From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The carnelian cube of the title is a small red "dream stone" confiscated by archaeologist Arthur Cleveland Finch from Tiridat Ariminian, one of the workers on the dig he is supervising in Cappadocia. It bears an inscription in Etruscan that appears to identify its original possessor as Apollonius of Tyana, and supposedly allows the bearer to attain the world of his dreams. Finch, frustrated with the irrationality of his existence as an archaeologist, yearns for a more rational world in which he could realize his true dream of being a poet. Sleeping with the stone beneath his pillow he finds himself cast into a parallel world. It and later worlds visited by Finch tend to place him in or near his native Louisville, Kentucky rather than the Middle Eastern locale he starts out from, but Kentuckys that, while appearing to share much of the "real" world's history, have developed in radically alternate directions due to differences in their worlds' psychological or physical properties. Finch's new home sets the pattern; it is entirely too rational, with its denizens acting solely from self-interest in a society organized on a strict patron-client basis. The regimentation extends to naming conventions: people's names are ordered surname first, given name second, and occupation last. Finch initially finds himself classed as "Finch Arthur Poet" — and is, indeed, a poet. Poets are, however, a low-classified occupation, with few perks, certainly as compared to the local patron, Sullivan Michael Politician. Finch's attempts at social climbing, while initially successful, also bring him enemies, eventually making his new world too hot for him. The stone had not made the trip with him, and Finch's only means of escaping this new and not entirely congenial existence is to purloin its counterpart from the local version of Tiridat. With the rational world's counterpart stone, Finch dreams himself into a second parallel world, this one exemplifying the individualism he has missed in the rational world. But he finds the individualist world one of rampant vanity and violence, in which megalomaniacal bully-boys like Colonel Richard Fitzhugh Lee uneasily dominate a population of extreme egocentrics defensive of their "originality" and touchy about being told what to do. It is also a more fantastic place, in which claims of ESP or the ability to raise spirits tend to be real. Hiring a medium-provided spirit to do the dirty work, Finch again obtains his current world's counterpart of the carnelian cube and makes his escape, this time hoping to regain his original existence as an archaeologist reconstructing the past. Finch awakens in yet another parallel world, only to find the stone has once again over-literalised his dream; his third world is one in which astrology-guided archaeologists really do reconstruct the past, drafting and magically conditioning vast numbers of people to reenact past events. He finds himself project head of a recreation of the Assyrian siege of Samaria, and quickly discovers the reenactment no mere fantasy; the brainwashed participants actually fight, kill and die in the furtherance of scientific knowledge. Caught up in the chaos, Finch faces execution at the order of the reenactor portraying usurping Assyrian king Sargon. "Sargon" turns out to be yet another version of Tiridat, who, like the others, is the possessor of this world's carnelian cube. Begging the cube from the "king" as a last request, Finch determines to escape once again by dreaming himself into a truly ideal world. On this note the novel ends, with neither the protagonist's possible execution or projected escape recounted, leaving the plot open-ended and providing an obvious opportunity for a sequel. However, no such sequel ever appeared. ===== Hyun-woo (Ji Sung) is the reluctant heir to his father's chemical company and engaged to be married to Soo-jin (Lee Bo-young). Eun-soo (Eugene) lives a simple life, running a bed and breakfast with her elderly father. Their paths cross one fateful night when, after a failed attempt on his life, Hyun-woo loses his memory in a car accident. Discovered on the roadside by Eun-soo and her father, they take him in, nursing him back to health. Over the course of his recovery, Eun-soo and Hyun-woo (whom she has named "Baek Chang-ho") fall in love. On the day of their engagement, Eun-soo's father passes away. Following another attempt on Hyun-woo's life and a resulting accident, Hyun-woo regains his memory but forgets the year he spent with Eun-soo and leaves her to seek out his past life. Eun-soo, in her determination to find her lost love, travels to the city where she meets Hyun- woo, who, in turn, gradually falls in love with her again. A close confidant of Hyun-woo, Tae-min, is revealed as a traitor seeking to gain control of Hyun-woo's company. Tae-min is ultimately exposed and Hyun-woo regains ownership of the company. In a final, desperate attempt to get revenge on Hyun-woo, Tae-min tries to run him over, but instead of Hyun-woo, Eun-soo shows up and this accident paralyzes her from waist down. Refusing to be a burden to Hyun-woo, Eun-soo disappears to work as a teacher at a home for physically challenged children, until after a year of searching, Hyun-woo sees a familiar drawing, and the lovers reunite. The final credits show Eun-soo learning to walk again with Hyun-woo's assistance. ===== Jabez Stone is a desperate, down-on-his-luck writer who hits rock bottom when his close friend, Julius Jensen, finds success. In his attempts to get his work published, he meets a beautiful stranger who offers him a chance at fame and fortune in exchange for his soul. Stone, having lost faith in himself, agrees to the offer. After accepting the deal Jabez is quickly lavished with all he had ever dreamed of: a book deal, money, women, notoriety, Stone now has it all. However, despite the success, he is losing the friendship, respect and trust of those around him. Coming to the realization that he did not quite get everything that he bargained for, Stone begs the devil to release him from their deal. When the devil scoffs, he turns to famed orator Daniel Webster. The two conclude that they should take the battle to court with Webster defending Stone in an otherworldly trial against the devil in the ultimate battle of wits in a fight over the fate of Stone's soul. ===== A dark sinister tale befalls ten-year-old Negi Springfield and class 2-A. One year after Negi's arrival at Mahora, two representatives from the Magic Academy arrive at Mahora with the news of the disappearance of a mysterious artifact known as the Star Crystal. The Star Crystal holds a power that not even the Thousand Master could control. Even though the reason or the cause behind the Star Crystal's disappearance is a mystery, the effects of the artifact begin to envelop Negi and his students. Surrounded by a menacing power, Negi and the class must cope as the dark power harasses and attack the class at a moment's whim. Simultaneously, Negi places his thoughts towards his missing father, while the supporting cast do all they can to provide assistance. ===== Two days before Christmas, Christopher Robin writes out a letter to Santa Claus for him and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, asking for presents; Rabbit wants a new fly swatter to stop bugs from eating carrots; Eeyore wants an umbrella to keep the snow off his house; Tigger wants a snowshoe for his tail so he can bounce on the snow without his hands and feet; Robin wants a sled "big enough for me and maybe a friend or two"; and Piglet said Santa Claus could bring whatever he wanted. He sends the letter off into the wind, but on Christmas Eve, Winnie the Pooh realizes, after Piglet informs him, that he did not ask anything for himself, so they search for the letter, which has not gotten very far. Afterwards, they, along with Tigger and Eeyore, go to Rabbit's house and rewrite the letter to include Pooh's present, a pot of honey. Along the way, however, they become greedy and start upgrading their desires. Following this, Tigger, Eeyore, and Rabbit go off to get a giant Christmas tree, with help from a reluctant Gopher. Meanwhile, Pooh and Piglet go back to the point where Robin sent the letter and cast it off into the wind again. But the wind shifts southward, and the letter follows Pooh to his house. He goes to Piglet and informs him of what happened. Knowing that the rest of the gang will not get their presents as a result of this, Pooh tells Piglet they must take it into their hands to make sure the gifts are delivered. Pooh (disguised as Santa) sneaks out and delivers Tigger, Rabbit, and Eeyore a super-bouncer barrel, a bug sprayer made from a teapot, and a mobile home made from a suitcase, respectively - or rather, handmade versions of the said items that break apart upon use. Demanding to know what is going on, the three of them corner Pooh, who says that he is Santa. However, Piglet, disguised as a "sorry-lookin' reindeer", slips and makes his sled fall downhill before crashing, exposing Pooh's disguise. After explaining what happened, Pooh decides to try to deliver the letter to Santa himself, telling the rest of the gang it would be worth missing Christmas if he could "bring Christmas" to them. He does not get far, though, as the wind suddenly takes the letter, so he gives up. At the Christmas tree, Pooh's friends bemoan that spending time with him at Christmas is more important than getting gifts just as Pooh reunites with them. Robin shows up on his new sled and brings them the gifts they had originally asked for. Even though Pooh doesn't feel like he deserves his gift, he gives Robin a hug as they celebrate Christmas. ===== The odyssey of a Kurdish man (Beko) in search of his brother, who has fled to avoid being drafted into the Turkish Armed Forces.Plot Description, New York Times Escaping arrest in Turkey, he flees to Syria and from there to Iraqi Kurdistan, where he finally finds refuge among displaced children. In Iraq, Beko manages to survive the Iraqi chemical attacks in 1988, and along with a blind girl, he makes it to Germany. Eventually he discovers that his brother was drafted in the Army and killed in the conflict with Kurdish guerillas. ===== The Marcovaldo series depicts the life of a poor rural man with his family living in a big industrial city in northern Italy. The central character of Marcovaldo is an unskilled labourer for the company Sbav and Co. who has an affinity with nature and a distaste for city life. He is married to Domitilla and they have a growing family, which includes their daughters Isolina and Teresa, and their sons Michelino, Pietruccio, Filippetto and Fiordaligi. Other characters include Marcovaldo's foreman, Signor Viligelmo, the street-cleaner Amadigi, and the night watchman Tornaquinci. In each story Marcovaldo succumbs to something that appears natural and beautiful but actually disappoints him. Common themes in the stories include pollution, appearance vs. reality, failure, poverty and consumerism. The stories in the book are: :*Mushrooms in the city – Marcovaldo spots some mushrooms growing at his tram stop and jealously guards them until it rains and he can harvest them for a much-anticipated supper. :*Park-bench vacation – Marcovaldo spends a hot summer night sleeping on a park-bench, but it is not the peaceful experience he had longed for. :*The municipal pigeon – Seeing a rare flight of autumn woodcock flying over the city, Marcovaldo schemes to lure and catch them on the roof of his building. :*The city lost in the snow – Marcovaldo’s daydreams in the snow end abruptly. :*The wasp treatment – Marcovaldo enlists the help of his children in catching wasps, which he uses to cure the rheumatism of his neighbours. :*A Saturday of sun, sand, and sleep – The children bury their father in the warm sand on a river barge as a treatment for his rheumatism. :*The lunch-box – Marcovaldo and a rich young boy exchange their lunches. :*The forest on the superhighway – The children help their father find firewood in an unusual forest. :*The good air – Marcovaldo takes his children to the hills on the outskirts of the city for some fresh air. :*A journey with the cows – Marcovaldo is envious of his son, Michelino, when the boy spends the summer in the mountains after following a herd of cows crossing the city at night on their way to their alpine pastures. :*The poisonous rabbit – After spending time in a hospital convalescing, Marcovaldo inadvertently takes a rabbit home and then plans to fatten it up for Christmas. :*The wrong stop – Marcovaldo gets lost in thick fog after a night at the cinema. :*Where the river is more blue? – After a series of health scares in the city involving contaminated food, Marcovaldo attempts to feed his family fresh fish. :*Moon and Gnac – Marcovaldo’s efforts to teach his children about the night sky are thwarted by the neon sign on the roof of the building opposite his own. :*The rain and the leaves – Marcovaldo tries to nurse a potted plant to health. :*Marcovaldo at the supermarket – Marcovaldo’s family get carried away when they dream of emulating the wealthy consumers they see around them. :*Smoke, wind, and soap-bubbles – The children start collecting coupons for free washing powder. :*The city all to himself – Unable to afford a holiday, Marcovaldo wanders the deserted streets of the city. :*The garden of stubborn cats – Following a cat during his lunchbreak, Marcovaldo discovers the secret refuge of the city’s cats. :*Santa’s Children – The company he works for chooses Marcovaldo to dress as Santa and deliver Christmas presents to its important clients; his children unwittingly start a new trend in gifts. ===== The Maclean brothers, Norman and Paul, grow up in Missoula, Montana with their father, Presbyterian minister John, from whom they learn a love of fly fishing for trout in the Blackfoot River. Norman and Paul are home taught and must adhere to the strict moral and educational code of their father. As young men, the brothers navigate a dangerous waterfall. Norman leaves to attend college at Dartmouth; when he returns six years later, he finds that Paul has become a skilled fisherman. Norman attends a July 4th dance, and meets Jessie Burns. Paul has become a fearless muckraking reporter at a newspaper in Helena. He has angered many of the locals by falling behind in a big poker game in Lolo Montana where a bar is a front for gambling and prostitution. He is also dating a Native American woman, Mabel, who is deemed inferior by the white community. Paul is arrested after fighting a man who has insulted her, and Norman is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from the police to come and bail Paul out of jail. After Norman and Jessie go on several dates, she asks that Norman make an effort to get along with her brother Neal, who is visiting from California. Norman and Paul do not like Neal, but at Jessie's insistence they invite him to go fishing. Neal shows up drunk with Rawhide, a woman he met at a bar the night before. Norman and Paul decide to fish anyway and return to their car hours later to find that Neal and the woman have drunk all the beer and passed out naked in the sun. Norman returns a painfully sunburned Neal home, where Jessie is waiting for them. She is angry that the brothers did not fish with Neal. Norman asks Jessie to drive him home, as he had brought Neal back in Neal's car, and he tells her that he is falling for her. She drives away angry but a week later asks Norman to come to the train station to see Neal off. After the train departs, Norman shows Jessie a letter from the University of Chicago: a job offer for an English Literature teaching position. Norman tells Jessie that he does not necessarily wish to leave and when it becomes clear that it's because of her - her face lights up and she quickly embraces him. alt= When Norman tells Paul about the job offer and marriage proposal, he urges Paul to come with him and Jessie to Chicago, concerned that Paul is making powerful enemies. Paul says that he will never leave Montana. Just before leaving for Chicago, Norman, Paul, and their father go fly fishing one last time. Paul catches a huge rainbow trout that drags him down the river through a set of rapids before he finally lands it. John proudly tells him what a wonderful fisherman he has become, and how he is an artist in the craft, much to Paul's delight. They pose for pictures with the huge fish. Soon after the fishing excursion, Norman is called by the police, who tell him that Paul has been found beaten to death in an alley. Norman goes home and tells his parents the news. Years later, Mrs. Maclean, Norman, Jessie, and their two children listen to a sermon being given by John, who dies soon after. The closing scene is of the elderly Norman, once again fishing on the same river, with director Robert Redford narrating the final lines from the original novella; ===== Once back in the capital, he quickly gained the favour of the new emperor, the elderly Nikephoros III Botaneiates (), reportedly due to the latter's fondness for Syrian textiles, which Isaac often gave him as gifts. Accordingly, Botaneiates often called Isaac to dine at his table, gave him the high title of sebastos and the right to reside in the imperial palace. Despite the favour shown to them by Botaneiates, Isaac and Alexios plotted to advance the position of the Komnenos clan by deposing the emperor and seizing the throne. When Botaneiates' Bulgarian confidantes, Boril and Germanos, learned of their intentions, the brothers sought the protection of Empress Maria, who adopted Alexios. The empress feared for status of her son by Michael VII, Constantine Doukas, whom Botaneiates intended to sideline in favour of a certain Synadenos. According to Anna Komnene, the brothers used the opportunity to reveal their plans to the empress, pledging to safeguard Constantine's rights to the succession. Thus, and through Alexios' marriage to Irene Doukaina, the Komnenos brothers secured the support of the still powerful Doukas family. The brothers found an opportune moment in late January 1081, when the sack of Cyzicus by the Seljuks led to a concentration of troops in Thrace, close to the capital. On Sunday, 14 February, the brothers and their partisans met, and on the next day they secretly left Constantinople and made for Adrianople, and then Tzouroulos, where they joined the army. Gaining control over it, they moved it towards Constantinople, setting up camp at the suburb of Skiza. At Skiza, there was contention that Isaac could be proclaimed emperor instead of Alexios, who according to one anonymous chronicle had already been crowned emperor at Adrianople, but the Doukai and the bulk of the army threw their support behind the latter, and Isaac acquiesced. He even demonstratively clasped the imperial purple boots on his brother's feet. The Komnenoi entered Constantinople on 1 April, and Isaac with the rest of the family established themselves in the palace. ===== A 16-year-old girl named Hitomi Hayama is involved in a car accident and admitted to a hospital. Upon waking, she realizes that another mind has taken residence in her head. The player takes on the role of this separate consciousness. The pair are then put into the middle of a mystery that begins at the hospital, which includes a murder, several suicide attempts, and a bombing attempt. Hitomi frequently communicates back with the player, and the player must convince her to perform actions rather than commanding. ===== It is 1912 and groups of Mexican revolutionaries have been attacking towns on both sides of the Mexican–American border. The most powerful of these groups is led by a former Mexican army general, Héctor Cordoba. When a surprise attack results in six cannons falling into the hands of Cordoba and his men, the United States government puts General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing in charge of seeing that the cannons will never be used against the American people. Pershing turns to Captain Rod Douglas, instructing him to gather a group of men to take part in the dangerous mission into the heart of the Cordoba's territory. The first man to sign up for the job is Jackson Harkness, a soldier who has worked with Douglas before. At the beginning of the film, Harkness has to stand by and watch as his brother is tortured and killed by Cordoba. Douglas ordered him not to step in because they were undercover as sympathizers in the enemy camp and could not afford to make their true intentions known. As a result, Harkness vows vengeance on the captain and will not leave his side until the opportunity presents itself. The next two men that Douglas chooses for the operation are Andy Rice, and Peter, who have just broken out of the army jail when Douglas arrives with the orders for their release. The captain now has all of the men that he feels are necessary for getting the job done. However, a Mexican lieutenant, Antonio Gutierrez, who holds a personal grudge against Cordoba, approaches him and demands to be part of the operation. He tells Douglas that he knows a woman, Leonora Cristobal, who, for her own reasons, wishes to see Cordoba dead. If the captain includes him in the mission, she will help them by working her way into Cordoba's confidence and getting him alone so that he will be vulnerable when they make their move. Antonio and Leonora arrive at Cordoba's camp first. Leonora, who learns that the Mexican government wants to capture Cordoba alive, betrays Antonio and informs the bandit leader of his intentions, hoping that he will reward her for what she has done by allowing her to get closer to him, giving her the opportunity to kill him herself. When Douglas, Andy, Peter, and Harkness arrive at the camp, posing as sympathizers, they hear of what Leonora has done and decide that they have to act quickly. Douglas starts a fight with one of the Mexican men, so as to be put in jail, where he can help Antonio to escape. That night, Andy, disguised as a Mexican guard, breaks both of the men out of jail so that the operation can proceed. Douglas goes to Cordoba's room, where he finds him alone with Leonora. She betrayed Antonio but she still did the job she was supposed to do. Meanwhile, Jackson and Peter turn the cannons on the camp and begin to fire, while Andy and Antonio shoot flares into the buildings. Chaos ensues and the group of men, along with Leonora and their prisoner, Cordoba, attempt to ride out of the camp. Peter, Antonio, and Andy are killed in the process, and Cordoba is wounded. The next morning, miles away from the camp, the diminished group stops to rest. When Douglas goes off by himself, Harkness sees his opportunity to avenge his brother. He follows the captain, demands that he turn around, and draws his gun. As Douglas walks unflinchingly toward him, however, he is unable to shoot and, instead, punches him. All now forgiven, the two men walk back to where Leonora waits. Cordoba has died from the wound he received the previous night. They are not able to bring him back alive, as the government had wanted, but the cannons were destroyed and their mission is complete. ===== Josephine Monaghan (Amis) is a young society woman who is seduced by her family's portrait photographer, and as a result, bears an illegitimate child. She is expelled from her family and home in disgrace, and with no other resources, she leaves her newborn son under the care of her sister and heads West. On the road, Josephine discovers that her options are very limited. As a single woman traveling alone, she is viewed with suspicion, or as sexual prey for any man. She assists a traveling salesman (René Auberjonois) who subsequently tries to sell her services as a whore to passing strangers. Seeing it as her only protection, Josephine scars her face, and begins to dress as a man - thus becoming "Jo." At a mining camp in Ruby City, she meets Percy (McKellen) who takes her under his wing. Percy recommends Jo for a job at the stable, and teaches her about how to survive in the frontier. But Percy nurses a deep suspicion of women, which he later demonstrates by slashing the face of a prostitute who refuses to give him oral sex. Jo no longer feels safe with Percy or her secret, so she accepts a job herding sheep, and heads for the mountains. After returning in the spring, Percy gives Jo a letter for her that he had received months earlier. The letter is from Jo's sister, and Percy having opened it, now knows he is a she. He is furious at being made a fool of by a woman and "a whore at that," referring to the mention of her son in the letter. He attacks and tries to rape Jo, but she draws her gun and subdues him. Largely ostracized by the town's people since the incident with the prostitute, Percy promises Jo he will not share her secret if she finances his journey out of the territory. She agrees, though swears to him she will find him and kill him if he breaks his silence. For five years she works as a shepherd, braving the deadly winters alone to the worry of her employer, Frank Badger (Hopkins), who has taken a liking to the "young man" he nicknames "Little Jo." When Jo has enough money saved, she quits Badger, and buys her own homestead. While frequently viewed as "peculiar", Jo is clearly educated, and earns the respect of the people in Ruby City and the surrounding territory. A local girl, Mary, (Graham) has her eye on Jo. Blind to the truth, most hope the two will court. However, Mary ends up wedding her cousin, Lucas Brown, soon after Jo returns from her first winter as a sheep herder. One day in town, Jo comes across a mob about to lynch a Chinese laborer for trying to "take our jobs." Jo intervenes, and Badger insists the "chinaman", Tinman Wong (David Chung), go to live with Jo to help with the homestead. Tinman accompanies Jo to the homestead, and takes on the duties of cook and housekeeper. Though he seems slow-witted, Jo is not happy at having company forced upon her, and is afraid he will discover she is not a man. She keeps as much distance as possible. But Tinman easily discovers the truth about Jo, and in doing so, reveals he is far more intelligent than he has pretended to be—he, too, has been masquerading for his own safety. Jo drops her guard and the two begin a love affair. A feud begins to brew between the sheep herders and cattlemen who are moving into the territory. The Western Cattle Company wants to buy up all the land in the area, and they kill anyone who does not comply. One by one, the sheep herders give in, or are murdered by masked gunmen. Jo has witnessed the brutal murders of too many of her friends, and the violence that will be necessary to win this kind of fight goes against her gentle nature. This is a masculine quality that goes beyond her ability to "pass," so Jo dons a dress once again in a feeble effort to step back into a more traditionally feminine role. Tinman argues that it will be impossible for her to go back being the society woman, urging her to keep the homestead, and stand against the cattlemen in the upcoming election. Jo is not swayed, and meets with the representative from the cattle company, Henry Grey (Anthony Heald) to tell him she will sell. Tinman falls ill, and Jo summons Badger's wife (Snodgrass), who practices folk medicine, to tend him. Badger comes along, and is furious when Grey arrives with his wife so that Jo can sign the final papers for the sale of the homestead. Feeling betrayed by Jo for helping the cattle company to "squeeze me," Badger hits Jo, proclaiming, "By God, boy! I thought you'd amount to something." As Grey prepares the papers inside, Jo watches his wife who, through the warped glass, is visually reminiscent of Jo when she was a woman of society. In an instant, Jo changes her mind and refuses to sell to Grey, who leaves in disgust issuing less than veiled threats. Tinman recovers, and on election day, Badger and Jo ride to Ruby City but are met by several of Grey's masked gunmen. Badger shoots one of the gunmen, but is wounded, so it is up to Jo to finish the fight. She kills the two remaining men, but the pain of the act of killing is clearly indicated on her face. The plot jumps to many years later, after Tinman Wong has died. Jo collapses while fetching water, and Badger finds her in bed, near death. He takes her in his wagon to the Ruby City doctor, but she is dead before they arrive. As Badger buys rounds of drinks at the saloon in memory of Little Jo, the undertaker rushes in with his shocking discovery—Little Jo was a woman. The town elders rush back to the undertaker's to inspect. All stand around the preparation table in shock, all except Mrs. Addie (Cathy Haase), the saloon owner, who laughs and laughs. Badger is furious at the betrayal by his friend, and because Jo "made a fool out of me." He goes back to her homestead, and as he tears the place apart in anger, comes across the letter from her sister, and a picture of her as she lived as a woman. In town, the people tie Jo's dead body to her horse for a photograph. The final shot is of the newspaper story with the before-and-after photographs, and the headline, "Rancher Jo Was a Woman." ===== ===== Mavis Arden (Mae West), is a movie star who gets romantically involved with a politician. She makes plans to meet him at her next tour stop but her Rolls Royce breaks down and she is left stranded in the middle of a rural town. Her manager arranges for her to stay at a local boarding house. She immediately set her eyes on the young mechanic, fixing her car, Bud Norton, played by Randolph Scott. West sings the Arthur Johnston/John Burke song, I Was Saying to the Moon as she is trying to seduce Scott. ===== Asking for money to his father imprisoned in jail, threatening a friend who became a murderer by mistake, stealing money from his friends... Ku Dong-hyuk (Kim Rae-won) is the worst scumbag you can ever imagine. Living a low-life like a street dog, one day, Dong-hyuk gets kidnapped by a mysterious gang. Being captured out of no reason, the gang trains Dong-hyuk in a secret and inhumane way repeatedly. Dong-hyuk tries to escape but fails, which makes the training more harsh and cruel than before. After finishing all the training, the gang orders Dong-hyuk to become a police detective as their secret connection. ===== ===== In 1949, Anya is a blind woman who was always taken care of by her mother. Anya copes with her loneliness by collecting bells, a situation which becomes worse when her mother dies. Now middle-aged and alone, Anya befriends a 12-year-old delivery boy, Scott Rhymes (Mason Gamble). Scott is considered "slow", though later it is revealed that he is dyslexic (a disorder not commonly understood at that time). Anya teaches him to read Braille, which Scott rapidly learns, and the two become close friends. ===== American conductor John Meredith (Robert Taylor) and his manager, Hank Higgins (Robert Benchley), go to the Soviet Union shortly before the country is invaded by Germany. Meredith falls in love with beautiful Soviet pianist Nadya Stepanova (Susan Peters) while they travel throughout the country on a 40-city tour. Their bliss is destroyed by the German invasion. ===== The tranquility in a Bulgarian village under Ottoman rule is only superficial: the people are quietly preparing for an uprising. The plot follows the story of Boycho Ognyanov, who, having escaped from a prison in Diarbekir, returns to the Bulgarian town of Byala Cherkva (White Church, fictional representation of Sopot) to take part in the rebellion. There he meets old friends, enemies, and the love of his life. The plot portrays the personal drama of the characters, their emotions, motives for taking part in or standing against the rebellion, betrayal and conflict. Historically, the April Uprising of 1876 failed due to bad organization, limited resources, and betrayal. The brutal way in which the Ottomans broke down the uprising became the pretext for the Russian-Turkish war, Illustrated history of the Russo- Turkish war in 1877-1878 that brought about Bulgarian independence. The book has many autobiographical elements: Sopot is the writer's hometown, and he did take a personal part in the uprising described. ===== Title. In June 1941 Ukrainian villagers are living in peace. As the school year ends, a group of friends decide to travel to Kiev for a holiday. To their horror, they find themselves attacked by German aircraft, part of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Eventually their village itself is occupied by the Nazis. Meanwhile, men and women take to the hills to form partisan militias. The full brutality of the Nazis is revealed when the Germans send Dr. von Harden to use the village children as a source of blood for transfusions into wounded German soldiers. Some children lose so much blood that they die. When Dr. Pavel Kurin, a famous Russian doctor, discovers this and informs the partisans, they prepare to strike back. They launch a cavalry assault on the village to rescue the children. The Russian doctor accuses the German doctor of being worse than the convinced Nazis, because he has used his skills to support them. He then shoots him. The peasants join together, and one girl envisions a future in which they will "make a free world for all men". ===== The central character, Griswold, explains that during World War II, he was involved in US intelligence. While questioning a suspected German spy, he performed a word association test on him. When Griswold said "terror of flight," the suspect replied, "gloom of the grave." This was evidence that he was a spy who had been trained up in Americanisms, since the two phrases allude to a line in the third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and no native-born American could possibly be familiar with the third verse of the national anthem ("except for me, and I know everything," added Griswold). Most Americans only know the first verse because it is the only one of the anthem's four verses that is normally sung. This is a tongue-in-cheek parody of stories where an enemy agent is caught by his lack of knowledge. However, Griswold does make the serious point that the third verse of the US national anthem is particularly war-mongering, and so was especially forgotten in the "great peace-loving years of 1941 to 1945." In truth, the third verse was often omitted during those times by the few who knew it because of the alliance with Great Britain, which was the enemy in the War of 1812 and thus the object of scorn in the third verse. ===== Chris McKinley (Jackson) is a recent college graduate backpacking through Europe. He is trying to enjoy and gain as much as he can from his last days there before he starts his new career back in the United States. When he reaches Pamplona along with two friends, he meets three new people. He meets an Australian thrill-seeker, a Spaniard named Adella (Varela), and a provocateur (D. Hopper). This new trio encourages McKinley to think about the life and path he has chosen to take and he does so. When the time for him to leave becomes close, he must ponder whether he should take the road to his fast-track career or take a new path into his life. ===== In the centre of a village, the ground begins to open up and a strange green light emanates from within. Two drunken men see the light and walk over to take a closer look. As they approach, a gaseous vapour begins pouring out of the fissure and in a flash of light the two men are charred with only their bones remaining. Then a desirable young woman is being bathed and dressed afterwards. Meanwhile in a village square, a man challenges the villagers to fight Eryx the boxer. One man agrees but he is tricked when he is introduced to the real boxer, a towering brute of a man. The challenger dies fighting Eryx, so an old man from the village tells a youth to find Hercules. After a short while, the boy returns with Hercules, who challenges Eryx. They begin to fight and it appears that Eryx is going to beat Hercules, but then Hercules finally ends the fight by killing Eryx. With the man dead, the man who first made the challenge gives Hercules a peacock feather, Hera's symbol. He goes to Hera's temple and asks if they can call a truce; Hera defies Hercules, so he destroys her temple. Zeus appears and tells Hercules that he will only make things worse between him and Hera. When Hercules arrives home, Deianeira tends to his wounds and they make love. The following day, Hercules is working in the smithy with Nessus, the centaur. He watches his children playing outside when a woman, Iole, comes looking for him and faints. She says she's from the village of Gryphon and that they need Hercules' help. Hercules agrees to help, but Deianeira tells the girl to rest first. During the night, Iole tells Deianeira that she thought she saw someone outside her window. Deianeria tells her no one is there. Deianeira gets a lantern and goes outside; she finds Nessus in the smithy and he tells her that she cannot trust Hercules with Iole as she is a virgin young woman, Hercules will not be able to resist. She defends him saying that Hercules would be faithful to her but she starts to doubt when sees the virgin maiden sleeping naked. In the morning Hercules, Iole and Nessus leave for Gryphon. Before leaving Iole gives Deianeira a necklace to thank her for looking after her the night before. Deianeira goes to the market where a woman tells her that the necklace is a sign that she has lost her husband and tells Deianeira about the necklace is given to women whose men are to be killed by Nurian maidens trained so well in the art of seduction that they can get any man in their power. Deianeira goes after Hercules to warn him and finds the three at a river bank. She tells Iole to leave, but Hercules says he already knew she was a Nurian maiden, but that he loves Deianeira, and would never be unfaithful to her. After reassuring Deianeira, Hercules and Iole continue to Gryphon with Hercules holding Iole in his arms to help her cross the river, but Nessus begins to stir doubts in Deianeira's mind, and after she tries to get away he attacks her. Nessus tries to rape her. She calls for Hercules, who shoots an arrow which strikes Nessus in the back. As he lay dying, Nessus showing Deianeira the cloak his blood drenches tells her that his blood is powerful and will prevent Hercules from being unfaithful. She gives the cape to Hercules and tells him to wear it if he gets cold. Hercules and Iole continue their journey, discussing their past and popularly exaggerated reputations. Iole demonstrates how her power can work for good, stopping an apparently raging man from causing a major fight by touching him and diagnosing he just burnt his mouth at hot soup. They come close to each other in a night and she kisses him. The other day, she swims naked in a lake while a man, who she mistakes for Hercules, watches her. She then stops Hercules from killing the young Lycastus from her village, a love interest of her who attacks anyone he considers a rival for the heart of the Iole. When they arrive at the village, the hell-mouth is stronger then ever. Lycastus and Iole passionately kiss each other as she is being prepared for Hercules. He begs her but she says that Hercules is her destiny. Hercules walks through the village seeing fire and destructions and dead bodies strewn on the floor. He approaches the fissure and looks into it and see spirits coming out from deep within the Earth. Zeus appears and tells him that it is the Underworld. Hercules asks if he is mortal or not, Zeus tells him he is mortal, but tries to prevent Hercules from going down the hole. The half-god hesitates to believe his father Zeus, who answers reluctantly he can die, yet turns Iole's desperate plea - taking off her clothes, offering herself and kissing him - down and gives her to Lycastus but when the cloak drenched in Nessus' blood nearly kills him as he puts it on setting out to return home and displays Hera's peacock-sign, he jumps into the Underworld. As Hercules travels to the Underworld, a man arrives at Hercules' house and tells Deianeira that Hercules is dead. He explains about the cape trying to kill Hercules and that he jumped into the hole. Hercules arrives in the Underworld, where he meets Charon, whom he forces to transport him across the River Styx. On the other side of the river Hercules finds Cerberus' collar, he enters a doorway and vanishes. Meanwhile, Deianeira, distraught by the thought that she caused her own husband's death, goes to a cliff top; while standing there she sees a vision of Hercules and reaches out to him; as she reaches out she falls from the cliff to the rocks below and two eyes appear in the sky. After being attacked by different monsters, Hercules meets Eryx the boxer and some other people he sent to Hades and cleverly makes them fight each-other and then sees Nessus, who taunts him by showing him, via a portal, that Deianeira is dead. Hercules ask for Nessus to show him again, when Nessus shows Deianeira again Hercules jumps through the portal into the Elysian fields. He finds Deianeira but she has no memory of him, Hades appears and tells Hercules that he erased her memory about Hercules because of the thought of killing her husband. He begs Deianeria to remember him and their children and then kisses her. With the kiss her memories return and Hercules makes a deal with Hades that if he can capture Cerberus, who got loose and causes havoc all through the Underworld, then Deianeira can go back to Earth with him. Hercules goes after Cerberus, he finds Hades' men trying and failing to capture him. The hunt is arduous, but his physical force and kindness at the right time do the job. Once Cerberus is chained the hole in the ground closes up and Deianeira appears. Back on Earth the villagers thank Hercules for helping them and he and Deianeira go home. Iole says goodbye to him with a sweet kiss as Deianeira smiles. ===== In a sun-dappled forest, two men are searching for buried treasure. They pace out the step given with the map, and discover a cave overgrown with bushes. The two men break through the plants and enter the cave. In the cave they find a huge wooden door, as they try to get through the door, a monster breaks through the door and chases after them. One man is captured and the other flees as the monster tells him to bring Hercules. Meanwhile, Hercules works on his farms, he sees his sons fighting and tells them that they should not fight. They say that Hercules fights, Hercules explains that he only fights when he has to and only to prevent other people from being harmed. He tells about the time when he had to fight Eryx the boxer to stop him from killing anymore people. He asks the boys if they understand, and they say they do. Later that evening, Hercules is working in the stable, Zeus appears and they chat. Hercules tells Zeus that there have been no monsters for a while, which is good as he has now settled down with Deianeira to raise the children. Zeus gives him a scale from a sea serpent and Hercules remembers the time when he and Deianeira were swallowed by a sea serpent while looking for the lost city of Troy. While day-dreaming he snaps back to reality at the dinner table to find the dog eating his dinner. Back in the cave, the Minotaur broods in wait for Hercules. At night the children ask their father to tell them a story, Ilea asks for Hercules to tell her about when he and Deianeira first met. Hercules begins relating how the fire had vanished from the Earth and that Deianeira's village needed fire, and how he got the fire back from Hera's temple. Halfway through the story Hercules realises the children are asleep. He and Deianeira retire to bed and she asks him if he misses his adventures and battling monsters, he says truthfully that he does miss it. The following day, Hercules is working in the stables and sees something flit past the door, he goes to look but sees nothing. As he walks back into the stable a man jumps down upon him, Hercules turns to see it is Iolaus. They begin talking about their adventures and the time when they had to fight the Lernaean Hydra that Hera had sent to kill them. The two men go inside to get a drink, Iolaus tells Hercules that he met a man who taught him some new moves that allow smaller men to overpower a bigger man. Hercules says he won't fight Iolaus, but he is eventually persuaded. The two men strip off their tops and prepare to spar. When Hercules attacks Iolaus he is overpowered by the smaller man, but after a short while Hercules gets the best of Iolaus as he sees Deianeira and Ilea standing in the doorway. Deianeira tells Iolaus that since Hercules gave up his adventures he has become depressed. A man arrives at the stable looking for Hercules, he tells him that he must help his village and that a monster has taken his brother. Hercules says he can't go and the man says he has to because he is Hercules. Later that evening Deianeria asks him why he refused to help and he tells her that he promised to stay and raise the children with her. She tells him that he shouldn't try to stop being Hercules, not for her or the children. She tells him to go and the next day her and Iolaus set off for Alturia. As they travel to Alturia a young couple are looking for somewhere quiet, they find the cave and enter. While they are making out the Minotaur comes and attacks them. When Hercules and Iolaus arrive in Alturia they ask a woman where the monster is and she tells Hercules that there isn't any monster. Underneath the village the Minotaur swears that Hercules will pay, Zeus appears and tells the Minotaur that he still has not learned his lesson, he replies that he has been feeding on hate. Minotaur taunts Zeus because he was unable to kill the Minotaur. Hercules and Iolaus are in a tavern and end up fighting some men because they don't believe that he is really Hercules. Outside the tavern three men are killed and Hercules goes to investigate, only to be found by the villagers. They think he killed the men and chase him and Iolaus. The man who had asked for Hercules's help comes and takes Hercules to the cave where his brother was captured. Zeus appears and tells Hercules what the monster is and why he wants Hercules. He asks Hercules to kill the Minotaur, and he enters the cave. In the center of the cave he finds the Minotaur, who challenges Hercules. They begin fighting and as Hercules is about to kill the Minotaur, the creature reveals that he is really Hercules' brother Gryphus and Hercules cannot kill him. The Minotaur then attacks Hercules and Hercules ends up killing him by throwing him onto a stalagmite as Zeus arrives. As Gryphus lies dying, Hercules says he is sorry Zeus had to lose a son this way. Zeus says to Hercules that Gryphus was lost the day he tried to lead the people against him and that it didn't have to be this way. When Gryphus begs for Zeus not to let him die like this, Zeus changes Gryphus back to mortal form as a mist covers over Gryphus' dead body. As Zeus declares that Gryphus is now "free," Hercules helps Iolaus and the other people being held by the Minotaur and the two brothers are reunited. With the people of the village now safe and Iolaus freed, the two men journey back home. ===== George Edward Grodman, a respected superintendent at Scotland Yard in 1890, makes a mistake in an investigation that causes the execution of an innocent man. He takes the blame for his error, is dismissed from his position as superintendent and replaced by the obnoxious and gloating John Buckley. Soured by the turn of events, Grodman sets out to make Buckley look too inept to perform his new job. He enlists the aid of his macabre artist friend, Victor Emmric, and when a mysterious murder occurs, they realize their chance to ruin Buckley may have arrived. ===== Durga (Amisha Patel) is a beautiful blind woman with a talent for shaping pottery. She is poor and lives with her widowed mother in a simple home. She crosses paths with Rohit, (Arjun Rampal) who saves her life when she is about to fall over a cliff. The pair spend time together and fall in love. At one point, Durga creates a clay bust of Rohit but weeps because she cannot see it. Rohit tells her that he will find a way to help her see again. When Durga's mother is killed due to the actions of Rana (Parmeet Sethi), Rohit promises to marry her so that he can take care of her. He takes her to a hospital where she will have surgery to regain her sight. While she is recovering (before the bandages are removed), Rohit leaves to prepare their new home. Rana steps in and apparently kills Rohit. Upon receiving news of Rohit's death, Durga goes into depression. Dr. Prasad, who performed the surgery, takes her in as his own adopted daughter. As part of his plan to help her recover, he takes her to Switzerland. There she meets Raj (Bobby Deol), a businessman who falls in love with her. He, too, is grieving a dead friend and recognizes that Durga is also lonely. Through persistence and kindness, Durga finally accepts Raj's marriage proposal. Unknown to both, Durga's first love and Raj's dead friend are the same man, Rohit. On the day of Raj and Durga's engagement, Raj is told that Rohit is alive and in a reclusive hospital where he has been in a coma for six months. Raj is reunited with Rohit, and they return to the house in time for the engagement celebrations. Rohit is shocked to discover that Raj's fiancée is his beloved Durga, but keeps this a secret. Raj introduces Rohit to Durga, but Rohit purposely doesn't speak in front of her so as to avoid her recognizing his voice. Durga later overhears Rohit speak, recognizes his voice, and confronts him, wanting to be sure whether Rohit is really the man she loved. Rohit denies it, but Durga is not convinced. She calls Dr. Prasad, as he had met Rohit before Durga underwent surgery. The doctor tells her that Rohit is not her long lost love, but it turns out that the doctor was just following Rohit's instructions to lie to her. Durga finally accepts this and does not question Rohit anymore. One night, the lights go out in Raj's home, and Durga and Rohit accidentally bump into each other. In the dark, Durga's hand goes up to feel Rohit's face, which she recognizes. Rohit flees, and Durga blindfolds herself and recreates the clay bust of her love, relying on memory alone. When it's completed, she looks at it and realizes that Rohit is the person she loves. Rohit confronts her, asking her whether it would be right to destroy Raj's happiness after all that he has been through. Durga reluctantly agrees that she cannot leave Raj, and they decide to keep the secret. On the day of the wedding ceremony, Raj publicly confronts the pair, apparently in anger. He accuses Rohit of trying to steal Durga away from him. Rohit quietly accepts the accusation. However, Durga couldn't remain silent and speaks up for her lover, exposing the truth of their past. It is then revealed that Raj's angry behavior was a ruse to make them reveal the truth. He gladly steps aside to reunite the lovers so they may be married, sharing their happiness as his own. ===== The book describes the life of a child named Joey Pigza who frequently gets into trouble at school due to his erratic behavior. He has a habit of swallowing a key attached to a piece of string in order to pull it back out again, and on one instance he forgets to attach a string to the key, preventing him from pulling it back up. At school, Joey puts his finger in a pencil sharpener, runs around with scissors, and cuts the tip of a girl's nose off. Pigza is on medication which he takes regularly, but it doesn't seem to be very effective. As a consequence of slicing off the tip of his classmate's nose, Pigza is suspended from school and sent to a special education center. Joey Pigza fears that "something [is] wrong inside" him, a fear which escalates until the medications he is on are readjusted, and he feels he is able to make better decisions. The book implies that Joey Pigza is dealing with a condition such as ADHD, adjustment disorder, depression, or conduct disorder, but an exact diagnosis is never specified. ===== As a class of seminary students are sent home for vacation, three of them get lost on the way in the middle of the night. One spots a farmhouse in the distance, and they ask the old woman at the gate to let them spend the night. She agrees, on the condition that they sleep in separate areas of the farm. As one of them, Khoma Brutus, lies down in the barn to sleep, the old woman comes to him and tries to seduce him, which he staunchly refuses. She puts him under a spell, and makes him lie down so she can climb on his back. She then rides him around the countryside like a horse. Khoma suddenly finds that they are flying and realizes she is a witch. He demands that she put him back down, and as soon as they land, he grabs a stick and beats her violently. As she cries out that she's dying, he looks and sees she has turned into a beautiful young woman. Horrified, he runs back to his seminary, where he finds the Rector has sent for him. Khoma is told that a rich merchant has a daughter who is dying and needs prayers for her soul, and that she specifically asked for Khoma by name. He refuses to go, but the Rector threatens him with a public beating, so he relents and finds he is returning to the farm where he met the witch. The girl dies before he gets there, and to his horror, he realizes she is the witch, and that he is the cause of her death (but he tells no one). The girl's father promises him great reward if he will stand vigil and pray for her soul for the next three nights. If he does not, grave punishment is implied. After the funeral rites, Khoma is told of a huntsman who fell in love with the young girl, and how when she came into the stable and asked his help to get on her horse, he said he would like it more if she rode on his back, then took her on his back and ran off with her, reminding Khoma of his encounter (the men telling the tale suspect the girl was a witch). He is taken to the chapel where the girl's body lies and is locked in for the night. As soon as Khoma walks in, several cats scurry across the floor at his feet. He lights every candle in the chapel for comfort, then begins to recite the prayers for the girl's soul. When he sneezes, the girl opens her eyes and climbs out of the coffin, blindly searching for him (apparently, she can hear but cannot see). He quickly draws a sacred circle of chalk around himself, and this acts as a barrier—the night passes with Khoma praying fervently and the girl trying to get to him. When the rooster crows in the morning, the girl returns to her coffin and all the candles blow out. The men of the rich man's estate, who escort Khoma to and from the chapel, surround him and asked what happened that night, to which he replies, "Nothing much. Just some noises." Khoma gets drunk to strengthen himself for the second night. This time, a flurry of birds fly out from the coffin, startling him into running for the door, which is shut by one of the rich man's men. Khoma returns to the prayer podium and is frightened by a bird flying out his prayer book. He draws the sacred circle again and begins the prayers. The whole covered coffin rises into the air and bangs against the protection of the sacred circle, causing a panicked Khoma to cry out to God to protect him. The cover falls off the coffin, and the girl sits up and again starts reaching blindly to him, but once more, she cannot see him or get to him. The coffin continues to fly around the room as the girl reaches blindly for Khoma and calls his name. As the rooster crows, the coffin returns to its place and the girl lies down, but her voice is heard placing a curse on Khoma, to turn his hair white and render him blind—however, his hair actually turns grey and he retains his sight. The rich man's men have to help him off the floor and out of the chapel, placing a hat on his head. When they return to the farm, Khoma demands music and begins dancing as a young boy plays on his flute. He removes his hat, and all the servants can see his hair is white. He asks to speak to their master, saying he will explain what happened and that he doesn't want to pray in the chapel any more. Khoma meets with the rich man, trying to explain what happened in the chapel and begging to be allowed to leave, but the rich man threatens him with a thousand lashes if he refuse—and a thousand pieces of gold if he succeeds. In spite of this, Khoma tries to escape, but makes a wrong turn and winds up in the hands of the rich man's men, and is returned to the farm. He returns to the chapel a third time, drunk, but still remembers to draw the sacred circle before beginning the prayers. The girl sits up on the coffin and begins to curse him, causing him to have visions of walking skeletons and grasping, ghostly hands. She summons various hideous, demonic figures to torment him, but they cannot get past the sacred circle either. She finally calls on Viy, a name which causes all the demons to tremble in fear. A large monster emerges, and orders his huge eyelids to be moved from his eyes. Khoma realizes he cannot look this demon in the eye or he is lost. Viy is able to see Khoma, which allows the other demons to pounce on him and beat him, but when the rooster crows once more, the demons all flee away, leaving Khoma motionless on the floor. The girl turns back into the old woman and lies down in the coffin, which instantly falls apart. The Rector enters the chapel to this scene, and races off to tell the others. The last scene shows Khoma's two friends from the start of the movie back at the seminary, painting some walls. One offers to drink to Khoma's memory, while the other doubts that Khoma is really dead. The movie follows the original tale in a somewhat loose fashion, but manages to retain the majority of the images and action. ===== ===== Paul, the owner of a strip club bar on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, is taken home after being knocked out at a brothel, whose madam sends two thieves to Paul's club to rob the place while he is unconscious. When the star dancer at the bar quits, Paul's wife Kelly fills in for her. The bartender Ray then seduces her and takes her to his home, and the thieves Cal and Feeny begin working on cracking the safe. When Paul comes to and cannot find his wife at home, he goes to the club, where the thieves are engaged in their work. Paul manages to kill the two robbers after Claire has been killed and Ray seriously wounded. ===== The story revolves around Keiko Nakadai, who in the beginning is an Office Lady working at the perpetually last-place ATV television network. However, she is chosen to fill in for weather reporter Michiko Kawai for one night, and Keiko takes full advantage of her opportunity by blatantly flashing her panties while on live television. The incident causes the evening news ratings to jump, and because of ATV's desperation to escape the ratings cellar, Keiko is subsequently promoted to full-time weather reporter, displacing Michiko in the process. The rest of the series focuses on her rivalries with co-workers jealous of and insulted by the nature of her success. The humor in Weather Report Girl is full of sexually oriented sorority style humor, aimed primarily at young men. The protagonist, Keiko, is depicted as being exhibitionistic, first using her sex appeal to rise to the position of weather girl by flashing her bra and panties, and maintaining her position by frequently wearing lingerie while on the air. She is also very resourceful, always one step ahead of her rivals' various revenge schemes. Keiko is also extraordinarily vengeful, humiliating Michiko on the air by spiking her tea with laxatives after Michiko had attempted a similar tactic against her. Keiko proceeds to masturbate in her apartment while watching Michiko embarrass herself on television. Finally, she is sexually domineering, effectively enslaving Michiko—who due to the on-air incident would have been fired had she not agreed—by making her lick her lingerie and perform cunnilingus on Keiko. The second episode introduces Kaori Shimamori, a reporter who uses her dad's position as a member of the Diet at Keiko's expense. Kaori conspires to have Keiko demoted after allotting her weather corner during a breaking news report. This effort fails after being flooded with viewer mail protests. Soon after, Keiko and Kaori agree to partner up on a marketing campaign for ATV, though still plotting revenge against Keiko by eavesdropping on her. She soon discovers Keiko's dominatrix relationship with Michiko and becomes friends with Keiko. The OVA ends with a stripping and humiliation of Michiko in which Kaori embraces Keiko's lifestyle and then proceeds to entice Michiko into having oral sex with her while Keiko, half asleep, listens with a smirk. ===== Gungrave opens thirteen years after Brandon Heat is betrayed and killed by his best friend Harry MacDowell. He is reborn through the use of necrolyzation as Beyond The Grave, and begins a quest of revenge against the crime syndicate. The series then backtracks to Brandon's youth, and follows him and Harry as they rise through the criminal underworld, detailing the circumstances that led to their eventual falling-out. ===== When his former wife Ann goes to Africa to help out following a natural disaster, Jimmy Venables, a handyman, has to move back into the marital home to look after his two children, Molly and Alex. Jimmy's opinionated widowed former mother-in-law Diana Neal, a teacher, who has always disliked Jimmy, decides to help him out. Diana's husband, Patrick Neal OBE, died in 1996. Fashion-obsessed Molly is an intelligent girl who sees herself as the only adult in the family, while cheerful Alex is bright but has constantly changing ideas. Jimmy had a girlfriend, Siobhan Casey, a hairdresser, who often feels he does not pay her enough attention. Jimmy's assistant is Kev, while the landlord of his local pub, The Leek and Shepherd, is the pessimistic Bobby. In Series Two, Siobhan is the barmaid at the pub and goes back to college to study Business Studies. She appears less often in Series Three, having been partially written-out by having her split with Jimmy. The actress playing the character, Amanda Abbington, was pregnant at time of filming and so it was decided to make things easier for her by reducing her sizeable role. Bobby and Kev, meanwhile, have been developing a tendency to team up and do things which annoy Jimmy (such as kidnapping him and locking him in Kev's flat or taking legal action against him). Often compared to My Family, After You've Gone is a light comedy which pulled in good viewing figures despite often being broadcast at the same time as Coronation Street. It was often broadcast on Friday evenings on BBC One and followed by the heavier comedy of Have I Got News for You. ===== The film opens on the studio set of a fictional 1990s TV show, The Gourmet Detective. This is depicted as a crass cross-genre detective/cookery series ("two recipes and one murder per show"), whose lead character (played by Keith Allen) presents his recipe in a style that parodies Keith Floyd. Allen's "on-screen" Gourmet Detective character is the epitome of politically correct "new man" compassion, but the actor "off-screen" is shown to be an obnoxious, drug-taking womaniser. He is subsequently murdered – the second TV detective to be killed in six months – and the rest of the film involves the search for his assassin. The police commander (played by Jim Carter) is exasperated that the detective assigned to the case, Dave Spanker, has come up with much "Northern nostalgia" but no leads. Cheesecloth and the footprint of a 1970s platform shoe are found at the scene, inspiring him to bring in 1970s-style detectives to help solve the crime – initially Bonehead, Foyle and George. When the platform shoe is revealed to be from the early 1970s, Jason Bentley is added to the team, and the commander insists that Bentley's methods alone are to be used ("no guns, no fast cars, no shouting"). Bentley consequently drives the detectives to a random country house, drinks copious claret, smokes endless cigarettes, and predictably gets nowhere with the case. The frustrated detectives have a punch-up while they are – on Bentley's advice – "waiting for a Mini Moke to turn up". The commander gives the team a dressing-down, and explains that, with the TV-cop-killer still at large, the production of various 1990s TV cop shows is under threat. In order to highlight further the writers' views of contemporary TV detective shows, he lists these as The Dull as Dishwater Detective, Detectives on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and The Whistling Detective Who Lives on a Barge. The Dull as Dishwater Detective is apparently in hiatus because "the actor's run abroad, he's scared" – a reference to the real TV series Inspector Morse, whose lead actor John Thaw was making A Year in Provence at this time. Thaw had previously played Regan in The Sweeney. Bonehead, Foyle and George insist they be allowed to proceed with the investigation their way, complete with fast cars and guns. The commander reluctantly agrees to give them 48 hours, and they gleefully wheel-spin away to a rendezvous at an East End drinking den. Meanwhile, a sheepish Bentley asks to see the original lab reports. At the pub, George asks to see his informant, while Bonehead and Foyle order Babychams then storm the toilet cubicles the way they might storm an embassy. However, Bentley provides the breakthrough. He reveals that the forensic report proves the platform shoes were bought in Newcastle upon Tyne. After Spanker confesses that he committed the crimes due to TV ratings pressure, he makes his escape. There ensues a 1970s-style high-speed car chase involving all but Bentley, based mainly in a large yard where all three cars drive around somewhat pointlessly in circles. The repeated handbrake-turns wreck Foyle's gearbox and, in frustration at missing out on the car chase, Bonehead briefly considers leaving his partner. However, the chase continues on foot into London Docklands, where Spanker takes refuge. Bonehead and Foyle – as is customary for them – remove their trousers for this final showdown, and then bemoan the Docklands redevelopment that has taken place since the 1970s: "where's all the wasteland and disused factories?". They nevertheless negotiate the area trouserlessly as if it is still full of rusty girders and rubble, to the bemusement of passing city workers. Meanwhile, George attempts to talk Spanker into a surrender. Spanker complains that, with the increased realism in TV detective shows, he has missed out on the fast cars and the "shoot a man at a hundred yards crap" enjoyed by his 1970s counterparts. To prove the point, he feels no ill effects when George shoots him from this very distance as an apparent 1970s denouement to the scene. However, Bentley now magically appears exactly where the plot requires him to appear, right alongside Spanker. In a typically relaxed and tangential fashion, he manages to capture the detective effortlessly. George devises a punishment for Spanker far worse than being shot at close range – Spanker will instead be "shot on tape". He has his scruffy hair cut to a regulation police constable's length, in order to take his place as "a faceless copper in uniform - three nights a week". Spanker's suitably TV-based punishment is to become a member of the cast of The Bill. The film ends on an up-beat note, with Bonehead, Foyle, George, Bentley and the commander all drinking to "the Seventies". ===== The story is set during the Great Depression, specifically around the time of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Camilla (Salma Hayek) is a fiery, beautiful Mexican café waitress who aspires one day to be above her current standing in society, to make something of herself, to give her and her future children a place and chance in the world. Arturo (Colin Farrell) is a struggling writer who comes to Los Angeles's Bunker Hill area to start his writing career. Though he falls in love with Camilla, he does not marry her. Later, Camilla is infected by tuberculosis and leaves Arturo without informing him. When Arturo finds her, she is about to die and he promises to marry her, but Camilla dies and Arturo writes a novel dedicated to Camilla. Arturo writes a dedication in one of his books to her and throws it into the sand. ===== Dr. Flake Fountain is approached by the military to develop an antidote to a virus they have created, which is known as the "Pied Piper" virus, due to its relation to a mirth- and dance-inducing virus which supposedly caused the phenomenon the Pied Piper story was based on (see also St. John's Dance), which leaves its victims alive and unharmed, but destroys the brain's capacity for symbolic reasoning. This leaves victims unable to use language, including speech and writing to communicate. However, before Dr. Fountain can complete his antidote, the virus is released and everyone else on Earth, as far as he knows, is infected with it. He holes up in the house of his friends Blip (a fellow college professor) and Sophia, two organic hippie types. Since the house is a self-sufficient geodesic dome, he is protected from the virus and has electricity, and it is revealed that the book is his journal, where he is recording everything that has happened and is happening. Each chapter also begins with a selection from the "Book o' Billets-Doux" ("love letters" in French), which he found in the dome and is apparently an extended conversation between Blip and Sophia which they wrote, eventually while succumbing to the virus. In time Flake discovers that the people "afflicted" with the virus can apparently communicate, and he surmises that they connect on a deeper level without the hindrance of a language and its capacity to obscure the truth. They work together and seem happy, even Edenic. Because of this, once he has finished the book, he exposes himself to the virus, becoming unable to continue it and leaving the reader to wonder exactly what happened to him. ===== In the film, ten children, nine of whom have monkey faces, hats and tails, plan on going to the park for a picnic. They all ride there on their eight bikes together on the nine-block journey (two did not have bikes; one's bicycle was stolen and who instead had to run to keep up with his friends, and the other was so obese that he broke his bicycle); seeing that one of their friends has a basket, they decide to have him carry all of their lunches to the park. Each one of the monkeys has a character flaw, and each disobeys a specific rule that prevents them from reaching the park. At each block, one of the monkeys is eliminated from the group because of the consequences of their disobedience—usually by way of a collision. In the end, only one of the friends (who not only followed all the bike safety rules, but is also a normal human, whose face is not shown until the very end) makes it to the park and, because he was the one with the basket, gets all of his friends' food to himself, even though he doesn't want it all. Thus, as the title says, "One got fat!" Three of the monkeys are seen in hospital beds. In contrast to other social guidance films, One Got Fat is a dark comedy. ===== ===== Original illustration by Virgil Finlay accompanying the publication in Weird Tales (October 1937, volume 30, issue 4). For many years, the narrator and his uncle, Dr. Elihu Whipple, have nurtured a fascination with an old abandoned house on Benefit Street. Dr. Whipple has made extensive records tracking the mysterious, yet apparently coincidental, sickness and death of many who have lived in the house for over one hundred years. They are also puzzled by the strange weeds growing in the yard, as well as an unexplained foul smell and whitish phosphorescent fungi growing in the cellar. There, the narrator discovers a strange, yellowish vapour in the basement, which seems to be coupled with a moldy outline of a huddled human form on the floor. The narrator and his uncle decide to spend the night in the house, investigating the possibility of some supernatural force. They set up both cots and chairs in the cellar, arm themselves with military flamethrowers, and outfit a modified Crookes tube in the hopes of destroying any supernatural presence they might find. When Dr. Whipple naps, he tosses and turns and starts babbling in French until he suddenly awakes. He tells the narrator that he had strange visions of lying in an open pit, inside a house with constantly shifting features, while faces stared down at him. Many of the faces were those of the Harris family, whose members died in the house. When the narrator sleeps, he is awakened by a horrific scream. He sees a revolting yellowish "corpse-light" bubbling up from the floor, which stares at him with many eyes before vanishing in a wisp through the chimney. He finds his uncle transformed into a monster with "blackened, decaying features" and dripping claws. He turns on the Crookes tube, but seeing that it has no effect, escapes the house through the cellar door as his uncle's body dissolves, transforming into a multitude of faces of those who died in the house as it melts. The narrator returns the next day to find his equipment intact, but no body. The narrator hatches a plan. He orders a military gas mask, digging tools, and six carboys of sulfuric acid to be delivered to the cellar door of the house. He digs into the earthen floor of the cellar, turning up fungous yellow ooze, and arranges the barrels of acid around the hole in the belief that he will happen upon some kind of monstrous creature. Eventually, he uncovers a soft, blue-white, translucent tube, bent in half and two feet in diameter at its widest point. He frantically climbs out of the neck-deep hole, and dumps in four barrels of acid, realizing that he had found the elbow of a gigantic monster. The narrator faints after emptying the fourth barrel. When he awakens, the narrator empties the two remaining barrels, to no effect, replaces the dirt, and finds that the strange fungus has turned to harmless ash. He mourns his uncle, but is relieved to be sure that the horrible creature is finally dead. The narrator records that the house has subsequently been rented to another family, and that the house now appears completely normal. ===== Thomas Olney, a "philosopher" visiting the town of Kingsport, Massachusetts with his family, is intrigued by a strange house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It is unaccountably high and old and the locals have a generations-long dread of the place which no one is known to have visited. With great difficulty, Olney climbs the crag, approaches the house, and meets the mysterious man who lives there. The only door opens directly onto a sheer cliff, giving access only to mist and "the abyss". The transmittal of archaic lore and a life-altering encounter with the supernatural ensue, as Olney is not the only visitor that day. He returns to Kingsport the next day, but seems to have left his spirit behind in the strange, remote dwelling. ===== Charles Farmer is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and astronaut-in-training who reluctantly resigned from the space program and was discharged from the military before he could fulfill his dream of becoming a vital part of NASA. He did so in order to take over his family's failing ranch in Texas after his financially strapped father's suicide prior to the ranch being foreclosed on. Having missed the opportunity to travel into space, he decides to build a working replica of the historic Mercury-Atlas rocket and spacecraft in the barn on his secluded ranch in the fictional town of Story, Texas, using all his assets and facing his own foreclosure of the ranch as a result. But he has done so with the ongoing support of his wife Audrey, his teenage son Shepard, and young daughters Stanley and Sunshine. When he begins making inquiries about purchasing rocket fuel, the FBI and FAA step in to investigate, and the ensuing publicity thrusts Farmer into the spotlight and makes him a media darling. Farmer's launch is delayed by endless red tape created by U.S. government officials from the FAA, FBI, CIA, NASA and the Department of Defense, who seek to stall him beyond his deadline and force his creditors to foreclose on the farm. Farmer was counting on publicity to help him financially. He is denied the hydrazine fuel he requires, with government officials claiming he is a security risk and that it is too dangerous to allow a private citizen to launch a space vehicle. Facing financial ruin, he panics, climbs aboard, and, using a less-than-optimal substitute fuel, he somehow launches the rocket. However, after only a foot or two of vertical lift, the rocket descends back down, falls over, and horizontally blasts out of the old wooden barn where it was constructed. Farmer nearly dies from head trauma and other injuries after his capsule is thrown from the rocket. News media, spectators and all their vehicles are nearly crushed in the process. During the months he spends recuperating, public interest in his project wanes, and while he recovers slowly, he is depressed at the failure of the project and of his dream. An inheritance from her father, Hal, is unexpectedly left to Audrey after his death, which allows them to bring their debts current. Audrey, realizing how much Charles' dream means to the entire family, encourages Charles to construct another rocket, financing it with the rest of her inheritance. He is able to do so in relative privacy. Using a ruse to distract snooping government officials, Charles succeeds in launching the rocket, while the FAA claims no such thing has occurred. As the rocket rises out of the barn, the locals and law enforcement authorities in the area are amazed to watch it rise into space. After orbiting Earth nine times and suffering a brief period of a communication blackout, Charles returns safely and is given a hero's welcome home, appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and as seen in still photos shown during the end credits, while playing Elton John's Rocket Man. ===== "It was quite difficult to be rolled into a rug and breathe and come out looking pleased with yourself," Colbert remembered. "We only had to do that scene once." In 48 BC, Cleopatra vies with her brother Ptolemy for control of Egypt. Pothinos (Leonard Mudie) kidnaps her and Apollodorus (Irving Pichel) and strands them in the desert. When Pothinos informs Julius Caesar that the queen has fled the country, Caesar is ready to sign an agreement with Ptolemy when Apollodorus appears, bearing a gift carpet for the Roman. When Apollodorus unrolls it, Cleopatra emerges, much to Pothinos' surprise. He tries to deny who she is. However, Caesar sees through the deception and Cleopatra soon beguiles Caesar with the prospect of the riches of not only Egypt, but also India. Later, when they are seemingly alone, she spots a sandal peeking out from underneath a curtain and thrusts a spear into the hidden Pothinos, foiling his assassination attempt. Caesar makes Cleopatra the sole ruler of Egypt, and begins an affair with her. Caesar eventually returns to Rome with Cleopatra to the cheers of the masses, but Roman unease is directed at Cleopatra. Cassius (Ian Maclaren), Casca (Edwin Maxwell), Brutus (Arthur Hohl) and other powerful Romans become disgruntled, rightly suspecting that he intends to abolish the Roman Republic and make himself emperor, with Cleopatra as his empress (after divorcing Calpurnia, played by Gertrude Michael). Ignoring the forebodings of Calpurnia, Cleopatra, and a soothsayer (Harry Beresford) who warns him about the Ides of March, Caesar goes to announce his intentions to the Senate. Before he can do so, he is assassinated. Cleopatra is heartbroken at the news. At first, she wants to go to him, but Apollodorus tells her that Caesar did not love her, only her power and wealth, and that Egypt needs her. They return home. Bitter rivals Marc Antony and Octavian (Ian Keith) are named co-rulers of Rome. Antony, disdainful of women, invites Cleopatra to meet with him in Tarsus, intending to bring her back to Rome as a captive. Enobarbus (C. Aubrey Smith), his close friend, warns Antony against meeting Cleopatra, but he goes anyway. She entices him to her barge and throws a party with many exotic animals and beautiful dancers, and soon seduces him. Together, they sail to Egypt. King Herod (Joseph Schildkraut), who has secretly allied himself with Octavian, visits the lovers. He informs Cleopatra privately that Rome and Octavian can be appeased if Antony were to be poisoned. Herod also tells Antony the same thing, with the roles reversed. Antony laughs off his suggestion, but a reluctant Cleopatra, reminded of her duty to Egypt by Apollodorus, tests a poison on a condemned murderer (Edgar Dearing) to see how it works. Before Antony can drink the fatal wine, however, they receive news that Octavian has declared war. Antony orders his generals and legions to gather, but Enobarbus informs him that they have all deserted out of loyalty to Rome. Enobarbus tells his comrade that he can wrest control of Rome away from Octavian by having Cleopatra killed, but Antony refuses to consider it. Enobarbus bids Antony goodbye, as he will not fight for an Egyptian queen against Rome. A short montage sequence shows the fighting between the forces of Antony and Octavian, ending in the naval Battle of Actium. Antony fights on with the Egyptian army, and is defeated. Octavian and his soldiers surround and besiege Antony and Cleopatra. Antony is mocked when he offers to fight them one by one. Without his knowledge, Cleopatra opens the gate and offers to cede Egypt in return for Antony's life in exile, but Octavian turns her down. Meanwhile, Antony believes that she has deserted him for his rival and stabs himself. When Cleopatra returns, she is heartbroken to find him dying. They reconcile before he perishes. Then, with the gates breached, Cleopatra kills herself with a poisonous snake and is found sitting on her throne, dead. ===== In 47 BC, Egypt is in civil war. Cleopatra VII, Egypt's rightful Queen, is in exile, while her sister Arsinoe and brother, Ptolemy have stolen the throne. Roman general Julius Caesar comes to Alexandria to collect Egypt's tax debt. Cleopatra smuggles herself into the palace wrapped in a carpet; a gift from her to Caesar. The two spend the night together, and the next morning, Cleopatra and Ptolemy are betrothed to marry by Caesar. Cleopatra is proclaimed Queen of Egypt. Caesar then orders the death of the unscrupulous Prime Minister Pothinus, prompting Ptolemy and Arsinoe to flee and return with their army to drive their sister out of Alexandria. A battle breaks out between the Romans and the Egyptian forces, and in the process, Alexandria's great library is burned to the ground. Arsinoe and Ptolemy are pursued by Roman forces. Arsinoe is captured while Ptolemy is killed when his carriage overturns. Cleopatra has Arsinoe strangled in her cell. Cleopatra and Caesar take a 2-month journey down the Nile aboard one of the Queen's elegant ships. Caesar comes under fire from the Roman Senate and his critic Brutus due to a crisis in Pontus. Caesar promptly leaves for Rome. Unbeknownst to Caesar, Cleopatra is pregnant with his child. A son is born to the queen roughly nine months later; he is named Caesarion, in honor of his father. Back in Rome, Caesar invites Cleopatra to stay at one of his villas, just outside Rome. With her, she brings the couple's infant son. In front of his people (including wife Calpurnia), Cleopatra declares that Caesar is her son's father, publicly forcing his hand, and demanding that her son be allowed to rule both Egypt and Rome invoking the consternation of Brutus and Cassius. Believing that he should hold the same status as his Egyptian lover, Caesar demands he be declared King of Rome. Although they are hesitant to do so, the senate eventually grants Caesar's request. Now having been declared king, Caesar prepares his a conquest of Parthia. Although he accepts Caesarion as his child, Caesar denies the queen's request, causing Cleopatra to leave him. Just before her return to Egypt, Cleopatra soon learns that Caesar has been assassinated at the hands of Brutus, Cassius and other senators. The burdens of ruling fall on the shoulders of Caesar's Roman heir and nephew, Octavian and Mark Antony who declares revenge and begins a war against Brutus and Cassius. In the process, both Cassius and Brutus commit suicide. Though Octavian desecrates Brutus' corpse by severing and displaying his head, creating a rift between him and Mark Antony. In spending time with together, Antony and Cleopatra fall in love. Antony turns away from her for the sake of Rome. Antony reluctantly marries Octavian's sister, Octavia, in order to strengthen his alliance and co-ruling with the new emperor. Antony returns to Egypt. Defying his Roman beliefs against polygamy, Antony marries Cleopatra in Antioch, claiming that her son, Caesarion, is heir to not only Egypt, but also Rome. Upon hearing of Antony's claim, Octavian wages war against the two lovers. Antony leads Cleopatra's fleet into the legendary Battle of Actium. Octavian defeats Antony, which demoralizes he and his men. Cleopatra sends her son to India while Antony prepares a last stand. His army is overwhelmed by Octavian's army. Antony returns with his defeated soldiers, badly wounded and soon dies of his injuries. Cleopatra is devastated. Octavian arrives in Alexandria, demanding that Cleopatra join him in Rome as his prisoner. She agrees and asks that her son be allowed to rule Egypt. Octavian refuses, but allows Antony to have an Egyptian burial. Cleopatra lets an Egyptian asp bite her, and dies shortly after. Her handmaidens quickly follow their queen's example. Octavian's men break through the doors, only to discover that the queen is dead. Octavian approaches Cleopatra and finds that she is dead. Then he says "You have won, Cleopatra" and then leaves. ===== The film is based on Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer, which in turn was inspired by the 1913 trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Russian Jew who was falsely accused of having ritually murdered a Ukrainian boy named Andrei Yushchinsky, an example of the Blood Libel. ===== Stranded in a small town in a downpour, the manager of a traveling musical show (Fred Allen) convinces the handlers of a boring long-winded local judge running for governor (Raymond Walburn) to hire his group to attract people to the politician's rallies. When the show's crooner, Eric Land (Dick Powell), upstages the judge, he's fired, but on a return visit he saves the day by standing in for the judge, who is too drunk to speak. Impressed by his poise, the party's bosses ask Eric to take over as candidate. The singer, knowing he has no chance to win, agrees for the exposure and the radio airtime in which he can showcase his singing. Soon, though, his girlfriend Sally (Ann Dvorak) becomes annoyed at the amount of time Eric is spending with the wife of one of the bosses, and she leaves when she thinks he has lied to her. When the bosses ask Eric to agree to patronage appointments that will lead to easy graft for all of them, he exposes them on the radio, telling the voters that voting for him would be a huge mistake and urging them to vote for his opponent. At the end Eric is, of course, elected governor, then reunited with Sally. ===== Miss Carol (Diana Durrell) is an idealistic teacher in a remote one-room schoolhouse. A native of the Ozarks herself, she is determined to stop the practice of child marriage, in which older men marry teen or preteen girls. Her campaign raises the ire of some local men, led by Jake Bolby (Warner Richmond), who one night drag her into the woods and tie her to a tree, with the intention of tarring and feathering her. Before they can do this, however, Angelo the dwarf (Angelo Rossitto) and Mr. Colton (George Humphreys) arrive with a shotgun to save the day. Following this, Jake Bolby comes across young Jennie Colton (Shirley Mills) swimming naked. When her father dies, Bolby decides to take advantage of the opportunity to blackmail her mother into letting him marry the girl, threatening that otherwise he will see her hanged for murder. After he "courts" Jennie by giving her a doll, the two are married. It later turns out that this ceremony was illegal, as child marriage had been banned several days prior, but this point quickly becomes moot. Before Bolby can consummate the union, he is gunned down by Angelo. Jennie leaves his house with Freddie Nulty (Bob Bollinger). ===== The film begins when a miller, who is poaching deer on lands belonging to the King of England, is detected by a hunting party led by the cruel Norman knight Sir Miles Folcanet. The miller flees the hunting party until he runs into a Saxon earl, Robert Hode and his friend, Will. The miller pleads for help and Will urges Hode to intercede, as the Normans arrive threatening to poke the miller's eyes out. Folcanet is enraged by Hode's interference and demands that Hode be punished by the local Sheriff (shire-reeve) Roger Daguerre, who is Hode's friend. Privately Daguerre confides to Hode that he needs peace with Folcanet because he has agreed to give Daguerre a large portion of his niece Marion's wealth once they are married. Publicly Daguerre orders a single stroke of the whip for Hode after he apologizes; Hode is enraged, insulting Daguerre and is outlawed as a result. He flees into Sherwood Forest, meets John Little and the usual cast of Merry Men and under the name "Robin Hood" takes up arms and fights against the Norman nobility. After seeing Hode's Merry Men humiliate Folcanet, Mariane joins their band in disguise, until a disgruntled outlaw recognizes her and betrays her to the Sheriff. Hode convinces everyone to attack Nottingham Castle to stop the wedding, certain that she loves him. Folcanet is defeated and Daguerre is convinced to set aside their feud and bless the marriage of Robin and Mariane. ===== Lobby card for the film Episodic in nature (effectively three short films merged into one), the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she's a ghost haunting him. ===== Krish (Ram) is a happy-go- lucky guy who lives with his brother (Naresh) and sister-in-law (Jhansi). He was in love with a girl named Manju (Sheela), who happens to be the daughter of Simhachalam (Mukesh Rishi). Krish's only intention is to become rich by marrying her, and he does not have any feelings whatsoever towards her. He weaves a love story between him and a girl called Meenakshi aka Meenu (Hansika Motwani) to make Manju fall for him. He also meets Meenu, starts to like her for real, and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Simhachalam and Shinde (Pradeep Rawat) run against each other in a presidential election in Delhi. Shinde is a man of misdeeds and tries to find faults in Simhachalam's personal life so that he can expose him in front of the high command of the party so that his route will be clear to get the party ticket. Shinde comes to learn that Simhachalam has another wife (Seetha) and a daughter who lives in Hyderabad. He sends his men to find them. Unfortunately, Simhachalam fixes Manju and Krish's marriage, but Krish loves Meenu. Manju discovers it and points a gun on Meenu, but she leaves Krish to her and reveals that Meenu is the unofficial daughter of Simhachalam and the sister of Manju. Simhachalam, Krish, and Shinde arrive. Meenu and Manju emotionally ask their father to forget everything and live happily. He gives up the election to Shinde. Krish then marries Meenu and Manju lives happily. ===== The story is set in the early Qing Dynasty. The protagonist is an uneducated street urchin called Wei Xiaobao, who was born and raised by his mother in a brothel in Yangzhou. Through a series of misadventures, Wei manages to make his way from Yangzhou to Beijing, the seat of the Qing government, where he accidentally bumbles into a fateful encounter with the young Kangxi Emperor. By hook or by crook, but also through a genuine concern and fierce loyalty towards Kangxi, Wei finds himself in the greatest of confidences and a complicated friendship with one of the most eminent monarchs in Chinese history. The plot follows Wei on a rags-to-riches journey as he becomes embroiled in political and court intrigues, helping Kangxi overcome his enemies, and accomplishing amazing achievements. Along the way, Wei meets and successfully woos seven beautiful women, climbs his way up the social ladder from brothel boy to great lord and nobleman, acquiring titles such as 'Imperial Emissary and Plenipotentiary', 'Ambassador', 'General' and 'Admiral' — courtesy of Kangxi — as well as finding himself in positions completely at odds with the above: 'Green Wood Lodge Master' of the Heaven and Earth Society, and 'White Dragon Marshal' of the Mystic Dragon Cult. In the end, however, Wei cannot reconcile his two separate lives — as an anti-Qing rebel and Kangxi's devoted courtier. He chose to offer up his own life — in return for Kangxi's munificence towards him and also as an honourable way out of the Heaven and Earth Society. Pained and aggrieved beyond words, Kangxi orders the execution of his one and only true friend. Afterwards, plagued by loss and guilt, Kangxi took a long walk along the Great Wall, asking Heaven for guidance — only to be happily surprised by the appearance of Wei, who did not die. After saving his mate's life once again, Wei bids Kangxi farewell, reaffirming their friendship which will, from that point onwards, remain only in their minds and memories. ===== Tang monk Tripitaka (Nicholas Tse) and his three disciples Monkey King Sun WuKong (Bolin Chen), Pig Monk Zhu WuNeng (Kenny Kwan), and Sand Monk Sha WuJing (Steven Cheung) arrive triumphantly to a hero's welcome in Shache city. Tripitaka's most arduous challenge to achieve deification is to come, only he can perform. During their stay in the city, the three disciples are captured by evil Tree Spirits. Tripitaka borrows the Golden Pole and tries to find a way to save them. He meets a young lizard imp Meiyan (Charlene Choi) who is more than a visual match for Quasimodo: matted bushy hair, and teeth of any dentist's nightmare. Meiyan falls in love with Tripitaka at first sight and devotes herself to trailing him. She even sets a love trap to ensnare him. Tripitaka unwittingly falls into the trap and in the process breaks the Heavenly Code. The region is one full of monsters, strange beings and creatures of unknown origins and among them are the beautiful Princess XiaoShan (Fan Bing-bing) and her army. On a passing journey to Earth her path crosses Tripitaka's and she vows her aid. Tripitaka decides to leave with the Princess. Meiyan is heartbroken. She picks a fight with Princess XiaoShan and, although she loses, she finally discovers her own identity as a galactic warrior. She eventually helps the princess in defeating the enemy and rescues Tripitaka and his disciples. After the battle, Meiyan surrenders to the Temple of Heaven for judgment. Torn between passion and righteousness, Tripitaka rebels against the heavens to rescue the gallows-bound Meiyan. A benevolent Buddha is moved and pardons the two on condition that they embark on a journey to the West to accomplish the Eight-One Tasks to redeem themselves and save the world. ===== Blood Beast takes place about a year after the events recounted in Slawter. Grubbs Grady is back in Carcery Vale. His life seems to have settled down at last. He's getting on well with Dervish. Grubbs has been struggling to contain the magical talent he discovered in the town of Slawter. He doesn't want to become a Disciple and he hopes his abilities will fade if he hides them long enough. His magician's prowess is growing all the time. He is having dreadful nightmares and suspects he might be turning into a werewolf.Blood Beast - plot outline Things come to a head when Grubbs and his friends, Loch and Bill-E decide to go on a treasure hunt. While exploring a tunnel that leads to a cave, Grubbs hears a scream behind him and turns to find Loch's lifeless body on the floor, blood seeping from his head. Bill-E leaves to get help, and Grubbs attempts unsuccessfully to resuscitate Loch, whose heart has stopped. Dervish returns with Bill-E and they dispose of Loch's body in a nearby quarry. Dervish explains that the cave is a potential doorway for demons to enter the human world and it is his responsibility to safeguard it. Grubbs returns to school, and meets with the new psychologist, Juni Swan, whom he had previously met in Slawter. Juni also has a gift for magic. She becomes romantically involved with Dervish who teaches her more spells. For several nights around the time of the full moon, Grubbs has a difficult time and is in extreme pain. Juni suggests that they should meet at the cave. Grubbs runs to the cave, where he turns into a werewolf. When he returns to a human state, he finds that he has killed Bill-E's grandparents and legal guardians. Not wanting to kill again, he and Juni decide to run away. They board a plane and Grubbs falls asleep. When he awakes, the cockpit opens and demons appear on the plane, and then begin attacking the passengers. Is Juni a friend or foe? ===== Picking up where Blood Beast left off, Grubbs is on a plane in a dire situation face-to- face with Lord Loss and Juni Swan who has just been revealed to be one of his higher ranked familiars. Just when it seems like Grubbs will be killed, Beranabus (the homeless man from the previous book that had been following him around Carcery Vale, and a powerful magician who the Disciples follow) appears, the two jump from the plane, and fly to his cave. Once there, Beranabus and Kernel take Grubbs with them to fight a demon in one of the Demonata worlds. Grubbs chickens out and is stuck in Beranabus' home for seven weeks. Once Beranabus and Kernel return from demon hunting, they all discover that the tunnel that Bec had sealed 1600 years ago has been opened, and hell has been brought to Earth. Enlisting the help of the Disciples, Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus set out to reseal the tunnel and remove the Demonata from Earth at the same time. After arriving at the tunnel, Kernel gets his eyes gouged out by Spine (one of Lord Loss's familiars) and Grubbs sees all his friends' and Dervish's heads carried by demons (Not Bill-E's). The spirit of Bec appears again and tells Beranabus that sealing the tunnel will not remove the demons like it did last time. In the chaos, the Kah-Gash (the weapon powerful enough to destroy universes) awakes in Grubbs, Kernel and Bec and turn back time to a point just before the tunnel was opened, providing Grubbs, Kernel, and Beranabus a way to prevent mankind's extinction. During the cave battle between Beranabus' group and Lord Loss', it is revealed that Bill-E must be killed to prevent the opening of the tunnel, since he unwittingly sacrificed Loch to open the tunnel. Because Dervish is unable to kill his nephew, Grubbs is forced to painlessly kill Bill-E. This seals the tunnel, and also forces the retreat of a shadowy creature unlike any demon Grubbs has seen before. Bec, her essence trapped within Grubbs, fills Bill-E's body and mutates it to resemble hers. It is revealed that Bec's spirit has been trapped inside the cave for the past 1600 years, believed by Beranabus to be because she is part of the Kah-Gash, along with Grubbs and Kernel. Now knowing what is at stake, Grubbs leaves Dervish in the care of Bec and joins Beranabus and Kernel on their never ending quest to prevent more tunnels from opening and to learn more about the creature known as the Shadow. ===== Detectives Jimmy McNulty and Leander Sydnor monitor drug lieutenant Melvin "Cheese" Wagstaff. At the Major Case Unit, Lester Freamon, Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski and new member Caroline Massey man a wiretap. Sydnor observes that Cheese does not use a phone, instead conducting his business face-to-face and receiving phone messages through his subordinate. After being relieved by Freamon and Kima Greggs, McNulty is told by ASA Rhonda Pearlman and Lieutenant Cedric Daniels that they are considering the abandonment of the wire. McNulty, believing the wire will eventually reach Proposition Joe and Stringer Bell, heatedly asserts that Bell is their target and that all other objectives are secondary. Daniels insists they need a break in the case to justify continued use of the wiretaps. McNulty, Greggs and Freamon observe a dealer named Drac, who is far less discreet on the phone than Cheese's crew. Freamon states that Drac is supplied by Lavelle Mann, one of Joe's soldiers; Sydnor has been developing a connection with Mann through undercover work for some time. They plan to arrest Mann in the hope that Drac, Joe's nephew, will be promoted and give them more information on the organization through his careless talk on the wire. Daniels takes the plan to Acting Commissioner Ervin Burrell, who is reluctant to fund more wiretaps. Burrell later reports to Daniels that Mayor Clarence Royce is now holding up the proposal to promote Daniels to the position of Major because Daniels' wife Marla is set to challenge one of the mayor's allies in an upcoming election. Burrell tells Daniels that the mayor will not make him a commander until he knows where Marla stands politically. McNulty goes to an Orioles game with his old partner Bunk Moreland. He meets his estranged wife Elena to take his children for the second half. Despite it being his day off, Bunk is forced to leave the game early when he is called to work a murder scene. The following day, Daniels marshals his men for the hand-to-hand on Mann. Once out in the field, Greggs and McNulty make a clean arrest and Sydnor maintains his cover. Drac immediately starts talking about a possible promotion on the wire. Unfortunately for the detail, the promotion goes to Cheese instead. After McNulty and Daniels argue over the future of the case, Freamon chastises McNulty for his confrontational attitude and self-absorption. At midnight, Prez finds McNulty reviewing old files from the Barksdale investigation. As Massey leaves, McNulty explains his research to her as a way to avoid making the same mistakes again. In the Western District, Sergeant Ellis Carver marshals his new squad and plans a sting on a corner drug dealing operation. He and Thomas "Herc" Hauk eventually chase down a runner named Tyrell. Elsewhere, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin greets two new officers to his district, Aaron Castor and Brian Baker. When Carver and Herc bring Tyrell in with no evidence for a drug charge, Colvin criticizes their use of resources. Later, as he prepares to patrol the Western, he is disappointed to see that Carver's squad has brought in more street dealers on loitering charges with no leads into their distributors. Colvin further sees the urban decay blighting the neighborhood thanks to rampant crime. He is even more disgusted when a young drug dealer, Justin, approaches him despite his being in uniform. Bodie Broadus, Poot Carr and Puddin reminisce about the Barksdale towers, which are being demolished. Bell chairs a meeting to discuss the Barksdales' new direction now that their main territory is lost; Bodie suggests that they take new territory by force. Bell instead suggests that they supply other dealers with their product rather than battle over territory, urging his subordinates to think like businessmen. Meanwhile, in prison, Wee-Bey Brice talks to former Barksdale soldier Dennis "Cutty" Wise, who is about to be paroled. Avon Barksdale asks Cutty for help securing new territory and gives him a number to call when he is released. Once outside, Cutty arranges a meeting with Shamrock and is given directions to a package of narcotics. Cutty observes one of Marlo Stanfield's crews and strikes a deal with the leader, Fruit, to work the package for a share of the profit. When Cutty returns later that night, Fruit tells him his stash was confiscated by police and drives him away with a gun. Bubbles and Johnny lose control of their cart, which crashes into the car of Marlo's driver. He takes their trousers as punishment. After buying new pants, they are unable to afford drugs for the both of them. Elsewhere, Royce delivers a speech at the demolition ceremony for the towers. Councilmen Tommy Carcetti grills Burrell and Deputy Commissioner William Rawls about increased violent crime in East Baltimore during a review meeting. Over lunch, Burrell declines an offer by Carcetti to help him if Royce shorts him on funding. He meets with Royce and his chief of staff, Coleman Parker, who speculates Carcetti is preparing to run for mayor. Royce dismisses Carcetti's chances of winning in a majority-black city, but Parker is concerned he could use rising crime figures to his advantage. Royce and Parker pressure Burrell to have the Baltimore Police reduce violent crime citywide by 5% in each district and keep murders under 275 for the year. At the next ComStat meeting, Burrell tells his men to cut the felony rate by Royce's figures. Colonel Raymond Foerster, now in charge of the CID, is dismayed at the directive. Colvin realizes how the commanders have been encouraged to water down their figures and questions how they could "juke the stats" with murder victims. Burrell threatens to replace commanders who fail to deliver the figures he wants. Later, Daniels attends a meeting at his home with State Delegate Odell Watkins and Marla's other political contacts. Once they have left, Marla thanks him and he returns to sleep at the office. ===== In 1846 an English ship called the Daphne heads out to reach Australia. The ship never makes it, as it, and all of its passengers (including slaves, zealous missionaries, and English settlers) are swallowed up by some gargantuan, oceanic beast. Skip forward to the present day and the descendants of the original passengers are living in Gutsville, a shanty town within the belly of this mysterious creature. ===== Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom), a struggling physician in 18th dynasty Egypt (14th century BC), is thrown by chance into contact with the pharaoh Akhnaton (Michael Wilding). He rises to and falls from great prosperity, wanders the world, and becomes increasingly drawn towards a new religion spreading throughout Egypt. His companions throughout are his lover, a shy tavern maid named Merit (Jean Simmons); and his corrupt but likable servant, Kaptah (Peter Ustinov). While out lion hunting with his sturdy friend Horemheb (Victor Mature), Sinuhe discovers Egypt's newly ascendant pharaoh Akhnaton, who has sought the solitude of the desert in the midst of a religious epiphany. While praying, the ruler is stricken with an epileptic seizure, with which Sinuhe is able to help him. The grateful Akhnaton makes his savior court physician and gives Horemheb a post in the Royal Guard, a career previously denied to him by low birth. His new eminence gives Sinuhe an inside look at Akhnaton's reign, which is made extraordinary by the ruler's devotion to a new religion that he feels has been divinely revealed to him. This faith rejects Egypt's traditional gods in favor of monolatristic worship of the sun, referred to as Aten. Akhnaton intends to promote Atenism throughout Egypt, which earns him the hatred of the country's corrupt and politically active traditional priesthood. Life in court does not prove to be good for Sinuhe; it drags him away from his previous ambition of helping the poor while falling obsessively in love with a Babylonian courtesan named Nefer (Bella Darvi). He squanders all of his and his parents' property in order to buy her gifts, only to have her reject him nonetheless. Returning dejectedly home, Sinuhe learns that his parents have committed suicide over his shameful behavior. He has their bodies embalmed so that they can pass on to the afterlife, and, having no way to pay for the service, works off his debts in the embalming house. Lacking a tomb in which to put his parents' mummies, Sinuhe buries them in the sand amid the lavish funerary complexes of the Valley of the Kings. Merit finds him there and warns him that Akhnaton has condemned him to death; one of the pharaoh's daughters fell ill and died while Sinuhe was working as an embalmer, and the tragedy is being blamed on his desertion of the court. Merit urges Sinuhe to flee Egypt and rebuild his career elsewhere, and the two of them share one night of passion before he takes ship out of the country. Olympic discus thrower Fortune Gordien and Jean Simmons on set. For the next ten years Sinuhe and Kaptah wander the known world, where Sinuhe's superior Egyptian medical training gives him an excellent reputation as healer. Sinuhe finally saves enough money from his fees to return home; he buys his way back into the favor of the court with a precious piece of military intelligence he learned abroad, informing Horemheb (now commander of the Egyptian army) that the barbarian Hittites plan to attack the country with superior iron weapons. Akhnaton is in any case ready to forgive Sinuhe, according to his religion's doctrine of mercy and pacifism. These qualities have made Aten-worship extremely popular amid the common people, including Merit, with whom Sinuhe is reunited. He finds that she bore him a son named Thoth (Tommy Rettig), a result of their night together many years ago, who shares his father's interest in medicine. Meanwhile, the priests of the old gods have been fomenting hate crimes against the Aten's devotees, and now urge Sinuhe to help them kill Akhnaton and put Horemheb on the throne instead. The physician is privately given extra inducement by the princess Baketamun (Gene Tierney); she reveals that he is actually the son of the previous pharaoh by a concubine, discarded at birth because of the jealousy of the old queen and raised by foster parents. The princess now suggests that Sinuhe could poison both Akhnaton and Horemheb and rule Egypt himself (with her at his side). Sinuhe is still reluctant to perform this evil deed until the Egyptian army mounts a full attack on worshipers of the Aten. Kaptah manages to smuggle Thoth out the country, but Merit is killed while seeking refuge at the new god's altar. In his grief Sinuhe blames Akhnaton for the whole mess and administers poison to him at their next meeting. The pharaoh realizes what has been done, but accepts his fate. He still believes his faith is true, but that he has understood it imperfectly; future generations will be able to spread the same faith better than he. Enlightened by Akhnaton's dying words, Sinuhe warns Horemheb that his wine is also poisoned, thus allowing him to marry the Princess and become Pharaoh. Later, Sinuhe is brought before his old friend for preaching the same ideals Akhnaton believed in, and is sentenced to be exiled to the shores of the Red Sea, where he spends his remaining days writing down his life story, in the hope that it may be found by Thoth or his descendants. Ultimately it is revealed that "These things happened thirteen centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ". ===== Alumnae of Mount Holyoke College (Wasserstein's alma mater) meet for lunch one day in 1978 and talk about their time together in college. The play is thus a series of flashbacks to the 1972–1973 school year as eight seniors and one freshman try to "discover themselves" in the wake of second-wave feminism. ===== Monty Brewster is a Minor League Baseball pitcher with the Hackensack Bulls. He and his best friend, Spike Nolan, the Bulls' catcher, are arrested after a post-game bar fight. A man offers to post their bail if they will come to New York City with him. At the Manhattan law office of Granville & Baxter, Brewster is told that his recently deceased great-uncle Rupert Horn, whom he has never met, has left him his entire $300 million fortune, but only if he can complete a challenge with several conditions. Brewster can choose to receive $1 million upfront, or attempt to inherit the whole estate by spending $30 million in 30 days. In the former case, the law firm becomes the executor of the estate, collecting a fee for performing this service and dividing the remainder among several charities. In the latter case, Brewster may not own any assets that are not already his at the end of the 30 days. He must get value for the services of anyone he hires, he may donate 5% to charity and lose 5% by gambling, he cannot give any of the money away, and he may not waste it by purchasing and destroying valuable objects. Finally, he is not allowed to tell anyone, even Spike. If he fails to spend the entire $30 million, he forfeits any remaining balance and inherits nothing. Brewster decides to take the $30 million challenge, and Angela Drake, a paralegal from the law firm, is assigned to accompany him and keep track of his spending. Brewster, who has never earned more than $11,000 a year, rents an expensive hotel suite at the Plaza Hotel, hires personal staff on exorbitant salaries, and places bad gambling bets. However, Spike makes good investments, earning Brewster money. Realizing that he is making no headway, Brewster decides to run for Mayor of New York City and throws most of his money at a protest campaign urging a vote for "None of the Above." A copy of the famous Inverted Jenny appears in one of the film's gags The two major candidates threaten to sue Brewster for his confrontational rhetoric, but they settle out of court for several million dollars. Brewster then hires the New York Yankees for a three-inning exhibition against the Bulls, with himself as the pitcher. He is forced to end his protest campaign when he learns that he is leading in the polls as a write-in candidate; the job carries an annual salary of $60,000, which is considered an asset under the terms of the will. Blowing his last $38,000 on a party after the game, Brewster becomes fed up with money and is heartbroken that Spike, Angela, and others around him do not understand his actions. On the final day, he finds that the sycophantic treatment he received from his entourage is gone. Shunned by everyone he knows, Brewster makes his way to the law office. Having withdrawn from the election, he learns that the city voted "None of the Above," forcing another election in which none of the previous candidates are running. Warren Cox, a junior lawyer from the law firm and Angela's fiancée, has been bribed by the firm to ensure that Brewster fails to spend the entire $30 million. Moments before time expires, Cox hands Brewster some money previously thought to have been spent and informs him he is not broke. Shortly before Brewster signs, Angela learns of the plot and reveals it to him. Brewster punches Cox, who threatens to sue and declines Brewster's offer of the money as compensation. Realizing that he will need a lawyer, Brewster pays the money to Angela as a retainer. With the transaction completed and all of the money now gone, Brewster fulfills the terms of the will and inherits the entire $300 million. ===== The film focuses on Michael (Michael Djerzinski) and Bruno and their disturbed sexuality. They are half-brothers who are very different from each other. They both had an unusual childhood because their mother was a hippie, instead growing up with their grandmothers and in boarding schools. Michael grows up to become a molecular biologist and in doing so becomes more fascinated with genetics and separating reproduction and sexuality by cloning rather than having actual sexual relationships. He is frustrated by his current job in Berlin and decides to continue his research on cloning at an institution in Ireland. Bruno, a secondary school teacher and unsuccessful author, on the other hand, is obsessed with his own sexual desires and systematically drowns himself in failed attempts with women and nights with prostitutes. He voluntarily checks himself into a mental institution after having sexually harassed one of his students. Before his departure to Ireland, Michael visits the village of his childhood for the first time in years. To his surprise, he meets his childhood friend Annabelle there and finds that she is still single and they start a sexual relationship. Bruno leaves the mental institution and goes on holiday to a hippie camp after being faced with divorce by his wife. At the camp he meets Christiane, who is also sexually open. Although they have an open relationship, he falls in love with her. During a sex orgy at one of their visits to a swing club, Christiane collapses and Bruno is faced in hospital with the news that Christiane is paralysed forever because of a chronic illness. Nonetheless Bruno wants to live with her until the end. However Christiane insists that he should take some time for consideration. Michael moves to Ireland and learns that, despite his doubts, his old research on cloning was a revolutionary breakthrough. However he misses Annabelle but does not manage to get her on the phone. Annabelle is informed that she is pregnant but must have an abortion and her womb removed due to life-threatening abnormalities. Bruno calls Christiane but always replaces the receiver after just one ring. He finally drives to her apartment only to learn that she has committed suicide shortly before. Subsequently he re-enters mental institution totally devastated. Michael is told by Annabelle's mother that Annabelle had an abortion and a severe surgery. He immediately leaves Ireland for Annabelle and finally openly admits his deep love to her. In hospital Bruno has hallucinations of Christiane who explains to him that her suicide was not his fault. In his imagination he tells her that he ultimately has decided to stay with her forever. After Annabelle recovers and before their departure to Ireland, Michael and Annabelle visit Bruno in hospital and take him to the beach. Michael asks Bruno if he wants to come with Annabelle and him to Ireland but Bruno decides to live happily in hospital with Christiane in his mind forever. The film ends with title cards stating that Michael Djerzinski received the Nobel Prize. This too is fiction. ===== Bunty, a scientist's apprentice catches a dove to give to his boss to use in an experiment. Bunty and the scientist want to capture Son Pari and use her to become rich by showing her off to the world. Fruity set the dove free, not knowing that the bird is actually Son Pari (Golden Fairy), who often comes to Earth with the permission of the fairy queen called Pari Ma (Fairy Mother). Fruity's mother died long ago. Fruity goes to the terrace to look at the stars, as she believes her mother is in one of them. One night Son Pari comes to her and offers her friendship in return for the assistance Fruity once gave her. This starts the story of their strange friendship. Son Pari and Altu start meeting Fruity regularly and have many adventures. They help her get rid of Ruby, a woman who wants to marry Fruity's father, Rohit, for his money. Although Ruby's brother helps Ruby, Son Pari and Altu make sure they don't succeed. Later Son Pari realises that Fruity is in great danger, for it is written on the prophecies that Fruity will kill Kali Pari (Black Fairy), who is the main villain of Season 2. For a short while, Son Pari makes Tooty, a fairy who is Fruity's look-alike, take care of Fruity and protect her from Kali Pari. Much later a new character Princy comes into picture, who will be able to see Son Pari and Altu despite of them being invisible to everyone. The series contains multiple subplots and finally, fruity will be able to kill the Kaali Pari and thus the darkness ends. ===== ===== ===== The film begins two years before African- American Darnellia Russell attends the predominantly white and upper-class Roosevelt High School. Bill Resler, a tax law professor at the University of Washington, becomes their new girls basketball coach. Resler, a coach who uses animal and nature themes to motivate his team, believes they can win the Washington State championship but they fall short in the first game of the state tournament. A couple of years later, Russell attends Roosevelt High School where she makes the junior-varsity team. Learning of her natural talent, Resler recruits her for the varsity squad. In the following years, the talented Roosevelt team falls short of winning the state championship in close games. Russell receives letters of interest from several major universities. However, after her junior year, she becomes pregnant by her longtime boyfriend and drops out of school. After giving birth to a daughter, Russell returns to Roosevelt for her fifth year. However, the WIAA (Washington Interscholastic Activities Association) bans her from playing basketball due to a rule that states that high school students can only play on their teams for four years, unless a hardship is involved. Russell, believing that having an unplanned child constitutes a hardship, appeals the decision. Attorney Ken Luce, located in Tacoma, Washington, represents her in court and a judge rules in Russell's favor. The WIAA takes the matter to court again, and for the second time the judge grants Russell the right to continue playing. However, the WIAA files a lawsuit against Russell and Roosevelt High School. In defiance of the WIAA, the Roughriders continue to play with Russell on the team. Russell and her team return to the Washington State high school basketball championship tournament and play rivals, the Garfield Bulldogs in the finals. She leads the team to the school's first state championship. Two days later, the WIAA dropped their case. Russell graduates from high school with honors and is named the Northwest Player of the Year. Although Russell didn't receive any college scholarships, she attended North Seattle Community College. ===== Red Dwarf receives a distress call from a crashed spaceship, the Nova 5. When Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Dave Lister (Craig Charles), and Cat (Danny John-Jules) check the call, they learn that it was made from a service mechanoid called Kryten (David Ross), who reports that all of the crew are dead except for three female crew members. Eager to rescue them but learning from Holly (Norman Lovett) it will take 24 hours for Red Dwarf to reach the crash site, the group boldly spruce themselves for their meeting. Upon boarding the Nova 5, they quickly discover that the women are also dead and that Kryten has been oblivious to this for centuries. Upon being convinced by the others of this fact, Lister takes pity on Kryten when he questions how he will cope, and decides to bring him back to Red Dwarf.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 52. Once on the ship, Rimmer makes use of him to serve primarily himself, much to Lister's disgust. As a result, Lister tries to make Kryten live for himself by having him watch films starring Marlon Brando and James Dean. Although his plan seems not to work, Rimmer is angered when his request for a portrait by Kryten leads him to painting the hologram in an admiral uniform while using a toilet. Kryten takes heart in Lister's tutoring and rebels by insulting Rimmer and ruining his bunk, before asking to borrow Lister's space bike and speeding off to enjoy himself. ===== In 1917, 17-year-old Will Stoneman (Mackenzie Astin) is a mail-runner for his small South Dakota town and an apprentice carpenter for his father Jack (John Terry), who creates furniture and also runs the family farm. After delivering the town mail one day, Will opens a college letter addressed to him and sees that he was accepted to his desired school. Despite his happiness at being accepted, he hesitates to leave his family responsibilities behind; Jack however encourages Will to attend college and to chase his dreams, and to not let fear stand his way. While returning with Will one day from a lumber run with their sled dogs, Jack drowns in a mushing accident when his sled overturns into a river; he sacrifices his own life to prevent Will, whose team was just ahead and tied to his own sled, from being dragged into the water, too. As the only son, now responsible for his mother Maggie (Penelope Windust) and his family's bill- indebted farm, Will despairs of college but protests when his mother plans to sell their valuable sled dogs. Knowing that his father was thinking of competing in an international dog-sled race with a cash prize that his father knew could save the farm, Will insists on making the attempt. After a month of rigorous physical, mental and spiritual training from Native Indian farm hand Ned Dodd (August Schellenberg), Will travels to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to enter the race. The race's principal sponsor, railroad magnate J.W. Harper (David Ogden Stiers), initially refuses his entry as too late. American news reporter Harry Kingsley (Kevin Spacey) sees the youngster as his opportunity to win headlines and gives Will the extra money he lacks to pay the late fee, which Harper reluctantly accepts rather than be criticized in American newspapers. The rich race sponsors and the highly experienced international mushing champions scoff at the brash boy's apparently silly hopes of being real competition for them. During the race, Will's energy and determination wins the grudging respect of the international mushers and immensely pleases Harper, who never expected Will to last for more than a day in the race. Kingsley writes admiring articles gushing about Will's courage and competitive zeal (nicknaming him "Iron Will" to bolster his public image as an American hero), but his stories, written by a cynical reporter, languish on back pages while the world focuses on the European War. As Will follows Ned's training advice to "run longer, sleep less," start earlier and race persistently for the long hours and many days of the over 500 mile race through subzero blizzards and lonely snow-covered forests, he endures brutal cold, steep mountains, treacherous river passages and various other obstacles. Will becomes increasingly tired and sick, especially after he sacrifices his lead one day to save the life of a Icelandic fellow competitor who was felled in a remote area by the influenza beginning to sweep the world. Upon learning Will's intention to win, Harper becomes understanding of him and refuses to drop him out of the race because he experienced similar things as Will did in the past before his own financial success. One of the race's co-sponsors Angus McTeague (Brian Cox) offers a bribe to a particularly brutal Swedish competitor Borg Guillarson (George Gerdes) to do whatever it takes to force the kid out of the race. The intimidating racer eliminates a number of other mushers by underhanded tactics. He also takes a special malevolent interest in the innocent young man, mocking Will, threatening him and eventually releasing the meanest of his large dogs to attack and attempt to kill Will's lead dog, Gus. Will stands up against this active attempted sabotage by Borg and also realizes that his supposed sponsor Kingsley is just using him as a pawn to justify embellished articles which the veteran reporter hopes will win him front-page status and a promotion from the cold North to his paper's Headquarters. However, when McTeague, who has funded the attempted sabotage of Will's attempts so he can win an immense side bet, repeatedly tries to bribe Will to drop out of the race, Kingsley overhears the final offer, defends Will's honor and throws McTeague out. By standing up for the plucky boy, the jaded reporter suddenly lost some of his cynicism and found himself trying to help Will for purely unselfish reasons. Will accepts the gesture and the two make amends. On the last day of the race, reporter Kingsley becomes genuinely concerned when he sees how serious Will's physical condition is and can barely move. Kingsley urges the battered and exhausted Will to drop out of the race and see a doctor, but Will insists on finishing the race. Will finds himself following Borg on a dangerous shortcut to the finish line. This hazardous frosty course alongside runs a turbulent river, just like the trail that took the life of Will's father. Before this, every time Will confronted a frozen lake or icy riverside trail, he avoided those paths out of fear over what happened to his father. This time, Will remembers his Ned's advice and finds the courage to trust his dog team and risk the water hazards as Gus recovers enough to finish the race. Borg takes the lead by continually whipping his dogs, but they quit from exhaustion and attack him when he attempts to brutalize them into continuing. Will sees Borg being savaged by his team and scares them off, saving his enemy, as he races by on the dangerous shortcut. The large crowd waiting at the finish line suddenly sees Will come into view with a huge lead. Exhausted from lack of sleep, having been battered by falls and cut by tree limbs, Will's sled overturns near the finish line and he collapses. Then Ned awakens the spirit of his father's dog Gus with a familiar whistle with the crowd following suit. While the other racers close in, Will struggles to stand back up again and cross the finish line just ahead of the others. Falling to the ground, unable to stand, he is helped up by his fellow competitors and falls into his mothers arms in an embrace. Spectators, along with Kingsley, Harper and other race officials and reporters, surround Will, applauding him for his heroic victory, his endurance and persistence for not giving up. ===== Taking a different approach from the previous seven books in the series, Nerilka's Story has a non-dragonrider and non-harper as its major viewpoint character. It is set during the events detailed in Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. Nerilka is the daughter of a Lord Holder who turns her back on her life in an upper-class family and sets out to fight the disease that threatens to kill all humans on Pern. According to a critic for the Chicago Tribune, Nerilka makes for an "intelligent, resourceful, selfless and, alas, homely" heroine. ===== Peter is a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, advances to the bonus round, and wins, despite choosing Z, 4, three Qs, and the Batman symbol for his consonants and vowel, and taking a self-described "shot in the dark" with his answer, "Alex Karras in Webster", managing to get the correct answer on his first try, to Pat's absolute shock (whom Peter believes is Regis Philbin). He chooses, among several other prizes, one week of free maid service. When his maid Joan arrives, Peter has her pull items out of his belly button (including, among other things, a ColecoVision set and a carton of Parliament Cigarettes to the shock of Peter, who says he hasn't smoked in ten years), and rides on her back, like a horse, to the store. Peter decides to over-work Joan on her last night by giving Meg a watermelon filled with chocolate pudding and M-80 firecrackers, which explodes in her face. After being introduced to her by Peter, Quagmire falls in love with her. After dating Joan, Quagmire proposes marriage to her, which she accepts and the couple prepare their marriage ceremony. Lois, Peter and their neighbors visit Quagmire's house, finding that he has changed his personality significantly. Peter still believes this to be a prank and shows Quagmire porn magazines in an attempt to change him back to his former ways. Meanwhile, Lois begins to question whether she should keep breastfeeding Stewie, as he is hurting her when feeding. By the time of Quagmire's wedding, Lois' breasts have gotten very large after deciding to wean Stewie, on the advice of Brian. While at the reception, the top of her shirt rips open. Peter notices that Quagmire is staring at Lois' huge breasts, and deliberately spills champagne on them. Peter then "helps" Lois by shaking her, which makes her large breasts jiggle. This arouses Quagmire, and he realizes that he has made a mistake by marrying Joan. He informs Joan that some of his friends think they should get an annulment after discussing it with Peter, Joe and Cleveland, but she threatens to cut herself and him if he annuls their marriage. As a result, Peter decides to help Quagmire fake his death. He shows Joan a video of Quagmire being attacked by a ninja (Joe), a Nazi (Cleveland), a "pots and pans" robot (Peter), and the body being consumed by a dinosaur held by Peter (to the theme of Jurassic Park). Joan is unconvinced by the video. Peter and his friends then operate plan B, which consists of Quagmire pretending to suffer a heart attack and die. Quagmire is buried in a coffin with enough oxygen to last him a short period of time so Peter can return after the funeral has finished and dig him up. However, when Mayor West announces that all coffins must be buried in concrete (to guard against zombies), Peter exclaims that Quagmire is not dead, and brings him out of the coffin, alive. Death shows up to retrieve his body. Joan pleads for Quagmire's life, and touches Death's arm, which kills her instantly. Death takes Joan instead, as "she was suicidal and her last name was Quagmire." However, before he leaves, Quagmire asks Death to leave the body for another five minutes, thus turning him back into his old usual self. Meanwhile, Stewie has been having drug-like withdrawals since Lois decided to wean him. He becomes so desperate that when he and Lois are at the park, he jumps on a woman breastfeeding her baby and greedily suckles on her, but is pulled off by Lois. One night, he then tries to milk Lois in her sleep. He pumps her breasts and succeeds, but spills and desperately tries licking it up. Stewie realizes how pathetic he is and accepts his weaning. He comes to Brian and informs that he is now off breast milk, but Lois has other plans. Lois allows Stewie to be breastfed again, thus delighting him. ===== In the 1970s, Philadelphia is in chaos as southern portions of the city protest the shutdown of several job sites while their NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, endures a string of losing seasons. In 1976, substitute teacher Vince Papale goes to a sandlot one night and joins his friends playing a pick-up football game against another group of young men. After the game ends, Papale goes home and finds his wife Sharon disgusted with his failure to provide proper support. The next morning, Papale is unexpectedly laid off from his job at the school. That night, Papale goes to the bar where he works as a part-time bartender. The bar contains die-hard Eagles fans, who are watching a TV report on Eagles hiring a new head coach, Dick Vermeil, who will be staging open public tryouts for the Eagles; the bar regulars encourage Papale to attend the tryout. Returning home, Papale finds out that Sharon has left him, leaving him a note saying he will never be anything in the world. Distraught, Papale trashes the few remaining belongings that she left behind. The next night at the bar, Papale meets a new co-bartender, Janet Cantrell, who is a Giants fan. Desperate for income in the aftermath of his wife's departure, Papale receives support from his friends and attends the tryout hosted at Veterans Stadium. Papale is competing against several hundred Philadelphia residents, but performs well during the workouts. After the tryouts, Dick Vermeil comes by as Papale is trying to start his car. Vermeil is impressed by Papale's performance and invites him to training camp to compete for a roster spot with the Eagles. Accepting, Papale receives a warm welcome at the bar, and has an interview with a newscaster. The next day, Papale is jogging in the city and stops by his empty home; running into friends, he tells them about joining the Eagles. His father, meanwhile, offers to let Vince stay with him. The following day, he goes to his first training camp with the Eagles. As the days of training camp progress, Papale endures hard training and disrespect from other players. One night, Papale takes Janet out on a date. He is unsure if he can start a new relationship, since he needs to try his best to make the team. Janet claims that she did not know it was a date. She goes back to work and he leaves. As training camp ends, the final roster spot is down to Papale and a veteran. Against his assistants' advice, Vermeil lands the final spot to Papale. As Papale's career with the Eagles begins, the team loses all six preseason games and their regular season opener against the Dallas Cowboys. Papale plays poorly against the Cowboys, and Vermeil faces pressure from the fans and media. After the team returns to Philadelphia, Papale goes to the sandlot where he played with his friends once before. He is invited to play, but he declines because of his upcoming Eagles game and watches for a few minutes. However, as a rainstorm begins, Papale joins his pals and plays against another sandlot team to help his friends. He ends the wet and dirty game by throwing a touchdown pass. When he runs into Janet later, they speak briefly before passionately embracing and tumbling into Papale's home. During the home opener against the New York Giants, Janet's appearance in a Giants shirt angers the Eagles fans. In the locker room, Papale looks again at the note Sharon had left and tears it up. He opens the game by solo-tackling the kickoff returner inside the fifteen-yard line. After an up-and-down game, Papale gets downfield during an Eagles' fourth quarter punt to tackle the returner, forcing a fumble that he recovers and takes into the end zone for a touchdown, giving the Eagles their first win in Papale's career. Eagles fans go wild with joy. During the end credits, media highlights of Papale's career with the Eagles are shown. Papale plays for the team for three seasons and eventually marries Janet while Vermeil succeeds in turning the Eagles into a winning team, culminating in an appearance in Super Bowl XV. ===== The series is set in the fictional town of O'Grady, which is periodically plagued by a force called "The Weirdness." The Weirdness affects its residents in strange ways, and its effects usually last for several days. For example, it causes people to project their private thoughts in bubbles over their heads, or produce clones of themselves every time they get angry. The focal characters of the show are four students of O'Grady High: Kevin, Abby, Harold, and Beth. ===== Peter's mother, Thelma, visits the Griffin family home, and alerts her son, Peter that she has finally left his father, Francis. In an attempt to find her a new husband, Peter's wife, Lois, takes her to a meeting for "single people," where she meets local news anchor Tom Tucker. Thelma and Tom begin dating, which upsets Peter, causing him to attempt to sabotage the new relationship. He is eventually persuaded by Tom that he should let his mother be happy, and the two begin bonding. Eventually, his mother suddenly ends the relationship, however, causing Peter to believe it is his fault. The next day, Peter learns that it is important for fathers and sons to spend time together, and tells Tom that he should spend more time with his own son, Jake, instead. Meanwhile, after interrupting a broadcast of local radio station WQHG's program "Weenie and the Butt", Brian gets his own radio talk show, when one of the station's producers compliments his speaking voice. Attempting to have an intelligent dialogue with his listeners, and distancing himself from "Weenie and the Butt"'s constant overuse of sound effects, Brian is immediately heckled by Stewie's prank phone calls. After first planning to cancel Brian's show, the station's producer announces that he loved the calls, and eventually decides to hire Stewie as co-host. Stewie then turns Brian's sophisticated talk show into a lewd, raucous, shock jock- style comedy show called "Dingo and the Baby", much to Brian's chagrin, who is reluctant to accept the new format. Upon discovering that people love the new show, however, Brian decides to play along with Stewie's idea. However, when author Gore Vidal, whom Brian had contacted for an interview on his original show, walks into one of his "Dingo and the Baby" broadcasts and leaves in disgust, Brian quits his job in shame. The show is soon replaced by one featuring Cleveland and Quagmire, entitled "Dark Chocolate and the Rod". ===== The film starts with accidental death of Kisnya (younger brother of the villain), who insists that Shabri be handed over to Police for the murder of Inspector Khare, which Murad ( a friendly neighbor of Shabri family who is a bookie) forcefully opposes. Shabri is guilty of murder of a wicked police inspector (Khare) who tried to rape her in police station in front of her younger brother who has already been tortured by Khare. After killing Kisnya, Murad and Shabri (now both murderers) run away from Mumbai to a farmhouse uptown, but are nevertheless traced by Rajdar bhau's gang (who is even helped by a corrupt officer named Inspector Kadam). There is a shoot out. Murad gets shot and is captured by the gang (he is later put to death with two dozen bullets by an angry Rajdhar Bhau, who wants to avenge Kisnya's death). Shabri is taken to Kadam's flat where the drunk officer tries to rape her but Shabri again somehow manages to run away after shooting Kadam in foot and breaking a bottle of beer on his head. Now another friend of the late Murad namely Vilas helps her. Here an interesting character, Irfan Kazi (played by Zakir Hussain) enters the story, interesting because it is not possible to make out if he is good or evil. Nevertheless, he is an encounter cop who is fed up with killing criminals and wishes to do something more creative for his own entertainment. He does this by giving Shabri inside knowhow of Rajdar Bhau's gang where unknown to the egotist Rajdar almost every one, by now fed up with selfishness of their boss, is standing on brink of rebellion. In the climax, Shabri at last comes face to face with Rajdar bhau and he is shocked to learn that Shabri is not there to beg for mercy but to kill him. Each gangster standing around them are now friends of Shabri and ready to kill Rajdar at her signal - their guns are pointed at Rajdar bhau (using her leadership qualities and Kazi's contacts she has convinced all of them that their future and well being is now in getting rid of Rajdar bhau and reorganizing under Shabri's being their chief under whom they will all work as equal partners ). Rajdar Bhau, with Shabri's approval shoots himself. ===== Danny Muldoon, a 38-year-old Chicago policeman, still lives with his overbearing Irish mother, Rose Muldoon. A lonely bachelor, Danny falls in love with Theresa Luna, an introverted, lonely girl who works in her father's funeral home as a cosmetician. On their first date, he takes her to Comiskey Park and has a picnic on the field. Their courtship eventually becomes very difficult because Rose begins to feel threatened that Theresa is trying to steal her son away; the fact that Theresa is not Irish (she is Sicilian and Polish) only exacerbates the situation. Danny's brother Patrick tries to convince Danny to remain unmarried so that Danny and Rose can move down to Florida, where Danny can take care of her; Salvatore "Sal" Buonarte, one of Danny's married friends and a fellow police officer, tries to tell Danny that he can do better and not to settle down just yet, as he did. Because of this, Danny begins to feel guilty about his relationship with Theresa, especially towards his mother. This leads to his interrupting dates with Theresa to check on his mother. When Theresa is finally introduced to Rose at a fancy dinner, Rose immediately begins to put her down. Theresa stands up to Rose, and complains to Danny as to why he didn't stand up for her. After Theresa leaves, Danny scolds his mother for being so cruel to Theresa, saying that her way of "telling it like it is" is really her attempt to hurt people. He then reminds her that she lost a $450,000 account for his late father's company by making anti-Semitic remarks. Danny then tells Rose that he will propose to Theresa, whether she approves or not. That night, Danny apologizes to Theresa and proposes to her from the bucket of a Chicago fire truck. She says yes and the two are set to be married. However, even though Rose finally does approve of Theresa, on the night before the wedding, Danny calls to check on his mother in front of Theresa. Angered at the fact that they might never be alone, Theresa walks off. Both Danny and Theresa fail to show up for the wedding, thus, the two don't marry. A few weeks later, Danny's friends question what caused them to call off the wedding, but Danny gives no answer. When a family friend named Doyle passes away, alone with no wife or children, Danny realizes that he doesn't want to end up that way. Finally, the day Danny and Rose are scheduled to move to Florida, Danny tells Rose that he can't let Theresa go and by leaving her behind, he'd be leaving behind the best thing that ever happened to him. Reluctant at first, Rose finally agrees to Danny's plan and goes to Florida without him, instructing her son to get married, have a family and be happy. Danny then goes to Luna's Funeral Home to look for Theresa. However, her father tells him that she left for New York City by train. Danny contacts the railroad station manager, who agrees to stop the train at a suburban station outside the city. There, Danny apologizes to Theresa and proclaims his love for her. He tells her that he will move to New York with her and join the New York City Police Department. Having no more guilt about his mother, the two re-board the train for New York to live the rest of their lives together. Throughout the film, the Muldoons' Greek neighbor, Nick Acropolis - who has been encouraging Danny to pursue Theresa - attempts to woo Rose. Rose is salty towards Nick in the beginning, but as she gradually softens her stance regarding Danny's relationship with Theresa, she ultimately warms to Nick, who takes Danny's place on the flight to Florida to be with Rose. ===== While having dinner with white friends, Carcetti expresses disapproval when they make disparaging comments about African Americans and tells them he intends to run for mayor. He approaches Theresa D'Agostino, a political consultant he knows from law school, and courts her interest in becoming his campaign manager. D'Agostino dismisses his chances since he would be a white candidate running in a majority-black city. Elsewhere, Bunk is unable to find Dozerman's missing gun. He asks McNulty to locate Omar to help with the murders of Tank and Tosha. Later, a drunk McNulty visits Pearlman's house and demands to come inside when he notices Daniels' car out front. Daniels and Pearlman see McNulty through the window. In the Western, Colvin attends a town hall meeting where residents vent their frustrations on rampant crime and the perceived lack of policing. Colvin admits everything they have done has failed; while the residents seem to appreciate his candor, they are enraged that he has put forth no tangible solutions. Later, Colvin looks into working security at Johns Hopkins University following his retirement. When Carver's squad fails to corral the Western's drug crews into Colvin's free zones, Colvin orders school buses to round up the dealers. They are gathered in a school gym and are unwilling to listen to Colvin as he tries to explain how the free zones will operate. Elsewhere, Cutty learns that his landscaping crew is entirely composed of ex-convicts. He approaches Slim Charles, offering himself for anything that pays. McNulty observes a meeting between Bell, developer Andy Krawczyk and State Senator Clay Davis, who discuss plans for revamping Bell's properties as residences in gentrifying areas. Donette tells Bell about McNulty's visit. Avon is granted parole despite Pearlman's protests. Meanwhile, Cutty, Slim Charles, Gerard, and Sapper survey one of their dealers who has been short on his count. Later, Bodie hosts a party where he plies Cutty with drugs and women. At the behest of McNulty and Greggs, Bubbles explores the Barksdale territory in the Western and sees Marlo talking to Fruit, memorizing his license plate number. Back at the detail, Freamon admonishes McNulty and Greggs for showing disloyalty towards Daniels by investigating Bell, despite what the lieutenant has done for them. Freamon and McNulty almost come to blows. Bubbles reports to the detectives about how Marlo has stayed out of the collaboration between the Barksdales and the East Side dealers. Using the license plate number, they pull up Marlo's criminal record. Greggs visits Homicide to talk to Detective Vernon Holley, who describes Marlo as pure evil. She theorizes that Marlo is working for Bell. Greggs spends a day with Bubbles mapping out the territories of the dealers, learning that they are using disposable cell phones. McNulty visits Bell's community college and, using the school's phone records, traces a cell number to Bell. Freamon has Prez check property purchasing records for Bell's front organization. From this information, the detail learns that Bell is trying to build a "legitimate" business as a property developer, either parallel to or instead of his illicit drug operation. McNulty worries about how they can wiretap Bell's disposable phones. Freamon tells McNulty to swallow his pride and return to the Major Case Unit. Daniels has an awkward drink with McNulty as they discuss Daniels' new relationship with Pearlman. McNulty tells him that he wishes them all the best and Daniels thanks him for making it "easy." ===== Aerial view of the U.S. Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox After destroying a drug laboratory in Latin America, MI6 agent James Bond vacations in Miami Beach. His superior, M, via CIA agent Felix Leiter, directs Bond to observe bullion dealer Auric Goldfinger at the hotel there. Bond discovers Goldfinger cheating at a high-stakes gin rummy game, aided remotely by his employee, Jill Masterson, who prompts him using binoculars and a one-way radio. Bond interrupts Jill and then blackmails Goldfinger into losing. After a night with Jill, Bond is knocked out by Goldfinger's Korean manservant Oddjob. Bond awakens to find Jill dead, covered in gold paint, having died from "skin suffocation". In London, the governor of the Bank of England and M tell Bond that fluxuating gold prices is allowing someone to profit by selling bullion internationally. Bond's objective is determining how Goldfinger smuggles gold across countries' borders. Q supplies Bond with a modified Aston Martin DB5 and two tracking devices. Bond meets Goldfinger at his country club in Kent and plays a round of golf with him. Goldfinger attempts to cheat, but Bond wins, having bet a recovered Nazi gold bar (provided by MI6). Goldfinger warns Bond against interfering in his affairs, and Oddjob demonstrates his steel- rimmed derby as a deadly weapon. Bond trails Goldfinger to Switzerland. There, Bond meets Jill's sister, Tilly, who attempts and fails to assassinate Goldfinger. Bond sneaks into Goldfinger's refinery and overhears him telling Chinese nuclear physicist, Dr. Ling, that he always travels with his Rolls- Royce Phantom III, hiding some of his gold in secret compartments, and melting the rest to incorporate it into the car's bodywork. Bond also overhears Goldfinger mention "Operation Grand Slam". Leaving, Bond encounters Tilly, who again tries to kill Goldfinger. An alarm is tripped and Oddjob kills Tilly with his lethal hat. Bond is captured and strapped to a table with an overhead industrial laser, the beam slicing through the surface toward him. Bond lies to Goldfinger, saying that MI6 knows about Operation Grand Slam. Goldfinger spares Bond's life so the MI6 agents surveilling the compound can see him and think 007 is safe. Pilot Pussy Galore flies the captive Bond to Goldfinger's stud farm near Louisville, Kentucky in a private jet. Once there, Bond escapes his cell and witnesses Goldfinger's meeting with American mafiosi, who are supplying materials needed for Operation Grand Slam. Goldfinger plans to breach the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox by releasing Delta 9 nerve gas into the atmosphere, killing the personnel. Pussy recaptures Bond, and Goldfinger has all the mafiosi executed. Bond tells Goldfinger it would be impossible to move that much gold before American military forces intervened. Goldfinger hints he is not intending to steal it, and Bond deduces that Goldfinger plans to detonate a dirty bomb inside the vault to irradiate the gold, contaminating it with radiation for over half a century. Goldfinger's own gold will then increase in value and the Chinese gain an advantage from the resulting economic chaos. Goldfinger warns that any attempt to locate the bomb or interfere will result in the bomb being detonated at another vital U.S. location. Operation Grand Slam launches with Pussy Galore's Flying Circus spraying gas over Fort Knox, seemingly killing the military guards and government personnel, including Felix Leiter. Goldfinger's private army breaks into Fort Knox and accesses the vault as Goldfinger arrives in a helicopter with the bomb. In the vault, Goldfinger's henchman, Kisch, handcuffs Bond to the bomb. Unbeknownst to Goldfinger, Bond seduced Pussy and convinced her to alert the American authorities, after which the gas was replaced with a harmless substance. As the troops attack Goldfinger's men, he locks the vault. He removes his coat to reveal a U.S. Army colonel's uniform and escapes. Bond, Oddjob, and Kisch are trapped inside the vault. Kisch attempts to disarm the bomb, but Oddjob, loyal to Goldfinger, throws him to his death. Bond frees himself, but the physically stronger Oddjob batters him before he can stop the bomb. Bond electrocutes Oddjob to death, then forces open the cabinet containing the bomb but he is unable to disarm the complex mechanism. After killing Goldfinger's men, U.S. troops open the vault. An atomic specialist rushes in, and, with seven seconds left on the countdown clock, simply turns off the device. Bond is being flown to the White House for lunch with the president. En route with Pussy, Goldfinger hijacks the plane. In a struggle for Goldfinger's revolver, the gun fires, shooting out a window, creating an explosive decompression. Goldfinger is blown out through the ruptured window. With the plane out of control, Bond and Pussy parachute safely from the aircraft before it crashes into the ocean. A search helicopter passes overhead the life raft. Bond declares, "this is no time to be rescued", and draws the parachute over himself and Galore. ===== Bo Price (Keith), a down-and-out country singer, has returned home for his brother's funeral following a military training accident. While there, he reunites with his true love, Angela Delton (Preston), a Miami news reporter who has also returned home for her brother's funeral. Bo also meets their 16-year-old daughter, Dixie Leigh Delton (Haun), for the first time. Since Bo walked away from Angela while she was still pregnant, Dixie has never met him or his side of the family. Dixie has experimented with alcohol, but is able to break free with the help of her now- sober father. With her father's musical blood running through her veins, Dixie closes the movie by singing a song she wrote at the memorial for the fallen soldiers. ===== The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed young Irish Catholic boy living in a poor area of Derry. This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the Troubles of Northern Ireland, from the partition of the island in the early 1920s until July 1971, just after the violent Battle of the Bogside took place in Derry. The setting mirrors mid-twentieth century Derry leading into the Troubles. While the narrator is surrounded with violence, chaos, and sectarian division, Derry serves as the place where he grows up, both physically and mentally. Despite the surrounding events, the narrator's tone never slips into complete despair, but maintains a sense of hope and humour throughout. The main focus of the novel is the young narrator’s gradual uncovering of a family secret and the effect of this knowledge on him, and on members of his family. A quote in the frontispiece reads: The people were saying no two were e'er wed But one had a sorrow that never was said. The book is divided into three main parts, of two chapters each. These chapters are further subdivided into a series of short stories in strict chronological order, anchored in time by month and year, with short precise titles such as "Feet"; “Father”; “Mother”; and “Crazy Joe”. This structure provides the reader with telling glimpses of crucial events in the narrator’s life: the gloom of grinding poverty and injustice is relieved at times by hilarious and vivacious dialogue. There is a strong emphasis on the division between Catholics and Protestants and how it affected everyone. The power of the Church and the authority of police, atheism versus faith, the nature of courage, subjugation by various hierarchies, family loves and loyalties, the yearning for education, and the impact of economic hardship are central themes . Seamus Deane has often been asked why "Reading in the Dark" was not called a memoir rather than a novel, because Deane's upbringing was almost identical to that of the main protagonist, but he usually avoids giving a straight answer, which raises the question for some readers about how much truth lies in fiction. ===== The story begins with a road trip story set in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Iran–Iraq War in 1988. The radio announcer is describing the events happening. The scene then switches to a Kurdish village a few weeks before the Halabja poison gas attack where Ako, a young Kurdish man, is forced to join the Iraqi Army, while he is dreaming of escaping the country. A few dramatic scenes follow, some of them being flashbacks of home. Ako is sent to the frontline with a few Kurdish comrades and is subject to abuse by the other Iraqi soldiers, due to his Kurdish background. There are other scenes depicting abuse also. In one, a man is beaten for refusing to run laps with the others. In another, a firing squad is seen in executing captured Kurdish guerillas. When Ako is given a mission to escort the coffin of a dead Iraqi soldier to his family, an unexpected opportunity for escaping comes up. His driver turns out to be an Arab with strong feeling against the Kurds. They are given a small car with the coffin draped in an Iraqi flag, strapped to the top. The two set out for the long journey across the Iraqi landscape, and encounter a few happenings along the way. In one, they are confronted by a screaming Iraqi woman who is convinced that the dead soldier is her husband. In another, the two men are sitting together as they take a break, and the driver refuses to let Ako look at a picture of his wife. As the journey goes on, Ako does his best to trick the driver into heading toward Kurdistan. He eventually finds his village, now destroyed and abandoned. However, he finds his wife, but their reunion is cut short by an Iraqi bombardment. The setting switches to Ako and his wife in 2003. They discuss how much they lost during the war, and hear the news that Baghdad has fallen to Coalition troops. They are overjoyed, and celebrate their newfound freedom. ===== The situation was a role-reversal comedy, in which the premise was that Russell Milburn (Davison) becomes a "house-husband" to raise his baby daughter while his wife, Penny (Hodge) a captain in the Women's Royal Army Corps, goes out to work. Russell's friend Fitzroy, or "Fitz" (Kelly), adds to the comic tension by encouraging Russell's enthusiasm for football, pacifism and beer. ===== Three hundred years in the future, the government provides for everything, including plastic surgery operations. Everyone on their sixteenth birthday receives the “pretty” operation which transforms them into the society's standard of beautiful.Westerfeld, p. 83 After the operation, new Pretties cross the river that divides the city and lead a new life with no responsibilities or obligations. There are two other operations available, one to transform Pretties into “Middle-Pretties” (adults with a job), and another to transform Middle-Pretties into "Crumblies". Former cities have decayed after bacteria infected the world's petroleum, making it unstable. The old society, so dependent on oil, fell apart when cars and oil fields exploded and food could no longer be transported. People who lived before this catastrophe are called "Rusties."http://scottwesterfeld.com/books/uglies/ Tally Youngblood is almost sixteen. Like every other Ugly, she awaits the operation with great anticipation. Her best friend, Peris, has already had the operation and, motivated by her desire to see him, Tally sneaks across the river to New Pretty Town. There she meets Shay, another Ugly. They become friends and Shay teaches Tally how to ride a hoverboard. Shay also mentions rebelling against the operation. At first, Tally ignores the idea, but is forced to deal with it when Shay runs away a few days before their shared sixteenth birthday, leaving behind cryptic directions to her destination, a “renegade settlement” called the Smoke, where city runaways go to escape the operation. On the day of Tally's operation, she is taken to Special Circumstances, a division that is likened to “gremlins” and, “[blamed] when anything weird happens."Westerfeld, p. 120 Dr. Cable, a woman who is described as “a cruel pretty”,Westerfeld, p. 191 is the head of Special Circumstances. She gives Tally an ultimatum to either help locate Shay and the Smoke, or never become a pretty. Tally cooperates and Dr. Cable gives her a hoverboard and all the needed supplies to survive in the wild, along with a heart locket that contains a tracking device. Once activated, it will show the location of the Smoke to Special Circumstances. Following Shay's clues, Tally sets off to find her friend. When Tally arrives at the Smoke, she finds Shay, her friend David and an entire community of runaway Uglies. She is reluctant to activate the pendant and it eventually becomes clear that David is in love with her. David takes her to meet his parents, Maddy and Az, who are the original runaways from the city. They explain how the operation does more than “cosmetic nipping and tucking.” It also causes lesions in the brain to make the people placid, or “pretty- minded.” Horrified, Tally decides to keep the Smoke secret and throws the locket into a fire to destroy it. However, the flames' heat causes the tracker to activate, giving away the Smoke's location. The following morning, Special Circumstances arrives at the camp and Tally makes an effort to escape. She does not succeed and is caught and taken to a rabbit pen, where other caught Smokies are kept, tied up. Eye scans are taken of all the captured Smokies, identifying from which city they fled. Tally is then taken to Dr. Cable, who explains how they found the Smoke. Because of how long it took to activate the pendant, Dr. Cable suspects that Tally betrayed her but activated it by accident. Dr. Cable tests Tally by ordering her to retrieve the locket, which should be intact. Tally escapes on a hoverboard. After a long and stressful chase, she manages to hide in a cave where they cannot track her heat signature. There she finds David also hiding and together, they begin to plan a rescue. Tally and David go back to his house, where they find evidence that Special Circumstances took Maddy and Az. David leads Tally to a secret stash of survival equipmentWesterfeld, p. 338 where they find everything they need, and load them onto the four hoverboards stashed there. As Tally and David travel back to the city to free their friends, they fall in love. Arriving at the Special Circumstances complex, they discover that Shay has already been “turned” and is now a Pretty.Westerfeld, p. 364 After meeting Dr. Cable, David knocks her out and takes her work tablet, which contains all the necessary information to reverse the brain lesions created by the Pretty operation. Tally and David then free all the Smokies held in the complex. As they escape the complex, Maddy tells David that his father, Az, is dead. Once everyone is safe, Maddy begins working on a cure using Dr. Cable's tablet.Westerfeld, p. 388 She then offers it to Shay, who refuses, not wanting to become a “vegetable.”Westerfeld, p. 397 Since Tally feels responsible for her betrayal, she decides to become a Pretty and take the cure as a “willing subject”.Westerfeld, p. 395 To convince David to let her go back to the city, she tells him about her involvement with Special Circumstances and searching for the Smoke to betray them. While David is absorbing what Tally admitted, Maddy advises Tally to go back with Shay before she changes her mind. Once there, Tally announces to a Middle Pretty, “I’m Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty,” the final phrase of the novel.Westerfeld, p. 406 ===== The film is set in a Yazidi village in Armenia, still suffering economically from the Soviet Union's collapse. Hamo, a widower with three sons, visits his wife's grave every day. In the graveyard, he meets Nina, a widow who works at a local roadside stand called Vodka Lemon which is about to close down. Both are penniless, yet start an unexpected relationship which revitalises them. ===== Are You My Mother? is the story about a hatchling bird. His mother, thinking her egg will stay in her nest where she left it, leaves her egg alone and flies off to find food. The baby bird hatches. He does not understand where his mother is so he goes to look for her. As he lacks the ability to fly, he walks, and in his search, he asks a kitten (who says nothing), a hen, a dog, and a cow if they are his mother, but none of them are. Refusing to give up, he sees an old car, which he realizes certainly cannot be his mother. In desperation, the hatchling calls out to a boat and a plane (neither responds), and at last, he approaches and climbs onto the teeth of an enormous power shovel. It belches "SNORT" from its exhaust stack, prompting the bird to cry, "You are not my mother! You are a Snort!" As the machine shudders and grinds into motion, he cannot escape. "I want my mother!" he sobs. At that moment, the Snort drops the hatchling into his nest, and his mother returns. The two are reunited, much to their delight, and the baby bird recounts to his mother the adventures he had looking for her. ===== Duane Hopwood is a floor manager at Caesars Palace casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His slip into alcoholism has resulted in his divorce from his wife Linda, who holds custody over their two daughters, Mary and Katie, while Duane holds only visitation rights. One night, a drunken Duane is pulled over after swerving across the road, and it is discovered that Katie is in the backseat. Duane is banned from driving and is forced to borrow a bicycle from Linda as his main means of travel. At the casino, Duane has to deal with a difficult customer, Mr Alonso, whom he illegally gives a few quarters to play a few more slots, resulting in Alonso winning the jackpot prize. Duane later meets Linda and she tells him that Mary would like to talk to him and also informs him that her lawyer has suggested she revoke his visitation rights because of his drunk driving incident, but also expresses her own desire for Duane to refrain from drinking around their children. When Duane returns to the casino, he is taken into his boss Carl's office to explain his part in a disagreement between Alonso and an old lady, Mrs Fillipi, who claims that she was initially using Alonso's machine and that she saw Duane give Alonso the quarters to use it. Duane falsely claims that it was Alonso's own money which was used to win the jackpot; Mrs Fillipi loses the dispute. Duane visits Mary, who tells him she wants to live with him due to Katie calling her fat and Linda's new boyfriend, Bob, encouraging her to go running and lose weight. Duane asks Linda if she will call off her lawyer if he stops drinking altogether. He later confronts her and Bob about the latter's role in Mary's unhappiness; the confrontation escalates and Duane picks up a baseball bat and moves towards Bob, but backs off and leaves after realising the children are watching. That night, Duane later goes to a bar and gets drunk, where he meets Gina, a barmaid. She gives him a ride home, but rejects his drunken advances. However, her car fails to start, so she remains at his house overnight, and although Duane refrains from hitting on her any further, a mutual attraction grows. The next day, Carl shows Duane a tape of him giving the quarters to Alonso. Carl, under pressure from his own boss, is forced to fire Duane. Duane spends the rest of his day getting drunk, before going home and having sex with Gina. However, he admits to her that he still loves Linda, causing Gina to leave. Duane attends a support group for his alcoholism, but becomes too emotional to stay for long. When he later attends the court hearing on his visitation rights, he explains to the judge that he needs to be able to see his daughters because they are the only thing he has left to live for. However, Linda's lawyer produces the bat that Duane had threatened Bob with. Shortly after the hearing, Duane's lawyer, Steve, grimly shows up on Duane's doorstep, saying simply "Let's talk." Fearing the worst, Duane drives to Linda's house but finds it empty. He later gets drunk, goes to his friend and housemate Anthony's stand-up gig at the casino and proceeds to ruin it, before being restrained and made to leave. The next morning, Duane apologizes to Anthony for sabotaging his show. Linda turns up and explains that she, Bob and the two girls are moving to South Carolina, where Bob has a job co-running a gym. Duane accepts responsibility for the breakup of the family, and Linda asks him to come and say goodbye before the move, promising to arrange for him to visit the girls in South Carolina once they have settled. The next day, Linda, Bob and the two girls wait at the house for a while, but Duane does not show, so they drive off, only for Duane to cycle up next to the car, wearing a turkey costume that Anthony had used for one of his stand-up acts. After giving them all a proper goodbye, Duane contently watches them leave. Having moved on from Linda, Duane reunites with Gina, with whom he and Anthony attend a thanksgiving meal. The film ends with a scene of a toast, with everyone then drinking wine, except Duane, who drinks water. ===== The novel is set at some indeterminate time in a post-nuclear holocaust future, where science and sorcery co-exist and the Dark Empire of Granbretan (Great Britain) is expanding across Europe. ===== Ankur is a complex film that analyzes human behaviour in general and heavily stresses characterisation (though the story is not fictional). The story revolves around two characters, Lakshmi and Surya. Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi) lives in a village with her husband Kishtayya (Sadhu Meher), a deaf-mute alcoholic potter who communicates using gestures. The couple is poor and belongs to the lowly Dalit caste. Lakshmi attends a village festival and prays faithfully to the Goddess, stating that her only desire in life is to have a child. Surya (Anant Nag), the son of the village landlord, has just finished his studies in the nearby city of Hyderabad and arrives back home. Surya's father (Khader Ali Beg) has a mistress named Kaushalya with whom he has an illegitimate son named Pratap. Surya's father claims to have given Kaushalya "the best land in the village", a gift which serves as both a token of his affection and also keeps Kaushalya quiet and satisfied. Surya is forced by his father into a child marriage with the under aged Saru (Priya Tendulkar), and begins to feel extremely sexually frustrated due to the fact that they cannot have sex until Saru reaches puberty. Surya reluctantly takes over the administrative responsibilities of his share of land in the village. Alone, he moves into a different, older house, and Lakshmi and Kishtayya are sent as his servants. Not long after his arrival, he begins to exert his authority by introducing a number of different laws and measures, many of which are controversial among the village people. Almost immediately, Surya starts to form an attraction towards Lakshmi, and gives her the task of cooking his meals and serving him tea. This does not sit well with the village priest, a man who traditionally delivers food to the landowner, though at a higher price than Lakshmi asks. Surya also hires Kishtayya to ride his bullock cart and run his errands. The following day, he has Kishtayya collect fertilizer from the landlord's house. Surya then uses Kishtayya's absence to flirt with Lakshmi, but she fails to reciprocate. In the meantime, the villagers have begun to gossip, and many (most notably the overseer, Police Officer Patel Sheikh Chand) believe that Surya has already slept with Lakshmi, and will act in the same way that his father did - try to conceal the scandal by giving his mistress a vast plot of land. Kishtayya is caught stealing toddy, after which he is publicly humiliated, and he decides to leave the village due to the embarrassment. In his absence, Surya and Lakshmi sleep together. Some time later, Saru arrives at the village, in order to live with her husband. Saru does not approve of Lakshmi's presence, partly because Lakshmi is a Dalit and partly because Saru has heard the villagers' rumours. The next morning, Lakshmi has morning sickness, and Saru fires her, claiming that she is too sick to work. Many days go by, and eventually Kishtayya returns, having cured himself of his alcoholism and made some money. Lakshmi is overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt, because she believes that she has betrayed her husband. On discovering Lakshmi's pregnancy, he salutes the village goddess at her temple, acknowledging that his wife's wish has been granted. He then decides to return to work and hopefully ride the bullock cart once again for Surya. Surya sees Kishtayya and mistakenly believes that Kishtayya is seeking revenge from him due to his infidelity with Lakshmi. Surya orders three men to grab hold of Kishtayya and then proceeds to whip him with a rope used for lynching. The commotion attracts others, including Sheikh Chand and Pratap, to the scene, and Lakshmi rushes to defend her husband. She angrily curses Surya, then slowly returns home with Kishtayya. In the final scene, after the others have left, a young child throws a stone at Surya's glass window and runs away.Shyam Benegal at filmreference''' ===== James Tobin is a struggling artist in San Francisco who owns an art gallery with his business partner, Zachary Barnes. For some time, the gallery is a lucrative business. However, after a new series of Tobin's paintings fail to sell, the gallery struggles financially. Tensions rise further when a burglary occurs at the gallery and Tobin's new series of paintings are stolen. During this time, unrelatedly, Barnes and Tobin's girlfriend, Ruby Garcia, have a one-night stand. One morning a few weeks later, an incident occurs between Tobin and Barnes at the gallery and Tobin shoots Barnes dead. Tobin claims that he killed Barnes in self-defense following an argument and a struggle. The police do not accept this claim and believe the killing to be an act of premeditation. They believe that the burglary several weeks before Barnes' death was carried out by Tobin himself, that he stole his own paintings to gain the insurance money to save the struggling gallery. Saying that Tobin killed Barnes not only to cover up his crime but also as an act of revenge for Barnes' affair with his girlfriend, the police arrest Tobin and charge him with grand theft and murder in the first degree. Three months later District Attorney Sterling Granger is summoned by Inspector Looper who provides him with substantial evidence with which he has to establish concrete proof that Tobin is guilty of the charges and present them at court, while trying to withstand doubts cast by Tobin's expert Defense Attorney Cynthia Charleston. ===== A Catholic priest, Father Anthony Romano (Nick Chinlund), intervenes with the police when his colleague attacks a drifter named Lil (Georgina Cates). When Anthony reluctantly provides her asylum in his rectory, the brash hustler soon discovers a secret he has hidden from his diocese and parish. Through this unlikely muse, Anthony finds a path to regain his honor and calling in a post-scandal world where priests are guilty until proven innocent. ===== The prologue introduces Paul Godard, a filmmaker, and his estranged girlfriend, Denise, in which a stressed Paul leaves the deluxe hotel to which he has moved and rebuffs the sexual advances of a male hotel attendant. The first section, "The Imaginary," follows Denise as she takes her first steps to an independent life without Paul. She lands a manual job on a local paper run by an old friend, perhaps an old lover, in a country town and gets a room on a farm in return for helping with the cattle. She is also writing up some new project, which may become a novel. At the same time, she has to complete her job at the television station where she and Paul work, as well as find a new tenant for her flat in the city where she and Paul have been living together. Realising she is late to collect the author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras for an interview, she telephones Paul to ask if he can do it for her. Despite being in no mood to agree with her, he accepts. The second section, "Fear," focuses on Paul. He is afraid of life without Denise, perhaps of life itself. After picking up his surly daughter Cécile from soccer practice, at which seemingly apropos of nothing he asks the coach if he has ever felt like touching or having sex with his own daughter, he fulfils his favour to Denise by collecting Marguerite Duras from a local college, where she was due to give a talk. When she refuses to do so (her voice is heard but she is not shown), Paul reads out some of her notes, in which she says that she only makes films because she lacks the courage to do nothing. Paul says this is true for himself as well. The celebrity then gets Paul to take her back to the airport, after which he has to face a furious Denise who has lost her interviewee. That evening, as it is Cécile's birthday, he takes her and her mother to a restaurant but all his scornful ex-wife wants is money and all the girl wants is presents. Leaving in fury, after again expressing his alienation with inappropriate sexual innuendo, he meets Denise in a bar, where the two quarrel and part. Standing alone in a late-night cinema queue, he is picked up by the prostitute Isabelle. Part Three, "Commerce," is Isabelle's section, in which she devotes herself to increasing her earnings in order to achieve independence. After her night with Paul, in which she mechanically goes through the motions while mentally planning her next day, she is waylaid by a pimp who gives her a spanking to remind her that there is no independence in a commercial world and he must have 50% of her earnings. On returning to the apartment she shares with some other women, who all seem to detest her, her younger sister arrives unexpectedly and asks Isabelle for money because her lover and all his associates have just been jailed for robbing a bank. When Isabelle refuses, the sister asks if she will get her started in the local prostitution business. Isabelle agrees to coach her for a month, in exchange for 50% of the take. While continuing to service a variety of clients with different needs, sometimes inventive (one businessman choreographs a foursome while sitting at his desk), and all the while with her mind elsewhere, she is also searching for an apartment of her own. An old school friend she meets in a hotel corridor, probably a dealer and maybe a prostitute as well, offers her a lucrative opportunity to be a courier, but the boss of the operation finds Isabelle too dangerously naive. Going to inspect an apartment, it turns out to be that of Denise, and Paul is also there trying to rekindle the relationship. Isabelle and Denise form an immediate bond. In the coda, entitled "Music," Isabelle seems to prosper in her new apartment and Denise has moved on in life. After having spent several days adrift, Paul runs into his ex-wife and daughter and asks plaintively to spend more time with them. Walking backwards away from the two, Paul accidentally steps in front of a car and is hit. Isabelle's sister, now apparently a prostitute, flees the scene with the driver of the car, her client. Paul's ex-wife also urges Cécile to come away, saying "it's nothing to do with us." As the two walk off, they pass a small orchestra set up in a garage yard that is playing the theme music which has echoed through the film. ===== Alex Rider lands in the South Pacific after blowing up the Ark Angel in outer space. After his recovery, he is sent to a military base in Swanbourne, Australia. One day before his departure, he goes to a barbecue with some of the soldiers but finds himself on a minefield by accident, and narrowly avoids being killed by an armed landmine. Meanwhile, the criminal organization SCORPIA, as part of their mission to assassinate eight celebrities due to host a conference to rival the G8 summit on Reef Island (an island off the north- west coast of Australia), breaks into a Ministry of Defence weapons research centre and steals a prototype bomb "Royal Blue", a more powerful and devastating version of the daisy cutter. In Australia, Ethan Brooke, head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), coerces Alex into helping him by pairing him with agent Ash, who was his godfather and once his father's best friend, to infiltrate the powerful snakehead ring under Winston Yu, after two failed attempts. Alex then travels to Bangkok, Thailand where he meets Ash, who explains that they will take on the identities of Afghan refugees who have paid the snakehead to smuggle them into Australia. After being disguised, they go to an area in Chinatown to await contact from the snakehead. To collect the papers necessary for them to move on to Indonesia, Alex is told by a Snakehead member, Anan Sukit, to fight in a Muay Thai boxing ring, which he wins by cheating. However, the unexpected victory incites a riot which Alex manages to escape when someone creates a diversion; Sukit is killed by the man who created the diversion. The next day, while Ash goes to the snakehead to retrieve the papers, Alex tails a suspicious-looking man who has been following him since he landed in Bangkok. The man reveals himself to be Ben "Fox" Daniels (introduced in Stormbreaker), an MI6 agent who had caused the diversion previously, and leads him to MI6, who is tracking down "Royal Blue" and Major Yu. MI6 also warns Alex that Major Yu, whom they suspect is in possession of the bomb, is actually a board member of SCORPIA. Alex agrees to help locate Royal Blue for MI6 and is given several gadgets by Smithers to use, including a seemingly broken watch with a homing beacon for MI6 to find him, three exploding Thai coins (one baht, five baht, and ten baht) and a belt equipped with jungle survival gear. After retrieving the papers, the two continue on to Jakarta; during the journey, Ash shares details about Alex's father, John, and Ash's botched mission in taking John out of SCORPIA, which despite being successful, led to the deaths of some MI6 agents. Ash was then demoted and eventually resigned from MI6, soon emigrating to Australia. In the snakehead's toy factory Unwin Toys, they are briefly apprehended by Kopassus, but Alex and Ash manage to board a container ship, the Liberian Star, but are separated; the Liberian Star is used for people smuggling by the Snakehead. Alex escapes from his container by using one of his coins and explores the ship and finds Royal Blue, hidden in a modified container. However, he goes into hiding when Major Yu discovers Alex's breakout and orders a search for him. The next day, Alex escapes the ship and reaches Darwin while damaging the reefers with another coin. However, to Alex's dismay, Ash is found to have been caught, and Alex thus surrenders to Yu, who knocks him unconscious. Alex wakes up and meets Yu over dinner, who then reveals his plan to cause a tsunami using the bomb to destroy Reef Island and stop the conference, along with destroying the west coast of Australia. Alex is then taken to a hospital in the Australian rainforest where he is to be used as an unwilling donor for illegal organ transplants, to pay for his damage to SCORPIA both in the 'Invisible Sword' project and on the Liberian Star. However, Alex manages to escape and establish contact with MI6. Along with Ben Daniels, Alex is sent as part of an Australian SAS team to the oil rig where Royal Blue will be detonated underneath. On the oil rig, Alex and Ben confront Yu and his assistant Ash, whom Ben shoots at before being shot by Yu. Ash, before dying, confesses about being a double agent for SCORPIA following the botched mission and his involvement in the death of Alex's parents which Alex had already suspected. Yu escapes but Alex detonates the bomb early and it goes off relatively harmlessly; the only casualty is Yu, who is killed in the resulting shock wave due to his inordinately fragile bone structure. At the end of the novel, Jack Starbright, Alex's housekeeper, unexpectedly calls Sabina Pleasure (his old friend who moved to San Francisco after the events of Eagle Strike) over for dinner. Both discuss plans to visit a castle in Scotland. The epilogue shows Ash's decision to join SCORPIA and his involvement in the death of Alex's parents, in a plane bombing. ===== Young sorceresses Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent travel across the world in search of adventure and money, bickering with each other along the way. They meet a girl named Saleena, who seems to be a random victim of the result of their petty food fight that ended with a powerful spell explosion. Truth is she has been already injured since when she escaped from her village of Biaz, where the evil organization Zein enslaved the population. The usually selfish Lina inexplicably agrees to help them: she has heard about an ancient elven treasure made of the nearly indestructible magical metal of orihalcon and she would like to put her hands on it. Because of Lina's suspicious behavior, the equally greedy Naga decides to follow them. Once in Biaz, the two ask for a reward for saving it but the village chief and Saleena's father is not able to give them a reward high enough, so Naga takes and puts on an orihalcon bracelet she finds there. Lina and Naga embark to defeat the Zein megalomaniac leader Galev and discover is a fluke as his wizard powers are mostly a bluff, and his organization currently consists of just himself and his sole underling Zahhard. The girls and Saleena confront Galev's arriving collection of henchmen but they want to get Galev themselves because he did not pay their promised salary. Turns out that Galev planned to take hold of a long-lost legendary superweapon that find out about in an old magic book and, if he was able to take possession of it, conquer and rule to world. When the weapon is unearthed, what Lina thought would immense treasure turns out to be a massive golem made whole of orihalcon. Naga's bracelet is its control device but she can not either control it properly or take it off. The golem attacks them all and a chase and running battle begins, in which everyone join the forces to defeat the golem and the mini-golems it spawns. To solve destroy the crazed golem, Lina asks Naga to create one of her golems and surround it with a barrier, so Lina can cast a destructive Dragon Slave spell and send the second golem right against the first, finally defeating it but ruining all the orihalcon. The film ends with the girls and Biaz's people running after Galev, because he did not only take money from them and spent for useless fancy costumes for his organization, but now it was also impossible for the chief to pay Lina and Naga. ===== Gabriel is an electronic engineer and former seminarian who is consumed with remorse and guilt; when he was a child he lost his brother Nicholas. That loss caused Gabriel's father a heart attack. His mother has never forgiven him for that. Gabriel tried to purge his guilt in the priesthood, but left the seminary because of an affair with Sonia, a humble washerwoman. Gabriel never forgot Sonia, despite being in a relationship with Sandra who he does not love. Upon discovering that truth, Sandra attempts suicide. Adolfo, a millionaire and owner of a chain of nightclubs, is in love with Sandra. Gabriel returns to be with Sonia and discovers that she is working as a prostitute and offers to pay all her expenses, her mother’s treatment, and an apartment to make her quit being a prostitute. But Gabriel's true love is far away, in Tlacotalpan. Perla is a young, cute, and poor waitress who is also a clairvoyant. Her powers let her know that her boyfriend Paco is in danger, but he ignores her. Paco is killed and Perla discovers through her visions that his killer has a tattoo of a skull on the arm. Elmer is an employee of Don Geronimo, the owner of many properties in Tlacotalpan and Perla's boss. Once discovered, Elmer blackmails Perla to accept the marriage proposal from Don Geronimo if she does not want him to kill her father. After Gonzalo, who is Paco's best friend, comes to where Perla lives, Gonzalo wants to find the assassin of his friend he's to goes in some problems one of his problem is that he has a trafficking with Sebastian and Enrique, he is also Elmer's enemy. Gonzalo says Perla that he swears Paco he will protect Perla from Don Geronimo and Sebastian. Perla accepts Don Geronimo's proposal who will show her a world of luxury and beauty which she always dreamed of. On a trip to Mexico City with her boyfriend Don Geronimo, Perla encounters Gabriel, who will be her true love. The wedding takes place and, during the banquet, someone murders Don Geronimo. Enrique blames Fidel who flees to the Capital. Sick and penniless, Fidel is rescued by Leticia, a good, hardworking merchant who, by a twist of fate, is harassed and stalked by Sebastian, brother of Don Geronimo. Perla decides to go to the Capital to find her dad with the help from Gabriel, and the two slowly fall in love. But Sonia will make Perla's life miserable to win for Gabriel's love. But these are not Perla's only problems. First is Sebastian, a criminal who seeks Perla and her father to avenge the death of his brother; there's also 'El Dandy', the pimp of Sonia, who Gabriel confronts in order to defend Sonia, and who now seeks revenge; and Enrique, the son of Don Geronimo who killed him because of the obsession he has with Perla; and he will not rest until he finds her. ===== The player takes control of a martial artist named Riki, who sets out to rescue his girlfriend Kyoko from his rival, Wang. The game is composed of six left-to-right side- scrolling stages in which Riki faces different types of underlings (depending on the stage), facing the occasional sub-boss at midpoints of certain stages. Keeping true to the original source material Hokuto no Ken, underlings violently explode upon being punched or kicked. At the end of each stage, Riki must confront the stage's boss, each being susceptible to only one type of attack. The player must exploit their opponent's weakness and use it to finish the boss off. ===== Heidel von Hymack, known to all as "H", is a man with the power to cure people of incurable diseases. He travels from world to world healing people by touching them. However his healing powers have a dark side: after a while they reverse and he becomes a spreader of deadly diseases. Avoiding contact with others is almost impossible because of his celebrity, so his most dedicated followers tend to die horribly. He does not know why he has this power, though he dreams of a mysterious "Lady" who rules his life. In fact he has been accidentally joined to a deity of the Pei'an religion, a goddess of disease and healing whose changing moods determine whether he saves or kills. The only other human so joined is Francis Sandow, a man of incalculable wealth who builds planets. Sandow was introduced in the novel Isle of the Dead. To escape his fate, "H" must go with Sandow and others to the devastated remains of the Earth, destroyed in a recent war, where Sandow engages in a duel of powers to drive out the goddess. Elsewhere, Malacar Miles is the last holdout on Earth, the last bastion of the old regime and an obstacle to Sandow and other world builders who want to make the planet habitable again. Part of Sandow's mission is to remove the obstacle Malacar presents. ===== Junior Senator Maggie Davidson's hard-line anti-terrorism policy makes her the target for a sleeper cell of murderous Jihadist terrorists who plant a dirty bomb at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. ===== Airi is a talented young girl who dreams about making a big splash in show business one day. Unfortunately, she lives in Okinawa. And that's the wrong place to be for little girls with stars in their eyes. But hope springs eternal for all dreamers. Each week, a variety show called Boom Boom showcases fresh and exciting talent on TV. Airi decides she has to be on that show. With that goal in mind, she enrolls at an actor's school in the big city. Inspired by her new environs, Airi is determined to turn the world on with her smile. But, of course, there are hundreds of other kids at school with exactly the same dream. The competition is fierce, but with hard work and a whole lot of charm, Airi has taken her first step in becoming Japan's next big thing. ===== A vampire attacks a high school and kills thirty-nine students, leaving one "alive" — Canon Himuro — for some reason as a vampire. After the incident, she lives on having a grudge against this vampire, the only memories of him are his blond hair and blue eyes. To suppress her blood-drinking instincts, she wears a crucifix given to her by an American some years ago. One day, she met a Japanese half- vampire - his father a vampire, his mother a human — named Sakaki who later reveals himself to be the vampire responsible for the deaths of Canon's friends as well as her return from the undead. Sakaki is a boy who had a grudge against a blond vampire named Rod. Sakaki is very powerful and has the power to change people's memory, which is what he has done to Canon. After some incidents happen, Canon and Sakaki fall in love. ===== In the late 19th century American West, a gang of bank robbers, including Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson), is off to rob a small-town bank, but Graham is having second thoughts: he's had a nightmare in which the gang was wiped out during the robbery attempt. Worse, Graham's horse broke down and the gang members have to get another. They try at the ranch of the widow Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland). Amanda, suspicious of the men, denies having a horse. Graham checks out the barn and finds a horse, but still afraid of disaster, he lies to his men and agrees to wait three hours at the ranch for their return. It turns out he has another reason for wanting to stay behind though: he wants to force himself on Mrs. Starbuck. Amanda resists rather inventively; simply lies still, fully clothed. This frustrates Graham, who decides on a ruse. He pretends he is impotent, hoping to play on Amanda's sympathy. The deception works, and they make love three times. As time passes, Graham and Amanda have a long, thoughtful discussion talking of their past lives, as well as their hopes and ambitions - Graham even wants to go straight and work in a bank. They even dance to Amanda's music box, with Graham wearing Mr. Starbuck's old tuxedo. A neighbor boy stops by to tell Amanda about an attempted bank robbery. The bank robbers from Graham's gang were caught and were going to be hanged in town that afternoon. She thinks Graham should ride out and help them. Graham thinks this is a way for him to be able to stay with her and get away from the gang. After much coercing he decides to play along and rides out, intending only to have a long nap. But this is shattered when the posse rides into sight, spotting Graham and giving chase. Graham eludes them when he comes upon a traveling dentist, exchanges clothes with him at gunpoint, and steals his horse and wagon. The unfortunate Dr. Finger is taken for Graham and shot dead. The posse, recognizing Mr. Starbuck's horse and tux, bring the body back to the Starbuck ranch. Amanda, seeing what she thinks is Graham's body faints. But Graham does not get away clean: it turns out Dr. Finger was a quack, and the first person Graham encounters after his escape was one of Dr. Finger's dissatisfied customers. He is put into prison on a year-long sentence for Dr. Finger's crimes. At first Amanda is ostracized by the townspeople. But an impassioned speech proclaiming her true love for him does a remarkable trick: the townspeople not only forgive her, they see a remarkable story in that of Graham and Amanda. This story forms the basis of a legend, one that spawns a popular book, From Noon Till Three, dime novels, a stage play, and even a popular song, "Hello and Goodbye," set to the tune of Amanda's music box. The legend of Graham and Amanda becomes bigger than the reality of the two, and with her book a worldwide best seller it makes Amanda a wealthy woman. Graham, who reads the book while in prison, is amused by the distortions: Graham is described as being 6'3" (1.90 m), Southern, and very handsome; he is, in fact, none of these. After serving his time he is eager to renew his relationship with Amanda. A disguised Graham takes one of Amanda's guided tours of her ranch, and stays behind, intending to reveal himself. When he does so, Amanda does not recognize him and becomes frightened. It is only when Graham shows her "something that's not in the book" that Amanda believes him. But instead of joy, Amanda is confused and worried. If word got out that Graham was alive, the legend of Graham and Amanda would be done for. Even Graham's suggestion that he live with her incognito is no good; after all, if Amanda were to live with another man, the legend would still be destroyed. The encounter ends up with Amanda pointing a gun at Graham ... but at the last second she decides to shoot herself. Graham is heartbroken. Not only has he lost Amanda, the secret of his real identity is lost for good. He tries to forget what has happened, but there are reminders everywhere. He hears "their song" at a local saloon, and walks in on a stage production of From Noon Till Three. Worse, people he knew slightly laugh when he says he is Graham, since he looks nothing like his description in the book. Ultimately he is arrested and put in an insane asylum, where he meets the only people who believe him: his fellow inmates. He seems relieved. ===== The short opens with Mater pranking the other residents of Radiator Springs by moving Red's flowers, bursting out from a pile of tires to jumpscare Guido and Luigi, dressing up as a cone vampire to scare Sally, attempting to scare Lizzie while she's sleeping (which is unsuccessful), moving Fillmore's gas cans back outside while he takes them in and finally jumpscaring Lightning McQueen when he believes Mater is hiding behind a pile of cans ready to jump out (what was really behind the pile of cans is one of Mater's signs). This sequence then culminates with Mater teasing McQueen as if he had seen "the Ghostlight," a Route 66 urban legend. Sheriff admonishes him for mocking the urban legend. When McQueen asks about the Ghostlight, Sheriff explains that the Ghostlight is a blue paranormal orb of light that haunts Radiator Springs, but Mater reminds Lightning that it is not real. Sheriff points out that it is real, shocking them. He then tells everyone the tale of the Ghostlight, explaining the disappearance of a young couple that encountered it, leaving behind two "out-of-state license plates" and that it hates nothing more than the sound of clanking metal. At this point, Mater is so scared that he begins making the noise that the Ghostlight dislikes the most and tries to stop himself. Sheriff ends the story with a warning that the Ghostlight could be anywhere. The rest of the gang say goodnight and turn off all the store lights, leaving a nervous and scared Mater all alone in the dark. Nervous, he returns to his junkyard and sees a shadow of a monster and, in a sudden shock, shines his light on it, revealing it to be just a pile of junk with another of his signs. After he accidentally breaks his headlights in fear, he enters his wall-less garage and closes the door, which then falls down. A light suddenly appears in front of him and he panics, believing it to be the Ghostlight until he realizes it is just a lighting bug (actually resembling a Volkswagen Bug). Suddenly, a blue light appears behind him. After using his mirror to observe it, he runs for it thinking it is that Ghostlight. For the remainder of the short, mayhem ensues as Mater is pursued by the Ghostlight, ultimately revealed to be just a lantern affixed to Mater's towing cable by Lightning and Guido. He drives into Willy's Butte and wakes Frank and his tractors and goes into slow motion where he sounds like a bull. The other residents of Radiator Springs watch as Mater drives around frantically with the "Ghostlight" on his tail, before Mater tires himself out and discovers the truth. The cars tell him it was all a prank to pay him back for all his pranks he played on them. Sheriff gently tells Mater that the only thing to be scared of on Route 66 is "his imagination." Doc jokingly adds that all Mater really had to fear was "the Screaming Banshee" before they all leave Mater, alone and frightened once again. In a post-credits scene, Mater actually encounters the Screaming Banshee (which is actually an enormous truck who is both a monster truck and a construction vehicle with a broken windshield and a "BANSHEE" logo on the front) on the road, but unaware it is him, warns him of the Banshee before departing for the safety of his junkyard once again, leaving the Screaming Banshee confused. ===== Apprentice architect Dave Willis meets art student Julie Hammond when his liverwurst on pumpernickel sandwich falls into her bag while she is passing by a building on which he is working. In pursuit of his lunch, he chases after her until she stops in a local park. Upon getting his first good look at Julie, Dave loses interest in the sandwich and the two start to talk. So begins a whirlwind courtship that quickly leads to marriage, despite Dave's misgivings about getting married while he only makes $85.37 a week. In need of a new place to start their lives together, Julie finds an unfurnished converted store room with no windows that has one major perk: direct access to the roof of the apartment building which offers a beautiful view of San Francisco. Julie feels that the place has charm and atmosphere, plus the rent is cheap. The newlywed couple becomes friends with fellow tenants, Stan and Carol Parker. Stan quickly develops the habit of coming into their apartment unannounced in order to share his ideas with them. Also in the habit of showing up unannounced, although much less welcome than Stan, is Julie's father, Fred Hammond, who is always finding a way to meddle in Dave and Julie's lives, while his ever-patient wife, Phyllis, watches in amusement. Dave, however, is adamant that he and Julie will not accept Fred's help, especially if it is monetary, a stance that causes much contention between the two men. The humor in the series is formed, not simply out of the situations in which the characters find themselves, but out of the ways in which the differing personalities that regularly pass through the Willis’ apartment react to the situations and, in the process, to each other. ===== In the 1880s, Griff Bonnell, and his brothers, Wes and Chico, arrive in the town of Tombstone in Cochise County, Arizona. Griff is a reformed gunslinger, now working for the Attorney General's office, looking to arrest Howard Swain for mail robbery. Swain is one of landowner Jessica Drummond's forty hired guns. She runs the territory with an iron fist, permitting the town to be terrorized and trashed by her brother, Brockie Drummond, and his boys. Brockie is an arrogant drunk and bully, but he goes too far by shooting vision-impaired town Marshal, Chisolm in the leg. Thereupon, Brockie and his drunken friends start trashing the town. Griff intervenes and pistol-whips Brockie with a single blow while Wes covers him with a rifle from the gunsmith shop. Aware of how close Brockie is to his sister, Griff makes it a point not to crack Brockie's skull. Jessica delivered Brockie when their mother gave birth for the last time. Wes falls in love with Louvenie Spanger, the daughter of the town gunsmith, so he decides to settle down and become the town's marshal. Griff becomes romantically involved with Jessica after she is dragged by a horse during a tornado. Two of Jessica's forty dragoons, Logan, and Savage, attempt an ambush of Griff in an alley. He is saved by youngest brother Chico, who was supposed to be leaving for California for a new life on a farm. Chico's shot kills Savage, after which Jessica's brother and hired guns try to turn the town against the Bonnell brothers. On his wedding day, Wes is gunned down by Brockie, who is really aiming at Griff (who leans forward to kiss the bride, thereby unknowingly saving himself). Brockie is jailed for the murder. He tries to escape by using his sister as a shield, daring Griff to shoot, and is shocked when Griff does exactly that. Griff's expertly-placed bullet merely wounds Jessica, and the cowardly Brockie then becomes the first man Griff has had to kill in ten years. Brockie's last words are "Mr. Bonnell, I'm killed!" Chico remains behind to take the marshal's job. Griff rides out, certain that Jessica hates him for killing her brother, but she runs down the dirt street after his buckboard - repeatedly calling out "Griff! Mr. Bonnell!" - and they appear to ride off together for California. ===== Blade of the Phantom Master takes place in the fictional land of Jushin, modeled after feudal Korea. In Jushin, there once lived secret government agents called the amheng osa (or angyō onshi in the Japanese version), who traveled the countryside in disguise. They were charged by the king with finding and punishing corrupt government officials, and bringing justice to the country's citizens. At the start of the series, Jushin has been destroyed, fractured into numerous fiefdoms and kingdoms, many of which are ruled by corrupt and tyrannical warlords. Blade of the Phantom Master follows the adventures of one of the remaining amheng osa, Munsu, as he continues to wander the countryside and deals with the chaos caused by Jushin's fall. Though initially episodic in nature, it becomes apparent as the series progresses that Munsu's travels are not random. In truth, Munsu is searching for the man responsible for assassinating his best friend, the king of Jushin, an act that led to the fall of the country. But as Munsu grows closer to reaching his goal, he encounters old friends and comrades from his past, some who have since switched their allegiance to his enemy. Through them, it is revealed that Munsu was not always an amheng osa and is himself partly responsible for the king's death and subsequent fall of Jushin. In addition to the overarching plotline, the series also uses the exploits of Munsu and his companions to retell various Korean folk stories. ===== The world is yet again rebuilding after the events of Universal Tour. To speed up the cleaning process, the evil and corrupt Scumlabs creates a time machine to send employees back in time to deal with the destruction without having to do so in the present. Unfortunately, monsters from the previous games (George the ape, Lizzie the dinosaur, Ralph the wolfman, Boris the rhino, Curtis the rat and Ruby the lobster), have somehow returned to Earth, this time joined by a new monster: Harley the warthog. They surprise Scumlabs and enter the time machine, and begin terrorizing the past, present, and future, bringing mayhem to the space-time continuum. Later, a UFO-like craft is created to stop the monsters, only to fail. Eventually, the monsters are finally defeated. ===== The story begins shortly before the wedding of Michael Crawford, a doctor. The night before he marries Julia, he inadvertently places his wedding ring in the hand of a statue in a garden. When he goes to retrieve it, he discovers the statue has mysteriously vanished. Despite this mysterious event, the wedding proceeds. Julia's disturbed twin sister Josephine serves as the maid of honor. The next morning, Crawford awakes to discover Julia's horribly mutilated corpse next to him in the bed. Knowing he will be suspected of murdering his bride, Crawford flees to London and passes himself off as a medical student. He meets John Keats, who is also studying medicine. One day while visiting the wards they encounter the grief-stricken Josephine, who attempts to shoot Crawford to avenge her sister. A mysterious apparition saves him. Keats does his best to help Crawford understand what has happened. By placing the wedding ring on the statue Crawford unwittingly attracted the attention of one of the nephilim, who now considers herself Crawford's true wife. The nephilim killed Julia so she could have Crawford for herself. Keats, who has some experience with the nephilim, recommends that Crawford visit the Alps. There is a place high in the mountains where he may be able to free himself from "the stress of her regard". While traveling on the Continent, Crawford is called upon to assist another Englishman who is suffering from a seizure. The man is Percy Shelley, and is accompanied by Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clarmont. Byron and Shelley are also connected to the nephilim, which they see as both a blessing and a curse. The nephilim can prolong the lives of humans and serve as muses who help to inspire great works of creativity, but they are extremely jealous and will destroy anyone they see as a rival. Crawford and the two poets make their way up the Jungfrau, where it is said one might be able to break the bond with a nephilim. After answering a version of the Riddle of the Sphinx Crawford manages to free himself from his "wife". In doing so he also learns more about the nature of the nephilim. Yet the danger is not over for Crawford, the poets, and their loved ones. The nephilim are still active, and developments in Venice may threaten all humanity. Crawford, Josephine, Shelley, and Byron, all haunted by personal tragedy, must find a way to save themselves and the rest of the world from the nephilim. ===== Moondance (Kay Panabaker) is faced with the difficulties of her father's passing and her overprotective mother (Lori Loughlin). When she finds a lost pinto horse and discovers his jumping abilities, she convinces his owner Dante Longpre (Don Johnson) to train them to compete in a mop show. With a lot more to think about, Moondance has to worry about her enemy Fiona Hughes (Sasha Cohen) putting her down constantly with her fancy horse Monte Carlo. When they do a surprisingly good job at the show, Dante isn't questioned anymore about his ability to train riders and horses. Everybody is shocked when Moondance ties Fiona, the reigning Bow River Classic champion. ===== Each episode follows 'Allan' shown as a clever business-minded person, coming up with some immoral tricks to earn fast money. He used to use 'Nanha' as his stooge. He himself was not inclined to work and would rather be the sleeping partner in every saga or telling the tricks to poor Nanha (his front man). The character of Nanha became an instant hit. He was shown to be an innocent, funny and somewhat dumb-looking person from a rural area who loved his country and would dream of earning an honest living. He didn't know the norms of the new society and was therefore used by Allan as the 'front man' for his tricks. In the end, he would unintentionally toss out the whole plot of Allan by speaking the truth to the public. ===== The mother of a dead Union soldier attempts to convince President Lincoln to pardon a similarly condemned Confederate soldier whose unjust conviction was the result of her vindictive scheme. ===== After the assassination of one of their agents in Amsterdam, British Secret Service chief Sir Gerald Tarrant recruits former criminal mastermind Modesty Blaise to protect a shipment of diamonds en route to Abu Tahir, the Sheikh of a small Middle Eastern kingdom. The shipment has also attracted Gabriel, the head of a criminal organization that includes his accountant McWhirter and bodyguard Mrs. Fothergill. Modesty believes that Gabriel, who maintains a compound in the Mediterranean, is dead, but he reveals himself to her. In exchange for an exclusive discount on the kingdom's oil exports, the British government delivers periodic diamond shipments to the Sheikh. Blaise, who enjoys an ongoing love-hate relationship with law enforcement, is recruited not only for her competence, but because she is the Sheikh's adopted daughter and thus trusted by him implicitly. Modesty agrees to the arrangement, on the condition that she is given total immunity by the British government and complete freedom to deliver the diamonds how she sees fit. With Sir Gerald monitoring her from afar, Modesty travels to Amsterdam, where she reunites with her former lover Paul Hagen, a Secret Service agent and aide to Sir Gerald. She calls upon her longtime partner, Willie Garvin, who is reuniting with an old flame, Nicole, who may have information on Gabriel through her employer, an illusionist associated with him. Modesty narrowly survives several attempts on her life by Gabriel's assassins, whose failure leads to their swift execution by the ruthless Mrs. Fothergill. Modesty continually toys with Hagen, first seducing him before stealing his gun and disappearing. When Gabriel learns that Nicole is working with Modesty and Willie, he orders her assassinated. The illusionist sends thugs to have her killed, and they succeed when Modesty and Willie fail to intervene in time. Modesty and Willie set themselves up as live bait to draw Gabriel out, but find themselves pursued by Tarrant and a jilted Hagen, being briefly arrested before quickly escaping with the help of some smoke bombs. When Modesty attempts to identify and infiltrate the boat being used by Gabriel for the planned diamond theft, she is lured into a trap and captured. Gabriel reveals his true plan, to use Modesty as leverage to force Willie to steal the diamonds for him. Willie reluctantly agrees to the arrangement, successfully stealing the diamonds from under Tarrant and Hagen's noses. He and Modesty are subsequently taken to Gabriel's island fortress, where they are promptly thrown into prison cells. Gabriel offers Modesty to join forces, but she refuses. Willie and Modesty manage to escape and kill Mrs. Fothergill, and signal their location to the Sheikh's forces. The Sheikh leads his army to the island, leading to an all-out battle with Gabriel's forces and ending in his capture and the diamonds reaching their intended owner. In his desert camp, the Sheikh leaves Gabriel tied up outside to dehydrate. McWhirter suddenly appears in Highland dress to free his employer, though no one seems to notice or care. When the Sheikh asks Modesty what he can do for her, she asks for the diamonds. He responds by laughing boisterously and she seems to go along with it, but suddenly breaks the fourth wall by looking directly at the camera as the film ends in a freeze-frame shot. ===== Jim Davis (Christian Bale) is a former U.S. Army Ranger who suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder. Jim has a Mexican girlfriend, Marta (Tammy Trull), whom he is determined to marry and bring into the United States to start a life together. With this in mind, Jim returns to Los Angeles, California. In Los Angeles, Jim meets up with his best friend Mike Alonzo (Freddy Rodriguez). Mike's longtime girlfriend, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), a young attorney, is "on the warpath" over his failure to get a job (his previous job was outsourced) and she encourages Jim to help Mike hand out resumes. After being denied a position in the Los Angeles Police Department for failing the psychological profile, Jim gets drunk with Mike. The two visit Jim's ex- girlfriend, but when her current boyfriend shows up, a fight ensues in which the boyfriend is backed up by a group of friends. Jim is able to get the upper hand and when Mike produces a gun, they subdue the men and rob them of their possessions, including marijuana and a handgun which they later decide to sell. Jim later leaves messages on Mike's answering machine with several different voices, pretending to be companies responding to his resume. The next day, Jim goes to visit Mike and finds Sylvia in a good mood due to the fake callbacks. Jim and Mike go to a "paisa" bar to try to sell the gun, but leave after their potential buyer is killed. Mike is horrified, but Jim is strangely excited by witnessing death again. When Mike arrives back home drunk, Sylvia is upset, so Mike plays back the answering machine, unaware that his friend didn't hang up early enough and his voice is heard on the tape. Sylvia is enraged and throws Mike out. He stays at Jim's place. Jim gets shortlisted for a position with the Department of Homeland Security, but, after cheating to pass a urine test, he fails a polygraph test due to a question about his drug use. The only hope left for him is a government agent working out of Colombia, who appreciates Jim's ability to "get things done"; Jim eventually accepts the position but is warned that he must not marry a foreigner. Jim is told to report to FLETC in a few days. Meanwhile, Mike gets a job with a company managed by an old friend. Mike goes to visit Sylvia and tells her that he has a job for real. She calms down and the two make love. Impatient, Jim goes inside and tells Sylvia that Mike is coming to Mexico with him for the weekend, as it is their last chance to hang out. Sylvia is angry and against the idea, but Mike decides to go with Jim and Marta to Mexico. In Mexico, the trio attend a big party where Marta reveals she is pregnant, and Jim responds violently, threatening to punch her in the stomach and shoot her in the head. On the way back, Jim reveals that he is transporting 20 kilos of marijuana. When Mike protests, Jim pulls a gun on him, flashing back, before breaking down in tears, horrified at what he is becoming. Mike, filled with pity for his friend, agrees to accompany Jim to the deal. When they arrive, they realize one of the buyers was the same man they had earlier robbed and beaten, the boyfriend of Jim's old flame. Hostility ensues with both Jim and the other gang members pulling out guns, resulting in the other man's death. The other members of the buying party plead for their lives, but Jim kills them while suffering flashbacks. While Jim and Mike are escaping in the car, a man comes from the house and shoots at the car with an Armsel Striker; Jim is hit in the back and face and subsequently paralyzed. He urges Mike to "step up" and shoot him, thus ending his suffering. After some hesitation, Mike and Jim say their goodbyes and Mike ends up killing Jim. The film ends with Mike returning to Sylvia. They embrace together as Mike breaks down crying. ===== Travel writer Dirk Barnevelt and lecturer George Tangaloa, associates of interplanetary explorer and documentarian Igor Shtain, are drafted on Shtain's disappearance to complete his commission to explore the Sargasso Sea-like Sunqar area of Krishna's Banjao Sea — and incidentally to find Shtain, who is suspected to have been kidnapped to Krishna. Arriving on the planet, the Earthmen travel to their goal in disguise as native Krishnans; Barnevelt himself is given the alias of the famous general, Snyol of Plesht, from the Antarctic nation of Nichnyamadze (setting of the Krishnan short story "Calories"). Snyol's formidable reputation proves at various times both a boon and a hindrance to their mission. The two are dogged at every step by pirates from the Sunqar who believe their true goal is to disrupt the pirates' smuggling operation. Complications arise when the two become embroiled in the affairs of the native monarchy of Qirib, whose princess Zei is kidnapped by the pirates. Dirk is ordered by Queen Alvandi to recover the princess while George remains behind as a hostage. Dirk must therefore take the lead in rescuing Zei, putting down the pirates, recovering Shtain, and settling the affairs of Alvandi's topsy-turvy kingdom, in which the women bear arms and the men languish in perfumed idleness. To make matters worse, Dirk falls in love with Zei, an entanglement fraught with its own dangers and complications. Not only is she a princess, but as potential queen of Qirib she would have the responsibility of taking a new king-husband annually, ritually executing and feasting on each when his term as consort reaches its end. And even could that obstacle be overcome, as representatives of two different species Barnevelt and Zei supposedly could never be a true couple. ===== The story depicts the lives of mountain people living in the Ozarks. The main story surrounds the relationship between Grant "Old Matt" Matthews Senior and Dad Howitt, an elderly, mysterious, learned man who has escaped the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow. Howitt spends his time alone, acting as a mediator and friend to the mountain people, and trying to recover from his tragic past, which includes the prior deaths of his wife and children, and the later presumed madness and subsequent suicide of his only surviving child, his artist son (later referred to as "Mad Howard"). Howitt's reclusiveness has earned him the moniker "The Shepherd of The Hills", yet he befriends the Matthews clan (the strongest and most respected family in the area) who come to love and trust him. Old Matt and the Shepherd's common history (which only The Shepherd knows at the outset) involves Old Matt's daughter, who died while giving birth to her son (and Old Matt's grandson), Pete Howard: unbeknownst to the Matthews, Mad Howard is Pete's father, and thus The Shepherd is Pete's grandfather. Years earlier, Mad Howard returned home after spending time painting in the mountains, and one of his paintings became famous, as did he. That painting was of a young girl, pretty, standing beside a creek; the girl in the painting was Old Matt's daughter, with whom he had fallen in love. However, Mad Howard believed that his father's pride of family and place in society would never allow him to approve of his son's marriage to an Ozark country girl. Mad Howard packed up his paintings and returned to the city, leaving Old Matt's daughter with the impression that he would return. Once returning to the city, Mad Howard sent her a letter explaining that his father would not approve of their marriage. However, he never told his father about Old Matt's daughter and his relations with her; the secrecy drove a wedge between Mad Howard and his father, although his father never understood why. Meanwhile, Old Matt has sworn he will kill the man who abandoned his daughter, as well as his father, if ever he finds them. Over the years, Mad Howard's love for Old Matt's daughter and his guilt over abandoning her slowly drove him insane. Eventually, Mad Howard feigns suicide and leaves behind his city life. He goes to the Ozarks and learns that Old Matt's daughter is dead, but that she has a son who (like his father) suffers from mental instability. Mad Howard hides in the woods, living like a hermit, trying to atone for the wrongs he has done. Mad Howard is portrayed throughout the story as a ghostly person, masked and always hiding in the shadows, who reveals himself only to Pete (as a result, Pete is also believed to have some mental instability). The Shepherd is suffering a mental breakdown of his own over the presumed death of his son. Though The Shepherd is a pastor, he realizes that he has no true belief in the Good Shepherd he preaches to others; this crisis of faith pushes him over the edge. His doctor recommends he take a long vacation, so he spends some time wandering around the country, rediscovering and strengthening his faith. Eventually, he changes his name and moves to the hills to connect with what his son loved most. Here he finally learns of his son's secret, the subsequent death of the Matthews girl, and the identity of young Pete as his grandson. He keeps this and his true identity from everyone, knowing that Old Matt has sworn vengeance. The Shepherd also hopes to do what he can to atone for his son's actions and intends to spend the rest of his life helping these people and teaching them about the "true Shepherd". Only later in the story does The Shepherd discover that the ghostly figure is his son Mad Howard. Shortly afterwards, Mad Howard is shot while risking his life to save others. The Shepherd then confesses his identity to Old Matt and tells him that the betrayer of his daughter is still alive, but dying and desires to be forgiven. After The Shepherd's confession Old Matt, although angry, finds it within himself to forgive both father and son, and he and the Shepherd (along with his wife and Pete) go to Mad Howard's bedside. With the doctor and family present, Mad Howard looks at the painting of the Matthews girl. He speaks to her of their life together, saying, "I loved her, I--LOVED--HER. She was my natural mate. My other self. I belonged to her, she to me." For a time he lies exhausted; then he rises on his arms and says, "Do you hear her? She is calling. She is calling again! Yes, sweetheart. Yes, dear, I am coming!" With that, Mad Howard dies and is buried in an unmarked section of a cave on Dewey Bald. Shortly thereafter, Pete also dies and was buried next to his mother. A backdrop storyline surrounds the pretty Samantha "Sammy" Lane and her love of Grant "Young Matt" Matthews, Jr. Young Matt is in love with Sammy, who is also being courted by two other men: Ollie Stewart (a "city slicker" who at the outset appears to have the inside track, but Sammy decides that she doesn't want to move to the city) and Wash Gibbs (leader of the Baldknobbers, a gang who terrorize the countryside wearing frightening masks with horns at their top and who rob banks and settlers as they see fit). Gibbs (whose father and Sammy's father Jim were involved with the Baldknobbers in the past) is jealous of Young Matt, and during the story kills Jim after he refuses to go along with one of the Baldknobbers schemes (it is during this episode that Mad Howard is shot by a posse mistaking him for one of the Baldknobbers). Eventually Sammy and Young Matt marry and have children of their own. The last chapter of the story skips ahead many years to an artist wandering through the mountains, looking for inspiration. He meets The Shepherd, and the two men converse casually for a time. The Shepherd notes that the mountains will eventually become "the haunt of curious idlers" once the railroad comes, but he will not be alive by then. For a few days they see one another regularly, conversing, and one day The Shepherd invites the artist to his home where the artist meets Sammy and Young Matt and their family. Inside, the artist takes special note of how nicely decorated the home is, and he is especially interested in one room, where paintings of good quality are hanging. He notices that the largest painting is veiled, hiding its content. The Shepherd never offers to show the young artist that painting, and the young artist does not ask to see it, but remains curious. The artist leaves the mountains, but returns the following summer. He is greeted by Young Matt and Sammy, and discovers that The Shepherd's prediction had come true - the railroad was blasting away nearby mountains, but he had died while the surveyors were in the area before construction had started (and was buried at Dewey Bald). It was then that, as requested by The Shepherd, the veiled painting is revealed to the young artist, who then becomes excited, knowing it immediately as Mad Howard's famous lost painting (though not revealed in the story it is implied that it is the painting of Old Matt's daughter). The young artist asks excitedly, "How - where did you find it?" They enter another room, as Young Matt and Sammy begin re-telling the story of The Shepherd of The Hills. ===== In Buffalo, New York, police detective Sharon Lazard finds a little girl, Michelle Bishop, alone in an alley. Lazard takes the seemingly lost girl into her precinct, and leaves her alone to be interviewed by another detective, Rudolph Barbala. However, moments later, Barbala is launched through a window, falling to his death. Lazard turns to Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for help. She tells them of Michelle's claims that a man had attacked Barbala, even though she was the only person in the room when the detective was killed. The agents have Michelle describe the alleged attacker for a computerized facial composite; the computer seemingly glitches, displaying a face that Michelle identifies as the killer. The composite matches that of a Detective Charlie Morris — who died nine years previously in an apparent gangland hit. Mulder speaks to Michelle's psychiatrist, Dr. Braun, who tells him that she habitually mutilated dolls in a uniform manner during their sessions together, removing the same eye and arm each time; Mulder realizes that these mutilations match the circumstances of Morris' death. The agents interview Tony Fiore, Morris' ex-partner, who attributes his death to a triad gang they had been investigating together. Later that day, Fiore meets with a Leon Felder to discuss claiming a large sum of money from a safety deposit box. The two men agree that they haven't waited the ten years they had intended to, ominously discussing that they are the last two claimants left. That night, Felder gets off a bus, but his scarf catches in the door, seemingly moved by an invisible force, as the bus drives off. The driver tries to brake, but the bus inexplicably continues to accelerate, strangling Felder. Michelle watches from inside the bus. Investigating further, Mulder and Scully learn that Fiore, Barbala, Felder and Morris had all worked closely together in the past. They also find that Fiore's wife Anita keeps a collection of origami animals made by her first husband—Charlie Morris. Anita tells the agents that Fiore hasn't returned home from the previous night; meanwhile, the agents find that pages are missing from the file on Morris' murder, and Fiore was the last one to have checked the file out. Michelle undergoes a session of regression hypnosis, where she claims to be twenty-four years old. She suddenly starts screaming in panic about someone trying to kill her, and the session is ended. Mulder reviews the video of the session, and is convinced that the girl is the reincarnation of Morris, having been conceived right around the time the detective was murdered. The tape contains a brief section of static noise just before Michelle begins screaming, which Mulder has an expert clean up. The noise is found to contain a grainy image of what appears to be a fish tank ornament of a man in an atmospheric diving suit. Meanwhile, Scully has tracked down Morris' autopsy findings, which show the presence of salt water in his respiratory tract, indicating he died of drowning. The agents realise from these findings that Morris was drowned in the exotic fish tank in Fiore's house. Rushing to Fiore's house, Mulder and Scully find Michelle using telekinetic powers to try to kill Fiore. They prevent her from doing so, and Fiore confesses that he, Felder and Barbala had stolen a large sum of money, intending to keep it safe for ten years before claiming it. Morris learned of their plan and threatened to report on them, and was consequently killed to silence him. However, Fiore maintains that he never wanted to see Morris dead and only wanted to take care of Anita after his death. Michelle uses her powers to destroy the fish-tank, but spares Fiore after hearing pleas from Anita not to hurt him. Later, Fiore pleads guilty to charges of murder and grand larceny, whilst Michelle seemingly recovers and goes on to become a normal little girl.Lowry, pp.150–151Lovece, pp.98–100 ===== An unidentified man is found dead along the railroad tracks near Gallup, New Mexico. There is a note in one pocket of his suit referring to Agnes Tsotsie and a Yeibichai or Night Chant ceremony. FBI agent Kennedy calls on Lt. Leaphorn to aid in finding footprints near the body. There are no footprints to follow, but the note sends him to interview Agnes Tsotsie, who shows him the letter from Henry Highhawk, who will attend her Night Chant. Always curious, Leaphorn learns that an Amtrak train made an emergency stop in the desert, the likely explanation for the body found near the railroad tracks with no footprints around him. The man's left-behind luggage is now stored in Washington D.C. Leaphorn takes his vacation in Washington D.C. to follow up on Pointed Shoes. Leaphorn talks with Roland Dockery and Peres of Amtrak, who show him the luggage, which holds a useful notebook. Peres saw the man now known to be the killer of Pointed Toes. The notebook includes the name and prescription number for a medicine he took, revealing both the name and address of Elogio Santillanes. Leaphorn proceeds to inform the next of kin, who are rather quiet in receiving the news. He then notices that their next door neighbor matches the description of the killer. As Santillanes was tortured, Leaphorn suspects the family home might be bugged, so leaves them with the sad news. Leaphorn calls Kennedy to match fingerprints under the victim's proper name. Leaphorn calls the NTP, learning that Chee was arresting officer for Highhawk and is now in D.C. An arrest warrant is issued for Henry Highhawk, who stole human remains from a New England cemetery and then crossed state lines. Highhawk is attending a Night Chant ceremony on the Navajo Reservation, where Jim Chee arrests him with aid from his friend Cowboy Dashee, for the FBI. Chee sees the masks that are integral to the last day of the ceremony. Chee gets a letter from Mary Landon, his longtime love, saying he should not come to Wisconsin; they cannot resolve the cultural barrier between them. Minutes later, his friend Janet Pete calls him from Washington, D.C. Her newest client is Henry Highhawk, and she is afraid on several counts. Chee leaves to visit her, meeting Highhawk and Rudolfo Gomez on his first night in town. Pete points out the man she thinks is following her. Chee confronts him and he drives off. Chee visits Highhawk at his office in the museum, seeing the accurate detail of an upcoming exhibit on Masked Gods of the Americas, including the Navajo Talking God mask. Highhawk takes a phone call, telling Chee he will be back shortly. Chee leaves when Highhawk does not return, walking out past an unguarded exit. The next morning, Leaphorn goes to Chee's hotel, updating each other on why they came to Washington. They realize that both Gomez and Santelleros were tortured in Chile, must be leftists in exile, and are still hunted. Leaphorn calls his friend Captain Rodney, who joins them. Rodney knows Chee's name as having signed into the museum the night before, but not out. Rodney tells them of the murder of Mrs. Yokum, the guard. The three men find Highhawk's body in a museum storage bin, after Chee has maintenance look for something out of place as the guide to the emptied bin. They find Highhawk's tape recorder wired to his watch, and a replica Talking God mask. Leaphorn and Chee figure out why Gomez /Santerro sought a connection with Highhawk, and the danger of the proximity of Highhawk's exhibit to the Incan exhibit. The Chileans will not pay Leroy Fleck, their hired assassin, because the victim is identified. Fleck's revenge is to kill as many Chileans as he can, trailing them to the exhibit of Incan masks in the Natural History Museum with a high ranking general from the present rightist government, the same goal that brings Santerro. The Inca exhibit draws media coverage when the Chileans arrive. The Chilean leftists want to kill the rightists in Washington, and used Highhawk to set up the explosives. Tensions mount as Chee pulls apart the exhibit to find the plastic explosives packed under the mask, and Leaphorn kicks apart the remote detonator that falls from Santerro's hands. Fleck is shot twice by the Chilean body guard in the museum, after he kills the general and The Client with his shank, a very sharp tool. Leaphorn heads right back to Window Rock. The police tell Chee that Highhawk was found dead, killed by Santerro, who escaped. Chee finds a Tano Pueblo fetish in the trunk of Highhawk's car, and gives it to Janet Pete to return it to the Tano people, who are connected to her law firm. Mary Landon calls Chee, glad to hear him alive, but they end their relationship. Chee heads home. ===== Randolph Carter discovers, at the age of 30, that he has gradually "lost the key to the gate of dreams." Randolph once believed life is made up of nothing but pictures in memory, whether they be from real life or dreams. He highly prefers his romantic nightly dreams of fantastic places and beings to the "prosiness of life". He believes his dreams to reveal truths missing from man's waking ideas, regarding the purpose of humans and the universe, primary among these being the truth of beauty as perceived and invented by humans in times past. As he ages, though, he finds that his daily waking exposure to the more "practical", scientific ideas of man has eroded his ability to dream as he once did and has made him, regretfully, subscribe more and more to the mundane beliefs of everyday, waking "real life". But, still not certain which is truer, he sets out to determine whether the waking ideas of man are superior to his dreams, and in the process, he passes through several unsatisfying philosophical stances. Discouraged, he eventually withdraws from these lines of inquiry, and goes into seclusion. After a time, a hint of the fantastic enters his dreams again, though he is still unable to dream of the strange cities of his youth, leaving him wanting more. During one of these dreams, his long-dead grandfather tells him of a silver key in his attic, inscribed with mysterious arabesque symbols, which he finds and takes with him on a visit to his boyhood home in the backwoods of northeastern Massachusetts (the setting for many of Lovecraft's stories), where he enters a mysterious cave that he used to play in. The key somehow enables him to return to his childhood as a ten-year-old boy, and his adult self disappears from his normal time. The story then relates how Randolph's relatives had noted, beginning at the age of ten, that he had somehow gained the ability to glimpse events in his future. The narrator of the story then states that he expects to meet Randolph soon, in one of his own dreams, "in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt", reigning there as a new king, where the narrator may look at Randolph's key, whose symbols he hopes will tell him the mysteries of the cosmos. ===== At a gathering to decide the fate of Randolph Carter's estate (which has been held in trust since his disappearance) the mysterious Swami Chandraputra, who wears curious mittens and enveloping robes, tells Carter's acquaintances of his ultimate fate. He explains that the key took Carter to a type of higher dimension. There, Carter, on an ill-defined mission (or out of sheer curiosity), travelled strange sections of the cosmos by first meeting with 'Umr at-Tawil, a dangerous being warned of in the Necronomicon, saying those who deal with it never return. 'Umr at-Tawil offers Carter a chance to plunge deeper into the cosmos; Carter thus perceives the true nature of the universe before passing through the "Ultimate Gate." After passing through the Ultimate Gate, Carter (now reduced to a disembodied facet of himself) encounters an Entity, implied to be Yog-Sothoth itself. This being explains that all conscious beings are facets of much greater beings, which exist outside the traditional model of three dimensions. Carter himself, and indeed all of the infinite Space-Time continuums, is a facet of this particular being, the Supreme Archetype, made up of the greatest thinkers of the universe. The Entity, appearing to be proud of Carter's accomplishments, offers to grant him a wish relating to the many facets of which it is a part. Carter explains that he would love to know more about the facets of a particular long-extinct race on a distant planet, Yaddith, which is constantly threatened by the monstrous Dholes. He has been having persistent dreams about Yaddith in the last few months. The Supreme Archetype accomplishes this by transferring Carter's consciousness into the body of one of his facets among that race, that of Zkauba the wizard, though not before warning Carter to have memorized all his symbols and rites. Carter arrogantly believes that the Silver Key alone will accomplish this claim, but it soon transpires Carter's wish was a mistake; he cannot escape, and is trapped in Zkauba's body. The two beings find each other repugnant, but are now trapped in the same body, periodically changing dominance. After a vast amount of time trapped on Yaddith, Carter finds a means of suppressing the alien mind with drugs, and then uses their technology, along with the Silver Key to return both to the present and to Earth, where Carter can retrieve his manuscript with the symbols he needs to work on regaining his original body. Once there, the Swami reports, Carter did find the manuscript and promptly contacted Swami Chandraputra, instructing him to go to the meeting to say he would soon be along to reclaim his estate and to continue to hold it in trust. After the Swami finishes the tale, one in the party, the lawyer Aspinwall (who is Carter's cousin), accuses Swami Chandraputra of telling a false tale in an attempt to steal the estate, claiming that he is some kind of conman in a disguise. As Aspinwall tears at the Swami's masklike face and beard, it is revealed that the Swami is not human at all, but Carter, still trapped in Zkauba's hideous body. The other witnesses don't see Carter/Zkauba's true face, but Aspinwall suffers a fatal heart attack. The crisis causes Zkauba's mind to reassert itself, and the alien wizard enters a curious, coffin-shaped clock (implied to be Carter/Zkauba's means of transport to Earth) and disappears. The tale ends with a vague postscript, speculating that the Swami was merely a common criminal who hypnotized the others to escape. However, the postscript notes, some of the story's details seem eerily accurate. ===== Antiques dealer Lovejoy is commissioned to hunt down what he considers to be a mythical object, the Judas pair, the supposed thirteenth pair of duelling pistols, an 18th-century flintlock made by the famous London gunmaker Durs Egg. After two murders Lovejoy is certain that the pistols do exist, and are now in the hands of the murderer. Lovejoy solves the mystery by drawing from his comprehensive knowledge of the antique world, poring on the backgrounds of materials so that past and present deceit and criminality are revealed. ===== The movie starts with Kool jumping out of a two-story window running towards his red Chevrolet Corvette only to be given chase by the Los Angeles Police Department. He seems to have escaped pursuit until they tail him again and the car hightails into a river. Kool starts to narrate his story, telling the audience "I'm not surprised this road is ending, I've been on this road to nowhere for a while. My name is Kool, they say I'm a thug...I say I was made into one." as the movie flashes back 6 months earlier. Kool, C-Dawg (Snoop Dogg), Pee Wee (Anthony Johnson), and Remo (C-Murder) are all seen playing a card game at a neighborhood barbecue. Kool impresses his friends at the table by free-styling while playing cards. The movie then introduces LaShawna and Mrs. Ferrel (Pamella D'Pella) as LaShawna asks if Kool has gotten to the barbecue. Mrs. Ferrel shuns him off, not liking the company he keeps around him. Kool and LaShawna try to persuade Mrs. Ferrel to let LaShawna go to Las Vegas with Kool (as LaShawna will be leaving for college soon, and they won't be seeing each other on a permanent basis anymore) to which Mrs. Ferrel declines. She tells Kool to take her daughter to the museum since she said Kool was an "artist." The movie then skips ahead to Kool sparring with other students in a Kenpo-karate class which introduces Master Keaton (Jeff Speakman) as his mentor. Kool has made his transition from a brown belt to a black belt. The movie then skips to the next day and introduces Tyrel (Mystikal), and he is arguing with C-Dawg about Mike Tyson biting Holyfield's ear off in the boxing match. Kool changes the subject and turns on a song that he wrote in which his friends do not give him credit. LaShawna comes by and they go over to Kool's house. LaShawna remembers his birthday and has a cake she baked for him. The movie cuts to an office at the LAPD precinct. Officer Mack (Brent Huff) is interrupted from his work by Maurice (Maurice Lamont) and Mack tries to tell him that the deal is off due to there being an undercover cop on the deal. Maurice tells Mack that the deal is still on and that he'd better be there. The movie jumps back to Kool and LaShawna in bed together with Kool telling LaShawna that he had written her a song that was going to get them out of the hood and into a better place. They are interrupted by Tyrel knocking on the door telling Kool to hurry up because something big is about to go down, and C-Dawg and Remo are in the middle of it. LaShawna hears Tyrel screaming at the door and she gives Kool the go ahead despite Kool not wanting her to walk home by herself. As she is walking home, she witnesses a stabbing and discovers the victim is a cop as he dies in her arms. As the officer dies Officer Mack, who is a dirty cop, brandishes his gun, which causes LaShawna to run away from the crime scene just as help is arriving, and LaShawna runs all the way home where she is apprehended and taken into custody. Kool arrives and Eddy (Anthony Boswell) explains that she has just been charged with murder despite he and Kool knowing that she would never kill anyone. Eddy reluctantly offers to help, but can't due to the fact that it isn't his murder case. Kool wants to prove her innocence, and Tully (Gary Busey), the cynical detective in charge, ignores LaShawna's case but uses Kool to break up an incipient crime operation, which has Saint (Clifton Powell) jailed and LaShawna's certain release. She's in danger because the guilty parties fear that the officer talked before he died. While in jail, pregnant with Kool's child and awaiting a hearing and legal help, she's beaten to death by Mack. While at LaShawna's funeral, Officer Mack pulls out an Uzi and fires upon the funeral. Kool gets into a hearse and gives chase to Mack, Kool eventually catches up to Mack and destroys the van he is driving, killing him. After being double crossed by a crooked cop and having his girlfriend wrongfully accused of murder and jailed, he begins to find difficulty in ignoring the lure of urban gang-life, and Kool vows revenge. Kool is eventually pushed over the edge by a pair of racist cops and decides to start his own gang called "Hot Boyz," who turn out to be the toughest new gang in the city. As the Hot Boyz continue their rise to dominance, they are all at a club when Tyrel comes and sits at the bar with them, and tells them that Saint gets released from prison at 9 o'clock in the morning. Tyrel and Remo insist that they kill him before he puts together another crew and there will be a turf war between Saint and the Hot Boyz. Moe (Master P) is an informant who is helping out Officer Roberts (C. Thomas Howell) with the case at hand, Moe tells Roberts exactly what he wants to know and Moe skips town after it happens. Pee Wee makes a deal with Saint, who lets him in his organization when he told about the hit the Hot Boyz were planning on him. C-Dawg finds out what Pee Wee did, then he and Kool confront him about it. Kool scolds him, then reaches into his pocket, and Pee Wee, thinking Kool is about to kill him, runs for his own safety and is shot and killed by C-Dawg. Kool reveals that he was never intending to kill Pee Wee, but just send him back to his hometown of Oakland with a plane ticket. Saint finds the warehouse where the Hot Boyz do their business and has his crew, and the corrupt police working with them, draw their guns and get ready to kill. A 10-minute gunfight ensues, in which most of the Hot Boyz, Saints Crew and the Police Force are killed or injured. Kool and Tully have a standoff in which Kool wins due to C-Dawg (who was shot by Saint earlier in the shootout) regaining consciousness and assisting Kool in a move which costs him his own life, Kool kills Tully and in the end as he jumps out of the window, hops into a car and jumps into the river, he tells the audience that "There was time when the world was mine; LaShawna, me, and our baby, the future looked so good, and now I'm on a dead impact and a crash course with destiny." He also tells the audience that it's funny when you're thirty-eight feet below, all the guns, and the money in the world doesn't even matter any more, and that you find yourself thinking about the strangest things,noting "I found myself thinking about justice, and that I realized I had not found any for myself, I had just been sinking deeper and deeper, and that now all I wonder is if I had any air to get away, will I have anything to live for any more." He tells the audience that eventually he was found and locked in prison for 30 years without parole until Eddy got him out on a legal loophole after only serving 5 years in prison, getting a second chance to live a good life - a life that LaShawna and the baby would have approved of. As the movie ends, it shows Kool sitting by LaShawna's gravesite and having flashbacks of her, after which he tells the audience that a good life is worth living, because as long as he lives the memory of LaShawna lives on forever, and that love is something to believe in, and all he has now is memories. ===== 11-year old Persia is an energetic, caring, loyal and happy young girl who has grown up alongside the animals on the Serengeti plains of Africa wearing only a leopard skin. Twins Riki and Gaku Muroi and their grandfather, Gōken, bring Persia to Japan with them in Minato-machi (lit. Port Town), where she lives with a couple who own a grocery store. During an incident during the return flight to Japan, Persia finds herself in the "Lovely Dream", the land where dreams are born and grow. It is a wintry place, and dreams cannot get out. The Fairy Queen appears before Persia in the form of a butterfly, and explains that the Lovely Dream is in danger, requesting Persia's help. She gives Persia a magical golden headband with a star which reacts to the word "Papurikko". With it, Persia can conjure a magic baton which bridges her world and Lovely Dream, as well as transform into an older self by saying "Perukko Raburin Kurukuru Rinkuru". She is sent with three kappa back into the regular world with the mission of collecting love energy to thaw the frozen Lovely Dream. ===== Lelio, a Venetian who has spent years away from home, returns to Venice. He courts the two daughters of Doctor Balanzone, Beatrice and Rosaura, without telling them which one he really loves. Meanwhile, each girl has another suitor, Florindo for Rosaura and Ottavio for Beatrice. Florindo is shy, however, and will not tell Rosaura that he loves her. This allows Lelio to concoct fabulous lies and convince Rosaura that he wishes to marry her. Meanwhile, Lelio's servant Arlecchino tries to woo the Doctor's servant Columbina away from Brighella, Florindo's friend. Lelio's lies get him into deeper and deeper trouble with the girls, their father, and his own father Pantalone. At the end, it is revealed that while in Rome he married a Roman lady, Cleonice Anselmi. He departs to go to her, leaving Rosaura and Beatrice free to marry Florindo and Ottavio, and Columbina free to marry Brighella. ===== In the kingdom of Fairyland, three magic jewels were enshrined in the palace to maintain peace in the kingdom. One day, an evil man broke into the palace and stole one of the three magic jewels. Without the third jewel, the two remaining jewels lost their magic sparkle. The magic spell that sealed the power of Varalys, the most vicious demon in the kingdom, was broken. During the turmoil which followed, the last two jewels were stolen. Varalys cast a special magic on Princess Ann, turning her into three fairies, and hid her somewhere in the kingdom. He then let loose a horde of monsters across the land and became the ruler of the kingdom. ===== Frank Giorgio's life is thrown into chaos when the bank that loaned him money for a restaurant addition to his seafood business folds and the FDIC demands he repay the loan in full immediately. With the threat of a public auction looming, the very proud and stubborn Frank, his family, and eccentric crew rally to save the business. Frank's son Michael, who works in the tech world of Seattle, and his girlfriend Kerry return home for Christmas and are dragged into the family drama. Michael's childhood home has been sold, and his mother Maureen, who has separated from Frank and is hoping to establish her own identity apart from the business that has consumed her life, is scheduled to move into a rental house after the holidays. Over the course of two weeks, Michael finds himself sleeping on a pull-out couch with his father in Frank's office, catching wandering lobster crates in the bay, and trying to mend his relationship with Kerry after his father assaults her uncle. Meanwhile, his sister Lauren, who has worked with her father since graduating from college, is striving to keep the lines of communication open among all the family members. In the end, Frank's longtime customer and friend Bill Lau offers the highest bid on the property, with the idea he and Frank will complete construction of the restaurant and operate it as partners. ===== By observing the lives of those around him and recording the goings-on, Gould set about compiling an exhaustive record of modern life he called the "Oral History." He claimed that oral history held more truth than the formalized history of textbooks and professors, as it gave voices to the lower classes that were representative of true humanity. In the 1920s, Gould had small portions of his "Oral History" published in magazines, but in the years that followed he became more secretive and eccentric. He was well-known among the local shopkeepers, artists, and restaurateurs, many of whom gave him handouts of money or food in support of his project. Mitchell met Gould in 1942 and wrote the profile "Professor Sea Gull" on him for The New Yorker. The first part of Joe Gould's Secret is made up of this profile, covering the period from Gould's graduation from Harvard University in 1911, leading up to the writing of his "Oral History", said to be composed of 20,000 conversations and 9,000,000 words. The second part of the book is a more personal memoir of Mitchell's experiences with Gould, their eventual falling out, and his discovery of Joe Gould's secret: that the "Oral History" did not exist. Gould suffered from writer's block and hypergraphia; while to those around him he appeared to be taking constant notes--a notion he was happy to reinforce--he was, in fact, re-writing the same few chapters dealing with seemingly trivial events in his own early life. He had filled countless notebooks with edited versions of these events, evidently searching for meaning in the revisions. Out of respect, Mitchell waited several years after Gould's death to reveal the secret. He wrote the second article in 1964, and combined it with the original article in book form in 1965. Mitchell's pieces on Gould were later collected along with many of his other prominent works in the volume Up in the Old Hotel, published in 1992. ===== The book begins with a brief introduction describing the lasting nature of the College of Arms through successive monarchs and governments. Immediately, though, the book shifts its focus to the current set of officers of arms at the College. At the end of the first chapter, Garter Principal King of Arms- the head of the body of heralds - announces his intended retirement from the post in six months time. The announcement by Garter throws the entire College of Arms into confusion. Set in the late 1960s, the retiring King of Arms had led the College since the end of World War II. Each of the other, twelve officers of arms in ordinary begins calculating his own chances of promotion to the top spot. Some continue about their own business, knowing that their dutiful service will be rewarded, however, Cecil Gascoigne, who is Chester Herald, decides he will stop only short of murder in obtaining the coveted office. Slowly, but surely, Cecil Gascoigne begins eliminating his competitors. His methods are diverse, and include devising for a colleague to be caught smuggling illegal substances into England; also using blackmail and bankruptcy to his advantage. Over time, Gascoigne begins grasping that unfortunate problems have befallen his fellow officers, and he is not the cause. Thinking that his competition has him on a list for elimination, Gascoigne begins doubling his efforts; by book's end, four officers of arms have died, and the rest disgraced. As Cecil Gascoigne awaits the inevitable appointment as Garter King of Arms, he is arrested for an arson at the College of Arms that he did not commit. With his staff depleted and the College demoralised, Garter King of Arms decides to shoulder the burden and continue on in his duties. ===== In Seattle, Washington, 1974, law student Ted Bundy (Michael Reilly Burke) appears to be the typical friendly guy-next-door; but underneath this gentle facade lies a monster. After watching women from their home window while masturbating, Bundy builds the courage to commit his first murder. From there, he always manages to lure a young woman to his car by faking a broken arm or an illness then asking for help or by disguising himself as a police officer. Then he knocks her unconscious with a tool, ties her up and drives her to an arranged location where he rapes and murders her. Driving his yellow VW Beetle, he leaves a bloody trail through the United States. The police are left in the dark, as no one suspects the young man for his reputable character in the community; being a model citizen and top-student. In 1975, one of his victims, Tina Gabler, escapes him when she throws herself from his moving car. Based on her description of his car, Bundy is stopped by a police officer and arrested. In his trunk, the officers find pantyhose masks, a hand saw, a crowbar, knives, ropes and handcuffs. Even though he is identified by Tina Gabler in a lineup, he denies ever having seen the woman. When he is visited by his girlfriend at the Colorado State Prison, he admits to her that charges are being brought against him for multiple murders but stresses the fact that there is no evidence, however, and that he will never be convicted; at this point she distances herself from him. Due to his wish to defend himself, he is granted access to the courthouse law library, and promptly escapes by jumping from an upper story window. He is jailed again after an auto theft, but manages to escape yet again months later. This time he overpowers four women in their home and brutally beats them. After the murder of a little girl he becomes heavily intoxicated and is recognized by a police officer and arrested after a short chase. At trial the judge sentences Ted to be executed by electric chair. After having a conversation on the phone, Ted makes a final statement before the execution is carried out. ===== Wataru and his partner Babo, two black market merchants with no morals to speak of, get caught up in a battle between the Helgebard Empire and the mysterious girl Mian Toris. To reward Wataru for saving her life, Mian collars both Wataru and Babo and declares them to be her pets. While dragging them across the continent, they learn that Mian's destination is a head-on confrontation with Shion, the empress of the Helgebard Empire itself, at Kyuraweil Keep. ===== Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti) is the sister of Sara Wolfe, a survivor of a birthday event eight years ago in the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, which at that time had been first abandoned and later converted into a private residence— but has since been abandoned yet again. In the 1930s, the asylum was overseen by the sadistic psychiatrist Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs). Sara claimed that ghosts of the house residents killed the party guests, and later commits suicide. Ariel and her friend Paul (Tom Riley) are kidnapped by an art dealer, Desmond Niles (Erik Palladino). Ariel realises that Sara didn't commit suicide: Desmond killed her. Desmond forces Ariel to help him find an artifact located inside the old Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute, a figurine of the demon Baphomet. Inside the building, they encounter Dr. Richard Hammer (Steven Pacey) and his assistants Kyle (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Michelle (Cerina Vincent). Ariel explains that the building has been rigged to keep everyone inside for at least 12 hours. The group splits up to search for the idol. Desmond's henchmen are killed by the inmate ghosts, having visions of the patients there suffering the same deaths as them. A ghost shows Ariel the depravity the inmates suffered under Dr. Vannacutt. These images reveal that Vannacutt was driven mad by the idol, and performed experiments on the mentally ill. The inmates led a revolt against Vannacutt, during which the sanatorium burned down. (The audience is shown footage from the 1999 film House on Haunted Hill.) The deaths in the previous film were assumed to be caused by the ghosts. But now Ariel is shown that the dead are actually forced by the idol to do Vannacutt's bidding and did not willingly kill. Although the 12 hours are up, the master locking mechanism begins to lock the house down again. Ariel escapes but discovers that Paul has entered into the house to look for her, and goes back inside. Convinced Michelle wants the idol for herself, Desmond attempts to kill her. Michelle however is killed by Vannacutt. The rest of the group discovers a way out of the asylum but it is blocked by iron bars. The ghost of an inmate shows Ariel that the idol is in the asylum's basement crematorium. Ariel, Paul, and Dr. Hammer descend to the crematorium and discover the "heart of the house," composed of living flesh. Ariel tries to destroy the idol but it is indestructible. She then reasons that if it is flushed down the sewer and leaves the building, the spirits will be freed. The team is ambushed by Desmond, who wants the idol. The ghosts seize Desmond and burn him alive after he has a vision about a patient dying a similar death. Dr. Hammer is overcome by the idol's evil and tries to strangle Ariel. The ghost of Vannacutt and inmates appear, Vannacutt hoping one of them will die in the fight. Hammer recovers his senses, but Dr. Vannacutt kills him. Ariel throws the idol into the sewer. The spirits vanish, and several attack Dr. Vannacutt, tearing him apart. The building comes unsealed and Ariel and Paul leave. In a post-credits scene, a man and woman are about to have sex on a beach. The woman feels something under the sand. They dig, and pull the Baphomet idol into the light. ===== Thunderstrike VS. Shatterax. The game's plot and roster of playable characters and their assistant characters are based on the Operation: Galactic Storm story arc. ===== Tomoe Tatsumi, a high school student from Nagoya, goes on a trip to Tokyo to take a university entrance exam. He gets lost wandering around Tokyo when he runs into, Mitsugu Kurokawa, an office worker who had been out drinking with his friend Isogai. Isogai throws up on Tomoe and so Kurokawa takes him to clean his now ruined coat and tells him he'll help him find his hotel, but then they realize that the address to the hotel is in his coat pocket which is now in the wash, further complicating the situation. Since Kurokawa has an extra room at his place, he offers to let Tomoe stay at his place for the night. Tomoe accepts and the next morning he goes off to take his entrance exam. When Tomoe is getting on the train back to Nagoya, Kurokawa kisses him. Tomoe appears shocked and appalled at this and Kurokawa thinks he'll never hear from him again, but is surprised to receive a post card from Tomoe telling him that he passed the entrance exam. When Tomoe returns to Tokyo to look for a place to live, he asks for Kurokwa's help and Kurokawa offers to let him sub-lessee the extra room in his apartment. Tomoe thinks it would be a good idea since it would save his family money and accepts the offer. Kurokawa eventually confesses his love to Tomoe and their relationship develops gradually, but not without interference from various friends and relatives. Tomoe's short- tempered older brother, Souichi Tatsumi, is suspicious of the living arrangement and tries many times to get Tomoe to move back home. It is revealed that Souichi is homophobic because he was almost raped by one of his professors at his university but his lab assistant, Morinaga, saved him. As it so happens, Morinaga is gay and has had a crush on Souichi for 4 years starting from the moment they met. Souichi and Morinaga's story is continued in the spin-off series, The Tyrant Falls in Love. ===== German professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld feels that he is not accorded the scholarly recognition and veneration he deserves, though he has a good position as a philologist at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany. Von Igelfeld is extremely tall, like his closest colleagues. They are professors Dr Dr (honoris causa) Florianus Prinzel and Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Von Igelfeld is plagued by envy and suspicion of them. The old Irish language was the first interest of von Igelfeld in pursuing his doctoral studies. He moves to Munich to work under an expert in Irish. They go on a field trip to Cork, where they are directed to a man in the west who will not let them in his home; rather he shouts invective at them for an hour until they leave. Von Igelfeld takes it down phonetically, to learn later that all the vocabulary are curse words based in pornography. His landlady sees the page of Irish (translated into German) in his room, and throws him out on the spot. He had already been considering irregular verbs as a topic of greater interest, so he parts from the unsupportive professor in Munich for the study of Romance languages at the University of Wiesbaden. Professor von Igelfeld's interest in, and extensive knowledge of, Romance languages take him abroad for conferences or vacations, where he finds adventure and mishap. He is invited to conferences because of the definitive book he researched and wrote, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, which sold about 200 copies to libraries, leaving several hundred of the original print run of this hefty tome. While at college, he commits his friend Prinzel to a duel, thinking him an athletic type of man, for whom von Igelfeld serves as second. Prinzel is not athletic and rather upset. Duels are fashionable on the campus; von Igelfeld accepted the challenge from a group who are well practised at fencing. Prinzel loses the tip of his nose in the duel. The surgeon who patches him up attaches the lost skin upside down. Von Igelfeld never again refers to his friend as an athlete. In another chapter, the three attend a conference in Zürich, choosing a hotel a little out of town with nicer walks outdoors. Seeing a tennis court, they decide to play a game, getting equipment and an old book on the rules of tennis (written by someone from Cambridge) from the hotel. After ten minutes reading the book, they start the game, with two playing and the third as referee. None of them can serve, which sounded simple in the book. No-one can achieve the required number of sets to win. They give up playing, attributing their failure to have a winner to the Cambridge book, after providing excellent entertainment to others in the hotel with a view of the tennis courts. Von Igelfeld sees a dentist for a troublesome tooth, deciding he will pursue her romantically. He gives Lisbetta, the dentist, a copy of his only book as a gift. She stands on the book to make it easier to care for her patients. He tells his colleague Unterholzer about this excellent new dentist. Unterholzer acts more quickly in courting Lisbetta, and the couple become engaged. Von Igelfeld endures the emotional challenge of attending their wedding. He then takes a vacation to Venice in September with the Prinzels, where he learns that the Venetians are not fond of German tourists, as not enough of them have been visiting. Oddly, he chances upon a Geiger counter in their hotel. He finds no evidence of radiation on himself. When Florianus Prinzel tries the device, it reveals radioactivity on his shirt, where water had splashed on him in a gondola ride with his wife. Von Igelfeld shares the remarks made to him about a problem with the water in Venice, leading to a decline of German tourists in the summer. The courses of their meal were measured, leading them to send the fish course back to the kitchen. The three decide to end their stay in Venice early, so Prinzel can seek medical advice in Germany. Then young Tadeusz – a boy with a Polish family staying at the same hotel – walks past the measuring device, which reveals that he has a very high level of radiation. Von Igelfeld approaches the mother, speaking in French, telling her that her son has an issue with radioactivity. She replies politely, thanking him for the information, and indicating she has a theory about children and radioactivity, saying no more. Von Igelfeld receives a telegram from Unterholzer about an award from the Portuguese government. He is happy because he thinks the curtly worded telegram meant it was for himself. As they drive through Austria back home, Prinzel points out that Unterholzer probably meant the award was given to him, not to von Igelfeld. After a moment of sadness, he realizes this is not the end, and the three head back to Germany, "where they belong". ===== The bookkeeper Johannes Pinneberg and his girlfriend, the sales girl Emma "Lämmchen" Mörschel, marry when they find out that she is two months pregnant. Hardly any time passes until Pinneberg is fired and must find a new job in the middle of the economic crisis. Pinneberg's despicable mother Mia, a nightclub hostess from Berlin, comes to the rescue by finding her son a job as a salesman in the Berlin department store Mandels. However, Pinneberg is under heavy pressure because the boss, Spannfuss, introduces a monthly quota for all salesmen to achieve, otherwise they are made redundant. This leads to fierce competition between the colleagues. As their son Horst, whom they affectionately call “Shrimp,” is born, money again becomes scarce because their health insurance payouts are delayed. After a year Pinneberg becomes less able to work at Mandels. After many warnings about lateness, he is very behind on his monthly quota. He begs the film actor Franz Schlüter, who wanders into the shop, to buy something from him. The actor refuses and complains to the manager about Pinneberg's behavior, and Pinneberg is promptly fired. In November 1932, the small family illegally moves into Pinneberg's former colleague's summer house 40 km east of Berlin. Although Pinneberg has been unemployed for 14 months, his wife forbids him to steal coal. Instead, she darns socks and does dressmaking for local families to earn a bit. One of Pinneberg's journeys to Berlin ends in a fiasco, as Pinneberg, with his poor appearance, is chased away from Friedrichstrasse by the police. The couple realize that good old-fashioned love is all that matters. Fallada gives a detailed description of the living conditions of the white-collar workers of the time. He also shows the roles of trade unions, governmental institutions, and sacking in the labor market, while also highlighting the benefits of Germany's social care system which pays unemployment benefits for a while, takes care of the medical bills when baby Horst is born, and pays Emma so that she doesn't have to work in the weeks before and after giving birth. Businesses are shown to exploit and pit people of the same class against each other, and reveal everyone's worst side. ===== Urvashi Pururavas, painting by Raja Ravi Varma. Once upon a time, Urvashi, who was an Apsara, was returning to heaven from the palace of Kuber on mount Kailas leaving her son Risyasringa with Vibhandaka rishi. She was with Chitralekha, Rambha and many others, but the demon named Keshin abducted Urvashi and Chitralekha and went in the North-East direction. The group of Apsaras started screaming for help, which was heard by the king Pururava, who rescued the two. Urvashi and Pururava fall in love at first sight. The nymphs were immediately summoned back to heaven. King tried to focus on his work, but he was unable to shake off the preoccupation with the thoughts of Urvashi. He wondered if his was a case of unrequited love. Urvashi, who had gone in invisible form to see the king, wrote a message on a birch leaf instantly, conforming her love. Unfortunately, the leaf was carried off by the wind and stopped only at the feet of the queen Aushinari, the princess of Kashi and the wife of Pururava. The queen was enraged at first, but later declared that she would not come in the way of lovers. Before Urvashi and Pururava could talk, Urvashi was summoned again to heaven to perform in a play. She was so smitten that she missed her cue and mispronounced her lover's name during the performance as Pururava instead of Purushottama. As a punishment, Urvashi was banished from heaven, which was modified by Indra as until the moment her human lover laid eyes on the child that she would bear him. After a series of mishaps, including Urvashi's temporary transformation into a vine, the curse was eventually lifted, and the lovers were allowed to remain together on Earth as long as Pururava lived. ===== The novel tells the story of the land that people travel to when they dream, and how a young boy finds courage and strength in fighting, but also in accepting, his own deepest fears and nightmares. ===== Hibiki and Asumu are on their way to a Makamou attack on the beach. Once they arrive there, they see dozens of people running from the massive Orochi, a beast rumored to be the strongest Makamou ever created. Once they arrive, Hibiki walks towards the Orochi and transforms, but all of his attacks prove useless against Orochi. The situation is made even more dire when Hibiki jumps in the way of an attack meant for Asumu. Taking the full force of the attack, Hibiki passes out as the Orochi swims away, leaving a panicking Asumu to get help. Hibiki ends up in the hospital and Asumu begins blaming himself for Hibiki's injuries. Feeling useless, he begins helping at Tachibana's, going through dozens of books to try to discover a way to defeat the Orochi. Upon coming across a book with his name on it, Asumu sits down and begins to read what turns out to be the history of Takeshi, the Oni and the Makamou war. In the Sengoku period, a young boy who has the same resemblance and name as Asumu is wandering around with his childhood friend Hitoe. In this time, the humans all knew and feared the Makamou, sometimes forced to sacrifice one of their own to spare an entire village from the Makamou's wrath. Suzu was such a case as she was offered up as the yearly sacrifice to the Orochi to keep it from killing the villagers. After some protesting from the girl's father, the man was killed by Douji and Hime before Suzu and her father's corpse were consumed by the Orochi. A year later, a mark appears upon Hitoe's hand, making her as the next sacrifice to the Orochi. Asumu, unwilling to let her meet such a fate, sets out to find a way to stop it. Meeting the village elder Tobei and the others for such a means, learning the only way is to bring an Oni, though many villagers see them to be no different than the Makamou, despite the fact that they fight the monsters. Asumu understands the danger but insists on setting out in spite his own history with an Oni. Tobei sends along his daughters, Kazue and Hinako, to help. The group then enters a town being attacking by a Makamou called Kaendaishou before it is defeated by an Oni named Kabuki who has been hired by the town's people to defeat the Makamou. After realizing that the people can only pay him with food, Kabuki offered some a younger boy, but the boy's mother quickly slaps the food away from the boy due to the taboo of humans' contact with the Oni. Learning of Asamu's blight, Kabuki offers his aid after telling him they need to gather allies to help them against the Orochi. To that end, Kabuki takes Asumu's group to find a small home where a former Oni named Hibiki lives. Asumu instantly declares his hatred for this man as he believes him to be the one that killed his brother. Asumu's older brother, Takeshi, was the apprentice to Hibiki and was killed one day in a rock slide. Asumu found Hibiki carrying his brother's body and assumed that Hibiki was his brother's killer. Without Hibiki, the group moves on to find the next Oni; Ibuki. They find Ibuki, who aided in the war and became daimyō. But bored with his life as a feudal lord, Ibuki quickly takes care of his court and leaves with the group. The group then heads on to a small temple, where they recruit a buddhist priest named Touki after Kabuki attempted to throws a rock at him to test his buddhist abilities. The Oni then try to trick the Makamou by setting Ibuki up as the sacrifice in Hitoe's place. After finding out it was all a trick, the Makamou then attack Ibuki, who is quickly aided by Kabuki and Touki, the latter making quick work of the couple with his freezing power. But the Orochi then shows up and forces the Oni to leave the battle as the Douji and Hime threaten the villagers for their attempted defiance by giving them a month to redeem themselves or suffer the plague that they have inflicted on the girl. After Kirameki arrives too late for the fight, the group sets out to gain more partners. As the Douji and Hime discuss how to deal with their eventual meddling, the Oni group make a stop in a village, with Asumu following them until he is attacked by a group of Samurai and unknowingly being saved by Hibiki. The group then learn of Nishiki, the Oni thief who is to be executed for his crimes. The group comes to witness his public beheading, but Nishiki surprises everyone by catching the sword to be used in his beheading with his teeth. He then escapes and joins the group, who are being watched by a young girl that turns out to be a Makamou named Hitotsumi who specializes in killing Oni. The Oni then find Habataki, who first refuses to join them now that he has a wife and son. However, Habataki agrees to join the group only after his wife persuades him to take up the cause again as long as he returns to her alive. While they are traveling, they find Todoroki being attacked by Bakegani. Nishiki, Habataki and Kirameki help him dispatching the Oni before he tells them that Hibiki sent him to help them out. Back at Asumu's village, Hitoe illness worsens as she has gone to a cave to hide, with a group of villagers looking for her as the Oni returned. The villagers are found murdered later, with Nishiki's weapon at the scene. The house where the Oni are staying is then burnt down, and the Oni are told by the villagers that Nishiki's weapon was found at the sight of the murders and Hitoe saw the murderer to be an Oni. The group of Oni then get into a fight over the situation if they should fight back against the humans or not, but the fight is broken up once Hibiki comes along. It is then revealed to Asumu that Hibiki did not kill his brother, and that his brother was crafting a special sword for him. Hitoe is then brought home, identifying Kabuki as the one who killed the villagers and left Nishiki's weapon there to frame him. Though Hibiki and Asumu were confused, Kabuki reveals his intentions as he and Kaendaishou attack Hibiki, the two get away without Hitoe. The group of Oni then break up and head their own ways, but before doing so, Todoroki returns Hibiki's tuning fork and Disc Animals to him. While this occurred, before taken to be sacrificed, Hitoe takes Asamu to the cave he and brother played, finding a katana that Takeshi made for Hibiki before his death. Asumu makes his way to Hibiki as Kabuki ambushes him at his home, handing Hibiki the katana and asking him to fight for the memory of his brother. Taking the request to heart, Hibiki transforms and fends off Kabuki after killing Kaendaishou. After a long battle Hibiki, defeats Kabuki as he and Asumu make their way to the beach as Hitotsumi devours Kabuki. Arriving, Hibiki begins fighting with a massive group of Ninja Makamou as Asumu saves Hitoe. But outnumbered, the tie turns when the other Oni arrive to help Hibiki, killing Hitotsumi and the Douji/Hime pair. The battle goes on until Hibiki comes head to head with the Orochi. At the climax of the battle, the katana is swiped away from Hibiki's hands and into the sea. In the present, Asumu sees that the last page to the book is missing and not showing how that battle ended. Asumu then finds out that Hibiki is well and fighting the Orochi again. Sensing a presence in the nearby cave, Asumu finds the katana from the story he read and hands it to Hibiki, changing into the Armed Saber as he becomes Armed Hibiki and defeats the Orochi. In the past, in aftermath of their win over the Makamou army, Hibiki and the other Oni take their leave to be of service elsewhere. As the villagers rebuild their home, they decide that a human and Oni partnership would be best for both sides in the future, with Asumu naming this group "Takeshi", honoring the memory of his brother. ===== The plot takes place in the same house in two different time periods divided by the gap of two hundred years (1799 and 1999). The play questions the basic principles of scientific (medical) research, such as the right of the scientist to cross ethical limits: the right to perform dissection on the recently deceased (1799) and use of embryos in stem-cell research (1999). Both years are symbolic—they stand at the turns of new centuries and have to face the challenges the new times are about to bring. There will be a great development in medicine in the 19th and of genetics in the 21st centuries. The play also implicitly deals with gender roles and questions the stereotypes of women scientists. While in 1799, it is the father (Fenwick) who is the enlightened soul and his male friends are also scientists (Armstrong, the physician, and Roget, the to-be-author of the thesaurus), his wife (Susannah) is a stereotypical wife of the time and their two daughters (Maria and Harriet) are expected to be such, too. The decision of one of them to become a scientist leads to disapproval. In 1999, the roles somehow change: Ellen, the wife, is the geneticist, and her husband, Tom, is a historian. Ellen's friend, Kate, is also a young genetic researcher. There are also two "uneducated" characters: Isobel, the 1799 maid, and Phil, the 1999 handyman. An additional theme of this play involves the ethics of using human life, in any form, for the advancement of science. Though the topic is not specifically discussed in 1799, the characters in 1999 do talk about the issue, though no concrete conclusions are drawn. Besides the general questions about a scientist's responsibilities and limits, the play is in part a detective story. In the modern times, a skeleton is found in the basement. The skipping between the two time periods highlights, then resolves, questions about the identity of the corpse and the means of their death. After Armstrong seduces Isobel, he confesses to Roget that he feigned love for Isobel because then she would agree to have intercourse with him. If she is naked, then he can examine her twisted spine more thoroughly. Isobel overhears and is moved to kill herself by hanging. Armstrong finds her hanging and speeds up the process. The characters in 1799 ring in the new year with the death of Isobel, whereas, the characters in 1999 begin the new millennium leaving their old home, and the certainties it possessed for them, behind. ===== In the middle of class, in front of everybody, Hoshino approaches Negishi (who doesn't even know his name) with "Negishi, I like you. Please go out with me" and is obviously refused; she refuses to go on a date too, so they settle for walking home together, and the whole class starts laughing and clapping their hands (a leitmotiv in their story, marking every significant advancement in their relationship). The day after their walk, Negishi approaches Hoshino with "Hoshino, I like you. Please go out with me." ===== ===== Most of the story takes place in Switzerland, where Templar (Hugh Sinclair) interrupts his holiday to retrieve a missing secret code. The key to the mystery is a Swiss music box with a most unusual tune, diligently sought after by enemy agent Rudolph (Cecil Parker) and British secret service operative Valerie (Leueen MacGrath). Templar is aided in his investigation by reporter Mary Langdon (Sally Gray) and Monty Hayward (Arthur Macrae), with Inspector Teal (Gordon McLeod) of Scotland Yard. ===== The main protagonist of the book is Briar Moss, a young ex-thief and "green" or plant mage, having ambient magic with all forms of plant life. Through his eyes the book explores themes of poverty and social injustice, as a deadly plague named the Blue Pox strikes The Mire, the poorest quarter of Emelan's capital city, Summersea. ===== After a sinister crash on the highway in a small New Mexican town, people start disappearing and animals begin dying. The cause of the crash is later revealed to be a 900-year-old creature which was unearthed during an archaeological dig in the area. Meanwhile, a gas station owner informs a group of people that the gas tank never arrived, which meant that the small group needed to spend the night at the gas station. Sheriff Annie is called to investigate the crash, and finds a strange piece of evidence. Annie then takes it to the gas station, where Nodin investigates it. It is clearly not human, and has many elements of DNA in it. It is later explained the creature is an alien weapon, devised by an extremely ancient civilization to collect DNA like some kind of probe or exploration device created using bio- technology, however it tends to do so in a decidedly lethal manner. At the bar, Carla finds male customers dead in the back lot. She runs back into the bar, and the creature then breaks in. It first injures her arm (and also causes her to shoot herself in the foot), and then it eventually butchers her. Back at the gas station, Caya and Charlie are flirting inside the motel room. Ally goes outside to throw out some garbage, and encounters Grandpa, thinking Ally was a coyote rustling through the trash. Ally then returns to the motel, but before she can enter, the creature rips its claw into her torso. Ally's dead body is thrown back into the room and onto the stove. Her dead body burns, causing a fire, and a gas leak. Annie, Nodin, and Grandpa go into the room where the creature is outside banging on the walls. Grandpa is then killed, and Nodin begins to panic. Annie then knocks her unconscious and they go out to the truck, after the room explodes into flames. After battling the monster countlessly, most of the group is killed. At the end, Annie confronts the monster, and believes she kills it by smashing it against a water tank with her car but the monster was only made unconscious for a while. Annie injects herself with the poison containing uranium (the only substance that makes the poison work against the monster) that was prepared by Nodin in order to kill the monster. The monster kills Annie and dies itself as soon as it comes in contact with the uranium in the poison. The remaining survivors, Caya and Nodin, place Annie's body in the back of their truck. They then drive off, leaving the monster in the dirt, where it is most likely going to become buried again. ===== The world of Earth- land is home to numerous guilds where wizards apply their magic for paid job requests. Natsu Dragneel, a Dragon Slayer wizard from the Fairy Tail guild, explores the Kingdom of Fiore in search of his missing adoptive father, the dragon Igneel. During his journey, he befriends a young celestial wizard named Lucy Heartfilia and invites her to join Fairy Tail. Lucy forms a team with Natsu and his cat-like Exceed partner, Happy, which is joined by other guild members: Gray Fullbuster, an ice wizard; Erza Scarlet, a magical knight; and Wendy Marvell and Carla, another Dragon Slayer and Exceed duo. The team embark on numerous missions together, which include subduing criminals, illegal dark guilds, and ancient Etherious demons created by Zeref, a wizard cursed with immortality and deadly power. After several adventures, Natsu and his companions find Zeref living in isolation on Fairy Tail's sacred ground of Sirius Island, where he expresses a desire to die for the atrocities he has committed. A battle over Zeref ensues between Fairy Tail and the dark guild Grimoire Heart, which attracts the attention of the evil black dragon Acnologia. The Fairy Tail wizards survive Acnologia's assault when the spirit of their guild's founder and Zeref's estranged lover, Mavis Vermillion, casts the defensive Fairy Sphere spell that places them into seven years of suspended animation. Later, Fairy Tail wages war against the Etherious dark guild Tartaros, who aim to unseal a book believed to contain E.N.D., Zeref's ultimate demon. When Acnologia returns to annihilate both guilds, Igneel – revealed to have sealed himself within Natsu – emerges to battle Acnologia, only to be killed in front of a helpless Natsu, who departs on a training journey to avenge Igneel. After Natsu returns one year later, Fiore is invaded by the Alvarez Empire, a military nation ruled by Zeref, who intends to acquire Fairy Heart, a wellspring of infinite magic power housed within Mavis's equally cursed body preserved beneath Fairy Tail's guildhall. While battling Zeref, Natsu is informed of his own identity as both Zeref's younger brother and the true incarnation of E.N.D., whom Zeref resurrected as a demon with the intention of being killed by him. When Natsu fails to do so, Zeref absorbs Fairy Heart from Mavis in a bid to rewrite the present timeline with one where he might prevent his own curse and Acnologia's rise to power. After Natsu defeats Zeref to stop the drastic changes to history his actions would create, Mavis lifts her and Zeref's curse by reciprocating his love, which kills them both. Meanwhile, Fairy Tail and their allies detain Acnologia within a space-time rift created by the use of Eclipse, Zeref's time travel gate. However, Acnologia escapes while his disembodied spirit traps all of the present Dragon Slayers within the rift to maintain his godlike power. Lucy and the other wizards across the continent immobilize Acnologia's body within Fairy Sphere, while Natsu accumulates the other Dragon Slayers' magic and destroys Acnologia's spirit, killing him and freeing the Dragon Slayers from captivity. The following year, Natsu and his team depart on a century-old guild mission, continuing their adventures together. ===== ===== Bubbles and Johnny argue about the morality of acting as paid police informants. Johnny persuades Bubbles to run a short con with him instead of reporting to Greggs. Once Johnny has the money, Bubbles is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Carcetti reads a story in the paper about a murdered state's witness and is concerned about the message the killing sends. He takes the issue to Mayor Royce, who promises to act quickly. At a committee hearing, Gray confronts Burrell and Rawls about the witness, while Carcetti urges him to lay off. At the ComStat meeting, Rawls questions Foerster about Dozerman's missing gun. At Homicide, Bunk canvasses for witnesses in the shootings and is told that Omar was present. Landsman tells Bunk to interrogate some prisoners who have promised to exchange information on the gun in exchange for leniency, but he finds the ordeal to be a waste of time. In the Western, Colvin decides to coerce dealers and crew chiefs into moving their corner operations to Hamsterdam. Despite initially being unable to find any intelligence on the high-level dealers, Colvin gets what he needs when he is put in touch with the Major Case Unit. McNulty arrives and gets a warm greeting from Colvin, his former commander. Colvin orders his men to bring in drug lieutenants, telling Carver he can sympathize with their position as middle management. Carver and Herc are tasked with bringing in Marlo, but they find him surrounded by soldiers and refusing to move. Carver realizes the danger they are in and has them withdraw. Meanwhile, Officer Anthony Colicchio has picked up Bodie. At Hamsterdam, Colvin tells the lieutenants that they will be allowed to operate freely within the three drug-tolerant zones, but will be arrested if they do business anywhere else. Herc, Carver and Colicchio staff one of the Hamsterdam zones and are tasked with rounding up drug addicts for the dealers, one of whom is Johnny. Cutty returns to work checking on the dealer that Slim Charles suspects of stealing from the Barksdales. Cutty leaves the crew to meet an appointment with The Deacon, who tells him that he will have to work to find a job but that he can help him get into a GED program. Cutty, having thought Grace would be present, leaves the church. After snorting cocaine with Gerard and Sapper, Cutty is put in touch with an old man who helps him cheat a urine test. When Cutty's crew confronts the girlfriend of the suspected dealer, Cutty slaps her. However, Cutty is appalled when Gerard and Sapper beat the dealer into unconsciousness. Bell chairs a meeting of the New Day Co-Op in compliance with Robert's Rules of Order. Afterwards, he angrily admonishes Shamrock for taking down notes of the meeting. Later, Shamrock picks up the newly paroled Avon from prison. Bodie reports to a suspicious Bell about what is going on with Hamsterdam. After meeting with Marlo and failing to reach any compromise, Bell attends Avon's welcome party and talks business with Levy, Krawczyk, and Senator Davis. Avon spots Gerard and Sapper coming into the party high and has them thrown out. Bell shows Avon his new apartment, telling him they have enough legitimate money to put whatever they like out in the open under their own names. In the MCU, Bubbles tells Greggs more about Marlo's organization and names Chris Partlow as his chief bodyguard. He gives Greggs a disposable phone previously used by Fruit. McNulty continues following Bell and approaches him in his copy shop. Bell responds by brazenly offering to sell him a condominium in his development, to which McNulty states his disappointment as he had high hopes for their continuing game of cat and mouse. McNulty tells Prez and Freamon that Bell has become "the bank" - working legitimate businesses to produce funds to buy packages of narcotics for distribution that he will never touch. Greggs tracks down Marlo and finds Bell visiting him at his headquarters. Inside, Bell tries to persuade Marlo to join the Co-Op and is met with silent treatment. After Bell leaves, Marlo tells his people to gather weapons. While attending an open house event at his sons' school, McNulty encounters D'Agostino doing fundraising work. The two flirt and end up having a one night stand. However, D'Agostino rejects McNulty's further advances after they have sex, turning her full attention immediately to her work. Meanwhile, Omar's crew prepare weapons for their next heist. Tension is still high between Dante and Kimmy over the former's accidental killing of Tosha. Omar warns them that they must get along or leave the crew. ===== The movie begins with a couple on a small sailboat who find a small island and begin to look around. The woman wanders off while the man ties up the boat. She stumbles across a fence and a small compound, but no one seems to be around. She is then attacked by unknown creatures. The man at the boat is startled by her screams. Sometime later, a seaplane heads to what appears to be the same island. Matt (Lively) and John (Hudson) are two brothers who are heading to the island for a week of fun and relaxation. The island was owned by their uncle, who built a cabin on it. He recently died, and the island is otherwise uninhabited. The brothers are joined by three friends, Nicki (Rodriguez), Sara (Manning) and Noah (Harper). Upon landing, they moor the seaplane at a dock near the cabin. Soon after they arrive, a puppy shows up. The friends take him in to the cabin. Noah goes into the kitchen to get a drink. The puppy follows him in. The puppy then mysteriously growls at him and runs off. Sara and John then follow him out. They are ambushed by an older vicious dog and Sara is bitten by it. The pair manage to get back to the cabin. The following morning, the men are in the forest. They bump into the man who came to the island at the beginning of the movie. He is bloody and warns them about the dogs. A pack of dogs attack and eat him. The men run back to the cabin and tell the women to come inside. A dog attacks Nicki and John shoots an arrow to save her, wanting to kill a dog, but accidentally impales one through of Nicki's shin instead. They are soon under siege by more vicious dogs, one of which they impale with a hot-poker. The friends decide they must leave the island, but dogs have surrounded the plane. As they have no other way off the island, and no means of communication, they will have to wait out the dogs. However, a few minutes later, they see the plane has detached from its moorings and is drifting toward the ocean; the dogs have chewed through the ropes to force the friends out of the cabin. When John attempts to swim to the plane, the dogs are on the plane and they attack him. However, he manages to swim to the dock, then the friends retreat to the house. Sara begins to show distinct canine behavior, such as a ravenous appetite and growling. Their next idea is to make their way to a storage shed and drive their uncle's car to the training compound, where they believe they can call for help. However, the car won't start and that night, with no other options, they continue to party. The power goes out, and Noah heads to the fuse box in the basement which also contains a stock of vintage wine, where he is killed by dogs who have managed to enter the house. The dogs then find their way into the rest of the cabin, and Matt is bitten. John, Matt, Nicki, and Sara have to hide in the attic. There, they discover paperwork relating to the training facility, and learn it was an Army facility to train attack dogs. The next morning, the dogs have left. Matt and John make another attempt and manage to pop the clutch of their uncle's Mercedes Benz. They go back to pick up the women, but Sara does not want to leave. The dogs attack her again, and in fighting one, Sara falls out of the window and impales herself and the dog on a post. Matt, John, and Nicki drive to the facility and find it abandoned. They break in and discover that the dogs were being genetically enhanced. John finds communications equipment, but a power cable on the antenna has been disconnected, so he goes out to fix it. Having been bitten and infected, Matt learns he can sense the dogs, and realizes if they escaped they can get back in. When the antenna is powered up, John is accidentally shocked by electricity, and when he falls to the ground the dogs attack him. Matt shows up with a baseball bat to fight off the dogs, but a power surge has caused a fire in the compound. Nicki realizes the fire is creating a backdraft, and lures in the dogs before exposing them to the fire. The building then explodes, killing all the dogs inside. John tells Matt that he saw a nearby boat, which was owned by the couple from beginning of the film. When the dogs surround the brothers, the dogs do not appear hostile and almost look accepting. Before anything can happen, Nicki shows up in the Mercedes, the brothers jump in and drive off. Because there are so many dogs, they cannot stop the car and get out, so John has Nicki drive the car off the pier. They swim to the boat and sail off. Thinking they are safe, they wonder if they can make it to medical facilities before Matt and John fall victim to the dog bites and become feral-minded like the dogs. In the last shot, they open the door to the sleeping quarters, and a stowaway dog leaps out. ===== Lalu is the daughter of a Chinese farmer. When her father loses everything, Lalu finds herself thrust into debt slavery. Her misfortunes eventually take her to the Pacific Northwest.http://www.learner.org/workshops/hslit/session7/aw/work2.htmlhttp://www.theliteratemother.org/thousand- pieces-of-gold-by-ruthanne-lum-mccunn ===== One night, Bugs Bunny is fast asleep in his bed, as he starts to drift off into a dream. In his dream, he sees Yosemite Sam experimenting on a "giant carrot serum", but before he could take action, Sam orders Gossamer to fetch the rabbit's brain for his robot, prompting chase. Bugs soon came across a "Televisor" and is transported to many of his times from older cartoons, in which he must complete several objectives in each level. After finishing all 4 levels, Bugs Bunny attempts to escape the haunted castle and defeat both Gossamer and Yosemite Sam in the laboratory. He eventually succeeds and exits the castle to escape inside a rocket ship. Bugs soon found himself stranded in outer space after the launch, as he spots a nearby space scooter which he uses to travel across the galaxy and face a new threat: Marvin the Martian and his trusty pet dog K-9. Upon reaching Marvin's home planet, Mars, Bugs comes across some levers and switches them around, foiling Marvin's plans, and upon leaving back to Earth, he tosses the dynamite stick he previously rescued over to Marvin, resulting in the destruction of Mars itself. Eventually, Bugs wakes up back in his bed, only to find a giant carrot sitting right in front of him, much to his shock. ===== The show starts out by telling the story between the celebrity and the person who helped them out in the past (agent, parents, friend, etc.). Then the celebrity states the plans for the new car, but leaves room for the build team to add in some cool extras. After that, the show turns over to the build team. This part of each episode takes place at a famous auto shop in Detroit, named Wheel to Wheel. Finally, the climax of the show involves the celebrity handing over the new car's keys to the person who helped them out in the past, thanking them for all the help they have been. ===== While investigating the deaths of a large number of marine animals, Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino encounter a group of tourists on Seymour Island. Aboard the tourists' cruise ship (the Polar Queen), a mysterious "disease" has killed everyone on board. The tourists are brought to the Ice Hunter, a research vessel for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). Here, they find out that the Polar Queen is missing and will not respond to their calls. After some searching, Pitt and Al discover that the missing ship is heading towards a cliff. After being winched onto the ship from a helicopter, Pitt steers and manages to narrowly avoid the crash. But he finds only one surviving passenger on board: Deirdre. Maeve, the tour guide from Seymour Island, is Deirdre's sister, and she seems perplexed to find Deirdre aboard. Pitt and Al uncover more evidence to suggest that the passengers of the Polar Queen were killed by extremely high-powered soundwaves. At this time, more outbreaks occur on a cargo ship and a Chinese junk. The cargo ship blows up while a boarding party from a passing ship is aboard; in the distance, a futuristic yacht is spotted heading away from the scene. We learn that the yacht belongs to the Dorsett Consolidated Mining Company, a gemstone mining company headed by the ruthless Arthur Dorsett. Dorsett is also the father of Maeve, Deirdre and a third daughter, Boudicca. Of Dorsett's three daughters, Maeve is the only one who does not work for his company. As a young girl, she ran away from home, broke all bonds with her family, and changed her last name to Fletcher. By borrowing the US Navy sonar net in the Pacific, NUMA discovers that the acoustic plague appears to be caused by a convergence of soundwaves from four sources around the Pacific: in the southwest, Gladiator Island; in the northwest, one of the Commander Islands; in the northeast, Kunghit Island; and in the southeast, Easter Island. Since Kunghit Island is located not far from the United States, Pitt decides to go there to investigate. He enlists the help of Mason Broadmoor, a Native American fisherman who, along with his associates, delivers fish to the Kunghit Island mine every week. During one such visit, Pitt is smuggled onto the island and given a tour of the mine by a disgruntled employee, who, Pitt finds out, is Clive Cussler. The mine has a revolutionary mining method in which high-powered soundwaves are used to dig through clay containing diamonds. Pitt learns that the Dorsetts have kidnapped both of Maeve's sons and are holding them hostage. The company security force captures Pitt as he leaves the island, but Broadmoor rescues him, and the two escape using jet skis. Soon after returning to the US, Pitt, Al and Maeve are sent to Wellington to board another research vessel, the Ocean Angler. Their mission is to covertly infiltrate Gladiator Island, find Maeve's sons, and bring everybody back to the vessel. However, the plan is derailed when the pickup car drives them to a Dorsett company warehouse instead of to the research vessel. After a failed escape attempt, they are all brought onto the Dorsett yacht and immediately put out to sea. After about a day, Pitt, Al and Maeve are abandoned in the southwest Pacific Ocean, in a small craft and far away from ordinary shipping routes; in addition, a tropical cyclone is quickly approaching. Meanwhile, the NUMA computer center in Washington discovers a way to predict the coming convergence zones, and in a few weeks the Hawaiian island of Oahu will be hit. The head of NUMA, Admiral James Sandecker, fails to convince the President of the looming threat, so he launches a clandestine operation to avert the disaster. The plan is to reflect the soundwaves from the convergence zone back towards Gladiator Island. A giant reflector is obtained from a government agency; it is dismantled, loaded onto the famous deep-sea recovery ship Glomar Explorer, and brought into the convergence zone. Pitt, Al, and Maeve have successfully endured the storm and finally stumbled upon a small island. Here they find the remains of a sailboat, which they use along with their own battered craft to build a small sailship. With this ship, they set course for Gladiator Island, planning to rescue Maeve's sons from her evil family. As they climb ashore, the sound reflector outside Oahu successfully reflects the high-powered soundwave toward Gladiator Island. At the same time, scientists realize that this could cause both volcanoes on the island to erupt. Admiral Sandecker is shocked when he receives a call from Pitt, using Mr. Dorsett's phone. Pitt and Al rescue Maeve's sons and kill Arthur, Boudicca and Deirdre Dorsett; however, Deirdre fatally shoots Maeve before Pitt kills her. Pitt and Al flee, using the Dorsett yacht to make their escape. Al takes the children aboard a helicopter that was parked on the yacht, and as they fly away from the island, Al sees the yacht engulfed by a pyroclastic ash cloud with Pitt still on board. Al arrives to a safe landing point, where he is recruited by rescue officials to fly back to the island. Al is concerned about what he will find there, but he has already decided to fly back and try to rescue his friend Pitt. Al also agrees to take a load of food, fresh water, and medical supplies to the islanders, who will most certainly need the items in the days following the eruptions. Upon his arrival at the island, Al is told that the authorities have received no radio communication to suggest that Pitt is still alive. As Al begins to mourn the loss of his best friend, he hears new information about a stranded yacht that has been seen floating several miles from the island. Al, feeling it might be Pitt, flies the helicopter to the coordinates hoping to find Pitt alive. Al indeed finds that Pitt is alive, having survived by barricading himself from the searing heat of the ash cloud. Sadly, however, Maeve is discovered dead from the injuries she sustained at the hand of her sister. We also discover that, prior to her untimely death, she and Pitt had pledged their deepest love for each other. After Pitt is rescued, he flies back to D.C. on a commercial jet flight and heads home, but not before spending some time in a hospital recovering from his very serious injuries. Category:1996 American novels Category:Dirk Pitt novels Category:Novels set in Antarctica Category:Fiction set in 2000 Category:Books with cover art by Paul Bacon ===== After a political event, Daniels' wife Marla raises the possibility of reconciling. However, Daniels explains that he cannot promise any more than his continued support of her career, later telling Pearlman that he feels he still owes her to fill the role of a supportive spouse. During a game of racquetball, Carcetti and Gray skirt around the issue of who should run against Mayor Royce, with Carcetti seemingly conceding that only a black person could win the race. Carcetti again asks D'Agostino to run his campaign, saying that Baltimore's black vote will be split if Royce and Gray both run. Royce and Parker suggest to Burrell that he may not keep his job as police commissioner if the city's crime rate keeps rising. In Homicide, Bunk tells Landsman that he will work on the double homicide of Tosha and Tank rather than wasting time on the missing gun; Landsman finally agrees. Bunk interviews Tosha's family and asks them to have Omar contact him. The word gets back to Omar, who catches up with the witness who identified him to Bunk and convinces him to change his story. Omar arranges a meeting with Bunk, telling him there is no victim in the case of the shooting. Bunk, enraged, talks about their shared past at Edmondson High School and says that the empathy and sense of community in their neighborhoods is all but gone. In the Western, Colvin has Carver and his other men forcibly relocate any straggling dealers into Hamsterdam. Despite the positive effect Hamsterdam has on the wider neighborhood, Colvin notices one resident remaining in the zone. When the resident refuses to move, Colvin approaches Foerster with the necessary paperwork, telling him the woman is a witness in a drug case. Colvin again finds himself relying on information from the Major Case Unit, and requests their assistance in targeting both the Barksdales and the Stanfields. Meanwhile, Bell and Avon are dismayed to find costs spiraling at their development site. They join Slim Charles in surveying territory. Avon questions why the Barksdales are conceding their best territory to Marlo without a fight and resolves to get his corners back. Bell and Bodie agree to move a small part of their business to Hamsterdam to test the waters. Avon orders Slim Charles to attack Marlo using Cutty and other muscle. Bell is told that construction at the site is being held up by city hall. When he meets with Davis, the senator demands $25,000 to move things ahead. Cutty and Slim Charles devise a plan of attack and explain it to their crew. However, the plan goes awry when the getaway driver, Chipper, makes his move too early and allows himself and Country to get killed by Marlo's crew. Cutty, Slim Charles, and Gerard manage to escape. When Avon and Bell disagree on their next move, Slim Charles and Cutty volunteer to handle things themselves. Marlo's advisor Vinson warns him to expect retribution from Avon. Marlo readies his soldiers Snoop and Partlow for the coming gang war. Brianna gives her blessing for Donette to pursue her relationship with Bell, but is startled by McNulty's allegation that D'Angelo's death was not a suicide. Cutty and Slim Charles come across Fruit's crew with their guard down. Cutty has a shot lined up on Fruit, but allows him to escape. When Avon expresses his disappointment, Cutty admits that he couldn't shoot Fruit because "the game" is no longer part of him and that he wants no further involvement. Avon, still respectful of Cutty, lets him go on good terms. Meanwhile, McNulty and Greggs mistakenly report to Daniels that Marlo is a new member of the Barksdales, erroneously concluding that Marlo's territory belongs to Bell. Despite the detectives' urging, Daniels rules that as long as Bell isn't openly violent, they have no call to investigate him. McNulty and Greggs meet with a state's attorney in Anne Arundel County to discuss reopening D'Angelo's case, but are told that another murder will not be put on the county's books without a suspect. The two go drinking and discuss their relationship difficulties. Bubbles tells Greggs about the botched gunfight and corrects her about the relationship between the Stanfield and Barksdale crews. She and McNulty report the new killings to Daniels, who chastises them for insubordination. Acting on a plan with Greggs, McNulty presents the case to Colvin, who sees that he is going behind Daniels' back. The next day, Colvin, Rawls and Burrell meet with Daniels to give him his new assignment. ===== A husband sees a unicorn in the family garden and tells his wife about it. She ridicules him, telling him "the unicorn is a mythical beast" and calls him a "booby". When he persists, she threatens to send him to the "booby hatch" (the mental institution). He persists, and she summons the authorities. However, after she tells them what her husband saw and they note her own somewhat loony-looking facial features, they force her into a straitjacket. They then ask the husband if he told his wife he had seen a unicorn. Not wanting to be locked up himself, he prudently tells them that he has not, because "the unicorn is a mythical beast." Thus they take the wife away instead, and "the husband lived happily ever after". The story ends with, "Moral: Don't count your boobies before they're hatched", a play on the popular adage, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched". Thus, the moral advises not to expect one's hopes to be a certainty. ===== Anthony Fremont has been terrorizing the residents of the small town of Peaksville for 40 years, still using his psychokinetic powers to banish those he deems "bad", including his own wife and father, to a mythical "cornfield". His mother Agnes is shocked to discover that Anthony's beloved young daughter Audrey has inherited those powers. This discovery is soon followed by one even more shocking: Audrey can bring back things that her father has banished to the cornfield. With this realization, Agnes - who has grown to detest her son - tries to influence her granddaughter to use her powers in order to free Peaksville from Anthony's reign of terror. When Anthony learns of his mother's plans he seeks out each co-conspirator one by one, sending them to the cornfield. Agnes finally confronts her son, letting go of all of the dismay, hatred and anger that she has suppressed for forty years, and tries to convince Audrey to use her powers against her own father and wish Anthony away. Audrey is forced to choose between her grandmother and her father, whom she loves very much. Caught between these two sides, Audrey ultimately aligns herself with her father, saving him from a resident who attempted to hit him while his back was turned. But then to the horror of Anthony she sends her grandmother away and empties the town of Peaksville. Anthony and Audrey are left alone, but Anthony soon realizes that he misses having everyone else around. In order to cheer her father up, Audrey brings back the world beyond Peaksville, which Anthony had sent away decades prior. Audrey asks Anthony about visiting New York City, and her father replies that it is a big city with many people. Audrey implies that they had all better be nice to her and her father, otherwise they'll suffer severe consequences. The episode ends with Anthony realizing that his daughter is far more powerful than he is, and he accepts that she has done a "real good thing" by returning the world outside of Peaksville. As a couple pulls up to ask them if they know how to get to Highway 10, Anthony and Audrey plan to travel to different places. Anthony states that "It's going to be a good day. A real good day," as they head to the two people in the car. ===== The crew encounters a protostar and Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) decides to have samples beamed aboard for use as a potential power source. A problem occurs when beaming the samples to Voyager. Janeway recommends to B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) that she should have Ensign Harry Kim's (Garrett Wang) assistance, but he is discovered to be missing. The crew finds his holodeck program, based on the epic poem Beowulf, still running. With each person sent into the holodeck also becoming lost, Captain Janeway sends in the Doctor (Robert Picardo) to investigate, under the assumption that as an immaterial hologram, he cannot be dematerialized in the way the missing crew had been. The Doctor shows signs of nervousness when preparing for his first "away" mission, so Kes (Jennifer Lien) encourages him to take a name to embolden him with having an identity of his own. He states that he has narrowed his choices to three but does not reveal them. Once in the holodeck, the Doctor meets Freya (Marjorie Monaghan), a shieldmaiden, and introduces himself as "Schweitzer". She takes him to the hall, where he is made to prove himself before the others, and after a celebratory meal and everyone has retired to separate rooms, she reappears and suggests that, in the cold of the night when the fire in his hearth has gone out, he ought to join her. Though he dismisses her advances, he relaxes his inhibition in later scenes. Later they are confronted by Unferth (Christopher Neame), who kills Freya. She dies in Schweitzer's arms. With her last words she speaks his name. As the Doctor investigates, he realizes that alien energy lifeforms were beamed onto the ship within the containment field into which the protostar samples were transported. The missing crew members have been converted to energy by the lifeforms from the protostar, presumably as hostages in retaliation for Voyagers actions. The Doctor releases the energy lifeforms on the holodeck; in kind, the missing crew are returned to their original forms. Afterwards, upon reflection, the Doctor decides not to keep the name Schweitzer, as his memories associated with it are too painful. ===== In 1916, Manfred von Richthofen is serving as a fighter pilot with the Imperial German Air Service along the Western Front. After dropping a wreath over the funeral of an Allied pilot, Richthofen and his fellow pilots Werner Voss and Friedrich Sternberg encounter a squadron of enemy aircraft led by Captain Lanoe Hawker. Richthofen shoots down Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown. After pulling Brown out of the wreckage of his aircraft, Richthofen assists Nurse Käte Otersdorf with a tourniquet on Brown's leg. After killing Hawker, Richthofen is awarded the Pour le Mérite medal and promoted to command a squadron. He is joined by his brother Lothar von Richthofen (Volker Bruch). He orders his men to avoid killing enemy pilots unless absolutely necessary and is dismayed when Lothar deliberately strafes and kills a British pilot who has already been forced into a landing. Later, during an aerial dogfight, Richthofen again encounters Captain Brown, who has escaped from a German prisoner of war camp after being nursed by Käte. Both are forced to ditch their aircraft in no man's land, where they share a friendly drink. Brown expresses hope that they will not meet again until after the war is over, and he tells Richthofen that Käte has feelings for him. On the way back to base, Richthofen is devastated to learn that his close friend, the Jewish pilot Friedrich Sternberg, has been shot down and killed. Over the days that follow, Richthofen makes no secret of his grief and refuses to leave his room. An enraged Lothar reminds him that, "A leader cannot afford to mourn." Shortly thereafter, Richthofen suffers a skull wound during an aerial battle, and is sent to be nursed by Käte. As he recovers, the two share a romantic dinner and a dance. After Richthofen expresses gratitude for his wound keeping him out of the fighting, an angry Käte takes him on a tour of a local field hospital, berating him for regarding war as a game. Later, Richthofen and Käte are beginning to make love when they are interrupted by an Allied bombing raid. Determined to protect the squadron's aircraft, he orders Käte to hide in the cellar and takes to the air with his men. During the raid, Richthofen's wound begins to reopen, making him disoriented, and upon witnessing the death of his protege Kurt Wolff, he goes into a state of rage in the air. During another visit, Richthofen informs Kate that he has been offered a rear echelon position in command of the entire Air Service. Käte is overjoyed, but a depressed Richthofen conceals his doubts. Richthofen sees he is being manipulated by the Kaiser and his generals. While visiting the Fokker Industries Richtofen discovers that Werner Voss, the most competitive pilot of the squadron after him and his dear friend, died in a dogfight, thus leaving the squadron with very few experienced pilots. On the eve of the February 1918 offensive, he approaches general Paul von Hindenburg and tells him that the war is now unwinnable, however, Hindenburg orders him back to his squadron. Caught between his disgust for the war, and the responsibility for his fighter wing, Richthofen sets out to fly again. As the offensive begins, Richthofen's squadron sets out to clear every Allied aeroplane and balloon out of the target area. As Käte tends the wounded on the ground, she is horrified to learn that her beloved has returned to combat. Käte confronts him and demands to know why he has turned down the chance to remain safe. Richthofen states that he will not betray the soldiers in the field. He says, "You are my greatest victory." On April 21, 1918, Richthofen is wakened with the report of a British formation approaching the front, after making love to Käte. He has a brief talk with his pilots and tells Wolfram not to get involved in combat. As Richthofen climbs into his cockpit, he exchanges a sad smile with Käte. Käte crosses over to Allied lines with Brown's assistance and visits Richthofen's grave. She apologises for not coming sooner and expresses remorse for never telling him how much she loved him. A funeral wreath has been left by Captain Brown, reading "To Manfred von Richtofen, Friend and Enemy." ===== Masaki Michishita, a "typical guy" enrolled in preparatory school, is running to the park washroom when he spots a man wearing a jumpsuit sitting on a nearby bench. The man, Takakazu Abe, unzips his jumpsuit and exposes his penis, asking Masaki, . They proceed to the washroom to have sexual intercourse. When Abe performs fellatio on Michishita, the latter cannot hold his bladder and accidentally urinates in Abe's mouth. Abe suggests that Michishita empty his bladder in Abe during anal sex, and Michishita does so. When it is Michishita's turn to be on the receiving end, he defecates on Abe's penis, much to the dismay of Abe and the embarrassment of a middle-aged man walking by, who overheard their conversation: "But you never know, it might be fun to do it covered in shit." ===== The series opens in 1932, as Jack and Honey Bailey lose their hardware store and are forced to move back to Jack's hometown in Northern Ontario, where his family owns a silver mine. When Jack dies after being stung by hornets, Honey is forced to leave her children with her domineering mother-in-law while she searches for work. The series follows Honey, her children, their extended family, and friends as they attempt to survive and thrive during the 1930s. ===== Morgan, the protagonist, is an illiterate man. One evening, Morgan is sitting alone and suddenly feels compelled to start writing. Despite his illiteracy, he records the dream of Howard Phillips, another man. In Morgan's writing, Phillips says that he fell asleep on November 24, 1927 and has never reawakened. The dream's setting takes place in a strange marshland. Phillips explores the marsh's cliff side, noting the eerie and mouth-like caves dotting the plateau. Eventually, Phillips encounters a set of railway tracks. On these tracks he finds "a yellow, vestibuled car numbered 1852—of a plain, double-trucked type common from 1900 to 1910." This car is able to start and he climbs aboard, searching for a light switch so that he can see better. He hears a noise behind him, and, turning to look, sees two men (assumed to be the motorman and conductor) approach him. The first man lifts his head to the sky, sniffs, and howls, while the second drops to all fours and charges toward the Phillips and the car. Phillips immediately flees out of the car until he is too tired to continue. Phillips reveals that the reason for his terror was not "because the conductor had dropped on all fours, but because the face of the motorman was a mere white cone tapering to one blood-red-tentacle..." Phillips is aware that it is a dream, but is unable to wake up. During the day, he travels the strange land, and each night, is brought back to the place with the train car. He always alerts the howling beast to his presence, and always flees from it. The narrator closes the story by saying that he would visit Phillips' house in Providence, but fears what he might find. ===== Dr. Zorka, a rogue scientist, is the creator of various weapons of warfare, including a devisualizer belt which renders him invisible; an eight-foot tall slave robot (Ed Wolff), robot spiders that can destroy life or paralyse it and he also has a deadly meteorite fragment from which he extracts an element which can induce suspended animation in an entire army. Foreign spies, operating under the guise of a foreign language school, are trying to buy or mostly steal the meteorite element, while his former partner, Dr. Fred Mallory, miffed that Zorka will not turn his inventions over to the U.S. Government, blows the whistle on him to Captain Bob West of the Military Intelligence Department. Tired of answering the door and saying no to the spies and the government, Zorka moves his lab. When his beloved wife is killed, Zorka, puttering around for his own amusement up to this point, is crushed and swears eternal vengeance against anyone trying to use his creations and to make himself world dictator. And would have if not for his assistant Monk, an escaped convict virtually enslaved by Zorka, who is cowardly, treacherous and totally incompetent, and whose accidental or deliberate interference with Zorka's efforts repeatedly frustrates his master's own plans... ===== During a subcommittee hearing, Carcetti expresses concern that the impressive reduction in crime from the Western may be a misrepresentation. He further lays into Burrell about the ongoing problems in the city's witness protection program, ignoring advice from both Gray and D'Agostino. At a dinner with Carcetti and his wife, D'Agostino chastises Carcetti for his short-sightedness in using facts to win arguments instead of an inspiring message, and arranges for Carcetti to get coaching to improve his demeanor. In Hamsterdam, one of the drug dealers is assaulted, bound, gagged, and robbed in one of the vacant buildings. Once the stick-up crew has left, the dealers manage to escape and alert the police. The dealers plead with Carver, Herc and Colicchio that if they are not allowed to carry weapons, then the police should guard them against stick-ups. Elsewhere, Colvin takes his friend the Deacon on a tour of the improved neighborhood, then brings him into Hamsterdam. Colvin suggests to Carver that he pay the young lookouts to act as auxiliary police and watch for trouble. The Deacon, disgusted by Hamsterdam, cannot be convinced that Colvin's scheme is a good idea. He asks Colvin to provide clean water, needles, condoms and treatment centers now that the addicts have been concentrated into one place. Over drinks, Carver, Herc, Colicchio, and Truck debate the merits of Hamsterdam. Cutty helps the Deacon load boxes into a car, saying he needs to occupy himself to stay straight. A community leader named Roman meets with both men, suggesting they hold a basketball tournament to keep Hamsterdam's restless boys occupied. When Cutty tells the Deacon he is more experienced a boxer, Roman suggests an abandoned gym that the kids can use. When Roman presents Cutty with a disused gym, Cutty resolves to fix it up himself, pleased to have something to work on. Colvin leaves a meeting with the Deacon to attend a ComStat briefing, where Rawls insinuates Colvin is altering his figures to get his significantly lowered crime figures and asks Colvin to give him his records for review. After Colvin, Roman, and the Deacon meet with a representative of a public health non-profit, the major institutes initiatives to exchange needles and provide free condoms in Hamsterdam. Using its serial number, Prez traces Bodie's disposable phone to the store where it was sold. Freamon maps out store locations and finds that they are spread along I-95 between Baltimore and Richmond. He assigns McNulty and Greggs to track the buyer of the phones. Upon visiting the store, the detectives find that security tapes are reused after a week, so there is no chance of getting footage of the buyer. Greggs decides they should drive further out to independent stores. In Dumfries, Virginia, McNulty and Greggs find a mini-mart where Bernard bought eight phones, only to be told they also reuse their security tapes. Realizing the local police could help them, McNulty approaches the local sheriff and feigns racism under the assumption that the sheriff will be more inclined to help him. However, McNulty learns that the sheriff's deputy, who is also his wife, is black. The sheriff cooperates anyway and promises to provide outdoor security footage of the mini-mart. McNulty and Greggs find a motel and discuss infidelity. Upon returning to the detail, the detectives find Agent Terrence "Fitz" Fitzhugh installing new equipment, which allows Prez to enlarge the mini-mart footage and get Bernard's plate number. Greggs and Prez track the plate number to a rental agency and find that Bernard rents a car from them every couple of weeks to make his collections. McNulty meets with Brianna and insists that D'Angelo could not have killed himself, and that he was most likely the victim of a planned murder. McNulty guilt trips Brianna concerning her role in the Barksdales and D'Angelo's turn to crime, leaving her crying uncontrollably. At Rico's funeral, Avon and Slim Charles plot revenge on Marlo. Meanwhile, Bell meets with Senator Davis to question him about the lack of progress in his development business. Back in the office, Avon gives Charles a contact in social services to find some of Omar's relatives. Charles suggests that splitting their efforts between Omar and Marlo may be a mistake, but Avon reassures him that he can handle everything. Shamrock bribes a social services employee and learns the address for Omar's grandmother. Charles has Sapper and Gerard to stake out the house and tells them to wait for Omar to show up. Sapper once more fails to understand the plan. Krawczyk tells Bell about a rival property developer garnered much success associating with Davis. When Bell comes back to insist that Davis move faster in making him money, the senator takes him to meet a contact who can arrange federal funding. Bell gives Davis a briefcase full of cash; Davis calls this a sign that Stringer is still not ready, but takes the money and tells Stringer that everything is a go. Brianna visits the funeral home looking for Avon; Bell tries to dissuade her from talking to him and promises to put them in touch. ===== The episode opens with Turtle walking into a restaurant, greeting every female by name as he goes. When he meets up with the group, he tells Vince to sign a poster for Head On (Vince's new movie co-starring Jessica Alba). When asked why, Turtle explains that it's for the girl who hooks the group up with all of their Nike shoes. The group then engages in a discussion of how bad promo photos can sink an actor's career, until two extremely attractive females walk by and Turtle starts to harass them. After the girls leave, the group discusses whether or not they should attend their high school reunion back in New York City, and their disapproval of Eric's on again / off again girlfriend Kristen. Next the guys head to the premiere of Head On, where Johnny "Drama" tries to get out of the limo before Vince. As the guys walk up the red carpet and comment on the girls in attendance, Eric tells Turtle to go and make sure that Ali Larter is not sitting within ten rows of Vince. When Vince has a reporter take his picture with his brother Drama, the photographer can't place where he knows Drama from. When Eric tells Vince to go take a picture with Alan, Vince is unsure of who that is, and Eric has to remind him that Alan is the man who financed Head On. While Vince takes the pictures, Ari starts harassing Eric to get Vince to read the script for Matterhorn, a buddy cop type movie set in Disneyland. Ari promises court side Los Angeles Lakers tickets if Eric gets Vince to read the script. While they are talking, Turtle interrupts to tell "E" that he's lined up a "revenge fuck" who looks just like his ex, Kristen, and who's apparently told Turtle that she "puts out". As Turtle describes the girl, Ali Larter comes over and looks very annoyed, and then proceeds to aggressively quiz Eric on Vince's whereabouts. We are left to assume that there was a relationship that went sour between Vince and Ali. After the premiere the guys head back to their house with some girls in tow for a pool party. The guys spend time trying to get with each girl. The next morning Drama and Turtle pester Eric with tales of how the girls they ended up with the night before performed in bed, and try to get Eric to talk about how his was. When Vince comes down, Eric asks Vince if he's read the script for Matterhorn yet. Vince says no, and asks E what he thought of it. When Eric says he thought it sucked, Vince says "OK. I trust you", then explains how he never read the script for Head On and didn't know who the killer was until he saw the film the night before. The guys then take a trip to the Warner Brothers studio to meet with the director for Matterhorn. On the way, Turtle tells the guys about Arnold the rottweiler he is getting for Vince from Black Hack. As they walk into the studio, we learn that Drama is Vince's half- brother and that Vince and Turtle originally moved to Hollywood to follow Johnny around. Just before they walk in, the guys exchange greetings with Mark Wahlberg. When the guys get back home, they discuss the meeting with the director, and Ari calls to tell Vince that the director loved him and wants to sign him to do Matterhorn for $4 million. Vince asks Eric what he thinks, and E tells him he thinks it's time Vince read the script. While Vince struggles to read the script, the guys hit golf balls into the neighborhood, trying to hit the homes of other actors, such as Pierce Brosnan. After a while the guys switch from golf to basketball while Vince finishes reading the script. After reading it, he still has the same opinion, that is Eric was right and the script sucks but the $4 million would be sweet. When Ari calls, Vince tells him what Eric thinks of the script but Ari doesn't care. Vince, however, values Eric's opinion and tells Ari to talk to E about it (even though E wants to talk to Ari even less than Ari wants to talk to E). Ari decides to have dinner with Eric to discuss Vince's future. Vince likes this as now he won't always have to "be in the middle of things". The dog arrives but the guys are too afraid to take it out of the cage so they have Turtle dress up in full hockey gear as they open the cage from the second story of the house via a draw string. At dinner Eric and Ari spar with verbal insults and discuss why Eric doesn't think that Vince should do Matterhorn. Eric threatens to slap Ari if he ever insults him again and we learn that two years prior Vince couldn't get a call back from Ari. After dinner Eric passes out watching SportsCenter, and Turtle and Drama wake him up to get ready to go to Las Vegas. Eric doesn't want to go so they tell him that his ex-girlfriend Kristen is sleeping with Vince Vaughn. Eric believes them at first then realizes (thanks to Drama's overacting) that they are lying to him. Vince enters the room and takes Eric aside to find out why he threatened Ari and tells him he can't do that. Eric explains that Ari was being condescending (in particular deriding his former role as a manager at Sbarro), so Vince asks if Eric thinks he should fire Ari. Eric sarcastically says yes and Vince begins to make the call. When Eric sees this, he stops him and Vince tells E he wants him to make his decisions. From this point, Eric is now his unofficial manager. After this, Vince and E decide not to go to Vegas. Vince also wants to skip the reunion but Eric is looking forward to it and wants to go and convinces Vince go as well. The next day, the guys are getting ready to head to the airport and Eric asks Turtle if he got the Bose headsets. Turtle has no clue what E is talking about, and Eric berates him to go get them. After Turtle gets in the car, Vince asks Eric what that was about as he didn't ask for any headsets. Eric points at the car and says "you also don't want to ride in a car that has that on it". As Turtle drives off we see a bumper sticker on the back of the car that reads "I ♥ Cock", as E reminds Drama that he's next. Ari calls again and Vince hands the phone to E. Eric answers and Ari asks for Vince. E tells him Vince wants them to talk instead. Ari then tells him that Colin Farrell took Matterhorn. When Eric breaks the word to Vince he says, "I hope you know what you're doing, pizza boy." ===== Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) is delighted to have a double of himself after Dave Lister (Craig Charles) activated his hologram disc, believing it would allow him to see his old girlfriend. The pair promptly move out and begin spending time with each other, the Rimmers both moving into new sleeping quarters and encouraging each other through their routines of study, exercise, sleep. Lister decides to make the most of it by enjoying his own sleeping quarters to himself and viewing a video left by Rimmer, detailing his death. Choosing to skip his lengthy monologue, he views the moment when Rimmer was being chastised by Captain Hollister (Mac McDonald) for his repair of the drive plate before the crew's death in the radiation surge. Lister soon becomes confused over Rimmer's dying words, "Gazpacho soup!", and decides to find out why he said them. The Rimmers soon find themselves competing against each other, causing their tempers to fray and an argument to break out between the two.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 51. Lister learns that each has determined that the other must go, and the original Rimmer lost out as a result. As Rimmer arrives in full uniform, including his medals for his long years of service on Red Dwarf, to prepare for erasure, Lister asks him about his final words before his death. Rimmer soon explains he was once invited to the Captain's Table for dinner, and was served Gazpacho soup for starters. Because he didn't realise that it was meant to be served cold, Rimmer was humiliated by everyone when he ordered the chef take it away and bring it back hot, and thus was never invited to the Table again. Rimmer remarks that it was the worst moment in his life and prepares for his erasure, only for Lister to explain that he opted to erase the double just to hear his explanation. Rimmer, annoyed at being tricked, demands him to tell no one, to which Lister agrees before teasing him. ===== Megan is a teenage gifted writer living in the Dayton, Ohio area. She has been abandoned by her father and neglected by her mother, who works 12-hour days and goes to school at night, leaving Megan to babysit her younger sister, Lily. The girls' father does not pay child support, causing financial strain in the household. Lily has serious emotional problems; she cuts herself, refuses to eat, and speaks about becoming an angel. After being checked into the psychiatric ward of a hospital, Lily kills herself by jumping out of an open window as she tries to "fly". Meg finds solace in her English teacher, Mr. Auster, who claims he is passionate about writing a novel. He becomes a comfort to Megan, and encourages her to enter a poetry contest, which is later followed by one-on-one poetry tutoring. After winning the local round of the competition, Megan wants to compete at the finals in Florida during spring break. With her mother unable and unwilling to fund the trip, Megan resorts to stealing and is barely able to make it to Florida. A closer, pseudo-sexual relationship develops between Megan and Mr. Auster. The two run into each other outside the hotel that is hosting the poetry competition and go to a hotel room, where Megan reluctantly has sex with Mr. Auster, who stops after realizing that she is not comfortable with the situation. After this, Megan realizes that Mr. Auster has not written a novel at all, and that it was all just a ruse to impress her. After writing and delivering a brand new poem subtly denouncing Mr. Auster, Megan walks out of the competition. Later, back home, she decides to live with her father, riding away with him in his blue car. ===== After watching Patty and Selma's old home movies of a trip to Barnacle Bay in New England during a town-wide outdoor movie night, Marge pines for the excitement she had in her youth. Moved by his wife's depression, Homer organizes a surprise trip to the island. However, on the family's arrival, Marge's hopes to relive her youth are dashed as Barnacle Bay has been devastated by overfishing of the Yum Yum Fish, the island's main attraction. Homer refuses to let Marge down and fixes the boardwalk and celebrates with a large fireworks show. The plan backfires and he accidentally starts a fire and the boardwalk burns down. In order to repay the townsfolk, Homer joins a fishing crew and sets out to rediscover the Yum Yum Fish. Homer mistakenly beer batters and deep fries the fishing hooks, attracting a large haul of Yum Yum Fish. However, their celebrations are short-lived as Homer and the crew become trapped in a storm. Searching for a means of escape, they discover Bart has stowed away and removed the lifeboat in order to hide. The ship sinks and Marge and the rest of Barnacle Bay believe that all is lost. Much to everyone's relief, Homer, Bart and the rest of the crew manage to survive and are rescued by a Japanese fishing boat called "Iruka Koroshi Maru" (Dolphin Killer). The townsfolk plan to recommence fishing, but Lisa warns them about the dangers of overfishing and how it brought their town to financial ruin. Agreeing with her, the townsfolk decide to go into logging instead, and clear cut the island's trees, which are planned to be sent to a paper mill to be made into issues of Hustler and Barely Legal magazine. ===== The novel is separated into three parts, "Winter Kitchen", "Summer Kitchen", and "Oz Circle". The primary focus is on Jonathan, a gay actor with AIDS who goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to Manhattan, Kansas, and on the "real" (in the novel) Dorothy. Other characters include Baum, who makes an appearance as a substitute teacher in Kansas. Millie, a makeup girl on the set of the original film version film narrates an encounter with Judy Garland. ===== A post pod for Red Dwarf finally reaches the ship three million years late and is brought on board by Holly. As the group check through it, Arnold Rimmer finds a letter addressed to him detailing that his father is dead. Despite knowing that he and rest of humanity are long dead, seeing the news in writing from his mother upsets him. Although Rimmer admits he loathed him due to his strict requirements for his kids to get into the space corps to make up for his own failure to join, he also points out that he looked up to him. Seeing him depressed, Dave Lister and the Cat invite him to join them within "Better Than Life" – a total immersion virtual reality game that came within the post. Within the game, the group finds that makes their deepest desires come true – Cat has Marilyn Monroe and an alternate version of mermaid (top half fish, bottom half woman) as girlfriends; Lister has wealth, eating caviar-covered vindaloo and playing golf; while Rimmer, with a physical form, leads an admiral's life with drinks, parties, and a wonderful wife.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 54. However, things start to go wrong when Rimmer sees his father in the game and is insulted by him, soon bringing out his feelings of inadequacy, and causing his neurotic mind to subconsciously reject the nice things happening to him, causing him to live a wrecked life with an unsympathetic Outland Revenue Collector threatening to harm him over a large debt he has. Rimmer's mind soon affects everyone else's fun, leaving them suffering anguish as well, before the game comes to an end. Once back on Red Dwarf, Rimmer is called out for his "messed up brain" and presumes his life will never be good. Almost suddenly, he finds a letter informing him he passed astro-navigation examination, but his joy is short-lived when he and the others find his tax collector suddenly turning up, revealing that they are still in the game. ===== Star Chow (Stephen Chow) is an officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police's elite Special Duties Unit (SDU). During a meeting with his senior officer, Inspector Yip (Deanie Ip), Star jokingly suggests he wish to be reassigned to the traffic unit. Star immediately finds himself demoted to Constable engaging in traffic duty on the streets of Hong Kong. After being made the scapegoat for a failed high school terrorist investigation, Star hastily resigns from the police. He decides to enroll at the high school to launch his own private investigation. But Star realises the investigation won't be easy when he discovers that the bumbling, incompetent CID detective Tat (Ng Man Tat) is also undercover at the high school. ===== The film is set in a dark surreal New York that is mostly devoid of humans and populated only by rats and a few eccentrics. Lafayette is a young French electrician living on his own in a basement who works for Andreas Flaxman, the cynical owner of a waxwork museum dedicated to recreating scenes from imperial Rome. He works alongside his friend the sculptor Luigi Nocello, who the maintains the varied and often macabre wax displays, such as the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Assassination of Julius Caesar, which fill the museum. Lafayette also works as a lighting technician for a feminist theatre group. After rehearsal one day, the women in the group discuss their next project and decide to improvise a piece about rape for their next production, contending that women are just as capable of violence as men are; in the middle of their discussion, they knock Lafayette unconscious with a bottle of Coca-Cola, pin him down, and the attractive Angelica volunteers to rape Lafayette. Beside the Hudson River, amidst construction site of Battery Park City, Lafayette meets Luigi and a band of eccentrics who find an abandoned baby chimpanzee in the palm of a giant King Kong Sculpture that Lafayette adopts. When he brings the chimp with him to the museum, Flaxman warns him that the chimp will rob him his freedom if he does not get rid of it. Flaxman is approached by the mysterious Paul Jefferson of the State Foundation for Psychological Research who convinces the initially resistant Flaxman to transform the face of the sculpture Julius Caesar into the face of John F. Kennedy. Angelica, who has become enamored with Lafayette, moves into his sordid flat and shares in the care of the infant chimp. However, when Lafayette does not respond to the news that she is pregnant, she moves out. Alone again, he returns one day to find his baby ape eaten by rats. In total despair and needing human contact, he breaks into the waxwork museum but is met with hostility by the owner. The two fight and a fire, presumably caused by faulty wiring, consumes them both. Later, we see Angelica on the shore playing happily with her child. ===== Newly engaged Mma Ramotswe is not impressed with Mr JLB Matekoni's maid, Florence Pena. Unknown to him, she has been sleeping in his bed with her men friends. Obvious to Mma Ramotswe is that she does not keep the house clean. The maid, sensing that the forthcoming marriage will involve unpleasant changes in her own life, attempts to plant a gun at Mma Ramotswe's home to have her jailed. Mr JLB Matekoni is maneuvered by Mma Potokwane, the matron of the orphan farm, into offering a home to Motholeli and Puso, a sister and brother orphaned in the bush. He worries that this may affect his engagement to Mma Ramotswe. He likes the girl, who displays an aptitude for, and interest in, the work of the garage. The first case is that of an American woman in her fifties who lost her son Michael Curtin in Africa ten years earlier. Mrs Curtin suspects he died but does not know and wants resolution. Mma Ramotswe meets the people who were involved in the community to which he belonged while his family lived in Gaborone. His attachment to the community kept him from returning to the US for his time at college. Mma Ramotswe speaks to the secretary in the college where one man from that time now teaches. It is the secretary's last day, and she dislikes the professor for what he did to a relative of hers, and to many other women. Mma Ramotswe encounters the professor, who is a womanizer, known for dishonest manipulation to gain favors from his female students. She mixes lies with the truth to him, in short uses blackmail, to pull the truth of the events from him. She was powerful against him, to keep herself in charge of the situation. The professor had just started seeing the young man's girlfriend Carla, and she was pregnant with the young man's son. Michael encountered the two together in a small hut. The two men fought; Michael ran and fell into a deep ditch (a donga) and broke his neck. Mma Ramotswe feels the goal is to let Mma Curtin come to peace, so she agrees not to bring any of this information to the police, as it ought to have been originally. They buried the son without telling anyone what happened. Next she meets Carla in Zimbabwe where she lives with that child, a son. She agrees to meet the mother of her long ago lover to tell her the story and let her meet her grandson. Mma Ramotswe sees Mr JLB Matekoni with the children on their day out shopping for new clothes. She meets them and understands that he has adopted them. She decides he is a very kind man, and takes the children to her house, where the family will live. Mr JLB Matekoni learns on a call to his garage that his maid has been arrested. Her plan turns against her, as her friend calls the police on her, and she ends up behind bars, all events occurring without her employer being aware of them, save for the end result. Mma Ramotswe accepts the case of Mr Badule, a butcher who suspects his wife of an affair. Mma Makutsi expresses her yearning to do detective work, and Mma Ramotswe promotes her to assistant detective, while also retaining her secretarial role. Mma Makutsi follows the wife and talks with the maids at the home where the wife goes. She discovers that the woman's son – unknown to her husband – is the son of another man, himself married to a wealthy wife, who is paying for the boy's private education. Mma Makutsi finds it difficult to tell a lie, but she understands the importance of not hurting the client with information he does not need to know. Forced to report to the client herself, she tells him his wife is seeing another man so that his son can get the private school education he needs. Mr Badule does not learn the son is not his biological son, which would crush him. All the adults continue as they had, and the boy stays in school. The solution of the butcher's case is the first test of Mma Makutsi's detective and diplomatic skills. Mma Ramotswe gives a small basket as a gift to Mrs Curtin, explaining the meaning of its designs as being the tears of a giraffe, meaning that we all have something to give, and the giraffe has its tears to give. Mrs Curtin's newly found grandson, is keen on geology, identifying rocks to Mma Ramotswe as the two walk outside while his mother tells his grandmother the events of ten years earlier. The boy looks at Mma Ramotswe's engagement ring and identifies it as cubic zirconium, not the diamond Mr JLB Matekoni and she thought they bought. ===== Mma Ramotswe's business, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, has clients but needs to cut costs and increase revenue from fees. To reduce costs, she and her fiancé Mr JLB Matekoni decide to move the agency to the garage, which has plenty of office space. The original office will in turn be let, to add income. Mma Makutsi, secretary, is given the title of assistant detective, with a rise in pay. Mr JLB Matekoni is behind on his paperwork, which Mma Makutsi can organize. He has been lethargic lately. Mma Ramotswe realizes he needs help, and sets out to help him. He will not agree to see the doctor, so Mma Ramotswe asks Mma Potokwane of the orphan farm to step in. Mma Potokwane brings him to Dr Moffat who diagnoses him as having depression, for which he steps back from his garage while medications begin to work. Mma Makutsi takes over management of the garage and the useless young apprentices, making the apprentices accountable for their work, and making rapid business decisions to make good on the garage's name, Speedy Motors. She shows her strong management skills from the first hour of taking over her role as acting manager. The young apprentices are impressed with her, and how she applies her detective skills to solving some of the auto problems that the apprentices cannot solve. An important Government Man, never named, approaches Mma Ramotswe to investigate his sister-in-law, whom he suspects of attempting to poison his brother. Mma Makutsi devises a way to gain access to the family, so the case is accepted, despite Mma Ramotswe needing time for her fiancé and their foster children. Mma Ramotswe is invited to stay at the family farm, so she can meet the family and investigate. While she is away, Mma Makutsi gains a client for the detective agency who wants work done in three days. Mr Pulani runs the beauty contests in Gaborone. The present contest for Miss Beauty and Integrity has five finalists; one is disqualified for theft from a store. The final selection is in three days. He wants to know if there is one finalist who has integrity. He is already under pressure from his financial backers for scandals the year before. He promises a large fee, writing the check as soon as Mma Makutsi agrees to take the case. She travels to the university campus where one contestant lives, under her guise as a news reporter come to interview each contestant. The girl reveals herself to be shallow, a "bad girl". One of the apprentices drives her to meet the girls; Mma Makutsi realizes that any girls he knows will not be suitable to win the contest. He knows three of the four girls from his bar visits. Mma Makutsi then proceeds to the home of the fourth girl. She proves to be beautiful and modest, and her goal is to attend the Botswana Secretarial College, the same as Mma Makutsi attended. Returning to the office, she reports to the client with confidence that she is the contestant who matches the title of the contest. At the farm, Mma Ramotswe meets all the family of the Government Man and a few of the staff in the house. She joins the family for a lunch that includes a meat stew. She is poisoned by this meal, as are several others in the family. She recovers and sleeps, waking well before dawn. Walking about the grounds, she encounters the cook, who is starting the fire in the house boiler. He once had worked in Gaborone as an assistant chef, but really did not like the work. He met the Government Man, who suggested he go to the family farm to be the assistant manager, as that was the work he sought, care of the cattle. Arriving at the farm, the brother took him on as the chef based on his experience. The cook had no success in making his case for a different job, so he began cooking badly in hopes they would push him out of that job. Mma Ramotswe decides not to prosecute the cook for the risks he had taken. Back in Gaborone she confronts the Government Man with all the misunderstandings and hurt feelings of each person in that family, the real poison of so many secrets and unexpressed feelings. All of this is out in the open now and the cook is put to a different job. She then goes to see her fiancé at the orphan farm, where he has been connecting with the wild boy, teaching him words, making him toys. The two reach a vantage point above Mochudi, to see how the rains change the landscape. He is getting better. ===== Eight hours after the escape, Michael, Lincoln, Abruzzi, C-Note and Sucre eventually manage to elude Captain Bellick and his team with the help of a freight train. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agent Alexander Mahone is assigned to lead a nationwide search for the escapees, this makes their escape even more difficult, as Mahone calls a press conference, and urges everybody watching the television broadcast to find the "Fox River 8." He also has a keen interest on Scofield, and wants to know everything about him. The escapees are found by a hunter, who attempts to turn them in. However, Abruzzi holds the hunter's young daughter hostage, and is able to get the hunter to drop his weapon, and gives Michael the keys to his Jeep Grand Cherokee. The five escapees board the SUV, en route to a storage room where Michael has some items ready. Meanwhile, Mahone and Bellick use Michael's credit card invoices to find a storage room in Oswego, and each separately rush to the storage facility. It turns out to be a ruse of Michael's, as he is seen in a cemetery storage room, gathering shovels to unearth the ground at the grave of (R.I.P.) E. Chance Woods. Agent Mahone deciphers the message on Michael's tattoo ("Ripe Chance Woods") and arrives at the scene right after the escaped gang of five unearthed Michael's package and put on a fresh set of clothing. Lincoln takes the backpack Michael hid and found the brothers' fake passports. The five are able to escape to Oswego and blend in, despite being tailed by Agent Mahone. Elsewhere, T-Bag finds a veterinary clinic of Dr. Marvin Gudat, and coerces him to reattach his left hand without the use of anesthesia. Dr. Sara Tancredi recovers from her drug overdose, and is interrogated by the FBI, who tells her that 8 prisoners escaped. After Nurse Katie's visit, Sara finds an origami swan inside her purse. Inside is a message "There's a plan to make all of this right", and a dotted code. The dot code on the origami swan that Sara found can be grouped into lines of numbers. The numbers are 3221243324 for the first line, 4221312231 for the second, and 23133121 for the third. Veronica discovers yet another secret from Terrence Steadman. He is being held captive, although somewhat willingly, inside the estate; the doors can be opened only from the outside, and the windows are bulletproof. Veronica receives a phone call from Lincoln after calling 911, and informs him of what she has learned. While she is on the phone with Lincoln, Company agents arrive and kill Veronica, where Lincoln could only listen and slips into grief. Mahone continues to study images of Michael's tattoos and other elements of his escape plan, saying it will tell him everything about where Michael and the others are going, so he can be there waiting for them when they get there. ===== Conniving wife (Neri) has her husband murdered and finds herself butting heads with his heir and nephew Johnny Yuma (Damon). The woman then enlists the assistance of her ex-lover (Dobkin) who is a professional gunslinger to kill Johnny. When she tries to double-cross the ex-lover, he and the heir team up and kill her bodyguards. The lover is killed but just before he dies, he sabotages her water supply. She flees across the desert but is found the next day having died of thirst. ===== Fast's story is about how a group of scientists and educators, through a controlled environment, succeed in raising naturally gifted children into "man-plus"--people who possess comparatively super-human abilities. They possess unparalleled understanding of all technical subjects such as math, physics and unlock natural telepathy. They also excel at physical endeavors, such as sports and break numerous physical records. Their controlled environment, an isolated compound in California comprising , is a government sponsored facility granted for the raising of the children. The scientists were given fifteen years, later extended by three more years and a few weeks, to experimentally raise the children. By a very early age, the children surpass their teachers' knowledge. ===== ===== The story has little or no obvious plot. It follows a neurosurgeon, Powers, who is in a state of mental and physical decline. He works at a research clinic in a landscape of hills and dry salt lake beds somewhat like that of the deserts of California. Powers has resigned, as he finds his hours of wakefulness getting shorter and shorter. He seems about to become yet another Sleeper, one of an ever- increasing number of people who lapse into a coma from which they cannot be roused. Many Sleepers are housed at the clinic. Powers records his feelings, and his last interviews with his therapist, in a journal in which he also records strange epigrams, such as "Goodbye, Eniwetok" – an allusion suggesting that increased levels of background radiation from nuclear weapons testing may somehow be responsible for mankind's predicament. Along with excerpts from recordings of interviews, such entries drive the story forward and provide a counterpoint to the standard third-person narrative. Powers had a colleague, a biologist called Whitby, who committed suicide, but not before carving an elaborate mandala into the bottom of an empty swimming pool. As we find from Powers' replaying of recordings of interviews, Whitby was convinced that life itself was in decline, that evolution had peaked. Life, and particularly humans, would become simpler as time went by: > Five thousand centuries from now, our descendants, instead of being multi- > brained star-men, will probably be naked prognathous idiots ... grunting > their way through the remains of this Clinic ... Whitby's own research involved using highly tuned X-rays to selectively activate the so-called "silent pair" of genes in animals and plants. The results are bizarre creatures that can directly "sense" time and pace their metabolism to the geological age of their surroundings, can "see" in gamma radiation wavelengths, and exhibit grotesque changes like an external nervous system that can expand limitlessly in a web-like manner. Powers himself keeps finding wild animals outside Whitby's lab with similar strange mutations, such as a frog with a lead-lined shell on it. Powers is stalked, and somewhat tormented, by Kaldren, a patient who has been surgically altered by Powers so that he does not sleep. Kaldren scrawls huge numbers in places where Powers will see them, apparently representing some kind of countdown. Kaldren's latest girlfriend, an unearthly beauty he calls, ironically, Coma, approaches Powers on Kaldren's behalf. We learn much of what is going on through Powers' explanations to her. Powers explains that the "silent pair" phenomenon is closely linked to the Sleepers, so by implication he also has the genes. By activating them, Whitby seemed to show that the pair are a last-ditch attempt to jump-start evolution and preserve life on Earth in an environment abnormally high in nuclear radiation. Powers consents to visit Kaldren in his home, a bizarre spiral structure which is supposed to represent the square root of −1. Kaldren shows him his collection of "Terminal Documents"--his obituary of the human race. They include ephemera such as an EEG recording of Albert Einstein and the results of psychological tests of the twelve condemned to death at the Nuremberg trials. The numbers which so obsess Kaldren are received as radio transmissions from other galaxies. It has been estimated that when the countdown reaches zero, the Universe will have just ended. Kaldren grabs Powers by the arm and warns him: > You're not alone, Powers, don't think you are. These are the voices of time, > and they're all saying goodbye to you ... every particle in your body, every > grain of sand, every galaxy carries the same signature ... you know what the > time is now, so what does the rest matter? Powers has for some time been recreating Whitby's mandala on a grand scale, using concrete on an old artillery range. Having performed some procedure on himself, he goes to it one last time, lost in a wash of sound only he can hear, coming from the rocks, the ancient hills, and the very stars themselves. At the center of the structure, turning toward the great galaxies that broadcast Kaldren's countdowns, he feels a stream of time coming to bear him away, and gives himself up to it. His body is found by Coma. Whitby's lab is in chaos as the life-forms have mutated and run riot. Powers had applied the tuned X-rays to himself, activating his own 'silent genes'. Kaldren pockets a film he finds by the X-ray generator. He secludes himself in his house. ===== An authentic mummy is packaged and shipped from Cairo to Professor Horatio Bitts in Philadelphia. The package is sent under the name Simon Templar, but the sender is a man called The Partner, who is a member of an international team of jewel thieves, led by Boss Duke Bates. Meanwhile, John Bohlen of the Philadelphia Police Department is visited by Inspector Henry Fernack from New York. Private detective Simon Templar himself, more known as "The Saint", comes to visit his old friend Professor Bitts, and later in the night, the police are called to the professor's home to investigate a homicide. Fernack and Bohlen arrive at the crime scene and suspect Simon Templar of the killing, since he was the last one to visit the professor, and one of Templar's calling cards is found on the dead body. Knowing he is a suspect, Templar has to stay away from the police, but he still visits Inspector Fernack at his hotel late at night. Fernack tells Templar that he personally doesn't suspect him. Templar goes back to the crime scene, talks to Anne, daughter of the professor and has a closer look at the mummy. Templar has no idea that Boss Duke Bates is the spitting image of Templar, and poses as the famous private detective now and then. When Boss kills another man, one of his fences, Templar manages to find his hideout at the 4 Bells Café and finds out about his doppelganger. After Boss finds out that one of the jewel packages is still inside the mummy, he goes back to the professor's house, but the professor crosses his path and is murdered by Boss. Templar sends a message to the police and Anne, alerting them of Boss' existence and of the café. Boss tries to kill Anne but Templar arrives just in time to save her life. Then he goes back to the 4 Bells Café, but is caught by Boss and his henchmen, bound and gagged. Boss plans to kill him and transports him to a boat nearby to get rid of the body afterwards. Before Boss has time to kill Templar, the police arrive and arrest Boss, presuming he is Templar. When they have gone, Templar manages to free himself and escape from the boat. He dresses up as a woman to get into the jail where Boss is held, and when they meet again, Boss knocks him down and steals his disguise in order to escape. This is something Templar has counted on, and when Boss tries to flee the jail, the police shoot him down and kill him. Fernack realizes that Boss was Templar's double and lets him run after he has returned the stolen jewels he found in the mummy. ===== =====