the village of St Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. Both the river and the village are fictional. The novel begins in the late 1820s or early 1830s – several historical references place the events in the book after the Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of 1832.Byatt, A.S. Introduction to the Penguin Classics Edition, 1985. (In chapter 3, the character Mr Riley is described as an "auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago", placing the opening events of the novel in approximately 1829, thirty years before the novel's composition in 1859. In chapter 8, Mr Tulliver and Mr Deane discuss the Duke of Wellington and his "conduct in the Catholic Question", a conversation that could only take place after 1828, when Wellington became Prime Minister and supported a bill for Catholic Emancipation). The novel includes many autobiographical elements and reflects the disgrace that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) experienced while in a lengthy relationship with a married man, George Henry Lewes. Bintry Watermill, which depicted Dorlcote Mill in the 1997 TV series. Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist and the story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem (a hunchbacked, sensitive and intellectual friend) and with Stephen Guest (a vivacious young socialite in St Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane) constitute the most significant narrative threads. Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Their relationship is coloured by Maggie's desire to recapture the unconditional love of her father before his death. Tom's pragmatic and reserved nature clashes with Maggie's idealism and fervor for intellectual gains and experience. Various family crises, including bankruptcy, Mr Tulliver's rancorous relationship with Philip Wakem's father, which results in the loss of the mill and Mr Tulliver's untimely death, intensify Tom's and Maggie's differences and highlight their love for each other. To help his father repay his debts, Tom leaves school to enter a life of the business. He eventually finds a measure of success, restoring the family's former estate. Maggie languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, her intellectual aptitude wasted in her socially isolated state. She passes through a period of tough spirituality, during which she renounces the world, motivated by her reading of Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ. This renunciation is tested by a renewed friendship with Philip Wakem, with whom she had developed a friendship while he and Tom were students. Against the wishes of Tom and her father - who both despise the Wakems - Maggie secretly meets with Philip and they go for long walks through the woods. The relationship they forge is founded partly in Maggie's heartfelt pity for broken and neglected human beings but it also serves as an outlet for her intellectual romantic desires. Philip's and Maggie's attraction is, in any case, inconsequential because of the family antipathy. Philip manages to coax a pledge of love from Maggie. When Tom discovers the relationship between the two, he forces his sister to renounce Philip, and with him her hopes of experiencing the broader, more cultured world he represents. Several years pass, during which Mr Tulliver dies. Lucy Deane invites Maggie to come and stay with her and experience the life of cultured leisure that she enjoys. This includes long hours conversing and playing music with Lucy's suitor, Stephen Guest, a prominent St Ogg's resident. Stephen and Maggie, against their rational judgments, become attracted to each other. The complication is compounded by Philip Wakem's friendship with Lucy and Stephen; he and Maggie are reintroduced and Philip's love for her is rekindled, while Maggie, no longer isolated, enjoys the clandestine attentions of Stephen Guest, putting her past profession of love for Philip in question. Lucy intrigues to throw Philip and Maggie together on a short rowing trip down the Floss but Stephen unwittingly takes a sick Philip's place. When Maggie and Stephen find themselves floating down the river, negligent of the distance they have covered, he proposes that they board a passing boat to the next substantial city, Mudport and get married. Maggie is too tired to argue about it. Stephen takes advantage of her weariness and hails the boat. They are taken on board and during the trip to Mudport, Maggie struggles between her love for Stephen and her duties to Philip and Lucy, which were established when she was poor, isolated and dependent on them for what good her life contained. Upon arrival in Mudport, she rejects Stephen and makes her way back to St Ogg's, where she lives for a brief period as an outcast, Stephen having fled to Holland. Although she immediately goes to Tom for forgiveness and shelter, he roughly sends her away, telling her that she will never again be welcome under his roof. Lucy and Philip forgive her, in a moving reunion and in an eloquent letter, respectively. Maggie's brief exile ends when the river floods. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph: "In their death, they were not divided".2 Samuel I:23 ===== Virgil Hawkins is a 14-year-old who lives with his older sister Sharon, and his widowed father Robert in Dakota City. He attends high school with his best friend Richie Foley, and has a crush on a girl named Frieda. He also has a dispute with a bully named Francis Stone, nicknamed "F-Stop." A gang leader named Wade recently helped Virgil, hoping to recruit him, but Virgil is hesitant, as he knows his mother died in an exchange of gunfire between gangs. Wade eventually leads Virgil to a restricted area for a fight against F-Stop's crew, but it was interrupted by police helicopters. During the dispute with the police, chemical containers explode, releasing a gas that causes mutations among the people in the vicinity (this event was later known as "The Big Bang"). As a result, Virgil obtains the ability to create, generate, absorb, and control electricity and magnetism—he takes up the alter-ego of "Static". The gas also gives others in the area their own powers, and several of them become supervillains. The mutated people become meta-humans known as "Bang Babies" and their mutations apparently spread to other people around them. ===== Newspaper reporter Carl Streator has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome, from which his own child had died. Carl discovers that his wife and child had died immediately after he read them a "culling song", or African chant, from a book entitled Poems and Rhymes Around the World. During his investigations into other SIDS cases, he finds that a copy of the book was at the scene of each death. In every case, the book was open to a page that contained the culling song. As Carl learns, the rhyme has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to. Because of the stress of Carl's life, the deadly rhyme becomes unusually powerful, allowing him to kill by only thinking the poem. Carl unintentionally memorizes the rhyme and semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer who makes people die over minor annoyances. Carl turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has also found the rhyme in the same book and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the rhyme, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and destroy the page containing the rhyme. They are joined by Helen's hippie assistant, Mona "Mulberry" Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, a nihilistic environmentalist named Oyster. Carl now must not only deal with the dangers of the rhyme, but with the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes. In addition to tracking down and destroying any copy of the rhyme, the foursome hope to find a "grimoire", a hypothesized spellbook which also contains the rhyme. Carl wants to destroy it, believing that the knowledge contained in it is too dangerous, while the others in his group want to learn what other spells it contains—partly in the hope that there is a spell to resurrect the dead. The group eventually abandons Oyster on the side of the highway after he assaults Helen in an attempt to learn the rhyme. Mona eventually realizes that the datebook Helen had been carrying throughout the trip is the grimoire they had been looking for, written in invisible ink. Helen had acquired it years earlier in the estate of the publisher of Poems and Rhymes Around the World, whom she had killed with the rhyme as revenge for the deaths of her husband and child. Initially, Mona attempts to persuade Helen and Carl to allow her to translate the grimoire, but they are distrustful of her relationship with Oyster, leaving Mona infuriated. Helen, utilizing the resources she obtained from the publisher's estate, translates the book. In addition to the culling song, the grimoire is found to contain other spells. Carl and Helen have a romantic moment where they declare their love for each other, but Carl later is left skeptical of the relationship after Mona convinces him that Helen was using a love spell from the grimoire to control him. After confronting Helen about the accusation, Carl decides to kill Nash, a paramedic who he inadvertently gave knowledge of the rhyme to. Nash uses the rhyme to kill beautiful models in order to have sex with their corpses. After his confrontation with Nash, Carl surrenders himself to the police and is placed in a maximum security prison. During a rectal exam, the police sergeant asks him if "he is up for a quickie"; to Carl's astonishment Helen has used the grimoire to possess the officer's body and helps Carl escape. During this time Oyster steals the grimoire (with the exception of the culling song) with the help of Mona and uses it to possess Helen and commit suicide. With her last amount of energy Helen possesses the police sergeant and joins Carl to kill Mona and Oyster, who have been using the spells to advance their extremist views. ===== The film is set in East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later. Alex Kerner lives with his mother Christiane, his sister Ariane, and her infant daughter Paula. Alex's father purportedly abandoned the family for a mistress in the West in 1978. His mother joined the Socialist Unity Party and devotes her time to advocating for citizens. While Christiane believes socialism can improve Germany and the world, her children are cynical. Alex is disgusted with the celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary and participates in an anti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl but they are separated by the Volkspolizei before they can introduce themselves. Christiane, seeing Alex being arrested and beaten, suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Visiting his mother in hospital Alex finds that her nurse, Lara, is the girl from the demonstration. She and Alex begin dating. Erich Honecker resigns, the borders are opened, the Berlin Wall falls, East Germany holds free elections, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex begins working for a West German firm selling and installing satellite dishes. He befriends a western coworker, aspiring filmmaker Denis Domaschke. Ariane's university closes and she works at Burger King. She begins dating the manager, Rainer, who moves into their apartment. After eight months Christiane awakens from her coma. Her doctor warns that she is still weak and any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex resolves to conceal the profound societal changes from her and maintain the illusion that the German Democratic Republic is just as it was before her coma. He, Ariane, and Lara retrieve their old East German furniture from storage, dress in their old clothes, and repackage new Western food in old East German jars. The deception is increasingly complicated as Christiane witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola banner on an adjacent building. Denis and Alex create fake news broadcasts from old East German news tapes to explain these odd events. Alex and Ariane fail to find where Christiane keeps her life savings (in East German marks) in time to exchange them for West German marks before the deadline. Christiane gets stronger and one day wanders outside while Alex is asleep. She sees her neighbors' furniture stacked in the street, new West German cars for sale, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue of Lenin being flown away by helicopter. Alex and Ariane take her home and show her a fake newscast explaining East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following an economic crisis there. At the family dacha Christiane reveals her own secret: Her husband had fled not for a mistress but because his refusal to join the ruling party had made his life and job increasingly difficult, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. Christiane, fearing the government would take her children if things went wrong, decided to stay. Contrary to what she had told her children their father wrote many letters which she hid. As she declares her wish to see her husband one last time to make amends, she relapses and is taken back to hospital. Alex meets his father, Robert, who has remarried, has two children, and lives in West Berlin. He convinces him to see Christiane one last time. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment, persuading a taxi driver (who is or resembles cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) to act in the false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West. However, unbeknownst to Alex, Lara had already recounted the true political developments to Christiane earlier that day. Christiane reacts fondly to her son's effort without revealing her knowledge. Christiane dies two days later, outliving the German Democratic Republic by three days after German reunification. The family and friends scatter her ashes in the wind using a toy rocket Alex made with his father during childhood. ===== A small group of Sleestak assemble in an underground trap designed to capture a pig-like creature, installing a temporary periscope to spy on the pig. Ta runs into the pig, who chases him away. Meanwhile, Will sharpens a knife at the base of High Bluff while Holly watches Rick on the pendant. Ta arrives and sees Will's knife. He realizes it could be used to kill the pig and tries to steal it, but is caught in the act. As Holly watches her father in the pendant, she sees him fall into the trap and disappear. Rick awakes beneath the opening into which he fell. He finds himself surrounded by Sleestak, realizing he is safe as long as he stays in the pool of light cast by the sun. Will and Holly arrive with rope to retrieve him, but are chased away by Grumpy, whose right leg slips into the cave-in while in pursuit of Spot. Watching the pendant, Holly sees that Rick has been taken to the Lost City. She and Will go to Enik and plead with him to help save Rick. Enik promises to find Rick's location, but not save him. He travels alone to the Library of Skulls, where he sees that Rick has been chained in the Nursery as food for the Sleestak hatchlings. Enik persuades the Council of the Sleestak to trade Rick for a pig like the one they had sought, then returns to the children and explains the situation. He adds that the newborn Sleestak will hatch at sunset and eat their father. Will and Holly return to the trap and cover it in branches and string it with a noose. In search of bait, they convince Ta that the noose is a swing and offer him the knife if he will sit on the swing. As Ta swings, the pig comes and charges, but falls into the trap. Will and Holly shunt the pig toward the Nursery, and the Sleestak leader returns Rick. ===== In the year 2021, when the earth is devastated by continuous climate changes, with sudden waves of frost (it snows in the middle of summer even in Venice), John, a university lecturer, traveling from Poland to Calgary, stops in New York, to sign divorce papers for his wife Elena. This is a beloved champion of ice skating followed by a very large entourage that takes care of her numerous commitments and all external relations. John is detained one night so he can see an important performance from Elena. The next morning he should leave but Elena not only does not sign the divorce papers but begs him to help her. She doesn't give much explanation but he, still in love, indulges her. John discovers that the young woman is the victim of a strange plot hatched by her own entourage. Three clones, perfectly identical to her, were made to replace her. Officially to relieve her of the burden of an activity that is getting heavier, but the fear is that once the training is over, the real Elena can be put aside. Between escapes and returns, the killing of the clones, the betrayal of his own family members, in the end John and Elena go away first by train then on foot towards a safe place to resume a new life together, but they face the cold storms that they are scourging much of the Earth, dying embraced. The narration of the finale is entrusted to Marciello, John's brother, who in flight over the planet is one of the last survivors but is also destined to perish as it is not possible to land. ===== In 1482 Paris, Clopin, a Romani puppeteer, narrates the origin of the titular hunchback. A group of Romani sneak illegally into Paris but are ambushed by Judge Claude Frollo, Paris' Minister of Justice, and his soldiers. A Romani woman in the group attempts to flee with her deformed baby, but Frollo chases and kills her outside Notre Dame. He tries to kill the baby as well, but the cathedral's archdeacon intervenes and accuses Frollo of murdering an innocent woman. To atone for his sin, Frollo reluctantly agrees to raise the deformed child in Notre Dame as his son, naming him "Quasimodo." Twenty years later, in 1502, Quasimodo develops into a kind yet isolated young man, though still deformed and now with a pronounced hunchback, who has lived inside the cathedral his entire life. A trio of living stone gargoyles—Victor, Hugo, and Laverne—serve as Quasimodo's only company and encourage him to attend the annually-held Festival of Fools. Despite Frollo's warnings that he would be shunned for his deformity, Quasimodo attends the festival and is celebrated for his awkward appearance, only to be humiliated by the crowd after two Frollo's guards start a riot. Frollo refuses to help Quasimodo, but Esmeralda, a kind gypsy, intervenes by freeing the hunchback, and uses a magic trick to evade arrest. Frollo confronts Quasimodo and sends him back inside the cathedral. Esmeralda follows Quasimodo inside, only to be followed by Captain Phoebus of Frollo's guard. Phoebus refuses to arrest her for alleged witchcraft inside Notre Dame and instead tells Frollo that she has claimed asylum inside the church; the archdeacon orders Frollo and his men out. Esmeralda finds and befriends Quasimodo, who helps her escape Notre Dame out of gratitude for defending him. She entrusts Quasimodo, a pendant containing a map to the gypsies' hideout, the Court of Miracles. Frollo soon develops lustful feelings for Esmeralda and, upon realizing them, begs the Virgin Mary to save him from her "spell" to avoid eternal damnation. When Frollo discovers that she escaped, he instigates a citywide search for her, which involves bribing and arresting gypsies and setting fire to countless houses in his way. Horrified when Frollo orders him to burn down a house with a family inside, Phoebus openly defies him, and Frollo orders him executed. While fleeing, Phoebus is struck by an arrow and falls into the River Seine, but Esmeralda rescues him and takes him to Notre Dame for refuge. The gargoyles encourage Quasimodo to confess his feelings for Esmeralda, but he is heartbroken to discover she and Phoebus have fallen in love. Frollo returns to Notre Dame later that night and discovers that Quasimodo helped Esmeralda escape. He bluffs to Quasimodo, saying that he knows about the Court of Miracles and intends to attack at dawn with 1,000 men. Using the map Esmeralda gave him, Quasimodo and Phoebus find the court to warn the gypsies, only for Frollo to follow them and capture all the gypsies present. Frollo prepares to burn Esmeralda at the stake after rejecting his advances, but Quasimodo rescues her and brings her to the cathedral. Phoebus releases the gypsies and rallies the Paris citizens against Frollo and his men, who try to break into the cathedral. Quasimodo and the gargoyles pour molten lead onto the streets to ensure no one enters, but Frollo successfully manages to get inside. He pursues Quasimodo and Esmeralda to the balcony where he and Quasimodo fight, and both fall over the edge. Frollo falls to his death in the molten lead, while Phoebus catches Quasimodo on a lower floor. Afterward, Quasimodo comes to accept that Phoebus and Esmeralda are in love, and he gives them his blessing. The two encourage him to leave the cathedral into the outside world, where the citizens hail him as a hero and accept him into society. ===== ===== Jeanne Crain and Ethel Waters Pinky Johnson (Jeanne Crain) returns to the South to visit Dicey (Ethel Waters), the illiterate black laundress grandmother who raised her. Pinky confesses to Dicey that she passed for white while studying to be a nurse in the North. She had also fallen in love with white Dr. Thomas Adams (William Lundigan), who knows nothing about her black heritage. Pinky is harassed by racist local law enforcement while attempting to reclaim money owed to her grandmother. Later two white men try to sexually assault her. Dr. Canady (Kenny Washington), a black physician, asks Pinky to train black students who want to become nurses, but Pinky tells him she plans to return North. Dicey asks her to stay temporarily to care for her ailing, elderly white friend and neighbor, Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore). Pinky has always disliked Miss Em and lumps her in with the other bigots in the area. Pinky relents and agrees to tend Miss Em after learning that she personally cared for Dicey when she had pneumonia. Pinky nurses the strong-willed Miss Em, but does not hide her resentment. As they spend time together, however, she grows to like and respect her patient. Miss Em bequeaths Pinky her stately house and property when she dies, but greedy relative Melba Wooley (Evelyn Varden) challenges the will. Everyone advises Pinky that she has no chance of winning, but something she herself does not fully comprehend makes her go on. Pinky begs retiring Judge Walker (Basil Ruysdael), an old friend of Miss Em's, to defend her in court. With great reluctance, he agrees to take the case. Pinky washes clothes by hand when her grandmother is sick in order to pay court expenses. At the trial, despite hostile white spectators and the non-appearance of the only defense witness, presiding Judge Shoreham unexpectedly rules in Pinky's favor. When Pinky thanks her attorney, he coldly informs her that justice was served, but not the interests of the community in his opinion. Tom, who has tracked Pinky down, wants her to sell the inherited property, resume her masquerade as a white woman, marry him and leave the South, but she refuses, firmly believing that Miss Em intended her to use the house and property for some purpose. As a result, they part. In the end, Pinky establishes "Miss Em's Clinic and Nursery School" within her community. ===== Siva (Madhavan) is based out of Srirangam and he comes to Chennai to join a college. He stays with his sister (Anu Hasan) and her husband (Raghuvaran). Siva does not like his brother-in-law and never talks to him, despite several attempts made by his sister to convince both. Siva meets Priya (Meera Jasmine) during a bus journey, and it is love at first sight for him. He again meets her on a few more occasions and proposes his love, but she warns him to stop following her despite liking him. Siva understands that Priya's brother Bhaskar (Atul Kulkarni) is a local goon, and he attacks anyone who follows his sister. Priya does not want Siva to get beaten by her brother and advises him to stop following her. But Siva is not scared of this and one day, Bhaskar's hit men spot Siva and Priya together. They try to attack Siva, but instead, Siva beats them up, which gives the courage to Priya to love him as he is capable of fighting her brother. Siva's brother-in-law gets to know about the love story and offers help which makes them both talk. Siva's sister feels happy that her husband and brother are in good terms now with each other. One day, Bhaskar comes to attack Siva's sister's family, but in the meantime, Siva threatens to attack Bhaskar's family, thereby frightening him. Priya decides to elope with Siva. Bhaskar chases them along with his men. The couple is tracked down, and the goons start attacking Siva. Now Priya interferes and challenges her brother to attack Siva single-handedly without any of his hit men. He accepts and starts attacking Siva. But Siva retaliates and hits back Bhaskar, who gets severely injured. He takes a sword and puts it next to him, but rather than killing him, he spares him because he is Priya's brother. Bhaskar accepts his defeat and lets his sister go with Siva. The movie ends with Siva and Priya uniting. ===== Movie takes place during the Homeland War in Croatia. The film is based on a true story that happened on the eve in autumn of 1991 in the small Croatian village of Kusonje, near Pakrac. A small group of Croatian soldiers went on a patrol in an improvised armored car that they had made. In Kusonje they get ambushed by Serbs and are forced to hide in a nearby abandoned house that bears the house number 55. Their resistance to the forces of the rebel Serbs, the JNA and Serbian special forces takes almost 24 hours. In parallel the film follows the efforts of their fellow soldiers to pull them out of the encirclement. ===== Steve Jobs is speaking with director Ridley Scott about the creation of the 1984 advertisement for Apple Computer, which introduced the first Macintosh. Jobs is trying to convey his idea that "We're creating a completely new consciousness." Scott is more concerned with the technical aspects of the advertisement. Next in 1997 with Jobs, returning to Apple, and announcing a new deal with Microsoft at the 1997 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve "Woz" Wozniak, is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between Big Brother and the image of Bill Gates on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they "got from there to here", the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple. The earliest flashback is in 1971 and takes place on the U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the student anti-war movements. Teenagers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. They flee and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak, "Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are." Wozniak then comments that "Steve was never like you or me. He always saw things differently. Even when I was in Berkeley, I would see something and just see kilobytes or circuit boards while he'd see karma or the meaning of the universe." Using a similar structure, the film next turns to a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, in the early 1970s, with classmate Steve Ballmer, and Gates's high school friend Paul Allen. As with Wozniak in the earlier segment, Ballmer narrates Gates's story, particularly the moment when Gates discovers the existence of Ed Roberts's MITS Altair causing him to drop out of Harvard. Gates's and Allen's early work with MITS is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the "Homebrew Computer Club". Jobs and Woz develop Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's family home, with the help of Daniel and Elizabeth. Eventually, Mike Markkula invests in the company which allows it to expand and move forward. In 1977, Jobs, Woz, and Markkula demo the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. This event is followed by the development of the IBM-PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981. The film follows Jobs's relationship with his high school girlfriend and early Apple employee, Arlene (a pseudonym for Chrisann Brennan), and the difficulties he had with acknowledging his parental legitimacy of their daughter, Lisa. Around the time she was born, Jobs unveiled his next computer, which he named Lisa. The Lisa was followed in 1984 by the Macintosh, both having been inspired by the Xerox Alto. The main body of the film finally concludes with a 30th birthday toast in 1985 to Steve Jobs shortly before he was forced out of Apple by CEO John Sculley. The film ends in 1997, with the return of 42-year-old Jobs to Apple (after its acquisition of NeXT Computer) and with his announcement at the MacWorld Expo of an alliance between Apple and Microsoft. It also indicates that Jobs is now married, has children, and has reconciled with Lisa. ===== Jim Dixon is a lecturer in medieval history at a red brick university in the English Midlands. He has made an unsure start and, towards the end of the academic year, is concerned about losing his probationary position in the department. In his attempt to be awarded a permanent post he tries to maintain a good relationship with his absent-minded head of department, Professor Welch. To establish his credentials he must also ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, but he eventually discovers that the editor to whom he submitted it has translated it into Italian and passed it off as his own. Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again "girlfriend", Margaret Peel, a fellow lecturer who is recovering from a suicide attempt in the wake of a broken relationship with another man. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon's sense of duty and pity while keeping him in an ambiguous and sexless limbo. While she is staying with Professor Welch, he holds a musical weekend that seems to offer an opportunity for Dixon to advance his standing among his colleagues. The attempt goes wrong, however, and the drunken Dixon drops a lighted cigarette on the bed, burning a hole in the sheets. During the same weekend Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welch's son, Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After a bad start Dixon realises that he is attracted to Christine, who is far less pretentious than she initially appears. Dixon's growing closeness to Christine upsets Bertrand, who is using her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle and get a job from him. Then Dixon rescues Christine from the university's annual dance after Bertrand treats her offhandedly, and takes her home in a taxi. The pair kiss and make a date for later, but Christine admits that she feels guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrand's back and about Dixon's supposed relationship with Margaret. The two decide not to see each other again, but when Bertrand calls on Dixon to "warn him off the grass" he cannot resist the temptation to quarrel with Bertrand, until they fight. The novel reaches its climax during Dixon's public lecture on "Merrie England". Having attempted to calm his nerves by drinking too much, he caps his uncertain performance by denouncing the university culture of arty pretentiousness and passes out. Welch lets Dixon know privately that his employment will not be extended, but Christine's uncle offers Dixon the coveted job of assisting him in London. Later Dixon meets Margaret's ex-boyfriend, who reveals that he had not been her fiancé, as she had claimed. Comparing notes, the two realise that the suicide attempt was faked as a piece of neurotic emotional blackmail. Feeling free of Margaret at last, Dixon responds to Christine's phoned request to see her off as she leaves for London. There he learns from her that she is leaving Bertrand after being told that he was having an affair with the wife of one of Dixon's former colleagues. They decide to leave for London together, and then walk off arm in arm, outraging the Welches as they pass on the street. ===== Julien Vercel, a real estate agent in the south of France, is hunting for ducks by the lake, while a man named Massoulier, who hunts in the same area, is shot dead. Julien returns to his office unaware but is soon questioned by the police. He learns that he is the main suspect, because when he left the hunt, he saw Massoulier's parked car, turned its lights off to save the battery and closed one of the door upon which he left fingerprints. Furthermore, the deceased Massoulier and Julien's wife, Marie-Christine had a secret relationship. When he confronts his wife later at home, she nonchalantly confirms her adultery. While Marie-Christine hides, Julien is taken to the police station for a second interview but is released with the help of his lawyer, Clement who drives him home. In the meantime, Marie-Christine has been murdered. Julien is now the prime suspect. In an effort to prove his innocence he wants to go to Nice, where his wife previously worked, but his secretary, Barbara Becker, argues that she should do the research on his behalf. She does so cunningly when her boss falls asleep in the office. Barbara is secretly in love with her boss, whereas Julien seems to have been indifferent to her. While Julien hides in his real estate office instead of surrendering to the police, Barbara, who travels to Nice, starts investigating the past life of Marie-Christine. She learns that Marie-Christine's real name was Josiane Kerbel, that she has been married to a gambler, and that she lost a great deal of money gambling on horses. She married Vercel only to avoid drowning in debts. The tracks lead Barbara and Julien to a movie theater, then to a night club, and from there to the dark labyrinths of the prostitution area. Barbara and Julien mistakenly assault a suspicious man, believing him to be the real killer. It is revealed that he is, in fact, Massoulier’s brother. At the theater, a box office clerk, former lover of Massoulier, who viciously accused Julien of murder on the phone, is stabbed to death. Barbara, at her wit’s end, goes to see Julien’s lawyer and finally find the truth : Clement and Marie-Christine were lovers. He killed Massoulier because Marie-Christine asked him to, he killed her because she did not wanted to divorce Julien, he killed the clerk because she knew everything and he would have killed Julien after that. Barbara and a savvy police officer work together to set a trap for the lawyer. Clement, who smells the trap based on the sound recording at the last minute, commits suicide in a phone booth after having admitted everything on the phone, when he sees the approaching cops. Julien and Barbara finally get married by Massoulier's brother who is a clergyman. ===== ===== The story takes place during a new ice age. The camera tracks a blank, frozen, seemingly deserted tundra until two blurry, distant figures can just be made out. They are the seal hunter Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant companion, Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), the daughter of one of Essex's late hunting partners. They are traveling north, where Essex hopes to reunite with his brother, Francha (Thomas Hill). Essex and Vivia eventually find Francha's apartment, but the reunion is short-lived. While Essex is out buying firewood, a gambler named Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson) throws a bomb into Francha's apartment, killing everyone inside, including Vivia. Essex sees Redstone fleeing the scene and chases him to the sector's "Information Room." Essex witnesses the murder of Redstone by an Italian gambler named St. Christopher (Vittorio Gassman). When St. Christopher leaves, Essex searches Redstone's pockets and finds a piece of paper with a list of names: Francha, Redstone, Goldstar, Deuca, St. Christopher, and Ambrosia. Puzzled by the mystery, Essex discovers that Redstone had previously checked into the Hotel Electra, a gambling resort in another sector. He visits the hotel and assumes Redstone's identity. Immediately after checking in, Essex is given an unexpected welcome by Grigor (Fernando Rey), who is the dealer in the casino. Insisting that he means no harm, Grigor invites Essex (as "Redstone") to the casino, where gamblers are now heavily involved in a "Quintet" tournament. While there he meets Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), who always assumes the role of the "sixth player" in the game. Essex is unaware that the current Quintet tournament is a fight for the survival of the fittest. Those who are "killed" in game are executed in real life. Grigor and St. Christopher are aware that Essex is not the real Redstone, so they ignore him and focus on the other players. Goldstar (David Langton) is the first killed, followed by Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), until the only two players left are St. Christopher and Ambrosia. Ambrosia, however, insists that Essex be counted as a player in the game since he has assumed Redstone's identity. Grigor agrees and informs St. Christopher that he has to eliminate Essex before he can face off against Ambrosia. Essex and St. Christopher have a showdown outside the city, where St. Christopher is killed by falling into a rupture of the ice sheet. Essex returns to Francha's apartment and finds the same list that Redstone had. Ambrosia follows Essex to the apartment. Essex slits her throat moments before her attempt to slit his throat. Returning to the Hotel Electra to cremate Ambrosia's body, Essex confronts Grigor to demand his "prize", since he was the winner of Quintet. Grigor reveals that the only prize is the thrill of the game itself. Grigor insists he stay and participate in future tournaments, but a disgusted Essex condemns Quintet and leaves the hotel for good. The film ends with Essex taking a long walk out into the barren distance. ===== Two professors create an advanced cybernetic brain, which they call "Bossy." Bossy can "optimise your mind...and give you eternal youth into the bargain, but only if you're ready to abandon all your favourite prejudices."Rotten Apple, by Dave Langford, from SFX #168, April 2008, archived at ansible.co.uk However, when given the choice of admitting they were wrong and therefore being able to benefit from Bossy's abilities, most people would rather be right, and Bossy's ability to confer immortality is almost made ineffective by humanity's fear of "her." ===== The USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Kirk, is investigating a loss of communication with a line of Earth outposts near the Romulan Neutral Zone, formed under the terms of the peace treaty that ended the Earth-Romulan War a century earlier. Because there were no visual communications at that time, the two races have never seen each other. While Kirk officiates at the wedding of Lieutenant Tomlinson and Ensign Martine, Outpost 4 comes under attack. The Enterprise comes to Outpost 4's aid and contacts the base commander, Hansen, who reveals he is the only survivor of an attack by an unknown enemy with weapons of immense power. A single shot destroyed the base's shields and killed the phaser crew. As they speak, the enemy ship reappears. The ship fires before disappearing again. The shot destroys the outpost and kills Hansen. The ship's sensors locate the attacker, which remains invisible. Kirk surmises that the attacker is equipped with a cloaking device. A coded message from the intruder provides a view through one of its internal cameras, revealing humanoids with an appearance like Vulcans. Lieutenant Stiles, the navigator, son of a service family that lost several members in the Earth–Romulan War, begins to question the loyalty of the Enterprise half-Vulcan first officer, Mr. Spock. During a discussion of the Romulan ship's capabilities, Stiles suggests the Enterprise attack the vessel before it can reach the Neutral Zone. Spock agrees; he reasons that if the Romulans are in fact an offshoot of the Vulcan species and have retained the martial philosophy of the Vulcans' ancient past, they would surely take advantage of any perceived weakness. A cat-and-mouse game ensues. The Enterprise is faster and more maneuverable, while the Romulan ship has a cloaking device and immensely destructive plasma torpedoes. However, the range of these torpedoes is limited, and firing one requires so much power that the ship must decloak first. When the Romulans head into the tail of a comet, Kirk tries to head it off: when the Romulan ship emerges on the other side, it will be visible and can be targeted. However, when a subordinate manning the scanner reports that the Enterprise is gone, the commander guesses Kirk's plan, and takes evasive maneuvers. The Enterprise, waiting on the other side of the comet, sees nothing and Kirk realizes what happened. He orders phasers to be fired blindly before the Romulans can counterattack. The Romulans, almost beaten, plant a nuclear weapon amidst jettisoned debris. When Spock detects a "metal-cased object", Kirk orders a point-blank phaser shot that detonates the device. The Enterprise is shaken by the blast and much of the phaser crew are incapacitated, requiring Stiles to act as backup. Kirk orders operations to work at minimal power to exaggerate the apparent damage and lure the Romulans in for a kill shot. Although the Romulan commander suspects Kirk's trap, Decius, a politically well-connected member of the command crew pressures him to attack the Enterprise. When the Romulan ship decloaks to launch a torpedo, Kirk tries to spring his trap, but a coolant leak in the phaser room incapacitates Stiles and Tomlinson. Spock rescues Stiles and fires the phasers in time to mortally wound the Romulan ship. Kirk hails the Romulans and at last communicates directly with his opponent, offering to beam aboard survivors. The Romulan commander says that it is not the Romulan way to be taken prisoner and triggers his ship's self-destruct system. The battle's casualties include Lt. Tomlinson. Kirk goes to the chapel to provide some comfort to a grieving Ensign Martine. ===== The film centers on Étienne, who lives in Rouen with his mother and grandmother and intends to take part in the national figure skating championship. For his 16th birthday, his grandmother gives him a digital camcorder as a present, which he starts to use immediately (supplying the introductory scenes of the film). Étienne films anything and everything around him – his family, his teacher Laurent, Ludovic, his best friend, himself figure skating, the sea, steep cliffs. As for Ludovic and his geography teacher, it soon becomes apparent that his obsession with them is grounded in more than just artistic pursuits. Étienne's homosexuality becomes more and more clear both to him and the audience over the course of the film. Even though Étienne is determined to make this year "the year of love", the year when everything turns around for him, things do not go as well as anticipated. He makes a blunder in his figure skating performance and only achieves second place. And when he starts, very carefully, to talk to Ludovic about the possibility of two men being in love, Ludovic runs away. In the final minutes of the film, the purpose of Étienne's video diary gets clear: Feeling he has failed in what he set out to do and being deeply hurt by Ludovic's resentment, Étienne decides to jump from the cliff and leave the camcorder (which he sets up to film his suicide) behind to explain to his family what he went through. Luckily, a stranger walks by at that moment and notices the boy close to the cliff and his camera nearby. The final scene shows the stranger and Étienne in bed after sex, with Étienne seeming truly happy for the first time. ===== On October 30, Devil's Night in Detroit, Sergeant Albrecht is at the scene of a crime where Shelly Webster has been beaten and raped, and her fiancé, Eric Draven, lies dead on the street after having been stabbed, shot, and thrown out the window. The couple had planned on getting married the following day, Halloween. As he leaves for the hospital with Shelly, Albrecht meets a young girl, Sarah, who says that she is their friend, and that they take care of her. Albrecht tells her that Shelly is dying. One year later, a crow taps on the grave stone of Eric Draven; Eric awakens and climbs out of his grave. Meanwhile, a low level street gang, headed by T-Bird, is setting fires in the city. Eric goes to his old apartment and finds it derelict. He has flashbacks of the murders, remembering that those responsible were T-Bird and his gang: Tin Tin, Funboy and Skank. Eric soon discovers that any wounds he receives heal immediately. Guided by the crow, he sets out to avenge his and Shelly's murderers by killing the perpetrators. The crow helps Eric locate Tin Tin; Eric kills him and takes his coat. He goes to the pawn shop where Tin Tin pawned Shelly's engagement ring. Eric forces the owner, Gideon, to return the ring and blows up the shop with gasoline, letting Gideon live so that he can warn the others. Eric finds Funboy with Sarah's mother, Darla. After killing Funboy, Eric talks to Darla, making her realize that Sarah needs her to be a good mother. He visits Albrecht, explaining who he is and why he is here. Albrecht tells him what he knows about Shelly's death and that he watched as she suffered for thirty hours before dying. Eric touches Albrecht and feels the pain Shelly felt during those hours. Sarah and her mother begin to repair their strained relationship. Sarah goes to Eric's apartment and tells him that she misses him and Shelly. Eric explains that, even though they cannot be friends anymore, he still cares about her. As T-Bird and Skank stop at a convenience store to pick up supplies, Eric arrives and kidnaps T-Bird. Skank follows the pair and witnesses Eric kill T-Bird; he escapes and goes to Top Dollar, a top-level criminal who controls all the street gangs in the city. Top Dollar and his lover/half-sister Myca, who keeps a murder victim's eye as a souvenir, have become aware of Eric's actions through various reports from witnesses. Top Dollar holds a meeting with his associates where they discuss new plans for their Devil's Night criminal activities. Eric arrives looking for Skank. A gun fight ensues, killing nearly everyone there, and Eric kills Skank. Top Dollar, Myca and Grange, Top Dollar's right-hand man, escape. Eric, having finished his quest, returns to his grave. Sarah says goodbye to him, and he gives her Shelly's engagement ring. She is abducted by Grange, who takes her into the church where Top Dollar and Myca are waiting. Through the crow, Eric realizes what has happened and goes to rescue her. Grange shoots the crow as it flies into the church, making Eric lose his invincibility. Myca grabs the wounded crow, intending to take its mystical power. Albrecht arrives, wanting to pay his respects to Eric, just after Eric is shot and wounded. Top Dollar grabs Sarah and climbs the bell tower as a fight ensues, and Albrecht kills Grange. The crow escapes Myca's grip, claws her eyes, and sends her down the bell tower to her death. When Albrecht is wounded, Eric climbs to the roof of the church on his own. There, Top Dollar admits ultimate responsibility for what happened to Eric and Shelly. In their fight, Eric gives Top Dollar the thirty hours of pain he absorbed from Albrecht; the sensation sends Top Dollar over the roof of the church to his death. Sarah accompanies Albrecht to the hospital, and Eric is reunited with Shelly at their graves. The crow, carrying Shelly's engagement ring in its beak, lands on Eric's grave and drops the ring into Sarah's hand. ===== Perry Nelson, a normal 1939 engineer and Navy Pilot, is driving his automobile when he has a blowout, skids over a cliff, and wakes up in the year 2086. Though he was apparently killed in the summer, he re-appears in extremely cold snow, nearly dies again by freezing, and is saved by a fur-clad woman named Diana. The exact circumstances of his being killed and reborn after a century and half are never explained. The later 21st Century people seem strangely incurious, showing little interest in how he had come to be among them and rather take his appearance for granted and proceed to explain to him the details of the social and political set-up of their world. =====