From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The Rebel Angels follows several faculty and staff of the fictional College of St. John and Holy Ghost, affectionately referred to as "Spook". The story, like many of Davies', is notable for very strongly drawn and memorable characters: * The defrocked monk Parlabane, a brilliant and sinister sodomite with a thundering voice and voracious appetite; * Anglican priest and professor of New Testament Greek Simon Darcourt; * Maria Theotoky, a graduate student researching Rabelais; * Clement Hollier, a frazzled and absentminded professor; and * Urquhart McVarish, a greedy and manipulative counterpoint to Hollier. The novel's narration alternates between Theotoky's and Darcourt's points of view. Darcourt is attempting to write a history of the university based on Aubrey's Brief Lives. Much of the story is set in motion by the death of eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish. Hollier, McVarish, and Darcourt are the executors of Cornish's complicated will, which includes material that Hollier wants for his studies. The deceased's nephew Arthur Cornish, who stands to inherit the fortune, is also a character. ===== In the 23rd century, while colonizing new planets, humans have encountered a hostile non-technological insectoid species known as Arachnids, but commonly referred to as "Bugs". The Bugs appear to be little more than savage, unrelenting killing machines, though there are suggestions that they were provoked by the intrusion of humans into their habitats. In the United Citizen Federation, citizenship is earned by performing activities such as military service, which grants individuals opportunities prohibited to basic civilians. After graduating from high school in Buenos Aires, John "Johnny" Rico, his girlfriend Carmen Ibanez, and psychic best friend Carl Jenkins enlist in the Federal Service, despite Rico's parents' disapproval of military service. Carmen becomes a spaceship pilot, while Carl joins Military Intelligence. Rico enlists in the Mobile Infantry and is surprised to find Isabelle "Dizzy" Flores, his fellow ex-student, has deliberately transferred to his squad. In Mobile Infantry basic training, Career Sergeant Zim ruthlessly trains the recruits. Rico befriends fellow cadet Ace Levy and is later promoted to squad leader. He subsequently receives a Dear John letter from Carmen, as she desires a career with the fleet and now serves under Rico's high-school sports rival, Zander Barcalow. Following a live-fire training incident that kills one of Rico's squad members and causes another to quit out of guilt, Rico is demoted and flogged. He resigns and calls his parents to ask them if he can return home, but rescinds his resignation after an asteroid, reported to be launched by the Arachnids, obliterates Buenos Aires, killing his parents and millions of others. An invasion force is deployed to Klendathu, the Arachnids' home planet, but the operation severely underestimates the Arachnids and is a total disaster. Rico is severely wounded and mistakenly reported KIA. After recovering, he, Ace, and Dizzy are reassigned to the "Roughnecks", an elite unit commanded by Lt. Jean Rasczak, Rico's former high-school teacher. He quickly gains the respect of his peers and is promoted to the rank of Corporal after taking out a tanker Bug. His relationship with Dizzy continues to grow, and they have sex during their night on Tango Urilla. The Roughnecks respond to a distress call from Planet "P", where they reconnoiter an outpost that has been devastated by Bugs. They soon realize that the distress call is a trap, and the Arachnids swarm the outpost. Rico, now an acting sergeant, euthanizes a mortally wounded Rasczak after a buried Bug bites off his legs. Dizzy is killed, but the surviving Roughnecks are rescued by Carmen and Zander. Rico and Carmen encounter Carl, now a high-ranking intelligence officer, at Dizzy's funeral. Carl reveals that there is reason to believe an intelligent "Brain Bug" is directing the other Bugs and has been learning how to fight humans. He field- promotes Rico to lieutenant and gives him command of the Roughnecks, ordering the Mobile Infantry units under his control to return to "P" in an attempt to capture the Brain Bug. The fleet encounters unexpected heavy fire from the Bugs and Carmen's ship is destroyed. Carmen and Zander's escape pod crashes into a Bug tunnel system near Rico. They are surrounded by Bugs, and a Brain Bug uses its proboscis to pierce Zander's skull and eat his brain. As it is about to do the same to Carmen, she cuts off its proboscis with a knife. Rico, Watkins and Ace arrive and threaten the Bugs with a small nuclear bomb, which the Brain Bug recognizes. They flee while the Brain Bug makes its escape. Arachnids pursue them and Watkins, mortally wounded, sacrifices himself by detonating the bomb to enable the others to escape. After returning to the surface, they find that former Sergeant Zim, who had requested a demotion to private so that he could serve at the front, has captured the Brain Bug. Carl tells Rico and Carmen that the humans will soon be victorious now that Military Intelligence can study the Brain Bug. Carl mentally scans the Bug and reveals that it is afraid, to the cheers of the troops. A propaganda clip shows Carmen, Ace, and Rico as model servicemen, encouraging viewers to enlist in the armed forces. ===== A manhole opens at night in an empty street and out climbs Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) in a dinner suit. He gets into a Rolls-Royce and drives home. There, he prepares seven envelopes, each containing an American crime paperback called The Golden Fleece, halves of ten £5-notes and an unsigned invitation from “Co-operative Removals Limited” to lunch at the Cafe Royal. The envelopes are sent to former army officers, each in desperate or humiliating circumstances. When they all turn up looking for the other halves of the £5-notes which are handed out, Hyde asks their opinion of the novel which is about a robbery. They show little enthusiasm but Hyde then reveals each person's misdemeanours. Hyde has no criminal record but holds a grudge for being made redundant by the army after a long career. He intends to rob a bank using the team's skills, with equal shares of £100,000 or more for each man. The gang meet under the guise of an amateur dramatic society rehearsing Journey’s End to discuss the plan before moving into Hyde’s house and living a military regimen of duties and fines for being out of line. Hyde knows that a million pounds in used notes is regularly delivered to a City of London bank and has details of the delivery. They raid an army training camp in Dorset for arms and supplies. Hyde, Mycroft, Porthill and Race distract soldiers by posing as senior officers on an unscheduled food inspection. The others steal weapons while posing as telephone repairmen, speaking in Irish accents to divert suspicion to the IRA. Hyde has explained the reasoning behind this ruse by stating the one nationality to whom the British will never give the benefit of the doubt is the Irish. The gang rent a warehouse to prepare. Race steals vehicles including cars and a truck which are fitted with false number plates. They are disturbed by a passing policeman who offers to keep an eye on their premises as he patrols. In Hyde’s basement, the gang trains with maps and models. On the eve of the operation, Hyde destroys the plans and recalls his former military glory. The robbery is bloodless and precise. Using smoke bombs, sub-machine guns, and radio jamming equipment, the gang raids the bank, near St Paul’s. The money is seized without serious injury and the robbers escape. At Hyde’s house, celebrations are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Hyde’s old friend, Brigadier “Bunny” Warren (Robert Coote), who drunkenly recalls the old days. One by one the members leave carrying suitcases filled with notes. Then the telephone rings; Hyde is told that police and soldiers surround the house. Leading the police is Superintendent Wheatlock (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) from whom Hyde learns the flaw in his plan. A small boy outside the bank had been collecting car registration (licence plate) numbers, a common hobby at the time. The police, discovering the number, found it had been noted by the policeman who visited the warehouse. The policeman had also noted the number of Hyde's own car. Thus a link was established between the robbery and Hyde. Hyde is escorted to a police van in which the rest are "all present and correct", each having been captured as he left the house. ===== William Thacker owns an independent travel book store in Notting Hill, London. His wife has recently left him for another man who he thinks looked exactly like Harrison Ford and he has a silly roommate named Spike. He meets Hollywood actress Anna Scott when she enters the shop incognito. Later, in the street, Will accidentally spills his drink on her, and she goes to his house to change. Upon leaving she impulsively kisses him. She later invites Will to visit her at the Ritz Hotel, but, mistaken for a reporter and ushered into a press junket for Anna's new film, he pretends to interview her and the other cast members as a writer from Horse & Hound magazine. Anna asks to be his date to his sister's birthday party that evening, where she gets on well with Will's friends and sister. They later climb a fence and enter a private neighborhood park, where Anna again kisses Will. The next night, they go on a date; at a restaurant they overhear a group of men disparaging Anna because of her screen image. Will walks over and criticises them, and Anna calmly puts them down. Anna invites Will to her hotel room, but their plans change when he discovers that her movie star boyfriend, of whom he was unaware, has unexpectedly arrived from America to be with her. Will pretends to be a hotel worker in order to avoid detection. Will's friends try to help him get over his disappointment, and over the next six months they set him up on a series of dates, including one with a fruitarian. But he finds it impossible to forget Anna. Much of the filming took place on Portobello Road One day, a distraught Anna appears at Will's doorstep, in need of a place to hide from a tabloid scandal. She apologizes for the hotel incident, telling Will that her relationship with her boyfriend is in the past. They enjoy spending time together and discovering their shared interests, including Will's print of Marc Chagall's 1950 painting La Mariée. They sleep together that night, but their bliss is short-lived when the reporters, tipped off by Will's housemate Spike, besiege Will's house and get pictures of him, Anna, and Spike half- dressed at the front door. Furious, Anna blames Will for the situation, declares that she regrets their time together, and leaves. Seasons pass and Will remains miserable. At a dinner with his friends, he discovers that Anna, by this time an Oscar winner, is back in London making a film. He visits her location shoot, where Anna sees him and invites him past security so that he can watch the filming with the intention of them talking privately afterwards. Despite realising that the film is a period Henry James rendition (something he had suggested), Will overhears her dismiss him to a co-star, and leaves without further contact. The next day, Anna comes to the bookshop with a wrapped gift, and asks if she can see him again. He tells her what he overhead at the movie set. She explains that she didn't want to discuss her private life with an indiscreet co-star. He accepts this explanation, but rejects her out of fear of being hurt again. Will meets his friends and sister in a restaurant with the opened gift: Chagall's original La Mariée ("The Bride"). They act supportively, half-heartedly backing up his decision. Spike, however, declares Will a "daft prick," and Will realises his mistake. They race across London to Anna's hotel, where they learn that she has checked out and is holding a press conference at the Savoy Hotel. Will arrives to hear Anna's publicist tell the crowd that Anna will be taking a year off and will be leaving the UK that night. Some reporters discuss "Thacker" the guy Anna had been photographed with on her last trip. Anna says they are just friends. Will, again pretending to be a reporter, asks Anna if she'd consider being more than friends with Thacker if he admitted he'd been a "daft prick" and begged her forgiveness. She says she would. After exchanging a few glances with Will, Anna announces that she will be staying in Britain "indefinitely," and the press is abuzz, realising that Will is actually Anna's love interest. The final scenes show Anna and Will marrying, attending a Hollywood red carpet event, and spending quiet time in the park they had visited on their first date. Anna is now pregnant. ===== By 2021, Earth's nations are at (relative) peace, and even the erstwhile poorer nations are beginning to enjoy stable political and economic regimes. The invention of a super-strong material named Bulerite is partially responsible for this, which enables Earth to, at last, initiate a burgeoning space industry. However, events unfold which result in the first "Macrolife" colony leaving the solar system for the nearer stars. ===== The novel is split into three main sections. (I) Sunspace: 2021 ... The Bulero family/corporation, inventors and marketers of Bulerite which is used to build the huge cities which house the Earth's (and colonies) teeming millions, are at the pinnacle of their influence and wealth. Unfortunately, it is discovered - too late - that the substance is inherently flawed, in that after a time it destabilizes and self-destructs with spectacular results. Gradually, all the Bulerite on Earth, and that on and in the space colonies throughout the solar system becomes unstable, causing destruction and megadeath. The devastation precipitates a war with Earth's colonies on the outer planets, with whom a struggle for control of the solar system existed. Many nuclear-tipped missiles explode on Earth which adds to the Bulerite destabilization. The combination of the Bulerite and the nuclear explosions cause a mysterious shroud of radiation to envelop the Earth. All humans on the planet are assumed dead. Before this final devastation, many refugees manage to escape to the Moon, Mars, and Asterome, an orbiting colony situated inside a hollowed-out asteroid at the Moon's L5 point. Included amongst the refugees are most of Bulero family who end up on Asterome. The leadership of Asterome are now faced with several severe challenges: Handling the influx of refugees, removing any Bulerite used in the construction of Asterome, consolidating their resources now that the Earth can no longer supply them with finished goods, and preventing increasingly aggressive attempts by the outer colonies and remnants of Earth's government to take control and plunder Asterome. When a means of providing Asterome with propulsion is discovered, the leadership of Asterome decide that leaving the solar system is the best option available to ensure Asterome's short-term survival as well as proving a way for Mankind to survive should the solar system be destroyed by the after-effects of Bulerite and war. After overcoming attempts to stop them, Asterome finally manages to leave the solar system, heading for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star. (II) Macrolife: 3000 ... A thousand years later, Asterome has grown by adding concentric layers of shells around itself, and is now host to millions of humans and Humanity II cybernetic organisms. The invention of engines that can surpass the speed of light has made it possible for the colony to explore far and wide; the second part finds them studying a planet orbiting the star Praesepe over 500 light years away. John Bulero, a young clone of one of the original Bulero's, decides to see what life is like on a planet, and lives for a while amongst the natives, descendants of a human colony that has reverted to savagery. His experiences, while tragic, enable him to grow as an individual. Eventually, Asterome travels back to the solar system to see how events there have unfolded. Their arrival coincides with the first time humans meet an intelligent alien species which is itself experimenting with Macrolife, and, together, the species begin a process of intermingling and further expansion into the universe. (III) The Dream of Time ... A hundred billion years have passed, and Macrolife is now the dominant culture throughout the universe, which is, at this stage, beginning to contract into its final death throes. Most life is in the form of a Hyperpersonal Aggregate; an amalgam of individuals of all kinds. The aggregate re-individualizes John Bulero again, to help them solve the problem of how Macrolife can survive beyond the death of the Universe. Eventually, they discover many Macrolife survivors from many previous cycles of the universe, who help them to conquer time itself. ===== Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday. It is a legacy from her uncle, a corrupt British army officer who served in India. The diamond is of great religious significance and extremely valuable, and three Hindu priests have dedicated their lives to recovering it. The story incorporates elements of the legendary origins of the Hope Diamond (or perhaps the Orloff Diamond or the Koh-i-Noor diamond). Rachel's eighteenth birthday is celebrated with a large party at which the guests include her cousin Franklin Blake. She wears the Moonstone on her dress that evening for all to see, including some Indian jugglers who have called at the house. Later that night the diamond is stolen from Rachel's bedroom, and a period of turmoil, unhappiness, misunderstandings and ill luck ensues. Told by a series of narratives from some of the main characters, the complex plot traces the subsequent efforts to explain the theft, identify the thief, trace the stone and recover it. ===== Douzi, a boy endowed with feminine features, is abandoned by his prostitute mother to an all-boys Peking opera troupe supervised by Master Guan. He befriends Shitou, a student of the troupe. A few years later in 1938, a teenage Douzi is trained to play dan (female roles), while Shitou learns jing (painted face male roles). When practicing the play "Dreaming of the World Outside the Nunnery", Douzi accidentally substitutes the line "I am by nature a girl, not a boy" with "I am by nature a boy, not a girl," and is disciplined by the instructors. Douzi along with another student, Laizi, attempt to run away, but Douzi decides to pursue acting seriously after witnessing an opera performance. Upon returning, they find the whole troupe being punished for their desertion, and Douzi is beaten. As a result, Laizi hangs himself. An agent who provides funding for opera plays comes to the troupe to seek potentials. When Douzi repeats the same mistake in front of the agent, Shitou commands him to start over. Douzi finally whispers, "I am by nature a girl, not a boy". He delivers the entire monologue successfully, to the joy of the troupe, and secures the agent. The troupe is invited to perform for eunuch Zhang. Shitou and Douzi are brought to Zhang's house where they find a finely crafted sword, which Shitou promises to one day gift to Douzi, as the hero would do for his concubine. Zhang asks to meet Douzi in his room and sexually assaults him. Douzi does not mention this to anyone, but Shitou implicitly knows what happened. On their way home, Douzi adopts an abandoned baby, who later comes under Master Guan's training. Memorabilia from the film exhibited at "The Art of Leslie Cheung's Movie Images", April 2013, Hong Kong Central Library. Years go by, Douzi and Shitou become Peking opera stars under stage names Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou, respectively. Their signature performance is the play Farewell My Concubine, where Dieyi plays the concubine Consort Yu and Xiaolou plays the hero Xiang Yu. Their fame attracts the attention of Yuan Shiqing, a reputable person who attends their performances. Yuan Shiqing also possesses a sword similar to the one that Dieyi and Xiaolou found, which he gives to Dieyi. The adult Dieyi has an unrequited love for Xiaolou, but when Xiaolou marries Juxian, a headstrong courtesan at an upscale brothel, Dieyi and Xiaolou's relationship begins to fall apart. The love triangle between Dieyi, Xiaolou, and Juxian leads to jealousy and betrayal, which is further complicated by the successive political upheavals following the Second Sino-Japanese War. When Master Guan dies, the abandoned baby, now Xiao Si, comes under Dieyi's training to continue learning dan roles. When the communist forces win the civil war, Xiao Si becomes an avid follower of the new government. Dieyi's addiction to opium negatively affects his performances, but he ultimately rehabilitates with the help of Xiaolou and Juxian. Xiao Si nurtures resentment against Dieyi because of his rigorous teachings and usurps his role in Farewell My Concubine during one performance, without anyone telling Dieyi beforehand. Devastated by the betrayal, Dieyi secludes himself and refuses to reconcile with Xiaolou. As the Cultural Revolution continues, the entire opera troupe is put on a struggle session by the Red Guards where, under pressure, Dieyi and Xiaolou accuse each other of counterrevolutionary acts. Dieyi also tells the guards that Juxian was a prostitute. To protect himself from further prosecution, Xiaolou swears that he does not love her and will "make a clean break" with her. Juxian is heartbroken and returns the sword to Dieyi before committing suicide. Afterward, Xiao Si is caught by the Red Guards when he is singing Consort Yu's lines to the mirror alone in a practice room. In 1977, Dieyi and Xiaolou reunite, seeming to have mended their relationship. They once again practice Farewell My Concubine; Xiaolou begins with the line "I am by nature a boy," to which Dieyi makes the same mistake of finishing with "I am not a girl." As they finish their performance, Dieyi takes Xiaolou's sword and cuts his throat, paralleling the concubine's final act in the opera. ===== The cartoon opens with images of explosions, gunfire, and heavy artillery; one character even fires into the camera. It is World War I, and the ever-cheerful Bosko is a doughboy eating down in a trench. Enemy fire destroys his meal, and later a picture of his girlfriend, Honey. Bosko shows a rare moment of anger, but is quickly cheered up by a fellow soldier. The two begin to dance, only to be interrupted by more gunfire. Bosko finally decides to fight back and downs an enemy bomber (actually a pelican) by using a fellow soldier as a cannon. A friendly hippopotamus is shot down by heavy artillery, which Bosko destroys with a pair of longjohns-turned-catapult. He then saves the wounded soldier by unzipping his navel and retrieving the shell inside. The projectile explodes anyway, turning the already black-faced Bosko even blacker and prompting him to exclaim "Mammy!" à la Al Jolson. ===== Ning Choi-san, a timid debt collector, goes to a rural town to collect debts but fails and runs out of money. He has no choice but to take shelter in a deserted temple in the forest on the outskirts of the town. That night, he meets a beautiful and alluring young maiden, Nip Siu-sin, and falls in love with her. In the morning, however, after he recalls that night's events, he becomes increasingly fearful and superstitious because Yin Chik-ha, a Taoist priest, told him that the people he saw in the temple are ghosts. That night, he returns to the temple and confirms his theory that Nip is actually a ghost. Nip tells Ning her story of how she became eternally bound to the servitude of a sinister Tree Demoness. She explains that as long as her remains are buried at the foot of the tree, her spirit will be forever enslaved by the Tree Demoness. Ning attempts to free her from her suffering so he seeks help from Yin Chik-ha. Yin fights with the Tree Demoness and attempts to free Nip's soul but fails. As punishment for betraying her master, Nip's soul is banished to the Underworld. Ning is unwilling to give up on Nip and he insists that Yin help him. Yin reluctantly opens a temporary portal into the Underworld and brings Ning along to search for Nip. As the Underworld is full of spirits, they have a hard time finding her. Ning and Nip are eventually able to see each other briefly near dawn when they manage to leave the Underworld. When sunlight shines on the urn containing Nip's cremated remains, Ning uses a curtain to shield the urn to prevent Nip's soul from being destroyed by exposure to sunlight. Before leaving for good, she tells him that the only way to save her soul is to rebury her remains at a more auspicious burial site. Ning follows her instructions and, acting on Yin's advice, he buries her remains near the crest of a hill. He burns a joss stick for her and prays for her soul while Yin watches solemnly behind him. ===== Aunt Dete hurrying away after leaving Heidi with her grandfather HeidiMeaning of "Heidi" is an orphaned girl initially raised by her maternal grandmother and aunt Dete in Maienfeld, Switzerland after the early deaths of her parents, Tobias and Adelheid (Dete's brother-in-law and sister). Shortly after the grandmother's death, Dete is offered a good job as a maid in the big city, and takes 5-year-old Heidi to her paternal grandfather's house, up the mountain from the Dörfli ('small village' in Swiss German). He has been at odds with the villagers and embittered against God for years and lives in seclusion on the alm, which has earned him the nickname 'The Alm-Uncle'. He briefly resents Heidi's arrival, but the girl's evident intelligence and cheerful yet unaffected demeanour soon earn his genuine, if reserved, love. Heidi enthusiastically befriends her new neighbours, young Peter the goatherd, his mother, Brigitte, and his blind maternal grandmother. With each season that passes, the mountaintop inhabitants, especially Peter and the grandmother, grow more attached to Heidi, and she to them. However, the grandfather refuses to allow Heidi to attend school, and quarrels with the local pastor and schoolmaster, who try to encourage him to do so. Three years later, Dete returns to take Heidi to Frankfurt to be a hired lady's companion to a wealthy girl named Clara Sesemann, who is unable to walk and regarded as an invalid. Clara is charmed by Heidi's simple friendliness and her descriptions of life on the Alm, and delights in all the funny mishaps brought about by Heidi's naïvety and lack of experience with city life. However, the Sesemanns' strict housekeeper, Fräulein Rottenmeier, views the household disruptions as wanton misbehaviour, and places the free-spirited Heidi under more and more restraint. Soon, Heidi becomes terribly homesick for the Alm, and grows alarmingly pale and thin. Her one diversion is learning to read and write, motivated by Clara's grandmother, who shows her trust and affection, and encourages her to believe in God and to pray. Heidi's intractable homesickness leads to episodes of sleepwalking where she goes downstairs and opens the front door, which the household initially takes as the work of ghosts, and the family doctor recommends she be sent home as a matter of urgency before she becomes seriously ill. She returns to the mountains laden with presents for her friends, but finds one of her greatest pleasures is reading hymns to Peter's blind grandmother, who can no longer do so for herself. Her faith in God speaks to something in the Alm-Uncle, and he returns to the Christian faith. He accompanies Heidi to church, and that winter takes accommodation in the village so that she can attend school. Heidi and Clara continue to keep in touch and exchange letters. A visit by the doctor to Heidi leads him to eagerly recommend that Clara visit Heidi, feeling assured that the mountain environment and the wholesome companionship will do her good. Clara makes the journey the next season and spends a wonderful summer with Heidi, becoming stronger on goat's milk and fresh mountain air. But Peter, who grows jealous of Heidi's and Clara's friendship, pushes her empty wheelchair down the mountain to its destruction, although he is soon wracked with guilt about what he did and ultimately confesses to it. Without her wheelchair, Clara has no choice but to learn to walk; she attempts to do so and is gradually successful. She is not very strong, often relying on Heidi or the grandfather to stay standing and not collapse, but it marks an end to her time as a lonely, shut-in invalid. Her grandmother and father are amazed and overcome with joy to see Clara walking again. The Sesemann family promises to provide permanent care for Heidi, if there ever comes a time when her grandfather is no longer able to do so. ===== Fred Madison, a Los Angeles saxophonist, receives a message on his house intercom: "Dick Laurent is dead." The next morning, his wife Renee finds a VHS tape on their porch containing a video of their house. After having sex, Fred tells her he had a dream about someone resembling her being attacked, he then sees Renee's face as that of a pale old man. As the days pass, more tapes arrive, showing shots of them asleep in their bed. Fred and Renee call the police but the detectives offer no assistance. Fred and Renee attend a party being thrown by her friend Andy. The Mystery Man that Fred dreamed about approaches Fred, claiming to have met him before. The man then says he is at Fred's house at that very moment and answers the house phone when Fred calls him. Fred learns from Andy that the man is a friend of Dick Laurent's. Terrified, Fred leaves the party with Renee. The next morning, another tape arrives and Fred watches it alone. To his horror, it shows him hovering over Renee's dismembered body. He is sentenced to death for her murder. While on death row, Fred is plagued by headaches and visions of The Mystery Man and a burning cabin in the desert. During a cell check, the prison guard finds that the man in Fred's cell is now Pete Dayton, a young auto mechanic. Although Pete is released into the care of his parents, he is followed by two detectives who are trying to find out more about him. The next day, Pete returns to work at the garage where gangster Mr. Eddy asks him to fix his car. Mr. Eddy takes Pete for a drive, during which Pete witnesses Mr. Eddy beat down a tailgater. The next day, Mr. Eddy returns to the garage with his mistress, Alice Wakefield, and his Cadillac for Pete to repair. Later, Alice returns to the garage alone and invites Pete out for dinner. When Pete and Alice begin an affair, she fears that Mr. Eddy suspects them, and concocts a scheme to rob her friend Andy and leave town. Alice also reveals to Pete that Mr. Eddy is actually an amateur porn producer named Dick Laurent. Pete gets a phone call from Mr. Eddy and The Mystery Man, which frightens Pete so much that he decides to go along with Alice's plan. Pete ambushes Andy and accidentally kills him, before he notices a photograph showing Alice and Renee together. Later, when the police are at the house investigating Andy's death, Alice is inexplicably missing from the photo. Pete and Alice arrive at an empty cabin in the desert and start having sex outside on the sand, which ends with Alice getting up and disappearing into the cabin. Pete transforms back into Fred. Upon searching the cabin, he meets The Mystery Man, who begins filming and chasing Fred with a video camera. Fred escapes and drives to the Lost Highway Hotel, where he finds Mr. Eddy and Renee having sex. After Renee leaves, Fred kidnaps Mr. Eddy and slits his throat. The Mystery Man shoots Mr. Eddy dead and then whispers something to Fred before he disappears. Fred drives to his old house, buzzes the intercom and says: "Dick Laurent is dead." When the two detectives drive up to the house, Fred runs back to his car and drives off, with the detectives in pursuit. Fred suddenly begins convulsing and screaming as his car speeds down the darkened highway. ===== The book, written during the final period of World War II, takes place at an undetermined year "after the end of the war". Mark Studdock is a young academic who has just become a Senior Fellow in sociology at Bracton College in the University of Edgestow. The fellows of Bracton are debating the sale of a portion of college land to the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.), whose staff already includes some college faculty. The sale is controversial since the land in question (Bragdon Wood) is an ancient woodland believed to be the resting place of Merlin. After the deal is struck, a N.I.C.E. insider called Lord Feverstone proposes a possible post for Mark at the Institute. (It is gradually revealed that Feverstone is the new title of Richard Devine, who accompanied Professor Weston on the trip to Mars in Out of the Silent Planet, but not on the trip to Venus in Perelandra.) Mark's wife Jane (a PhD student at the university) has suffered a peculiar nightmare involving a severed head. She meets Mrs. Dimble, the wife of one of her former tutors, who is being evicted due to sale of land to the N.I.C.E. When Jane talks about her dreams, Mrs. Dimble leads her to seek counsel from a Miss Ironwood who lives in the Manor in the nearby town of St. Anne's. An argument between Jane and Mark shows how their marriage is deteriorating. Lord Feverstone introduces Mark to the N.I.C.E., where he becomes acquainted with the top brass at their headquarters at Belbury, near Edgestow. Here and throughout his time with them, Mark can never find out what his place in the organisation is; he has no office or duties and seems to be alternately in and out of favour. A scientist named Bill Hingest, who is resigning from the N.I.C.E., warns Mark to get out. As he drives home that night, Hingest is mysteriously murdered. At the same time, Jane works up the courage to visit Miss Ironwood at St. Anne's. Miss Ironwood, who is dressed in black just as Jane had dreamed of her, is convinced that Jane's dreams are not psychological but visions of genuine events. Later, Jane is introduced to Dr. Elwin Ransom, the protagonist of the first two books in Lewis's space trilogy. He has become the legitimate king or Pendragon of the nation of Logres, the heir of King Arthur and Director of the group living in the Manor at St. Anne's. He is in communication with the Oyéresu (singular "Oyarsa"), angelic beings who guide the planets of the Solar System. Earth has been in quarantine: its rebellious Oyarsa (who is the Devil) and his demons could not travel beyond the orbit of the Moon, and the other Oyéresu could not come to Earth. Mark is finally given work: his main duty is to write pseudonymous newspaper articles supporting the N.I.C.E., including two for use after a riot they intend to provoke in Edgestow. The riot takes place as planned, allowing the N.I.C.E.'s private police force to take over the town. They arrest Jane, whom the N.I.C.E. are interested in (as revealed later) for her psychic abilities, which they fear will get into their opponents' hands. The head of the N.I.C.E. police, a woman known as "Fairy" Hardcastle, starts to torture Jane but is forced to release her when rioters turn in her direction. Mark is once again out of favour in the N.I.C.E., but after a conversation with an Italian scientist named Filostrato he is introduced to the Head of the Institute. This turns out to be a literal head – that of a recently guillotined French scientist (as Jane dreamed) which Filostrato erroneously believes he has restored to life by his own efforts. From Jane's dreams that people were digging up the grave of a long-buried man and that the man had left, Ransom concludes that the N.I.C.E. is looking for the body of Merlin, who truly is buried in Bragdon Wood, though not dead but in a timeless state. Jane will guide members of the group to the place she dreamed of. The N.I.C.E. bosses now try to strengthen their hold over Mark by showing him trumped-up evidence that he murdered Bill Hingest. This however backfires, as the moment of crisis finally gives Mark the courage to leave Belbury. He returns to Edgestow in search of Jane only to find their apartment empty and the town under N.I.C.E. control. Later he meets Cecil Dimble, one of the St. Anne's community, who despite his misgivings offers to help him. Unfortunately Mark deliberates too long over Dimble's proposal and he is found and arrested for Hingest's murder. That night, during a heavy storm, both the company of St. Anne's and N.I.C.E. personnel are on the trail of Merlin, who has apparently revived. He has taken the clothes of a tramp through his powers of hypnosis and acquired a wild horse. He meets the company of St. Anne's but rides away. Members of the N.I.C.E. capture the tramp, believing him to be Merlin. Mark, while contemplating his upcoming trial and execution, discovers that he has not been arrested by the real police but by officials of the N.I.C.E. who (he now guesses) are the true murderers of Hingest. Much to his surprise he is now told that he is to be initiated into the group's inner ring. In preparation for this he begins a bizarre program of training intended to cultivate absolute objectivity by relegating emotion to the status of a chemical phenomenon. He outwardly participates in these rituals (knowing that he will otherwise be killed) but inwardly begins to reject everything the N.I.C.E. stands for. Merlin arrives at St. Anne's ahead of his pursuers, where he and Ransom converse in broken Latin. Ransom reveals that there are Satanic forces behind the N.I.C.E. and that Merlin is to be possessed by the Oyéresu; since the forces of darkness broke the lunar barrier in the earlier books, the heavenly beings may also cross the barrier and intervene in human affairs. Jane then has two mystical experiences; the first with the earth-bound counterpart of the Oyarsa of Venus, and the second with God. After discussions with Mrs. Dimble and the Director, she becomes a Christian. Merlin, now possessed by the Oyéresu, disguises himself as a Basque priest and answers the N.I.C.E.'s advertisement for an interpreter of ancient languages. He hypnotises and interviews the tramp (who the N.I.C.E. still believe may be the real Merlin) and the two of them are brought to a banquet. There Merlin pronounces the curse of Babel upon the assembled N.I.C.E. leaders, causing all present to speak gibberish, and also liberates the many animals on which the N.I.C.E. were experimenting. The bigger animals kill most of the N.I.C.E. staff. As earthquakes destroy the building, Lord Feverstone flees to Edgestow but is killed when that too is engulfed. Merlin helps Mark escape and sends him to St. Anne's. The Oyarsa of Venus lingers at the Manor, as Ransom is now to be transported back to that planet. When Mark arrives, a vision of Venus leads him into a bridal chamber that Jane has been preparing for him. ===== Peter Venkman, Raymond "Ray" Stantz, and Egon Spengler are scientists at Columbia University investigating the paranormal. Following their first encounter with a ghost manifesting at the New York Public Library, the dean fires them and dismisses the credibility of their research. In response, they create "Ghostbusters", a paranormal investigation and elimination service. They convert a disused firehouse, develop high-tech equipment to capture and contain ghosts, and convert a combination car into the "Ectomobile" to support their business. Seeing their television ad, a skeptical cellist, Dana Barrett, is initially dismissive but reluctantly calls them after a paranormal encounter in her kitchen. Recounting the event, she describes opening her refrigerator and seeing a creature that utters a single word: "Zuul." Venkman reassures her and becomes romantically interested, while Ray and Egon research her claims. Business is slow until they are hired to remove a ghost from the Sedgewick Hotel. There, Egon warns the group never to cross the energy streams of their proton pack weapons, as this could cause a catastrophic explosion. They capture their first ghost and deposit it in a special containment unit in the firehouse. Soon their business booms as paranormal activity increases across New York City. To cope with demand, they hire a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore. Suspicious of their operation, Walter Peck, an Environmental Protection Agency inspector, asks to evaluate their equipment but leaves after Venkman insults him. Privately, Egon warns the team the increase in supernatural activity is becoming dangerous and their equipment is at risk of failing under the stress. Venkman meets with Dana. He shares that Zuul was a demigod worshiped as a servant to "Gozer the Gozerian," a shape-shifting god of destruction. He convinces Dana to discuss her case further over dinner. However, when Dana returns home, she is supernaturally assaulted and possessed by Zuul. In a nearby apartment, a nearly identical entity manifests, then chases and possesses her neighbor, Louis Tully. Venkman arrives and finds the possessed Dana/Zuul claiming to be "the Gatekeeper." Louis, also possessed, is found by police officers and claims he is "Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster of Gozer." The Ghostbusters agree they need to regroup but keep the pair separated. Peck returns with law-enforcement and city workers to have the Ghostbusters arrested and orders the deactivation of their ghost containment system. Stressed beyond capacity, the shutdown causes an explosion that releases the captured ghosts, and the Ghostbusters are detained. Louis/Vinz manages to escape in the confusion and makes his way to the apartment building where he meets Dana/Zuul. In jail, Ray and Egon reveal that Dana's building is the true source of the supernatural increase. The architect, Ivo Shandor, a genius and cult leader of Gozer-worshippers, designed it to channel ghosts for the purpose of ending the world. Faced with chaos in the city, the Ghostbusters convince the mayor to release them over Peck's protests. On the apartment building roof, Dana/Zuul and Louis/Vinz open the gate between dimensions and transform into supernatural creatures just as the Ghostbusters arrive. Gozer, in the form of a woman, arrives, and Ray attempts to reason with her first. When this fails, Gozer attacks, forcing the Ghostbusters to attempt to trap her, but she disappears. Her disembodied voice demands the Ghostbusters "choose the form of the destructor." Raymond inadvertently recalls a beloved corporate mascot from his childhood, and Gozer reappears in the form of a giant, "Stay Puft" marshmallow man that proceeds to attack the city. Egon tells the team to ignore his earlier advice and cross their proton energy streams at Gozer's portal. The resulting explosion destroys Gozer's marshmallow man form, banishes it from this dimension, and closes the portal. The Ghostbusters rescue Dana and Louis from the wreckage and are welcomed on the street as heroes. ===== The Draka world in 1942 The Draka world in 1948 The first book of the series, Marching Through Georgia, is set during the Eurasian War. The Soviet Union, weakened by civil war and the Draka incursion, collapses to the Nazi invasion before a Draka attack falls on the German army in the Caucasus. While both sides' weaponry is somewhat more advanced than historically, with jet and rocket aircraft and advanced armored vehicles, that of the Draka proves superior. With most European countries loath to unite behind the Germans, the Draka are eventually able to conquer all of mainland Europe. Meanwhile, having already subdued what remains of China, Japanese forces are able to concentrate on the United States, seizing its Pacific possessions and raiding North America. The U.S. does not open a second front in Europe and eventually turns the tide against Japan. The Draka invade Japanese-occupied China and Korea, and the war ends in 1945 with multiple German and Japanese cities and bases destroyed by nuclear weapons. The remaining countries of the world join the Alliance for Democracy, with the United Kingdom inundated with refugees and heavily fortified against potential Draka attack. The second book, Under the Yoke, shows Europe under Draka rule. The Draka, having applied modern science to the practice of slavery, ruthlessly crush resistance and obliterate old institutions, including the use of a thermonuclear weapon on the rebelling city of Barcelona. The third book, The Stone Dogs, depicts the cold war between the Draka and the Alliance, fought mostly on interplanetary colonies throughout the inner solar system, and Alliance efforts to recruit Draka defectors. In the 1970s, the exposure of an Alliance covert operation against a Hindu nationalist party leads to India seceding from the Alliance, after which it is conquered and enslaved by the Draka. Even so, long-term trends are depicted as favoring the Alliance -- its larger economy and free population give it an advantage in physics and computer research, as well as the secret construction of a starship for escaping to Alpha Centauri in the event of defeat. At the same time, by experimenting on slave subjects, Draka geneticists develop a virus known as "The Stone Dogs", which they use for a preemptive strike on the Alliance. In a war costing hundred of millions of lives, the Alliance strikes back but is narrowly defeated; a truce allows them to launch the starship. The Draka take over the rest of Earth, now devastated by a years-long nuclear winter, and eventually produce a new species of human that is genetically engineered for servility, as well as unable to breed with the Draka "Master Race". Only a few isolated groups of baseline humans are said to survive. The fourth novel, Drakon, starts in 2442 when research into wormhole technology, needed to bridge the gap between Earth and the Alliance refugee colony at Alpha Centauri, ends up sending a single Draka and a pursuing Alliance agent into an alternate 1995-2000 where the Draka never existed. In the original timeline, the Draka barely beat back a wormhole-enabled Alliance assault from Alpha Centauri, while in the alternate timeline, the agent manages to prevent the Draka from reopening the wormhole and invading. Using technology captured from the interlopers, this Earth begins preparing for the next appearance of the Draka. ===== Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) is transported forward in time by the occultist John Dee (Richard O'Brien) by the aid of the spirit guide Ariel (a character from William Shakespeare's The Tempest) whom he commands. Elizabeth arrives in the shattered Britain of the 1970s. Queen Elizabeth II is dead, killed in an arbitrary mugging, and Elizabeth I moves through the social and physical decay of the city observing the sporadic activities of a group of aimless nihilists, including Amyl Nitrate (Jordan), Bod (Runacre in a dual role), Chaos (Hermine Demoriane), Crabs (Nell Campbell), and Mad (Toyah Willcox). Numerous punk icons appear in the film including Jordan (a Malcolm McLaren protégé), Toyah Willcox, Nell Campbell, Adam Ant, Hermine Demoriane and Wayne County. It features performances by Wayne County and Adam and the Ants. There are also cameo appearances by the Slits and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The film was scored by Brian Eno. It begins with a scene where John Dee summons the spirit Ariel for Queen Elizabeth I; the action then moves to an anarchic present day where law and order has broken down, and punk gangs roam the streets committing acts of murder and larceny. In one squat, Amyl Nitrite is instructing a group of young women—in so doing, valourising the violent criminal activity of Myra Hindley—before she reminisces about her time as a ballet dancer and introduces the audience to Mad, Crabs, Chaos, Sphinx and Angel (two incestuous bisexual brothers) and Bod, a sex-hating anarchist. Bod has just strangled and killed Elizabeth II and stolen her crown. From there the group move on to a café, where Crabs picks up a young musician named the Kid, Mad tears up some postcards and Bod attacks a waitress with a bottle of ketchup. Bod contacts impresario Borgia Ginz. On meeting Ginz, however, she is surprised to find Amyl performing a pastiche of "Rule Britannia". Sphinx and Angel establish a relationship with Viv, a young former artist, whom they take to meet Max, an ex-soldier. In exchange for sexual favours, Crabs takes the Kid to see Ginz, who auditions him and his band signs them up under the name "Scum". Sphinx and Angel try to talk the Kid out of this, but he just laughs at their lecturing. Ginz is branching out into property management and has purchased 'abandoned' properties such as Westminster Cathedral and Buckingham Palace, which are transformed into musical venues. Meanwhile, Mad, Bod and Crabs asphyxiate Happy Days, one of Crabs' one-night stands, with red plastic sheeting; and break into the flat of androgynous rock star Lounge Lizard, whom Bod throttles to death. A fight breaks out at a disco session in St. Paul's Crypt between Kid and a policeman. After the gang all watch Kid's TV debut together, Viv and the three males all pay a visit to Max's bingo hall, where violent police activity causes the death of Sphinx, Angel, and the Kid, and two revenge attacks on the police officers responsible. One of them is castrated to death by Mad and Amyl; the other, who has just started an affair with Crabs, is blown up on his doorstep with a petrol bomb by Bod. Finally, Ginz takes the four women off to Dorset and signs a recording contract with them. Interspersed with these displays of contemporary anarchic violence, Dee, Ariel and Elizabeth try to interpret the signs of anarchic modernity around them, before they undertake a pastoral and nostalgic return to the sixteenth century at the film's end. ===== A group of fish in a posh restaurant's tank swim together casually, until they look at the customers outside of the tank and see their friend Howard being eaten. This leads them to question the meaning of life. The question is explored in the first sketch, "The Miracle of Birth", which features a woman in labour being ignored by the doctors in favour of impressing the hospital's medically-clueless administrator. Meanwhile, in Yorkshire, described as "the third world", a Roman Catholic man loses his job and returns home to tell his numerous children that he will have to sell them off for scientific experiments due to the Catholic church's opposition to contraception; this leads to the musical number "Every Sperm Is Sacred". A Protestant man with his wife looks on disapprovingly, and proudly remarks that Protestants can use contraception and have sex for pleasure (though his wife points out that they never do). In "Growth and Learning", a class of boys are taught school etiquette before partaking in a sex education lesson, which involves watching their teacher have sex with his wife. One boy laughs, and is forced into a violent rugby match pitting pupils against the adult school masters as punishment. "Fighting Each Other" focuses on three scenes concerning the British military: first a World War I officer tries to rally his men during an attack, but they insist on presenting him with various going-away presents, including a card, a cake, and a clock; second, a modern army RSM attempts to drill his platoon, but his sarcastic remarks asking what they'd "rather be doing" ends with him actually dismissing them all to pursue leisure activities. Lastly, in 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, a soldier finds his leg has been bitten off. Suspecting a tiger (despite being non- native to Africa) the soldiers hunt for it and find two men suspiciously wearing two halves of a tiger costume. The prior sequences ends abruptly with a host introducing "The Middle of the Film", beginning with a surreal segment called "Find the Fish", wherein bizarre characters ask the audience to find a hidden fish over a strange musical number. "Middle Age" involves a middle-aged American couple visiting a Hawaiian restaurant themed around Medieval torture, where, to the interest of the fish, the waiter offers a conversation about philosophy and the meaning of life. The customers are unable to make sense of it and move on to a discussion of "live organ transplants". "Live Organ Transplants" involves two paramedics visiting Mr. Brown, a card-carrying organ donor, forcefully removing his liver while he is still alive. Mrs. Brown is initially reluctant to donate her own liver while alive, but she relents after a man steps out of a fridge and sings the "Galaxy Song", discussing man's insignificance in comparison to the enormousness of the universe. The Crimson Permanent Assurance pirates from the short pre-film feature appear to invade a corporate boardroom where executives are discussing the meaning of life, but a tumbling skyscraper ends their assault. "The Autumn Years" starts off with a musician in a French restaurant singing about the joys of having a penis. When the song is finished, the horrible, gluttonous, and grotesquely obese Mr. Creosote visits the restaurant, much to the horror of the other guests and the fish tank. He vomits continuously and devours an enormous meal. When the maître d' persuades him to eat one last wafer-thin mint, Creosote's stomach begins to rapidly expand until it explodes, spewing his chewed-up food on various diners. The maître d' then gives him the bill. Two staff members clean up Creosote's remains while discussing the meaning of life. A third waiter leads the audience to his house, spouts some weak philosophy, and then angrily dismisses them after his point trails off. "Death" features a condemned man choosing the manner of his own execution: being chased off the Cliffs of Dover by topless women in sports gear and falling into his own grave below. In a short animated sequence, several despondent leaves commit suicide by throwing themselves from the branches of their tree. The Grim Reaper thereupon enters an isolated country house, where the hosts and dinner guests are all clueless as to who he is until the Reaper reveals his identity and tells them they all died of food poisoning from eating spoiled salmon mousse (although one guest points out she didn't even eat it). They accompany the Grim Reaper to Heaven, revealed to be the Hawaiian restaurant from earlier. They enter into a Las Vegas-style hotel where it's always Christmas, with all the characters from the previous sketches as guests, and where a Tony Bennett-style singer performs "Christmas in Heaven" to the cast. The song is cut off abruptly for "The End of the Film." An epilogue features the host of "The Middle of the Film" being handed an envelope containing the meaning of life. Pronouncing it "nothing very special," she blandly reads it out: "Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations". ===== Major Scobie lives in a colony on the west coast of Africa during World War II, and is responsible for local security during wartime. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature and poetry, cannot make friends. Scobie feels responsible for her misery, but does not love her. Their only child, Catherine, died in England several years before. Louise is a devout Catholic. Scobie, a convert, is also devout. Throughout the novel the oppressive nature of the climate is a major backdrop. The heat and humidity act as weakening factors. Scobie is passed over for promotion to commissioner, which upsets Louise both for her personal ambition and her hope that the local British community will begin to accept her. Louise asks Scobie if she can go to live in South Africa to escape a life she hates. At the same time, a new inspector, named Wilson, arrives in the town. He is priggish and socially inept, and hides his passion for poetry for fear of ostracism by his colleagues. He and Louise strike up a friendship, which Wilson mistakes for love. Wilson rooms with another colleague named Harris, who has created a sport for himself of killing the cockroaches that appear in his room each night. He invites Wilson to join him, but in the first match, they end up quarrelling over the rules of engagement. One of Scobie's duties is to lead the inspections of local passenger ships, particularly looking for smuggled diamonds, a needle-in-a-haystack problem that never yields results. A Portuguese ship, the Esperança (the Portuguese word for 'hope'), comes into port, and a disgruntled steward reveals the location of a letter hidden in the captain's quarters. Scobie finds it, and because it is addressed to someone in Germany, he confiscates as it might contain secret codes and clandestine information. The captain says it's a letter to his daughter and begs Scobie to forget the incident, offering him a bribe of one hundred pounds when he learns that they share the Catholic faith. Scobie declines the bribe and takes the letter, but having opened and read it—contrary to regulations—and finding it innocuous, he decides not to submit it to higher authorities, and burns it. Scobie is called to a small inland town to deal with the suicide of the local inspector, a man named Pemberton, who was in his early twenties and left a note implying that his suicide was due to a loan he could not repay. Scobie suspects the involvement of the local agent of a Syrian man named Yusef, a local black marketeer. Yusef denies it, but warns Scobie that the British have sent a new inspector specifically to look for diamonds; Scobie claims this is a hoax and that he does not know of any such man. Scobie later dreams that he is in Pemberton's situation, even writing a similar note, but when he awakens, he tells himself that he could never commit suicide, as no cause is worth the eternal damnation that suicide would bring. Scobie tries to secure a loan from the bank to pay the two hundred pound fare for Louise's passage, but is turned down. Yusef offers to lend Scobie the money at four per cent per annum. Scobie initially declines, but after an incident where he mistakenly thinks Louise is contemplating suicide, he accepts the loan and sends Louise to South Africa. Wilson meets them at the pier and tries to interfere with their parting. Shortly afterwards, the survivors of a shipwreck arrive after forty days at sea in lifeboats. One young girl dies as Scobie tries to comfort her by pretending to be her father, who was killed in the wreck. A 19-year-old woman named Helen Rolt also arrives malnourished and dehydrated, clutching an album of postage stamps. She was married before the ship left port and is now a widow with a wedding ring too big for her finger. Scobie feels drawn to her, as much to the cherished album of stamps as to her physical presence, even though she is not beautiful. She reminds him of his daughter. He soon starts a passionate affair with her, all the time aware that he is committing the grave sin of adultery. A letter he writes to Helen ends up in Yusef's hands, and the Syrian uses it to blackmail Scobie into sending a package of diamonds for him via the departing Esperança, thus avoiding the authorities. After Louise unexpectedly returns, Scobie struggles to keep her ignorant of his love affair. But he is unable to renounce Helen, even in the confessional, where the priest instructs him to think it over and postpones absolution. Still, to placate his wife, Scobie attends Mass with her and receives communion in his state of mortal sin—a sacrilege according to Catholic doctrine. Soon after, Yusef's servant delivers a "gift" to Scobie, which he refuses. Scobie's servant, Ali, however, witnesses this and a romantic embrace between Scobie and Helen. Scobie visits Yusef to confront him about the gift, but also to relate his suspicion that Ali, whom he had trusted for all of their 15 years together, is disloyal. Yusef says he will take care of the matter, which within a few hours ends up with Ali being killed by local teenagers known as "wharf rats". The reader is led to believe that Yusef arranged the killing for which Scobie blames himself. Having gone this far down the path of ruin and seeing no way out, Scobie decides to free everyone from himself—including God—and plots his death by faking a heart ailment and getting a prescription for sleeping pills. Knowing full well that suicide is the ultimate damnation according to Church doctrine, he proceeds in the end to commit suicide with the pills. The act, however, yields ambiguous results. Helen continues her dreary existence. And Louise, who knew about the affair all along, is made to realise by her suitor, Wilson, that Scobie's death was a suicide. She tells Wilson she will not marry him, but might in time. The concluding chapter consists of a short encounter between Louise and her confessional priest. Louise tries to rationalise Scobie's suicide in relation to his Catholicism, to which the priest advises that no one can know what's in a person's heart or about God's mercy. ===== Two hundred colonists arrive on Avalon, having made the 100-year journey from Earth in suspended animation on the starship Geographic. The colonists, selected for their outstanding physical and mental acuity, make a terrible discovery: the suspended animation has damaged their intellect and reasoning skills. Some are only mildly afflicted, while others have serious intellectual disabilities; eight cannot be reanimated at all. The colonists build a settlement on an isolated island, and begin growing crops and stocking the nearby waters with terrestrial species to complement the samlon, a local aquatic species. The colonists become overconfident in their security, to the frustration of expedition security officer (and former soldier) Cadmann Weyland. When unsettling events begin to happen – missing animals, fences torn down – the colonists' impaired minds prevent them from properly analyzing the situation. Weyland is suspected of sabotage to further his agenda of building up defenses. He is drugged and restrained when a monster attacks the settlement, killing ten colonists. Resenting his treatment, Weyland retreats from the colony to an isolated homestead on a mountain near the colony. Mary Ann, a colonist with a romantic interest in Weyland, convinces him to allow her to stay with him, and conceives his child. Ultimately, Weyland agrees to assist the colony in its defenses. The colonists are confounded by the ecology of the island, as there does not seem to be a sufficient food source for the creatures to inhabit it. An autopsy reveals that grendels (as the creatures are now known, in reference to Beowulf) are crocodilian in appearance and behavior, with powerful jaws and claws, and a sense of smell better than a dog's. Its brain shows it is at least as intelligent as a gorilla. It possesses a snorkel enabling it to lurk under several feet of water. Its cardiovascular system and musculature give it strength and stamina far beyond that of humans. A grendel can release a super-oxygenated blood supplement into its blood that does to it what nitrous oxide does to internal combustion engines - enable short bursts of speed in excess of 100 miles per hour. This trait makes the grendels devastating, but is also the key to their destruction. Using the supercharger causes the grendels to heat up so rapidly that they die if they do not immediately return to water to cool off. With this knowledge and their technology and tactics, the colonists are able to wipe out the grendel population of the island within several months, making Weyland a hero to the people who previously turned on him. Some months later, the colony's scientists come to a disturbing realization: the grendels and the aquatic samlon are the same species. Their life cycle is similar to that of terrestrial frogs - the herbivorous samlon are in fact the juvenile form of the carnivorous grendels. The juvenile samlon are male, and become female when they mature. Interaction is unnecessary, as the grendels continually lay unfertilized eggs in the water for the samlon to fertilize. Like some species of frogs, the grendels are cannibalistic - if no other prey is present, they will eat their own young. On the colony's island, all other prey sources were previously exhausted, and the grendels have turned to cannibalism as the rule rather than the exception. The colonists have exterminated the adult grendels. But as there is now no check at all on the samlon population, they all become grendels, meaning that instead of a few dozen grendels, there are now thousands. Weyland again asserts control. The colony's pregnant women, children and essential specialists are evacuated to the Geographic. The grendels cannot hunt far from water, so most others are evacuated to Weyland's mountain camp. Combat is joined. At first, the colonists' technology and tactics serve them well. Weyland observes the grendels' behavior and discovers that packs of grendels can be sent into a shark-like feeding frenzy by spraying them with blood taken from dead grendels, especially if it is laced with the "supercharger" chemical. Tracer bullets are used to ignite the supercharger gland in their bodies. But as the grendels' numbers fall, their individual strength rises, as every dead grendel is food for the rest. Eventually, all that remain are the strongest and fastest fully grown grendels, and the colonists make a planned retreat to Weyland's mountain retreat. As the horde approaches, the colonists spray them with more supercharger, sending them into a frenzy once more. When they begin climbing the bluff, Weyland sets off a deadfall trap, killing even more. The grendels, though not as smart as humans, are smart enough to learn, given time and much experience. Their behavior changes as they realize the remaining colonists are not worth dying to reach when there are other grendels to kill. The colony is saved. One year later, the grendels are being driven to extinction. Now that the grendel life cycle is known, the colonists continue the hunts, but this time the samlon are targeted as well. The new tactics, supercharger spraying and recorded grendel challenges, make them almost a routine chore. The terrestrial fish are gone, and will not be reintroduced, forcing the grendels to help drive their own species to extinction through cannibalism. Now rebuilding can begin. The battle against the grendels has left the colony with surplus of women, and a new social organization based on polygamous marriage is taking shape. The mainland is being explored, and the colonists have high hopes. The colonists hope the story of their battle will inspire Earth's population to restart its nascent colonization program. ===== ===== Part 1 of the series describes Norman Winters’ previous life and his process of suspended animation. After the disappearance of Norman Winters, his son, Vincent, questions the servants working on his New York estate. After receiving a suspicious answer from the groundskeeper Carstairs, one of his father's most loyal workers, Vincent threatens to turn him in to the police. Preserving his freedom, Carstairs presents Vincent with a letter from his father detailing his whereabouts. In the letter, Norman explains his collaborations with various scientists to determine how to build a chamber which will shield him from cosmic rays and a coma-inducing drug. Norman constructs an underground chamber with six-foot leaden walls impervious to the outside radiation's influence on his cells. Once in the chamber, Norman will use the sleep-drug to fall into a coma where he “shall not awake until [he is] again subjected to radiation,” which will be provided by an X-ray lamp (similar to what one finds next to any dentist's chair) set to power on after five thousand years. In hopes of awaking to a Utopian future, Norman encourages Vincent to live his life in the absence of his father. Upon waking up, Norman discovers that he had lain dormant for five thousand years. Realizing the success of his time travelling system, Norman explores the futuristic world briefly, and then returns to suspended animation, planning to wake again after another 5,000 years. He repeats this several times, giving the reader a brief view of various social results. * 5000 AD. Humanity staggers to save itself amid the world's littered, stagnant wreckage after what has become known as the great Age of Waste. There is a political rivalry between the younger generation opposing the older generation's proposed waste of resources that they (the younger generation) assert that they are entitled to. * 10,000 AD. The world is dominated by the Brain – the immovable in purpose super computer that knows all, sees all, and feels nothing. Thanks to its cradle-to-grave supervision, human life is easy and comfortable, but what will happen when The Brain realizes people are superfluous? * 15,000 AD. People can now program their choice of dreams and sleep their lives away. Winters awakes to find the sleeping outnumber the living. He cannot stop the implosion of civilization by himself. * 20,000 AD. After an abused Age of Freedom came an Age of License. Genetic experiment heralded the terrifying Age of Anarchy. Each Individual had his own mobile "City" that provided for all his needs, resulting in a society where people had no need for each other and were incapable of cooperating, resulting in nearly all interpersonal encounters being small wars. * 25,000 AD. Scientists discover the secret sought through the centuries – immortality. But is Mankind ready for it? Immortality is frightfully boring without a purpose. Humanity scatters to the far corners of the cosmos seeking knowledge and experience, leading to a quest toward "the meaning of it all." The novel might be easily dismissed as standard pulp fare if it had not presaged concepts popularized decades later: the sexual revolution, green consumerism, strong AI, full-immersion virtual reality as a surgical procedure (like The Matrix), desktop molecular manufacturing, global warming, and stem cell therapies. Many of these have only appeared in most peoples' worldview in the 21st century. ===== Doctor Robotnik seeks a new way to defeat his longtime nemesis Sonic and conquer the world. During his research, he learns about an entity called Chaos—a creature that, thousands of years ago, helped to protect the Chao and the all-powerful Master Emerald, which balances the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds. When a tribe of echidnas sought to steal the power of the Emeralds, breaking the harmony they had with the Chao, Chaos retaliated by using the Emeralds' power to transform into a monstrous beast, Perfect Chaos, and wipe them out. Before it could destroy the world, Tikal, a young echidna who befriended Chaos, imprisoned it in the Master Emerald along with herself. Seeking to use Chaos, Robotnik releases it from the Master Emerald, and tests the creature's natural form on the city of Station Square. When Sonic sees local police fail to defeat it, he and Tails work to stop Robotnik from empowering it with the Chaos Emeralds. At the same time, Knuckles, the only remaining echidna, sets out to find the shards of the Master Emerald and repair it. Activating a new series of robots, including one named Gamma, Robotnik orders them to find Froggy, an amphibian who had eaten a Chaos Emerald after mutating from contact with a piece of Chaos the night he was released. His owner Big seeks to find him as well. In Station Square, Sonic's friend Amy finds a Flicky being pursued for a Chaos Emerald in its possession, and decides to protect it. When both are captured, Amy convinces Gamma not to work for Robotnik, who helps her to escape, before seeking out and destroying the other robots in his series, sacrificing himself in the process. Despite Sonic managing to disrupt Robotnik's plans, Chaos manages to absorb all the Chaos Emeralds. Transforming into Perfect Chaos, it rebels against Robotnik and attacks Station Square, devastating the city. Having experienced flashbacks from Tikal, who was released herself, Sonic realizes that Chaos has been in constant torment and sorrow, and that imprisoning it again will not stop it. Using the Emeralds brought to him by the others to transform into his super form, Sonic fights Perfect Chaos and defeats it. Returned to normal, Chaos calms down when he sees the Chao living peacefully in Station Square. Realizing its pain is gone, Tikal decides to take it somewhere safe to live in peace. With Sonic having won, he decides to leave to pursue a fleeing Robotnik. ===== An alien race (The Nar) assemble humans from a stream of genetic information transmitted by radio from the Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting colony of humans spend some time integrated into the Nar society before growing restless, discovering the secret of human longevity, and embarking on the seemingly impossible millennia-long mission of a physical journey back to Earth. This epic journey is made in a gigantic space-grown semi-sentient Dyson tree known as Yggdrasil. Category:1986 novels Category:1986 science fiction novels Category:Novels by Donald Moffitt ===== In 1928 Kansas, Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis (Natalie Wood) is a teenage girl who follows her mother's advice to resist her desire for sex with her boyfriend Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), the son of one of the town's more prosperous families due to oil drilling. In turn, Bud reluctantly follows the advice of his father Ace (Pat Hingle) to wait to marry Deanie until after college and to find another kind of girl with whom to satisfy his desires. Bud's parents are ashamed of his older sister Ginny (Barbara Loden), a flapper and sexually-promiscuous party girl who smokes, drinks, and has recently been brought back from Chicago, where her parents had a marriage annulled to someone who married her solely for her money; the rumor around town is that she actually had an abortion. Disappointed in their daughter, Bud's parents pin all their hopes on him and pressure him to attend Yale University. The emotional pressure is too much for Bud, who suffers a physical breakdown and nearly dies of pneumonia. At a New Year's Eve party, Ginny becomes drunk to the humiliation and disappointment of her parents. Bud attempts to take her home, but she refuses. Instead, she looks for someone to dance with her, asserting that men "only want to talk to her in the dark." She leaves the party with a man, and Bud finds her outside in a car being raped by the man, a crowd of men surrounding them. He starts a fight with the man, but loses when the crowd joins in. Bud takes Deanie home after the party. Disturbed by what he's seen happen to his sister, he tells Deanie that they have to stop kissing and fooling around and breaks up with her. Aware that his classmate Juanita (Jan Norris) is willing to become sexually involved with him, Bud has a liaison with her. Shortly afterward, depressed that Bud ended their relationship, Deanie attends a party with classmate Toots Tuttle (Gary Lockwood); trying out Ginny Stamper's behavior, she goes outside with Bud and comes on to him. When he rebuffs her, shocked because he always thought of her as a "nice" girl, she returns to Toots, who drives her to a private spot by a pond that streams into a waterfall. While there, Deanie realizes that she can't go through with sex, at which point she is almost raped. Escaping from Toots and driven close to madness, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping in the pond, but is rescued just before reaching the falls. Her parents sell their oil stock to pay for her institutionalization, which actually turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because they make a profit prior to the Crash of 1929 that leads to the Great Depression. While Deanie is in the institution, she meets another patient, Johnny Masterson (Charles Robinson), who has anger issues targeted at his parents, who want him to be a surgeon. The two patients form a bond. Meanwhile, Bud is sent to Yale, where he fails practically all his courses but meets Angelina (Zohra Lampert), the daughter of Italian immigrants who run a local restaurant in New Haven. In October 1929, Bud's father travels to New Haven in an attempt to persuade the dean not to expel Bud from school; Bud tells the dean he only aspires to own a ranch. The stock market crashes while Ace is in New Haven and he loses everything. He takes Bud to New York for a weekend, including to a cabaret nightclub, then commits suicide by jumping from a building – something he had been joking about just a short time earlier – and Bud must identify the body. Deanie returns home from the asylum after two years and six months, "almost to the day." Ace's widow has gone to live with relatives, and Bud's sister has died in a car crash. Deanie's mother wants to shield her from any potential anguish from meeting Bud, so she pretends to not know where he is. When Deanie's friends from high school come over, her mother gets them to agree to feign ignorance on Bud's whereabouts. However, Deanie's father refuses to coddle his daughter and tells her that Bud has taken up ranching and lives on the old family farm. Her friends drive Deanie to meet Bud, at an old farmhouse. He is now dressed in plain clothes and married to Angelina; they have an infant son named Bud Jr. and another child on the way. Deanie lets Bud know that she is going to marry John (who is now a doctor in Cincinnati). During their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them. Bud says, "What's the point? You gotta take what comes." They each relate that they "don't think about happiness very much anymore." As Deanie leaves with her friends, Bud only seems partially satisfied by the direction his life has taken. After the others are gone, he reassures Angelina, who has realized that Deanie was once the love of his life. Driving away, Deanie's friends ask her if she is still in love with Bud. She does not answer them, but her voice is heard reciting four lines from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality": :"Though nothing can bring back the hour :Of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower :We will grieve not; rather find :Strength in what remains behind." As music plays, the final scene fades out, but the words THE END do not appear. ===== Z Marion-4195, or "Z" for short, is a neurotic and pessimistic worker ant who longs to express himself. While at a bar one night, Z falls in love with the ant colony's princess, Bala, when she visits the bar to escape her suffocating royal life. The ant colony declares war on an encroaching termite colony and a large force of soldier ants is mobilized for an attack. To see Bala again, Z exchanges places with his soldier friend Weaver and joins the army, where he befriends staff sergeant Barbatus. Z is unaware that the army's leader and Bala's fiancé General Mandible is secretly sending the soldiers loyal to the Queen Ant to die so he can stage a coup d'état. At the base of a tree near nightfall, Z realizes he is marching into battle. Everyone except Z is killed by acid-shooting termite defenders. Before dying, Barbatus tells Z to think for himself instead of following orders. Meanwhile, while filling in for Z, Weaver meets and falls in love with Z's co-worker and friend Azteca. Z returns home and is hailed as a war hero (despite not doing anything and left traumatized). Secretly irate, Mandible congratulates him and introduces him to the Queen. There he meets Bala, who eventually recognizes him as a worker. Z panics and pretends to take Bala hostage, causing him and Bala to fall out of the anthill via a garbage chute. Z decides to search for Insectopia, a legendary insect paradise. Bala attempts to return to the colony, but quickly rejoins Z after encountering a praying mantis. News of the incident spreads through the colony and Z's act of individuality inspires the workers and some soldier ants, halting productivity. To gain control, Mandible publicly portrays Z as a self-centered war criminal, promotes the glory of conformity, and promises them a better life through the reward of completing a "Mega Tunnel" planned by himself. However, Mandible's second-in-command Colonel Cutter becomes concerned about Mandible's plans. Z and Bala come upon a human picnic laid out on a cloth, which they take for Insectopia, but they are baffled by the wrappings on the food. A married couple of liberal wasps, named Chip and Muffy, befriend them, though with much condescension, and they all start to break into the food; but they are disrupted by being trampled by giant sneakers and swatted with a fly swatter. Z rescues Bala from the sneaker treads, but Muffy is killed by the swatter, leaving Chip heartbroken. He encourages the ants to move on. They at last find Insectopia, a human waste bin overfilled with decaying food, where Bala begins to reciprocate Z's feelings. After interrogating Weaver, Mandible learns that Z is looking for Insectopia and sends Cutter to retrieve Bala and kill Z. That night, Cutter arrives in Insectopia and forcibly flies Bala back to the colony. Z finds them gone; seeing his desperation, a grieving Chip generously flies him back to the colony. When Z arrives, he encounters soldiers who forcibly direct him toward the Mega Tunnel. Along the way, he finds Bala held captive in Mandible's office. After he frees her, they both discover that Mandible's "Mega Tunnel" leads straight to the puddle next to Insectopia which Mandible will use to drown the Queen Ant and workers at the opening ceremony. Bala warns the ants at the ceremony, while Z goes to the tunnel exit to stop the workers but fails, and the water leaks in. Z and Bala unify the workers into building a towering ladder of themselves towards the surface as the water rises. Meanwhile, Mandible and his soldiers gather at the surface, where he explains his vision of a new colony with none of the "weak elements". When the workers break through, Mandible tries to kill Z, but Cutter rebels against Mandible and instead helps Z and the worker ants. Enraged, Mandible tries to lunge at Cutter, but Z pushes Cutter out of the way to save him and is accidentally tackled into the flooded colony with Mandible, who lands upon a root, dying on impact. Cutter orders the soldiers to help the workers and the Queen Ant up to the surface while he himself goes after Z. Although Z has seemingly drowned, Bala resuscitates him. Z is praised for his heroism and marries Bala and Weaver marries Azteca. Together they rebuild the colony, transforming it from a military state into a community that values all of its members. As Z narrates how he now feels content about his place in the world, the camera zooms out to reveal that the whole story took place in a small part of Central Park in New York City. ===== A 1965 production from Finland with Asko Sarkola, Laila Kinnunen and Göran Schauman ===== The club pays a high price for Tasmanian recruit, Geoff Hayward (Howard). Geoff does not play well initially, infuriating the dedicated coach, Laurie Holden (Thompson). With the club playing so badly, Laurie's coaching days may be over soon. Club president Ted Parker (Kennedy) is forced to resign following an assault on a stripper. The incident could have been kept quiet but for backstabbing from various board members, especially Jock (Frank Wilson) and Gerry (Alan Cassell). Laurie discovers that the board wants to sack him (arising from a long grudge held against Laurie by Jock), so Laurie inspires Geoff to start playing well. It is later revealed that Jock used to be Laurie's coach when Laurie played for the club. Jock was jealous because Laurie nearly surpassed his club record of 282 games. He also lost a Grand Final by making poor decisions under the influence of alcohol. Laurie then told the members that Jock was drunk. After being dismissed as coach, he was replaced by Laurie and tried to sabotage the club his best to get back at him. The team start winning and eventually make the grand final, beating Fitzroy. The film ends with Gerry saying, 'Laurie's a great coach', then looking at Jock, 'God knows why some members of the board wanted to get rid of him'. ===== When Violet Kellty, who had an undiagnosed stroke, dies in her isolated cabin in the North Carolina mountains, Dr. Jerome "Jerry" Lovell, the town doctor, finds a terrified young woman hiding in the house rafters. She speaks angrily and rapidly, but seems to have a language of her own. Looking at Violet's Bible, Jerry finds a note asking whoever finds it to look after Violet's daughter Nell. Sheriff Todd Peterson shows Jerry a news clipping that Nell was conceived through rape. Jerry seeks the help of Dr. Paula Olsen, a researcher working with autistic children. Paula and her colleague Dr. Alexander "Al" Paley are interested in studying a "wild child" (feral child), and Al continues calling Nell this even after studying films showing that Nell does not fit the "wild child" profile. Paula and Al get a court order to institutionalize Nell for further study. Jerry hires lawyer Don Fontana and prevents it. The judge gives Jerry and Paula three months to interact with Nell and discover her needs. Paula shows up on a houseboat with electronic equipment to monitor Nell's behavior while Jerry chooses to stay in a tent by Nell's cabin and quietly observe. Paula discovers that Nell's seemingly indecipherable language is English, based partly on her mother's aphasic speech after a stroke, and partly on the secret language she shared with her decades-deceased identical twin sister. Jerry and Paula begin a grudging friendship. Nell sleeps during the day or works inside her home and is active outdoors only after sunset. She explains to Jerry that her mother told her about the rape and warned her that men were evildoers. As Nell comes to trust Jerry, she sees him as a friend, the "gah'inja" her mother promised would come. Jerry later realizes that "gah'inja" is Nell's phrase for "guardian angel." Using popcorn as an incentive, Jerry is able to lead Nell outside and into the sun. Nell leads Jerry and Paula to the decayed remains of her identical twin sister, May, who died in a fall while the two were playing in the woods. Mike Ibarra, a reporter, learns of Nell's existence and visits her cabin. Nell is curious of the visitor at first, but when he snaps a photo, the flash frightens Nell. Jerry arrives and throws the reporter out. Paula believes that Nell would be safer in a hospital, while Jerry feels that Nell should be left alone and allowed to live as she pleases. The two decide that Nell should be shown a little of the world, and they make the decision to bring Nell into town. While in town, Nell befriends Mary, Todd's depressed wife, but also encounters some raunchy boys in a pool hall until Jerry gets her out. With increased intrusion by the press, Jerry and Paula take Nell to a hospital for her protection. There, Nell becomes extremely despondent and unresponsive. Jerry removes her from the hospital and hides her in a hotel. Paula joins him, and the two admit that they love each other. At the court hearing the next day, Al, who wants to study Nell in a controlled environment, delivers his opinion that Nell has Asperger syndrome and belongs in an institution. Nell then comes forward and, with Jerry interpreting, speaks for herself. Five years later, Jerry and Paula bring their daughter, Ruthie, to visit Nell in her house. It is Nell's birthday, and friends surround her. ===== Earth & Beyond was set some time around 2575 AD. It featured three races: the Progen, Jenquai and Terran. The Progen were a genetically-altered and advanced race. The Jenquai were philosophers who sought eternal life. The Terrans were the original humans. Each of the three races had descended from the human race on Earth. The game's storyline took place in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Progen, Terran and Jenquai were all uneasy of each other, but still managed to live together in peace. The Terrans were known for their extremely large corporations, such as Infiniti Corp. and GetCo. Infiniti Corp. was the manufacturer of the inter-system and inter- sector warp gates. The warp gates were originally created by the mysterious Ancients, an enigmatic and hyper-advanced race who had all but disappeared. ===== A former Nazi SS dentist at Auschwitz, Dr. Christian Szell, now residing in Paraguay, has been living on the proceeds of diamonds he extorted from prisoners there. The diamonds are kept at a bank in New York by his father. The sales and transfers of proceeds are facilitated by a secret US agency called "The Division" for whom Szell has provided information about other escaped Nazis. When his father dies in a car accident, Szell must come to New York himself to retrieve the diamonds, as there is no one else he can trust with them. Meanwhile, at Columbia University, Thomas Babington "Tom" Levy,Goldman, William. Marathon Man. Random House Digital, Inc., Jul 3, 2001. p. 237. Retrieved from Google Books on January 9, 2012. , . '"Here lies Thomas Babington Levy, 1948–1973, Caught by a Cripple."' known by his brother as "Babe" (the first and middle names are a reference to Thomas Babington Macaulay,Goldman, William. Marathon Man. Random House Digital, Inc., Jul 3, 2001. 224. Retrieved from Google Books on January 9, 2012. , . "After, of course, the great British historian." and the nickname is a reference to Babe Ruth) is a postgraduate student in history and an aspiring marathon runner. He is haunted by the suicide of his brilliant academic father, H.V. Levy, who was one of the victims of McCarthyism, when Babe was ten. Babe's PhD dissertation aims to clear his father's name of alleged Communist affiliations. Unbeknownst to Babe, his elder brother by ten years (and best friend), Henry David "Hank" Levy (after Henry David Thoreau), known by Babe as "Doc", works in The Division under the name "Scylla" and has been helping to move Szell's diamonds as part of his duties. When Szell arrives in New York he meets with Doc. Suspecting Doc of planning to rob him when he retrieves the diamonds, Szell stabs him and leaves him for dead. Mortally wounded, Doc makes his way to Babe's apartment and dies in his brother's arms. When Szell finds out about this he believes Doc may have told Babe about the plan to rob him. Szell's two henchmen abduct Babe. Szell tortures Babe by drilling into his teeth without anesthetic and repeatedly asking the question, "Is it safe?", referring to Szell's appointment to collect his diamonds from the bank. Babe does not know what the question means nor the interrogator's identity until Szell explains after torturing him. When Szell finally concludes Babe knows nothing, he orders his people to dispose of the young man. Though in great pain, Babe escapes and thanks to his training as a marathoner outruns his pursuers. Seeking revenge for the killing of Doc, Babe arranges a rendezvous at which Szell's people, who hope to eliminate him, are killed instead. He then intercepts Szell at his bank, a confrontation that ultimately leads to Szell's death. ===== Fred (seated) and Lamont Sanford Sanford and Son stars Redd Foxx as Fred G. Sanford, a widower and junk dealer living at 9114 South Central Avenue in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, and Demond Wilson as his son Lamont Sanford. In his youth, Fred moved to South Central Los Angeles from his hometown of St. Louis. After the show's premiere in 1972, newspaper ads touted Foxx as NBC's answer to Archie Bunker, the bigoted white protagonist of All in the Family. Both shows were adapted by Norman Lear from BBC programs. Sanford and Son was adapted from Steptoe and Son and All in the Family from Till Death Us Do Part. An earlier pilot for an American version of Steptoe and Son was produced by Joseph E. Levine in 1965. Starring Lee Tracy and Aldo Ray as Albert and Harold Steptoe, it was unscreened, and did not lead to a series. The pilot was released on DVD in the UK in 2018. ===== Astro Boy is a science fiction series set in a futuristic world where robots co-exist with humans. Its focus is on the adventures of the titular "Astro Boy" (sometimes called simply "Astro"): a powerful android created by the head of the Ministry of Science, Doctor Tenma (aka Dr. Astor Boynton II in the 1960s English dub; Dr. Boynton in the 1980s English dub). Dr. Tenma created Astro to replace his son Tobio ('Astor' in the 1960s English dub; 'Toby' in the 1980s English dub and the 2009 film), who died in a self-driving car accident (first ran away, then died in the accident in the 2003 anime; vaporized by the peacekeeper in the 2009 film). Dr. Tenma built and adopted Astro in Tobio's memory and treated Astro as lovingly as if he was the real Tobio. However, Dr. Tenma soon realized that the little android could not fill the void of his lost son, especially given that Astro could not grow older or express human aesthetics (in one set of panels in the manga, Astro is shown preferring the mechanical shapes of cubes over the organic shapes of flowers). In the original 1960 edition, Tenma rejected Astro and sold him to a cruel circus owner, Hamegg (the Great Cacciatore in the '60 English dub). In the 1980 edition, Hamegg kidnapped Astro while Tenma was trying to find him. In the 2009 film, Tenma rejected Astro part-time because he could not stop thinking about his original son, but later during the film, Tenma realized that Astro made credit to replace Tobio; as a result, Tenma decided that he would readopt Astro. None these events about Astro being rejected (completely or temporarily) or kidnapped in both the 1960 & 1980 cartoons as well as in the 2009 film happened in the 2003 cartoon as Astro's birth was given by Professor Ochanomizu (Dr. Elefun in the 1960 & 1980 cartoons as well as in the 2009 film; Dr. O'Shay in the 2003 cartoon). After some time, Professor Ochanomizu, the new head of the Ministry of Science (co-head of the Ministry of Science in the 2009 film), notices Astro Boy performing in the circus and convinces Hamegg to turn Astro over to him. (In a retcon the story becomes far more violent and complicated). He then takes Astro in as his own and treats him gently and warmly, becoming his legal guardian. He soon realizes that Astro has superior powers and skills, as well as the ability to experience human emotions. Astro then is shown fighting crime, evil, and injustice using his seven powers: 100K horsepower strength, jet flight, high intensity lights in his eyes, adjustable hearing, instant language translation, a retractable machine gun in his hips, and a high IQ capable of determining if a person is good or evil. Most of his enemies are robot-hating humans, robots gone berserk, or alien invaders. Almost every story includes a battle involving Astro and other robots. In one manga episode, Astro takes on the US Air Force, and stops it from bombing some innocent Vietnamese villagers (this was a time- travel episode, in which Astro went back from the 21st century to 1969).Episode "The Angel of Vietnam." ===== In Africa during the mid-20th century, as mankind encroaches, the white lion Panja (Caesar in the English dub) gives the jungle's wild animals a safe haven. However, he angers nearby villagers by stealing their cattle and their food to feed the jungle carnivores (in the English dub he merely frees the cattle). A professional hunter, Ham Egg (Viper Snakely in the English dub), is called in to stop these raids. He avoids directly attacking Panja. Instead, he records the sounds of Panja and uses them to trap his pregnant mate, Eliza, who then becomes bait in a trap for Panja. Panja is killed for his hide (but not before asking Eliza to name their child Kimba), and Eliza is put on a ship, destined for a zoo. Kimba (Leo in Japanese) is born on the ship. Eliza teaches him his father's ideals. As a huge tropical storm nears, she urges her cub out through the bars of her cage. The storm wrecks the ship and Kimba starts to drown in the ocean. The fish help him learn to swim. As he begins to despair, the stars in the sky form the face of his mother, who encourages him. Guided by butterflies, he makes it to land. Kimba lands far from his ancestral home and is found and cared for by some people. He learns the advantages of human culture, and decides that when he returns to his wild home he will bring culture to the jungle and stand for peace like his father. The show follows Kimba's life after he returns to the wild, still a young cub, and how he learns and grows in the next year. Kimba soon learns that only communication and mutual understanding between animals and humans will bring true peace. ===== In the early Meiji era, after participating in the Bakumatsu war as the assassin "Hitokiri Battōsai", Himura Kenshin wanders the countryside of Japan with a reverse blade katana, offering protection and aid to those in need as atonement for the murders he once committed. When arriving in Tokyo in the 11th year of Meiji (1878), he meets a young woman named Kamiya Kaoru, who is in the middle of a fight with a murderer - who claims to be the Hitokiri Battōsai - tarnishing the name of the swordsmanship school that she teaches. Kenshin decides to help her and defeats the fake Battōsai. After discovering that Kenshin is the real infamous assassin, Kaoru offers him a place to stay at her dojo noting that he is peace-loving and not cold-hearted, as his reputation implies. Kenshin accepts and begins to establish lifelong relationships with many people such as Sagara Sanosuke, a former Sekihō Army member; Myōjin Yahiko, an orphan from a samurai family who is also living with Kaoru as her student; and a doctor named Takani Megumi, caught in the opium trade. However, he also deals with his fair share of enemies, new and old, including the former leader of the Oniwabanshū, Shinomori Aoshi and a rival from the Bakumatsu turned police officer, Saitō Hajime. After several months of living in the dojo, Kenshin discovers that his successor as assassin of the shadows, Shishio Makoto, plans to conquer Japan by destroying the Meiji Government, starting with Kyoto. Feeling that Shishio's faction may attack his friends, Kenshin goes to meet Shishio alone to defeat him. However, many of his friends, including a young Oniwabanshū named Makimachi Misao, whom he meets in his travels, decide to help him in his fight. After his first meeting with him, Kenshin realizes he needs to get stronger to defeat Shishio without becoming the cold assassin he was in the past and returns to the man who taught him kenjutsu, Hiko Seijūrō, to learn the school's final technique. He finally accepts his friends' help and defeats Shishio in a close fight; Shishio dies being engulfed in flames due to the rise in his body temperature caused by his severe burns. When Kenshin and his friends return to Tokyo, he finds Yukishiro Enishi, who plans to take revenge by killing his friends. At this point, it is revealed that, during the Bakumatsu, Kenshin was to be married to a woman named Yukishiro Tomoe. She had initially wanted to avenge the death of her 1st fiancé whom Kenshin had killed, but instead, they both fell in love, and she got proposed to. It is then discovered that Tomoe was related to a group of Edo guards that wanted to kill Kenshin, and Tomoe is betrayed by them and captured to use as bait. Kenshin rushes to rescue her, killing both his assailant and believed to accidentally slay Tomoe, who jumps in at the last minute to save Kenshin from a fatal attack. Wanting to take revenge for the death of his sister, Enishi kidnaps Kaoru and leaves behind a corpse doll bearing a stunning resemblance of Kaoru for Kenshin to find and momentarily grieve over. Once discovering that Kaoru is alive, Kenshin and his friends set out to rescue her. A battle between Kenshin and Enishi follows, and when Kenshin wins, he and Kaoru return home. Five years later, Kenshin has married Kaoru and has a son named Himura Kenji. Now at peace with himself, Kenshin gives his reverse-blade sword to Yahiko. ===== Three discharged United States Navy aviators, Johnny Morrison, Buzz Wanchek and George Copeland, arrive in Hollywood, California. All three flew together in the same flight crew in the South Pacific. Buzz has shell shock and a metal plate in his head, above his ear. While George and Buzz get an apartment together, Johnny surprises his wife, Helen, at her old apartment, which is patrolled by a house detective, "Dad" Newell. He discovers that she is having an affair with Eddie Harwood, the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Helen, drunk, confesses to Johnny that their son Dickie, who Johnny believed died of diphtheria, actually died in a car crash that occurred because she was driving while drunk. Newell sees Johnny and Helen fight. Later, Johnny pulls a gun on Helen, but drops it and leaves. Buzz goes out to find Johnny. He meets Helen and, unaware of her identity, goes to her bungalow for a drink. Eddie breaks up with Helen, who then blackmails him into seeing her again. Johnny is picked up in the rain by Joyce Harwood, who is separated from Eddie. Both do not reveal their name, and they spend the night in separate rooms in a Malibu inn. The next morning, they have breakfast, and he decides to give his marriage another chance. Then, the radio announces that Helen has been murdered and that Johnny is suspected. The police interview Newell, Harwood, Buzz, and George. After Johnny checks into a cheap hotel under an assumed name, Corelli, the hotel manager, finds Johnny's photo of himself with Dickie and tries to blackmail him. Johnny beats Corelli up and then discovers that on the back of the photo, Helen revealed that Eddie is really Bauer, a murderer who is wanted in New Jersey. Corelli revives and sells information on Johnny's identity to a gangster named Leo, who kidnaps him. Buzz and George visit Eddie at the Blue Dahlia. Joyce introduces herself. As Joyce picks at a blue dahlia flower, the nightclub's music sets off a painful ring in Buzz's head. Lapsing into a fit, he remembers the agonizing music that he heard at Helen's bungalow, as she played with a blue dahlia. Johnny escapes Leo's henchmen as Eddie arrives and forces him to admit that 15 years earlier, he was involved in the shooting of a bank messenger. Leo tries to shoot Johnny but hits Eddie instead. Johnny flees to the Blue Dahlia, where the police are trying to force a confused Buzz to admit that he killed Helen. Johnny enters and suggests for Joyce to turn up the music. As his head pounds, Buzz remembers leaving Helen alive in her bungalow. Police Captain Henrickson then confronts Newell with the accusation that he tried to blackmail Helen about her affair and that when she refused to comply, he killed her. Newell then tries to escape from the office but is shot by Henrickson. Later, outside the Blue Dahlia, Buzz and George decide to go for a drink, leaving Johnny and Joyce together. ===== The play starts with Ken Gorman and his wife, Chris Gorman, at the 10th anniversary party of Charlie Brock, the Deputy Mayor of New York, and his wife, Myra. Unfortunately, things are not going quite to plan. All the kitchen staff are gone, Myra is missing, and Charlie has shot himself in the head. Chris calls Charlie's doctor, but before Chris can tell him what has happened, Ken dictates that she not inform the doctor of anything that has happened, for the bullet only went through Charlie's ear lobe. It appeared that he had taken some Valium, and was falling asleep as he fired the gun, managing to miss his head. Chris gets off the phone with Dr. Dudley just as the doorbell rings. Chris opens the door and lets in Lenny and Claire Ganz, also friends of the Brocks. Lenny and Claire have just been in a car accident, and Lenny calls his doctor, who also happens to be Dr. Dudley, to ask him about his neck. Claire and Lenny exchange rumors that they have heard about Charlie and Myra, both convinced that one is having an affair. Finally they confront Ken, who lets them in on the situation. Lenny declares they should call the police, but Ken disagrees. Before they can agree on anything, another car shows up. Ken goes back upstairs to Charlie's bedroom, and Claire opens the door to let in Ernie Cusack, a psychologist, and his eccentric wife Cookie. Claire, Chris, and Lenny engage the Cusacks in conversation, not telling them about the situation with Charlie. Suddenly, a gunshot is heard. Ken comes out of the upstairs bedroom and requests Chris' presence, while Lenny distracts the Cusacks, then goes upstairs to check on the problem. It turns out Ken was taking the gun away, tripped on Charlie's slippers and accidentally fired the gun, which has made him almost deaf. As the Cusacks prepare dinner, the final guests arrive, Glenn, a politician running for State Senate, and Cassie Cooper, who have a very strained relationship and argue constantly. Act I closes as the Cusacks come out with a steaming dinner, Cassie furiously berates Glenn for making her drop a crystal in the toilet, Chris trips on a telephone wire, Lenny's neck goes out, Cookie has a back spasm, and a very deaf Ken sits in absolute confusion. Act II begins as dinner ends, the Cusacks and Coopers having been told the entirety of the situation. The guests decide to place blame for the situation on Ken. Cassie attempts to make Glenn jealous by blatantly flirting with Ken, indirectly clearing Ken's ears in the process. A mysterious woman, who Claire and Chris assume to be Myra, calls the house asking for Glenn. Things get serious as a police car pulls up the driveway. The guests furiously debate what to do, and decide to pretend that they hadn't noticed anything was wrong, claiming "had the music on too loud to hear the gunshots". Just to be safe, the men decide for Lenny to play Charlie if the policeman asks for him, and for Ken to play Lenny. The policeman, Officer Welch, enters and interrogates them, and quickly gets suspicious as their story unravels. It turns out the policeman was just investigating Lenny's car accident, and no one is in trouble, but Glenn accidentally reveals the gunshot situation just as the officer begins to leave, only to get a call on his walkie-talkie about an incident involving gunshots near the scene. Now angered by what he has learned, Welch demands to see Charlie, and a disgruntled Lenny comes downstairs to "explain everything". Lenny, at first unsure what to possibly say, eventually gets carried away in his monologue and invents a ludicrous, rambling explanation for everything, culminating in a claim that Myra is in the basement. Welch, partly out of exasperation, buys the story and leaves the house. The guests, elated at their escape, begin to troop upstairs to speak with Charlie and find out the story once and for all, but are delayed when they hear Myra call up from the basement. ===== In 1946, David Alfred Eaton (Paul Newman) returns home from the war to Philadelphia. He finds his mother Martha (Myrna Loy) driven to alcoholism by years of neglect and abuse from her husband Samuel Eaton (Leon Ames), owner of a prestigious iron and steel company. Having withdrawn from his family after the death of his firstborn son thirteen years earlier, Samuel's resentment drove Alfred to turn his back on the family business and strike out on his own with Lex Porter (George Grizzard), his closest friend. While attending a party at the estate of Lex's wealthy uncle, Alfred is dazzled by Mary St. John (Joanne Woodward), the daughter of a wealthy family. Mary is drawn into a relationship with Alfred and breaks her secret engagement to Dr. Jim Roper (Patrick O'Neal), defying her parents. After a humiliating argument, Alfred's father falls ill, and Alfred shuns the family business once again to start an aviation company with Lex. On his wedding day, Alfred receives word that his father has died. Certain that Samuel has timed his death to spite him, Alfred goes ahead with the ceremony. With his uncle's money, Lex and Alfred then fund the Nassau Aircraft Corporation, but when Lex shows more interest in perfecting aircraft designs than in selling planes, Alfred becomes impatient. One wintry day, Alfred and Mary are driving home from a party when they see a little boy fall through the thin ice of a frozen pond. Alfred plunges into the icy waters to save him. The boy's grandfather, James Duncan MacHardie (Felix Aylmer), the most famous financier in America, invites Alfred and Mary to dinner. MacHardie, a shrewd businessman, sensing Alfred's drive and ambition, offers him a job in his investment firm. Obsessed by the need to outdo his father, Alfred travels the country for MacHardie, leaving Mary alone for months at a time. Lonely and self-pitying, Mary begins to resent Alfred's constant absences. Creighton Duffy (Howard Caine), MacHardie's son-in-law, whose position is threatened by Alfred's acumen, suggests that Alfred spend two months in rural Pennsylvania checking out the business aptitude and prospects of Ralph Benziger (Ted de Corsia), a prosperous coal mine owner. After an ugly argument with his wife, Alfred goes to Pennsylvania. Invited to dinner at Benziger's home, he meets Natalie (Ina Balin), the man's beautiful and compassionate daughter. Lonely and overwhelmed by her sensitivity, Alfred impetuously invites her on a date, but she refuses because he is married. Later that night, however, Natalie reconsiders and meets him at a drive-in movie the following evening. Alfred confides to Natalie that her warmth and generosity has made him realize what a sham his marriage is. They share a kiss, but Natalie still believes they must end this relationship before it goes any further for both their sakes. Upon returning to New York, Alfred immediately is summoned to MacHardie's office. He is informed that Mary has been having an affair with Dr. Roper. But the archly conservative MacHardie proceeds to warn Alfred that he will not tolerate divorce within his firm, considering it a failure in the employee's character. MacHardie also assigns him to analyze the Nassau Aircraft Corp., his former firm, as a possible investment. One night, while leaving a party with his wife, Alfred unexpectedly encounters Natalie in front of the hotel. Sensing that Alfred and Natalie were intimate, Mary vindictively calls Roper and makes a date with him. Alfred goes to meet Natalie and tells her that, although he is estranged from Mary, his career prevents him from requesting a divorce. Alfred begins to investigate Nassau Aircraft's business practices. Duffy, who has become unethically involved with Nassau and will reap a financial windfall if MacHardie invests in the company, threatens to blackmail Alfred unless he suppresses his report. Alfred and Natalie find themselves unable to resist their attraction to each other, and they meet for a tryst in a hotel room. Photographers hired by Duffy burst in and capture their indiscretion. Natalie, uncertain if Alfred's main concern is to save her reputation or his career, decides to leave. Mary, meanwhile, suggests to her husband that they share an open marriage, seeing whomever they please. After she seductively retires to her bedroom, the scandalous photos are delivered to Alfred at his home. At work the next day, MacHardie ushers in Mary to celebrate Alfred's surprise promotion to partner. Duffy smirks, only to see Alfred rise and denounce MacHardie's hypocrisy of placing success and social position above personal responsibility and happiness. Alfred then issues the uncensored report exposing Duffy's duplicity and walks out. Mary runs after him, but it is too late. He leaves her for good and returns to Natalie's home and a new life. ===== In Washington, D.C., Maggie Hayward (Bridget Fonda) is a drug addict found guilty of murdering a police officer during a robbery shootout, and is about to be executed by lethal injection. Her demise is faked and a spy named Bob (Gabriel Byrne) informs her that she has to work for him. Maggie, having little choice, reluctantly agrees to cooperate and begins a regimen of intensive training that includes not only martial arts and firearms training, but etiquette and computer use. Senior Operative Amanda (Anne Bancroft) transforms her into a refined, beautiful woman. She is taken on a dinner date with Bob, who informs her about the first job: an assassination of a VIP eating at the same restaurant. Maggie kills the VIP and his bodyguard and then is pursued by a team of the VIP's bodyguards. She shoots several of the bodyguards and then escapes from the kitchen by jumping down a laundry chute. This task was her final test and she has now completed her training. The following morning she leaves for Venice, California, where she enters into a romantic relationship with apartment house manager J.P. (Dermot Mulroney). While her first assignments, both hit jobs, are ultimately successful, Maggie quickly comes to hate her work and tries to quit her job as a professional killer. As things progress between her and J.P. and her double life threatens their relationship, she asks for help in leaving the agency. Her request is denied, but Bob agrees to get her out of the agency if she completes the next task. The new job is to masquerade as Angela (Olivia d'Abo), the girlfriend of Fahd Bakhtiar (Richard Romanus), an Iranian trading in nuclear weapons. As she prepares for the job, J.P. continues to complain about her mysterious friends and mocks the improvised backstory that Bob had provided for himself and Maggie. Maggie is shown watching a scene from Deception, in which a woman kills a former lover to keep their past secret from her new husband, reflecting Maggie's determination to kill her employers if necessary to protect her relationship with J.P. Taking out Angela proves problematic and results in the deaths of Angela's two bodyguards and the injury of Maggie's partner, Beth (Lorraine Toussaint). Director Kaufman (Miguel Ferrer) then sends in Victor, a "cleaner" (Harvey Keitel) to get rid of the bodies and salvage the mission. Unknown to Maggie, he has also been ordered to kill both agents as well because one failure results in death. After killing the wounded Beth in front of Maggie, he drives her to Fahd's home. At gunpoint she gets Fahd to unlock his computer and reveal his secrets, but he avoids execution and she is forced to flee. As they purportedly drive back to her residence, Maggie sees a gun in Victor's waistband and correctly suspects that he is going to kill her. This leads to a struggle and the car spins out of control. Ultimately, Victor is dragged over a ravine and killed. Maggie makes her way back to her apartment, but leaves sometime during the night. Bob subsequently learns of her disappearance from J.P.. As Bob is leaving, he sees Maggie watching him through the mist. Instead of reporting her, he calls Kaufman and informs him, after some hesitation, that the cleaner and Maggie are both dead. ===== Geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) and scientists Dr. Serge Leveque (Tchéky Karyo) and Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) become aware of an instability of Earth's magnetic field after a series of bizarre incidents across the globe. They determine that the Earth's molten core, which generates this field, has stopped rotating and that, within a year, the field will collapse, exposing the planet's surface directly to devastating solar radiation. Backed by the U.S. government, Keyes, Leveque, and Zimsky create a plan to bore down to the core and set off five nuclear explosions to restart the rotation. They gain the help of rogue scientist Dr. Ed "Braz" Brazzelton (Delroy Lindo), who has devised a vessel made of "Unobtainium" that can withstand the heat and pressure within the Earth's crust and convert it to energy, as well as a laser-driven boring system that will allow them to quickly pass through the crust. Construction starts immediately on the Virgil, a multi-compartment vessel to be helmed by Space Shuttle Endeavour pilots Commander Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood) and Major Rebecca "Beck" Childs (Hilary Swank), who will join Keyes and the others. To prevent a worldwide panic, Keyes enlists computer hacker Theodore Donald "Rat" Finch (DJ Qualls) to scour the Internet and eliminate all traces of the pending disaster or their plan. Virgil is launched through the Marianas Trench from an offshore platform. The team accidentally drills through a gigantic empty geode structure below the surface, damaging the lasers when it lands at its base and cracking the geode's structure and causing magma to flow in from above. The crew repairs and restarts the laser array in time, but before they can return to the ship, Iverson is killed by a falling crystal shard that hits him in the helmet. As Virgil continues, it clips a huge diamond that breaches the hull of the last compartment. Leveque sacrifices himself to save the nuclear launch codes before the compartment is crushed by extreme pressure. Meanwhile, on the surface, the public becomes aware of problems after a lightning superstorm and an unfiltered patch of ultra-violet radiation from the sun destroy Rome and San Francisco, respectively. Virgil eventually reaches the molten core, and, as they take readings, they discover that the density of the core is far different from what they expected, which will not allow their plan to work. Finch is unable to stop worldwide panic but instead learns of the top-secret project "DESTINI" (Deep Earth Seismic Trigger INItiative), which is the government's 'secondary protocol' and will be deployed should the Virgil mission fail. Finch relays his information to Keyes, who discovers that Zimsky was one of DESTINI's lead scientists. DESTINI, according to Zimsky, was designed as a weapon to propagate earthquakes through the Earth's core, but its first activation unintentionally stopped its rotation instead. Zimsky reveals the government will use it again to attempt a restart of the core. Keyes is convinced it will have disastrous results and has Finch hack into DESTINI's system and cut its power supply to buy the Virgil more time. The Virgil team formulates an alternative plan, and calculates that by splitting their nuclear weapons into the remaining compartments and jettisoning each at specific distances, they can create a "ripple effect", where the power of each bomb will push against the blast of the next, generating the energy required to restart the core. However, because Virgil was not designed to jettison undamaged compartments due to hasty design, the plan requires someone to deactivate a safety switch that is in an area exposed to the extreme temperatures. Braz volunteers and deactivates the switch, dying shortly afterwards. Keyes and Zimsky race to reset the nuclear charges, and Zimsky gets trapped in one of the detaching compartments. Keyes believes they still may have too little yield, but Zimsky suggests they use the ship's nuclear fuel source as well, which will leave the Virgil powerless; Zimsky then forces Keyes out of the compartment before it closes, sacrificing himself. Keyes deploys the nuclear core in the last compartment and detaches it just as the triggered detonations start, and then the core's rotation is restarted. Drifting powerless in the core, Keyes and Childs realize they can use the unobtainium shell to convert the heat and pressure from the wavefront to power the Virgil, and they are able to escape from the Earth's core. They break through the crust underwater, leaving them safe on the ocean floor, but power and communications are offline. They believe themselves lost underwater but use the remaining power to activate a weak sonar beacon. The beacon attracts a nearby whale pod, and Finch is able to trace their whale songs to locate the Virgil. A week after the mission, Finch unleashes the full details of the mission, (including those lost), and of DESTINI to the public via the Internet. As a result, the Virgil crew is hailed as heroes, and the government is forced to answer questions about DESTINI. ===== Irma la Douce tells the story of Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), an honest cop, who after being transferred from the park Bois de Boulogne to a more urban neighborhood in Paris, finds a street full of prostitutes working at the Hotel Casanova and proceeds to raid the place. The police inspector, who is Nestor's superior, and the other policemen, have been aware of the prostitution, but tolerate it in exchange for bribes. The inspector, a client of the prostitutes himself, fires Nestor, who is accidentally framed for bribery. Kicked off the force and humiliated, Nestor finds himself drawn to the very neighborhood that ended his career with the Paris police - returning to Chez Moustache, a popular hangout tavern for prostitutes and their pimps. Down on his luck, Nestor befriends Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine), a popular prostitute. He also reluctantly accepts, as a confidante, the proprietor of Chez Moustache, a man known only as "Moustache." In a running joke, Moustache (Lou Jacobi), a seemingly ordinary barkeeper, tells of a storied prior life, claiming to have been, among other things, an attorney, a colonel, and a doctor, ending with the repeated line, "But that's another story". After Nestor defends Irma against her abusive pimp, Hippolyte, Nestor moves in with her, and he soon finds himself as Irma's new pimp. Jealous of the thought of Irma being with other men, Nestor comes up with a plan to stop Irma's prostitution. But he soon finds out that it is not all that it is cracked up to be. Using a disguise, he invents an alter-ego, "Lord X", a British lord, who "becomes" Irma's sole client. Nestor's plans to keep Irma off the streets soon backfire, and she becomes suspicious, since Nestor must work long and hard in the market at night to earn the cash "Lord X" pays Irma. When Irma decides to leave Paris with the fictitious Lord X, Nestor decides to end the charade. Unaware he is being tailed by Hippolyte, he finds a secluded stretch along the river Seine, and tosses his disguise into it. Hippolyte, not having seen Nestor change his clothes, sees "Lord X"'s clothes floating in the water, and concludes Nestor murdered him. Before Nestor is arrested, Moustache advises him not to reveal that Lord X was a fabrication. He tells him, "The jails are full of innocent people because they told the truth." Nestor admits to having killed Lord X, but only because of his love for Irma. Hauled off to jail, but with Irma in love with him, Nestor is sentenced to 15 years' hard labor. Learning that Irma is pregnant, Nestor escapes from prison, with Moustache's help, and returns to Irma. He narrowly avoids being recaptured when the police search for him in Irma's apartment, but donning his old uniform, Nestor simply blends in with the other police. With the help of Hippolyte, Nestor arranges for the police to search for him along the Seine from which, dressed as Lord X, he emerges. Knowing he cannot be re-arrested for a murder the police now know did not occur, Nestor rushes to the church, where he plans to marry Irma. As she walks down the aisle, she begins to experience contractions, and they continue during the wedding ceremony. (The ceremony, as depicted, would have had no legal effect, since priests cannot perform officially recognized marriages in France). Nestor and Irma barely make it through the ceremony before she goes into labor and delivers their baby. While Nestor and everyone else is occupied with Irma, Moustache notices one of the guests sitting alone at the front of the church. Rising from his seat, and walking past Moustache, the guest is none other than Lord X! A clearly baffled Moustache looks at Lord X, and then at the audience. "But that's another story", he says. ===== The film tells the story of Angie Rossini (Natalie Wood), a salesclerk at Macy's department store who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand with musician Rocky Papasano (Steve McQueen). When she tracks him down, he doesn't remember her. She wants the name of a doctor for an abortion. Meanwhile, Angie is being pressured by her older brothers, played by Herschel Bernardi and Harvey Lembeck, to marry the unappealing restaurateur Anthony (Tom Bosley). Rocky and Angie scrape up enough money for the crude backroom abortion. But when he and Angie meet the abortionist, who turns out not to be a doctor, Rocky refuses to let her go through with the dangerous procedure. The maturity he shows in doing this brings them closer. After meeting her brothers, Rocky decides to "take his medicine" by marrying her. Angie is insulted and turns him down. Angie wants romance, with "bells and banjos". As an act of independence, Angie moves out of her family home. She begins dating Anthony, who offers to marry her. By acting aloof, she attracts Rocky, whom she invites to dinner at her apartment. At dinner, he makes advances on her and is rejected. Angie says she does not want to make the same mistake again. They quarrel and she throws him out. The next day, Rocky waits for her outside Macy's, ringing bells and playing a banjo, and wins her heart. ===== It tells the World War II era story of a cynical, successful 28 years old businessman named Domenico (Marcello Mastroianni), who, after meeting a naive 17 year old country girl, Filumena (Sophia Loren), one night in a Neapolitan brothel during bombing outside , keeps frequenting her for years in an on again-off again relationship spanning 22 years. From the very beginning, Filumena is deeply in love with Domenico but her love is not reciprocated. After Filumena expresses her wish to be solely his woman, Domenico arranges a lease for her with Rosalie as maid and Alfredo(Aldo Puglisi) as the butler and arranges a job for her in his shop. He eventually takes her in his house as a semi-official mistress under the pretense that she is the niece of Carmela (his mother's old maid) to take care of his ailing, senile mother. Domenico's mindset about Filumena's past keeps him from taking their relationship seriously. After having fallen for the young 20 year old cashier of his store; Domenico, now 50, plans to marry her. But he finds himself cornered when Filumena feigns illness and "on her deathbed", asks to be married to him. Thinking she'll be dead in a matter of hours and the 'marriage' won't even be registered, he agrees. After having been proclaimed his legal bride, the shrewd and resourceful Filumena drops the charade of feigning death. This puts Domenico in a fit of rage as he feels that Filumena tricked him for the money. But Filumena reveals the real reason for the marriage: she did it for her 3 children that she bore(Umberto, Riccardo and Michele) . As the children were coming of age, she wanted them to have a family name,precisely, Soriano. Domenico won't accept this and decides to contest the marriage. The law comes in his favour and the marriage is annulled. Filumena accepts the annulment but tells Domenico that he fathered one of the children. She does not say which as she considers all of them as equal.However, she gives him a hint that his child was conceived on the night Domenico said " to pretend they are in love" and gave her a 100 lire note where she wrote the date of that night. She leaves that note to Domenico. Domenico is visibly rattled by this revelation but can't solve the clue. Domenico tries desperately to figure out which child he fathered. He visits the children at their workplace and tries other means but hits a dead end. He meets up with Filumena and tries to force an answer out of her but she reveals nothing more. As a last resort, Domenico decides to confront the children directly but Filumena vehemently opposes this as it would wedge a barrier between the children due to the prospect of Domenico's money. As both of them scuffle, they tumble down and fall into each other's arms. The couple then proclaim proclaim their love for each other with a kiss and decides to remarry. At the church, the boys wait, and Domenico arrives. Domenico mentions that, because he will be marrying their mother, he will give them his name. However, he continues to prod them for clues but again comes out with nothing as they all share some resembling traits. Filumena rushes in, and Domenico smiling with joy, tells her how wonderful she looks and the marriage takes place. Back at home, the sons bid their mother goodnight. As the boys, one after another say goodnight to their 'father' Domenico, he smiles broadly at this and says that he will see them tomorrow. Filumena sits and weeps with joy at this. When Domenico asks why she is crying, she states it feels wonderful to cry. ===== Rescued from the Colorado River as an infant and raised by Seamus Tobin, tomboy Molly Tobin is determined to find a wealthy man to marry. She journeys to Leadville, Colorado and is hired as a saloon singer by Christmas Morgan. After miner Johnny Brown renovates his cabin, the two wed, and he sells his claim in a silver mine for $300,000. The Browns and Seamus move into a Denver mansion, and Molly sets out to improve her social status by trying to ingratiate herself with the city's elite, all of whom snub her and her nouveau riche ways. She and Johnny go to Europe, where they are embraced by royalty, and the couple return to Denver with their new friends. Molly's plan to introduce them to the people who formerly rejected her is derailed by Johnny's rough-and-tumble friends, whose unexpected and boisterous arrival ruins the gala party Molly is hosting. Molly decides to return to Europe, leaving Johnny behind. She initially falls for the charms of Prince Louis de Lanière, but eventually decides she prefers to live with Johnny in Leadville. For the first time in her life, she realizes that someone else's feelings and priorities need to be considered. Setting sail for home aboard the RMS Titanic, she becomes a heroine when the ship sinks and she helps rescue many of her fellow passengers. When her deed makes international headlines, Molly is welcomed home by Johnny and the people of Denver. ===== Myra Savage (Stanley) is a medium who holds séances in her home. Her husband Billy (Attenborough), unable to work because of asthma and cowed by Myra's domineering personality, assists in her séances. Myra's life and psychic work are dominated by her relationship with the spirit of her son Arthur, who died at birth. At Myra's insistence, Billy kidnaps Amanda, the young daughter (Donner) of a wealthy couple, Mr and Mrs Clayton (Eden and Newman), confining her in a room in the Savage home, whilst Myra impersonates a nurse to deceive the girl into believing she is hospitalised. Myra insists she is "borrowing" the girl to demonstrate her psychic abilities to the police in helping them find her. Although they ask for a £25,000 ransom, they plan to return the money with the girl after Myra has become famous for helping find her. Myra visits the Claytons, stating that she is a professional medium and claiming that she had a dream involving their daughter; Clayton is dismissive but his wife believes that Myra may know something. Mrs Clayton then comes to one of Myra's seances. After Billy hides Amanda, anticipating (correctly) the police coming to the house to investigate, he collects the ransom money, burying it in their garden before taking Amanda back to their house, but she has a high temperature and Billy wants to get a doctor, which Myra violently disagrees with. Myra's plan goes awry as her unsteady mental health begins to fray.Review , Time Out, LondonQNetwork review by James Kendrick Believing that her dead son Arthur wants Amanda to be with him, she tells Billy to kill her; he wants to refuse, realising that his wife is completely unhinged, but he seems to lack the will power to resist her. He takes Amanda into the woods and places her under a tree; it is not clear if she is dead or just sedated. When the police ask Myra to conduct a séance to help them find the missing girl – as she had hoped they would – she breaks down during the séance and reveals, as if in a psychic trance, what she and Billy have done. As the trance continues, she senses that the girl was not killed. Billy tells the police where he hid the ransom money and reveals that he left Amanda unconscious where she would be found by scouts who were camping nearby, which the police already know, confirming that she is alright. ===== The characters drive to a remote location to hike at a site marked "Wilderness Trail". As they start, they see some other hikers passing by. After some walking, talking, and an impromptu foot race, they decide to head back. Before long, they realize that they are lost. That night, they build a campfire. Over the next couple of days, the two hikers wander through the wilderness without food or water. They try to split up for a while, retrace their steps and follow some animal tracks, all to no avail. They grow increasingly irritated with each other as the situation becomes dire. They eventually find themselves slowly walking mostly in silence through a desert. They finally collapse due to fatigue and dehydration. The weaker of the two (Affleck) proclaims that he is "leaving", and reaches towards Damon's character. Damon's character rolls on top of Affleck and wordlessly strangles him before collapsing again. After some time, Damon's character awakens and realises that a highway is not far away. In the final sequence, he is badly sunburned but watches the passing landscape from the car of the father and son who have seemingly rescued him. ===== Following the conclusion of Debt of Honor, previously confirmed Vice President Jack Ryan is sworn in as President of the United States. With nearly every executive, legislative, and judicial figure deceased, Ryan is left to represent the United States by himself. He must deal with multiple crises: reconstituting his own Cabinet, the House, the Senate and the entire Supreme Court; a challenge to the legitimacy of his succession to the Presidency by former Vice President Ed Kealty, leading to press hazing; and a war brewing in the Middle East. When the Iraqi president (implied to be Saddam Hussein) is assassinated by an Iranian deep cover agent, Iranian leader Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei takes advantage of the power vacuum by launching an unopposed invasion of Iraq and later uniting it with his country, calling the new entity the "United Islamic Republic" (or 'UIR'). Daryaei then secretly unleashes a master plan of “weakening” the United States through a series of terrorist attacks: a biological attack in the country using a weaponized strain of Ebola virus, a kidnapping attempt on Ryan’s youngest daughter Katie from her school, and an assassination attempt on the President himself by a Secret Service bodyguard who is actually an Iranian sleeper agent. China and India secretly assist Daryaei, first by causing a diplomatic crisis between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan when a PLAAF aircraft "accidentally" shoots down a Taiwanese airliner. The incident pulls a U.S. Navy carrier group from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and allows the Indian Navy's own carrier group to move undetected to the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off access to the only sea-bound pathway to the UIR and Saudi Arabia. Daryaei thinks that with the U.S. government and military overwhelmed by a multitude of crises, he is now free to invade Saudi Arabia and claim superpower status for the UIR. The attack on Ryan's daughter, as well as the assassination attempt on the President, is swiftly averted by the FBI and the Secret Service. However, the Ebola epidemic causes the President to declare martial law and enforce a travel ban in an effort to contain the virus. The epidemic later burns out due to the virus being so fragile that it cannot spread effectively. Meanwhile, CIA operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez are tasked with investigating the origin of the virus in Africa, where they later find out about Daryaei's involvement, connecting the whole puzzle of seemingly unrelated global crises that are baffling the United States. Ryan then deploys what is left of the United States military (the virus immobilizes almost the entire military apparatus except for one fighter wing, two armored cavalry regiments, and one National Guard armor brigade that had been training at isolated Fort Irwin) to assist Saudi and Kuwaiti military forces in repelling a UIR invasion of Saudi Arabia. The tide soon turns against the UIR, with its forces obliterated by the combined firepower of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. President Ryan had sent Clark and Chavez into Tehran, the de facto capital of UIR, to target Daryaei with assistance from Russian intelligence. The Ayatollah is later killed in his residence by precision guided munitions dropped from F-117 Nighthawks. Ryan then threatens to launch a tactical nuclear strike on Tehran unless those responsible for the attacks are immediately extradited to the U.S. to face charges, and the facility where the weaponized Ebola was cultured is neutralized. He announces a new foreign policy doctrine, the “Ryan Doctrine", under which the United States will hold personally accountable any foreign leader who orders attacks on American citizens, territory, or possessions in the future. Kealty's challenge to President Ryan's legitimacy fails in court; due to the way Kealty's legal complaint was worded, the federal judge who heard the case inadvertently confirms that Ryan is the President of the United States. In the aftermath of the crisis, public appreciation of the unelected president grows. ===== About 65 million years ago, a meteorite crashes into the Earth, killing the dinosaurs and splitting the universe into two parallel dimensions. The surviving dinosaurs cross into a new dimension and evolve into a humanoid race. In the present, a mysterious woman leaves a large egg, along with a rock, at a Catholic orphanage, but as she attempts to leave, she is accosted by King Koopa, who demands the location of the rock. Rocks then fall onto the woman, killing her. The egg then hatches, containing an infant girl. Twenty years later, Italian American plumbers Mario and Luigi live in Brooklyn, New York. They are on the verge of being driven out of business by the mafia-operated Scapelli Construction Company led by Anthony Scapelli. Luigi falls for NYU student Daisy, who is digging under the Brooklyn Bridge for dinosaur bones. After a date, Daisy takes Luigi back to the bridge only to witness two of Scapelli's men sabotaging it by leaving the water pipes open. Mario and Luigi manage to fix it but are knocked unconscious by Iggy and Spike, Koopa's henchmen and cousins, who kidnap Daisy. Mario and Luigi awaken and pursue them through an interdimensional portal that leads them to Dinohattan. Iggy and Spike realize they didn't bring Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment which Koopa is trying to get in order to merge his world with the human world. It is then revealed that Daisy is the long-lost Princess of the other dimension. When Koopa overthrew Daisy's father the King and devolved him into fungus, her mother the Queen took her to Brooklyn. The portal was then closed, but Scapelli's men inadvertently reopened the portal when they blasted the cave. Koopa sends Spike and Iggy to find Daisy and the rock to merge the dimensions and make him dictator of both worlds. However, after Koopa subjects them to one of his experiments to make them more intelligent, Spike and Iggy realize Koopa's evil intentions and side with the Mario Bros. in the desert. Daisy is taken to Koopa-Tower, where she meets Yoshi. Koopa informs Daisy that she descended from the dinosaurs, believing only Daisy can merge the worlds because of her royal heritage. Eventually, the Mario Bros. rescue Daisy with the help of Toad, a good-natured guitarist who was devolved into a Goomba as punishment. Eventually, the two worlds merge and Koopa devolves Scapelli into a chimpanzee before going after Mario, but Luigi and Daisy manage to remove the fragment from the meteorite and the worlds separate again. In Dinohattan, Mario confronts Koopa and eventually defeats him when he and Luigi fire their devolution guns at Koopa and blast him with a Bob-omb. Koopa, now transformed into a ferocious, semi-humanoid Tyrannosaurus, attempts to kill the Mario Bros., but they destroy him once and for all by devolving him into an actual Tyrannosaurus rex, then primeval slime. With Daisy's father restored after Koopa's defeat, he reclaims control over the kingdom. The citizens celebrate and immediately destroy anything under Koopa's influence. Luigi professes his love for Daisy and wants her to come to Brooklyn with him, but Daisy cannot come until the damage caused by Koopa is repaired and thus, she wants to spend more time with her father. Crestfallen, Luigi kisses Daisy goodbye as he and Mario return home to Brooklyn, with Daisy watching them leave. Three weeks later, the Mario Bros. are getting ready for dinner when their story comes on the news and the anchorman says they should be called the "Super Mario Bros." Daisy then arrives and asks the Mario Bros. to help her on a new mission. In a post-credits scene, two Japanese business executives propose making a video game based on Iggy and Spike, now trapped on Earth, who decide on the title The Super Koopa Cousins. ===== ===== Neo and Bane lie unconscious in the medical bay of the ship Hammer. Inside the Matrix, Neo is trapped in a subway station named Mobil Ave (an anagram for limbo), a transition zone between the Matrix and the Machine City. He meets a "family" of programs, including a girl named Sati. The "father" tells Neo the subway is controlled by the Trainman, a program loyal to the Merovingian. When Neo tries to board a train with the family, the Trainman refuses and overpowers him. Seraph contacts Morpheus and Trinity on behalf of the Oracle, who informs them of Neo's confinement. Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity enter Club Hel, where they confront the Merovingian and force him to release Neo. Troubled by visions of the Machine City, Neo visits the Oracle, who reveals that Smith intends to destroy both the Matrix and the real world. She states that "everything that has a beginning has an end," and that the war will conclude. After Neo leaves, a large group of Smiths assimilates Sati and Seraph. The Oracle accepts her assimilation and the Smiths gain her powers of precognition, but it is not clear if she has actually been lost forever in the process. In the real world, the crews of the Nebuchadnezzar and the Hammer find and reactivate Niobe's ship, the Logos. They interrogate Bane, who says that he has no recollection of the earlier massacre. As the captains plan their defense of Zion, Neo requests a ship to travel to the Machine City. Motivated by her encounter with the Oracle, Niobe offers him the Logos. Neo departs, accompanied by Trinity. Bane, who has stowed away on the Logos, takes Trinity hostage. Neo realizes that Bane has been assimilated by Smith and a fight ensues. Bane burns Neo's eyes with a power cable, permanently blinding him. Neo, discovering an ability to perceive anything part of the machine source code in the real world as wreathed in golden light, sees and kills Bane. Trinity pilots them to the Machine City. Niobe and Morpheus rush toward Zion in the Hammer to aid the human defenses. Zion's shipyard is overwhelmed by a horde of Sentinels, and the fatally wounded Captain Mifune instructs Kid to open the gate for the Hammer. When it arrives, it discharges its EMP, disabling all the Sentinels present but also Zion's remaining defenses. The humans are forced to retreat and wait for the next attack, thinking it will be their last stand. Near the Machine City, the Logos is bombarded by thousands of missiles, causing it to crash, fatally wounding Trinity. Neo enters the Machine City and encounters "Deus Ex Machina," the machine leader. Neo warns that Smith plans to conquer both the Matrix and the real world and offers to stop Smith in exchange for peace with Zion. The machine leader agrees, and the Sentinels stop attacking Zion. The Machines provide a connection for Neo to enter the Matrix. Inside, the Smith with the Oracle's powers steps forth, saying that he has foreseen his victory against Neo. After a protracted battle, Neo realizes there is no other way to win and allows himself to be assimilated. The machine leader sends a surge of energy into Neo's body in the real world. Because Neo is connected to the Source, the energy surge causes the Neo-Smith clone and all other Smith clones in the Matrix to be destroyed, deleting Smith once and for all. The Sentinels withdraw from Zion, Morpheus and Niobe embrace, and Neo sees a final vision of the machine city while succumbing to his injuries, as his body is carried away by the machines. The Matrix is rebooted, and the Architect encounters the Oracle in a park. They agree that the peace will last "as long as it can" and that those humans who desire it will be offered the opportunity to leave the Matrix. When questioned about Neo's fate, the Oracle tells Sati that she thinks they will see Neo again as Sati reveals she created a beautiful sunrise over the horizon in Neo's honor. Seraph asks the Oracle if she knew this would happen. She replies that she did not know, but she believed. ===== In feudal Japan, two rival clans, the Ebihara and the Mishima, are at war. The Mishima go to the swordmaster Usagi Miyamoto to craft a weapon to end the conflict: the Daikatana. However, Usagi realizes the Mishimas' dark desires and gives the Daikatana to the Ebihara; Inshiro Ebihara throws the sword into a volcano at the end of the war. In 2455 AD, swordmaster Hiro Miyamoto is visited by a man named Dr. Toshiro Ebihara, a descendant of Inshiro who is suffering from a plague and about to die. Toshiro tells Hiro that Kage Mishima, the ruler of the planet, took over the world by stealing the Daikatana and using it to alter history. He stole the cure to a viral plague in 2030 and uses the cure to control the world's population. Mikiko Ebihara, Toshiro's daughter, has been captured when trying to steal back the Daikatana, and Hiro must rescue her and fix history. Hiro storms the Mishima's headquarters where he rescues Mikiko as well as Superfly Johnson, the Mishima's head of security who rebelled when he grew sick of the Mishima's brutal totalitarian practices. Mikiko and Superfly join Hiro in his quest and steal the Daikatana. The Mishima encounters the trio as the trio steal the sword, wielding a second Daikatana. The Mishima sends the trio back in time to Ancient Greece. Hiro and Mikiko defeat Medusa, recharging the Daikatana as it absorbs Medusa's power. The three time jump once more, only to encounter the Mishima again and be sent through time to the Dark Ages, stranded as the Daikatana has run out of energy. The group finds a sorcerer named Musilde who offers to recharge the Daikatana if Hiro, Superfly, and Mikiko can save his village from the black plague. To do this, the group must defeat the necromancer Nharre, reassemble the Purifier, a magical sword, and use it to restore King Gharroth's sanity so that he may use the sword to put an end to the plague. When King Gharroth recharges the Daikatana, Hiro and his allies time jump again, finally ending up in 2030, where San Francisco has fallen to gangs and martial law has been declared by the military and the Mishima. The trio fights their way through a naval base where the Mishima is working on weapons. The ghost of Usagi enters Hiro's body and gives him full control over the Daikatana. With Usagi's knowledge and skills with the sword, Hiro slays the Mishima. One of the Daikatana disappears, as its timeline no longer exists. Mikiko steals the remaining Daikatana and kills Superfly, revealing that the feudal Ebihara clan was just as evil as the Mishimas. She announces her intentions to use the Daikatana to restore the honor of her ancient clan and take over the world. Hiro defeats and kills Mikiko, then uses the Daikatana to fix history once and for all. The Daikatana is never found in 2455, the viral plague is cured in 2030, the Mishima never take over the world, and Hiro exiles himself to a forgotten corner of the space-time continuum, safeguarding the Daikatana to ensure that it never falls into the hands of evil. ===== All Gas and Gaiters, predominantly farcical in nature, was set in the close of the fictional St Oggs Cathedral and concerned various intrigues and rivalries among the clergy in the Church of England. The bishop was easygoing; his friend the archdeacon was elderly, tippling, and still appreciative of attractive women; and the bishop's chaplain was naïve and accident-prone. Their wish to live a quiet bachelor life was continually threatened by the overbearing dean, who tried to bring by-the-book rule to the cathedral. The title is a pun, deriving from a comic expression uttered by an eccentric character in Charles Dickens' 1839 novel Nicholas Nickleby, and later used by such writers as P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, and Powell and Pressburger (spoken in the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp). The phrase "all gas and gaiters" has had different meanings. Sometimes it has been used to mean "a satisfactory state of affairs" and sometimes it has had the meaning of "nonsense". The relevance of this phrase to Anglican clergy is that gaiters (worn over shoes) were part of the traditional dress of bishops and archdeacons. The series initially aroused some controversy because of its portrayal of senior clergy as bungling incompetents, although some clergy enjoyed it. In the opening credits, St Albans Cathedral was shown as the fictional St Oggs, but with the twisted spire of Church of St Mary and All Saints, Chesterfield added to the central tower. The background to the opening credits was the headmaster's garden of St. Albans School. The name "St. Oggs" may have been taken from a fictional village in George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss. It proved to be the first of a series of comedies starring Derek Nimmo in similar bumbling clerical roles—(Oh, Brother!, Oh, Father! and Hell's Bells)—but is regarded as the best, partly because of a strong supporting cast (particularly the experienced farceur Robertson Hare as the archdeacon) and partly because it included some elements of gentle satire.Sangster and Condon TV Heaven. All 11 surviving episodes were released on DVD by DD Home Entertainment in 2004, originally accompanied by a detailed behind-the-scenes booklet, written by Andy Priestner in consultation with the show's writers, Edwin Apps and Pauline Devaney, but later released without. Cinema Club have since bought the DVD rights. Eight scripts of the lost episodes were published in 2015: All Gas and Gaiters, the Lost Episodes: Tome 1 (): "Only Three Can Play", "The Dean Goes Primitive", "The Bishop Goes To Town", "The Bishop Learns the Facts", "The Bishop is Hospitable", "The Bishop Takes a Holiday", "The Affair at Cookham Lock" and "The Bishop Gives a Shove". ===== Darrell Rivers begins her first year at Malory Towers, a castle-like clifftop boarding school in Cornwall. Determined to do well and make friends, her first term is turbulent. Her temper causes problems, her efforts at playing the fool backfire, and the first book ends with Darrell becoming best friends with Sally Hope. Darrell's career from this point is smoother, and she eventually covers herself in the personal, scholastic and sporting glory that was originally expected of her. She is head of the fourth form, games captain of the fifth, and head girl in her final year as well as being a successful lacrosse and tennis player. When she is in the fourth form, her younger sister, Felicity, joins her as a first former at the school. From then up until "Last Term at Malory Towers", we also focus on Felicity and the rest of her form, especially June, the troublesome cousin of Alicia. In all of the books, Darrell plays a pivotal role, though she is not always successful in her endeavours and indeed is temporarily stripped of her fourth-form captaincy (when she is caught shaking a smaller girl (June) who was threatening to reveal the secret of a midnight feast held by the fourth formers out of personal spite), though she gets it back again by resolving a particularly complicated case of sibling rivalry. She is on friendly terms with most of her classmates and even makes her peace with Gwendoline Lacey at the end, when a personal tragedy strikes the vain, selfish class outcast. At the end of her school life, Darrell is bound for the University of St Andrews with her best friend, Sally Hope. She puts her younger sister Felicity in charge of upholding the standard that she and her classmates set. The second series of six books follows Felicity from the third year to her final term. In the seventh book, New Term at Malory Towers, Felicity battles with clingy friends as well as her enemy and snobbish new girl, Amy. In the eighth book, Summer Term at Malory Towers, the girls help Darrell’s friends when someone tries to ruin their new horse riding stables. The ninth book, Winter Term at Malory Towers, shows the struggles of trying to put on a successful show whilst dealing with the troubles of pushy Sylvia, sullen Olive and interfering Miss Tallant. Millicent and June clash in "Fun and Games at Malory Towers" when girls must choose between music and sport. The eleventh book, Secrets at Malory Towers, sees the return of a familiar face from the second book: Jo, a girl who was expelled back when Felicity was in the second form, returns as Alice. A kind and caring girl who eventually saves another girl from a burning building; changing the girl’s view of her forever. Daffy Hope a new first former and Sally Hope’s (from the first six books) younger sister joins for the final book in the Malory Towers series, Goodbye Malory Towers, sees Felicity through the ups and downs of her last term at Malory Towers. It also sees the return of Gwendoline Lacey. ===== Following the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn (Elaine Stewart), for infidelity, King Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) exiles the child Elizabeth (Noreen Corcoran) to Hatfield House, after declaring her illegitimate and removing her from eligible succession to the throne. Over the years, her position rises and falls according to the whims of her father. The child is periodically summoned to return to London to become acquainted with each of Henry's latest spouses. When Henry marries his last wife, Catherine Parr (Deborah Kerr), the now-teenage Elizabeth (Jean Simmons) rebels against her latest summons but is persuaded by the handsome, tactful Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour (Stewart Granger) to change her mind. She meets Catherine, and the two become good friends. Meanwhile, Henry is impressed and amused by the resolute defiance of his daughter, and he declares her once again a legitimate heiress to the crown. When Henry dies, Thomas's scheming brother Ned (Guy Rolfe) takes over as Lord Protector and guardian of King Edward VI (Rex Thompson), overriding Henry's dying wish that Thomas raise the boy. Ned's fear of his brother's ambition grows with each of Thomas's naval triumphs. In the meantime, Elizabeth realizes she is in love with Thomas, but graciously persuades her brother, King Edward, to issue a royal decree sanctioning the marriage of Thomas and Catherine. Despite the union, Thomas grows close to Elizabeth without realizing it until he witnesses Elizabeth being kissed by Barnaby, a servant. Prompted by jealousy, Thomas kisses Elizabeth, who declares her love for him. Catherine, who has noticed the closeness between her husband and Elizabeth, asks Elizabeth to make a choice, and the princess moves back to Hatfield. Soon after, Catherine sickens and dies. After months of Thomas being away at sea, he returns and finally sees Elizabeth. Ned has him arrested and charged with treason. He also accuses Elizabeth of plotting with Thomas to overthrow her brother, the king. She goes to see Edward, but is too late to save Thomas from execution. The film then shifts forward to 1558. Having survived the perils of her early life, and with Edward deceased and her elder sister Mary dying, Elizabeth is about to become Queen of England. ===== All three scenes are set in the sitting room of Guy's London apartment: during Guy's flatwarming party (Scene 1); after Reg's funeral, some years later (Scene 2); and after Guy's funeral (Scene 3). The group, most of them in their thirties, meet at irregular intervals, often at Guy's place. Guy himself is a lonely man. Ever since their university days, he has had a crush on John, but he has never dared to tell him about it. Rather, he lives a solitary life, which he only spices up with phone sex and an occasional visit to a gay pub—that is where he meets 18-year-old Eric, who then helps him decorate his new flat. On holiday on the island of Lanzarote, he meets a gay man who eventually forces himself on Guy and has unprotected sex with him—the last thing Guy has been looking for. At his flatwarming party, he has just come back from his holiday and is still quite shocked about what happened. It is hard for him not to start crying when, as a present, John gives him a cookery book specialising in dishes for one. The most popular of the gay circle is Reg, who is conspicuously absent from the party. Reg has had a long-term relationship with Daniel, but Daniel himself suspects Reg of occasionally being unfaithful to him. In fact Reg seems to be sleeping with every man he can get hold of (as it seems, even with the vicar). In the course of the play, John, Benny and even his seemingly faithful companion Bernie have secret sex with Reg. They all confide in Guy. It hurts Guy most to hear that John -- whom he himself fancies -- is having an affair with Reg, thus betraying their mutual friend Daniel. After his fling with Reg, Benny panics because he thinks he might have contracted HIV, but he does not confess it to his partner, Bernie. When Reg is dying from AIDS, he is looked after by his partner, Daniel. The next one to die is Guy, the only one who has not had sex with Reg and who seems to have been infected with HIV when he was raped during his holiday in Lanzarote. Guy bequeaths his new flat to the love of his life, John who does not need it at all because he comes from a rich background. It is John who, somewhere in the flat, finds all kinds of memorabilia dating back to their student days. ===== ===== Following a short prologue, the body of the novel is divided into two halves (or "books"), both narrated by Rupert Ray. The first book tells the story of his and his friends' progress through school; while the second deals with the experiences of (specifically) Ray and his friend Edgar Doe during the war. =====