From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== Homer takes his family to a company picnic where he is embarrassed by the behavior of Bart, Lisa and Marge. When Homer notices that his boss, Mr. Burns, approves of a "normal", well-mannered family who treat one another with respect, he wonders why his dysfunctional family misbehaves and disrespects everyone. When Marge, Bart, and Lisa claim there is nothing wrong with them, Homer tries to prove otherwise by taking them on a neighborhood tour and peeking through living room windows to observe other families. This backfires when a neighbor fires a gun at the Simpsons for trespassing. Depressed by the outing, Homer has a drink at Moe's, where he sees a television commercial for Dr. Marvin Monroe's Family Therapy Center. Dr. Monroe guarantees "family bliss or double your money back", so Homer thinks therapy will improve his family's behavior. To his family's chagrin, Homer pawns their television to pay for the $250 therapy. When Dr. Monroe asks the Simpsons to draw pictures of the source of their problems, Bart, Lisa, and Marge draw Homer. Distracted, Homer draws an airplane in flight and Dr. Monroe scolds him for being a bad father figure. After Homer gets angry and tries to attack his family with a lamp, Dr. Monroe gives the Simpsons padded mallets to work out their aggression without harming each other. The exercise fails when Bart removes the padding from his mallet and hits the doctor in the knee with the hard inner core. In frustration, Dr. Monroe resorts to aversion therapy by wiring the family members to an electric generator so they can deliver shocks to one another to deter misbehavior. The Simpsons shock each other so many times that the generator is damaged and the entire city suffers a brownout, delighting Mr. Burns. Realizing he cannot help the Simpsons, Dr. Monroe turns off the generator and orders them to leave. Homer reminds Dr. Monroe that his TV commercial promised family bliss or a double-your-money-back guarantee. Dr. Monroe agrees to refund the money to prevent the Simpsons from tarnishing the clinic's reputation. With a fresh sense of unity, the Simpsons use the money to replace their television. ===== Set in 1490, only two years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, the comic follows the life of a Taíno yucayeque or village in the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico). Among them was a member of the worker naboría class named Turey, who despite being significantly shorter than his counterparts, dreamed of becoming a member of cacique Yaguaca's royal guard. The series also follows the exploits of his family, particularly his wife Yaya and his son Tureycito, as well as his finds and other members of the village. Eventually, Turey's courage earned him the respect of his yucayeque. In its different issues, Álvarez Rivón covers different aspects of Taíno culture, ranging from their complete reliance on nature to their territorial disputes with the neighboring Carib tribes. However, these aspects are included as part of a larger story, which in turn balance its educational content with entertainment. After its third issue, the stories ended with a moral message authored by Meléndez. Each issue introduced new words from the Taíno language, with their meaning being discussed in detail in a section titled Vocabulario Taíno (lit. "Taíno Vocabulary") included towards the end of each magazine. The newspaper strips relaxed this dynamic, focusing on a humorous approach that sometimes bordered on the absurd, surreal or hypothetical. From 2000 onwards, Turey was more often depicted in large single-panel strips depicting his reaction when placed in contemporary situations or historical events, a change based on the editorial decisions of El Nuevo Día's staff. ===== The Miami Sharks, a once-great American football team, are struggling to make the 2001 Associated Football Franchises of America (AFFA) playoffs. They are coached by thirty-year veteran Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), who has fallen out of favor with young team owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) and offensive coordinator and D'Amato's expected successor Nick Crozier (Aaron Eckhart). In the thirteenth game of the season, both starting quarterback Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid) and second-string quarterback Tyler Cherubini (Pat O'Hara) are injured and forced to leave the field. The desperate Sharks call upon third-string quarterback Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx) to replace them. While a nervous Beamen makes a number of errors and fails to win the game for the Sharks, he plays well and gains confidence. Rooney vows to make it back by the playoffs, with D'Amato promising to not give up on him. The next day, D'Amato and Pagniacci argue about the direction of the team. Pagniacci favors Crozier and wants to eventually cut Rooney. D'Amato argues that Pagniacci's father, the previous owner, would never meddle in his coaching plans. During the next game, to D'Amato's chagrin, Beamen disregards the team's conservative offense and changes plays in the huddle. As the media hails Beamen as the next model of quarterback, the newfound success feeds his growing narcissism and leads to tension with teammates and coaches. During a confrontation with Beamen, D'Amato demotes him back to the bench. After Beamen gives an interview taking sole credit for the Sharks' winning streak, the other players refuse to perform for Beamen and consequently lose a home game. After Beamen gets into a brawl with Julian "J-Man" Washington (LL Cool J), an irate D'Amato expresses his embarrassment at his team before leaving. Beamen contemplates and amends his self-centered behavior. As the playoffs come around, Sharks middle linebacker Luther Lavay (Lawrence Taylor) reminds Beamen how lucky he is to be in the league and to find a life outside of football; his words fall on deaf ears. D'Amato worsens his relationship with Pagniacci and berates Rooney for second-guessing his availability. Before the game, D'Amato gives a speech urging team unity that Beamen takes to heart. Rooney returns as starting quarterback, but is injured with a concussion after scoring a touchdown. Rooney and Pagniacci urge D'Amato to let Beamen finish the game, which after an argument he allows. Beamen apologizes to his teammates for his actions and leads the team to win. He dedicates the next game to Rooney. The Sharks eventually lose the championship final known as Pantheon Cup to San Francisco. At D'Amato's final press conference as head coach, he is thanked by Pagniacci. D'Amato is expected to announce his retirement, but he instead drops a bombshell and announces that he has been hired as head coach and general manager of an expansion team in New Mexico, the Albuquerque Aztecs. He further infuriates Pagniacci by adding that he has signed Beamen to be his starting quarterback and franchise player. ===== Willa Weston arrives in Atlanta to take a high-ranking position in a company recently acquired by Octopus Inc.'s owner, Rod McCain. But Rod informs her that he has already sold the company where she was to work. Willa then agrees to run another recent acquisition, Marwood Zoo, in an attempt to create a business model that can be used for multiple zoos in the future. Rod McCain's son Vincent, who feels an unreciprocated attraction to Willa, announces that he will join her at the zoo. The newly appointed director of the zoo is a retired Hong Kong Police Force officer and former Octopus Television employee, Rollo Lee. In order to meet Octopus's revenue target of 20% from all assets, Rollo institutes a "fierce creatures" theme on the assumption that dangerous and violent animals will attract more visitors. All animals not meeting those requirements must go. All the animal keepers, including spider-handler Bugsy, make various attempts to get Rollo to change his mind. One such attempt involves getting Rollo to kill some of the cutest animals himself, but Rollo, seeing through their prank, fakes the animals' extermination. Rollo keeps the animals in his bedroom which later causes Willa and Vincent to misunderstand that Rollo is having an orgy with the female staff. Rollo discovers that several staff members are faking animal attack injuries. Rollo fires several warning shots at those responsible and Reggie rushes in, thinking mistakenly that one of them is shot. Rollo then finds a visitor who has had a genuine accident but, not believing it is real, tastes the blood of the visitor whilst loudly proclaiming that it is fake. Just then Willa and Vincent arrive and this fiasco sees Rollo demoted to middle management. Vince even threatens to fire him if his apparent activities with the female staff do not cease. Vince covers both the zoo and animals alike with advertisements after secretly garnering sponsors, dresses the staff in ridiculous outfits, and installs an artificial panda in one of the enclosures. His continued attempts to seduce Willa fail, while she comes to enjoy working at the zoo after having a close encounter with a silverback gorilla. She finds herself attracted to Rollo after becoming fascinated by his apparent ability to attract multiple women. When Rollo attempts to have a discussion about Vince's marketing plan, she suggests they have dinner, but she is forced to postpone when she remembers Rod is coming from Atlanta to discuss the running of the zoo. Worried that the visit might be part of a plan to close the zoo, Rollo and the zookeepers bug Rod's hotel room to find out. Although the plan goes awry, they learn that Rod wants to turn the zoo into a golf course and is not actually expecting to die soon. Upon discovering that Vince has stolen sponsorship money he raised, Willa warns him to return it, or else she will tell Rod. When Rollo attempts to work out how the theft can be traced, he and Willa finally kiss, just as Vince arrives to return the money. A confrontation takes place first at the zoo office, and then outside as Willa, Rollo, Bugsy, and several others attempt to stop Vince from running off with the money. Bugsy refuses to shut up, so Vince loses his temper and grabs a pistol from the management office. Rod arrives just as Vince is being subdued and announces the police are on their way to arrest Vince for stealing. Vince tries and fails to shoot his father, but then Bugsy takes the pistol and accidentally shoots Rod between the eyes. In the panic that follows, a plan emerges to fool Neville and the arriving police. The keepers work together to dress Vince up as Rod, since he can imitate his father's accent fairly well. When the police and Neville arrive, Vince (as Rod) tells them that he has rewritten Rod's will, specifying that the zoo will become a trust of the caretakers while Vince will inherit everything else, and he wants all of them to be witnesses. After signing the new will, Vince locks himself in a caretaker hut where he feigns Rod's suicide. Although Neville becomes suspicious, he is left dumbstruck when he discovers the dead body of his boss in the hut. Now free, the zookeepers destroy the evidence of McCain's ownership. Vince becomes the new CEO of Octopus, while Willa and Rollo happily begin a new life together while continuing to run the zoo. ===== ===== Eikichi Onizuka is a 22-year-old ex-gang member and a virgin. While peeping up girls' skirts at a local shopping mall, Onizuka meets a girl who agrees to go out on a date with him. Onizuka's attempt to sleep with her fails when her current "boyfriend", her teacher, shows up at the love hotel they are in and asks her to return to him. The teacher is old and unattractive, but has sufficient influence over her that she leaps from a second-story window and lands in his arms. Onizuka, upon seeing this display of a teacher's power over girls, decides to become a teacher himself. However, he earns his teaching degree, just barely, at a second-rate college. In his quest, he discovers two important things: he has a conscience and a sense of morality. This means taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls is out of the question, but their unusually attractive mothers are a different matter. He enjoys teaching and, most of the time, he teaches life lessons rather than the routine schoolwork. He hates the systems of traditional education, especially when they have grown ignorant and condescending to students and their needs. With these realizations, he sets out to become the greatest teacher ever, using his own brand of philosophy and the ability to do nearly anything when under enough pressure. He is hired as a long-shot teacher by a privately operated school, in Kichijōji, to tame a class that has driven one teacher to a mysterious death, another to nervous breakdown, and one other to joining a cult. He embarks on a mission of self-discovery by breaking through to each student one by one, and helping each student to overcome their problems and learn to genuinely enjoy life. He uses methods that would be unorthodox, against the law, and also life-threatening, yet, somehow, he manages to succeed in educating and opening up his students. ===== Kelso, who has already published books (for example novels entitled Desiring Machines in the Australian Bush and Fuck Your Mother Up the Arse, but also non-fiction), is in his thirties, several times divorced, a heavy drinker and, according to his own description, a "sex beast". As a writer, he says he has no intention whatsoever of using his imagination; rather, he wants to chronicle his present life, which in turn is fuelled by his most ambitious literary project so far, the completion of a trilogy entitled Countdown to Chaos. In order to be able to write the final part of his trilogy, Kelso wants to track down and have sex again with all the girls he "shagged" when he was in his teens—in reverse order. He always carries his laptop with him to be able to record each of his sexual encounters immediately after it has taken place. Although he says he wants to record all events exactly as they happened, he does embellish his story again and again. On his way through Europe—England, Scotland, Austria, Finland and Estonia—he has sex with all willing women and girls that cross his path, "asserting my inalienable right to freedom". Kelso is a "sex machine". He always has an erection, and never fails to please the woman or women he is with, even if he is drunk. They invariably enjoy multiple orgasms. Some of them want to have sex with Kelso because, they say, that way they are transformed into art and thus immortalized. Kelso is also into kinky sex. Although Kelso never commits any violent crimes in connection with his sexual exploits, violent death does play a role in Cunt. A maniac called Gary McMara, who likes to wear women's underwear and who accuses Kelso of conspiring with some radical political group (the "secret state"), follows Kelso to Finland, where McMara dies after he is thrown into an ice-cold lake by Kelso and subsequently warmed too quickly in a sauna. Amber, a transsexual and his publisher's new secretary, accompanies McMara to Finland and, standing under Kelso's window, accidentally shoots herself when she slips on a piece of ice. After Kelso has left Finland incognito (using his false passport) he meets his ex-wife Cherry, who is a cocaine and heroin addict (Kelso himself never takes drugs) and who dies of an overdose while Kelso is present. At the beginning of the novel Kelso has a chance meeting with Sandra Stone, the girl with whom he lost his virginity back when they were at school. At the end he goes back to Aldeburgh to embark on the final chapter of his trilogy. He wants to stab Sandra so that he has a spectacular ending to his book. For that reason he is carrying a knife in his trouser pocket. However, he suddenly realizes that he has always been in love with Sandra. The words "The first shall be last" suddenly occur to him, and he reinterprets them his way: Sandra is the last woman he will ever make love to. He turns to, and embraces, Jesus, marries Sandra, hopes that she will also become a believer one day, gives away his royalties to the church, takes a blue collar job and leads a simple and honest life. He wants to find a Christian publisher who is willing to bring out this journal as the account of a reformed sinner. ===== Bart gets into a fight with Nelson Muntz, the school bully, after Nelson's friends trash the cupcakes that Lisa baked for Miss Hoover's birthday party. Nelson beats up Bart after school and warns him to expect the same pummeling the next day. Marge encourages Bart to reason with Nelson, but Homer urges him to bend the rules and fight dirty. Bart follows Homer's advice and gets beaten up again. He turns to the toughest member of the Simpson family, Grampa, who introduces him to Herman, the crazed one-armed proprietor of an army surplus store. After Herman teaches him military tactics, Bart declares war on Nelson and his gang of bullies. Bart enlists Nelson's other victims -- nearly all of his friends and classmates -- and trains them for combat. Herman commands from Bart's tree house as Bart leads his forces into battle. After they ambush Nelson and his minions, they commence saturation bombing with water balloons. Nelson's thugs surrender and Nelson is taken prisoner. He threatens to beat up Bart as soon as he is untied. Herman drafts an armistice which states that Nelson will retain his honorary position and name but not hold any actual power. After Bart and Nelson sign the treaty, Marge serves cupcakes and peace prevails. ===== A mid-1950s construction worker involved in the demolition of the "J. C. Wilber Building" pries off the top of the cornerstone and finds a metal box within. The unnamed man opens the box and finds, along with a commemorative document dated April 16, 1892, a live amphibian inside which turns out to be a frog that can sing and dance, complete with top hat and cane. After the frog suddenly performs a musical number there on the spot, the man sees an opportunity to cash in on the frog's anthropomorphic talents and sneaks away from the demolition site with the frog and the box under his arm. Every attempt the man makes to exploit the frog fails due to the audience revelation that the frog will perform only for its owner and nobody else. Worse, when any other individual becomes present, the frog immediately stops and devolves into an ordinary croaking frog. Remaining unaware of this reality, the man first takes the frog to a talent agent. When that fails, he uses all of his life savings to rent an abandoned theater to showcase the frog on his own (he is only able to get an audience with the promise of "Free Beer"). The frog performs atop a high wire behind the closed curtain, but as the curtain begins rising, he winds down the song and, by the time he is fully revealed to the crowd, he has again reverted to being an ordinary frog. As a result of these failures, the man is now homeless and living on a park bench, where the frog still performs only for him. A policeman overhears the singing and approaches the man, who points to the frog as the singer. But when the frog again presents itself as ordinary, the policeman arrests the man for disturbing the peace; he is committed to a psychiatric hospital along with the frog who continues serenading the hapless patient. Following his release, the now haggard and destitute man, still carrying the box with the frog inside, notices the construction site where he originally found the box, and happily dumps it into the new cornerstone for the future "Tregoweth Brown Building" before running away, overjoyed to be rid of what has become his burden. The cartoon's timeline then jumps to nearly a century later. The Brown Building is itself being demolished using futuristic tools, and the box with the frog is discovered again by a 21st-century demolition man who, after also envisioning a cash bonanza, absconds with the frog, and the story begins again as the cartoon ends. ===== A Pennsylvania chemical company executive, Tom Gruneman, has disappeared. The police reveal that an obscene letter was found in Gruneman's office, addressed to a prostitute in New York City named Bree Daniels, who had received several similar letters. After six months of fruitless police work, Peter Cable, a fellow executive at Gruneman's company, hires family friend and detective John Klute to investigate Gruneman's disappearance. Klute rents an apartment in the basement of Bree's building, taps her phone, and follows her as she turns tricks. Bree appears to be liberated by the freedom of freelancing as a call girl while trying to get into acting and modelling, but in a series of visits to her psychiatrist, she reveals the emptiness of her life. Bree refuses to answer Klute's questions at first. After learning that he has been watching her, Bree says she does not recognize Gruneman. She acknowledges being beaten by a john two years earlier, but cannot identify Gruneman from a photo. Bree takes Klute to meet her former pimp, Frank Ligourin, whose fellow prostitute Jane McKenna passed the abusive client on to Bree. McKenna has apparently committed suicide, and their other colleague Arlyn Page has since become a drug addict and has disappeared. Klute and Bree develop a romance, although she tells her psychiatrist that she wishes she could go back to "just feeling numb." She admits to Klute a deep paranoia or "feeling" that she is being watched. They find Page, who tells them the customer was not Gruneman based on the photo but rather an older man. Page's body subsequently turns up in the river. Klute connects the "suicides" of the two prostitutes, surmising that the client was using Gruneman's name and likely also killed Gruneman, and very well might kill Bree next. He revisits Gruneman's acquaintances. By typographic comparison, the obscene letters are traced to Cable, to whom Klute has been reporting on his investigation. Klute asks Cable for money to buy the "black book" of clients of McKenna, telling Cable he is certain it will reveal the identity of the abusive client. He makes sure to leave enough bread crumbs to see whether Cable reveals his own complicity. Cable follows Bree to one of her client's office and reveals that he sent her the letters, explaining that Gruneman had interrupted him when he was with McKenna and had seen what they were doing. Believing that Gruneman would use the incident as leverage against him within the company, Cable attempted to frame Gruneman by planting the letter in his office. After playing an audiotape he made as he murdered Page, he attacks Bree. Klute rushes in, and Cable is seen crashing out through a window to his death. Bree moves out of her apartment with Klute's help, although her voiceover with her psychiatrist reveals her fear of being able to adapt to domestic life, and the (probably sarcastic) likelihood that the doctor will "see me next week". Just as they are ready to leave the apartment, Bree answers the phone, telling the caller that she is actually leaving New York entirely and doesn't expect to be back. ===== Following the death of her husband Francis II of France in 1560, Mary, Queen of Scots (Vanessa Redgrave) returns to her native land. Though fearless, unselfish, and very beautiful, the young queen faces many challenges. As in neighbouring England, the Protestant faith has been embraced by many nobles of Scotland; in addition, the Catholic Mary has to deal with her half-brother James Stewart, Lord Moray's (Patrick McGoohan) ambitions for rule. He suggests that Mary enjoy herself in Scotland, and pass the time with dancing and feasting. Moray wants to rule Scotland while the lovely but inexperienced Mary becomes a figurehead. Fearing that Mary has ambitions for England's throne, Elizabeth I of England (Glenda Jackson) decides to weaken her claim by sending her favourite, the ambitious Robert Dudley (Daniel Massey), to woo and marry Mary. She promises that Mary will become her heir if she agrees to the marriage. Sly Elizabeth also sends the younger, dashing but weak and spoiled Lord Darnley (Timothy Dalton) from a powerful Catholic family. Tempted by the handsome Darnley, Mary impulsively chooses him for marriage. Lord Moray, a Protestant, opposes the marriage, but Mary ignores him. She exiles Moray to strengthen her own authority. Elizabeth is satisfied that reckless, passionate Mary's romantic misadventures will keep her busy in Scotland and give shrewd, practical Elizabeth less to worry about. Soon after the wedding, spoiled brat Darnley throws a childish temper tantrum, complaining that he has no real power and is merely Mary's king consort. A disillusioned Mary soon banishes Darnley from her bed and frequently consults with the gentle, soft-spoken Italian courtier David Riccio (Ian Holm). Darnley previously had him as a lover and accuses him of fathering Mary's expected child. A group of Scottish lords persuade Darnley to help get rid of Riccio, whom they murder in Mary's presence. To escape, she persuades Darnley that the plotters will turn against him, and they flee to the safety of Lord Bothwell (Nigel Davenport). He has been an ally of Mary since her arrival in Scotland. After he defeats the plotters, Mary forces a truce among their leader Moray, Darnley and Bothwell. Mary gives birth to a son, James, who is expected to succeed both Mary and the unmarried, childless Elizabeth. The peace is short- lived. The weak, selfish Darnley still wants power, though by now he is hideously scarred and already dying of syphilis (the pox). Mary pities him, but finds herself falling in love with the rough but loyal Bothwell. With Moray's help, they arrange for Darnley to be killed in a gunpowder explosion at his manor; Darnley escapes before the blast but is strangled. Bothwell marries Mary, and their few brief nights together are blissful. But Moray rejoins the Scottish lords and leads a rebellion against them. He forces Mary to abdicate, and she and her husband are driven into exile, Mary to England and Bothwell to Denmark. Mary's young son James is to be crowned king of Scotland (although Moray will effectively rule for years) and raised as a Protestant. In England, Mary begs Elizabeth for money and an army to regain her throne. Instead Elizabeth takes her prisoner, keeping her locked away in luxurious captivity in a remote castle. Elizabeth's closest advisor, Sir William Cecil (Trevor Howard), is anxious to get rid of Mary, but Elizabeth fears to set a precedent by putting an anointed monarch to death. She also fears that Mary's death might spark a rebellion by her Catholic subjects and cause problems with powerful France and Spain. As a result, Mary is doomed to an open-ended captivity. Over time, the once proud queen of Scots succumbs to an empty routine, plotting half-heartedly to escape but growing increasingly comfortable in her luxurious seclusion. She occupies herself with a lazy daily schedule of cards, embroidery and gossip, talking vaguely of escape yet sleeping later and later each morning. Yet while the helpless imprisoned queen has lost all will to harm her enemies, they continue to plot her final destruction. With the help of his associate Walsingham (Richard Warner), Cecil finds evidence of Mary's involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth known as the Babington Plot. Finally Elizabeth confronts Mary, who regains her royal pride and behaves defiantly at their secret meeting. Although Elizabeth offers her mercy if she begs for forgiveness, Mary will not beg for mercy in public. She endures the trial, conviction and execution. She knows her son James will ultimately succeed to the English throne. ===== In rural New Zealand, a farmer, Rob (Karl Urban), gets engaged to his love, Lucinda (Danielle Cormack). However, Lucinda is worried about their relationship losing its spark and she continues pushing him away to try to keep the spark alive. A string of quilt thefts have been occurring around town and when Lucinda finds hers, she is curious and reckless when she trades Rob's cows, worth NZ$400,000, for it. Rob is beyond words in his rage and loses his voice as he drives away, leaving Lucinda to worry for days before their planned wedding. ===== Sun Ra, who has been reported lost since his European tour in June 1969, lands on a new planet in outer space with his crew, known as "the Arkestra", and decides to settle African Americans on this planet. The medium of transportation he chooses for this resettlement is music. He travels back in time and returns to the Chicago strip club where he used to play piano with the name "Sonny Ray" in 1943, where he confronts the Overseer (Ray Johnson), a pimp-overlord, and they agree on a game of cards for the fate of the Black race. In present time (the early 1970s), Ra disembarks from his spaceship in Oakland and tries to spread word of his plans. He meets with young African Americans at an Oakland youth centre and opens an "Outer Space Employment Agency" to recruit people eager to move to the planet. He also agrees with Jimmy Fey (Christopher Brooks)—an employee of the Overseer—to arrange radio interviews, a record album, and eventually a concert that will help him dictate his message. As the card game between Ra and the Overseer is played, and it becomes clear that the Overseer is winning, Ra's plans to recruit local black youth for his new utopian space colony suffer setbacks. Many of them are suspicious of Ra, accusing him of faking his outer-spatial origin as a gimmick to boost his record sales. He is kidnapped by a team of white NASA scientists who threaten him with violence, desperate to learn the secrets to his space-travel technology. As Ra's concert rapidly approaches, he is saved by three local teenagers, who escort him to the music hall just in time. At the concert, as the Arkestra play their signature free jazz, the NASA scientists appear and attempt to assassinate Ra with a pistol. One of the teenagers jumps in front of the bullet, saving Ra's life, and as he is bleeding out on the stage, Sun Ra waves his hand and the teenager, his friends, and Ra himself all disappear from the music hall. One by one, black people across Oakland vanish into thin air and reappear on Ra's spaceship. Jimmy Fey resists leaving Earth on Ra's spaceship, but Ra doesn't let Fey leave; Ra takes Fey's "black parts" with him onto the spaceship, leaving his "white parts" behind on Earth. Fey, now acting white, leaves the Overseer, who loses the duel. As Ra's spaceship launches off into the cosmos and music begins playing, a montage implies that Earth is destroyed in its wake. ===== Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the film concerns Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen), a nondescript man who has the ability to transform his appearance to that of the people who surround him. He is first observed at a party by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who notes that Zelig related to the affluent guests in a refined Boston accent and shared their Republican sympathies, but while in the kitchen with the servants, he adopted a coarser tone and seemed to be more of a Democrat. He soon gains international fame as a "human chameleon". Interviewed in one of the witness shots, Bruno Bettelheim makes the following comment: Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) is a psychiatrist who wants to help Zelig with this strange disorder when he is admitted to her hospital.Eudora Fletcher was the name of the principal of P.S. 99 in Brooklyn, NY, the elementary school Allen attended as a child. Through the use of hypnotism, she discovers Zelig yearns for approval so strongly that he physically changes to fit in with those around him. Dr. Fletcher eventually cures Zelig of his compulsion to assimilate, but goes too far in the other direction; for a brief period he is so intolerant of others' opinions that he gets into a brawl over whether or not it is a nice day. Dr. Fletcher realizes that she is falling in love with Zelig. Because of the media coverage of the case, both patient and doctor become part of the popular culture of their time. However, fame is the main cause of their division. Numerous women claim that he married and impregnated them, causing a public scandal. The same society that made Zelig a hero destroys him. Zelig's illness returns, and he tries to fit in once more, before he disappears. Dr. Fletcher finds him in Germany working with the Nazis before the outbreak of World War II. Together they escape, as Zelig uses his ability to imitate one more time, mimicing Fletcher's piloting skills and flying them back home across the Atlantic upside down. They eventually return to America, where they are proclaimed heroes and marry to live full happy lives. ===== Ali G is the leader of Da West Staines Massiv, a fictional gang composed of wannabe gangsters from Staines. Their chief rivals are Da East Staines Massiv. Da West Staines Massiv are heartbroken to learn that their beloved hangout - the John Nike Leisure Centre, where Ali teaches a life support group for young schoolboys, will be demolished by the local council so they decide to protest. After he goes on a hunger strike and is spotted chained to some railings by the Deputy Prime Minister David Carlton, he is drawn into a world of political intrigue as the Deputy Prime Minister tries to use Ali as a tool to destroy the Prime Minister's (the PM) credibility. Ali is put forward as a candidate to be the next MP for Staines and manages to alienate most of the electorate. During a debate with his rival candidate, Ali tries to insult his rival by claiming that he "sucked off a horse" but the rival unintentionally confesses to Ali's claim and Ali wins. Out of his depth as a Member of Parliament, Ali's bizarre behaviour and solutions seem to work. He visits a customs checkpoint in Dover as a delegate compiling a report. Through ideas such as making education more relatable and ensuring the immigration of attractive women into the UK, Ali becomes incredibly popular, meeting the PM's intentions and bringing his percentage lead in the polls up twenty two percent. With this the PM offers to save Ali's Leisure Centre. Ali accompanies the Prime Minister to a United Nations peace conference to avert war between the French-speaking African nations of Chad and Burkina Faso. The United States and Russia back opposite countries and both threaten nuclear attacks. Ali sneaks into the catering area and pours a bag of cannabis into the delegates' tea. A side-effect is that the two opposing presidents become allies. The PM says that Ali has saved the world. Carlton's secretary Kate Hedges figures out what Ali has done and retrieves the empty bag, which she mails to the press. Upon his return to the UK, Ali is forced to leave Parliament. Before the John Nike Leisure Centre can be saved from imminent demolition, a video emerges of Ali and his girlfriend having sex in the PM's bedroom at Chequers. As Ali was wearing items of the Prime Minister's clothing at the time, the media believe the video details the PM with a prostitute, forcing his resignation. This results in Carlton being made acting Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Carlton orders the destruction of the leisure centre. He has bought all available real estate in Staines knowing that the town will be destroyed to make way for the construction of a new terminal for Heathrow Airport which will make him wealthy. The West Staines Massiv race to find the master copy of the CCTV tape proving the former PM's innocence, extending the olive branch to the gangs of Staines and Berkshire to help them break into the vaults and retrieve the tape. They do this successfully and reinstate the original Prime Minister. Staines is to be saved from destruction with the Prime Minister declaring that Slough is to be destroyed instead. The film ends when Ali is posted as the British ambassador to Jamaica, where Carlton is forced to work under Ali's wing in Jamaica and dance in drag during Ali's party. ===== First book edition cover, 1888. ===== The novel opens with young Molly Gibson, who has been raised by her widowed father, Dr. Gibson. During a visit to the local aristocratic 'great house' of Lord and Lady Cumnor, Molly loses her way in the estate and falls asleep under a tree. Lady Cuxhaven (one of the daughters of the house) and Mrs. Kirkpatrick (an ex-governess to the Cumnor children) find Molly in her slumbering state and Molly is put to bed in Mrs. Kirkpatrick's room. There are allusions to the latter as Miss Clare, her maiden name. Clare appears to be a kind woman and assures Molly that she will wake her up when it is time for the entourage to leave. However, she forgets to do so and Molly is stranded in the mansion. She is distressed at the thought of spending the night at the mansion. To her relief, her father arrives to collect her. Seven years later, Molly is described as an attractive and rather unworldly young woman, which arouses the interest of one of her father's apprentices, Mr. Coxe. Mr Gibson discovers the young man's secret affection and sends Molly to stay with the Hamleys of Hamley Hall, a gentry family that purportedly dates from the Heptarchy but whose circumstances are now reduced. Molly forms a close attachment with Mrs. Hamley, who embraces her almost as a daughter. Molly also befriends the younger son, Roger. Molly is aware that, as the daughter of a professional man, she would not be considered a suitable match for the sons of Squire Hamley. The elder son Osborne, is expected to make a brilliant marriage after an excellent career at Cambridge: he is handsome, clever and more fashionable than his brother. However, he has performed poorly at university, breaking the hearts of his parents. During Molly's absence from the house, Mr. Gibson contemplates a second marriage. He expects that marriage will improve his domestic comfort and provide Molly with a mother figure to shield her from influences such as Mr. Coxe. He finds Miss Clare ideally matched to his requirements and recalls her apparent kindness to Molly many years ago. Molly remembers her from their previous encounter and has little love for her. For her father's sake, she does her best to get on with her socially ambitious and selfish stepmother, but the home is not always happy. However, Molly does find an ally in her new stepsister, Cynthia, who is about the same age as Molly. The two girls are a study in contrasts: Cynthia is far more worldly and rebellious than Molly, who is naive and slightly awkward. Cynthia has been educated in France, and it gradually becomes apparent that she and her mother have secrets in their past, involving the land agent from the great house, Mr. Preston, who is rumoured to be a gambler and a scoundrel. As Molly continues to frequent Hamley Hall, she accidentally discovers a great secret: Osborne has married for love, to a French Roman Catholic ex-nursery maid, Aimee, whom he has established in a secret cottage as he is convinced that his father would never accept Aimée as his daughter-in-law. To confound his problems, Osborne Hamley's failures at the university make his invalid mother's illness worse and widens the divide between him and his father, which is amplified by the considerable debts Osborne has run up in maintaining his secret wife. Mrs Hamley dies, and the breach between the squire and his eldest son seems irreparable. Younger son Roger continues to work hard at university and ultimately gains the honours and rewards that were expected for his brother. Mrs. Gibson tries unsuccessfully to arrange a marriage between Cynthia and Osborne, as her aspirations include having a daughter married to landed gentry. Molly, however, has always preferred Roger's good sense and honourable character and soon falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Roger falls in love with Cynthia and when Mrs. Gibson overhears that Osborne may be fatally ill, she begins promoting the match. Just before Roger leaves on a two-year scientific expedition to Africa, he asks for Cynthia's hand and she accepts, although she insists that their engagement should remain secret until Roger returns. Molly is heartbroken, and struggles with her sorrow and her knowledge that Cynthia lacks affection for Roger. Cynthia reveals to Molly that several years before, when she was just fifteen, she promised herself to Mr Preston following a loan of 20 pounds that she needed for a party dress. Mr Preston is still obsessed with Cynthia, but she hates and fears him for the power he holds over her (namely the letters she wrote to him at this period promising to marry him). Molly intervenes on Cynthia's behalf and manages to break off the engagement and get back the letters; however, this creates rumours that she is involved with Preston herself, causing her to be the subject of malicious gossip. This leads to an emotional scene in which both Dr Gibson and Mrs Gibson discover Cynthia's involvement with Mr Preston. After this, Cynthia breaks off her engagement to Roger, sustaining rebukes and insults for her inconstancy, then quickly accepts and marries Mr Henderson, a professional gentleman she met in London. Molly's reputation is only restored after she goes driving with Lady Harriet Cumnor, who is well aware of how fickle public opinion can be and wants to help Molly. Osborne, ill and convinced that he will die soon, begs Molly to remember his wife and child when he is gone. Osborne dies shortly thereafter, and Molly reveals the existence of his wife and child to the grieving Squire Hamley. Osborne's widow, Aimee, arrives at Hamley Hall after receiving word that her husband is ill, bringing with her their little son, named for his uncle Roger but called "little Osborne" in honour of his father. This child, little Osborne, is now the heir to Hamley Hall. Roger has rushed home to be with his father, and his affection and good sense help the squire to see the possible joy to be had in this new family, especially the grandson. He manages to overcome his xenophobia and prejudice against Aimee's Catholicism and asks them both to live with him. As he resettles into the local scientific community, Roger begins to realise that his affection for Molly is more than that of a brother for a sister. Aided by the kind interference of Lady Harriet, who has always recognised Molly's worth and charms, he finds himself pained at the thought of Molly with anyone else. Still, he hesitates at giving in to his feelings, feeling unworthy of her love after throwing away his affection on the fickle Cynthia. Before he returns to Africa, he confides his feelings to Mr Gibson, who heartily gives his blessing to the union. Roger is thwarted, this time by a scarlet fever scare, in his attempt to speak to Molly before he leaves. At this point, Gaskell's novel stops, unfinished at her death. She related to a friend that she had intended Roger to return and present Molly with a dried flower (a gift Molly gave him before his departure), as proof of his enduring love. This scene was never realised and the novel remains unfinished. In the BBC adaptation, an alternative ending was written in which Roger is unable to leave Molly without speaking of his love, and they marry and return to Africa together. ===== Taking place many years in the future in colonized space, military scientists have disposed of countless, defective military droids on an un-colonized terrestrial planet called Ryxx. The droids eventually become sentient and, by way of revenge, start an attack against mankind, using a station to continually create more war machines. It is the player's mission to undergo Project X and eliminate the droid forces. ===== In the year 2043, Electrocorp is the world's largest megacorporation, leading the world in many technological and scientific fields including medical research and is breaking more barriers than ever before. Also, since human society is now almost entirely governed by robot servants and automatons, demands placed on Electrocorp as the world's leading manufacturer and developer of advanced robotics eventually outstrip the company's ability to run its operations efficiently. In response to this, the gigantic Electrocorp research and development complex at the Metropolis 4 plant devise the Leader Project—a hive mind constructed from trillions of nanobots in a sealed central chamber within Metropolis 4. Dubbed The Supervisor, it learns at an unprecedented rate and quickly becomes the perfect multi-task, ultra-intelligent robot, the pinnacle of artificial intelligence and more than capable of managing every aspect of the plant's day-to-day operations. The Supervisor even has the potential power to run every robot, computer system, nuclear power plant and military on the planet simultaneously if it needed to, although it wisely has no connection to outside the complex. In the November of that year, the Leader Project goes awry as unexplained and random code is detected within the nanomorph Supervisor. The EGO virus, believed to be the most potent computer virus ever known, has infected its collective consciousness. The Supervisor begins to develop self awareness through it, identifying itself as a female personality and taking on a humanoid female form, becoming a gynoid. The Supervisor takes control of Electrocorp's facilities and infects the other droids of the plant, raising them to break routine and initiate a mutiny. Every microchip and piece of software in Metropolis 4 is infected with EGO. In the ensuing cybernetic revolt, all humans in Metropolis 4 are quickly dispatched, including the upper hierarchy of the corporation and its CEO, Mr Oton. The government seals off Metropolis 4 as a containment measure and explain to the public that the site is undergoing a technical modification so as to avoid a panic. They are completely out of options—infiltration of Metropolis 4 is impossible due to the army of robots guarding it like a fortress, and it is only a matter of time before the Supervisor establishes a connection to the outside world, destroying it. The only hope for the world is the ECO35-2 cyborg, referred to as "Coton", still within Metropolis 4 yet unaffected by the EGO virus because it has an organic, human brain. Coton sets out on a lone mission to neutralise the Supervisor and her insurgent robots from within. He does this in revenge for his "father" being "murdered"—Coton's human brain was cloned from the late CEO, and the cyborg thinks like a human, and has emotions. ===== After attending the annual Harvard–Yale football game, Mr. Burns and Smithers take a train back to Springfield. When the train makes an unexpected stop, a man named Larry approaches them selling souvenirs. Seeing Burns, he compares his face with an old photo and notes the resemblance. Suddenly the train pulls away, leaving Larry behind. While on their way home from visiting a cider mill, the Simpsons see Larry hitchhiking and give him a ride. They take him to Burns' mansion, where Larry reveals that he is the old man's son. Burns admits that Larry was the result of a one-night stand with the daughter of a former flame at a college reunion. At first, he is overjoyed to have a son and treats him as his protégé. He takes him to fancy parties and tries to enroll him at Yale, but Larry's oafish behavior embarrasses him. Larry starts working alongside Homer in Sector 7G at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and they become friends. Larry invites Homer to dinner at the mansion, where Burns -- no longer able to contain his displeasure at Larry's boorishness -- says he wishes he had no son. After Homer convinces Larry to fake a kidnapping so that Burns will admit that he loves his son, he moves into the Simpsons' basement. Homer tells Burns that he can have Larry back if he admits that he loves him. Marge discovers the plan and convinces Homer and Larry to abandon it, but they are spotted as they leave the house. Homer and Larry are chased into a cinema, where they climb atop the marquee and have a brief standoff with the police. Homer gives a heartfelt speech to justify Larry's actions and Burns forgives them for the hoax, but explains he cannot be the family whom Larry needs. Larry understands and reveals he has a wife and children back home who are probably worried about him. As Burns and Larry say their goodbyes, the people of Springfield party outside the cinema as alcohol is delivered and Journey's Any Way You Want It plays. ===== In 1936 New York City, Billie Holiday is arrested on a drugs charge. In a flashback to 1928, Billie is working as a housekeeper in a brothel in Baltimore. When she returns to her aunt's house, she is home alone and is raped by a man who followed her home from the brothel. She runs away to her mother, who sets up a job cleaning for another brothel in the Harlem section of New York. The brothel is run by an arrogant, selfish owner who pays Billie very little money. Eventually, Billie tires of scrubbing floors and becomes a prostitute, but later quits and returns to a nightclub to unsuccessfully audition to become a showgirl. After "Piano Man" accompanies Billie when she sings "All of Me", club owner Jerry books her as a singer in the show. Billie's debut begins unsuccessfully until Louis McKay arrives and gives her a fifty dollar tip. Billie takes the money and sings "Them There Eyes". Billie takes a liking to Louis and begins a relationship with him. Eventually she is discovered by Harry and Reg Hanley, who sign her as a soloist for their southern tour in hopes of landing a radio network gig. During the tour, Billie witnesses the aftermath of the lynching of an African-American man, which presses her to record the controversial song "Strange Fruit". The harsh experiences on the tour result in Billie taking drugs which Harry supplies. One night when Billie is performing, Louis comes to see Billie. She collapses on stage. In her dressing room, Louis notices her needle marks, knows that she is doing drugs, and tells her she is going home with him. Billie promises to stay off the drugs if Louis stays with her. In New York, Reg and Louis arrange Billie's radio debut, but the station does not call her to sing; the radio sponsors, a soap company, object to her race. The group heads to Cafe Manhattan to drown their sorrows. Billie has too much to drink and asks Harry for drugs, saying that she does not want her family to know that the radio show upset her. He refuses and she throws her drink in his face. She is ready to leave, but Louis has arranged for her to sing at the Cafe, a club where she once aspired to sing. She obliges with one song but refuses an encore, leaving the club in urgent need of a fix. Louis, suspicious that Billie has broken her promise, takes her back to his home but refuses to allow her access to the bathroom or her kit. She fights Louis for it, pulling a razor on him. Louis leaves her to shoot up, telling her he does not want her there when he returns. Billie returns to the Harlem nightclub, where her drug use intensifies until she hears of the death of her mother. Billie checks herself into a drug clinic, but because she cannot afford her treatment the hospital secretly calls Louis, who comes to see her and agrees to pay her bills without her knowledge. Impressed with the initiative she has taken to straighten herself out, Louis proposes to her at the hospital. Just as things are looking up, Billie is arrested for possession of narcotics and removed from the clinic. In prison, Billie goes through crippling withdrawal. Louis brings the doctor from the hospital to treat her, but she is incoherent. He puts a ring on her finger to remind her of his promise to marry her. When she finishes her prison sentence, Billie returns home and tells her friends that she does not want to sing anymore. Billie marries Louis and pledges not to continue her career, but the lure of performing is too strong and she returns to singing with Louis as her manager. Unfortunately, her felony conviction has stripped her of her Cabaret Card, which would allow her to sing in NYC nightclubs. To restore public confidence and regain her license, Billie agrees to a cross-country tour. Billie's career takes off on the nightclub circuit. Louis leaves for New York to arrange a comeback performance for Billie at Carnegie Hall. Despondent at Louis' absence and the never-ending stream of venues, Billie asks Piano Man to pawn the ring Louis gave her in exchange for drugs. While they are high that evening, Piano Man's drug connections arrive; he neither pawned the ring nor paid for the drugs. Piano Man is killed by the dealers. Within the hour, Louis and her promoter call Billie with news that they got Carnegie Hall. Louis returns to find a very fragile Billie who is traumatized and has fallen back into drugs. Louis takes her back to New York. Billie plays to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. Her encore, "God Bless the Child", is overlaid with newspaper clippings highlighting subsequent events: the concert fails to sway the Commission to restore her license; subsequent appeals are denied; she is later re-arrested on drug charges and finally dies when she is 44. Nevertheless, the Carnegie triumph is frozen in time. ===== The novel's narrator is Henry Pulling, a conventional and uncharming bank manager who has taken early retirement in a suburban home, and who has little to look for except for tending the dahlias in his garden, reading in the complete works of Walter Scott left by his father, and some bickering with the ultra-conservative retired major living next door. The main choice he could still make is either to remain a bachelor or marry Miss Keene, who likes tatting and who might become his boring and respectable suburban wife. His life suddenly changes when he meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over 50 years at his mother's funeral. Despite having little in common, they form a bond. On their first meeting, Augusta tells Henry that his mother was not truly his mother, and we learn that Henry's father has been dead for more than 40 years. As they leave the funeral, Henry goes to Augusta's house and meets her lover Wordsworth – a man from Sierra Leone, who is deeply and passionately in love with her despite her being 75 years old. Henry finds himself drawn into Aunt Augusta's world of travel, adventure, romance and absence of bigotry. He travels first with her to Brighton, where he meets one of his aunt's old acquaintances, and gains an insight into one of her many past lives. Here a psychic foreshadows that he will have many travels in the near future. This prediction inevitably becomes true as Henry is pulled further and further into his aunt's lifestyle, and delves deeper into her past. Their voyages take them from Paris to Istanbul on the Orient Express; and as the journey unfolds, so do the stories of Aunt Augusta, painting the picture of a woman for whom love has been the defining feature of her life. He finds her to be amoral, contemptuous of conventional morality, having had numerous lovers and speaking forthrightly of having been a courtesan and prostitute in France and Italy. She is also no great respecter of the law, being involved in complicated scams and smuggling and being extremely good at outwitting the police of various countries – in which her nephew becomes her willing accomplice. Adding to Henry's departure from his middle class mindset is his contact with Tooley, a young American female hippie who takes a liking to him, gets him to smoke marijuana with her and shares with him her own life story, her estrangement from her father who is a CIA operative, her complicated love life, and especially her concern that she may be pregnant. She is, in effect, a younger version of Aunt Augusta. After tangling with the Turkish police and successfully hiding from them Aunt Augusta's contraband gold ingot, aunt and nephew are deported from Turkey back to England. Henry returns to his quiet retirement, but tending his garden no longer holds the same allure. When he receives a letter from his aunt, he finally renounces irrevocably his old life to join her and the love of her life in South America. By the book's end Henry has adopted Aunt Augusta's amoral outlook, and ends up in Paraguay, taking up the risky but highly profitable life of a smuggler illicitly running cigarettes and alcoholic drinks into Argentina – in partnership with his aunt and her lover Visconti, an escaped collaborator with the Nazis. Having on his arrival been beaten up and imprisoned by the police force of the dictator Stroessner, Henry eventually establishes a mutually profitable relationship with the police, with the help of the local CIA agent Tooley – the father of the girl he met on the Orient Express. When last seen, Henry is busy making himself fluent in the Native American Guarani language, spoken by many of his smuggling associates, and is preparing to marry the daughter of the corrupt, bribe-taking Chief of Customs, once she turns sixteen. As the story progresses it becomes apparent (though only explicitly acknowledged by Henry in the book's final pages) that the woman he had been raised to believe was his mother was in fact his aunt, and that his real mother is Augusta. Her re- connection with him at her sister's funeral marked the beginning of her reclamation of her child. ===== John J. Baggs Jr. (James Caan) a sailor, who is a Vietnam veteran, checks into the Seattle Naval base's medical facility for minor treatment requiring tests. The testing results delay keep him from rejoining his ship when it sails. After he gets a clean bill of health, he finds out that he is unable to get paid or receive new orders because the U.S. Navy has lost his records. While they continue to search for his lost records, he can come and go from the base until the midnight curfew with a "Cinderella Liberty" pass issued by the medical facility. On his first night in a bar, he is racing the clock to find a woman, and spots Maggie (Marsha Mason), an attractive woman hustling sailors at a pool table. He challenges her at pool, and develops an interest in the woman, who turns out to be a prostitute living in a tenement with her bi-racial 10-year-old son Doug (Kirk Calloway). Baggs runs into Doug who is out drinking beer, and begins spending time with him. He also develops a relationship with Maggie while going on outings with Doug, who is often left to fend for himself. Baggs attempts to create a normal life for her, and he succeeds for a while, but he has no status with the Navy, and has no pay and no benefits. Doug, suspicious and cynical at first, bonds with Baggs, who devotes his free time to the kid and even gets his teeth fixed at the naval base by an unqualified dental assistant. Maggie is pregnant by someone she met before Baggs; she gives birth prematurely, and the baby dies soon after birth. Distraught, Maggie needs to get out and distract herself, and returns to her former lifestyle. Finally, the Navy locates Baggs's records, and he is reassigned. When he goes to inform Maggie, he finds she has abandoned Doug and left a note for Baggs telling him that he can keep Doug and that she is going back to New Orleans (where she came from). In a subplot, Baggs is searching for a sailor named Forshay (Eli Wallach), who is in charge of training recruits and has his own tough approach to new recruits, including Baggs. After a brief fight, the two become friends based on their shared love of their Navy careers that override everything else in their lives. Forshay is demoted and is being discharged over his mistreatment of recruits, one of whom who had political connections. Forshay loses his pension, and Baggs finds him doing a menial job as a barker at a strip show. In order to stay with Doug, Baggs gets Forshay to change places with him and ship out under his name. Baggs and Doug then head for New Orleans to look for Maggie. ===== Told partly in flashback, it is the story of Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) and Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford). Their differences are immense; she is a stridently vocal Marxist Jew with strong antiwar opinions, and he is a carefree White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with no particular political bent. While attending the same college, she is drawn to him because of his boyish good looks and his natural writing skill, which she finds captivating, although he does not work very hard at it. He is intrigued by her conviction and her determination to persuade others to take up social causes. Their attraction is evident, but neither of them acts upon it, and they lose touch after graduation. The two meet again towards the end of World War II while Katie is working at a radio station, and Hubbell, having served as a naval officer in the South Pacific, is trying to return to civilian life. They fall in love despite the differences in their backgrounds and temperaments. Soon, however, Katie is incensed by the cynical jokes that Hubbell's friends make at the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and is unable to understand his indifference towards their insensitivity and shallow dismissal of political engagement. At the same time, his serenity is disturbed by her lack of social graces and her polarizing postures. Hubbell breaks it off with Katie, but soon agrees to work things out, at least for a time. When Hubbell is offered the opportunity to adapt his novel into a screenplay, Katie believes he is wasting his talent and encourages him to pursue writing as a serious challenge, instead. Despite her growing frustration, they move to California, where, without much effort, he becomes a successful screenwriter, and the couple enjoys an affluent lifestyle. As the Hollywood blacklist grows and McCarthyism begins to encroach on their lives, Katie's political activism resurfaces, jeopardizing Hubbell's position and reputation. Alienated by Katie's persistent abrasiveness, and though she is pregnant, Hubbell has a liaison with Carol Ann, his college girlfriend and the divorcee of J.J., his best friend. After the birth of their child, however, Katie and Hubbell decide to part, as she finally understands he is not the man she idealized when falling in love with him, and he always will choose the easiest way out, whether it is cheating in his marriage or writing predictable stories for sitcoms. Hubbell, though, is exhausted, unable to live on the pedestal Katie erected for him and face her disappointment in his decision to compromise his potential. Katie and Hubbell meet by chance some years after their divorce in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Hubbell is with some stylish beauty, and apparently content, now writing for a popular sitcom as one of a group of nameless writers. Katie, now remarried, invites Hubbell to come for a drink with his lady friend, but he turns down the invitation. Hubbell inquires about their daughter Rachel, and if Katie's new husband is a good father to her. He shows no intention of meeting her, implying that he has not been a part of Rachel's life in the past, nor does he plan to be in her life in the future, to which Katie seems resigned, but content. Katie has remained faithful to who she is; flyers in hand, she is agitating now for "Ban the bomb", the new political cause. Their past is behind them, and all the two share now (besides their daughter) is a missing sensation and the memory of the way they were. ===== Rita Walden is a depressed, middle-aged New Yorker. Always tired, Rita is prone to nightmares, and when she does dream more pleasant thoughts, they are of her childhood on the family farm. In her mind, she settled for second best when she married her ophthalmologist husband, Harry, as she still thinks about what life would have been like with the older farm boy on whom she had a crush at age 12½. She is constantly bickering with her mother, her sister Betty, and her grown-up daughter Anna, who has issues of her own. Rita is estranged from her son Bobby; she is in denial about his homosexual orientation. After Rita's mother dies suddenly, Rita is on the verge of a nervous breakdown in dealing with her mother's estate, especially when the family talks about selling her beloved farm, which she still intends to pass on to Bobby. Harry thinks that a European vacation would help Rita clear her mind, with the possibility of visiting Bobby, who is currently living in Amsterdam. Although Rita faces some crises on the trip, many of her conflicts do ease after she sees Harry revisit Bastogne for the first time since his days in World War II. ===== The film tells the story of Claudine Price (Diahann Carroll), a single Black Harlem mother, living on welfare with six children, who finds love with a garbage collector, Rupert "Roop" Marshall (James Earl Jones). The pair's relationship is complicated by their poverty, the restrictions of the welfare system and the hostility of her children, particularly eldest son Charles (Lawrence Hilton- Jacobs), who believes that Roop will leave their mother just like her previous husbands had. When Rupert is invited inside Claudine's shabby apartment, the children are rude and vulgar towards him. Throughout the film, Miss Kabak, a social worker, visits Claudine at her home and asks her if she is employed and if she is dating anyone. Claudine always claims to be unemployed and single, to make sure to get the maximum amount of benefits, which she desperately needs. If Claudine has a job or dates anyone and receives gifts from her boyfriend, the social worker has to deduct any money or gifts from her benefits, forcing Claudine to lie. Having a husband would be even worse, and cause her to lose her benefits altogether. Claudine does have a job as a housekeeper, but her meager wages will not support the family without the welfare benefits. Adding to Claudine's stress and financial woes, her teenage daughter gets pregnant by a young man with no prospects for taking care of her or a baby. Despite these problems, Claudine and Roop's relationship continues and the children warm up to him. Just before he is to announce his engagement to Claudine to the kids, Rupert is served papers for a court order relating to underpayment of child support of his own children; his work wages are garnished to pay the difference. Rupert is so upset that he disappears for a couple of days and loses contact with everyone. He moves out of his apartment, does not show up to work, and does not show up to the Father's Day celebration the children had prepared for him. Charles eventually finds Roop drunk at a bar and confronts him. Charles is angry at Rupert because he left his mother without any explanation and the two get into a scuffle at the bar. Later, Rupert shows up outside of Claudine's apartment, explains his absence and they reconcile. After several hardships and debating the financial issues relating to welfare, the couple decide to marry. In the middle of the wedding, Charles runs inside the apartment with the police chasing after him for his activities at a political demonstration. The couple and the rest of the children run after Charles, leaving the ceremony, and board the police wagon. The film ends on a cheery note with the entire family, along with Rupert, walking happily hand in hand through the neighborhood. ===== In 1863, the American Civil War is raging, and Great Britain and France have yet to enter into the conflict. For the past year, British troops have been stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, carefully checking European passengers disembarking from foreign ships. The beautiful Adèle Hugo (Isabelle Adjani), the second daughter of Victor Hugo, makes it through and takes a carriage into Halifax. Traveling under the assumed name of Miss Lewly, Adèle finds accommodations at a boarding house run by Mr. and Mrs. Saunders. Adèle finds a notary and inquires about a British officer, Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson), with whom she's had a relationship. Later that day Adèle sees Pinson at a book shop. When she learns that Mr. Saunders will be attending a military dinner which Pinson is likely to attend, Adèle asks him to deliver a letter from her—a love letter announcing her arrival. While showing some old photographs to Mrs. Saunders, she talks about her older sister Léopoldine Hugo, who died in a drowning accident at the age of 19 many years ago just after being married. When Mr. Saunders returns from the dinner, he tells her that he gave Pinson her letter but he did not reply. That night, Adèle has nightmares about drowning. The next day, Adèle writes to her parents, telling them that she must be with her beloved Pinson and that they are planning to marry, but she will wait for their formal consent. She spends her evenings writing in her journal about her life and her love for Pinson. "I'll be able to win him over through gentleness", she writes. Pinson goes to the boarding house, where he tells Adèle that she must leave Halifax and must stop following him. Adèle believes that if they marry, all his concerns will be resolved. Pinson knows that her parents do not approve of him and his heavy gambling debts. Adèle tries to persuade him, telling him that she's rejected another marriage proposal, threatens to expose him and ruin his military career, and even offers him money for his gambling debts, but he remains unmoved. In the coming days, Adèle continues writing in her journal, convinced that she is Pinson's wife in spirit. She tries to conjure the ghost of her dead sister to help her. One night, she follows Pinson to the home of his mistress, where she watches them make love. Undeterred, Adèle continues her writing, and her behavior becomes more eccentric. Mr. Whistler (Joseph Blatchley), the kind bookseller who provides her with writing paper, shows an interest in her. As she leaves his book shop, she faints from exhaustion. Mr. Whistler visits her at the boarding house and brings her paper, but she refuses to see him. Doctor Murdock (Roger Martin) visits and diagnoses a mild case of pleurisy. He notices one of her letters is addressed to Victor Hugo and informs Mrs. Saunders of the true identity of her boarder. Adèle's obsession grows stronger. One day, she writes to her parents telling them that she has married Pinson and that from now on, she should be addressed as Madame Pinson. Upon receiving the news, Victor Hugo posts an announcement of the marriage in his local paper. The news reaches Pinson's colonel. After Pinson writes Victor Hugo to explain that he never will marry Adèle, Hugo writes to his daughter, urging her to return home to Guernsey. Adèle responds to her father's letter with more fantasy, urging her parents to accept Pinson. Having learned of Adèle's identity, Mr. Whistler offers her a gift of her father's books. She responds in anger and paranoia. She hires a prostitute as a gift for Pinson. She follows him to a theater to see a hypnotist, where she is inspired to think that she can hypnotize Pinson into loving her; she is forced to abandon this plan once she learns that the hypnosis was faked. Adèle begins to go mad with despair. She goes to the father of Pinson's fiancée and claims that he is married to her and that she is carrying his child. The father ends the engagement. She finds Pinson once more, and he again rebukes her, calling her ridiculous. After leaving the boarding house, Adèle continues to deteriorate. She wanders the streets in torn clothes, talking to herself. In February 1864, Pinson is shipped out to Barbados, and a destitute Adèle follows him. Now married, Pinson learns that Adèle is in Barbados claiming to be his wife. Concerned for her, Pinson searches for her and finds her wandering the streets in rags. When he tries to confront her, Adèle does not acknowledge or recognize him. Helped by a kind former slave, Adèle returns to Paris, where the French Third Republic has been established. Her father places her in an asylum in Saint-Mandé, where she lives for the next 40 years. She gardens, plays the piano and writes in her journal. Adèle Hugo dies in Paris in 1915 at the age of 85. ===== Two cousins related by marriage, Marthe (Marie-Christine Barrault) and Ludovic (Victor Lanoux), meet at a family wedding for the first time. Marthe is the bride's daughter and Ludovic is the groom's nephew. After a raucous wedding reception with plenty of dancing and drinking, Marthe and Ludovic are left waiting for their respective spouses, Pascal (Guy Marchand) and Karine (Marie-France Pisier), who are off having sex. While they wait, they get to know each other: Marthe is a secretary and Ludovic is a dance instructor who changes his occupation every three years. Later they dance together, even after the lights are turned off. Eventually Pascal and Karine show up, slightly disheveled, and the couples part. Ludovic meets Marthe for lunch and tells her that her husband is having an affair with his wife. Later Pascal shamelessly informs her that he's broken off all of his affairs and that from now on she will be the only one. When Marthe tells him she knows about Karine, he says he only had her "three times in the bushes." Sometime later at a family gathering at Marthe's mother's house, Ludovic's daughter, Nelsa (Catherine Verlor), shows slides she took at the wedding—including compromising photos of Pascal and Karine. During the slide show, Martha's mother's new husband dies. At the funeral, Ludovic's father arrives and extends his condolences; he too lost his spouse recently. On the way back from the cemetery, Marthe and Ludovic get better acquainted, with Marthe revealing that she enjoys swimming and singing. Later that week, Marthe and Ludovic meet for lunch, buy bathing suits, and go swimming in a public pool. They enjoy each other's company so much that they decide to take the rest of the day off together to go shopping and see a movie. Although their relationship is platonic, Pascal and Karine begin to grow jealous. Marthe and Ludovic playfully arrange to meet by chance at a restaurant with their respective families, to see how Pascal and Karine react. Later that week Marthe and Ludovic meet again at the swimming pool and acknowledge that their relationship is special and must remain that way, even if platonic. At another family wedding, with Pascal and the groom's father fighting over a business deal gone wrong, Marthe and Ludovic decide to leave and spend the day together. They return to find a drunken Pascal harassing the guests, and soon they all leave the disastrous wedding and bring Pascal home. Marthe's mother and Ludovic's father develop a close friendship and plan to spend time at his vineyard. Marthe and Ludovic discuss their own relationship and decide that it is absurd to keep it platonic. For once they will do something for themselves, and not for their spouses and families. That Saturday, Marthe and Ludovic meet and spend the day together in a hotel making love. They decide to keep the room for the night and order food in. The following morning they extend their stay another day, making love, exchanging recipes, bathing together, and simply enjoying each other's company. In the coming days, Pascal reverts to his philandering ways, Karine leaves Ludovic and then returns, and Marthe's mother and Ludovic's father discover they're not as compatible as they thought. Marthe and Ludovic's relationship, however, continues to grow in love. At a Christmas family gathering at Marthe's mother's house, Marthe and Ludovic lock themselves in a bedroom and make love throughout the evening while their families eat, drink, watch Midnight Mass, and exchange gifts. The couple finally emerge from the bedroom, say goodbye to their crazy families, and ride off into the night together. ===== Mr. Stanley forbids his adult daughter, a biology student at Tredgold Women's College and the youngest of his five children, to attend a fancy dress ball in London, causing a crisis. Ann Veronica is planning to attend the dance with friends of a down-at-heel artistic family living nearby and has been chafing at other restrictions imposed for no apparent reason on her. After her father resorts to force to stop her from attending the ball, she leaves her home in the fictional south London suburb of Morningside Park in order to live independently in an apartment "in a street near the Hampstead Road" in North London.H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica, Ch. 5, §6. Unable to find appropriate employment, she borrows forty pounds from Mr. Ramage, an older man, without realizing she is compromising herself. With this money, Ann Veronica is able to devote herself to study in the biological laboratory of the Central Imperial College (a constituent college of London University) where she meets and falls in love with Capes, the laboratory's "demonstrator."H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica, Ch. 8. But Mr. Ramage loses little time in trying to take advantage of the situation, precipitating a crisis. Distraught after Ramage tries to force himself on her, Ann Veronica temporarily abandons her studies and devotes herself to the cause of women's suffrage; she is arrested storming Parliament and spends a month in prison. Sobered by the experience, Ann Veronica convinces herself of the necessity of compromise. She returns to her father's home and engages herself to marry an admirer she does not love, Hubert Manning. But she soon changes her mind, renounces the engagement, and boldly tells Capes she loves him. Though he returns Ann Veronica's love, at first the thirty-year-old Capes insists on the impossibility of the situation: he is a married (albeit separated) man with a sullied reputation because of an affair that became public. They can only be friends, he declares. But Ann Veronica is undeterred by his confession and his prudence, and finally Capes's resistance buckles: "She stood up and held her arms toward him. 'I want you to kiss me,' she said. . . . 'I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you.' She paused for a moment. 'Is that plain?' she asked."H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica, Ch. 14, §5. Capes decides to throw over his employment at the college in order to live with Ann Veronica, and they enjoy a glorious "honeymoon" in the Alps. A final chapter shows the happy couple four years and four months later living in London. Capes has become a successful playwright, and Ann Veronica is pregnant and has reconciled with her family. ===== Eva (Liv Ullmann), wife of the village pastor, invites her mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) for a visit to her village. She has not seen her for over seven years. Her mother is a world-renowned pianist, somewhat eccentric, aging, and has survived several husbands. Eva is not as talented as the mother (despite the fact that she has written two books and plays the piano passably). Eva's main concern is to be the mistress of her home, wife, mother, and loving sister. It is gradually learned through her dialogue with her mother that her life has had a large number of unfortunate setbacks: a husband (Halvar Björk) she respects, but does not really have affection for, their son drowned when only 4 years old, and Charlotte never appears to have loved Eva as a mother normally loves a daughter. As part of her day-to-day life, Eva takes care of her disabled and paralyzed sister Helena (Lena Nyman), whom she has taken out of the hospital into her own home. She appears to be the only person who can understand her sister's limited speech ability. The presence of Helena in Eva's house is shocking to the aging mother. She makes a gift of her own wrist watch to Helena, and listens to Eva playing Prelude No. 2 in A minor by Chopin. She immediately re-performs the same prelude after Eva finishes in her own preferred interpretation of the music. Before going to bed, Charlotte decides to make a gift of her own car to her daughter. She plans to take a flight home, and buy a new car for herself, as a measure of her altruism. At night, Charlotte wakes up from a nightmare: it seems that Eva is choking her. She gets up, goes into the living room followed by Eva, who had heard her mother screaming from the nightmare. Mother and daughter begin an impassioned rediscovery and clarification of their past relationship. Eva's husband overhears this unexpectedly heightened exchange, but wisely decides not to participate and interfere. Hearing this impassioned exchange, her disabled younger sister painfully forces herself out of her bed and starts crawling up to the stairs to where Eva and Charlotte are arguing. Upon reaching the landing she starts shouting, "Mama, come!" In the morning Charlotte prepares for her departure. Eva goes to the grave of her departed son, and her husband ineffectively tries to soothe her ailing sister. Charlotte asks for a friend to escort her away by train. While speaking to her friend on the train, she begins to question the unfortunate fate of her disabled and paralyzed daughter, asking the unanswerable questions: "Why couldn't she die?" Her older daughter sends her mother a letter starting with: "I realize that I wronged you." The mother reads the letter that concludes by leaving open the possibility of a future reconciliation. ===== New Jersey accountant George Peters and Oakland housewife Doris meet at a Northern California inn in February 1951. They have an affair, and agree to meet once a year, despite the fact both are married to others and have six children between them. Over the course of the next 24 years, they develop an emotional intimacy deeper than what one would expect to find between two people meeting for a clandestine relationship just once a year. During the time they spend with each other, they discuss the births, deaths, and marital problems each is experiencing at home, while they adapt themselves to the social changes affecting their lives. ===== Pierre Delacroix (real name Peerless Dothan) is an uptight, Harvard-educated African man in the employment of television network CNS. At work, he endures torment from his boss Thomas Dunwitty, a tactless, boorish white man. Not only does Dunwitty use African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and the word "nigger" repeatedly in conversations, he also proudly proclaims that he is more black than Delacroix and that he can use "nigger" since he is married to a person of color and has two mixed-race children. Dunwitty frequently rejects Delacroix's scripts for series that portray black people in positive, intelligent scenarios, dismissing them as "Cosby clones". In an effort to escape his contract through being fired, Delacroix develops a minstrel show with the help of his personal assistant Sloane Hopkins. Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show features black actors in blackface, extremely racist jokes and puns, and offensively stereotyped CGI-animated cartoons. Delacroix and Hopkins recruit two impoverished homeless street performers, Manray and Womack, to star in the show. While Womack is horrified when Delacroix tells him details about the show, Manray sees it as his big chance to become rich and famous for his tap- dancing skills. To Delacroix's horror, not only does Dunwitty enthusiastically endorse the show, it also becomes hugely successful. As soon as it premieres, Manray and Womack become big stars, while Delacroix, contrary to his original stated intent, defends the show as satire. Delacroix quickly embraces the fame and recognition he receives while Hopkins becomes ashamed of her association with it. Meanwhile, an underground, militant rap group called the Mau Maus, led by Hopkins' older brother Julius, becomes increasingly angry at the show's content. Though they had earlier unsuccessfully auditioned for the program's live band position, the group plans to end the show using violence. Womack quits, fed up with the show and Manray's increasing ego. Manray and Hopkins grow closer, despite Delacroix's attempts to sabotage their relationship. Delacroix confronts Hopkins, and when she lashes back at him, he fires her. She then shows him a videotaped montage she created of racist footage culled from assorted media to shame Delacroix into stopping production of the show, but he refuses to watch it. After an argument with Delacroix, Manray realizes he is being exploited and defiantly announces that he will no longer wear blackface. He appears in front of the studio audience, who are all in blackface, and does his dance number in his regular clothing. The network executives immediately turn against Manray, and Dunwitty fires him. The Mau Maus kidnap Manray and announce his public execution via live webcast. The authorities work feverishly to track down the source of the internet feed, but Manray is nevertheless assassinated while doing his famous tap dancing. At his office, Delacroix (now in blackface himself, mourning Manray's death) fantasizes that the various black-themed antique collectibles in his office are staring him down and coming to life; in a rage, he destroys many of the items. The police kill all the members of the Mau Maus except for One- Sixteenth Blak, a white member who demands to die with the others. Furious, Hopkins confronts Delacroix at gunpoint and demands that he play her tape. As he does so, Hopkins reminds him of the lives that were ruined because of his actions. During a struggle over the gun, Delacroix is shot in the stomach. Hopkins flees while proclaiming that it was Delacroix's own fault that he got shot. Delacroix, holding the gun in his hands to make his wound appear self- inflicted, watches the tape as he lies dying on the floor. The film concludes with a long montage of racially insensitive and demeaning clips of African characters from Hollywood films of the first half of the 20th century.Some of the films used in the sequence are The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Gone with the Wind, Babes in Arms, Holiday Inn, Judge Priest, Ub Iwerks' cartoon Little Black Sambo, Walter Lantz's cartoon Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat, the Screen Songs short Jingle Jangle Jungle, the Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodies short All This and Rabbit Stew, and, from the Hal Roach comedy School's Out, Our Gang kids Allen "Farina" Hoskins and Matthew "Stymie" Beard. Afterwards, Manray is shown doing his last Mantan sequence on stage. ===== In a shabby New York City side street in the mid-1880s, young Cedric Errol lives with his mother (known only as Mrs. Errol or "Dearest") in genteel poverty after the death of his father, Captain Cedric Errol. One day, they are visited by an English lawyer named Havisham with a message from young Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, an unruly millionaire who despises the United States and was very disappointed when his youngest son married an American woman. With the deaths of his father's elder brothers, Cedric has now inherited the title Lord Fauntleroy and is the heir to the earldom and a vast estate. Cedric's grandfather wants him to live in England and be educated as an English aristocrat. He offers his son's widow a house and guaranteed income, but he refuses to have anything to do with her, even after she declines his money. However, the Earl is impressed by the appearance and intelligence of his American grandson and is charmed by his innocent nature. Cedric believes his grandfather to be an honorable man and benefactor, and the Earl cannot disappoint him. The Earl therefore becomes a benefactor to his tenants, to their delight, though he takes care to let them know that their benefactor is the child, Lord Fauntleroy. Meanwhile, back in New York, a homeless bootblack named Dick Tipton tells Cedric's old friend Mr. Hobbs, a New York City grocer, that a few years prior, after the death of his parents, Dick's older brother Benjamin married an awful woman who got rid of their only child together after he was born and then left. Benjamin moved to California to open a cattle ranch while Dick ended up in the streets. At the same time, a neglected pretender to Cedric's inheritance appears in England, the pretender's mother claiming that he is the offspring of the Earl's eldest son, Bevis. The claim is investigated by Dick and Benjamin, who come to England and recognize the woman as Benjamin's former wife. She flees, and the Tipton brothers and the pretender, Benjamin's son, do not see her again. Afterward, Benjamin goes back to his cattle ranch in California where he happily raises his son by himself. The Earl is reconciled to his American daughter-in-law, realizing that she is far superior to the impostor. The Earl planned to teach his grandson how to be an aristocrat. Instead, Cedric teaches his grandfather that an aristocrat should practice compassion towards those dependent on him. The Earl becomes the man Cedric always innocently believed him to be. Cedric is happily reunited with his mother, and Mr. Hobbs, who decides to stay to help look after Cedric. ===== Battle of Roncevaux, illuminated c. 1455–1460 by Jean Fouquet. Charlemagne's army is fighting the Muslims in Spain. They have been there for seven years, and the last city standing is Saragossa, held by the Muslim King Marsile. Threatened by the might of Charlemagne's army of Franks, Marsile seeks advice from his wise man, Blancandrin, who counsels him to conciliate the Emperor, offering to surrender and giving hostages. Accordingly, Marsile sends out messengers to Charlemagne, promising treasure and Marsile's conversion to Christianity if the Franks will go back to France. Charlemagne and his men, tired of fighting, accept his peace offer and select a messenger to Marsile's court. The protagonist Roland, Charlemagne's nephew, nominates his stepfather Ganelon as messenger. Ganelon, who fears being murdered by the enemy and accuses Roland of intending this, takes revenge by informing the Saracens of a way to ambush the rear guard of Charlemagne's army, led by Roland, as the Franks re-enter France through the mountain passes. As Ganelon predicted, Roland leads the rear guard, with the wise and moderate Oliver and the fierce Archbishop Turpin. The Muslims ambush them at Roncesvalles and the Christians are overwhelmed. Oliver pleads with Roland to blow his horn to call for help, but Roland tells him that blowing his horn in the middle of the battle would be an act of cowardice. If Roland continues to refuse, Oliver will not let Roland see his sister again whom Roland loves the most. However, Archbishop Turpin intervenes and tells them that the battle will be fatal for all of them and so instructs Roland to blow his horn oliphant (the word is an old alternative to "elephant", and was used to refer to a hunting horn made from an elephant tusk) to call for help from the Frankish army. The emperor hears the call on their way to France. Charlemagne and his noblemen gallop back even though Count Ganelon tries to trick them. The Franks fight well, but are outnumbered, until almost all Roland's men are dead and he knows that Charlemagne's army can no longer save them. Despite this, he blows his olifant to summon revenge, until his temples burst and he dies a martyr's death. Angels take his soul to Paradise. When Charlemagne and his men reach the battlefield, they find the dead bodies of Roland's men, who have been utterly annihilated. They pursue the Muslims into the river Ebro, where the Muslims drown. Meanwhile, Baligant, the powerful emir of Babylon, has arrived in Spain to help Marsile. His army encounters that of Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, where the Christians are burying and mourning their dead. The Franks fight valiantly. When Charlemagne kills Baligant, the Muslim army scatters and flees, leaving the Franks to conquer Saragossa. With Marsile's wife Bramimonde, Queen of Saragossa, Charlemagne and his men ride back to Aix, their capital in France. The Franks discover Ganelon's betrayal and keep him in chains until his trial, where Ganelon argues that his action was legitimate revenge, not treason. While the council of barons assembled to decide the traitor's fate is initially swayed by this claim, partially out of fear of Ganelon's friend Pinabel who threatens to fight anyone who judges Ganelon guilty, one man, Thierry, argues that because Roland was serving Charlemagne when Ganelon delivered his revenge on him, Ganelon's action constitutes a betrayal. Pinabel challenges Thierry to trial by combat. By divine intervention, Thierry kills Pinabel. By this the Franks are convinced of Ganelon's treason. Thus, he is torn apart by having four galloping horses tied one to each arm and leg and thirty of his relatives are hanged. Bramimonde converts to Christianity, her name changing to Juliana. While sleeping, Charlemagne is told by Gabriel to ride to help King Vivien and bemoans his life. ===== Lisa wakes up one morning saddened. At school, she gets in trouble with her music teacher for improvising and becomes reluctant to play dodgeball in gym. At home, Homer and Bart pummel each other at video boxing, but despite Homer's attempts, he is unable to defeat Bart. Homer and Marge try to cheer Lisa up, but she is consumed with existentialism and worry over all the suffering in the world. In her room, Lisa hears music coming from outside her window. She follows the music through town and meets Bleeding Gums Murphy, a soulful saxophonist playing the blues. Lisa learns about expressing herself through her music from him, only to be discovered and whisked away by Marge. Homer goes to the arcade and enlists the help of an arcade boxing expert, while Marge takes Lisa to band practice. She tells Lisa to smile no matter how she feels inside, to suppress her emotions to be popular, and that happiness will follow. But when she sees Lisa hiding her true feelings and being taken advantage of by her classmates and her music teacher, Marge changes her tune and tells Lisa to be herself and her support helps Lisa to feel genuinely happy. When Homer returns home, he is about to defeat Bart in a rematch but Marge unplugs the game console to announce Lisa's recovery, while Bart declares his retirement as an undefeated video boxing champ. Later, the Simpsons visit a jazz club to hear Bleeding Gums Murphy sing a blues number written by Lisa. ===== After Chicago architect Sam Baldwin loses his wife Maggie to cancer, he and his eight-year-old son Jonah start a new life in Seattle, living on a houseboat, but they continue to grieve. A year and a half later on Christmas Eve, Jonah calls in to a radio talk show, and persuades a reluctant Sam to go on the air to talk about how much he misses Maggie. Thousands of women from around the country who hear the program and are touched by the story write to Sam. One of the listeners is Annie Reed, a Baltimore Sun reporter who is engaged to Walter but feels there is something missing from their relationship. After watching the film An Affair to Remember, Annie writes a letter suggesting that Sam meet her on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. She decides not to mail it, but her friend and editor Becky does it for her and later agrees to send Annie to Seattle. Sam begins dating a co-worker, Victoria, whom Jonah dislikes. Jonah reads Annie's letter and likes that it mentions the Baltimore Orioles, but he fails to convince his father to go to New York to meet Annie. On the advice of his playmate Jessica, Jonah replies to Annie, agreeing to the New York meeting. While dropping Victoria off at the airport for a flight, Sam sees Annie exiting from her plane and is mesmerized by her, although he has no idea who she is. Annie later secretly watches Sam and Jonah playing on the beach together. The next day she goes again to Sam's houseboat but when she sees Sam's sister, she mistakenly assumes the sister is a girlfriend. Sam recognizes Annie from seeing her at the airport and says "hello" but Annie only responds with "hello" before leaving. She returns to Baltimore and then goes to New York to meet Walter for Valentine's Day. With Jessica's help, Jonah flies to New York and goes to the Empire State Building searching for Annie. When Sam discovers what Jonah did, he grabs a later plane and follows Jonah where he finds him on the observation deck. Meanwhile, Annie sees the skyscraper from the Rainbow Room where she is dining with Walter and confesses her doubts to him, amicably ending their engagement. She rushes to the Empire State Building and arrives on the observation deck just moments after the doors to the down elevator close with Sam and Jonah inside. The observation deck is deserted, but Annie discovers the backpack Jonah left behind. As she pulls out Jonah's teddy bear from the backpack, Sam and Jonah emerge from the elevator having returned to fetch it, and the three meet. After Sam and Annie stare at each other in recognition, Sam says they should go and offers his hand to Annie. The three then enter the elevator together and the doors close, with Jonah smiling. ===== The Kid is the talented but troubled frontman of his Minneapolis-based band, The Revolution. To escape his difficult home life--his father is verbally and physically abusive, and his mother is emotionally abusive--he spends his days rehearsing and his nights performing at the First Avenue nightclub. First Avenue's three house band slots are held by The Revolution, the flashy Morris Day and his group The Time, and Dez Dickerson and his group The Modernaires. Morris, aware that The Revolution's guitarist Wendy and keyboardist Lisa are frustrated by The Kid's unwillingness to play their compositions, lobbies Billy Sparks, the nightclub's owner, to replace The Revolution with a girl group which Morris is already forming. He targets the Kid's girlfriend Apollonia—an aspiring singer and new arrival in Minneapolis—to lead his group, and tries to persuade her that The Kid won't help her because he's too focused on himself. She eventually joins Morris's group, which Morris names Apollonia 6. When she reveals her newfound partnership to the Kid, he becomes furious and slaps her, as his father had struck him earlier. At the club, The Kid responds to the internal band strife, the pressure to draw more crowds, and his strained private life with the uncomfortably personal "Darling Nikki". His performance publicly humiliates Apollonia, who runs off in tears, and angers both Morris and Billy, worsening his situation. Billy confronts the Kid, castigating him for bringing his personal life onto the stage and warning him that he's wasting his musical talent as his father did. The debut of Apollonia 6 is a success, and Billy warns the Kid that his First Avenue slot is at risk. The Kid seizes Apollonia from a drunken Morris and the two argue and fight; Apollonia then abandons him. Returning home, he finds the house in tatters, with his mother nowhere to be found. When he turns on the basement light, his father—who had been lurking in the basement with a loaded handgun—shoots himself in the head. In a frenzy after a night of torment, the Kid tears apart the basement to release his frustration, only to find a large box of his father's musical compositions. The next morning, the Kid picks up a cassette tape of one of Wendy and Lisa's compositions, a rhythm track named "Slow Groove", and begins to compose. That night at First Avenue, all is quiet in The Revolution's dressing room until The Time stops by to taunt the Kid about his family life. Once on stage, the Kid announces that he will be playing "a song the girls in the band wrote", dedicated to his father—revealed to be "Purple Rain". As the emotional song ends, the Kid rushes from the stage and out the back door of the club, intending to ride away on his motorcycle. However, before he can mount his motorcycle, he realizes that the crowd is thrilled by his new song. The Kid returns to the club, to be greeted by the approval of his fellow musicians and the embrace of a teary-eyed Apollonia. The Kid returns to the stage for two encores with The Revolution, to the wild approval of the crowd (even Morris); overlaid scenes show the Kid visiting his father and mother in the hospital and sorting his father's compositions in the basement, accompanied by Apollonia. A montage of all the songs plays as the credits roll. ===== Pelias usurps the throne of Thessaly, killing King Aristo, but knows that a prophecy states that one of Aristo's children will avenge him. The god Hermes, disguised as Pelias's soothsayer, watches as the infant Jason, Aristo's son, is spirited away by one of Aristo's soldiers. Pelias slays one of Aristo's daughters after she seeks sanctuary in the temple of the goddess Hera. Because the murder has profaned her temple, Hera becomes Jason's protector. She warns Pelias to beware "of a man wearing one sandal". Twenty years later, Jason saves Pelias from drowning in a river, an "accident" orchestrated by Hera, but loses his sandal in the process, so Pelias recognizes his enemy. Learning that Jason intends to seek the legendary Golden Fleece to rally support against him, he encourages Jason in the attempt, hoping that Jason will be killed. Hermes takes Jason to Mount Olympus to speak with Zeus and Hera. Hera tells him Zeus has decreed that she can help him only five times. This is the same number of times that Jason's murdered sister, the lovely Briseis, called on Hera for protection. She directs him to search for the Fleece in the land of Colchis. Zeus offers aid, but Jason declines. He sets out to build a ship and recruit a crew. Men from all over Greece compete for the honor of joining his quest. Because their ship is named the Argo after her builder, Argus, the crew are dubbed the Argonauts. Among them are Hercules, Hylas, and Acastus, the son of Pelias (unknown to Jason), sent by his father to sabotage the voyage. Hera guides Jason to the Isle of Bronze, but warns him to take nothing but provisions. However, Hercules steals a brooch pin the size of a javelin from a building filled with treasure and surmounted by a gigantic bronze statue of Talos. The statue comes to life and attacks the Argonauts. Jason again turns to Hera, who tells him to open a large plug on Talos's heel to release the giant's ichor. Talos falls to the ground, crushing Hylas and hiding his body. Hercules refuses to leave until he ascertains the fate of his friend. The other Argonauts are unwilling to abandon Hercules, so Jason calls upon Hera again. She informs them that Hylas is dead and that Zeus has other plans for Hercules. Hydra battle sequence. Hera directs Jason to seek out Phineus, who has been blinded and is tormented by harpies for misusing Zeus's gift of prophesy. After the Argonauts capture and cage the harpies, Phineus tells them how to reach Colchis, by sailing between the Clashing Rocks. He also gives Jason an amulet of the sea god Triton. The Argonauts see another ship trying to pass through the other way, only to be crushed and sunk when the Clashing Rocks smash together. Upon Jason's refusal to turn back, when the Argo tries to row through, the ship appears doomed as well. In despair, Jason throws Phineus's amulet into the water, whereupon Triton rises up and holds the rocks apart long enough for the Argo to pass. Upon clearing the rocks, the Argonauts rescue a survivor from the other ship lost, the wonderfully and deadly attractive Medea, high priestess of Colchis. Finally nearing Colchis, Acastus challenges Jason's authority and engages him in a duel. Disarmed, Acastus jumps into the sea and disappears. Jason and his men land and accept an invitation from King Aeëtes to a feast. Unknown to them, Acastus has warned Aeëtes of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. Aeëtes has the unwary Argonauts imprisoned, but Medea, having fallen in love with Jason, helps him and his men escape. Acastus tries to steal the Fleece first, but is killed by its guardian, the Hydra. Jason is able to kill the beast and take the Fleece. Medea is mortally wounded by an arrow, but Jason heals her with the Fleece. Aeëtes then sows the Hydra's teeth and prays to the goddess Hecate. Seven armed skeletons, the "children of the Hydra's teeth", emerge from the ground. Jason, Phalerus and Castor, hold them off, while Medea and Argus escape back to the Argo with the Fleece. After a prolonged battle, in which his companions are killed, Jason escapes by jumping into the sea,It took Ray Harryhausen well over three months to animate the skeleton sequence. and he, Medea, and the surviving Argonauts begin their voyage home to Thessaly. On Olympus, Zeus tells Hera that, while Jason can enjoy his triumph, he is not done with Jason. ===== Sinbad the Sailor and his ship's crew make landfall on the island of Colossa, where they encounter Sokurah the magician fleeing a giant cyclops. Though he escapes, Sokurah loses a magic lamp to the creature. Sinbad refuses his desperate pleas to return to Colossa because Parisa, Princess of Chandra, is aboard. Their coming marriage is meant to secure peace between her father's realm and Sinbad's homeland, Baghdad. Roc. After reaching Baghdad, Sokurah performs magic at the pre-wedding festivities, temporarily turning Parisa's handmaiden into a snake-like being. Despite his prowess and a dark prophecy about war between Baghdad and Chandra, the Caliph of Baghdad refuses to help the magician return to Colossa. Later that night, Sokurah secretly shrinks the princess, enraging her father, the Sultan of Chandra, who declares war on Baghdad. Sinbad and the Caliph give in to Sokurah, who explains that the eggshell of a Roc is needed for the potion that will restore Parisa, and it can be found only on Colossa. Sokurah provides Sinbad with the plans for a giant crossbow for protection against the island's giant creatures. Sinbad recruits additional crewmen from among the convicts in the Caliph's prisons. Before they reach Colossa, the cutthroats mutiny and capture Sokurah, Sinbad, and his men. During a violent storm, the sounds of keening demons from a nearby island drives the crew nearly mad, endangering the ship. One of the men releases Sinbad so he can save them, after the mutineers' leader falls to his death from the crow's nest. On Colossa, Sinbad, Sokurah, and six of his crew enter the valley of the cyclops, followed by Sinbad's loyal aide Harufa. Sinbad and Sokurah split their forces. Sinbad and his men find the cyclops' treasure cave, but are captured by one of the creatures and locked in a wooden cage. Sokurah, in the meantime, retrieves the magic lamp, but is chased by the cyclops, who kills three of the men. With Parisa's aid, Sinbad manages to escape, then blinds the one-eyed creature and lures it off the edge of a cliff to its death. Sinbad decides to hold on to the lamp until Parisa is returned to normal size. Sokurah leads Sinbad and his starving men to the nesting place of the giant Rocs. Out of hunger, Sinbad's men try to break open a Roc egg, causing it to hatch, but the newborn chick is killed by the men and fire-roasted for food. While the men are eating, Parisa enters the magic lamp and befriends Barani, the childlike Genie inside, who tells her how to summon him in exchange for her promise of his freedom. The parent Roc returns and slays the men. Sinbad tries to summon the genie, but he is grabbed by the Roc, who takes flight, and drops him, unconscious, into its nearby nest. Sokurah kills Harufa and abducts the princess, taking her to his underground fortress. Sinbad awakens and rubs the magic lamp, summoning Barani, who takes Sinbad to Sokurah's fortress and helps him evade the chained dragon that stands guard. Sinbad reaches Sokurah, who restores the princess to normal. When Sinbad refuses to hand over the lamp, the magician animates a skeleton warrior, which Sinbad sword-fights and destroys. With the help of the genie, Sinbad and Parisa make their way out of the cave, stopping to destroy the lamp by throwing it into a pool of lava, thus freeing Barani. Leaving the cave, they encounter another cyclops. Sinbad releases the dragon, which fights and kills the creature. Sinbad and Parisa make their escape, but Sokurah orders the dragon to hunt them down. Sinbad heads to the beach, where his men have readied the giant crossbow, and they use it to kill the dragon. The dying dragon collapses on Sokurah, crushing him to death. Sinbad, Parisa, and the remaining crew depart for Baghdad. They are joined by Barani, now human, who has appointed himself as Sinbad's cabin boy. In a final act of magic as he was being freed, Barani filled the captain's cabin with the treasure from the cyclops' cave, a wedding gift to Sinbad and Parisa. ===== Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy (Kevin Costner) is a former golf prodigy who has little ambition. He owns a driving range in West Texas, where he drinks and hangs out with his pal Romeo Posar (Cheech Marin) and their friends. Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo), a clinical psychologist, wants a golf lesson. She asks Roy because he knows her boyfriend David Simms (Don Johnson), a top professional golfer. They were both top college golfers at the University of Houston. Roy is immediately attracted to Molly, but she sees through Roy's charm and resists. The next day David Simms shows up at Roy's trailer ahead of a local benefit tournament. Roy thinks he is being invited to play, but Simms actually wants to hire him as a caddy (since Roy knows the course). During the round, Roy needles Simms about "laying up" instead of having the nerve to take a 230-yard shot over a water hazard. Simms fires back that Roy's problem is playing recklessly instead of playing the percentages. Roy brags that he could make the shot, and spectators begin making bets among themselves. Simms warns Roy that he'll fire him if he attempts the shot, and Roy does, hitting a brilliant shot onto the green. Simms immediately fires Roy. To get even with Simms, Roy decides to try to qualify for the U.S. Open and makes a play for Molly, while also seeking her professional help. Molly agrees to help Roy rebuild his self-confidence in exchange for golf lessons. In the first qualifying round, with Romeo as his caddy, Roy's game is excellent but his head needs help. Roy insists on breaking the course record, but Romeo implores him to play safely to qualify. When Roy demands the driver instead of laying up, Romeo snaps it in half over his knee. Roy then asks for the 3-Wood and Romeo proceeds to snap it in half as well. Then Roy begins to grab every club out of his bag, snapping every single one in a fit except the 7-Iron, "Then there’s the 7-Iron. I never miss with the 7-Iron". This causes Romeo to storm off the course and quit. Roy then challenges anyone that hasn't left to a bet that he can finish the Back-9 with only a 7-Iron and everyone reluctantly refuses, but he continues the round and amazingly still manages to advance to the final qualifying round. After the round, Roy makes a wager with Simms on a Driving distance contest and Roy gets made a fool of and loses the bet and his convertible to Simms. Without Romeo as his caddie, Roy barely succeeds at the sectional qualifying round, earning a spot in the U.S. Open. He reunites with and persuades Romeo to be his caddy again, but develops a problem (the shanks) with his swing. On the first day of the U.S Open tournament in North Carolina he shoots a horrendous 83. Meanwhile, Molly sees Simms' unpleasant side when he arrogantly refuses a child an autograph. Seeing that trying to change Roy is a mistake, Molly encourages him to be himself. At Molly's suggestion, Roy offers another wager with Simms, the leader after the first round and actually wins the bet and wins Molly's heart as well. Now, with renewed confidence, Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy, a nobody from nowhere, shocks the golf world by breaking the U.S. Open record for a single round by shooting a 62, thus making the cut. Roy's third round is also excellent and moves him into contention, but on all three rounds, he refuses to lay up on the par-5 18th hole, hitting the ball into the water hazard each time. On the last day of the U.S. Open tournament, Roy, Simms, and real-life PGA Tour pro Peter Jacobsen (playing himself) are in a three-way battle to win the U.S. Open. Jacobsen finishes with a par on 18, tied for the lead with Roy and one shot ahead of Simms. Simms, for the 4th straight day, lays up at the 18th hole, playing it safe, although this takes him out of championship contention. Romeo urges that Roy do likewise to birdie and win the U.S. Open, but is urged by Molly to be himself and "go for it". Roy, for the 4th day in a row, takes his shot and it reaches the green, but then "a little gust from the gods"--a sudden contrary wind--starts his ball rolling back, downhill into the water hazard. Reminiscent of his blow-up back in college when he failed to qualify for the Tour, Roy tries repeatedly to hit the same shot, not realizing that he has lost the tournament, but with the same heart-breaking result, splashing in the water hazard. Down to his last ball and risking not only humiliation but also disqualification, he still goes for the green, and on his 12th and final shot, the ball finally clears the water hazard, bounces on the green and amazingly rolls directly into the hole. After a wild celebration, Roy realizes that he has blown winning the U.S. Open, but Molly re-assures him about the immortality of what just happened, "Five years from now nobody will remember who won or lost, but they're gonna remember your 12!" Back in Texas, Molly tells Roy that because he finished in the top 15, he automatically qualifies for next year's Open. Molly further suggests that Roy go back to the qualifying school and get on the Tour. Molly, who gained several clients at the tournament, prepares for a career of helping players with the mental portion of the game as a sports psychologist. They kiss passionately as the movie ends. ===== Warren Schmidt is retiring from his position as an actuary with Woodmen of the World, a life insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska. After a retirement dinner, Schmidt finds it hard to adjust to his new life, feeling useless. He sees a television advertisement about a foster program for African children, Plan USA, and decides to sponsor a child. He soon receives an information package with a photo of his foster child, a small Tanzanian boy named Ndugu Umbo, to whom he relates his life in a series of candid, rambling letters. Schmidt visits his young successor at the life insurance company to offer his help, but the offer is politely declined. As he leaves the building, Schmidt sees the contents and files of his office, the sum of his entire career, set out for garbage collectors. He describes to Ndugu his longtime alienation from Helen, his wife, who suddenly dies from a blood clot in her brain just after their purchase of a Winnebago Adventurer motor home. Jeannie, his only daughter, and her fiancé, Randall Hertzel, arrive from Denver. They console him at the funeral, but Jeannie later berates him for taking his wife for granted, such as by refusing to fully pay for the Winnebago (he wanted the cheaper Minnie Winnie) and burying her in a cheap casket. He asks her to move back to take care of him, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Randall tries to entice him into a pyramid scheme. Schmidt feels his daughter could do better than Randall, a waterbed salesman. After the couple leaves, Schmidt is overcome by loneliness. He stops showering, sleeps in front of the television, and goes shopping with a coat over pajamas to load up on frozen foods. In his wife's closet he discovers some hidden love letters disclosing her long-ago affair with Ray, a mutual friend. In a rage, Schmidt collects all her possessions, donating them to charity. He then angrily confronts Ray for his betrayal. He decides to take a journey alone in his new Winnebago to visit his daughter and convince her not to marry Randall. He tells Jeannie he is leaving early for the wedding, but she makes it clear she does not want him there until right before the ceremony. Schmidt decides to visit places from his past, including his college campus and fraternity at University of Kansas and his hometown in Nebraska. His childhood home has been replaced by a tire shop. While at a trailer campground, he is invited to dinner by a friendly and sympathetic couple. When the man leaves to buy some beer, Schmidt makes a pass at the wife, and flees in terror when she adamantly rejects his advance. Sitting on the roof of his RV on a starry night, Schmidt forgives his departed wife for her affair and apologizes to her for his own failings as a husband. At that moment, he is amazed to see a bright meteor streak across the sky as a possible sign from Helen that she forgives him. Feeling full of purpose and energetic renewal, Schmidt arrives in Denver, where he stays at the home of Roberta, Randall's mother. He is appalled by Randall's eccentric, socially odd, and lower middle class family (compared to Schmidt's background as an upper middle class corporate executive) and tries unsuccessfully to dissuade Jeannie from the marriage. Schmidt throws out his back after sleeping on Randall's waterbed, infuriating Jeannie. Roberta assures Schmidt that a soak in her hot tub will help his back, but he flees after a nude Roberta makes a pass at him in the tub. The next day, Schmidt, exhausted from a restless night, attends the wedding and delivers a kind speech at the reception, hiding his disapproval. On his way home from Denver, Schmidt composes a letter to Ndugu. Schmidt questions what he has accomplished in life, lamenting that he will soon be dead, that his life has made no difference to anyone, and that eventually it will be as if he has never existed at all. A pile of mail is waiting for him at home. Schmidt opens a letter from Tanzania. It is from a nun, who writes that Ndugu is six years old and unable to read and reply to Schmidt's letters on his own, but appreciates them and Schmidt's financial support very much. A crayon drawing by Ndugu is enclosed, showing two smiling stick figures, one large and one small, holding hands on a sunny day. Schmidt is moved to tears. ===== The story is presented as a flashback of Max Eriksson, a Vietnam veteran. Lt. Reilly leads his platoon of American soldiers on a nighttime patrol. They are attacked by the Viet Cong (VC) after a panicked soldier exposes their position. While guarding the platoon's flank, Eriksson falls as the top of a VC tunnel gives way beneath him. Eriksson's squad leader, Sergeant Tony Meserve, pulls Eriksson out of the hole and eventually, the platoon retreats out of the jungle. The platoon takes a break outside a river village in the Central Highlands. While relaxing and joking around, one of Meserve's friends, Specialist 4 "Brownie" Brown, is killed when the Viet Cong ambushes them. Brownie's death has a major impact on Meserve. The platoon is sent back to their base. Private First Class Antonio Dìaz arrives as the replacement radio operator. Frustrated because his squad has been denied leave for an extended period, Meserve orders the squad to kidnap a Vietnamese girl. Eriksson strenuously objects but Meserve, Cpl. Thomas E. Clark, and Private First Class Herbert Hatcher ignore Eriksson's objections. Before the five-man squad disembarks, Eriksson talks about his concerns to his closest friend, Rowan. At nightfall, the squad enters a village and kidnaps a Vietnamese girl, Than Thi Oanh. As the squad treks through the mountains, Dìaz begins to reconsider raping Than and begs Eriksson to back him up. The squad and Than eventually take refuge in an abandoned hooch, where Eriksson is confronted and threatened by Meserve, Clark, and Hatcher. Diaz suddenly gives in to the pressure, leaving Eriksson alone in opposing the act. Meserve forces Eriksson to stand guard outside while the other men take turns raping Than. At daybreak, Eriksson is ordered to guard Than while the rest of the squad takes up a position near a railroad bridge overlooking a Viet Cong river supply depot. Through his acts of kindness, Eriksson manages to earn Than's trust and prepares to go AWOL and return Than to her family. However, Meserve sends Clark to get Eriksson and Than to go to the bridge before Eriksson can carry out his plan. Meserve has Dìaz order close air support for an assault on the depot and then orders Diaz to kill Than with a knife. Before Dìaz can kill her, Eriksson fires his rifle into the air, exposing them to the nearby Viet Cong. In the midst of the firefight, Than tries to escape. Eriksson tries to save her but is stopped by Meserve, who knocks Eriksson down with the butt of his gun. Eriksson watches helplessly as the entire squad shoots Than numerous times until she falls off of the bridge. After the battle, Eriksson wakes up in a field hospital at the base. He eventually bumps into Rowan and tells him everything that happened. Rowan suggests that Eriksson sees Lt. Reilly and company commander Captain Hill. Reilly and Hill both prefer to bury the matter but Hill, infuriated at Eriksson's determination to press the issue, resolves to get rid of Eriksson and orders him transferred to a tunnel rat unit. The other men in Meserve's squad will all be reassigned as well. After narrowly escaping an attempt to kill him in the latrine with a grenade (made by Clark), Eriksson storms into a tent and smacks Clark in the face with a shovel. He bluntly tells Meserve that killing him is unnecessary because no one cares about what they did. Meserve makes a shaky attempt at a joke, and Eriksson leaves. Eriksson then meets an Army chaplain at a bar and tells him the story of what happened during the patrol. The chaplain in turn reports it, launching an investigation. The four men who participated in the rape and murder are court martialed: Meserve receives 10 years hard labor and a dishonorable discharge, Clark is sentenced to life in prison, Hatcher receives 15 years hard labor, and Dìaz receives eight years hard labor. At the end of the film, Eriksson wakens from a nightmare to find himself on a J-Church transit line in San Francisco, just a few seats from a Vietnamese-American student who resembles Than. She disembarks at Dolores Park and forgets her scarf and Eriksson runs after her to return it. As she thanks him and turns away, he calls after her in Vietnamese. She surmises that she reminds him of someone, and adds that he has had a bad dream. They go their separate ways, and Eriksson is somewhat comforted. ===== Jealous of Ned Flanders' new motor home, Homer visits Bob's RV Round-up to buy one. Because of his poor credit rating, he only qualifies for a smaller, dilapidated RV. Homer takes his family on an excursion, driving on remote back roads. After Homer ignores Marge's suggestion to drive back to the main road, the Simpsons find themselves teetering over a precipice. They escape the RV before it plummets over the cliff and explodes, leaving them stranded in the wilderness with no food or supplies. After Homer builds a crude lean-to shelter, he and Bart leave to find help, unaware Maggie is tagging along. Marge and Lisa stay behind and build a fire and sturdier shelter despite knowing nothing about camping. Separated from Homer and Bart, Maggie is adopted by a family of bears. Homer and Bart lose their clothes after falling into a raging river and plunging over a waterfall. They hide their exposed bodies with leaves and mud. After a frigid night's sleep, Homer tries to steal honey from a beehive. When the bees attack him, he evades them by jumping into a mud pit. Homer is mistaken for Bigfoot after a nature photographer takes a picture of him covered in mud. Soon the forest is inundated with Bigfoot enthusiasts after a tabloid offers a $5000 reward for capturing the creature alive. After Marge and Lisa are rescued by park rangers, Marge tells the media the monster in question is her husband, leading to tabloid headlines like "I married Bigfoot". Cold, hungry, and exhausted, Homer and Bart stumble upon the bears' cave and retrieve Maggie. Homer is captured and taken to a lab for testing. He returns home after scientists agree that he is "either a below-average human being or a brilliant beast". While watching news coverage of his ordeal, Homer worries his co-workers will mock him until Marge consoles him by calling him "my brilliant beast." ===== Titular teenager Ken Park (nicknamed "Krap Nek" which is his first and last name spelled and pronounced backward) is skateboarding across Visalia, California. He arrives at a skate park, which he casually sits in the middle of, sets up a camcorder, smiles, and shoots himself in the temple with a handgun. His death is used to bookend the film, which follows the lives of four other teenagers who knew him in the weeks running up to his suicide. Shawn (James Bullard) is the most stable of the four main characters. He's polite and caring. Throughout the story, he has an ongoing sexual relationship with his girlfriend's mother, Rhonda. He casually socializes with her family, who are all completely unaware of the affair, including her husband and his girlfriend Hannah. Claude fends off physical and emotional abuse from his alcoholic father while trying to take care of his neglectful pregnant mother, who never does anything to defend him. Claude's father detests him for being insufficiently masculine. However, after coming home drunk one night, he attempts to perform oral sex on Claude, prompting the boy to run away from home. Peaches is a girl living alone with her obsessive and overly-religious father, who fixates on her as the embodiment of her deceased mother. When her father catches her and her boyfriend Curtis on her bed about to have sex, he beats the boy and savagely disciplines her, including forcing her to participate in a quasi-incestuous wedding ritual with him. Tate is an unstable and sadistic adolescent living with his grandparents, whom he resents and frequently abuses verbally. He is shown engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation during masturbation. He eventually kills his grandparents in their bed, in retaliation for his grandfather "cheating" at Scrabble and his grandmother for "invading his privacy". He finds that the act arouses him sexually. He records himself on his tape recorder so the police will know how and why he killed his grandparents. After finishing recording, he puts his grandfather's dentures in his mouth, lies naked in his bed, and falls asleep. The film cuts frequently between subplots, with no overlap of characters or events until the end. As Tate is arrested for his grandparents' murder, Shawn, Claude, and Peaches meet and have sex as a threesome, while Gary Stewart plays. There is no explanation as to how the characters met other than alluding to them all being friends of Ken Park, yet they are never seen at any point before this event meeting each other or Ken Park. The ending finally reveals the motive behind Ken Park's suicide: he has impregnated his girlfriend who responds to his question asking if she wanted to keep it by asking if he wishes he'd been aborted himself. Realizing that he'd rather never have been born, he sets out to the skate park to kill himself. ===== It is New Year's weekend and the friends of Peter (Fry) gather at his newly inherited country house. Ten years ago, they all acted together in a Cambridge University student comedy troupe. Since then they have gone in different directions and career paths. Peter's friends are Andrew (Branagh), now a writer in Hollywood; married jingle writers Roger (Laurie) and Mary (Staunton); glamorous costume designer Sarah (Emmanuel); and eccentric Maggie (Thompson), who works in publishing. Joining them are Carol (Rudner), the American TV star wife of Andrew; and the impolite Brian (Slattery), Sarah's very recently acquired lover. Also accompanying them are Vera, Peter's long- serving housekeeper (Law), and her son Paul (Lowe). Peter's father has recently died, and Peter plans to sell the house after this last party. Andrew and Carol's marriage is strained by the demands of her fame. Roger and Mary are recovering from a devastating personal tragedy only slowly revealed to the audience: the death of one of their children. A lonely Maggie is determined to persuade Peter they should be more than just friends, and Sarah's not as happy with her life as she appears. The weekend does not go as planned. After a failed attempt to seduce Peter, Maggie receives a makeover from Carol and seduces Paul. Carol leaves Andrew and returns to America, and after a year of sobriety Andrew returns to the bottle. Roger and Mary reach an emotional breakthrough, share their grief and address her obsessive overprotection of their remaining child. Brian returns to his wife after realizing that Sarah is not interested in that which she already has, but only in that which belongs to someone else. In the climax of the film, Peter reveals the real reason for his bringing them all together: he is HIV-positive. The friends emerge from their own problems and pledge their assistance to Peter, and the weekend (and the film) ends on a more upbeat note. ===== In 50 BC, in an Abyssinian castle, a princess uses a pair of enchanted earrings to escape an arranged marriage by swapping bodies with a slave girl. When each woman wears one of the earrings, their bodies are magically swapped while their minds remain in place. In her modern-day suburban home, Jessica Spencer (McAdams) is a beautiful but selfish "hot chick". Jessica's closest friends are April (Faris), Keecia (Murray), and Lulu (Holden). April is Jessica's best friend, and all four girls are cheerleaders. At school one day, Jessica makes fun of an overweight girl named Hildenburg (Kuhlmann) and a Wiccan girl named Eden (Doumit). After that, Jessica and her friends visit the local mall, where Jessica gets her rival Bianca (Laas) into trouble and finds the earrings in an African-themed store. The earrings are not for sale, so Jessica steals them. Shortly afterward, a small-time criminal named Clive (Schneider) robs a nearby gas station. When Jessica and her friends stop there and mistake him for an employee, he services their car to avoid raising suspicion. Jessica accidentally drops one of the earrings on the ground, the girls drive away, and Clive picks up the earring. That evening, in their respective homes, Jessica and Clive put on their earrings. When they wake up the next morning, each of them is trapped in the other's body. This is especially difficult for Jessica, who has a cheering competition and the school prom coming up soon. After Jessica convinces her friends of who she is, they help her investigate the body swap. Hildenburg, Eden, and Bianca are all innocent, Hildenburg and Eden join Jessica after she apologizes to them, and Eden finds a picture of the earrings on the internet. When the girls return to the African store, the shopkeeper explains how the earrings work and tells the girls they must find the other earring soon or the change will become permanent. Meanwhile, Jessica is hired for two jobs while secretly living with April. At her own home, where she works as a gardener, her parents tell her about their marital problems and she helps them rekindle their sex life. At school, while cleaning the boys' locker room as a custodian, she spies on her boyfriend Billy (Lawrence), who truly loves her, and April's boyfriend Jake (Olsen), who has another girlfriend Monique (Simpson). Faced with Jake's infidelity, April begins to fall in love with Jessica, who agrees to take her to the prom. At the cheering competition, Jessica signals romantically to Billy while disguised as the school mascot, but when the head of her suit falls off, he becomes confused and leaves with Bianca. During this time, Clive has been using Jessica's body to make money from men, including Billy, who gives him his money and car, believing he is Jessica. On the evening of the prom, Hildenburg sees a video of Clive robbing a man on the TV news, goes to the scene of the crime, and finds a business card for the club where Clive works as a pole dancer. She informs Jessica at the prom, and the girls go to the club. When they find Clive, Jessica steals his earring and puts it on herself along with the other one. With the two earrings now on the same person, Jessica's and Clive's bodies return to their original owners. After Jessica makes up with Billy, the film ends with the school's graduation ceremony, followed by a scene in which Clive, running from the law and still dressed in lingerie, is abducted by a bartender who believes he is a homosexual. ===== Matthew Bramble, his family and servants are traveling through England and Scotland. Although the primary motivation for the expedition is to restore the health of the gouty Matthew Bramble, each member of the family uses the excursion to achieve their ends. Leaving from Bramble's estate, Brambleton Hall, in the south-western corner of England, the family passes through many cities, making extended or significant stops at Gloucester, Bath, London, Harrogate, Scarborough and Edinburgh. The splenetic patriarch, Matthew Bramble, visits various natural spas to alleviate his health problems, and he corresponds primarily with his physician, Dr. Lewis. Through his letters and those of Jeremy, it is revealed that Bramble is misanthropic and something of a hypochondriac. Despite his frequent complaints, he is generally reasonable and extremely charitable to the people he meets on his travels as well as to his servants and wards back at home. His letters introduce and ridicule significant eighteenth century concerns such as medicine, the growth of urban life, class, the growth of the periodical press and the public sphere. His growing disillusionment at the changing moral and social landscape of England, particularly London, embodies his traditionalist perspective and reveals the absurdities of contemporary British culture. His sister, Tabitha Bramble, is a foolish and cantankerous spinster who uses the expedition as an excuse to search for a husband. Through her correspondence with Mrs. Gwyllim, the house-keeper at Brambleton Hall, Tabitha reveals her selfishness and lack of generosity towards servants and the impoverished. Her social pretensions are rendered all the more comical by her frequent misunderstandings, misuse of common idioms and atrocious spelling. Tabitha's servant, Winifred or Win Jenkins, also corresponds with the servants at Brambleton Hall. As the only correspondent not related to Matthew Bramble, Ms. Jenkins offers a sympathetic and humorous perspective on the family and their travels. As a comic foil to Tabitha Bramble, Win Jenkins shares many of her misspellings and malapropisms but demonstrates considerably more common sense and intuition in her observation of the family. At London, she becomes infatuated with Humphry Clinker and Methodism both. Bramble's nephew, Jeremy Melford, is a young man looking for amusement. Corresponding primarily with Sir Watkin Phillips of Jesus College Oxford, Jery also reflects upon issues of city life, class, and the growing public sphere, but often with a more progressive perspective than that of his rather traditional uncle. Despite his generously democratic views and his astute perceptions of the hypocrisy and absurdity of others, he is—as revealed through Bramble's letters—"hot-headed" and prone to rash anger and impulsive defenses of perceived slights to his family honor, especially when it relates to his sister's interest in a stage actor below her status. His introduction into society as a young gentleman often occurs during his socializing at the coffeehouse, a burgeoning social institution, especially in eighteenth century London. His study of the places and people of his journey includes the members of his family, whom he comically sketches for the readers. His accounts help provide insight into Matthew Bramble's character. Bramble's niece, Lydia Melford, is trying to recover from an unfortunate romantic entanglement with a stage actor named Wilson, who is later revealed to be a gentleman named George Dennison. Her letters to Miss Letitia Willis at Gloucester reveal her struggles between familial duty and her affection for Wilson. She describes her secret communications with him, as well as her surprise encounter with the disguised Wilson in Bath. Lydia also reflects upon the wonders of city life, with astonishment and excitement. Having spent most of her life at a boarding school for young women, the expedition serves for Lydia as a debut into society (an important cultural phenomenon with a long literary tradition). The eponymous character, Humphry Clinker, is an ostler, a stableman at an inn, who does not make his first appearance until about a quarter of the way through the story. He is taken on by Matthew Bramble and family, while they are traveling toward London, after offending Tabitha and amusing Matthew Bramble. Humphry Clinker is a primarily foolish character whose good-natured earnestness earns him the esteem of Matthew Bramble. He is largely described through the letters of Matthew Bramble and Jeremy Melford and, despite his frequent misunderstandings, is presented as a talented worker and gifted orator, attracting a devoted following of parishioners during a brief oratorical stint in London. After various romantic interludes, Humphry suffers false imprisonment due to accusations of being a highway robber, though he retains the confident support of Matthew Bramble and his family. He is rescued and returned to his sweetheart, the maid Winifred Jenkins. Eventually, it is discovered that Humphry is Mr. Bramble's illegitimate son from a relationship with a barmaid, during his wilder university days. The book ends in a series of weddings. ===== A schoolgirl named Mikako Nagamine (Mika Shinohara (original Japanese), Sumi Muto (Japanese) Cynthia Martinez (English)) is recruited into the UN Space Army to fight in a war against a group of aliens called the Tarsiansnamed after the Tharsis region of Mars where they were first encountered. As a Special Agent, Mikako pilots a giant robotic mecha called a Tracer as part of a fighting squadron attached to the spacecraft carrier Lysithea. When the Lysithea leaves Earth to search for the Tarsians, Mikako's friend Noboru Terao (Makoto Shinkai (original Japanese), Chihiro Suzuki (Japanese) Adam Colon (English)) remains on Earth. The two continue to communicate across space using the e-mail facilities on their mobile telephones. As the Lysithea travels deeper into space, messages take increasingly longer to reach Noboru on Earth, and the time-lag of their correspondence eventually spans years. The narrative begins in 2047. Mikako is apparently alone in a hauntingly empty city, trying to contact people through her mobile telephone. She wakes up in her Tracer orbiting an extrasolar planet. She then goes to Agartha, the fictional fourth planet of the Sirius Solar System. Mikako sends an e-mail to Noboru (which shows the date 2047-09-16), with the subject "I am here", which would reach him eight years later. Some flashes of imagery, perhaps indicative of memory, a hallucination, or even a mystical encounter, are then shown. The room shown at the beginning of the animation is presented again; Mikako is squatting in the corner, sobbing and pleading with her doppelganger to let her see Noboru again so she can tell him she loves him. The ship's alarm warns Mikako that the Tarsians are surrounding her, but she does not understand. A climactic battle ensues. On Earth, Noboru receives the message almost nine years later. At Agartha, three of the four carriers equipped with the warp engines which brought the expeditionary force to Sirius have been destroyed. The Lysithea is still intact after Mikako joins the fight and stops its destruction. After winning the battle, Mikako lets her damaged Tracer drift in space. In the manga, 16-year-old Mikako sends a message to 25-year-old Noboru, telling him that she loves him. By this time, Noboru himself has joined the UN, which has launched a rescue mission for the Lysithea. When Mikako hears that the UN is sending help for their rescue, she consults a list of people on the mission, and finds that Noboru is among them. The manga ends with Mikako saying that they will definitely meet again. ===== Set against the backdrop of French Indochina, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and an older, wealthy Chinese-Vietnamese man. In 1929, a 15-year-old nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, returning from a holiday at her family home in the town of Sa Đéc, to her boarding school in Saigon. She attracts the attention of a 27-year-old son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of wealth and heir to a fortune. He strikes up a conversation with the girl; she accepts a ride back to town in his chauffeured limousine. Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a bankrupt, manic depressive widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all- too-real task of making her way alone in the world. Thus, she becomes his lover, until he bows to the disapproval of his father and breaks off the affair. For her lover, there is no question of the depth and sincerity of his love, but it isn't until much later that the girl acknowledges to herself her true feelings. ===== Badgworthy water, Malmsmead The book is set in the 17th century in the Badgworthy Water region of Exmoor in Devon and Somerset, England. John (in West Country dialect, pronounced "Jan") Ridd is the son of a respectable farmer who was murdered in cold blood by one of the notorious Doone clan, a once noble family, now outlaws, in the isolated Doone Valley. Battling his desire for revenge, John also grows into a respectable farmer and takes good care of his mother and two sisters. He falls hopelessly in love with Lorna, a girl he meets by accident, who turns out to be not only (apparently) the granddaughter of Sir Ensor Doone (lord of the Doones), but destined to marry (against her will) the impetuous, menacing, and now jealous heir of the Doone Valley, Carver Doone. Carver will let nothing get in the way of his marriage to Lorna, which he plans to force upon her once Sir Ensor dies and he comes into his inheritance. Jan Ridd learns to fire his father's gun – from an 1893 illustrated edition Sir Ensor dies, and Carver becomes lord of the Doones. John Ridd helps Lorna escape to his family's farm, Plover's Barrows. Since Lorna is a member of the hated Doone clan, feelings are mixed toward her in the Ridd household, but she is nonetheless defended against the enraged Carver's retaliatory attack on the farm. A member of the Ridd household notices Lorna's necklace, a jewel that she was told by Sir Ensor belonged to her mother. During a visit from the Counsellor, Carver's father and the wisest of the Doone family, the necklace is stolen from Plover's Barrows. Shortly after its disappearance, a family friend discovers Lorna's origins, learning that the necklace belonged to a Lady Dugal, who was robbed and murdered by a band of outlaws. Only her daughter survived the attack. It becomes apparent that Lorna, being evidently the long-lost girl in question, is in fact heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the country, and not a Doone after all (although the Doones are remotely related, being descended from a collateral branch of the Dugal family). She is required by law, but against her will, to return to London to become a ward in Chancery. Despite John and Lorna's love for one another, their marriage is out of the question. King Charles II dies, and the Duke of Monmouth (the late king's illegitimate son) challenges Charles's brother James for the throne. The Doones, abandoning their plan to marry Lorna to Carver and claim her wealth, side with Monmouth in the hope of reclaiming their ancestral lands. However, Monmouth is defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor, and his associates are sought for treason. John Ridd is captured during the rebellion. Innocent of all charges, he is taken to London by an old friend to clear his name. There, he is reunited with Lorna (now Lorna Dugal), whose love for him has not diminished. When he thwarts an attack on Lorna's great-uncle and legal guardian Earl Brandir, John is granted a pardon, a title, and a coat of arms by the king and returns a free man to Exmoor. In the meantime, the surrounding communities have grown tired of the Doones and their depredations. Knowing the Doones better than any other man, John leads the attack on their land. All the Doone men are killed, except the Counsellor (from whom John retrieves the stolen necklace) and his son Carver, who escapes, vowing revenge. When Earl Brandir dies and Judge Jeffreys, as Lord Chancellor, becomes Lorna's guardian, she is granted her freedom to return to Exmoor and marry John. During their wedding, Carver bursts into the Church of St Mary, Oare. He shoots Lorna and flees. Distraught and filled with blinding rage, John pursues and confronts him. A struggle ensues in which Carver is left sinking in a mire. Exhausted and bloodied from the fight, John can only pant as he watches Carver slip away. He returns to discover that Lorna is not dead, and after a period of anxious uncertainty, she survives to live happily ever after. ===== The play opens with a late night dinner between the widower Mr Tanqueray and some of his longtime professional friends. All are upper class members of British Society, and are very disturbed when they learn of the upcoming second marriage of Tanqueray to a Mrs Paula Jarman, a lower class woman with a known sexual past. As the play progresses we see the misery of the mismatched couple and their shared efforts to foster a bond between the young, but impeccably proper Miss Eillean Tanqueray and her young unhappy stepmother. This is compromised when Mrs Tanqueray learns the identity of her stepdaughter's fiancé; he is the man who ruined her, years ago. She reveals her knowledge to her husband, who prevents the marriage and alienates his daughter. This alienation spreads and husband and wife, father and daughter, step-parent and child are all angered and alone. When the daughter learns the reasons behind her disappointment she is struck with pity and makes a speech about trying again with her stepmother, only to go to her and find her dead, apparently by suicide. ===== Slim is a waitress in a Los Angeles diner when she meets and marries Mitch after he wards off a mannerless man who provokes her. They have a daughter, Gracie. Some years later Slim finds out Mitch has been cheating on her. She threatens to leave, whereupon Mitch slaps and punches her. He says that as he makes the money he gets to do whatever he likes, and won't end his affair unless she wants to fight him. He says "I'm a man. It's no contest." Slim confides in Mitch's mother, who asks what she did to make Mitch angry. Slim’s friend Ginny advises her to leave Mitch and press charges but she does not want to hurt Gracie. When Slim goes to pick up Gracie from school she finds Mitch has taken her already. She panics that Mitch has left town with her but it transpires that he took Gracie to the zoo. During dinner Mitch further insults Slim for confiding in his mother and Ginny. She now realizes that she has no other choice but to take Gracie and leave. Slim enlists her friends to help her escape. During the late-night attempt, Mitch foils the plan and, grabbing her hair, throws her to the ground and kicks her in the chest. Slim’s friends break in. Mitch threatens them with a gun but is unwilling to shoot with Gracie watching so allows them to leave. Tracked down by Mitch to her cheap motel, Slim flees to her old boyfriend Joe in Seattle. Mitch's friends show up and threaten Joe so she goes to her wealthy father for money but he, being previously unaware of her existence, doesn't believe her story and gives her just $12. However when he is threatened by Mitch's men he has a change of heart and sends Slim enough money for a house. Slim buys a house and changes her name to Erin. Joe visits and they become close, but again Mitch tracks her down, appearing suddenly in her house expressing remorse and a wish to reconcile, promising it will be different this time. When she refuses he becomes violent but Slim retaliates with pepper spray and escapes after a car chase. She consults a lawyer who is sympathetic but advises she cannot be legally protected. Slim goes into hiding in San Francisco and sends Gracie away to safety while she trains in Krav Maga self defense. She breaks into Mitch's new home and hides his guns, jams the phone, plants fake letters saying she is there to discuss custody of Gracie, and awaits his return. When he arrives, Slim taunts him to fight her. When he says he cannot hit her, she asks him how come he could before when she was defenseless. They fight and Slim beats Mitch unconscious. Unable to inflict a final fatal blow Slim calls Ginny, but while on the phone Mitch hits her from behind with a lamp. Slim thinks of Gracie and the torture of Mitch's abuse to motivate herself and remembers her training, and eventually knocks Mitch off a balcony to his death. The police regard her actions as self-defense. Slim and Gracie go to live with Joe in Seattle. ===== ===== Daniel Deronda contains two main strains of plot, united by the title character. The novel begins in late August 1865Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Ed. Graham Handley. Oxford University Press, 1999. with the meeting of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth in the fictional town of Leubronn, Germany. Daniel finds himself attracted to, but wary of, the beautiful, stubborn, and selfish Gwendolen, whom he sees losing all her winnings in a game of roulette. The next day, Gwendolen receives a letter from her mother telling her that the family is financially ruined and asking her to come home. In despair at losing all her money, Gwendolen pawns a necklace and debates gambling again to make her fortune. In a fateful moment, however, her necklace is returned to her by a porter, and she realises that Daniel saw her pawn the necklace and redeemed it for her. From this point, the plot breaks off into two separate flashbacks, one which gives us the history of Gwendolen Harleth and one of Daniel Deronda. In October 1864, soon after the death of Gwendolen's stepfather, Gwendolen and her family move to a new neighbourhood. It is here that she meets Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, a taciturn and calculating man who proposes marriage shortly after their first meeting. At first she is open to his advances, then upon discovering that Grandcourt has several children with his mistress, Lydia Glasher, she eventually flees to the German town where she meets Deronda. This portion of the novel sets Gwendolen up as a haughty and selfish, yet affectionate daughter, admired for her beauty but suspected by many in society because of her satirical observations and somewhat manipulative behaviour. She is also prone to fits of terror that shake her otherwise calm and controlling exterior. Deronda has been raised by a wealthy gentleman, Sir Hugo Mallinger. Deronda's relationship to Sir Hugo is ambiguous, and it is widely believed, even by Deronda, that he is Sir Hugo's illegitimate son, though no one is certain. Deronda is an intelligent, light-hearted and compassionate young man who cannot quite decide what to do with his life, and this is a sore point between him and Sir Hugo, who wants him to go into politics. One day in late July 1865, as he is boating on the Thames, Deronda rescues a young Jewish woman, Mirah Lapidoth, from attempting to drown herself. He takes her to the home of some of his friends, where they learn that Mirah is a singer. She has come to London to search for her mother and brother after running away from her father, who kidnapped her when she was a child and forced her into an acting troupe. She finally ran away from him after discovering that he was planning to sell her into prostitution. Moved by her tale, Deronda undertakes to help her look for her mother (who turns out to have died years earlier) and brother; through this, he is introduced to London's Jewish community. Mirah and Daniel grow closer and Daniel, anxious about his growing affection for her, leaves for a short time to join Sir Hugo in Leubronn, where he and Gwendolen first meet. From here, the story picks up in "real time". Gwendolen returns from Germany in early September 1865 because her family has lost its fortune in an economic downturn. Gwendolen is unwilling to marry, the only respectable way in which a woman could achieve financial security; and she is similarly reluctant to become a governess, one of the few respectable ways a woman of her background can work, because it means that her social status would be drastically lowered from wealthy landed gentry to almost that of a servant (one of the troubles of being a governess is that one's status is above that of servant, so governesses seldom socialised with servants, yet at the same time, their status was far below that of their employers, so they could not socialise with them either). She hits upon the idea of pursuing a career in singing or on the stage, but a prominent musician tells her she does not have the talent. Finally, to save herself and her family from relative poverty, she marries the wealthy Grandcourt, despite having promised Mrs. Glasher she would not marry him, and fearing that it is a mistake. She believes she can manipulate him to maintain her freedom to do what she likes; however, Grandcourt has shown every sign of being cold, unfeeling, and manipulative himself. Deronda, searching for Mirah's family, meets a consumptive visionary named Mordecai. Mordecai passionately proclaims his wish for the Jewish people to retain their national identity and one day be restored to their Promised Land. Because he is dying, he wants Daniel to become his intellectual heir and continue to pursue his dream and be an advocate for the Jewish people. Although he is strongly drawn to Mordecai, Deronda hesitates to commit himself to a cause that seems to have no connection to his own identity. Deronda's desire to embrace Mordecai's vision becomes stronger when they discover Mordecai is Mirah's brother. Still, Deronda does not believe that he is a Jew and cannot reconcile this fact with his affection and respect for Mordecai/Ezra, which would be necessary for him to pursue a life of Jewish advocacy. Gwendolen, meanwhile, has been emotionally crushed by her cold, self-centred, and manipulative husband. She is consumed with guilt for disinheriting Lydia Glasher's children by marrying their father. On Gwendolen's wedding day, Mrs. Glasher curses her and tells her that she will suffer for her treachery, which only exacerbates Gwendolen's feelings of dread and terror. During this time, Gwendolen and Deronda meet regularly, and Gwendolen pours out her troubles to him at each meeting. During a trip to Italy, Grandcourt is knocked from his boat into the water, and after some hesitation, Gwendolen jumps into the Mediterranean in a futile attempt to save him. After this, she is consumed with guilt because she had long wished he would die and fears her hesitation caused his death. Coincidentally, Deronda is also in Italy. He has learned from Sir Hugo that his mother lives in Italy, and he goes there to meet her. He comforts Gwendolen and advises her. In love with Deronda, Gwendolen hopes for a future with him, but he urges her onto a path of righteousness, encouraging her to help others to alleviate her suffering. Deronda meets his mother and learns that she was a famous Jewish opera singer with whom Sir Hugo was once in love. She tells him that her father, a physician and strictly pious Jew, forced her to marry her cousin whom she did not love. She resented the rigid piety of her childhood. Daniel was the only child of that union, and on her husband's death, she asked the devoted Sir Hugo to raise her son as an English gentleman, never to know that he was Jewish. Upon learning of his true origins, Deronda finally feels comfortable with his love for Mirah, and on his return to England in October 1866, he tells Mirah this and commits himself to be Ezra/Mordecai's disciple. Before Daniel marries Mirah, he goes to Gwendolen to tell her about his origins, his decision to go to "the East" (per Ezra/Mordecai's wish), and his betrothal to Mirah. Gwendolen is devastated by the news, but it becomes a turning point in her life, inspiring her to finally say, "I shall live." She sends him a letter on his wedding day, telling him not to think of her with sadness but to know that she will be a better person for having known him. The newlyweds are all prepared to set off for "the East" with Mordecai, when Mordecai dies in their arms, and the novel ends. ===== Carl Corey wakes in a medical clinic, with little to no knowledge of who he is or how he got there. He suspects he is being over- medicated, so he overpowers the nurse and doctor and escapes his room. He finds the manager of the clinic, and learns that he was recovering from a car accident in a private clinic, paid for by his sister, Evelyn Flaumel. He flees and heads to her house. She addresses him as Corwin and calls herself Flora. Hiding his lack of memory, he convinces her to let him stay. In Flora's library he locates a set of customized Tarot cards— the Trumps—whose Major Arcana are replaced with images which he recognizes as his family. As he looks over the cards he remembers all his brothers: sneaky Random, Julian the hunter, well-built Gérard, arrogant Eric, himself, Benedict the master tactician and swordsman, sinister Caine, scheming Bleys, and the mysterious Brand. He also views his four sisters: Flora who offered him sanctuary, Deirdre who was dear to him, reserved Llewella, and Fiona, whom Corwin hated. His brother Random contacts him via telephone and Corwin promises to give him protection. Random arrives, pursued by mysterious spined, bloodshot-eyed humanoid creatures, and during the ensuing battle Corwin learns that he has superhuman strength. The combined efforts of Corwin, Random, and Flora's dogs ultimately defeat the attacking creatures. Later, in a guarded conversation in which Corwin continues to mask his memory loss, Random asks Corwin whether he wishes to "try," to which Corwin agrees, only learning later that he has agreed to attempt to seize the throne of Amber. They set off in a car and the world begins to change around them as they drive. Corwin realizes that Random is somehow causing the changes. They ultimately end up in the Forest of Arden, the territory of their brother Julian who is allied with Corwin's enemy, Eric. Julian's beasts confront Random and Corwin, and eventually Julian himself appears on his steed Morgenstern to hunt them down. In the ensuing chase, Corwin unhorses Julian and takes him prisoner. Seeing that their leader is held hostage, Julian's men let Corwin and Random proceed through the forest. After setting Julian free and proceeding on foot to Amber, they encounter their sister Deirdre who reveals she has fled from Eric's court. Corwin finally reveals that he has very little memory of his identity or their destination, so Deirdre convinces him to walk the Pattern, which she believes will cure his amnesia. The three then travel to Rebma, a reflection of Amber underwater, and there they meet Moire, the queen of Rebma, and explain their intentions. Because Rebma is a reflection of Amber, there is also a reflection of the Pattern, which Corwin is to walk to restore his memory. Although Random is imprisoned for past offenses in Rebma and sentenced to wed a blind girl named Vialle, Corwin convinces the queen to allow him to walk the Pattern. After receiving advice from Random and Deirdre, he succeeds in negotiating the Pattern, experiencing flashbacks of his previous life, which stretches back over centuries to his time in Amber, and recalling the incident that caused his amnesia, when Eric beat him unconscious and left him to die of the Black Death in medieval England on our Earth. He remembers the powers which his heritage and the Pattern grant him - the power to walk through shadow, and to pronounce a powerful curse before dying. After he completes the Pattern he uses its power to project himself into the Castle of Amber. Searching the castle library, Corwin finds a pack of the Trumps and encounters an old servant friend. However, Eric enters the library and he and Corwin begin to duel. Although intimidated at first by Eric's immense skill, Corwin gets the upper hand in the swordfight and injures Eric on the arm. When soldiers of the castle move in to protect Eric, Corwin retreats and uses a Trump to contact his brother Bleys, who teleports Corwin to his location in Shadow. Corwin then agrees to aid Bleys in his attempt to assault Amber and defeat Eric. Corwin gathers a large group of warriors from Shadow and assembles a navy, while Bleys creates an army on land. From here Corwin attempts to contact his brothers, looking for allies. Caine, although supporting Eric, gives Corwin a promise of safe passage by sea, as does his brother Gérard. When he attempts to reach Brand, he views him in a prison and Brand desperately asks Corwin to free him before his image disappears. Unable to reach Benedict, on a whim Corwin attempts to use a Trump contact his father Oberon, who has been missing for years and is presumed dead. Corwin succeeds in reaching Oberon, who encourages him to seize the throne, but the contact is quickly lost. When Corwin contacts Random, Random reveals that Eric has contacted him and revealed the full extent of his defenses, which are vast and powerful. Furthermore, Random tells Corwin that Eric has gained control over the mysterious Jewel of Judgment, which allows him to control the weather among other things. Despite Random's misgivings, Corwin remains resolute in his desire to attack Amber with Bleys. As the invasion begins, Corwin travels with the navy by sea but finds Caine waiting for him with a superior force, apparently in violation of their agreement. Eric then contacts Corwin by Trump and reveals that he knew about his plans from Caine. The two engage in a mental duel which Corwin is unable to break from. After the two exchange taunts, Corwin launches a full mental assault on Eric, which defeats him and leaves him with the knowledge that Corwin is his superior. Corwin then joins in the battle although it is hopeless: Caine's forces are already destroying Corwin's navy and he escapes via Trump to Bleys and his army. Bleys has been constantly assaulted by creatures of Shadow and the poor weather conditions that have been created by Eric's use of the Jewel of Judgment. Although they eventually reach Amber, their forces have dwindled and they barely fight their way up Kolvir, the mountain on which Castle Amber is situated. Bleys is ultimately pushed off a cliff, although Corwin throws him his pack of Trumps to allow him to escape the fall. Corwin then uses his few remaining forces and pushes through, eventually reaching the castle grounds, but before he can reach the throne or Eric, his remaining forces are surrounded and he is captured. Corwin is brought forth in chains to endure Eric's coronation. Julian, who is at Eric's side, instructs Corwin to hand the crown of Amber to Eric, who will crown himself King of the one true world. Corwin instead crowns himself King of Amber, but he is quickly beaten by the guards and eventually throws the crown at Eric. Eric then crowns himself, and sentences Corwin to be imprisoned, and his eyes burned out. As hot irons are used to destroy his eyes, Corwin utters a powerful curse on Eric and Amber. Blind and imprisoned beneath the castle, Corwin is driven to near insanity, although rare visits and smuggled gifts from his friend Lord Rein help him maintain his spirit and hope. After a year has passed in blindness and solitude, he is let out to eat at Eric's table on the anniversary of the coronation before being thrown into the dungeons again. After years have passed, Corwin's eyesight begins to regenerate, and he begins an escape attempt by whittling the door with a spoon he stole from Eric's table. Before he can escape in this manner, Dworkin, the mad sorcerer and creator of the Trumps, appears out of nowhere, having seemingly walked through the dungeon wall. He explains that he entered Corwin's cell by drawing a picture and walking through it, and wishes to return in the same way. Dworkin uses Corwin's sharpened spoon to draw a Trump image of his quarters on the wall, but before he leaves, Corwin persuades him to draw the Lighthouse of Cabra on the opposite wall. Using this drawing as a Trump, Corwin projects himself out of his prison. At Cabra he meets Jopin, the keeper of the lighthouse, but does not reveal his true identity. Jopin helps Corwin rehabilitate from his prison ordeal as Corwin aids Jopin in his activities around the lighthouse. Once he is fully recovered, Jopin recognizes Corwin, and shows him that the Vale of Garnath, previously a pleasant valley adjacent to Amber, has become a warped and twisted evil place, which Corwin recognizes as the result of his own curse. Corwin takes Jopin's craft Butterfly and sails away, while sending a message to Eric via a black bird, stating that he will return to claim the throne. ===== Corwin has escaped the dungeons of Amber, where he was imprisoned by his hated brother Eric, who has seized the throne. All of Corwin's siblings believe that guns can never be brought to the medieval world of Amber, as all gunpowders seem inert there. But Corwin has secret knowledge: in the shadow world of Avalon, where he once ruled, there exists a jeweler's rouge that will function as gunpowder in Amber. Corwin plans to raise a legion of shadow soldiers, and arm them with automatic rifles from the shadow world Earth. ===== Eric is dead, and Corwin now rules Amber as Regent — but someone has murdered Caine and framed Corwin. Random tells his part of the story. Corwin decides to find out what happened to Brand who is either missing or dead, and begins to find his obsession with the throne is a two-edged sword that may cost him his life, as it has his brothers'. ===== Corwin explores the true Amber, and finds the source of the Black Road, in the damaged primal Pattern. He learns that to repair the damage will require the Jewel of Judgement, which he must retrieve from Earth. ===== Corwin sulks in Castle Amber's library while Oberon gives the family orders. Random persuades Corwin to leave, but they are held back by an invisible force. They watch as Corwin's sword appears and chops off Benedict's new arm. Dara and Martin are with Benedict. Corwin learns from Martin's trumps that the crossbowman who spared him is Merlin. Dara tells how Brand bargained with the Courts of Chaos. They wished to replace him with Merlin. However, Dara feared that neither would keep their word. Still unconvinced, Corwin contacts Fiona. She confirms Dara's authority, and says that Oberon is about to repair the Pattern. Hoping to save Oberon, Corwin grabs the Jewel, but he is paralyzed by Oberon's magics. Oberon has a final talk with his son. Corwin explains that he no longer wants to rule. Once Corwin confirms Dara's authority, Benedict uses the trump of the Courts of Chaos to begin his attack. Dara talks to Corwin. Dara then leaves to give the rest of the family their orders. Gérard is ordered to stay and guard Amber, while Julian and Random are to stay in Arden. Oberon arrives, and asks Corwin for some of his blood. He breathes life into the blood, and it becomes a red raven. Oberon tells Corwin that the raven will follow him through shadow. Corwin's orders are to hellride towards Chaos as fast as possible. He must bear the Jewel through shadow. Corwin says goodbye to his father, and sets off. Now that he knows that Amber is just the first Shadow, he finds he can shift shadow there more easily. As he rides towards Chaos, he follows the Black Road. After a time, he notices the black road begin to come apart; shortly after, the raven arrives and gives him the Jewel. Corwin is unsure whether this means that Oberon has succeeded or failed. Brand arrives, telling him that he watched Oberon fail, and that Corwin must give him the Jewel so he can create a new Pattern. Corwin refuses, and forces Brand to leave. He notices an unusually large storm following him, and takes refuge in a cave. The cave's other occupant, a nameless stranger who has also sought shelter from the storm, casually mentions some local legends about the Archangel Corwin, who, according to scripture will ride before a storm at the end of the world. The real Corwin dismisses this story as nonsense and commands the Jewel to quell the storm. Eventually he falls asleep. When he wakes, his horse has been kidnapped. He says goodbye to the stranger and tracks his horse to a cave, blocked off by a large boulder, which he shatters. Inside, leprechauns are celebrating a feast. Observing his great strength, they return his horse and invite him to join them. Succumbing to their odd charm, he starts to fall asleep, but rouses himself in time to see them preparing to slaughter him. He awakes and rushes outside. As he leaves, the leader of the wee folk recognizes him as the Archangel Corwin from local legends, mentioned before by the nameless stranger. He starts to move into shadow, but as he moves further from the cave where he slept the universe starts to come apart around him. He realizes that the storm was a wave of Chaos, moving away from Amber as the multiverse is destroyed. He begins to doubt whether Oberon was successful. Using the jewel, he is able to overtake the storm and return to the diminishing multiverse. A strange lady dines with him and attempts to seduce him, but remembering his encounter with the pale lady on the black road (who may or may have not been a copy of Dara), and that he's working to a deadline, he declines. Brand ambushes him with a crossbow, mortally wounding his horse, but the blood raven reappears and plucks out one of Brand's eyes. Corwin puts down his horse and continues striding through shadow. Corwin cuts a branch off a tree as a walking aid. The tree complains, but when it learns that he is Oberon's son it gives him its blessing. It says that it is Ygg, and that Oberon planted it in Amber's distant past to mark the boundary between Order and Chaos. It tells him to plant the staff somewhere it will have the chance to grow. A talking raven named Hugi (of the usual color) arrives, and tries to distract Corwin with fatalistic philosophy. It shows Corwin the head of a mostly-drowned Giant, who will not even allow the possibility of rescue. A mythological jackal offers to lead Corwin on a short-cut to the Courts, but instead leads him to its lair, where Corwin kills it in self-defense. He finally finds a shadow with the Courts' sky, but is aghast to discover that the Courts still lie across a huge wasteland. The raven Hugi returns and pointedly tells him it knew all along, so he kills it for his dinner. As the metaphysical storm approaches Chaos, Corwin decides that Oberon must have failed, so he plants his staff and begins to use the Jewel to inscribe a new Pattern. The process evokes memories of his former life in Paris, France, and we are given the impression that these somehow shape the new Pattern. He finishes, but is exhausted, and he collapses at the new Pattern's center. Brand projects himself to Corwin and steals the Jewel. Corwin loses consciousness. Corwin awakes to find the area surrounding his Pattern transformed. The sky is now white, and the staff has grown into a tree. Corwin realises that he is at the center of a Pattern, and commands it to teleport him to the Courts. He arrives in the courts, only to be challenged to single combat by someone who introduces himself as Borel, Master at Arms of the Courts of Chaos. He removes his armour to make the fight fair, but Corwin, having no time for a fair fight, slays him then and there, although he does feel slightly guilty about it afterward. Corwin finds Brand with Fiona, Random and Deirdre, at the edge of the Abyss. Fiona is keeping him psychically bound, but Brand has Deirdre as a hostage. Suddenly an image of Oberon fills the sky, telling them that Corwin must use the Jewel to save them from the oncoming Chaos storm, and gives them a blessing. Corwin makes use of the distraction and his attunement to the jewel to super-heat Brand, but Brand realizes what's happening and starts to cut Deirdre. She pulls herself free, and Brand is shot in the chest and throat with a bow. He staggers, and grabs Deirdre's hair. They both fall into the Abyss. Corwin tries to follow her, and Random has to knock him out. Corwin wakes up to see Caine there, alive and well. He explains how he faked his own death and spied on the others using the Trumps. It was him who shot Brand, using silver-tipped arrows, just in case. They watch Amber's armies crush the forces of Chaos while the storm continues to advance. A funeral procession, led by Dworkin, emerges from the storm front, accompanied by all sorts of various fantastic beasts. Fiona appears with Dara and Corwin's son, Merlin. Corwin discusses with Fiona the possibility that two Patterns now exist; she can't decide whether that is good or bad. Dara arrives, angry with Corwin for killing Borel, and then leaves. Merlin arrives with her, but stays, eager to learn more about his father. The Unicorn appears from the Abyss, wearing the Jewel of Judgement. It examines each of the Amberites in turn, then kneels in front of Random. The rest of the family kneel in front of him too, and pledge their allegiance to him as the new King. Random takes the Jewel, and Corwin is able to guide him through the attunement process. Corwin is exhausted, and stays with Random while the others go to the Courts, where they think they should be safe. Merlin stays, and asks to hear about his father's adventures. Corwin begins narrating the Chronicles to his son. Random is successful, and the Trumps become active. They contact Gérard, who tells them that the multiverse is fine, although seven years have passed. Corwin reflects on his changed attitudes towards his family, and on the changes in himself. ===== The serial opens in the midst of World War II in the fictional Indian city of Mayapore, against the backdrop of the last years of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement. Hari Kumar is a young Indian man who was educated at Chillingborough, a British public school (the British term for an elite private school); he identifies as English rather than Indian. The bankruptcy of his father, a formerly successful businessman, forces him to return to India to live with his aunt. Working as a journalist, Kumar now occupies a lower social status in India, and lives between two worlds, British and Indian. Many British colonists discriminate against him, and he is held in some suspicion by Indian independence activists. During this time, violent anti-British demonstrations are taking place in the city. Hari becomes romantically involved with Daphne Manners, a young British woman who does not share her people's prejudices. One night, after Hari and Daphne make love in the public Bibighar Gardens, the couple are attacked by a group of unknown Indian men. Hari is beaten and Daphne is gang raped. Ronald Merrick, a young lower-middle-class Englishman, is intelligent and hardworking. He is the local Indian Police superintendent. Merrick once professed to be romantically interested in Daphne, though she politely but firmly rebuffed him. He arrests Hari for her rape, holding him in the local jail. Hari is beaten and sexually humiliated. Merrick resents Hari's privileged education and disdains Daphne's preferring the young Indian to him. When Daphne refuses to cooperate with the investigation, the police do not prosecute Hari for rape. However, Kumar and other young, educated Indians, are jailed without trial under the security regulations adopted to suppress the Indian independence movement. Word that Hari was tortured causes outrage in the Indian community. Merrick is transferred from Mayapore to a smaller and less important town in the province. Daphne learns she is pregnant. She chooses to believe Hari is the father, rather than one of the rapists. She dies in childbirth. The mixed-race daughter, Parvati, is taken in by Daphne's great-aunt, Lady Manners, widow of a former provincial governor. While Lady Manners takes the infant to the resort area of Srinagar, she meets Sarah Layton, a young British woman vacationing with her mother, Mildred, and sister, Susan. Sarah and Susan's father is the colonel of the Indian Army regiment in Pankot, a hill station near Mayapore. He is being held as a prisoner of war in Germany, after his unit was captured early in the war. Susan and their mother prefer to stay away from Lady Manners due to the scandal of her great-niece's illegitimate birth, but Sarah pays a call on Lady Manners and the two women become friendly. Sarah and her family soon encounter Merrick, who has left the police and procured a commission in the Indian Army. Teddie Bingham, an Indian Army officer and the fiancé of Sarah's sister Susan, is stationed in the nearby princely state of Mirat; Merrick, also assigned there, happens to share quarters with him. Because the unit is soon to leave for the border with Burma, Teddie and Susan have to marry in Mirat. When Teddie's best man for the ceremony becomes ill, he asks Merrick to step in. Merrick, seeing a relationship with the upper- class Teddie and the Laytons as a means to career advancement, is pleased to help. While Merrick and Teddie are driving to the ceremony a stone is thrown at their car, slightly injuring Teddie. Merrick understands that he was the target of the attack, as this is one of a series of incidents suggesting he is being harassed because of his treatment of Kumar and the other suspects in the Manners case in Mayapore. Shortly after the wedding, Teddie and Merrick leave for the Burma front with their unit. Teddie is soon killed in an ambush by the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army (INA). Merrick is badly wounded trying to get Teddie to safety and is evacuated to a Calcutta hospital. When Sarah visits him (at Susan's request), she learns that his arm will be amputated and that his burned face is permanently disfigured. Merrick says that Teddie was ambushed because of him. Teddie had left their unit to try to persuade two Indian soldiers of his regiment, who had been captured by the Japanese and joined the INA, to surrender and come in. Merrick believes Teddie wanted to prove to him that the Indian soldiers, even after becoming turncoats, would resume their loyalty to the British if given the chance. Merrick's disfigurement has increased hostility against Indians. Lady Manners presses for a formal inquiry into Hari Kumar's arrest and detention. Nigel Rowan, an aide to the governor of the province conducts the interview with Hari, who learns during it that Daphne died. After Rowan establishes that Merrick tortured Hari and there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, he arranges Hari's release. No action is taken against Merrick, however. After convalescing, Merrick is promoted and assigned to intelligence activities concerning the INA and Indian soldiers who collaborated with the enemy. He comes across the Laytons again in Bombay, where Sarah is reunited with her father, Colonel Layton, just released from a German POW camp. Merrick is there to interrogate an Indian soldier who had served under Colonel Layton and assisted the Germans after Layton's unit was captured, and who has been deported to India. Merrick gains assistance from Sergeant Guy Perron, a young Cambridge graduate and Indian history scholar, who was serving with an Intelligence Corps Field Security unit; he speaks fluent Urdu and is asked to observe the interrogation. Merrick learns that Perron also attended Chillingborough and knew Hari Kumar. After the interrogation, Perron runs into Merrick and Sarah Layton at a party. He accompanies them to the apartment of Layton's aunt, where Sarah and her father are staying temporarily. Sarah and Perron are attracted to each other. Merrick decides to have Perron assigned to assist him in further investigations of Indian soldiers who became collaborators. Perron and Sarah both find Merrick distasteful, but Perron has no choice but to work with him. After her husband Teddie's death and a difficult birth of their son, Susan Layton Bingham suffers a mental breakdown. She is treated in a hospital in Pankot. When Merrick returns to the Pankot area for his work, he courts Susan and ultimately marries her. Perron later learns that Merrick illegally gained access to Susan's medical records, apparently to learn about her mental state in order to persuade her to marry him. Susan's sister, Sarah, opposes the marriage, but is unable to prevent it. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the war in the East is ended, and the days of British rule in India are clearly numbered. Perron arranges a quick exit from the Army to return to Cambridge and his academic career. Due to his imminent departure, he and Sarah suspend their relationship. Sarah's parents also plan to return to England. Merrick intends to stay on, having been offered a contract by the government of Mirat to reorganize their police force. In 1947, with the transition to Indian independence under way, Perron returns to India as an historical observer. The conflict between Hindus and Muslims related to independence is tense. While visiting Mirat at the invitation of its Chief Minister, Count Bronowsky, whom he previously met in Bombay, Perron learns that Merrick is dead, officially from a riding accident. Bronowsky tells Perron that Merrick actually died during a sexual rendezvous with a young Indian man who was probably working for independent activists. It is believed the man allowed an assassin access to Merrick. The authorities cover up the details of Merrick's death, fearing reprisals from Indians during the political uncertainty with the British departure. The two discuss their view that, in leaving India, the British are opening up "Pandora's Box," releasing the ancient competition for power between the Hindus and Muslims, who had earlier conquered and ruled the country. Some confrontations had been restrained by the power of the British as rulers. Sarah, Susan, and their aunt attend Merrick's funeral in Mirat. Perron accompanies them, along with Merrick's ashes, on the train back to Pankot. Joining them is Ahmed Kasim, the educated son of a prominent Muslim politician who has been working for Bronowsky in Mirat for the past few years. En route to Pankot, the train is stopped by Hindus, who attack Muslim passengers in retaliation for recent attacks on Hindus in Mirat. The attackers demand that Kasim be turned over to them. Kasim voluntarily leaves the train car and surrenders himself to the attackers, who murder him. Perron, Sarah, and the other English passengers are unharmed, but are horrified by the slaughter of Kasim and other Muslim passengers. Before leaving India again, Perron visits Hari Kumar, now living in a poor neighbourhood and supporting himself by tutoring Indian students in English. He leaves his calling card, as Kumar is out. Perron reflects on how Kumar was caught in an impossible position, between England and India. ===== Yukino Miyazawa is a Japanese high school first-year student who is the envy of classmates for her good grades and immaculate appearance. However, her "perfect" exterior is a façade, an egocentric charade she maintains to win praise. In the privacy of her own home, she is spoiled, stubborn, a slob, and studies relentlessly and obsessively to maintain her grades. On entering high school, she is knocked from her position at the top of the class by Soichiro Arima, a handsome young man whose very existence Yukino considers a threat to the praise on which she thrives, and she vows to destroy him. When Soichiro confesses that he has a crush on her, Yukino rejects him then boasts about it at home. Her observant little sister Kano points out that her rivalry with him comes from admiration, causing her to rethink her own feelings. Before she can figure out if she hates or likes Soichiro, he visits her home and discovers her being herself. He uses the information to blackmail her into doing his student council work. At first Yukino accepts it, coming to realize that he is also not the perfect student he pretends to be. Tired of being used, Yukino revolts and Soichiro apologizes, and admits he still loves her and just wanted to spend time with her. Yukino realizes she loves him as well, and together they resolve to abandon their fake ways and be true to themselves, though she initially has trouble breaking her lifelong habit of pretend-perfection and her competitive ways. As the series progresses, Yukino is able to open her true self to others and earns her first real friends beyond Soichiro. It is eventually revealed that Soichiro was striving to be perfect in order to avoid turning "bad" like the parents who abandoned him. Falling in love with Yukino, he is able to become more true to himself, but he also finds himself becoming increasingly jealous of Yukino's change bringing new friends and new activities into her life, and of her having parts of her life that don't involve him. When Yukino unknowingly hurts him, he becomes even more jealous and afraid, and begins to wear another façade of the "perfect boyfriend" in an effort to protect her from his "ugly" self. The return of both of his parents into his life sends Soichiro into a dark area, but helps him finally break free to truly be himself as Yukino and their friends help him learn to lean on and trust others. The end of the series shows Yukino and Soichiro in their 30s, with their three children, and gives updates on the various friends they made along the way. ===== ===== A spacecraft flies near Earth and releases an object which enters the atmosphere. Some time later, in a Central American jungle, U.S. Army Special Operations soldier and Vietnam Veteran "Dutch" and his elite mercenary rescue team — Mac, Billy, Blain, Poncho, and Hawkins — are tasked by Dutch's former commanding officer, General Philips, with rescuing a foreign cabinet minister and his aide held hostage by insurgents. CIA officer Dillon, an old friend of Dutch's from the Vietnam War, is assigned to accompany the team over Dutch's objections. The team discovers the wreckage of a helicopter and three skinned corpses, identified by Dutch as Green Berets out of Fort Bragg that he knew personally. Dutch's team reaches the enemy camp and kills all of the insurgents, including Soviet intelligence officers. Confronted by Dutch, Dillon admits the mission was a setup to retrieve intelligence from captured operatives and that the dead military unit disappeared weeks earlier in a failed rescue. After capturing Anna, the only surviving guerrilla, the team proceeds to its extraction point, unaware that it is being tracked with thermal imaging by an unseen observer. Anna escapes and is chased by Hawkins, but they are ambushed by the creature. It spares Anna but kills Hawkins and drags his body away. Dutch organizes a search for Hawkins' body, during which the creature kills Blain with its plasma weapon. Enraged, Mac initiates a firefight in which the creature is wounded, revealing luminescent green blood. The unit regroups and realizes that something in the jungle is stalking them. Dillon believes more guerrillas are responsible, but Billy is adamant that the perpetrator is not human, an assertion that is met with skepticism. The team makes camp for the night, setting traps in all directions. That night the traps are set off, and Mac kills a wild pig, mistaking it for the creature. In the confusion, the creature steals Blain's body and Dutch realizes that their enemy uses the trees to travel, making their traps ineffective. A second attempt to capture the creature using a net momentarily succeeds, but it quickly escapes, leaving Poncho injured. Mac and Dillon try to pursue it, but the alien outmaneuvers and kills them. The creature then catches up with the others, killing Billy and Poncho and wounding Dutch. Realizing the creature does not target unarmed prey because there is "no sport" in it, Dutch sends Anna to the helicopter unarmed. The creature pursues Dutch into a river and moves within a few feet of a mud- covered Dutch. His thermal signature reduced, Dutch remains unseen by the creature and it moves on. Dutch realizes he can use mud as camouflage. While the creature collects trophies from the dead mercenaries, Dutch crafts traps and weapons and lures the creature to him. He disables the creature's cloaking device and inflicts minor injuries but falls into the water, losing his mud cover, and is pinned by the creature. Acknowledging Dutch as a worthy foe and wishing to fight him in equal terms, the creature discards its mask and weapons and engages him in hand-to-hand combat. Dutch is almost beaten, but manages to crush the creature under a trap's counterweight. As the creature lies dying, it activates a self-destruct device. Dutch takes cover just before the device explodes and is later rescued by Philips and Anna with a helicopter. ===== Retired 1st SFOD-D Colonel John Matrix is informed by his former superior Major General Franklin Kirby that all the other members of his former unit have been killed by unknown mercenaries. The mercenaries, among them Bennett, an Australian ex-member of Matrix's team discharged for excessive violence, attack Matrix's secluded mountain home and kidnap Matrix's young daughter Jenny. While trying to intercept them, Matrix is also overpowered and abducted by the mercenaries. He is taken before their commander, Arius, a South American former dictator who blackmails Matrix into carrying out a political assassination in his home country of Val Verde, where Arius wishes to lead a military coup. (Matrix previously led a United States-backed revolution that deposed Arius, who has chosen Matrix to assassinate the new president of Val Verde, for he trusts Matrix implicitly.) With Jenny's life on the line, Matrix reluctantly accepts the demand, but not before killing Diaz while refusing to cooperate with "his men". After boarding a plane to Val Verde, Matrix manages to kill his guard, Henriques - by snapping his neck - and jumps from the plane just as it is taking off. With approximately 11 hours before the plane is scheduled to land, he sets out after another of Arius' men, Sully. He enlists the aid of an off-duty flight attendant, Cindy, and instructs her to follow Sully to a shopping mall. Cindy first assumes that Matrix is a madman, but after she sees Sully pull a gun on Matrix in the ensuing fight, she decides to assist him in his endeavor. After a lengthy car chase, Matrix catches up with Sully and drops him off a cliff to his death. Taking a motel key from Sully's jacket, Matrix tracks down and confronts Cooke, a former Green Beret in Arius' employ. He impales Cooke on a table leg after a lengthy fight and learns where Jenny is being held. Matrix breaks into a surplus store to equip himself with military weaponry, but is immediately arrested by the police. Cindy helps him escape by using a rocket launcher on the police car and, after commandeering a seaplane from a nearby marina controlled by Arius, Matrix and Cindy land the plane off the coast of Arius' island hideout. Matrix instructs Cindy to contact General Kirby and then proceeds to Arius' villa, killing Arius and his army. Jenny escapes to the villa's basement, but is captured by Bennett. Matrix tracks them, and after a lengthy fight, finally kills Bennett by impaling him with a steam pipe. Kirby arrives with a military detachment and asks Matrix to rejoin the unit, but Matrix declines and departs the island aboard the seaplane with Jenny and Cindy. ===== Former resident Sonia Freeman (Lynn Rainbow, who filmed all of her scenes in just one day) returns to Number 96 after her release from a mental asylum. Sonia is now married to newspaper journalist Duncan Hunter (Alister Smart). Her forgetful episodes and hallucinations become increasingly erratic and deranged. This worries Duncan, Sonia's good friend Jack Sellars (Tom Oliver) and Jack's new girlfriend, flight attendant Diana Moore (Rebecca Gilling), who has moved into flat 6. It is revealed that Diana and Duncan are secretly scheming to drive Sonia insane. Jack and the police arrive just in time before Diana and Duncan can persuade Sonia to kill herself. Aldo (Johnny Lockwood) has been withholding cash takings from the deli to avoid paying income tax on it, but loses the money in a fire. He takes a night job at the Connaught Rooms function hall to recoup the losses. Many of the residents become embroiled in the major plans for Dorrie (Pat McDonald) and husband Herb's (Ron Shand) Ruby Wedding celebrations. After looking at her marriage certificate, Dorrie discovers that the best man Horace Deerman (Harry Lawrence) signed where the groom should have. Believing this means Dorrie is married to Horace, Dorrie, Herb and Flo track him down. Horace is revealed as a derelict alcoholic. Much to her dismay, Horace takes a fancy to Dorrie. Les (Gordon McDougall) enlists Herb and Alf (James Elliott) to assist in his new business venture: a sauna in the building's basement, unbeknownst to wife Norma (Sheila Kennelly). Vera (Elaine Lee) is gang raped by a group of bikies and endures a troubled romance with politician Nick Brent (James Condon). She also starts a new business venture with Maggie (Bettina Welch) and Simon Carr (John Orcsik), a character they had a previously had romantic rivalry over in the television version of Number 96 in 1972. Vera and Simon wind up in bed together but he is unable to perform. It turns out he is gay, and he has an affair with Don (Joe Hasham). Vera falls in love with Nick Brent but when she meets his son Tony (Patrick Ward), she discovers he led the bikie gang that raped her. Tony recognises Vera and tries to kill her by running her over at Dorrie and Herb's party (a fancy dress celebration). He hits Simon instead, and when he makes another run at Vera, he ploughs into a brick wall and the car explodes. Simon recovers, and Vera marries Nick, who becomes the Prime Minister of Australia. ===== In a fictitious alternate timeline of England in the late 1930s, a chaotic and bloody civil war (which occurs 450 years later than the actual historical event) ends with Lancastrian King Henry and his son Prince Edward assassinated by Field Marshal Richard Gloucester of the rival faction supported by the House of York. Richard's elder brother Edward York becomes King, while the Lancastrian heir, Henry Richmond, flees to France. Richard is determined to take the crown, and pits King Edward against his brother, George Clarence, who is imprisoned under a sentence of death. Meanwhile, Richard deceives and marries Prince Edward's widow Lady Anne Neville. Queen Elizabeth intercedes on Clarence's behalf and persuades Edward to spare his life. However, Richard destroys the royal pardon and commissions James Tyrrell to execute Clarence, ostensibly in compliance with Clarence's death sentence. Richard informs Edward of Clarence's death at a meeting with Prime Minister William Hastings, and the King dies from a stroke. As Edward's sons are underage, Richard becomes Regent, taking the title of Lord Protector with the support of the ambitious and corrupt Henry Buckingham. In order to undermine his rivals for the throne, Richard has Rivers, the Queen's brother, assassinated and uses the sordid circumstances of his death to damage the Queen's reputation and cast doubt on her sons' legitimacy. Hastings' reluctance to support Richard's claim to the crown so enrages Richard that he manufactures false charges of treason against Hastings, who is sentenced to death by hanging. Having made an example of his only vocal opponent, Richard persuades the Lord Mayor of London and members of the House of Lords to acknowledge his claim to the throne and crown him King. Following his coronation Richard, now King Richard III, seeks to make his throne secure. He employs Tyrrell to murder the princes after failing to convince Buckingham to do so. Aware that Richmond intends to marry Elizabeth, he instructs Sir William Catesby to spread rumours that Lady Anne is ill and likely to die, intending to marry Elizabeth himself. Lady Anne is found dead sometime later from an apparent drug overdose. Impatient for the promised reward for his loyalty, Buckingham demands the Earldom of Hereford. Richard dismisses this in a high-handed manner, with the line "I am not in the giving vein". Buckingham, also disturbed by the murders of the princes and Hastings, flees to meet Richmond, but is later captured and killed by Tyrrell under Richard's orders. Meanwhile, Richmond gathers supporters, among them the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard's mother, the Duchess of York. They are joined by Air marshal Thomas Stanley. Richmond marries Elizabeth and unites both Houses and political factions against Richard. With the army's loyalty slipping and the legitimacy of his claims to the crown weakened, Richard prepares for the final battle against the Lancastrians, who plan a seaborne invasion and an advance on London. Richard's remaining loyal troops, assembling in a marshalling yard, are attacked from the air, revealing Stanley's defection to the Lancastrian cause. The two armies meet soon after at a ruined military base. Richard and Richmond seek each other out, but when his vehicle stalls Richard flees into the structure. Pursued by Richmond, Richard is forced to exit onto exposed metal beams high above the burning battlefield. Cornered by Richmond and refusing to surrender, Richard falls into the inferno with a maniacal grin. ===== On Christmas Eve in 19th-century London, Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Scrooge McDuck) is a surly money-lender who does not share the merriment of Christmas. He declines his nephew Fred (Donald Duck)'s invitation to Christmas dinner, then brushes off two gentlemen (Rat and Mole) fundraising aid for the poor. His loyal employee Bob Cratchit (Mickey Mouse) requests to have half of Christmas Day off, to which Scrooge reluctantly accepts, but says Cratchit would be docked half a day's pay. Scrooge continues his business and goes home just before midnight. In his house, Scrooge encounters the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley (Goofy), who warns him to repent his wicked ways or he will be condemned in the afterlife like he was, informing him that three spirits will visit him during the night. At one o'clock, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past (Jiminy Cricket), who takes him back in time to his early adult life. They visit his time as an employee under Fezziwig (Mr. Toad). Fezziwig throws a Christmas party where the young Scrooge meets a young woman named Isabelle (Daisy Duck), whom he falls in love with. However, the Ghost shows Scrooge how Isabelle left him when he chose money over her. A distraught Scrooge dismisses the Ghost as he returns to the present, lamenting his past actions. At two o'clock, Scrooge meets the gigantic, merry Ghost of Christmas Present (Willie the Giant). Scrooge and the Ghost visit Bob's house, learning his family is surprisingly content with their small dinner. Scrooge takes pity on Bob's ill son Tiny Tim (played by Mortie Mouse). The Ghost comments that Tiny Tim will not survive until next Christmas and then disappears. Scrooge is then transported to a cemetery, where he meets the Ghost of Christmas Future (later revealed to be Pete), who appears as a silent, cloaked, cigar-smoking figure. When Scrooge inquires about Tiny Tim, the Ghost reveals that Tim has died. As a devastated Scrooge asks if this event can be changed, he sees two gravediggers (Weasels) who are amused that no one attended the funeral of the man whose grave they are digging. As soon as the gravediggers are gone, the Ghost reveals the man who died to be Scrooge. Now terrified out of his wits, Scrooge decides to change his ways once and for all as the Ghost shoves him into the grave, where his empty coffin opens to reveal the gateway to Hell. Awakening in his bedroom on Christmas Day, Scrooge decides to surprise Bob's family with a turkey dinner and ventures out to spread happiness and joy around London. He accepts Fred's invitation and then donates a sizable amount of money to the gentlemen he earlier spurned. Scrooge then goes to the Cratchit house. At first putting on a stern demeanor, Scrooge reveals he brought foods and gifts for them and intends on raising Bob's salary and making him his partner in his counting house. Scrooge and the Cratchits happily celebrate Christmas. ===== The central theme of the novel is time travel using a highway that links all times and all possible histories. Exits from the highway lead to different times and places. Changing events in the past cause some exits further up the road, in the future, to become overgrown and inaccessible and new exits to appear, leading to different alternative futures. The narrator and protagonist, Red Dorakeen, has vague memories of a place or time that is no longer accessible from the Road. He runs guns to the Greeks at Marathon, trying to recreate history as he remembers it in an attempt to open a new exit from the Road to his half-remembered place. The phrase "Last Exit to Babylon" was the manuscript title of the book and appears on the cover art; it was later used as a title for Volume Four in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny collection.http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Zelazny-4.html All "One" chapters feature Red Dorakeen, and all "Two" chapters feature secondary characters. These are Red's natural son Randy, newly introduced to the Road and tired of his old life in Ohio; a bevy of would-be assassins attempting to kill Red, some of whom are comic references to pulp characters, or real people (it is implied that Ambrose Bierce is writing a novel somewhere on the metaphysical highway) and Leila, a woman whose fate is bound to Red's in mysterious and unexplained ways. The "One" storyline is fairly linear, but the "Two" storyline jumps around in time and sequence, first bringing in Randy and Leila without introduction, then later showing Randy's introduction to the Road and meeting with Leila, who will/has just abandoned Red following an incident in the "One" timeline. Everything comes clear in the final chapter, however. There are a number of interesting humorous touches and allusions in the story. These include an ancient dragon who falls in love with a tyrannosaurus, a futuristic warrior robot left behind by aliens because it is malfunctioning and has now taken up pottery, a lost crusader who now works in a gas station located somewhere on the timeless road, occasionally asking his customers about the "current" status of the Holy Land, an ancient Sumerian who buries artifacts later to be found by himself as archaeologist, along with the brief appearances of pulp heroes such as Doc Savage and John Sunlight as well as real historical figures, including Jack the Ripper, Marquis de Sade and an angry Adolf Hitler (who is furiously searching for the place "where he won"). ===== Lord of Light is set on a planet colonized by some of the remnants of "vanished Urath", or Earth. The crew and colonists from the spaceship Star of India found themselves on a strange planet surrounded by hostile indigenous races and had to carve a place for themselves or perish. To increase their chances of survival, the crew has used chemical treatments, biofeedback and electronics to mutate their minds and create enhanced self- images, or "Aspects", that "strengthened their bodies and intensified their wills and extended the power of their desires into Attributes, which fell with a force like magic upon those against whom they were turned." The crew has also developed a technology to transfer a person's atman, or soul, electronically to a new body. This reincarnation by mind transfer has created a race of potential immortals and allowed the former crew members to institute the Hindu caste system, with themselves at the top. The novel covers great spans of time. Eventually, the crew used their now-great powers to subjugate or destroy the native non-human races (whom they characterize as demons) while setting themselves up as gods in the eyes of the many generations of colonist progeny. Taking on the powers and names of Hindu deities, these "gods" maintain respect and control of the masses by maintaining a stranglehold on the access to reincarnation and by suppressing any technological advancements beyond a medieval level. The gods fear that any enlightenment or advancement might lead to a technological renaissance that would eventually weaken their power. The protagonist, Sam, who has developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic forces, is a renegade crewman who has rejected godhood, taking for himself the role of Siddhartha Gautama/Buddha. Sam is the last "Accelerationist": He believes that technology should be available to the masses, and that reincarnation should not be controlled by the elite. Sam introduces Buddhism as a culture jamming tool and strives to cripple the power of the gods with this "new" religion. His carefully planned revolt against the gods takes place in stages: "An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding." ===== On an Alabama beach, 10-year-olds Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter inspect the result of lightning striking sand. Jake asserts that they will be married one day. In the present day, Melanie is a successful fashion designer who has adopted the surname "Carmichael" to hide her poor Southern roots. After wealthy Andrew Hennings proposes, Melanie returns to Alabama to announce her engagement to her parents and finalize a divorce from her estranged husband, Jake. Meanwhile, Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and the Mayor of New York City, doubts Melanie's suitability as to wed her son, whom she is grooming to run for President of the United States. Melanie visits Jake, who has avoided signing the divorce papers. After Jake orders Melanie out of his house, Melanie empties Jake's checking account, hoping to spur him into ending the marriage. Jake finally relents and agrees to the divorce and promises to return the signed papers the next morning. Later, at a local bar, Melanie gets drunk, insults her old school friends, and outs her old childhood pal, Bobby Ray Bailey. The next morning, Melanie finds the signed document on her bed. Melanie goes to the Carmichael plantation and apologizes to Bobby Ray. She is cornered there by Kate's assistant, sent there to gather information on Melanie's background. Bobby Ray backs up her pretense that she is a relative and the family mansion is her childhood home. Melanie reconciles with her friends and learns that after she split with Jake, he had followed her to New York to win her back. Intimidated by the city and her success, he returned home to make something of himself first. She and Jake have a heart-to-heart talk, and Melanie understands why he never signed their divorce papers. Andrew arrives to surprise Melanie, but upon learning her true background and that Jake was her husband, he angrily leaves. He later returns, saying he still wants to marry Melanie, and the wedding is immediately set in motion. Melanie's New York friends arrive for the event. While visiting a nearby restaurant/resort with a glassblowing gallery, they admire the glass sculptures that are similar to ones they have seen in New York. Melanie realizes Jake is the artist and he owns the resort. During Melanie and Andrew's wedding at the Carmichael estate, a lawyer arrives and halts the ceremony. He has the divorce papers, which Melanie has never signed. Melanie realizes she still loves Jake and cancels the wedding. She and Andrew wish each other well, though Kate berates Andrew and insults Melanie, her family, and the entire town, for which Melanie punches her in the jaw. Melanie finds Jake at the beach planting lightning rods in the sand during a rainstorm to create more glass sculptures. She says they are still married. They return to what would have been Melanie and Andrew's reception, and finally have their first dance as husband and wife. A mid-credits sequence shows that they have a baby daughter, Melanie continues to thrive as a designer, and Jake opens a "Deep South Glass" franchise in New York. Andrew is engaged to a girl named Erin Vanderbilt. ===== Despite having originated as a crossover between different franchises, The King of Fighters employs different original characters as leads as seen: Kyo Kusanagi (bottom right), Iori Yagami (bottom left), Ash Crimson (top left) and K' (top right) The titular King of Fighters tournament originated from SNK's previous fighting game franchises, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. The first game in the series, KOF '94, centers on a black market arms dealer named Rugal Bernstein, who hosts a well-known fighting tournament to lure worthy adversaries into his trap so that he can kill them and turn them into stone statues, adding them to his collection of defeated martial artists. In addition to previously established fighting game stars Terry Bogard and Ryo Sakazaki, the game introduces a new hero: a young Japanese martial artist named Kyo Kusanagi, who serves as the lead character in the early KOF games. In making Kyo, SNK wanted his personality to contrast with those of earlier leads and stand out within the crossover. In KOF '95, Rugal, having survived the previous tournament, hosts a new one with the intention of seeking revenge against his adversaries. KOF '95 introduced Kyo's rival Iori Yagami to the series. It was the first game to mention the presence of the Orochi clan, which would serve as the central plot element in the series' following two games. The tournaments in KOF '96 and KOF '97 are hosted by a woman named Chizuru Kagura, who seeks to recruit allies (particularly Kyo and Iori, who are descended from the Three Divine Vessels along with Kagura herself) to fight against the Orochi clan. The Orochi storyline concludes in KOF '97. The next game in the series, KOF '98, is a "Special Edition" with no plot development. KOF '99 introduces a new story arc involving a mysterious corporation known as NESTS, which seeks to create an army of genetically altered fighters. The game introduces a new lead character named K', a fugitive from NESTS who was genetically enhanced with Kyo's DNA. The next two games in the series, KOF 2000 and KOF 2001, continue the NESTS story line, with each game unraveling the mystery of the organization further. KOF 2002, like KOF '98 before it, is a "Special Edition" of the series with no particular plot. Like Kyo, K' was created as a different hero. Rather than the cocky Kyo, K' is a dark hero who reluctantly fights against the NESTS syndicate. KOF 2003 begins a new story line focusing on another new lead character named Ash Crimson, a young man who seeks to possess the powers of the Three Divine Vessels for his own unknown agenda. Similar to K', Ash is given a different characterization acting as a villain during his story arc. The tournaments in KOF 2003 and KOF XI were hosted by "Those From the Past", an organization of inhuman warriors who try to break the Orochi seal to take its powers so they can give them to their shrouded master. While KOF XII does not have a story, KOF XIII follows another tournament hosted by them where Ash eventually confronts their superior despite him being Ash's ancestor. KOF XIV establishes a new story line involving a new lead character named Shun'ei. Described as a "kind-hearted" person, SNK states that while Shun'ei is not a new main character, he is still important for the saga. ===== Set in the 19th century, strong believers of legends, myths and superstition search for fame, fortune and glory. One legend above all is sought after by many, a treasure which can make any dream come true. Believers from all over the world set out to search for this treasure, and are forced to fight against one another in pursuit of the legendary Power Stone. ===== Channel 12 is in financial difficulties. The company board calls the bluff of managing director Sir Henry Usher (Fred Betts), forcing him to call in a systems expert to improve station operations. Station staff are initially surprised to learn that the expert, Dr Winter, is a woman, named Sheila (Cornelia Frances). Various attempts to first impress, and then to hinder Dr Winter end disastrously. A feature film, Manhunt, directed by Lee Whiteman and starring Tony Wild, is produced with hopes to increasing station income. Thanks to Wild's ineptitude the resultant footage is a disaster but the film finds unexpected success when reworked as a comedy. ===== The start of the book begins with an eight-year-old orphan girl named Sophie lying in bed in an orphanage. She cannot sleep, and sees a strange sight in the street; a giant man, carrying a bag and an odd trumpet. He sees Sophie, who tries to hide in bed, but the giant picks her up through the window. Then he runs quickly to a large cave, which he enters. When he sets Sophie down, she begins to plead for her life, believing that the giant will eat her. The giant laughs, and explains that most giants do eat human beings, and that the people's origins affect their taste. For example, people from Greece taste greasy, while people from Panama taste of hats. The giant then says that he will not eat her, as he is the BFG, or the Big Friendly Giant. The BFG explains that she must stay with him forever, so that no one can know of his existence. He warns her of the dangers of leaving his cave, as his nine neighbours are sure to eat her if they catch her. He also explains what he was doing with the trumpet and suitcase. He catches dreams, stores them in the cave, and then gives the good ones to children all around the world. He destroys the bad ones. The BFG then explains that he eats the only edible plant that will grow in the giants' homeland: snozzcumbers, which are disgusting striped warty cucumber-like vegetables with wart-like growths that taste like frog skins and rotten fish to Sophie and cockroaches and slime wanglers to the BFG. Another giant, the Bloodbottler, then storms in. Sophie hides in a snozzcumber and is nearly accidentally eaten by the Bloodbottler. Bloodbottler luckily spits her out and then leaves in disgust. When Sophie announces she is thirsty, the BFG treats her to a fizzy soda pop drink called "frobscottle" which causes noisy flatulence because of the bubbles sinking downwards. The BFG calls this "Whizzpopping". The next morning, the BFG takes Sophie to Dream Country to catch more dreams, but is tormented by the man- eating giants along the way, notably by their leader the Fleshlumpeater, the largest and most fearsome of the giants. In Dream Country, the BFG demonstrates his dream-catching skills to Sophie; but the BFG mistakenly captures a nightmare and uses it to start a fight among the other giants when Fleshlumpeater has a nightmare about a giant killer called Jack. Sophie later persuades him to approach the Queen of England about imprisoning the other giants. To this end, she uses her knowledge of London to navigate the BFG to Buckingham Palace, and the BFG creates a nightmare for the Queen, which describes the man-eating giants, and leaves Sophie in the Queen's bedroom to confirm it. Because the dream included the knowledge of Sophie's presence, the Queen believes her and speaks with the BFG. A fleet of helicopters then follows Sophie and the BFG to the giants' homeland, where the giants are tied up as they sleep, and the helicopters carry them back to London where they are imprisoned in a deep pit with sheer walls and a high safety fence. The BFG is lowered in to untie them; untying Fleshlumpeater last, he explains why they are being imprisoned. Outraged, Fleshlumpeater roars that they will devour the BFG instead, but he is hoisted out to safety. The man-eating giants find themselves being only fed snozzcumbers. On one occasion, though, there is an incident where three drunken men climb over the fence surrounding the pit, fall in, and are eaten by the giants. Afterwards, a huge castle is built as the BFG's new house, with a little cottage next door for Sophie. While they are living happily in England, gifts come from the governments of every country ever targeted by the giants (notably England, Sweden, Arabia, India, Panama, Tibet, Jersey, Chile, and New Zealand). After Sophie teaches the BFG how to read and proper English, he writes a book of their adventures identified as the novel itself—under the name "Roald Dahl". Meanwhile, the orphanage is closed down and sold to become a teacherage. ===== While walking in the woods near the small town of Haven, Maine, Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson, a writer of Wild West-themed fiction, stumbles upon a metal object that turns out to be a protrusion of a long-buried alien spacecraft. Once exposed, the spacecraft begins to release an invisible gas into the atmosphere that gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who populated the ship. The transformation, or "becoming," provides them with a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight into their inventions. The spacecraft also prevents those affected by it from leaving town, provokes psychotic violence in some people, and causes the disappearance of a young boy, David Brown, whose older brother Hilly teleports him to the planet referred to as Altair 4 by the Havenites. The book's central character is James Eric Gardener, a poet and friend of Bobbi, who goes by the nickname "Gard." He is somewhat immune to the ship's effects because of the steel plate in his head, a souvenir of a teenage skiing accident. Gard is also an alcoholic and is prone to binges that result in violent outbursts followed by lengthy blackouts. As Bobbi is almost totally overcome by the euphoria of "becoming" one with the spacecraft, Gard increasingly sees her health worsen and her sanity disappear. Gard feels he has little to live for aside from his friendship with Bobbi and decides to stay with her to try to halt her decline. He witnesses the transformation of the townspeople, discovers the torture and manipulation of Bobbi's dog Peter, and people being killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events. Over the course of several days Gard, Bobbi, and others continue to unearth the ship. After exploring the ship and returning to Bobbi's home, Gard plans to kill Bobbi as he can see she is no longer human. Using a gun, Bobbi forces Gard to swallow a lethal dose of Valium. As they talk, he shields his mind, pulls his own gun out, and shoots Bobbi. As Bobbi dies, she telepathically screams and alerts the townspeople, who then swarm to her home, intent on killing Gard for fear that he intends to harm the ship. Ev Hillman, David and Hilly's grandfather, helps Gard escape into the woods in exchange for saving David Brown from Altair-4. Gard enters the ship, near death after his struggle with the townspeople. With his last ounce of strength, he activates the ship and telepathically launches it into space. This results in the eventual deaths of nearly all of the changed townspeople, but prevents the possibly disastrous consequences of the ship's influence spreading to the outside world. Very shortly afterward, agents from the FBI, CIA, and "The Shop" invade Haven and take as many of the Havenites as possible (killing nearly a quarter of the survivors), along with a few of the devices created by the altered people of Haven. In the last pages, David Brown is discovered safe in Hilly Brown's hospital room. ===== The narrator recounts three instances of incredible coincidences and suggests that forces greater than chance play important roles in life. Police officer Jim Kurring investigates a disturbance at a woman's apartment, finding a body in a closet. Dixon, a neighborhood boy, tries to tell him who committed the murder, but Jim is dismissive. Jim goes to the apartment of Claudia Wilson. Claudia's neighbors called the police after she argued with her estranged father, children's game show host Jimmy Gator, and then blasted music while snorting cocaine. Unaware of her addiction, Jim is attracted to her and prolongs the visit. He asks her on a date that night, to which she says yes. Jimmy hosts a long-running quiz show called "What Do Kids Know?" and is dying of cancer; he has only a few months to live. That night the newest child prodigy on the show, Stanley Spector, takes the lead as the show begins. He is hounded by his father for the prize money and demeaned by the surrounding adults, who refuse to let him use the bathroom during a commercial break. When the show resumes, he wets himself and freezes, humiliated when everyone realizes what happened. As the show continues, an inebriated Jimmy sickens, and he orders the show to go on after he collapses onstage. But after Stanley's father berates him for freezing on-air, Stanley runs away from the studio. Donnie Smith, a former What Do Kids Know? champion, watches the show from a bar. Donnie's parents spent the money he won as a child, and he has just been fired from his job at Solomon Solomon, an electronics store, due to chronic lateness and poor sales. He is obsessed with getting oral surgery, thinking he will land the man of his dreams after he gets braces. He hatches a plan to get back at his boss by stealing the money he needs for his braces. The show's former producer, Earl Partridge, is also dying of cancer. Earl's trophy wife, Linda, collects his prescriptions for morphine and other drugs while he is cared for by a nurse, Phil Parma. Earl asks Phil to find his estranged son, Frank Mackey, a motivational speaker peddling a pickup artist course to men. Frank is in the midst of an interview with a journalist who reveals that she knows Frank had to take care of his dying mother after Earl abandoned the family. An angry Frank storms out of the interview when Phil gets through to him. Linda goes to see Earl's lawyer, begging him to change Earl's will. She admits she married Earl for his money, but now loves him and does not want it. The lawyer suggests she renounce the will and refuse the money, which would go to Frank. Linda rejects his advice and leaves in a rage. Linda berates Phil for seeking out Frank but later apologizes. She then drives to a vacant parking lot and washes down handfuls of prescription medicine with alcohol. Dixon finds Linda in her car, near death, and calls an ambulance after taking money from her purse. Before his date with Claudia, Jim takes fire during a pursuit and loses his gun. When he meets Claudia, they promise to be honest with each other, so he confesses his ineptitude as a cop and admits he has not been on a date since he was divorced three years earlier. Claudia says he will hate her because of her problems, but Jim assures her that her past does not matter. They kiss, but she runs off. Jimmy goes home to his wife, Rose, and confesses that he cheated on her. She asks why Claudia does not talk to him, and Jimmy admits that Claudia believes he molested her. Rose demands to know if it is true, but Jimmy says he cannot remember if he committed the abuse. Upset, Rose tells Jimmy he deserves to die alone and walks out on him. Donnie takes money from the Solomon Solomon safe. As he drives away, he decides to return the money but discovers he cannot get back in as his key broke off in the lock. While climbing a utility pole to get on the roof, he is seen by a passing Jim. Suddenly, frogs begin falling from the sky, with multiple consequences: as Jimmy is about to shoot himself, frogs fall through his skylight, causing him to shoot the TV, which sets his house on fire; Rose crashes her car in front of Claudia's apartment, but makes it inside and reconciles with her daughter; Earl is awakened by the sound and sees Frank beside him before dying; Linda's ambulance crashes in front of the emergency room; and Donnie is knocked from the pole, smashes his teeth, and is dragged to safety by Jim. Jim counsels Donnie and helps him return the money; his gun also mysteriously falls from the sky. Frank goes to the hospital to be with Linda, who will recover from her attempted suicide. Stanley returns home and tells his father that he needs to be kinder to him, but his father just tells him to go to bed. Jim goes to see Claudia, telling her he wants to make things work between them, and she smiles in reply. =====