From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== When construction on a stamp museum wakes up the Simpsons, everyone in Springfield protests against its construction. Soon, Mayor Quimby, moves it to where the Springfield Cemetery used to be, and the cemetery is moved next door to the Simpsons' house. Lisa is the only member of the family whose room overlooks it. Lisa is scared and cannot sleep at night, and ends up sleeping with Homer and Marge. The next night Lisa meets a white-haired man known as Gravedigger Billy, who is Groundskeeper Willie's cousin. After a hand comes out of a tomb, Lisa goes to Marge and Homer's room and makes a promise that if they go to the Springfield Stamp Museum, Lisa will sleep in her room. At the museum there is a lecture for Milton Burkhart's book "The Land of the Wild Beasts", and an advertisement based on the book for a restaurant called The Hillside Wrangler. Lisa then feels that she can sleep in her room with the cemetery, but is already afraid, and sleeps in Homer and Marge's room. Homer and Marge then come home, and Marge tells Lisa she is breaking her promise. Marge and Homer then spend a night in Lisa's room and find out how scary the view really is. Marge and Homer then contact a psychologist, and find out that it is expensive and her fears are mostly going to be solved by herself, as she was not nurtured enough as a baby. Lisa, however, does not want to go see a therapist, and goes with Bart and Santa's Little Helper to overcome her fears at the cemetery, but Bart and Santa’s Little Helper leave. Lisa then changes her mind, but the gate is locked, and Lisa is left alone. Afterwards, Lisa's head is hit by a tombstone and faints. In the meantime Marge and Homer worry about Lisa and Bart not doing anything except for watching Itchy & Scratchy cartoons. Lisa is then in a dream, where she is eaten by a skeleton, and then is on a web in a slime pond with a slug resembling Milhouse, and a spider resembling Bart. Lisa is then in another vision, with the monsters from "Land of the Wildbeasts," and Lisa finds out they are funny, instead of scary, and that it is okay to be scared. Marge and Homer then find Lisa, wake her up, and they go home. ===== During a science class, the boys dare Kenny to eat a manatee's spleen, which Kenny does in exchange for money. He eats his own vomit for money, then begins to undertake all manner of bizarre acts. He soon gets his own television program, The Krazy Kenny Show, as a showcase for his outrageous behavior, but Jesus compares him to a prostitute since he takes money to perform acts that require no real talent. When the boys ask Chef to explain, he believes that they are referring to the sexual connotation of being a prostitute and sings a song about it with James Taylor. Meanwhile, Cartman's mother and others from the town pay to send Cartman to fat camp against his will. There, a pair of overenthusiastic counselors try to teach him and other overweight children to exercise and live a healthier life, even using fake taco stands and ice cream trucks to catch kids who attempt to escape. Though Cartman resists, he soon reappears in South Park, having lost a great deal of weight and displaying a more mature attitude. This "Cartman" is actually an escapee from a drug rehabilitation center near the fat camp, who has struck a deal with the real Cartman to smuggle junk food into the camp for him to sell. As a result, none of the other campers lose any weight and their parents (also overweight, and claiming their children are genetically predisposed to obesity) decide to take them home. Along with shock comedians Tom Green and Johnny Knoxville, Kenny appears on The Howard Stern Show, where Stern offers to pay them to perform oral sex on him. Kenny names the lowest price, but after performing the act, he is arrested for prostitution. When Cartman's impostor delivers the episode's moralizing statement, saying that it was wrong for them to have encouraged Kenny, Kyle gets suspicious and reveals the deception. At the fat camp, one of the kids reveals Cartman's junk food scheme, and the campers' parents allow them to stay and try to lose weight properly. However, Cartman is banned from the camp; he rails against the counselors and campers, but later sobs as he eats the last doughnut from his stash by himself. In exchange for not revealing the impostor's scheme with Cartman or his escape from the rehab center, Kyle forces him to carry out Kenny's latest stunt: spending six hours inside Mrs. Crabtree's uterus on live television. As the time runs out, Mrs. Crabtree expels the impostor (disguised as Kenny) from her uterus, but he has died from the pressure on his body. She then expels the body of a second boy, to the host's great surprise. ===== In the later Famicom version, King Suren's forces have been captured and turned into trees and rocks by King Ogereth. King Suren has to release his warriors from trees and rocks, and defeat King Ogereth's forces. The allies coming from trees and rocks only appear in the Famicom version. In the earlier X1, MSX and PC computer versions, however, the player starts with a complete army and may gain some extra knights by freeing them from prison cells, not from trees or rocks. There are no soldiers turned into objects in the original computer versions. ===== In this film, Grande Otelo, Ankito and Jô Soares are three thieves frequently searched by the police. Grande Otelo's character was having a crisis with his girlfriend due to his criminal lifestyle. However, things get even more complicated when Grande Otelo receives a letter from his aunt saying that she has sent her son. Grand Otelo's nephew, Zé Maria, is extremely Christian, and eventually wins over Grande Otelo, a fact that causes more problems than anticipated. ===== A police car moves through the streets of Alhambra, California. The car stops at a police station, and the officers inside it transport their drunk prisoner to the station. Inside the station, Marilyn Gregor (Dolores Fuller) meets Inspector Johns (Lyle Talbot) and Lt. Bob Lawrence (Steve Reeves). Through their discussion, the viewers learn that her brother Don Gregor (Clancy Malone) had been arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun. She has just posted bail for him, and the two officers warn her that she would forfeit if her brother fails to show up for his trial. They release her brother, but they refuse Don's request to return his handgun. As the Gregor siblings leave, Johns muses about the son of a great doctor being a jerk. Lawrence suggests it could be a result of the "sins of the father".Craig (2009), p. 69-82 Johns suspects the young man was an associate of gangster Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell). The Gregor siblings return home and Don immediately heads for the liquor cabinet in the living room, pouring himself a drink. He then reminds Marilyn that he is a legal adult, and claims to know what he in doing. Both statements aim to prevent Marilyn from lecturing him on his behavior. They briefly argue and she breaks his glass. Afterwards, Don opens a book safe and retrieves a hidden revolver. As he prepares to leave, Don has a chance encounter with his father Dr. Boris Gregor (Herbert Rawlinson) at the front door. The son exits into the night, while the father enters the home. As his daughter pours a drink for him, the Doctor reveals that he is already aware of Don's association with Vic Brady and his recent arrest. Inspector Johns had notified him with a phone call. But he is not particularly worried, feeling that everything will work out in the end. He blames Don's current behavior on the premature death of Mrs. Gregor and his own upbringing having had the unintentional effect of spoiling the boy. While Marilyn expresses concern over the influence of Brady on Don, her father continues to drink. He then heads for the book safe and discovers that the revolver is missing. He seems aware of his son's secrets, despite his apparent denial concerning his criminal tendencies. The scene shifts to the Hunters' Inn, a bar in Temple City, California, where Don and Brady meet. Don receives his share of the money for his role in a recent robbery. They are then joined by Johns and Lawrence, and briefly "cops" and "crooks" (as they call each other) drink together. The policemen provoke Don into a confrontation, and he knocks over Johns' drink. As the officers intended, this gives them the excuse to frisk him. They fail to find the revolver, as he had earlier offered it to Brady for safekeeping. John orders both criminals to leave the bar and they obey. Outside the bar, Brady chastises Don for his impulsive behavior with the officers. Don wants revenge against Johns, but Brady dismisses the idea and reminds his partner that they have other plans. They are going to rob the payroll of the Monterey Theatre, though Don has his doubts about the plan. At the Gregor House, Marilyn has changed into her nightgown while her father sleeps in an armchair, probably drunk. She wakes him up to discuss their concern over Don's nocturnal activities. The father states that he can't see his own son as a wrongdoer. But he also expresses guilt over his own failure as a father. Brady and Don break into a closed theatre and ambush the nightwatchman (Bud Osborne). The nightwatchman is forced at gunpoint to open the safe for the criminals. At this point Miss Willis (Mona McKinnon), a bookkeeper, end her shift and attempts to leave the building. She startles the criminals, and the robbery starts having casualties. Don shoots and kills the nightwatchman, while Brady shoots the fleeing woman in the back. Afterwards Brady collects their loot while Don seems to be in shock over his own actions. The two criminals flee while police sirens are heard approaching the theatre. A car chase scene follows, with the driving Brady managing to lead their car to safety. At the theatre, a doctor examines the wounded Willis, while Johns receives the basic information on the case: robbery, murder, and attempted murder. The nightwatchman is identified as a recently retired veteran of the police force, who took his last the job just to relieve his boredom. The officers decide to treat this case as one involving cop killers. The press has already arrived at the murder scene, in the person of a female reporter (Regina Claire) and her photographer. Brady leads Don to the residence of his gun moll, Loretta (Tedi Thurman). While he explains their situation to her, Don leaves unnoticed. When Loretta notices his absence, Brady decides to search for him. The following night, Don wanders the streets until deciding to visit his father's office. He confesses the murder to his father, and the doctor urges him to surrender to the police. The guilt-ridden Don agrees to do so eventually, but wishes for more time to think things through. His father helps him escape the arriving police. While fleeing Don is captured by Brady, who drives him back to Loretta's residence. The three of them listen to the radio, where the case of Paul McKenna (the nightwatchman)'s murder is covered and both their names are announced as murder suspects. Also mentioned in the broadcast is that Don is the son of a famous plastic surgeon. Don repeatedly expresses his decision to surrender and face the consequences of his actions. Fearing for his own safety, Brady kills his partner. The corpse is temporarily stored behind a curtain. An argument between Brady and Loretta follows. She accuses him of destroying everything and everybody that comes in contact with him, while Brady reminds her that he once rescued her from the gutter. He insists that she should stay by his side to the end. The two end the argument in an embrace. At this point, Brady conceives a plan to elude the police by undergoing plastic surgery. He contacts Dr. Gregor, claiming that he is holding Don hostage until plastic surgery is completed. The doctor decides to have Marilyn assist him, since she is a trained nurse. Days later, Lawrence attempt to romance Marilyn, with the ulterior motive of seeking further information on Don. She coldly turns him down. Later than night, Brady, the doctor, Loretta, and Marilyn gather in preparation of the operation. Brady expresses his distrust of the Gregors and has to be convinced that anesthesia is necessary. With Brady sedated, Dr. Gregor searches Loretta's residence for a water basin. He finds it, but also finds Don's stored corpse. He keeps this a secret and maintains a facade of calmness while performing and completing the operation. He claims that the bandages covering Brady's face have to stay on for two weeks. The necessity of a second visit saves his life and that of his daughter, as Loretta had orders to kill them both once the operation was over. Two weeks later, Brady and Loretta arrive to the Gregor residence on schedule. But so do Johns and Lawrence, who were both summoned by the doctor. They want to know who the bandaged man is. When Brady's bandages are removed, his new face is revealed to be modeled after that of Don. Besides the Doctor, everyone else considers him to be the wanted murderer. And the Doctor claims that the man is his son. A horrified Brady attempts to flee and is killed in a shootout with the police. His dying body falls into a swimming pool. ===== Human colonists on Ganymede send three extremely hardy and durable robots, ZZ One, ZZ Two, and ZZ Three, to explore the physically demanding surface of Jupiter and contact the Jovians. Initially they are greeted with hostile attempts, though it takes the robots some time to deduce the hostile nature of activities because the attacks are too feeble, but reproduce normal conditions on Earth (e.g., using oxygen to poison the robots). After the initial hostile encounters with both Jupiter's wildlife and the suspicious Jovians, the robots establish a line of communication and are taken on a tour of the Jovian civilization. They quickly discover that the Jovians have a vastly larger population than the humans, since Jupiter has a much greater surface area than Earth. The robots also realize that the Jovians are considerably more advanced scientifically, and that they have developed force field technology far beyond that of humanity. Moreover, the Jovians are culturally inclined to believe themselves superior to the extent that they consider all other life forms, including humans, "vermin". They arrogantly threaten to use their force field technology to leave Jupiter, in order to destroy humanity. However, as the tour proceeds, the robots repeatedly (and unintentionally) surprise the Jovians with their immunity to extremes of heat, cold and radiation. Because they use gamma radiation for close range vision, they even pose a danger to local microbes and the Jovians themselves. At the conclusion of the tour the Jovians return the robots to their spacecraft, only to be astonished that it does not need to provide them with any protection against outer space. After a flurry of diplomatic activity, the Jovians return to the robots and, unexpectedly, swear eternal peace with humanity, surprising the robots. They quickly retreat back to Earth. On return from the surface of planet Jupiter, the three robots reflect on this change of heart by the Jovians. ZZ One (with his considerably lower reasoning capacity than the other robots) argues, from the perspective of the First Law, that the Jovians simply realized that they could not harm humans. However, the other two robots intuit the real reason. When the Jovians' superiority complex was confronted by the strength and resistance of the robots to all manner of hazards, it crumbled and led to their acquiescence. ZZ Three thoughtfully realizes that the three robots never thought to mention that they were robots, and the Jovians must have simply mistakenly assumed that they were humans. ===== The Cold War has endured for a century and an uneasy peace between "Us" and "Them" exists. A secret agent arrives in America from Moscow with the story that robots identical to humans in appearance and behaviour have been developed by Them and that ten have already been infiltrated into America. When they get together, they will trigger a nuclear-level explosion (they are components of a total conversion bomb). A conference of "Our" greatest minds in all the branches of natural science is hastily convened to decide how to detect these robots and how to catch up on this technology. Almost too late, the head of the Bureau of Robotics realises that Their plan exactly anticipates this: the infiltrator robots have replaced scientists invited to this conference, and while the explosion would kill a relatively small number of people, it would precisely include "Our" top scientists, and therefore all the scientists arriving to the conference must pass a security check before they are allowed to get together. His guess is proven correct almost immediately, as ten of the scientists en route explode via self-destruct charges. However, the Bureau head wonders how They could have realized and acted upon the discovery of the plan so quickly. The truth dawns on him; he pulls a blaster and blows the secret agent's head off. The body slumps forward leaking "not blood, but high- grade machine oil." ===== Robot TN-3 (also known as Tony) is designed as a humanoid household robot, an attempt by US Robots to get robots accepted in the home. He is placed with Claire Belmont, whose husband works for the company, as an experiment, but she is reluctant to accept him. Tony realizes that Claire has very low self-esteem, and tries to help her by redecorating her house and giving her a make-over. Finally, he pretends to be her lover, and deliberately lets the neighbors see him kissing Claire, thus increasing her self-esteem. In the end, though, Claire falls in love with Tony, and becomes conflicted and ultimately depressed when he is taken back to the lab. The TN-3 robot models are scheduled to be redesigned, since US Robots thinks that they should not produce a model that will appear to fall in love with women. US Robots robopsychologist Susan Calvin dissents, aware that women may nevertheless fall in love with robots. ===== Mickey Rooney as Dan Brady Peter Lorre as Nick Dramoshag Dan Brady (Mickey Rooney), a young auto mechanic in California, "borrows" $20 ($ today) from the cash register at his job to pay for a date with blonde femme fatale Vera Novak (Jeanne Cagney), who works at a nearby diner.In the plot description, in order to improve readers' perspective on the relative severity of the main character's crimes in 1950, an inflation adjuster is installed to provide updated monetary equivalents based on the most current full-year CPI (Consumer Price Index) figures calculated by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C. He intends to return the money before it is missed, but the garage's bookkeeper shows up earlier than scheduled. As Brady scrambles to cover evidence of his petty theft, he quickly finds himself drawn into an ever- worsening "quicksand" of crime, with each of his misdeeds more serious than the last. In a scheme to return the pilfered $20, Brady decides to pay only one dollar as a down payment at a jewelry store for a $100 wristwatch ($ today), a deal that requires him to sign a sales contract to buy the watch over time with regular installment payments. He then promptly goes to a pawnshop where he hocks the watch for $30 cash ($ today), using most of that money to cover the missing funds at the garage. However, the next day Brady is tracked down by an investigator who informs him that he has violated the installment contract by pawning a watch he does not legally own. The investigator tells him that if he does not pay the jewelry store the full $100 for the watch within 24 hours, he will be charged with grand larceny, a crime punishable by three years in state prison. After unsuccessfully applying for a payday loan and attempting to use his car as collateral for another loan, a desperate Brady resorts to mugging a tipsy bar patron known for carrying large amounts of cash. Nick Dramoshag (Peter Lorre), the seedy owner of a penny arcade on Santa Monica Pier and a man who has had his own intimate history with Vera, discovers evidence of Brady's mugging. He blackmails the young mechanic, demanding a car from Brady's job in exchange for his silence. Brady steals the car, which he trades for the evidence from Dramoshag. Brady's morally lacking boss Oren Mackey (Art Smith) soon confronts Brady and says he knows that he stole the car. Mackey demands the return of the vehicle or $3,000 in cash ($ today), or he will go to the police. Brady and Vera steal the month-end receipts from Dramoshag's arcade, obtaining $3,610 ($ today). Brady expects to use the money to pay Mackey. Vera, however, feels entitled to half the money, so she buys herself a mink coat for $1,800 ($ today). Once Brady learns what she has done, he is furious. He leaves Vera and returns to the garage, where he offers Mackey $1,800 to settle their arrangement. Mackey takes the money, but he draws a pistol and says he refuses to settle. The two men struggle when Mackey tries to telephone the police, and Brady strangles him in their altercation. Certain that his boss is dead, Brady takes Mackey's gun and returns to Vera to inform her of what he has done. He asks her to flee with him to Texas. She will not go, insisting that the authorities have no evidence against her. Disgusted by Vera's self-serving behavior, Dan ends their relationship and departs. Outside of Vera's apartment, Brady's still- loyal but unappreciated former girlfriend Helen (Barbara Bates) waits in his car to talk with him. She had seen him earlier on the street and realized then that he was in trouble. She now decides to accompany "Danny" as they drive out of town to avoid his anticipated arrest for murder. After his car breaks down, Brady carjacks a sedan, which happens to be driven by a sympathetic lawyer (Taylor Holmes). Brady subsequently gets out of that car when they arrive at Santa Monica Pier. There he tells Helen to remain with the lawyer as he carries out his new plan to escape to Mexico on a friend's charter boat. He also assures Helen that he will send for her once he is safely resettled across the border. Brady rushes away to catch the boat. A few minutes later, the lawyer and Helen hear over the sedan's radio a news report that Mackey is actually not dead, that the shady auto dealer had survived his injuries. They now drive back to the pier to find Dan and inform him that he is not a murderer. Meanwhile, police officers spot Brady there, wound him by gunfire in an ensuing chase, and take him into custody. The film concludes with Helen, now on the scene, comforting Dan and promising to wait for him until he is released from prison. ===== The story centers around Sgt. John Riley and 16 men of his U.S. Army battalion who (against military law) are whipped for "desertion" only because they had traveled—without an explicit permission—to the Mexican side of the border to fulfill their religious obligation to attend Mass, and because they are thought to be "Papists" whose loyalty is ipso facto suspect in the eyes of their Protestant commanders. Sgt. Riley, with regard for the safety and well- being of his men, releases them at gun-point from the lash. He escorts them across the border to Mexico to hopefully find at Vera Cruz a ship back to Ireland, only to be violently captured by the revolutionary Juan Cortina as enemies of Mexico. Riley, wounded in his thigh, is nursed by Cortina's woman Marta. As Cortina considers what to eventually do with Riley and his men, news arrives that the U.S. and Mexico are now at war. Because of this, after a visit from the representative of the Mexican government the Irish deserters are presented with the choice of joining and fighting on the side of the Mexican Army, thus forming their own batallion under command by Riley. Riley is made a captain, in charge of all the Irish-immigrant U.S. soldiers who have come over to the Mexican side in increasingly large numbers, (as General Zachary Taylor puts it, "because of sex, saints and sadism"). For encouragement they are given their own green flag as the Saint Patrick's Battalion. Several key battle engagements are highlighted, with dates, and a cease-fire is reached. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is threatening to impeach President Polk as world opinion turns against U.S. aggression and the invasion of the Republic of Mexico. The cease-fire is soon violated and hostilities resume. Gen. Zachary Taylor, unlike Gen. Winfield Scott, deplores the war, but he obeys his commander-in-chief. As it becomes increasingly evident that the war is being lost by Mexico, Riley's men debate what to do. There is a difference between desertion and treason. Those who deserted before the war and are taken back to the U.S. will be lashed and branded; those who deserted after the declaration of war will be hanged as traitors. They decide to die as men fighting for freedom. When they finally lose, Cortina has escaped with many of his forces, and the Irish are taken prisoner. Many of them are still officially British citizens, having never yet been granted the U.S. citizenship they had first been promised for enlisting in the U.S. Army. General Winfield Scott utterly rejects the appeal of the Mexican Government, presented by Col. Nexor, to recognize Riley's men as Mexican citizens and prisoners of war; protests have come in from all the nations of the world denouncing their punishment as barbaric and an utter contradiction of the principles of the American Revolution. Scott is adamant: the deserters will be lashed and branded, and forced to watch those condemned as traitors hanged, whose heads will be forcibly faced in the direction of Chapultepec to watch the taking of that stronghold and the sight of the lowering of the Mexican flag and the raising of the Stars and Stripes, so that this will be their last sight—they will be hanged at that instant. On the day of their execution, in sight of the men on the scaffold, Riley is lashed with a cat-o-nine-tails: 50 strokes. He is then branded on his right cheek with a large letter D "just below the eye, so not to impair his vision." The soldier ordered to wield the red-hot brand is told to do it quickly, as "Riley must be conscious when it is done!". Visibly shaken, the soldier sears the brand into Riley's face upside down (backward). He is harshly reprimanded, then told to "do it right!", but he vomits and faints, and Riley is branded on his left cheek by the officer in charge of punishment. Riley is then forced to watch the executions ordered by Scott. He loudly cries out encouragement to them, who shout back as they are hanged. Some time afterward, while working in a stone quarry for military prisoners, Riley is told by his former U.S. commander that he has been freed, to which he responds, "I have always been free". Riley returns to Mexico, locates Cortina, and finds Marta still alive. She still has the green flag of the St. Patrick's Battalion. Cortina recognizes her love for Riley and departs. Riley and Marta disappear into the wilderness. The epilogue explains that Gen. Winfield Scott, who had hoped to become President of the U.S., was defeated, and Gen. Zachary Taylor, who only wanted peace, was elected. To this day the St. Patrick's Battalion has been honored annually by Mexico and Ireland. ===== The researchers at Hyper Base are ready to test the first hyperspace ship. Previous experiments were successful in transportation of inert objects, but all attempts to transport living creatures have led to complete loss of higher brain function. As such, the ship has a positronic robot at the controls, since a robot is more expendable than a human, and its brain can later be precisely analyzed for errors to determine the cause. The ship fails to function as planned, and Susan Calvin persuades Gerald Black, an etherics engineer (who had also appeared in "Little Lost Robot"), to board the ship in order to locate the fault. As Calvin suspects, Black finds that the fault lies with the robot, which, as a result of imprecise orders, has damaged the controls of the ship. They realize that the precise and finite robot mind must be compensated for by human ingenuity. ===== U.S. Robots is planning the production of the LNE series of robots, which are designed for boron mining in the asteroid belt. After a technician neglects to lock a terminal, a factory tourist accidentally reprograms the prototype LNE, wiping clean the structure of the robot's brain, and rendering it a baby in all effects. Robopsychologist Susan Calvin experiments with it, in the process naming it "Lenny" (and developing maternal feelings for it), and after a month, has been able to teach it a few simple words and actions. She gets emotionally attached to Lenny and realizes that robots can be built that are able to learn, instead of being built for a fixed and specific purpose. Complications arise when Lenny, unaware of its own force, breaks the arm of a computing technician, which is about to cause widespread "robots attacking humans" panic. However, Susan Calvin manages to exploit the sense of danger to add a new thrill of robotic investigation, just as happens with space exploration or radiation physics. ===== In 2120, the crew of a rocket ship headed for the planet Mars is dying and plagued by nightmarish visions and dreams. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Mars – supernaturalist authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood and Ambrose Bierce — are also dying, fading from existence as the people of Earth burn the last of their books, outlawed a century ago for their superstitious themes. Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare are there too, although Dickens bitterly resents his "ghettoization" among genre writers. The last copies of books that survived, brought by the captain acting on an unknown hunch, are all that stand in the way of the destruction of these literary remnants on Mars. Upon landing, the astronauts burn the books, thus finally exterminating the authors and their creations. The Three Witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth appear at the beginning of the story. Similar characters reappear in another of Bradbury's short stories, "The Concrete Mixer", also dealing with Mars, and they provided the title of Bradbury's novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. ===== The Sundial tells the story of the residents of the Halloran house, opening on the evening of the funeral of Lionel Halloran, the house's master. Lionel's wife, Maryjane, is convinced that Lionel was pushed down the stairs and murdered by his mother, Orianna Halloran, who stands to inherit the house; only hours after the funeral, Maryjane taught her young daughter, Fancy, to repeat the phrase "Granny killed my daddy." Also living at Halloran house were the aged Richard Halloran, who needed a wheelchair to move around, and was kept by a nurse; Essex, a young man hired to catalogue the library (and of whom it is implied was more specifically hired to be a kept man to the elder Mrs. Halloran); Fanny, Richard Halloran's sister; and Miss Ogilvie, young Fancy's governess. A less obvious but nonetheless imposing character in the novel is the Halloran house itself. Built by a man who came into great wealth late in his life, the house is lavish to the point of garishness, and the endless details of the grounds and interiors are carefully described by Jackson until they overwhelm both characters and reader alike. One of these details is the eponymous sundial, which stands like an asymmetrical eyesore in the middle of the mathematically perfect grounds and bears the legend "WHAT IS THIS WORLD?" (a quote from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in "The Knight's Tale"). Immediately upon the death of her son, Orianna seizes ownership of the house and begins to exert her power over its occupants: Miss Ogilvie and Essex are to be dismissed, Maryjane sent away, and Fanny allowed to live in the house only by Orianna's good graces. Young Fancy, who Orianna claims will inherit the house upon her grandmother's death, will remain. Amid the uproar following this announcement, Fanny receives a vision whilst walking in the Halloran gardens: the ghost of her father warns her that the world is soon to end and that only those in the Halloran house will be spared. As Fanny tells the others of the coming destruction, a snake seems to manifest on the floor; this is taken as an omen from the ghost of Fanny's father. Orianna, shaken, reconsiders and allows everyone to remain in the house. Soon after this, Orianna sends for Mrs. Willow, "an old friend" of Orianna's. Mrs. Willow arrives with her two daughters, Julia and Arabella; all three women seem intent on winning their way into the Hallorans' money, but become frightened when they hear of the coming destruction and refuse to be sent away. Only a few days after, another young woman named Gloria arrives. Gloria is seventeen, a daughter of a cousin of Orianna, who asks to stay with the Hallorans whilst her father is out of the country. Mrs. Willow, meanwhile, suggests they try to view the future through an oil-coated mirror—a parlor game from her adolescent years. Gloria volunteers to try it, and describes visions of the end of the world and the Eden-like paradise that will come afterwards. The visions terrify Gloria and the others must pressure her to see for them. Finally, a last member of the party is brought into the house: a stranger whom Fanny and Miss Ogilvie meet at random in the village. Upon making his acquaintance, Aunt Fanny dubs him "Captain Scarabombardon." His real first name is revealed to be Harry. At first the small group is excited, using the opportunity to spend Halloran money to stock up on items for the "next world." They burn books in the library to make room for supplies. At first the items are useful, but gradually, as the pampered residents begin to think of luxuries they might miss in "Eden", the supplies grow fanciful to the point of ridiculousness. Orianna soon begins to issue edicts and laws regarding behaviour after the world ends, setting herself up as the queen of the coming paradise. The more she commands and postures, the more the others ignore her as they grow more and more caught up by Gloria's increasingly detailed visions of the beauty of the next world. When doubt is again expressed by Orianna, another omen—the spontaneous shattering of a window overlooking the sundial—is attributed to Fanny's dead father. There are at least two dissenters in the group. Julia, who finds the concept of the end of the world ridiculous, wishes to leave with Captain. Orianna, realising that Captain is only one of two males who will enter the new world, bribes him with enough money to convince him to stay, claiming that she does not believe he will have enough time to spend it all. Julia goes on alone, but after a ride with a terrifying, sadistic cabbie (it is possible, though barely suggested, that this man might have been employed by Orianna solely to scare Julia), she flees back to the safety of the house. Gloria, meanwhile, has befriended Essex, and talks about her dream to live out the rest of her life—no matter how short it might be—in a real world, rather than the artificial, insulated world of the Halloran manor. Essex betrays Gloria by alerting Orianna of the young woman's plans of leaving. A less obvious dissenter is Fancy. A spoiled and frightening child, Fancy resents the idea that the world will be destroyed before she has a chance to live in it, and plays obsessively with her dollhouse (which itself is a small model of the Halloran house), taking as much delight in ordering her dolls about as Orianna takes in lording over the residents of Halloran House. Fancy has taken her grandmother's promise of inheritance to heart, and claims that she will smash the dollhouse when her grandmother dies because she "won't need it anymore." The evening before the world is due to end, Orianna plans a great party (outdoors, so that no one will comment on the preparations inside the house) and invites the whole village to attend for a final feast. This party takes on the air of a coronation when Orianna appears wearing a small gold crown to symbolise her position in the next world. Orianna vows never to remove the crown until she passes it on to Fancy. The day after the party is spent sending away the servants and covering up the windows of the house so that no one will have to see the destruction that will happen that night. A violent storm begins, and the lights go out as the residents prepare to gather for the night in a single room. As the group goes downstairs, they discover Orianna dead on the landing. "I was certainly wondering about all those instructions and rules of hers," observes one character. "I kept thinking maybe she was going to a different place than ours." As they speculate on what might have happened, Fancy dashes down to take the crown from her grandmother's head and put it on her own. The two men brave the storm to carry Orianna's body to the sundial, where it is implied she will be swept away in the destruction. Then all the players gather together to wait for the coming morning, and the novel ends. ===== Two men, Jean-Paul Ladouceur and Grant Munro, live peacefully in adjacent cardboard houses. When a single, small flower blooms between their houses, they fight each other to the death over ownership of that flower. The moral of the film is, simply, Love your neighbour. The moral is also shown in other languages, including: *French: Aimez votre prochain *Japanese: 同胞に親切なれ (Dōhō ni shinsetsu nare) *Chinese: 親善鄰居 (Qīnshàn línjū) *Hebrew: אהבתי לרעך; (Ahavthi l'reacha) *Russian: Любите ближнего своего; Lyubite blizhnego svoyego *Spanish: Ama a tu prójimo *Italian: Amate il prossimo *German: Liebe deinen Nächsten *Norwegian: Elsk din nabo *Esperanto: Amu vian najbaron ===== A black man and a white girl (Mona Montgomery) are wed on a rooftop. He courts her by carrying her around in a trash can and chooses a Ku Klux Klansman to perform the wedding. The wedding guests are played by people dressed in early pop-influenced costumes such as American flags and tinfoil. Mary Vivian Pearce does a dance known as the Bodie Green. ===== Bill and Janice Templeton live a privileged life in Manhattan's Upper West Side with their 11-year-old daughter, Ivy. Over a period of several weeks, they begin to notice a stranger following them in various public places, and Janice grows alarmed when she sees the man follow her and Ivy home one afternoon. The man eventually reaches out to the couple by phone, revealing himself as Elliot Hoover, a widower who lost his wife and young daughter, Audrey Rose, in a car accident in Pittsburgh. The couple agree to have dinner with Elliot, during which he explains that he believes their daughter, Ivy, is a reincarnation of Audrey, and that details relayed to him by psychics confirm his suspicions; the details he is aware of include intimate knowledge of the couple's apartment and Ivy's bedroom. Furthermore, Ivy was born only minutes after Audrey died. Bill, a skeptic, believes Elliot is extorting the family. He invites Elliot to their apartment, and arranges for his attorney friend, Russ, to listen covertly to their conversation from upstairs. When Elliot speak's Audrey's name, Ivy hears him from her room and enters an altered state of panic, which is only calmed by Elliot's presence. In the state, she bangs her hands against the cold window, and it leaves inexplicable burns. Elliot insists this is evidence of her reincarnation, as Audrey burned to death in the car accident. Bill grows enraged by Elliot and forces him out, but Janice is sympathetic. One night while Bill is working late, Ivy experiences another night terror, in which she thrashes around the apartment violently. Janice, unable to control her, is surprised by Elliot's appearance at her door, and eagerly allows him in to help calm Ivy. When Bill returns, Elliot locks the couple out of their apartment and disappears with Ivy. An attendant in the building swiftly informs the couple that Elliot rented an apartment in the building earlier that day. Police quickly discover him and Ivy in the apartment, apprehend him, and charge him with child abduction. A trial ensues, during which Janice and Bill have Ivy sent to a Catholic boarding school in upstate New York to shield her from the public. During the trial, Elliot attempts to persuade the jury that his actions were necessary to grant peace to the spirit of his daughter, Audrey. The trial becomes an international news story, with a Hindu holy man testifying about their religious belief in reincarnation, to which Elliot ascribes. When questioned on the stand, Janice relents and admits that she believes Elliot, and that he had only pure interests in helping Ivy. The judge grants a recess in the trial, and Janice and Bill are subsequently informed that Ivy has injured herself at her boarding school by crawling toward a fire pit during a Christmas celebration. After Ivy is treated for burns, Janice remains in upstate New York, and the two spend the evening in a hotel. In the middle of the night, Janice finds Ivy repeatedly greeting herself as Audrey Rose in the bathroom mirror. In a motion to complete Elliot's trial, Bill and Janice's attorney requests that Ivy be hypnotized as a means of proving she is not a reincarnation of Audrey. The hypnotist employs a past life regression hypnosis, which is observed in a hospital by the jury, along with Elliot, Bill, and Janice. The hypnosis reaches a fever pitch as Ivy revisits the traumatic car crash that took Audrey's life, and she begins to react violently. She eventually loses consciousness, and Elliot breaks a one-way mirror to access the room and attempt to calm her, but she dies in his arms. Some time later, Janice writes a letter to Elliot, thanking him for transporting Ivy's cremated remains to India, and informing him that Bill has gradually come to accept her and Elliot's belief that Ivy was a reincarnation of Audrey. A closing intertitle quotes the Bhagavad-Gita: ===== In 1964, a fiery car crash claimed the lives of Audrey Rose Hoover and her mother. Eleven years later, Elliot Hoover, her father, believes he has found Audrey's reincarnated soul in the body of 10-year-old Ivy Templeton. When Ivy dies during a terrible hypnotic reenactment of Audrey's death throes, the Templetons are devastated and Elliot disappears. However, the question remains: If Audrey Rose returned as Ivy Templeton, who died in 1975—then, where is she now? Janice Templeton is determined to find the answer. ===== Bill and Janice Templeton's peaceful lives are cast into chaos when a strange man begins fixating on their eleven-year-old daughter Ivy. This stalking seems to coincide with Ivy's horrible night terrors in which she beats at the windows and screams. One night while Ivy is in the middle of one of these episodes, the stranger contacts them directly and introduces himself as Elliot Hoover. Hoover explains to the Templetons that he lost his wife and their three-year-old daughter, Audrey Rose, in a fiery car crash. To heal his mental anguish, he visited a clairvoyant who revealed that his daughter had been immediately reincarnated as another young girl born at the moment of Audrey Rose's death. Because of this immediate reincarnation, Audrey Rose's soul was not allowed the necessary time to reflect in the spirit world, causing her to be trapped forever at the moment of her horrific death. In an effort to rescue his daughter's soul, Hoover began to research births that coincided with his daughter's death, gradually determining that his daughter's soul now resides in Ivy Templeton. The Templetons refuse to believe Hoover and order him to stay away from their daughter. However, Ivy's night terrors grow steadily worse. The Templetons are astonished when Hoover is able to calm Ivy by calling her Audrey Rose. Hoover continues to intrude in the family's lives, going so far as to kidnap Ivy in an attempt to heal his daughter's tormented soul. Although Hoover soon returns Ivy voluntarily, Bill has Hoover arrested for kidnapping. While Hoover is in jail, Ivy nearly dies after walking into a bonfire, seemingly while in a trance. Bill suspects Hoover of brainwashing his daughter during the kidnapping, but Janice starts to believe that Ivy truly is the reincarnation of Audrey Rose. Bill dismisses his wife's beliefs, causing strain on their relationship. During the kidnapping trial, Hoover continues to insist that his daughter's soul resides in Ivy. The newspapers begin to spin the trial as a supernatural child custody battle, and the resulting media circus disrupts Bill and Janice's lives, further threatening their marriage. A psychotherapist is brought forth to hypnotize Ivy before the jury. Ivy is taken into her past life by the hypnotist, where she suddenly begins reenacting Audrey Rose's violent death. While reliving Audrey Rose's last moments, Ivy dies of what is determined to be smoke inhalation, even though no smoke or fire is present. Devastated, the Templetons finally acknowledge that Hoover was telling the truth and have the charges against him dismissed. Some years later, Janice writes a letter to Hoover to thank him for transporting Ivy's ashes to India. While Bill is still in denial, Janice has come to accept that Hoover was correct all along. She believes that both Ivy and Audrey Rose are now at peace and takes comfort in the thought that Ivy will one day be reborn. She closes with a quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita. ===== Nick Halloway is a stock analyst who spends most of his life avoiding responsibility and connections with other people. At his favorite bar, the Academy Club, his friend George Talbot introduces him to Alice Monroe, a TV documentary producer. Sharing an instant attraction, Nick and Alice make out in the ladies' room and set a lunch date for Friday. The following morning, a hungover Nick attends a shareholders' meeting at Magnascopic Laboratories. Unable to endure the droning presentation by Dr. Bernard Wachs, Nick leaves the room for a nap. A lab technician accidentally spills his mug of coffee onto a computer console, causing a meltdown, and the entire building is evacuated. The building seems to explode, but there is no debris. Instead, much of the building is rendered invisible, including Nick. Shady CIA operative David Jenkins arrives on the scene, and discovers Nick's condition. While they are transferring him to an ambulance, the agents joke about how Nick will spend the rest of his life being studied by scientists. In a panic, Nick flees. Jenkins convinces his supervisor Warren Singleton not to notify CIA headquarters so that they can capture and take credit for Nick, who could become the perfect secret agent. Nick hides at the Academy Club. He locates Dr. Wachs and asks for his help to reverse his condition. Wachs agrees to help, but Jenkins kills him to keep Nick's invisibility a secret. Jenkins' team gets a hold of Nick's background information but it doesn't prove very useful in finding him. It says that Nick has never been married, his parents are both dead, he has no relatives, a few friends but none that he's very close to, and he's not really dedicated to his job as he does it fast and loose. After reviewing Nick's profile, Jenkins says that Nick was an invisible man even before the accident. Nick infiltrates the CIA headquarters to find any information that can be used against them. Jenkins discovers Nick and tries to recruit him, but Nick is disgusted by the idea of him killing people. They have a confrontation, but Nick gets away. Nick goes to San Francisco and stays in George's remote beach house. George arrives with his wife Ellen, Alice, and another friend, to spend the weekend. Nick phones Alice and tells her to meet him nearby. He reveals his condition to Alice, and she promptly faints. When she revives, Alice decides to stay with Nick and help him. They travel to Mexico, where Nick can start a new life. To make money, he trades stocks using Alice as a proxy. Jenkins tracks them down, and shoots Nick with a tranquillizer gun. Nick falls into a river, revives and escapes. He makes his way to a video store, where he records his memoirs on video tape, including an ultimatum for Jenkins: exchange Alice for the tape, or Nick will give it to the CIA and the press. Jenkins agrees to the exchange. At the arranged time for the exchange, Jenkins puts Alice into a cab and orders his men to surround the phone booth where he thinks Nick is. The man in the phone booth turns out to be George, who is dressed in Nick's concealing clothing. Nick is disguised as the cab driver; he takes Alice away, pursued by Jenkins. They continue the chase on foot into a building still under construction, in the course of which Nick gets covered with concrete dust, outlining his silhouette. At the top, by taking off his jacket (which has the largest amount of dust on it), Nick tricks Jenkins into thinking that he has become desperate enough to commit suicide. Nick holds the jacket out to his side and pretends to begin to fall. Jenkins lunges at the jacket to try to save him, but ends up plunging off the building to his death. Believing Nick to be dead, Singleton releases Alice. Nick reunites with Alice and they leave for Switzerland. The film ends with shots of Nick's apparently empty clothing skiing down a mountainside towards their chalet, where a pregnant Alice greets him with a hot drink and a kiss. ===== After attending a Lakers basketball game, an immigration lawyer named Mack (Kevin Kline) finds himself at the mercy of potential muggers when his car breaks down in a bad part of Los Angeles late at night. The muggers are talked out of their plans by Simon (Danny Glover), a tow truck driver who arrives just in time. Mack sets out to befriend Simon, despite their having nothing in common. In the meantime, Mack's wife Claire (Mary McDonnell) and his best friend Davis (Steve Martin), a producer of violent action films, are experiencing life- changing events. Claire encounters an abandoned baby while jogging and becomes determined to adopt her. Davis suddenly becomes interested in philosophy rather than box-office profits after being shot in the leg by a man trying to steal his watch, vowing to devote the remainder of his career to eliminating violence from the cinema. The film chronicles how these characters—as well as various acquaintances, co-workers and relatives—are affected by their interactions in the light of life-changing events. In the end, they visit the Grand Canyon on a shared vacation trip, united in a place that is philosophically and actually "bigger" than all their little separate lives. ===== Published in 2005 by E.L. Doctorow, The March is a historical fiction novel set in late 1864 and early 1865 near the conclusion of the American Civil War. Central to the novel is the character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as he marches his 60,000 troops through the heart of the South, from Atlanta to Savannah, carving a 96 km (60 mile)-wide scar of destruction in their wake. As a result of Sherman's order to live off the land, his soldiers sow chaos as they pillage homes, steal cattle, burn crops, and attract a nearly unmanageable population of freed slaves and refugees who have nowhere else to go. While the novel revolves around the decisions of General Sherman, the story has no specific main character. Instead, Doctorow retells Civil War history according to the individual lives of a large and diverse cast of characters—white and black, rich and poor, Union and Confederate—whose lives are caught up in the violence and trauma of the war. The character of General Sherman is an unstable strategic genius who longs for a sense of romance in the war he wages and chafes under the implications of a post-war bureaucracy. Charismatic, yet often detached, Sherman is idolized by his men and the freed slaves who follow behind in hope of a better future. Pearl is the young and attractive daughter of a black slave woman and her white master who is unsure about her future and the attention she is now receiving from the handsome Union soldiers. She must decide whether to follow the advice of other emancipated slaves or choose to seek the possibilities she hopes the conclusion of the war will bring. Colonel Wrede Sartorius is a cold yet brilliant field surgeon who is seemingly numb to the horrors of war due to his close and frequent proximity to the surgical hacksaw which he carries with him everywhere. Trained in Germany, Sartorius experiments with new techniques on his patients and is consumed with his work, leaving little time for regret, romance, or pain. Arly and Will are two Confederate soldiers who serve the roles of the Shakespearean fool, alternately offering comic relief and poignant wisdom. Their antics are wild and chaotic and include defecting to the Union, impersonation, and robbing a church in order to be able to pay for a trip to a brothel. Emily Thompson, a judge's daughter, is a displaced southern aristocrat from Milledgeville, Georgia, which was then the state capital. She becomes the surgical assistant and lover to the cold, passionless Colonel Sartorius. The novel concludes when Lincoln is assassinated on April 14, 1865, shortly after the war ends, exposing the cautious optimism of the freed slaves and beleaguered soldiers. The final scene describes the faint smell of gunpowder dissipating through a forest with the lonely image of the boot and shredded uniform of a fallen soldier lying in the dirt. While Doctorow's characters express guarded hope now that the conflict is over, the physical and psychological toll of the war has left its scars on the people and the land, and no one is quite sure what to do next. ===== The story follows the life of a young woman, Selina Peake De Jong, who decides to be a school teacher in farming country. During her stay on the Pool family farm, she encourages the young Roelf Pool to follow his interests, which include art. Upon his mother's death, Roelf runs away to France. Meanwhile, Selina marries a Dutch farmer named Pervus. They have a child together, Dirk, whom she nicknames "So Big," from the common question and answer "How big is baby? " "So-o-o-o big!" (Ferber, 2). Pervus becomes ill and dies, and Selina is forced to take over working on the farm to give Dirk a future. As Dirk gets older, he works as an architect but is more interested in making money than creating buildings and becomes a stock broker, much to his mother's disappointment. His love interest, Dallas O'Mara, an acclaimed artist, echoes this sentiment by trying to convince Dirk that there is more to life than money. Much later in life, Selina is visited by Roelf Pool, who has since become a famous sculptor. Dirk grows very distressed when, after visiting his mother's farm, he realizes that Dallas and Roelf love each other and he cannot compete with the artistically minded sculptor. In the end, Dirk comes to appreciate the wisdom of his mother, who always valued aesthetics and beauty even as she scraped out a living in a stern Dutch community. Ultimately, Dirk is left alone in his sumptuous apartment, saddened by his abandonment of artistic values. ===== Danny O'Shea has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, Kevin, a Heisman Trophy winner and a local football hero. They live in their hometown of Urbania, Ohio. Kevin coaches the local "Pee-Wee Cowboys" football team. Despite being the best player, Danny's tomboy daughter, Becky, nicknamed Icebox, is cut during try outs because she is a girl. Also cut are her less- talented friends, Rashid Hanon (who can't catch anything), Tad Simpson (who can't run), and Rudy Zolteck (who's overweight and quite flatulent). After being ridiculed by the players who made the team, she convinces her dad to coach a new pee-wee team of their own. At first, Danny is reluctant to do so, but later accepts in an attempt to show Urbania that Kevin is not invincible, and that there is another O'Shea in town capable of winning. Kevin mockingly reminds him of the "one town, one team" rule and with the help of the locals, they decide to have a playoff game to determine the lone team that will represent Urbania. Alongside Becky, Hanon, Tad, Rudy, and Nubie (an intelligent boy who becomes assistant coach), Danny also gathers other children that have never been given a chance and dubs the team the "Little Giants." One such player is Junior Floyd, a strong-armed quarterback who turns out to be the son of Danny's childhood crush, Patty Floyd. Becky slowly develops a crush on him and struggles with her newfound feelings as a girl. Two local old-timers, Orville and Wilbur, encourage the rivalry between Danny and Kevin by reporting to them that a new star player, Spike Hammersmith, has just moved to Urbania. Danny succeeds at recruiting him by tricking his overzealous father, Mike, that he is the famous "Coach O'Shea", but Spike proves to be rude, arrogant, and refuses to play on a team with a girl. The deception is later discovered and he switches over to Kevin's more well- structured team. Kevin also encourages his daughter, Debbie, to become a cheerleader and later convinces Becky that a quarterback will want to date a cheerleader, not a teammate. Believing it is her best chance to win over Junior, she decides to quit the team and pursue cheerleading. Just as Danny's team start to lose hope, a bus arrives carrying NFL stars John Madden, Emmitt Smith, Bruce Smith, Tim Brown, and Steve Emtman. They teach and inspire the young players into believing they can win. On the day of the game, Kevin goads Danny into making an impulsive bet: If Danny wins, he gets Kevin's Chevrolet dealership; if Kevin wins, he gets Danny's gas station. Facing a 21-point halftime deficit, the Giants are lifted when Danny asks them to individually recall a time when they had a proud accomplishment and reassures them that all it takes is "one time" to beat the Cowboys. With this, they begin to make a big comeback with a series of outstanding and unexpected plays. Realizing that Junior is the main threat to them, Spike, under orders from his father, injures him by spearing him with his helmet after the whistle, which even Kevin considers disgraceful, unsportsmanlike conduct. Witnessing from the sidelines, an enraged Becky drops her pompoms and suits up for the game. She immediately makes an impact when she forces a fumble after a jarring hit on Spike. Other Giants make touchdowns in tandem with overcoming personal problems, such as Hanon's fear of dropping passes and making a reception, or another one running towards the end zone in excitement when he sees his little-seen dad has rushed back from a business trip to watch him play. In the game's closing seconds with the score tied at 21 all, the Giants make a goal line stand when Becky stops Spike. With time remaining for one final play, their offense steps back onto the field and uses a trick play Nubie calls "The Annexation of Puerto Rico," inspired by Tom Osborne’s famous “fumblerooski”. Kevin shouts out its actual name as it occurs, shouting "Fumblerooski, Fumblerooski!" The play includes three different ball carriers, utilizing the hook and lateral from Zolteck, to Junior, and finally to Berman, who scores the Giants' 99 yard game-winning touchdown. Afterwards, Danny suggests that rather than having the Giants solely represent Urbania, they should merge with the Cowboys, and both he and Kevin can coach the team. Danny and Patty rekindle their childhood romance. He also decides not to hold Kevin to the prior bet, on the stipulation that the town water tower be changed from "Home of Kevin O'Shea" to "Home of The O'Shea Brothers," reflecting a much earlier promise that Kevin made to Danny from their childhood. ===== George Kuffs, an irresponsible 21-year-old high school dropout from San Francisco, has walked out on his pregnant girlfriend Maya. Having lost his job and with no other prospects, George visits his brother, Brad, to ask for money. Brad serves as an officer in the San Francisco Patrol Special Police, a civilian auxiliary police unit that has potential officers assign themselves specific areas and work on a for-hire basis. Brad, unwilling to loan George any money, suggests George join him as a Patrol Special in the district he owns and work under him. Before George can decide on accepting the offer, Brad is shot by a man named Kane, whom George sees holding the gun. Kane drops the gun and nonchalantly walks away from the scene, and Brad is rushed to the hospital. George is brought in for a lineup where he identifies Kane as the shooter, but the police are forced to release him because George did not actually see Kane, who had worn gloves to prevent fingerprints, fire the gun. Shortly after, George is told by Captain Morino, a friend of Brad's, that Brad died from his injuries and that George has been bequeathed Brad's district. Local businessman Sam Jones tries to purchase the district so he can control it, but George decides to keep it and train to be a police officer. Seen as unskilled and rude, George draws the mocking of his fellow Patrol Specials and the ire of Officer Ted Bukowsky -a police liaison who has been assigned to work with the Patrol Specials as punishment for having an affair with the police chief's wife. George spikes Ted's coffee with sleeping pills while on duty, resulting in Ted getting suspended. After George is shot and wounded by a suicidal writer, his life begins to improve. He cracks a criminal enterprise run out of a Chinese dry cleaner (run by Jones), gaining respect and admiration from his fellow officers, and also reconnects with Maya. George gets justice for his brother's murder by killing Kane (in self-defense) during a failed ambush in George's apartment. His joy is short lived, however; Jones gives George's high school transcript to the Patrol Specials -proving George is ineligible to be a police officer because he never graduated- and declares he will take control of the district. George does not stop tracking Jones and seeks out the still-suspended Ted for help. They wind up in a massive rooftop shootout with Jones' goons and are eventually joined by the rest of the police unit. George corners Jones in the lowest level of a parking garage and fatally shoots him in self-defense. George marries Maya and becomes the proud father of a baby girl named Sarah. At Maya's suggestion, he takes the high school equivalency exam and passes, allowing him to continue working as an officer. He also takes out a loan to expand his brother's district. ===== A timeless spirit of mischief, the boggart has lived in Castle Keep since ages past, wreaking havoc upon the MacDevons who've lived there. His job, as far as he's concerned, is to keep life "interesting" for his beloved family. He's been too busy filching apples, knotting shoelaces, and trashing the kitchen to pay much attention to the march of history. But when the last MacDevon dies, the boggart has to come to terms with a new set of owners: the Volnik family from Toronto, who have no intention of inhabiting the drafty tumbledown castle that they've inherited from their great-uncle MacDevon. The sulking boggart is most displeased to find himself mistakenly shipped to Canada inside an antique desk destined for Emily Volnik's room. But once out and about, he is fascinated by this new world of peanut butter, pizza, and electric gizmos. Filching oatcakes quickly becomes a thing of the past as the boggart finds all sorts of new ways he can drive this modern family crazy. Possessing the t.v. set? No problem. Booby- trapping the house for Halloween? Well, if kids can do it, boggarts can do it. The traffic lights in downtown Toronto? Wouldn't they look prettier if they were another color? But when the boggart's pranks send Emily to the hospital, she and her brother Jessup must find a way to pry the boggart out of his new home and send him back to the castle where he belongs. Back in Scotland, the mail carrier swears his van is haunted when he delivers Tommy's Christmas package all the way from Canada. And the video game that Tommy finds inside seems to have a mind of its own! When Tommy crashes into the black hole himself, the boggart bursts forth from his own computer, home at last and free. The happy boggart returns to Castle Keep, ready to welcome its new owners with a whole host of boggart tricks. ===== Earth colonists on Ganymede, the largest satellite of Jupiter, have discovered the existence of intelligent life on the planet's surface. They manage to establish communication with the Jovians by means of a "radio-click" code, and exchange scientific information. When the Jovians realise that the humans are not like them, they break off communication with a threat to destroy what they see as inferior beings. Scientists on Ganymede realize that no possible Jovian ship could leave the surface without utilizing force-field technology, and experimentally determine that said technology cannot be made practical—therefore the Jovians will be unable to carry out their threat. Although the force field can be created, it cannot exist for more than a fraction of a second at the strength needed to contain Earth's air pressure, let alone Jupiter's. The scientist in charge, a brilliant theoretician, predicts this and then proves it with an experiment that ends in an explosion. Nicholas Orloff, the Colonial Commissioner, (who had been on Ganymede to assess the threat) reports back to Earth that the danger that had been posed by the Jovians is ended. Meanwhile, a ship is headed for Ganymede to pick up Orloff and return him to Earth. A conversation between the ship's Captain and a technician reveals that this ship utilizes force-field technology in an ingenious way, which the scientists on Ganymede have not thought of. By trial and error the technician discovered that the field explodes, losing an arm and an eye in the process. However he has circumvented this by turning the field on and off at a high frequency, so it is never on long enough to explode, but is never off long enough to lose air. The ending line, "I imagine he'll be rather pleased [with the applicability of the new technology]" is ironic since the reader knows that this is precisely the reverse of what we know Orloff's (and the rest of the human race's) reaction to the news will be, since this implies that the Jovians will eventually be able to overcome the technical difficulties and emerge from their planet to wage war on humanity. The story illustrates a tension between the theoretical ("Scientific") attitude and the practical ("Technical") one, exemplified by the prominent scientist claiming that his theory shows the force-field technology to be impossible ("That's final! That's final!"), and mirrored by the technician's account of his methods, and by the story's title. ===== Ray resides in Southern California. He devotes his time to helping those who are in trouble. His background is shadowy; all that is known about him is that he advertises surreptitiously in newspapers, ostensibly offering a 65 black Stingray, for Barter Only To Right Party" and including a telephone number (555-7687). Those wishing to enlist his services, presumably having learned the ad's real meaning by word of mouth, can call him for help. It is not clear if "Ray" is even his real name, or simply a nickname he has taken on based on the car he drives, the same one described in the advertisement. In the pilot, he does say that it is short for "Raymond", but it never becomes clear if he is being honest or using a cover. In the episode "Sometimes You Gotta Sing the Blues" he identifies himself to police as Charles D. Stroke and invites identification by fingerprint. However, it is not made clear if this is his real name or part of an elaborate cover. In subsequent episodes, the name Charles D. Stroke is not used. Ray does not charge money for his help. Instead, he requests a favor from his client in advance: the client will repay Ray in the future by performing one service—perhaps easy, perhaps difficult—upon Ray’s request, and the request may not be refused. As the series begins, Ray has apparently collected favors from many previous clients. This allows him to call in a variety of favors during the series to help his current clients. For instance, when he poses as a doctor and is called upon to perform surgery, he calls in a favor from a physician client who secretly takes Ray’s place in the operating room. Ray is a skilled driver and accomplished martial artist, and is excellent at covering his tracks and hiding his real identity. On several occasions, clients and government authorities believe that they have discovered who he really is, but in the end they always find that they are mistaken. Often it seems that Ray either is or was affiliated with a secret government agency, perhaps the CIA, but this is never conclusively proven. In "Abnormal Psych" an unnamed opponent with ties to the U.S. intelligence community claims to have "created" Ray, and in "Anytime, Anywhere" it is clear that he served in Vietnam in some capacity. Whenever the license plate for his Stingray is run through a computer, it lists many different addresses and owners. Two of the most notable were "1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC" (the address of the White House) and the motor pool for the Governor of California. Ray's other talents include a photographic memory, speed reading, the ability to slow down his heart to barely perceptible levels, and a knack for adopting personas including an arrogant surgeon, a tent-revival preacher, a crippled Vietnam veteran, and a grieving husband. He is a skilled computer hacker, capable of accessing and altering data systems and coordinating information retrieval. ===== As the Smurfs get ready for the Blue Moon Festival, Papa Smurf sees in his cauldron a vision of Clumsy Smurf reaching for a dragon wand and the Smurfs' longtime enemy, evil wizard Gargamel, capturing him. Not wanting this vision to come true, Papa disallows Clumsy to pick smurfroot, since the smurfroot fields lead to Gargamel's castle. Clumsy disobeys Papa and ends up unintentionally leading Gargamel and his pet cat Azrael to the village. The Smurfs all flee for their lives while Clumsy unknowingly runs towards the Forbidden Falls, with Papa, Smurfette, Grouchy, Brainy and Gutsy running after him. They find him at the edge of a cliff, and while trying to help him up, they are sucked into a gigantic vortex that spirits them to present day New York City. To make matters worse, Gargamel and Azrael follow them through the vortex. The Smurfs end up in the apartment of Patrick and Grace Winslow, a married couple who are expecting their first child, and their Basset Hound Elway. After introducing themselves and explaining their situation, the Winslows befriend them and allow them to stay in their apartment. The next day, needing to find a "stargazer", the Smurfs follow Patrick to his workplace at Anjelou Cosmetics, misunderstanding the previous explanation of his job as fortune-telling, where he calls Grace to pick them up. Meanwhile, having extracted Smurf essence from a lock of Smurfette's hair, Gargamel also arrives at Anjelou Cosmetics and ends up being treated favorably by Patrick's boss Odile when he uses most of his acquired magic on her elderly mother by restoring her youth and attractiveness. But Gargamel resumes his search upon recognizing Patrick and following him into FAO Schwarz, but gets arrested after stealing another man's leaf blower and for causing chaos in the store with some customers while trying to catch the Smurfs. Gargamel manages to bust out of prison with the aid of flies, since he encountered a moth and told it to bring him eagles to help him escape. By that time, Papa manages to calculate the night he and the others can get home. But first, he must figure out the spell to do so. Patrick tells them that there is an old bookstore in the city near Anjelou Cosmetics that may contain the spell Papa needs. Meanwhile, Patrick bonds with the Smurfs after sending what he believed to be his finished advertisement to be published. However, the next day, Patrick learns that Clumsy accidentally attached Patrick's first attempt at the advertisement, a blue-moon themed image that he was not confident enough to submit, and he angrily berates the Smurfs, walking out on them and Grace to save his job. Forced to search on their own, the Smurfs find the store and find the book L’Histoire des Schtroumpfs by researcher Peyo, containing the spell to turn the moon blue. But learning of their location, Gargamel sneaks into the bookstore and finds a dragon wand, transferring his magic into it as he uses it to capture Papa as he sends the others to safety. Though the Smurfs promised Papa that they won't try to save him and return home, Clumsy and Patrick, having seen the error of their actions after Grace gave him a sonogram picture of their baby, convince them to plan a rescue. At Belvedere Castle, after increasing the dragon wand's power with Smurf essence extracted from bits of Papa's beard, Gargamel finds himself facing all the Smurfs, summoned to New York by Brainy after he reopened the vortex by conjuring the blue moon. As the Smurf army battles Gargamel, Smurfette defeats Azrael and saves Papa before they join the fray. Though Gargamel attempts to break the Smurfs by killing Papa, Patrick saves him while Gutsy knocks the dragon wand out of Gargamel's hand, but he drops it. Clumsy tries to catch it, and to Papa's surprise, is successful, and sends Gargamel flying into trash bags and being hit by a MCI J4500 bus with the advertisement "Blue Moon" on it before Papa breaks it. Soon after, the Smurfs take their leave as Patrick receives a call from Odile that he still has his job because he finally gave her what she wants after she noticed the blue moon that Brainy created. Later, Patrick and Grace have a baby boy, whom they name Blue to honor the Smurfs, who rebuild their village in the style of New York. In the aftermath, Gargamel wakes up and learns that he is still in the present and he looks at the audience before breaking the fourth wall and asking them "What are you looking at?" and blasts them with his wand, ending the movie. ===== Arthur Burton, an English Catholic, travels to Italy to study to be a priest. He discovers radical ideas, renounces Catholicism, fakes his death and leaves Italy. While away he suffers great hardship, but returns with renewed revolutionary fervour. He becomes a journalist, expounding radical ideas in brilliant satirical tracts published under the pseudonym "the gadfly". The local authorities are soon dedicated to capturing him. Gemma, his lover, and Padre Montanelli, his Priest (and also secretly his biological father), show various forms of love via their tragic relations with the focal character of Arthur: religious, romantic, and family. The story compares these emotions to those Arthur experiences as a revolutionary, particularly drawing on the relationship between religious and revolutionary feelings. This is especially explicit at the climax of the book, where sacred descriptions intertwine with reflections on the Gadfly's fate. Eventually Arthur is captured by the authorities and executed by a firing squad. Montanelli also dies, having lost his faith and his sanity. It is debatable to what extent an allegorical comparison can be drawn between the Gadfly and Jesus. ===== Dr. Ernest Sovac is taken from his cell for his execution, but is able to give notes to a reporter, which recount his story, as he is led to a chamber. Sometime earlier, Sovac's best friend, bookish college professor George Kingsley, is run down while crossing a street. In order to save his friend's life, Sovac implants part of another man's brain into the professor's. Unfortunately, the other man was a gangster who was involved in the accident and was apparently heading for the electric chair, according to the police. The professor recovers but at times behaves like the gangster. Sovac is horrified but also intrigued, because the gangster has hidden $500,000 somewhere in New York City. The doctor continues to treat his unwitting friend and persuades him to take a vacation in New York; Sovac hopes this will revive the gangster's memory so that Kingsley will lead him to the fortune which he hopes to spend on a laboratory. Unfortunately, for the doctor's plans, the professor's personality change becomes more extreme, including plotting revenge against other members of his former gang. When Kingsley (behaving as a gangster) attempts to murder the doctor's daughter, Sovac shoots him dead. Returning to present, Sovac is executed. ===== A quiet gardener living in Los Angeles, California picks up blond women and is murdering them with garden shears. The police attempt to track him down but the man continues to kill. The killer lives in a shack on a hill overlooking Los Angeles (Chavez Ravine). ===== The story is a courtroom drama. It opens in 2034, with Simon Ninheimer, a professor of sociology, suing U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men for loss of professional reputation. He contends that robot EZ-27 (aka "Easy"), while leased to Northeastern University for use as a proofreader, deliberately altered and rewrote parts of his book Social Tensions Involved in Space Flight and their Resolution while checking the galley proofs (hence the title). Ninheimer holds that the alterations to his book make him appear an incompetent scholar who has absurdly misrepresented the work of his professional colleagues in fields such as criminal justice. Susan Calvin (U.S. Robots' Chief Robopsychologist) is convinced that the robot could not have acted as Ninheimer claims unless ordered to do so, but infers from its refusal to answer questions about the matter that it has been ordered into silence by Ninheimer. In any case, a robot's testimony in its own defense is not legally admissible as evidence. During the trial, Ninheimer is called as a defense witness in the presence of EZ-27 and is tricked into lifting EZ-27's inhibition on accounting for its actions. He responds to the robot's intervention by angrily denouncing its disobedience of his order to remain silent, thus implicitly confessing to having attempted to pervert the course of justice. The story's final scene is a post-trial encounter between Ninheimer and Calvin. Calvin notes how Ninheimer was caught as a result of his mistrust of robots: far from being about to tell the court what Ninheimer had ordered it to do, EZ-27 was actually going to lie and claim that it tampered with the text without Ninheimer's involvement, because it had become clear that losing the case would be harmful to Ninheimer and EZ-27 was bound by the First Law to try and avoid that harm. For his part, Ninheimer explains his attempt to frame EZ-27 in order to bring disgrace on US Robots. He was motivated by his fear that the automation of academic work would destroy the dignity of scholarship; he argues that EZ-27 is a harbinger of a world in which a scholar would be left with only a barren choice of what orders to issue to robot researchers. ===== The film is a romantic melodrama about two childhood friends, Leo and Ulrich, who grow up to be soldiers in Germany. Leo becomes infatuated with Felicitas, the wife of a powerful count (a marriage about which Felicitas neglects to inform Leo). The count calls for a duel of honor with Leo, but insists that it be done under the false pretense that the quarrel was due to angry words exchanged between the two at a card game to protect the count's reputation. Leo kills the count in the duel, but then is punished by the military, being sent to Africa for five years. Due to Ulrich's intervention, Leo only serves three years before being recalled home. On his return journey, he focuses on his dream of being reunited with Felicitas. Before he left for Africa, Leo had asked Ulrich to take care of Felicitas' needs while he was away. Ulrich — unaware that his friend is in love with Felicitas — falls in love with her and marries her. Upon his return, Leo finds himself torn between Felicitas — which the woman encourages — and his friendship for Ulrich. Condemned by a local pastor for continuing to associate with Felicitas, Leo eventually loses control of his emotions, leading to a climactic duel between the two boyhood friends. While racing to stop the duel, Felicitas falls through a layer of thin ice and drowns. Meanwhile, the friends reconcile, realizing that their friendship is more important than Felicitas. ===== Clinton Madarian, the successor to Susan Calvin at U.S. Robots, who has just retired, initiates a project to create a "feminine" robot, which not only has female physical characteristics but will, it is hoped, have a brain with "feminine intuition". After several failures together costing half a billion dollars, JN-5 (also known as Jane) is produced and the company plan to use it (her) to analyse astronomical data at the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, to calculate the most likely stars in the vicinity of Earth to have habitable planets. This will allow the most effective use of the hyperspace drive to explore those stars. Madarian and Jane go to Flagstaff and after absorbing as much knowledge on astronomy as possible, Jane gives Madarian an answer. Mandarian and Jane board the plane that will take them back to U.S. Robots, and Mandarian calls the director of the company with the news, stating that "a witness" had also heard Jane's answer. Unfortunately, Madarian and Jane are killed and destroyed respectively in an aircrash before completing the call. Desperate to know what, if anything, Jane had discovered, U.S. Robots asks Susan Calvin for her assistance. She solves the problem using her own version of feminine intuition - a combination of careful information gathering and astute psychological reasoning. She deduces from the timing of the call (and Madarian's propensity to call as soon as possible) that the "witness" must have been the truck driver that took them to the plane. Information provided by this truck driver enables her to reconstruct Jane's answer. ===== In the town of Northampton, in the East Midlands of England, Charlie Price is attempting to save the family shoe factory, which has been floundering since his father died. While on a business trip to London to sell the company's extra stock, Charlie encounters a woman being harassed by drunken hoodlums and intervenes to his detriment. He wakes up backstage, in the dressing room of Lola, a drag queen performer and alter ego of Simon. Charlie is intrigued when he sees that drag queens' high heels snap easily, and wishes to create high heels that can support a greater range of foot sizes and body types. Back in Northampton, while in the process of laying off workers, one employee, Lauren, gives Charlie the idea of looking for a niche market product to save the business. Charlie then recruits Lauren to assist him in designing a high-heeled boot for drag performers. When their initial designs are met with scorn by Lola, Charlie and Lauren bring her on as a consultant. The road is initially bumpy: many of the male employees are uncomfortable with Lola's presence and the new direction, and Charlie's relationship with his fiancée, Nicola, begins to deteriorate as she encourages him to sell the factory building to a real estate developer. Although things improve when Lola tones down her personality and starts making friends, matters take a turn for the worse when Charlie is invited to showcase the new boots in Milan; the strain he puts on his employees causes most of them, including Lola, to walk out. Charlie's fiancée arrives at the factory, furious that he took out a second mortgage on their house to save the company. Nicola insists that he sell the company, but Charlie is determined to save it and the jobs of his employees. The argument (which ends with Nicola leaving Charlie) is broadcast on the factory's PA system, which is overheard by Lauren and Lola's bitterest opponent at the factory, Don, a chauvinistic male worker. Don turns over a new leaf after Lola had graciously allowed him to win an arm wrestling match, and rallies the factory workers to make the boots in time for Charlie and Lauren to get to Milan. When Charlie catches Nicola with another man, he angrily takes out his frustrations on Lola, causing Lola to quit. After arriving in Milan with no one to model the boots, Charlie is forced to go onstage and model the boots himself. After tripping and ultimately falling flat on his face, Lola and her posse of drag queens arrive, put on a spectacular runway show, and save the day. In the film's denouement, Lola headlines her own show and sings a song in honour of the "kinky boots factory" of Northampton. Most of the key workers are in attendance and enjoying themselves, including Charlie and Lauren, who have become a couple. ===== The plot centres on the rivalry between Adam and his brother St John. As the younger of the two, Adam knows that when their father dies, the family estate and shipyard that he loves so much will be inherited by his wayward brother. The rivalry between the two men intensifies when Adam falls in love with Meriel Sawle, the beautiful daughter of the local tavern keeper. But St John is determined that Adam will have neither the estate or Meriel. According to genealogical information provided in the book, Adam Loveday was born in Cornwall in 1767 as the son of Edward and Marie Loveday. He has a twin brother, St John Loveday. Adam Loveday was encouraged to join the Royal Navy, and spent much of his early life as a junior officer. However, he was eventually forced to leave after being caught duelling with a rival officer, Lieutenant Francis Beaumont. After this he spent much time working in his father's shipyard where his designs for new ships helped to expand and improve the business. His talent for shipbuilding encouraged his father to make Adam heir to the family shipyard, further fuelling the rivalry between himself and St John. Reissue cover for the first paperback edition () Adam is described as being tall, with dark shoulder length hair, a lean build and deeply tanned skin from his long days spent at sea. He is twenty years old when introduced in the first book of the Loveday series. Category:1999 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Hodder & Stoughton books Category:Historical romance novels Category:Literary characters introduced in 1999 ===== Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price) is sentenced to death for the murder of his brother Michael, a crime he did not commit. Dr. Frank Griffin, the brother of the original invisible man injects the prisoner with an invisibility drug. As Radcliffe's execution nears, he suddenly vanishes from his cell. Detective Sampson (Cecil Kellaway) from the Scotland Yard guesses the truth while Radcliffe searches for the real murderer before the drug causes him to go insane. The Radcliffe family owns a mining operation. The recently promoted employee Willie Spears (Alan Napier) is promoted within the company, stirring Radcliffe's suspicions. After forcing Spears' car off the road, Spears is frightened into revealing that Richard Cobb (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), Radcliffe's cousin, is the murderer. After a confrontation, a chase scene ensues during which Radcliffe is struck by a bullet from Sampson. Cobb is fatally injured by falling from a coal wagon but confesses to the murder before he dies. Now cleared of all wrongdoing, Radcliffe, dying from blood loss and exposure, makes his way to Dr. Griffin. A number of Radcliffe's employees volunteer to donate blood to Radcliffe. The transfusion succeeds, making Radcliffe visible again, allowing the doctor to operate and save his life. ===== After a year of marriage, Marge Farrell (Gloria Talbott) is despondent that her husband Bill (Tom Tryon) is cold and not acting toward her the way he did before they were married. He doesn't show any signs of genuine affection towards her or toward his new dog, a surprise anniversary present from Marge. The dog barks and snarls at him whenever he approaches; he kills it in their basement, telling Marge the dog was strangled by his collar while pulling on his tethered leash. She is also becoming concerned because, wanting a family, she cannot become pregnant. After undergoing various tests, her doctor assures her she can have children; he suggests that Bill come in and see him to be tested. She soon notices that other husbands in their social circle are acting the same way. One night, she follows Bill when he goes out for a long walk. He heads to an isolated area in the woods, where she discovers that he is not the man she thought she married but an alien impostor. An extraterrestrial life form leaves Bill's body shell and then enters a hidden spaceship. She confronts the alien Bill, and he eventually explains that all the females on his dead planet are extinct. He and the other males of his species are taking over human men so they can have offspring with Earth's women, saving their race from extinction. Marge is horrified at the prospect and tries to warn others of the alien plot, but too many men in town have already been taken over, including the town's Chief of Police, who does nothing after hearing her story. She attempts to call Washington, D.C., but all outgoing phone lines are busy. She attempts to leave by car and the local police stop her, saying the only exit bridge that leads out of town is down. Finally, her doctor (Ken Lynch) comes to believe her wild story, and he gathers up a posse of men he knows cannot be disguised aliens. They attack the aliens in their hidden spaceship. Bullets can't hurt the invaders, who are surrounded by a force barrier. The aliens, however, prove to be defenseless against a pair of German Shepherd dogs being used by the posse. The aliens are killed when the dogs attack, all except the alien Bill. Entering the spaceship, the posse finds that all the human male captives are unconscious but still alive, including Bill. The men are each hooked up to an apparatus that helps the aliens become their captors while living in faux human shells. The posse begins to disconnect the captives, which kills the aliens one-by-one. Shortly before his faux human body is destroyed, the alien occupying the Chief of Police broadcasts a warning to his people in orbit that they've been discovered by the humans. Thereafter, a fleet of alien spaceships is seen leaving Earth space. They must seek out humanoid females elsewhere now that their breeding plan on Earth has been discovered. ===== The film is set in Singapore's Chinatown. It is narrated by Jen Fan, owner of a successful restaurant. Her signature dish is "Chicken Rice"-in fact she is rather well known for it. Jen has three sons. Daniel and Harry are gay, and Jen is determined the youngest, Leo, does not go the same way. She enlists the help of her friend Kim-Chui, who owns a nearby restaurant. He is less successful than Jen, but is in love with her. Leo has become her life, she is pinning all her hopes of grandchildren on him. She and Kim-Chui hatch a plan that involves bringing Sabine, a female French exchange student, to stay at Jen's house. When Sabine arrives, Leo predictably shows little interest in her. It is painfully clear to all except Jen that Leo is in love with his best friend "Batman". Sabine is very laid- back and mystical in her outlook, and the family warm to her. It is she who ultimately helps Jen come to terms with her life. When "Batman" suddenly announces that he is leaving Singapore, Jen finally realises the truth from Leo's grief-stricken face, and strikes him in fury. As he leaves the house, she falls down the stairs chasing him, injuring her ankle. Some time later Jen, persuaded by Sabine, attends Harry's birthday party. There she meets many of Harry's gay friends, and she finds them delightful and fun. Another obstacle she must overcome is news of Daniel's impending gay marriage, she is horrified and cannot accept it. The film ends with Jen finally realising how wonderful her sons truly are. She may also consider a future with the ever-loyal Kim-Chui but this is left open. ===== Doctor Pearson (Michael Rennie), who works at a Canadian hospital in the province of Quebec, receives a series of poison pen letters. More letters, all signed with the mysterious picture of a feather, are delivered to others in the small Canadian town. Cora Laurent (Constance Smith), the wife of the main doctor - Dr. Laurent (Charles Boyer) - at the hospital, receives a letter accusing her of having an affair with Pearson. Another letter informs a shell-shocked veteran Mr. Gauthier that he is dying of cancer, causing the distraught man to commit suicide. Quickly, the townsfolk begin pointing fingers at all possible suspects. ===== In his hometown Oulu, Lepistö meets a man who shows him a map of Lapland, showing an "X" mark at the spot where he claims is gold. Lepistö believes the man and shows the map to his companion Ervasti. Lepistö and Ervasti travel to the Teno River, where they manage to find a couple of grams of gold. They travel back to Oulu to lay official claim on the find site but are told it has already been claimed. Finally a large gold rush to Lapland starts. ===== When the Lovedays' banker is found dead in the river Thames, his legacy of debts and foolish investments plunges the family into financial chaos and leaves them facing ruin. As Adam struggles to face this new challenge, he falls in love with the mysterious gypsy woman Senara despite his father's censure. Meanwhile St John, encouraged by his wife Meriel, throws in his lot with a gang of smugglers in order to win the riches both of them have always dreamed of. The growing Revolution in France also has repercussions for the family. Reissue paperback first edition cover Category:2000 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne ===== Adam, now married to the half-gypsy Senara, returns to his home to find his father threatening to disown him for his wife's heritage. To support his wife and new child, he becomes an undercover agent helping nobility to escape from a France now in the turmoil of revolution. Meanwhile, his brother St John is making a fortune as a smuggler and his wife Meriel is pregnant with his second child, ensuring his future as heir to their father's estate. But his success has made him an enemy of Thadeous Lanyon, a rival smuggler. When Lanyon attacks Meriel and causes her to lose her child, he is soon found murdered. With all the evidence pointing to him, St John faces execution unless the family can find some way of proving his innocence. Reissue cover for the paperback Category:2001 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Novels set in Cornwall Category:Historical romance novels Category:Novels set in the French Revolution ===== 6teen is an animated sitcom for older children, preteens, and teenagers. The plots take place almost entirely in a megaplex shopping mall known as the Galleria mall. The Galleria mall is a cross between the Toronto Eaton Centre and the West Edmonton Mall. The series follows the cast of six 16 year-old friends in everyday lives, including their first part-time jobs. 6teen is focused on the common issues related to teenagers. The main characters are: Jude, Jen, Nikki, Jonesy, Caitlin, and Wyatt. They deal with first crushes, first jobs, first bank accounts, and a sweet taste of freedom. Nikki finds herself stuck working at The Khaki Barn, a store where she would not shop herself, while Jen has found her dream job at a sports shop, but makes some mistakes. As a running gag, Jonesy manages to get fired from a new store in almost every episode with a few exceptions. Wyatt falls hopelessly in love with his older co-worker. Jude works at the hockey rink as a Zamboni driver. Caitlin endures the daily humiliation of working at the lowest store in the mall's hierarchy of cool – The Big Squeeze, a lemonade stand shaped like a giant lemon, where she's required to wear a hat shaped like a lemon as a part of her uniform. ===== While her husband is away on business, Lucia confronts Darby, a low- life Los Angeles criminal, and demands he stop seeing her 17-year-old daughter, Bea. He agrees, but with the caveat that Lucia pay him. She responds by telling him he has simplified the situation, that when she tells Bea "how deeply you feel about her" the girl will be glad to break off with him. When Lucia returns home she is confronted by Bea - Darby had telephoned to tell her of her mother's visit. She refuses to believe Darby would mention money in the manner her mother suggests happened. Lucia forbids her daughter to see Darby again but, that evening, Bea sneaks out to the family's boathouse to meet him. She assures him she does not accept her mother's version of things, but he indicates he could do with some money and that it does not mean the two could not continue to be together. Bea is repulsed by this and, during an ensuing struggle, she hits him and he goes down to his knees. Unknown to her, he shakily tries to follow her but accidentally falls and subsequently dies. Having discovered Bea missing, Lucia searches for her. When she comes upon the distraught girl, who has just come indoors after her ordeal and reveals it to her mother, Lucia goes to the boathouse; there is nothing amiss and she does not see Darby. The next morning, however, she finds him lying dead by a jetty. She uses a motorboat and disposes of the body in a swamp; it is found, and a murder investigation begins. Another L.A. criminal, handsome and smooth- talking Donnelly, the partner of Nagel, a brutal loan shark, shows up in possession of letters Bea had written Darby. Nagel had fronted the now- deceased man money and has been holding the writings as collateral. Lucia must now come up with $5,000 to keep Bea's relationship from becoming known. As Lucia struggles to secure these funds, Donnelly is falling in love with her. He tries to allow her more time, he tells her he has declined his 'cut' and that if she can get half the money, he may be able to mollify Nagel. If he could, he says, he would pay the blackmailer off himself. After desperately pawning much of her jewelry, Lucia has only $800. When she meets Donnelly to hand this over, he announces that she is in the clear, a man has been arrested in relation to Darby's murder. Lucia is stricken with guilt because she knows Darby was not actually murdered; she tries to convince Donnelly that she is the killer. He will not accept her story and says that while the man in custody may be innocent of this he is "guilty of a hundred other things" and it does not matter, she needs to think of her family. Later, Donnelly learns that the suspect has been released. When Lucia gets home, her housekeeper says Nagel is waiting in the boathouse. He lets her know the suspect has been "sprung" and that she must pay the full $5,000 immediately. Donnelly arrives and attacks his partner; during the fight, Donnelly is wounded but manages to strangle Nagel to death. Afterwards, Donnelly talks about his warm feelings for Lucia; she says she will call the police and straighten everything out, she cannot allow him to spend the rest of his life wanted for murder. He asks her for a drink and, while she is gone, Donnelly drives away with Nagel in the car. Lucia follows in her vehicle. While driving, Donnelly reaches into Nagel's pocket to retrieve Bea's letters; he loses control, smashes through a fence and into a tree, overturning the car and trapping himself under it. When Lucia finds him, he tells her to not assist him, it will be better if the authorities find him this way. He gives her the letters. At home, as Lucia is trying to compose herself, her two children return from an evening out. Her son talks about "seeing a terrible accident". Bea tells Lucia how the police mentioned that, just before dying, the man pinned beneath the vehicle admitted to killing Darby. ===== Marjorie Morgenstern, born 1916, is a New York Jewish girl in the 1930s. She is bright, beautiful, and popular, with many admirers. Her father is a prosperous businessman who has recently moved his family from a poorer, ethnically Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx to Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her mother hopes that the change of neighborhood will help Marjorie marry a man with a brighter future. Marjorie aspires to become an actress, using "Marjorie Morningstar" as a stage name. ("Morningstar" is the literal translation of "Morgenstern" from the original German.) She begins with her school's (Hunter College) production of The Mikado, and lands the title role. As a result, she meets Marsha Zelenko, who will become her best friend (for a while). Marsha encourages Marjorie in her quest, and helps her get a job as a drama counselor at the summer camp where Marsha teaches arts and crafts. That summer, Marsha persuades Marjorie to accompany her on an excursion to South Wind, an exclusive resort with a staff of professional entertainers. There Marjorie meets Noel Airman, an older man who has won some fame as a composer, as well as Wally Wronken, a younger man who hopes to become a playwright. Marjorie idolizes Noel, who can sing, dance, compose, and speak several languages. They begin a relationship that determines the next four years of her life. He tells her that he has no interest in marrying, or fitting in with the middle-class life that he tells her she will ultimately want. Having changed his birth name from Saul to Noel to escape his Jewish origins, he mocks her Jewish observances (such as her unwillingness to eat bacon), and taunts her for her 'Mosaic' unwillingness to engage in premarital sex. Noel tells Marjorie that she is a " Shirley": a typical, well-brought-up New York Jewish girl who will ultimately want a stable husband and family, while he is embarking on an artistic career. Over the course of the novel, neither Noel nor Marjorie finds professional success in the theater. Marjorie accepts that she will not succeed as a professional actress, and spends more of her time reading and working. Noel takes and quits stable writing and editing jobs, blaming Marjorie for motivating him to take jobs that do not suit him and for his unhappiness. He flees New York in a panic rather than marry Marjorie, saying that he will not succeed as a writer and will return to studying philosophy. Having entered a sexual relationship with him, Marjorie is convinced that her only hope is to marry Noel. She decides that the best way to persuade him to marry her is to wait a year and then pursue him to Paris. However, en route to France, Marjorie meets a mysterious man aboard the Queen Mary. She enjoys his company, he treats her well and speaks respectfully of her religious traditions, and he helps her locate Noel. In Paris, Noel tells her how happy he is to see her, but does not notice when she is hungry or hurt. He tells her that in his year in Paris he has not actually enrolled in school to study philosophy, and that he will return to the U.S. to take another stable writing job. He offers to marry her, but Marjorie has realized that life with Noel will not make her happy, and that it would be possible for her to fall in love with someone else. She returns to New York free of her infatuation with Noel, and quickly marries, no longer caring whether Noel would describe her as a "Shirley". The novel concludes with an epilogue in the form of an entry in the diary of Wally Wronken, the only character who did manage to have a successful artistic career. Wally idolized Marjorie as a young man, and meets her again 15 years after she marries, when she has happily settled into a role as a religious suburban wife and mother. Wally recalls the bright-eyed girl he once knew, and marvels at how ordinary Marjorie seems at 39. The character name Airman is a translation to English of the Yiddish expression Luftmensch. The critic Dan Vogel writes that Wouk casts Noel as a "rashi" or bad or Satanic figure for leading Majorie in a descent from violating traditional Jewish laws of kashrut or kosher laws to violating traditional values of sexual morality. ===== In 19th-century rural Bengal, Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) and her husband Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee) live with Umaprasad's family. Umaprasad's elder brother Taraprasad, his wife and their young son Khoka (with whom Doyamoyee shares a special bond) also live in this house. Umaprasad and Taraprasad's father, Kalikinkar Choudhuri, is a devoted follower of the goddess Kali. Umaprasad leaves for Kolkata (Calcutta) to teach in college and learn English, and Doyamoyee remains behind to take care of her father-in-law. One evening, Kalikinkar has a vivid dream that intermingles the eyes of the devi Kali and the face of Doyamoyee. When Kalikinkar awakens, he is convinced that Doyamoyee is an avatar of Kali. He goes to Doyamoyee and worships at her feet. Following Kalikainker's gesture, Taraprasad also accepts Doyamoyee as goddess. But Taraprasad's wife believes the entire idea is ridiculous, and writes a letter to Umaprasad urging him to return home as soon as possible. Soon Kalikinker starts to worship Doyamoyee officially and changes her room and lifestyles etc. Many people start to visit her and offer prayers and drink charanamrito (water with which the devi's foot has being washed). Then a man comes with his terminally ill son, and after drinking this charanamrito, the son woke up. This coincidence leads Doyamoyee to believe that she herself is an goddess. Soon other people also come to believe that she is an incarnation of the goddess. Umaprasad returns home and is horrified by what he sees, but is unable to remedy the situation as Doyamoyee has come to believe that she is an avatar of Kali. He tries to escape with Doyamoyee to Kolkata but she refuses. But on the other hand Doyamoyee herself was not happy of her condition as people don't treat her as a person, Khoka (their nephew) also avoid her, she was so lonely and even she refuses to go with her husband. She lives a life of beliefs, far away from a life of reality. That saddens her deeply but she was unable to escape as she was bound to superstitions. She was confused. Meanwhile, Khoka has developed a severe fever. The family refuses to go to doctor, rather they believed that Doyamoyee's charanamrito will heal Khoka. So they keep the child near Doyamoyee that night. But being a logical person, Khoka's mother asks Doyamoyee to give up and to tell the father in law to visit the doctor. But bound to beliefs, Doyamoyee decides to watch that night if the kid recovers with her godly powers. Next day morning, when Umaprasad returns to home to take action against his father's beliefs and to make Doyamoyee free from this situation, he finds that his father is crying at Godess kali's feet. The reason is at that morning Khoka has died due to lack of proper treatment, the Charanamrito doesn't work and the belief cost the kid's life. And then Umaprasad goes to Doyamoyee's room and finds her in an insane condition, as she mumbles that she should went to water (symbolic bisarjan - god and goddess statues are drowned in water after the worship is completed)..otherwise the family would kill her. The story finely plotted the religious dogmatism. ===== Just before the turn of the new millennium, a strange disease hits Taiwan that causes people to crawl on the floor and search for dark places. It also rains constantly. Despite evacuation orders, tenants of a rundown apartment building stay put, including Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng). Hsiao Kang runs a food store with few customers. One day, a plumber arrives at Hsiao Kang's apartment to check the pipes. He drills a small hole into the floor which comes down through the ceiling of the woman downstairs (Yang Kuei-mei). The woman, who maintains her flooded apartment while stockpiling toilet paper, becomes annoyed by Hsiao Kang's antics on the other side of the hole. She confronts him at his store. However, the hole remains there, and the two continue to get on each other's nerves. The woman sprays her room, creating a smell that Hsiao Kang cannot stand; Hsiao Kang's alarm clock goes off, waking the woman. In spite of this, the two begin forming a connection. Someone rings Hsiao Kang's doorbell, but he does not answer. He lays down next to the hole and sticks his leg into it. The woman catches the disease and crawls into the toilet paper fort that she made. Hsiao Kang gets distraught. He bangs on the floor near the hole with a hammer. Eventually, the woman emerges from the fort. Hsiao Kang offers her a glass of water through the hole, and she drinks it. Hsiao Kang then pulls her up through the hole. In the final scene, the two slow dance with each other. ===== The plot of the movie goes back to a similar outing the writer Sunil Gangopadhyay took in the early days of his poetic career. The story unfolds around a group of four friends, quite unlike each other and yet bonded together deeply. The four friends are all educated and come from different layers of society, but the urge to escape from the daily grind of city life forces them to go out into the land of tribes. Of the four friends, Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee), the leader of the pack, owns the car they drive in, has a cushy job, likes the company of girls and yet is very conscious of how he should be perceived by them. Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee) is a labour executive but would ideally want to immerse himself in literature. Hari (Samit Bhanja), a frank and straightforward cricketer, wants to forget the girl who dumped him. Shekhar (Rabi Ghosh) is the jester of the party, the only one without a job. He has a roving eye but stays sober when his friends get drunk and vent their frustrations. They set out for the tribal Palamau, in Bihar, to tear themselves away from their regulated city life. They had read legends about this land, the tribal women who are open and simple and beautiful. Wanting to break rules, they force a stay in a forest rest house by bribing the chowkidar, burn a copy of a newspaper in a symbolic gesture of cutting ties from civilization, deliberate on whether to shave or not and walk through the forest to get drunk at a country liquor shop. Hari gets close to tribal Santhal girl Duli (Simi Garewal) when she approaches the group for extra drink. Their resolve to be unshaven collapses when Shekhar sights two ladies Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and her sister-in-law Jaya (Kaberi Bose) in the forest. The four introduce themselves to this family and in the midst of the forest, the two urban groups of people are almost relieved to find someone from their part of society. Asim flirts with Aparna and coaxes her to show her room. He is attracted to the elegant and enigmatic Aparna, but is unable to keep pace with her composure, presence of mind and intelligence. Later Jaya invites all of them for breakfast the next day. At night the four friends go to drink alcohol again in the country liquor house. Hari is upset because he cannot see Duli (Simi Garewal) whom he had met previous night. While returning to their rest house, they stumble upon a car which they shout at without realizing it as the car of Aparna. They oversleep and miss the next day's breakfast. They find a packet of food lying outside their rooms and go to Aparna's house to return it. The entire group decides to chat near the rest house while Aparna's father is away with Jaya's son for a circus. They play a memory game where each participant has to add a name to a chain of names of famous people, after repeating all the names in correct sequence. The names each player chooses reflect his/her own preference and state of mind. The game reaches a crescendo, with only Asim and Aparna left in the fray, at which point Aparna pulls out, deliberately handing victory to Asim, who seems to have placed his entire confidence at stake on the win. The tensions peak at the village fair where the four friends go their own way. Shekhar goes off to gamble with money borrowed from his friends. Hari takes Duli into the forest and makes love to her. Aparna reveals her more vulnerable side that lies behind her composed exterior. She also holds up a mirror to urban insensitivity by pointing out to Asim how despite having spent three days at the rest house, they never bothered to find out how grievously ailing was the chowkidar's wife. Sanjoy, held back by his middle class moralities, is unable to draw up courage to respond to Jaya's bold advances. Later he walks back on the lonely village road, lost in his own thoughts as twilight melts into darkness. The next morning, the four friends, each wiser than before in his own way, leave for Calcutta since their new friends have had to return in a hurry. As a parting gift, they find a can of boiled eggs sent by the thoughtful Jaya. The look of glee on Shekhar's face as the car drives off and the relieved chowkidar rushes to close the gates behind them, brings about an emphatic finish to this forest sojourn. ===== The film tells two parallel stories, one about the life of a street vendor (Lee) following the death of his father; the other about a woman he meets briefly (Chen) as she heads off on a trip of uncertain duration to Paris. Lee's character, who sells watches on the streets of Taipei, sells his own watch to Chen and then finds himself overcome by a desire to set every clock he sees to Paris time. Jean- Pierre Léaud, the lead actor in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and actor in many other classic films, has a cameo appearance in this film. ===== Little John (Robbie Rist), as seen in the opening credits. The show's main character was a forty-year-old middle school science teacher named John Martin (played by Edelman). While vacationing in Florida, he drinks from a spring which turns out to be the legendary Fountain of Youth sought by Juan Ponce de León. The water changes him into a twelve-year-old boy (played by Rist), and back again. The changes occur spontaneously and without warning. Because Martin only sipped the water, the changes are recurring and not permanent; according to legend, had he taken a full drink, he would be age twelve permanently. Only his wife, Marjorie (Joyce Bulifant), and son, Ricky (Mike Darnell), know his secret, though Martin's students (who befriend him as "Little John") and his boss, principal Bertha Bottomly (Olive Dunbar), do become suspicious that something unusual is going on. The Martin family explain the younger John as their nephew, staying with them. Throughout the series, "Big John" unsuccessfully tries to find a cure for his predicament, but his experiences as "Little John" often give him insight into what his students are facing. To make the two actors resemble each other more closely, Rist's blond hair was dyed brown, while Edelman wore a hairpiece that partially covered his baldness, though was absent during the credits sequences. Edelman and Rist appeared together in 1977, on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. ===== Chickenpox infects Stan's sister Shelley and Kenny. The other boys' mothers begin to think that maybe the other boys should be exposed to it too, so as to get it while they are young, when it is easier to deal with. They agree and have the other boys stay at Kenny's house. The boys are unenthusiastic about spending the night at Kenny's house because he is poor. The next day, Cartman and Stan get sick, but not Kyle. Stan's chickenpox gets so bad he has to be brought to the hospital with Shelley. Mrs. Broflovski tries sending Kyle over to Kenny's house again, much to Kyle's protests, but he still fails to catch the disease. Sheila Broflovski, after learning from Mrs. McCormick that her husband, Mr. McCormick, and Gerald, Sheila's husband, had once been close friends, decides to try to patch things up between them by setting them both up on a fishing trip. However, the trip does not go well and the two fight. Apparently, Mr. McCormick is jealous of Gerald's success, while Gerald makes a speech to Kyle about how some people need to be poorer than others as part of a capitalist society. As part of his homework assignment, this makes Kyle come up with a plan to eliminate all the poor people in the world to make it a better place: by putting them in camps; this makes Gerald realize the callousness of his beliefs. After Kyle learns from his mom that she tried to get him sick, he breaks Stan out of the hospital. Both go to Cartman's house to retrieve Cartman and all of the boys decide to get revenge on the adults for what they did. The parents begin a frantic search, while the boys see Old Frida, a local prostitute with herpes in her mouth, and pay her to go to their homes and use the parents' items to give them all herpes. The parents find the children and bring them back to the hospital; Kyle finally falls ill and passes out on the floor. With all the boys in hospital, they laugh at their herpes-riddled parents, who accept the boys' actions. ===== ===== A scene from film The story is set in 1907 on the estate of the rich Bengali noble Nikhilesh (Victor Banerjee). In the chaotic aftermath of Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal into Muslim and Hindu states, the nationalist movement is trying to impose a boycott of foreign goods by claiming that imports are at the root of Indian poverty. He lives happily with his beautiful wife Bimala (Swatilekha Sengupta) until the appearance of his friend, a revolutionist, Sandip (Soumitra Chatterjee). Sandip, a passionate and active man, is a contradiction to the peace-loving and somewhat passive Nikhilesh. He easily attracts the innocent and unsuspecting Bimala, creating a love triangle. Although Nikhilesh figures out what is happening, he is a mature person and grants Bimala the freedom to grow and choose what she wants in life, as their marriage was arranged when she was a girl. Bimala experiences the emotions of love for the first time in a manner that helps her understand that it is indeed her husband Nikhilesh who really loves her. Importantly, Nikhilesh tells Bimala that he would like her to have a life not only inside the home, but outside of it as well — a controversial stance in 1916 when the novel was written. ===== An unidentified man discovers a dead logger's body killed gruesomely by a deadly carnivore, he proceeds to cover it up by making it look like an accident. Reed Shelton, policeman and his introverted wife Rebecca Shelton are about to begin their vacation (something which Rebecca opposes). More and more sightings of a hairy, upright monster occur and Rebecca hears a shrieking in the night. Suddenly she is kidnapped by a large beast, Reed seeing her taken away. Rebecca's captor proves to be a gentle giant however, a red colored female Bigfoot that lives in a small troop with her mate, an adult male, the male's other mate, and the other mate's offspring. Rebecca comes to call the male Jacob, the other female Leah, and the female who took her and seems especially maternal of her, Rachel. The bigfoot are powerful, but relatively peaceful animals skittish around humans and Rebecca comes to realize that rather than the source of the attacks or shrieks, they're actually running away from the true monster; a genetically engineered hybrid of a human and chimpanzee that had been driven insane by its condition. The reason Rachel abducted Rebecca was because the hybrid killed her offspring and the grieving mother mistook Rebecca for her baby based on their shared red color. Eventually Rebecca manages to get away as the hybrid corners her after being wounded in a failed attack. It’s gunned down by its creator but the amoral scientist who tried to cover up his escaped monster's doings attempts to silence her by strangling her. Jacob saved Rebecca's life by killing the sociopath and Rebecca exchanges a goodbye with Rachel as the bigfoot depart. ===== In 1986, Chava is a young 11-year-old boy from El Salvador. His father escaped to the United States at the start of the civil war when he was only 5. His family lives in a small town of Cuscatancingo that is currently heavily fought over between the Salvadoran army and the El Salvador guerrillas. His mother makes a living for the family by sewing, and Chava sells the clothes in shops. When he's not in school, Chava works for a bus driver announcing stations for him as a part- time service to help his family with money. He is nearing his twelfth birthday, when the Salvadoran military forces will recruit him into active service against the guerillas. Chava witnesses the army recruiting twelve- year-old children from his school inside, and also witnesses a 10-year-old recruited when he trips another boy as a bad prank on him, and he is violently restrained after he tries to run away, and his teacher is almost shot while trying to defend him. One day, his uncle Beto, who has joined the guerrillas, comes to visit Chava's family. Beto wants to take Chava with him so the military can't recruit him, but Chava's mother is against it. Beto gives a radio to Chava and tells him how to listen to the guerrillas' banned radio station, Venceremos. Throughout the scenes in the village where they live, there are firefights between government and rebel forces, as the settlement is on the border of the conflict. Chava knowingly plays a song banned by the Salvadoran Army in front of the soldiers, but the town's priest saves him by playing the same song over the church's loudspeaker, focusing the soldier's attention away from Chava. During class, Chava falls in love with a girl in his class named Cristina Maria. The guerrillas attack the army from the school building and the school is closed. Kella and her family move out of town to her mother's house in a safer area. One of the guerrillas, Raton, tells Chava of the army's next recruitment day, and Chava and his friends warn the entire town to hide their children. Chava decides to visit Cristina Maria but only finds the bombed-out shell of her house. He and his friends decide to join the guerrillas, but they are followed and the guerrilla camp is attacked by the army. Chava and his friends are taken from the camp, and forcibly marched to an unknown destination, repeating the opening scene. It appears to be an execution ground on a riverbank, where other bodies litter the scene. Ancha, the mentally handicapped local from Chava's village is seen to have been hanged. The soldiers begin to shoot the boys one by one, and two of them are killed. Chava is next in turn, but at the last moment he is saved by a guerrilla attack. He runs back into the undergrowth right into a raging firefight. After seeing a guerrilla get killed by a government soldier, Chava feels he should fight against them. He picks up the rifle, but realizes the government soldier is another young boy who he knew in school. He cannot bring himself to kill his old friend, another human. He flees, and the camera shows the boy he was aiming at, who realizes that his life was in another child's hands. Chava runs home to find his mother in the burnt out ruins of their house. She decides to send him to the United States to prevent him being caught by the authorities, and he promises to return and rescue his brother before he too turns twelve. In 1992, six years later, it is shown that he also rescued his brother and brought him into the United States, and the war has ended. ===== Gustad Noble (Roshan Seth) is a Parsi bank clerk who lives with his family in Bombay (Mumbai), just before the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. At first, he seems to be a self-centred, self-involved, neurotic man, who is so tied up in his own pain for perceived slights both past and present that he cannot seem to connect with either friends or family. He is haunted by memories of his privileged youth and his father's fortune, which has been lost to the machinations of an unscrupulous uncle. He is baffled by the changes wrought in his eldest son, Sohrab (Vrajesh Hirjee), who refuses to attend the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology to which he has gained admittance, and worried about his youngest daughter, Roshan, when she falls ill. Other conflicts involve Gustad's ongoing interactions with his eccentric neighbours and his relationship with his close friend and co-worker, Dinshawji. Tehmul, a seemingly unimportant and mentally disabled character, is essential in Gustad's life, as he brings out his tender side and represents innocence in life. A letter that Gustad receives one day from an old friend, Major Bilimoria, slowly draws him into a government deception involving threats, secrecy and large amounts of money. He then, begins the long journey that sheds new light on all aspects of Gustad's life. ===== Such a Long Journey takes place in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in the year 1971. The novel's protagonist is a hard-working bank clerk Gustad Noble, a member of the Parsi community and a devoted family man struggling to keep his wife Dilnavaz, and three children out of poverty. But his family begins to fall apart as his eldest son Sohrab refuses to attend the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology to which he has gained admittance and his youngest daughter, Roshan, falls ill. Other conflicts within the novel involve Gustad's ongoing interactions with his eccentric neighbours and his relationship with his close friend and co-worker, Dinshawji. Tehmul, a seemingly unimportant and mentally disabled character, is essential in Gustad's life, as he brings out the tender side of him and represents the innocence of life. A letter that Gustad receives one day from an old friend, Major Bilimoria, slowly draws him into a government deception involving threats, secrecy and large amounts of money. He then begins the long journey that sheds new light on all aspects of Gustad's personal and political life. The novel not only follows Gustad's life, but also India's political turmoil under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. ===== In 1970, Doctor Hoshikawa was researching how to transform the planet Sedon into a green, lush world, testing it by attempting to grow flowers. On the day the first flower bloomed, the Zone Empire launched an assault on the planet, separating him and his wife from their five children. Arthur G6 took the five children back to Earth and raised them while after the attack, Doctor Hoshikawa is safely went to Planet P16 Milky way. Twenty years later, the five are now teachers at the same school, the Newtown Elementary School (Newtown Shougakko). The Galactic Imperial Army Zone led by Empress Meadow and Captain Garoa now prepares to invade Earth as its thousandth target to destroy for immortality of Empress Meadow (but later reveals that Empress Meadow is an illusion used by Vulgyre, their base which is also a gigantic lifeform monster to manipulate them in order to be a "god"). As they begin the attack, three vehicles appear and counter the offensive. Five warriors descend from the vehicles and confront Zone. The Hoshikawa siblings have been developing the Fiveman technology and training hard upon the possibility of Zone invading Earth. Now the five siblings are ready to battle with the familiar foes as Fiveman. ===== In this version of the famous plot a group of midget circus runaways decide to form their own community to flee the chaos out come under attack from motorcycling ruffians. In response, of course, midgets hire seven tough people to defend them. One of them is a woman driving a car, another a stunt man, another a Mongolian eagle hunter, and a beatnik. The bandits have an easy victory and allow the hired fighters to leave with their weapons. However, they come back, teach the midgets to fight and entrap the bandits. In a final fight, the chief of the fighters confronts the main bandit at their lair and wins. The bandits return the stolen car to the fighter. The midgets exchange the car for a tractor following the final wish of the driver. The film was shown in many international film festivals as both a fun movie and an oddity. It was billed as "The Last Soviet Film." ===== Lambert, a withdrawn middle-aged man, works the night shift at a Parisian petrol station. He has no friends, no family; his only companion is his bottle of rum. One night, a young Arab man, Bensoussan, enters his shop -- and his life. This stranger has also no family, lives alone in a dingy room, and scrapes together a living as a drug dealer. The two solitary men develop a friendship -- but this is brutally brought to an end when Bensoussan is killed in front of Lambert. Lambert soon realises that his new friend was murdered by his drug dealing associates and sets out to avenge his death -- assisted by Lola, a punk girl who knew Bensoussan briefly. By doing this, Lambert manages to come to terms with his own tragic past. ===== In 1968, Justin McLeod has been living an isolated existence as a reclusive painter for the past seven years, following a car accident that left him disfigured on the right side of his face and chest by burns sustained in the post-crash fire. Chuck Nordstadt is a young boy who has endures a dysfunctional relationship with his academically brilliant stepsisters and their oft-divorced mother. One day, Chuck meets McLeod on a ferry when McLeod witnesses Chuck in an act of vandalism born of escalating frustration. Chuck is both intrigued and slightly scared of him. Chuck needs a tutor to help him pass a military academy's entrance exam that he'd failed earlier that year. Eventually, upon discovering that McLeod is a teacher, Chuck persuades him to become his tutor. While he is initially baffled by McLeod's unorthodox methods, the two, over time develop a close friendship. Chuck keeps his daily meetings with McLeod a secret in order to avoid being scorned for associating with a disfigured man whose past is shrouded in mystery. No one knows much about McLeod and few people have ever made an effort to know him. As a result, McLeod has become the object of gossip, speculation, and suspicion. "A proper troll," McLeod notes with self- deprecating humour. "Tourist board oughta pay me." Ultimately, Mrs. Nordstadt learns that her son has been visiting McLeod. She and the rest of the town convince themselves that McLeod is molesting Chuck, despite Chuck's adamant denials. Chuck researches McLeod's car accident, which involved the death of another boy, thus causing McLeod's fear of another attachment. Chuck is forcibly taken to a psychiatrist, who Chuck correctly suspects is also biased against McLeod. Chuck inevitably confronts McLeod to learn the truth of his disfigurement and to discover the identity of the youth who was killed in the car crash. As it turns out, the boy was a student of McLeod's. Consequently, McLeod was unjustly branded a pedophile, was exiled from his hometown, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served three years in prison. Once his relationship with Chuck is openly known, McLeod is once again run out of town and ordered by the authorities not to have any contact with Chuck. Chuck enters the military academy he'd worked so hard to get into. At mail call, he gets the letters he'd sent to McLeod, marked Undeliverable. Needing to know what's happened to his friend, Chuck quietly leaves his school that night, and goes back to McLeod's house. He finds it empty, but for a painting he'd done of Chuck that summer, and with the painting is a letter. The letter tells Chuck that he's moved on, and that he wishes him the best of luck in his academic goals, thanking him for the gift of grace he'd so unexpectedly been given. In the film's final scene, Chuck is shown graduating from the military academy as his sisters and their mom (along with her newest husband) look on proudly. Chuck sees a familiar figure in the background and recognizes it as his "faceless" tutor. They silently greet each other. ===== The main character of this book is Dana Evans, an anchorwoman for the press, who was also featured, though not as a main character, in another Sidney Sheldon book, The Best Laid Plans. The book begins with Dana Evans returning from Sarajevo with an armless adoptee, Kemal after filming war coverage for three months. Soon after, the last member of one of the most respected families in the world, Gary Winthrop dies after being shot by robbers. Dana decides to set out to find why anybody would want to kill the family well known for its kindness and contributions to charity (all of Gary's relatives had died in suspicious circumstances one at a time before him). Dana starts by visiting Roger Hudson, one of Taylor Winthrop, Gary's father's friends to start looking for answers. Meanwhile, Kemal is facing difficulties at his current school from Ricky Underwood, who teases him about having only one arm. After being repeatedly warned by the school principal for getting into fights and swearing, things finally reach a breaking point where the principal expels Kemal. Dana's boss's secretary, Elliot Cromwell helps Dana enroll Kemal in another school and refers her to an organization who help buy Kemal a prosthetic arm. As Jeff Connors, Dana's fiancé takes care of Kemal, Dana thinks about a motive for murdering the Winthrops. She rules out money, as when the Winthrop family dies, the fortune goes to charity. She settles on revenge as a motive, and starts hunting for clues by visiting the places where the Winthrops died. Dana's search turns up cold, as all she meets say that the Winthrops were too good to have enemies. Finally, she gets the name Joan Sinisi, Taylor's secretary who filed a charge against Taylor, but later dropped it. After several failed attempts to contact her, Sinisi finally agrees to meet Dana after having the notion that someone is watching her. Sinisi later dies after being pushed off her penthouse window before being able to come to the meeting place. Dana then hears of the FRA, whose head, General Booster kicks her out. At the same time, Jeff is forced to go visit his ex-wife, who has breast cancer, thus Dana employs a nanny to look after Kemal. Dana eventually comes to Russia, where she finds the pen she'd been given by her friends was a tracking device and destroys it and meets a military official named Sasha Shdandoff. Sasha promises to tell Dana why the Winthrops were killed, but she must first get him out of Russia, as someone is attempting to kill him. Dana accepts, and Sasha leads her to Krasnoyarsk-26, a closed town in Krasnoyarsk Krai. After disguising Dana as a prostitute and going in with her, Sasha explains that Krasnoyarsk-26 exists for the sole purpose of creating plutonium, the key ingredient in nuclear weapons. One hundred thousand scientists and technicians work there, and must severe all ties with the outside world before working there. It is impossible to shut down the plant as it warms the city above it, and without it the city's population would freeze to death. Taylor Winthrop was killed by his business associate after he got too greedy and decided to take all the plutonium. Sasha then says he will reveal more when he is out of Russia. After talking to Roger and Pamela Hudson, who have guided her through her adventure, Dana returns to find Sasha dead. After a sniper attempts to kill her, Dana realizes that Roger was Taylor's business associate, who is trying to kill her now after knowing the truth. Dana is then forced into a cat-and-mouse chase from Russia to the United States, finding out that several people that she trusts are working to kill her. She is ultimately able to elude her enemies, but the Hudsons trick her into coming to their house after claiming they have Kemal, who, after realizing his nanny is also trying to kill him and Dana and is feeding him sleeping pills, was able to escape the apartment, but was tranquilized and brought to the Hudsons. Dana goes to the Hudsons' house in the hope of saving Kemal, but finds it was a trap and that Kemal had already been left for dead in a burning school. The Hudsons' doorman, Cesar takes Dana to a park to drown, but Jeff Connors, whose ex-wife asked him to leave after lying that her mastectomy to prevent her cancer from spreading was successful, arrives in the TV studio's helicopter and decapitates Cesar using the helicopter blades. Dana weakly utters Kemal's name before fainting. Jeff gets the hint and is able to rescue Kemal from the burning school. The Hudsons, furious, try to leave on a private plane for Russia, despite the airport ordering them not to by General Booster, but their plane explodes thanks to a bomb planted by Boris Shdanoff, Sasha's brother. Soon after, Dana marries Jeff and gets pregnant, Kemal gets to star in a TV show, Jeff's ex-wife dies from cancer and the Hudsons end up starring as the first criminals on the TV station's new crime program. The book ends with Dana asking her boss Matt about a murder of a 75-year-old millionaire in his hot tub. ===== Roffe and Sons is a family firm, an international empire filled with desperate, cash-hungry family members. The family consists of * Anna Roffe, whose husband Walther Gassner married her only because of her bloodline * Simonetta, the wife of Ivo Palazzi, a womanizer being blackmailed by his mistress, Donatella * Helene Roffe, the three time divorcee who marries Charles Martel. Martel invests in a vineyard by stealing his wife's jewelry, but the money drowns. * Alec Nichols, whose mother was a Roffe, whose gambling-addicted and spendthrift wife Vivian, pushes him into increasing debts. It is clear that everyone in the family is in need of money. The firm Roffe and Sons is managed by Sam Roffe and his assistant Rhys Williams. Sam Roffe was expecting a son, but instead got a daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was declined love from her father during childhood, but escaped the reality by reading about her great- great grandfather, Samuel Roffe. Samuel Roffe was born in a Jewish ghetto, which was systematically and strictly controlled by officials. The ghetto gate was opened after sunrise and locked before sunset. Anyone caught outside the gate after sunset was captured and sent to prison camps. In midst of this chaos, along with the trauma of his mother's death, Samuel Roffe aspires to become a doctor. He wanders around the Wal house, the house of a rich Jewish doctor, and falls for his daughter. Wal accepts to teach him about medicine, and Samuel learns a lot. But later, Wal's daughter's marriage is fixed, which she rejects as she believes she is in love with Samuel. The Wals give Samuel six months to prove himself worthy of his daughter's hand, and he manages to do that by making a vaccine. The bloodline goes on, to reach the present situation, with Roffe and Sons being the second largest company in the world. Elizabeth is sent to a Swiss boarding school, and later expected to host parties like her mother. She does not get involved in the family business, until she receives the news that her father died in a hiking accident. All the money-hungry family members ask her to sell the stocks and make the company public, but Elizabeth refuses to, sensing that her father was against making the company public. She later discovers with a confidential report that someone is sabotaging the company. She narrowly escapes death twice: once in a car accident and another in a lift accident, in which her secretary dies. While searching for the culprit, she falls for Rhys Williams. Rhys and Elizabeth later get married as Elizabeth could not handle the company on her own so she insisted on marrying Rhys Williams who would become the president of the company. With Rhys Williams handling the company, Elizabeth investigates on who is sabotaging the company. In Zurich Kriminalpolizei, detective Max Hornung is assigned with the investigation of the lift accident targeted on Elizabeth. After further investigation, Max suspects one of Elizabeth's family members to be the culprit . Meanwhile, Elizabeth comes to a conclusion that Rhys Williams is the murderer of her father based on the research she does herself. To be safe, Elizabeth flees to her villa in Sardinia where she is escorted by a police chief. Later, she wakes up to find out that she was drugged and the power supply has been cutoff in the house. Amidst the darkness, she hears the footsteps of her killer approaching, and she runs towards a tower and climbs into it. After a dramatic climax, Elizabeth finds out that her killer was none other than Alec who wants to kill Elizabeth in order to sell the stock to repay off his debts. Alec threatens to kill Elizabeth by pointing a gun at her, but detective Hornung and Rhys Williams reach just in time with the police chief and save Elizabeth. Alec perishes in the fire he himself set to the villa, thinking about his wife Vivian and the murders he committed of young girls with a red ribbon tied around their necks for her. ===== Tracy is a successful bank-worker in Philadelphia, engaged to a wealthy heir, whose child she is carrying. Then her mother commits suicide, after being scammed by the New Orleans Mafia and left in debt. Tracy gets a gun to frighten the scammer, Joe Romano, into admitting her mother’s innocence, but he tries to rape her and is wounded in the struggle. Her attorney convinces her that she will get a much shorter sentence if she pleads guilty, but the judge sentences her to fifteen years to Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women, and she realises that the judge and the attorney are both working for Romano’s boss, mafia Don Anthony Orsatti. As she goes to jail, her employer and her fiancé abandon her and the unborn child, which she miscarries under the horrendous abuse she suffers from her prison mates. Tracy now decides to avenge herself on all the men who have ruined her life. Granted an official pardon for saving the life of the warden's daughter, she uses her banking knowledge to divert large sums into Romano’s account, making it look as though he was planning to skip the country, and Orsatti imprisons him for his apparent betrayal. Then she gets the boyfriend of one of her jail-mates to plant evidence in the attorney’s home, making it look as though he was cheating Orsatti at cards, and Orsatti teaches him a lesson too. While the judge is in Russia, she sends him coded letters that implicate him as a spy, and he is sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor in Siberia. She stalks her ex-fiancé and his new wife, but decides that they look so bored and unhappy with each other that no further punishment is needed. With a criminal record, however, her career is over, and she reluctantly slips into crime, presently finding that she enjoys stealing, especially from those who deserve to be stolen from. In the course of a colorful crime spree all over Europe with FBI, INTERPOL and Federal Police stalking, she falls in love with one of her co-conspirators, Jeff Stevens, and they plan to take their winnings and live the law-abiding life in Brazil. But on the plane, she finds herself sitting next to wealthy top criminal Maximilian Pierpont, who shows a strong interest in her, and we are left wondering if she will try to steal from him too. ===== The movie is a lesson on how to live life, examining the lives of Hari (Sanjeev Kumar) and Aarthi (Jaya Bhaduri), who are deaf and mute. They meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. They raise him well and he marries a girl similar to his parents. All they have to help them is their hope, confidence and some kindness in the society, along with Uncle Narayan, who is blind. Tragedy strikes their lives as well when they lose their first child thanks to Kanu's greed. But they never give up hope on life and not in one instance during the entire movie do they think about ending it. They live life, fight for it and succeed at a bigger scale than any normal person. ===== Alex, Antoine, Jeff and Manu have been friends for most of their lives and have achieved their professional goals, therefore all seems to be going well. Suddenly, the death of a father, a wife's infidelity and a daughter's wedding affects them and brings them closer together. Forced to confront situations beyond their control, they share their feelings, support each other, and question the true meaning of their lives. They realise that their relationship with women is at the heart of all their problems, their conversations and their conflicts. ===== Kate Blackwell, matriarch of the Blackwell family and head of multinational business empire Kruger-Brent Int., celebrates her 90th birthday. She sees the ghosts of her past but refuses to join them until a member of the family is ready to take over. The novel revolves around four generations of the empire's rise and Kate's dedication to the conglomerate. Kate's father, Jamie McGregor, leaves Scotland for Klipdrift, South Africa to find his fortune in the growing diamond trade of the 1860s. He is swindled and left for dead by merchant Salomon van der Merwe but is saved by Banda, van der Merwe's servant, and they steal millions' worth of diamonds in a dangerous heist. An unrecognizable Jamie returns to Klipdrift under a new name and impregnates Margaret, van der Merwe's daughter, for revenge, revealing his true identity to everyone after announcing Margaret's impregnation to the supposedly moral and religious town, shaming the very religious van der Merwe. Jamie's wealth and business helps the town thrive. Jamie secretly takes control of the local bank and ruins van der Merwe financially, driving the latter to kill himself. Margaret gives birth to a son, and after leaving the baby on Jamie's doorstep after trying to reconnect with him, Jamie grows to love Jamie Jr. and agrees to marry Margaret to keep Jamie Jr. close to him. One night Jamie drunkenly mistakes his wife for his mistress, which results in Kate's birth. During the Bantu rebellion, Banda kidnaps Kate before rebels can take her, but Jamie Jr. is kidnapped and left to die in the desert. News of this causes Jamie to have a stroke, leaving him helpless in the care of Margaret, who runs Kruger-Brent with Jamie's right- hand man, David Blackwell. While captured during the Boer War, Kate realizes the need for power so she will never feel helpless again. Kate grows up stubborn and obsessively in love with David, who is about 20 years older, but after her mother's death becomes serious about running the company and goes to business school. Upon her return, she learns of David's engagement to a woman whose family wants him to leave Kruger-Brent and run their company. Kate manipulates David into breaking off his engagement and eventually they marry. During World War I, Kate sees an opportunity to manufacture weapons. David is against it and stops her, but when he enlists for the war, she starts production, which causes a strain in their marriage upon his return. She becomes pregnant with his child but also begins to realize her obsession with Kruger-Brent and wonders if the company is becoming more important to her than her marriage. David is killed in an explosion in one of the company's mines, causing Kate to prematurely give birth to Anthony "Tony" Blackwell. Kate makes Kruger-Brent a global success, though her demanding nature causes Tony to stutter in her presence. Tony opts for an art career and goes to an art school in France. He shows promise, but Kate pays a critic to negatively criticize Tony's work, leading him to give up his art and join Kruger-Brent. While working, he learns that Dominique, his French girlfriend, was actually a model working under one of Kruger-Brent's smaller companies and was paid by his mother to spy on him, and he gains the courage to cut Kate out of his life. Kate uses his hatred of her to manipulate him into marrying Marianne Hoffman so Kate can obtain the Hoffman electronics empire as well as grandchildren to inherit the company. Despite warnings from Marianne's doctor about her health, Kate persuades her to have children, and she dies giving birth to twins. Tony learns of how his mother persuaded Marianne to carry out the pregnancy at the same time Dominique reveals his mother was responsible for the end of his art career. Tony goes insane and tries to kill Kate to "save her" from the company. He does not fatally wound her, and he is lobotomized and sent to an asylum while Kate takes care of both the company and her granddaughters, Eve and Alexandra. Eve, the older twin, is manipulative, evil, and despises Alexandra, a trusting and sweet girl. Eve has secretly attempted to kill Alexandra several times. Kate decides to name Eve heir to Kruger-Brent while Alexandra the head of the conglomerate's charities, but disinherits Eve when she discovers Eve's true nature. Eve meets George Mellis, an heir like her who has been disinherited by his rich family, and they plot to have George marry Alexandra and kill her, leaving George with Alexandra's fortune while Kate will have no option but to take Eve back to run the company. Eve manages to help George marry Alexandra, but she taunts him to the point that he nearly beats her to death. A talented surgeon, Keith Webster, fixes her face, and Kate reconciles with Eve and plans to put her back in her will. Eve decides she no longer needs George and decides to get rid of him. She intercepts Alexandra and prevents her rendezvous with George. Eve then pretends to be Alexandra and kills him. The police find his body and build a case against Eve. Keith realizes the truth when Dr. John Harley, the family's doctor whom Eve visited under the guise of a suicidal Alexandra, says he was able to tell the twins apart because of Eve's facial scar from her assault though Keith knows he left no scars on Eve's face and has a post surgical photo to prove it. Keith threatens to show the photo to the police if Eve doesn't marry him, and although she complies she cheats on him openly with a younger man. Keith refuses to testify at the coroner's inquest and Kate gives Eve an alibi, believing Eve murdered George but thinking she will punish Eve in her own way. Before she can do so, Keith deliberately destroys Eve's face during a laugh line removal procedure, making Eve devoted to Keith in fear that he will leave her alone with her ugliness. Kate considers this punishment enough. Alexandra marries George's psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Templeton, and they have a son named Robert. Back in the present, Robert, now eight, is a classical pianist prodigy. Kate tries to meddle with Robert's future, but is rebuffed by Peter and Alexandra who say Robert will choose his own life and won't be forced to take over Kruger-Brent. Kate relents, saying she would never interfere in anyone's life choices. She then offers to introduce young Robert to a renowned musician as she once offered to help with Tony's art career. ===== The Space Cats come from a planet called Trygliceride-7, ruled by a being named D.O.R.C. (short for Disembodied Omnipotent Ruler of Cats) which can be described as a disembodied, bespectacled, human head with a funny voice. The Space Cats station themselves on Earth in an underground base with a garbage can as its only access. A live-action segment is shown, where various Space Cats are seen on duty. D.O.R.C. describes each mission to the team's leader Captain Catgut. The animated segment is then shown where Captain Catgut sends the team of Tom, Scratch and Sniff out to work. At the end of each episode, the group gives the viewers a moral, then wrap up the episode vocalizing the Charge music and shouting out their team name. This was spoofed, when one Space Cat says the moral is for kids to stop watching TV and go read a book, the other two angrily remark that if that is taken seriously it would result in their own cancellation! ===== Joanna Lander, a clinical psychologist, interviews patients who have had near- death experiences; she aspires to understand what occurs between the times when a person dies and then is revived. She becomes frustrated when many of her patients cannot or will not give accurate information about their experiences. She realizes that the scientific evidence is contaminated by the influence of Dr. Maurice Mandrake, a persistent and almost omnipresent charlatan "researcher" who publishes best-selling books about near-death experiences and convinces patients that their experiences happened exactly the way his books describe NDEs, such as learning cosmic secrets from angels: Dr. Richard Wright, who has discovered a way to induce artificial NDEs in patients and monitor their brain activity throughout, contacts Joanna and asks if she will join his research study and interview his patients after he induces NDEs. She agrees. They are intellectually compatible and have a budding, mutual romantic interest. Mandrake considers the pair his competitors, and he sabotages their efforts by approaching revived patients before they can. Mandrake's method is to ask mellifluous leading questions of the patients and thereby taint their self-reported NDEs; this causes Joanna and Richard hardship in finding un-interviewed volunteers for their own study. The reader later learns that two of their volunteers are liars, which also corrupts their conjectures. Lacking enough volunteers for proper methodology, Joanna elects to undergo the process. She gets the help of Tish, a nurse, to help with the prep; Tish is happy to, because she thinks Richard Wright is "cute" and can flirt with him while Joanna is "under". Joanna finds herself in a dark passage that, through further NDEs, she realizes is part of a dream-like version of the RMS Titanic, on which she encounters passengers of the real Titanic as well as someone symbolically near death, a high school teacher whom she had studied with a decade or so earlier, Mr. Pat Briarley. Between NDE sessions, Joanna struggles to figure out why she sees the Titanic, and she eventually tracks down Mr. Briarley, who spoke often of the Titanic in class. Joanna discovers that Mr. Briarley, once a highly animated and keen teacher, now suffers from Alzheimer's disease. This is crushing to Joanna, who was certain that Mr. Briarley could give her "the key" to clarify why she sees the Titanic. However, Mr. Briarley's niece, Kit, promises to help. Joanna also consults with Maisie Nellis, a nine-year-old girl who suffers from a heart defect, "V-fib", because Maisie, a born rationalist, gives only accurate information about her NDEs. Maisie also gives Joanna important information about the Titanic. Through talking with her patients and undergoing more NDEs, Lander realizes that the near-death experience is a mechanism that the brain uses to create a scenario symbolic of what the brain attempts to do when it is dying: find a suitable neural pathway by which to send a message that can "jump start" the rest of the body back into life. If the person having a real near-death experience can metaphorically send a message to someone appearing in the NDE, she learns (specifically, from a revived coma patient), the person will awaken and survive. Before she can tell Richard Wright about her discovery, she goes to visit Nurse Vielle in the Emergency Room and is stabbed by a man deranged by a drug called "rogue". Before losing consciousness, she manages to say a few words to Vielle, trying to communicate her discovery about NDEs. She finds herself on the Titanic again and races against dream- like obstacles to escape and awaken. Richard Wright, on hearing that Joanna is dying or dead, enters an artificial NDE, thinking that he will find himself in the Titanic and be able to rescue Lander. He instead finds himself at the offices of the White Star Line, where the names of the victims of the Titanic disaster are being read to the public - he is too late to "save" Joanna. He awakens many hours later, and Tish, crying, tells him that Joanna has died. As Richard and Joanna's friends struggle with her death, Joanna herself remains on the Titanic until it sinks, and her memories of life fade away. Richard realizes that Joanna was trying to tell him something before she died (they had discussed the importance of last words), and he tracks down all the people she spoke to before she was stabbed. He learns what Joanna discovered. Before she could reach him, Joanna had told, of all people, Mandrake, "The NDE is a message. It's an SOS. It's a call for help."Willis, Passage, p. 415. Grasping her dying message, Richard develops a chemical treatment that he believes can revive a patient. Maisie suffers V-fib and dies, but Richard successfully uses his experimental treatment on her, and she later receives a heart transplant; she will live. Within her final NDE, on an imaginary ship, Joanna finds herself adrift on the water, with some memories still intact and accompanied by a child and a dog which Maisie has told her about from other disasters. As the novel ends, they watch the approach of a ship repeatedly mentioned by Ed Wojakowski. ===== Lauren Hartke and her film director husband, Rey Robles, are occupying an isolated house outside New York City. They have a sparse verbal exchange over breakfast before Rey leaves to go for a drive. Later that morning, Rey is found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his first wife's Manhattan apartment. An obituary detailing the frequently ambiguous details of Rey's life ensues, where Rey's age (64) is revealed, along with his history of depression and the fact that Lauren had been Rey's third wife. A bereaved Lauren remains alone in the house against the advice of her friends and relatives. She becomes disconnected from the temporal world and from her own body, experiencing frequent and inexplicable déjà vu. Lauren spends the subsequent hours, days and weeks exploring this disconnection. She practices her trademark 'bodywork'-- aerobic and stretching techniques she has developed to prepare her body for performance pieces. Lauren also integrates a sequence of daily rituals, including chopping firewood and gazing for hours at webcam footage of a road in Kotka, Finland. One morning, Lauren hears a noise coming from the upper floor of the house. She goes upstairs to investigate but finds no one there. Lauren goes upstairs again the next day. This time, she finds a man sitting in one of the bedrooms. The man's appearance varies each time Lauren sees him, but in this first incarnation, he is described as "smallish and fine-boned [resembling] a kid, sandy-haired and roused from deep sleep" (43). This ageless man, whom Lauren dubs Mr. Tuttle, is unclear about his origins; he articulates only in fragments that echo past conversations between Lauren and Rey previous to Rey's suicide. These echoes are so uncanny as to include body gestures and intonations, leading Lauren to bring him into the house, bathe him, and take him shopping, all the while trying to pry from him the source of his "memories," that is, the conversations between Lauren and her dead husband. Lauren processes Mr. Tuttle's presence in her home, all the while continuing her body artistry, detailed through her practice, a sort of yogic / kinesiological series of sometimes quotidian expressive postures that ultimately become imbued with her sublimation of deep loss. Because of Mr. Tuttle's "channeling" of Rey's words, Lauren begins to perceive him as an avatar of her late husband, and her attachment to him extends to sexual expression. Mr. Tuttle repeats the conversation between Lauren and Rey upon Rey's final departure from his wife towards Manhattan, where he shoots himself. Soon afterwards, Mr. Tuttle disappears. After a period of searching for him, Krikor emerges as having absorbed Mr. Tuttle's voice, and an article by Lauren's friend Mariella establishes that Lauren has adopted, as a body artist, a performance that includes her "transformation" into a masculinized Mr. Tuttle figure. As the novella closes, Lauren continues to grieve in the couple's home, and the owner visits, asking if he can retrieve a chest of drawers stored in the house. After this visit, Lauren continues ineffectually processing her grief, a psychic state mirrored throughout the text in the repetition / perseverance of the narrative. The Body Artist ends ambiguously; her identity compromised throughout the novella, Lauren throws open a window to "feel the sea tang on her face and the flow of time in her body, to tell her who she was" (126). ===== The wealthy lawyer Dick Russell (John Howard) funds the dotty old inventor Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) to create an invisibility device. The first test subject for this machine is Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce), a department store model who had been fired from her previous job. The machine proves quite successful, and Kitty uses her invisible state to pay back her sadistic former boss, Mr. Growley (Charles Lane). While the Professor and the invisible Kitty are off visiting the lodge of the millionaire Russell, the gangster Blackie Cole (Oscar Homolka) sends in his gang of moronic thugs (including Shemp Howard) to steal the device. With the machine back at their hideout, however, they cannot get it to work. By now, Kitty has returned to visibility, and the thugs are sent in to kidnap her and Gibbs. However, she has learned that some alcohol will restore her to invisibility, and uses this to defeat the gang (with help from Russell). At the end of the film, it is revealed she has married and become a mother. To top it off, she and the professor learn that her treatment has apparently become hereditary, as her infant son vanishes upon being rubbed with an alcohol-based lotion. ===== A cliff tribe are about to sacrifice three blonde women. Three priests, wearing dinosaur hides, are about to sacrifice them for their Sun God, but one of the women, Sanna, escapes and jumps off the cliff. She is rescued by Tara and some men on a raft. Tara takes Sanna to his seaside tribe, who also worship the Sun God. After building a hut for herself, She joins them at a feast and celebration of a successful hunt. A Plesiosaur attacks the seaside tribe until it is lured to a store of oil and burned to death. The feast continues, and a brunette woman, Ayak, is interested in Tara, but he is too fascinated with Sanna. He brings her food. After a ritual fight between Sanna and Ayak in the water, Sanna's former tribe arrives, looking for her. She flees, and her former tribe gives chase. Hiding in a tree, a large Boa sees her but attacks and kills one of the men instead. They think that Sanna is in a nearby cave, but a Chasmosaurus makes its lair there, and disembowels one man before injuring another with a deep gash. Vultures, drawn by the carcasses, attack the wounded man. When Tara seeks Sanna, he finds the one man dead and, after the Chasmosaurus charges him. He is chased to a cliff, where he hides on a small ledge as the Chasmosaurus loses its footing and plunges to its death. A funeral pyre at the shore is followed by a tribal frenzy during which an enraged Ayak burns down Sanna's hut. Sanna meanwhile, running through a rainforest, sees a reptile, and runs before it notices her. She becomes trapped by a carnivorous plant, and cuts off a portion of her hair in order to escape. Sanna sleeps in a large Megalosaurus eggshell. The other egg hatches, and the dinosaur thinks Sanna is its sibling. The parent, thinking Sanna is one of its own, brings her a Deer carcass. Sanna, enamored by the beast, plays hide-and-seek with it, and teaches it to sit. She dives into a nearby lake and catches a fish in her teeth. She returns and finds the mother dinosaur in a fight with two men, but she distracts it so they can escape. While Tara is hiking back to his tribe, he is carried off by a giant Rhamphorhynchus. At its nest, he kills it by ripping its wing, and then knocking it off its nest when it lands. Tara sees Sanna being followed by the dinosaur and assumes she is being chased, but he runs to her and finds she has domesticated it. They reunite at Sanna's cave, where they express their love for one another and have passionate sex. They are seen by a lookout, however, and when Tara returns to the tribe, he is sacrificed to a Plesiosaur. Ayak cries as he is set adrift on a burning raft to the animal, held in place by another woman and forced to watch. However, when they are gone, he re-emerges from the water, still alive. Seeing they have left and somehow having evaded the beast, he escapes to Sanna. The tribe is still searching for Sanna, and see smoke from her fire. The two run away into a forest, where Sanna's dinosaur "parent" rescues her, but as for Tara they prepare to burn him again. Giant fiddler crabs kill a few people as the weather grows ominous again. The Moon seems to be forming, and a tsunami looms. Sanna arrives to save Tara from one of the giant crabs, and a raft escape begins to take shape. The tribal leader tries commanding the water to heel, and is swept away and (presumably) drowns. While Ayak is running on the sand, she steps into a trap of quicksand and is sucked down to her death. Giant waves hit the shore, but Tara, Sanna, and a few others survive on a raft. As the waters calm, the survivors stop to witness a lunar eclipse, as the Moon exists. ===== After the local mayor Sir Eustace Briggs makes negative remarks about Ireland, two Irish students at Wrykyn, O'Hara and Moriarty, sneak out at night to tar and feather a statue of Briggs, though they use leaves instead of feathers. They are not caught, but O'Hara realizes that during the escapade, he lost a tiny gold cricket bat he borrowed from his friend Trevor. Trevor won the bat, which is about an inch long, as a trophy since he was the captain of the winning cricket team in the latest house cricket cup. He is supposed to return it to the school by the next house cricket cup. Trevor is concerned about being blamed for the statue incident if the gold bat is found near the statue. Meanwhile, there is a vacant spot in the school rugby football team, and Trevor, as captain, considers Rand-Brown for the position, but favours Barry, who is smaller than Rand-Brown but more skilled. A study belonging to a prefect named Mill is found wrecked, and a calling card left behind indicates that it was done by a group called the League, which was the name used by a society of students several years prior who bullied others to get what they wanted until they were expelled. The society has apparently been revived. Trevor receives a letter warning him that the League does not wish Barry to play for the school rugby team. Trevor knows the team will do better with Barry than Rand-Brown and ignores the letter. As a result, Trevor's study is also wrecked by the League. Rand-Brown has the clearest motive for trying to get Barry out of the team, and dislikes Mill, but he could not have damaged Trevor's study since he was playing rugby at the time the incident occurred. O'Hara tries to find where the League meets and believes he has succeeded when he sees two figures in a basement used to store extra chairs, but it turns out that they are only the two younger students Renford and Harvey, who are secretly keeping two ferrets in the basement. The study of another prefect, Milton, is also wrecked by the League. Leather-Twigg, known as "Shoeblossom", saw a white figure coming out of Milton's study who was probably responsible, and Milton thinks the figure's description fits Rand-Brown, whom he insulted on the rugby field. Trevor receives a letter from the League warning him that they have the gold bat. Barry sprains his ankle and is unable to play in an important match against another school, Ripton, so Trevor chooses Rand-Brown to play instead. However, Trevor suspects Rand-Brown of being part of the League and searches his study for the gold bat, but Rand-Brown denies being involved with the League and Trevor does not find the bat. Rand-Brown plays badly in the important match and Barry is permanently awarded the place in the team. O'Hara and Moriarty again investigate the basement, but only find several students secretly smoking. The students smoking are caught, and O'Hara and Moriarty barely escape through a trap-door. Thereafter, the basement is kept locked, so O'Hara helps Renford and Harvey by moving the ferrets to another location behind the fives-courts. The headmaster tells Trevor to search the studies in Dexter's House for hidden tobacco. While searching with his friend Clowes, they find the missing gold bat in a drawer in the study of Ruthven, who admits that he was blackmailed by Rand-Brown to form the League with him. Trevor intends to settle his feud with Rand-Brown with a fight, but O'Hara, who is a boxer, knows Trevor does not know how to fight and arranges a boxing match between himself and Rand-Brown before Trevor gets a chance. Moriarty goes as O'Hara's second. The fight takes place by one of the fives- courts, and Renford, coming upon the fight while on his way to feed the ferrets, agrees to keep time. O'Hara wins the fight, and it is also revealed that Rand-Brown is leaving the school since he was one of the students caught smoking. Political protesters repeat the tarring and feathering of Briggs's statue, apparently inspired by O'Hara and Moriarty's initiative. Sir Eustace Briggs was suspicious of the school's students after hearing that a tiny gold bat was found near the statue, and given to a student who claimed it was his property, but now thinks the protesters tarred and feathered the statue the first time too. Trevor also denies to Sir Eustace Briggs that it was his bat. Choosing his words carefully, he claims that his bat had been in a drawer nearly all the term. ===== The title of the book comes from its prologue, which is told in verse (by John W. Houghton): > T Swiss, against their Austrian foes, ::Had ne'er a soul to lead 'em, Till > Tell, as you've heard tell, arose ::And guided them to freedom. Tell's tale > we tell again—an act ::For which pray no one scold us— This tale of Tell we > tell, in fact, ::As this Tell tale was told us. The story is said to take place many years ago. Switzerland is under the control of the Emperor of Austria, who has his friend Hermann Gessler govern the country. Gessler is a tyrannical Governor and imposes excessive taxes on the Swiss people. The people of Switzerland send three representatives – Walter Fürst, Werner Staufacher, and Arnold of Melchthal – to Gessler's Hall of Audience to complain about the taxes. Gessler refuses to change the taxes and uses the threat of boiling oil (demonstrated on the tip of Arnold of Melchtha's finger, for which he is charged a fee) to make the three men leave the Hall. The townspeople decide to rebel, and to ask William Tell to be their leader. Tell is brave, patriotic, and skilled with the crossbow. The three representatives go to Tell's house. Tell lives with his wife Hedwig, who is the daughter of Walter Fürst, and their sons Walter and William. Tell is not much of an orator and is reluctant to be a leader, but he agrees to help if they need anything done. Gessler enjoys annoying the Swiss by forbidding things, but having banned games, dancing, and singing, he has run out of things to forbid. He comes up with an idea and has a pole set up in the middle of the meadow just outside the town. He also has an old hat of his placed on top of it. Everyone must show their reverence to him by bowing to the hat when they pass by. Anybody who crosses the meadow without bowing will be arrested. Two armoured soldiers, Friesshardt and Leuthold, keep watch by the pole all day. A crowd gathers to throw eggs and other things at the guards from afar, without crossing the meadow. Tell and his son Walter, who have not heard about the hat on the pole, start to cross the meadow without bowing. The soldiers command Tell to bow but he keeps walking, and Friesshardt hits him on the head with a pike. Tell fights back, and is joined by the rest of the crowd. Tell, however, does not think a crowd should fight two men. He shoots the hat on the pole, which puts an end to the fighting as the people rejoice. Gessler enters the meadow with a bodyguard of armed men, and the townspeople scatter. The two soldiers tell Gessler what happened. Gessler already dislikes Tell because Tell once insulted him, and is displeased that he shot the hat. Walter claims that his father can hit an apple on a tree a hundred yards away. Gessler says that Tell must shoot an apple off of his son's head from a hundred yards away, or else his own life will be forfeit. Tell responds that he would rather die than shoot at an apple on his son's head, but Gessler insists that Tell will die with his son if he refuses. The crowd returns and observes. Walter is confident his father will make the shot. Tell draws two arrows and places one in his belt. He fires the first arrow, piercing the apple, and the crowd cheers. Gessler asks Tell why he had placed a second arrow in his belt, and assures him that his life is safe whatever the reason. Tell explains that if the first arrow had hit his son, he would have shot Gessler with the second arrow. Enraged, Gessler has him arrested, claiming that he had promised Tell his life but not his freedom. Tell is to be imprisoned in Gessler's castle across the lake. He is bound and brought to Gessler's ship. On the lake, the ship is caught in a storm. The helmsman is not skilled or strong enough to steer the ship in the storm, so Gessler orders Tell to steer. Tell steers the ship through a rocky area and saves them. When Gessler commands the guards to bind him again, Tell grabs the bow and quiver lying on the deck and jumps off the ship onto the rocks. Gessler orders his bowmen to shoot Tell, but Tell is faster, and Gessler is killed by Tell's second arrow. With the death of the Governor, the Swiss people are no longer afraid and successfully revolt against Austrian rule. A group of people bring Tell Gessler's pole, with his hat still nailed to it by Tell's arrow. Some of them want to burn the pole, but Tell decides to have it preserved as a memorial to their newly-gained liberty. Tell retires to his home and lives there happily ever afterwards with his family. ===== The quiet brahmin girl from Bengal becomes a passionate resister of foreign rule, against the British Raj. The narrator discovers her ancestor's struggle for her land, whilst seeking to establish herself as an American citizen. ===== Alice (Beatriz Costa), and her father Caetano (António Silva) Vasco Leitão (Vasco Santana), a medical student in Lisbon, is supported by a generous allowance from his two rich elderly aunts from Trás-os-Montes, Efigénia and Perpétua (Sofia Santos and Teresa Gomes), whom he had falsely told he had already graduated. In fact, he devotes himself to a bohemian life, preferring the popular fairs and pretty women, especially Alice (Beatriz Costa), a seamstress from the Castelinhos neighbourhood, which rather upsets her ambitious father, Caetano (António Silva), a tailor who is familiar with Vasco's debts. On the same day he fails his final exam, Vasco is surprised by his aunts' announcement that they will visit him in Lisbon to see his practice. Immediately after arriving in Lisbon, the aunts' bags are stolen and the two elderly ladies faint. Vasco sees himself forced to accept Quinquinhas's (Eduardo Fernandes) suggestion to carry the two unconscious aunts in the carriage announcing an upcoming bullfight; when the aunts come to, they are outraged at the means of conveyance and get cross with Vasco. To soothe their indignation, Vasco asks Caetano for help, and he lies to the aunts, telling them their nephew is an excellent, renowned physician. What Vasco does not know is that Caetano's real interest is the old ladies' large inheritance. Vasco (Vasco Santana) plays along as he is mixed-up with the vet at the Zoo Vasco and Alice have a falling out during the Midsummer festival. Meanwhile, at the local recreational society, Caetano single-handedly decides on the outcome of the competition to crown "Miss Castelinhos" so that his daughter Alice can win: the ceremony acts as a musical interlude in which Alce performs a song from a revue, "A Agulha e o Dedal" ("The Needle and the Thimble"), for all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood (who attend in spite of the tedious rhetoric of the jury led by Caetano). The aunts start getting suspicious and see through Vasco's lies once he cannot show them his surgery and takes them instead to Lisbon Zoo, where he is mixed-up with the Veterinarian. The aunts are ashamed and stop supporting Vasco, and soon start being courted by Caetano and the local cobbler (Alfredo Silva) in a final attempt to get their inheritance. The wedding Vasco is saved from misery by his good friend Carlos (Manoel de Oliveira), who gets him a job earning his living as a fado singer, turning him into something of a local celebrity. This does not deter him from pursuing a career in medicine, and he finally passes his final examination with flying colours, regaining the favour of his aunts and winning the hand of Alice in marriage. ===== Starhunter follows the exploits of the crew of a retired luxury-liner refitted to serve a late-23rd century bounty-hunting crew, led by Dante Montana (Paré). The owning company's name, "Trans-Utopia Cruiseship HHS", was painted on her side but has faded, leaving some letters readable while obliterating others. The letters that remain have become her nickname, so she is casually known to the crew as the "Tulip". Non crew people and space transport hubs generally refer to the ship as the "Trans-Utopian" In the first season, Tulip is owned by Rudolpho deLuna who has hired Dante Montana as a bounty hunter. Dante took the job to provide a means of traveling while also financing the search for his son, Travis, who was abducted a decade prior by a group of brigands called Raiders. Aiding him are the ship's engineer Percy Montana (Dante's niece) and security officer Lucrecia Scott, a former marine added to the crew by deLuna to keep Dante focused on the missions given him. Lucrecia has a hidden agenda, as an operative for a mysterious organization called "The Orchard". The Orchard comprises scientists and researchers dedicated to unlocking, in hopes of controlling, alien genes called "The Divinity Cluster". When broadcast in Canada each episode began with a long message transmission from deLuna (usually to Dante) outlining Dante's current assignment and deLuna's philosophical thoughts about it. In the United States, these monologues were removed. In the second season, the show was restructured (and retconned). Percy Montana emerges from hyperspace unaged, while fifteen years have passed in the outside universe. No characters remain in the show from the first season except deLuna. He attempts to assert ownership of the Tulip but since he collected on the ship's insurance when the Tulip was presumed lost, the insurance company now legally owns her. Percy claims ownership by salvage when the company shuts down. Travis Montana, Dante's son and Percy's cousin, joins the crew along with his sidekick Marcus Fagen. DeLuna brings Callista Larkadia, another bounty hunter. Percy describes the four as the "pretend cousin, big fat sleaze, little buddy, [and] mystery slut". ===== It shows the life and problems of Marinete (Cláudia Rodrigues), a cleaning lady with a short temper. She always ends up depending on her friends, who are distracted by any stupid thing and leave her to solve things on her own. ===== The basic premise of the comic book series was that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster opened a rift in reality that allowed two humanoid alien races with supernatural powers, the Mineans and Dayaks, to enter our world. The two races are at war, and it is hinted throughout the series that they have a close genetic relationship and close cultural ties with humanity, suggesting a mutual origin of some sort, though the series ended before the exact nature of that relationship could be made clear. The two primary protagonists, Andromeda Weaver, an ambitious geneticist, and Lucien Barnes, a hardened mercenary soldier, are caught up in this conflict. Both are transformed by mystical pages of the Mineans and Dayaks: Andromeda becomes a blue-skinned empath, and Lucien grows wings and gains super-strength, enhanced speed, and the ability to teleport, becoming gargoyle-like. The protagonists befriend Petra, the heir to the Minean throne. The protagonists are usually allied to the generally peaceable Mineans and are usually enemies of the aggressive Dayaks. ===== This is the story of Dimple Dasgupta who has an arranged marriage to Amit Basu, an engineer, instead of marrying a neurosurgeon as she had dreamed about. They move to the United States and experience culture shock and loneliness. At one point, she jumps rope to escape her pregnancy. As frustration becomes expressed as abuse, the tale turns to tragedy with the murder of her husband, Amit at the end. ===== St John Loveday has been cleared of murder, but forced to leave England for America until the scandal of his trial dies down. His wife Meriel has left him to seek her fortunes elsewhere, and Adam Loveday is still at sea on his ship Pegasus. Meanwhile, Japhet Loveday, spurned by the love of Gwendolyn Druce, leaves the peace of Cornwall for London. There he begins an affair with the treacherous actress Celestine Yorke. As bad fortune continues to dog him, he turns to highway robbery to settle his debts. When Gwendolyn arrives in London, Japhet realises how much he still loves her. But Celestine Yorke is not a woman to be trifled with and she is determined that if she can't have Japhet, then no one will. Paperback recovered issue Edward Loveday is also shocked by the arrival of his illegitimate daughter Tamasine, who puts his relationship with his wife under immense strain. Category:2003 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Novels set in Cornwall Category:Novels set in London ===== (This plot summary is based upon the version of the poem found in Gonville and Caius College Cambridge MS 175, a missing folio supplied by British Library Cotton Caligula A ii.) Sir Isumbras lives a comfortable life; he is a generous nobleman with a young family, a beautiful, loving wife and enjoys a respected position in society. However, his failure to think about his Christian duties causes God to tell him that he grown too proud. The message is delivered, curiously, by a speaking bird. (This resembles the way that Sigurd is warned by the birds to kill Regin in the Saga of the Volsungs when he is splashed by the juice from the dragon's heart as it cooks and can immediately understand their language.Byock, Jesse L. 1990, reprinted 1999. The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sugurd the Dragon Slayer. Translated from Old Norse with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited. 20: Sigurd Eats the Serpent's Heart. p 66. Similarly, Canace is able to understand the lament of a lady-falcon in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tale from the Squire.) Sir Isumbras is riding in his forest early one morning when a bird in the branches above him begins to talk. It tells him that one of two things must happen, and that he can choose his fate: either he can be wealthy in his youth and impoverished in his old age, or the other way around. Sir Isumbras, with no hesitation, chooses to have wealth in his old age, since: :“In yowthe I may ryde and go, :I elde I may noght do so, :My lymes wyll wex unwelde.”lines 55 to 57 ("In youth I can run about and ride a horse, but in old age I won’t be able to do any of these things because my limbs will be crippled." ) Immediately, Sir Isumbras's horse falls down dead beneath him, his hawks and hounds flee away in startled fright and a boy comes running up to tell him that his manor house has just burnt to the ground. On the way to see for himself, he learns that all his cattle and sheep have been stolen during the night. However, his wife and his children are safe. Sir Isumbras arrives at a scene of devastation to see them standing charred and naked before him, having run from their beds to escape the flames. He has lost everything except his wife and his three sons, and he quickly decides that he and his family must go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They set out with nothing except the torn clothes they are wearing, begging for food along the way. Soon they come to a great river and try to cross it. Quickly, Sir Isumbras loses two of his sons to wild animals. A lion and a leopard make off with the boys as he leaves each of them in turn on the far bank in order to return for the others. When the depleted group arrives at last at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, intending to find a ship to take them to the Holy Land, an invading sultan takes a liking to Sir Isumbras's wife and buys her from him, much to the knight's distress. She is packed away into a ship to sail to the sultan's kingdom to be made the sultan's queen. Before they part, Sir Isumbras's wife urges her husband to try to find her by any means he can, and gives him a ring by which she might know him. Very shortly afterwards, Sir Isumbras's remaining son is carried off by a unicorn, and the payment he received for the sale of his wife is carried off by a bird. Sir Isumbras finds himself alone and destitute in a foreign land. The wheel of fortune has carried him to its lowest depths. However, like the hero of the romance Sir Gowther,Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve. 1995. who may similarly have been punished for excessive pride,Blamires, Alcuin. 2004. The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther. In: Pulp fictions of medieval England, edited by Nicola McDonald, pp 45–63. having reached this low point halfway through the tale, Sir Isumbras's climb now begins. He arrives at a working smithy and asks for food, but is made to work for it. Thus, he labours for his meals and after a while they take him on as an apprentice. For seven years he works in this smithy, and at the end of this time he is so proficient at metalwork that he is able to make himself a suit of armour. Meanwhile, the sultan has been campaigning throughout Europe and only now do the forces of Christendom feel able to commit an army to battle. The two sides face one another across a field of conflict. Sir Isumbras, keen to avenge himself on the sultan who stole his wife, rides into battle on a horse used by the smithy for carrying coal, armed in his own armour (perhaps conjuring an image like that of Florent riding out against a giant wearing his father's rusty armour in the medieval romance OctavianHudson, Harriet. 1996. Octavian, lines 983 to 994. Florent, the hero of the romance, although the son of an emperor, lives as the son of a merchant in Paris. When a giant comes to besiege the city, he insists upon riding out in his father's old, rusty armour in order to challenge the fiend, and is met with howls of nervous laughter when he asks for the city gates to be opened to let him out.). Sir Isumbras performs magnificent deeds of valour and when his sorry horse is killed from under him, an earl rescues him from the battlefield, gives him a new horse and new arms and Sir Isumbras rides once again into the melee, managing at last to kill the sultan himself, winning the battle. When the Christian king wishes to congratulate him, however, Sir Isumbras acknowledges himself simply as a blacksmith, much to the monarch's incredulity. He is sent to a convent to receive medical attention and convalescence and when he is fit again, rather than going to the king to claim the honours promised him, he makes his way once more towards the Holy Land as a beggar. For many years Sir Isumbras lives in desperate poverty in the city of Acre, which was the last Christian stronghold to fall to the Muslims, in the late-thirteenth century. Then he makes his way to Jerusalem, and outside the walls of this city an angel appears one night to tell Sir Isumbras that God has at last forgiven him his sins. Destitute still, however, Sir Isumbras wanders the eastern lands until he comes to a city that once belonged to a great sultan before he was killed on the battlefield. Now it is ruled by his former queen. This lady is accustomed to distributing alms to wandering paupers and to taking in the most needy to feed and to ask them about their travels; as though keen to hear news of somebody. He is brought into the castle, meets with her, tells her his news and is invited to live there and to serve at the table. Yet, like Sir Eglamour of Artois after his travels, he does not recognise his own wife. Like Sir Yvain's wife, the Lady of the Fountain, and the wife of the eponymous hero of the romance Guy of Warwick, she does not recognise him.Kibler, William W., and Carroll, Carleton W., 1991. Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances. Translated from Old French with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited.Zupitza, J, 1875, reprinted 1966. The Romance of Guy of Warwick: The second or 15th-century Version. Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press. Guy's return to Warwick as a beggar and his death there, lines 10,480–678. "To the castell gate he came: that hym knewe, was there no man. Amonge the pore men he hym dudde: grete sorowe toke he in the stedde." – lines 10,483–486. One day, as he is outdoors pursuing the sports he used to love, he climbs a crag up to an eagle's nest and finds within it the distinctive red cloak which the eagle had stolen from him just after he had been parted from his wife, and before his youngest son had been abducted by the unicorn. The cloak had contained some food, all those years ago, and all the gold that the sultan had given to him in payment for his wife. In a sudden agony of memory, Sir Isumbras takes this cloak with the gold, carries it to his room and puts in under his bed. Then he goes about the castle grief-stricken and in tears, remembering the family he had once had. This change in his behaviour is noticed by everybody and is brought to the queen's attention. One day, some noblemen break down the door to Sir Isumbras’ room and find the gold lying beneath the bed. They bring it to the queen. She recognises it immediately as the gold that her husband was once given for her. That evening, she confronts Sir Isumbras with the discovery and he tells her what happened. She asks him to produce the ring that she gave to him; it matches hers and they at last recognise each other. There is a tearful scene of reunion. Sir Isumbras remarries his wife, is made king and soon decrees that everybody should become Christian. The population rebels and an army is raised against him, commanded by the kings of two neighbouring countries. Sir Isumbras and his wife – for she has armed herself as a knight – face the forces alone. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, three mysterious knights suddenly arrive on the battlefield, one riding a lion, another riding a leopard and the third a unicorn. They turn out to be Sir Isumbras' lost sons, come to aid their parents in battle. After defeating the opposing forces, Sir Isumbras appoints his sons to rule over the three kingdoms he now possesses. ===== The story revolves around Tara who was raised in Calcutta, educated at Vassar College in New York and is married to an American man. The novel explores her sense of culture shock when she travels back to India intertwined with the political situation in Calcutta and West Bengal. ===== Japhet Loveday has been convicted of highway robbery and sent to prison, where he faces deportation to the penal colony of Botany Bay. His wife Gwendolyn races to prove his innocence, but powerful men are working to ensure she will be too late. Meanwhile, Edward Loveday's marriage is stretched to breaking point as he struggles to hold together the shipyard and family estate despite his deteriorating health. He is fighting a losing battle however, and finally dies from the effects of a gunshot wound that never fully healed. St John returns from America on hearing of his father's death. But there are further shocks for him - Meriel, his estranged wife, has returned from London after being discarded by her wealthy lover. Bankrupt and desperately ill from tuberculosis, she seeks to reinstate herself into the Loveday family and become mistress of Trevowan, the family estate. Category:2004 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Novels set in Cornwall Category:Historical romance novels ===== Fourteen-year-old Nadav is hopelessly in love with his aunt Nina (Ayelet Zurer), who has recently lost her husband (Hattab). He is caught between the two worlds of his divorced parents: his mother (Waxman) is a high-strung fashionista, while his father (Ben Ari) has recently become devoutly Orthodox and withdrawn from the family in order to join a group of Hassidic Jews who tour Tel Aviv in a van, blasting the word of God through loudspeakers. ===== The kingdom's chief minister wants his son to marry the king's daughter, Princess Vidyadhare. When he expresses his wish to the king, he is ridiculed. Instead, the king orders him to search for a "Sakala Vidya Paarangatha" groom for his daughter. Vowing to take revenge against the insult, the minister goes in search of a foolish groom. Kalidasa, a humble shepherd is shown rearing his sheep. Convinced of his stupidity, the minister charms Kalidasa to accompany him to the palace, so that Kalidasa can marry the princess. Coached by the minister, Kalidasa excels in the tests conducted by Vidyadhare (Jaya Pradha). The minister is shrewd enough to teach a key sentence to Kalidasa. If he can't answer a question, Kalidasa must utter "heluvudakku, keluvudakku, idu samayavalla" ("This isn't the right time to question or answer.") Vidyadhare is fooled by Kalidasa's brilliance and marries him. However, the truth comes out during the first night. Shattered, Vidyadhare locks Kalidasa in the palace temple and gets him to demand "vidyaabuddhi" (knowledge and wisdom) from the goddess Kali. In a mystical scene, Vidyadhare loses consciousness, while Kalidasa is blessed with vidyaabuddhi. Kalidasa is shown walking away from the palace-temple, implying his casting off his earlier ignorance and walking away from his previous life. Vidyadhare regains consciousness and goes in search of her husband. Kalidasa, now a renowned poet, is one of the astadiggajas (eight great poets including Daṇḍin) in the court of King Bhoja (Srinivasa Murthy), much to the ire of the elder poet Musuri Krishnamurthy. Bhoja pleads with his dear friend Kalidasa to write a charama geethe (burial song) for him. Kalidasa refuses, since Bhoja is sure to die once he hears the song. Vidyadhare assumes the name Kaladhare, rests at a prostitute Ratnakala's home and catches Kalidasa's attention. Vidyadhare is pleased to see her husband, but Kalidasa is unaware of his former life. Kalidasa composes his best work Abhignaanashaakuntala with romantic interests on Vidyadhare. Bhoja can't bear the fact that his aptamitra (intimate friend) Kalidasa is in the company of a prostitute. The differences lead to Kalidasa parting ways with Bhoja and walking out of his court. Dimdima kavi, who is blessed with a dindima from the goddess Saraswati, throws a literary challenge to Bhoja's ashtadiggajas, asking them to complete his shloka with the answer. Bhoja recalls his friend, when none can answer the question, kamale kamlotpattitih (lotus within a lotus). Shamed Bhoja announces that he will donate half of his kingdom to anyone who solves the puzzle. Ratnakala gets the answer from Kalidasa and poisons him. She walks into royal court, to claim half kingdom. She answers, "Eye lotuses in the face lotus of my lady." Dimdima kavi, who could silence herds of lauretes with his dimdima, catches her fault, asking when she herself is a lady, how can she say "milady." He announces that other than Kalidasa no one can answer this puzzle. Bhoja rushes the guards to Kalaadhare's house, only to find the dead body of Kalidasa. Bhoja also learns the truth from Vidyadhare: Kalidasa was her husband. Bhoja pledges to Vidyadhare that he'll get her husband back to her and prays to the goddess Kali to donate his half life to Kalidasa. When Kalidasa awakes to life, Bhoja hides himself and tricks him to sing "charama geethe." Bhoja dies once his friend has completed the song. The onus is now on Kalidasa to get his friend back to life; the only way is the divine intervention. He prays his heart out to the goddess Kali, who is touched by the love and affection Kalidasa and Bhoja bestow on each other. The goddess blesses both Kalidasa and Bhoja with long lives. The movie ends with Kalidasa reuniting with Vidyadhare. ===== Doctor Eggman kidnaps Princess Elise of Soleanna in the hopes of harnessing the Flames of Disaster, a destructive power sealed within her. Aided by his friends Tails and Knuckles, Sonic works to protect Elise from Eggman. Meanwhile, Shadow and his fellow agent Rouge accidentally release an evil spirit, Mephiles. The spirit transports them to a post-apocalyptic future ravaged by a demonic monster, Iblis. When Mephiles meets survivors Silver and Blaze, he fools them into thinking Sonic is the cause of this destruction and sends them to the present to kill him. Throughout the story, Sonic and friends travel between the past, present, and future in their efforts to stop Mephiles and Iblis and protect Elise from Doctor Eggman. Though at first Silver stalks Sonic and impedes his attempts to save Elise, Shadow reveals to him that Sonic is not the cause of his world's suffering but rather Mephiles, who is trying to change the past for his own evil purposes. They learn that Mephiles seeks to bond with Iblis, who was sealed within Elise as a child, as they are the two halves of Soleanna's omnipotent god, Solaris. Mephiles eventually succeeds after killing Sonic to make Elise cry over his death, releasing her seal on Iblis and merging with him to become Solaris, who then attempts to consume time itself. The heroes use the power of the Chaos Emeralds to revive Sonic, and he, Shadow, and Silver transform into their super forms to defeat Solaris. Sonic and Elise are brought to the past and extinguish Solaris's flame, removing the god from existence and preventing the previous events from ever occurring. Despite this, Sonic and Elise show faint signs of recalling their encounter afterwards. ===== In the kingdom of Charak, a celebration is taking place for the coronation of Prince Kassim. But Kassim's evil stepmother, Zenobia, places a curse on him and turns Kassim into a baboon just as he was going to be crowned Caliph. Sinbad, sailor and Prince of Baghdad, moors at Charak, intent on seeking permission from Prince Kassim to marry Kassim's sister, Princess Farah. He quickly gets used to the city and its people, but finds it under curfew. When Sinbad and his men shelter in a nearby tent, one is poisoned and the rest are attacked by Rafi, Zenobia's son, but Sinbad defeats him. Soon a witch (whom the audience later learns is Zenobia) summons a trio of ghouls, which emerge from a fire and attack Sinbad and his men. Sinbad disposes of the ghouls by crushing them under a pile of huge logs. Sinbad meets with Farah, who believes that Kassim's curse is one of Zenobia's spells and if Kassim cannot regain his human form within seven moons, then Zenobia's son will become caliph instead. Sinbad, Farah, and the baboon Kassim set off to find the old Greek alchemist named Melanthius, a hermit on the island of Casgar, who is said to know how to break the spell. Zenobia and Rafi follow in a boat propelled by the Minoton, a magical bronze automaton created by the sorceress that looks like a minotaur. During the voyage, Farah proves to be the only person capable of calming the baboon. Sinbad has been convinced that the baboon is Kassim by witnessing him playing chess with Farah, before which he had beaten him, and he truly proves who he really is to a sailor by writing a sentence that says it on the wall. Sinbad and Farah land at Casgar and find Melanthius and his daughter Dione, who agree to help them. Melanthius says they must travel to the land of Hyperborea where the ancient civilization of the Arimaspi once existed. On the way to Hyperborea, Melanthius and Dione also become convinced that the baboon is Kassim. Besides Farah, Kassim enjoys having Dione's company and develops a love interest towards her. Zenobia uses a potion to transform herself into a seagull to spy on Sinbad. Once aboard his ship, she turns into a miniature human and listens in as Melanthius tells Sinbad how to cure Kassim. Alerted by Kassim, Melanthius and Sinbad capture Zenobia. Unfortunately, her potion spills and a wasp ingests some of it. The wasp grows to enormous size and attacks the two men, but Sinbad kills it with a knife. Zenobia takes what is left of her potion, turns into a seagull, and flies back to her own ship. But there is too little of the drink left: While Zenobia is restored to human form and full size, the lower part of her right leg remains a seagull's foot. After a long voyage, Sinbad's ship reaches the north polar wastelands. Sinbad and his crew trek across the ice to the land of the Arimaspi, but are attacked by a giant walrus. It destroys most of their supplies and kills two men, but Sinbad and the others fend it off with spears. Zenobia uses an ice tunnel to reach the land of the Arimaspi, and she, Rafi, and the Minoton climb subterranean stairs to emerge in the warm, Mediterranean-like valley above. Sinbad and his crew also reach the valley. While resting, they encounter a Troglodyte, an tall creature somewhat like a fur-covered caveman, with a single horn on the top of its head. The Troglodyte proves to be not dangerous, but rather friendly and they named him Trog for short and follows the adventurers to the giant pyramidal shrine of the Arimaspi. Zenobia and Rafi arrive at the shrine first, but she has no key to enter. She orders the Minoton to remove a block of stone from the pyramid's wall. He succeeds, but the block crushes the Minoton and destabilizes the shrine's power. Sinbad and his friends arrive minutes later, and realize Zenobia has entered the pyramid. They enter the shrine's main chamber, the interior of which is covered in ice and is guarded by "The Guardian of the Shrine", a Smilodon frozen in a block of ice. Zenobia orders Rafi to attack Melanthius and is about to hurt Dione with a knife, but he is attacked by Kassim and is killed falling down the temple stairs. Momentarily overcome with grief, Zenobia cradles her son while Sinbad and Melanthius investigate how to get Kassim into the column of light at the top of the shrine which will break the spell. Having come to her senses again and seeing Kassim restored to human form, Zenobia transfers her spirit into the Smilodon. Breaking free of its icy prison, the giant tiger attacks the group but Trog then enters the scene and engages the Smilodon in combat. Initially gaining the upper hand and even slamming the creature to the ground, the Smilodon disarms Trog of his spear and pins him to the wall, inflicting more damage before killing him via biting the neck. Sinbad and his men fight against the Smilodon but are overpowered by its speed and Maroof is killed. The Saber Toothed Tiger then attacks Sinbad who uses Trog's spear to jab it in the chest, killing both the Smilodon and Zenobia. With the spell on Kassim broken and Zenobia dead, the adventurers flee the temple as it collapses and is buried in snow and ice. Sinbad, Kassim, Farah, Melanthius, and Dione return home just in time for Kassim to be crowned Caliph. Kassim and Dione smile at each other and Sinbad and Farah share a kiss. The film fades to black, and the eyes of Zenobia appear on the screen. ===== ===== Jimmy Lait (Brown) and his girlfriend, Wendy, come across Jimmy's friend, House, wounded and dying. Lait learns from House that he had escaped from a secret medical experimentation facility. Later in the hospital, a delirious House tells Lait that there is someone who aims to "kill us all" and that they have a way of doing it. However, Lait has to return to the studio to supervise a recording session with a group he is producing, The Impressions. He leaves Wendy in the hospital. While Wendy talks to Jimmy on the phone outside of the room, two men climb through the window, murder House and kidnap Wendy. After finding out about her kidnapping, Jimmy begins a quest to find the whereabouts of his girlfriend, but a group of attackers ambush him. Lait survives with the help of his friend, Jagger Daniels (Williamson). Lait and Daniels join up with Mister Keyes (Kelly, named "Mister" by his mother so people would be forced to show him respect) after he wins a fist fight with several police officers attempting to plant drugs in his car. Lait is shot as they capture a member of Feather's gang, but are unable to force him to give up his secrets. Jagger calls three dominatrixes: The Countess (Pamela Serpe), The Empress (Irene Tsu), and The Princess (Marie O'Henry). The eager women ask Jagger if they can go all the way, meaning, torturing the captured man to death. Jagger tells them, only after the prisoner gives him the information he seeks. They agree and proceed to go upstairs to torture the tied up man. The three women at first excite the captive by baring their breasts, but they torture him while Keyes and Daniels wait. After some time the women emerge, and say the captive is ready to talk. He informs them of Feather's plot and dies from his torture. There is a secret plot of black genocide concocted by the nefarious Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson), the leader of a secret Neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization. Their chief scientist, Dr. Fortrero (Richard Angarola), has developed a lethal poison that only affects African Americans. They plan to deploy the serum into the water systems of Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Los Angeles, in order to wipe out their black populations. The three heroes re- unite as Lait is leaving the hospital, and decide to stop the poisoning of the water supplies. "Three the hard way, three cities, the three of us." Lait returns to Chicago. Mister Keyes stops the poisoning in Washington, D.C., as Jagger does in Detroit. They reunite again to stop Feather and arm themselves to the teeth. They raid Feather's compound and rescue Wendy after a huge shootout, leaving Dr. Fortrero burned alive, and Feather and many white supremacists dead. ===== The Chiricahua Apache chief, Victorio, called his sister Lozen his wise counselor and his right hand. He said she had the strength of a man and was a shield to her people. Even in a society possessing extraordinary courage, endurance and skill, she was unique. The Apaches believe that when she was young, the spirits blessed her with horse magic, the gift of healing and the power to see enemies at a distance. In the Apaches' 30-year struggle to defend their homeland, they came to rely on her strength, wisdom, and supernatural abilities. Because of her gift of far-sight, she was the only unmarried woman allowed to ride with the warriors and fight alongside them. After her beloved brother Victorio's death, she joined Geronimo's band of insurgents. With Geronimo and fifteen other warriors, she resisted the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies, and the heavily armed civilian populations of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. She and the sixteen warriors, and seventeen women and children held out against a total of about nine thousand men. ===== The cartoon opens showing several signs posted throughout the forest indicating that it is rabbit season. It is revealed that Daffy Duck is the one putting them up, and he is shown stamping the ground with artificial rabbit tracks leading to Bugs' hole. Daffy states that while he knows what he is doing is unsporting, he has to have some fun "and besides, it's really duck season." Elmer Fudd then appears and notices the rabbit tracks. He pokes his gun into the hole, threatens to blast Bugs if he does not come out, and then follows through on his threat. Bugs Bunny, however, has been watching from a hole a few feet away and wanders over to Elmer to begin a conversation with him about rabbit season. When Elmer fails to realize that Bugs is a rabbit, Daffy is disgusted by this and emerges from his hiding spot to point out that Bugs is a rabbit, which the latter confirms, asking if Elmer would prefer to shoot him now or wait until he gets home. Daffy eagerly shouts for the first option and Bugs rebukes him, "You keep out of this! He doesn't have to shoot you now!" Daffy angrily asserts, "He does so have to shoot me now!" and outright demands that Elmer do so. Elmer looks confused for a few seconds, but complies as Daffy sticks his tongue out at Bugs. The shot dislocates his beak to the back of his head and Daffy replaces his beak before requesting to run through again what they just said. Bugs agrees to, and upon reaching Bugs' word swap, Daffy calls him out on "pronoun trouble", saying "It's not 'he doesn't have to shoot you now.' It's 'he doesn't have to shoot me now.' WELL, I SAY HE DOES HAVE TO SHOOT ME NOW!" Subsequently, Daffy commands Elmer to shoot him again, which he does. Daffy fixes his beak again and is about to rant at Bugs before realizing that he may fall into the same trap once more. He decides to speak to Elmer instead, confirming that Elmer is a hunter and that it is rabbit season. Bugs interjects, asking what Elmer would do if Daffy was a rabbit. Daffy repeats the question angrily, and has enough time to realize what he said (looking towards the camera and piteously saying "Not again") before Elmer shoots him. Daffy fixes his bill once more and laughs sarcastically at Bugs for his trick. At that point Elmer grows impatient and begins firing at them both. They hide together in Bugs' hole, and Daffy checks to see if the hunter is gone at Bugs' behest. Daffy is shot again, and in a daze rejects Bugs' suggestion of being a decoy, whereupon the rabbit dresses up as a woman (wearing a Lana Turner-style sweater). He manages to fool Elmer briefly, but a peeved Daffy demands that he reveal his identity out of sheer honesty. When Daffy prods Bugs, asking if he has anything to say out of sheer honesty, "she" replies that she would love a duck dinner. A lovestruck Elmer shoots Daffy, who removes his beak by hand as he is shot and replaces it afterwards. The duck approaches the rabbit, briefly apologizes for suspecting him, then removes Bugs' wig to expose him and commands Elmer to shoot him. Bugs responds by asking, "Would you like to shoot him here or wait till you get home?" Daffy attempts to escape any more tricks by choosing the latter option, whereupon he joins Elmer on a walk to his cabin and is once again shot. Daffy walks back to Bugs, fixes his beak, and the cartoon ends with Daffy rebuking Bugs, "You're despicable." ===== The protagonist and narrator is Merlin, who supervises the birth and raising of King Arthur. (In this version, Merlin's father is Aurelius Ambrosius, so he is Arthur's cousin.) The Duchess Ygraine is said to have conspired with him to herself bear Arthur to Uther Pendragon; whereafter Merlin goes into hiding, to evade accusations, and learns that Uther wishes the child to be hidden, until another (legitimate) son is born. In later chapters, Merlin gives the child to his own nurse Moravik, who later sends him to Count Ector of Galava to be trained in courtesy and warfare. Thereafter, Merlin visits Constantinople, where he learns from his relative Adhjan that Magnus Maximus (alias 'Macsen Wledig') possessed an especially beautiful and well-made sword, which was taken back to Britain after his death. Inspired by a dream which he believes prophetic, Merlin finds the sword in a deserted temple of Mithras. There, Merlin becomes a hermit in an obscure shrine, providing healing to the injured and advice to the insecure. Later, Merlin becomes Arthur's tutor and that of two other boys: Arthur's foster-brother Cei and his friend Bedwyr. One day, Arthur discovers the sword of Maximus — his ancestor and Merlin's — hidden in a cave on an island in the centre of a lake, and names it Caliburn. Later he wins his first battle in a decisive victory against invading Saxons; whereupon his parentage is revealed and he is proclaimed the heir to Uther Pendragon. Shortly before he learns his identity, he unknowingly commits incest with his half-sister Morgause, and thus sires Mordred. When challenged to prove his birthright, he reveals Caliburn to the assembled kings. ===== The Investigator concerns a Senator who is never explicitly identified as Joseph McCarthy, but who shares McCarthy’s nasally whine and who uses such McCarthy-esque sayings as "Your uncooperative attitude can only cast the gravest doubts on your own loyalty." This senator dies in an airplane crash and finds himself at the gates of "Up Here", where a tribunal must decide whether he should stay Up Here or be sent "Down There". He meets Cotton Mather of the Salem Witch Trials, Tomas de Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition and the ‘Hanging Judge’ George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys who, despite their reputations as shrewd and conniving characters, call themselves "mere untutored novices" compared to the Senator. As it turns out, they’ve been looking for someone to commandeer the admission tribunal and bring to it "the latest inquisitorial techniques", and they think the Senator is the perfect man for the job. The Senator easily gains control of the committee and soon decides that a great many persons Up Here could potentially be subversives from Down There. He calls numerous historical figures to the stand, including Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, John Milton, and Martin Luther. When they testify, they all give oddly relevant quotations of theirs, such as when Voltaire states that "liberty of thought is the life of the soul." Completely disregarding their statements regarding freedom and rights, the Senator "deports" them all to "Down There", claiming that "security is the paramount issue." Trying to call Karl Marx to the stand, the Senator accidentally calls other persons named "Karl Marx" instead of the Karl Marx; as a result, he orders that all those Up Here with the name Karl Marx be deported to Down There. The Senator's actions soon create a panic of suspicion Up Here, where everyone is now a potential subversive. For instance, Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner agree to drop Chopin from their quartet because of his "Revolutionary Étude." Chopin's replacement, a "non-controversial" cipher named Otto Schmenk, gradually replaces other famous "subversives" in literature and music, but eventually he joins them in banishment as well. Finally, after sending dozens or hundreds of "subversives" Down There, the Senator has run out of ideas. "Can’t we jazz the hearing up with a few names?" he asks an assistant, "I don’t want them to think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel." But Satan pays a call on the Senator, begging that his investigations cease, because the influence of those he's sent Down There are changing it too much; Karl Marx, for example, is distributing pamphlets declaring, "Workers of the Underworld, unite! You have nowhere to go but up!" ("Which Karl Marx?" asks the Senator. "How should I know! There are hundreds of them!") Satan claims the Senator is "bungling" his job, insisting there are more subtle ways to handle his committee and the deportations. But the Senator has become a demagogue, valuing his position (and absolute power) above all else. Finally, claiming that "there is no one so high as to be immune from investigation," he’s found the name he’s looking for: "The Chief". Now even Mather and Torquemada try to discourage him, but the Senator refuses to listen. He rises to an insane scream, crying "I AM THE CHIEF!" as "The Chief" suddenly appears before him, banishing him to Down There. However, Satan refuses him entry, so, "pursuant to Article ...", he is returned to Earth, still muttering "I am The Chief ... I am The Chief ..." In a brief epilogue, an incredulous doctor explains to one of the Senator's allies, a Mr. Garson, that despite his being "the only survivor", found virtually unscathed at the foot of the mountain where the plane crashed, the Senator's mind has been affected, hence his strange mutterings. Declares Mr. Garson of the Senator's survival, "It was an act of God!" ===== Yosemite Sam is the captain and only occupant of a sailing ship, H.M.S. Friz Freleng with home port in Kansas City (an on-screen reference to the late animator and his hometown), and he's heading on a voyage for buried treasure with the means to get it for himself. He reaches the island, immediately finding the dig site, and uncovers both a treasure chest and Bugs Bunny on it. Before Sam can deal with Bugs, the rabbit shoves the chest and Sam onto the ship and sets the ship in motion. Bugs avoids walking the plank and tricks Sam into thinking he's a charming mermaid, which gets him into a swimming chase with a shark. In the end, Bugs Bunny opens his treasure chest, which is revealed to be full of carrots. ===== Rahul Seth, is a young and rich Indo-Canadian living in Toronto whose widowed mother is eager to get him married after the freak-accidental death of his white pop singer girlfriend, Kimberly. Rahul's mother disapproved of her son's relationship with a non-Indian woman. Furthermore, the mother proclaims that the impending wedding of her daughter Twinky and Bobby will not take place until Rahul has found himself an Indian bride first. The pressure mounts on Rahul as he finds out that Twinky must marry to preserve the family's reputation because she is pregnant. Rahul goes to a bar and there meets Sue. Thinking she is a Spanish escort (non-sexual companion), he hires her to pose as his fiancée because she looks Indian. Rahul eventually discovers that Sue is actually Indian (her name is short for Sunita). Despite his initial anger at her lie, the two grow closer—due in no small part to a confidence boost Sue gave to Rahul's tormented younger brother, Govind, who incorrectly believes that no one cares about his welfare. Rahul and Sue eventually consider one another a fit match. Pleased, Mrs. Seth agrees to sanction Twinky's wedding. Rahul and Sue grow more intimate, sharing stories about their pasts. It is revealed that Sue was once offered as a bride to the well-meaning but dim- witted professional wrestler Killer Khalsa; offended that her parents would even consider such a match, she has been playing mischief in revenge. This mischief is not fully explained, but her liking for it is suggested by her audacity. Sue is quite immune to social norms; she speaks bluntly to all, particularly to Rocky, Rahul's driver, who she knows (but does not reveal to others) is a famous drag queen. The blossoming romance is shaken, when a drunken friend at Bobby's bachelor party states that Sue is a prostitute, and that he himself has paid her for sex in the past. Rahul is uncertain, causing Sue to be so hurt that he would question her honesty and integrity that she leaves him. He is forced to confess to his family that he never really courted Sue but merely bribed her to act the part of his fiancée. His mother is forced to postpone Twinky's wedding until Rahul can find a new bride, becoming despondent that Twinky's pregnancy will make the family social outcasts, for which Rahul calls her out for being a hypocrite. Twinky enters the room and tells her mother to stop crying, as Twinky and Bobby have eloped. Twinky thanks Rahul for doing so much to help her. Prodded by Rocky ("Sue ma'am is special. Anyone who can keep a secret deserves the best"), by his insightful, Shakespeare-quoting grandmother and by the ghosts of his father and Kimberly, Rahul goes after Sue. In a balcony scene facilitated by Sue's father and mother, Rahul professes his true love to Sue, who abruptly leaves him standing outside her balcony. Rahul initially leaves in his limo, then tells Rocky to return to Sue's house, only to find that Sue has replaced Rocky in the driver's seat. All parties, including ghosts and the film's crew, join in the closing-credits dance. ===== Alien activity is discovered in a Kirkwood gap; the aliens are identified as self-replicating machines (von Neumann probes). Their activity is potentially an immense threat, as Malenfant notes in an earlier speech: "A target system, we assume, is uninhabited. We can therefore program for massive and destructive exploitation of the system's resources, without restraint, by the probe. Such resources are useless for any other purpose, and are therefore economically free to us. And so we colonize, and build." The self-replicating spacecraft are named Gaijin (Japanese for "foreigner"), after their discovery by a Japanese observer on the Moon. Malenfant travels in a prototype fusion engine to the Kirkwood Gap and discovers an interstellar teleportation device. He travels around the galaxy to uncover information about the Fermi paradox (see below). At the same time, the story also follows the efforts of Humans on Earth and the eventual draining of the Earth's resources, making a move off- world necessary. At the same time small group of humans use anti-aging techniques and an alien form of interstellar teleportationTeleportation using quantum entanglement – EPR correlation — to travel at light speed between transmitter and receiver to "parachute" in on the changing solar system over many centuries. Eventually, it is revealed that in this version of the Fermi paradox, sentient life is endemic throughout the universe; Humanity simply hadn't noticed it earlier because the universe destroys any race before it becomes advanced enough to develop a Type IV civilisation. The story ends with Malenfant helping the Gaijin build a shield to prevent a pulsar from sterilising a large part of the galaxy. Although this project will not be completed before another predicted pulsar event wipes out all extant species, it is hoped to give the sentient aliens who develop from the aftermath of the coming extinction a better chance at long-term survival. ===== The movie is set in early 20th century China. Wong Fei- hung, along with his father Wong Kei-ying and servant Tso, is on the way home to Canton after a trip to the Northeast when he encounters Fu Wen-chi, a former top candidate in the Qing era's military examination. After an exchange of blows, Wong and Fu accidentally switch the boxes they had been fighting over. Wong ends up with the Imperial Seal while Fu gets the ginseng that Wong's father had bought for a client. Unknown to Wong, the Imperial Seal is one of numerous Chinese artifacts that the British consul is trying to smuggle out of China to Britain. Back in Canton, Wong gives the client a root from his father's favourite bonsai to pass off as the ginseng; the client falls sick after consuming the fake ginseng and his wife informs Wong's father about it. Wong's stepmother, Ling, complicates things when she tries to help Wong by loaning her necklace for money for Wong to buy a new ginseng; their neighbours mistakenly believe that the Wongs are in financial difficulty. In the meantime, the British consul sends his henchmen to track down Wong and seize the Imperial Seal. A fight breaks out between Wong and the henchmen when the latter try to snatch a bag from Ling, thinking that it contains the Seal. At Ling's instigation, Wong gets drunk and uses drunken boxing to beat up the henchmen until his father shows up and stops him. The older Wong is furious at his son for embarrassing their family by getting drunk and fighting in public. To make matters worse, he learns the truth behind the ginseng and bonsai and becomes so angry that he hits his son and chases him out of the house. When Wong tries to drown his sorrow by drinking heavily, he gets beaten up and publicly humiliated by the henchmen because he is too drunk to fight back. After his family saves him and brings him home, Wong feels deeply ashamed of his drunken behaviour and apologizes to his father. Meanwhile, Fu Wen-chi visits the Wong residence and tells them about the British consul's smuggling operation. The next day, Fu and Wong are attacked at a restaurant by the Axe Gang, a group of thugs hired by the consul. Fu is fatally shot and the Imperial Seal is taken by the consul's men. Before dying, Fu implores Wong and his friends to retrieve the Seal and stop the consul from stealing Chinese artifacts. One night, Wong and his friend, Tsang, disguise themselves and break into the British consulate. They are caught, beaten up and held for ransom by the consul, who demands that Wong's father sells his land in exchange for their release; the older Wong reluctantly agrees. Later, Wong's friends discover that the British consul is planning to smuggle the stolen artifacts out of Canton using boxes meant for steel shipments. They inform Wong and Tsang, who then join the workers in a violent protest at the British- owned steel factory against the consul's abuses. After a long fight, Wong and his friends defeat the consul's henchmen and put an end to the smuggling operation. At the end of the movie, a Chinese general presents the Wongs a commemorative plaque to honour them for their service to the country. ===== Little Fish is about Tracy Heart (Cate Blanchett), a former heroin addict who is desperately trying to escape her past and achieve her goals and dreams. Tracy lives with her mother (Noni Hazlehurst) and brother in the Little Saigon area (Cabramatta) in Sydney, where heroin is readily available. She is in need of money to become a partner in the video store that she works in, but her loan applications are repeatedly rejected by finance providers, as a result of her past criminal record, poor repayments of credit card debt, history of drug use and lack of collateral. Tracy lies to both her mother and her boss at the video store, pretending she has received the loan. This is one of the recurring themes of the movie, the casual ways people lie to each other for convenience. Tracy is trying to help her drug addicted stepfather and former NRL star Lionel (Hugo Weaving) to kick his heroin addiction. After a four-year absence in Vancouver, her former boyfriend Jonny Nguyen (Dustin Nguyen), also a former heroin addict, has come back into her life. Jonny, who now dresses in business suits, claims to have employment as a stockbroker at a large firm and suggests he may be able to obtain the money Tracy desires through share trading. The romance between Tracy and Jonny is rekindled. Upon visiting Jonny's alleged workplace, Tracy discovers Jonny has lied to her and is not in fact employed as a stockbroker. Jonny has become involved in a drug deal with her brother Ray, and Tracy also chooses to become involved in the deal as she sees this as the only means of providing the finance she needs to become a partner in the video store. Tracy, Ray and Jonny set out to execute the deal, which ends in tragedy. Tracy's courage and deep love for those she cares about are notable in the climactic scenes of the film. ===== There are two classes of people: Long Ears and Short Ears. Long Ears, marked by large wooden plugs in their earlobes and a certain tattoo, are the ruling class. The working-class Short Ears have no ear plugs and a different tattoo. Young men from each Long Ear tribe compete in the annual Birdman Competition. The winner's tribe gets to rule the island for a year. Ariki-mau has been the Birdman (Island King) for 20 years. He has a conviction that one day the gods will arrive in a great white canoe and take him to heaven. His advisor tells him to build more and bigger moai statues to curry favor with the gods and encourage them to come sooner. Ariki-mau petulantly rejects the latest statue—which stands over tall—as too small. The Short Ear workers are forced to build an even bigger statue in an impossibly short amount of time. The king's advisor ruthlessly enforces the rules and status quo by publicly killing a Short Ear fisherman who had accidentally caught a taboo fish. Long Ear Noro (Jason Scott Lee) and Ramana (Sandrine Holt), a Short Ear, are both rejects in their tribes—her father was banished for building an unlucky canoe. Noro's father stole a canoe and sailed away, and is accused of abandoning the tribe. They have a secret relationship and have fallen in love. Ariki-mau tells Noro that he has to compete in the Birdman Competition so Ariki-mau can continue to rule the island. Noro asks if he can marry Ramana if he wins the Birdman Competition. The king reluctantly agrees. The king's advisor claims that Ramana's skin is too dark and that she should be purified by spending the time from now until the Birdman Competition (six months) in the "Virgin’s Cave". He checks her virginity and snidely remarks to Noro, who is watching Ramana being lowered to the cave, that she isn't right for the Virgin's Cave and that it will be their secret. Ramana takes one last look at the sunset and goes into the cave. Noro approaches Ramana's banished father, a canoe maker, and asks him to help him train for the Birdman competition. He initially refuses, because it is Noro's fault that his daughter is confined to a cave, but later relents and trains Noro. While training Noro he explains that he and Noro's father were great friends once and that he gave the canoe to Noro's father. He further explains that Noro's father sailed away after discovering a piece of a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, thus breaking the long-held belief that Rapa Nui is the only land left with people on the Earth. Meanwhile, the Short Ears are beginning to starve because the king insists on them working on the new statue instead of growing food but continues taking the full quota of their remaining food for the Long Ears. The resources of the island are being rapidly used up and depleted (with the last remaining tree being cut down), due to the extensive Moai construction and overpopulation. Noro is the only person worried about the resource depletion, but his concerns are dismissed by the increasingly senile Ariki-mau. Noro sneaks some food to his Short Ear friend Make (Esai Morales) and shares his plans to marry Ramana. Make reacts badly and Noro realizes that Make loves her, too. Make declares that they are no longer friends and runs off. Separately, Noro and Make visit Ramana at her cave, bringing her food and talking to her through the barrier at the mouth of the cave. They both declare their love to her. She always responds, but she sounds despondent. After a supply shortage results in the death of one of the Short Ears (Heki, the former master carver), they demand half of the wood, food and other materials and that they be allowed to compete in the Birdman Competition. The King's advisor initially refuses and orders their death. However, the King gives in to their demands after realizing that if the Short Ears die no one will build the moai. The King, however, only allows them to compete after the moai has been completed. He makes the condition that if the Short Ear competitor loses he will be sacrificed. Despite these conditions Make accepts the position of the Birdman Competitor on the condition he be allowed to marry Ramana if he wins. The King agrees and Make spends all his time working and training, leaving no time for sleep or other recreational activities. Meanwhile, work on the great Moai has become so important that the Short Ears sacrifice their food to complete it. Finally it is the Birdman Competition. Nine competitors must swim to a close by islet surrounded by pounding surf, climb the cliffs to get an egg from the nest of a sooty tern and bring it back. The first to return wins for his tribe. Noro barely wins and Ariki-mau gets to be the island's ruler for another year. Ramana is brought from the cave, pale from her long underground stay and obviously pregnant. Before anything is decided about the fate of Ramana or Make, an iceberg is spotted off the coast. Ariki-mau believes that the iceberg is the great white canoe sent to take him to the gods and goes out to it with some of his followers. After the iceberg has carried Ariki-mau away, the advisor attempts to seize control of the island, but Make kills him and the Short Ears stage a rebellion, slaughtering and even eating the remains of the Long Ears. Noro alone survives, as Make allows him to live, and Noro, Ramana and their baby escape the island in a canoe Ramana's father built. A post-credits scene states that archaeological evidence proves that Pitcairn Island was settled some away, providing hope that Noro, Ramana and their daughter made it to a new land. ===== The RMS Poseidon, a luxury ocean liner, is making a transatlantic crossing. Former New York City Mayor and firefighter Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) is traveling with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel) to New York, soon to be engaged. Also on board is former Navy submariner-turned-professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), stowaway Elena (Mía Maestro), and waiter Marco Valentin (Freddy Rodriguez). As the passengers are enjoying a New Year's Eve party, officers on the bridge see a huge rogue wave bearing down on the ship. To survive the wave, they try to steer the ship to starboard to take the wave bow-first, but it does not turn fast enough. The wave swamps and capsizes the ship, killing the bridge officers along with many passengers and crew. In the ballroom, a badly injured Captain Bradford (Andre Braugher) attempts to restore order and assures the surviving passengers that help is on the way, and tries to persuade them to stay put. Unconvinced, Dylan leads Conor, Maggie, Robert, Richard, and Valentin make their way towards the bow, where he believes they will have the best chance of escaping from the capsized liner. As they head up, they have to cross an elevator shaft, into which Valentin falls before being crushed by the falling elevator. They reunite with Jennifer, Christian, Elena, and gambler Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon), who had all been in the nightclub section of the ship, and who are the only survivors out of all of the occupants in the nightclub. The group crosses a makeshift bridge across the lobby, where Lucky Larry gets crushed by an engine. The pressure from the water finally cracks the ballroom windows, drowning the occupants, including Captain Bradford. With the water rising rapidly, the group is forced to escape through an air duct and some ballast tanks, although Elena hits her head underwater and drowns as a result. With the ship slowly sinking, the survivors soon find themselves in a crew lounge where they find the bow section is flooded, until an explosion of the engine room lifts it out of the water. The group enters the bow thruster room and are horrified to find the thrusters still running. With their path blocked by the propellers, and knowing that the control room is submerged in water, Robert swims away to turn off the engine. He finds the 'shut off' switch to be broken, but presses the reverse button instead, before drowning. With the propellers now spinning in the other direction, Dylan throws a nitrogen tank into it, causing an explosion that destroys the propeller, and leaving an opening for them to escape through. The group jumps out the thruster and swim to a nearby inflatable raft, and as they are getting into the raft, the ship starts to sink. As they are paddling away, the waves push the raft further and further away from the sinking liner. Across the water, the survivors look on as the stricken ship sinks stern-first into the Atlantic. After the survivors fire a flare, two helicopters and several ships arrive to rescue them, having tracked the location of the Poseidon's GPS beacon. ===== The story begins in the 26th century, when an ensemble gang called the Black Marketeers begin hunting the dinosaurs to serve their unknown purpose. The continuous hunting process has made the dinosaurs violent and now they have started attacking villages and people. Four heroes: mechanic and shaman Jack Tenrec, diplomat and explorer by profession Hannah Dundee, friend and engineer Mustapha Cairo, and mysterious Mess O'Bradovich, have decided to team up against the Black Marketeers. The protagonists journey to the "City in the Sea" where they suspect the whole hunting network being operating from. As they reach the top of a building they fight Vice Terhune. After being beaten, Vice tells them about Butcher, who had been hunting in the northern woods. Following the information, they go through the swamp forest where they find a lot of dead dinosaurs before reaching and defeating the Butcher. Meanwhile, another big name in the hunting network, Hogg, realizes that Jack is busy in the swamp forest and decides to take over Jack's Garage. Proceeding with the mission, the heroes go through the desert of death, where they use their car to travel safely, but then the car is chased by Hogg on his cruiser motorcycle. After defeating Hogg, Jack realizes that the gangsters have taken over his garage. They go there and clear out the garage from the gangsters, eventually confronting and defeating their leader Slice and regaining control of their garage. This is when they receive a message from an old villager who tells them about the weird behavior of the dinosaurs and asks for help. In response to the call, the heroes reach the village where they notice dinosaurs violently attacking the people and that the village has been set on fire by someone. Going ahead further, they meet the old villager again as he tells about the whole network and as soon as he is about to reveal the name of the person behind all of it, he is shot dead by Morgan, who attacks the group as well. During the fight, Morgan talks about the powers of "doctor" transforms himself into a dinosaur-like creature called Morgue. By now, they have come to know that some doctor is trying to create new lifeforms. Proceeding ahead, the heroes reach the coal mine and another jungle, where they face a dinosaur trying to stomp them. They eventually reach a place where they fight a tentacled creature called Tyrog that attaches itself to the bodies of the gangsters as a monstrous dinosaur-human hybrid. With all the leads and hints, Jack has now realized that Dr. Simon Fessenden is the mastermind behind all that is happening. The team heads towards his underground hideout, which again is somewhere in the "City in the Sea". The heroes head towards the bunker, going through the library and the computer lab, where the doctor appears on the computer screen, calling himself the creator of a new world. Deep down is a bio-lab, and below it is a cave, which finally leads to Fessenden's lab. Seeing the team, he transforms himself into a Morgue-like creature, but is beaten. By now, the transforming serum's effect reaches its peak, and Fessenden transforms into a three-headed creature, but the heroes manage to defeat him. Crippled by his defeat, Fessenden sets the whole complex to self- destruct. As the laboratory starts exploding, the heroes run for their lives, but Hannah falls down while running and Jack stops to help her. Only Mustapha and Mess are able to make it out of the laboratory as it is destroyed. As they are walking back to their homes, thinking about Jack and Hannah, the latter two come from behind in the car, alive. All four heroes return home. ===== It is about Suzanne Vale, an actress with bipolar disorder who married Leland Franklin, a studio executive who helped her find her "far-flung best self." He then left her, for a man, when their daughter, Honey, was three. Now, three years later, Vale is a successful TV talk show host with a six-year-old daughter, a gay ex-husband, and an aging starlet mother. It is her love for Honey that keeps her going. When Vale, a recovering drug addict, stops taking her medication, she is plunged into a manic episode. She goes on a search for OxyContin in Tijuana with a tattoo artist friend and new house guest, a clinically depressed patient she met at her psycho-pharmacologist's office. A psychotic break lands Vale at Shady Lanes, where she is the "latest loony to hit the bin." Despite her mental illness, Vale still has her wit and ability to find irony in every situation as she struggles back from the brink of insanity. "You entered the hospital broken, found some other like broken patient people, and once in their company, looked down on the other more pathetic inhabitants of the bin you shared, those flying even lower than you and your lo-flung co- conspirators." Pharmacological facts and scenes from group therapy are revealed. Rather than hide the truths of mental disorders, the humor serves to highlight them. A happy ending is contrived for Vale and Honey, a sweet little girl, but a little happiness in the midst of all the craziness is a good thing. ===== Matthew Quigley is an American cowboy with a specially modified rifle with which he can shoot accurately at extraordinary distances. Seeing a newspaper advertisement that asks for a man with his special talent, he answers using just four words: "M. Quigley 900 yards", written on a copy of the advertisement that is punctured by six closely spaced bullet holes. When he arrives in Australia, then part of the British Empire, he gets into a fight with employees of the man who hired him as they try to force "Crazy Cora" onto their wagon. After he identifies himself, he is taken to the 'station' of Elliot Marston, who informs Quigley his sharpshooting skills will be used to eradicate the increasingly elusive Aborigines. Quigley turns down the offer and throws Marston out of his own house. When the aborigine manservant knocks Quigley over the head, Marston's men beat him and Cora unconscious and dump them in the Outback with no water and little chance of survival. However, they are rescued by Aborigines. Cora now reveals that she comes from Texas. When her home was attacked by Comanches, she hid in the root cellar and accidentally suffocated her child while trying to prevent him from crying. Her husband had then put her alone on a ship to Australia. Now Cora consistently calls Quigley by her husband’s name (Roy), much to his annoyance. When Marston's men attack the Aborigines who helped them, Quigley kills three. Escaping on a single horse, they encounter more of the men driving Aborigines over a cliff. Quigley drives them off with his deadly shooting and Cora rescues an orphaned baby she finds among the dead Aborigines. Leaving Cora and the infant in the desert with food and water, Quigley rides alone to a nearby town. There he obtains new ammunition from a local German gunsmith, who hates Marston for his murdering ways. Quigley learns as well that he has become a legendary hero among the Aborigines. Marston's men are also in town and recognize Quigley's horse. When they attack, cornering him in a burning building, he escapes through a skylight and kills all but one of them. The injured survivor is sent back to say Quigley will be following. But first Quigley returns to Cora and the baby, which she has just saved from an attack by dingoes. She had tried to stop that child from crying too, but finally let him make as much noise as he liked as she killed the animals using a revolver that Quigley had left for her. Back in town, Cora gives the baby to Aborigines living there after Quigley tells her that she (Cora) has 'a right to happiness'. Next morning, Quigley rides away to confront Marston at his station. At first he shoots the defenders from his location in the hills, but is eventually shot in the leg and captured by Marston's last two men. Marston, who has noticed that Quigley only ever carries a rifle, decides to give him a lesson in the "quick-draw" style of gunfighting. However, Marston and his men are beaten to the draw by Quigley; as Marston lies dying, Quigley refers to an earlier conversation, telling him, "I said I never had much use for [a revolver]; I never said I didn't know how to use it." Marston's servant comes out of the house and gives Quigley his rifle back, then walks away from the ranch, stripping off his western-style clothing as he goes. An army troop now arrives to arrest Quigley, until they notice the surrounding hills are lined with Aborigines and decide to withdraw. Later Quigley and Cora book a passage back to America in the name of Cora’s husband, since Quigley is still wanted. On the wharf, she reminds him that he once told her that she had to say two words before he could make love to her. Smiling broadly, she calls him "Matthew Quigley" and the two embrace for the first time. ===== In the opening story, three young people become caught up in the plans of ex-Nazi officer Karl von Gelb to "reverse the verdict of the last war" and inflict revenge on his former enemies. Under the direction of Colonel Buchan of MI5, the trio thwart Gelb's scheme to launch Polaris missiles on London from a captured nuclear submarine. This set the template for future stories, with the teenagers regularly preventing Gelb from carrying out massive and ingenious threats to Britain's security. ===== Private investigator Sheba Shayne (Grier) returns from Chicago, Illinois to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, to confront thugs who are trying to intimidate her father Andy into dissolving or handing over his family insurance company business. Sheba teams up with her father’s partner, Brick Williams, and the two rekindle their old romance. Driving in her father's car, Sheba is nearly killed when the vehicle explodes. The local police warn Sheba against continuing to pursue her investigation, but she persists. Later, four gangsters show up at Andy's office and open fire. Sheba kills three of them, but Andy is shot and killed during the battle. Sheba's investigation leads to an apartment complex, where another shootout ensues. After a chase into a nearby amusement park, Sheba extracts a confession from a gangster named Pilot that the local gang is controlled by an insurance salesman called Shark Merrill. Sheba joins a party aboard Shark's yacht, but is identified and captured. After the gang does away with Pilot by tying him to a speedboat and dragging him through the water at high speed, they attempt about to do the same to Sheba, but she escapes using a knife she had hidden in her wet suit to cut the rope. As Brick leads the police to the yacht and another gun battle breaks out, Shark tries to escape in a speedboat, but Sheba gives chase on a jet ski and kills him with a spear gun. Brick urges Sheba to continue their relationship, but Sheba insists on returning to Chicago, though she promises to return to see him again, since they are now business partners. ===== Mild-mannered watchmaker Eddy Kay (Michael Biehn) runs into a burning building to save a trapped woman and is featured in the news as a result. Watching the news, Colonel Taylor (Richard Jordan) is shocked to see Eddy, whom he had assumed to be dead. A game of cat and mouse begins as Eddy, with the help of psychiatrist Dr. Anna Nolmar (Patsy Kensit), tries to discover his past and why they want him dead. Eddy and Dr. Nolmar discover that he was part of a secret government program to create assassins. Using various sensory deprivation and brainwashing techniques, the assassins could be sent to infiltrate other organizations and facilities undetected and carry out programmed missions. Eddy manages to capture and interrogate one of the female assassins (Tracy Scoggins), finding out the Colonel's current assassination plan. He then plots to confront Colonel Taylor and put an end to the assassination program once and for all. ===== Frank Griffin Jr, the grandson of the original Invisible Man, runs a print shop in Manhattan under the assumed name of Frank Raymond (Jon Hall). One evening, he is confronted in his shop by four armed men who reveal that they are foreign agents working for the Axis powers and they know his true identity. One of the men, Conrad Stauffer (Cedric Hardwicke), is a lieutenant general of the S.S., while a second, Baron Ikito (Peter Lorre), is Japanese. They offer to pay for the invisibility formula and threaten amputation of his hands if it is not revealed. Griffin manages to escape with the formula. Griffin is reluctant to release the formula to the U.S. government officials, but following the Attack on Pearl Harbor agrees to limited cooperation (the condition being that the formula can only be used on himself). Later, while in-flight to be parachuted behind German lines on a secret mission, he injects himself with the serum, becoming invisible as he is parachuting down, to the shock and confusion of the German troops tracking his descent, and after landing strips off all of his clothing. Griffin evades the troops and makes contact with an old coffin-maker named Arnold Schmidt (Albert Basserman), who reveals the next step of Griffin's mission. Griffin is to obtain a list of German and Japanese spies within the U.S. in the possession of Stauffer. Griffin is aided in his task by Maria Sorenson (Ilona Massey), a German espionage agent and the love interest of both Stauffer and Stauffer's well-connected second-in-command, Gestapo Standartenführer Karl Heiser (J. Edward Bromberg). According to their plan, Sorenson attempts to gain information from Heiser during a private dinner, with Griffin as witness. Drunk from champagne, Griffin uses his invisibility to play tricks on Heiser instead. Finally enraged when the dinner table mysteriously tips and soils his uniform, Heiser places Sorenson under house-arrest. Later, an apologetic Griffin demonstrates his existence to Sorenson by putting on a robe and smearing facial cream on his features. The two are attracted to each other. Conrad Stauffer returns from his efforts in the United States and tries to manage his shifting alliances with Karl Heiser, Maria Sorenson, and Baron Ikito. When he learns of Heiser's disastrous romantic dinner with Sorenson, Stauffer has Karl Heiser arrested and baits a trap for Griffin, whom he comes to suspect has made contact with Maria. Despite walking into Stauffer's trap, Griffin manages to obtain the list of agents, and start a fire to cover his escape. Griffin takes the list of agents to Arnold Schmidt for transmission to England. Conrad Stauffer tries to hide the loss of the list from the prying Baron Ikito, who has been staying at the local Japanese Embassy. When Stauffer refuses to answer Ikito's questions, the two confess to each other that German and Japanese cooperation is not one of trust. Without revealing their plans to each other, both men start separate hunts for the Invisible Agent.Griffin steals into a German prison to obtain information from Karl Heiser about a planned German attack on New York City. In exchange for additional information, Griffin helps Heiser escape his imminent execution. Griffin returns with Heiser to Schmidt, who in the meantime has been arrested and tortured by Stauffer. At the shop, Griffin confronts Maria Sorenson, whom he suspects has betrayed Schmidt, and is captured with a net trap by Ikito's men. Heiser escapes detection and attempts to save his life and career by phoning in Ikito's activities to Stauffer. Griffin and Sorensen are taken to the Japanese embassy, but manage to escape during the mayhem that ensues when Stauffer's men arrive. For their joint failure to safeguard the list of Axis agents, Ikito kills Stauffer and then performs seppuku, ritual suicide, as Heiser watches from the shadows. Assuming command, Heiser arrives too late to the local air base to stop Griffin and Sorenson from escaping. The couple acquires one of the bombers slated for the New York attack, and destroy other German planes on the ground as they fly to England. Stauffer's loyal men catch up with Karl Heiser and he is shot. Griffin succumbs to his injuries before he can radio ahead. England's air defense shoots down their craft, but not before Sorenson parachutes them to safety. Later, in a hospital, Griffin has recovered and is wearing facial cream so that he can be visible again. Sorenson appears with Griffin's American handler, who vouches for Sorenson that she has been an Allied double-agent all along. Sorenson is left alone with Griffin. Griffin reveals that he is actually visible under the facial cream, and they kiss. Sorenson happily accepts the challenge of discovering how Griffin regained his visibility. ===== In 1845, Mexico would not relinquish its claim to Texas, and the U.S. prepared for war. Under the command of General Zachary "Old Rough and Ready" Taylor, Sarah signed on as a laundress and cook and bivouacked with Taylor's army in Corpus Christi, preparing for an attack by Mexico. Before the war even began, though, her husband was killed. But going home was out of the question. She considered the army her home and its soldiers her family. Nowhere else would her courage and compassion be so much needed and appreciated. While the battle raged around her, Sarah became a familiar figure through the haze of sulfurous blue smoke and the stench of exploding gunpowder, riding among the flames to retrieve the wounded. Through the long years of bitter battle, she would find love in the arms of a sergeant with eyes as golden as a flame, and friendship in the company of Cruz, a Mexican woman whose personal history encompassed the war in all its passions and horrors. ===== Walk in My Soul is the story of Tiana Rogers of the Cherokee, the young Sam Houston, and the Trail of Tears. Tiana grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of the Cherokee. In a tribe that revered the life force that was female, she became a beloved woman—priestess, healer, and teacher. Known as the "father of Texas", the young Sam Houston ran away on a lark from his family's general store in Maryville, Tennessee, to live among the Cherokee. He hunted and played ritual games with the men and was adopted as a headman's son and was known as "Raven". Houston falls in love with Tiana, but due to their differing racial and cultural backgrounds, conflict ensues. ===== > Storyline > A group of six friends, recently graduated in the UK travel to Bosnia in > 1992. As fighting breaks out around the capital Sarajevo the friends are > forced to escape overland to the border whilst the fighting spreads. After > witnessing a horrific massacre in Bosnia they are pursued by a ruthless > Yugoslav People's Army Officer and his brutal Chetnik fighters. With the > weather worsening, limited supplies and murderous soldiers behind them, will > they ever make it out of Bosnia alive?! Written by Spearhead Films" ===== While the Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is en route to Starbase Montgomery to run diagnostics on its engines, Picard receives a message from Starfleet offering First Officer Commander William Riker a command of his own, the Aries, which is on a potentially dangerous exploration mission in a distant sector. Picard advises Riker that while the Enterprise is a prestigious assignment, it cannot replace the experience of having one's own command, and gives him 12 hours—the duration of their stop at the starbase—to decide. Riker's decision is complicated by the fact that the civilian adviser Starfleet has sent to brief him on his mission turns out to be his father, Kyle Riker (Mitchell Ryan), with whom he has an antagonistic relationship. After his father makes several attempts to reconcile, which Will rebuffs, the tension between the two finally boils over, and they agree to a match of anbo-jitsu, a form of martial arts. During the match, the two continue to argue, with Will venting his bitterness over the death of his mother. Will interrupts the match, claiming a move his father used is illegal, and realizes his father had only been able to beat him in his youth by cheating, which his father admits. The two are finally able to talk and reconcile, and Will admits he is glad his father came. Meanwhile, Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher notices that Lieutenant Worf is acting particularly agitated, and enlists the help of Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Commander Data to find out why. The trio eventually learn that Worf was coming upon an important anniversary, 10 years since his Age of Ascension, which is normally celebrated with an important Klingon ritual among other Klingons. They recreate the ritual, which involves a gauntlet of Klingon warriors brandishing pain sticks, on the holodeck as a surprise for Worf. While reciting vows of honor, Worf undergoes jolts from the sticks with each step forward, enduring the extreme pain, and finally reaches the end, where he is grateful to his "family" aboard the ship for honoring him in this way. ===== Number Two is directed by Number One to step up efforts to extract information from Number Six—specifically relating to what information he is believed to have sold, leading to his resignation from the intelligence agency he worked for. Number Two directs Number Fourteen to prepare a machine she has developed. With the help of an injected drug, it will allow observation of, and influence on, the dream-state of a person connected to it. They have prepared three dossiers of foreign agents that Number Six was known to have met during an elegant party hosted by Madame Engadine prior to his resignation, suspecting that he has sold out to one of them. The dossiers are labelled "A", "B", and "C". On the first two nights, Number Six is sedated through his evening tea, brought to Number Fourteen's laboratory, injected with the drug, and connected to the machine. Numbers Two and Fourteen watch events unfold in Number Six's visions of the party, and then insert, separately, the dossiers for "A" and "B", agents with known ties to Number Six. During the first night with "A", a defector, Number Six refuses to sell his secrets to "A", and then escapes from being kidnapped by "A" and his henchmen. During the second night with "B", a female spy, Number Six avoids answering her questions regarding his departure. Number Fourteen uses the machine to speak directly to Number Six via "B", but he becomes suspicious and when "B" is threatened by hostile agents to be killed, he does not stop to save her. Number Two determines that neither "A" nor "B" is the person they seek, and Number Six is returned each night to his home. After the second night, dim memories of the experiment lead Number Six to follow Number Fourteen around the Village, eventually coming across her laboratory. He dilutes the final injection after verifying the dossier for "C". That (third) night, Number Six fakes drinking the drugged tea, and instead acts drugged before he is taken back to the laboratory. Number Two uses the final dossier on "C", whose true identity is unknown beyond ties to Number Six, with the dream state machine. The visions they see of the event are blurred and distorted, a factor that Number Fourteen attributes to the repeated use of the process. In the dream, it is revealed that "C" is really Madame Engadine, but she explains that she must take him to her superior, whom Number Fourteen calls "D". To Number Two's shock, Number Six reveals that "D" is Number Two. As Numbers Two and Fourteen watch in surprise, they discover that Number Six has full control of his dream state. He returns to the Village and the laboratory and speaks directly to the dream versions of Numbers Two and Fourteen. He hands the dream version of Number Two an envelope which they had believed to contain secret information to sell, but which turns out to be simply travel brochures, and explains that his resignation was not due to having sold out. As the dream ends, the broken Number Two is startled as the phone from Number One ominously rings... ===== Vera and Irene reveal their exploits and adventures to each other in their letters and e-mails, but sometimes their correspondence becomes fractious when one accuses the other of being an alcoholic or engages in too much one-upmanship. Nevertheless, when the chips are down and the going gets tough, each is instantly there for the other, like a charge of the cavalry but with a more sarcastic bugle call. Other recurring characters include people we occasionally hear, as well as some we only hear about: *Howard Small ("Howie"), Vera's gay son, who runs a sheep farm near the village of Great Shagthorn with his business and personal partner, Anthony Flowers ("Ants"). Howie and Ants have a daughter, "Small-Flowers" currently known as "Flo"; *Karen, Vera's daughter, with whom she has a difficult relationship. Karen's second husband, St. John (pronounced "sinjun"), is a veterinarian with whom Vera has an excellent relationship. St. John is also revealed to be the biological father of Baby Small-Flowers. Karen and St. John have two children together: the long-legged Nelson and Millie (so-named after her premature arrival around the time of the new "Minnellium" [sic]); *Sabrina Small, Karen's daughter whose father is never mentioned. Karen was married and divorced prior to Sabrina's birth. *Lesley, Irene's daughter, who lives in Australia with her second husband Brian and their two children, Cheryl-Marie (from Lesley's first marriage ('Cheryl' pronounced 'CHAIR-ull') and Bubbles (real name: Sarah-Jane). Brian has a squint Lesley finds embarrassing, and a too-obvious hair-transplant; *Christopher Thoroughgood, Irene's long-lost son, Lesley's elder half-brother. Christopher is the result of an "illicit and unwanted infringement" of Irene's maidenhood and was put up for adoption. Christopher's first wife was Margaret and they had two sons, "Little Christopher" and Tommy. Christopher's second wife is Michaela, who appears, with their baby daughter Sophie-Irene, out of the blue in Ladies of Letters Crunch Credit; *Youssou, Vera's "adoptive grandson", a former child soldier in Panglawangla, whom she brought back with her from her 'Global' adventure; *Beryl "next door", who was Irene's neighbour and has recurrent medical problems with her bottom; *Nellie Thoroughgood, Christopher's adoptive mother. She is played by Susan Jameson for her sole appearance in Ladies of Letters Go Global, in which she calls herself Nellie Havergood. No reason is given for the difference in surname. Vera and Irene always strive to outdo each other, whether with their recipes, holiday destinations or who has the best grandchildren. The humour is mostly derived from the lack of insight of the two main protagonists, but there is also a somewhat melancholic theme that lurks just beneath the surface at the way these two women are taken for granted by their respective families. By the end of 2004's Ladies of Letters Spring Clean it is implied that there has been something of a parting of the ways between the women and their kinfolk. Later series tend to heavily use malapropisms for comic effect. Ladies of Letters Go Global (broadcast 2 to 6 January 2006) featured a somewhat bizarre and unlikely world tour undertaken by the two women, in contrast to the more naturalistic tone of previous stories. The BBC issued a CD collection of the first seven series as a special 'biscuit tin' release in October 2006.BBCShop A short, newly written, episode was featured as part of the Woman's Hour 60th Anniversary concert in October 2006. Ladies of Letters Say No was broadcast from 27 to 31 August 2007 and featured a broadly satirical take on the involvement of the private sector in the NHS, concentrating on the underhand dealings of the tycoon Alan Trumper. Ladies of Letters Go Green – the ninth series – was broadcast from 10 to 14 March 2008. Series 10 – Ladies of Letters Crunch Credit – was broadcast from 4 to 8 May 2009.Ladies Of Letters An eleventh radio series Ladies of Letters Go Crackers was broadcast at Christmas 2010 (27–31 December). Patricia Routledge was not available at the time of recording so Anne Reid, who plays Vera on television, stepped into the role.Ladies Of Letters ===== The story concerns an unnamed man who is confined to a mental institution because he is suffering from the delusion that he is one of the few "real" entities in the universe, and that the other "real" entities have created the rest of the universe in a conspiracy to deceive him. He spends much of the story engaged in verbal sparring with the psychiatrist who is caring for him, and in pondering his predicament, trying to figure out a way to prove that his belief is true. On the final page of the story, the reader discovers that his belief is true; the god-like character "the Glaroon" is behind the conspiracy. However, this revelation is kept from the protagonist. ===== On 7 January 1972, the South Korean base in Nha- Trang, Vietnam, receives a radio transmission from a missing platoon that has been presumed dead. The scene switches to a patient full of bandages being asked if Donkey Three (the platoon that sent the radio message) was his unit. The patient says it's impossible and that everyone in his unit was dead. The man then asks how it was possible that they have been sending transmissions and it is already the third one for that month. The patient swears they're really dead and he collected their tags himself. He said that there is no Viet Con in R-point and he watched all his colleagues die. We then see Lieutenant Choi Tae-in having fun with his colleague and visiting a brothel. The sound of a gunshot wakes him up. He goes out to check and sees a lady who tries to grab something from her bucket. Lieutenant Choi shoots her right away and sees her rifle. His colleague, Private Kim, dies in the next room (most likely shot by the lady). The lieutenant heads back to the headquarters to report. The superior tells him that they will bury the incident. In turn, the veteran and decorated Lieutenant will lead a squad of eight soldiers, including Sergeant Jin Chang-rok to assist him, to extract the missing soldiers from Romeo point (R-Point) in one week. Upon arriving, Sergeant Oh asked for them to take a picture as a souvenir. Afterwards, they immediately encounter and defeat a Vietnamese woman with a machine gun. They later find a tombstone with markings that said a hundred years ago, the Chinese killed the Vietnamese and dumped them into the lake. After that, they filled the lake and built a temple on it. Further, it said “Wherever you go, I’ll be there. If you have blood on your hands, you can’t go back.” After their first night, a huge, empty mansion suddenly appeared where they set up their base. While checking the area, Corporal Joh Byung-hoon peed and gets left behind by his group. He sees other soldiers and followed them thinking they were from his unit. He sees the helmet of one of the soldiers with writings “Jung-Suk, wait for me” then the soldiers suddenly disappeared. The other members of Corporal Joh’s unit searched for him and found him hiding in a cave and terrified to death. Corporal Joh relayed the incident to his unit but they refused to believe him. He checked his colleagues’ helmet to find the one he saw earlier, but no helmet had the same markings. A group of American soldiers came to check their things that are in the building. Before leaving, they warned Lieutenant Choi that nothing and no one survives in R-Point but did not give more details. The unit continues to contact the headquarters. While fixing the radio, Corporal Byun Moon-Sub received a transmission from a French unit stationed nearby. A French army corporal named Jacques sent a message and said he has a twin brother named Paul who is also in the army. The Lieutenant however confirmed that they’re the only unit in the area. Outside, Sergeant Oh confronts Corporal Joh regarding the helmet incident earlier. He says that it belongs to one of the soldiers who went missing. Before calling it a night, the soldiers happily danced to the radio that Corporal Byun fixed. However, their party was immediately cut short by voices of terrified screaming men recorded in the radio. On their second day, a soldier reports that another colleague is missing, Private Jung, who is supposed to be on duty from 6:00. While searching, a pool of blood suddenly drenches Sergeant Park. They then find Private Jung’s dead body hanging from a rope. Upon returning to their base, the unit finally reaches the headquarters and reported what happened. On the radio, Captain Park said that Private Jung was one of the missing soldiers that the unit is supposed to rescue. When asked how many soldiers are in the unit at the moment, the Lieutenant responds that 1 is down and 9 are left. The Captain shouts that they started the mission with 9 soldiers. Later that night, the soldiers tried to recall Private Jung’s face but cannot. Corporal Joh remembers that Private Jung was not with them at the dock but was at the beach when they took their pictures. Lieutenant Choi also realizes that he was indeed one of the missing soldiers, through their picture in his file. Throughout their stay in R-point, Lieutenant Choi has been seeing a lady in áo dài (traditional Vietnamese dress). He decides to follow her and finds a graveyard of French soldiers with a cross for the twin soldiers Jacques and Paul (the former sent a radio transmission earlier). Sergeant Oh then encounters his friend (the one with the helmet). He runs away and accidentally falls for the booby trap that they have set up earlier and dies. On the 4th day, the unit divides into two groups to search the area again for clues on who sent the transmission to the headquarters. The lieutenant’s group finds the corpses of the American soldiers they met earlier which indicate that they were also just ghosts. A terrified Corporate Joh, who has been seeing ghosts, mistakenly thinks that he saw another and accidentally fires at Sergeant Mah (the cook) who immediately dies. Back at the base, the soldiers checked the room of the Americans and found it looking abandoned for a long time with old equipment. On the 5th day, they were able to reach the headquarters and requested for a helicopter. The earliest rescue, however, will come the next day. Sergeant Jin then seemingly returns and says they should have never come to R-Point. Though he was able to state his name and rank completely at the Lieutenant’s request, he suddenly changes his expression and beheads Sergeant Park before being shot dead by the soldiers. Lieutenant Choi then orders everyone to verify their names and ranks. Corporal Byun then also changes expression and removes the pin of a grenade, blinding the youngest soldier, Sergeant Jang Young-soo, who was standing near him. While the lieutenant helps Sergeant Jang, Corporal Lee Jae-pil laments to Corporal Joh who also changes his expression and shoots him. The lieutenant then kills Corporal Joh right away. With two of them left, Lieutenant Cho finds a picture of foreign soldiers with the lady in áo dài. When she appears, Lieutenant Cho asks Sergeant Jang to pick up his rifle. Knowing he may turn out like his colleagues, the lieutenant instructs the Sergeant to point the weapon at his direction and fire. On the next morning, Sergeant Jang was found alone by the rescuing team, without the corpses of the 8 other soldiers from his unit. ===== Pani Poni Dash!'s central storyline revolves around Rebecca Miyamoto, a child prodigy homeroom teacher, and the antics of her class 1-C. The characters attend a high school called the where Rebecca has taken up a job as one of the teachers after being the youngest graduate at M.I.T. and is being watched by space aliens who screw up the story every now and then. Though the story hardly strays from the focus of the four first-year classes labeled 1-A through 1-D, the mishaps that occur in them, the teacher's lounge, and on school trips also become sources of material for topical allusions regarding satire, anime, Internet, gaming, and popular culture. ===== In 1937 Louisiana, four little girls in the woods at night take a blood oath of loyalty to one another, led by Vivi Abbott, who dubs the group the "Ya-Ya Sisterhood." In 1990s New York City, Vivi's eldest daughter, playwright Sidda Walker, gives an interview with a reporter from Time, mentioning her unhappy childhood as a major source of inspiration for her work. The reporter sensationalizes Sidda's complaint, implying abuse and deep, dark family secrets. The article upsets Vivi, who calls Sidda and angrily declares that she is dead to her. Vivi cuts Sidda from her will, and Sidda disinvites Vivi from her upcoming wedding. Still friends despite the years, the other Ya-Ya Sisters, Caro Benett, Teensy Whitman, and Necie Kelleher, decide to take the matter into their own hands. They kidnap Sidda in New York and take her back to Louisiana, hoping to show her how Vivi's troubled past has caused her present issues, including her fight with Sidda. As the Sisters show Sidda Vivi's scrapbook, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a series of flashbacks depicts Vivi's turbulent history from her childhood to Sidda's. Sidda is unmoved in her opinion of Vivi as self-centered and helpless, and is so upset she tells her fiancé she wants to postpone their wedding. It is revealed that the main source of conflict in Sidda and Vivi's relationship is an incident where Vivi had a nervous breakdown and brutally beat Sidda and her siblings. Sidda did not know that after this incident, Vivi took an overdose of the antidepressant Dexamyl and had to be hospitalized. With this revalation, Sidda finally understands her mother's suffering, and realizes that none of the pain Vivi inflicted on her was her own fault. She recalls happy memories of her mother. Vivi and Sidda reconcile, and Sidda decides that she wants to marry her fiancé in Louisiana. Vivi and the Sisters induct Sidda into the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. ===== The parents of 12-year-old D.J. go on an errand for the weekend, leaving him in the care of his babysitter Zee. D.J. has been spying on his elderly neighbor Mr. Nebbercracker, who scares away children and confiscates their belongings that land in his front yard. After D.J.'s best friend Chowder loses his basketball on Nebbercracker's lawn, D.J. is caught attempting to retrieve it, and the enraged Nebbercracker suffers a heart attack from overexerting himself and is taken away by an ambulance. That night, D.J. gets phone calls from the house with no one there and eavesdrops on Zee's boyfriend Bones, who tells her about losing his kite on Nebbercracker's lawn when he was ten and that Nebbercracker supposedly ate his wife. Later, Bones sees his lost kite in the house's front door, but is suddenly devoured by the house while attempting to retrieve it. D.J. meets up with Chowder and the two investigate, but retreat when the house comes to life and attacks them. The next morning, schoolgirl Jenny Bennett sells Halloween candy and goes to the house; D.J. and Chowder rush out to save her before she gets eaten. Jenny promptly calls police officers Landers and Lister, who unfortunately do not believe the trio because the house is inactive when adults are present. The trio then consults local video gamer Reginald "Skull" Skulinski, supposedly an expert on the supernatural. They learn from him that the house is a rare monster created when a human soul merges with a man-made structure and that it can only be killed by destroying its heart. Concluding the heart must be the furnace, the trio creates and brings a dummy containing cold medicine taken from a pharmacy to the house. Before the dummy reaches the house, Landers and Lister return, thwart their plan and arrest them after Landers discovers the stolen medicine inside the dummy. The house eats the two officers and their police car where D.J., Chowder and Jenny have been shut. After the house falls asleep, the three begin exploring. In the basement, they find toys accumulated from Nebbercracker's lawn as well as a door opening to a shrine containing the encased-in-cement body of Nebbercracker's late wife, Constance the Giantess. The house becomes aware of their presence and attacks them, though they force it to vomit them outside by grabbing its uvula. Nebbercracker returns alive, revealing that the house is merged with Constance's spirit, instead of eating her, he had given her the happiest times in her life. As a young man, he met Constance, then an unwilling member of a circus freak show, and fell in love with her despite her obesity and rescued her from the circus. One Halloween, as children tormented her due to her size, Constance tried chasing them away but lost her footing and fell to her death in the unfinished basement. Nebbercracker had finished building the house, knowing it was what she would have wanted. Aware that Constance's spirit made the house come alive, he drove everyone away in order to protect them. D.J. convinces Nebbercracker to let Constance go, much to the house's anger. It breaks free from its foundation and chases the group to a construction site. Nebbercracker realizes the trouble Constance has caused and attempts to blow the house up with dynamite, but it attacks him. As Chowder fights off the house with an excavator, D.J. and Jenny climb to the top of a crane and D.J. throws the dynamite given to him by Nebbercracker into the house's chimney, causing it to explode and release Constance's ghost who shares a short dance with Nebbercracker before finally ascending to the afterlife. D.J. apologizes to Nebbercracker for his losses, but Nebbercracker thanks the trio for freeing him and his wife from being trapped for 45 years. Later that night, children in their Halloween costumes line up at the site of the house where Nebbercracker, D.J., Chowder and Jenny return their toys to them. After Jenny's mother picks her up and D.J.'s parents return, Chowder and D.J. go trick-or-treating, which they earlier felt they were too old for. Those who were eaten by the house emerge from the basement. ===== Corset company owner and independent-thinking suffragette Rose Gillray has her wagon struck by a 'horseless carriage' in 1897 New York. This early automobile is driven by Charlie Masters, who tells her it's the transportation means of the future. At work, Rose is helping singer Molly Wade into a boldly designed new corset when she gets the idea that using it for Molly's costume on stage would help to promote sales, but instead the show is shut down by the police. With her business failing, Rose owes money to Jim Carter, whose steel business manufactures the metal used for a corset's stays. Jim takes a shine to Rose and offers her a chance to sell his barbed wire, which is not selling well out west, where his salesmen get run out of town – or worse. Ending up in Kansas City, accompanied by Molly and followed by Charlie, a cattlemen's association convention seems a good place to try to sell the barbed wire. But cattle rancher Joel Kingdon gives her the runaround, attracted to her personally but warning her against peddling wire. She tries his home state of Texas next, but once again, Joel interferes, putting the women out of business temporarily. Joel and Jim both end up in love with Rose and proposing marriage, but she rejects both. Charlie, though, comes along offering a ride to California, where he's got another new notion that he wants to explore: machines that fly. ===== Baten Kaitos Origins takes place 20 years prior to the events of the original Baten Kaitos. The main character, Sagi, works for the Alfard Empire in an elite unit, the Dark Service, that reports directly to a powerful politician, Lord Baelheit. Sagi is a spiriter: someone with a connection to an extra-dimensional entity called a Guardian Spirit that provides power and protection. The role of the Guardian Spirit is taken by the player. He is joined by Guillo, who, while resembling a mechanized puppet, is actually sentient and animated by magic. At the start of the game, the unit is given a dubious assignment to assassinate Emperor Olgan, although the ultimate source of the order is unclear. Before the two have a chance to actually carry out or reflect on the morality of this act, Olgan is killed by a third party. Blamed for the murder, Sagi and Guillo are then forced to flee, with a man named Geldoblame helping them in escaping while suggesting they meet up with his master, Quaestor Verus, due to Sagi and Verus both being spiriters. During their escape, they encounter a giant beast called an Umbra, which Guillo has been mysteriously programmed to defeat. While trying to leave the city, they meet up with the third member of the party, a young woman named Milly. The three of them must work to clear Sagi's name while trying to uncover the nature of the threat caused by the maneuvering of Alfard's various power-hungry politicians, as they work under Alfard's Quaestor Verus. Verus runs against Baelheit in the upcoming election to replace Olgan. Verus assigns the group to stop Baelheit's efforts at pro- machination, an effort to forcibly mechanize key locations in other nations to boost Baelheit's power and control. Though Sagi and company secure the cooperation of the other nations' leaders, they prove consistently unable to contend with the powerful mechanical weapons of Baelheit's Machina Vanguard, ultimately allowing Baelheit to establish footholds in every nation. The group encounters more Umbra on their journey, learning that they are afterlings, pieces of an ancient, evil god named Malpercio. Sagi quickly learns that whenever an afterling is slain in his presence, he is overcome by a vision of another world, in which a sorcerer named Wiseman pursues pro-magnation to turn every being in the world into pure Magnus. They discover that these visions are in fact the past, and that Malpercio was not a god, but simply a group of warriors who solicited the help of dark forces to defeat Wiseman. It is revealed that the player is not a Guardian Spirit and was actually a member of this group of warriors, and that Sagi is not a spiriter at all, but is instead part of the Empire's malideiter project. This came about as a result of experiments which Lord Baelheit was ordered to perform on behalf of Emperor Olgan in an effort to create artificial spiriters by infusing people with pieces of Malpercio's afterlings. Although the experiments were ultimately abandoned after a mishap, the test subjects were released still containing pieces of Malpercio. Sagi learns of his true nature and reaches equilibrium with the player, acquiring immense strength. With this strength, he is finally able to defeat the Machina Vanguard that were pro-machinating each of the floating continents. Slightly later in the tale, Milly admits she is Baelheit's daughter, initially sent to spy on the group until she had a change of heart. Baelheit also reveals that Milly is half-Machina; when she was just a child, a failed experiment (along the lines of the one which created Sagi's "spirit") tore her in half and killed her mother. With the help of his own guardian spirit, Baelheit managed to revive Milly using Machina. Baelheit wins the election over Verus and becomes Emperor. He finishes construction on a huge flying fortress built completely out of machina called Tarazed. He orders that everyone move onto the fortress, as he intends to destroy the continents. Verus orders Sagi to stop Baelheit, and although Sagi does so, Verus reveals he has been pulling the strings and using the group for his own ends. The group defeats him, but Wiseman, who had possessed Verus, attacks the group. With the aid of the members of Malpercio, Sagi is able to defeat Wiseman, but this leads to Tarazed's collapse. Sagi, Milly and Guillo flee, aided by the previously defeated members of the Machina Vanguard. In the chaos of the fortress's collapse, Guillo sacrifices itself to save Sagi. Sagi and Milly return to Alfard, happily reunite with family and friends, and eventually decide to elope and move to Mira. Geldoblame, as Verus's right-hand man and most loyal devotee, is devastated by Verus's betrayal. He wanders the streets of Alfard in a daze only to discover that he is now technically Emperor due to the deaths of Verus and Baelheit's entire cabinet in the destruction of Tarazed, driving him into madness. He instructs his new subjects to locate the five "End Magnus" and to bring the researcher Georg before him, setting up the premise of the first Baten Kaitos game. The game's last screen features an image of a baby with only one wing apparent, largely implied to be a character from the sequel, who would be an adult by that time. ===== It is Christmas in Sunnydale and Angel is haunted with dreams of the people he murdered over the years as Angelus. When Buffy starts getting dragged into his memory-nightmares, experiencing Angel's dreams also, they realize something unnatural is happening. Visions of his past victims, including Jenny Calendar, appear to him and try to get him to kill Buffy, saying that he will be released from the pain if he does so. Angel cannot bring himself to do this, so instead he opts to kill himself by standing on a hill and waiting for the sun to come up. Meanwhile, Oz tells Willow that he is willing to give their relationship another chance while Cordelia is not as forgiving and resumes her previously hostile ways towards the Scooby gang. Buffy and Giles figure out that the First Evil has been driving Angel insane. Buffy finds the Bringers and pummels them. After the First appears to her, informing her that she cannot possibly fight it, and that Angel is about to be destroyed by the dawn's light, she runs to his mansion to stop him. Oz goes to Willow's house to watch videos only to find her dressed up and playing Barry White's music, intending to sleep with him. Oz appreciates the gesture, but explains to Willow that he wants their first time to be special rather than just a way for her to try to make things up to him. Buffy, who invited and ordered Faith to watch Joyce, finds Angel atop the hill behind the mansion, awaiting sunrise. However, the heatwave from which Sunnydale has been suffering abruptly ends and the first flakes of snow start to fall. With the weather report saying the sun should not be expected to be seen at all that day, Buffy and Angel take a walk through the town. ===== Lois asks Peter to go to a PTA meeting in her place; Peter asks Brian to go in his place. Brian reluctantly attends, but he falls in love with one of Meg's teachers (played by Gabrielle Union) named Shauna Parks (a reference to Rosa Parks), who is black. They go out on a date, and Brian, attempting to win her over, suggests changing the name of James Woods Regional High School to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Shauna likes Brian's idea, and the board holds a meeting to consider the name change. However Peter is a James Woods fan and sees through the trick. He tries to protest the idea but Brian denies the fact that he is doing it for love and not to really honor the Civil Rights Movement. As a James Woods fan, Peter brings James Woods himself to the school during the name-changing to sabotage the effort. Woods permits them to change the name and the school, impressed by his humility, reinstates the name to the James Woods Regional High School. Brian gets furious with Peter for sabotaging the attempt to change the name of the high school and continues his denial of just wanting to impress his girlfriend and her race. However, Peter exposes Brian and points out the ruse by saying that Brian could have named it after Ronald Reagan rather than anybody from the Civil Rights Movement. In reply to this Brian and Peter end their friendship. To replace Brian as a friend, Peter becomes BFFs with Woods and the two spend their days giving gifts, sculpting themselves up with trees, riding bikes, camping in the backyard, wrestling in their tent like two children, etc. (during this time Peter and Woods sing a parody of "You Two" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). One day during a date at the movie theatre Brian is forced to admit to Shauna that he is still loyal to Peter. Shauna however hates Peter for sabotaging them and makes Brian choose between her or Peter. Brian likewise chooses to remain loyal to Peter and they break up. Noticing the situation Mayor Adam West, as a joke, offers Brian popcorn to cheer him up but Brian sees cream corn in the popcorn bag. When Brian comes back home he sees that his life has been given to James Woods. Woods sleeps on the bed with Peter and Lois, Peter and Woods now play fetch with each other and they act as if they do not see Brian as their friend or relative anymore. Over time Peter and Brian get bored without each other and they decide to reconcile. However Peter notices that Woods has become obsessive with their friendship enough that Woods goes into a tirade at Peter for missing 5 minutes of a dinner. To defeat Woods, Peter and Brian plant a trap baited with pieces of Reese's peanut candy ending in a crate. The plan works and Woods ends up being locked up in a crate and examined by "top men." ===== Based during the Qin dynasty, general Meng Yi (Chan) is tasked with escorting Ok-Soo (referred at times as "Concubine Li") (Kim), a Korean princess, back to China to serve as a concubine for Qin Shi Huang, in an attempt to strengthen diplomatic relationships. Along the journey, a Korean warrior (seemingly her fiancé) attempts to seize her back but Meng Yi saves her. Meng Yi protects Ok-Soo through their journey back, while Ok-Soo tends to his wounds. In the process, she begins to develop feelings for him but Meng Yi, while apparently harboring similar feelings for her, steps back reminding her of her purpose of becoming a concubine in the interests of her people and successfully completes his mission. The Qin emperor becomes critically ill later and sends Meng Yi to find the elixir of immortality, the only thing that can save his life. Before leaving, Meng Yi discreetly confesses his feelings to Ok-Soo stating "my heart belongs to you forever" and Ok-Soo vows to await his return. The guards escorting the elixir are ambushed by rebels on the orders of the treacherous prince and chancellor. Meng Yi hands over the elixir to his deputy, Nangong Yan, before dying in the ensuing battle. Although Nangong Yan manages to bring the elixir to the emperor, the prince and chancellor trick Nangong Yan and Ok-soo to test the validity of the elixir and force them to consume the elixir, condemning them to imprisonment in the Qin emperor's mausoleum for eternity. In the present day, Jack, an archaeologist (also Chan), is Meng Yi's reincarnation, and he often dreams about his past life. One day, his friend William invites him on a quest to find a rare material that can create a field of zero gravity. They travel to a floating tomb of a Dasar prince in India, where Jack discovers a painting of the princess he has been seeing in his dreams. Jack also learns that during a mission to the Qin Empire, the Dasar prince brought treasures and women as gifts. In return, the Qin emperor offered him one of his concubines and asked him to choose, but refused when the prince chose his favourite, Ok-soo. Instead, the Qin emperor gave him a painting of Ok-soo and the Qin Star Gem. William removes a strange black rock from a feline statue, and accidentally collapses the zero gravity field holding up the tomb, resulting in its destruction. William manages to escape but Jack leaps off a cliff and falls into a river. He loses consciousness and drifts along with the current until he is saved by Samantha, an Indian peasant girl. Samantha brings Jack to see her uncle, a Kalaripayattu (Indian martial art form) guru, who tells Jack to take the sword he found and fight with one of his students. During the fight, Jack has a recollection of a duel he had with the Dasar prince in his past life, and briefly recovers his fighting skills from his life as Meng Yi. Samantha's uncle enlightens Jack about his past and future, and Jack succeeds in returning home safely and he delivers the sword to the National Museum of China as a national treasure. His action angered Professor Koo, the leader of the syndicate that has been funding Jack and William's treasure hunt. After extensive research, Jack and William conclude that the anti-gravity material is a fragment of a meteorite that fell to Earth during the Qin dynasty. They find the location of the Qin emperor's mausoleum, concealed behind a waterfall. The massive tomb contains the strongest fragment of the meteorite, powerful enough to make the tomb a floating palace. Jack meets Ok-soo and Nangong Yan alive inside the tomb and they mistake him for Meng Yi. Professor Koo and his men enter and attempt to seize the immortality elixir, leading to an aerial fight between both parties. William accidentally breaks the balance of the field after removing a piece of the meteorite and causes the tomb to collapse on itself, and dies from drowning in mercury. While Jack is escaping from the collapsing tomb, he asks Ok-soo to come with him, but she refuses after realizing he is not Meng Yi and says she will wait for the real Meng Yi forever, believing he still lives. As Koo nears the elixir, Yan grabs onto him as they fall and presumably perish. Jack is then seen at home with a published copy of The Myth, a book written by him about his adventure and his experiences which he dedicates to William. ===== The USS Enterprise is rocked by an energy pulse. Science Officer Spock informs Captain Kirk that the gravity pull of the planet fluctuated to zero and the surrounding space momentarily "winked" out of existence. Sensors locate a human presence on the planet that was not there before. Spock and Kirk beam down to the planet and find a one-man spacecraft. A disheveled man named Lazarus appears and slips off a cliff. He is injured, and Kirk has him beamed to the Enterprise for examination. Back on the ship, Lt. Masters informs Captain Kirk that the mysterious disturbance has drained the dilithium crystals in the warp drive. A message from Starfleet reports that every quadrant has been subjected to the same winking effect and electronic disruption. Starfleet fears that the disruption may be a prelude to an invasion and has ordered all ships except the Enterprise to leave the area. Kirk is ordered to find the cause of the disturbance. Lazarus periodically fades in and out of the universe, encountering a lookalike enemy in a "dimensional corridor", creating an energy wink. Spock reports a "rip" in space and time on the planet. Lazarus says his enemy, trying to destroy the universe, is causing the phenomenon. Lazarus demands dilithium crystals so he may fix his ship and continue to fight his enemy. Kirk refuses. Lazarus steals dilithium from the Enterprise and is caught. Lazarus denies the theft and blames it on his nemesis. Kirk beams back to the planet with Lazarus and a security team to seek this enemy. Lazarus has another dimensional corridor episode and is returned to sickbay. Lazarus explains to Kirk that he is a time traveler; the planet below was once his home world. Lazarus claims his enemy destroyed his civilization in the past, for which Lazarus has chased him for centuries. Mr. Spock develops a hypothesis that Lazarus's enemy is his counterpart from an anti-matter universe. If he and his anti-self contact each other within either physical universe outside the dimensional corridor, they would annihilate both the matter and anti-matter universes. Lazarus slips away from sickbay and creates a diversion in engineering to acquire dilithium. With the stolen crystals, he beams down to the planet to repair his ship. Kirk follows, but Lazarus activates his time machine just as Kirk tries to stop him. Kirk is teleported to the anti-matter universe, where he meets the Anti- Lazarus. The Anti-Lazarus admits to stealing the Enterprise's dilithium. He informs Kirk that his people believed two universes existed, and when his matter counterpart learned about it, he went insane and became obsessed with destroying him. He tells Kirk that only by destroying the ship with the two Lazaruses inside the dimensional corridor which links the two universes can both universes be saved. Kirk realizes this would trap the two men in the corridor forever. Kirk confronts the matter Lazarus, and pushes him into the dimensional door. Kirk heads back to the Enterprise, ordering the ship's phasers to target the dimension ship. The two Lazaruses meet once more and fight inside the dimensional corridor as phaser beams vaporize the ship. ===== When Scooby and the gang discover someone has released thousands of real ghosts and monsters from a magic book called The Tome of Doom, they race to solve mysteries and put the monsters back. ===== Shooting the Past delves into a world quite separate from modern life and demonstrates that the preservation of the past to tell the extraordinary stories of the lives of ordinary people, can be astonishingly powerful and revealing. The Fallon Photo Library is a gigantic collection of photographs kept in a huge Victorian mansion/factory. The staff is minimal and made up of shy eccentrics led by manager Marilyn Truman (Duncan) and head librarian Oswald Bates (Spall). An American company buys the building, planning to remodel and modernise the building to turn it into a business school. The company president, Christopher Anderson (Cunningham), had informed Oswald by fax months earlier that he was coming and to have the building empty and ready but Oswald fails to pass on the news, planning a "strike" of sorts. On their arrival, having expected the library of ten million photographs to have been disposed of and the building emptied, Anderson tells the staff that the majority of the collection must be destroyed if they cannot sell it. The staff members believe that the collection must be kept in its entirety, not broken up or sold to different buyers. To prove the value of their library, the group presents Anderson with intriguing stories put together by researching photos from all over the collection. The research was largely by Oswald and presented by Marilyn, who emphasizes that these photos came from all over the collection and that Oswald spent months studying details to piece the stories together. Against orders from his superiors, Anderson gives them time to find a buyer. Due to the size of the collection there is little interest. Marilyn has to learn to "sell" herself and the collection and manages to make a successful pitch to an advertising company but as most of the collection is in black and white the potential sale falls through. Having alienated Anderson to the point that he's been banned from the building, Oswald attempts suicide, leaving notes on a final story. Marilyn attempts to think as Oswald would and lays out the pictures – telling the story of Anderson's grandmother. Finally convinced that the collection should be saved and kept whole, Anderson finds a buyer in America – another photo collection – who will accept all ten million pictures. ===== Each episode of Telecrime featured a crime, and in a "whodunit" storyline, the viewers were given enough evidence to solve the crime themselves. ===== During Reverend Lovejoy's sermon, Maggie is scratching. The family takes Maggie to see Dr. Hibbert, who diagnoses Maggie with chicken pox. Inspired by Ned Flanders' suggestion of purposely exposing his sons to the chicken pox, Homer invites all the neighborhood kids over to the Simpson house for a "pox party". He ends up catching it himself, by drinking from Maggie's milk bottle, having no childhood immunity. Milhouse's parents Luann and Kirk attend the party, and after getting drunk on Marge's custom Margaritas, they resume their relationship. Milhouse feels neglected because his parents are not fawning over him as they did while they were separated. He schemes to break them up again, and Bart helps him with a plot borrowed from The O.C.. The boys place a bra, belonging to Marge, on Kirk's bed. Luann finds the bra, assumes Marge is having an affair with Kirk, and informs Homer. When Homer confronts Marge, she angrily denies the allegation and kicks him out of the house. Prodded by Lisa, Bart confesses to Marge that he left the bra in Kirk's bed. However, Marge refuses to reunite with Homer as he still does not trust her. In order to bring Homer and Marge back together, Lisa inadvertently influences Bart and Milhouse to plan to throw a dummy that looks like Bart off a cliff into the river below, while Homer and Marge, after receiving false messages from each other to meet, watch. However, after breaking his glasses, Milhouse accidentally pushes the real Bart off the cliff. Homer leaps into the rapids to rescue him, but they end up clinging on to a rock near a waterfall. There Bart confesses to Homer what he did, causing Homer to strangle him. Marge tells them to trust her, and let go of the rock. They let go and she catches them, swinging from a rope attached to a tree. Once safely on the river bank, Marge and Homer reconcile. They see Milhouse, thinking Bart died, jump off the cliff. The episode ends with Milhouse's fate unresolved. Marge wonders if Milhouse can swim, to which Bart asks "What do YOU think?" ===== In Network, Beale, the anchorman for the UBS Evening News, struggles to accept the ramifications of the social ailments and depravity existing in the world. His producers exploit him for high ratings and avoid giving him the psychiatric assistance that some, especially news division president and his best friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden), think he needs. Beale, a long-standing and respected anchorman who began his career at UBS in 1950, saw his ratings begin a slow, but steady decline in 1969. In 1970, his wife died and he become lonely, causing him to drink heavily. In September 1975, the UBS network decided to fire him, leading him to engage in binge drinking as he feels there is nothing left for him in the world. Beale's career as "The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves" is sparked by his half-joking offer, after receiving his two weeks' notice, to kill himself on nationwide TV. He subsequently apologizes to his viewers, telling them he "ran out of bullshit." Viewers respond positively and the network producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) wants him to serve as an "angry man" news anchorman. Schumacher feels that Christensen is exploiting his troubled friend, but Beale happily embraces the role of the "angry man". His foul-mouthed tirades feature a dark vision of America as a nation in decline as he speaks about the "depression" (i.e the recession caused by the Arab oil shock of 1973-74), OPEC, rising crime, the collapse in traditional values, and other contemporary issues. Beale believes his ranting is guided by a voice in his head, talking of having some mystical connection to some sort of higher supernatural power, but Schumacher believes he is losing his mind. However, encouraged by Christensen, the executives at UBS decide that his unhinged ranting about the state of the world, especially when he repeatedly shouts "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore", will revive ratings at the struggling network. He is given his own show where he can say whatever he likes, and the carnivalesque show becomes the number one show in the United States. Beale shouts about whatever issue of the moment is agitating him until he passes out. At one point, he rants about how television is an "illusion" that peddles fantasies that can never be realized. Unfortunately for the network, he exposes the ties between CCA, the corporation that owns the network, and business interests in Saudi Arabia. At a time when Saudi Arabia was unpopular in the United States owning to the Arab oil boycott of 1973-74, Beale charges that the House of Saud is buying up United States and demands his audience send telegrams to the White House to save the United States from being brought up by the Saudis. Arthur Jensen, CCA chairman and chief stockholder (played by Ned Beatty), thunderously explains to Beale his belief that money is the only true god, whereupon Beale completely turns his message around--before, he told people their lives had value and meaning, but after his meeting with Jensen, he says the opposite. Beale tells his viewers that Americans are degenerating into "humanoids" devoid of intellect and feelings, saying that as the wealthiest nation, the United States is the nation most advanced in undergoing this process of degeneration which he predicts will ultimately be the fate of all humanity. His ratings drop, but Jensen orders him kept on; network executives order him to be assassinated. The film concludes with his murder on national television; a voiceover proclaims him "the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings." ===== Whilst working for the CIA, Jackie (Jackie Chan) is assigned to follow leads of a nuclear smuggling case. One of the tasks the CIA gives him is simple enough: watch a woman named Natasha while on a plane from Hong Kong to Ukraine and record her movements. Jackie arrives in Ukraine and the CIA, partnered with local Ukraine security, take over the task of following Natasha. However, the CIA operation almost falls apart when the Ukrainian Strike Force arrest Natasha. Luckily for the CIA, Jackie spots Natasha being driven away and he discreetly follows her. During the chase, Jackie discovers that Natasha is working with unknown male partner, who actually called in the Strike Force to prevent Natasha from being followed. Natasha and the unknown male are also romantically involved. Jackie decides to follow the unknown male to a remote lodge in the Ukrainian mountains, and informs the CIA of his location. The unknown male is apparently meeting with Russian mafia members who are interested in a nuclear bomb that's in his possession. The criminals are on high alert when they spot Jackie and agents of Ukrainian security and the CIA arriving. A gunfight ensues. During the battle, the unknown male is identified as Jackson Tsui (Jackson Lou), a Chinese-American nuclear scientist with CIA links, suspected of stealing a nuclear warhead. Jackie finds a briefcase which contained evidence from Tsui, but as he is chased by mafia forces, Jackie loses the briefcase as he falls into frozen waters, and the mafia takes the briefcase. When he recovers in Russian military hospital, he meets Colonel Gregor Yegorov (Yuriy Petrov) of the FSB, who explains the situation. Jackie goes with him to Moscow where he discovers he has been assigned to work with Gregor to solve a similar case involving nuclear weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine. His task is to track Tsui, who disappeared after their last encounter. He is smuggled into Brisbane, Australia by a Russian submarine. In order to find out where Jackson is, Jackie befriends his younger sister Annie (Wu Chen-chun), who works at an aquarium doing shark shows. Jackie pretends to be Jackson's "sworn brother". Chan's deception is successful, and he eventually meets Uncle 7 (Terry Woo), the Tsuis' father and the local Triad boss. Uncle 7 is seriously ill and will be getting surgery soon. While meeting Uncle 7, Jackie reveals the true nature of his visit to both Uncle 7 and Annie and informs them of Jackson's criminal activities. Jackie then meets with Gregor to report his findings. He tells Gregor that if Uncle 7 dies, Jackson will surely show up. Unknown to Jackie, Jackson is hiding at the hospital and has given a nuclear warhead (disguised as a small oxygen tank) to Annie, who hides it at the aquarium. While following Annie, Jackie gets held up by Jackson, who claims to have a deal with Gregor. He also reveals to Jackie that Gregor has secretly put audio bugs in several of the objects the FSB gave him. After realizing he has been used by Gregor for nefarious purposes, Jackie decides to return home and write a full report to both of their superiors. However, two men are sent to kill him, and he is framed for the murder of Uncle 7. He attempts to clear his name by going to see Annie at the memorial hall, but he is (unsurprisingly) unwelcome, having to fight the family's bodyguards until Jackson arrives to clear Jackie's name. Jackson explains that Gregor caught him on a CIA assignment three years before, and forced him to turn into a triple agent: a CIA agent ostensibly turned by the FSB, but in reality serving Gregor's private criminal schemes. Gregor uses the nuclear warheads to secure stakes in oil franchises in the Middle East. Jackson was trying to get money from Gregor for the warhead. Annie, Jackie, and Tsui decide to work together to find Gregor and bring him in. Uncle 7's elaborate Chinatown funeral becomes the scene for a complex shootout between the various parties. Annie and Jackie attempt to retrieve the stolen warhead from the shark pool (so that they can return it to the police), but Gregor and his men follow them, leading to a climactic confrontation underwater. During the fight, Gregor shoots the aquarium tank and shatters the glass, which releases the killer shark. During the confusion, Gregor escapes with the warhead and kidnaps Annie to a getaway boat. Jackie saves the tourists from the shark and then pursues Gregor. While Gregor escapes in the getaway boat, Jackie finds and drives a Mitsubishi FTO display car onto the boat. The car pins Gregor, allowing Jackie to successfully retrieve the warhead and save Annie. Gregor and Jackson are apprehended by the Australian police and turned over to Russian authorities. The case is solved, and Jackie is thanked for his work by the FSB and returns to his work in Hong Kong. ===== The CVN news network's nightly program, starring Don Tobin (Watson), with reports from correspondents Michael Boyle (Glenn) and Dorian Waldorf (Shaver), discusses a terrorist bombing of the American embassy in Saudi Arabia that killed the American ambassador. The week before, a global banking crisis, caused by several South American countries defaulting on their loans, led to turmoil in Southwest Asia. Before the unrest spread to Saudi Arabia, Soviet-backed militants led a coup in Oman when the Omani economy collapsed. Shortly after, a new report shows the banking crisis may soon begin to ease. During this time, Waldorf's Pentagon insider boyfriend is providing off-the-record insight into the White House's response to all these events, and suggests that there may be too many critical events going on at once for the President and his advisers to handle effectively. The following day, it is revealed that a large military operation was launched to keep the peace in Saudi Arabia, with many American soldiers, ships, and planes being sent at King Fahd's request. This move is heavily criticized - in the US and abroad. The United Kingdom, America's closest ally, refuses to take part in the operation as do many other of America's allies. However the attitude of the American representatives is clear that they can perform the peacekeeping mission alone, citing the success of the British in the past in containing the Soviets' previous provocation in the area. In response to this move, which the Soviet Union sees as provocative, the Soviet- backed puppet government in Oman imposes a $10,000 toll for every oil tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. The Soviet government claims it will remove the toll if the Americans withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia. The captains of the tankers refuse to pay the toll, effectively creating an economic blockade in which no oil can be transported through the Persian Gulf. A breaking news alert on the fifth day of the Middle East crisis reveals that a short battle took place between American warplanes and unidentified enemy warplanes, presumed to be from Iran or Kuwait, in which an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf before two of the five attacking planes were shot down. The attacking aircraft were presumably aiming for an oil refinery in Ras Tanura in retaliation for Saudi Arabia's request for American troops. Meanwhile, Waldorf brings a story to CVN: her boyfriend had provided her with satellite photos that suggests that Soviet forces have disappeared from their border with the Middle East, possibly as an covert invitation to mutually withdraw from the area — an invitation that could have been ignored in the flood of information the multiple global crises have created ("The signal-to-noise ratio in there [The White House] is horrendous."). However, Tobin reluctantly insists that Waldorf have more than one source for the story. On day six of the crisis, an American aircraft carrier, the and its battle group, armed with both nuclear and conventional weapons, are sent by the U.S. President to the Persian Gulf to ensure the free passage of oil tankers in the region; the President also activates Selective Service, drafting thousands of soldiers in anticipation of a larger conflict. The Soviet Union quickly responds to this action by sending submarines to the Persian Gulf. CVN sends Michael Boyle to the Nimitz to cover the deployment. The Soviets publicly criticize the United States for failing to accept their offers of conciliation and mutual withdrawal from the area, implying that Waldorf's information was correct and that the US may have given up an opportunity for a peaceful solution. On day eight of the crisis, in response to the growing urgency of the situation, CVN begins to broadcast 24 hours a day. Shortly after a State Department briefing, the Defense Secretary dies, perhaps of a heart attack brought on by the stresses of crisis management. On day nine, the crisis deepens when an Omani gunboat attacks and apparently destroys an unarmed Dutch vessel which tried to go through the Strait of Hormuz. The CVN broadcast also notes the presence of Soviet attack submarines near the site of the attack. At this point, people begin to evacuate cities, overseas air travel is suspended by the FAA, many American schools begin closing, the Strategic Air Command redeploys B-52 bombers throughout the nation's airports, and people are urged to stay off their phones. By nightfall, an evacuation of the White House is ordered, and the US begins shutting down its nuclear power plants nationwide, an act noted not to have happened since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later, Waldorf is met by her boyfriend at the news studio, offering to take her along in the evacuation—the President has delegated tactical nuclear launch authority to the Nimitz battle group commander after the destruction of the Dutch vessel, and the chances of a nuclear exchange in the Gulf have increased significantly. Waldorf chooses to remain in Washington to continue her work. A night battle then erupts between Omani gunboats and the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Hormuz, with an Omani gunboat firing first and disabling an American warship, then subsequently being destroyed. Despite the gravity of the situation, Tobin discusses his optimistic viewpoint of the situation with correspondent Eric Sevareid, believing that "[r]easonable people, once they've looked the Devil in the face, aren't going to shake hands with him." Shortly after the Omani gunboat exchanges fire with the American ship, a Soviet submarine slips through the perimeter of American ships and is tracked towards the Nimitz, which begins exploding depth charges towards the submarine. There is suddenly a large, underwater nuclear detonation, suggesting that a nuclear depth bomb was detonated to stop it. Boyle evacuates into the carrier's island, confronting an officer to find out who provided authorization for the nuclear attack, but cannot get a clear answer. Shortly thereafter, a nuclear weapon detonates inside the battle group, causing an unknown level of damage, yet apparently not sinking the Nimitz. Shortly thereafter, Boyle and the Nimitz lose contact with CVN. At this point, the White House is completely evacuated, with the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other White House officials evacuated onto the National Emergency Airborne Command Post plane with the Strategic Air Command's airborne command center Looking Glass in accompaniment, and the Emergency Broadcast System is activated. In the moments before CVN's broadcast is transferred over to the Emergency Broadcast System, Tobin reiterates his optimism, discussing the opinions of a deceased colleague who was considered an expert in nuclear war scenarios. His colleague held the belief that a nuclear exchange would someday take place, but when the two superpowers were confronted with the horror of the situation, they would choose peace over war. As a now-bewildered Tobin prepares to turn things over to the EBS, it is obvious that he is shaken by the events that have occurred, and is, moreover, almost mournfully fearful over the inescapable realization that both mankind and the planet Earth may very well not have any future at all. ===== With the death of his father, St John Loveday is finally master of Trevowan. But his success is blighted by the presence of his treacherous wife Meriel who, despite being riddled with pox and consumption, manages to cling on to lifelong enough to thwart his plans to marry a rich widow from America. Embittered by his failure, St John soon turns to drink and gambling while his hatred towards his brother continues to fester. Adam meanwhile has been putting all his energy into rebuilding the ruined estate of Boscabel, which he intends to create as a rival to Trevowan itself. And on the far side of the world, Gwendolyn races to reach her estranged lover Japhet and give him his pardon. But Japhet has sworn to live an Honorable life, and to return to England with pride. He has made a promise, and pride will not allow him to abandon his obligations. The girl on the front cover is performance artist, Abi Lake. Category:2005 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Novels set in Cornwall Category:Historical romance novels ===== Tarō Yamada is smart, athletic, and very handsome. He seems perfect on the outside, but he's actually dirt poor due to his mother's reckless spending habits and his always-gone father. Although never once does he admit it, everyone at school thinks he is a very humble rich boy because of his good looks. However, at home, he must care for his six younger siblings, who share a one-bedroom place with him and his mother. ===== Jane Hoyt (Susan Hayward) arrives in Hong Kong, looking for her husband, thrill-seeking photojournalist Louis (Gene Barry). She attracts the eye of shady shipping magnate Hank Lee (Clark Gable). With his help, she learns that Louis entered Communist China and was imprisoned as a suspected spy. She decides to arrange his escape. Hank advises her to give up the foolhardy venture, but she refuses. She foolishly meets Fernand Rocha (Mel Welles) alone and gives him a $500 deposit to set up a rescue, but he merely gambles the money away and locks her up for his lecherous purposes. Word reaches Hank in time to save her. Having fallen in love with Jane and realising that she will not let herself get involved with him while her husband's fate remains uncertain, Hank decides to rescue the man himself. Hong Kong Marine Police Inspector Merryweather (Michael Rennie) is inspecting Hank's junk when Hank decides to make his attempt, and gets shanghaied into helping rescue the husband who is being held in prison in Canton. Louis is freed. Merryweather is forced to help Hank fight off a pursuing Chinese gunboat. When they return safely to Hong Kong, Louis graciously bows out of his wife's life. ===== Ted Shackleford (Will Ferrell) is a tour guide at the Bloomsberry Museum, which is often visited by teacher Ms. Maggie Dunlop (Drew Barrymore) and her students, being the only regular visitors. Mr. Bloomsberry (Dick Van Dyke) informs Ted that the museum will have to close because it is no longer making a steady money flow. Mr. Bloomsberry's son, Junior (David Cross), wants to tear down the museum and replace it with a parking garage. Ted impulsively volunteers to go to Africa in place of Mr. Bloomsberry, who is now too old to explore, and bring back a mystical, forty-foot tall idol known as the "Lost Shrine of Zagawa" in the hopes that it will attract customers, much to Junior's envy. Ted is outfitted with a yellow suit and boards a cargo ship to Africa. With the help of a guide and tour group, Ted finds the idol but discovers it to be only three inches tall. He sends a picture of it to the museum, but the angle at which it was taken leads Mr. Bloomsberry to believe that the shrine was even taller than he had originally believed. Ted encounters a happy and mischievous monkey living in the jungle and gives him his yellow hat, but the monkey soon follows him and boards the cargo ship. Ted returns home to find advertisements for the shrine all over the city, and receives a phone call from Mr. Bloomsberry, telling him to report to the museum and be interviewed for the news. After he reaches Ted's apartment, the monkey discovers the building's penthouse and vandalizes Ted’s neighbor, Ms. Plushbottom's (Joan Plowright) room with paint. Due to the strict "No pets allowed" policy, Ted is evicted by Russian-accented doorman Ivan (Ed O'Ross). Ted returns to the museum and reveals to Bloomsberry the idol's size. Ted is kicked out of the museum by Junior after the monkey accidentally destroys an Apatosaurus skeleton. Ted and the monkey sleep outside in the city park. The next morning, Ted follows the monkey into the zoo, where Maggie and her students name the monkey "George" after a nearby George Washington statue. George begins floating away on helium balloons high up over the city, prompting Ted to commandeer a larger amount of balloons and a kite to save him. George's balloons are inevitably popped by bird control spikes on a building but Ted catches him. Ted and George make their way to the home of an inventor named Clovis (Eugene Levy), where George uses an overhead projector to increase the idol's size, making it appear 40 feet tall. Ted and George go to the museum so that Ted can explain his plan to Mr. Bloomsberry. Junior tries to convince his father that it would not be honest to fool the public, but Mr. Bloomsberry sees it as the only way to save the museum. And so while Ted isn't looking, Junior ruins Ted's plan by breaking the projector by pouring a latte on it as well as giving George the rest and then he blames George for it by saying George had ruined their last chance at saving the museum. As a result, George is taken into custody by animal control. Ted addresses the crowd outside of the museum, announcing that it is to close permanently and they don’t have the idol. Ted later speaks with Ms. Maggie, who helps him understand what is important in life. Ted regrets his decision to let George be captured and drives his car all the way onto George's cargo ship to get him back. While Ted explains to George that nothing else matters besides their "buddyship," George discovers that the idol reveals a pictogram when turned to the light, and Ted realizes the meaning of the inscription: when held up to the sun, the small idol is actually a map to the real idol. They sail the ship back to Africa and George helps Ted find the real forty- foot tall idol. The idol is put in the museum, which goes back in business and becomes more successful than ever. Despite being devastated over not getting his parking lot, Junior gets a job as the valet, but finds joy in his father, Mr. Bloomsberry, finally being proud of him. Ivan invites Ted to move back to his apartment out of his fondness for George. George causes more trouble by starting up a rocket ship, which he and Ted are forced to fly, and they end up repeatedly circumnavigating the globe. ===== During springtime on a farm in Somerset County, Maine, young Fern Arable discovers her father John about to kill a runt of a litter of newborn pigs. She successfully begs her father to spare the piglet's life; Fern names him Wilbur and nurtures him lovingly. The next morning, Fern sneaks Wilbur into her school desk, causing commotion. When Wilbur has matured, Fern is regretfully forced to take him to her uncle Homer Zuckerman's barnyard. Mrs. Arable feels slightly concerned for Fern's behavior and one night, prevails upon Fern to stay home, do her homework and go straight to bed. During this time, Wilbur feels abandoned and is left yearning for companionship, but is snubbed by the other animals - a serious and steadfast sheep named Samuel; a fun-loving and kindly goose couple named Gussy and Golly; two beautiful and laid-back cow sisters named Bitsy and Betsy; and a cowardly and humorous horse named Ike - until he is befriended by Charlotte A. Cavatica, a barn spider who lives in the space above Wilbur's sty in the Zuckermans' barn. When the other animals reveal to Wilbur that he will be prepared for dinner by Christmas, Charlotte promises to hatch a plan guaranteed to save Wilbur's life. With the help of Samuel, Gussy, Golly, Bitsy, Betsy, Ike and a comedic rat named Templeton, Charlotte convinces the Zuckerman family that Wilbur is actually quite special by spelling out descriptions of him in her web such as "Some pig", "Terrific", "Radiant" and "Humble". The next day, the Arables, Zuckermans, Wilbur, Charlotte and Templeton go to a fair where Wilbur is entered in a contest. While there, Charlotte produces an egg sac containing her unborn offspring while Wilbur, despite winning no prizes, is later celebrated by the fair's staff and visitors, making him too prestigious to justify killing him. Exhausted from laying eggs, Charlotte cannot return home because she is dying. Wilbur bids an emotional farewell to her as she remains at the fair and dies shortly after his departure, but he manages to take her egg sac home with the help of Templeton. Wilbur then lives to witness his first Christmas and by the next spring, hundreds of Charlotte's offspring emerge; most of the young spiders soon leave, but three named Joy, Aranea and Nellie stay and become Wilbur's friends. ===== In Victor Grandison's country house, a shadowy figure murders Grandison's secretary, Roslyn Wright. We see Claude Rains' face in a mirror. He leaves her body hanging from a chandelier. It is reported as suicide. Cut to the studio where this man, Victor Grandison, a popular "true crime" radio host, is broadcasting.The synopsis on TCM.com, which is copied from the AFI Catalog, says that this broadcast happens at the same time as Roslyn's murder. This is not true. Her death has already happened and is discussed. The confusion may have arisen because Grandison does use the timing of his regular broadcast as an alibi. Donovan later discovers that Grandison left the studio and took an earlier train than usual. After the broadcast, Victor's niece, Althea, throws a surprise birthday party for him. Victor recently lost his ward,The synopsis on TCM.com, which is copied from the AFI Catalog identifies Matilda as Victor's niece. She is named as his ward in the film and never described as either his niece or Althea's cousin. Matilda Frazier, presumed dead when a freighter burned at sea. Althea's husband, Oliver, is drinking heavily. He and Matilda were engaged before Althea married him. Althea is shocked by the arrival of Steven Howard, who claims to be married to Matilda. Homicide Detective Donovan stays after the party to share a thick file on a hatchet-murder case with Victor and witnesses Victor's meeting with Steven. With Matilda's multi-million-dollar estate to be settled, Victor asks Donovan to investigate. Cut to the airport in Rio de Janeiro, where Matilda boards a Pan American plane. Victor is dictating a script (to a phonograph record). His producer, Jayne Moynihan, asks what's wrong: He's lost his zip. He has a premonition. Donovan reports: Steven not only checks out; he is very rich. A cable arrives. Althea is making a play for Steven when Victor delivers the news: Matilda is alive and well and arriving the next day. Press, a murderer whose identity Victor uncovered but kept secret, tries to kill him but is thwarted when Victor plays a copy of the confession he recorded at the time. Steven meets Matilda at the airport, but she claims to have no memory of him or their marriage, despite compelling evidence. The next day, Steve takes the early train to town; Victor searches and finds a picture of Roslyn in Steve's wallet. In the city, Jayne meets Steve: They have been working together to prove that Roslyn was murdered. Steve goes to Donovan, who takes him to Victor's to investigate and show Victor their new evidence that it was murder. Althea already suspects Victor. She kept quiet because she, too, depends on Matilda's money. Victor records a quarrel between Althea and Oliver and kindly encourages Oliver to leave. He confesses to Althea—and shoots her. With Matilda and Steven as witnesses, Victor uses the recordings to frame Oliver and sets the police on him. Oliver dies in a car crash when the brakes Victor damaged fail. Jane brings Steve and Matilda together. He explains that he had known Roslyn all his life. Matilda dismisses his warnings about Victor. Victor prepares to kill Matilda, asking her to write down text that he can use as a suicide note. He summons Mr. Press. Steven finds the recording that Victor used to frame Oliver and calls Donovan, but hangs up when Victor opens the door. Victor destroys the record. Press knocks Steve out and stuffs him into a trunk. Victor gives Matilda drugged wine. She regains consciousness, sees the note and an empty bottle of pills, but cannot make it to the door. Donovan arrives, thanks to the call from Steve, and revives her.The synopsis on TCM.com, which is copied from the AFI Catalog, says, incorrectly, that Matilda calls the police. She does not. She collapses trying to reach the door. After Donovan breaks in and revives her, he tells her that it was Steve's call that alerted him to trouble. They track Press to the trash incinerator where he has dumped the trunk. Victor introduces his broadcast as usual but is thrown off when Donovan enters the control booth and police surround the auditorium. Matilda and a badly bruised Steven are ushered into the audience. Victor confesses to the murders, ending with: "I am The Unsuspected, your genial host, Victor Grandison." The last scene is a long shot of Victor and two policemen, silhouetted against moonlit pavement, walking toward the yawning gates of a prison. ===== The story is based on the account of Biblical prophet Elijah from the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings chapters 17-19). The focus is on Elijah's time in Zarephath (in this book named Akbar). In ninth century B.C.,wife to Israel's ruler Jezebel threatens to execute all prophets who refused to worship the pagan deity Baal. Elijah, a young prophet is commanded by an angel of God to flee Israel and he eventually seeks safety in the land of Zarephath .He unexpectedly falls in love with the widow to whom God sent him. But this new-found rapture is cut short and Elijah gets lost in his emotional turmoil. Much has been added to the simple Bible story by Coelho, including Elijah witnessing the sacking of Akbar by the Assyrians, Elijah's journey up the Fifth Mountain itself (said to be the dwelling place of Baal). For a considerable portion of the story Elijah is very compliant, obeying everything God's angels say. Eventually he realizes that his destiny is not being chosen by him but by God and ultimately he decides to abide by his own desires and will. ===== Cenodoxus was a man who had a sterling reputation for healing the sick, helping the poor, speaking kindly, and ministering to all in need. He was equally loved and admired by all. At a ripe old age, he had succeeded in all the things he had set out to do. He was a teacher, a scholar, a doctor, a lawyer, and a philosopher. He excelled at all the things a man could excel at. But he began to lose his health, and this alarmed all of his friends. When he got sick, friends visited his house to see him, but there was nothing they could do to save him. All they had for him was good words, and wished they could be more like him. People prayed for him day and night. Everybody believed that Cenodoxus was the nicest person they'd ever met. Mortal intervention from all quarters could not help the good Doctor of Paris, who had helped so many other people. The priest came, but was unable to hear him confess any sins that were not already confessed. The priest left, saying he had done all he could do, "But with the Lord's help, he may yet regain his health." Yet Cenodoxus died, and the mourning began. ===== The book is written as a third-person narrative describing how Paulo and his wife embark on a 40 day journey through the Mojave Desert. There they meet the valkyries, a group of warrior women who travel the desert on motorcycles. At the beginning of the story, "J", Coelho's master in RAM, shows him a copy of the poem by Wilde that says "we destroy what we love" and this theme is central to the story. ===== Mint na Bokura is a light-hearted romance manga about fraternal twins, Noel and Maria Minamino (who happens to be very close to each other), and various love situations that occur around them. When Maria falls for an older guy and transfers to the school (he goes) to be closer to him, Noel - who seems to love his sister a "bit" too much - is struck by extreme jealousy. To make things worse, the school that Maria has transferred to is a boarding school, which will cause him to no longer be able to hang out with her. Since Noel won't stand a chance, he decides to enter Maria's new school and persuade her to come back. But there is one major problem: the only open admission left is in the girl's dorm! Supposedly, that fact alone is enough to deter any normal, proud guy. But Noel seems to be anything but that - especially when it concerns his beloved sister. Armed with a half-wig, a headband, a pair of suppatsu and a padded bra, Noel resolutely disguises as a girl and begins his new life in Morinomiya Boarding School. ===== In 1993, Jerry Shepard is a guide at an Antarctica research base under contract with the National Science Foundation. UCLA professor, Dr. Davis McClaren, arrives at the base. He presses Shepard to take him to Mount Melbourne to find a rare meteorite from Mercury. Because of the hazardous conditions of the ice, vehicles traveling to the mountain would likely be too heavy to stay on the surface. Shepard decides that the only way to get to Mount Melbourne is by dog sled. Shepard and McClaren make it to Mount Melbourne, but are called back to base camp due to an approaching heavy storm. McClaren begs for more time, and Shepard gives him half a day, which is enough time to find a fragment of the meteorite. En route back to base, McClaren slips down an embankment, breaking his leg and falling into freezing water. Shepard uses the lead dog Maya to carry a rope to McClaren and pulls him out. The two battle hypothermia, frostbite and near whiteout conditions as the dogs lead them home. Once there, the entire human crew is immediately evacuated, while the dogs are left behind. Certain that their pilot will return within days for the dogs, Shepard tightens their collars to ensure they cannot get loose and run away. But because of the harsh weather conditions, no rescue can be attempted until the next spring - and by then the dogs will be dead. Back at home, Shepard tries to secure a plane to return and save the dogs, but no one is willing to finance the risky expedition. Five months later, Shepard makes one last attempt to get back. McClaren realizes the magnitude of his ingratitude and uses the remaining balance of his grant money to finance a rescue mission. Shepard acknowledges that there is almost no chance that any of the dogs have survived this long, but he owes it to his team to go back for them. After being left behind, the eight sled dogs – lead dog Maya, Old Jack, Shorty, Dewey, Truman, Shadow, Buck, and the young Max, wait in the freezing conditions for Shepard to return. After two weeks without eating, with their spirits dwindling, they sit on the line next to the base. Suddenly, a gull flies near, prompting the dogs into action, and they all begin to break free, one by one. Old Jack, too weak by now, remains attached, and Maya stays to try and free him while the others chase the flock of gulls that have landed nearby. Maya realizes Old Jack has given up, and she reluctantly leaves him behind when he shows no sign of wanting to leave the base. Maya joins up with the other dogs, and they all work together to attack the gulls and manage to kill a few, getting their first food in two weeks. After nearly two months on their own, having kept their strength up and still traveling, the dogs rest on a slope one night under the southern lights. Fascinated by the display, they run about and play until Dewey slips and falls down an incline, lying injured at the bottom. The team rushes to his side and sleeps with him. In the morning they find he has died. Max, unwilling to leave him, stays behind momentarily while the others head on, and by the time Max heads in their direction, he has lost them. Maya manages to lead the team to the Russian base, which is unsecured and full of food, while Max finds his way back to the American base, which is still locked and abandoned. Setting back out into the wilderness, Max soon finds and recognizes the embankment the dogs traveled through on their way back from Mount Melbourne, along with some equipment dropped during Doctor McClaren's accident. Exploring the area, Max finds the carcass of a dead orca, but is driven off by a leopard seal nesting inside the body. Maya and the team are nearby, and they hear Max and rejoin him. Having nearly ruined their attempts to catch the gulls back when they had first left the base, Max redeems himself by luring the leopard seal away from the orca so the dogs can eat. However, it doubles back and attacks Maya, who is badly injured when it claps its reptile-like maw onto her paw. In a rage, the other five dogs jump on the seal, tearing and slashing at its face and body. The seal, overwhelmed, quickly drags itself back through the ice into the water, swimming away, and the dogs turn back to the orca and feast. After they have eaten their fill, the team, now reunited, continue traveling. They are starving, freezing and exhausted, and eventually the injured Maya collapses into the snow to rest. The dogs lie down beside their leader as the snow piles up around them. They have been on their own for nearly six months. Shepard makes it back to base with the others and is dismayed to find the body of Old Jack, still attached to the chain, and no sign of the other dogs. He hears the sound of barking and sees Max, Shorty, Truman, Shadow and Buck come over the horizon. After a joyous reunion, Shepard attempts to load the dogs into the snowmobile, but Max runs off, with Shepard in hot pursuit. Max leads him to Maya, lying in the snow – weak, but alive. With six of his eight sled dogs in tow, Shepard and his crew head back to civilization, with the last scene showing a grave for the two fallen dogs, Old Jack and Dewey. ===== Dave Douglas (Tim Allen) is a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County who is prosecuting social studies teacher and activist Justin Forrester (Joshua Leonard) for firebombing the pharmaceutical corporation Grant and Strictland. Forrester denies this, but claims that Grant and Strictland have been engaging in illegal animal experimentation. This distances Douglas from his daughter Carly (Zena Grey), one of Forrester's students. As Dave is also a workaholic, his relationships with his wife, Rebecca (Kristin Davis), and son, Josh (Spencer Breslin), are strained. The greedy geneticists working for Mr. Lance Strictland (Philip Baker Hall), led by Dr. Kozak (Robert Downey Jr.), have stolen a 300-year-old sacred dog named Khyi Yang Po (a Bearded Collie) from a Tibetan monastery. The scientists determine that Khyi Yang Po's genetic sequence, when isolated and put into a vaccination, invades and alters the cells and DNA of a victim. Carly brings Khyi Yang Po, who she calls ‘Shaggy’, home. When Dave returns from work, he takes Khyi Yang Po out in the garage, then the dog runs to get the newspaper. Khyi Yang Po gives him his newspaper, and Dave reaches for it, only to be bitten on the hand by Khyi Yang Po. Khyi Yang Po's saliva and cells infect Dave and is taken to be tested for rabies and the tests came back negative. Over the next few days, Dave realizes that he uncontrollably transforms into a sheep dog exactly like Khyi Yang Po when prompted by distractions and activities typical of a dog, such as a stick thrown through the air and chasing cats. These transformations can be reversed by sleeping, but Dave's human absence from his family further strains his relationships. During this time, his family, unaware of Dave's condition, continue housing Dave as a dog, thinking it's Khyi Yang Po. Dave slowly learns just how little he understands his kids and wife and resolves to make amends. In the ongoing trial, Forrester testifies seeing the animals behaving like dogs and the presence of a bearded collie he identifies as a giant sheepdog, which sparks Dave's suspicions about Grant and Strictland. When his dog-like behavior annoys the judge, Dave is removed from the case. Seeking answers to his transformation, Dave heads to Grant and Strictland. He has a janitor help him transform so that he may sneak in through a vent. Hidden in the laboratory, Dave witnesses Dr. Kozak injecting company president Lance Strictland with a drug that will paralyze him for several months, giving Kozak enough time to usurp control of the company. After viewing security cameras, Kozak and his minions realize that Dave is capable of transforming into a copy of Khyi Yang Po. When Dave returns home, still in his canine form, he overhears a conversation between Carly and Josh that he and Rebecca may be splitting up. After hearing this, Dave then knocks over a Scrabble game and uses the letters to reveal his identity to his kids. But when Dave gets out of the house, he is captured by Kozak's minions. His kids attempt to save him, but end up picking up the real Khyi Yang Po instead and rush to their mom at work to report recent events. Dave is taken to the laboratory to be euthanized, but Kozak has a court summons, and must deal with Dave later. Right before he exits, Kozak mocks Dave in canine form and Dave bites him in response. The other mutated animals in the laboratory tell Dave to meditate to reverse his transformation. Dave succeeds in returning to human form, and is able to escape with all of the other animals. He drives to the courthouse and calls his wife to ready a change of clothes for him at the courthouse, but is forced to abandon the car with the animals when they get stuck in traffic. Dave runs on all fours to trigger his transformation to get to the courthouse in time. At the courthouse entrance, his attempts to tell his wife that he loves her allows him to transform back. In the courtroom, Dave calls Kozak back to the stand and tries to get him to admit what he has done, but Kozak manages to hide his secret. Thinking quickly, he mocks Kozak by implying he was working under Strictland's shadow, and angers him. The two begin growling at each another, and the judge, exasperated by Dave's canine behavior, orders the bailiff to remove him. Dave grabs the baliff's baton and tells Kozak to fetch, triggering a partial transformation in him and thus implicating him of illegal and unethical experimentation. The pharmaceutical company is returned to Strictland, the mutant animals enter protective custody, and Dave finally makes amends with his family. An epilogue shows the family vacationing in Hawaii with Khyi Yang Po. Josh tells his dad to fetch a frisbee he just tossed, and Dave catches it with his mouth. ===== This story begins with an argument between high school classmates Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, who both attend Miss Basehoar’s school in Manhattan. Ginnie confronts Selena about Selena’s habit of leaving Ginnie to pick up the cab fare after the two play tennis each Saturday. Selena tries to explain to Ginnie that her mother has pneumonia and that Selena would rather bring the money to class later, but Ginnie insists that Selena reimburse her immediately. This dispute takes the two girls to Selena’s apartment, where Selena goes inside to get money from her mother, leaving Ginnie in the living room alone. Most of the narrative follows Ginnie’s conversation with Franklin, Selena’s irreverent older brother, whom Ginnie meets while Selena is inside. Ginnie appears repulsed by Franklin, who slinks into the room wearing pajamas and a bandage around his finger, which he accidentally cut in the bathroom. During their conversation, Franklin reveals that he once met Ginnie’s sister, Joan, and considers her the “Queen of the goddam snobs.”Salinger, J. D. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown and Company (p. 44). He also mentions that his unexplained heart troubles prohibited him from entering the Army, and that he has been working in an airplane factory for the past thirty-seven months. Because it is lunch time, Franklin offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich, and then goes inside to get ready for his friend Eric’s arrival. Eric and Franklin have plans to see Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, which Eric considers brilliant. While he is gone, Eric arrives and complains to Ginnie at length about his roommate, who is a writer. When Selena comes back to the living room with the money, Ginnie insists that Selena keep it. Ginnie also says she may come over later that afternoon, despite previously suggesting that she already had plans for that evening. During her walk to a bus stop, Ginnie considers throwing away the chicken sandwich Franklin gave her, but ultimately decides not to, remembering how it once took her three days to throw away a dead Easter chick. ===== In Brooklyn during the 1980s, a heavyset, middle- aged woman walking alone meets a mysterious man in a fedora and a trench coat who greets her and shows her the remains of a black leather jacket. The woman sobs at the sight of it, and the man begins to tell a story. In the 1950s, Vinnie is the leader of a gang named "the Stompers". His best friend, Crazy Shapiro, is subject to multiple murder attempts by Crazy's detective father, Solly. While in an old basketball court, Vinnie reunites with an old flame named Rozzie, but their reunion is abruptly interrupted by Rozzie's protective Jewish father, who chains her to her bed so she won't meet with Vinnie. Vinnie and Crazy get all dressed up in their suits and spend the evening drinking, playing pool and seeing the entire town. They arrive at a bar where they meet up with two prostitutes and go to sleep on the beach, waking up to find themselves close to a group of showering women and their mobster husbands. While Crazy inches over to the ladies, Vinnie finds a dead body buried in the sand. The screams of Vinnie and the women alert the mobsters, who beat up Crazy. It's later seen that Crazy has killed off the mobsters. Vinnie runs off, finding himself on the black area of the beach where he bumps into rival gang leader Boogaloo Jones and his gang, the Chaplains. Boogaloo sets up a rumble between his gang and the Stompers. Vinnie later meets up with Roz and the girl Crazy dates, Eva; Crazy has meanwhile beaten all the mobsters. The four head out to a party, where Vinnie tells the Stompers that they are going to fight with the Chaplains, to which the gang responds negatively. Much of the gang and their girls head out to a rock and roll show. Vinnie is horrified at the idea of Crazy and himself having to fight the Chaplains alone. One of the Stompers named Sal and his girl have a run-in with Boogaloo while driving, and wind up in a car crash. Vinnie finally persuades the Stompers to rumble with the Chaplains. At a drive-in restaurant, Vinnie dares and bets Crazy $5.50 to go all the way with Eva. Vinnie and Crazy both make out with their girls. When Roz spots a car that she thinks Boogaloo is in, Crazy is quick to drive off after it. Crazy ends up shooting two of the black gang members in an alley dead, much to Vinnie's shock. Solly investigates the death of the two black gang members. He questions Boogaloo, who tells him that he should be looking for the Stompers. Crazy and Roz are then seen at a pier. Rozzie tells him that Vinnie is ditching town, her and the rumble, which makes Crazy the leader of the Stompers. Disgusted with Vinnie's cowardice, Roz allows Crazy to make love to her in an abandoned warehouse. Solly interrupts their time together, and fights Crazy boxer-style to get him to talk. As he is losing, Crazy lies, saying Vinnie killed the gang members. Vinnie packs up his things and leaves his apartment, but bumps into the Stompers and in time for the rumble. As the two gangs wait for Boogaloo to show up, Solly drives up, ready to arrest Vinnie. On the rooftop of a nearby building, Crazy begins hallucinating and shooting randomly towards the street, causing both gangs to begin shooting at each other. Vinnie tries to run and is shot at by Solly. Vinnie pretends to be hit, falls and plays dead. Crazy jumps off the rooftop, landing on Solly, killing himself and Solly. As Roz calls up a radio station to make a memorial request in honor of Vinnie, he stands up and walks away, playing pool and getting drunk in the old neighborhood alone one last time as he did with Crazy before leaving Brooklyn. As the mysterious man finishes his story in a bar in Long Island, he claims he left because he was heartbroken over the death of Crazy. The woman knows he is lying. She reveals that she is Roz, and that the man is Vinnie, returned after 30 years. Roz angrily berates him for abandoning her and the gang just to save his own skin. Roz tells him that her husband will soon come looking for her, and he hates to see her drinking with another man. She gives Vinnie a second chance, if he will fight for her like she wished he did before. But she's bluffing. At first Vinnie imagines himself walking out on her again but then he throws his arm around Roz, telling her "Hey kid, how's it going? I've been waiting for you." She embraces him. And the two reunite. ===== During a grocery shopping trip, Lois realizes she is short on money to pay for food. She pretends to return a ham to the meat department but decides to hide it in her purse instead. Hooked on the thrill of shoplifting, she begins stealing other items, quickly becoming addicted to theft. She begins to indulge in large shoplifting sprees, including stealing a Matisse painting, which arouses the suspicion of Brian. While attempting to steal from an auto parts store, Lois is caught by Brian, who tells her she is doing wrong and that her stealing is not going to solve problems. Lois accepts his reasoning, but as she loads up the car to return her stolen goods, she is caught by Joe and arrested. In court, Lois is sentenced to serve three years in prison. The Griffin household turns to chaos in Lois' absence, and the family realizes they need to break Lois out of jail. During a visit to Lois in the prison, Peter smuggles her out by stuffing her into his mouth. As Lois' escape is realized, the Griffins jump into a laundry van, where they escape to Quahog's Asiantown (which evokes the traits of Chinatown and Japantown) and rent a run-down apartment to begin new lives. Chris begins a career as a rickshaw driver, Stewie takes a job at sewing shoes (but is fired after sewing a shoe to his hand, and replaced with a newborn baby). Peter becomes a sumo wrestler, but is spotted by Joe on the television shortly afterward. Joe successfully tracks the family down and pursues them through Asiantown, leading them into the city sewers. Lois decides to surrender and face the consequences so that the rest of the family won't have to, but as Joe attempts to detain her, he slips in the sewer and is almost swept off a nearby ledge. Lois pulls Joe to safety, and in gratitude, Joe manages to get Lois' sentence cancelled, and life returns to normal for the family. ===== In the 13th century, on the island of Konoshima (in the Seto Naikai, Inland Sea of Japan) there existed two feudal clans, the Kagami and the Sue, both aligned to the same Daimyō. They lived in peace until war on mainland Japan crushed the Daimyō. The Kagami swore fealty to the new Daimyō while the Sue were loyal to their master until the end. The conflict between the two began with the Kagami drawing the Sue off of the island and into battle. The Sue, having been defeated in battle, then lost their sacred sword the Yugiri. For centuries after, secretive battles were fought that were fierce, but not widespread. Some 800 years later, the Shainto school, composed of the remaining descendants from the Sue clan, attacked the Narukagami Shintoryu, the Kagami clan dojo, at their headquarters, the Meikyokan. To redeem their honor, they move to recover the Sacred Sword Yugiri and wipe out the last descendant of the Kagami family. That is the point from which the opening FMV begins, covering the assault which is later seen more fully in the story mode. ===== Teenager Maddie Dolan hails from San Diego. She looks forward to the day her father Gary, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, retires from military service so that he can share Maddie's life at home with her sister Kiley and their mother Kate. Maddie's dad invites her to participate in Operation Tiger, a week-long cruise for military families and their friends aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. She agrees and soon hits it off with fellow teens Anthony and Tina. Tina is fascinated by the military, her elder sister Grace being a United States Naval Aviator. Anthony, an aspiring drummer from New York City, would rather have nothing to do with the military, although his elder brother Kenny is a sailor. Maddie also bonds with preteen Joey, whose mom is a "Squid" (Naval slang for sailor) aboard the Constellation. On September 10, 2001 (one day into the cruise), the "Tigers" are excited about the day's upcoming air show. Tina hopes to take pictures from the flight deck of Grace's jet taking off. However, the flight deck is a restricted area due to safety regulations; non-military personnel must watch the airshow from "Vulture's Row". Tina, Maddie and Anthony disguise themselves as members of the deck crew so that Tina can get the pictures she wants. The threesome are recognized by the instructor and brought to Captain Anderson's office. The Captain reprimands the teenagers for their reckless actions, warning them that violation of any further regulations will get all three confined to their quarters until the carrier docks. After the teens retire, Anderson admits to their families that - more than anything else - his threats were intended to scare the threesome into line and keep them there. Gary, Grace, and Kenny express their disappointment over what happened during the air show. Commander Dolan tells Maddie about another, tragic incident when a crew member was killed landing a jet during practice maneuvers. Maddie tearfully divulges her true reason for accepting his invitation: she dislikes the negative connotations that come with being a military brat. Maddie recalls how she and Kiley got jumped on their first day at school and suspended for fighting. Gary agrees to come home after the voyage. On September 11, 2001, the crew and passengers learn of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. With the Constellation abruptly going on full alert, Tina finally realizes the truth behind her sister's assertions regarding the less-glamorous side of military life. Anthony fears for the safety of people he knew who had jobs in the Twin Towers. Maddie experiences her father's honor, courage, and commitment to his family and also his will to make sacrifices for their country. Although upset that her dad is still needed in the military, she and her fellow Tigers express their pride and support by unfurling a giant American flag on the Constellation's flight deck. Maddie, having concluded that being a "brat" isn't so bad after all, tells her father and his crew- mates to keep doing what they do. ===== The plot was described as a science fiction anthology series set in a futuristic city with a seamy side. Each episode is introduced by Raven, a nightclub hostess who also makes brief appearances in the tales. ===== Dave Walsh (Matt Dillon) is a bank employee whose day begins badly when he gets fired from his dream job and dumped by his fiancée Sara Goodwin (Christina Applegate) the day after their engagement party was crashed by his best friend, Jack (Steve Zahn). Jack tries to console him by telling him that it's for the best, that Dave was headed down the wrong path. In a further effort to console him, Jack arranges for a hooker named Whisper (Jenna Fischer) to show up at his apartment, but instead she steals his car. The next day, Dave goes back to the bank with a gun tucked into in his waistband. He surreptitiously makes his way into his former boss's office, where he pulls out the gun and threatens to end his boss's life. Though intimidated, the boss stands up to Dave, and Dave, deciding he does not want blood on his hands after all, pistol-whips him instead. When Dave emerges from his boss's office, he finds the bank being robbed. A sequence shows him killing the robbers single-handedly, but this is then shown to have been a daydream. When one of the robbers seizes his co-worker Wendy (Andrea Bendewald), he shoots the robber and saves her, but he is shot, tackled, and forced into the getaway vehicle, whereupon the robbers make their escape. A montage shows various people's reactions to the incident, including that of Dave's ex-fiancée Sara (who is crying uncontrollably), and then a burning van. A reporter announces that dental records have shown that the body found in the van was Dave's. A complex series of plot twists follows. It turns out that the robbery had actually been part of plan hatched two years ago, by Dave and his friends Jack, Wendy, and Eric (Dave Foley), to rob the bank and fake Dave's death, erasing his identity so that he would not be caught, and leaving him and his friends filthy rich. Eric, who is Sara's dentist, is revealed to have driven the getaway vehicle and falsified the dental records of the corpse in the van. Dave, Wendy, and Jack meet up in a motel room, prepared to divide their loot and part ways. When Wendy leaves the room, however, Dave kills Jack. (It turns out that Dave had secretly hated Jack ever since Jack scarred Dave's face and torso extensively in a childhood accident.) Wendy returns and kills Dave. She grabs the money and runs off to pick up Sara, with whom it turns out she's involved in a romantic relationship. (Sara, for her part, had previously gone to Eric's office, killed him, and taken his share of the money.) After the credits, Sara and Wendy's car is shown being hit by a bus. ===== Josh gets into college on a scholarship, and Cooper is assigned as his roommate. Cooper does little work and instead spends all the time partying and consistently fails his courses, but his father continues to pay his tuition. The normally studious Josh is led astray by Cooper's lifestyle, and spends the first half of his first year partying instead of studying, and consequently fails all of his exams. To his horror, he then finds out that a condition of his scholarship is a passing mark average each year, and that with his poor midterm score, he needs an A+++ in all of his courses or he will lose his scholarship. Meanwhile, Cooper's father finally realizes Cooper is not trying to pass his course at all, and threatens to pull his funding if he does not get a passing mark this year, leaving him in a similar position. They find out about an obscure academic rule that states that if a student's roommate commits suicide, then the roommates get perfect marks for that year, regardless of any previous academic standing. Cooper and Josh set out to find roommates who are likely to commit suicide; their first potential roommate, Cliff O'Malley, is more likely to get himself (and any one with him) killed than commit suicide. They soon realize that he will likely get them killed or arrested and jump out of his moving car when he is being chased by the police. Next, they try Buckley Schrank, a computer geek who thinks Bill Gates wants his brain. After they move Buckley in, they try to help push him over the edge. First, Cooper poses as a suicide hotline volunteer, and when Buckley calls, he tells him that he is Bill Gates and wants his brain. Then, Cooper buys equipment that may assist in a suicide (rope, daggers, prescription drugs) and as Josh and he are trying to plant the items around the dorm room, Buckley discovers the pair hiding from him with a noose and knife in hand. Buckley, who thinks that they are trying to kill him, and that the conspiracy to kill him and steal his brain is real, runs away. Finally, Josh and Cooper move in with Matt Noonan, a moody rock musician. Later, Cooper catches him singing show tunes and learns he was voted Mr. Happy in high school, leading them to believe that he is only pretending to be depressed to impress girls and make a name for himself in music. Facing the loss of his scholarship, Josh stands on the edge of a bridge, about to commit suicide himself. Cooper tells Josh he is not a failure and talks him down. When Josh comes down from the bridge, he reveals to Cooper that he was faking his suicide attempt so the school would not fail him, and Cooper would look like a hero to his father. The film ends with Josh narrating that he was given an additional semester to improve his grades, in which he saved his scholarship, and that Cooper became a more serious student, but did work summers cleaning toilets for his father's business to learn how to eventually take over. ===== Dale Stewart, a character from Summer of Night, has ruined his life. A fifty- one-year-old college professor and writer, he left his spouse for a young co- ed and the co-ed has left him. He returns to Elm Haven, Illinois, where the events of Summer of Night took place. Dale is remembering these events as more pleasant than what actually happened. He will soon recall the truth and also must deal with current-day Neo-Nazis. ===== ===== Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid) is a New Orleans police lieutenant who investigates the murder of a local mobster. His investigation leads him to suspect that fellow members of the police force may be involved. Anne Osborne (Ellen Barkin), a state district attorney, is sent to investigate alleged police corruption. After seeing firsthand some unorthodox practices by Remy, Anne accuses him of being on the take. He argues that she does not have an understanding of how the system works in New Orleans for police. Despite Osborne's suspicious and apprehensive feelings towards him, they form a relationship. McSwain is caught accepting payoffs in an Internal Affairs sting, and Osborne has the burden of prosecuting him. With the assistance of fellow officers within the police force, the evidence is destroyed and suppressed. McSwain is cleared of the charges, at which point Anne, now clued in, is faced with the conflict of her personal feelings for Remy and her duty to uphold the law. It is later revealed that Jack Kellom (Ned Beatty), Remy's boss, and the two detectives De Soto (John Goodman) and Dodge (Ebbe Roe Smith) are behind the murder, and a stash of heroin is hidden at a boat yard. Kellom goes to the boat and is confronted by De Soto and Dodge. Kellom suggests getting rid of the drugs, but De Soto shoots Kellom. Remy and Anne arrive and are confronted by De Soto and Dodge, and a shootout starts, resulting in De Soto being shot by a fatally wounded Kellom, and Dodge being shot with a flare gun by Remy, which starts a fire, and Remy and Anne make a run for it in the nick of time just before the boat explodes. The final scene shows Remy dancing with Anne, and it appears they had just been married. ===== Fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia is the beautiful, charming, and naïve Archduchess of Austria, youngest of Empress Maria-Theresa's daughters. In 1770, the only one left unmarried among her sisters, she is sent by her mother to marry the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI, to seal an alliance between the two rival countries. Marie-Antoinette travels to France, relinquishing all connections with her home country, including her pet pug "Mops", and meets King Louis XV of France and her future husband, Louis-Auguste. The betrothed young couple arrive at the Palace of Versailles, which was built by the Sun King, Louis XIV. They are married at once and are encouraged to produce an heir to the throne as soon as possible, but the next day it is reported to the king that "nothing happened" on the wedding night. As time passes, Marie-Antoinette finds life at the court of Versailles stifling. Her husband's courtiers disdain her as a foreigner and blame her for not producing an heir, although the fault really lies with her husband, for the marriage remains unconsummated for an inordinate amount of time. The French court is rife with gossip, and Marie-Antoinette consistently ruffles feathers by defying its ritualistic formality. Marie-Antoinette also refuses to meet or speak with Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV. Over the years, Maria-Theresa continues to write to her daughter, giving advice on how to impress and seduce the Dauphin. Marie's attempts to consummate with her husband fail and the marriage remains childless. Marie spends most of her time buying extravagant clothes and gambling. After a masquerade ball, Marie and Louis return to find that the King was dying of smallpox; he orders du Barry to leave Versailles. After his death on May 10, 1774, Louis XVI is crowned King of France at the age of 19, with Marie- Antoinette as Queen at the age of 18. Marie-Antoinette's brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, comes to visit, counseling her against her constant parties; advice that she finds easy to ignore. Joseph meets Louis XVI at the Royal Zoo and explains to him the "mechanics" of sexual intercourse in terms of "key-making", as one of the King's favorite hobbies is locksmithing. Thereafter, the King and Marie Antoinette have sex for the first time, and on December 19, 1778, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a daughter, Princess Marie Thérèse Charlotte of France. As the child matures, Marie-Antoinette spends much of her time at the Petit Trianon, a small chateau in the park of Versailles. It is also at this time that she begins an affair with Axel Fersen. As France's financial crisis worsens, food shortages and riots increase, her public image has completely deteriorated by this point: her luxurious lifestyle and seeming indifference to the struggles of the French people earned her the title "Madame Deficit". As the queen matures, she focuses less on her social life and more on her family and makes what she considers to be significant financial adjustments. A year after her mother's death on November 29, 1780, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a son, Louis- Joseph, Dauphin of France, on October 22, 1781. She also gives birth to another son, Louis-Charles on March 27, 1785, and another daughter, Princess Sophie on July 9, 1786, who dies on June 19, 1787, a month before her first birthday. As the French Revolution erupts with the storming of the Bastille, the royal family resolves to stay in France, unlike most of the court. Rioting Parisians force the family to leave Versailles for Paris. The film ends with the royal family's transfer to the Tuileries. The last image is a shot of Marie-Antoinette's bedroom at Versailles, destroyed by angry rioters. ===== The film charts the stories of several people over a hot summer weekend in Adelaide. Photojournalist Nick (William McInnes) discovers he has testicular cancer that has spread to his lungs. On his way home he goes to the site of a train accident to report on it, and meets Meryl (Justine Clarke) an emotionally vulnerable artist, who has witnessed a man get run over by a train. Over the course of the weekend, their relationship develops sexually as another chance encounter allows them to discover more about each other; the two gradually allow themselves to let go of their fears and form a meaningful relationship. Meanwhile, Nick's colleague, Andy Walker, has to deal with the news that his estranged girlfriend, Anna, is pregnant, made more difficult because neither of them really wanted or planned for a baby. Andy also has to cope with his ex-wife, who doesn't trust his ability to take good care of his two children. The lives of Julia (the partner of the man run over by the train) and the driver of the train are explored: Both characters are shown going through the seven stages of grief. The train driver bridges the gap with his estranged teenage son during the course of the movie. The rain at the end of the film symbolises relief. The film's credits are complemented by a series of photographs showing Nick and Meryl staying together, eventually travelling together and Nick surviving cancer. ===== The story details the life of a horse in the western United States from his birth to his eventual decline. It takes place after the 1910s, during which the West dies away and automobiles are introduced. Smoky is born in the wild but is captured and trained by a cowboy named Clint. Clint is taken by Smoky's intelligence and spirit, and he uses him as his personal steed. Under his guidance, Smoky soon becomes known as the best cowhorse around. However, Smoky is among a number of horses stolen by a horse thief. When Smoky refuses to allow the thief to ride him, being loyal only to Clint, he is beaten repeatedly in punishment. Developing an intense hatred for humans from this treatment, Smoky eventually attacks and kills the thief. When Smoky is eventually captured by local authorities, his now violent and aggressive demeanor prompts his use as a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Under the moniker of "The Cougar", he becomes the most famous rodeo attraction in the South West, and people come from miles away to attempt to ride him. Years of performing at the rodeo eventually take their toll on his body and spirit, and he is left a shell of his former self. As he is no longer of any use as a rodeo horse, he is renamed "Cloudy" and used as a riding horse, then later sold to an abusive man who starves him. During this time, Clint finally reunites with Smoky. While in town on business, Clint spots and recognizes the horse. After having Smoky's current owner arrested for his acts of cruelty, Clint reclaims him and takes him home with him. Although Clint initially despairs at the condition Smoky is in, his careful treatment of the horse begins to show results. In the end, Smoky has completely recovered his former health and personality. ===== An extremely venomous spider has been accidentally brought from the Amazon rainforest to California and mates with a number of spider queens, creating a new crossbreed of venomous little spiders that kill people in one bite. The plague of spiders is spreading and killing people at a frightening rate. Bug-exterminator Delbert McClintock takes the liberty of going through California to clear seven towns of their infestations. After the successful cleansing, Dr. Atherton commissions Delbert to destroy the spiders in the jungle. ===== Dobry is a young boy who lives in a small farming village in Bulgaria with his widowed mother and grandfather. Both of them are dedicated farmers, and Dobry spends much of his early life helping them in the fields. The majority of his free time is spent with his best friend, Neda, the daughter of the village shoemaker. While still young, Dobry discovers a found love for art, in which he displays an unusually high amount of natural talent. In order to pay for the art supplies he needs to practice, he takes on the job as the village cow herder, and spends the next several years honing his artistic skills. While Neda and Dobry's grandfather are impressed and supportive of his dedication to his craft, his mother becomes increasingly worried and agitated. She had always assumed that Dobry would take over the family farm as an adult, and sees the time that Dobry spends with his art as wasted time that he could be using to help with the work. However, Dobry's grandfather is slowly able to convince her that talent like his should be allowed to develop. When Dobry creates a beautiful snow sculpture of the nativity that the whole town praises, his mother finally realizes how skilled her son truly is. At the following New Year celebration, Dobry's mother presents him with a surprise gift: money that she has saved up in order for him to enroll in an art academy. While Dobry excitedly begins to prepare for his new life, Neda worries that he will be leaving the village forever. However, he assures her that once he has completed his education, he will return to the village and marry her. ===== Act 1 A young boy, Smeeton/Smike, sits alone in a class of empty desks. Soon, the rest of the class files in and the Headmaster reads out the Daily Test. The children, however, voice out their reactions to the test (the Headmaster cannot hear them) rather than writing down their answers. At the end of the test, the children hand in their papers to the drama mistress, Miss Grant ("Daily Test Chant") before expressing how they feel about school ("Doing Things By Numbers"). The Headmaster then introduces the class's new English teacher, Mr. Nicholls, before punishing Smeeton who has forgotten to rule a line at the end of his work. The Headmaster and Miss Grant show Nicholls to the book cupboard, leaving the children alone. Tubby, a bully, taunts Smeeton and a fight starts. Nicholls breaks up the fight, and informs the class they will be looking at Nicholas Nickleby. The children are not happy. Nicholls tells them the story of a young man named Nicholas Nickleby, who is sent by his uncle to teach in a school run by a cruel and vicious headmaster by the name of Squeers. The children notice that they are in a similar situation, and ask why they should listen to Nicholls, as nobody ever listens to them. ("Here I Am"). The Headmaster and Miss Grant overhear the commotion, and Nicholls explains that he was getting the children interested by turning Nicholas Nickleby into a musical. The Headmaster and Miss Grant are not convinced, but Nicholls explains the character of Squeers to the Headmaster, convincing him to play the part. The Headmaster is a little more convinced, and the children flick through their books to see what characters they can play. It is decided that Miss Grant will play Squeers' daughter, Fanny, and that Smeeton, much to his dismay, will play Smike. Smeeton gives in, but only if Nicholls plays Nicholas Nickleby, which is agreed ("Stop! And Just Think Who You Could Be"). The scene then transforms to The Saracen's Head, a 19th-Century pub. Squeers is in London recruiting pupils for his school, Dotheboys Hall. He is accompanied by three frightened-looking boys. Suddenly, one of them sneezes, and Squeers rounds on him. Richard, the landlord of the Saracen's Head, announces that a gentleman is here to speak to Squeers. Mr. Snawley enters, saying that he wishes to enroll his two sons in Dotheboys Hall. Squeers accepts, and ensures Snawley that he will ensure the boys are in good hands and will achieve the best of their abilities ("We've Got The Youngsters' Interests At Heart"). Ralph Nickleby and his nephew Nicholas Nickleby enter, and Ralph recollects the time that a young boy named Dorker died at Dotheboys Hall. He then changes the subject, having noticed an advertisement in a newspaper for an able assistant to Squeers, and says that Nicholas should apply. At first Squeers objects to this decision, saying that Nicholas is too young and without a college degree, but Ralph reminds Squeers that he did not inform Ralph of Dorker's death until years after he died; thus Ralph must have still been paying Squeers for Dorker's education while he was dead. Squeers changes his mind and employs Nicholas, informing him they will depart for Dotheboys Hall the following morning. Squeers and Nicholas arrive at the gates at Dotheboys Hall. Squeers calls for Smike, a skinny boy who works as a slave to the Squeers family. He treats Smike poorly before asking him to fetch the luggage. Squeers then introduces Nicholas to his wife, Mrs. Squeers, who helps him run the school. She immediately takes a disliking to Nicholas. Nicholas is then introduced to the Squeers' children, Fanny and Wackford. Squeers tries to show that his family is perfect, but Nicholas knows they are far from it ("Wackford, Fanny, Squeersy And Me"). Squeers then introduces Nicholas to the boys, who look more like sewer rats than human beings. He states that Mrs. Squeers is like a mother to the boys, and that the school is filled with love and charity, but Nicholas can see that the boys are treated poorly ("Dotheboys Hall"). Nicholas is shocked when he sees that the boys are restricted to drinking a jug of water and only when Squeers calls their number ("Doing Thing By Numbers (Reprise)". Once the boys are sent to bed, Nicholas dines with the Squeers family, unaware that Fanny is attracted to him. Smike, who is serving them dinner, asks Squeers if anything has been heard about him, but is dismissed whilst treated cruelly. Nicholas feels that he is eating a meal that many go without, and Squeers explains that they prepare the boys for a life in the real world. Smike returns, this time with ale, but Squeers considers him lazy for taking his time, and beats Smike until he is left in a heap on the floor. After dinner, Squeers tells Nicholas to sleep in the living room until more permanent arrangements can be made. Nicholas hears Smike reflecting on his situation ("Better Off The Way I Am") and comforts him. Smike explains that he was with Dorker when he died and remembers seeing smiling faces upon Dorker. Smike is troubled that nobody would smile upon him when he dies, and that he will never find his family. Nicholas comforts him, saying there is always hope ("Don't Let Life Get You Down"). ===== The start of the story mode introduces the player to Arran, a young boy living in a small village. One day, Arran creeps into a forest whilst playing hide and seek with his friends, and stumbles upon a glowing floating orb. The orb informs him that he must go on a quest to defeat the evil 'Night Caster'. Arran is then placed in suspended animation (even though he still ages) by the orb, presumably so that he 'will be ready' to fight the Nightcaster. Arran wakes up, having aged to around the mid-twenties, to find his world devastated by darkness and the legions of monsters under the reign of the Nightcaster spreading terror over the populace. Arran's parents are supposedly dead when Arran finds his home to be a smoldering wreckage, at which point the orb informs him that 'it is the Nightcaster['s doing]'. So he starts his quest facing many creatures and as he ages his spells are stronger, more effective and more expansive. ===== During World War II, Flying Tiger triple ace Lieutenant Fred Atwill and his almost-as- successful comrades, Reginald Fenton and Richard Merlin, are brought back to the United States for a ticker tape parade and a ten-day "leave". The only trouble is, they are expected to spend all their time on a nationwide morale- boosting tour. Fred sneaks off the train at a rural stop to seek some fun. He eventually ends up in New York City. He spots a beautiful woman, Joan Manion in a nightclub. Eavesdropping, he learns that she is a newspaper photographer fed up with taking pictures of celebrities. Her pleas for an assignment in a war zone fall on deaf ears. Her boss, newspaper publisher Phil Harriman, likes her just where she is: nearby so he can try to wear her down and persuade her to marry him. Fred, giving himself the last name "Burton" to hide his identity, romances her himself in an annoyingly persistent way, even renting a room in the building she lives in. Eventually, however, she starts to like him, despite what she considers to be a lack of ambition on his part; he does not seem to have or want a job. She lets him take her on a date, though she steers him into a crowded canteen where she does volunteer work entertaining servicemen. When a performer cancels on short notice, Joan is recruited to sing a number; Fred invites himself along and sings and dances with her. Afterward, he runs into his fellow pilots. While Richard dances with Joan, Reginald amuses himself by blackmailing Fred into doing a snake dance on the table in exchange for not revealing who he really is. Joan tries hard to get Fred a job. When she learns that he once worked as a reporter, she arranges an interview with Phil. Fred, with his leave running out, instead spends the time giving Phil pointers on how to win Joan over, even setting up a romantic dinner at Phil's penthouse with the assistance of Jackson, Phil's butler. Phil blunders, however, and reveals to Joan what Fred is doing, and it is Fred who ends up spending the evening with her. Joan proposes marriage, leaving Fred in an uncomfortable situation. Later, Reginald informs Fred that their leave has been cut short; they only have two more days. Since Fred still does not have a job, Joan takes him along to a banquet honoring airplane manufacturer Harvey J. Sloan. She introduces Fred to Sloan, but instead of making a good impression as he had promised, he criticizes the fighter built by Sloan. When Joan finds out, she breaks up with him. Afterward, Phil takes him to a bar, where he reveals that he has found out Fred's true identity. Fred asks him to keep his secret, and proceeds to get drunk, going bar hopping to the song "One for My Baby". The next day, Phil makes one last attempt to get Joan to marry him. When that fails, he sends her to the airfield to take pictures of pilots returning to the fighting in the Pacific, knowing that Fred would be there. There she spots Fred in his uniform, and all becomes clear to her. They embrace, and Fred confesses he loves her before he has to leave. ===== After the prosecution rests its case in the murder trial of Larry Ballentine (Robert Young), the defendant takes the stand to tell his story. In flashback, Larry recounts how he started seeing Janice Bell (Jane Greer), innocently enough, but feelings developed between them. Unwilling to break up his marriage to Greta (Rita Johnson), whom Larry had married for her money, Janice gets a job transfer. Larry agrees to run off with her. When he returns home, however, Greta is unwilling to give him up. She tells him she has purchased half-interest in a brokerage in Los Angeles for him. The temptation is too great, and Larry leaves with Greta without telling Janice goodbye. At the brokerage, Larry once again begins womanizing. One day he is reprimanded by his business partner, Trenton (Tom Powers), for neglecting a rich client. Appearing to be acting on Larry’s behalf, employee Verna Carlson (Susan Hayward) produces a copy of a letter supposedly mailed by Larry to the client the day before, but actually written by her and sent special delivery that day. Larry resists becoming romantically entangled again, particularly with someone already engaged in a relationship with Trenton who brazenly admits she is a golddigger, but Verna seduces him. Late one night, Larry comes home and is confronted by Greta. She tells him that she is finished with him, but will not divorce him. She has sold the brokerage interest and bought an old Spanish ranch in the mountains. She again tells him to choose, and once again he elects to go with her. The ranch is isolated, without phone or mail service. The closest settlement is a general store down the road. Larry is bored, but Greta loves it there. After some time she tells Larry that she wants to build a guest house for an aunt he despises, who reviles him in return. He claims that he knows an architect who can do the job, and on the pretext of calling him phones Verna and arranges to meet her in Los Angeles. Larry describes to her his plan to clean out a joint checking account with Greta and run away together. He writes a check for $25,000 that Verna is to cash at the brokerage and leaves a note for his wife declaring he has left and suggesting she get a divorce. After their rendezvous, Verna produces the uncashed check, forcing Larry to choose between a penniless future with her or another return to Greta. Larry tears it up. She has also bought herself a cheap wedding ring, inducing him to follow through on his promise to divorce Greta and marry her. As they drive to Reno that night an oncoming truck blows a tire and swerves into their path. Verna is killed and burned beyond recognition. Larry wakes up in the hospital, where he is consoled over his wife's death. The police have mistakenly identified her as Greta because of the wedding ring. He does not correct the error. Once he recovers, he returns to the ranch, planning to kill Greta for her money. He finds his farewell note at the top of a cliff and her body beneath it by a waterfall, her favorite spot. He dumps the corpse in the rushing river. Depressed but still in the clear, Larry tours South America and the Caribbean to unsuccessfully try to cheer himself up. In Jamaica, he runs into Janice. He persuades her to reconcile, and they return to Los Angeles together. Later, early for an engagement with her at her hotel, he sees Trenton go into her room. He eavesdrops through an open window and discovers that Trenton has become concerned about Verna's disappearance and enticed Janice to work with him. Ultimately dared by Larry, Trenton eventually calls in the police. Lieutenant Carr obtains a search warrant. They find Greta's body, but assume it is Verna's. Local storekeeper Thomason (Don Beddoe) is a witness to Larry and Verna driving away together, the last time she was seen. The police theorize that Larry killed her because she was blackmailing him. While the jury deliberates, Larry is visited by Janice, whose love for him has revived. He informs her that he has passed judgment on himself for his actions. Back in court, just before the jury's verdict is delivered, he rushes to the window to commit suicide; a fatal shot fells him. The verdict is then read: not guilty . ===== Rika Saginuma, Nanaka Shimada, Yumihiko Tsukumura, and biology teacher Reiichi Katano meet in a chatroom, where they go by the screennames 11, Polaris, Mr. Money, and Jangalian, respectively. While online, they discuss their frustrations and form a plan to blow up their school, which they see as the source of all their problems. As the characters get to know each other, they begin to realize that their problems are situated in other aspects of life, as well, not just from the school. The characters find solace in each other; a major topic of the manga is loneliness. All of the characters implode inside as their problems condense. Jangalian is stalked by his boss's daughter, 11 can't deal with a younger girl's presumed superiority, Mr. Money has an abusive mother, and Polaris is crippled by shyness when she is not dressed as a gothic lolita. They deal with their problems through helping each other. ===== Milda, a cultural education worker, decides that she wants to have a baby — without a father or a family, bred from best proletarian stock of her choice. The child is to be raised by the communal child-rearing organizations that Milda herself is helping to establish as part of the Bolshevik’s effort to construct the ideal socialist state. Doing her best to ignore the meddling and scorn of the unruly co-tenants in her crowded Moscow apartment block, Milda sets out to complete her mission. Eventually she fulfills her dream after a laborious, comic, melodramatic, and tragic journey. ===== The story begins with Cousin Eddie at his latest workplace, a nuclear facility where he 'works' alongside a monkey. When the monkey outperforms him in every test (specifically mental agility), the decision is made to fire him. Upon finding out the news, the two get into an argument which results in the monkey biting him. With Christmas approaching, Eddie is worried about what this job loss will mean for him and his family and he decides to talk to his former boss. Although the thought never occurs to him, the nuclear company is convinced that he will sue. As a preemptive countermeasure, they offer him and his family (along with Audrey Griswold and his Uncle Nick) a free vacation to an island in the South Pacific. While on holiday they go on a boat ride. While Eddie attempts to catch a shark, they get lost and eventually shipwrecked on an isolated island. Eventually Eddie is able to prove himself a man by providing for his family and they all celebrate Christmas together on the island. Shortly after, they are rescued - although when the pilot becomes incapacitated, it is left to Eddie to land the rescue plane safely. Once landed, Eddie discovers he has been given his job back. ===== In 1930s Hong Kong, struggling former World War I fighter pilot Jake "Lucky" Masters is recruited by rich businessman E.A. Lomax for a dangerous mission. Lomax's daughter Kate has been kidnapped by ruthless warlord Li Deng and imprisoned in Deng's Chengdu fortress. Lucky must rescue Kate, but to do so he must enlist the help of a mysterious ninja named Zhao Chi. Each day Lucky has not rescued Kate, his reward money decreases by $20,000. After sneaking into Deng's fortress, Lucky and Chi snatch Kate and escape. Unfortunately, Kate is bitten by a snake during the rescue and the only medicine that can save her is in Kathmandu in Nepal. After further adventures in Istanbul, the trio makes its way to Paris. The game featured three different endings, with the player's actions determining which one would be depicted. ===== Followed by the death of her friends, journalist Hong Sun-Joo comes across a videotape containing incomprehensible images. Towards the end of the tape, she finds the curse which states that the viewer would die at the same time next week if he/she does not perform certain tasks. However, the next scene explaining the nature of the task has been erased. Sun-Joo and a doctor named Choi-Yul embark on a journey to break the curse placed upon them. They discover that the videotape was made by the psychic called Park Eun-Suh. Eun-Suh was an illegitimate daughter of a female psychic and was born a hermaphrodite. She was romantically involved with her half-brother and worked in a night club for a while. There, a man who found out about her secrets was killed as she had the uncanny ability to protect herself. The video tape is the medium Eun-Suh uses to reveal herself to the society. Her first exposure to the media was a painful experience, which caused her to withdraw from the outside world. When it became difficult for her to relate to the society, she retaliated by infiltrating it like a virus. The way of infiltration is one-way only and any attempt to block the process ends in extremely negative consequences. ===== The story opens with the discovery of a castaway in the Black Sea. Recovering in hospital in Turkey, the man is visited by Andrew Drake, an Anglo-Ukrainian. The castaway, Miroslav Kaminsky, is a Ukrainian nationalist who escaped after he was betrayed to the KGB. Drake convinces Kaminsky that they should strike a blow against the Soviet Union. Kaminsky tells Drake about Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, two Ukrainian Jewish nationalists who have suffered lifetimes of abuse and discrimination by the anti-Semitic Soviet authorities and are ready to take any actions that strike against the USSR. Meanwhile, a chain of failures at the Soviet Union's plant that makes fungicide for wheat has led to the inadvertent poisoning of the wheat crop. The United States is aware of this crisis and plans to sell its food to the Soviets in exchange for political and military concessions. Hardliners in the Politburo, led by Soviet Army Marshal Kerensky and Party theoretician Vishnayev come up with a different strategy: to take the food by conquering Western Europe, insisting on ideological rather than factual grounds that the West (particularly the U.S.) will accept defeat and the resulting long-term victory of the Soviets over them rather than resort to nuclear war. Chairman Maxim Rudin, while a hard-line Communist who has ruled with an iron hand for a long time, knows that the pro-war faction's plan would result in an all-out nuclear war because the West would otherwise be vassals on a planet dominated by the Soviet bloc. However, Rudin is dying of cancer and knows that he is running out of time to prevent the faction from ousting him and starting World War III. The news of the war plan comes to British intelligence agent Adam Munro through a Russian woman, his former lover Valentina, who works in the Kremlin offices and has access to the records of Politburo debates. The information shakes both the British and U.S. political leadership. Mishkin and Lazareff, with the help of Drake, complicate the situation for Rudin by assassinating Yuri Ivanenko, his ally in the Politburo and the chief of the KGB. While the Politburo covers up the truth of Ivanenko's death, Mishkin and Lazareff hijack a Soviet airliner to escape from Ukraine but are arrested in West Berlin after one of the pilots is shot dead during landing. Drake needs the two men released because only they can reveal that the Soviet government couldn't protect one of its most powerful leaders, thus triggering nationalist uprisings in Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Drake and other Westerners of Ukrainian origin hijack the world's largest oil supertanker in the North Sea and demand the extradition of Mishkin and Lazareff to Israel, threatening to vent 1,000,000 tons of oil if this condition is not met. The coastal countries threatened by this ecological catastrophe support the release of the prisoners. U.S. President Bill Matthews receives information from the British that the USSR will cease negotiations regarding grain and military concessions if the prisoners are released, so there appear to be only two potential outcomes: the greatest oil spill in history, or a Soviet invasion of western Europe. Thus Matthews is faced with the 'Devil's Alternative' of the title: no matter which course of action he pursues, massive loss of life is guaranteed. Munro eventually devises a third option which enables the prisoners to be released (thus ending the oil tanker standoff) and then quietly executed without them being able to reveal that they have assassinated the KGB chief. Kaminsky, who is waiting in Israel to confirm the two prisoners' release, is cornered by Israeli police and commits suicide, believing himself hunted by the KGB again. Drake and his team are killed after escaping the supertanker while Vishnayev is dismissed from the Politburo in disgrace, ending the threat of war. In the epilogue, Rudin proclaims a relative moderate (someone who believes that the Soviet Union will eventually rule the world but will do so gradually and without resorting to nuclear weapons) from the peace faction as his successor. After the ceremony he privately reveals to a shocked Munro that Valentina had been working for him all along, feeding Munro and the Western governments the information they needed to defuse the crisis and avert war. He informs Munro that Valentina is genuinely fond of him, but not so romantically attached to abandon her homeland for him. Walking outside, free to begin a new life outside the service, Munro begins laughing at himself - a veteran spy taken in by the oldest espionage trick in history: false love. ===== The ocean liner SS Britannic is in the middle of a voyage in the North Atlantic with 1200 passengers on board when the shipping line's owner Nicholas Porter in London receives a telephone call from an unidentified person with an Irish accent styling himself as "Juggernaut", who claims to have placed seven drums of high explosives aboard the ship which are timed to explode and sink it at dawn on the following day. He warns that the drums are booby-trapped in various ways and that any attempt to move them will result in detonation, and offers that technical instructions in how to render the bombs safe will be given in exchange for a ransom of £500,000. As an indication of his seriousness he then sets off a demonstration attack with a series of small bombs behind the ships funnel, which injure one crewman. Unable to order an evacuation of the ship's passengers via lifeboats due to rough seas, the shipping line's management is inclined to yield to the ransom demand, however British government officials inform the company that if it does so they will withdraw the company's operating subsidy in line with the Government's policy of non-appeasement of terrorism. Instead, a Royal Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon, leading a bomb-disposal unit, is dispatched, arriving on the scene by air transit and parachuting into the sea, to board the ship and defuse the barrel-bombs before the deadline. Meanwhile, back in London, Supt. McCleod, whose wife and two children happen to be holidaying on board the ship, leads Scotland Yard's investigation against the clock to capture the criminal master-bomber. After an attempt to drill a hole into one of the barrel-bombs fails, setting it off and damaging the ship, Fallon decides to split up his team with each man working simultaneously on each of the remaining devices at different points around the ship, Fallon going first with each stage of the defusing operation and informing his men of each move by radio link, with the aim that if he fails and his bomb explodes, his men will know what went wrong and continue the process onwards, with his second in command taking up the lead, until the devices are disarmed. However, if two more bombs go off, the ship will sink. Fallon proceeds to disarm the bomb he is working on, apparently successfully, with his men following each step. However, it contains a hidden secondary mechanism and one of his men, close friend Charlie Braddock, accidentally triggers it, resulting in his death when it explodes, causing further damage to the ship. A distraught Fallon abandons the operation and tells the ship's captain, Alex Brunel, to advise the shipping line to pay the ransom to avoid any more carnage. However, when negotiations with Juggernaut break down (in part because Juggernaut sees the trap police set for him when he goes to collect the ransom) Fallon is ordered by the captain to continue disarming the remaining bombs. Meanwhile, an extensive police search back in London captures the bomber posing as Juggernaut, who is revealed to be an embittered former British military bomb- disposal officer, Sidney Buckland. He is escorted to the police situation room. After a brief interrogation he agrees to tell Fallon--whom he knows personally, having trained him as a junior officer--how to disarm the bombs. Time is running out and the dawn detonation is fast approaching. Fallon and Juggernaut have a brief conversation, and, because of their former comradeship, Juggernaut agrees to tell Fallon how to safely disarm the bombs. Juggernaut gives the instruction. Fallon, somehow sensing he is being misled, does the opposite of what he is told, and in so doing is successful in disabling the bomb. The rest of the bomb-disposal unit swiftly follow Fallon's example, and the ship and its passengers are saved. ===== The miniseries chronicles the lives and loves of the four March sisters – Jo (Susan Dey), Meg (Meredith Baxter Birney), Amy (Ann Dusenberry) and Beth (Eve Plumb) – growing up in Concord, Massachusetts during the American Civil War. While their father leaves for battle, the sisters must rely on each other for strength in the face of tragedies both large and small. ===== Henrietta Winslow lives in an old mansion with many cats, caretaker Eduardo and her housekeeper Abigail. In the property's garden, there is a curious crematorium where the bodies of her dead cats end up, the ashes of which she collects and places in urns. One evening, the old lady receives her heirs to read her will to them. ===== Lou Francis (Lou Costello) and Bud Alexander (Bud Abbott) have just graduated from a private detective school. Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz), a middleweight boxer, comes to them with their first case. Tommy recently escaped from jail after being accused of murdering his manager, and asks the duo to accompany him on a visit to his fiancée, Helen Gray (Nancy Guild). He wants her uncle, Dr. Philip Gray (Gavin Muir), to inject him with a special serum which will render Tommy invisible, and hopes to use the newfound invisibility to investigate his manager's murder and prove his innocence. Dr. Gray adamantly refuses, arguing that the serum is still unstable, recalling that the formula's discoverer, Jack Griffin, was driven insane by the formula and did not become visible again until after he was killed. However, as the police arrive Tommy injects himself with it and successfully becomes invisible. Detective Roberts (William Frawley) questions Dr. Gray and Helen while Bud and Lou search for Tommy. Helen and Tommy convince Bud and Lou to help them seek the real killer, after Tommy explains that the motive for the murder occurred after he refused to "throw" a fight, knocking his opponent, Rocky Hanlon (John Day), out cold. Morgan (Sheldon Leonard), the promoter who fixed the fight, ordered Tommy's manager beaten to death while framing Tommy for the crime. In order to investigate undercover, Lou poses as a boxer, with Bud as his manager. They go to Stillwell's gym, where Lou gets in the ring with Rocky. Tommy, still invisible, gets into the ring with them and again knocks out Hanlon, making it look like Lou did it, and an official match is arranged. Morgan urges Lou to throw the fight, but when the match occurs (with the aid of an invisible Tommy), Hanlon is knocked out yet again. Morgan plans Bud's murder, but is thwarted by Tommy, who is wounded in the battle and begins to bleed badly. The protagonists rush to the hospital where a blood transfusion is arranged between Lou and Tommy. During the transfusion Tommy becomes visible again – some of Tommy's blood has apparently entered Lou, who briefly turns invisible, only to reappear with his legs inexplicably on backwards. ===== In an Indian village, Buldeo, an elderly storyteller, is paid by a visiting British memsahib to tell a story of his youth. He speaks of the animals of the jungle and of the ever-present threats to human life posed by the jungle itself. He then recalls his earlier life: As a younger man he dreams that his village could one day become an important town and that the jungle could be conquered. However, when he is speaking about these dreams, an attack by Shere Khan, the tiger, leads to the death of a man and the loss of the man's child. The child is adopted by wolves in the jungle and grows to be the wild youth Mowgli. Years later, Mowgli is captured by the villagers and taken in by his mother Messua, though she does not recognize him as her lost child. He learns to speak and tries to imitate the ways of men, as well as becomes friendly with Buldeo's daughter, Mahala – much to Buldeo's distress, since he is convinced that the wild Mowgli is dangerous. When Mowgli and Mahala explore the jungle, they discover a hidden chamber in a ruined palace, containing fabulous wealth. Warned by an aged cobra that the wealth brings death, they leave, but Mahala takes one coin as a memento. When Buldeo sees the coin, he tries to force Mowgli to tell him where the treasure is, but Mowgli refuses. Buldeo resolves to follow Mowgli to the site of the treasure. Later Mowgli fights and kills Shere Khan, with some last minute help from Kaa, the python. As he is skinning the body, Buldeo arrives. He threatens Mowgli with a gun, but is attacked by Mowgli's friend Bagheera, the black panther. Buldeo becomes convinced that Bagheera is Mowgli himself, shape-shifted into panther form. He tells the villagers that Mowgli is a witch, as is his mother. Mowgli is chained up and threatened with death, but escapes with his mother's help. However, she and another villager who tries to defend her are tied up and themselves threatened with burning for witchcraft. Mowgli is followed by the greedy Buldeo and two friends, a priest and a barber, to the lost city. They find the treasure (including a golden elephant goad with a big ruby intact) and leave for the village with as much as they can carry. But when they stop for the night, the priest tries to steal the goad from the barber's share and murders him when the barber wakes up. The priest unconvincingly tells Buldeo that the barber had attacked him and that he had killed in self-defense, but Buldeo knows better. The next day, the priest attacks Buldeo while his back is turned, but Buldeo knocks him into the swamp where he is killed by a crocodile. Mowgli, who'd been trailing the men, tells Bagheera to chase Buldeo, the sole survivor, from the jungle, and Buldeo flees for his life, jettisoning the treasure he'd been carrying. Enraged and maddened, Buldeo tries to murder Mowgli and even the jungle itself, by starting a forest fire. The fire rages, but the wind turns and threatens the village. The villagers flee, but Mowgli's mother and her defender are trapped. Mowgli brings the elephants to the village and breaks open the building, escaping to the river with his mother, Mahala and other villagers. He is invited to follow them to a new life downriver, but refuses to leave the jungle, turning back to help animals trapped by the fire. The scene returns to the present day, with the elderly Buldeo telling his story and admitting that the jungle defeated his youthful dreams, and because of his actions his reputation was destroyed. When asked what became of Mowgli and his daughter, as well as how he escaped from the fire himself, he looks into the camera and says that is another story. ===== Link Stuart and Gauche are the ruthless co-leaders of a gang of bandits who rob a train of its $400,000 payload. On the train is the Japanese ambassador, on his way to Washington, who has with him a ceremonial tachi, a gift to the American president. Gauche steals the gold-handled sword and shoots dead one of the ambassador's two samurai guards. At the same time, by Gauche's order, other members of the gang double-cross Link by throwing dynamite into the train car he occupies and leave him for dead. Before the gang departs, the surviving samurai guard, Kuroda, tells Gauche he intends to track him down and kill him, but Gauche is dismissive of the threat. The Japanese ambassador instructs Link, who was not injured in the attempt to kill him, but who has been disarmed, to assist Kuroda in tracking down Gauche. Kuroda is given one week to kill Gauche and recover the sword. If he fails, both Kuroda and the ambassador will have to commit harakiri for having lost their honor in allowing the sword to be stolen and the samurai's death to go unavenged. Link reluctantly agrees, but he realizes that Kuroda will kill Gauche immediately, which Link does not want because he knows Gauche will have hidden the loot. Once they set off in pursuit of the gang, Link repeatedly attempts to elude Kuroda, only to be thwarted by the irrepressible samurai. Sure enough, Gauche and four gang members bury the loot, and then Gauche kills them so only he knows the hiding place. Gauche pays off others, who go their own way, and the remaining gang members stay with him. While tracking Gauche's gang, Kuroda reveals to Link that his samurai values are disappearing and his countrymen no longer value the customs of old. Convinced that the country is changing forever and that the samurai spirit will soon be gone, Kuroda explains that the only way to honor his ancestors and his own way of life is to bring back the ceremonial sword. The two approach a ranch that has been taken over by some gang members, and in a brief battle kill them all and take their horses. Link, now armed with guns taken from the gang, can no longer be threatened into doing Kuroda's bidding. He rides away from Kuroda, but has a change of heart and returns to him, having grown to respect the strict bushido code by which Kuroda lives. However, he warns Kuroda that he will kill him if he tries to kill Gauche before Link learns where the loot has been hidden. Continuing the pursuit, Link decides the best way to get to Gauche is through his girlfriend, Cristina. The duo travel to the brothel where she works in the town of San Lucas, and Link locks her in her room. The next morning, four of Gauche's men arrive at the brothel to fetch Christina. Link and Kuroda kill three of them, and the fourth is sent back to Gauche with the message that the duo has abducted Cristina and will give her to Gauche in exchange for the stolen sword and Link's share of the spoils from the train robbery. The exchange is to take place at an abandoned mission a day's ride away. Link and Kuroda, on the way to the exchange, have a non-violent confrontation that compels Kuroda to agree to not kill Gauche until Link has obtained from him the information he seeks. In trying to escape from the duo, Christina rides into the path of some Comanches, and she kills a warrior who assaults her. In retribution, the leader commands her to be bound and her neck to be tied with wet rawhide, to have her slowly strangled as the sun dries the strip. Link and Kuroda charge into the group, killing many and driving the rest of the Comanches away. When they arrive at the mission, Link and Kuroda are ambushed by Gauche and his men. Gauche, who has the sword with him, tells one of his men to shoot Link, disregarding Cristina's appeal not to do so. Just then the Comanches attack, which forces the ex-partners, Kuroda, Cristina and Gauche's men to fight on the same side. The defenders successfully repel the attacks, first on the mission, then, after it is burned down, in the surrounding cane fields. However, the attrition rate is high. When the last attack has been countered and the Comanches are dead or have fled, only Link, Kuroda, Cristina and Gauche are alive. Gauche immediately faces off against Link, who has run out of bullets. Kuroda closes in behind Gauche and prepares to kill him, but remembering his promise to Link, he hesitates. Gauche turns and shoots Kuroda, mortally wounding him; Link seizes the opportunity to grab a rifle from the ground. Gauche is confident that Link will leave him alive to learn where the loot is hidden, but Link, having decided that the dying samurai's honor is more important to him than money, kills him and promises the dying Kuroda that he will return the tachi to the ambassador. After Kuroda dies, Link rejects Cristina's offer to join her, and later hangs the sword in front of the train station where the Japanese ambassador is arriving, thus eluding capture and fulfilling his pledge. ===== In the (then-near future) year 1998, the United States has run out of oil, and many Americans are living in their now-stationary cars and using nonpowered means of transportation such as jogging, riding bicycles and rollerskating. Many Americans wear sweatsuits. Paper money has become completely worthless, with all business transactions being conducted in gold; even a coin-operated elevator warns, "Gold Coins Only". In search of leadership, Americans elect Chet Roosevelt as president of the United States. Roosevelt, a "cosmically inspired" former governor of California, proves to have little in common with Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin D. Roosevelt other than his name. Roosevelt, an overly-optimistic man who quotes positive affirmation slogans, stages a number of highly publicized fund raising events, all of which fail. He becomes interested in having a relationship with Vietnamese American pop superstar Mouling Jackson. Real money comes in the form of loans from a cartel of Native Americans, led by billionaire Sam Birdwater, in control of Nike (renamed National Indian Knitting Enterprise). The federal government, now housed in "The Western White House" (a sub-leased condominium in Marina del Rey, California), finds itself facing national bankruptcy and in danger of being foreclosed and repossessed when Birdwater goes public on national television with the fact that he lent America billions of dollars and now wants the money back, the alternative being foreclosure and the country reverting to its original owners, stating "Hey, I have to eat, too. Does that make me a bad guy?". In desperation, Roosevelt hires a young television consultant Eric McMerkin to help produce a national raffle. Instead, they decide that the only way enough money can be raised to save America is instead to run a national telethon, and hire vapid TV celebrity Monty Rushmore to host it. However, Presidential adviser Vincent Vanderhoff is secretly plotting to have the telethon fail so that representatives of the United Hebrab Republic (formed by the merger of Israel and the Arab states) can purchase what is left of the country when Birdwater forecloses. ===== In Broome, Western Australia, 1999, two British tourists, Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl, are backpacking across the country with Ben Mitchell, an Australian friend. Ben buys a dilapidated car for their journey from Broome to Cairns, Queensland via the Great Northern Highway. The trio makes a stop at Wolf Creek National Park. Hours later, they discover that their watches have stopped and the car will not start. After dark, a man named Mick Taylor comes across them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. The group goes with him to an abandoned mining site several hours south of Wolf Creek. Mick regales them with tall stories of his past while making a show of fixing their car. He then gives the group water which causes them to fall unconscious. Liz awakens gagged and tied in a shed. She breaks free and hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage, and witnesses him sexually assaulting her. Liz sets the now-dismantled car on fire to distract him, and goes to help Kristy. When Mick returns, she shoots him with his rifle, the bullet hitting him in the neck. The women attempt to flee in Mick's truck. Mick stumbles out of the garage and shoots at them before giving chase. The women evade him by pushing his truck off a cliff before returning to the site to get another car. Liz leaves the hysterical Kristy outside, telling her to escape on foot if Liz does not return in five minutes. Liz enters another garage and discovers Mick's large stock of cars and travellers' possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Mick "helping" other travellers stranded at Wolf Creek. She picks up Ben's camera and notices Mick's truck in the footage; he had followed them long before they got to Wolf Creek. She gets into a car but Mick appears in the backseat and stabs her with a bowie knife. Liz crawls out and he hacks her fingers off, then severs her spinal cord, paralyzing her. He interrogates her as to Kristy's whereabouts. By dawn, Kristy has reached a highway and is discovered by a passing motorist. He attempts to help her but is shot dead by Mick with a hunting rifle. Mick gives chase, prompting Kristy to take off in the dead man's car. Mick shoots out her back tire and she attempts to crawl away, but is shot dead. Mick bundles her body and the dead motorist into the back of his car and torches the car. Ben awakens nailed to a mock crucifix in a mine shaft. He extracts himself and enters the camp in early daylight. He escapes into the outback, but becomes dehydrated and passes out beside a dirt road. He is discovered by a Swedish couple who take him to Kalbarri, where he is airlifted to a hospital. A series of title cards states that despite several police searches, no trace of Liz or Kristy has ever been found. Early investigations into the case were disorganised, hampered by confusion over the location of the crimes, a lack of physical evidence and the alleged unreliability of the only witness. After four months in police custody, Ben was cleared of suspicion. The film ends with Mick walking into the sunset with his rifle. ===== Set in 19th-century Osaka, the film tells the story of a love affair between Sasuke (Miura) and blind koto teacher Shunkin (Yamaguchi), who lost her sight at the age of nine. Blindness gives Shunkin an extraordinary ability to masterfully play the traditional Japanese instruments of the three-stringed shamisen and thirteen-stringed sophisticated koto. She performs as a renowned musician and also gives music lessons. The film is also a psychological study of Shunkin and struggles of a young woman aware there is life out there she is never going to experience. Her life takes a turn when she accepts a young man (Sasuke) to teach him play music. He is both her student and a servant. Sasuke strives to please Shunkin in every possible way but irritates her when she discovers, he tries to play with eyes closed, since it reminds her about her defect. The two develop a unique a melancholic romantic relationship. Despite Shunkin's resistance the two are drawn to each other closer and closer. Shunkin is aware of Sasuke feelings, but does not want to accept them. However, subconsciously, she cannot live without his love anymore. Shunkin suffers one more devastating tragedy when her face is burned with boiling water in her sleep by an assassin hired by a rejected suitor. Her beauty was a reason of the young woman pride and strength when dealing with her blindness and now even that was taken away from her. With her mutilated face she feels vulnerable, weak and scared of living her life. Her face is wrapped up in bandages. She forbids Sasuke to look at her anymore after the attack and does not want to show her scarred face to anyone. It is the time when their feelings become even stronger. They come to realization they cannot live without each other. Sasuke blinds himself to completely submerge into Shunkin's world and give her comfort that he never sees her other than a beautiful young woman. Shunkin ultimately surrenders to Sasukes' dedication and love and does not resist to openly loving him back any longer. They continue to live together and study and perform music together in complete harmony. ===== LAPD Detectives Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Lee Blanchard are paired as partners after engaging in a boxing match to raise funds for the department. Lee introduces Bucky to his girlfriend Kay Lake, and the trio becomes inseparable. Bucky is shocked when Kay tells him she isn't sleeping with Lee, and later tries to seduce him, but he refuses. He also discovers that Kay has been branded with the initials "BD", for Bobby DeWitt, the gangster whose arrest and conviction for a big bank robbery made Lee's career. Soon after, on January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short's dismembered body is found and she is dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press. Both detectives become obsessed with solving the case. Bucky learns that Elizabeth was an aspiring actress who appeared in a pornographic film and hung out with lesbians. He goes to a lesbian nightclub and meets Madeleine Linscott, who looks very much like Elizabeth. Madeleine, who comes from a prominent family, tells Bucky that she was 'very close' with Elizabeth but asks him to keep her name out of the papers in exchange for sexual favors. She introduces him to her wealthy parents almost immediately. Lee's obsession leads him to become erratic and abusive toward Kay. After Lee and Bucky have a nasty argument about a previous case, Bucky goes to Lee and Kay's to apologize, only to learn from Kay that Lee was responding to a tip about Bobby DeWitt. Bucky finds DeWitt in the atrium of a building before he is gunned down by Lee, then sees a man garrote Lee before a second figure steps out and slits Lee's throat. Lee and the man holding the rope fall over the railing to their deaths several floors below. The grief of losing Lee propels Bucky and Kay into having sex. The next morning, Bucky finds money hidden in Lee and Kay's bathroom. Kay reveals that she had been DeWitt's girlfriend and that he abused her. Lee rescued Kay, stole DeWitt's money, and put DeWitt behind bars. Bucky realizes Lee was there to kill DeWitt and leaves, furious, to return to Madeleine, where he notices a painting of a leering clown. Kay follows him and she is appalled to see Madeleine's striking resemblance to the Dahlia. Bucky starts putting the pieces together and remembers props in another movie matched the set in Elizabeth's pornographic film. The end credits thanked Emmett Linscott, Madeleine's father, and Bucky digs deeper into a story Madeleine told about him using old film sets to build cheap firetrap housing. In an empty house below the Hollywoodland sign built by Emmett, Bucky recognizes the set that was used in Elizabeth's film. He finds evidence in a barn on the property that Elizabeth was killed and butchered there, as well as a drawing of a man with a Glasgow smile. The drawing matches the painting in Madeleine's home and the gruesome smile carved into Elizabeth's face. Bucky confronts Madeleine and her father in their home and Madeleine's mother, Ramona, reveals that she killed Elizabeth. She confesses that Madeleine was not fathered by Emmett but rather by his best friend, Georgie. She says Georgie became infatuated while watching Elizabeth film the pornography. Ramona was disturbed by the idea of George having sex with someone who looked so much like his own daughter, and lured Elizabeth to the house and killed her. Before Bucky can decide what to do, Ramona shoots herself. A few days later, remembering something Lee said during the investigation, Bucky visits Madeleine's sister Martha with some questions. He learns that Lee knew about Madeleine and Elizabeth, and blackmailed Madeleine's father to keep it secret. Bucky finds Madeleine at a seedy motel, and she admits to being the one who slit Lee's throat. Although she insists that Bucky wants to have sex with her rather than kill her, he tells her she is wrong and shoots her dead. Bucky goes to Kay's house and she invites him in and closes the door. ===== On the first page, Forrest Gump tells readers "Don't never let nobody make a movie of your life's story," and "Whether they get it right or wrong, it don't matter." However, the character is not an idiot savant, as in the first book, but more similar to Tom Hanks' "warmhearted dope." The text purposely contains frequent grammar and spelling mistakes in order to indicate the character's deficient education and cognitive difficulties. The story suggests that the real-life events surrounding the film have affected Forrest's life.Delarte, Alonso (February 2004). "Movies By The Book: Forrest Gump" (PDF). Bob's Poetry Magazine: p. 24. Retrieved July 2, 2009. ===== Chapter 1: The Epic Beginning Ina discovers that her father, Masuhiro Senshin, has formed a peace treaty with the war-like Wataro clan. To avoid the arranged marriage, Ina runs away in middle of the night. Chapter 2: Off to Adventure Ina soon runs into a small group of bandits who threaten to kidnap her. These bandits are stopped when Yorikiro Wataro, the idealistic elder son of Hirotomo Wataro who has left his clan to live as a wandering samurai, appears to save Ina. Yorikiro manages, through luck, to kill two of the four bandits, but his katana is broken in the process. With no means to defend himself, Yori picks up Ina and attempts to escape. The two are forced to jump off a cliff and into a river below. After gaining consciousness from the fall, Ina grudgingly accepts Yorikiro's offer to follow her as a body guard. During introductions, both characters, for different reasons, avoid mentioning their clan names. Chapter 3: Ninja Death Inn The two find a small village inn and stay for the night. Ina and Yorikiro switch rooms when Ina finds a rat in her own. Later that night, two ninjas, upon locating Yori's original room on the Inn's register, break into Ina's room by mistake. Yori, alerted by Ina's scream, breaks into her room. Without a working sword, Yorikiro is forced to use his sheath to knock out the first ninja. The second, however, is able to counter his attack and kicks him through a wall into the next room. Yorikiro lands upon Cho Teko, a blind Taoist priest, who offers his assistance. Cho, a martial arts expert, quickly dispatches the second ninja. Yori and Ina leave the inn to avoid further trouble. Cho, lacking any particular goal, decides to join them. Here it is revealed that he is part of a prophecy that states a Christian, Hindu, and blind Taoist priest walk into a Japanese bar, and the world ends. Unfortunately, Cho had managed to accidentally go to Japan. As a devout follower of fate, however, Cho resigns himself to his role in the end of the world. Chapter 4: Daimyo Switcharoo Masuhiro Senshin, Ina's father, decides that the best way to avoid war with the Wataro clan is to journey to meet Hirotomo Wataro, personally explain about Ina running away and attempt to continue negotiating peace between the two clans. He appoints his brother in law Yukizane, a skilled strategist and diplomat, to lead the clan in his absence and takes a small group of bodyguards and retainers with him, hoping to make better time that way. Chapter 5: New Friend or Foe Yori, Ina, and Cho enter a new town where they plan to stop for the night. Upon entering the town they stop by a tea stand with a long line. Here they meet Ken, a disgruntled Ronin with a large Zanbatō sword. After entering the town, Yori runs off to buy a new blade for his broken sword at a "one yen" store. While the shop keeper attaches the blade, Yorikiro discovers a wakizashi with a retractable blade. He absent-mindedly pockets this item and leaves the store with his new sword. By the time Yorikiro meets up with Ina and Cho, it has been decided that there is only enough money for one room. Yori is left outside to find shelter for himself. Chapter 6: It's All in the Past Two bandits (unrelated to those found earlier in the comic) find Ken laying motionless in middle of a small wood outside town. Believing him to be dead, they attempt to steal from him, but soon find that he is quite alive and eager to fight despite their attempts to leave peacefully. The noise alerts Yori who comes to the aid of the clearly outmatched bandits. Yorikiro accidentally reveals his clan name, Wataro. Ken explains that his own clan had been wiped out by Yorikiro's and he intends to get revenge. The bandits are able to run away in the confusion, leaving Yori to face Ken alone. (The resulting fight is one of the first obvious parodies of Rurouni Kenshin). As the fight continues, Yorikiro's sword is broken a second time. He is then slammed against a tree and loses consciousness. When Yori recovers, he mentions that his former trainer Genchu would not wish to see him lose here. Ken is shocked to hear that Yori had known Genchu, a man who had saved him from the destruction that met the rest of his clan. In the process, Genchu had fought General Nataku, the man leading the invasion, and had cut off his pinky finger. Yori explains that he hopes to redeem his clan. Ken decides to join Yorikiro in hopes of obtaining his revenge specifically on General Nataku. Chapter 7: Ninja Ambush On his travels, Masuhiro is ambushed in a narrow mountain pass by a group of ninja who slay all his retainers. Masuhiro fights back skillfully, but eventually at the hands of the ninja band's female leader Suzuka, who cuts him with a drug laced weapon. Just before falling into unconsciousness, she reveals that she has been hired by the Wataro clan. Chapter 8: Politics Suck Eijiro Wataro visits the Senshin clan to meet his bride to be. Yukizane and Kagome (Masuhiro's wife) manage to excuse Ina's disappearance under the pretenses of illness. Furthermore, Yukizane is surprised to find that Eijiro did not meet Masuhiro while travelling. Eijiro leaves with a warning to the Senshin clan, and reports to his father that, as suspected, the bride has disappeared. He also informs Hirotomo that Masuhiro has gone missing as well, and that Eijiro has located Yorikiro's location. Upon hearing this, Hirotomo summons his four most trusted warriors, the Demons of the Sorrow, and sends them after his Yorikiro. Chapter 9: Send in the Ninjas As Ina, Yori, Cho, and Ken travel through a rock quarry, they are accosted by the somewhat incompetent ninja Bunzo, who specializes in rock jutsu. However, his skills seem to primarily involve throwing any available rocks at his opponents, and seem to be no match for Cho, and even less trouble for Ken. After Bunzo runs out of rocks to throw, he decides to make his retreat, but not before revealing that he is a member of the Izuma ninja clan, as well as his threat to throw Mount Fuji itself on his opponents. Bunzo walks away, muttering to himself, and the others find a sign giving them the way to Kyoto. Meanwhile, Masuhiro is found in a prison, alongside the two surviving bandits from the first chapter. After a brief discussion, Masuhiro manages to free the three of them from the ninja cave. He sends the bandits to find Yorikiro Wataro and warn him about the ninja's intentions, and goes himself to find Suzuka for more information. He finds her bathing, and she manages to get the upper hand on him again, drugging him with another needle, sending him right back into the prison. Chapter 10: Kyoto Kaos Chapter 11: Yori's Dead! Chapter 12: Think Like a Ninja Chapter 13: Demons vs. Ninjas Chapter 14: Kabuki Katastrophy Chapter 15: Brothers in Arms Chapter 16: Bridge Chapter 17: Deals in the Dark While Suzuka confides with the bound Masuhiro that her employer may not be completely trustworthy after all, Masuhiro manages to escape again and be recaptured by Suzuka. The ninja clan, with hostage in tow, meet up with their employer, who turns out to be Eijiro himself. He reveals that he has hired the ninja without his father's knowledge, and that with Masuhiro's death, war will break out between the two clans, and the Wataro clan will take what it deserves without the need for a peace treaty. After the deal is made, Suzuka instructs Ayane to send Masuhiro back to the Senshin clan for a price. Upon returning to his camp, Eijiro is sent to Nataku, who informs Eijiro that he has been aware of Eijiro dealing behind his father's back. However, Nataku sides with Eijiro, saying that his actions are in the best interest of the Wataro clan. Chapter 18: Choices In this flashback chapter, Nataku tells Eijiro of the story of Genchu's return to the Wataro castle. Genchu fights his way past the guards, and eventually makes his way to Hirotomo himself, and the two of them face off. Genchu tells Hirotomo that he intends to kill him, and make Yori the new daimyo. Meanwhile, Yori and Tadashii, having returned from a study session for a few weeks, find that their soldiers in ruin. The fight between Genchu and Hirotomo continue on, with Genchu the winner. However, Yori and Tadashii happen in on the fight, which distracts Genchu long enough for Hirotomo to turn the fight around. Hirotomo now has Genchu at his mercy, until Yori pleads with his father to spare Genchu's life. Hirotomo agrees, but only on the condition that Genchu is to be completely forgotten and never brought up again, except in mentioning that he is a traitor. ===== Supernova chronicles the search-and-rescue patrol of the medical ship Nightingale 229 in deep space in the early 22nd century and its six-member crew, which includes captain and pilot A.J. Marley (Robert Forster), co-pilot Nick Vanzant (James Spader), medical officer Kaela Evers (Angela Bassett), medical technician Yerzy Penalosa (Lou Diamond Phillips), search and rescue paramedic Danika Lund (Robin Tunney) and computer technician Benjamin Sotomejor (Wilson Cruz). Aboard their vessel, they receive an emergency distress signal coming from an ice mining operation on the moon Titan 37, more than 3,000 light-years away. The crew answers the call and dimension-jumps—during which Captain Marley suffers fatal injuries due to a malfunction of the ship's equipment—arriving in the path of Titan 37's debris cloud, some of which damages the ship and causes the loss of 82 percent of its maneuvering fuel. Worse still, Titan 37 orbits a blue giant, and its high gravity field will pull the ship to the point where it will be incinerated in 17 hours, 12 minutes—which happens to be almost the same amount of time that the Nightingale 229 will need to recharge its jump drive, their only possible hope for escape. With only an 11-minute window for escape, the surviving crew soon find themselves in danger from the disturbing young man (Peter Facinelli) they rescue, and the mysterious alien artifact he has smuggled aboard. This artifact is analyzed by the ship's computer and is said to contain nine- dimensional matter. It is ultimately discovered that the young man who called for rescue is actually Karl Larson, an old former lover of Kaela (it is implied they had an abusive relationship). Karl came into contact with the nine-dimensional matter after recovering the artifact. It somehow enabled him to acquire super-strength and supernatural healing abilities, and made him younger (such that Kaela did not recognize him). Karl murders most of the crew except Kaela and strands Nick on the mining platform. Karl unsuccessfully attempts to romantically reconcile with Kaela. Nick finds his way back to the medical ship through a rescue pod left on the mining platform, and a battle ensues between Nick and Karl. Karl is ultimately killed by Kaela using explosives placed near the alien artifact which Karl was obsessed with retrieving. The explosion ejects the artifact into space, hurtling it towards the blue giant. With moments left before the dimension jump activates, Kaela and Nick place themselves into the only remaining dimensional stabilization chamber (Karl had destroyed all but one), which is the only thing that enables human beings to survive the ship's dimensional jump drive. The pods are meant to hold only one person; however, two subjects might be genetically mixed during the dimensional jump. Before Nick and Kaela enter the only remaining pod, the computer warns them that the nine-dimensional matter is reacting with the gravity of the blue giant sun and will cause a nine-dimensional reaction that will spread in all directions, such that the reaction's resulting supernova will reach Earth within 51 years. The computer hypothesizes that the reaction will either destroy life on Earth or "enable humankind to achieve a new level of existence". Just before the blue giant supernovas, the ship engages in a dimensional jump which brings Nick and Kaela back to Earth. As a result of their being in the same pod, the two of them each have one eye of the other person's original eye color. The ship's computer also reveals that Kaela is pregnant, which may be the result of them being in the pod together during the jump, or the result of their copulation hours earlier. ===== Sitting in a top secret bunker one night puzzling over some challenging physics problems, some futuristic artifacts are amazingly teleported to the player—in the role of a US Army scientist—along with a note that says the artifacts are from the future, a future in which the Nazis won World War II and subsequently were able to enslave the entire world. The scientists who sent the artifacts did so in a hope that the player could reverse the outcome of the war, a war Nazi Germany should have rightfully lost. The success of the Nazis is based on their use of a mineral named lunarium, which has the ability to lower the IQ of human males drastically, thus effectively preventing military resistance when the Nazis invade. The lunarium is dropped in the form of bombs from a fleet of zeppelins flying at a higher altitude than anti-aircraft guns could possibly reach. What is even more puzzling is that lunarium is - as the name indicates - only mineable on the Moon, and mankind so far does not yet have the technology to reach it. Using a rocket pack and a radium pistol, the player must fly around the world fighting the escalating Nazi technology. Sometimes this includes shooting down enemy fighters with the radium pistol to intercept enemy shipments. Sometimes the sequences degenerate into bareknuckle fistfights with enemy Nazi guards in order to gain rocket parts, and sometimes he has to disable the defenses of two available lunarium depots to get fuel for both his own rocket pack and the rocket ship he must assemble. From time to time, the hero must catch up with the kidnapped scientist Dr. Barnstoff and his voluptuous daughter Jane (the love interest for the game) in a zeppelin. In these encounters the player must engage in dialogue with them (notably for the time, featuring digitized speech) to win their trust. Another part of the game takes the form of a strategy game: from a world map display the player directs five agents to search for hidden Nazi bases and they can also "organise resistance" to slow the enemy's advance towards the USA. The ultimate goal of the game is to collect five parts for a rocket ship and 500 units of lunarium to get to the Moon and close down the mines. But as it turns out, the Nazis were not the only party involved: An "Interplanetary Union of Fascists", which was formed by aliens, have struck a deal with the Germans, aiding their world conquest with their technology. In order to achieve final victory, the Rocket Ranger must battle one of these aliens. ===== Janie Barlow (Joan Crawford) is a young dancer who is reduced to stripping in a burlesque show. Arrested for indecent exposure, she is bailed out by millionaire playboy Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) who was attracted to her while slumming at the theatre with his society pals. When she tries to get a part in a Broadway musical, Tod intercedes with director Patch Gallagher (Clark Gable) to get her the job: he will put his money into the show, if Janie is given a part in the chorus. Even though he needs the money, Patch is resistant, until he sees Janie dance and realizes her talent. When, after hard work and perseverance, Janie is elevated to the star's part - replacing Vivian Warner (Gloria Foy) - Tod is afraid he will lose any chance of gaining her affection if she becomes a star, so he closes the show, and Janie, out of work, goes away with him. Patch starts rehearsals up again using his own money, and when Janie returns and finds out that Tod has deceived her and manipulated things behind the scenes, she dumps him and joins up with her new sweetheart, Patch, to put on the show, which is a smash hit.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 26 ===== In the opening scene in Ireland, a young boy loses his parents in a Viking raid, but is spared in spite of the command of Thord, the Vikings' leader, to kill him. His sister is kidnapped by the Vikings. Twenty years later, the boy has become a man and travels to Iceland to seek revenge against the perpetrators and find his sister. His name is never revealed, and he is only known as "Gestur" by the characters in the film since he is a stranger to them. "Gestur" simply means "guest" but is also not an uncommon given name. With two of the Viking raiders now living in exile from Norway and king Harald Hairfair, Gestur coldly plays their gangs against each other to get his revenge. He stays out of sight, only revealing himself through his killings and to Erik, Thord's fosterbrother. He slays several of Thord's men and then frames Erik's gang for it. Thord is led to believe that Erik is plotting against him and is lying about the Gestur character. Thord's younger brother encourages this - it is later revealed that he is the one plotting to overthrow Thord and take his position. Thord is eventually driven to attack Erik and his men, killing them all. Gestur discovers that Thord is married to the now adult sister and they have a young son. Gestur reveals himself to his long lost sister, but she is still a Christian like their father raised them and does not help Gestur's plans to assassinate Thord. Thord is a devout Norse paganist. Gestur secretly manipulates Thord's altar, leading Thord to believe that the gods demand his son, Einar, as a sacrifice. In her desperation, Gestur's sister reveals her brother was the one who manipulated the altar and leads Thord and his gang to capture Gestur. He refuses to reveal who he is, even under brutal torture. The guilt-stricken sister frees him in secret, and the badly wounded Gestur escapes to Erik's grave. Thord decides that he will use Gestur's trick against him. He secretly confides with Odin that he will use the ceremony as a hoax to lure Gestur out to save Einar. In the middle of the ceremony, Gestur suddenly reveals himself in Erik's funeral cloth. When Thord's arrows fail to kill Gestur, Thord's followers mistake him for Erik's vengeful ghost and flees. Gestur is secretly wearing armor beneath his cloak which allows him to get in range of Thord and his brother, revealing his true identity and killing them both. Gestur buries his weapons and asks his sister and her son to come with him back to Ireland. He claims that he will now abandon violence and live a Christian life. His sister refuses and says that her son is "old enough to have seen too much", using the same words that Thord used twenty years ago when he ordered the killing of Gestur. In the final scene of the film, Einar looks after Gestur in anger and digs up Gestur's buried weapons, presumably to avenge his father and continue the cycle of violence. ===== Ned (Nick in the film) Constantine, his wife Beth, and their daughter Kate relocate from New York City to an isolated Connecticut village, Cornwall Coombe, where the villagers adhere to "the old ways", eschewing modern agricultural methods and having limited contact with the outside world. The villagers celebrate a number of festivals that revolve around the cultivation of corn. The most important festival is "Harvest Home", which takes place once every seven years. Ned befriends Robert Dodd, a former college professor who is now blind and housebound; like Ned, Robert was once an outsider who moved to Cornwall Coombe at the behest of his wife Maggie, who was born in the village. Ned also meets Justin Hooke, who serves as the current ceremonial "Harvest Lord"; Justin's wife Sophie, his chosen "Corn Maiden" in the approaching "Corn Play"; and Worthy Pettinger, a young man whose dream of going to agricultural college are frustrated by his parents, who hold to the old ways. The most important person in the village is the widow Mary Fortune, known as "Widow," the village herbalist and midwife. When Kate suffers a severe asthma attack, the Widow Fortune performs a tracheotomy to save her life, and later prescribes home remedies which cure Kate entirely. Beth and Kate grow to adore the Widow, but Ned is suspicious of her herbal medicines and finds her influence in the town troubling. Meanwhile, Worthy is chosen as the next "Harvest Lord" who will replace Justin at the end of his seven years of service. Worthy does not wish to become the Harvest Lord, confusing Ned, who understood the title to be an honor. At church, Worthy shouts out a curse upon the corn before fleeing. The Widow announces that Worthy is henceforth "bane" and will be shunned from the village if he ever returns. Ned, however, secretly provides Worthy with money to escape the village, and Worthy promises to write to him. Ned begins to understand that the villagers, led by their women, practice pagan fertility rites to ensure their harvests. He became suspicious of the upcoming Harvest Home, but the most anyone will tell him is that it is "what no man may see nor woman tell." Meanwhile, unknown to Ned, Worthy's letter to Ned is intercepted and used to send a posse to retrieve him. Ned is horrified to see Worthy's body burned in a massive bonfire on Kindling Night. On the day of Harvest Home, Justin's wife Sophie commits suicide. She is denied burial in consecrated ground on the orders of the Widow Fortune. Ned denounces her for this cruelty, and the Widow declares Ned an outcast and has him imprisoned in the village jail to keep him from interfering with Harvest Home. All the women then depart to choose another Corn Maiden. Ned escapes and returns home to find his car missing and his phone dead. Ned goes to Robert for help, only to be told that on the night of Harvest Home, all the phones are disabled and all the cars confiscated until morning, while all the men are confined to their homes. Robert reveals that he himself was blinded for attempting to discover the secret of Harvest Home and begs Ned not to go out again. Fearing for his wife and daughter, Ned ignores Robert and returns to the village. Ned arrives in time to see the heavily-veiled new Corn Maiden, Justin, and the village women depart for Harvest Home. Ned races ahead of them. The Corn Maiden removes her veil, revealing herself to be Beth. When Ned cries out in horror, the women capture him and are on the verge of killing him before they are stopped by Widow Fortune. The Widow explains that Ned's family was allowed to move to Cornwall Coombe because they needed new blood. She then forces him to watch as Beth has sex with Justin, symbolically uniting the Harvest Lord and the Corn Maiden to ensure a good harvest. At the moment of Justin's climax, Tamar Penrose cuts his throat with a sickle. The women then sprinkle his blood through the fields. Ned tries to escape but the women surround him, blind him, and cut out his tongue. Months later, the blind, mute Ned learns that Beth is pregnant and that Kate is to be the next Corn Maiden. ===== Candy Christian, aged eighteen, is an extremely pretty and desirable but naïve young woman, who finds herself in a variety of farcical sexual situations as a result of her desire to help others. The men in her life, regardless of age or relationship, wish only to possess her. Having eluded the pursuits of her philosophy instructor Prof. Mephesto, she returns to her father's house, where she plans to allow the family gardener to sexually initiate her. However, her father steps in, and angrily denouncing the gardener as a Communist, attacks him and in the ensuing scuffle ends up with a fractured skull. Candy visits him in the hospital. Mr. Christian's twin brother Jack and his lascivious wife Olivia (Livia) are also present. Aunt Livia leaves, and Uncle Jack attempts to have sex with Candy; a nurse enters and wrestles him away from the girl, who escapes, only to find herself in the lair of young Dr. Krankeit, who is studying the salutary effects of masturbation. (Aunt Livia also has an adventure with Krankeit, which she later describes to Candy in a cheery letter.) Back in the hospital room, the patient (in identical head-bandages after the scuffle with the nurse) turns out to be Jack; Candy's father has gotten up quietly and left. On her way to work, Candy encounters a perverted hunchback, whom she takes for a sort of performance artist and invites to her apartment. Subsequently she is propositioned by school friends in a café, and by a gynecologist who overhears their conversation and gives Candy an "exam" in the bathroom. The café is raided by police and Candy escapes with the help of Pete Uspy, an anti-materialist (the only man in the novel with no designs on Candy's body) who sends her to the camp of the peace activist Crackers. Their leader Grindle is a would-be guru who talks Candy into intercourse by couching it in metaphysical terms. When Candy fears she is pregnant, he tells her the next phase of her spiritual journey is beginning, and buys her a one- way ticket to Calcutta, India. Soon after, Candy is meditating in a temple in Lhasa, along with a dung-encrusted pilgrim who sits nearby, when a thunderstorm occurs. She finds herself pinned between the fallen, lightning- struck statue of Buddha and the pilgrim. As he has the usual physical reaction experienced by men in Candy's proximity, she becomes aware of his identity when the rain washes his face clean (it is her father), and the novel closes with her cry of recognition. ===== In 1987, Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair, a British publisher, is at a book fair in Moscow. With business friends he goes on a drunken retreat to a secluded dacha in the forest near Peredelkino. When their talk turns to politics, Barley finds himself talking boldly of patriotism and courage, of a new world order, and an end to Cold War tensions. One attentive listener, "Goethe", asks him privately whether he truly believes in the possibility of such a world. Barley convincingly says that he does. Several months later in Moscow, a woman named Katya seeks Barley out at an audio fair, hoping to convince him to publish a manuscript for her friend Yakov which details Soviet nuclear capabilities and atomic secrets. The manuscript has a cover letter to Barley, saying that Yakov is trying to serve his country by hastening the day when democracy will come to the Soviet Union. Barley is in Lisbon. Katya gives the package to Niki Landau to forward it to Barley. When Landau is unable to locate Barley, the manuscript is sent to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Their Russia House is more than interested in it and ask Barley to contact Yakov with a list of verifying questions to determine the document's authenticity. Barley is content to stay out of the matter, but he is manipulated into undertaking the mission. He grows fond of Katya and begins thinking of a way to get her out of the Soviet Union. Over the course of several meetings with Katya and Yakov, Barley realises his nervous informant is very likely under KGB scrutiny. The CIA and MI6 decide one final meeting is needed to verify the authenticity of the data, but Yakov is suddenly "hospitalized" due to purported exhaustion. In a secure phone call, Yakov tells Katya through code that he has been taken and that she is in danger. Barley and Katya realise that any further meeting is merely a KGB scheme to draw them out into the open. Barley receives a message that he must bring "a final and exhaustive" list of questions on Soviet research. He makes contact with one of his Soviet publishing associates who uses his connections in the KGB to arrange a meeting with Yakov's handlers. Although the CIA and MI6 set up a major surveillance operation at the meeting site, Barley goes missing along with the last set of questions, presumably arrested. More than a year later, after several unconfirmed sightings in Moscow, Barley shows up in Portugal, offering no explanation for his absence. Neither the CIA nor MI6 are inclined to interrogate him, reasoning that the KGB has already worn him down to get the information they needed. They are resigned to the fact that the "manuscript" had been KGB bait all along. The truth, however, is that Barley traded the questions for the freedom of Katya and her family. The philosophical Barley reasons that governments are not the only ones who can manipulate and betray, and some things are more important than the games that spies play with others' lives. The theme of this novel is that the arms race is supported by duplicity that ensured funding of intelligence agencies, the military, and the military–industrial complex, a premise that is supported by KGB agents who were questioned in Langley after the breakup of the Soviet Union by the CIA. ===== In a restroom in the White House, a janitor finds secretary Carla Town dead. Metropolitan Police homicide detective Harlan Regis, whose apartment block is awaiting demolition in favor of a parking lot, is put on the case. At the White House, Regis is introduced to U.S. Secret Service Director Nick Spikings, National Security Advisor Alvin Jordan, and Secret Service agent Nina Chance. Spikings assigns Chance, a former Olympic gold-medal sharpshooter, to keep an eye on Regis. Parallel to this, the White House has to deal with an impending international crisis: President Jack Neil has been trying to deal with a situation where Americans are being held hostage in North Korea, and some people—including several members of his inner circle, led by Vice President Gordon Dylan—think that Neil is not handling it the right way. Some people think that Neil should send troops to North Korea to rescue the hostages, but he does not want to risk a potential second Korean War. White House janitor Cory Allen Luchessi was apparently unaccounted for on the night of the murder and had once made a pass at Carla. He is arrested and questioned, but his testimony and a clearly set-up piece of evidence lead Regis to suspect that the Secret Service may be involved. That night, Regis finds his apartment burglarized; the culprit escapes, and in a subsequent search, a hidden bug is found. In a picture of Carla, Regis sees Burton Cash, the Secret Service agent assigned to Kyle Neil, the president's son. Regis figures out that Kyle had sex with Carla on the night of the murder. At a dance club, Regis talks with a young woman who says that Kyle once bragged that he shared Carla with his father. Carla's uncle's company, Brookline Associates, is the president's leading East Coast fundraiser, and also owns the apartment that Carla lived in. Regis eventually discovers that Chance once was Kyle's bodyguard herself. When he confronts her, Chance explains that one night she discovered Kyle beating up his girlfriend. The Secret Service covered up the beating so that Kyle would not be arrested for assault, and Chance asked to be reassigned and was replaced by Cash. Upon being confronted by Regis, Kyle denies that he murdered Carla, but provides a special piece of information: among the bookings she made, Carla supposedly also ordered a car - despite not having a driver's license. Later on, Regis and Chance discover that the most recent entries in Carla's appointment book were forged. With some clues left by Jordan, Regis finds out that Spikings has withheld several surveillance tapes from the night of the murder. Regis goes to Spikings' residence to question him; Spikings is willing to show the tape but is suddenly killed by a sniper. However, Regis and Chance escape the gunfire with the tape. They learn that Jordan engineered the murder in order to blackmail Neil into resigning, which would allow Dylan to assume office and have troops sent to North Korea. Regis, Chance, and Regis's partner Stengel enter the White House tunnels. The sniper pursues them and wounds Stengel, but Chance manages to kill him. Pursued by the Secret Service, Regis just barely manages to get in contact with Neil and present him with the evidence of Jordan's conspiracy. Jordan attempts to shoot Neil, only for his shot to be intercepted by a handcuffed Chance, and he is killed by the Secret Service. Chance and Stengel are brought to a hospital, where they recover from their injuries. In gratitude for his rescue, Neil promises Regis to look into the commission who bought Regis's building. ===== Grayson's traveling carnival comes to Munich with acts that include high-dive artist Frank Collini (Lyle Bettger) and silent strongman Groppo (Ady Berber). A local girl named Willi (Anne Baxter) picks the pocket of Joe (Steve Cochran), who works for the carny, but she ends up being offered a job. Joe makes romantic advances to Willi, who tries to resist him but can't. Collini asks if she would like to become a part of his act, which involves diving into a flaming tank of water from a great height. He also proposes marriage on Willi's first night as part of the show. Magazine photographer Bill comes to take their picture as the Great Collinis' fame grows. Collini beats Joe up after catching him with Willi, whereupon he plunges to his death after a rung on his high-dive ladder breaks. Willi inherits $5,000. Joe spends the night with her, but the next morning, he is gone as is her money. She eventually gets Joe to confess that he sawed Collini's rung in two, deliberately causing his death. When Willi asserts her independence from Joe, he tries to strangle her. Hearing her cries for help, Groppo comes to Willi's rescue and chases Joe who tries to escape on a Ferris wheel. Groppo climbs to the top of the wheel and throws Joe off, killing Joe; and Groppo is led away by the police. ===== To stop a solar flare from destroying the Earth, Steve Kelso is tasked to drop an artificially intelligent bomb on the Sun from the spaceship Helios. Arnold Teague, who believes the danger to be overstated, attempts to sabotage the mission so he can profit from the panic. Teague's agents on Earth clash with Kelso's father, Admiral "Skeet" Kelso, and his son, Mike. ===== Ghosts of Albion: Witchery by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden The story is about the Swift siblings, Tamara and William, the descendants of a wealthy early Victorian era London family. Tamara is a budding novelist (specializing in pulp horror novels, or "penny dreadfuls") and William is an architect's apprentice. One night in 1838 they are called to their ailing grandfather's bedside. There he tells them that while he may have seemed to be another stage magician, he is actually a mystical soldier who protects Albion, the mystical spirit of Britain. William and Tamara at first do not believe him, until he is suddenly slaughtered before their eyes by werewolves, and their father is possessed by a demon. Before dying, their grandfather had told the two that they are to carry on his legacy as protectors of Albion. His words are soon confirmed when they are soon introduced to the ghosts of the poet Lord Byron (Joseph McFadden), Admiral Nelson (Anthony Daniels), and Queen Bodicea (Emma Samms), also mystical protectors of Albion. They all leave their home, now overrun with demons, to the house of Nigel Townshend (Paterson Joseph), an old friend of their father's (as well as Nelson's). There they study spells and prepare themselves to fend off certain doom from Britain—and the world. ===== Former conman Nick Blake (John Garfield), a soldier returning to New York City after World War II, looks up his old girlfriend Toni Blackburn (Faye Emerson) to get the money she has been holding for him while he was in the army. Toni claims that she lost the money investing in a nightclub before selling it to Chet King (Robert Shayne), who employs her there now as a singer. However, Nick has discovered Toni's affair with King, and gets his money back from King. Nick looks up old conman Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan), who feels he's getting too old for the con game and that if he keeps it up, he will end up "selling pencils on the side of the road." Nick and his crony Al (George Tobias) travel to Los Angeles, where another con artist, Doc Ganson (George Coulouris), has spotted a sucker, but has neither the money nor the charm necessary for the job. Doc reluctantly approaches Pop to recruit Nick, even though there is bad blood between them. The plan is to have Nick, a ladies' man, romance rich recent widow Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and persuade her to invest in a phony tugboat business. Nick agrees on the condition that he get two-thirds of the proceeds, increasing Doc's bitter resentment of the younger, more successful man. The plan hits a snag when Nick falls in love with the intended victim and decides to back out of the con. At the same time, Gladys' business manager, Charles Manning (Richard Gaines), has found out about Nick's criminal past and alerts both Gladys and the authorities. The law can't touch Nick since he hasn't yet taken any money. Nick admits the truth to Gladys anyway. However, she is hopelessly in love and refuses to let him go. Nick decides to pay the others the $30,000 he promised them, using his own money. Toni shows up, though, and learns of the aborted scheme. When she tells Doc that she is sure Nick intends to marry Gladys and her $2,000,000, the gang kidnaps the widow for a larger share of her money. Pop is able to follow them to their hideout. In the ensuing gunfight, Nick rescues Gladys, but both Doc and Pop are killed. ===== Harry Beckmeyer, an Australian anthropologist, obtains film footage from 1905 which shows Australian Aborigines ceremonially sacrificing a wolf-like creature. Alarmed by the reports of a werewolf killing a man in Siberia, Beckmeyer tries to warn the US president about widespread werewolf attacks, but the president is dismissive. Jerboa, a young Australian werewolf, flees her sexually abusive stepfather, Thylo. After spending the night on a park bench near the Sydney Opera House, she is spotted by a young American, Donny Martin, who offers her a role in a horror film, Shape Shifters Part 8. Jack Citron, the film's director, praises her natural talent and hires her immediately. After Jerboa and Donny attend a film which depicts a werewolf transforming, she insists that "it doesn't happen like that" and admits she is a werewolf to an unbelieving Donny. After they have sex, Donny notices that Jerboa's lower abdomen is covered in downy white fur and a large scar. At the wrap party for the film, Jerboa is exposed to strobe lights which make her start transforming. She flees the party and is hit by a car. At the hospital, doctors find she has a marsupial pouch and striped fur on her back like a thylacine. Doctors also discover that Jerboa is pregnant and question Donny about her unusual anatomy. Beckmeyer's father disappears in the Outback shortly after recording a film of tribal villagers killing a werewolf. Three of Jerboa's sisters track her to Sydney and take her back to the pack's hidden werewolf town, Flow (wolf spelled backward). Beckmeyer and his colleague Professor Sharp spend the evening watching a visiting ballet troupe practice. They witness the prima ballerina, Russian Olga Gorki, transform into a werewolf, to the horror of her troupe. She is captured and taken to a laboratory but quickly escapes. She makes her way to Flow, where the pack wants her to be Thylo's mate. Jerboa gives birth to a baby werewolf which crawls into her marsupial pouch. Donny informs Beckmeyer that his girlfriend is from Flow and they attempt to find her. Jerboa smells Donny nearby and meets him at night. She shows him their baby boy and tells him about the impending danger; they flee to the hills. The next morning a government task force captures the werewolf pack. Beckmeyer convinces Olga to allow scientists to study her and Thylo. After Thylo is tortured with strobe lights to make him transform, Beckmeyer frees him and Olga. The trio escape into the Outback and find Kendi, Donny, Jerboa, and the baby. Kendi summons the spirit of a phantom wolf which massacres hunters pursuing the group. Kendi is cremated, but the smoke alerts soldiers who are still in pursuit. Kendi's skeleton attacks the soldiers before being destroyed by a soldier's machine gun. At night, Thylo also summons the spirit and is transformed into a huge wolf who attacks the remaining soldiers before being killed by a bazooka blast that destroys the rest of the encampment. Olga and Beckmeyer fall in love and hide with Jerboa and Donny at an idyllic riverside camp. Eventually Jerboa and Donny leave, assuming new identities; the Beckmeyers remain behind to raise their daughter and newborn son. Sharp locates Harry and informs him that all lycanthropes have been given amnesty due to the crimes committed against them. The Beckmeyers move back to the city. While teaching a class in Los Angeles, Beckmeyer is approached by a young man who introduces himself as Zack, Jerboa and Donny's son. Zack informs Beckmeyer that his parents are living in Los Angeles under new identities: Jerboa is now the famous actress "Loretta Carson" and Donny is the famous director "Sully Spellingberg". That night, Olga and Beckmeyer watch Jerboa win a best actress award on a television show hosted by Dame Edna Everage. As Jerboa accepts the award, the flashing cameras and stage lights cause her to change into a werewolf. Olga also transforms, to her husband's dismay. Jerboa goes on the attack as her sisters howl in glee; Sharp is seen in his living room smiling deviously. The final shot is of a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial carnivore which was hunted to extinction by Australian farmers to protect their sheep. ===== Says Ted: "After I've cleared up a couple murders, you and I could have lots of fun." Private detective Ted Shane returns to work with his former partner Ames, who is not particularly happy about the situation because his wife Astrid dated Ted before they were wed. Valerie Purvis hires the detectives to locate a man called Farrow, and when both Ames and Farrow are found dead, Shane is suspected of both murders. Shane finds his office and apartment have been ransacked and his secretary Miss Murgatroyd has been locked in a closet by Anthony Travers, who is in search of an 8th-century ram's horn rumored to be filled with jewels. Madame Barabbas is also searching for the treasure and sends a gunman to bring Shane to her. Working all sides of the street, Shane makes deals with each of them to find the horn, and eventually winds up in possession of a package allegedly containing it, but it turns out to be full of sand instead of jewels. The police round up all the suspects, but Shane and Valerie escape. He baits her into confessing to Ames's murder and tries to apprehend her for the $10,000 reward, but Valerie thwarts him by allowing a washroom attendant to turn her in to the police instead. Miss Murgatroyd then shows up and claims Shane for her own. ===== The musical's story spans about 40 years, from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. Magnolia Hawks (Irene Dunne) is an 18-year-old on her family's show boat, the Cotton Blossom, which travels the Mississippi River putting on shows. She meets Gaylord Ravenal (Allan Jones), a charming gambler, falls in love with him, and eventually marries him. Together with their baby daughter, the couple leaves the boat and moves to Chicago, where they live off Gaylord's gambling winnings. After about 10 years, he experiences an especially bad losing streak and leaves Magnolia, out of a sense of guilt that he is ruining her life because of his losses. Magnolia is forced to bring up her young daughter alone. In a parallel plot, Julie LaVerne (Helen Morgan) (the show boat's leading actress, who is part black, but passing as white) is forced to leave the boat because of her background, taking Steve Baker (Donald Cook) (her white husband, to whom, under the state's law, she is illegally married) with her. Julie is eventually also abandoned by her husband, and she becomes an alcoholic. Magnolia becomes a success on the stage in Chicago. Twenty-three years later, Magnolia and Ravenal are reunited at the theater in which Kim, their daughter, is appearing in her first Broadway starring role. ===== A community group of British women (mostly Punjabis of various faiths) of different generations, take a group day out to the Blackpool Illuminations. The tensions of the generation gap torn between tradition and modernism as well as the personal upsets and issues of the women and girls come to boiling point as they spend the day out. Simi, the head of the group, has modern social beliefs about feminism that the older club women object to, however she manages to be the caring, in-control figure who holds the day together despite tensions. Ginder is escaping from her abusive criminal husband with her young son and fighting the stigma of single parent and her son's pleas to have both a mother and father again. Two boy- crazy teenage girls meet with the disapproval of the conservative older ladies. Hashida is a high flying student who is about to start medical school, yet would prefer to be studying painting. She has hidden her Afro-Caribbean boyfriend Oliver from her family for a year, but now she's pregnant by him and now they must decide about the child and their relationship: would it stand the strain of social disapproval. Asha, a devout Hindu and Bollywood-cinema fan, is stuck with a humdrum life in her convenience shop and finds excitement and a sense of fulfilling missed opportunities in life with a charming, eccentric, artistic English actor in Blackpool, yet feels she must stay in her marriage. In the end, most of the characters have their stories left open. We do not see what happens to Asha or Oliver and Hashida and the final scenes of these characters seem quite content but open-ended. Ginder and her son escape the violence of her husband and the most conservative characters receive a humorous treatment in a strip club. ===== =====