From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The Leningrad Cowboys, a band with foot-long quiff hairstyles and long Winklepicker shoes to match, are seeking success in Siberia, but nobody seems to like their music, except for the mute village idiot, Igor (Kari Väänänen). Thwarted by a lack of local commercial potential, they are encouraged to move to America, for people will "buy anything" there. They depart for New York, bringing with them a band member who had frozen the previous night while practicing outside. They arrive at the CBGB bar in Manhattan. An agent offers them a gig at a wedding in Mexico and recommends that they change their musical style to rock and roll. They buy a used 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Limousine, strap the coffin carrying their frozen band member onto the roof and set off to earn their way through the Deep South, adapting their musical style to suit local tastes at each new location. All the while they are being driven on and exploited by their money- and food-hoarding manager, Vladimir (Matti Pellonpää), who has a seemingly unlimited supply of beer in the ice-filled coffin. Meanwhile, Igor, who stowed away on the plane, follows the band by his own means of transportation. When he finally catches up with them, they appoint him as their road manager. During the trip, the band spends time in jail, has their car engine stolen, causes a nightclub to close after playing an unsuccessful show, and reunites with a long-lost cousin (Nicky Tesco) whose singing gives positive reception from the audience. They eventually make it to Mexico and perform their wedding gig, where the thawing bass guitarist is revived with a shot of tequila and joins the group on stage, as does Igor. Vladimir watches them play then wanders off, but the band finally finds success in Mexico, making the top ten. ===== The story centres around two alien agents, Cadet Flynn and Pseudo-Cadet Niven. They are incredibly advanced and evolved vegetables on a fact finding mission to Earth, where they take on human form. Their supervisor is accidentally decapitated shortly after arrival, leaving the cadets to fend for themselves. Through the course of the series the aliens discover the intricacies of basic needs, like the eating ritual, the sleeping ritual and how to purchase things, usually doing so in their own idiosyncratic manner. Their exact whereabouts on Earth is something of a mystery. The society in which they find themselves bears some resemblance to both Britain and America, and there are hints that a totalitarian government is in charge. There are also street gangs parodying those in A Clockwork Orange. Two agents and their apparently psychopathic commander try to capture the aliens. The aliens repeatedly escape, but not without suffering occasional injuries themselves. ===== After being dumped by his fiancée, hard-drinking and depressed Mark Cormack (Payne) loses his job in the Los Angeles district attorney's office and serves as bouncer in a Las Vegas casino. A wheelchair- bound stranger, Barzland (Francis L. Sullivan), hires him to locate a ruby that disappeared in a Caribbean plane crash. He lures Cormack into doing the job by telling him it may be in the possession of the very woman who jilted him, Janet Martin (Murphy), who is now married to the pilot of the downed plane. The ex-detective flies to remote Santo Rosario to find the stone and investigate the mystery. When he finds his old flame, her husband is in prison. Cormack, again falling for Janet, is coaxed into helping him break out of jail. Her husband shocks Mike by revealing Janet sabotaged his plane, causing its crash, out to collect on his life insurance. Janet also double- crosses Mike, who discovers she has killed a man and has the ruby. Barzland returns but plunges to his death, and Mike watches the police take Janet away to jail. ===== Whittier arrives at the fictional California State College hoping to join the national champion varsity cheerleading team. She meets up with her friend from cheerleading camp, Monica, and they're both impressive at the tryouts. Head cheerleader Tina is ready to ask them to join the team, but Greg goes a step further, telling Tina that Whittier will be the next head cheerleader. This angers Tina's pal Marni who had the position staked out, but at the urging of Dean Sebastian, Tina goes along with the plan, taking Whittier under her wing. Whittier meets Derek, a campus D.J. who immediately takes an interest in her. Tina is very demanding and controlling and warns Whittier that Derek is not the type of boy she should be dating. Monica is bothered by Tina's meddling, but Whittier momentarily lets her cheerleading ambition get the better of her, and betrays Derek. Then, Tina, upset with Monica's sassy attitude, punishes her which leads to an injury and she forces Whittier to choose between her friendship and the squad. Whittier and Monica get fed up and quit Tina's tyranny, but Whittier's school spirit cannot be suppressed. With Monica's help, she gathers up the outcasts from the drama club, the dance club, and other groups that have lost their funding because of the squad and forms a ragtag squad of her own, determined to battle the varsity squad for a spot at the national championship. The two teams end up competing for the spot at nationals, with Whittier's squad ultimately winning. Afterward, Whittier offers Tina a spot on her squad, a position that Tina initially refuses but ends up wanting. The film ends with Tina sucking up to Whittier and Monica, deciding she wants to be on their squad after all, while Marni comically throws a fit. ===== In the summer of 1936 in the Soviet Union, Comdiv Sergei Petrovich Kotov, his wife Maroussia and their young daughter Nadia are relaxing in a banya when a peasant from the local collective farm frantically tells them the Red Army's tanks are about to crush the wheat harvest as part of general maneuvers. Kotov rides out to order the tank officer to halt. Kotov carries authority as a senior Old Bolshevik and legendary hero of the Russian Civil War, and is also very popular with the common people and local villagers. The happy family returns to their country dacha, where they join Maroussia's relatives, a large and eccentric family of Chekhovian aristocrats. However, Mitya, an ex-nobleman and veteran of the anti-communist White Army then arrives. He was Maroussia's fiancé before disappearing in 1923. Joyfully embraced by the family, he is introduced to Nadia as "Uncle Mitya". Maroussia is left feeling deeply conflicted, as she had suffered deeply when he left without explanation. Despite his personable nature, Mitya appears to have returned with a secret agenda, as he works for the Soviet political police, the NKVD. He has arrived to arrest Kotov for a non-existent conspiracy. It is revenge, as Kotov had conscripted Mitya into the GPU, the predecessor of the NKVD. Mitya detests Kotov, whom he blames for causing him to lose Maroussia, his love for Russia, faith, and his profession as a pianist. Kotov remarks on Mitya's activities in Paris, where he gave up eight White Army generals to the NKVD. All were kidnapped, smuggled to the Soviet Union, and shot without trial. Kotov believes his close relationship with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin will save him. However, a black car carrying NKVD agents arrives to remove Kotov, just as a group of Young Pioneer children arrives at the dacha to pay tribute to him. Kotov is forced to make a false confession to all charges and is shot in August 1936, while Mitya commits suicide. Maroussia is arrested and dies in the Gulag in 1940. Although arrested with her mother, Nadia lives to see all three sentences overturned during the Khrushchev thaw, and works as a teacher in Kazakhstan. ===== Shadow Skill takes place in the warrior kingdom of Kurda, where the main character Elle Regu has recently become the 59th Sevaar, a title awarded to their most elite warriors. She often leaves a trail of destruction when she fights and along with a drinking habit. Elle is constantly followed by debts and throughout the series takes on jobs to work off these debts. One of these such jobs leads her to the Green Octopus Inn on an island outside the city, which eventually becomes the protagonists' base of operation. Throughout the series, Elle travels along with her adopted younger brother Gau Ban, who is studying Elle's fighting skills so that one day he could become the greatest Sevaar in Kurda. Also in Elle and Gau's life is Faurink Maya (Faury), a Sui Rame talisman sorceress, and Kyuo Lyu, a Septia beast-catcher and grandniece of Eva Stroll, the king of Kurda. Warriors in Kurda fight using the Kurda-style Kōsappō (交殺法, lit. "combining kill methods", ADV "Annihilation techniques") which has two general divisions: Hyōgi (表技, "open skills" or "bright skills"), which emphasize punches and throws, and Eigi (影技, "shadow skills"), which focus on kicks and the user's footwork. ===== Lord Alwin (LeRoy Mason), Earl of Northumbria, is captured in a Viking raid and taken to Norway as a slave. There he is bought by Helga (Pauline Starke), an "orphan of noble blood" under the guardianship of Leif Ericsson (Donald Crisp). He proves a troublesome slave, and Leif's sailing master, Egil the Black (Harry Woods), prepares to kill him for his insolence, but Helga stops him. When Alwin challenges Egil to a sword fight, Leif is impressed by his courage and permits it. Alwin manages to break Egil's sword, but spares him. Helga then gives Alwin to Leif. Leif, with the support of King Olaf (Roy Stewart), the first Christian king of Norway, sets out to search for lands beyond Greenland, which was discovered by his pagan father, Eric the Red (Anders Randolf). Back in Greenland, Eric kills one of his men after he discovers that the man is a Christian. When Leif stops there to pick up supplies, Eric gives his blessing for his marriage to Helga (unbeknownst to her). However, after it is revealed that Leif is himself a Christian, Eric disowns him and refuses to give him any supplies. Fighting breaks out after Leif instructs Alwin to take the supplies anyway. In the confusion, Helga stows away on Leif's ship. Leif has no choice but to take her along. During the voyage, she and Alwin confess their love for each other. Unaware of this, Leif informs her that he will marry her on the "second change of the moon". Egil, in love with Helga himself, foments a mutiny among the crew, who fear sailing off the edge of the world. When Egil prepares to stab Leif in the back during the wedding ceremony, Alwin leaps in the way and is wounded. Leif kills Egil, but is enraged when Helga reveals that she loves Alwin. He raises his sword to kill the unconscious Alwin, but his Christian faith stops him. Just then, land is sighted, and the mutiny dissolves. Leif steps ashore bearing a makeshift cross. He has a stone tower built and makes friends with the natives. When Leif leaves for home, Alwin, Helga and a few others remain behind. A final, 'modern day,' scene, with God Bless America sung in the background, implies that the stone tower still stands somewhere in a coastal city on the northeast coast of America. ===== In Utah, Nancy Breyers is a defense lawyer who is inexplicably in love with client Michael Bosworth, a sociopathic convict. During a break from a courtroom hearing, Nancy sneaks a gun to Bosworth. After Bosworth snaps a guard's neck, Bosworth and Nancy slip away. Bosworth tears at Nancy's clothing and leaves her behind, where she will tell authorities Bosworth held her at gunpoint during his escape. He speeds off in a car with his brother Wally, and their partner, the hulking, half-witted Albert, then changes cars with one Nancy has left for him in a remote location. In the meantime, decorated Vietnam veteran Tim Cornell arrives at his former home with his ex-wife Nora, who have two kids—15-year-old May and her 8-year-old brother Zack. Tim and Nora separated due to his infidelity with a younger woman, and Tim shows up trying to reconcile with Nora, with whom he is still in love. Needing a hideout until Nancy can catch up with them, the Bosworth brothers and Albert settle on the Cornells' home with a "For Sale" sign which is seemingly picked by Bosworth at random. Somehow, Bosworth picks up intimate details of the Cornells, and one by one all of them find themselves the prisoners of the Bosworth brothers and Albert. Nancy's innocent act does not fool FBI agent Brenda Chandler, who puts surveillance on her every move. Nancy eventually cuts a deal with Chandler to have charges against her reduced by betraying Bosworth. As young Zack tries to escape through a window, a friend of the Cornells who visits the house by chance meets him. Bosworth makes the family friend enter inside by force, and as they talk, Bosworth shoots him, then makes Albert dispose of the body as Albert gets anxiety-ridden and decides to go off on his own. As Albert leaves while covered in blood, he intercepts two college girls, who expose his presence to a small gas station owner. The owner calls the authorities who chase after Albert. Albert ignores their order to surrender and is killed by the police on a river bank. Nancy begs Agent Chandler to give her a gun, but unbeknownst to Nancy, Chandler removes the bullets. As she goes to the Cornells' house, the house gets surrounded, and as a shootout starts by Bosworth, Wally is fatally wounded in a barrage of FBI bullets and falls on top of a shocked Nancy. Wally's gun is taken away by Tim. Bosworth holds a gun on Nora and is prepared to use it if Tim interferes. He is unaware that Tim has removed the bullets. Tim then drags the criminal outside, where Bosworth ignores the FBI's order to surrender, and is fatally shot. ===== The plot concerns an Englishman who meets his double, a French aristocrat, while visiting France, and is forced into changing places with him. The Englishman is a single, rather lonely academic, and he finds himself caught up in all the intrigues and passions of his double's complex family. ===== The film begins with Muhammad sending an invitation to accept Islam to surrounding rulers: Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor; the Patriarch of Alexandria; the Sasanian Emperor. Earlier Muhammad is visited by the angel Gabriel, which shocks him deeply. The angel asks him to start and spread Islam. Gradually, almost the entire city of Mecca begins to convert. As a result, more enemies will come and hunt Muhammad and his companions from Mecca and confiscate their possessions. Some of these followers fled to Abyssinia to seek refuge with the protection given by the king there. They head north, where they receive a warm welcome in the city of Medina and build the first Islamic mosque. They are told that their possessions are being sold in Mecca on the market. Muhammad chooses peace for a moment, but still gets permission to attack. They are attacked but win the Battle of Badr. The Meccans want revenge and beat back with three thousand men in the Battle of Uhud, killing Hamza. The Muslims run after the Meccans and leave the camp unprotected. Because of this, they are surprised by riders from behind, so they lose the battle. The Meccans and the Muslims close a 10-year truce. A few years later, Khalid ibn Walid, a Meccan general who has killed many Muslims, converts to Islam. Meanwhile, Muslim camps in the desert are attacked in the night. The Muslims believe that the Meccans are responsible. Abu Sufyan comes to Medina fearing retribution and claiming that it was not the Meccans, but robbers who had broken the truce. None of the Muslims give him an audience, claiming he "observes no treaty and keeps no pledge." The Muslims respond with an attack on Mecca with very many troops and "men from every tribe". Abu Sufyan seeks an audience with Muhammad on the eve of the attack. The Meccans become very scared but are reassured that no one will be abused in their houses, by the Kaaba, or in Abu Sufyan's house will be safe. They surrender and Mecca falls into the hands of the Muslims. The pagan images of the gods in the Kaaba are destroyed, and the very first azan in Mecca is called on the Kaaba by Bilaal Ibn Rabaah. The Farewell Sermon is also delivered. ===== Successful Greek filmmaker, A (Harvey Keitel), returns to Greece. He has come to participate in a screening of one of his earlier films and to begin a personal journey across the Balkans. After the screening is disrupted by local ideological conflict, A takes a taxi from Greece to Albania. Ostensibly A is searching for 3 undeveloped reels of film shot by the Manaki brothers. The mysterious reels could predate the brother's first film, The Weavers, which is believed to be the first film shot in the Balkans. A's journey fuses his own memories, the experiences of the Manaki brothers, and contemporary images of the Balkans. A drifts from Albania to North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. He travels on a train, a barge laden with a statue of Lenin (Polyphemus) and eventually a row boat. Though A makes some acquaintances along the way, he never lingers. His search for the roots of cinema, memory, and the Balkan identity pull him inevitably towards decay and death. eventually travels to the besieged Sarajevo. He meets Ivo Levy (Erland Josephson), the curator of an underground cinema archive who had attempted to develop the missing reels before the war. A convinces Levy to continue his work with the reels. The film ends on a rare foggy day in Sarajevo. Ironically the fog protects locals from snipers and gives the city a rare chance to flourish. explores the city with Levy's family. Near the river the family encounters military personnel and are executed. ===== Three short sequences, based on the following Poe tales, are told: "Morella", "The Black Cat" (which is combined with another Poe tale, "The Cask of Amontillado"), and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". Each sequence is introduced via voiceover narration by Vincent Price, who also appears in all three narratives. ===== Players take the role of Wesley Tyler, a senior mechanic on the IGTO Repair Base on Ganymede, who is tasked with the repair of various systems. At the start of the game, Tyler is ordered to repair the backup generators, and he and two other technicians drive out to fix them. On the way there, they discuss Tyler's past, how he was previously in charge of a security team, before being blamed for an accident involving faulty equipment. Upon fixing the power however, Tyler loses radio contact with the others, and starts encountering small three-legged insect like creatures. He then starts finding bodies, and larger more dangerous versions of the aliens he had encountered before. He finds a pistol and begins to battle the increasingly hostile aliens. He eventually receives a message from a Corporal Jane Awryn, who is trapped in a water treatment facility. Tyler proceeds to rescue her and the two of them attempt to battle their way to the main colony of New Atlantis. On the way, they are ordered to report to "Weather Station 5", an illegal military compound and one of the first of the IGTO's secret military and research projects that Tyler will encounter throughout the game. Tyler is tasked by Lieutenant Dan Baxter with various different missions, before being reunited with Jane and sent to restore the ISERCom facility so that a message can be sent to any nearby space ships. The Provectus, a large carrier class ship, hears the message and proceeds on route to help. Meanwhile, Jane and Tyler are ordered to report to New Atlantis in order to protect the civilians living there. Despite some sizeable resistance, the colony had already mostly been trashed, and Tyler encounters few survivors. He and Jane do manage to rescue Dr. Harold Weiss, an IGTO research scientist, who informs them of the unfortunate news that the Provectus had already been shot down. Tyler and the rest search the stricken ship and eventually find and rescue Colonel Roger Smith, who despite the crash is still defiant and confident that they can take down the alien's mothership. Tyler is sent to go to the mines and find Baxter and his team to provide additional reinforcements, but arrives too late and only finds Baxter shortly before he dies. Now on their own, Tyler reunites with Jane, Weiss, and Smith and they attempt to launch a series of defensive missiles. The missiles fail to launch, being engulfed on the launch pad. Ever undaunted, Smith devises another plan; they will take the alien pod, one of the many alien technologies that was being researched in secret by the IGTO, and the also alien AMEW bomb and blow up the ship from the inside. With Smith staying behind to man the launch, Tyler, Jane, and Weiss are flown into the heart of the mothership. Upon reaching the centre of the ship and defeating a final boss, the last of the Ancient ones, they are approached by the aliens' collective consciousness who inform them of the real reasons for the invasion and the danger they are posing to themselves and the whole solar system. The AMEW bomb was based on technologies that they had developed many years before, utilizing an energy source so powerful that it could destroy stars. The aliens had abused it themselves, destroying their home planet and most of their own race. Those that remained were intent that no one else should share the same fate. They had tried to recover all of the energy they had spread throughout the universe, but were disturbed to find out humanity's attempts to utilize it much as they did. They tried to warn them, but those in charge refused to listen, so they sent an army of genetically engineered warriors to protect humanity from itself. The bomb that they hold in their hands could take out every planet and moon orbiting the Sun. Weiss deactivates the bomb, and the aliens promise to never again meddle in our affairs, and return Jane, Tyler, and Weiss back to safety. ===== Darren Shan is about to take the Trials of Initiation, a series of tests that vampires were forced to take part in during years gone by, to prove himself to the Princes. Currently, it is only used for vampires who want to become a general, or for those who wish to demonstrate their strength. However, Darren Shan is required to endure the trials to earn the respect of the entire vampire race for his mentor Mr. Crepsley's 'impulsive' decision to turn him. Darren is mostly trained by the games master of the Mountain, Vanez Blaze. For the first trial, he must escape from a maze that is filling with water whilst dragging a stone weighing half of his body weight. The second trial Darren must complete is The Path of Needles, a barefoot journey through one of the mountains many caverns littered with stalagmites and stalactites, all of which are razor sharp and could fall at any second. Luck is on Darren's side as the Festival of the Undead takes place right after his second trial. During this three-day period no official business can take place meaning he gets a five-day rest before his next trial. Suffering from a lot of cuts, notably on his hands and back, he finds it hard to enjoy the festival. A veteran vampire and Larten Crepsley's mentor, Seba Nile, asks to meet with him later as he has a cure for his discomfort. They go to a cavern deep inside the mountain which is covered in spider webs and Darren soon realizes that it is full of hundreds of thousands of spiders. Seba breaks up the cobwebs and applies them to Darren's cuts which he says helped immediately. After the Festival of the Undead, Darren must choose his third trial which is The Hall of Flames, a metal room with various jets that emit flames periodically. Darren must remain in the room for approximately fifteen minutes, trying not to be 'toasted' by the scorching hot flames. This is revealed by many to be one of the hardest trials he could have picked, and he barely survives it. The fourth trial is The Blooded Boars, a trial which is generally considered quite easy for full vampires. As Darren is only a half vampire and still nursing bad wounds from the previous trial, he struggles. The aim is to kill two wild boars which have been injected with vampire blood making them more aggressive than usual. Darren kills the first boar but it lands on top of him, and his lack of strength means he is unable to move the boar as the second closes in. It charges at him, certain to kill him when Harkat Mulds, the Little Person who accompanies Darren in his journey to the Mountain steps in and kills the boar. This causes an uproar as failure to complete the trials leads to death. Mr. Crepsley and Kurda, a soon to be Vampire Prince, argue that Harkat is not a vampire and cannot be expected to behave by their rules, and that Darren would've died if he had not been interrupted by Harkat. However, it is decided for Darren to be executed for not completing the Trials. Kurda finds Darren in his room facing imminent death and encourages him to escape the mountain. Regretfully Darren follows Kurda as they make for one of the mountains many exits. Soon they are tracked down by Gavner Purl who tries to convince them to go back but eventually end up following them. They come across a cavern full of the Vampaneze. Kurda tells Darren to go on while he and Gavner would stay and fight the Vampaneze. Darren heads off but decides to come back and fight. He comes back and witnesses Kurda stabbing Gavner in the stomach and it is revealed he is an ally of the Vampaneze. Darren runs and ends up in the Hall of Final Voyage, where dead vampires were tossed into the strong current and washed out of the mountain. He realizes he is on the wrong side of the stream and attempts to jump over it. He falls short and manages to grab on to a rock as Kurda and the Vampaneze enter the cave. Kurda offers his hand to help pull him back to safety but Darren brands him a traitor and pushes himself out into the current. He is swept out of sight into the darkness beyond. ===== Nick Cassidy and Rudy Duncan are cellmates in prison two days away from release. Nick has been corresponding with a young woman named Ashley Mercer, who is waiting for him on the outside. After Nick dies in a prison fight, Rudy assumes his identity so that Ashley will think he is the one who has been writing to her. Gabriel, the leader of a gang and Ashley’s brother, kidnaps Rudy and Ashley in their cabin and tells Rudy that the gang, with the help of "Nick", will rob the casino that Nick used to work at. Rudy reveals that he is not Nick, but Ashley believes that he is. She reveals that she wrote to him knowing that Gabriel was going to force Rudy to assist in the robbery. Using the information from the real Nick’s prison cell stories, Rudy is able to devise a robbery plan and informs Gabriel that the biggest loot is hidden inside a safe in the manager Jack Bangs's office. One night, Rudy breaks out of his hotel room and stumbles upon Gabriel and Ashley and learns that they are lovers and not siblings, but he is forced to return to his room when he is almost caught. The group robs the casino, each dressed as Santa Claus. Rudy, forced to take part in the robbery, hides the fact that he knows Ashley’s secret. Shots are fired, and security guards and Santas are shot. Ashley drives into the Casino and lets Nick/Rudy know she is in on the heist. All meeting in the manager's office, Gabriel introduces Rudy to the casino manager as Nick but the manager recognizes that he is not Nick and Rudy confesses. Gabriel, furious at Rudy’s deception, spares him for a moment when he demands to know where the "PowWow” safe is. When the manager opens the safe, he grabs guns from inside and kills one of the robbers as the rest flee. The casino manager dies during the shootout. Rudy kills another one of the robbers and is then grabbed by Gabriel and Ashley who tie him up in their 18-wheeler truck. They plan to drive him off the edge of a cliff in a burning vehicle with a little of the money so that officials will guess all the stolen money had been burned. After accidentally revealing too much information during an argument with Rudy, Ashley shoots and kills the now suspicious Gabriel. Shortly after, Nick appears, having staged his death at the prison. It is revealed that Ashley's real name is Millie Bobeck and Rudy learns that the two had collaborated to rob the casino using Rudy, Gabriel, and Gabriel's gang. Millie had known the entire time who Rudy truly was. Nick also informs Rudy that the prison stories were part of a set-up. After they tie Rudy to the steering wheel to drive off the cliff, he produces a knife he had gotten earlier, cuts his bindings, hot wires the car, sets it to reverse and crushes Nick's legs. With Millie firing at him, he rams the fiery car into her and dives out as the car and Millie go over the cliff. Nick, who is still alive, tries to convince Rudy that they can share the money but Rudy locks him in the truck and also sends it over the cliff. Rudy picks up the stolen cash and begins distributing it in mailboxes he comes across on the way home to his family, and he eats a Christmas dinner with them. The film closes with Rudy smiling. ===== After the Wrath of the Lamb earthquake, Rayford Steele must find his wife Amanda White, who was supposed to land in New Babylon. Buck Williams must find his wife Chloe Steele, who was last seen in a house that is now a shattered ruin. The only other person accounted for is Tsion Ben-Judah, and nearly a quarter of the world's population was snuffed out by the earthquake. The GC starts a new program called Cellular Solar, aka: Cell-Sol (pronounced sell-soul), a solar powered cell phone global network. Both Buck and Tsion find a new home for the Tribulation Force, half of a duplex belonging to the late Donny Moore and his wife, after discovering the death of Loretta, a close friend to the Tribulation Force, and after Buck rescues Tsion from the shelter under the church where he lived. Nicolae Carpathia is revealed to have believed Revelation about the earthquake, because all surviving GC in New Babylon move into a massive underground shelter. Mac McCullum, Rayford's co-pilot, wants to know what Rayford knows about Carpathia, not believing that someone who thought only of his own life (as Nicolae did during the earthquake) could be divine. Leon Fortunato, a sycophant of Carpathia and now his Supreme Commander, claims that Carpathia resurrected him from the wreckage of GC headquarters in New Babylon. Buck searches for Chloe, discovering she is pregnant with their baby. He also meets Floyd Charles, a physician and fellow believer, who later joins the Trib. Force. Mac, becomes a Believer. Believers around the world discover that they have received a sign on their foreheads visible only to other believers, leading to the common phrase, “I can see yours. Can you see mine?” This mark becomes a central plot device, since believers are able to locate each other with ease and yet blend in with Antichrist and Global Community Potentate Nicolae Carpathia's henchmen when necessary. Buck finds Chloe in a GC Hospital and rescues her, taking her back to the house where he and Tsion are staying. Tsion is planning to go back to Israel to teach the 144,000 witnesses. Ken Ritz becomes a believer as well. After TV signals return, they discover that the content is terrible from nudity, sexuality, torture, black arts, and more. The Trib. Force finds Hattie Durham in an abortion clinic in Denver and discovers that Carpathia is plotting to have both Rayford and Hattie murdered there. Pretending to be Rayford, Buck rescues Hattie and unwittingly punches and kills an armed security guard intent on killing them. Later, Buck deeply regrets the guard's death even after one of his friends explains it was a "kill or be killed" situation. Rayford, who continues to fly the Condor 216 for Carpathia, tries to find Amanda's body. He buys two sets of scuba gear to dive to the bottom of the Tigris River with Mac. Hattie is sick and Trib. Force members try to get her to accept God. Rayford and Mac find his wife's body as the First of the Seven Trumpet Judgments, flaming hailstones and blood pour down from the sky. Rayford is suicidal upon finding Amanda and tries to drown himself, but Mac will not allow it. Rayford recovers her laptop and says that the Hard Drive is intact. Rayford and Mac discuss that they did not see the mark of the Believer on Amanda, but decide that this is inconclusive because they do not know if she died before or after the marks started appearing, or if the mark stays on the believer or goes away after they die. The GCASA (Global Community Aeronautics and Space Administration), find that a new comet is going to crash into the ocean, killing marine life and sinking ships. This is the second Trumpet Judgment. Ten weeks later, right before the Trib. Force travels to Israel for the Meeting of the Witnesses, the GCASA find a new threat in the heavens, a star called Wormwood. The GC tries to destroy it, but before they are able to effect a nuclear strike on it, it shatters into billions of pieces that fall into the lakes, streams, and fountains, turning the water to a bitter poison. This is the Third Trumpet Judgment.Soul Harvest by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins copyright 1998 ===== Former Irish pugilist and Provisional IRA member Danny Flynn (Daniel Day-Lewis) returns home to Belfast from a 14-year stint in prison at the age of 32. Weary of the unbroken cycle of violence in Northern Ireland, he attempts to settle down and live in peace. After meeting his drink-sodden old trainer Ike (Ken Stott), Danny starts up a non-sectarian boxing club for boys in an old gymnasium. While fixing up the old building, however, he runs across a cache of Semtex hidden underneath the stage. He throws the cache into the river. Danny's action infuriates Harry (Gerard McSorley), a bitter and ruthless IRA lieutenant. Harry feuds with Danny, assassinating the kindly police officer who donates equipment to the boxing club. The murder causes a riot at one of Danny's boxing matches. During the riot, the gymnasium is burned down by Liam, the young son of Maggie (Emily Watson), who thinks Danny and his mother are going to elope. Danny has been reconnecting with an old flame, Maggie, now married to an imprisoned IRA man and required by IRA code to remain faithful to him. Their relationship dominates much of the film. Harry sees Danny and Maggie's relationship as a way to undermine the authority of her father, Joe Hamill (Brian Cox), the grim but war-weary local IRA commander who is working for peace. Eventually, Harry and some other IRA men kidnap Danny and take him away to be executed. Then, in a last-minute twist, the IRA gunman shoots Harry instead of Danny, thus eliminating a rogue agent. With her son Liam in the car, Maggie picks up Danny and they all drive home together. ===== The book begins with protagonist Rayford Steele contemplating killing Global Community Supreme Potentate and Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia. The prologue is the last three pages of Apollyon. ===== The book begins soon after Nicolae Carpathia is assassinated, and tells more on the end of the Gala, the midpoint of the Tribulation and the opening of the Great Tribulation. ===== His Excellency Global Community Potentate Nicolae Carpathia has been resurrected and indwelt by Satan himself. He plans to remodel his offices and add two floors to his palace, including a glass ceiling. He also demands that the people of the Global Community worship him. Statues of himself are erected for worship. He introduces Viv Ivins to the senior staff and tells them of the loyalty mark program. The Antichrist declares that every single person on earth must receive his mark of loyalty and worship his image or lose their head to the loyalty enforcement facilitator. David Hassid finally finds out that his fiancée Annie Christopher has been killed by lightning called down by GC Supreme Commander and False Prophet Leon Fortunato. David passes out in the heat after the "funeral" while looking for Annie. He awakes to find himself tended by Hannah Palemoon, a nurse and a believer. She is added to their ranks and helps to plan their escape before the mark. Albie and Rayford Steele run across Steve Plank, under the alias Pinkerton Stephens, at Boulder, CO, where Hattie has been taken. Steve tells them his conversion story; he became a believer during the Wrath of the Lamb Earthquake, surviving but losing much of his body. He now wears prosthetic body parts and uses a wheelchair. The three then carry out the incredible rescue of Hattie Durham, who finally becomes a believer. Before they rescue her, she tries to hang herself in her room. Terror comes to Christians in Greece as they are among the first to receive the death penalty for refusing the mark. Lukas Miklos loses his wife, his pastor, his pastor's wife and dozens of fellow Greek believers to the guillotine, while Cameron "Buck" Williams, who is in Greece in disguise along with Albie, help two Greek teenagers escape the detention center. Meanwhile, back in the states, Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr. also known as Zeke, is distraught to find out that his father, whom everyone calls "Big Zeke", has suffered the same fate after being caught helping and supplying other believers (subversives, according to the GC). In New Babylon, David Hassid, Mac McCullum, Abdullah Smith, and Hannah Palemoon plan to leave, taking Ming Toy's 17-year-old brother Chang Wong (who is also a believer) along with them. But Chang, a computer prodigy, was brought by his parents to New Babylon, hoping to get him hired in Carpathia's forces. Determined to "make proud", Mr. Wong has Chang drugged, carried to the mark application site, and held down, even as he protests. But even after being given the mark of the beast against his will, Chang still has the mark of the believer clearly visible because he never accepted the mark of the beast by heart, spirit, and will. In this, David and Chang discover a great advantage: Chang can now be the new Tribulation Force mole in the GC Headquarters Palace as he can come, go, and trade freely. Meanwhile, the others plan a plane crash to deceive the GC into thinking they're dead while they join up with the Tribulation force to get ready for the massive exodus for believers which they call "Operation Eagle", calling in all their favors from the International Commodity Co-Op. Everything reaches a climax when Carpathia announces that he will be returning to Jerusalem less than a month after his death there to occupy what he believes is his rightful house: the Jewish Temple.The Mark by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins copyright 2000 ===== The Remnant begins immediately after the end of Desecration. The Great Tribulation unfolds, with one million believers gathered in Petra under the protection of God as Global Community Supreme Potentate and Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia continues to attack them and Armageddon approaches. Carpathia is ecstatic that he is about to attack the believers with massive amounts of conventional ordnance, a barrage that no one could survive without a miracle, yet all the believers do, not even feeling the flames that engulf their bodies. A final missile hits, opening a spring that drenches the fire. Afterwards, people talking to each other hear each other in their own language. Chloe Steele Williams, Hannah Palemoon, and Mac McCullum all go to Greece disguised as GC officers to try to rescue George Sebastian. They gain information as to his whereabouts and begin searching that night. Meanwhile, Ming Toy leaves the safe house and under her new disguise (provided by Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr. a.k.a. Z) attempts to return home to China to aid her parents. While on the way, she falls in love with a South Korean Pilot named Ree Woo (who later marries her). She discovers that both of her parents have become believers, but a strange man informs her that her father was killed. Chang Wong despairs for his safety and looks to escape New Babylon. After an arduous ordeal, George escapes his holders. He finds his way to the Co-op, where he meets up with the others and a miraculous escape is staged. Steve Plank refuses the Mark of the Beast and dies at the guillotine. The new safe house is compromised, thanks in part to Chloe's venturing out in the previous book, and the Tribulation Force is forced to look for a new place. They manage to leave the now compromised safe house and the Chicago, Illinois, area just in time before Antichrist orders what remains of Chicago to be obliterated by a nuclear blast. The main Trib. Force members find a new safe house with George Sebastian in San Diego, California. Meanwhile, over the next two and a half years, the next two Bowl Judgments hit: the world's freshwater supply is turned into blood and the sun scorches with fiery heat. The three angels of Revelation 14 begin appearing all around the world, spreading their messages. Rayford moves back and forth between San Diego and Petra, while Tsion stays at Petra to teach the Jewish remnant there. Antichrist sends scores of false messiahs and false teachers to deceive as many people as possible. Many people, including several at Petra, follow them only to meet horrible and gruesome deaths. The next Bowl Judgement hits, and a deep and painful darkness descends upon the throne and kingdom of the Antichrist in New Babylon. Chang plans to use the darkness to his advantage in order to finally escape. As the book ends, the final year of the Tribulation begins. God is leveling the playing field and setting the stage for Armageddon, the cosmic battle of the ages that will decide the fate of all that exists.The Remnant by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins copyright 2002 ===== Ned Flanders invites the Simpson family to a barbecue where he announces plans to open the Leftorium, a store for left- handed people. While pulling a wishbone with Ned, Homer — jealous of Ned's material success — wishes for the Leftorium to fail and go out of business. Undeterred after Lisa scolds him for indulging in schaudenfreude, Homer gloats when Ned tells him business is slow. Homer sees left-handed citizens struggling with items made for right-handed people and considers telling them about the Leftorium, but decides not to. Eventually the store closes, plunging the Flanders family into debt and misery. Ned is forced to sell his possessions, and Homer gleefully buys many of them for a pittance. Overcome by regret, Homer decides to return Ned's possessions, but he finds Ned's house repossessed and the family living in their car. Homer tells Ned to open the store one final time and informs all the left-handed residents of Springfield about the Leftorium; they descend upon the store and buy most everything. The business boom helps Ned keep the store open and get his house back. In the subplot, Bart begins taking karate lessons at Akira's karate school. He soon finds himself bored with karate, so he decides to skip each lesson and play video games at the mall arcade instead. Whenever Bart is asked by his friends and family about the karate techniques he is learning, he refers to the Touch of Death, an ability he sees in one of the arcade games he plays. He proceeds to terrorize his sister Lisa into doing his will by threatening her with the Touch of Death. When the school bullies take Lisa's saxophone, she tells them Bart will defend her with the Touch of Death. Unable to actually defend himself or his sister, Bart is pantsed and hung by his underwear from a playground basketball hoop rim by the bullies. Having reclaimed her saxophone, Lisa wistfully notes that sometimes two wrongs _do_ make a right. ===== It is the beginning of the final year of the Tribulation, and New Babylon is covered in thick darkness with the fifth Bowl Judgment. Rayford Steele, Abdullah Smith, and Naomi Tiberias travel by jet to New Babylon to rescue Chang Wong, their undercover mole looking for a way out. While there, Rayford discovers a believer named Otto Weser, whose underground cell of believers were hiding out in New Babylon from Global Community forces. Rayford and Otto crash a meeting that Global Community Supreme Potentate Nicolae Carpathia holds in his office, telling his officials about the move to Al Hillah and the plan to build up troops in the Jezreel Valley for the final battle to deal with the Jews and believers in both Jerusalem and Petra. Rayford, Abdullah, Naomi, and Chang manage to escape, though Otto stays behind in New Babylon. Meanwhile, Global Community troops are canvassing the area of the San Diego underground safehouse in which the members of the Tribulation Force are hiding out. Chloe Williams goes out to investigate one of their vehicles, but is soon pursued, captured, and brought into custody where she is interrogated for any knowledge she has concerning the Tribulation Force. With divine help, Chloe refuses to give them any information, even when she gets drugged and transported to an Illinois holding facility where she is injected with truth serum. Upon finding Chloe missing, Buck is absolutely frantic and short-tempered with others. The Tribulation Force try to find out where she was being taken, but are unable to rescue her before she is publicly executed. Before her transfer, Chloe is able to send a coded message to Rayford instructing him to quickly evacuate the safe house, as GC Troops know where it is located, and relocate to Petra. The San Diego believers are relocated to Petra, where they mourn not only for Chloe but also for Albie, who was killed by Mainyu Mazda when he tried to pay for his help in bugging the place where Nicolae's cabinet was going to meet. Half a year later, Ming Toy and Ree Woo marry, and the Global Community cabinet now moves to Baghdad, to a special conference room that the Tribulation Force has secretly bugged in order to find out Carpathia's plans. During the meeting, Carpathia confesses that he is the Antichrist, and then with Leon Fortunato he causes three Carpathia clone bodies come to life by three froglike spirits that come out of their mouths. Their purpose is to gather up all the armies of the world to the Jezreel Valley (the Valley of Megiddo, or Armageddon) for the final battle. It is at this point that Tsion Ben-Judah decides to turn over the leadership at Petra to Chaim Rosenzweig in order to train himself as a soldier to defend Jerusalem from the Global Community forces. At the final week of the Tribulation, God causes the Euphrates River to dry up, allowing the armies from the east to pass over and gather at the Jezreel Valley, fulfilling the sixth Bowl Judgment. The day before the Lord's second coming, Tsion travels to Jerusalem with Buck to fight with the Jews and to share the gospel with them so that they could be saved. An angel appears in New Babylon and calls believers to come out of her before she is destroyed. Mac McCullum travels to New Babylon with Lionel Whalum and delivers the remaining believers out prior to its destruction which they watch happen from the sky after rescuing believers from the city; New Babylon is utterly destroyed in 1 hour, similar to Sodom and Gomorrah. The battle finally commences on the day of the Lord's coming, with the Jews in Jerusalem dealing with Global Community forces storming the city and the people of Petra dealing with the vast sea of military forces surrounding the location. During the battle, Tsion is killed, and Buck and Rayford are mortally wounded, Buck defending the Old City, and Rayford when he is shelled on a reconnaissance mission outside Petra. One of the two original Tribulation Force members die at the end of the book.Armageddon by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins copyright 2003 ===== The Antichrist has assembled the armies of the world in the Valley of Megiddo for what he believes will be his ultimate triumph of the ages. With a victory here, he would ascend to the throne of God. The Tribulation Force has migrated to the Middle East, most ensconced at Petra with the Jewish Remnant, now more than a million strong. Petra is surrounded by the Unity Army, poised to destroy all that is left of God's people and usher in Nicolae Carpathia's new world order. The world holds its breath as the greatest military battle to ever take place threatens to obliterate all that remains of humanity. All seems lost. Tsion Ben-Judah and Buck Williams have been slain in Jerusalem, now overrun by Global Community forces. The hour of attack for Nicolae Carpathia’s Global Community Unity Army to assault the Rebels at the Temple Mount draws near. Mac McCullum goes to Jerusalem undercover to find Buck Williams and discovers his dead body before being ushered to a meeting with several more troops and Nicolae Carpathia's cabinet in Solomon's Stables. After witnessing Chaim Rosensweig preaching at Petra through live television and the death of a Global Community Officer, Satan temporarily leaves Carpathia's body and reminds the now trembling, feeble shell of Nicolae Carpathia that he is merely a shell for him before indwelling him once again. Rayford is greatly wounded from a Global Community mortar attack on Petra's perimeter and is left on the brink of death before being discovered by Leah Rose and Abdullah and brought back to Petra in heavy bandages due to his injuries. As Mac returns and Chaim visits Rayford as night falls, the sun and moon go out before the stars and meteors fall upon the Global Community army, slightly reducing their numbers before the Sign of the Son of Man (a giant cross) appears and heals Rayford and all other saved and undecided of their injuries, causing many to become saved, including one third of the Jewish Remnant. This does not dissuade the enemies of God, as the Unity Army, led by the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia himself, makes their final charge against Petra, seeking to annihilate all remaining rebels against the Global Community. But suddenly, as Nicolae begins leading the attack, the cross disappears from the sky as the Global Community's weaponry is rendered useless. Suddenly, the whole world is covered in a blinding light as the entire earth sees Jesus Christ coming in power and glory out of Heaven with the Armies and Raptured Saints of Heaven. As Jesus speaks, the entire third of the Global Community forces and Carpathia loyalists at Petra are slain with Nicolae and Leon fleeing to Bozrah. The Remnant at Petra are suddenly blessed with the ability to run at superhuman speeds, allowing them to arrive at Bozrah right before Jesus obliterates all the Global Community forces there and temporarily descends to the fields of Bozrah and stains his robe with blood, fulfilling the Prophecy of Isaiah 63:1-6 of Jesus trampling the enemies of God. With Carpathia's forces gone in Bozrah, Nicolae and Leon board a helicopter to the Valley of Megiddo where the other two thirds of the Unity Army are stationed. As the Remnant passes the Valley to get to Jerusalem, Rayford, Abdullah and Mac drive to a ledge of the Valley of Megiddo and witness Jesus obliterating the remaining two thirds of the Unity Army which are not at Jerusalem or around the world with the Seventh Bowl judgement and a loud cry from God in Heaven shouting "IT IS DONE!" . Viv Ivins is killed by a large hailstone crushing her before Nicolae and Leon escape the rising swamp of blood and gore of the fallen Global Community troops and make for Jerusalem in a Humvee. As Rayford, Mac, Abdullah and the rest of the Remnant arrive at Jerusalem, so does Nicolae and Leon, welcomed by Global Community loyalists. Nicolae mounts horseback, preparing to attack the Rebels at the Temple Mount before the horses are afflicted with a flesh-dissolving plague. Jesus appears in the sky again with the Armies of Heaven and Nicolae orders missiles shot at Jesus but to no avail. As the Global Community troops at Jerusalem die, Nicolae and Leon along with what's left of the Global Community forces arrive at the Mount of Olives as Jesus dismounts and descends onto the Mount of Olives, causing a great earthquake that splits the Mount of Olives in two. The last of the Global Community forces at Jerusalem die as Nicolae and Leon flee for safety. The Mount of Olives splitting also ushers in the largest Global Earthquake ever felt, completely flattening the world and causing Jerusalem to rise more than three hundred feet. The remaining Global Community forces and Carpathia loyalists bearing the Mark of the Beast are killed simultaneously by the Word of God and the Global Community is finally dissolved. Jesus enters through the East Gate into Jerusalem and calls all the Christians to him where he comforts them. Michael, the archangel, captures Nicolae Carpathia, Leon Fortunato along with Ashtaroth, Baal, and Cankerworm. Jesus personally shames Ashtaroth, Baal, and Cankerworm before destroying them. Leon is driven to tears and attempts to renounce Nicolae and Satan before being sentenced to eternity in the Lake of Fire. Nicolae at first refuses to bow to Jesus until Jesus casts Satan out of him, causing Nicolae to revert to what he would look like if Satan had not caused him to come back to life three and a half years prior. The feeble, elderly and rotting remains of what was Nicolae Carpathia bows to Jesus before confessing that Jesus is Lord and the Son of God along with confessing that he wasted his entire life on personal gain in his quest for power. Jesus then opens a hole in the ground which leads directly to the Lake of Fire before Nicolae Carpathia and Leon Fortunato are thrown into it and enter into eternal torment. Michael then captures Satan and Jesus personally lays the charges on him, going back to the original rebellion in Heaven. Michael then chains Satan up and binds him before throwing him into the Bottomless Pit, where he will remain until the end of Jesus' 1,000-year reign. Jesus then departs for the Temple's throne as Believers find one another and find temporary lodging in houses and residential areas in Jerusalem. The next day, Jesus gathers the entire remaining population of the earth in the Valley of Jehosaphat where the Sheep and Goats judgement occurs. Jesus banishes all those who still haven't accepted him as their saviour to Hell before resurrecting the dead Tribulation Saints and Old Testament saints before giving all of them their rewards. The Tribulation Saints along with the Raptured Church then re-unite with the surviving Tribulation Saints. Rayford is re-united with his wife Irene and son Raymie, and Kenny with Buck and Chloe, along with all the other saved characters who died throughout the series including Ken Ritz, Tsion Ben-Judah and his family, Hattie Durham, Floyd Charles, and others re-uniting in Glorified Bodies as the 75-day interval between the Glorious Appearing and the Millennial Kingdom begins. ===== The Rising is Prequel 1 of 3 in the books leading up to the events mentioned in Left Behind itself. It focuses 32 years before the main Left Behind series starts. Marilena Carpathia has only one dream: to be a mother. So when a mysterious clairvoyant promises the fulfillment of this dream, Marilena does not hesitate. Through genetic engineering and the power of the Prince of Darkness himself, Marilena is about to become a chosen vessel, an exact contrary to the Virgin Mary, one who will unknowingly give birth to the greatest evil the world has ever known. Halfway around the world, God's plans are subtly being carried out too. Young Ray Steele is determined to avoid one day taking over the family business. Instead, Ray sets his heart on becoming a pilot. Soon Carpathia and Steele's lives will intersect. And good and evil will clash in an explosion that will shake the world. ===== The stage is set as Nicolae Carpathia ruthlessly eliminates any obstacles in his rise to power. Pan-Con Airlines Captain Rayford Steele prepares for a flight to London with beautiful flight attendant Hattie Durham. Because of his wife's newfound faith, Rayford looks forward to time–and the possibilities–with Hattie. Journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams is in Israel when the Arab countries attack, and he experiences for himself the power of God when fire rains down from the sky, destroying the attackers. Even more, not a single casualty is reported in all of Israel. Buck cannot deny Chicago bureau chief Lucinda Washington's insistence that the event was prophesied in Ezekiel 38,39 and clearly of the supernatural, though he dares not consider the personal ramifications. Meanwhile, Nicolae Carpathia eliminates any obstacles in his path to power. As the newly appointed President of Romania, Nicolae is invited to speak before the UN Without warning, millions disappear and are inducted into Heaven, and believers from all over space and time reunite in the house of God, as prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17. The Judgment Seat of Christ takes place and the saints of the ages are rewarded for their perseverance with crowns from Christ himself. They are followed into heaven, where they see the glory prepared for them by the Lord. On Earth, some realize what has happened, what they have lost, what they have missed, and the world plunges into chaos as drivers, pilots, and pedestrians of all occupations go missing. Rayford's first officer, Chris Smith, is among the first to commit suicide in the wake of the disappearances and the ensuing chaos. Pastor Bruce Barnes is among those left behind, and the young pastor knows that the disappearances signal the beginning of the Tribulation. ===== Seeing a catalog in men's fashion, Scrooge reflects that a man of his wealth should wear better quality clothes than what he often wears, or as he said "an old broadcloth I found at a rummage sale in Scotland in 1902". Scrooge feels that he should wear a coat of gold and provides gold bars. However, his tailor warns that the coat would be crinkly, as it would be the same as converting bauxite to tinfoil. The tailor says there is no feasible way to make a gold coat unless somehow the Golden Fleece exists. Scrooge decides to give up, realizing that not even his money can buy everything, until he meets a man called Ali Eikral who is from the country of Seikral. Donald Duck, who has never heard of Seikral, is suspicious of the Eikral's intentions, so he asks his grandnephews to look up the name Seikral in the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook. It mentions Jason and the Argonauts. The nephews figure out that "Seikral" is "Larkies" spelled backwards and Larkies are creatures who are half women, half birds and that the true name of their country is Colchis, where Medea fled when her relationship with Jason failed, taking the Golden Fleece with her and putting it a labyrinth of halls to be guarded by a "Sleepless Dragon". Donald and the nephews are about to warn Scrooge that he is walking into a trap set by Larkies. Donald is also suspicious, and warns Scrooge as well when Scrooge is aboard a boat paying the disguised man five gold bars for his passage to Colchis. Just then, the "Eikrals" throw the gold bars overboard and reveal themselves as Larkies, capturing both Scrooge and Donald as Huey, Dewey, and Louie come to the rescue too late. However, the nephews see the Larkies' discarded gold bars in shallow water, then retrieve them to plan a rescue mission by buying their own weapons and hiring the services of a helicopter pilot to fly them to Colchis. The reason for the Larkies' kidnapping was that their queen has died, and they were on a mission to abduct the world's richest man (believing he is also the best gourmand) to judge in their cooking contest, the winner of which will become the new queen. One of the Larkies named Agnes agrees to help Scrooge and Donald escape if Scrooge says that her recipe is the best. To Scrooge's chagrin, it happened to be parsnip pudding, and Scrooge hates parsnips more than any other food. Later, while her sisters are sulking, the new queen Agnes lets Scrooge and Donald go but regrets it, so she later tricks them into yelling the word "Seikral" to find the way into the labyrinth. However, the maze of halls has a unique effect that will reverse the sound, so "Larkies" is shouted back. The Larkies find out that they escaped and bombard them near to the point of submission. However, the nephews arrive and drive away the Larkies with traps such as mice. Eventually, Scrooge and Donald reunite with the nephews and they find the Golden Fleece and defeat the Sleepless Dragon by covering its eyes with the Golden Fleece then sing a lullaby. Scrooge rejoices that he will now have the world's most fashionable coat, gold cloth with diamond buttons. One month later, they are back in Duckburg where the tailor has now finished Scrooge's coat. Donald and the nephews marvel at Scrooge's sparkling coat, however he retrieves his old broadcloth he discarded, remarking "this glittering mackintosh is the coldest contraption I ever had on my back!" ===== Tom Crick, fifty-two years old, has been history master for some thirty years in a secondary school in Greenwich. As the world sets its clocks according to Greenwich Mean Time, this is a place where time begins. Tom has been married to Mary for as long as he has been teaching, but the couple have no children. The students in Tom's school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom's subject. One of Tom's students, Price, questions the relevance of learning about historical events. The youth's scepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach to telling tales drawn from his own recollection. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. The headmaster, Lewis, tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement. Tom resists this because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and would be combined with the broader area of General Studies. Tom's wife is arrested for snatching a baby. The publicity that attends her arrest reflects badly on the school, and Tom is told that he now must retire. In response, he uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to recount a story to his students. The pivot of Waterland focuses on both the past in 1937, and the present time thirty years after – all related through the eyes of Tom as an adolescent. The novel addresses some three hundred years of local history – including that of Tom's family – this relates to the broader historical currents of past centuries. It refers to smuggling and the isolation in the small towns of the Fens. Much of the contemporary plot centres on Tom's tumultuous relationship with Mary, both as teenagers and after their marriage. Tom's brother Dick is mentally handicapped; he grows increasingly jealous when they are teenagers because of his own attraction to Mary. She grew up on her father's farm, located near the house of Tom's family. Tom's father, a lock-keeper, has a home with his two sons in the lock-keeper's cottage, beside a tributary of the Great Ouse. Tom's mother dies when he is eight years old. Mary's mother had died during her birth, and she is confined by a rigid religious upbringing from her father in her childhood. As Mary matures, her interest in men grows, and she and Tom slip into an illicit relationship. Dick resents them. When she learns she is pregnant, Dick overhears and asks Mary if he is the father. He thinks if she is, she will have to devote something to him. Mary tells him another boy, Freddie Parr, is the father. Distraught at this information, Dick fights with a drunken Freddie, who is unable to swim, and pushes him into the river. Tom's father finds and pulls Freddie's body from the sluice, not realising that his drowning is not accidental. But that is the conclusion of the coroner's inquest. When Mary fails to provoke a miscarriage, she and Tom – who is the father of the child – go to an old crone for an abortion. Mary contracts septicaemia and later learns that she has been made sterile. Her father forces her into seclusion, and for three years she remains isolated. The two fathers finally agree to allow their children to come together again. Unknown to them, Tom, away fighting in World War II, has already written to Mary. When he comes home, the two marry. Tom begins his teaching career while Mary takes a job in an old people's home. The novel returns to the present day, with Tom's growing horror over the child taken by Mary, who believes it is a gift from God. He must take action and return it to the real mother, despite his wife's pleas. Mary, obviously unstable and suffering from grief for years after her abortion, is arrested after the baby is returned. Tom is later told that she has been committed to a mental institute. The plot closes on a final flashback, which shows Dick's breakdown following the revelation that he was born from the incestuous relationship his grandfather forced on his daughter, his and Tom's mother. His adoptive father has never really accepted him or valued him as he does Tom. Dick becomes drunk on liquor he found in an old chest from his real father – which also coincidentally held the letters revealing his true parentage – and rides away on his motorbike. Frantic, his family gain use of friends' boat, and find Dick several miles away, about to jump into the water. Despite their pleas and assurances he will be valued as equal to Tom, Dick throws himself in the water and drowns. His death haunts Tom for the rest of his life. ===== , a journalist at a major newspaper, is a career woman in a society that does not handle successful women well. Sumire suffers from depression and anxiety. She also has hobbies that are very un-feminine, such as smoking, being a fan of pro wrestling, K-1, and shōnen anime. After her fiancé leaves her for his mistress and Sumire is demoted at work, she stumbles across a young injured homeless man in a box outside her condominium. She takes him in and becomes attached to him. As a joke, she says she wants to keep him as a pet. To her surprise, the young man agrees. She names him , after her beloved dog from childhood. Sumire provides room and board, and Momo provides unconditional love and loyalty. Sumire says there is no sex in their relationship, and she will only sleep with men who have the "three highs": higher pay, higher education and higher height (i.e. taller than her 170 cm.) Despite this, there is definite sexual tension in their relationship. Sumire later learns that Momo's real name is , and that he is a dance prodigy who studied classical ballet but was too short to take the lead roles. He switched to modern dance, and lived a semi-homeless life before meeting Sumire. When it is revealed that he and Sumire know one another, Momo passes himself off as Sumire's second cousin. Complications arise when Sumire is reunited with the man with whom she was infatuated during her time at Tokyo University, . Hasumi meets all of Sumire's requirements. However, Sumire cannot quite open up to Hasumi-senpai, or give up her attachment to Momo. For example, Sumire lets Momo call her by her personal name, while she struggles to let Hasumi call her "Iwaya" instead of "Iwaya- san." Takeshi (a.k.a. Momo) starts to have feelings for Sumire as well and they began to have feelings that go way beyond those of a pet and its Master. When Hasumi meets Momo, he recognizes Momo's face but cannot put a name to him. When Hasumi does some research on Iwaya-san's so-called cousin, he discovers that Takeshi was a child ballet prodigy and becomes friends with him. Takeshi, of course, has to keep the fact that he is also "Momo" to himself, even when Hasumi repeatedly brings up the topic of Sumire's pet in their conversations. Although, at times he changes personalities; something is up with Momo! ===== Distraught by the death of a friend in the Dominion War, Captain Benjamin Sisko tells his father Joseph he is considering leaving Starfleet. Sisko begins experiencing hallucinations of 20th-century New York City. As Dr. Bashir examines him, Sisko is suddenly taken over by his vision, becoming Benny Russell, an African-American science fiction writer in 1953. Russell writes for the magazine Incredible Tales, and most of the people he encounters bear the likeness of people from Sisko's life on Deep Space Nine. His fellow writers include Albert Macklin (who resembles Miles O'Brien); the short-tempered, left-wing Herbert Rossoff (Quark); and married couple Kay Eaton (Kira) and Julius Eaton (Bashir). The illustrator Roy Ritterhouse (Martok) shows them some sketches; Russell is particularly drawn to a drawing of a space station resembling Deep Space Nine, and decides to write a story for it. Editor Douglas Pabst (Odo) tells Kay and Russell they are to be excluded from upcoming staff photos, as the magazine's readers might object to a woman and a "Negro" as science fiction writers. That night, Russell is harassed by two police officers, Ryan (Dukat) and Mulkahey (Weyoun). Later, he encounters a preacher (Joseph Sisko) who seems to be speaking directly to him, imploring him to "write those words" in the name of "the Prophets". He goes home and begins to write. Some time later, he finishes his story, "Deep Space Nine", about a black captain of a space station. His girlfriend Cassie (Kasidy Yates) doubts his ability to earn a good living as a writer, but despite flirtation from the baseball player Willie Hawkins (Worf), her heart belongs to Russell. A young hustler, Jimmy (Jake Sisko), laughs at Russell's idea of "colored people on the Moon". At the magazine, the entire staff loves his story, including Pabst's secretary Darlene Kursky (Dax); however, Pabst refuses to print it. Russell writes six sequels to his story, angering Pabst. Macklin devises a compromise: Russell's story will be framed as a dream. Pabst agrees to buy the story. But while Russell and Cassie are out celebrating, Jimmy is shot and killed by Officers Ryan and Mulkahey. When Russell protests, they beat him savagely. Weeks later, on his first day back at the office, Russell is excited to see his story in print. Pabst arrives empty-handed: the whole month's run of the magazine has been pulped: the owner wouldn't publish a story featuring a black hero, and Russell is fired. Russell breaks down, screaming that they cannot destroy his ideas and the future he envisions is real. As he is taken away by an ambulance, he sees stars streaking past the window. The preacher sits by him and tells him that he is both the dreamer and the dream. Sisko wakes up back on the station. He is deeply moved by his vision and wonders if somewhere, far beyond the stars, Benny Russell is dreaming of Deep Space Nine. ===== Five French Resistance fighters, known by their animal-based code names (the Wolf, the Tiger, the Elephant, the Leopard and the Fox), fought during World War II. Their efforts came to a stop when one of their number, Claude Roget (the Wolf), was betrayed to the Gestapo by a contact called Boucher. In their interrogation of him, Roget—who was the husband of Manouche (the Leopard)--was shot dead before her eyes. Twenty-eight years later, Thomas Devon (the Elephant) spots Boucher (who was going under the name Rosch) in his shop. The surviving members of the Zoo Gang drop what they are doing and rendezvous for vengeance. The series follows the adventures of the remaining gang of four resistance fighters reunited decades later to scam habitual con artists and criminals in order to take their money and use it for good causes. Despite their ages, they put their skills and experience to use to raise enough money to construct a hospital in the memory of Claude. The gang is (reluctantly) aided by the son of Manouche and Claude, an inspector in the French police. The series is set on the French Riviera in Nice. Guest stars included Philip Madoc, Peter Cushing and Jacqueline Pearce. Roger Delgado, best known for his role as Doctor Who villain The Master, also appeared, although he had died in a car crash prior to the series' broadcast. ===== Edo, 1630. Tsugumo Hanshirō arrives at the estate of the Ii clan and says that he wishes to commit seppuku within the courtyard of the palace. To deter him Saitō Kageyu (Rentarō Mikuni), the Daimyō's senior counselor, tells Hanshirō the story of another rōnin, Chijiiwa Motome – formerly of the same clan as Hanshirō. Saito scornfully recalls the practice of ronin requesting the chance to commit seppuku on the clan's land, hoping to be turned away and given alms. Motome arrived at the palace a few months earlier and made the same request as Hanshirō. Infuriated by the rising number of "suicide bluffs", the three most senior samurai of the clan—Yazaki Hayato, Kawabe Umenosuke, and Omodaka Hikokuro—persuaded Saitō to force Motome to follow through and kill himself. Upon examining Motome's swords, his blades were found to be made of bamboo. Enraged that any samurai would "pawn his soul", the House of Ii forced Motome to disembowel himself with his own bamboo blade, making his death slow, agonizingly painful, and deeply humiliating. Despite this warning, Hanshirō insists that he has never heard of Motome and says that he has no intention of leaving the Ii palace alive. After a suicide pavilion is set up in the courtyard of the palace, Hanshirō is asked to name the samurai who shall behead him when the ritual is complete. To the shock of Saitō and the Ii retainers, Hanshirō successively names Hayato, Umenosuke, and Hikokuro—the three samurai who coerced the suicide of Motome. When messengers are dispatched to summon them, all three decline to come, saying they are suffering from a life-threatening illness. After provoking their laughter by calling bushido a facade, Hanshirō recounts his story to Saitō and the Ii retainers. He did, he admits, know Motome after all. In 1619, his clan was abolished by the Shōgun. His Lord decided to commit seppuku and, as his most senior samurai, Hanshirō planned to die alongside him. To prevent this, Hanshirō's closest friend performed seppuku and left a letter assigning to Hanshirō the guardianship of his teenage son—Motome. Despite Hanshirō's pleas, his Lord forbade him to kill himself. In order to support Motome and his own daughter Miho, Hanshirō rented a hovel in the slums of Edo and was reduced to making paper umbrellas to make ends meet. Despite this, he retained a firm sense of personal and familial honor. Realizing the love between Motome and Miho, Hanshirō arranged for them to marry. Soon after, they had a son, Kingo. When Miho fell ill with a fever, Motome could not bear the thought of losing her and did everything to raise money to hire a doctor. When Kingo also fell ill, Hanshirō was enraged when Motome claimed to have already sold everything of value. Motome, however, calmly explained that there was another way to raise money and that he would return very soon. For hours, Hanshirō and Miho anxiously awaited his return. Late that evening, Hayato, Umenosuke, and Hikokuro had brought Motome's mutilated body home. They explained how Motome had come to the Ii palace and had been forced to kill himself. They then displayed his bamboo blades in order to mock their victim before his family. After they left, Miho spent hours weeping inconsolably over her husband's body. Then, she returned to her sickbed next to Kingo. Having had no idea that Motome had sold even his sword blades to save Miho, a devastated Hanshirō implored his son-in-law's forgiveness for his own carelessness. Soon after, Kingo died from his illness. Having already lost the will to live, Miho followed after him the next day. Completing his story, Hanshirō explains that his sole desire is to join Motome, Miho, and Kingo in the next world. He explains, however, that they have every right to ask whether justice has been exacted for their deaths. Therefore, Hanshiro asks Saito if he has any statement of regret to convey to Motome, Miho, and Kingo. He explains that, if Saito does so, he will die without saying another word. Saitō, however, insists that Motome was "a despicable extortioner" who got exactly what he deserved. He boasts that all other suicide bluffs who come to the Ii palace shall be treated in the same fashion. Hanshirō then reveals the last part of his story. Before coming to the Ii house, he had tracked down Hayato and Umenosuke, easily defeated them, and cut off their topknots. Hikokuro then came to Hanshirō's hovel and, with great respect, challenged him to a duel. After a brief but tense sword fight, Hikokuro suffers a double disgrace: his sword is broken and his topknot was taken as well. As proof of his story, Hanshiro removes their labelled topknots from his kimono and casts them upon the palace courtyard. With deep contempt, Hanshiro reminds everyone that, for a samurai to lose his topknot is a disgrace so horrendous that even suicide can barely atone for it. And yet, the most revered samurai of the House of Ii —Hayato, Umenosuke, and Hikokuro— lack the fortitude to commit the suicide they would demand from anyone else. Instead, they are concealing their dishonor, feigning illness, and waiting for their hair to grow back. Hanshiro concludes that, despite the Ii clan's pride in its martial history, it seems that the Code of the Samurai is a facade even for them. Having now lost face very badly, an enraged Saitō calls Hanshiro a madman and orders his remaining samurai to kill him. In a battle which rages through the palace, Hanshirō kills four samurai, wounds eight, and contemptuously throws down the antique suit of armor which symbolizes the glorious history of the House of Ii. In a final confirmation of the clan's Machiavellian ways, three Ashigaru arrive armed with matchlock guns—a weapon seen as beneath contempt. As Hanshirō begins seppuku, he is simultaneously shot by all three gunmen. Terrified that the Ii clan will be abolished if word gets out that "a half starved ronin" killed so many of their retainers, Saito announces that all deaths caused by Hanshiro shall be explained by "illness". At the same time, a messenger returns reporting that Hikokuro had committed harakiri the day before, while Hayato and Umenosuke are lying about their illnesses. Saito angrily orders that Hayato and Umenosuke are to also commit seppuku as atonement for losing their topknots, and that a squad of soldiers are to be sent to their houses "to make sure they do it." As the suit of armor is lovingly re-erected, the visitor's book of the House of Ii clan is heard in voiceover. Hanshiro, who was clearly mentally unstable, had to be forced, like Motome before him, to commit suicide. The Shōgun, it is said, has issued a personal commendation to the Ii clan for how they handled the suicide bluffs of Motome and Hanshiro. At the end of his letter, the Shōgun praises the House of Ii and their samurai as the perfection of the Code of Bushido. Janitors clean the grounds where the fighting had occurred, and a janitor finds one of the three severed top knots on the ground. He places it in a bucket. ===== Rina is a poor young hunchbacked woman who sells flowers on the streets of Mexico City. She approaches cars at stop-lights to offer her products and one day she meets an old rich man. The man gets acquainted with Rina and eventually manipulates her into marrying him. The old man dies soon afterwards, and Rina is faced with dealing with his greedy sister-in-law Rafaela (María Rubio) as well as her feelings for the son of that woman, Carlos Augusto. ===== Trill, the main character, is judged guilty (indicated for a crime he did not commit) and ordered in a space cryogenic prison for 250 years. 248 years later, he awakes, but without the memory of who he is, where he is and why he was imprisoned. In the corner of his cell, which had doubled as a store-room, the prisoner finds a "briefcase computer" which gives him control over a group of four droids on a space ship. Now he must use these droids to find and free himself. ===== After failing to receive the Employee of the Month award at Pawtucket Brewery, Peter attempts to charm his supervisor, Angela, who is unimpressed by his work performance. He organizes a surprise cockfight in her house since she likes animals, but she returns to find the remains of several chickens who have killed each other. When his retarded co-worker, Opie, gets promoted and replaced by Soundwave from the Transformers, Peter still fails to win Employee of the Month. After speaking with Stewie's preschool teacher, Lois discovers several graphic pictures Stewie has drawn that show him killing her. She is oblivious to the obvious interpretation and instead notes that Peter is not included in any of the pictures. Lois suggests that Peter make more effort to bond with Stewie. Peter reluctantly agrees, but fails to make headway until—while helping Lois in the kitchen—he accidentally knocks a box off a high shelf in the kitchen, hitting Lois in the head, causing Stewie to laugh hysterically. After striking her with larger boxes and then a jar, and seeing Stewie's delight, Peter interprets Lois being hurt as a sign of father- son bonding. This prompts more vicious pranks on Lois, including spraying her with a water hose while she is in the bathroom, but culminating with an incident where Peter pushes her into the cargo area of the station wagon before driving it into the lake. Peter and Stewie enjoy their bonding time and Stewie even begins to dress just like Peter. Later, a furious Lois returns home and—after sending Stewie to his room—demands an explanation from Peter. When Peter fails to win his argument and he realizes he went too far, Stewie feels betrayed and refuses to talk to his father. To make amends with Stewie after using Brian's advice, Peter takes him to Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Excited at the prospect of visiting Disney World, Stewie forgives Peter, although pretending to be annoyed. When the pair arrive, Peter inadvertently loses Stewie, who is captured by Disney World employees and forced to sing at the Tiny World ride, complying to do so after learning that the alternative is to be in a Christmas movie with Tim Allen. Peter finds him and takes him away, but is chased across the theme park by a security guard, who eventually loses them in The Temple of Doom style (with Peter dressed as Indiana Jones and Stewie as Short Round). The pair return home after a brief encounter with Michael Eisner and Stewie's faith in Peter is restored. Meanwhile, after playing baseball in the street, Chris accidentally smashes his neighbor Herbert's window. In an attempt to repay his debt to Herbert, Chris agrees to help the elderly man in his household chores, much to Herbert's delight. Herbert takes Chris to dinner at a fine restaurant, where a photographer takes their photograph. Herbert then sings "Somewhere That's Green", envisioning a family life with Chris, but he falls asleep at the table after the song ends. In the coda, Herbert and his dog, Jesse, mope around the house until the ESPN Little League World Series comes on, perking up Herbert's spirits. ===== Jeffrey Cole (Omar Epps) is a recent graduate of the Cincinnati police academy who dreams of working undercover. Cole manages to get an undercover assignment the day of graduation and earns the praise of his superiors. He is soon given the task of taking down statewide crack dealer Dwayne Gittens (LL Cool J), an underworld boss so powerful that his nickname is "God". Gittens is known as a family man and a man of the people, contributing to his community and helping those in need. However, there is another side to him, a ruthless leader of a criminal empire who will torture or kill anyone without question. Gittens controls eighty percent of the drug traffic in Cincinnati, controls many of his opponents through bribery or intimidation, and appears to be untouchable. Cole goes undercover, posing as a drug dealer under the name of J. Reid from Akron, Ohio. He is determined to be the man who brings down Gittens underworld empire. Cole has to prove he has street cred to gain a place in God's crew. At one point God sends Cole out on a mission with a couple of his cohorts with the intention of Cole killing a man that God wants dead. Cole chases the target but intentionally missed his shots. The crew believe he's loyal, but has bad aim. Cole eventually becomes close with one of the members of Gittens' crew, Breezy T. (Hill Harper). Later on, Cole eludes an assassination attempt by members of Gittens' crew that he was with earlier. Cole goes to Breezy T., thinking that he was set up by Breezy or God. Once Breezy advises that he had nothing to do with that, nor did Gittens, and the guys acted on their own accord, Cole leaves. Cole's superiors are impressed at his undercover work and how close he has gotten to Gittens, earning his trust while providing his superiors with intricate details into the organization. Cole's superior, Preston D'Ambrosio (Stanley Tucci) worries that the line between cop and bad guy is getting blurred and that both identities are becoming one. He begins to see behavioral changes in Cole, as he starts to assume the J. Reid identity, and D'Ambrosio believes that Cole is getting too far deep undercover. D'Ambrosio places Cole on forced hiatus from undercover and sends him to a place in the woods far from the city to get his head straight and re-discover himself. During that time, Cole rediscovers his identity and meets Myra (Nia Long), an aspiring model during one of Cole's photography classes. The two eventually begin dating and D'Ambrosio begins to take notice of his new life away from undercover work. Cole tries to convince D'Ambrosio to let him go back undercover in the Gittens case, to no avail. D'Ambrosio is too concerned for Cole becoming the J. Reid persona and losing his identity for good. D'Ambrosio is eventually overruled by District Attorney Daniel Connelly (Jake Weber) and DEA agent Rick Scott (David Patrick Kelly), reasoning that Cole is the only undercover cop to infiltrate Gittens crew as deep as he has, and Cole is the person who can bring down Gittens' organization. Cole is then reassigned to the Gittens case. Myra, realizing that he has to go back undercover, begins to distance herself from Cole. Cole starts to see Gittens becoming unhinged and his sporadic violence in the community, going as far as torturing, then later killing his second in command for making a pass at his baby's mother. The ruthlessness starts to get to Cole, as he dives deeper into his J. Reid cover. The further Cole goes undercover, the more his identities and loyalties are blurred. The younger members of Gods crew feel scared and under appreciated, and because of J. Reid letting them know he appreciates them are willing to kill “God” and give him control of the Drug Empire. Because of this, Cole begins to alienate himself from his superiors, his fellow officers, and even Myra, as Cole begins to lose reality of who he is. D'Ambrosio wants to pull Cole out of undercover again, as he sees his officer becoming unhinged and becoming J. Reid. Connelly and Scott disagree, and they come up with a sting to bust Gittens meeting with his suppliers, to which D'Ambrosio eventually agrees after Cole convinces him the importance of this sting. A gunfight ensues when police arrive to arrest Gittens and the suppliers. Gittens advises his crew to lower their weapons and surrender. Cole shields Gittens from police and a standoff ensues between the officers and an unhinged Cole, struggling between his loyalties. Realizing he is losing himself, Det. Angela Wilson (Pam Grier) talks him down and reminds him that he is Jeffrey Cole, not J. Reid, and to lower his weapon. Cole eventually gets a hold of himself and lowers his gun. As Gittens is being read his Miranda rights, Scott requests Cole to bring Gittens in. Gittens, in disbelief, denies all allegations that Cole is an undercover cop. Eventually Gittens realizes the magnitude of the situation, and thinking he had a friend he could trust, calls Cole a sellout, and leaves in police custody. During trial, Cole testifies against Gittens and his organization. Cole puts in a good word for Breezy T., helping him reduce his sentence. Because of the evidence against him and Cole's testimony, Gittens is convicted and sentence to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Gittens and Cole share a final glance before Gittens is taken away. As Connelly and Scott hold a press conference for the conviction of Gittens, Cole and Myra are driving and listening to the press conference. Cole switches off the radio, while Myra reminds Cole that his undercover work was the sole reason Gittens is behind bars. The last scenes are shown where Cole is teaching new young officers about undercover work, and the importance to never lose their cover or get too deep. ===== Ben Crandall is a young teenage boy living in the suburbs of San Francisco, who experiences vivid dreams about flying through clouds and over a vast, city-like circuit board, usually after falling asleep watching old sci-fi films (The War of the Worlds is a favorite). Every night, upon waking from the dream, he draws the circuit board. Ben shows the sketches to his friend, child prodigy Wolfgang Muller. At school, Ben develops a crush on Lori Swenson, but he is not sure whether it is mutual. Both boys meet punkish-but-likable Darren Woods, with whom they share their circuit-board concepts. Wolfgang builds an actual microchip based on Ben's drawings. The chip enables the generation of an electromagnetic bubble which surrounds a pre-determined area. As the boys discover, the bubble is capable of moving at near-limitless distances and speeds without the usual ill effects from inertia. They construct a rudimentary spacecraft out of an abandoned Tilt-A- Whirl car; they name their ship the Thunder Road, after Bruce Springsteen's song of the same name. Their experiments with the Thunder Road draw attention from the United States government, which sends agents to scout the area for UFOs. After Ben receives more dreams about the circuit board, Wolfgang discovers a means of producing unlimited sustainable oxygen; this means longer flights, whereas previously they were limited to whatever a typical oxygen tank could hold. They finalize their plan to explore the galaxy in search of alien life. The boys complete lift-off, despite interference from the authorities (one of whom silently wishes them well). Shortly after breaking Earth's orbit, something overrides the boys' personal computer-controls. The Thunder Road is tractor-beamed aboard a much larger spaceship. The boys venture out to meet their "captors", Wak and Neek: two green-skinned aliens whose knowledge of Earth comes almost entirely from junk culture, particularly television reruns. The young explorers hit it off with their extraterrestrial hosts, but then the alien ship is suddenly intercepted by a larger-still alien vessel. Feigning an attack by space-pirates, Wak urges the boys to leave. They are in the process of doing so when they're interrupted by a gigantic brown extraterrestrial, this one bearing a close resemblance to the other two, who gestures furiously while grinding out barely-comprehensible alien language. As it turns out, Wak and Neek are brother and sister; they've taken their father's ship out for a "joy ride", sending the dreams to the boys in the hopes of meeting humans. Transmissions of old black-and-white movies have kept the extraterrestrial populace at a distance – except for the curious Wak and Neek – due to the way humans generally depict violence toward alien life. Wak and Neek's father allows the Thunder Road and its crew to depart, after Wak and Neek give the boys a parting gift: an amulet which, according to the extraterrestrials, is "the stuff dreams are made of". The boys make it safely back to Earth, but a malfunction results in them crashing the Thunder Road into their neighborhood lake. Now they're back to square one... or so they think. A week later, Ben has a dream at school in which he envisions another vast circuit board while flying through more clouds overhead. This time – thanks to Wak and Neek's amulet – Ben is joined in the dream by Wolfgang, Darren and Lori. They proclaim that the circuitry is "really complicated", and wonder where this one will take them once they've constructed it. Lori smiles at Ben while holding his hand. ===== Written in diary format, the story centers on the life of an unemployed young man named Joseph, his relationships with his wife and friends, and his frustrations with living in Chicago and waiting to be drafted. His diary serves as a philosophical confessional for his musings. It ends with his entrance into the army during World War II, and a hope that the regimentation of army life will relieve his suffering. Along with Bellow's second novel The Victim, it is considered his "apprentice" work. ===== From a Gain Ground flyer: > A long period of peace has deprived the earthlings of their instinct to wage > war. The Federated Government, greatly concerned regarding this ever > increasing dangerous situation, developed a Gain Ground simulation system in > the year 2348 in an effort to instigate their ever waning fighting spirit > However, suddenly without warning, the Supercomputer went berserk and took > many of the citizens as hostages. In order to rescue the POWs, three of the > bravest warriors were urgently dispatched to go forth into the deadly Gain > Ground. ===== 18-year-old Joy, who comes from a big family with a heavy drinking mother and womanising father, leaves home to marry Tom and they have a son, Johnny. Tom mentally and physically abuses Joy and shows little interest or affection. He has been in prison for four years and, when he is jailed again after being caught attempting a big robbery, they are left on their own. After briefly sharing a room with her Aunt Emm, an ageing prostitute, she moves in with Dave, one of Tom's criminal associates. Dave is tender and understanding, but the idyll is shattered when he is sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for leading a robbery which results in a woman being blinded, and given his long criminal record. Intending to be faithful to him, Joy moves back with Aunt Emm, writes to him frequently, and initiates divorce proceedings against Tom. However, after taking a job as a barmaid, she starts modelling for a seedy photographers' club and drifts into promiscuity. She likes men giving her presents but is too impulsive and easygoing to make a living as a prostitute. She is bored of her humdrum surroundings and dreams of bettering herself. When Tom is released, Joy goes back to him after he promises to move her from her small grotty flat to a modern well-furnished house. However, one evening, after Tom has slapped her several times, she goes out and, when she returns, she finds Tom watching the TV and Johnny missing. After a frantic search, she finds him alone on a demolition site where he has gone to play. Realising how much Johnny means to her, she decides to stay with Tom despite the abuse, but continues to dream of a future with Dave. ===== The game takes place in the year 2030, two years after the first Metal Slug game and before Metal Slug 2. Series antagonist General Morden becomes allies with Oguma, president of Oguma Enterprises and world leader of technology. Because this alliance could only stand to further strengthen Morden's military power, Marco Rossi, Fio Germi, Tarma Roving, and Eri Kasamoto set out to dissolve both parties. Recurring boss character Allen O'Neil also returns to oppose the player. ===== ===== The Gond has been terrorizing nearby space colonies with its periodic raids of destruction. The time has come to put an end to his reign of terror. The player has been selected to pilot an advanced fighter ship with high offensive capabilities, and must enter the cave inside the asteroid where the Gond makes his home, and safely fly through every zone; the Mountain Zone, Rainbow Zone, Styx Zone, Stripe Zone, Bleak Zone, and the City of Mystery (aka Last Zone) where the Gond is rumored to reside. The player must take the Gond out, and succeed in the mission. If unsuccessful, the colonies will be doomed. ===== Each of the elements of life is portrayed using four different people in the urban streets of Los Angeles, with the gangster Fingers (Garcia) playing the character that intertwines all four individuals. ;Happiness Forest Whitaker plays a meek bank employee who loves butterflies. He accidentally overhears acquaintances discuss a fixed horse race, and decides to bet $50,000, borrowing from a bookie, Fingers. Unfortunately he loses the bet. Fingers derives his name from his habit of cutting off the fingers of those who don’t pay back their debts. Fingers threatens Happiness, and Pleasure, Finger's enforcer, visits him to collect, but pities Happiness, so gives him a revolver and leaves. In desperation, Happiness robs the bank. While fleeing, he is slightly hit by a moving vehicle, then escapes to the top of a building. Surrounded, the police order him to drop his gun. He does not comply, throwing the money bag off the roof, and is killed by the police. When he hits the ground his coat is spread out making him look like a butterfly. ;Pleasure Brendan Fraser plays a man with a sad past and an ability to see the future of the people he meets, an ability that deprives him of the pleasure of enjoying the surprises in life. When he was young, he was forced to defend his younger brother in a street fight against two teenagers. Pleasure won the fight but found his brother lying dead. Pleasure often has flashbacks of this scene throughout the film. Later in life, Pleasure joins Fingers' gang and becomes one of his favorites due mostly to his ability. He, however, cannot see the future of Trista (Gellar). He is assigned to look after Fingers' visiting nephew, Tony. He has a vision of Tony climbing a fence and falling back. To avoid trouble, he leaves Tony in a club while working (collecting protection money). Unfortunately, one of the girls that Tony is with, high on drugs, staggers into the next room. When Tony follows her, they struggle over a gun, and an older mobster gets shot. Pleasure rescues Tony, and they run from the henchmen, ending at the fence of the earlier vision. Tony gets away, and it is Pleasure who is caught by the henchmen, severely beaten, and then treated by Love (Bacon) in a hospital. ;Sorrow Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a somewhat morose up-and-coming pop singer/dancer with the stage name "Trista". In flashback, it's revealed that as a young child, she saw her father killed when he was accidentally hit by a moving car, immediately after promising to 'be there for her', and the loss affects her deeply. Trista's manager is deeply indebted to Fingers, and embezzles Trista's money to pay Fingers, but that is not enough, so he assigns Trista's contract to Fingers. Trista, incensed, escapes from Fingers and meets Pleasure. Fingers, naturally, has already ordered his team to find her. Pleasure, sympathetic to her, helps Trista by letting her stay with him, knowing that his house is the only place Fingers wouldn't search for her. They become lovers, but soon Fingers finds out about her location, and kills Pleasure, causing Trista even more sorrow. Her blood type is Kp(a-b-), which she reveals when a TV interviewer (Jon Bernthal) asks her what is special about her. This becomes hopeful information when Love hears it on the television, as he is searching for that blood type, the same as Gina's, when he is trying to save her life. ;Love Kevin Bacon plays a doctor who is in love with his longtime friend Gina (Julie Delpy). He never confessed his love and, so, she married his best friend. Gina gets bitten by a poisonous snake and needs a rare type of blood. Desperate, Love races to the location where Trista is filming the interview; however, Trista's assistant is in the process of trying to help Trista run away. Love runs to Trista. Her bodyguards, thinking he is a crazed fan, grab him while Trista is accidentally knocked down, hits her head and ends up in the hospital. When she awakens, Fingers informs her that she will have to abort the baby that she has just become aware that she is carrying. In her sorrow that the baby, the one thing she has left of the man she loved (Pleasure) will be lost, she sneaks out of her room and goes to the roof to jump off and commit suicide. Love, by circumstance, sees her and races up in time to see her step off the ledge. He grabs the bed sheet that she had wrapped around her like a cape and catches her. He tells her she will have to come up and grab his hand for him to be able to pull her up. After she does this, the movie flashes to Gina, saved, awakening from her coma. Love loans Trista his car as a gift for saving Gina and she leaves the hospital. ;Ending Fingers looks for Trista at the hospital, but his efforts to find her are in vain, as she has already left. As Trista escapes in Love's car, she slightly hits Happiness as he runs in front of her car in his dash from the bank (in the scene that we saw from his point of view earlier); as she sits at the intersection, as she's coming to grips with all that has happened, the money bag Happiness threw from the top of the building lands on her car's rooftop. The film closes with Trista at an airport traveling away, the money bag providing her with all the financial support she needs to escape from Fingers and start a new life for herself and her baby abroad. ===== The player controls Mowgli, a young boy who has been raised by wolves. Mowgli must leave his home in the jungle and go back to the human village because Shere Khan, a tiger, is now hunting him. Mowgli must fight jungle wildlife and ultimately Shere Khan himself to reach his village. During the journey he meets Bagheera, Baloo, King Louie, and the hypnotist snake Kaa as well as the evil Shere Khan. ===== Mrs Li, a former actress, is losing her good looks and longs for passion with her wealthy husband, who is revealed to be having a love affair with his younger and more attractive masseuse. In order to boost her image, she seeks the help of Aunt Mei, a local chef. Mei cooks her some special dumplings which she claims to be effective for rejuvenation. After Mrs Li sneaks a look in the kitchen and sees a fetus being used as an ingredient within her next meal on her visits, she is initially disgusted and runs away, but later comes back. Mei tells her that the secret ingredient for her rejuvenating dumplings is unborn fetuses imported from an abortion clinic in Shenzhen, where she used to work. Mrs Li asks her to keep finding more potent remedies, until one day she is in luck: Mei had just performed a black market abortion on Kate, a girl five months pregnant who has been impregnated by her father. Mei makes the fetus into dumplings, which Mrs Li devours. This has a wondrous effect on her libido as she goes into the hospital and has sex with her husband, who has recently injured his leg. In a short flashback, Kate and her mother are seen riding a bus home after the abortion. After getting off, Kate collapses on the pavement, bleeding from her uterus. With no one around, her mother can only watch as she slips into unconsciousness. Muttering her last words, "I don't want to die..." Kate dies soon afterwards, presumably from a ruptured uterus. Mrs Li hosts a dinner party for her friends, who compliment her and wonder about her newfound beauty and youth. When she joins them, they claim there is a horrid fish-like smell in the air, which turns out to be from Mrs Li herself. She excuses herself from the table and runs to the bathtub. Furious with Mei, Mrs Li calls her, demanding to know what she has ingested. Mei merely claims that a child conceived by way of incest is the most potent. Curious at what his wife is yelling about, Mr Li gets on the other line and overhears the conversation between her and Mei about what happened, and pays the latter a visit to find out if her special dumplings really work. Mr Li eats one of the dumplings and has violent sex with Mei. After seeing an old poster of her, he is shocked to learn that she is actually in her 60s but has managed to preserve her physical appearance as a woman in her early 30s. Although she attributes her looks to her cannibalism, the revelation does not stop Mr Li from continuing to have sex with her. Soon, Mrs Li realises that she can not stay young without eating Mei's dumplings. Ignorant of her husband's affair with Mei, she pleads with Mei to continue to find her the most potent ingredients for the dumplings and promises to pay her handsomely. Presumably a mistress of Mr Li at this point in time, Mei ignores Mrs Li's plea and tears her cheque into pieces. The next morning, police officers arrive at an apartment, where they find Kate's mother, crying, bloodied and clenching a knife. Upset about her daughter's death, she has stabbed her incestuous husband to death. It is implied that upon finding Kate's mother and her dead husband, the police find out Mei's identity and raid her apartment. Mei, however, has already fled. It is revealed that Mr Li has impregnated his masseuse. When Mrs Li finds out, she tracks down the pregnant masseuse and offers to pay her if she aborts the fetus immediately. The masseuse reluctantly accepts. Mrs Li insists to the doctor that the foetus should come out alive. She then takes the fetus, makes dumplings out of it, and ingests her husband's unborn child. Mei, on the other end, ends up selling dumplings on the streets in Shenzhen. ===== Based in the Eighteenth century, Suzanne Simonin is an intelligent and sensitive sixteen-year-old French girl who is forced against her will into a Catholic convent by her parents. Suzanne’s parents initially inform her that she is being sent to the convent for financial reasons, stating it is cheaper for her to become a nun rather than paying a dowry in marriage. However, while in the convent, it is revealed to Suzanne that she is actually there because she is an illegitimate child as her mother committed adultery with another man. By sending Suzanne to the convent, her mother thought she could make amends for her sins by using her daughter as a sacrificial offering for a new salvation. At the convent, Suzanne suffers humiliation, harassment and violence because she refuses to make the vows of the religious community. Suzanne agrees to enter into the sisterhood; however, she is placed in isolation for six months for her reluctance to take her vows. Suzanne eventually finds companionship with the Mother Superior, Sister de Moni, as she pities Suzanne’s anguish. In the days leading up her death, Sister of Moni comforts Suzanne through prayer and her understanding of Suzanne’s torment in the convent. Sister de Moni was succeeded by Sister Sainte-Christine, who does not share the same empathy for Suzanne that her predecessor had. In fact, the new Mother Superior blames Suzanne for the death of Sister de Moni and for the unrest the convent faces under the new leadership. Suzanne is physically and mentally harassed by Sister Sainte-Christine, almost to the point of death. Suzanne contacts her lawyer, Monsieur Manouri, who attempts to legally free her from her vows. She loses the legal battle; however, Monsieur Manouri manages to transfer Suzanne to another convent, Sainte-Eutrope, liberating her from Sister Sainte- Christine's persecution. At the Sainte-Eutrope convent, the Mother Superior is revealed to be a lesbian and she grows affectionate towards Suzanne. The Mother Superior attempts to seduce Suzanne, but her innocence and chaste eventually drives the Mother Superior into insanity, leading to her death. Suzanne escapes the Sainte-Eutrope convent using the help of a priest. Following her liberating, she lives in fear of being captured and taken back to the convent as she waits for the help of Marquis de Croismare. ===== Asa Leventhal's wife Mary has left the city for a few weeks in order to help her elderly mother move from Baltimore to her old family home in the South. While she is away, Leventhal must take on many tasks of caring for himself which his wife would ordinarily undertake for him. The action of the story begins when Leventhal is at his job as a copy-editor and receives a frantic phone call from his sister-in-law. She tells him that his nephew is terribly ill and that she desperately needs his assistance. During their conversation we learn that Asa's brother Max is a negligent husband and father who has practically abandoned his wife and two sons for itinerant work in Texas. His family subsists on the money he sends to them. On his way to his brother's apartment, Leventhal reflects on the annoyance of being disturbed at work and the shameful treatment which Max is visiting upon his young family. But these reflections quickly take on a tone of self-reproach as Leventhal briefly admits to himself that he has allowed his obligation to this extended family to lapse inexcusably. Throughout the novel, Leventhal flirts with the possibility of widening his arc of responsibility to include humans other than himself and his wife. Usually, however, he finds a way to preserve his positive image of himself and to shirk responsibility for others. This theme is expanded one evening when Leventhal, while walking in the park, is abruptly confronted by a man whose face he is unable immediately to place. Slowly, through conversation and subterfuge, the stranger reveals himself to be an old acquaintance named Kirby Allbee. Leventhal initially regards Allbee, who looks down on his luck, with a mixture of alarm and pity, but is swiftly put on guard, for Allbee's stream of false courtesy is barbed with anti-semitism, and it emerges that Allbee holds Leventhal responsible for his having lost his job at some point in the past. As they stand there, Leventhal scrambles to recall the details of their acquaintance. He does recall Allbee's references to a party at which Allbee had angered Leventhal with anti-semitic remarks, and also that, while looking for a job himself, he had had a disastrous interview with Allbee's old boss. But Allbee has clearly become a 'crank' and a drunk, and Leventhal at first rejects out of hand Allbee's accusation that Leventhal's disastrous interview has lost him his job. Allbee asserts that Leventhal's angry behavior at the interview was deliberate provocation, payback for Allbee's anti-semitic remarks at the party, directed at Leventhal's close friend, Dan Harkavy, who had nonetheless contacted Allbee to help secure the disastrous interview for Leventhal. Allbee confronts Leventhal several more times over the following weeks and it is revealed that in recent years Allbee has led a life of dissipation and poverty. The loss of his job, his wife's subsequent decision to leave him and her ultimate death in an auto accident have left him without resources. Leventhal mulls over his angry behavior at the interview and begins, despite the fact that Allbee is stalking him and spying on him and eventually turns up on his doorstep late at night, to accept some degree of responsibility. He enters into painful introspection about his stance toward others and interpretations of their behavior. We learn that Leventhal's mother was institutionalized for mental illness, that Leventhal's 'nerves' are shot, and thus despite Allbee's alarming behavior the reader accepts Leventhal's doubts about his own assessments of people's motives. Interwoven with his struggles with Allbee are Leventhal's uneasy interactions with the family of his brother Max. After his initial visit to their lowly apartment, Leventhal is convinced that Max has neglected his young wife and children unconscionably and he resolves to give Max a piece of his mind. Leventhal convinces his sister-in-law to allow her son to be admitted to a hospital for treatment. When the young boy takes a turn for the worse, Max returns to the city just at the time of his son's death. Bellow uses the twin events of the death of Leventhal's nephew and the jarring conflict with Allbee to portray a period of self-examination and growth in the life of the protagonist. Although his tangles with Allbee nearly end in disaster, he parts with his brother on good terms, and in a final chapter, we learn that he has been promoted, looks younger despite graying hair, and is about to become a father. The end describes a chance meeting between Leventhal and his old tormentor Allbee—both early-middle-aged, in a theatre, just before the final act. Allbee's fortunes are superficially reversed: he is dating a Hollywood actress and is richly attired. Leventhal is dismayed when Allbee hails him, but Allbee comes close to apologizing for his past aggression, saying that now he has learned that 'the world wasn't made exactly for me' and that he has come to terms with 'whoever runs things'. But since Allbee has in the past bruited his belief that 'the Jews' run everything, Leventhal's parting words to him are, 'Wait a minute, what´s your idea of who runs things?' Poignantly, we part with Leventhal and his 9-months-pregnant wife in the dark, being shown to their seats by an invisible 'usher'. Category:1947 American novels Category:Novels by Saul Bellow Category:Vanguard Press books ===== War erupts between Earth and Mars after a human mission to the Red Planet results in an attack on the city of the Mysterons. The World President is threatened with assassination but ultimately saved from a Mysteron reconstruction of Spectrum's top agent, Captain Scarlet, which is released from Mysteron control and re-enters Earth's service ("The Mysterons"). However, the Mysterons successfully assassinate the Director General of the United Asian Republic ("Winged Assassin"). Captains Scarlet and Blue and Destiny Angel come under attack from a squadron of reconstructed Angel fighter jets, but the other Spectrum Angels come to the rescue ("Seek and Destroy"). A later assault on Cloudbase results in the total destruction of the Spectrum headquarters, but the Mysterons use their extraordinary abilities to rewind time, leaving the base intact ("Attack on Cloudbase"). ===== The plot centers around a young American singer named Wendy Reed, who wants to leave the US and her boyfriend (a musician played by Michael Cerveris), and travel to Tokyo, Japan, after hearing of the success of foreign groups overseas. She plans to visit a girlfriend but cannot find her. Instead she meets a young man named Hiro, who is the leader of an unsuccessful rock band. Wendy's appeal as a tall blonde American woman draws attention to both the locals and the band themselves. She falls in love with Hiro and develops a music career as the movie advances. With some tricks they manage to catch the eye of a record label producer and achieve success for a short time. The song, which is played throughout, is a cover version from John Sebastian's Do you believe in magic? While they top the charts, there is some luxury in their lives, but the blossoming relationship of the main couple starts breaking apart. A business mogul tells Wendy that being a foreign singer in Japan is looked at as a novelty, and questions the longevity of her career, citing quickly changing trends in pop culture as the reason. Wendy, no longer wanting to be used a gimmick, encourages Hiro to perform his own original songs as frontman for the band, so that their true essence will be the highlight and no longer based on Wendy's looks. Hiro does this towards the end and succeeds at the concert. Wendy realizes that "Tokyo Pop" is a one-day business where groups have their fifteen minutes of fame and then vanish forever. Since this is the case, Wendy goes back to the US in hopes of finding a more stable career. She appreciates the time she spent with Hiro, and the two have inspired one another. However, she believes she can leave him behind because she has given him the hope to believe in himself as a writer. At the end of the film, during the credits, Wendy is seen in the studio performing an original song inspired by her time with Hiro. ===== Oliver Lyon, a successful artist, is lodging at the house of an elderly baronet, Sir David, whose portrait he has been engaged to paint. At diner on the night of his arrival he recognises among the company a woman with whom he used to be in love. He has not seen her for twelve years, and knows her to be married. Her husband, Colonel Clement Capadose, is a brilliant and handsome gentleman with whom she appeared to be very much in love, and Lyon, having accepted her as something unattainable to him, feels no real jealousy towards him, being satisfied with her apparent happiness. He at first admires the Colonel, but over the course of the dinner, when he narrates a good many improbable stories that Lyon cannot believe, his opinion of him is rather altered, although he imputes it to a romantic tendency on the Colonel's part. However, he is rather startled by what appears a plain lie when the colonel tells him of a recent occurrence in the house, which his host Arthur Ashmore, the son of Sir David, states to be completely false. Afterwards, while painting Sir David's portrait, the baronet explains to him that Colonel Capadose is a compulsive liar. He extenuates his fault, saying that he has no bad intentions, but merely cannot give a straight answer. His wife, Lyon realises, tries to shield him by not revealing his lies, and even supporting what he says. Sufficiently shocked by his, the artist hopes that she never actively participates in her husband's deceptions, and wonders how much her nature has been corrupted. To find out how far she will go to save his name, Lyon spends as much time as possible with them, painting first a portrait of their nine-year-old daughter Amy, and then of the Liar himself. In the portrait, Lyon attempts to express the Colonel's deceitful nature fully, hoping that he might awaken his wife's moral sense. He tries to draw Mrs Capadose out about her husband's character, but she only says that his nature is noble, and hopes that Lyon will express no more than this in his picture. To capture the spirit of the Liar more fully, he encourages him to talk as much as possible during the sittings, and is given in return a vast amount of invented facts and anecdotes. On one occasion a poor model, Geraldine, comes into the studio seeking work. Lyon sends her away, but Colonel Capadose falsely tells him that she is not a model at all, but a mad woman with a vendetta against him who has been pursuing him for years. Sometime later the season ends, and the Capadoses leave with the portrait nearly finished. Lyon also leaves the town, but returning briefly to see his unfinished picture, find that the Capadoses have come unannounced into his rooms. Coming upon them unnoticed, Lyon realises that Mrs Capadose has seen in the picture what he hoped she would, her husband's vile nature, and that she is ashamed of him. She terms the portrait 'cruel' but tries to leave before her husband, in a passion, rips up the canvas. They depart without knowing that Lyon saw them, and he too leaves, having seen the woman Geraldine about the house. Lyon waits to see how the couple explain events. When they return to the town soon after, they act as if nothing has happened, and ask for the sitting to recommence. When Lyon tells them what has happened, they feign ignorance and Colonel Capadose, who also met Geraldine on the day, instantly accuses her of the deed. This is the last straw for Lyon; despite Sir David's affirmation that the Liar would never harm anyone, he has now 'wantonly sacrificing an innocent person', and his wife was an accessory to the misdeed. After giving her one last chance to confess to the deception, and to admit that she only shielded her husband form love, which Lyon could readily forgive, her leaves her to spare her further pain, remarking that 'she was still in love with the Colonel - he had trained her too well’. ===== The National Mirror is a tabloid publication that reports primarily on unexplainable phenomena. The editor, Vartan Malt, receives a story tip about a woman living with an angel in her house in a small town in Iowa, and decides to send three staff members to investigate. He chooses Frank Quinlan, Huey Driscoll, a photographer and owner of the Mirror star Sparky the Wonder Dog, and Dorothy Winters, hired by Malt to eventually replace Driscoll. At the boarding house of Pansy Milbank, they meet her tenant Michael. While Michael has wings and smells like cookies, he has an unexpected taste for cigarettes and sugar, seems rather boorish at first, and does not appear clean. When pressed for the type of angel he is, he replies he is an archangel, with Pansy boasting he triumphed over Lucifer in the War in Heaven. After Pansy unexpectedly dies, Frank and Huey decide to take Michael to Chicago. Michael reveals that this was his plan from the beginning. During the trip, Michael's mission on Earth is slowly revealed to be to get Frank and Dorothy together despite both having had bad experiences with love. After Sparky is hit by a truck and killed, Michael brings him back to life. In the process, he uses up his allotment of miracles and begins to weaken. The group reaches Chicago just in time for Michael to see the Sears Tower (which he has always wanted to see) before disappearing. After Frank and Dorothy go their separate ways, Michael returns one more time (this time with Pansy in tow) and successfully gets Frank and Dorothy back together for good. ===== Nora Harper (Jenifer Lewis) is an African-American businesswoman who owns a hair salon in Los Angeles, California. She keeps a watchful eye over her employees, friends, relatives, and regular customers. Lilleana (Tatyana Ali) is a new employee from the Dominican Republic who is in an abusive relationship with Bennie (Bobby Brown). Chloe (Tamala Jones) is a hairstylist with aspirations of a career in show business. Ming (Lucille Soong) is an opinionated manicurist with anger issues. Devin (Jean-Claude LaMarre) is a bisexual man who is uncertain about his relationship with Delicious (Donn Swaby), and fears losing his girlfriend (played by Lil' Kim as herself) in the event she discovers his attraction to men. Later in the film, Nora suffers a heart attack; her friends from the salon hope for her recovery, but she dies shortly before the end of the film. In the end, the salon remains open, selling Nora's hairstyling products. ===== The story's prologue is set in Highgate Cemetery, where Professor Alexis Fairburn, an Eton beak (Professor), is tracing a tombstone when he is kidnapped by Wolfgang and Ludwig Smith. Fairburn manages to leave the piece of paper with which he was tracing. The story itself starts with young James Bond and his friend, Perry Mandeville (leader of the Danger Society), reminiscing the previous day's events. Out of the blue, a letter to Pritpal from Fairburn comes, regarding Fairburn's resignation from Eton. To House Master Codrose and Headmaster Elliot, the "mistakes" are due to Fairburn's scatterbrained personality and eccentricity, but Pritpal soon realises that the mistakes were there for a reason. James and Pritpal work towards trying to decipher them - the first of them are easy - some wrong names in the letter (Luc Olivier and Speccy Stevens) translate into "Solve seven cryptic clues."'James Bond only has 24 hours to save Professor Fairburn! However, they have to get several photographs of the letter, which has been confiscated by Cecil Codrose, before they can continue. Eventually, they get it and continue. They determine from the second clue that they have to solve the puzzle of a certain crossword in the next The Times and eventually determine that "Gordian Knot" means that they must meet a man nicknamed "Gordius," who is coming to Pritpal's next Crossword Society meeting. James decides to come along to the meeting, but all the man does is play a game of Hearts, during which James wins five pounds. The man gives his name as Ivar Peterson, who is a professor at Cambridge University. However, James and Pritpal do not believe him. James arranges with Perry to go to Cambridge University during Perry's father's birthday leave. Before James can go to London, there is a break in at the school. James is sure that the intruder was intending to take something related to Fairburn. James decides to leave for London with Perry at once and learns that one more clue, when solved, says that Fairburn has actually been kidnapped. As he and Perry drive to London, they spy an old Bentley that is for sale. Eventually, they arrive in London and James goes off to Cambridge University to find Peterson. However, when he goes into his office, he discovers that Peterson has been murdered with an Apache revolver bayonet. The killer is, in fact, still in the room, and James flees before he can be attacked. James then reads a letter that he took from Peterson's desk and finds the name "John Charnage" in it. Before he can work out what it means, the killer James had seen (Ludwig) arrives with his accomplice (Wolfgang). James flees in his Bamford and Martin, but the men give chase and James ends up crashing in a river. He manages to escape the vehicle before it explodes and hides under a bridge. James passes out from the cold and wakes up in a hospital. After managing to steal a suit and shoes, James returns to Perry's house. The two realise that "John Charnage" is actually Sir John Charnage, a local businessman whose father used to own a chemical factory. The two pay him a visit, but James is recognised as the boy that was seen leaving the scene of Professor Peterson's murder. Charnage locks them in a room, but when he leaves to call the police, James and Perry try and escape. They manage to get to Hackney, where the Eton Mission is and for which Pritpal and Tommy Chong are working. The group solve the remainder of the puzzle and determine two things - they need to check Room 5 of the Royal College of Surgeons and then go to Highgate Cemetery. They go to the museum first and learn of Charles Babbage, who had tried to invent two machines for solving mathematical problems - essentially primitive computers. They determine that Charnage is trying to build one of these machines. They then head down to Highgate Cemetery. Wolfgang and Ludwig arrive at the graveyard, but James and Perry flee and split up. James hides in their car's trunk and is led straight to Fairburn's kidnapper - Charnage. When they arrive, James sets their car on fire and, in the confusion, enters the building. James finds himself in an abandoned chemical factory and steals a bottle of potassium to use as a weapon before he is discovered and is forced to escape. He discovers that the factory has been changed into an illegal underground casino. James tries to find a way out, but an American man who has just lost a fortune in the casino forces him to win back the man's money in roulette, preventing him from escaping, although James wins and the man promises to give him a share of the winnings. James is caught and taken to Charnage, who decides that he needs to kill him. To do this, he forces him to drink a large amount of gin. Drunk and with a damaged liver, James is then dragged by Ludwig and Wolfgang to a barge to be thrown into the River Thames. In his drunken state, James works out the rest of the crossword and determines that the word "Bond" (in his name) must have the word "runner" and the letter "m" inserted into it, but cannot make sense of the results. He manages to escape by throwing the jar of potassium at the Smiths, blowing Wolfgang's hand off, and then throwing himself overboard. After making it to land, James wanders through East London in his drunken state and passes out in an alley. He wakes up to find himself surrounded by a gang of girls, who prepare to beat him up. However, by coincidence, he is in the town of Red Kelly (the boy he met during the events of SilverFin). The leader of the gang is Red's younger sister, Kelly, who immediately takes a shine to James. James learns that Charnage's business had stopped several years before because the labourers were always dying, and determines that Charnage must have been doing a deal with the Russians to build the computer that he is trying to build, the N.E.M.E.S.I.S. machine, to avoid losing his fortune. Red inadvertently solves the last piece of the puzzle - one of the results James had got earlier, Brunnermond, was actually where a large explosion took place, near the Royal Docks. James realises that the machine is at the Royal Docks, in a boat called the Amoras. Upon arrival at the docks, James and Kelly sneak up to the boat and locate Fairburn before escaping to a nearby passenger ship, where they decide to shelter for the night. Kelly, who has demonstrated an interest in James since learning his identity, insists on dancing with him in the ballroom. However, during the night, Charnage's butler Deighton and a Russian man enter the boat and search for them, but they are rescued by Kelly's gang. They return to the Amoras and destroy N.E.M.E.S.I.S., killing Wolfgang and Ludwig in the process, before searching for the Russian in charge, Colonel Irina "Babushka" Sedova. They track her down to an abandoned train tunnel, where Kelly kisses James before they search. They eventually find Babushka, but she prepares to kill James. James manages to kill her henchman, and discovers a gun in his own pocket. He aims at Babushka's head, but spares her and lets her go. Sometime after his return to Eton, James discovers that the American has kept his end of the bargain and given James a large sum of money. James tells Perry Mandeville that he intends to buy the Bentley they saw earlier with the money he won at the casino. ===== ===== Nezami's version begins with an account of Khosrow's birth and his education. This is followed by an account of Khosrow's feast in a farmer's house; for which Khosrow is severely chastised by his father. Khosrow asks forgiveness and repents his offence. Hormizd IV, who is now pleased with his son, forgives him. That very night, Khosrow sees his grandfather Anushirvan in a dream and Anushirvan gives him glad tidings of a wife named Shirin, a steed named Shabdiz, a musician named Barbad, and a great kingdom, that is Persia. Shapur, Khosrow's close friend and a painter, tells Khosrow of the Armenian queen Mahin Banu and her niece Shirin. Hearing Shapur's descriptions of Shirin's flawless features, the young prince falls in love with Shirin, the Armenian princess. Shapur travels to Armenia to look for Shirin. Shapur finds Shirin and shows the image of Khosrow to Shirin. Shirin falls in love with Khosrow and escapes from Armenia to Khosrow's capital Mada'in; but meanwhile, Khosrow also flees from his father's anger and sets out for Armenia in search of Shirin. On the way, he finds Shirin unclothed bathing and washing her flowing hair; Shirin also sees him; but since Khosrow was traveling in peasant clothes, they do not recognize one another. Khosrow arrives in Armenia and is welcomed by Shamira the queen of Armenia - yet he finds out that Shirin is in Mada'in. Again, Shapur is sent to bring Shirin. When Shirin reaches Armenia, Khosrow – because of his father's death - has to return to Mada'in. The two lovers keep going to opposite places until Khosrow is overthrown by a general named Bahrām Chobin and flees to Armenia. In Armenia, Khosrow finally meets Shirin and is welcomed by her. Shirin, however, does not agree to marry Khosrow; unless Khosrow first claims his country back from Bahram Chobin. Thus, Khosrow leaves Shirin in Armenia and goes to Constantinople. The Caesar agrees to assist him against Bahram Chobin on condition that he marry his daughter Mariam. Khosrow is also forced to promise not to marry any one else long as Mariam is alive. Khosrow succeeds in defeating his enemy and reclaims his throne. Mariam, out of jealousy, keeps Khosrow away from Shirin. Meanwhile, a sculptor named Farhad falls in love with Shirin and becomes Khosrow's love-rival. Khosrow cannot abide Farhad, so he sends him as an exile to Behistun mountain with the impossible task of carving stairs out of the cliff rocks. Farhad begins his task hoping that Khosrow will allow him to marry Shirin. Yet, Khosrow sends a messenger to Farhad and gives him false news of Shirin's death. Hearing this false news, Farhad throws himself from the mountaintop and dies. Khosrow writes a letter to Shirin, expressing his regret for Farhad's death. Soon after this incident, Mariam also dies. According to Ferdowsi's version, it was Shirin who secretly poisoned Mariam. Shirin replies to Khosrow's letter with another satirical letter of condolences. Khosrow, before proposing marriage to Shirin, tries to have intimacy with another woman named Shekar in Isfahan, which further delays the lovers' union. Finally, Khosrow goes to Shirin's castle to see her. Shirin, seeing that Khosrow is drunk, does not let him in the castle. She particularly reproaches Khosrow for his intimacy with Shekar. Khosrow, sad and rejected, returns to his palace. Shirin eventually consents to marry Khosrow after several romantic and heroic episodes. Yet, Shiroyeh, Khosrow's son from his wife Mariam, is also in love with Shirin. Shiroyeh finally murders his father Khosrow and sends a messenger to Shirin conveying that after one week, she would have to marry him. Shirin, in order to avoid marrying Shiroy, kills herself. Khosrow and Shirin were buried together in the same grave. ===== Front cover of the European NES version. The story begins with the titular M.C. Kids, Mick and Mack, reading a storybook about Ronald McDonald showing off his magical bag at a picnic in the meadow. Suddenly, Hamburglar appears and steals Ronald's Magic Bag. Mick and Mack then search outside Ronald's clubhouse for four of the puzzle cards. After collecting four of the puzzle cards, Mick and Mack are told by Ronald that Hamburglar was sighted near Birdie's treehouse. Upon arriving at Birdie's treehouse, Mick and Mack search her house for five of her puzzle cards. After finding her puzzle cards, Mick and Mack are told that Hamburglar is sighted near the cliffs. Following the directions given by Birdie, Mick and Mack arrive at Grimace's loft in the Highlands and search his house for three of his puzzle cards. After finding two more cards, Grimace lets them head down a path to the Professor's workshop. When Mick and Mack reach the Professor's workshop, they find that he has invented something to help them in their quest. He then has Mick and Mack find five of his puzzle cards. Using the rocket that the Professor gave to them, Mick and Mack head to the moon to visit CosMc. They meet up with CosMc on the moon at his getaway where he tells him to find five of his puzzle cards. After collecting his cards, CosMc tells Mick and Mack to find an entrance to a volcano as Hamburglar might be hiding out there. Mick and Mack brave the scary volcano in their efforts to find Hamburglar and the Magic Bag. When they find Hamburglar, he tells them that the Magic Bag escaped from him. After collecting all six of his cards, Mick and Mack confront the Magic Bag where it launches a tied flag, a magic wand and then a rabbit in a hat in order to attack. When the Magic Bag is defeated, the game ends with Mick and Mack returning the bag to Ronald. ===== The cow town of Spurline is effectively ruled by Virgil Renchler (Welles), owner of the Golden Empire ranch. One night, some of Renchler's hands beat a young laborer, Juan Martín, to death. The newly elected sheriff of Spurline, Ben Sadler, decides to investigate the murder, but must contend with Renchler's henchmen and the fierce opposition of the townspeople, who fear Spurline would be ruined without the Golden Empire's business. Ranch foreman Ed Yates admits to Renchler that he killed Martin, but employee Chet Huneker is persuaded to tell the law that he hit Martin accidentally with a car. Renchler's daughter, Skippy (Miller), tells the sheriff what she remembers from the night of Martin's death. Sadler is beaten by Yates and Huneker, then dragged through town, tied to the back of a truck. Sadler gets a shotgun, tosses aside his badge and, with help from cropper Aiken Clay (Dano), goes after Renchler and his men, defeating them with the help of the townspeople, who then return Sadler's badge to him. ===== World-famous Italian tenor opera singer Giorgio Fini is in Boston for a concert when he gets a phone call asking him to perform at The Met. The call brings up bad memories from his disastrous appearance there seven years earlier. It scares him to the point where he cannot sing at rehearsal. Everyone panics thinking he is losing his voice. His business manager, Henry Pollack, calls throat specialist Pamela Taylor. Giorgio at first refuses her, believing her not to be a doctor but "a nurse" because she is a woman. After being scared into seeing her by his manager, she immediately detects that the problem is psychological, not physical. Pamela makes up a serious-sounding name for the condition and gives Giorgio a shot to cure it, which she reveals to Henry is harmless vitamin B12. After reacting to the prick of the needle, Giorgio instantly gets his voice back and proceeds to sing the following day at the Hatch Shell in Boston. Giorgio is immediately physically attracted to Pamela, and even though he is married with two children, she agrees to go out on a dinner date. The date does not go well, but Giorgio is persistent, visiting the hospital where Pamela works. His quick thinking helps calm a scared child getting ready for surgery to remove his tonsils, promising ice cream which he delivers after the surgery. Impressed by his handling of the children, she agrees to another date. She eventually becomes his traveling companion. After spending a romantic week in San Francisco and the wine country visiting friends of Giorgio, the two eventually fall in love, even though at the start of their relationship he told her this was just "a fling" and made her promise not to fall in love with him. He gains the confidence through his love for her to agree to perform at the Met in the Giacomo Puccini opera Turandot. However, because Giorgio refuses to leave his wife, Pamela throws him a kiss and leaves the Met while Giorgio is singing "Nessun Dorma" to her. ===== The book follows the travels of a man to the small town of Evening, Oregon, where his beloved wife was killed in a freak accident the year before. The novel relies heavily on surrealism and a lolling suspense that is never realized in any sort of actual climax. Nonetheless, the book retains a small following of fans that greatly admire its "mature" style and few reviewers have considered it a poor effort. ===== Rosalinda is a pretty woman who sells flowers and decorates a fancy restaurant. One day, she meets Fernando José, a man of high social status. He plays the piano at the restaurant. They eventually fall in love, get married, and have a child named Erika, but his stepmother Valeria desires to split the happy couple up, and she has the perfect way of doing so. Rosalinda's real mother, Soledad, served a 20-year prison sentence for the murder of Fernando José's real father. She was innocent, but took the blame. After finding out this horrible news, Fernando José abandons Rosalinda and her daughter. Valeria kidnaps Erika. Rosalinda goes into a clinical and eventually loses her mind. She is locked up in a mental hospital. One night, the mental hospital catches fire and burns down. Rosalinda manages to escape, but her loved ones are convinced she is dead. Suffering from a major case of amnesia, she is forced to become a thief by an old man who takes her in. She meets Alejandro "Alex" Dorantes while trying to steal from his house. Alex cleans her up and she takes on the identity of Paloma Dorantes and becomes a singer. She falls in love with Alex, the talent agent who makes her famous. Meanwhile, Fernando José marries Rosalinda's cousin, Fedra. Rosalinda's life with Alex seems to be going well. However, things just don't seem to be totally right. One night, Rosalinda and Alex attend one of Fernando Jose's concerts. He plays a song which happens to be the first one he played the day they met. This seems to trigger Rosalinda's memory of her past. Overwhelmed by these memories, Rosalinda scurries out of the concert hall and gets hit by a car. Alex rushes her to the hospital. It is then that Rosalinda realizes that she is not Paloma, but Rosalinda. Now that Rosalinda has gained her memory back, she must go back and fight to gain her child back, her family, and Fernando Jose in the process. ===== The novel tells the story of Chloe Parker, a woman in her early 20s who had been adopted at the age of seven by a music superstar and his wife, and who now associates with Hollywood celebrities. What had followed was a wild childhood distinguished by parties with movie stars and rock idols, run-ins with the press and the police, and a subsequent stint in rehab. When Chloe shoots to instant fame as a spokesmodel for a national ad campaign, her long- lost birth father appears out of nowhere, her best friend betrays her, and she has to struggle to keep it all together—her sobriety, her friendships, and her integrity—despite the betrayals of those around her. Ultimately, Chloe comes spectacularly into her own, achieving stardom in her own right and finding true love. ===== An iconic rock legend, Jack Fate (Bob Dylan), is bailed out of prison to perform a one-man benefit concert for a decaying future North American society. The film touches on many subjects from the futility of politics, the confusion of loosely strung government conspiracies, and the chaos created by both anarchy and Nineteen Eighty-Four- styled totalitarianism. It further reflects on life, dreams, and God's place in a seemingly increasingly chaotic world. Fate makes it clear that he "was always a singer and maybe no more than that". He produces no solutions to any of the problems the film presents. Rather, he makes it clear that he "stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago." ===== The film begins with Yoon So-eun (Kim Ha-neul), a student at Silla University eagerly awaiting a certain student Dong-hee (Park Yong-woo) returning to school after serving in the army. She meets him outside the amateur radio club room, where she tells him HAM radio is her hobby, and he thanks her for all the letters she wrote him during the war. Visiting her friend Heo Sun-mi who is recuperating from a broken leg in the hospital, So- eun tells her she is in love with Dong-hee. At home, one night, she is awakened by a call on her radio, from another radio enthusiast, Ji-in (Yoo Ji- tae). They discover that they attend the same university and plan to meet in front of the school clock tower, where Ji-in offers to lend So-eun a book for amateur HAM radio operators. At the set time, both wait for the other, So-eun in front of an unfinished clock tower in the heat and dust, and Ji-in in front of a completed one, in heavy rain. Later at night, they argue about why the other person did not show up, and about the weather, and Ji-in is suddenly shocked to discover he is speaking over a radio with a disconnected power plug. Further, Ji-in, is then jolted with the information which So-eun reveals: she is a Junior in 1979, he is a sophomore in 2000. At first he begins to doubt So-eun's words, but is slowly convinced despite the improbability of what is happening to him. Meanwhile, So-eun's relationship with Dong-hee is progressing well, and they end up dating. So-eun talks about her new-found relationship with Sun-mi at the hospital, but is not able to spend as much time with her now. Ji-in is close to a girl at school, Seo Hyeon-ji (Ha Ji-won), whom he takes for granted as she is always hanging around him, but for whom he comes to care for deeply. So-eun is increasingly irritated with the conversations she has with Ji-in over the radio, thinking he is lying about living in the year 2000. He then offers her some snippets from her future and his past, which finally make her believe that Ji In has been speaking the truth. So-eun then excitedly asks him about the future, and they also start to confide in each other about their personal lives, Ji-in telling So-eun to think of him as a sort of diary that talks. She begins talking about being in love, and Dong-hee. During some student demonstrations, Dong-hee is injured and So-eun goes to visit him tearfully, and signs her name on the plaster cast on his arm. She also visits Sun-mi who is at the same hospital. That night, she talks to Ji-in about signing her name on Dong-hee, and how that gave her the feeling that he belongs to her. Ji-in suddenly mentions that his parents went to Silla University at the same time as her, and that she might know them, and reveals their names as Sun-mi and Dong-hee. This breaks So-eun's world apart, and she runs to the hospital to see the sleeping Dong-hee with Sun-mi's name now signed on his plaster cast. She goes about in a daze, remembering Sun-mi and Dong-hee bonding while they were at the hospital, avoiding Sun-mi, who has returned to school from the hospital, and feeling a strange sense of unknown guilt as she dreams about Dong-hee. She has another conversation with Ji-in, where he talks about finding out one's true destination, and breaks up with Dong-hee the next day. Ji-in, on a visit to his parents' country home, sees pictures of his parents from school, the plaster cast his father's arm had been in once, the names signed on it and sees So-eun's name on there. He probes through the school yearbook of 1979 and is startled with the revelation that the lady he has been speaking with every night, was in love with his own father. The realization strangely disturbs and affects him. He wonders what would happen to him if So-eun chose to be with his father, and sets out to find out how So-eun is faring in his time, the year 2000. He finds her as a professor of English at another university and is touched to see her still single, but beautiful and happy, while So-eun smiles at him with vague recognition as she passes by. He leaves to tell So-eun over the radio that he saw her that day. However, the radio does not seem to work now, and it is the end of the strange companionship across the barriers of time. Ji-in goes back to his world, accepting his girlfriend Hyeon-ji, and So- eun gets on with her life, having realized Dong-hee was not meant to be her destination. ===== A young, reckless cowboy named Eddie deliberately provokes an argument with the notorious gunfighter Jimmy Ringo, who is widely known as the fastest draw in the West, making him the perpetual target of every young gunslinger eager to become famous as "the man who shot Ringo". When Eddie draws his weapon, Ringo has no choice but to kill him. Eddie's three brothers seek revenge and pursue Ringo as he leaves town. Ringo ambushes and disarms them then drives off their horses. He tells them to walk back to town; instead, they follow him on foot. In the nearby town of Cayenne, as Ringo settles into a corner of the largely deserted saloon, the barkeeper alerts Marshal Mark Strett. Strett is an old friend of Ringo's but nevertheless urges Ringo to leave, since his presence has already created a sensation and it is only a matter of time until trouble occurs. Ringo agrees to go as soon as he sees his wife, Peggy, whom he has not seen in eight years, and the son he has never met. Strett tells him Peggy has changed her surname to conceal their relationship and has no interest in seeing him. Ringo must deal with Hunt Bromley, another young gunslinger keen to make a name for himself, and Jerry Marlowe, who mistakenly believes Ringo killed his son. A bar girl, Molly—another old friend—eventually persuades Peggy to talk to Ringo. Ringo tells her that he is now older and wiser, and wants to leave his gunfighting past behind. He intends to settle in California, where people do not know him, and he invites Peggy to come with him. She refuses but agrees to reconsider in a year's time, if he has kept his word and abandoned his past for good. Ringo meets his son at last, although he does not reveal that he is the boy's father. Ringo's business in Cayenne is finished but he has lingered too long. The three vengeful brothers have arrived and lie in wait. Strett and his deputies intercept and apprehend them. Ringo bids farewell to Peggy and his son, but as he departs the saloon, Bromley shoots him in the back, mortally wounding him. As Ringo lies dying, he tells Strett that he wants it known that he drew on Bromley—that Bromley shot him in self-defense. Bromley protests that he does not want Ringo's help, but Ringo explains to his killer that he is doing him no favors. Bromley, he says, will soon learn as Ringo did that notoriety as a gunfighter is a curse that will follow him wherever he goes, making him an outcast and a target for the rest of his life. Strett orders Bromley out of his town, punctuating his order with a beating, which he warns is "just the beginning" of what Bromley has coming. In death, Ringo has finally found what he sought for so long: his wife's forgiveness and reconciliation. At his funeral, as Peggy proudly reveals to the townspeople for the first time that she is Mrs. Ringo, a silhouetted, unrecognizable cowboy rides off into the sunset. ===== Set in London, the film tells the story of a middle-aged gay Jewish doctor, Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch), and a divorced woman in her mid-30s, Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), who are both involved in an open love triangle with sculptor Bob Elkin (Murray Head), a younger man in his mid-20s. Not only are Daniel and Alex each aware that Bob is seeing the other but they know one another through common friends. Despite this, they are willing to put up with the situation through fear of losing Bob, who switches freely between them. Bob has his own coterie of artist friends who support his work, which consists of glass fountains. Alex and Daniel are both close friends with the Hodsons, who are a bohemian, academic middle-class family living somewhere in a leafy London suburb. They alternate having Sunday dinner with the Hodsons, who are quite aware of their relationships but don't talk about them, though the Hodson children are inclined to snicker. Alex also has a depressed client who has recently lost his job to age discrimination. They sleep together at Alex's flat, and then Bob announces his arrival, forcing them to pretend to be having a casual drink. Bob tells Alex that he has no problem with her sleeping with other men. They are, in his words, "free". There are minor crises in the narrative. The Hodson's family dog is run over by a truck which narrowly misses the children. Daniel has to deal with a former lover (Jon Finch) who is a heroin addict. After unsuccessfully trying to fill a heroin prescription for him at a pharmacy, being unable to prove he is a doctor, Daniel finds that his medical bag has been stolen from his car. For Alex, the relationship is bound up with growing disillusion about her professional life, failed marriage and uneasy childhood. For Daniel, it represents an escape from the repressed nature of his Jewish upbringing. Both realise the lack of permanence about the situation. When Bob decides to leave the country to settle in New York, after receiving an offer to open his own art gallery, they both come face to face for the first time in the narrative. Despite their opposed circumstances, Daniel and Alex come to realise that it is time to move on; Bob leaves for the United States. The film ends with an unconventional speech from Daniel directly to the audience. He muses on his relationship with Bob, his friends' concern for his happiness, and declares "I am happy, apart from missing him." His last remark is "I only came about my cough," often a punch-line to a joke about a man going to the doctor and getting unexpected news. ===== Birdee Pruitt is a Chicago housewife who is invited onto the national Toni Post talk show under the pretense of getting a free makeover, but is ambushed with the revelation that her husband Bill has been having an affair with her best friend Connie. Humiliated, Birdee and her precocious daughter Bernice move back to Birdee's hometown of Smithville, Texas, with Birdee's eccentric mother Ramona and her young, imaginative nephew Travis. As Birdee and Bernice leave Chicago, Birdee gives Bernice a letter from Bill, telling Bernice how much he misses her. Birdee struggles to make a new life as a working single mother and deals with the growing attraction between herself and a former high school classmate, Justin Matisse, who Ramona hopes that Birdee will get together with. She also tries to rebuild her relationship with her estranged mother, her father (who has Alzheimer's Disease), and Bernice, who desperately wants to be with her father, blames her mother for the breakup, and tries to sabotage the romantic overtures Justin makes towards Birdee. Bernice is also having difficulty adjusting to her new life and school in Smithville, worsened when she is bullied by a classmate known as Big Dolores. Adding to Birdee's heartache is her former status as the school queen bee and beauty pageant winner who dismissively alienated many of her classmates. They remember Birdee's high school snobbery and rub her nose in her televised embarrassment. Ramona tries to mend the gap between her daughter and granddaughter by telling a story about her childhood. She asks Bernice what she wants for her upcoming birthday. Even though Bernice says she does not have a birthday wish, she secretly wishes for her father to return. Ramona suffers a massive heart attack and dies. Birdee's sister and Travis's mother, Desiree, sends a telegram that she cannot make the funeral. Meanwhile, Travis wonders if Birdee will raise him now. When Bill arrives at the funeral, Bernice believes that her wish has come true and that her father wants them both to come home. However, it soon becomes clear to her that her parents' split is permanent when Bill asks Birdee for a divorce. Wanting to be with her father, Bernice runs to her room, packs a suitcase, and follows Bill to his car. She is devastated when he tells her that even though he loves her and promises to come back for her, he has no room for her in his new life with Connie right now. Bill drives off, leaving Bernice sobbing and screaming for him to come back and take her with him. Birdee picks Bernice up and carries her back into the house. As Birdee comforts her, Bernice says she knows the letter was actually written by her mother, and not really by her father. One day at work, Birdee finds Justin outside waiting for her with flowers. As she walks to him, she says, "Ok, Mama, stop pushing." After they kiss and embrace, he picks her up, places her in his truck and they drive off. The final scene shows Birdee, Justin, Bernice, and Travis at a big town event. It emerges that Birdee has taken full custody of Travis and is also dating Justin, but she is still not planning on getting married again for a really long time. Bernice embraces Smithville as her new hometown, ultimately accepts Bill's departure from her life, and has warmed up to Justin as her mother's new love interest and a father figure. She and Birdee are much closer because of everything they have been through, as Bernice realizes that it was not her mother's fault that her father left them and that Birdee really does love her. The mother and daughter share a tender, yet humorous moment when Bernice asks if Birdee plans to marry Justin. When Birdee asks her if she does not like Justin, Bernice says her only real concern is being known as "Bernice Matisse". ===== Sixteen-year-old Ruby Baker (Leelee Sobieski) and her eleven-year-old brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan) lose their parents, Dave and Grace, in a car accident. Their parents' will is not a recent one but, in accordance with its terms, the children are placed under the guardianship of family neighbors from some years back, the childless couple Erin Glass (Diane Lane) and Terry Glass (Stellan Skarsgård), who live in a large glass house in Malibu. There are early indications that all is not well. The children have to share a room; they are no longer educated privately; Rhett is allowed to play with games consoles at all times; Ruby is made uneasy by Terry's sexual hints when they are alone. Ruby comes across unlabeled pharmaceuticals and sees Erin injecting herself, though the couple claims this is for diabetes. Ruby tries unsuccessfully to get the children's estate and trust fund lawyer Alvin Begleiter (Bruce Dern) to accept her concerns and a visiting social worker is taken in by the couple's assurances. Ruby discovers a postcard from the children's maternal Uncle Jack (Chris Noth) in the trash, along with a letter from a private school indicating the Glasses unregistered the children and pocketed the $30,000+ tuition money. Ruby also finds signs that Terry is in debt to loan sharks, and she gradually realizes her new foster parents are after the siblings' $4 million trust fund. Ruby becomes suspicious of her parents' death and discovers evidence of the Glasses' involvement from the online news which states that Ruby's parents had been driving a BMW, which was actually one of Terry's cars, instead of their Saab. Moreover, Ruby is expelled from school because her essay, which Terry finished for her seemingly to rekindle their relationship, is found to be plagiarised; it is later revealed that this is Terry's plan to send Ruby to a boarding school far away. After being pushed by the loan sharks to pay off his debt, Terry decides to get money from the financial authority, claiming that it is to be used for the children's benefit. His request is denied and he is shown a copy of the un- registration letter from the school, previously faxed to the authority most likely by Ruby, which raises the question of why he needs more money when he has already gotten the tuition money back in his pocket. Later the same night, Ruby steals Terry's car keys, wakes Rhett and drives off in his Jaguar, attempting to escape. She is stopped by the police who demand to see her driver's license. The kids are recaptured in the car on the road by Terry and Erin who talk the police into letting them go. Back home, Ruby attempts to run away again but Terry knocks her down and Erin drugs her. Terry then tells Erin they must get rid of Ruby. Overcome by guilt and having been permanently stripped from her medical license after her employer Dr. Weiss uncovered her drug abuse, Erin commits suicide by overdose. Terry locks the kids in the basement and sabotages his car, expecting the kids to make another escape attempt and consequently die in it. The loan sharks (alerted by Ruby) appear at Terry's house, kill Mr. Begleiter (who has come to confront Terry and revealed his complicity), repossess Terry's Jaguar and Ferrari, and insist on taking a ride. Terry begs them to take the Volvo instead of the Jaguar. Having heard everything, Ruby rushes to stab the tires of the Volvo with a knife, causing the loan sharks to put Terry in the Jaguar and drive away in it. The car then goes over a ledge and crashes, seemingly killing the loan sharks and Terry. Meanwhile, the children are picked up by a friendly cop on the road. The policeman passes the scene of an accident with Terry's Ferrari and the kids see a body being covered up. They continue on to the kids' house, but he stops when he sees evidence of another car having broken through the barrier. He tells the children to stay in the car while he investigates. He comes across the car and radios that there is one fatality. Terry comes up knocks him out. A severely injured Terry climbs to the road and staggers towards Ruby and Rhett, hiding a gun. Ruby crawls into the front seat, and after backing the car up and telling Rhett to put his seatbelt on, speeds into Terry and kills him. The kids are last seen placing flowers at the grave of their parents with their Uncle Jack who hugs them, saying that things will get easier and Ruby responds that they already have. They leave together to go home to Chicago. ===== The story begins with D'arci Stern, the protagonist, joining the Union City Police Department. Much of her time is spent dealing with the Wildcats, a gang that is getting increasingly bold in their criminal activity. With the help of a vigilante named Roper McIntyre, D'arci begins to believe that the Wildcats plan to take over Union City. As the Wildcats grow ever bolder, D'arci discovers that the gang is led by Mack Bane, a candidate for mayor of Union City. Eventually, the Wildcats attempt a hostile takeover of the city, which is finally repelled by D'arci, Roper and the police. Some time later, D'arci is investigating a particularly brutal murder. She discovers that the murder was committed by Bane's elite bodyguards, a brotherhood of mysterious men in tailored black suits known as "The Fallen". This establishes a connection between Bane, the Wildcats and the Fallen. Soon after, he is arrested by D'arci and Roper in his out-of-town estate. Even from jail, Bane is able to direct the Wildcats, and D'arci and Roper are forced to deal with several more threats to the city. Later, Bane breaks out of jail and claims to be an Ancient Warlock. He uses his powers to summon a fire beast known as a Baalrog, which attempts to destroy the city, but D'arci and Roper defeat it. Bane and the Wildcats flee to a sanctuary tower to fulfill a prophecy; before they can complete their ritual, D'arci and Roper must rescue injured civilians, battle the remnants of the Wildcats and Fallen, and use the tower's ventilation system to destroy Bane once and for all. ===== Set in the fictional city of Stylesville, the show revolves around four teenagers (Cloe, Jade, Sasha, Yasmin) running their own teen magazine, titled "Bratz", while struggling school life at Stiles High School. Their rival magazine is "Your Thing", owned and run by the proud and demanding self-proclaimed "Reigning Queen of Fashion" Burdine Maxwell, and her mean identical twin interns Kirstee and Kaycee, known infamously as "the Tweevils". Accompanied by their friends Dylan, Cameron and Eitan, the girls' issues are exploited throughout the series, both in and outside of Stylesville. ===== The film follows the rehearsal and performance of a dreadful farce called Nothing On, a hit British show that is preparing for its American debut in Des Moines, Iowa, with a second-rate, Broadway-bound theatrical troupe under the direction of Lloyd Fellowes (originally named Lloyd Dallas in the play and portrayed by Caine). Among the cast members are fading star Dotty Otley (Burnett), hot-tempered and scatter-brained Garry Lejeune (Ritter), insecure matinee heartthrob Frederick Dallas (originally named Frederick Fellowes in the play and portrayed by Reeve), myopic leading lady Brooke Ashton (Sheridan), bubbly Belinda Blair (Henner), and alcoholic character actor Selsdon Mowbray (Elliott). Frantically working behind the scenes are Tim Allgood (Linn-Baker) and Poppy Taylor (Hagerty). The film opens with the final dress rehearsal before opening night, with an unfinished set and the cast still forgetting lines, missing cues, and mishandling props. Fellowes is reduced to cajoling, yelling at, and pleading with them to get things right. Complicating matters are the personal problems and backstage relationships of the cast and crew, which are simmering under the surface during rehearsal but erupt into the open as the play works its way across the country en route to New York. After the rehearsal, the film goes on to show two performances of the play, one a matinee in Florida in which the feuding cast are barely able to finish the first act, and another in Cleveland, which quickly degenerates into complete chaos and anarchy as none of the cast are able or willing to perform professionally. However, against all odds, they manage to sort out their personal differences and pull together for the Broadway debut, and the show becomes a massive hit. ===== The story takes the form of a report written by an ex-student of the story's protagonist, Professor Arthur Barnhouse. A year and a half before the writing of the report the professor develops the ability to affect physical objects and events through the force of his mind; he comes to call this power "dynamopsychism", while the press adopts the term "the Barnhouse effect". When Barnhouse makes the mistake of informing the US government of his newfound abilities, they try to turn him into a weapon. The program is successful, but Barnhouse, declaring himself the world's 'first weapon with a conscience', flees and goes into hiding. While in this reclusive state Barnhouse uses his dynamopsychic powers to destroy all nuclear and conventional weapon stockpiles, along with other military technologies. However, he realizes that because he is mortal, the world will revert to its warlike tendencies after he dies. Barnhouse passes on the secret of his abilities to his ex-student, who goes into hiding after he begins to manifest them as well. ===== The Romanian army accidentally blasts open a subterranean crypt, and the army captain, fearing looters and criminals, stations a guard near the site. Late in the night, an earthquake shakes loose one of the coffins, which slides down and lands at the feet of the confused guard. Curious as to what has fallen before him, the guard opens the coffin and discovers the body of a dog, impaled by a stake. He removes the stake, which revives the vampiric Doberman Pinscher Zoltan. After slaying the guard and drinking his blood, Zoltan opens another coffin shaken loose from the crypt, this one holding the body of his master, an innkeeper named Veidt Smit (Reggie Nalder), who once owned the crypt. Zoltan removes the stake from the innkeeper's chest, re-animating the innkeeper. The movie cuts to a flashback of a village in Romania in 1670, over 300 years ago. The dog of an innkeeper saves a woman from being bitten by Count Igor Dracula (Michael Pataki). Furious over losing his meal to a dog, Dracula, in bat form, bites the woman's savior, turning the dog into a vampire. Then Dracula, with the dog by his side, turns on his owner, turning the innkeeper into a creature called a "fractional lamia" (an undead creature that is only part vampire, able to function in the daytime and having no need to drink blood) and thus turns him into a slave of the Dracula family. Back in the present (1977), it appears that the Dracula family has only one surviving descendant, Michael Drake (also Michael Pataki), a psychiatrist, who decides to take his wife, Marla (Jan Shutan) and their two children, Linda (Libby Chase) and Steve (John Levin) (who, technically, are also descendants of the Draculas), as well as their two German Shepherd Dogs, Samson and Annie, and their two puppies, on a vacation in the family's Winnebago camper, hoping to spend some quality time with his family and their pets out in a national forest. Still loyal to the Draculas, the vampire dog and his master travel to the United States, shipping themselves via boat to Los Angeles, California in order to make Michael their new master. Eventually, Zoltan and Smit find themselves in the same forest as Michael, his family and their dogs. Other campers, vacationing with their dogs, discover that their pets are being killed by a strange beast. The deceased animals soon reanimate into vampire dogs, the minions of Zoltan. Zoltan is killed in the final scene, but a vampire German Shepherd puppy escapes destruction. ===== Being 400 years old, the Countess has collected a stable of young men and women who accompany her on her centuries- old journey through eternal night-and youth. While she is immortal, she is required to drink the blood of a young male virgin three times by Halloween each year to keep her immortality and youthful appearance - a task she finds increasingly and extremely hard, since attractive young male virgins are almost impossible to find in the 1980s, particularly in hedonistic cities, in this case, Los Angeles. Meanwhile, high school student Mark Kendall wants to have sex, but is being put off by his girlfriend Robin Pierce. One night, Mark and his best friends Jamie and Russ go into a singles bar in Hollywood. Mark meets the Countess, he goes back to her mansion, and after she seduces him, he passes out when she bites his thigh. When he wakes up, she pretends they have had sex and tells him that he is now hers. Mark does not know what she means, and over the next few days, he begins showing strange behaviors: having strange dreams, avoiding direct sunlight, and even drinking blood (from raw meat). After the Countess gets a second bite, Robin notices Mark's odd behavior and confronts the Countess during a dance-off at the high school's Halloween dance. While it appears that Robin has won back Mark, this is only temporary. The Countess kidnaps Robin to lure Mark to her mansion for a final bite before her deadline expires, and it is up to Robin, Jamie, and Russ to stop her. Eventually, to save Mark from the Countess's clutches, Robin and Mark have sex in a coffin while being chased by the Countess's minions, thereby taking Mark's virginity, bringing him back to normal. This renders him useless to the Countess as she has to drink virgin blood. Defeated, the Countess then begins to grow old and decrepit before their eyes. The Countess' assistant, Sebastian, tells her not to worry as there are other virgins in the world despite the fact that the Countess doubts she will find another virgin. The movie ends with Mark and Robin continuing to have sex in the coffin. ===== As the post-World War II baby boom explodes, an overworked stork (patterned after comedian Jimmy Durante) gets drunk in the Stork Club, complaining that he does all the work and the fathers get all the credit. Inexperienced animals; among them a dog with a propeller-powered tail carrying bundles of babies, four crows attempting to deliver an elephant, a pelican with simple devices to help haul the babies in its bill, and a mouse dragging a baby rhino; are among those commissioned to handle the increased workload as they take the babies to their parents. Babies are getting sent to the wrong parents; a mother goose is disgusted by her baby skunk, a baby kitten refuses to swim for its mother duck, a baby gorilla rides uncomfortably in the pouch of a Kangaroo, a Scottie Dog tries to rock his hippo to sleep, and two parents receive offspring that try to eat them—a kitten to a terrified mouse and an alligator to a pig. Porky Pig is brought in to manage Storks Inc. and its assembly line, with Daffy Duck as his assistant. While Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby ("I'm sorry, Bing, you've used up your quota."), Eddie Cantor ("You say you haven't got that boy yet?") and the Dionne Quintuplets' father ("Mr. Dionne, please!"), Porky runs the control room, contacting references to Roydan Stork, Jimmy Doolittle as Jimmy Doo-quite-a-little, and a B-19. Then a dog worker, apparently research and development, comes into Porky's door and said his skyrocket invention would speed things exponentially, but the rocket exploded before the send-off. It's back to the drawing board for that idea. Then Daffy yells, "Fffull-speed ahead!" and Porky pulled the switch as the babies (among them Tweety in a brief cameo) are seen going through a conveyor belt (to the tune of Raymond Scott's famous "Powerhouse") as they are diapered, fed milk and mechanically burped before they are sent by various animals, one of which is a baby hippo crying loudly and paused as it cutely said, "I'm only 3½ seconds old," before resuming its wailing. When the milk feeding machine begins spraying milk over a baby dog's diaper, it begins crying as an alarm suddenly sounds. In response, Porky pulls a lever that sends the baby dog to be given a rather quick bath. Problems, however, occur when Porky, reading the tags from the other babies, finds a stray egg is without an address and decides to have Daffy sit on it until it hatches. However, Daffy refuses to sit around on top of an egg and he said, "Sittin' on eggs is out! O-W-T—Out!!". Porky chases Daffy around the factory (complete with an imitation of Porky by Daffy) until they wind up trapped on the conveyor belt. The belt winds up stuffing both of them into one package (with Porky as the legs and Daffy as the top half) and sends them off to Africa via a stork-shaped skyrocket (Patent Pending), where a gorilla is waiting for her arrival. When the gorilla looks at the "baby" she sees Daffy Duck crying, Porky peeks through the diaper, saying, "Uh, boo...", causing the gorilla to cry on the telephone, "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!!" (a reference to John J. Anthony, who conducted a daily radio advice program at the time called The Goodwill Hour; its stock phrase was "I have a problem, Mr. Anthony"). When the alligator is trying to get milk from Mrs. Pig, she starts to say something before it abruptly cuts. According to Bob Clampett, she says “Don’t touch that dial” (a common cliché when radio or television shows cut to commercial). It was cut out because The Hays Office deemed it too risqué. No footage has surfaced of the original uncut scene. ===== Daffy is relaxing in a pond with a group of mallards. Suddenly a gunshot goes off, and all the ducks dunk their heads underwater for cover (Daffy puts a swimming cap on his head before similarly dunking his head). Porky enters and lets off another shot, which sends the other ducks flying away. Porky then takes aim at Daffy and orders him out. When Daffy comes out (still with his feet in the air), he quickly disarms Porky and tells the hunter that he is no ordinary duck and then shows this off by "singing", "dancing", and "acting" (flashing his contract with Warner Bros.). When this gag is over, Daffy offers to read the bumps on Porky's head, providing the bumps himself! Porky then tries holding a shotgun to Daffy, but Daffy responds to this threat by looking inside the shotgun to see a woman in a bathing suit. When Porky takes a look, he sees Daffy in the same pose! Porky shoots Daffy out, and Daffy runs back to the pond, where Porky cannot chase him. Daffy is underwater singing when he notices Porky has jumped in with a diving helmet. Daffy then walks up to Porky as "the Fuller Brush Man!", and knocks on Porky's helmet. When Porky tells him to "come in," Daffy opens the front of the helmet, causing Porky to jump out and start bailing out the water from the lake with a bucket. Eventually, all the water is gone, and Daffy flips around like a fish out of water. When Porky refuses to 'believe' that Daffy is a fish, Daffy counters that he does not believe Porky is a pig; he believes that Porky is an eagle. After the gag where Daffy switches what Porky says, Porky decides to prove that he is an eagle by jumping off a tree. When this does not work, Porky uses up all his ammunition trying to shoot Daffy. However, he still has his "trusty six-shooter". Before Porky can kill Daffy, Daffy asks to say goodbye to his wife and kids. Letting out a Tarzan-type yell (and then coughing at the end), his wife and three kids come to say a tearful goodbye. Porky then walks away, feeling that he would be a rat if he were to shoot Daffy. Just as he is out of sight, the "wife and kids" reveal themselves to be four friends of Daffy's, all with derbies and cigars. Their laughter is interrupted by Porky's shooting at them with his shotgun, and all five of them jump around, "hoo-hoo"-ing as they jump into the distance. ===== A baseball game is going on in New York City at the Polo Grounds (but the depiction of the frieze on the top deck was borrowed from Yankee Stadium), between the visiting Gas-House Gorillas and the home team, the Tea Totallers. The game is not going well for the home team as the Gorillas, a group of oversized rough-necks, are not only dominating the Tea Totallers, a team made up of just one elderly player, but intimidating the umpire by knocking him into the ground like a tent peg after he makes a “ball” judgment instead of a “strike”. The Gorillas' home runs go screaming, literally, out of the ballpark and the batters form a conga line, each hitter whacking a ball out. Bugs Bunny, watching from his hole in the outfield, is fed up with the unfair game and the Gas-House Gorillas playing dirty. He talks trash against the Gorillas, claiming that he could win the game single-handed with an endless barrage of home runs. He loses a bit of his bravado when he suddenly gets surrounded by the Gorillas. They force him to take up his own challenge and, as a result, Bugs now has to play all the positions on the opposing team, including speeding from the mound to behind the plate to catch his own pitches. Bugs throws his fastball so hard that it zips by the Gorillas' batter but, as he catches it, he is propelled off- screen, crashing into the backstop. In the course of his dual role, he shouts encouraging words to the pitcher before going back to the mound to make the next pitch, then returning to home plate to catch it. Next, Bugs decides to "perplex 'em with [his] slowball", throwing a pitch so slow that three Gorillas in a row strike out attempting to hit it. For his first time up, Bugs selects a bat from the batboy, a literal hybrid of a bat and a boy. As promised, Bugs starts smacking the ball. On the first pitch, he makes a long hit, dashing around the bases while also showing off for the crowd, only to find a grinning Gorilla holding the ball just ahead of the plate, just waiting to tag him out to once again prove their superiority. To allow himself to score his first run, Bugs pulls out a pin-up poster, which distracts the Gorilla player. The scoreboard now shows the Gorillas as the home team, with 96 runs, and Bugs batting in the top of the fifth with one run so far. Bugs hits another one deep, and while rounding the bases, a Gorilla ambushes the plate umpire and puts on his uniform. Bugs slides into home, obviously safe, but the fake umpire calls him out. Bugs gets in his face, actually behind the umpire mask, and argues the call, pulling his time-honored word-switching gag until the umpire ends up demanding that Bugs accept the safe call or go to the showers. Bugs gives in, and the faux-umpire gets wise too late as the board flashes another run. Bugs slams a third pitch, and as the ball soars across the field, one Gorilla in the outfield races towards the ball with his mitt, screaming, “I got it, I got it, I got it!, only for the ball to hit him with an incredibly strong impact and drive him underground; a gravestone then pops up from underground, reading “He got it”. Bugs then whacks the fourth pitch, and a burly, cigar-smoking Gorilla attempts to catch it, but the ball strikes him in the face - with the powerful impact sending him backward and smack into a large wooden sign, which reads, “Does your tobacco taste different lately?”. Bugs hammers the fifth pitch on a line drive that bounces off each Gorilla with a ping sound as in a pinball game. The scoreboard then blinks a random series of numbers and the word "Tilt." Bugs returns to pitching, and one Gorilla lands a hit. Just before he can score a home run, Bugs, with one foot on the home plate, shoves him to the ground with baseball in hand, tagging him out. As the dazed, concussed Gorilla sits there with several small illusionary winged Gorilla players swirling around his head, Bugs munches a carrot and pulls out a sign reading "Was this trip really necessary?" (a reference to a slogan used in a fuel rationing campaign during World War II). The story jumps ahead to the final inning, announced by a radio-style jingle, with Bugs leading 96–95, the Gorillas having lost a run somewhere along the way. Blanc's voice is now heard as the announcer as the radio booth has lost its original play-by-play man. With two outs in the last of the ninth, a Gorilla is on base and another, menacingly swinging a bat he has just fashioned from a huge tree, is ready for the pitch. Bugs proceeds with a tremendous wind-up, lets the pitch go, and the ball is rocketed out of the stadium. Startled, Bugs desperately gives chase. He grabs a cab and is almost led astray until he realizes a Gorilla is driving it; he jumps out and catches a bus which takes him to the "Umpire State Building". He takes an elevator to the roof, climbs a flagpole, throws his glove in the air and manages to catch the ball. An umpire appears over the edge of the roof, and calls out the Gorilla player who has followed Bugs there. The Statue of Liberty agrees with the call, repeating, “That’s what the man said- you heard what he said - he said that!”. Bugs also joins her in repeating these words. ===== On a hillside, Bugs is singing "A Rainy Night in Rio"Goldmark (2005), p. 114-125 on a banjo. In a nearby house, a burly, blond-haired opera singer named Giovanni Jones rehearses "Largo al Factotum" from The Barber of Seville. Overhearing Bugs, he absent-mindedly begins singing along in operatic style. Realizing his mistake, Giovanni loses his temper over his rehearsal being interrupted in this manner. He reacts by going to Bugs on the hill and grabbing the banjo from him, popping the strings, then splitting it in two. He crushes the neck into the banjo body, turns it over to dump out the neck pieces then slams it over Bugs' head. ("Music-hater," Bugs opines.) As Giovanni practices again, he overhears Bugs singing a variation on "My Gal is a High-Born Lady" on a harp. He tries to ignore Bugs, but he ends up both singing along in operatic style and dancing along. Becoming furious again, he retaliates by going to Bugs and resting his arm on the harp's center pole as he glares at Bugs and breathes heavily. When Bugs notices and asks what the problem is with his famous question: "Eh, what's up doc?" Giovanni sticks Bugs' neck between the harp's strings and then treats it like an accordion, pulling its bottom part close to the ground and its base, then pushing the bottom part back to crush the instrument with Bugs trapped in it. ("Hmm, also a rabbit-hater — oh, well," Bugs counters.) Giovanni tries to start singing once more, but the sound of a sousaphone seems to come out of his open mouth when he tries to sing the first note. The sound is coming from Bugs playing "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba" on a sousaphone. Bugs ducks into his hole after seeing Giovanni approach to punish him again for interrupting his rehearsal, the bell of the sousaphone getting stuck in the hole's small opening, but the singer simply pulls Bugs out through the sousaphone. Then, he ties Bugs' ears to a tree branch and pulls him down so that he bounces repeatedly beneath the branch, bonking his head on it several times, as Giovanni walks away in anger, certain that he's made sure Bugs will not interrupt his rehearsal any further. After this, a now-incensed Bugs decides it's time for payback against Giovanni for his actions and says one of his other famous lines: "Of course you know, this means war!" Bugs exacts his revenge against Giovanni through a series of public humiliations during his concert (seemingly at the Hollywood Bowl). First, Bugs causes the roof of the concert hall to vibrate, temporarily disrupting the singer's vocals. Then he hammers it so that the violent shuddering causes Giovanni to bounce across the stage, until he falls off and becomes trapped in the orchestra's tuba. Bugs rescues him and takes him backstage. Next, Bugs sprays Giovanni's throat with "liquid alum" which shrinks his head, as well as his voice, as he sings the "Figaro" part. Bugs dresses up as a teenage bobby soxer and asks Giovanni for an autograph ("Frankie and Perry just aren't in it!") —except the pen is a stick of dynamite. After the off-screen explosion, Giovanni steps out to the stage with a singed face and evening wear torn to shreds. He takes a couple of bows and then collapses. During the concert's final act, Bugs poses as the highly respected Leopold Stokowski, prompting the musicians, Giovanni, the conductor, and the audience to immediately snap to attention, show reverence, and acknowledge him with repeated astonished cries of "Leopold!", as Bugs takes over the conducting duties and the original conductor respectfully hands the reigns of the performance over to him. Bugs casually snaps the baton evenly in two and tosses the pieces aside, and then, using his hands instead (as did the real Leopold), Bugs makes Giovanni sing various different notes, including a very low D. Bugs, after accepting brief applause (which is instantly stopped when he raises his hand), cracks his knuckles, winds up his fists and, after scowling angrily at a nervous Giovanni, ready to deliver the finisher for his revenge against the singer, conducts Giovanni into holding a singular high G note until Giovanni can hardly endure the strain. Giovanni's face turns various colors as he squirms and his formal wear unravels. Bugs leaves his glove hovering in the air and steps off of the stage to order a pair of earmuffs, which are delivered almost instantly to Bugs after he places the order into the mailbox. Bugs takes the earmuffs out of the package, puts them on, and then returns to the stage where Giovanni has obeyed the glove and is still holding the high note, now on the floor from the strain. Bugs puts his hand back in his glove to continue conducting Giovanni to hold the note himself, as the strain of holding the note causes Giovanni to start thrashing about on the floor banging his fists, his face continuing to turn various colors. Finally, the top of the concert hall's shell shatters and tumbles down on top of Giovanni. As the audience applauds Bugs, who removes the earmuffs and bows to them, a roughed-up Giovanni (whose hair is now reddish) appears out of the rubble to take a couple of bows himself. Noticing one last piece of the amphitheater balanced on a steel beam above Giovanni, Bugs cues the singer to close out his performance with an encore of the high note. This causes the piece to fall and crush him in offscreen. Satisfied with his victory, Bugs removes his wig and ends the show by taking out another banjo and playing the Vaudeville-era four- note riff, "Good Evening Friends". ===== The story is about a shipping company which conducts cruiseferry traffic on the Baltic Sea between Stockholm, Sweden and Turku, Finland. It takes place on board MS Freja, the exterior of which was portrayed in the series by the Finnish registered MS Birka Princess. In the series the ship has different funnel colours from the ones in real life; in reality they were blue, yellow and red but in the series they were retouched to appear as different shades of blue. The show follows life on board the ship, mostly focusing on the crew and captain, but also on some of the passengers. The plot often involves love, breakups, accidents, deaths, murders, smuggling, theft, arson, rape, drugs, and insanity. Another part of the story takes place on land, following the life of the Dahléns, the family who owns and runs the shipping company. There are also rival companies who try to gain control over the company, which leads to a constant struggle for power. ===== At Colonel Korny's World Famous Circus, Bruno the "Slobokian Acrobatic Bear" - who, evidenced by his accent, is clearly Russian - is the star of the show. But when the Colonel gets a phone call about Bugs Bunny's talents, he agrees to put him on stage partnered with Bruno - a decision for which Bruno shows his disgust by spitting into a corner. When Bugs is introduced along with Bruno, the bear can't help but smack Bugs around a little. Bruno tries to get the better of Bugs - either by placing an anvil on top of a series of targets so Bugs can hit his head, or by not catching Bugs during a trapeze act. However, Bugs soon starts getting the better of Bruno, which includes turning the tables on the bear by letting him fall from the trapeze into the band section (twice). After telling Bruno he's "too clumsy", Bugs starts playing up the idea that he's going solo and will be the star of the show; to prove it, he'll take a 200-foot dive into a tank of water. Bugs jumps onto a platform and hikes himself to that height. Bruno gets on an adjacent platform and, after reaching Bugs' position, declares that he will take a 300-foot dive into a bucket of water. This diving challenge reaches higher heights into smaller containers of water (a damp sponge) until finally, Bruno comes up with the challenge of diving off the platform into a block of cement ("On my head, yet!"). Bugs accepts the challenge and starts to do the stunt, but Bruno forces his way into going first. Bruno lands and is flattened on the cement block. When the dazed bear straightens up a bit, Bugs leads him toward what looks like the gangplank of a cruise ship, telling him that he's going on a 'trip' . When Bruno is situated, Bugs cuts a rope and starts a series of thoroughly timed "accidents" that begins with Bruno flying across the tent. He then gets whacked around by various acrobats of the circus until he is taken by a trick bicycle into the mouth of a cannon, which Bugs uses to shoot the bear out of the tent and Bugs turned to the camera and said. "Well, that's one way to wind this up with a bang." Then he laughs as the screen irises out. ===== Yosemite Sam is running for mayor of a small town, offering such empty promises as: "There's enough fresh air and sunshine in this great country of ours for everybody – and I'll see to it, that you'll get your share!". Bugs Bunny is underneath the podium drinking carrot juice when Sam makes a pledge to make good on his previous promise "to rid this country of every last rabbit" if elected. Bugs is horrified and then decides he needs to fight Sam by running against him for mayor. Both of them proceed to engage in various stereotypical election ploys. Bugs tries to win the townspeople over with Theodore Roosevelt's famous "I speak softly, but I carry a BIG stick!" quote, even dressing up like Roosevelt. However, Sam declares "I speak LOUD and I carry a BIGGER stick, and I use it too!" He uses it on Bugs. Sam starts kissing babies (one of whom reacts by spitting the kiss off); he goes to kiss a disguised Bugs, who plants one on Sam first then yells that "a bad man bit my wittle nose", attracting some women of the town who chastise Sam and rough him up as punishment. Sam then steals Bugs' cigar stand at gunpoint ("If there's any giving away cigars, Yosemite Sam'll give 'em!"). Bugs switches his free "SMELLO" cigars for five-cent ATOM Explosive ones ("You Will Get A BANG Out of This"). Sam lights one for a voter and it immediately explodes, resulting in Sam receiving a solid punch in the face. Sam then sends a boxful of "assorted" picnic ants to steal the food from Bugs' free picnic. As they march by carrying the food, Bugs inserts a stick of dynamite inside a watermelon. Sam is taking the food from the ants and packing it into a sack; he stuffs the watermelon in and cheerfully scurries behind a wall. After the explosion blows up the sack, everything in it, and much of Sam's clothing and hair, Sam emerges saying, "I hate that rabbit!" Next, he rigs a cannon at the front door of Bugs' headquarters and greets Bugs with friendship at the back door; he knocks his boot heel against the floor to fool Bugs into going to answer the front door. The plan backfires when Bugs pretends that the person at the door is a girl from "Saint Louie" there to see Sam. Sam believes it's an old flame, Emma, and rushes to greet her, triggering the cannon. Sam then challenges Bugs, asking him if he can "play the pi-anna", and Bugs accepts the challenge; Sam rigs explosives in the piano, attached to a specific key, and presents the piano to Bugs to play "Those Endearing Young Charms" (a gag recycled from a Private Snafu short), but Bugs misplays the tune on purpose, avoiding the rigged key. A frustrated Sam finally takes over and plays it correctly, falling for his own trap. A quick chase through the streets leads the pair to the parade for the newly elected mayor. But as it turns out, a literal "dark horse" candidate, a chestnut-colored mare, stepped in and won. The car bears a sign reading "Our New Mare". Bugs suggests a game of Russian Roulette and hands Sam a revolver. Sam agrees, points the gun at his head, closes his eyes and pulls the trigger; he gets the click of an empty chamber. He then hands the gun to Bugs, who points the gun at his head, closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger as the "camera" irises into black in the center of the screen, to the sound of a gunshot. An iris opens up on Bugs to the left, showing that he had actually ducked immediately before he fired and now holds a smoking gun. He proclaims, "I missed!" The right side of the screen irises open to reveal a scorched, hatless Sam shot in the head by Bugs' wayward blast, and Sam grumbles: "I hate that rabbit!" ===== The cartoon begins with a newspaper showing Porky traveling to Africa to hunt the rare dodo bird. Porky flies his airplane to go to Dark Africa, then Darker Africa, and finally lands in Darkest Africa When Porky lands, a sign tells him that he's in Wackyland ("Population: 100 nuts and a squirrel"), while a scary voice booms out "It can happen here!" Porky enters into a surreal Dali-esque landscape and encounters many strange, weird, and oafish creatures. Suddenly, the last dodo of the dodo species appears. Porky tries to catch the dodo, but the dodo plays tricks on him. At one time, the dodo appears on the Warner Bros. shield and sling shots Porky into the ground. Finally, Porky dresses as another dodo, announcing himself to be the last dodo. The dodo handcuffs himself to Porky, claiming "I've got the last Dodo!" and runs with Porky to claim the reward. Porky reveals himself, and still handcuffed to the dodo, runs off with him, now proclaiming: "Oh, no, you haven't! I-I'm rich! I-I've got the last D-D-Dodo!" Once they disappear over the horizon, scores of dodos appear to confirm this. ===== Daffy, introduced as a "Western-Type Hero" and Porky, introduced as the "Comedy Relief", ride along the desert until they come across the small "Lawless Western Town" of Snake-Bite Center, which is so full of violence that the population sign immediately goes down a number when someone is shot (while the town cemetery's population sign immediately goes up a number); the most recent casualty is the last sheriff. In a recorded commentary on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, the commentator warns the viewer that "this film is literally stuffed with every western cliché ever done." This is illustrated in such spoof scenes as follows: a man is firing guns while chasing another man; both stop at a traffic light so a second pair can cross, then their chase resumes. Two riders on horseback casually approach one another; when they are in close proximity, the horses recoil and whinny in anger, then begin shooting at each other. Other scenes include: a holdup at "Custard's Last Stand"; a masked horse stealing horseshoes from a smithy at gunpoint; a gunman shot off someone's balcony is caught by waiting stretcher- bearers, who trot him off to "Rigor O'Mortis / The Smiling Undertaker"...whose funeral parlor towers several stories above the neighboring buildings. Seeing the "Sheriff Wanted" sign, Daffy picks a sheriff badge out of his collection of badges and rides into town on his horse, Tinfoil, with Porky following behind on his donkey (accompanied, of course, by "The William Tell Overture," which gained even greater fame as the theme song of "The Lone Ranger"). At the saloon, Daffy is about to enjoy a pasteurized milkshake and swami yogurt- chaser...when Nasty Canasta walks in past his 'Wanted' poster (which states "$5,000,000 REWARD (DEAD)" and "RUSTLER, BANDIT, SQUARE DANCE CALLER"). Daffy tries to intimidate Canasta with his gun ("Stick 'em up, homber! You're under arrest"), but Canasta just bites off most of the gun and eats it ("Probably didn't have his i-ron today!"). Canasta then threateningly orders himself and Daffy "two of the usual", a drink made of various poisons and toxic materials like cobra fang juice, hydrogen bitters and old panther (so hot that when two ice cubes are put in it, they jump out, yelping and bouncing into a fire bucket to cool off). Canasta downs the drink with no side effects (other than his hat flipping); Daffy gets Porky to drink the other one, and Porky comes through seemingly with no side effects either. So, Daffy demands one for himself and pours it down his throat. A few seconds later, Daffy and Porky exhibit wild side effects, including reciting "Mary had a Little Lamb" in Elmer Fudd-ese, turning green, and acting like they are motorized; Daffy's bullets shoot by themselves and create a hole in the floor, which he falls into, then rockets out of before coming back to Earth. As he floats down, Daffy sternly says to Canasta "I hate you." Eventually, Daffy challenges Canasta to a showdown in the street. Daffy and Canasta start walking towards each other, the street deserted (with camera angles designed to parody the showdown camera angles common in Western films of that era), when Porky takes matters into his hands by winding up a small British toy soldier and letting it go towards Canasta, accompanied by Raymond Scott's "The Toy Trumpet". Canasta picks up the toy, chuckling, until it points its gun at Canasta and fires, sending Canasta to the ground. With Canasta defeated, the rest of the people in town rush over to Porky, while Daffy is still pacing his way to the middle of the street. Daffy finally notices the adoration given to Porky, and in vain tries to get their attention ("Gimme the cheers! Give me … Give me - Give - Give me one dozen roses."). Porky is now the town sheriff, and Daffy reiterates his claim that he would "clean up this one-horse town" to the camera — except now he is a sanitation worker. Porky remarks: "L-l-l-lucky for him [Daffy] it is a one-horse town." ===== The cartoon is a story within a story. Daffy Duck is fed up with comedy and wants to try a dramatic act instead. He offers a script to Warner Bros.' chief Jack L. Warner – whom he addresses, as most people did, as "J.L." – called The Scarlet Pumpernickel, which he wrote himself (under the name "Daffy Dumas Duck"). As Daffy reads the script to J.L., the cartoon cuts away to various scenes and then back to J.L.'s office. Each time, Daffy announces a page number. By the cartoon's end, the script has exceeded 2,000 pages (movie scripts much in excess of 100 pages were usually rejected as too long back in those days). In this script, in 1903 England, a clumsy young highwayman named the Scarlet Pumpernickel (Daffy) constantly outsmarts the Lord High Chamberlain's (Porky Pig) men, to the Chamberlain's fury and the delight of the Fair Lady Melissa. Melissa loves Scarlet, but her happy mood is extinguished in a heartbeat when the Chamberlain orders her to "Keep away from that masked band-d-d-d-d-desperad-d-d-d-d-that masked stinker!" The Chamberlain gets a brilliant plan and decides to marry Melissa to the Grand Duke (Sylvester) in an attempt to lure the Scarlet Pumpernickel to town and then kill him. As planned, the Scarlet Pumpernickel is drawn to town to interrupt the wedding. He arrives disguised as a noble to research and develop his plan for rescuing Melissa. Storming the wedding ceremony through the use of a "Ye Little Olympic Highjumper" (a pin and a jab in the posterior) as she is walking up the aisle, he is instantly successful as Melissa tears herself from the Chamberlain's arms and runs from the chapel, dragging Scarlet with her and shouting, "Help, Scarlet! Save me!" Scarlet responds, as an aside, "So what's to save?" Scarlet takes her back to the inn where he is staying, and leaves briefly. The Grand Duke, in pursuit of Scarlet, stops for respite at the inn and spots Melissa on the staircase. As he corners her, Scarlet swings in. In this segment of the plot there is a running gag in which Daffy compares his own daring stunts with those of Errol Flynn. The Grand Duke and the Scarlet Pumpernickel engage in an intense duel, but no conclusive ending is given as to who ultimately wins the battle and what happens at the end. Daffy, as the scriptwriter, either having only thought of the beginning and middle of the story or lost the rest of his script underneath a huge pile of pages, and being pressured by the enthusiastic J.L., completely ad-libs the ending as an unlikely series of random and accelerating natural disasters; a thunderstorm breaking a dam, a cavalry charge through the resulting flood, an erupting volcano, and skyrocketing food prices (notably kreplach), to which J.L. asks, "Is that all?" At his wit's end, Daffy exclaims in defeat, "There was nothing for the Scarlet Pumpernickel to do, but blow his brains out, which he did." Daffy then grabs a gun and shoots through his hat in exhaustion, as if representing the Scarlet Pumpernickel committing suicide, commenting, "It's getting so you have to kill yourself to sell a story around here". ===== At Smeller's Productions, Porky Pig, a producer, loaded down with luggage and a golf bag, hangs a sign on his office door reading "No casting today" and leaves his office in a hurry to board an airplane. However, Daffy Duck, a talent agent, stops Porky from leaving, wanting to secure an audition for his client, droopy-eyed child performer Sleepy Lagoon (a reference to the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder). The pitch, intended to demonstrate Sleepy's allegedly wide and varied repertoire, consists of Daffy himself performing an array of musical and stage acts in his usual, absurd and unoriginal fashion. Sleepy meanwhile stays seated, nonchalantly licking an enormous lollipop and silently commenting on Daffy's ludicrous behavior using signs bearing rebuses, such as "ham" ("excessively theatrical"), "screwball" ("crazy and absurd"), and "corn" ("corny"). The songs that Daffy performs include I'm Just Wild About Harry, William Tell Overture and Angel in Disguise (the same song that Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Cat would sing in The Wabbit Who Came to Supper and Back Alley Oproar, respectively). Porky, with mounting frustration, (as it is his day off) repeatedly tries to escape from the pitch. Daffy handily foils each attempt in increasingly improbable ways, including by turning out to be the pilot of Porky's plane and then turning out to be the parachute Porky uses to escape said plane. After Daffy finally takes it upon himself to harass Porky with an outrageous finale, Porky decides to just get it over with by allowing Sleepy to audition. Sleepy calmly leaves his seat and begins to sing the song, The Garden of My Heart, in a strong, operatic baritone (provided by Billy Bletcher) that is not only surprising given his small stature but also substantially more dramatic than any of the acts Daffy used in the pitch. However, during a high note near the end, he erupts into a long coughing fit before weakly croaking the rest of the line. ===== Athanael (Jack Benny), the third trumpet player in the orchestra of a late night radio show sponsored by Paradise Coffee (motto: "It's Heavenly"), falls asleep listening to the announcer, who is doing his best to prove it is "the coffee that makes you sleep". Athanael dreams he is an angel (junior grade) and a trumpeter in the orchestra of Heaven. Due to the praise of his girlfriend Elizabeth (Alexis Smith), the assistant of the deputy chief of the department of small planet management (Guy Kibbee), he is given the mission of destroying planet 339001 (Earth) and its troublesome inhabitants by blowing the "Last Trumpet" at exactly midnight, signaling the end of the world. When he is deposited at the Hotel Universe via the building's elevator, he accidentally foils a robbery attempt by suave guest Archie Dexter (Reginald Gardiner) and his girlfriend accomplice, Fran Blackstone (Dolores Moran). Dexter blames Fran and breaks off their relationship. When Athanael prevents her attempt at suicide from the hotel's roof, he misses the deadline. Elizabeth persuades her boss to give him a second chance, and travels to Earth to inform him. Complications arise when two fallen angels named Osidro (Allyn Joslyn) and Doremus (John Alexander), also guests at the hotel, recognize Athanael and learn of his assignment. They want to continue their pleasantly hedonistic life. While Athanael encounters trouble holding onto his trumpet by his inexperience with Earthly life, Osidro and Doremus hire Dexter to steal the instrument. Learning that Fran was rescued by Athanael, Dexter reconciles with her. Then, while she distracts the angel, Dexter's henchman Humphrey (Mike Mazurki), steals the trumpet. Athanael, Elizabeth and her boss track the thieves to the roof. During a struggle, Athanael falls off the building, only to wake up from his dream. ===== The story is set in Dearborn, Michigan during the 1950s, and revolves around 14-year-old Arthur Bartley (Brandon deWilde) and his schoolmates, 15-year-old Janet Willard (Carol Lynley) and Ernie (Warren Berlinger). While widower's-daughter Janet laughs at Arthur and Ernie's forays into smoking, drinking, and playing cards, she's always been interested in Arthur, and as Arthur's parents try to shelter him from negative things in life (like the euthanasia of the family dog, done while he's at school), he turns to Janet for comfort. The relationship between Janet and Arthur results in her becoming pregnant. Unable to ask their parents (who misinterpret their pleas as "ordinary" teenage curiosity about sex and adulthood) for help, they turn to Ernie, who'd boasted earlier about "helping a sailor who got his girl in trouble" by directing him to an abortionist - only to discover Ernie made it all up, based on secondhand stories. The three seek together to arrange an abortion and raise the funds, only to be discovered by their parents at the last moment. In the meantime, Arthur and Janet find out how much they do not yet know about life - and how much they truly care about each other. ===== Jane Falbury (Judy Garland) is a farm owner whose actress sister, Abigail (Gloria DeHaven), arrives at the family farm with her theater troupe. They need a place to rehearse, and Jane and her housekeeper, Esme (Marjorie Main), reluctantly agree to let them use their barn. The actors and actresses, including the director, Joe Ross (Gene Kelly), repay her hospitality by doing chores around the farm. Although Joe is engaged to Abigail, he begins to fall in love with Jane after Abigail leaves him in an angry fit. Similarly, although Jane is engaged to Orville (Eddie Bracken), she falls in love with Joe. ===== Frontispiece by H. R. Millar The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathy, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden, they find a sleeping fairy- tale princess. The "princess" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a magic ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper's niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. The children soon find that the ring has other magical powersStephen Prickett, Victorian Fantasy p 233 such as making the "Ugly-Wugglies" (Guy Fawkes style dummies they had made to swell the audience at one of their play-performances) come to life. They eventually discover that the ring is actually granting their own wishes, and that the disturbing results stem from their failure to specify those wishes precisely. The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults. It combines descriptions of the imaginative play of children, reminiscent of The Story of the Treasure Seekers, with a magic more muted than in her major fantasies such as The Story of the Amulet. ===== The Three Bears are hungry and want something to eat, so they settle on a plan to lure Goldilocks to them with porridge. They find, however, that all they have is carrots, so they make carrot soup instead. The family then pretends to go on a walk through the woods, but quickly comes back to hide in the house and wait for Goldilocks to arrive. The delicious aroma of the carrot soup causes Bugs Bunny to literally float out of his rabbit hole and into the Bears' home. A plot derived from that of the traditional Goldilocks and the Three Bears story unfolds, with Bugs Bunny as the unwitting guest in the home of the three bears. Bugs Bunny eats the Bears' soup; they prepare to attack him as he does, but fall to the floor pretending to be rugs when Bugs nearly sees them. After eating and then stretching out on the 'rugs' for a bit, Bugs goes for some 'shuteye' in Junior's bed. The Bears recite the Goldilocks story lines and then attack Bugs, but he manages to escape and is seen standing next to Papa Bear's bed, watching the Bears essentially beat up an empty bed. When Mama Bear realizes the situation, she approaches Bugs with her fists raised. He flatters her and tells her that she's beautiful ("Your eyes. Your lips."), and gives her a kiss before he flees. Mama Bear stops Papa Bear and Junior from chasing Bugs, becomes amorous towards the rabbit ("Tell me more about my eyes!"), and attempts to embrace him. Bugs tries to ward off Mama Bear and get out of the house, opening three doors that reveal Mama Bear in three different seductive poses (in a see-through nightgown, talking on the phone, then in a dress and blonde wig, smoking a cigarette, finally in a bathtub). Bugs crashes through a wall and runs back into his hole. But Mama Bear (unseen) is in there, giggling and still asking him to tell her more about her eyes. She proceeds to kiss Bugs repeatedly off-screen. Seconds later, Bugs emerges from the hole, his face covered in red lipstick marks. He runs away, screaming. Mama Bear, now shown wearing red lipstick, emerges from the hole, sighing with contentment at her make-out session with Bugs. ===== The story centers around Isaac Hendrix (portrayed by Turman), a young college student studying law and a taxi-cab driver in New Orleans. While out on a night of fun with his friends and wife Christella, during a hypnosis act, he becomes an unwilling host for the restless spirit of J.D Walker, a hustler killed during the 1940s. Over the course of the film, "Ike" finds himself gradually being taken over by the sociopathic Walker, even eventually going so far as to adopt his hair and fashion style, mannerisms, and psychotic tendencies (including an attempted rape on his wife after she mocked his J.D. haircut). With the spirit of J.D. in complete control, he turns his attention toward wreaking vengeance against the man responsible for killing his sister, Theotis Bliss. Ike commits havoc all over town before making his way to the church where Theotis' brother works as a preacher, where he finally reveals himself and instructs Elijah to tell Theotis to meet him "on the killin' floor". Ike's wife has, meanwhile, gone to her ex-husband, a cop who is out for Ike's blood, believing him to be a simple psycho hiding behind a false persona—until he mentions to the Chief that Ike claimed his name was J.D. Walker, a man who was not only real, but also had died over 30 years ago. J.D. was a hustler who ran numbers during World War II, as well as a black-market meat plant where he was murdered by Theotis Bliss after witnessing the murder of his own sister, Betty Jo, at his hands because of her derisive chiding of him and threatening to expose the secret she held about her baby daughter. After being discovered over Betty Jo's lifeless body with her blood on his hand, Elijah Bliss (Gossett Jr.), Betty Jo's husband and the believed father of her child (and younger, submissive brother of Theotis), accused J.D of being the killer and J.D was gunned down on the spot by Theotis to cover up the event. Following Theotis to the old factory, Elijah finally learns the truth before getting into a struggle with Theotis for his gun, during which the weapon discharges and kills Theotis while Ike watches, and laughs maniacally as the event plays out. His business complete, J.D. appears to leave Ike's body and due to Elijah's testimony, he is allowed to go free to rejoin his wife and friends waiting for him outside. ===== Spot is a dog who wants nothing more than to be a boy, a fantasy he has been fulfilling for one year, dressing as a boy named Scott Leadready II, and going to school with his master Leonard Helperman. Leonard is looking forward to spending the summer with his dog, but Spot proudly declares "I Wanna Be a Boy". Mary Lou Helperman, the fourth-grade teacher and Leonard's mother, is nominated for a "Teacher of the Year" award, and given use of Principal Strickler's Wentawaygo to travel to the finals in Sunny Southern Florida, under the condition that no dogs are allowed in the RV. Leonard sadly bids farewell to Spot ("A Boy Needs a Dog") as he and his mother depart. Spot, along with the Helpermans' other pets, Pretty Boy and Mr. Jolly, are left with a pet-sitter when Spot accidentally sits on the remote and changes the channel to The Barry Anger Show. Anger's special guest is a "wacko" named Dr. Ivan Krank, who claims he can turn animals into human beings, who happens to be located in Sunny Southern Florida. Believing it to be fate, Spot chases down the RV. Spot and Leonard meet up at a gas station. Through many quick costume changes, Spot fools Mrs. Helperman into believing that he is Scott Leadready II and that his family, en route to Sunny Southern Florida, had to return home, but he could still go with the Helpermans. Spot, Leonard, and Mrs. Helperman continue on their way to Florida, singing through all fifty states ("A Whole Bunch of World"). Meanwhile, Pretty Boy and Mr. Jolly, back at home, see another episode of Barry Anger in which Anger reveals that Krank cannot turn animals into people, but rather into terrifying mutant creatures. They decide that they must track down Spot and stop him from being turned into a monster, but Mr. Jolly is afraid to leave the house. Pretty Boy assures him that they can be tough despite their size ("Small But Mighty") Upon arriving in Florida, Mrs. Helperman goes directly to the Teacher of the Year finals, and Leonard is all ready to play fetch, but Spot has other ideas. He reveals to Leonard the real reason he came to Florida, to become a real boy. Leonard is skeptical, but accompanies Spot to Krank's lab, where Krank has just unsuccessfully tried to turn a frog human. He is ready to destroy his machine when Spot and Leonard show up. Spot tells him that his machine can't work with a frog because it's a lower life form, like his other two creatures, Dennis (an alligator-man) and Adele (a mosquito-girl), and that he needs a mammal, like a dog. Krank agrees to turn Spot human, and gives him a nickel as payment for being his test subject. Krank explains that, throughout his entire life, people have mocked his ideas ("I, Ivan Krank") and turns the machine on Spot. Spot wakes up to find that he is indeed human—but not a boy as he expected, but rather a fully-grown man (he had forgotten to factor in dog time). Still, he is happy to be human, but the happiness quickly fades when Krank tells him that he will have to travel around with him forever to prove that Krank is not a wacko. Krank locks Leonard and "Scott" up, and hope seems lost until Ian, Krank's nephew and Leonard and Spot's classmate, shows up and sets them free. Krank grounds Ian and sends Dennis and Adele off to find his "dog-man". Leonard and Scott, meanwhile, are hungry, and Scott's clothes from when he was a dog disguised as a boy do not fit his adult body. They see a sign advertising a $100 reward for a lost dog. Scott uses the Twilight Bark to locate the lost dog, along with her four puppies that had been born while she was lost. This prompts the dog's owner to give them $500, as they brought back five dogs. Now rolling in money, Leonard and Scott enjoy a day on the town. The two lose track of time, but manage to make it back to the Wentawaygo just in time for dinner, forgetting that in place of Scott Leadready II is a stranger who Mrs. Helperman will not recognize. Scott and Leonard quickly make up a story that this new person is Scott Manly-Manning, Scott Leadready II had to go home, and he helped him out. Mrs. Helperman invites Scott in for coffee and soon begins to fall for him. Scott presents an idea to Leonard as to how they can stay together: he will marry Leonard's mother and they'll all be able to live together. Leonard is not okay with this; Scott is his dog, not his dad. Scott tells him he's not his dog anymore. Finally fed up with Scott's stubbornness, Leonard disowns Scott as his Dog and he confiscates Scott's collar and tells Scott to leave him and his mother alone. Scott storms off, leaving everyone else lamenting the loss: Mary Lou of her "Manly-Manning Man", Leonard of his dog, Krank of his creation, and Dennis and Adele, along with Pretty Boy and Jolly, search for Spot ("I'm Moving On"). Pretty Boy and Jolly finally make it to Florida, and Leonard tells them the whole story. He comes to the conclusion that the only way he and Scott can be together is for him to go to Krank and have him turn him into a dog. ("A Boy Needs a Dog (Reprise)"). Scott arrives moments after Leonard leaves, and after getting over the shock of seeing Spot as a human, Pretty Boy and Jolly tell him that Leonard has gone to Krank's lab. Krank plans to turn Leonard into a dog and use him as bait to get Scott back, and then he will have both the boy-dog and the dog-man. Scott arrives at the lab just as Leonard is being strapped to the table. Dennis detains Scott, Pretty Boy and Jolly, but they escape by tickling him. Scott unties Leonard and destroys Krank's machine by inserting the nickel that Krank had given him earlier into a slot on the machine marked "Quarters Only". The machine starts firing at random, turning Krank into a mouse and seemingly killing Scott, turning him into a pile of blue dust. Leonard angrily beats the machine and it fires at the blue dust and turns Scott back into his original dog form. Leonard and Spot reunite, and Spot decides that he is "Proud to Be a Dog". ===== Arizona deputy sheriff Walt Coogan (Eastwood) is sent to New York City to extradite escaped killer James Ringerman. Detective Lieutenant McElroy informs him that Ringerman is recovering from an overdose of LSD, cannot be moved until the doctors release him, and that Coogan needs to get extradition papers from the New York State Supreme Court. Coogan flirts with probation officer Julie Roth and takes her out for supper. He goes to the prison hospital and bluffs his way to Ringerman, tricks the attendants into turning him over, and sets out to catch a plane for Arizona. Before he can get to the airport, Ringerman's girlfriend Linny and a tavern owner named Pushie ambush Coogan and enable Ringerman to escape. Detective McElroy is furious with Coogan and warns him against playing policeman in New York. Coogan learns Linny's name from a visit to Ringerman's mother. While he is at Roth's apartment for a home cooked supper Coogan learns that Roth is Linny's probation officer and he finds Linny's address in Roth's home files while Roth is in the kitchen cooking them supper. He tracks Linny to a nightclub, where she offers to lead him to Ringerman. Instead she takes Coogan to a pool hall where he is attacked by Pushie and a dozen men in a bloody battle. Coogan holds his own for a while but is eventually overpowered. After hearing sirens the men take off, but not before the beaten Coogan kills Pushie and two others. Detective McElroy finds the bar in pieces and a cowboy hat on the floor. Coogan finds Linny and threatens to kill her if she does not lead him to Ringerman. She takes him to Ringerman who is hiding out at the Cloisters. He is armed with a gun stolen from Coogan. Ringerman gets away on his motorcycle and Coogan commandeers a motorcycle of his own. Coogan gives chase through Fort Tryon Park and eventually captures Ringerman. He hands the fugitive over to McElroy, who once again tells him to go to the DA's office and to let "the system handle this." Some time later Coogan, with Ringerman in cuffs, prepares to leave for the airport via helicopter from the helipad atop the Pan Am building. At the last minute Julie Roth runs up to the helicopter to give Coogan a long good-bye kiss. Coogan's last view is Julie Roth waving goodbye from the helipad as the helicopter lifts off. ===== The story concerns Kay Hilliard (June Allyson), a former nightclub singer who discovers her husband Steven (Leslie Nielsen) is having an affair with showgirl Crystal Allen (Joan Collins). Kay is the last to find out among her circle of gossiping girlfriends. Kay travels to Reno to divorce from Steve who then marries Crystal, but when Kay finds out that Crystal isn't true to Steve, she starts fighting to win her ex-husband back. ===== Overworked air traffic controller Jack Chester is given five weeks' paid leave as an alternative to being fired after nearly causing a mid-air collision on the job and having an outburst over what turned out to be a fly covering a radar blip. He uses this time off to take his wife Sandy and children Jennifer, Bobby, and Laurie on a summer vacation from the Atlanta area to the Gulf Coast resort town of Citrus Cove, Florida, where they are beset by a never-ending barrage of problems. First they are bumped out of the front of the line of an upscale seafood restaurant in favor of arrogant local sailing champion Al Pellet, who becomes Jack's main nemesis through the film. The family then misreads the address, moves into the wrong house, and are forced to leave in the middle of the night, ending up in a decrepit shack on a public beach with a constant stream of beach-goers tromping through the place. Jack then suffers a leg injury that prevents him from spending time with his family. Later, Jack again locks horns with Al, the new owner of the dubious piece of real estate where the Chesters are staying after the previous owner died. Jack gives Al the check for $1,000 to cover the rent for the next two weeks, but the latter tears up the check and orders the Chesters to leave the house when their first two weeks expire or he'll throw them out personally. To avoid an early eviction, Jack challenges Al to a race at the upcoming Citrus Cove Regatta: If Al wins, Jack will pay him the $1,000 rent and take his family home; if Jack wins, he keeps the money and earns the right to stay in the house for two more weeks rent-free. Al scoffs at the notion that Jack could defeat him in a race, but accepts the challenge. However, Jack hasn't sailed for many years and doesn't even have a boat. Scully, a local saloon keeper with a pirate's mentality whom the Chesters met earlier, befriends Jack and volunteers to help him on both counts. The bored Chesters come to life by helping Jack make his new vessel seaworthy. This motley crew is at first no match for Al or anybody else in the race, but tossing useless garbage overboard, a strong breeze, and a large pair of pants enable Jack to achieve a victory at sea. ===== Jack Gable is the lead writer and producer of the soap opera Beyond Our Dreams. Consumed by his work, he harbors an unspoken attraction to Laura Claybourne, the selfish actress playing the lead character, Rachel Hedison. Jack crosses paths with Louise, who is there to audition for the part of Janet DuBois, a character Jack did not want introduced. Jack then has a contentious meeting with his co- producers, the Sherwoods. The Sherwoods reveal that they are displeased with several elements of Jack's outline for the upcoming season and wish to kill off Rachel, due to Laura's outrageous contract demands. Feigning compromise, the Sherwoods immediately hire Arnie Federman, a rival of Jack's, to make the changes they desire. At the same time, Jack has suggested a new character, Jack Gates, a ruthless tycoon. The Sherwoods make no promise of writing Gates into the show, despite Jack's interest. Planning a trip to Vermont for the weekend, Jack is contacted by Laura. She has just broken up with her boyfriend Dennis, the actor who plays Dr. Paul Kirkwood on the show, and wishes to accompany Jack. As Jack loads their luggage into the trunk, Dennis suddenly calls out to Laura. Jack looks up to see them kissing just as the trunk lid hits him in the head. Upon awakening, he leaves for Vermont alone. Not far out of New York, he crashes his car. Upon waking, Jack finds himself in Ashford Falls Community Hospital, one of the settings of his show. Thinking himself the victim of a prank by the actors, he goes to the window to confirm his suspicions, only to see a real town. Incredulous, he manages to convince Dr. Kirkwood of his good health and checks out of the hospital. He is immediately intercepted by Janet DuBois. She believes him to be Jack Gates, who is seeking to buy a miracle weight-loss formula developed by her late father. Jack rebuffs her, denies he is Gates and says that he is only a writer. As she leaves in frustration, she angrily tells him to "write his way out". On a whim, Jack gets out his typewriter and writes a scene of the local mechanic calling to say that his damaged car is fixed. Immediately after, the mechanic calls and confirms the repairs are finished. Jack realizes that he can control events by writing them. Jack seizes his new found power to pursue Rachel, saving her from the death arranged for her by Federman. Despite his writing skills, she ignores him. His efforts are redeemed by the attentions of Janet. He assists her in her efforts to avoid the machinations of the Hedisons, including patriarch Carter and his sons, Blake and Ty. The Hedisons own a large pharmaceutical company, and wish to acquire her formula at any cost. The Federman version of Jack Gates appears, but Jack sends him on a business trip to Cleveland. As Jack works to ingratiate himself to Rachel, he continues to run into Janet. The episodes culminate in a party at the Hedison mansion, where Jack accidentally breaks his typewriter. Helen Caldwell, a nurse at the hospital reveals that Rachel and Janet were switched at birth, with Janet being Carter's actual daughter. Rachel is confronted by a gun-wielding Blake, who has been experiencing side effects of an overdose of medication prescribed by Kirkwood, a scheme orchestrated by Rachel. Blake shoots Janet and she is rushed to the hospital, where Rachel convinces Kirkwood to kill her in surgery. Jack must race against time to repair his typewriter and write Janet back to health. As Jack begins to write, he is confronted by Gates, who is furious at having been sent to Cleveland and shoots at Jack with a shotgun, hitting the typewriter. Jack wakes up back in New York, on the set of his own show, tended to by Laura and Dennis. He immediately confronts Laura about her behavior, revealing to her that she will be fired from the show. He confronts the Sherwoods about their plans for the show, and ensures that they will do things his way. He finds Louise in a delicatessen, gets her the part of Janet, and begins a relationship with her. ===== A clan of ninjas finds an abandoned chest that has been washed onto shore with a white baby inside. One of their ancient legends spoke of a foreign white male who would come among them and become a master like no other would. The boy, Haru, is raised amongst the ninja, with the expectation that he may become the legendary master. As Haru grows into adulthood, doubts are quickly cast over this, as he is clumsy and lacking in ninja skills, and so fails to graduate as a ninja with the rest of his class. Left alone to protect the temple while the clan are on a mission, Haru disguises himself as a ninja when an American, Sally Jones, comes to the temple seeking assistance. Sally says she is suspicious of her boyfriend, Martin Tanley, and asks Haru to investigate. Haru discovers that Tanley and his bodyguard, Nobu, are involved in a money counterfeiting business, but is unable to inform Sally before she leaves. Haru leaves Tokyo and goes to Beverly Hills in search of Sally. Gobei, Haru's adoptive brother, is sent by the clan's sensei to secretly watch over and protect Haru. Haru checks in at a Beverly Hills hotel, where he befriends bellboy Joey Washington, and teaches him some ninja lessons. Unaware that Gobei is helping him, Haru manages to find Sally. Haru tracks Tanley and Nobu to a night club in Little Tokyo, where they are attempting to retrieve a set of counterfeiting plates from their rival gang. The gangs fight, resulting in the deaths of two of the rival gang members, for which Haru finds himself the suspect. After receiving guidance from his sensei, Haru resumes his search for Sally, and locates Tanley's mansion. Haru finds Sally and discovers her real name is Alison Page. Alison informs him that Tanley murdered her sister, and that she is dating Tanley while using a fake name in order to get evidence. Haru disguises himself as a chef at a Japanese restaurant, and discovers Tanley will be hiring an ink specialist named Chet Walters to help counterfeit money. Haru then disguises himself as Walters and infiltrates Tanley's warehouse. Haru's identity is exposed after failing to properly counterfeit the money and Tanley captures him. While Tanley succeeds in obtaining the other half of the plates from the rival gang, Alison rescues Haru, only to be kidnapped by Tanley herself. The next day Haru enlists Joey's help in finding the warehouse. Gobei intervenes without Haru's knowledge and leads them back to the warehouse. Tanley locks Alison in a room with a bomb. Haru attempts to intervene but is overwhelmed by guards. Gobei reveals himself to Haru, and manages to distract the guards, allowing Haru to rescue Alison. Haru attempts to defuse the bomb but fails. On hearing Gobei become inundated by the guards, Haru goes to assist him. Haru snaps and suddenly demonstrates amazing martial arts moves, stunning Gobei. Haru saves Gobei's life and successfully defeats several guards himself. Haru and Gobei are left facing off Nobu and two guards. Joey, attempting to enter the building, crashes through a window and knocks himself and one of the guards unconscious. Haru and Gobei defeat Nobu and the remaining guard. Tanley then confronts Haru and Gobei. In the fight that follows, Haru accidentally knocks Gobei unconscious by hitting him in the head with a sheave, but forces Tanley to flee afterwards. Haru returns to attempt to rescue Alison. Using a large harpoon gun mounted on a cart, Haru shoots a harpoon through the room which inadvertently lands in the back of a truck in which Tanley is trying to escape. The harpoon drags the bomb into Tanley's truck and explodes. Haru successfully rescues Alison, then Tanley and his surviving hitmen are arrested by the LAPD. Sometime later back in Japan, Haru informs his sensei he will be returning to Beverly Hills to live with his girlfriend Alison. Haru and Alison leave together on a bus. A grappling hook tied to a rope has fallen from the bus and hooks into Gobei's wheelchair, causing him to be thrown into the ocean. Haru shouts an apology to Gobei. ===== Two teenagers come upon an apparently abandoned military installation at night. They take advantage of what appears to be a swimming pool to skinny dip. The teenagers are attacked by an unseen force in the pool and disappear under the water. A determined but somewhat absent-minded skiptracer named Maggie McKeown is dispatched to find the missing teenagers near Lost River Lake. She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan to serve as her guide. They come upon the abandoned compound, which functioned as a fish hatchery before being militarized. They discover bizarre specimens in jars and indications of an occupant. Maggie locates the drainage switch for the outside pool and decides to empty it to search the bottom, but the moment she activates it a haggard man appears and tries to stop her until he is subdued by Grogan. The two find a skeleton in the filtration trap of the empty pool, and learn it was filled with salt water. The man awakens and steals their jeep, but crashes it due to his disorientation, and is taken to Grogan's home where they spend the night. They take Grogan's raft down the river, where the man wakes up and tells them that the pool in the facility was filled with a school of lethal piranha fish, and that Maggie has released them into the river. They are skeptical until they hear a dog barking and they come across the corpse of Grogan's friend Jack, who has bled to death from an attack on a fishing dock. The man reveals himself to be Doctor Robert Hoak, lead scientist of a defunct Vietnam War project, Operation: Razorteeth, tasked with engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese rivers and inhibit Viet Cong movement. The project was shut down when the war ended, but some of the mutant specimens survived, and Hoak tended to them to salvage his work. Grogan realizes that if the local dam is opened, the school will have access to the Lost River water park resort, and the nearby summer camp where his daughter Suzie is in attendance. They encounter a capsized canoe with a boy whose father has been killed by the piranha. Hoak rescues the boy, but suffers mortal injuries when the school attacks him; he dies before he can reveal how to kill them. Blood from Hoak's corpse causes the piranha to tear away the raft's lashings, and they barely reach shore. Grogan stops the dam attendant from opening the spillway and calls the military. A military team led by Colonel Waxman and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers feed poison into the upstream section, ignoring the protests that the piranha survived the first attempt. When Grogan discovers that a tributary bypasses the dam, Waxman and Mengers quarantine them to prevent the agitated pair from alerting the media. After they escape, Waxman alerts law enforcement to capture them. The school attacks the summer camp during a swimming marathon, injuring and killing many children and Betsy, one of the camp supervisors. Suzie escapes due to her fear of water, and aids her camp mates in escaping. The school continues downriver. Waxman and Mengers arrive at the water park to intercept Grogan and Maggie, but the piranha attack the resort and kill many vacationers and Waxman. Grogan and Maggie commandeer a speedboat and rush to the shuttered smelting plant at the narrowest point of the river. Remembering the empty facility pond, Grogan theorizes the fish can survive in salt water; if the school passes the delta, they will reach the ocean and spread over the world. He intends to open the smelting refuse tanks, hoping the industrial waste will kill the piranha. They arrive at the plant ahead of the piranha, but the elevated water level has submerged the control office and Grogan must go underwater; he ties a rope around his waist and instructs Maggie to count to 100 before pulling him out. Grogan struggles to move the rusted valve wheel when the school arrives and attacks him. He manages to open the valves just as Maggie pulls him to safety. Maggie takes Grogan back to the water park, where a massive MEDEVAC is tending to the victims; his injuries are severe and he is seen in a catatonic state. Mengers gives an on-site television interview, providing a sanitized version of events and downplaying the existence of piranha. Her voice is heard carrying out over a radio on the shore of a West Coast beach. As she says "there's nothing left to fear", the piranha's characteristic trilling sound drowns out the waves on the beach. ===== The novel starts in the summer of 1870, when after serious diplomatic tensions, France has declared war on Prussia (the nucleus of Germany which was then emerging as one nation out of a number of disparate cities, regions and principalities). The French hoped to achieve a quick victory by marching their armies east, straight to Berlin. Instead, the Prussian armies crossed the Rhine before the French, beat the French Rhine army into retreat and invaded France. The novel is by far the longest of the Rougon-Macquart series. Its main character is Jean Macquart, a farmer who after having lost his wife and land (which events are described in the novel La Terre), has joined the army for the campaign of 1870. The main theme is the brutality of war for the common soldier and for the civilian population as it is hit by losses of family and friends and by economic hardship. It is written in three parts. In the first part, the French army corps in which Jean Macquart is a corporal moves to the southern part of the Rhine valley, only to retreat to Belfort and to be moved by train back to Paris and then to Reims without having seen battle, in a reaction to the news of the crushing defeat of another corps in the Alsace region followed by a Prussian breakthrough, moving west through the Vosges mountains. The growing demoralisation and fatigue of the French soldiers as they are commanded back and forth in time-consuming and irrelevant manoeuvres is poignantly described. A growing disorganisation of the army becomes apparent as it is unable to move food and equipment to where it is needed. The army corps of Jean is then moved to Reims from which it is supposed to march to the eastern French city of Metz, where another French army is besieged by the Prussians. In a reaction to pressure and movements by the Prussians, the march deviates from its original objective to the north and the French army ends up in the neighbourhood of the city of Sedan, in the valley of the Meuse river near the Belgian border. In the meantime, Jean has befriended Maurice, a soldier whose sister Henriette lives in Sedan. The second part describes the battle of Sedan. During this battle, the Prussian army succeeds in encircling Sedan and moving its artillery to the hills surrounding the city, trapping the French in the valley in a desperate position. The French army fails to break the encirclement. The part describes the battle as seen by the protagonists, Jean, Maurice, Henriette and Weiss, her husband, a civilian, who dies defending his house against the Prussians as they invade his village. The battle ends with the French army being beaten back to Sedan and capitulating to the threat of the Prussians to destroy Sedan (with the people it contains, civilians and army) by means of the artillery. The emperor and the French army at Sedan become prisoners of war. In the third part of the novel, the French army is held prisoner for a week, after which it is marched to Germany. Jean and Maurice manage to escape. Jean is wounded during the escape and ends up in the neighbourhood of Sedan where he is hidden by Henriette, who also takes care of his medical treatment, the healing taking till winter. After a while, Maurice moves on to Paris, which is then encircled by the Prussians during the winter and early spring of 1871. In the spring of 1871, Jean has rejoined the French army at the service of a new government, which has negotiated an armistice with the Prussians. A popular uprising takes place in Paris, fuelled by the humiliation of the armistice. The French government succeeds in breaking the uprising, during which Jean mortally wounds Maurice, who fights on the side of the insurgents. The novel ends by bringing three of its main characters together: Jean, the dying Maurice and his sister Henriette who has travelled to Paris after having lost contact with her brother for more than two months. ===== In 1995, Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds) is an overweight high school senior who secretly has a huge romantic crush on his classmate and best friend Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart). After confessing his feelings by writing them in Jamie's yearbook, he attends their graduation party. As he returns Jamie's yearbook to her, it is secretly swapped by her despicable ex- boyfriend, Tim (Ty Olsson), who reads the declaration aloud to everyone and humiliates Chris. Jamie doesn't reciprocate his romantic feelings; after they share a brief kiss on the cheek. Chris tearfully leaves the party, announcing that he will never return and vows to be more successful than everyone else. In 2005, Chris has lost weight, is handsome, lives in Los Angeles; and is a womanizer and a highly successful record producer. Prior to Christmas, Chris' employer, company CEO KC (Stephen Root), asks Chris to accompany an emerging self-obsessed pop singer named Samantha James (Anna Faris), whom Chris once went out with and ended up in the hospital afterwards, to Paris to ensure she signs with their label, an order to which Chris reluctantly complies. During the trip to Paris, Samantha accidentally sets her private jet on fire resulting in an emergency landing in New Jersey, near Chris' hometown. Chris takes Samantha to his mother's house to spend the night and re-engages with his teenage past, including his unresolved feelings for Jamie. Samantha meets Chris' mother and 18-year-old brother Mike (Christopher Marquette) who has an enormous crush on Samantha. At the local bar, Chris encounters some old classmates, including his other best friend Clark (Fred Ewanuick) and his wife Darla (Amy Matysio); he also encounters Jamie, who is working as a bartender to support herself through graduate school to become a teacher. Chris plans to impress and seduce Jamie by having Mike keep Samantha busy during his date with Jamie, but the realization that Jamie's platonic friendship is important to him hampers Chris' plan. During a friendly ice skating "day date", Chris is taken away in an ambulance after injuring himself during a hockey game with Jamie and a trio of kids (who start to share a dislike on him for his inexperience). At the scene, Jamie is reunited with Dusty Dinkleman (Chris Klein), a paramedic and former high school nerd who was also in love with her, while Chris is taunted by all of the kids in town for making them lose the game. The next night, Chris goes to Jamie's for a Christmas party, planning to reveal his feelings for her, but he finds Dusty already there winning the guests over with his charm and musical talents. Back at Chris' place, Samantha ambushes Mike and demands to find out Chris' location, he tells her where he has gone after she kisses Mike. In a rage, she drives to Jamie's house and crashes through her fence, destroying her family's Christmas decorations. Chris returns home in embarrassment, and Jamie follows him; she tells him she is not mad and they end up spending the night together catching up and looking at photos. However, due to Chris' continuing lack of assertion, the two end up just sleeping and nothing happens that night. The next day, Jamie speaks with Darla about the night before, while Chris goes to Clark's dental office for advice, her fear that Chris' lack of affection means that he doesn't like her. Jamie admits that while the two are "just friends", she tried to show Chris that she is interested in a relationship. Clark tells Chris that "the timing wasn't right" and Jamie and Chris' history hinders his willingness to have sex with her. Outside the office, they happen to catch Dusty singing to a sexy nurse and then kissing her. Dusty reveals to Chris and Clark that he only plans to have sex with Jamie, as he wants to humiliate her in the same way that he felt she used to humiliate him when he was a nerd and she was the object of his crush. Chris tries to warn Jamie, but instead ends up attacking Dusty in front of her; Jamie refuses to listen when Chris tries to explain. Chris consequently gets drunk and goes to the bar where Jamie works, finding her there with Dusty. Jamie refuses to listen and Dusty tries to convince her to have sex with him. When Jamie gently turns him down, Dusty storms out of the bar. Chris and Jamie get into another fight, with him blaming her for keeping him in the "friend zone" and saying that she will never amount to anything. Jamie punches Chris and he is tossed out of the bar. Upon returning to Los Angeles and having a frightening reunion with Samantha, Chris realizes that Jamie is his one and only true love. He returns to New Jersey, where he declares his romantic love for Jamie to her and the two share a kiss, while the three kids (from the hockey game earlier) watch in disgust. ===== After giving a guest lecture on criminal psychology at a local university, Dr. Helen Hudson, a respected field expert on serial killers, is cornered in the restroom of the lecture hall by one of her previous subjects, Daryll Lee Cullum, who kills a police officer and brutally attacks her. Helen becomes severely agoraphobic as a result, sealing herself inside an expensive hi-tech apartment, conducting her entire life from behind a computer screen and assisted by a friend, Andy. When a new series of murders spreads fear and panic across her home city of San Francisco, Inspector M.J. Monahan and her partner Reuben Goetz solicit Helen's expertise. Initially reluctant, Helen soon finds herself drawn into the warped perpetrator's game of wits. As the murders continue, Helen realizes that the elusive assailant draws inspiration from notorious serial killers, including Albert DeSalvo, The Hillside Strangler, David Berkowitz, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy. When the murderer begins contacting and even stalking Helen, she and M.J. realize that he is after them, and they enlist the aid of Cullum, who tells them what he knows about the killer. Helen soon realizes that the Copycat Killer has been following the list of serial killers in the same order as she had presented them in her lecture at the university on the night of her attack, and the two work to figure out where and when he will strike next. Reuben is held hostage and killed in an unrelated shooting incident at the police station, leaving M.J. - now questioning herself after her targeting of the shooter’s Brachial nerve failed when he got up and shot Reuben in the back - to continue the search for the serial killer alone. After Andy is killed in a manner reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer, M.J. deduces the killer to be Peter Foley. After leading a failed attempt to catch Foley at his house, M.J. discovers that he has kidnapped Helen and taken her back to the scene of Daryll Lee's attempt at killing her - the restroom of the lecture hall. Once she gets there, M.J. finds Helen bound, hanged and gagged in the same manner that Cullum did before, but she is ambushed and shot by Foley, rendering her unconscious. As Foley prepares to kill M.J., Helen desperately attempts to save her by ruining Foley's carefully replicated crime scene the only way she can - by attempting to hang herself. Foley panics and cuts Helen down, and Helen is able to get away and escape to the building's roof. Her agoraphobia kicks in again, and Helen finds herself cornered. Accepting her fate, she turns to face Foley. However, just as he is about to kill her, M.J. shoots him in the Brachial nerve, giving him one last chance to surrender. When he pulls his gun back on her, however, she shoots him until she kills him with a headshot. Some time later, Daryll Lee writes a letter to another serial killer, instructing him on how to kill Helen, and revealing that he had been aiding Foley all along. Daryll wishes "happy huntin', partner" to his new proxy in the mission of killing Helen. ===== From the icy vastness of outer space, an alien virus arrives on earth contained in a tiny black disk. Those who pick up the disk are infected by the virus which spreads rapidly with flu like symptoms. The first human to pick up the disk and be infected is Beau Stark, an ambitious 21-year-old young man. The virus starts by giving him flu like symptoms but within a few hours he is not only free of the symptoms but also infused with new energy and power. His girlfriend Cassy notices major personality changes and an obsession with environment. The man who was all for banning big dogs in the city suddenly acquires one and proceeds to infest it. The virus apparently infects all life forms on earth. Meanwhile, the first invasion & infestation having succeeded the disk sends a signal, inviting millions more disks to come. Those who handle the disks receive a sting, soon followed by flu-like symptoms and ending in what could be called "zombie assimilation" into an alien collective consciousness with Beau being the leader. Cassy however shares her fears of Beau's changing personality with their mutual friend and her ex-boyfriend Pitt, who is a medical student and concerned after witnessing a sudden upsurge in deaths of people, suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes. He takes Cassy to meet his senior Dr. Shiela who is also concerned about the preventable and unexplained deaths and surging number of flu cases. Cassy also tells them about personality changes reported in some people by one of her students, Jonathan. Jonathan introduces the group to his parents Nancy & Eugene, a virologist and a physicist. Jesse, a cop, also comes in contact with the group when he accompanies a colleague suffering sudden seizures to the hospital. The group finally zeros on the disks as being the carriers of the infection and deduces that this may be alien virus and decides to take the matter to the CDC. Nancy, Eugene & Shiela travel to the CDC headquarters, but discover to their horror that the entire board is already infected. While attempting to escape, Eugene is engulfed by one of the disks that is also a powerful weapon which emits radiation and can create a black hole. The two women make it back to the others and the group flees to a remote cabin owned by Jesse. Meanwhile, The final wave of disks infest the entire earth slowly infecting people all over the world and killing those with any genetic disease. The group contacts other hidden groups who are working on means to combat the virus. However, they soon have to make forays to the town for research supplies and food. On one such foray, Jesse is consumed by the disk just like Eugene, Nancy is infected and Cassy is carried off by the infected to Beau, who is unable to cope with the human emotions and is pining for her. Jonathan, Pitt, and Shiela abandon their hideout and go looking for a Dr. M who has made advances in isolating the virus. Cassy is taken to Beau who informs her that this invasion had been planned for a very long time as the disks only activate the virus which was planted in human DNA 3 billion years ago when life was just evolving on earth. Every million years, the virus activator protein is sent to earth to judge the suitability of its inhabitants as hosts to the virus. This time the hosts have been most suitable and are in the process of building a transporter, which would link Earth to the other planets infested by the virus and allow travel between all those planets. He shows Cassy the transporter under construction and then proceeds to infect her, telling her that he loves her and wants her to be a part of the alien consciousness. The strain makes Cassy faint and when she wakes up, she is horrified by what she would become once the virus takes control. She flees from the place with hopes of contacting her friends and informing them what they are up against. Cassy contacts the group, who has hooked up with Doctor Harlan McCay, who has a Biological Warfare Research Lab at his disposal. When the invasion started, Dr. McCay headed to the lab, which was left over from the Cold War. The lab is stocked and was at least somewhat staffed (the staff apparently left when they got infected) and although it was a secret, the local Native Americans knew about it and had at some point in time informed him of it. The lab had everything they needed to work on a cure for the virus. Dr. McCay discloses that he also was stung by the disk, but has prevented an infection by injecting himself with a monoclonal antibody that at least temporarily prevents the virus from taking hold of the host. Cassy is brought to the facility and given an infusion of the monoclonal antibody. While experimenting they discover that infecting themselves with another virus will cause the virus to expose itself and oxygen will destroy it, since it came to Earth 3 billion years ago when there was little to no oxygen so its vulnerable to it in a viral state. After testing this with infected mice (it cures all except the one infected the longest, who dies; apparently if it's in the system too long, the cure kills), they take a cold virus that has never been encountered before (it was artificially engineered, and, thus, no one will have immunity) as it is mild enough to not kill the person infected but will do the job. Dr. McCay acts as the guinea pig and exposes himself to the virus in a containment unit. Beau, in the meanwhile, has discovered that Cassy has escaped and unable to overcome his human emotions, follows and discovers the facility but has to leave before he can find Cassy as the gateway is encountering problems. He leaves a few of his associates behind to deal with the humans. The group escapes the facility and storms the mansion, smashing the gateway with a car. Beau is too far gone to be cured and tells them to run as the destruction of the gateway would cause dispersion. He dies and the mansion is destroyed but they are able to spread the cure and the invasion is halted. ===== Small rocks fall from the sky which, when touched, trigger a latent virus that has always existed in humans and begins mutating them into an alien species. Taking advantage of its hive mentality, the aliens are absolutely dedicated to transforming every human on Earth and do so with alarming swiftness. Only a small group of remaining humans have the medical knowledge to devise antibodies to reverse the effects of the virus. ===== In an alternate world, where the existence of God has been scientifically proven and magic has been harnessed for the practical needs of the adept by the degaussing of cold iron, the United States is part of an alternative Second World War in which the enemy is not Germany but a resurgent Islamic Caliphate, which has invaded the United States. Werewolf Steven Matuchek and witch Virginia Graylock meet on a military mission to stop the invading Islamic army from unleashing a secret superweapon, a genie released from a bottle in which it had been sealed by King Solomon. Together, they fight against the demon and incidentally fall in love with each other. After the end of the war (an Allied victory as in our World War II, but US forces remain in occupation of former enemy lands for much longer) the two of them continue and deepen their liaison and have various additional adventures (which were originally published as a series of independent stories). Among other things they stop an elemental summoned as a student prank which had gone amok, confront a succubus/incubus on their honeymoon, and enter the Hell dimension to save their daughter (who has been kidnapped and taken there, with a changeling left in her crib in her place). While in Hell the protagonists are at a loss to understand the identity of a moustached man with a strange armband who speaks with a strong Germanic accent, and why the most powerful demons tremble at the sight of him, or why he uses the "ancient and honorable symbol of the fylfot". Their alternative history never had a Nazi Germany. Another part of the book features a magical analogue to the counterculture of the 1960s, presented rather facetiously (reflecting Anderson's attitude to the real-life original). Given the supernatural metaphysics of this world, however, it takes the form of gnosticism, within a "Johannine Church" that is based on either an esoteric reading of the Gospel of John, or an alternative gnostic gospel version of that canonical New Testament book. In his werewolf form, Matuchek does not suffer many of the liabilities of a werewolf of folklore or, indeed, the werewolf of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. He remains himself while turning into a wolf, and is able to fully use his four-leg incarnation to fight various enemies; and in this magical world (unlike, for example, in the later created Harry Potter universe), there is no social stigma attached to lycanthropy. Dependence on the moon is lightly tossed aside with a comment that the necessary components of moonlight (specific frequencies of polarized light) have been isolated, and his Polaroid "Were-flash" lets him turn into a wolf or back to his human form at any time, its controls having been designed to be operable even with paws and no opposable thumbs. However, his invulnerability to silver is limited. Conservation of mass makes him a rather large wolf, although other weres in the book, taking far more drastic forms, have more serious problems. (A 600-pound weretiger has to be a 600-pound man in human form, again in order to not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass.) The couple's daughter, Valeria Matuchek, appears as a minor character in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest - where she is a self-assured young woman, exploring by herself the various timelines. In a mysterious "Inn Between the Worlds" she meets with Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the main character of Midsummer Tempest, as well as meeting Holger Carlsen, the protagonist of Three Hearts and Three Lions and helping him in his own quest. ===== Lynette Scavo has always known that her children were different from the other neighborhood boys since Porter, Parker and Preston like to play different games. When several of the mothers did not want to make play dates anymore with Lynette's kids, she discovers that if the boys' play dates disappear that her free time will also. Lynette then finds her twins playing with a new group of friends (also twins) who have just moved in the area. When Norma, the boys' mother asks Lynette if the boys are all right, Lynette decides that they are fine and that they are only playing. The two decide that they should arrange another play date. Lynette enjoys her freedom but when it comes their turn to host the boys, the Harper boys bring a video. When Porter and Preston leave the room, Lynette wonders if the other boys are boring them. Lynette enters the twins' bedroom where she finds Parker and the other boys watching their parents' homemade sextape. Immediately Lynette blocks the television before Norma's breast is exposed and ejects the tape and keeps it in her possession. When Lynette and Tom approach Norma and Leonard about their tape, Norma panics feeling outed and ashamed. Leonard has the opposite effect and decides to show Lynette and Tom their private film studio where they shoot and produce all of their videos. Lynette and Tom look on in horror and decide not to have another play date with Norma's kids. George surprises Bree when he tells her that he has purchased a house in the neighborhood. Bree feels happy for George but she discovers his mother and a realtor are hiding in the other room. When the women leave them alone, George proposes to Bree. Bree freezes up but because George's mother is in the room, she accepts, sparking a celebration. Bree then has second thoughts when she talks it over with Albert Goldfine, her marriage-counselor-turned-therapist. Dr. Goldfine asks if this is what she wants after her previous marriage ended so suddenly. Bree knows in her heart that she loves George as a friend, but not as a spouse and would love to do things with him even if that means getting married against her will. When she comes next to visit George, many of his friends are there and Bree is introduced to all of them. A friend of George says that he made a bet that he was gay, and demands proof in nine months. As Bree does not understand what "9 months" means, George talks of the possibility of children. Bree walks out with George following her. Bree tells George that she cannot marry him and when he asks why she tells him that she had talked it over with her therapist. George says that they can marry later. Bree drives away as George gives a cold look and walks back into the party. The following day, George follows Dr. Goldfine jogging and when Goldfine least expects it, George comes from behind and throws him off the bridge he had been jogging on. Gabrielle is beginning to show signs of her pregnancy which she is not liking since her weight is going up and she is expecting old friends from her modeling days to arrive. Gabrielle tries her best to cover up her pregnancy so the women won't tease her for beginning the journey to becoming yet another bored, fat housewife - which Gabrielle vowed she'd never become. Gabrielle goes on a 48-hour crash diet, but still is unable to fit into the gorgeous gown. With help from Bree, she manages to get into the dress and Bree tells her parenthood is a cherished gift and some things are hard to cover up. Gabrielle smiles and continues to prepare for the arrival of her friends. When they arrive, they automatically see that Gabrielle is pregnant and instead of making fun of her, they congratulate her. Gabrielle feels proud of her former friends' acceptance but finally understands that her true friends are the ones that do not judge. Susan removes the last of her belongings from Mike's house and the two part ways. Susan then witnesses her ex-husband Karl breaking up with Edie. The following evening, Karl visits Susan who is alone and the two begin to drink a bottle of wine. Karl tells Susan the reason that he and Edie broke up was because he kept an old picture of Susan underneath his mattress. Edie saw this as a sign of Karl's recurring love for Susan even though they are divorced. The following morning, Julie arrives home to find her two parents in bed after a night of unexpected romance. Julie looks in disgust and quickly leaves. Later, Susan tells Karl that their fling the night prior was a one-night stand since she is clearly not ready and unwilling to get back with him. Karl feels differently but, after considering it seriously, returns to Edie. Edie then unexpectedly thanks Susan for whatever she did to reunite the two. Susan feels as if she made a difference but still feels lonely because of her judgment. Betty and Matthew discover that Caleb has escaped shortly after their confrontation. Caleb's disappearance leads them to snooping around the neighborhood for any traces of Caleb. Matthew searches the street but is soon drawn to Danielle Van De Kamp when he searches Bree's backyard. He lies and tells her that he is there to ask her out. Danielle surprisingly says "yes" and Matthew leaves the yard happy. That night however, after Gabrielle finished entertaining her guests she goes upstairs to find a box of ice cream half-eaten causing her to think she has an intruder in her house. Gabrielle soon comes eye to eye with Caleb and quickly runs away before he does anything dangerous. Her escape comes with a price though when she trips and falls down the stairs. Gabrielle lands on the floor helpless and witnesses Caleb leaving the house. Bree arrives back at Gabrielle with her sewing kit but immediately calls an ambulance when she finds Gabrielle on the floor. Gabrielle is escorted into the ambulance van as she clutches her baby's sonogram picture. ===== The play opens with a summary of the story of Oedipus and its aftermath told by Jocasta, who in this version has not committed suicide. She explains that after her husband blinded himself upon discovering that he was her son, his sons Eteocles and Polynices locked him away in hopes that the people might forget what had happened. He curses them, proclaiming that neither would rule without killing his brother. To avert this, they have agreed to split the country – Polynices allows Eteocles to rule for one year. When the year expired, Eteocles was to abdicate, allowing his brother to rule for a year. He refused to do so, forcing his brother into exile instead. While exiled, Polynices went to Argos, where he married the daughter of Adrastus, king of the Argives. He then persuaded Adrastus to send a force to help him reclaim the city. Jocasta has arranged for a cease-fire so that she can mediate between her two sons. She converses with Polynices about what his life in exile was like, and then listens to both of their arguments. Polynices re- explains the situation, and that he is the rightful king. Eteocles replies, saying that he desires power above all else and will not surrender it unless forced to. Jocasta reprimands them both, telling Eteocles his ambition may destroy the city and criticizing Polynices for bringing an army to sack the city he loves. They argue, but are unable to reach any agreement. Eteocles then meets with Creon to plan for the coming battle; since the Argives are sending one company against each gate, the Thebans select one company to defend each of the seven gates. Eteocles also asks Creon to ask Teiresias for advice, and gives the order that anyone who buries Polynices in Theban soil is to be executed. Teiresias reveals that Creon must kill his son Menoeceus. He explains that when the city was founded, it was by men who had sprung from the ground where Cadmus sowed the teeth of a serpent he had killed, but the serpent was sacred to Ares, who would punish Thebes unless a sacrifice was made. As only Creon and his son were pure-blooded descendants of the men who sprouted from the ground, Menoeceus was the only choice. Creon is told he can only save the city by sacrificing his son, and instructs Menoeceus to flee to the oracle at Dodona; Menoeceus agrees but secretly goes to the serpent's lair to sacrifice himself and appease Ares. Jocasta then receives a messenger, who tells her about the progress of the war and that her sons are both alive, but have agreed to fight one-on-one for the throne. She and her daughter Antigone go to try to stop them. Shortly after they depart, Creon hears about how the duel has gone. Eteocles mortally wounded Polynieces, who was able to deliver a fatal blow to his brother; the two died at the same instant. Jocasta, overcome with grief, kills herself immediately. Antigone enters, lamenting the fate of her brothers; Oedipus emerges from the palace and she tells him what has happened. After he has a little while to mourn, Creon banishes him from the country and orders Eteocles but not Polynices to be buried in the city. Antigone fights him over the order and breaks off her engagement with his son Haemon. She decides to accompany her father into exile, and the play ends with them departing for Athens. ===== Each episode typically follows the format of a self-contained short story where a person has been suffering torment from an acquaintance to the point that he or she accesses the Hell Correspondence website and submits a request to get rid of the person. Ai Enma, the Hell Girl, appears, and presents a doll with a red string on its neck that can send the named antagonist to Hell. When the string is pulled, Ai and her companions then torment the antagonist, offering a last chance to repent (which is usually refused), and ferries them to Hell. The price of the contract is that the person making the request will also have to go to Hell after his or her life is over. Starting with the eighth episode, Hajime Shibata, a former journalist who has resorted to taking scandal photos to blackmail people, begins investigating the rumors surrounding the Hell Correspondence website, and discovers that people are literally being dragged to Hell. His daughter, Tsugumi, is somehow able to see Enma. As the series progresses, they become conflicted on whether they should intervene to save the people involved. In the second season, a mysterious young girl from Hell, named Kikuri, is introduced. Kikuri is able to travel freely between Earth and the Twilight realm where Enma resides. Later, the plot centers around Takuma Kurebayashi, a boy who is blamed by his townsfolk for causing disappearances around the town that are, in reality, caused by the townsfolk using the "Hell Correspondence" website. In the third season, Kikuri returns to recruit Enma's assistants along with a yōkai named Yamawaro, who accepts an old offer from Enma to become her fourth assistant. The story follows Enma's mysterious possession of a young schoolgirl, Yuzuki Mikage. In the fourth season, the story introduces a new character named Michiru, whom Ai helps realise her fate as a successor to the Hell Girl title. ===== Though portrayed differently from port to port, set in an unnamed fantasy world, a prologue tells of a grand legend related to the realm, of how long ago, three fallen gods of darkness known as the Masters of Evil attempted to lay siege to the mortal plane. They were known as Morgal, the Lord of Beasts, commander of the feral and the most voracious of monsters and beasts; Necros, the Master of War, corruptor of men and the inciter of temptation and vice; and Ulgar, the Overlord, the leader of the Masters of Evil and wielder of the most evil of magics. At the end of the great war that threatened all who lived in it, the Masters of Evil were sealed away in a floating tower far from the reach of anyone, and only three warriors, an elf, a human, and a dwarf, survived to tell the tale. Into the modern day, the main character and local bounty hunter, Popful Mail, makes her rounds; eventually, her day escalates to the point where she squares off with her bounty, the criminal golem maker and technomancer, Nuts Cracker, into the nearby forest. Though defeated, Nuts Cracker's body manages to escape, as always, and Mail thus cannot claim any bounty. Frustrated once more, she indifferently takes Nuts Cracker's head and wanders back into town. At the bounty post, she attempts to trade the head in for cash, but like with many who have sought to capture Nuts Cracker before her, duplicates of his head are all they could retrieve, making the attempt a failure. Instead, however, she learns of a new bounty and becomes reinvigorated when she spots a 2,000,000 gold reward poster for the wizard turned criminal, Muttonhead, near the post. With sword in hand and hope in heart, Mail makes leads into the nearby forest for clues. Eventually, her quest to undertake the biggest catch of her career, will turn out greater, more perilous, more dangerous- yet more important, and even more rewarding- than she imagines. ===== In Oklahoma Territory in 1889, Jed Cooper drives a small herd of cattle across a stream. A posse of nine men - Captain Wilson, Reno, Miller, Jenkins, Stone, Maddow, Tommy, Loomis and Charlie Blackfoot - surround him and he shows them a receipt for the cattle. After learning that the man he bought them from was a rustler who killed the herd's owner, Cooper explains that he knew nothing about the murder, but only Jenkins expresses doubts about his guilt. After Reno takes Cooper's saddle and Miller takes his wallet, the men hang him from a tree and ride away. Shortly afterward, Federal Marshal Dave Bliss sees Cooper, cuts him down before he dies, then takes him to Fort Grant, where the territorial judge, Adam Fenton, determines that Cooper is innocent, sets him free, and warns hims not to become a vigilante. As an alternative, Fenton offers Cooper a job as a marshal. Cooper accepts, and Fenton warns him not to kill the men who lynched him, but to bring them in for trial. While picking up a prisoner, Cooper sees his saddle on a horse in front of a small-town saloon. He finds Reno inside and tries to arrest him, but Reno draws his gun, forcing Cooper to kill him. Jenkins, learning of Reno's death at the hands of a marshal with a hanging scar, turns himself in and provides the names of the rest of the posse. Cooper finds Stone in another town, arrests him, and has the local sheriff, Ray Calhoun, put him in jail. Most of the men Cooper seeks are respected members of the community, but Calhoun honors Cooper's warrants for their arrest. On their way to arresting the men, Cooper and Calhoun encounter the survivors of a new rustling/murder. Cooper pursues these rustlers with a posse, and discovers that the rustlers are Miller and two teenage brothers, Ben and Billy Joe. He refuses to let the posse lynch the three rustlers, then takes them to Fort Grant single-handedly. On the way, Ben and Billy Joe insist that Miller was the murderer. Miller attacks Cooper, but Cooper subdues him while the brothers watch. Fenton sentences all three rustlers to be hanged, despite Cooper's defense of the teenagers. Fenton insists that the public will resort to lynching if they see rustlers going unpunished, threatening Oklahoma's bid for statehood. Some time later, Calhoun arrives at Fort Grant and pays Cooper for his cattle with money given by Captain Wilson and the others in Cooper's lynching party. Cooper makes it clear that while they are alive he still intends to arrest them. With the bribe rejected, Blackfoot and Maddow flee, while Tommy and Loomis remain loyal to Wilson, who has decided to kill Cooper. During the six-man hanging, Wilson, Loomis, and Tommy ambush Cooper in a saloon in Fort Grant, seriously wounding him. Cooper survives and is slowly nursed back to health by Rachel Warren. Rachel is looking for outlaws that killed her husband and raped her. Rachel and Cooper begin an affair. Cooper tries to quit, but Judge Fenton goads him into continuing, telling him that Wilson and his remaining posse members are holed up at his ranch. At Wilson's ranch, Marshal Cooper kills Tommy and Loomis, and Wilson hangs himself before Cooper can reach him. After returning to Fort Grant, Cooper demands that Fenton release old man Jenkins, who is both contrite and seriously ill, once again threatening to quit. In his second debate with Cooper about justice, Fenton insists that he is doing as well as he can, cursing the fact his is the only court in the territory and he the only judge; and that the best way for Cooper to promote justice is to help Oklahoma become a state by serving as a marshal. Cooper agrees to continue in exchange for Jenkins's release, which Fenton agrees to. Judge Fenton then gives Cooper fresh warrants for Blackfoot and Maddow, telling him, "The law still wants 'em." ===== Set at the end of the 28th century, the human race has long since abandoned a desolate earth, colonizing Jupiter's moons, particularly Ganymede. Most of the refugees fleeing earth did so in exchange for an agreement of indentured servitude, projected to last "at most" one or two generations. However, this proved untrue, and by the 28th century a large portion of the population are in permanent debt bondage from birth. Naia (Tara Strong) is one such debt slave, genetically modified to have enhanced lung capacity in order to survive harsher work environments. During a protest riot, Naia is freed with many other debt slaves from a holding cell on Ganymede. As she flees she encounters Parker (Claudia Black), a street saxophone performer being set upon by city police who incorrectly believe she is part of the riots. Naia saves Parker from a beating, with Parker later returning the favor. The two ultimately escape and quickly find themselves becoming attracted to each other, and soon after are in a romantic relationship and are living together. Both musicians, Naia and Parker begin composing music together, Parker's saxophone complementing Naia's guitar and singing. The two join with friends Chat (Alan Tudyk) and Atem (Khary Payton) and form a band, quickly rising in popularity and notoriety owing to Naia's passionate, anti-debt slavery lyrics. This soon attracts the attention of Ganymede "starmaker" Dorlan Mig (Tim Curry), who invites Parker and Naia to a party at a high-class club where he can discuss signing the band to his company. At the party both Naia and Parker indulge in several exotic treats, culminating in a rare vintage alcohol which renders both of them unconscious. Parker awakes in an alley in Ganymede's slums and soon discovers that Naia and the rest of the band have been signed without her. She tries to make contact with Naia several times, only to be dissuaded (often violently) by the rising star's bouncers, who inform her that Naia does not want to see her anymore. Heartbroken, Parker spends weeks lurking near Naia's studio. She soon finds herself needing to leave the area after district police label her a troublemaker. She finds a sympathetic ear in Captain Philo D Grenman (Ron Glass), a hoverchair-bound double amputee who buys her breakfast one morning. After hearing her story, Philo offers Parker a home on his non-operational spaceship; Parker accepts, and soon settles in with Philo and his first officer Reesa (Cree Summer), the only other person on the ship. Weeks pass, Parker tracking Naia's progress via news feeds. After seeing reports of a number of troubling incidents - Atem dying in a mysterious shuttle crash, Chat leaving the band due to a previously unknown drug addiction, and another talent signed to Dorlan's company dying just as her popularity peaked - Parker realizes that Dorlan is going to have Naia killed in order to maximize the popularity of her music. She strikes a deal with Philo and Reesa: if she buys them the last part needed to make the ship operational, using money from selling her antique saxophone, Philo and Reesa will help her recover Naia before she can be killed. Parker makes her way to a massive Naia concert, but after listening to her unemotional performance she realizes that the Naia on stage is actually an android duplicate, meaning the real Naia is being held somewhere else. She, Philo, and Reesa update their plans. Parker infiltrates the fake Naia's luxury apartment, with friends of hers providing a distraction. She confronts the fake Naia, incapacitates her, then grabs her. When security forces arrive Parker flees down the side of the building on Philo's loaned hoverchair, accidentally dropping the Naia android in the process. Though damaged, Parker recovers it and is soon picked up by Philo, who has stolen Dorlan's car. Philo flees from the police while Parker searches the android's databanks for Naia's location, eventually finding it. Successfully evading the police, Philo and Parker find the lab where Naia has been held, being used as a template to better enhance the Naia android's behavior. Naia is near death but alive; Parker rescues her, leaving the android in her place and setting the lab on fire. Naia is placed in a medical treatment device on Philo's ship, Parker unsure if she will survive. The destroyed lab is investigated; finding remains which seem to match Naia, the authorities declare Naia dead. Dorlan is soon arrested for his presumed involvement in the lab and Naia's death, especially since his car was found just outside. After some time, Naia finally awakes on the ship, greeting Parker lovingly. ===== Kitty Pryde's father Carmen has run into trouble with the Japanese Yakuza. In order to help him, Kitty follows him on a business trip but is captured by mob boss Shigematsu and the evil ninja Ogun, who brainwashes her into becoming a deadly ninja assassin. After she has perfected her skills, Ogun orders her to kill Wolverine, Ogun's former student, who has come to Japan to look for Kitty. A masked Kitty almost kills Wolverine, before she is knocked out by Logan's friend Yukio and comes to her senses. Terrified at having been turned into a killing machine, Kitty wants to flee, but Logan challenges her to overcome her conditioning by focusing on her inner strength. When Kitty, Yukio and Logan vanquish their opponents, Kitty has the chance to kill Ogun. But she balks, stating she cannot do it. For Wolverine, it is the proof that she is truly herself again. When Ogun tries to kill her, Wolverine impales him on his claws. Carmen Pryde exposes Shigematsu's schemes, turning himself in, and they return to the United States. ===== The family visits Paradise Pier, the Ferris wheel of which Marge has been looking forward all her life to riding, only to find out that it is being dismantled with its equipment being too old. Homer purchases a dumbbell while Marge gets a tandem bicycle. When Marge wants to take the bike for a ride, she finds Homer and the kids unwilling to join her. Marge tries it on her own and repeatedly falls. Realizing that she might actually be lonely, Bart offers to go for a ride with her. They ride into an unincorporated part of the county and come upon a small village that features a tea house. Later, the tea house closes forever, causing Bart to invite Marge to his treehouse for tea. Marge redecorates the treehouse and the pair goes off to get a new tea service; Bart gets a Krusty the Clown Tea Set. Outside the store, the bullies Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney accuse Bart of being a mama's boy, which causes Bart to rebel on her. Marge goes into a depression and eventually sells the bike to Chief Wiggum, Eddie and Lou. Feeling bad, Bart offers to team with her in a karaoke contest. While seeing Principal Skinner and his mother Agnes perform, Marge has visions of a bad future for her and Bart, and she stops the show to prevent that future from occurring. She then lets Bart know that he can find his own way of life and that he should not worry about her because she has to worry about him. To make things better, she gives him a fire extinguisher to spray in front of the audience, including the bullies that tormented him. Meanwhile, at Moe's tavern, Homer shows off the strength in one of his arms he has gained from working with the dumbbell, and Moe has an idea on how to capitalize on it. Moe takes Homer to the arm- wrestling championships, where Homer readily wins the grand prize--a refund on his $50 admission fee--but finds that he really misses his wife. He drives home to reunite with Marge at karaoke, stopping to win a pie-eating contest along the way. ===== The Colorado Army National Guard is called in to investigate a strange epidemic at ADX Florence. Its soldiers struggle to contain the disease before it overruns the United States, and search for a mysterious woman who may be vital to the solution. The novel begins with a mysterious woman in California being bitten on the street by a random man who walks up to her. She runs into the nearest establishment, an oxygen bar and proceeds to get high while waiting for the police to show up. The police arrive and take her to the hospital where a zombie outbreak is occurring. Although restrained, she manages to convince a nurse to let her go, who is then consumed by zombies. While this is occurring, we are also introduced to two additional characters, Captain Bannerman Clark and Dick Walters. Captain Bannerman Clark is in the Colorado Army National Guard and is the Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Officer in Charge, making him the always ready first man on the scene of any major disaster, trained to get the best intelligence on the situation and report to others who will take over. He is called away from enjoying a steak dinner alone to investigate an outbreak of what is believed to be a biological weapon at a prison in Colorado which spread from the prisoners to the guards, causing them to become perceived cannibals. The warden of the prison had travelled to California and had succumbed to the biological agent there, biting and infecting a young woman. Clark then goes to California to assess the damage. Dick Walters is travelling in the rural areas of Colorado to check on an outbreak of an infectious agent in sheep. When he arrives at the farm, the woman he is there to visit greets him with a gun and surmises quickly he is not, "One of them." She takes him to an abandoned mine shaft where several zombies are trapped, zombies which ate her husband and young son. The pair spend the night on the roof of her cabin, waiting for the walkers to come. Clark and the woman meet for the first time when she walks out of the hospital he arrives at, besieged by zombies. She is thought to be one of them and is to be executed in front of him when she disappears, removing her own aura. The girl then decides, after seeing a vision of a man, to head east towards Colorado. She is picked up by two delinquents along the way and runs amok with them for a bit, seeing a disturbing scene in a small town where the village kills a zombie. They eventually bunker down for the night in a small, abandoned inn. The woman, calling herself Nilla after Nilla Wafers, is approached for sex by the man of the group, but he runs when he sees she is covered in mold. She runs into the forest nearby and kills a bear when attacked, turning the bear into one of the undead. The next morning the trio depart. Clark is determined to find Nilla after seeing her disappear, but his superiors force him to go to Washington to meet with and work for a civilian. The civilian likes Clark and intends on using him to figure all this out. Clark returns to Colorado to work on the cause of the disease and later transfers to Las Vegas for a short time as the West Coast is eventually overrun by zombies. Dick and his companion eventually come off the roof and go exploring in the night. The woman is attacked atop a hill and he runs, tripping on a rock and falling down the hill. He has a concussion and is attacked, first by the woman's dead sheep, slaughtered to control the disease and then the woman herself. When he is reanimated without arms, he is drawn towards the source, an area nearby which exudes life force. He is eventually recruited by a voice coming from the source to go on a mission. The voice guides him along the way. Nilla and her two friends leave the inn and go on, eventually stopping by a truck with two men in the back. The man goes and checks on the two and is bitten when it is revealed it is a zombie feasting on a corpse. The zombie is Dick and he is then tasked with following Nilla after she is abandoned by the woman and her dying boyfriend. Nilla continues on, psychically drawn to a house where she is met by a handicapped man who tells her she is the only one who can stop the source. ===== Musil's novel is ostensibly a Bildungsroman, a story of a young disoriented man searching for moral values in society and their meaning for him. The expressionistic novel, based on Musil's personal experiences at a boarding school in Hranice (in Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic) was written according to Musil "because of boredom". In later life, however, Musil denied that the novel was about youthful experiences of his own. Due to its explicit sexual content, the novel at first caused a scandal among the reading public and the authorities of Austria-Hungary. Later, various prefigurings of Fascism were identified in the text, including the characters of Beineberg and Reiting, who seem to be orderly pupils by day but shamelessly abuse their classmate psychologically, physically and sexually by night. In 1966, the German director Volker Schlöndorff made the film Der junge Törless based on the novel. ===== Monster Island takes place in Manhattan one month after New York City has been completely overrun by the undead. A former UN employee named Dekalb, whose daughter is being held by a warlord in Somalia in exchange for his assistance, enters the zombie-infested island with a band of East African child soldiers in order to retrieve precious AIDS medication for the warlord. After surviving numerous zombie attacks, the group encounters Gary Fleck, an undead medical student who has managed to retain a high level of consciousness and self-control unlike other zombies. ===== ===== In 1863 Labienus has just completed dispatching the tragic cyborg Mendoza to oblivion, having manipulated her into furthering Company interests. He remembers his origins, and reviews his extensive files on other cyborgs. ===== Bishop (Tupac Shakur), Q (Omar Epps), Raheem (Khalil Kain), and Steel (Jermaine 'Huggy' Hopkins) are four teenage African-American friends growing up together in Harlem. They regularly skip school, instead spending their days hanging out at Steel's apartment, at a neighborhood arcade, and also a record store where they steal LPs for Q's DJ interests. Generally, they are harassed daily by the police or a Puerto Rican gang led by Radames (Vincent Laresca). Fed up with all of the torment he and his friends have endured, Bishop decides that the group must go on to do bigger things in order to win respect. However, Q is unsure if he wants to become involved in a life of crime. One Saturday night, under Bishop's persistence, the friends decide to rob a local convenience store to teach the owner, Fernando Quiles, a lesson. At first Q hesitates to go through with the robbery, unsure whether it will be successful. He also fears it will affect his chances of participating in a DJ competition in which he has yearned to compete for years. After being pressured by his fellow crew members, he decides to join in. Q manages to sneak out of the nightclub where he is competing in a DJ contest and joins his friends. During the heist, Bishop shoots the owner in the head, killing him. After fleeing the scene, the four young men gather in an abandoned building where they argue over the evening's events. Q, Raheem and Steel become angry at Bishop for killing Mr. Quiles, and Raheem demands that Bishop give the gun to him; Bishop resists. A struggle ensues between the two, and Bishop shoots Raheem dead. Panicking, Bishop, Q and Steel flee to another abandoned building, where Bishop threatens to kill Q and Steel if they reveal to anybody that he murdered Raheem. Q and Steel realize that Bishop is beginning to break down and is becoming addicted to the thrill of killing. They agree to give Bishop as wide a berth as possible. However, while attending Raheem's funeral, they are surprised to see Bishop there. Bishop goes as far as to hug Raheem's mother (Lauren Jones) and promise to find his killer. Q and Steel are mostly generally able to avoid Bishop, but he finds them and confronts them one at a time, questioning their loyalty. After a scuffle, Bishop kills Radames. In order to cover his tracks, he begins planning to frame Q for the murders of Quiles, Raheem and Radames. Fearful of Bishop, Q resorts to buying a gun for his own protection. Meanwhile, Bishop confronts Steel in an alley, accusing him of disloyalty, and shoots him. However, Steel survives the attack and is rushed to the hospital, where he informs Q's girlfriend Yolanda (Cindy Herron) that he has been shot by Bishop and he plans on framing Q. Frustrated with both the tension and troubles brought upon him, Q throws his gun into the river and decides to confront Bishop unarmed. Q and Bishop meet up, where a scuffle and chase ensues. Q is shot once in the arm during the chase, and he is subsequently chased into a building where a party is being held. Bishop begins firing into a group of partygoers in an attempt to hit Q, but Q escapes unharmed. Q disarms Bishop while he's distracted, and Bishop leaves the scene with Q following him. Q eventually finds Bishop on the roof of a high-rise building, and the two become engaged in a physical confrontation. Bishop eventually falls off the ledge, but is caught by Q. Bishop begs Q not to let go, but Q eventually loses his grip, and Bishop falls to his death. As Q is leaving the rooftop, a crowd from the party gathers to see what happened. One of the people in the crowd turns to Q and says, "Yo, you got the juice now, man." Q turns to look at him, shakes his head in disgust, and walks away. The film ends with a flashback clip of the four friends together in happier times as Bishop yells, "Wrecking Crew!" ===== A group of grifters rip off their latest mark and celebrate, while de facto leader of the group Jake Vig (Edward Burns) explains the art of the con. When one of the four, Big Al (Louis Lombardi) is found shot to death, the other three learn that the latest money they stole actually belonged to a local L.A. crime lord called The King (Dustin Hoffman). Jake proposes that the grifters work for the King and steal money from Morgan Price (Robert Forster), a rival who owns a bank. Jake enlists the aid of his remaining partners, Gordo (Paul Giamatti) and Miles (Brian Van Holt), and also convinces an independent con artist named Lily (Rachel Weisz) to round out their foursome. The King, a ruthless killer who suffers from ADHD, demands that one of his men, Lupus (Franky G), also come along. The con involves bribing a bank vice president into wiring money offshore. The plan hits a snag when Special Agent Gunther Butan (Andy García) shows up in L.A., looking to finally bust Jake, whom he has followed for years. Butan forces corrupt LAPD detectives Omar Manzano (Luis Guzmán) and Lloyd Whitworth (Donal Logue) to switch their allegiance from Jake to him. After hearing about Butan's arrival, a nervous Jake pulls the plug on the whole con. He screams at Lily, making her walk out. Lupus gets Jake to reconsider nixing the con, hinting that The King will torture and kill the grifters if the plan falls short. The con is back on, though now without Lily's help. The bribed bank VP wires the money to Gordo in Belize. Gordo brings it to Ontario Airport, where he is met by both Butan and The King's men, both sides after the $5 million in a duffel bag. Butan arrests The King and confiscates the money. Gordo disappears. Lupus, thinking the King has the money, reveals he was the one who killed Jake's grifter friend. Lupus holds Jake at gunpoint, but is shot by Travis (Morris Chestnut), a henchman for Morgan Price. It turns out that when Lily walked out, she went straight to Price himself and revealed the entire con, which was taking place that minute. Price told Travis to locate Jake and find out exactly how the con was engineered, to stop such a thing from ever happening again. Travis takes Jake to an abandoned lot and forces him to explain the entire story. A furious Lily takes out a gun and shoots Jake. Travis demands that he and Lily both disappear immediately. Minutes later, Butan arrives in a car and Jake sits up from a pool of blood, unharmed. The final parts of the con are revealed. Lily's "quitting" was faked—a set-up to confuse Lupus. Butan is actually an old confidant of Jake's. He managed to "confiscate" the money and arrest The King at the same time. Butan has the money and it's split five ways. Jake was wearing squibs to fake his own death in the lot. In the end, everyone was in on everything except for The King and Lupus (the first marks), Price and Travis (the second, bigger marks), and the two corrupt LAPD detectives, who have been arrested. The four grifters reunite and celebrate by driving off into the night. ===== A young woman awakens from a nightmare in a run down hotel. She leaves the lodging and wanders into the night. She encounters a dwarf hawking newspapers with the bold headline "Mysterious stabbing". She smiles enigmatically and quickly walks on. In a dark alley, a wino approaches and grabs her. A policeman rescues her and beats up the drunk as she leaves. Along her way, a pimp, with a pencil-thin mustache, and sharply dressed, approaches her, buys her a flower from a flower girl's basket, and cajoles her into escorting a porcine rich man in a chauffeured limousine. As they cruise the through the night, she thinks back to her tragic youth and her abusive father. She had stabbed him to death with a switchblade after he shot and killed her unfaithful mother. The rich man takes her to bars and nightclubs and finally to his elegant high-rise apartment. He first ignores her as he feasts on an extensive meal. She tempts him, and when he advances on her, she stabs him with her switchblade, pushing the dying man out of an upper story window. As he topples, he grabs the pendant around her neck, and it snaps off in his hand as he plummets. The crazed woman races out of the building onto the street and confronts the man's corpse. The dead man's hand still grasps her pendant in an iron grip, forcing her to saw it off with her knife. She flees while holding it, as she imagines faceless bystanders watching her impassively. Again, a patrol car appears. The same cop, with a strange frozen smile, tracks her with a spotlight as she runs; he appears to have her father's face. She ducks around a corner, hiding the severed hand in the flower girl's basket. As she runs down an alley, the pimp suddenly grabs her from inside a doorway and drags her into a club; an enthusiastic audience watches a jazz band playing. The smiling policeman enters, as the corpse of the rich man lies at the window pointing to his murderer with his bloody stump. The crowd moves forward, encircling her, laughing maniacally. She passes out, reawakening alone in her dingy hotel room. She goes to the mirror on the dresser and searches for clues. In the top drawer, she discovers her broken pendant, clutched in the fingers of a severed hand closed over it. ===== Gossamer and Bugs Bunny in Hair-Raising Hare. Animation by Basil Davidovich. One dark night, as the camera pans across a dark, empty forest, Bugs is heard singing a stanza of "Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart" (introduced in Hollywood Canteen). When the camera zooms in on Bugs' rabbit hole, he pokes up, dressed in a nightshirt and holding a candle, and tells the audience that he feels he is being watched ("Eh, I don't know but, did you ever have the feeling you was being watched?") In fact, he is being watched via remote TV by an evil scientist (a caricature of actor Peter Lorre;Greenberg (2004), p. 130Youngkin (2005), p. 214 like Bugs, he is played by Mel Blanc), who is planning to catch a rabbit to provide dinner for his large, hairy, orange, sneaker-wearing monster. The scientist lures Bugs to his castle via a shapely robotic female rabbit, complete with a large wind-up key in the back, and accompanied by Oh, You Beautiful Doll in the cartoon's underscore. Once Bugs gets to the castle (labeled "evil scientist" in neon lights) the evil scientist locks the door behind him. Bugs turns to him and says, "You don't need to lock that door, mac. I don't wanna leave." He proceeds to kiss the mechanical rabbit's hand, when suddenly the robot short- circuits and breaks into pieces. Bugs comments "That's the trouble with some dames... kiss 'em and they fly apart!" Nonchalantly shrugging off this odd encounter, Bugs heads for the door, but the scientist stops and persuades him to stay, saying that he's got "another little friend who'd like to eat - uh, meet you [Bugs]." When it becomes clear that this "friend" is a ferocious beast, Bugs sizes up the situation, vigorously shakes the scientist's hand goodbye and launches into a schtick where he packs luggage for a vacation trip, accompanied by a very brassy rendition of California, Here I Come. He tells the scientist, "And don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven...'cause it hasn't." He then bolts for the door. The scientist then releases the monster. The rest of the cartoon is an extended chase between Bugs and the creature, with gags aplenty. At one point, as Bugs is behind a door and the monster is trying to break through, Bugs desperately cries for a doctor ("Is there a doctor in the house?") A silhouette from the theater audience stands up and offers, "I'm a doctor." Bugs suddenly relaxes, grins, starts munching a carrot, and asks, "What's up, Doc?", just before the monster breaks through and the chase resumes. Bugs and the monster pass by a mirror. The creature steps back to look into the mirror, whereupon his reflection comes to life, screams in horror and runs away toward the door. Albeit confused, he turns to the audience, shrugs, then takes off after Bugs. Bugs rushes up a staircase, but suddenly comes rushing back down, running into the monster and knocking him down. Bugs says not to go 'up there' because it's dark (similar to a gag from The Wabbit Who Came to Supper). Bugs disguises himself as a lamp, then, after the monster 'turns on' the bulbs in Bugs' ears, the rabbit dances away to the tune of Shuffle Off To Buffalo. From one end of a hallway, Bugs taunts the monster by calling him "Frankenstein!". The two keep running until a trapdoor on the floor opens, forcing Bugs to halt. While Bugs is tiptoeing backwards and praying, he bumps into the creature. He comes up with the idea to give him a manicure. He produces a table and a chair and starts working on the nails while he talks and acts like a female manicurist ("Oh, for shame! Just look at those fingernails! My, I'll bet you monsters lead in-teresting lives. I said to my girl friend just the other day, 'Gee, I'll bet monsters are in-teresting.' I said. The places you must go and the things you must see -- my stars! I bet you meet lots of in-teresting people too. I'm always in-terested in meeting in-teresting people. Now let's dip our patties in the water!") He puts the monster's fingers into a bowl of water, but it contains two mousetraps, which snap and catch his fingers, causing him to yelp in pain and shed some tears. Bugs thinks he has escaped three times. The first time, the monster is hiding in a hole in the wall behind a painting. It seems that Bugs is not aware of the portrait's eyes following him, but then he plays a surprise prank by poking the portrait, and therefore the monster, in the eyes. The creature comes out from behind the wall, and while building up some speed to chase Bugs, realizes that the rabbit is likely hiding behind a painting he passes. He is about to play exactly the same eye-poking prank on Bugs, but right when he is about to carry it out, Bugs jumps the gun, pokes the monster in the eyes and disappears from the painting. As the creature jumps through the portrait and back behind the wall, Bugs jumps out. This second time Bugs feels his escape is successful, the monster is actually following Bugs behind the wall. Bugs can hear footsteps copying his own in the hallway. After a short series of deliberate footstep games, Bugs marks the wall where he knows the creature is, and smashes the mark with a giant mallet. The monster's shape appears on the wall, the segment of wall falls and the barely conscious monster does the same. Now, this third time he is sure he is free, Bugs plans to leave through the front door. But, he spots the creature in knight's armor, holding an axe above his head. Bugs heads off and reappears inside a locomotive-style jousting knight and, with his lance, smashes the monster into a wall. He becomes "Canned Monster". However, as Bugs saunters off toward the exit, singing to himself, the monster (who is now stretched out on the floor) gets the rabbit in his clutches. Bugs repeats his opening line ("Did you ever have the feeling you were being watched?") and the monster's expression changes from anger to anxiety. Bugs points to the audience and the creature, despite having already acknowledged the audience earlier, shrieks "PEOPLE!" and runs away screaming, breaking through a series of walls, leaving his cartoon silhouette in all of them. Having "re-re-disposed of the monster", Bugs is about to "exit stage right" (although this time, he is actually going stage left), when the female robo-rabbit re-appears, intact, and again accompanied by Oh, You Beautiful Doll. Bugs snickers, "Mechanical!," but then the robot smooches him on the cheek, leaving a lipstick mark on the smitten rabbit ("Well, so it's mechanical!") He assumes a robot-like gait (with his tail magically rotating like the robot's wind-up key) and follows her off the screen. ===== Charlie has a crowd around him as he uses a stick in his mouth to turn pages over on a flip board. Each page dramatically builds on the theme that there is something these people should have in their home. When the last page reveals that the to-be-desired item is Charlie, the people who have been watching walk away in disgust. Charlie then stows away in a pet shop truck which makes a delivery to Porky's hotel room. Porky ordered a canary, but when he removes the cage covering it is Charlie, crammed into the cage. Porky proceeds to dial the pet store to complain ("I ordered a canary, not a monster!") He discovers he is actually talking to Charlie, who has pulled the telephone wire from the wall and is speaking through it. Porky throws the dog out several times but each time Charlie returns to demonstrate how wonderful he would be to have around. He even pretends to be a baby left in a basket outside the door. Porky leads Charlie on for a minute, then kicks the entire basket down the hall. Disguised as an old lady, Charlie hits Porky with an umbrella while berating him for being a brute to an innocent baby. Porky ends up being chased out of the room; he knocks angrily until Charlie opens the door. At this point, Porky demands the dog get out once and for all. Charlie conducts a fake suicide by jumping from the window onto an unlikely stack of mattresses piled up from the street. Porky slams the window and closes the curtains. Porky initially believes the next knock on his door is Charlie, but it is his lunch, and he prepares to dig in. When he lifts the warming lid, Charlie is trussed up on the plate. Porky is holding a knife and the dog puts on an over-the-top performance begging Porky not to use it on him. He promises to do several chores if he is allowed to stay. Porky appears to give in. Pretending to be pinning a paper pattern for the coat onto Charlie, Porky succeeds in wrapping the dog up for mailing, and sticks a label on him reading, To Siberia. In spite of being stuffed into a mailbox, Charlie returns wearing traditional clothing and, while doing the Cossack dance, kicks Porky in the rear end until he ejects him into the hall. The upstairs neighbor phones threatening to come down to stop the noise. Charlie responds by counter-threatening the man. He tricks Porky into going upstairs, and the man beats him up. The man then drops off the injured Porky, who finally submits to making Charlie his pet. However, Charlie decides otherwise, saying that he thinks Porky's place is too noisy. As Charlie starts to leave, Porky approaches him, laughing maniacally and with an evil look in his eyes showing that he has finally snapped. The screen fades to black, then the cartoon returns with a scene similar to an earlier one, but with the roles of dog and master reversed. Charlie tries to sneak away but Porky's growls force him back into the chair. ===== While riding the bus to school, Milhouse shows Bart his new fortune-telling toy, a Magic 8 ball. Bart asks the ball whether he and Milhouse will still be friends by the end of the day; the ball predicts they will not. A new girl from Phoenix, Samantha Stanky, arrives at Springfield Elementary School the same day, and Milhouse instantly falls in love with her. To Bart's dismay, Milhouse and Samantha start a relationship. Rather than playing with Bart alone after school, Milhouse brings Samantha to the treehouse and spends the entire time hugging and kissing her. They ignore Bart, leaving him in tears. Milhouse and Samantha spend all their free time together. Feeling jealous and excluded, Bart reveals their relationship to Samantha's father. As punishment, Mr. Stanky sends Samantha to Saint Sebastian's School for Wicked Girls, a convent school run by French-Canadian nuns. After seeing Milhouse heartbroken, Bart begins to feel guilty for his actions. Bart and Milhouse pummel each other after Bart reveals that he snitched to Samantha's father. After calming down, the boys visit Samantha at the convent school, where Bart apologizes to her. Samantha says she loves Saint Sebastian's but still has feelings for Milhouse. She gives him a goodbye kiss despite knowing, if caught, her punishment will be fifty Rosaries. In the subplot, Lisa worries that Homer's obesity will lead to his early death. On Lisa's suggestion, Marge orders a subliminal weight loss tape for Homer. The company is out of weight loss tapes and sends him a vocabulary-enhancer tape instead, unbeknownst to Marge and the family. Homer falls asleep while listening to the tape. When he wakes up, he is suddenly articulate, but ends up eating more food than ever. Once he realizes the tape makes him gain rather than lose weight, Homer discards it and his vocabulary quickly returns to normal. ===== Robert Cole (Albert Brooks) is a Hollywood film editor right in the middle of cutting a new science fiction film featuring George Kennedy. His relationship with very patient bank executive Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold) is caught between undying devotion and endless agony. It's all because selfish Robert is a bit of a self-involved neurotic who can't quite decide if their relationship is meant to be, mainly because he's not sure if she's the one or there's someone else. Robert breaks off their relationship only to find that modern romance isn't as easy as it seems, and the people you love might be the ones you constantly hurt the most. He and Mary end up driving to a cabin in Idyllwild, California, where intense jealousy causes Robert to alternately accuse and annoy Mary and propose marriage to her. ===== An expatriate American doctor in London allows herself to lighten up when her freewheeling younger sister and a mysterious man enter her life. Her inhibitions released, the beautiful doctor learns that freedom has its own price. ===== The village has several characters, most notable of who is Vaidyaji — the big daddy of the village. He is assisted by his sons Badri Pehelwaan (or in English, Badri the Wrestler) and Ruppan Babu. A few more notable characters are the teachers at the village school, and the principal (whose characteristic trait is to burst into Awadhi, his native tongue, whenever he is very angry or excited). The story does not have a fixed plot – it is merely a series of anecdotes. It also does not have a hero or protagonist. Vaidyaji's nephew, named Ranganath, visits Shivpalganj after completing his M.A. in History. His health has been failing, and the doctors have advised a visit to the countryside for him to gather his strength. It is funny how Vaidyaji (which means "healer") heals the young boy's mind in more ways than one. After his masters, Ranganath, who is a big believer in high ideals and "poetic justice", comes face to face with the hypocrisy and the meanness of the village gang. The very first incident highlights his innocence and blind faith. In order to travel to his uncle's place, Ranganath boards a truck. The driver is a rash fellow, who drives carelessly without regard for the pedestrians. After witnessing him nearly run over a few cows and sleeping shepherds, the young man is finally elated when a few police officials pull the bus over. From a distance, Ranganath watches them question the driver. Although they are trying to extort money out of the driver, it appears to Ranganath that the driver is being punished for his foul deeds. There are several such incidents, one after the other, that shatter Ranganath's high ideals and faith in justice. He is a mere spectator of the system – unable to make a mark or stand up for himself. ===== The series takes place behind the scenes of a live sketch comedy show (also called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or Studio 60) on the fictional television network NBS (National Broadcasting System), whose format is similar to that of NBC's Saturday Night Live. National Broadcasting System is owned by the TMG Corporation. The show-within-a-show is run by executive producers Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford). Matt serves as the head writer and Danny produces the show. ===== The play is set in the upper class German-Jewish community living in Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939. Hitler has recently conquered Poland, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere, and Adolph Freitag (owner of the Dixie Bedding Company), his sister Boo, and sister-in-law Reba, along with nieces Lala and Sunny – a Jewish family so highly assimilated they have a Christmas tree in the front parlor – are looking forward to Ballyhoo, a lavish cotillion ball sponsored by their restrictive country club. Adolph's employee Joe Farkas is an attractive eligible bachelor and an Eastern Europe Jew, familiar with prejudice but unable to fathom its existence within his own religious community. His presence prompts college student Sunny to examine intra-ethnic bias, her Jewish identity (or lack thereof), and the beliefs with which she has been raised. ===== Hoops McCann, a recent high school graduate, fails to get a basketball scholarship, disappointing his parents. He hopes to be admitted to the Rhode Island School of Design, and must write and illustrate a love story for his application. He joins his friends, siblings George and Squid Calamari, to spend the summer on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. En route, they pick up a young rock singer named Cassandra Eldridge, who is pursued by a motorcycle gang at the time. Once on the island, Hoops and George, along with twin brothers Egg and Clay Stork and outcast Ack-Ack Raymond, must help Cassandra save her grandfather's house from the greedy Beckersted Family (led by the callous Aguilla). Along the way, Hoops must find a way to write his cartoon love story. Hoops runs afoul of Teddy Beckersted and his neglected girlfriend, Cookie. She secretly offers Hoops a date, and he is persuaded to go out with her even though he had promised to appear at Cassandra's first musical performance (which turns out to be sparsely attended). Hoops and Cookie go to a drive-in that night, where Teddy's friend Ty sees them and notifies Teddy. Meanwhile, Egg gets stuck in a Godzilla costume and causes havoc at Beckersted's promotional party for the Beckersted Estates (which would be located at the spot of Cassandra's grandfather's house). Hoops, George, Egg and Ack-Ack run into Teddy and his friends. As he threatens them, Cassandra appears and offers an impromptu basketball challenge between him and Hoops; Teddy dominates and Hoops fails. After spraying Teddy and his friends with mace, Cassandra is upset that Hoops did not appear for her performance and lied that he was a good basketball player. In an effort to make up with her, Hoops and his friends promote her next performance, which turns out to be a big success, and Cassandra forgives him. However, Aguilla immediately forecloses the house before it can be saved. Ack-Ack proposes they take part in the local regatta, despite Hoops' fear of the water. Nevertheless, they find and renovate an old boat to use. The regatta starts with the teams using paddles, then sails. Teddy's team recklessly injures a member of one team and Ack-Ack jumps into the water to save him. Aguilla, having stowed away on Teddy's boat, sabotages Hoops' sail with his crossbow. To repair the mast, Hoops successfully shoots the new guy line into the mast and they continue onward. Before Aguilla could shoot the mast again, he is thrown overboard by Squid operating a mechanical dolphin from a nearby movie set, as retaliation for when he kicked her beloved dog earlier. When the teams use the motors, Hoops and his team win after using Teddy's car engine as their motor. Hoops and his friends celebrate the victory—they are awarded the prize, Squid's dog turns out okay (after giving birth to puppies), George hooks up with Cookie, and Ack-Ack wins his stern father’s approval for his heroics. Despite winning, Hoops offers the prize to Teddy if he spares Cassandra's house, but Teddy immediately backs out on his promise. However, Old Man Beckersted (father of Aguilla and grandfather of Teddy) gives back the prize and spares Cassandra's house, stating he wasn't going to "put a dime" in the Beckersted Estates; he then drags Teddy away by his ear. With the prize returned and the house spared, Hoops and Cassandra kiss, and she inspires a love story for his application. In the final scene, George's uncle Frank finally wins a $1 million prize from a radio contest (having been driven insane every summer for trying to win), but his phone gets disconnected and his prize is given away to someone else; he snaps and promptly uses a rocket launcher to blow up the radio station, and shortly thereafter the Stork twins arrive and head to the still-burning station to roast marshmallows. ===== The film begins in the early 18th century with Rob Roy leading his McGregor clansmen against King George I's forces commanded by the Scottish Duke of Argyll. While determined to establish order in the Highlands, Argyll is sympathetic to "the bonny blue bonnets" whom he is fighting, even refusing to unleash German mercenaries against them. A final charge by royal dragoons scatters the clansmen but honour appears satisfied and Rob Roy returns to his village to wed his beloved Helen. The wedding celebrations are interrupted by fencibles – the private army of the Duke of Montrose who has been appointed as the King's Secretary of State for Scotland and who lacks Argyll's regard for the highlanders. All clans involved in the Jacobite rising of 1715 are pardoned except for the McGregors. Rob Roy is arrested and the Clan McGregor is deprived of the right to use its name. Rob Roy escapes, leaping a waterfall and subsequently leads McGregor opposition to the increasingly repressive regime imposed by Montrose through his agent Killearn. During a skirmish with the fencibles McGregor's mother is killed. A fort is stormed by the clan and its garrison of royal soldiers taken prisoner. The Duke of Argyll goes to King George to plead the case for leniency for the Clan McGregor, who have been forced into rebellion. Montrose urges repression. At this crucial point Rob Roy appears at the royal court, heralded by a piper. Rob Roy's self-evident qualities quickly convince the king to pardon him and his clan. After an exchange of compliments: "Rob Roy – you are a great rogue"; "and you sire are a great king", the McGregor returns to his people and his wife. ===== Yelena (Mariya Strelkova), a well-off would-be singer who can't carry a tune, mistakes shepherd Kostya Potekhin (Leonid Utyosov) for a famous Italian conductor of a jazz orchestra and invites him to an elegant party held in her house. He plays his pan flute, which attracts the herd of animals from his kolkhoz to the dining tables. Yelena's servant Anyuta (Lyubov Orlova) falls for Kostya. But Kostya is attracted to Yelena, and when she turns him down following the discovery of his real identity, he is very upset. He leaves for the city to try himself as a professional musician and finds himself in many comical situations. Eventually he joins a jazz band consisting of young "jolly fellows". Kostya becomes a head of the band and it turns to be quite a challenge – not only is he supposed to manage the creative work and performances but he must also control his quick-tempered bandmates, whose fiery arguments sometimes turn rehearsals into a brawl that results in the band being turned out of the house by their landlord. Because of this the band is urged to rehearse before a forthcoming performance right in the street and even play at funerals for more practice. On a rainy evening Kostya and his band mates accidentally meet Anyuta on their way to a concert hall and take her with them. She is revealed to be an excellent singer, so she joins the band and they start to perform together successfully. ===== Bates Motel ignores the existence of Psycho II and III (and would in turn be ignored by Psycho IV), with Norman Bates never being released from the mental institution to allow the events of those films. Alex West (Bud Cort) is a mentally disturbed youth who was admitted to the asylum nearly twenty years ago for killing his abusive stepfather. He became close friends with Norman Bates (Kurt Paul) at the asylum. Years later, Norman dies and Alex learns that he has inherited the Bates Motel. He travels to Norman's California hometown (renamed Fairville for this film; in the original film it was Fairvale) and with a little help from teenage runaway Willie (Lori Petty) and local handyman Henry Watson (Moses Gunn), Alex struggles to re-open the motel for business. Alex gets a loan to renovate the motel, but the project is plagued with rumors about the place being haunted by the ghost of Norman's mother, Mrs. Bates, and the discovery of her remains, as well as those of her late husband, buried on the grounds of the motel. When recovering the remains of Mrs. Bates, the sheriff said that the body "was never found," which seems to conflict with the original Psycho, where Mrs. Bates' corpse is present in the basement where Norman is finally captured by Sam Loomis. While renovating the motel, Alex sees Mrs. Bates in her bedroom window, and sees the corpse of her late husband from the same window, supporting the idea that the property is haunted. After Alex tells her that he owes his first loan payment of $10,000 the day after the motel opens, Willie becomes suspicious and eventually they find that the haunting was a prank and the ghost was the bank manager, Tom Fuller (Gregg Henry). Fuller had approved a loan with predatory terms with Alex and was trying to sabotage the motel by trying to scare him away. Tom is then forced to help Alex and the others by negotiating friendlier payment terms for the loan or face prison for fraud. The motel was soon finished with the renovation. Meanwhile, not all ghost stories turn out to be hoaxes as Barbara Peters (Kerrie Keane) books a room in Alex's motel for the night, planning suicide because she was getting older, and had been through three divorces without children. Barbara meets a teenage girl (Khrystyne Haje), who invites Barbara to dance at an after prom party in the motel with her and her teenage friends, including Tony Scotti (Jason Bateman), though Barbara felt uncomfortable hanging with young kids. It is then revealed that Barbara's real name is Sally, and that the teenage girl who took her own life 25 years ago is a ghost along with Tony, and other teens who also committed suicide. She tells Barbara that she has a life worth living for, then leaves with the rest of the group. Barbara leaves the motel the next day, planning to live her life to the fullest. Alex looks at the screen telling viewers, "If you ever need a room, come by. I can't say for sure what you'll find, but it is what makes the world go around." ===== In 1969, Henry Brubaker arrives at Wakefield State Prison in Arkansas disguised as an inmate. He immediately witnesses rampant abuse and corruption, including open and endemic sexual assault, torture, worm-ridden diseased food, fraud, and rampant graft. During a dramatic standoff involving Walter, a deranged prisoner who was being held in solitary confinement, Brubaker reveals himself to be the new prison warden, to the amazement of both prisoners and officials alike. Brubaker attempts to reform the prison, with an eye towards prisoner rehabilitation and human rights, clashing frequently with corrupt officials on the state prison board who have profited from graft for decades. He recruits several longtime prisoners, including trustys Larry Lee Bullen, Richard "Dickie" Coombes, and former warden's clerk Purcell (who secretly remains loyal to the unscrupulous trustys) to assist him with the reform. Lillian Gray, a public relations specialist for the governor's office, also attempts to influence Brubaker to reform the prison in a way that will cast the governor in a positive light. To improve the prison, Brubaker fires his crooked bookkeeper, who built up a stash of illicit food ostensibly for inmates but actually sold to generate profit, tosses the former prison doctor out of the facility when he learns inmates were being charged for medical treatment, and burns down an illicit pleasure shack on prison grounds where influential trusty Huey Rauch and his girlfriend Carol lived. After a faulty roof cave-in in the prison barracks, Brubaker meets with C.P. Woodward, a lumber salesman and longtime participant in the prison graft scheme. Accusing Woodward of using prisoners as slave labor and purposely pocketing contract money while intentionally building a shoddy, uninsured roof, Brubaker terminates Woodward's contract. He also oversees the formation of an inmate council, allowing the inmates to govern themselves. During the first meeting of the inmate council, Abraham Cook, an elderly black inmate still imprisoned three years after the end of his sentence, pulls Brubaker aside and confesses that he was instructed to construct coffins for murdered prisoners. Eddie Caldwell, a sadistic trustee, takes notice, and he, Purcell, and Rauch lure Abraham to the medical ward, where he is tortured with a Tucker Telephone. Brubaker attends the prison board meeting, where he discovers that many of the members are enraged at the disruption of their graft schemes via his reforms and are uninterested at investing any money to improve the prison. Brubaker accuses prison board head John Deach of defrauding the prison through insurance policies on nonexistent farm equipment (while leaving the prison buildings uninsured) before storming out of the meeting. The morning after the prison board meeting, Brubaker awakes and discover's Abraham's body suspended from the warden's residence flagpole. While excavating the area Abraham disclosed to him, Brubaker discovers multiple unmarked graves which contain bodies of prisoners who died violently. Word reaches the governor's office, and Gray, alongside Edwards, a liberal member of the prison board, and corrupt State Senator Hite, attempt to convince Brubaker to stop excavating graves with the promise of funding for the prison, trying to convince him he has instead discovered an old pauper's graveyard. Brubaker refuses, and continues the excavations. Rauch rudely laments Abraham's confession, and Coombes, knowing Rauch's involvement in Abraham's death, threatens Rauch, who then escapes the prison and hides out at a local restaurant. Brubaker and several trustys pursue him, and in the resulting gunfight, Bullen and Rauch are killed. Due to the spillage of violence outside the prison walls, the board fires Brubaker and holds a hearing about the exhumed bodies where the board continues to lie about their origin. Brubaker walks in and makes a comment about saving taxpayer money by shooting prisoners rather than sending them to Wakefield, which enrages Deach. Brubaker leaves and Gray follows him, imploring him to compromise, but he refuses to compromise over murder. Brubaker exits the prison as the new warden, hardline disciplinarian Rory Poke, addresses the prisoners. Coombes approaches Brubaker and tells him simply, "You were right." Coombes begins clapping, and the convicts ignore Poke and approach the fence, clapping a farewell to a teary Brubaker. A pre-credits title card reads: ===== The story of a 10th anniversary high school reunion, told through the eyes of a doctor who was humiliated on graduation day by being badly beaten up by a fellow graduate. Set in downtown Chicago during one long evening and night, the film follows several characters as they attend a ten- year high school reunion organized by the smarmy Robert S. Levitt (David Schwimmer) who used to be the high school's class president. Among the many guests attending are Kevin MacEldowney (Philip Rayburn Smith), his wife Molly (Joy Gregory) and their friend Zane Levy (Joey Slotnick). Kevin is medical doctor who does not look forward to the reunion ever since he was humiliated on graduation day after being beaten up in a brawl by his rival Pat Prince (Tom Hodges) who is also attending the reunion. Zane is a composer who is trying to make a comeback after a song that he wrote was plagiarized by a national record label, something over which he remains bitter. Among the guests are Duncan Shepard (David Caitlin) and Clay Mellon (Thom Cox), two mismatched best friends who are having their own life problems. Duncan recently lost his business and tries to sugar-coat his life while he inadvertently helps out others with their own business problems. Clay is a manic depressive at a crossroads with his life while trying to connect with others to find his own life path. Electra Pollack (Laura Eason) and Holly Petuto (Heidi Stillman) are also best friends attending where the accident- prone Electra tries to find a man to hook up with in order to be her potential new husband, and Holly is book author and self-help therapist who constantly talks about surviving a recent plane crash where she emerged unscathed. Electra and Holly are friends with Maria Goldstein (Teri Hatcher) who has become a wealthy business entrepreneur but who finds her own success to be lonely as well. Grace Williams (Laura Flynn Boyle) is a demented practical joker who causes various mischief and mayhem at the reunion to anyone who slightly angers or annoys her, and who later hooks up with Clay after they bond over their similar life situations as both of whom hold a personal grudge against Robert Levitt. The film also features cameo appearances by various actors and actresses whom include Molly Ringwald as a book fan of Holly's; Liev Schreiber as Fred Neff, a solo dancing attendee; Jennifer Grey as Polly Reed, a prescription medication addict; Carlos Jacott as the reunion's bartender; Helen Martin as a rude old lady that Clay and Grace encounter; and Marisa Tomei as Tori, another reunion guest. ===== Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus King of Thebes, Greece, learns that her two brothers Polyneices and Eteocles have killed each other fighting on different sides of a war. Creon, Antigone's uncle and newly appointed King of Thebes, buries Eteocles, who fought on the Theban side of the war, hailing him as a great hero. He refuses to bury Polyneices, proclaiming that any who attempt to defy his wishes will be made an example of, on the grounds that he was a 'traitor' fighting on the opposing side in the war. The play opens with Antigone and her sister Ismene discussing what action to take in response to Creon's new law against the burial of their brother. Antigone is reactive, arguing that Creon is breaching Divine Law by denying burial to Polyneices. Despite Ismene's pleading, Antigone heads off alone to enact the burial rites both for her own glory and for the preservation of her brother's soul. Antigone is caught defying her uncle's orders, and is punished severely despite being engaged to Creon's son Haemon. She is sealed within a tomb and left to die. After a visit from the oracle Tiresias warning of the consequences, Creon eventually repents, but by then she has killed herself and is followed in death by Creon's own son and wife, both of whom commit suicide. Creon's isolation is complete and he ends the play a broken and lonely man. Central to the play are the conflicts between individual freedom and the imposition of restrictions by state, as well as the conflict between Divine Law and Civil Law. The play contains many digressions from the Greek original, Heaney adding Irish idiom and expanding the involvement of some characters such as the Guard. Relevant to the time of its writing, Heaney also adds in "Bushisms", referencing George W. Bush and his approach to leadership, drawing a parallel between him and the character of Creon. ===== Toomai (Sabu), a young boy growing up in India, longs to become a hunter. In the meantime, he helps his mahout (elephant driver) father with Kala Nag, a large elephant that has been in their family for four generations. Petersen (Walter Hudd) hires the father and Kala Nag, among others, for a large annual government roundup of wild elephants to be tamed and put to work. Amused by Toomai and learning that he has no one but his father to look after him, Petersen allows the boy to come too. Strangely, no elephants have been seen in the region in a while, so Petersen has staked his reputation on a guess that they will be found further north. However, six weeks of hunting prove fruitless. He is ready to give up, but his right-hand man, Machua Appa (Allan Jeayes), persuades him to keep hunting for another month. When the other hired natives learn of Toomai's ambition, they mock him, telling him that he will become a hunter only when he sees the elephants dance (a myth). One night, Toomai's father spots a tiger prowling near the camp and wakes Petersen. When the two go out to shoot the beast, Toomai's father is killed. Kala Nag's grief becomes so intense, he rampages through the camp, only stopping when Toomai calms him down. Petersen decides to assign cruel Rham Lahl (Bruce Gordon) to Kala Nag, as Toomai is too young for the job. When Rham Lahl beats the elephant, however, Kala Nag injures his tormenter. The mahout insists that Kala Nag be destroyed, as is the law. Petersen manages to get him to change his mind and accept 100 rupees instead by threatening to have him removed from the safety of the camp. Unaware of this reprieve, Toomai takes Kala Nag and runs away into the jungle. There, they stumble upon the missing wild elephants, and Toomai sees them dancing. He leads Petersen to them. The other natives are awed, and hail him as "Toomai of the Elephants". Machua Appa offers to train the boy to become a hunter, a plan Petersen approves of. ===== Phillips' storyline followed the relationship of Irish-American widow Mother Moynihan and her unmarried daughter. Listeners in 1931 heard this dialogue in episode 25: :(Kitchen: Irene and Sue arguing. Mrs. Moynihan preparing breakfast.) :IRENE: I tell you, Sue, it won’t work. I’ve never worn that shade of orchid in all my life. I’d look like a perfect washout. Besides, that’s your very best special occasion dress. I wouldn’t think of taking it. :SUE: Don’t be silly. A wedding is a special occasion, isn’t it? And as long as I won’t need to wear it, you might just as well. If you’re a bridesmaid, you’ve got to look the part, kid. :IRENE: But I don’t look good in that color. I’d look faded or something. :SUE: Cracked ice! You can’t tell. You’ve never had it on. Gee, with gold slippers and a gold turban hat, you’d be a wow! Wouldn’t she, Mrs. Moynihan? :MRS.: Won't you be wearing it, Sue? :SUE: Why no; there's no reasons for my dressing up. I'm not in the wedding party. And I think that it would be just right for Irene, if there were a few tucks taken in around the waist. Anyway, it would save her from buying a dress. :IRENE: Well, who says I don't want to buy a dress? It's about time I was getting a new formal, anyhow. I haven't got a rag that's fit to be seen.Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. (Wisconsin Historical Society: Irna Phillips Collection.) Phillips occasionally played the lead of Mother Moynihan, as did Bess Flynn, who was a member of the show's writing team. Flynn, born August 18, 1899 in Tama, Iowa, went on to script three other soap operas: We, the Abbotts, Bachelor's Children and Martha Webster (originally titled Life Begins). In addition to doing the title role on Martha Webster, she also portrayed the annoying maid Tilda on The Gumps. ===== The series begins as Paul Callan (Skeet Ulrich), an investigator of modern miracles for the Catholic Church at the Archdiocese of Boston, is feeling frustrated with disappointing groups of believers each time he investigates and disproves the authenticity of a supposed "miracle". Upon the advice of his mentor, Father "Poppi" Calero (Héctor Elizondo), Paul takes a sabbatical. Months later while doing humanitarian work in Arizona, Paul receives a phone call from Poppi asking him to investigate the case of a young boy with supposed healing powers in the nearby town of Cottonwood. Paul finally sees a true miracle when he sees that young Tommy Ferguson (Jacob Smith) can truly heal people, but every time Tommy heals someone, his own rare disease worsens. When Paul is involved in a near fatal car accident, Tommy uses his healing power for the last time and dies healing Paul, but not before both of them see Paul's blood form itself into the words "God is Now Here" on his broken windshield. His faith restored, Paul returns to the Church, only for the Monsignor to dismiss his report on a lack of proof. Paul resigns out of frustration and discovers that Poppi never called him about Tommy Ferguson's case. Later, Paul is approached at a diner by a man named Alva Keel (Angus Macfadyen), who offers him a job with his organization, Sodalitas Quaerito (Latin for "Brotherhood in search of truth"). Keel tells Paul that his encounter with "hemography" (blood forming itself into readable words) is part of a large, dark impending event; the same miracle has appeared to six other people in the past 25 years, only every other time the message appeared as "God is Nowhere". Paul teams up with Keel and Evelyn Santos (Marisa Ramirez), a former police officer, to investigate his paranormal experience and discover a solution to the impending darkness. ===== Junior prepares to meet his 3 Digimon: Kumamon, Guilmon, and Patamon (from left to right). Digimon World 3s environments are science fiction-themed and viewed from an isometric perspective. Junior, and his friends Ivy and Teddy, log into "Digimon Online", where Ivy renames herself "Kail". Soon after Junior arrives, the players are trapped in the game by an error in the system. MAGAMI's "Game Master" publicly assures the players that the situation is under control, and blames the incident on the hacker, Lucky Mouse. Junior proceeds with his adventure as normal and travels to the A.o.A. controlled West Sector, and after defeating the real leader, travels to a secret base of Lucky Mouse, who reveals himself to be Kail's long-lost brother and an agent working against the A.o.A., Kurt, who reveals that MAGAMI is a front for the A.o.A., but soon the A.o.A. arrive and threaten to turn Kail into Oinkmon, if Kurt doesn't give the Vemmon Digi-Egg to the A.o.A. This results in Kurt being turned into Oinkmon and the Vemmon Digi-Egg stolen. Junior leads an attack on the Admin Center, which results in the Game Master being defeated and interrogated. Junior uses a network break to transport himself to the Amaterasu Server, where he defeats two of the A.o.A.'s chiefs and learns more about their plans. He returns to Asuka, defeats the fourth leader, and uses an emergency teleport system to reach MAGASTA, but is unable to prevent the Juggernaut from being unleashed. The Juggernaut is then used by Vemmon to digivolve to Destromon, which also allows it to manifest in the real world- thus becoming a very real threat to humans. Junior returns to the Amaterasu Server to defeat the final two chiefs, and gains access to Amaterasu City. He leads a fresh attack on the Amaterasu Admin Center, leading to the MAGAMI President being defeated. Junior then uses the central computer to destroy Destromon, before returning to Asuka to ask Airdramon to help him in lifting the virus which is affecting most of the players by transforming them into Oinkmon. Before long, the Oinkmon virus returns and strikes most of the players, with only Junior and Kail surviving untouched. Vemmon had used the beam containing the Oinkmon virus and shot the beam through all servers. Junior then goes into the admin center, and in the Master Room, Junior is challenged by an entity calling himself Lord Megadeath. Junior then travels to a military satellite, Gunslinger, to challenge Lord Megadeath. Once close to the control room, Junior battles Armaggeddemon, and defeats it. He then reaches the control room, and battles Lord Megadeath. Lord Megadeath is defeated, but succeeds in his project of creating Snatchmon, by combining four Vemmon. Snatchmon absorbs Lord Megadeath, challenges the player, and merges with the Gunslinger to become Galacticmon- its ultimate goal being to merge with the Earth to become an unimaginably powerful Gaiamon. Junior defeats him, and Galacticmon's satellite body falls to Earth, burning up into a meteor shower in the atmosphere. Three months later, Junior returns to the Amaterasu Server, where, as is revealed in the PAL and Japanese versions of the game (i.e. in Digimon World 2003), four new Server Leaders have been established and Kurt is the new World Champion. ===== In 1911, a young Orthodox Jew named Solomon Levinsky lives with his Yiddish-speaking family in the South Wales Valleys. Solomon peddles fabrics door to door, but hides his ethnicity due to anti-Semitism. One day, Solomon meets a demure, young gentile woman named Gaenor Rees, who he instantly falls in love with. Solomon tells Gaenor his name is Sam Livingstone and that his family is English. Solomon makes Gaenor a red dress and has her try it on. Solomon is struck by how beautiful Gaenor looks and they share their first kiss. Gaenor's father, Idris, finds the red dress and demands to know who gave it to her. Gaenor introduces Solomon to her family, who are polite, but suspicious of his intentions. Knowing they will never accept him being with a gentile woman, Solomon hides his relationship with Gaenor from his family. Due to the burden of keeping the secret, Solomon begins to struggle with his faith and feels distant from his family. After they are intimate for the first time, Solomon guesses that Gaenor is not a virgin and she reveals she was once engaged to a man, who was severely injured in a mining accident. Gaenor wants to meet Solomon's family, but he claims that his mother is ill and his father is away. Gaenor's violent brother, Crad, invites Solomon for a drink with his friends and teases him about his profession. Before going to see Gaenor, Solomon always hides his tzitzit in a wall, but this time he is unable to find it. Gaenor becomes frustrated with Solomon's unwillingness to introduce her to his family and tells him she feels like she means nothing to him. One day in church, a fellow parishioner named Noah Jones accuses Gaenor of being pregnant after "fornicating with an outsider." When asked by the vicar to confirm or deny the accusation, Gaenor has to admit in front of the whole congregation that she is pregnant. The Rees family is then expelled from the church. Idris tells Gaenor she has to get married or she cannot keep the baby. Solomon comes to see Gaenor, but her sister, Bronwen, tells him that Gaenor does not want to see him. Solomon hides out near Gaenor's home to get a chance to speak to her, but is beaten up by Crad and his friends, who tell him to never come back. Solomon finally gets to talk to Gaenor and is stunned when he finds out she is pregnant, but Gaenor declares that it is not his business. Solomon finds out his brother, Benjamin, took his tzitzit and when Benjamin asks him if he does not want to be a Jew anymore, Solomon explains that the prayers make everything seem so simple when they are not. Gaenor tracks down Solomon and confronts him about lying to her about who he is. Solomon explains that his family will not accept her and he would be cast out for being with her. Solomon also admits that even he has struggled to accept her. Gaenor tells him that her family has arranged for her to stay with extended family elsewhere and the baby will be taken away. Gaenor and Solomon begin to see each other again in secret and plan to run away together. Anti- Semitic feelings rise in the valley due to many people's financial struggles. Crad and his friends plan to ransack the shop owned by the Levinsky family. The family decides to hide elsewhere when they get wind of the plan. That same night, Solomon and Gaenor plan to run away. Solomon sneaks out and is devastated to see his family's business being destroyed. Solomon's father, Isaac, catches up with him and tells him that if he leaves with Gaenor, he will be dead to the family. Solomon reluctantly returns to his family, who have lost everything after the ransacking. Solomon leaves for Cardiff to work for his uncle to help his family get back on their feet. He writes letters to Gaenor, but they are disposed of by Crad. Gaenor asks Isaac and Solomon's mother, Rezl, where Solomon is, but they decline to tell her. She reminds them she is carrying their grandchild, but they reject the child. Gaenor is sent away to have the baby. Solomon learns from his mother that Gaenor has gone and returns to the valley. He finds Crad, who brutally beats him and refuses to tell him Gaenor's location. Solomon violently attacks Crad and repeatedly demands to know where Gaenor is. Crad tells him Gaenor's location and he sets off to reunite with her. Solomon treks through the harsh winter to find Gaenor, who is staying with her aunt. When Solomon finally arrives at the home, he is severely ill. Gaenor nurses Solomon, but it is clear it is too late to save him. As Solomon lies dying, he and Gaenor declare their love for each other and Gaenor climbs into bed with him. She awakens the next morning to see that Solomon has died and cries out in grief. Shortly after, Gaenor gives birth to their baby. Along with her father, Gaenor takes Solomon's casket to be buried. They pass by Crad, who climbs on the cart carrying the casket. ===== The film flashes back and forth between the 1970s and 1980s and centers on the relationship between Fielding Pierce, a young Coast Guard officer with political ambitions, and idealistic Roman Catholic Sarah Williams, who is drawn to programs designed to better the lives of the underprivileged and has mixed feelings about his career goals. In the opening scene, Fielding sees a television news program reporting Sarah's death in a Minneapolis car bombing following a church-organized excursion to Chile to feed the poor and organize resistance to the oppressive Pinochet dictatorship. He never quite recovers from the news, and he finds himself increasingly haunted by the past, in which the couple were as romantically close as they were politically apart, divided by his desire to work within the system and her conviction that the system is the root of all evil. His obsession with Sarah slowly puts his career, forthcoming marriage, and sanity in jeopardy. The question of whether or not Sarah actually was killed remains unresolved as Fielding's sister Caroline reports having seen her on the street some years later and Fielding himself supposedly meets her after being elected to the United States Congress, only to wonder afterwards if she merely was a hallucination. ===== Lieutenant Jordan, U.S. Coast Guard, responds to a number of pleas for help from civilian pleasure boat sailors around Southern California's Balboa Island. This type of event is typical of what the Coast Guard deals with on a regular basis, and is one of the reasons why Jordan has requested to transfer to a new station. He is handing over the reins to Ensign Tom Garland, a polite but remarkably clumsy fellow who will now report to Commander Taylor, a man who fought in World War II with Garland's father and holds him in high regard. Through a series of events, Garland's ineptitude as the station's new skipper is revealed. He repeatedly flounders in tending to the various minor issues plaguing the crowded waters' impatient travelers. It also does not take long for him to fall for Kate Fairchild, a "girl next door" who runs a local boat rental and sailing school spot on the coast. Meanwhile, three jewel thieves are making their way to Mexico while listening to reports of their pursuit. There's ringleader Harry Simmons, who poses as a yacht club "commodore" and dispatches orders to his two associates, Charlie, and Max. This trio has managed to steal a jewel collection, and they intend to smuggle them inside an assortment of casually hollowed food. They decide to rent a boat from Kate to make their way south of the border, although none of the three know how to sail. With Kate's suggestion that the crooks' suspicious behavior might indicate criminality, she and Tom begin to suspect that they are indeed the three men reported about in a newspaper article. Tom is right about the suspects, but Commander Taylor initially does not believe it. Ultimately, Tom is able to convince Taylor to retrieve the stolen jewels, and ensure that the jewel thieves are arrested. ===== Myra Breckinridge, the transsexual who terrorized Hollywood with dildo-rape and lesbianism, has transformed back into her former self, the literally and figuratively castrated Myron. One night, while watching the movie "Siren of Babylon" on the late show, he/she is transported to the set of the 1948 film through the television. It's Myra's dream come true, and Myron's nightmare. As Myron tries to adapt to life inside an endlessly repeating B-movie, Myra slowly starts creeping her way back into Myron's head, making a connection with a gay member of the community to obtain dresses and wigs. Her lapses back into Myron's personality are strongly encouraged by a character slyly based on Norman Mailer (though at one point he drunkenly hits on Myra), while most of the others on the set seem to prefer Myra to Myron. She attempts to castrate a crew member, then tries to castrate herself and partially succeeds in acquiring silicone implants. While Myron desperately searches for a way off the set (running into Richard Nixon along the way, who is considering taking up residence in "Siren of Babylon" in order to escape the Watergate hearings), Myra wants to stay permanently. Eventually, Myra/Myron trades places with Maria Montez, the star of the film. Myra is ecstatic and Myron disappears entirely from the narrative for a time. But when Montez, inhabited by Myra, coincidentally meets the 1948 Myron (who at this point is a child, possessed by the soul of a perplexed Maria Montez) their respective personalities are restored to their original bodies, returning Myron at once to his living room in 1970's California. However, the changes wrought by Myra's running amok on the set of "Siren of Babylon" continue to influence the present, and the book ends with a former cowboy actor in the film, now a transsexual, being elected Republican governor of Arizona. ===== Zora Banks (Sanaa Lathan) moves from Manhattan to her newly renovated brownstone in Brooklyn. Franklin (Wesley Snipes) is polishing the floors in what will be her new apartment. He informs her that she cannot move in yet due to her wood grain floors not being dry. An upset Zora threatens to fire one of the moving men, who proceed to leave her furniture and boxes on the sidewalk. Desperate, she asks Franklin to help her move her things. After moving her in, they begin to talk and she accepts his offer to help her unpack and get settled in. Later while Zora is walking home, she finds Franklin waiting for her on the stoop and chastises him for coming by without warning. Franklin says he was waiting for her because he wanted to see her. Zora invites Franklin inside. They cannot hide their mutual attraction and proceed to have sex. Later, the couple talk of their dreams and aspirations; Zora wants to become a singer and Franklin wants to get his contracting business off the ground. Both confess that they were putting off love until they got themselves together. Franklin then tells Zora that he is not a wealthy man. Zora reassures him, stating that she is not looking for a rich man. The two spend a lot of time together eating home cooked meals, playing Scrabble, and watching television. While getting a drink with his friend Jimmy (Clark Johnson), Franklin expresses that he likes Zora because she listens and they talk more than have sex. Jimmy then repays a loan that Franklin had made him. Franklin uses part of the money to get Zora's piano out of layaway. Zora then auditions for up-and-coming producer Reggie Baptiste (Q-Tip), and gets cut a deal to do a six-song demo with him. Franklin confesses to Zora that he dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade, never earning a GED. He also tells her that although separated for the last four years, he is still married with two sons. Zora does not take the news well and Franklin accuses her of caring more about "degrees and dollars" than their relationship. The next day, Zora finds Franklin at work and admits that she would not have gotten involved with him had she known the truth about him earlier. She then confides that she loves him and asks him to move in with her, expressing the desire to meet his children. In return, he tells her he loves her and promises that as soon as he gets the money he will get the divorce. Zora meets Franklin's sons, Marcus (Dequan Henderson) and Tyree (Fernando Phifer Cameron), and while the younger Tyree warms up to Zora quickly after she teaches him some notes on her piano, Marcus is not so welcoming to her. Despite all the obstacles, the couple continue to fall deeper in love, but things come to a head when Zora suffers an epileptic seizure while sleeping. The next morning when confronted by Franklin on why he never knew of her condition, she says she did not want to scare him off. Franklin reassures her that it will take more than that to get him to walk away. A while later, Zora gets pregnant. She wants an abortion since she does not think the time is right. But Franklin convinces her to keep the baby, and nine months later she gives birth to a boy named Jeremiah. After the birth of the baby, times get really hard for Zora and Frankie. He is out of work again and because of this he drinks and forgets to pick up the baby from daycare, this causes Zora to leave work to pick up the baby and miss her recording session with Reg. Reg is unhappy about this so she loses her demo deal. One night Zora and Frankie get in a heated argument and they break up. A heart broken Frankie drinks and plays sad records while Zora sleeps in the other room. Frankie then goes to the room and tries to have makeup sex with Zora, she pushes him away and says "I'm leaving and when I come back tomorrow I want you out of my house". While she is away a distraught and angry Frankie vandalizes their once home together with a hammer and leaves. About seven months go by and Franklin goes to Zora's house. He says he wants to see his son. She lets him in and Frankie holds his son and puts him to bed. The ex- couple then converse about what has been going on. Frankie tells Zora that he is taking his contractor test the next day and that he got his GED. Zora tells him that she writes songs and that one of them is on the radio. While walking out the door Frankie talks about their love and how it was real no matter what the timing was. He leaves and she follows him and says "I never got to beat you in Scrabble". He smiles, goes back upstairs and they play Scrabble. ===== Goofy and his friend Wilbur, a tame grasshopper, team up for a fishing expedition. Goofy decides to use Wilbur as bait, but has second thoughts when he realizes too late, that his friend might actually get eaten by a fish. Goofy has a row boat and a net, but no fishing rod. Wilbur, being a live bug, becomes the perfect choice for bait inside the net, which will lure fish when the boat approaches. Wilbur's life depends on the hapless and incompetent Goofy to save the little bug, who becomes the bait for a half- dozen fish. As Wilbur gets tricked again and again, he is even swallowed by a frog; then that frog gets eaten by a stork, all while Goofy desperately attempts a chasing rescue. In the end Wilbur hatches out of the stork egg, and to Goofy's relief, seems okay. It is not explained how Wilbur ended up in the egg of the stork. One dedicated blog writer comments; "I wonder if Goofy has had a psychotic break at the end of the cartoon, and the reappearance of Wilbur is simply a delusion". ===== ===== Set in the suburbs of Seattle during the mid 1970s, the story follows a group of teenagers who contract a mysterious sexually transmitted disease referred to as "the Bug," which causes them to develop bizarre unique physical mutations and subsequently become social outcasts, many of them running away from home to live in the nearby woodland. The plot focuses on two central characters who often narrate the story, Chris - a popular and respected female student, and Keith, a stoner who seems to experience anxiety. The viewpoint changes between (and sometimes within) issues. When the characters are introduced, Keith has a crush on Chris, who is kind to Keith but does not reciprocate his feelings. At a party, Chris quickly becomes infatuated with popular student Rob Fancicani. The two leave the party and have sex, Chris unaware that Rob that carries the Bug. Once Chris realizes she has been infected, she and Rob do not speak for some time. Keith and Chris share a moment at another party where Keith bandages Chris' cut foot, and despite Keith becoming even more infatuated with Chris, Chris does not return the feelings. Around the same time, Keith meets Eliza, a young woman who also carries the bug which manifests as a lizard-like tail. Despite their instant attraction, the two do not have sex. Meanwhile, many other teens in the town have contracted the disease, and several of them seek seclusion from society due to the severity of their mutations and build an encampment in the woods outside of town. Some of the infected teens, particularly females, begin disappearing, with strange statues and even body parts being found around the woods. Chris and Rob eventually renew their relationship, which culminates with Chris running away from home to the encampment in the woods. Rob introduces Chris to Dave, a mutated teen who was unpopular and bullied while attending school. Rob continues to live with his parents and attends school, visiting Chris daily at the encampment. At the same time, Keith and Eliza reconnect and have sex, Keith subsequently becoming infected. Later, an unknown mutated man murders Rob as he leaves Chris' tent one night. Chris does not know of Rob's fate, and is devastated by his disappearance. Chris starts going to The Pit, where she encounters Keith, a regular visitor who brings supplies to the teens. After pressuring her for some time, Keith convinces Chris to stay at a tract house that he is watching while its owners are on vacation. Chris eventually invites some of the other teens that frequent the pit to stay at the tract house, which they proceed to destroy to Keith's detriment. Chris becomes closer to Dave, and the two often spend time together. However, Dave's true sinister nature shows when Chris rejects his advances. With Chris locked inside her room, Dave shoots most of the teens living in the house using a gun that he had stolen from Chris' tent. Chris flees through an open window, and Keith discovers the bodies minutes after Dave leaves. Dave is seen ordering a bucket of chicken and bringing it to his friend Rick, who murdered Rob at Dave's behest. While Rick eats, Dave shoots him in the head and then himself. Keith calls Eliza and the two flee town with survivors Carla and Doug. After dropping off Carla and Doug, Keith and Eliza check into a motel, where they are fearful of the future, but happy together. Meanwhile, Chris hitchhikes to a beach where she and Rob had spent time together. Realizing that he is gone forever, and swearing to remember him, Chris swims out into the ocean, uncertain of her future. ===== Diijon, a tired magician, gives up his act to study the power of the mind. His wife Victoria, once supportive, now is struggling to pay bills. She urges her stubborn and older husband to return to the magic field where Diijon was considered one of the greats. He refuses but does reluctantly agree to do a hypnotism nightclub act at Victoria's urging. The act goes bad and he's laughed off the stage. He's convinced this is the handiwork of Victoria's ex-lover Tony Holliday. Later, Diijon finds that he does indeed have the power to control men's minds and begins to take revenge on the people he felt made him look like a fool. He hypnotizes his young wife to kill the man. Unfortunately for Diijon, things go horribly wrong. The opening of the film features a memorable scene depicting a woman being beheaded, with a guillotine—then revealed to be a magic trick. ===== During a space pirate attack, Bender—trying to find some peace and quiet in a torpedo tube—is accidentally fired into space. Because Bender was launched when the ship was at its top speed, it is impossible to catch up with him. After an asteroid crashes into Bender, a civilization of tiny humanoid "Shrimpkins" grows on him and worships him as a god. Bender enjoys his new-found status, picking a prophet named Malachi and having him bring "The One Commandment" ("God Needs Booze") to the Shrimpkins, who brew what for them are vast quantities of "Lordweiser" beer. The Shrimpkins begin praying for rain, sun and wealth, and Bender attempts to heed their prayers, failing and unintentionally harming the Shrimpkins in the process. Malachi tells him that the Shrimpkins who migrated to his buttocks feel their prayers are unheeded and have become atheists. The atheists threaten war with Bender's worshipers. Bender, horrified that his previous attempts to help the Shrimpkins only harmed them, refuses to intervene. The micro-civilization is destroyed when the Shrimpkin factions launch atomic weapons out of Bender's nuclear piles. Bender continues floating through space until he encounters a cosmic entity. During their time together, the entity tells Bender that it has had much the same experience with helping those who pray to it, and has given up on directly interfering in its worshippers' lives. It now uses a "light touch", which it compares to safecracking, pickpocketing, or (as Bender adds) insurance fraud. Bender asks if he can be sent back to Earth, but the entity claims that it does not know where Earth is. Meanwhile, Fry and Leela search for a way to locate Bender, which leads them to a sect of monks who use a radio telescope to search for God in space. Leela locks up the pacifist monks and Fry spends the next three days searching for Bender. Leela convinces him to give up the search, considering the odds of finding Bender astronomical. Fry spins the telescope's trackball and finds the cosmic entity by accident as he wishes out loud he had Bender back. The entity hears him and flings Bender toward Earth, where he lands just outside the monastery. Bender recounts his tale and Fry boasts they "climbed a mountain and locked up some monks", which reminds Leela that they never let them out. Fry is reluctant to return to the monastery and claims that their God will surely help them. Bender tells them that God cannot be counted on, and demands they rescue the monks themselves. The cosmic entity chuckles and repeats advice it gave to Bender earlier: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." ===== After a mission in which the uniforms of the Planet Express crew are ripped to shreds by a gigantic moth, Professor Farnsworth and Hermes agree to buy new ones. They pay a visit to a clothing store and buy a set of uniforms apparently tailor-made for them, complete with the Planet Express logo. Bender purchases fox hunting attire and joins a hunting club, dragging Fry and Leela along with him. Leela protests the injustice of such an activity, much to the dismay of the Master of the Hunt and other club members. It is revealed that the fox they are hunting is actually a robot, as are the hunting dogs and horses, leading Bender and Leela to launch a protest movement called B.A.R.F. (Bender's Animal Robot Front), culminating in attempts to legally abolish the injustice against robotic animals. Though B.A.R.F. succeeds in banning the butchering of robotic animal flesh and liberating robotic chickens from laying eggs as they were designed to, they fail to outlaw robot foxing via injunction due to the judge being a member of the hunting club. Bender kidnaps the next robot fox to be hunted and takes its place in the cage. The fox is taken back to Planet Express and quickly becomes popular with the crew, until it rips apart their new uniforms, kills Amy's beloved chicken, scratches Fry in the face, tears up Leela's sign and flees, prompting Fry and Leela to hunt it. Bender is discovered with the fox hunt about to start. His plan backfires as the Master of the Hunt makes Bender the new target of the hunt. He flees into the forest and meets with the robot fox, which assists him out of a leg trap by chewing off his foot. They evade several traps laid by the hunters and catch the Master of the Hunt. Fry and Leela catch up to them as Bender is poised with a rifle aimed at the Master of the Hunt, though Bender ultimately declines to kill him. The Master of the Hunt reclaims the rifle and is about to shoot Bender, but the robot fox attacks and kills him, revealing the Master himself to be a robot. This prompts Bender to state that robot-on-robot violence is OK. ===== A disadvantaged young man tries to get by in Margaret Thatcher's England. Writing in his book The Cinema of Ken Loach, Jacob Leigh comments: "Looks and Smiles reveals the depression people felt in the industrial North of England in the 1980s; but it is as depressing as Mick's life. ... Loach's characteristic attention to detail renders the film a period piece." ===== Within the Marvel Multiverse is an alternate Earth designated Earth-2149, which contains alternate zombie versions of Marvel superheroes. The story begins as an unknown superhero from another dimension, brought by the "Hunger", crash lands before infecting the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four and almost all other superheroes. The infection spreads by contact with the blood of the victim, usually through a bite by an infected individual. The zombie super heroes largely retain their intellect, personality and their super powers, although they are consistently driven by the "Hunger" for human flesh. (Captain America notes that he is still functioning with -literally- half a brain, having been partially decapitated by Magneto with his own shield.) As the story begins, the Marvel Zombies have already devoured all non-transhuman human life on Earth and are now without food (as prefigured in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, a later tie-in). The series begins where the Crossover story-arc ended, with Magneto destroying the cross-dimensional transporter after the Ultimate Fantastic Four and survivors escaped back to the Ultimate universe. After a battle with the zombies, Magneto learns that the Acolytes and Forge are still alive on Asteroid M. However, before he can reach them, he is attacked once again, killed and eaten by the zombies, though he manages to behead the zombified Hawkeye. The Silver Surfer arrives on Earth and informs the zombies that his master Galactus is en route to devour the planet. The zombies attack the Silver Surfer, who is overpowered and devoured by several of the former superheroes: Colonel America, Iron Man, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, the Hulk, and Wolverine. After acquiring a portion of the Power Cosmic, they slaughter most of the remaining zombies, intent on satiating their hunger despite the latters' unpalatability. The Acolytes return to Earth to find Magneto, but instead discover a still-living Black Panther. The Panther has escaped from the lab of the zombie Giant-Man, who has been keeping him alive as a food source, as a result of which the Panther is now missing an arm and a foot. Zombie Wasp gets into an argument with her husband when she discovers was hoarding the Black Panther he promptly decapitated by biting off her head, which remains sentient. After observing the Wasp's head begging for flesh, Black Panther reasons that the hunger is more psychological than physical. Meanwhile, the zombies have decided that the flesh of other zombies just isn't satisfying. Galactus then arrives on Earth and is attacked by the zombies, but he repels them easily. Giant-Man, Iron Man and Bruce Banner create a device that amplifies the powers they gained from the Silver Surfer, and together with Colonel America, Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine they are able to injure Galactus. The cosmic-powered zombies fight off zombified versions of several supervillains, although Colonel America is killed by the Red Skull, and then proceed to devour Galactus. Giant-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine are then infused with Galactus' power cosmic' the group thus becomes collective Galacti. Five years later, Black Panther, the Acolytes, and the Wasp, restored with a cybernetic body, return to Earth to find the planet depopulated. Unknown to them (although it is one hypothesis), the Zombie Galacti have taken their hunger to the stars. In the final scenes, an intelligent alien race on a distant planet is fearful of the coming of Galactus, as they can see the signs of his imminent arrival in the night sky. To their horror, the Zombie Galacti land on their world instead and immediately begin to consume the populace. ===== Dr. Stephen Fleming (Irons), a physician who has entered politics and become a minister, lives in London with wife Ingrid (Richardson) and daughter Sally (Clarke). Their adult son, Martyn (Graves), a young journalist, lives elsewhere in London. At a reception, Stephen meets a young woman, named Anna Barton (Binoche), daughter of a British diplomat and four-times married Frenchwoman (Caron), who "lives in Palm Springs". Anna, who works at Sotheby's, introduces herself as a close friend of Martyn's: they are instantly attracted to each other. Some time later, Martyn brings Anna to meet his parents at their elegant town house and reveals they are romantically involved. The sexual tension between Stephen and Anna is apparent, although Martyn and his mother seem unaware. After Anna calls his office, Stephen goes to her mews flat, where they have sex. The following day, Martyn is promoted and Ingrid arranges a celebratory dinner. There, Ingrid seems suspicious and interrogates Anna about her childhood. Anna says her brother, a year older, committed suicide at 16 over "Love." After dinner, Martyn drives Anna home and Stephen follows them. Once Martyn leaves, Stephen enters and tells Anna how much he "wanted to touch her during dinner". They have sex on the floor and in the bed. Anna describes her brother's death, after he had expressed incestuous desire, saying "he wanted me all to himself and not to grow up." She says damaged people are dangerous and she hates possessiveness. Stephen's obsession with Anna deepens; on a whim, he leaves a conference in Brussels to go to Paris where Anna is with Martyn. While Martyn sleeps, Stephen and Anna have sex in a doorway. Afterwards, Stephen moves opposite Anna and Martyn, spying on them. He now wants to be with Anna permanently, even if it destroys his family. Anna dissuades him, assuring him that, as long as she is with Martyn he will always have access to her. Visiting Anna's home, Stephen finds Peter Wetzler (Stormare), who tells Stephen that he and Anna are former lovers. A jealous Stephen assumes Anna is cheating, and, when Peter leaves, returns and confronts her. Anna denies it and recounts that, when she witnessed her brother's suicide, she had fled to Peter and slept with him as a reaction. Stephen is placated and they have sex. The Flemings visit Ingrid's father, Edward Lloyd (Bannen), who has acted as Stephen's political mentor, to celebrate her birthday. Martyn announces his that Anna has accepted his proposal of marriage, which visibly disturbs Stephen. That night, Sally observes him leaving Anna's room. An anxious Stephen lies about it, telling Sally he was talking to Anna about the marriage because Ingrid was upset. Later, the Flemings have lunch with Anna's mother, Elizabeth, who disparages the marriage, saying that Martyn doesn't seem like Anna's 'usual type' but noting how closely he resembles Anna's dead brother. Elizabeth notices the strained behavior between Anna and Stephen. She deduces the affair and warns Stephen to end it. Stephen initially complies and calls Anna to end their relationship. He tries to confess to Martyn and Ingrid, separately, but fails. Stephen instead succumbs to temptation and phones Anna but hangs up when Martyn answers. Anna sends a key to Stephen's office, with the address of a flat where they can meet. She tells Stephen that she could not marry Martyn without being with him. They meet at the flat and begin another tryst, but Martyn — having discovered about the flat by chance — finds them in bed. Stunned, he accidentally falls over a railing to his death. A devastated Stephen clutches him while Anna silently leaves. Stephen's affair is exposed and becomes a media frenzy, with reporters outside his house. An anguished Ingrid questions whether he had ever loved her and tells him she wishes they had never met. "Everyone only has one person in life," she says. "Mine was Martyn and yours was Anna." Stephen resigns his government position, just as he was due to join the cabinet, and parliamentary seat. Meeting Anna's mother, he discovers Anna is staying with her, but he and Anna are silent in their last meeting. Stephen, leaving his wife and daughter, retires to a rented room in a southern European town. In narration, he reveals that he saw Anna only once more, in passing at an airport, and that she has a child with Peter. Stephen stares at a huge blowup on his wall of a photo Martyn gave him of Stephen, Anna and Martyn together. He ends with a calm note: "She is no different from anyone else." ===== Three years out of high school in the fictional Burnfield (filmed mainly in Austin, Texas), four friends are in the daily habit of hanging out drinking by the garbage dumpster of a corner convenience store, occasionally taunting the foreign-born store owner/operator, married couple Nazeer and Pakeesa. The film's main character, Jeff, is an aimless soul unsure of his future since dropping out of college. Jeff is dating Sooze, a student at the local community college who plans to leave Burnfield and study visual arts in New York City. Jeff's best friends are Buff and Tim. Tim, recently honorably discharged from the Air Force, is a troubled heavy-drinker with a knack for shooting off his mouth. Sooze's friend Bee-Bee is a recovering alcoholic who hangs out with the group one evening. This particular evening, the group are expecting a visit from a high school friend, Neil "Pony" Moynihan, lead singer for Dreamgirl, a rock band that is on a stadium tour. Dreamgirl performed in Burnfield that night, but the gang could not afford tickets. Pony arrives with Erica, Dreamgirl's publicist. Erica reveals how excited Pony has been about seeing the gang and most of the group is glad to see him, although some of them are bitter and jealous of his recent success. As the expanded group hangs out beside the store, their actions and conversations show that they all are contemplating what they want to do with the rest of their lives. By the end of the night, Bee-Bee is in medical trouble after drinking an entire bottle of hard liquor. Buff has slept with Erica and is going to Los Angeles to shoot a Dreamgirl music video. Sooze has left town with Pony. Tim has been arrested and released, and Jeff is berated by Nazeer for "throw(ing) it all away". ===== Min-kyung, is a fresh high school graduate. She has worked in a liquor restaurant to pay off her father's gambling debt. However, Min-kyung borrowed some money and ran away, hoping to find a rich man as her spouse. Meanwhile, Young Ho is the son of a poor rice cake house owner, and works to pay off his dead father's debt. He falls in love with Min-kyung, because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend. When Min Kyung finds out that Young Ho is not rich, she dumps him, and goes back to a rich man (Son Chang Min) who proposed to Min Kyung once before. However, Min Kyung wakes up to true love and realizes that happiness does not necessarily come in money. Young-ho's father Moon Dae-cha (Lee Soon-jae) observed his diligence and decided to give Young-ho a chance to prove his worth in comparison with Dong-kyu (There is no scene that Young-ho realized that Moon Dae-cha is his illegitimate biological father, and the poor rice cake house owner is not his birth father, but a stepfather). Young-ho's father announced that there would be a fair competition from the two men to prove their worth and decide the heir to the company. That same night, Young-ho's father met Min-kyung's father. Dong-kyu's father, who was drunk, knocked down the duo as they were talking to each other and crossing the road. Dong-kyu was seen rushing and persuaded his father to escape while he called for an ambulance. Dong-kyu used this opportunity to gain advantage over Young-ho in the competition to become the heir, with his father's help. Young-ho, on the other hand, was having a hard time struggling to compete against Dong-kyu and his acts of sabotage. Young-ho was shocked when he saw his father at the meeting. Young-ho was declared to be the heir of the company and both Dong-kyu and his father announced their resignations. Young-ho instead wished to fulfill his long-time dream of becoming an astronomer and announced his intention of resigning as boss in order to become a full-time astronomer, after working for a few months. With the consent of his father, Young-ho took up astronomy at a space observation centre in Australia. He later married Min-kyung, and was seen swearing their wedding vows in front of a Christian priest. ===== Isaac Knott (Nick Stahl) is a successful radio talk show host on a New York City public radio outlet. He lost the use of his legs at the age of eight in an automobile accident that also claimed the lives of his parents. He is a wheelchair user. One day, Isaac learns about a man who showed up at a local hospital and demanded to have his legs amputated. The man was part of a secret subculture of able-bodied people who want to be paraplegics. They use wheelchairs whenever possible, and they try to deaden their legs through artificial means. Isaac becomes fascinated by these strange people, and begins studying the phenomenon for a news piece on his radio show. Through his research, Isaac meets Fiona (Vera Farmiga), a sexy but mysterious blonde who collects and restores Chinese art. Fiona also owns a wheelchair she doesn't really need. Increasingly attracted to her, Isaac tries to learn all he can about her role in the fake-paraplegic underground. Fiona, however, does not give away her secrets for free. Soon, Isaac discovers that the exchange of information and trust goes deeper the longer they know one another. ===== Censorship of the play Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue (1665), by Molière, is documented in the article La scène du pauvre, Paris 1682, dans ses deux états. Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue (1665) presents the story of the last two days of life of the courtier Dom Juan Tenorio, who is a young, libertine aristocrat known as a seducer of women and as an atheist. Throughout the story, Dom Juan is accompanied by his valet, Sganarelle, a truculent and superstitious, cowardly and greedy man who engages his master in intellectual debates. The many facets of Dom Juan's personality are exposed to show that he is an adulterer (Act I); an accomplished womanizer (Act II); an altruistic, religious non-conformist (Act III); a spendthrift, bad son to his father (Act IV); and a religious hypocrite who pretends a spiritual rebirth and return to the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, which is foild by death (Act V). ===== The novel begins with a frame tale in which the unnamed narrator describes the narrative that follows as "the great secret of my life." The narrator notes that he is taking a substantial risk by composing the narrative, but that it is one he feels compelled to record, regardless. The narrator also chooses to withhold the name of the small Georgia town where his narrative begins, as there are still living residents of the town who might be able to connect him to the narrative. Throughout the novel, the adult narrator from the frame interjects into the text to offer reflective commentary into the events of the narrative. ===== Members of a municipal band, Stanley and Oliver seem to be always following someone else's lead, rather than that of the temperamental conductor. Soon they're out of a job, as well as their lodgings when the landlady finds out they've been fired. The boys try their luck at being street musicians, but the tiffs they get into with each other soon spread to passersby in general, until the street is filled with men pulling each other's pants off. ===== Stan and Ollie are ordered to wash the dishes by Ollie's wife (in the first film-title pun-gag, Stan pours too much liquid-detergent into the dishpan, causing the resulting washing-solution to be "much thicker than water") but Stan dries them and puts them back in the washbowl. Ollie then tells him to put them somewhere dry and he places them on a gas ring where they heat up, so that when Ollie picks them up he drops them and they all smash. James Finlayson then calls to collect payment for some furniture. Stan, Ollie and Mrs. Hardy embark on a lengthy "the money that you gave to him, to give to me to pay him" dialogue routine. At Stan's suggestion Ollie then withdraws the couple's savings from the bank to buy furniture and inadvertently pays virtually the whole amount at an auction for a grandfather clock which is soon crushed under a passing truck. Awaiting the wrath of Mrs. Hardy back at home he tells Stan that "here is another nice kettle of fish you've pickled me in". Mrs. Hardy then causes serious injuries to Ollie when she hits him over the head with a frying pan, requiring him to be rushed to hospital for a blood transfusion. The doctor conscripts Stan to be the unwilling blood donor ("what do you think I am, a blood worm?"). During the transfusion, the blood-transferring equipment malfunctions and too much blood is pumped out of Stan and into Ollie, requiring some of the blood inside Ollie to be pumped into Stan. But too much blood gets pumped back into Stan, requiring another reversal, and so forth ... until the transfusion machine explodes. This sets up the climactic sight gag: when Laurel and Hardy exit the hospital they appear to have morphed into each other. Ollie is minus his toothbrush mustache and wearing Stan's hat and bow- tie, while Stan is wearing Ollie's hat, necktie and mustache. The two comedians proceed to do spot-on imitations of each other's mannerisms. Ollie mimes Stan's famous befuddled head scratch while an exasperated Stan twiddles his tie in response and delivers Ollie's signature catchphrase, "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" (in Hardy's dubbed voice). Ollie reacts by breaking into Stan's trademark cry for the comic fadeout. And after they said their goodbyes to the doctors as they leave the hospital, Oliver (as Stan) told Stan (as Oliver) "Wait a minute, I forgot something!" And it was pulling the end title screen. ===== Laurel and Hardy play two sailors on shore leave who decide to rent an automobile. With Laurel at the wheel, he nearly crashes the car into a pedestrian at a street corner. Hardy apologizes for Stan's poor driving, takes the wheel, and shortly thereafter crashes the car into a lamppost. Chagrined, Hardy drives off and parks in front of a drugstore where two young ladies are having difficulty with a street-side vending machine that has taken their penny without giving them a gumball. Hardy tries to shake a gumball from the dispenser but only ends up breaking the glass container, scattering gumballs all over the sidewalk. Seeing this, the angry proprietor confronts Hardy with Stan joining in, constantly slipping on the scattered gumballs. The girls come to their rescue and rough up the proprietor, accidentally breaking another gumball machine in the process. This action leads to a chain reaction of numerous drivers and passengers battling one another and deliberately damaging their automobiles. Eventually a motorcycle policeman arrives and is told that Stan and Oliver were the instigators of the fracas. ===== After serving time in prison for an assault on a liquor store employee, Brett Sprague is released from prison and returns home to his two brothers and his and their girlfriends, mother and stepfather. Things have changed, and as Brett begins to drink his way through the day, he regains his "top-dog" position one argument at a time. This power trip gets Brett and his brothers united in rage against their girlfriends and mother, and they are involved in a heinous crime. The aftermath of the night unfolds through the story with flashforwards. ===== As with its predecessor, Blotto, the film is set during the Prohibition. The film starts with Stan and Ollie listing ingredients outside "Malt and Hops", a shop selling ingredients for brewing. Ollie says he is going to make 15 gallons of beer and Stan says "we can't drink 15 gallons". Ollie replies "what we can't drink we will sell". The film then cuts to Laurel and Hardy arriving in handcuffs at prison for concocting and selling their own home brew. They become prisoners 44633 and 44634. Stan's loose tooth gets him into trouble with the governor. As they are taken to their cell Stan says that two other inmates are Amos 'n' Andy. They are put in cell 14 with five other prisoners including "The Tiger" (Walter Long), the roughest, toughest and meanest of all inmates. Stan has a loose tooth that causes him to emit a razzberry at the end of every sentence; the inmate interprets this as a coolly defiant attitude and is impressed—nobody else ever stood up to him like that. He and Stan become fast friends. Stan and Ollie have to share the top bunk as there are only six beds. Laurel & Hardy attend prison school with James Finlayson as the teacher. The vaudeville routine that follows ends with an ink-soaked ball of paper, meant for somebody else, hitting the teacher, in the face and the boys wind up in solitary. There is a sustained scene of the bleak cells with the unseen boys conversing through the walls. During a prison riot, the boys escape. A $500 dollar award appears on a wanted poster. They end on a cotton plantation, where they hide out undetected, in blackface. Ollie sings "Lazy Moon" while Stan dances. Stan falls in a pond and his blackface washes off. The prison warden drives by the plantation with his daughter and his car breaks down. When they attempt to repair the warden's car, they are discovered due to Stan's involuntary razzberry and are sent back to prison. A warden decides to send Laurel to the prison dentist to have the offending tooth pulled. Ollie decides to sit with Stan in the second chair and accidentally gets his tooth pulled. When the dentist eventually pulls Stan's tooth he pulls the wrong one. Tricked by a prison guard into breaking their alleged personal hunger strike, by being promised a thanksgiving-style feast, they go to the mess hall, only to be served the usual drab fare. Laurel protests the absence of the feast, but is threatened by the guards. Soon after, as guns are being passed around under the tables, the naively-puzzled Laurel cluelessly sets off the Tommy gun he has been passed and starts the planned riot prematurely. The Tiger tries to stab Stan for ruining the plan. The warden's daughter is trapped in a burning building and Stan and Ollie get ladders to rescue her. The ladder is too short and Ollie has to hold it high. Stan fires off the Tommy gun again and inadvertently breaks up the prison riot. The grateful warden issues them a written pardon. Laurel unintentionally "razzes" him (and naively solicits him for an order of beer when he misunderstands the warden telling them to "start all over again") and their exit from the prison is a very fast one. ===== Stan learns that he is to receive an inheritance left by a wealthy uncle. Unfortunately, most of the inheritance is consumed by taxes and legal fees, and he is left with only a rickety but fully provisioned yacht and a private island in the Pacific Ocean. Stan and Ollie leave for the island, accompanied by stateless refugee Antoine (Max Elloy) and stowaway Giovanni Copini, a malcontent Italian bricklayer (Adriano Rimoldi). On the voyage, the friendly Antoine acts as chef, but the food mysteriously disappears from Stan's plate because stowaway Giovanni is taking it. This leads Stan to blame Ollie and an argument ensues. The engine then fails, so Ollie removes parts in an attempt to fix it. He hands them to Stan, who puts them on the deck where they slide overboard. Ollie then realises that his efforts were in vain when he notices that the fuel gauge reads empty. Having lost the engine, they hoist the sail, revealing Giovanni hiding in it. They encounter a storm and Stan battles with an inflating liferaft in the cabin while Ollie is at the helm. They are shipwrecked on a newly emerged desert island, which they dub "Crusoeland" after the book Robinson Crusoe that is on their yacht. They are soon joined by Chérie Lamour, a nightclub singer (Suzy Delair) who is fleeing her jealous fiancé Jack Frazer, a naval lieutenant (Luigi Tosi). The island is established as a new republic, with Hardy as president and Laurel as "the people." They write a constitution declaring their atoll will have no laws, no taxes, and no immigration controls. All goes well until the singer's fiancé arrives to confirm the island is rich with uranium deposits. People from all over the world flock to "Atoll K" as it has been named, but soon the situation turns chaotic when a revolt seeks to overthrow and execute the island's original inhabitants. Before the execution, another storm strikes and floods the island. Laurel and Hardy are rescued and arrive at the island Laurel inherited, only to have their land and supplies confiscated for failure to pay taxes. It ends with Oliver ranting to Stan "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" and Stan whimpering.Aping 2008 ===== Jan Letterman (Barbara Wilkin), the personal assistant to a wealthy, over-the- hill actress named Laura Winters (Rita Morely), hires pilot Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders) to fly her from New York to Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, but a storm forces them to land on a small island. They soon meet Prof. Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck) a marine biologist with a German accent who is living in seclusion on the isle. After a series of strange skeletons wash ashore (human, then fish) it turns out the water has become inhabited by some sort of glowing microbe which apparently devours flesh rapaciously. Bartell is a former US Government agent who was sent to Nazi Germany to recover as much of their scientific data as possible. He was chosen for the job for his scientific skills and knowledge of the German language. Using the methods learned there he hopes to cultivate a group of monstrous "flesh eaters" that can devour the skin off a victim in mere seconds. A beatnik named Omar (Ray Tudor) joins the group after becoming shipwrecked on their shore. Tensions mount after the plane drifts off into the ocean, leaving the castaways and Bartell as potential meals for the ravenous monsters. High- voltage electrification (from a battery system devised by Bartell) is utilized in an attempt to slay the monsters. Bartell explains that he has been tracking these creatures and attempting to cultivate them to sell as biological weapons. It is soon discovered that an electrical shock does not kill the creatures, but instead causes the numerous smaller microbes to merge into a larger organism. By accident, the survivors stumble upon the solution to killing them: the creatures devour flesh but not blood, as in each case where remains have been found blood has been present. Bartell surmises that the creatures have a negative reaction to hemoglobin and, when directly injected with it, the creatures are indeed slain. By applying a large electrical shock to the waters surrounding the island, the survivors hope to force the numerous dispersed microbes into forming a giant single organism. The plan works and following a struggle, Bartell is killed just before Murdoch destroys the last of the creatures. ===== After murdering an unnamed woman, the villainous "Chain Gang" targets Cee Bee Beaumont, the girlfriend of rock-and-roll star Lonnie Lord. The Chain Gang harasses, stalks, and eventually abducts Beaumont. In order to save his girlfriend, Lord takes on the identity of "Rat Pfink", and his friend, Titus Twimbly, assumes the role of Rat Pfink's sidekick, "Boo Boo." On their Ratcycle, the duo eventually manages to track down the Chain Gang. After a long chase and the resulting confrontation with the gang, Rat Pfink and Boo Boo rescue Beaumont. However, Beaumont is abducted again, this time by "Kogar the Ape", a gorilla that has escaped from a local zoo. Kogar easily knocks out Rat Pfink, but his keeper soon comes and collects the ape. At the end of the film, Lord performs for everyone at a parade held to honor the heroes. ===== The story begins on the evening of the Fourth of July in Las Vegas. Hank, a mechanic, and Frannie, a travel agent, break up while celebrating their fifth anniversary. He has been insensitive to her yearning for adventure and excitement. They both spend a night with their idealized partners — Hank goes with Leila, a circus performer, and Frannie goes with Ray, a waiter who passes himself off as a cocktail pianist and singer. After their mutual nights away from each other, Hank breaks down, tracks Frannie to the motel room she and Ray are in, and abducts her. She refuses to stay with him and walks away, saying that this time it is goodbye forever. Hank follows her to the airport, where Frannie is about to leave for her dream trip to Bora Bora. Hank sings to her to prove he is willing to be more romantic, but she boards the plane, saying it is too late. Hank, distraught, goes home and is about to burn her clothes when Frannie returns, realizing she "made a mistake". ===== The Enterprise has arrived 2 days early for a rendezvous with a supply ship, USS Biko, and thus the crew spend the time to pursue personal activities. Data and La Forge propose to Captain Picard to attempt to set up systems that would allow them to use Data's processing abilities to run critical systems in the case of main computer failure, and he allows them to proceed. Meanwhile, Worf reluctantly joins his son Alexander in a holodeck adventure set in the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the American Old West, later joined by Deanna Troi.STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION: "A Fistful of Datas", #40276-234, Written by Brannon Braga and Directed by Patrick Stewart - FINAL DRAFT SEPTEMBER 17, 1992 The three play the role of lawmen in Deadwood, where Eli Hollander, the "Butcher of Bozeman", is wanted. Worf tries to use his Starfleet tactics to end the episode quickly, but Alexander insists that he play along with the scenario. They capture Eli, learning that his father Frank is a sly and powerful man. As Data and La Forge work on the interface, a brief energy surge occurs. The ship's systems react strangely, specifically around elements of Data's logs and records. Data also takes up stereotypical Wild West mannerisms and vernacular, unaware. In the holodeck, Frank, who appears exactly like Data captures Alexander, demanding the release of his son Eli. Worf gets into a gun battle and is wounded, and he and Troi find that the holodeck safety protocols are off and they cannot end the program. They realize Alexander could be in trouble and the only assured way is to play out the story. Further, Troi observes that Eli now possesses skills comparable to Data's. As more of the holodeck characters take on Data's appearance, Worf works to create a personal shield as protection, knowing he would not be victorious against characters that all have Data's skills. Data and La Forge determine that the power surge causes segments of the main computer and Data's processes to swap memories, and they start a memory purge to restore both to normal operation. On the holodeck, Worf and Troi successfully defeat Frank and his gang, and recover Alexander. They believe the story is now over, but the holodeck does not yet respond. Only after Miss Annie, one of the dancers from the local tavern and also now looking like Data, thanks Worf for his bravery and throws herself into Worf's arms, does the story end, allowing the three to leave safely. Data and the ship's computer are restored to normal, and Worf promises to join Alexander on the holodeck for another adventure in Deadwood. As a final nod to the Western genre where heroes are often seen riding off into the sunset, the episode concludes with the Enterprise flying toward and seemingly into a star that is half obscured by a nearby planet. ===== The series revolves around four children: Billy O' Toole, Marcus and Ruby Snarkis, and Lydia Lopez. The series' main antagonists are Earl P. Sidebottom, a.k.a. The Phantom, and his rat sidekick, Ratticus. Earl is a boy genius who, sometime before the series' beginning, got a "D" grade in shop class and retreated to the school's sub-basement boiler room in shame. There, he built a supercomputer capable of altering reality, which he uses to cause chaos in the school as revenge, leaving the protagonists to stop him. ===== The film begins with a group of Union soldiers being captured and forced to surrender at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in June 1864. They are transported to prisoner-of-war Camp Sumter, near Andersonville, Georgia. When they enter, they discover a former comrade, named Dick Potter, who was captured at Antietam, who explains the grim realities of daily existence in the camp – primarily the lack of shelter, clean water, and regular food supplies. He also states the danger of a rogue group of Union soldiers, called the "Raiders", who hoard the camp's meager rations, and lure unsuspecting "fresh fish" – newly captured soldiers – into their area of the camp, to attack and rob them. With every able-bodied man required for fighting, young teenagers and old men are used as guards. At one watch tower, manned by two young guards, a Union soldier offers money for some corn. He is instructed to step over the "dead line" fence and approach the watch tower to trade, which contradicts the rules of the camp. But reluctantly, compelled by need, the soldier steps over the line, and (in a macabre type of game) the soldiers in the next watch tower shoot him dead. As the story unfolds, the unit captured at the beginning of the film ally with some inmates, and help them by working on their tunnel under the stockade wall. Eventually it is complete, but one man tries to inform the guards, in hope of receiving a reward. He is captured and "TT" (meaning tunnel traitor) is cut into his forehead as a warning. The escape is attempted one night, and all goes well until the last man is spotted and shot, and the dogs are unleashed. In a very short time, most escapees are back in the camp and placed in standing stocks as punishment. The situation with the Raiders eventually becomes unbearable, as group after group of new prisoners are targeted upon arrival. Night raids are made, with possessions being taken from tents and prisoners injured or killed by the Raiders. After a banjo is stolen, one man fights to get it back but is badly beaten. Things progressively get worse until finally one man decides he has seen enough of the "vultures out to rob and murder the new boys". He rallies support from the disparate groups, and within minutes hundreds of his comrades are charging the Raiders' camp. A massive and deadly riot ensues. In the end the Raiders are beaten, stolen goods are redistributed to their owners, but many want them all hanged outright. But upon the insistence of a few, a request for a legitimate trial is made to Captain Wirz, the Confederate commander of the prison camp. A trial is held, with a jury made up of new internees, which ultimately results in the six ring-leaders being found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. After the executions life becomes relatively peaceful, but the cold reality of starvation, and lack of sanitation or medical care, begins to set in as emaciation, dysentery, scurvy, and fever take their toll, causing many to die. As the film ends, an announcement is made by Wirz that all prisoners are to be exchanged – the surviving Federal soldiers leave the camp, filing past their dead comrades on the way to the trains.http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/reviews/andersonville.htm Against a view of the present-day Andersonville National Cemetery, the movie's end coda reads: :In 1864–5, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned in Andersonville. 12,912 died there. The prisoner exchange never happened. The men who walked to the trains were taken to other prisons, where they remained until the war ended. After the war, Wirz was hanged, the only soldier to be tried and executed for war crimes committed during the Civil War. ===== Simon McKay is a genius and inventor with dwarfism who chooses to spend his life as a philanthropist and innovative toymaker dedicated to preserving and protecting innocence. CIC agent Alex Jagger is assigned to protect Simon from the evil forces who wish to use Simon's genius for their own nefarious purposes. They are soon joined by Simon's long time friend, Tillie Russell. Simon, Alex, and Tillie become a family unit working together through adventure and adversity, especially when it comes to defeating Simon's self-proclaimed arch-enemy, Troyan, who would rather seek revenge upon the world for his suffering from the radiation poisoning he brought upon himself than take responsibility for his own actions. =====