From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The special follows the spring training of Charlie Brown's baseball team, which is having problems. A child named Leland (Frieda's little brother) joins the team. Lucy points out that they are the only team without uniforms, so Charlie Brown and his team train hard for the first game of the season. Thanks to Leland, Charlie Brown's team wins, 27 to 26, therefore getting their uniforms (A recurring plot line is that Leland is so short the other team's pitcher either constantly walks him or beans him in his batting helmet). However, the team loses their next game because Leland has to quit because their new uniforms are too big for him, with Charlie Brown saying at the end, "It's not how you look, it's how you play the game." ===== The special begins with Linus roller-skating all over town. On his way back from a birthday party, he passes by a garden where he hears someone singing ("O Mio Babbino Caro") As he enters the garden, he learns that a little girl named Mimi is the person that was singing. After Linus and Mimi spend time gardening together, Linus invites her to his birthday party, and she accepts the invitation. Linus keeps hearing Mimi's singing voice everywhere he goes and can't seem to stop thinking about her. As Linus is writing his guest list for his birthday party, Lucy asks who Mimi is. After Linus tells her, Lucy thinks that it's ridiculous that Linus is inviting a girl that he just met and thinks Mimi will not show up, but Linus is positive that she will. On the day of Linus' birthday party, Linus wonders where Mimi could be. Lucy and Sally bring out Linus' birthday cake and light the candles, and everybody starts singing "Happy Birthday" to him. Linus tries to get them to stop, but to no avail. As soon as everybody finishes singing, Linus hears Mimi singing "Happy Birthday" from outside. After Mimi finishes singing to Linus, she gives him a flower and a kiss. At first, Linus is sad when Mimi has to leave, but he later starts dancing along with everyone else. The end of the special shows Linus talking to Charlie Brown about if he'll ever see Mimi again and Woodstock shows up, whistling the song that Mimi sang. ===== At the start of the special before the opening title credits are shown, Snoopy is using music to play a concertina on top of his doghouse, but he falls off and the concertina smashes on him. Charlie Brown is making dog food, Sally tells Snoopy to get his feet off the table and stop ringing that cell phone and then to stop ringing the door bell, Charlie Brown asks Sally if she has glasses, but she doesn't have optical equipment. It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown is a retelling to Sally by Charlie Brown of the story how the Pied Piper of Hamelin (portrayed by Snoopy as the Pied Piper Beagle) chased away all the mice (changed by Charlie Brown from rats because, upon the story saying that the rats fought the dogs and killed the cats, Sally is terrified of rats) from the city of Hamelin, The mice play basketball, football, baseball, hockey and other sports, the mice get all over Charlie Brown, causing him to cough, after that, Schroeder plays piano during mice invasion, but suddenly, a mouse jumps on the piano and frightens Schroeder, this causes the mice to dance and play "Chopsticks" on his toy piano. The mice dance to the funky music to lure Franklin, Marcy, Violet and Pigpen away, At the city hall, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Sally follow a TV crew into the mayor's office. The Peanuts gang substitute some characters, Snoopy being the Pied Piper Beagle with his contract being for a year's supply of dog food. When Snoopy plays a concertina (with David Benoit doing the honors), he lures the mice away from the city hall and the mice follow him out of town and into the distance, The woman claps to the beat, and the sun is about to set, once Snoopy and the mice are gone, the bells ring and the music gets faster as the mayor and his council members are put under a spell and dance to the faster tempo. Charlie Brown warns the mayor and his council that anyone that refuses to pay should pay in other ways, so Snoopy plays a long note on his concertina and does it to the mayor, when the mayor and his council refuse to pay for Snoopy's years supply of dog food, they laugh, but suddenly, they hear Snoopy playing his concertina again and the mayor and his council become bewitched. Instead of bringing Charlie Brown, Sally, Linus, Lucy and the other Peanuts gang out of town with his music, Snoopy does it to the mayor and his council and brings them out of town, the mayor and his council members dance to the tune of "Snoopy the Pied Piper Beagle", follow him out of town and into the distance where they then sing the song "Down By The Old Millstream by Randy Crenshaw, Neil Ross, Michael Mishaw, Gene Morford and Don Shelton", part of its lyrics "Not the river but the stream", "Where I first met you", "With your eyes of blue", "That you loved me true", "You were sixteen", "My village queen", and "By the old millstream", never to return again, once the mayor and his council members dissappear by Snoopy's concertina playing seen in the shadow of the sunset, day turns into night as the mayor and his council members are seen by a campfire, in which they then sing the song "Goodnight Sweetheart" and they then go to sleep by the fire pit, there's also tents and a moon there. When Charlie Brown finishes his story "A Promise is a Promise", little sister Sally does not think it would happen in real life. When they hear music and look out the window to see what it is, they see Snoopy the Pied Piper Beagle on his doghouse using music to make a bewitched Linus, Lucy, Franklin and Peppermint Patty dance around his doghouse, Lucy waits a long 30 seconds enough to shout in a rough manner "Charlie Brown, get your stupid dog to stop playing this music!" and Linus, Lucy, Franklin and Peppermint Patty continue dancing, but after that, the special draws to a close. There's also a special presentation called "An American Classic, Peanuts" featurette about a documentary of a tribute to the Peanuts gang's all time creator Charles Schultz at the end of the VHS release, but on the DVD release, it can be shown on the "Special Features" menu. ===== A series of vignettes are strung together regarding the Peanuts gang. Each vignette has a song that involves various members of the gang: * "Don't Be Anything Less Than Everything You Can Be" – Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Sally and Linus sing about being the best that you can be, as Snoopy observes. * "Snoopy's Song" – Snoopy decides to obey his owner more after Lucy almost convinces Charlie to trade him in for a cat. * "Woodstock's Theme" – short musical interlude plays as Woodstock wakes up and flies, with Snoopy commenting on his technique. * "Edgar Allan Poe" – Peppermint Patty, Lucy, Sally, Linus, Charlie Brown agonize over the teacher calling on them, figuring that no matter what, the teacher will ask them something having to do with Edgar Allan Poe. * "I Know Now" – Sally, Peppermint Patty and Lucy sing about what they have learned as they have grown up. * "The Vigil" – Linus once again holds vigil in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night, in hopes that the Great Pumpkin will appear. Snoopy accompanies him, but wears dark glasses so as to prevent anyone from recognizing him. * "Clouds" – The Peanuts gang lay about in a grassy meadow, talking about what they see in the clouds. * "The Great Writer" – Snoopy attempts to compose his written masterpiece: "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night". * "Poor Sweet Baby" – Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown discuss understanding what love is. * "The Big Bow-Wow" – Snoopy is selected as Head Beagle, and celebrates by going out on the town, and performing at a stage show. * "Just One Person" – The Peanuts gang sing an ensemble piece about believing in yourself ===== Psychologist Charles Marlowe (Lee) invents a drug which will release his patients' inhibitions. When he tests it on himself, he becomes the evil Edward Blake, who descends into crime and eventually murder. Utterson (Cushing), Marlowe's lawyer, believes that Blake is blackmailing his friend until he discovers the truth. ===== Jacob "Jake" Geismer (George Clooney), an American war correspondent for The New Republic, returns to Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers after World War II was over in Europe (May 1945) but before hostilities ended in Asia (August 1945). Jacob witnesses his murdered driver, a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully (Tobey Maguire), being fished from a river eddy, suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds. The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 50,000 German reichsmarks — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces. Geismer becomes entwined in both the mystery of his murdered driver and the clandestine search by both Soviet and American forces for the missing German Emil Brandt (the title character, played by Christian Oliver). He becomes more involved in both mysteries as his investigation intersects with his search for Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), a Jew — and Emil's wife — with whom Geismer had been in a relationship prior to the war. Lena has survived the Holocaust by doing "what she had to" to stay alive — early in the film this is assumed to be prostitution, but Lena, in reality, holds a darker secret of complicity and guilt. In the film, Emil Brandt is a former SS officer who had been the secretary of Franz Bettmann, Chief Production Engineer of the V-2 rocket at concentration camp Mittelbau- Dora/Mittelwerk. (Bettmann is only a minor character in the film; he appears to be based on the real Arthur Rudolph.) The Soviets, the Americans, and the British all try to get hold of Emil Brandt, for different reasons. The Americans have already detained Bettmann in a safehouse and intend to transport him to the U.S. as part of their Operation Overcast/Paperclip to have him work on their own rocket program (cf. Wernher von Braun). In the film, they are fully aware of Bettmann's role at Camp Dora and know about the slave labor used in the V-2 program, but want to cover up his involvement (because they could not lawfully employ a known war criminal), which includes eliminating Emil Brandt, whose testimony or written notes would prevent their whitewashing of Bettmann. Geismer, in his attempts to get his former lover, Lena, out of Berlin, gets more and more involved in the search for Emil Brandt. At one point, Lena gives Emil's notes on Camp Dora to Geismer. When Lena and Geismer try to hand Emil Brandt over to the American prosecutor charged with handling war crimes cases, they are intercepted by the American authorities who want to protect Bettmann, and Brandt is murdered. But Geismer still has Brandt's notebooks, which he now trades in to the war crimes investigators of the U.S. Army (who have turned out to be in league with the other American authorities — the ones who want to keep that evidence confidential to whitewash Bettmann) in exchange for a Persilschein (a denazification document) and a visa for Lena, such that she can leave Germany. Through a minor character of a Jewish owner of a pawn shop who survived the Holocaust with his legs amputated, the film refers to the Nazi human experimentation, in particular to bone transplantation experiments as they were done at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. ===== The film tells the story of two sisters, Caroline and Jessica, after their father calls Jessica and informs her that he will no longer finance their expensive New York lifestyle. Each sister reacts in different ways: Jessica must figure out how to continue her art studies and whether to move to France with her boyfriend Albert, while Caroline prostitutes herself to two investment bankers. When the girls' father, Mr. Blaine, arrives in town accompanied by his bodyguard/assistant Benton, Albert, who had come to Jessica's apartment to surprise her, is accidentally shot when he is mistaken for somebody who has been sending death threats to Mr. Blaine. ===== The novel concerns the adventures of “Mike”, who, recovering from a failed marriage, falls in with a clique of hard core northern rock climbers and becomes immersed in an intense and inward looking life style in which climbing is so important that “real life” is all but excluded. Mike is initially fascinated by this rather strange group of people and is in awe of their focus and technical competence on the rock, while their obvious incompetence in more mundane areas of life only seems to increase their glamour. For a while Mike loses himself in this closed little world but in the end seems to become disenchanted with its narrowness. The overall tone of the book is very much one of disappointment and alienation. The pivotal event is the death of the enigmatic “Sanky” who falls 30 feet from the 5b crux of a climb he has soloed without difficulty many times in the past. His friends cannot believe he has died on an undistinguished climb that was well within his technical competence and seem to have difficulty understanding the obvious fact that a 30-foot ground fall is more likely to result in death than a twisted ankle. The locations are easily recognisable by anyone who has climbed in the Peak and Pennines. Harrison does find beauty in this sometimes harsh and occasionally post industrial landscape but in keeping with the general tone of the book his eye is sometimes rather jaundiced. Describing the pleasant view from the top of Stanage Edge he chooses to focus on the cement factory at Hope. Although the story is set in the (mostly) picturesque town of Holmfirth, he devotes his descriptive powers to Lodge’s supermarket, the one truly hideous building in the town. In several interviews Harrison has said that he was pleased with the book. ===== A denizen (Garry Shandling) of a faraway planet occupied only by highly evolved males is ordered by his superior, Graydon (Ben Kingsley), to find a female human, impregnate her and bring the baby back to the planet. The visitor to Earth ends up in Phoenix, Arizona, where he assumes the name Harold Anderson and takes a job in a bank. There he meets a womanizing co-worker Perry Gordon (Greg Kinnear), who goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings strictly to meet women. Harold accompanies him to one and meets Susan (Annette Bening), a recovering alcoholic. He must marry her before he can try to mate. After their wedding in Las Vegas, Susan finds herself wildly satisfied by Harold, even though men from his planet have no genitals and he has been equipped for his Earth visit with a penis that makes a loud whirring sound whenever he gets an erection. Harold and Susan have a difficult time conceiving a baby. Meanwhile, Roland Jones (John Goodman), an employee of the FAA who learned of Harold's odd behavior on an airplane, has become obsessed with proving him to be an alien and being the first one to find him. When the child is born, Harold, following orders, abandons his wife and returns to his planet, but his sadness over hurting Susan leaves him with guilt and second thoughts even though people from his world theoretically have no emotions, so against the wishes of Graydon, he returns the baby to Susan and tells her the truth. Susan is angry, grateful, and completely disbelieving. Harold offers to prove that he is in fact an alien and does so just as Roland arrives, viewing Harold's "act of proof" through the window. Instead of forgiving him and welcoming him back into their relationship, Susan breaks down in tears, saying, "I thought I had things right but then I married an alien!" Harold leaves. Once outside, Harold sees Roland, who is delighted to know he was right all along about Harold being an alien. Roland implores Harold to come with him and admit this to his wife, who doesn't believe him about Harold. Harold charitably agrees, but before that can happen, Graydon shows up with a phaser. Holding Harold at gunpoint, he declares he's taking Harold back. Roland pulls his gun on the leader, who brags, "none of your primitive weapons can hurt me, and I can heal instantly from anything," and shoots him in the chest. Graydon falls dead into the fountain. Susan comes outside and says she thinks they should try to patch things up after all. Roland happily walks off with Graydon's alien body. Susan and Harold retake their vows in the wedding she says she always wanted. On the drive home, he tells her that the citizens of his planet want him to take over as leader. They discuss it, but she doesn't want to move since all her friends are here, and she knows nothing about the school system there. Harold grudgingly agrees to make the very long commute. ===== This book is split into three parts: the first deals with Chris' first meeting of Jenny, the second with his search for her, and the third with the tragic ending. The first sentence gives away the doomed nature of the book: Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm Oxford evening.... The seventeen-year- old main character, Chris, works for a lighting company in Oxford, England. While rigging up a party he inadvertently rescues a beautiful young woman in a white dress from upper class thugs. Smitten, he looks for her, but she has disappeared into the night, leaving the white dress in a boat shed. Before she goes, however, he finds out that her name is Jenny, and that she had gatecrashed the party. The thugs' leader, Piers, recognised her and was threatening to turn her in, unless she slept with him. He then searches for her for many weeks, and eventually finds her squatting in an empty house with two friends (not, as he fears, lovers). He asks her out on a date, and she accepts, much to his joy. After this, he goes to his father's house (his parents have divorced three weeks ago; their emotionless parting chills him), and meets his mistress, his secretary Diane. She asks him how his mother is, hoping that she hasn't forced her to suicide by taking her husband away from her. Chris tells her that she has a boyfriend, called Mike, and she is feeling much better. His father mentions that they are going abroad for a weekend together, and asks him if he would house sit for them. Of course, Chris agrees, and plans to bring Jenny there for a romantic weekend, as his father would be having in Paris. After another date (in which they ironically see Romeo and Juliet) Chris asks Jenny to spend the weekend with him at his father's house after they kiss passionately in the park. She says that she will be there. Meanwhile, we hear about Jenny's past at the hands of her abusive father. She comes from Yorkshire (and still retains a Northern accent), and after suffering at his hands very literally leaves home on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. The story is set a year later. On the night which she was supposed to arrive, she does not come. And so, crestfallen and lovesick, Chris goes to bed. The next morning Jenny arrives, and after having tea on the porch they go into his father's bedroom and make love. He is a virgin, while she is much more experienced, and he notices she has a tattoo of a butterfly above her left breast (hence the title). The next day, when she leaves, Jenny finds that the house in which she and her friends had been illegally squatting has been the victim of a police drugs raid. Her hippie flatmates are taken into custody for possession of cannabis, and, despite her innocence, Jenny flees the scene, since she does not trust the police as they failed to help her over her father's abuse. Because of this, not knowing Chris's address or even his last name, she loses contact with him. We then learn about the shady past of Chris' boss, Barry. He used to belong to the Carson gang, an outfit of petty thieves trying to pull a big heist. They tried to get the contents of a Securicor van, but they failed, and in the ensuing chaos one of the thick witted Carson brothers killed one of the security guards. With the police chasing them, they recklessly tackled another van, this time succeeding and killing two more men. Barry felt his conscience pricking him, and after making off with the thousands of pounds from the van turned the Carson brothers in to the Law. He gave evidence in court and one of the three Carson brothers were killed in the gunfight to take them, the other was sentenced to twenty five years in jail. Barry Springer changed his name by deed poll to Miller, and he, his wife and his small son were relocated from London to Oxford under the Witness Protection Act. The one remaining Carson brother, Edward, was not like his brothers; while they were dim-witted thugs he was like a modern-day Moriarty, and set his sights on ruthlessly hunting down Barry, and avenging his brothers. While Chris, frantic and love stricken, searches Oxford for Jenny, she finds work with a friend as a waitress. Her boss, who, like most of the men she meets, reminds her of her father, seeks to take advantage of her, and she tries to avoid him as much as possible, spending all her spare time searching for Chris. Fate, it seems, is against them, for the obnoxious boss Jenny works for so disgusted Chris when he came looking for a job that he vowed never to go there again, and although they catch tantalising glimpses of each other occasionally, they do not find each other, and as Jenny's love begins to cool, Chris' only intensifies. At this point Barry, Chris' boss, shows him a "chalet" which he has bought by the canal, and wants to fix up. When Chris asks him why he has it, he feeds him a kaleidoscopic version of the truth about his dealings with the Carson gang, shifting the drama to Ireland and the IRA. He then pays Chris to fix it up, and enthuses about an infrared light switch out at the front, so that the light will go on if anyone comes near it. Through a remarkable coincidence, after Jenny quits her job as a waitress, since her boss' attentions prove too much for her, she ends up babysitting for Chris' boss' eleven-year-old son, Sean. He is the epitome of innocence as he explains the cosmos to her, and teaches her to play chess. When she kisses him goodnight, she finds herself kissing him like a lover; she stops when she realises, and downstairs feels revulsion at what her father has made her become. After she's put him to bed the phone rings and Jenny answers, hearing “Tell him Carson's getting warm.” She only tells Barry about the call when he is driving her home. Barry goes completely white and tells her about the shed. Things start spinning out of control as Chris continues to ache for Jenny. Right then he decides to return to the shed to get the knife he’d forgotten. As he approaches the chalet he sees his Jenny and Barry exiting the chalet together. Being in a dark mood he immediately believes Barry has found himself a new plaything. The truth, is less shocking; Barry had simply asked the girl to do some painting and hang a few curtains to make the place more liveable. Chris turns away, in tears, before either of them sees him. Lying in bed Chris realises he should have confronted the two and makes up his mind to do just that the next day. That morning, unsure of what he's going to say, he goes to the warehouse. Barry isn’t there, but a police officer called Fletcher in an expensive white Mercedes is. He tells Chris he is looking for Barry Springer, a dangerous criminal—the man Chris knows as his boss. After a little pushing Chris agrees to betray his one-time friend and set him up to be captured at the shed later that night. Jenny again babysits Sean that night. As Sue is about to leave the house she tells her Barry might be a little late because he’ll be checking on Chris at the chalet. For the first time Jenny has hopes of seeing Chris again as Sue confirms it's indeed her lover in the shed. Chris, deliberately betraying a friend, is restless and decides to bike around town. He runs into Dave who is celebrating his birthday at a local pub. After some random drunk talk Dave tells Chris about Carson in the white Mercedes at the warehouse earlier. The boy immediately realises his stupid mistake. His anger had blinded him so much he never saw the obvious. In panic he asks one of the girls at the party to call Barry at his house. But he is out, while Jenny receives the message on his new answering machine: “For God’s sake keep away from the shed. Carson’s on his way there.” Without hesitation she takes Sue’s bike and races to the shed to save Chris. Chris goes home to call Barry, then races towards the shed when Sue tells him about Jenny. Riding his bike like a demon he arrives at the woods and jumps off his bike to run toward the chalet. He hears the low grumble, as if produced by a giant beast, behind him. Terrified, he realises it is the white Mercedes. In full sprint he runs to the shed. He enters the clearing, and as he calls out for Jenny he hears the deafening report of a gun, six times. Carson leaves, Barry arrives, and Chris enters the chalet to find his beloved Jenny on the bed, soaked in her blood and riddled with bullets. She had written on the wall in her own blood, "DAD." Her dad, at the inquest, covers his face with his hands. Chris understands that to be a father whom Jenny wanted to be next to her as she died. Chris is happy that she was able to say it before she died. ===== The story of Raiden takes place in the year 2090, when a race of collective alien lifeforms known as the Crystals made Earth a target of invasion. In response, the world gathered together under one organization, the Vanquish Crystal Defense, and developed a cutting-edge weapon built from Crystal Technology: the Fighting Thunder aircraft. Fighting Thunder is launched as the last hope for humanity's survival. In Raiden II, three years have passed since the Crystals were defeated. The remnants of the Crystal invasion force regrouped to launch another invasion on Earth. The Vanquish Crystal Defense had developed a new model of the Fighting Thunder with a new weapon for this new battle in humanity's war against the Crystals. ===== LaChiusa, Michael John. First Lady Suite (1995), Dramatists Play Service, Inc, , p. 5 The plot contains four unrelated stories and a prologue. Prologue :A nameless, African American First Lady reflects on her place in history. ;Over Texas :Aboard Air Force One on November 22, 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy's underpaid, overworked Secretary Mary Gallagher complains about her demanding employer to John F Kennedy's secretary Evelyn Lincoln before a foreboding dream reconciles herself to her place in history. ;Where's Mamie? :The White House, 1957. Feeling abandoned by her husband's absence on her birthday, Mamie Eisenhower fantasizes a trip through time and space alongside Marian Anderson to prevent her husband from having an affair and to alert him to the racial strife that will soon mar his Presidency. ;Olio :1950. Margaret Truman attempts to sing at a Recital, but is constantly upstaged by her mother Bess. ;Eleanor Sleeps Here :Inside Amelia Earhart's plane, 1936. As they fly over Washington in a plane piloted by Amelia Earheart, Hickok bitterly reviews her complicated relationship with her lover, friend and employer Eleanor Roosevelt. ===== A goat named Mei wanders into a barn one night, seeking shelter from a storm. In the barn, the goat meets another refugee. The two can neither see nor smell each other, but nevertheless they huddle together, fending off the cold, and begin to talk. Eventually, they establish a friendship. The two decide to meet later and will recognize each other by using the password "one stormy night". The next day, when they meet, Mei learns that his companion from the night before was a wolf named Gabu. Despite their natural predisposition as enemies, they share a common bond and begin meeting regularly. However, Mei's flock and Gabu's pack eventually find out about their relationship and forbid the friendship. In a truly underhanded tactic, the pack and flock attempt to force Mei and Gabu to use each other to get information on their enemies. Mei and Gabu, no longer wanting to be bound by their respective clan's unjust regulations and hoping to preserve their friendship, cross a river during a storm. They hope to find an "emerald forest" free from persecution. However, Giro, the leader of Gabu's pack, holds a grudge against goats and views Gabu as a traitor to all wolves. Giro and his pack begin to hunt down the two companions. Gabu and Mei reach the summit of a mountain where they stop and rest, exhausted from fighting their way through a snowstorm. Mei, knowing that Gabu has not eaten in days, offers to sacrifice himself as sustenance. Gabu reluctantly agrees initially, but soon realizes that no matter how hungry he is, he cannot eat his friend. Gabu hears his pack approaching and leaves Mei to face them, ready to defend his goat friend to the death. As Gabu is about to go face the wolf pack, there is an avalanche which sweeps them all away. The next morning, Mei digs through the snow blocking the cave and sees the "emerald forest" they had been searching for in the distance. Gabu is missing, but Mei finds him in another cave. Mei finds that Gabu has lost his memory of their friendship and all the events that preceded the avalanche due to the trauma of surviving that disaster, and Mei knows not how to undo the damage. While waiting for the moon to come out, Gabu taunts Mei that he plans on eating him. Mei, saying that he wouldn't have minded being eaten by Gabu before, accuses the wolf of not being the Gabu he previously knew and deems him pathetic for not even attempting to remember his past. Disappointed and disillusioned, Mei shouts that had he known things would take this turn it would have been better if they had never met each other on "one stormy night". On hearing these words, Gabu's memory slowly returns in flashes before in a rapid burst. After regaining himself, Gabu turns to Mei and speaks his name as well as wondering why they are in the cave; having no recollection of his time while amnesiac. A stunned and overjoyed Mei, deciding it would not matter to tell Gabu about his amnesia, claims to have been waiting for Gabu this whole time and they happily reunite. In the end, Mei and Gabu both enjoy watching the moon as it rises, marveling at its beauty and swearing that their friendship will last forever no matter what. Giro and the wolf pack are shown to have survived the avalanche and are seen running away back to their home gorge. ===== When bounty hunter Ben Brigade finds Billy John, he prepares to take Billy to the town of Santa Cruz, where he is wanted for murder. From the hills above, Charlie, one of Billy’s gang, fires at Brigade, prompting the bounty hunter to warn that he will kill Billy unless Charlie desists. Billy then instructs Charlie to notify his brother Frank, a notorious outlaw, that he has been apprehended by Brigade. After Charlie and the gang ride off, Brigade takes Billy prisoner and heads for Santa Cruz. Along the trail, they come upon an eerily deserted stagecoach way station. After a voice from inside the station orders Brigade to drop his gun, outlaw Sam Boone comes to the door and greets Brigade. Carrie Lane, the absent station master’s wife, then emerges from the doorway holding a shotgun and orders the men to leave. As a stagecoach approaches in the distance, Brigade suspects that Boone and his impressionable partner Wid have come to rob the coach. His train of thought is interrupted when the stage crashes into the corral, revealing that the driver and passengers have been massacred by Indians. After burying the dead, Brigade and the others hole up at the station, waiting for the Indians to attack. When Carrie, whose husband left to round up some horses scattered by the Indians, voices her concern about him, Brigade snorts that he was a fool to leave her. Boone then tells Brigade that his and Wid’s goal was not to rob the stage, but to capture Billy, because whoever turns Billy in will be granted amnesty for all past crimes. Boone explains that he has already bought a ranch in preparation for his new life on the right side of the law. In the morning, they saddle up and Brigade orders Carrie to ride with them to pick up her husband. Just then, a band of Indians appears on the horizon and Brigade rides out to meet the chief. Upon returning to the station, Brigade explains that the chief wants Carrie for his squaw and has offered to trade a horse for her. Insisting that they play along with the Indians, Brigade escorts Carrie to the chief, but when he offers a horse in trade, she recognizes the horse as belonging to her husband and screams, prompting the Indians to turn away and ride off. After the group heads out, the Indians appear in the distance, and Brigade gives the order to ride for cover at an adobe shack over the rise. Upon reaching the hut, they try to hold off the Indians, and when the chief comes for Carrie, she blasts him with her shotgun, sending the others scurrying. Meanwhile, Frank and his gang reach the way station and, finding it deserted, follow Brigade’s tracks. After Brigade declares that they will spend the night at the shack, Boone begins to believe that the bounty hunter wants Frank to catch up to them. Nervous about an armed confrontation with Frank, Wid suggests ceding Billy to Brigade and riding off, but Boone, whose longing for amnesty outweighs his fear of Frank, insists on staying. As Brigade nurses a traumatized horse, Carrie comments that he does not seem like “someone who would hurt a man for money.” In the morning, Billy, who, the night before, had filched a rifle from Boone’s saddlebags, shoves the weapon into Brigade’s belly. Boone then informs Billy that the weapon is empty and threatens to shoot him unless he drops it. Once Billy relinquishes the weapon, Boone picks it up and fires. After the traumatized horse recovers, the group heads for Santa Cruz. When Boone offers to pay Brigade the price on Billy’s head if he will hand over the outlaw, Brigade refuses, prompting Boone to warn that violence will result from his decision because he is bent on taking Billy in to win amnesty. Upon reaching the shack, Frank is puzzled that Brigade has not bothered to conceal his tracks and finally realizes that Brigade wants Frank to catch up to him so that he can avenge a past offense. As Brigade and the others pass a hanging tree, Brigade becomes irritable and orders them to camp at a nearby riverbed. Knowing that they are a day’s ride from Santa Cruz, Boone tells Carrie that he will look out for her and warns her that Brigade will never reach town alive. While Brigade stares at the hanging tree, Carrie voices her disgust over killing for money. Brigade then confides that he is not interested in taking Billy in but in catching Frank. Brigade explains that when he was sheriff of Santa Cruz, he arrested Frank for murder. Once Frank was released from jail, he kidnapped Brigade’s wife and hanged her from the tree. Soon after, dust kicked up along the trail signals Frank’s imminent arrival. Having overheard Brigade tell the story of his wife’s murder, Boone offers to cover Brigade in his confrontation with Frank. After ordering Billy to mount his horse, Brigade slips a noose around Billy’s neck and leads him to the hanging tree. When Frank arrives, Brigade challenges him to stop the hanging. Frank charges Brigade, guns blazing, causing Billy’s horse to bolt and leave Billy swinging from the tree. After killing Frank, Brigade shoots Billy down from the tree while Boone and Wid chase off the rest of the gang. Brigade then pushes Billy toward Boone and challenges him to “come and get him.” As Boone prepares to draw his gun against Brigade, Brigade turns Billy over to him and warns Boone to keep his promise about “going straight.” After the others ride off toward Santa Cruz, Brigade sets the tree on fire. ===== Fingerprints is based on an urban legend out of San Antonio, Texas that centers around a school bus full of children that was involved in a terrible accident with a train leaving all the children dead. The movie centers around a teenage girl, Melanie (Pipes), who has just finished rehab. She moves to her family's new home in the town of Emerald, where her father is a part of the crew constructing a highway over the old train tracks. Her sister, Crystal (Cavallari), tells her of the legend and she begins seeing the ghost of Julie, one of the dead children and becomes more and more involved in mysterious occurrences in the town. ===== Snakehead fish invade Cultus Lake in the small town of Cultus, Maryland, although the town's police department poisons the lake, seemingly killing all of the fish. Two years later, bodies begin showing up in the lake, with town sheriff Patrick James temporarily closing off the lake. After Patrick's daughter Amber's boyfriend James, and James' friend are eaten by unseen creatures, the bodies are inspected, and local doctor Jenkins gives Patrick a tooth he found in one of the bodies. Patrick attempts to convince the town's mayor to shut down the lake, although to no avail, as the town is suffering from economic troubles. Marine biologist Lori Dale soon arrives in town to help Patrick determine the cause of the recent deaths. Lori identifies the creatures as unusually large snakeheads. She theorizes that something in the lake is causing the snakeheads to grow in size. After more deaths occur, Lori discovers that the snakeheads have been drugged with human growth hormones to make them larger. A fisherman soon captures one of the snakeheads, convincing the mayor even further that the lake should not be closed, believing that the captured snakehead was the only one. While Patrick, and Lori head out on the lake to find the source of the hormones, Amber convinces her friends Jagger, Luke, and Craig to help her kill the snakeheads in order to avenge James. Patrick, and Lori find an overturned boat on the lake, and encounter the snakeheads. They attempt to head back to shore, only to find Jenkins' brother Colin pouring something into the lake. Colin flees as they attempt to catch him, and Lori discovers that the liquid Colin was pouring into the lake was a human growth hormone. On Craig's boat, Amber, Jagger, Luke, and Craig discover that the snakeheads are cannibals, and commonly eat the juvenile fish. They begin to follow some of the fish, only to almost collide with two fishermen on another boat. The snake heads attack the two boats, and eat Craig, and one of the fishermen, while Luke is knocked overboard, and Jagger accidentally kills the other fisherman by shooting his boat's gas tank, blowing it up. Amber, and Jagger then crash the boat on an island in the middle of the lake, and become stranded. They try to call the police, although they have no reception. They then find Luke washed up on the island, alive. Patrick and Deputy Reece sneak into Jenkins' lab in order to search for anything suspicious. They find a receipt for 5,000 units of human growth hormone. They arrest Jenkins, and he reveals that he put the hormones into the lake in order to increase the fish population for Colin's bait shop after the poisoning process occurred, not knowing the snakeheads were still in the lake. On the island, Amber, Jagger, and Luke find a cabin, as well as a half-devoured man inside. Luke goes further, and finds a woman being devoured by a snakehead. The snakehead attacks Luke, injuring his leg in the process, although Amber kills it with an ax. Patrick soon finds out that Amber is on the lake, and he, and Lori head out to rescue her, with Lori bringing an electric stick that she plans to use to kill the snakeheads. However, the snakeheads ram the boat, causing Lori to accidentally render the controls useless with the stick, causing them to crash into a dock on the island. They see a giant, whale-sized snakehead before heading onto the island. In the meantime, Colin is digging a hole to bury the hormone packages, only to be killed by the snakeheads. Meanwhile, Amber, Jagger, and Luke are attacked by snakeheads in the house, although they manage to kill several, and their screams helps Patrick, and Lori find them, although Luke is still killed. Patrick, and Lori arrive outside of the house, and give Amber, and Jagger directions to escape while they reach an electrical shed, planning to electrocute all of the snakeheads in the lake. Lori goes to rescue Amber, and Jagger, and the three girls kill all of the remaining snakeheads at the cabin before Patrick knocks down an electric cable. When Lori, Amber, and Jagger arrive at the dock, Lori dumps the cable into the water, electrocuting, and killing all of the remaining snakeheads. Patrick, Lori, Amber, and Jagger embrace as the fried snakehead bodies burn in the water. ===== Josie Potenza is the trophy wife of workaholic Hollywood producer Tony Potenza, but their marriage is crumbling due to his increased drinking resulting from stress at work. She convinces him to join her for a romantic getaway at a secluded lakeside cabin, but when it becomes obvious his concerns about the studio are going to take precedence over relaxation, she begrudgingly tells him to return home but decides to stay on her own for a few days. Josie sees Cole Wilson ogling her at a local bar and, uncomfortable with the unwanted attention, she leaves. Her jeep breaks down on a dark, secluded country road and as she starts to hike to the cabin, Cole pulls up in his truck and offers her a lift. He convinces her he is harmless and when he extends an invitation to dinner the following night, Josie accepts. As they linger over drinks after dinner, Josie discusses her unhappy marriage. Although there are problems, and she sometimes fantasizes about her husband's death, she is grateful to Tony for all he has given her and still has hopes for their future. Cole becomes aggressive and she resists his advances. During the drive back to the cabin, he turns off his headlights and begins to drive erratically, and Josie becomes hysterical. When he tries to force himself on her, Josie fires a gun she found in a kitchen drawer and grazes his face with the bullet. Vowing revenge, Cole leaves. With the passing of time, Tony stops drinking and he and Josie successfully work at repairing their damaged marriage. On the way home one rainy night, he stops at an ATM, and Cole conceals himself in the back seat of his car. He forces him to drive to a secluded park and shoots him numerous times, then goes to Josie's home and reveals he has killed her husband. He warns her if she reports him to the police he will tell them she hired him to murder Tony, and demands $30,000 for his silence. When the police question Josie she says nothing about Cole's involvement, but her story - or lack of one - makes detective Dan Fredricks suspicious, and his African American partner Ron Lewis accuses him of suspecting Josie simply because she is black and her husband was white. Josie tells her lover, struggling restaurateur Jake Golden that she knows the identity of Tony's killer but he warns her not to reveal anything. He has an ulterior motive - Jake, desperate for money to finance his failing business when his partner Tony bailed out, had hired Cole to kill Tony so Josie would be free to marry him and he could benefit from her wealth. Complications arise when attorney Bill Adolphe tells Josie all her husband's assets were in his name and he died intestate. All his accounts have been frozen and Josie will have to wait an undetermined amount of time for the court to supervise probate. While Jake's ex-wife Nora tries to convince the police he may have killed Tony, Josie becomes the target of the increasingly deranged Cole. After killing Jake, he traps her in her garage and Josie kills him in the ensuing skirmish. Josie pleads self defense, and when Nora tells them she doesn't believe Josie is clever enough to have masterminded any of the events that have transpired, the police let her go, unaware the two women are partners in crime. ===== "Believers" is the word for members of the "Smiley Face Center", a cult organization with the goal of achieving purity of self and reaching "the land of comfort". Believers follows the events of three such people that have been left stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Japan. The three "believers" are referred to only by their rank and they practice various activities in an effort to purge their bodies from the perceived evils that society has subjected them to, such as lust and possession. But the "believers" are not able to resist their past temptations so easily, and the faith in their "organization" gradually weakens as the "believers" begin to question what is right and eventually what is even real. ===== Kannan (Prashanth) is a young music shop employee. He dreams of a girl who wears gold anklets. One day he sees the feet of a running girl, and realises that she is the girl he has been dreaming of. He follows her. Kannan goes to a music college to repair music instruments. Gayathri (Simran), a college student, is the girl which Kannan found as his dream girl. She and her friends approach and request him to not repair the music instruments, as they are very old and unfit to use for the music contest. Kannan uses the opportunity to become close to her but Gayathri is angered by his behaviour. Kannan accompanies Gayathri to Bangalore for the music contest, where Gayathri sees Kannan getting money from a rival music band. On the day of the contest, Gayathri and her team are shocked to learn that the song which they have composed was stolen by the other troop. She assumes that Kannan has stolen and sold their work for money despite Kannan's protest that he is innocent. Kannan lends her one of the love poems he had written for her, and she sings it in the contest and wins the prize. Gayathri understands that Kannan has no role in the stealing of the song and he got money from the troop for fixing their repaired music instruments. Gayathri now realised her mistake and rushes to apologize and accept his love. Kannan gets news that his father was injured and rushes home. Kannan’s father Rudramurthy (Nassar) is an registrar office who witnesses many marriages take place without the consent of couple's parents. He is against such marriages and tried to prevent one such marriage by advising the girl who had come to marry her lover and sending her home which led to quarrel and attack by groom and his friends. Kannan understood that he is going to have a tough time with his love and his father who hates love marriages. Gayathri on other hand has a family with a father who is very depressed by one incident which happened in his life. Gayathri's friend and her lover commit suicide due to pressure put up by the parents against their love. This upsets Gayathri and she is scared on how to marry Kannan. Both Kannan and Gayathri plan to visit the family of the other, impress them, attract them and get permission for the marriage and set for their mission. Gayathri sets out to Kannan's home as a daughter of troublesome neighbour of Kannan and Kannan sets to Gayathri's home only to earn a name of vagabond from her family. Both Gayathri and Kannan try their level best to get into the home of other's families and succeed to some extent. Gayathri manages to win the heart of Rudramurthy when she tried to stop his daughter who was about to run away from her home with her lover and succeed in that. This makes Rudramurthy accept her as his daughter-in-law. On the other hand, Kannan visits his home with much depression reason being failing to accomplish his mission. Kannan finds the reason for Gayathri's father Vengudu's condition as one incident. Vengudu is a music critic and his criticism plays a vital role in one's music career. Vengudu once made a bad criticism about a male vocalist in front of the audience and also in the next day newspaper which led the vocalist to commit suicide. The wife of vocalist shouts at him and curses him for bring her a fate. From then he stopped his critic job and has been living with remorse. Kannan attempts to solve his problem by visiting the vocalist's house and explains the current condition of Vengudu. He requests them forgive him and visit his home to which the lady accepts. On the day of the visit the lady proposes marriage alliance of her son who met Gayathri on the music contest at Bangalore with Vengudu's daughter Gayathri to which Vengudu accepts. On hearing about her marriage, Gayathri screams that she will not let this happen and goes to convince her father. On seeing her father, he falls at her feet and she is tongue tied as she finds her father has changed a lot and her marriage would bring him complete relief from his guilt. However, on the day of the marriage the groom sings one of the love songs written by Kannan for Gayathri and which she sang in the music contest. On hearing this song, Gayathri runs to Kannan. The groom explains to Vengudu that Kannan and Gayathri love each other very much, and not to separate them. Vengudu accepts them as he does not want to commit another mistake in his life and spend his life in guilt. Kannan and Gayathri are united together in the end. ===== Mary McGuire (Mae Murray) is a working-class young girl who lives in a New York tenement and supports her mother and her shiftless father and uncle. Two items in the March 27, 1919 edition of The New York Star catch her attention. The first is a news item about the famous dancer Gloria du Moine going into hiding over a scandal involving her relationship with the Duke de Sauterne. (This was Murray in a thinly disguised portrayal obviously mimicking fellow real life dancer/star Gaby Deslys who had an affair with the King of Portugal before World War I). The second is a classified ad for the Peach Tree Inn, a nightspot that aims to be the "snappiest roadhouse this side of Monte Carlo." The Peach Tree's ad seeks a female hostess and dancer: "A Good Future For A Girl With A Past." Mary applies for the job. To help cinch the deal, Mary tells Peach Tree manager Larry McKean (William V. Mong) that she's really Gloria du Moine. Larry asks her why she's dressed so shabbily. Mary replies that her servant absconded with all of her clothing, leaving her to wear the servant's clothes. Mary—or rather, Gloria—gets the job, and the Peach Tree Inn promotes its grand opening night, featuring Gloria du Moine. In the audience for Gloria du Moine's Peach Tree opening night is Jimmy Calhoun (Rudolph Valentino), scion of the millionaire contractor Michael Calhoun (Edward Jobson). The young Calhoun meets Gloria and finds her enchanting. He tells his father he'd like to propose to her. Michael Calhoun arranges a small, private dinner party at the Peach Tree Inn in honor of Gloria. The elder Calhoun hopes that Gloria will make some sort of faux pas that will discourage his son from seeking her hand in marriage. Meanwhile, the Duke de Sauterne (Bertram Grassby) has arrived in New York from Europe and noted the press announcements touting Gloria du Moine's performances at the Peach Tree Inn. The duke sets out to see her at the roadhouse, and his arrival coincides with Michael Calhoun's dinner party. The duke is escorted into Calhoun's private room. He gives no indication that Gloria du Moine is an imposter. At sunrise, the dinner party guests are still at the Peach Tree Inn, sleeping off the drinks they consumed during the evening. Gloria/Mary wakes up and hurries upstairs to her lavish private suite. The duke also wakes up and follows her, and Jimmy follows him. Jimmy and the duke get into a fight, and the duke sends Jimmy tumbling down the staircase. Mary runs outside, gets into a car and heads for her family's tenement apartment in New York City. The duke and Jimmy follow her separately in their own cars. The duke arrives first, follows Mary up the stairs to the apartment and forces his way in. He grabs Mary and tries to kiss her. Jimmy arrives and engages the duke in another fight. A detective arrives and apprehends the duke for deportation to Europe on accusations of being a swindler. Jimmy's father arrives, notes Mary's humble surroundings and grants his blessing for Jimmy to marry her. ===== There once was a queen who had twelve healthy sons, but no daughters. She said she would not care what happened to her sons if she could only have a daughter as white as snow and as red as blood. A troll hag told her that she would have a daughter, but the hag would have her sons as soon as the baby was baptized. Soon the queen gave birth to a daughter. She christened "Snow-white and Rosy-red," but as the hag promised, all her brothers were turned into wild ducks and flew away. Snow-white and Rosy-red was often sad, and one day the queen asked her why; she said that everyone else had brothers and sisters, but she had none. So the queen told her about her brothers. She set out and, after three years, found the cottage where her brothers lived. Having done all the housework, she slept in her youngest brother's bed where her brothers found her. The oldest brother wanted to kill her as the cause of their problems, but her youngest brother argued that it was their mother's fault, and the sister plead that she had searched for them for three years. They told her that she could set them free by weaving cloth of thistle-down and making them all neckerchiefs, shirts, and coats without crying, laughing, or speaking. She set to work. Her brothers flew off as wild ducks every day but returned as men every night. One day, a king found her and brought her to his castle to marry her over his stepmother's objections. Snow-white and Rosy-red kept on sewing but soon had a son. The old queen stole the baby and threw him into a pit of snakes. She then smeared her mouth with blood to tell her stepson that the young queen killed and ate her baby. Twice more the queen had a child, and twice more the old queen killed the child until she finally persuaded the king to have his wife burned at the stake. Snow-white and Rosy-red finished the clothes and, when her brothers came to take them, they turned back into men and told her to speak. Snow-white and Rosy-red told the truth, and the princes showed them the babies, still alive in the snake pit. The king asked his mother what a fitting punishment would be for such an evil crime, and she prescribed being torn apart by twelve horses, and so she fell victim to her own punishment. ===== The first two lines are a complete story by themselves: The Zan have killed off all life on Earth other than pairs of specimens for their zoo of exotic Earth fauna. Walter Phelan is the last man on Earth, but Grace Evans, the last woman, is not overly impressed with him and maintains her distance. The Zan, who are ageless, become disturbed when, one by one, the other animals begin to die. They turn to Walter for advice. He tells them that the creatures have perished from lack of affection, suggesting that they pet the survivors regularly to keep them alive. He demonstrates with one of them. When the Zan begin to die, they depart the planet in fear. It is then revealed that the creature Walter advised them to pet was a poisonous snake. Then Walter discusses the future of the human race with Grace. She is shocked by his proposal and leaves. Shortly thereafter, he hears her footsteps returning. The narrative then ends as it began: ===== The protagonist, a film director named Bahman Farjami, is coming to terms with being an aged director. He also feels grief for the loss of his wife five years prior. He seeks to make a documentary about death, dying, and the grieving process, or so he tells his friends. ===== Takata Gouichi (played by Ken Takakura), an elderly Japanese man, has been on poor terms with his son Kenichi (Kiichi Nakai) since the death of his wife. When his son falls ill, Gouichi travels from the province of Akita to the hospital, located in Tokyo, but his son refuses to see him. Kenichi's wife Rie (Shinobu Terajima) gives Gouichi a video-tape so that Gouichi may learn more about his son, which contains footage of Li Jiamin, an artist of Nuo opera from the Province of Yunnan of the People's Republic of China, promising to perform Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles in a year. Gouichi decides to travel to the PRC in his son's place to film Li's performance. Gouichi arrives in the Village of Li, near the City of Lijiang, only to learn that Li was imprisoned after assaulting someone for mocking his illegitimate son. His translator Jiang Wen and the local guide Qiu Lin suggest that he film someone else, but Gouichi insists on Li. After an uncertain and time-consuming process of obtaining clearances from authorities, Gouichi gains entry to the prison facility, but Li breaks down in tears because he misses his son too badly. Gouichi decides to travel to Stone Village to retrieve Li's 8-year-old son Yang Yang (Yang Zhenbo). While in the village, Gouichi receives a call from Rie, telling him that Kenichi has been touched by his efforts, and requests that he come home. Gouichi wonders whether the message really was from Kenichi, and opts to continue his mission. On the way to the prison, the vehicle breaks down, and Yang Yang chooses to run away, being filled with anxiety at meeting a father whom he doesn't remember. Gouichi chases after the boy, and the two become lost in the limestone hills, having no choice but to sleep in a cave. Yang Yang is hostile toward Gouichi at first, but trusts him as the hours pass by. They are found the next morning by the combined efforts of villagers and the police. Gouichi feels that Yang Yang's opinion should be respected, and lets him go home. Shortly after, he receives another call from Rie, informing him that Kenichi has died, leaving behind a letter saying that he has forgiven his father. Gouichi returns to the prison with photographs of Yang Yang. Li is moved and promises to give his best performance. As he, the musicians, and the supporting actors are about to begin, he asks why Gouichi isn't recording. Gouichi explains that, since his son has passed, recording is no longer necessary. Li, however, persuades him to record anyway, given their difficulty in coming all this way, and so the performance begins in view of the camera. The film revolves around the meaning of Gouichi's journey, and brings in issues of performance and duplicity, the authenticity or its lack in tourist experience, and the way in which success abroad can seem to erase failure at home. ===== Jeetu (Shahid Kapoor), the son of retired teacher Jaidev Prasad (Anupam Kher), is constantly getting himself and his father into trouble because of his inability to properly manage money and has run many failed businesses. Plunging them both into debt, Jeetu breaks off his engagement with his promised fiancé, Pooja (Sushma Reddy) and decides to commit suicide by throwing himself into the sea. Jeetu thinks that by killing himself, he can do something right for once since his father can use the money from his life insurance to pay off his debts. However, it does not go as planned and Jeetu is found tangled in some nets by a pair of fishermen, Gundya (Paresh Rawal) and Bandya (Rajpal Yadav). Gundya owes money to a Gujarati businessman, Prabhat Singh Chauhan (Om Puri). They find a note containing people's names with the amount written next to the name in Jeetu's pocket, which makes them mistakenly think Jeetu is rich and has lent money to these people, rather than in debt. Jeetu does not want to reveal too much, and therefore pretends to be mute and deaf. Back home, Jeetu's family is denied insurance, stating unconfirmed death (owing to a lack of body), putting them in a difficult situation of repaying Jeetu debts. Prabhat takes away Gundya's boat, the only source of Gundya's income so that he pays back the money he owes him. The two fishermen visit Prabhat's house to request back their boat, only to be asked by Prabhat to leave something of value in return as a guarantee. Gundya cunningly makes Prabhat believe that Jeetu is his loving nephew and leaves both Jeetu and Bandya as the guarantee. Later, it is revealed that Prabhat's niece Shruti (Kareena Kapoor) is mute too, but not deaf. Her overprotective brother Mangal (Sunil Shetty) wants her to get married, however, her muteness makes her an undesirable match. One night, Jeetu gets drunk, and begins to sing but is caught by Shruti and her cousin Meenakshi (Neha Dhupia) who hear him (and consequently learn of his secret). They promise to keep his secret but in return, he must do something for Shruti. A greedy bridegroom is interested in marrying Shruti only for her wealth; so Meenakshi tricks Jeetu into pretending to be Shruti's lover, which eventually results in the marriage being broken off. Mangal arrives and finds Jeetu with a love note for Shruti that Meenakshi wrote. Not realising Jeetu is pretending to be mute and deaf, Mangal attacks him and only stops upon being told of Jeetu supposed disability. Regretful, Mangal gives Jeetu a job in his business and Prabhat extends Gundya's loan time. Meenakshi finds out that Jeetu is in debt and she begins to distrust him after learning about the troubles his debts are causing his family. Jeetu eventually finds out that since his body has not been found, his family is still being hassled for his debts as the insurers have not paid. Jeetu is involved in a car crash with Prabhat who, at the time, was carrying a lot of money. Meenakshi tells the police about her suspicions and they beat Jeetu mercilessly. Her and Shruti's views about him change however when Prabhat announces that Jeetu was the one that saved him and took him to hospital. A remorseful Shruti and Meenakshi, trick Prabhat into giving them money which they send to Jeetu's village through Bandya to repay his debts by having Bandya pretend to be Jeetu business partner. Bandya returns from the village and tells Jeetu that Pooja is married now. Unaware that Pooja believing herself to be Jeetu's widow, is living with Jeetu's family. At the same time, Shruti confesses her love for Jeetu. Mangal finds out about the romance and requests Jeetu marry Shruti after Jeetu reveals he is not deaf and mute. Free of debt, he agrees to marry Shruti, having fallen in love with her too. Later Mangal sends Gundya and Bandya to deliver a suitcase of money to Jeetu family to secure there financial well-being. However, while delivering the money they inadvertently reveal Jeetu is alive. Shocked Jeetu dad demands they take him to visit Jeetu. Jaidev arrives at Prabhat's House during Jeetu and Shruti's engagement ceremony and sees him alive. Jeetu comes out to speak to his father, who reveals that Pooja is living as his widow. Jaidev implores him to return home and marry Pooja, however, Gundya and Bandya urge Jaidev to leave. Jeetu later goes back home to speak to his family but they demand he marry Pooja, and Gundya and Bandya bring him back. On the day of the wedding, Jeetu's family intrude on the marriage, wanting him to return and marry Pooja instead. However, when Pooja learns that Shruti is mute, she has a change of heart and tells Jeetu to marry Shruti. Jeetu and Shruti get married and live happily ever after. ===== He generally succeeds in tasks after his older brothers have failed, as in The Red Ettin, or all three are set to tasks and he is the only one to succeed, as in Puddocky. He may happen on the donor that gives him his success, as Puddocky has pity on him, but usually he is tested in some manner that distinguishes him from his brothers: in The Red Ettin he is offered the choice of half a loaf with his mother's blessing and the whole with her curse, and takes the blessing where his brothers took the curse, and in The Golden Bird he takes a talking fox's advice to avoid an inn where his brothers decided to abandon their quest. This magical helper is often long faithful to him; he may fail many times after the initial test, often by not respecting the helper's advice. Indeed, in The Golden Bird, the fox declares that the hero does not deserve his help after his disobedience, but still aids him.Maria Tatar, p 264, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, This success may make his brothers an additional obstacle, as in The Golden Bird, where they overpower him and steal what he has won on his quest. In some tales, such as The Grateful Beasts, they conclude he may be a rival in advance, and they attempt to stop him before the quest; in others, such as Thirteenth or Boots and the Troll, he must set to tasks because they have spitefully claimed that he said he could. This rivalry is not a necessary component of the character. He may also be the only one of the brothers to set about the work, as in Dapplegrim. In some tales, such as the Norwegian version of The Master Thief, the brothers are only mentioned and vanish from the tale entirely when they set out to seek their fortune. ===== The series covers the events of the first two books, Titus Groan and Gormenghast. It does not cover any of the events from the third book, Titus Alone. {| class="wikitable" |- bgcolor="#CCCCCC" ! Episode !! Summary |- |Episode 1 || Depicts the events of the first half of Titus Groan, beginning with the birth of Titus and features a number of events including Titus's christening, Steerpike's escape and the events up to the lighting of the fire in the Library. |- |Episode 2 || The episode begins by detailing the conclusion of the events surrounding the fire in the Library. This episode mainly focuses on the events in the second half of Titus Groan, including Sepulchrave's descent into madness and the subsequent death of the Earl and Swelter, Keda's departure and the birth of The Thing, and the banishment of Flay. It ends with the ceremony in which Titus is invested as Earl. |- |Episode 3 || The episode picks up the story eleven years after the events of the previous episode and mainly covers the events from the early part of Gormenghast. Titus, now aged 12, is a schoolboy. The episode includes events such as Irma Prunesquallor's party and her romance with Professor Bellgrove, the murder of Nannie Slagg by Steerpike, and the incarceration of Clarice and Cora. During the episode, Titus begins to rebel and makes his first journey away from the castle, where he meets Flay and sees The Thing. |- |Episode 4 || The final episode covers the remaining events of Gormenghast, in which Titus – now aged 17 –, along with Flay and the Doctor, discover Steerpike's misdeeds. Events in this episode include Steerpike's murder of Barquentine, the discovery of the twins' corpses, Fuchsia's depression, the flood, the search for Steerpike and Titus's wish to leave Gormenghast. |} ===== The film depicts an era widely considered a cornerstone of the NHL's history. It shows the life of 'The Rocket' beginning with his years as a teenager, his ascension to the Montreal Canadiens, up to the Richard Riot, showing a full spectrum of Richard's career. It ends the year before Richard brought Montréal to an unrivaled record of five Stanley Cup Championships in a row. The film begins as the Canadiens coach argues for continuing the hockey game even though the Richard Riot is occurring. The film then rolls to Maurice labouring as a teenager. Maurice later plays hockey for a minor league and soon tries out for the Canadiens. He tries out and makes it on the team. Maurice scores several goals but is injured early in his first season. People begin to call Maurice a lemon and a waste of money. Maurice recovers from his injury but is asked to sit out. Later he and his wife receive a baby girl who weighs . Maurice goes to his coach and asks to exchange the number 15 for the number 9\. Maurice will continue to play and breaks the record of 44 goals in one season. In a game with the New York Rangers, he encounters Bob Dill, a player sent out to attack Maurice to prevent him from beating the record. Maurice however, takes out Dill. As the movie proceeds, other players attempt to take out Maurice but Maurice fights back. At one point Maurice is tripped and is required to have stitches. Maurice receives the stitches but continues playing near the end of the game and scores the game-winning goal. Later on, a referee grabs Maurice and allows the other hockey player to hit him; Maurice retaliates by hitting the referee. He is given a penalty denying him from playing for the rest of the season and the play offs and the Richard Riot begins. Maurice gives a speech to Montréal telling that he won't give up and will return next year. The movie shows a few goals from the real Maurice Richard. The film ends as Maurice walks out the stadium with a message that says "Maurice played for 5 more years" and "During which, he won 5 Stanley Cups in a row." ===== When several TV satellites launched by the Electric Wave Laboratory go missing above Japan in Earth's orbit, it is found out that they have inadvertently collided with unidentified protoplasmic "space cells" of unknown origin. A similar creature suddenly thwarted the efforts of a local branch of the International Diamond Robbery Ring. The diamonds they sought vanished, and similar unexplained events continued to occur across the globe. Meanwhile, Inspector Komai's (Yosuke Natsuki) investigation of these strange events led him to the crystallographer Dr. Munakata (Nobuo Nakamura). In the process of tracking down the self- proclaimed diamond broker Mark Jackson (Robert Dunham). He finds him in Dr. Munakata's home but knocks him out and escapes from Komai. He is then picked up by the gangsters for questioning. Komai wakes up and is greeted by Dr. Munakata and his lab assistant Masayo Kirino (Yoko Fujiyama). He tells them about the case he is working on and shows them pictures of the melted safe the gangsters were at that night. Komai then learns that the diamonds the Mark stole were synthetic and worth nothing. The gangsters bring Mark Jackson to their boss and find a bag containing the stolen diamonds. However, they too find out that they are fake and keep him as a prisoner but outwits them and escapes. The gangsters are then given word of a shipment of raw diamonds that will arrive in Yokohama. Meanwhile, Inspector Komai escorts Masayo to her home. Along the way, they meet Kirino (Hiroshi Koizumi), Masayo's brother who works at the Electric Wave Laboratory. They witness a strange invisible force suck up coal into the sky from a nearby factory as well as flaming sparks from the clouds. They meet back with Dr. Munakata who tells them that the flaming sparks might be from some form of carbon. Later, the professional thieves took advantage of this ripe opportunity and attempted a heist on an armored car carrying the raw diamonds. But a nearby coal truck passing by is lifted off the ground by some unknown force and disappears into the atmosphere and is dropped back down to the ground. Unfortunately for them, they were fooled and escaped with nothing but candy. The police came to learn of the mysterious events of the armored car heist. Inspector Komai tells them of the possibility of a creature that caused the coal truck to list up in the air, but no one believes him. He is then called by Masayo that Mark Jackson is at Dr. Munakata's house. Komai and the police surround the house to catch him. But he reveals himself that he is an investigator dispatched from the World Diamond Insurgence association to find out what has been stealing diamonds worldwide. Just then Masayo's brother comes in and tells them that the identity of the monster was reported from the Space Planning Committee at the U.N. that the monster is a space cell that has been mutated by massive amounts of radiation from the satellites. Suddenly, Dogora appears and eats its way through Dr. Muanakata's safe to eat the diamonds inside. The creature from outer space is deemed to be the culprit, an alien beast that draws its energy from carbon- based minerals. Dr. Munakata, confident in a remarkable scientific discovery, left for the coal mines near northern Kyushu, where it was proposed that the strange being would make its next appearance. Mark Jackson also took leave for Kyushu, as the realization was finally made that the candy recovered at the heist was likely his doing. It was probable that he had, in truth, absconded with the true gems. Hamako (Akiko Wakabayashi), one of the gangsters responsible for the failed heist, prepared to double-cross her comrades and retrieve the diamonds for herself. As Dr. Munakata arrived at Dogora's next likely target, unidentified objects began to show on radar. A swarm of wasps was attacking Dogora in retaliation for the disturbance of their hives in the mines, and as they attacked, solid crystal sections of the monster began to fall to the city below. Over Dokaiwan Bay, as night fell, evacuation orders were put into effect as the jellyfish-like monster began to descend from the sky. The self-defense force fired, to no avail. The monster continued to absorb carbon-based materials wherever they could be located, and the abomination even destroyed the Waikato Bridge in the process. The military continued to unleash their artillery at the alien creature and succeeded in momentarily silencing their foe. Unfortunately, the creature was only undergoing mitosis. It is later found out that when Dogora is stung by the wasps, the venom causes a chemical reaction that crystallizes the space cell. Analysis of the crystallizing effects of the wasp venom on Dogora at the Medical Substance Laboratory proves successful, and mass production was soon ordered all around the world for the creation of a similar toxin. The gangsters, still desperate for a successful heist, tracked Mark Jackson and Inspector Komai and almost immediately jumped to the conclusion that Mark had hidden the real diamonds in a safe-deposit box. Hamako left to retrieve the stash but instead fled solo with the stolen goods. The thieves left Jackson and Komai tied and doomed to death-by-dynamite, but the two men joined forces and only barely managed to escape. Meanwhile, Dogora attacked once again, but this time, powerful artificial wasp venom quickly ate away at the creature. The robbers and the police clashed at the beach, and in the heat of a vicious gunfight, the gang was completely wiped out by a falling crystal boulder, once a section of Dogora's extraterrestrial flesh. The wasp venom finally took full effect, and Dogora was no more. It was soon discovered that the diamonds Hamako had retrieved from the safe-deposit box were, in fact, synthetic. As this truth came to light, Dr. Munakata and his secretary left for the UN to discuss the peaceful potential of the Dogora incident with the world. ===== The start of the movie flashes back to 1962 when Benny becomes Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez. The main part of the movie is set in 1972, ten years after the events of The Sandlot. A new crew of nine kids have moved into the neighborhood of San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles and have started playing baseball in the Sandlot. The previous kids have all grown up and moved away. Johnnie Smalls (James Willson), the little brother of Scott Smalls, has heard the legend of "The Great Fear" (a beastly mutated dog, as he puts it when he later on tells the group about The Beast) owned by Mr. Mertle, who lives behind the Sandlot. A no-nonsense boy named David Durango (Max Lloyd-Jones) the leader of the team, consisting of Tarquell (Neilen Benvegnu), Mac (Brett Kelly), Saul (Cole Evan Weiss) and his little brother, Sammy (Sean Berdy), referred to as "Fingers", because he is deaf. Behind the Sandlot, next to Mr. Mertle's home, lives the Goodfairer family. David's rival, Hayley Goodfairer (Samantha Burton), the daughter and her two friends, Jenny (McKenzie Freemantle) and Penny (Jessica King), fight with the boys in a census to share the sandlot with Hayley calling David a little baby, and David calling Hayley a spoiled brat. The next day the boys repeatedly demand Johnnie to tell the girls to leave the Sandlot, but they keep refusing. Johnnie then suggests that they share the sandlot. The others agree except David. Although since the girls are amazing at playing ball, he plans to make a deal with them; that they have to be on their team, they agree and they all become friends. On Friday afternoon, the kids play a game with a little league team. But when the team captain, Singleton (Reece Thompson), purposely hits Hayley, David responds by punching Singleton in the face and forces him to leave, but not before telling him that the sandlot is theirs forever. Mac gets an aluminum baseball bat and hits the ball over the junk wall. The groups attempts to retrieve it but just as they are about to cross through a hole in the fence, Johnnie stops them and tells them the story of "The Great Fear": how it was born to bite and was different from its sibling puppies. There was a boy who loved the comic book hero named Rapid Rocket, and believed he ran as fast as him. On his first day of school, he went past the house belonging to Mr. Mertle (who forgot to lock the back gate where the Great Fear was), and The Great Fear got out and chased the boy. It was unknown what happened to him after he was cornered by "The Great Fear." Soon afterward, a wall made of assorted junk was built. Ever since, if anything went over the fence, nothing would ever come out. The main conflict comes when Johnnie accidentally launches a model Space Shuttle. The model was built by Hayley's father, a NASA engineer. It was said to be the future of NASA. Unfortunately, Mr. Goodfarier's rocket lands in Mr. Mertle's back yard (which is now the home of the "Great Fear"). Hayley, along with everyone else, frantically attempts many ideas of getting it back, including hiring a selfish little boy called "The Retriever", but he fails, and decides to retire and go home. Then, just like Benny Rodriguez from the first movie, David decided to go over the wall himself to retrieve the rocket. Here it is revealed that the little boy who was bitten by "The Great Fear" in the story was David himself. He retrieves it and escapes the Great Fear's yard. The Sandlot kids soon discover (just like The Beast) that The Great Fear got loose. David then hops on his bike and rides out of the sandlot. The Great Fear then chases after David. David then goes through a construction site, and then David gets off his bike and runs back to the sandlot. David hops over the junk wall back to Mr. Mertle's yard and falls through the tunnel that Mac used to try to get the rocket back. The dog knocks over the wall and saves David from suffocating. When David defeats the dog, it's revealed that the dog's real name is Goliath; after that, the kids can be seen running to the sandlot because Goliath got away, and realize that he only wanted to get out to see his girlfriend dog, Tiny (who was also behind a fence). As all the kids are leaving, Hayley and David share a kiss, and Mr. Mertle, tired of kids thinking he's grouchy, decides not to build a new fence. ===== A time traveler randomly abducts people from throughout history for his granddaughter Juliette (named for the Marquis de Sade's novel Juliette)The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, by Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint; published February 28, 2011, by Routledge to torture and kill in her sexual games. The last "toy" he gives her, however, turns out to be Jack the Ripper. ===== Jack (Billy Zane) and Jennifer (Kelly Brook) are a wealthy couple who are yachting in the Caribbean during Christmas. One of their crew is the handsome Manuel (Juan Pablo Di Pace), who is cursed by his angry ex-girlfriend as he prepares to leave on the yacht. He is clearly bothered and has a difficult time fulfilling requests for the crew and guests. After the captain confronts him, Manuel quits and throws down a rag as he storms out of the galley. The rag lands on a gas flame and causes the entire yacht to catch fire. The captain is unable to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher so they abandon ship. Their lifeboats are capsized by a storm later that night and everyone becomes separated. Washing up on a deserted island, Jennifer is completely alone until she sees the body of the captain in the water. As she attempts to resuscitate him, Manuel appears and also unsuccessfully tries to revive the man. They bury the captain and, under Manuel's guidance, set out to build a shelter and find food. Two days later, Jack also turns up on the island. Although things go smoothly for a little while, Jack eventually suspects Manuel of having desires on his wife and declares the man his enemy, promising to ruin his life once they get off the island. Manuel responds that Jack had better get home soon, because he can ruin Jack's life right there on the island. This puts Jennifer in the uncomfortable position of her loyalty to Jack conflicting with the realization that they both need Manuel's help to survive. A proud man, Jack insists that he can provide for them both, but it quickly becomes apparent that he cannot. Jack and Jennifer's relationship starts quickly deteriorating. Jack steals Manuel's goggles to go fishing one day and when Manuel discovers this, he threatens to kill Jack. Jennifer attempts to get him to calm down. As the two exit the water after fighting, Manuel pins Jennifer down and starts to rape her, but she soon stops resisting and the act becomes consensual. Afterwards, Jennifer feels remorse saying Manuel shouldn't have had sex with her despite having enjoyed the encounter. Manuel reveals that he has loved Jennifer from the moment he first saw her, but it is also clear that this is a way for him to hurt Jack. When Jack returns, Jennifer accidentally hints at him what had happened and he furiously rejects her. While fishing another day, Jack finds a boat on the ocean floor. He drags it to shore and attempts to repair it. Manuel proposes that he and Jennifer go for a midnight swim and as they start having sex, Jennifer gives Manuel the idea of stealing the boat so they can get away together from the island, unaware that Jack is listening to them. They plan to do so while Jack is out fishing. However, they do not get far before the boat begins to sink and they realize that Jack's plan all along was for them to take the boat and drown. They are forced to swim back to the island and to Jack, who attacks the now-exhausted Manuel with a spear and kidnaps Jennifer. The following day, an intense fight sequence ensues, interwoven with scenes of Manuel's ex-girlfriend performing a voodoo ceremony. The scene climaxes when Jennifer pins Jack to the ground, attempting to kill him with his own knife. Manuel, with Jack's spear stuck in his back, picks up a heavy rock with which to crush Jack. He loses his balance and falls backward, impaling himself on the spear, to Jennifer's horror. Simultaneously, the voodoo girl impales his effigy on a spike. One year later, a yachting family drops anchor near the island and explores it, discovering Jennifer asleep in her hut. She, still somewhat distraught over Manuel's death, leaves with them, but does not mention that her ex-husband, who she has been forced to live with and depend on since Manuel's death, is also on the island. Jack, who is fishing, sees her leaving on the yacht and calls out, but Jennifer, who had also stolen his lighter so he could not make any more fires, finally exacts revenge on him by ignoring him and the family inside the boat cannot hear him. Jack is abandoned on the island and his eventual fate is left ambiguous. ===== The story befalls the family of Wong Yuk Ting (Lau Dan) who runs a five-star hotel chain and tells of how repaying a favour turns into seeking vengeance in a twisting story of honour and revenge. Wong Kai Kit (Ron Ng) is the youngest son of Wong Yuk Ting, but his two elder brothers are not the suitable heirs to the family's wealth in the eyes of his father. Then Yuk Ting suddenly dies mysteriously and the business is strangely handed to a man named Ko Fung (Joe Ma) to head. He develops a romance with Bik Kei (Kenix Kwok), whom he meets in the hotel and becomes embroiled in a tangled power struggle with the family, including Kit's uncle Wing Fat (John Chiang), where deceit and plots unfold around every twist and turn. Ko Fung saved the business for another purpose and because of this, him and Kai Kit were always at odds. Through their many arguments and conflicts, Kai Kit slowly matured... ===== The narrator (Ray Bradbury) describes one small American town's preparations for Halloween night. Four friends are shown at their respective homes donning costumes excitedly: Jenny as a witch, Ralph as a mummy; Wally as a monster; and Tom Skelton as a skeleton. They plan to meet up with their best friend, Joe Pipkin, but he doesn't appear. They go to Pip's house and see him being loaded into an ambulance with his parents riding along with him. He has written them a note explaining that he is going to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy and that they should celebrate without him. They feel they cannot start Halloween without him, so they follow the ambulance to visit him at the hospital. Tom suggests a shortcut through the spooky woods: the dark and eerie ravine. They see what looks like a translucent Pip running along the ravine trail, and Tom leads them on, convinced that Pip has designed an elaborate hoax for them. The group races after Pip, who disappears near a towering and darkened mansion. A man named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud greets them inside. Moundshroud expresses disappointment that none of the children know what their costumes symbolize. He reveals that he is after the ghost of Pip. Pip seeks and steals a pumpkin with his face carved into it from Moundshroud's Halloween Tree of jack-o'-lanterns. Tom begs Moundshroud to let them come with him and help bring back Pip. Moundshroud initially refuses but relents: if they can keep up with him before dawn, then they might be able to retrieve the pumpkin and get Pip back, while also going on a scavenger hunt of sorts to learn about the significance of their costumes and the origins of Halloween. They begin their pursuit of Pip, traveling back in time by ripping down old circus posters from a nearby barn and crafting a giant kite, with the children hanging on as a weighted tail. First, they travel to Ancient Egypt to learn of the celebration called 'the Feast of the Ghosts'. Following Pip's spirit to a tomb in a pyramid, they learn about the significance of mummification. Ralph finds a weak-spirited Pip and begs him to come back. As the priests began trying to embalm Pip, Ralph scares them away by pretending to be a real mummy, but when Moundshroud confronts him again, Pip uses his pumpkin's magic to escape him, and the group chases him through time, once more. Next, arriving at Stonehenge during the Dark Ages in England, they witness rituals carried out by Celtic druids and villagers of the old Celtic world. As Moundshroud teaches them, Pip briefly appears as a black cat. They come across a field of straw being harvested and made into brooms and discover a coven of witches chanting and celebrating the New Year. Moundshroud helps the children escape a mob of anti- witch villagers by making some of the brooms fly, then knocks Pip off his broom in an attempt to snatch away his pumpkin. Jenny catches Pip but is afraid of losing him. He encourages her and then darts away. They follow him to France and arrive at the unfinished Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, learning of the cathedral's use of gargoyles and demons. The children use Moundshroud's magic to finish the cathedral, and Wally climbs to reach a Pip-shaped gargoyle that is holding Pip's pumpkin. He begs Pip to be strong; Pip flees again and the group follows. Finally, in Mexico, they learn about the significance of skeletons during "Día de los Muertos" — the Day of the Dead festival. They find a very weak Pip in a catacombs. Tom manages to get to Pip and apologizes to him, admitting he feels guilty for the whole ordeal because he once wished for something bad to happen to Pip so he could lead the group for once. Pip smiles and forgives him, promising to let him lead anytime he wants. Pip's spirit crumbles into dust and is gone. Moundshroud tells the children they did not make it in time and Pip is now his property. The children offer him a year from the end of each of their lives in exchange for Pip's return. He accepts the deal and gives each of them a piece of a sugar candy skull with Pip's name on it to eat, sealing the bargain. Pip's spirit then revives, and he snatches his pumpkin back from Moundshroud and flies out. The group is then immediately transported home to America in the present day, having completed the four- thousand-year journey. The children go to Pip's house to see if the experience was real, and are delighted to see him back from the hospital. At the mansion, Moundshroud blows out his pumpkin's candle, turns into smoke and disappears; the Halloween Tree is assaulted by strong winds, blowing all the pumpkins away — all except for Pip's "pumpkin", which the children rescued by their sacrifice. ===== Thangapaandi (S.J. Suryah) is the son of Malaiswamy (Vijayakumar), who is financially mediocre but well respected and loved in the Tirunelveli village. Thangapaandi, however, is immature and spends his time gallivanting about the village and dancing at temple functions, while failing his +2 examinations with regularity every year. His niece Rasathi (Preethi Varma) is in love with him, as their parents have informally promised them to each other from childhood itself. However, Thangapaandi pursues his own agenda and falls for loud-mouthed orphan girl Ayyakka (Meera Jasmine), who makes and sells pots for a living. Thangapaandi, despite his lack of a regular job or prospects, appears to be the most sought after bachelor in the village. In the midst of this love 'square', the elders add their own two cents of interference, causing more chaos. How Thangapaandi and his ladies deal with this is the fodder for the rest of the film. ===== Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) is a lonely nightwatchman tasked with guarding a shopping mall. He attempts to socialize, but is treated coldly by his manager and subjected to mocking by his colleagues. While he is drinking alone in a bar, he catches the eye of some criminals headed by Lindholm (Ilkka Koivula) who learn of his occupation. Koistinen's only human contact is the grill vendor Aila (Maria Heiskanen) to whom he outlines his plans of starting his own company. While at work, Koistinen notices a dog left outside a pub without water. While he is taking a break, Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi) approaches him, saying he seems lonely. They agree to go on a date together. Returning from his break, Koistinen meets a young boy in front of the pub and asks if he knows the owners of the dog. Despite the boy's warning, Koistinen confronts the owners in the pub and is beaten off-camera. Koistinen and Mirja go on a date. They talk little, and at a concert Koistinen watches as Mirja goes dancing on her own with other men. Despite this, they agree to meet again. Koistinen returns to Aila's grill and talks about his evening. Insulted, Aila asks him to leave and closes shop. Meanwhile, Mirja meets with Lindholm for her payment and ridicules Koistinen. Lindholm informs his contacts of an "open-door day." Koistinen seeks a loan to start his own business, but is harshly refused at the bank due to his insufficient education and lack of guarantors. Later, Mirja unexpectedly joins Koistinen while he is taking his rounds. While Koistinen explains the mall's security system, Mirja memorizes the security code he uses. She gives the code to Lindholm, who tells her to start cooling the fake relationship off. Mirja meets Koistinen at his place, but abruptly leaves when he attempts to put his arm around her. Koistinen begins to drink heavily, and ends up at Aila's grill. Aila walks him home and puts him to bed. At work, one of Koistinen's colleagues mockingly asks about his successes with women. Koistinen grabs the man, but stops himself from striking him and goes to his rounds. Mirja meets him and asks him to come and talk. Koistinen signs off and leaves with Mirja in his car. Mirja drugs Koistinen and passes his keys to one of Lindholm's contacts. Using Koistinen's keys and security code, the thieves rob a jewellery store at the mall. The police question Koistinen, but he claims to have been alone and drunk. He is released due to lack of proof, but is fired from his job. On Lindholm's insistence, Mirja meets with Koistinen at his apartment once again to plant evidence. Koistinen notices her hiding the evidence, but does not stop her and lets himself be arrested by the police. He is sentenced to two years in prison. Koistinen initially remains lonely in prison, tearing up a letter Aila sends him. Just as Koistinen begins to have some contact to other inmates, he is released a year early on parole. He finds lodgings at a night shelter and gets a job as a restaurant's dishwasher. He runs into Aila, but soon excuses himself. However, Aila comes to see him at the night shelter and asks about his plans for the future. When Koistinen says he plans to open a garage once he's back on his feet, she congratulates him for not losing hope. They agree to see each other again. Koistinen sees Mirja and Lindholm at the restaurant where he is working, but does not confront them. Lindholm calls up the head waitress and tells about Koistinen's criminal record, which results in him being fired immediately. Koistinen gets a knife from the night shelter and returns to the restaurant. As Lindholm and Mirja are leaving, he attacks Lindholm, but only manages to cut his hand while being disarmed and subdued by Lindholm's thugs. The thugs offer to kill Koistinen, but Lindholm refuses, saying he is a businessman and not a murderer. The young boy who warned Koistinen earlier sees the thugs take him away and finds Aila. They discover the badly beaten Koistinen in the harbour, along with the dog Koistinen attempted to help earlier. Aila offers to get help but Koistinen asks her to stay. When she asks him not to die, Koistinen replies "I won't die yet" and puts his hand on hers. ===== Against the dramatic scenery of Cornwall, the turbulent criminal underworld of London and the climactic events of the French revolution. In this seventh novel in the series, life with the Lovedays is not confined to England and France. America has won its independence but the Lovedays have connections in Virginia and the new penal colony in Australia has become the residence of one Loveday who took a chance too many. Loyalty to and pride in the Loveday name has held the family together through unstable times, but with the fierce rivalry that exists between family members, will loyalty be enough to honour the family's heritage? Category:2005 British novels Category:Novels by Kate Tremayne Category:Novels set in Cornwall Category:Historical romance novels ===== Raja (Kunal) is from a very poor, illiterate family, from Tamil Nadu (in the Hindi version he is from Allahabad). People from his region consider that "education is meant only for the rich". There, poor boys are made to work from age five, either at factories or farms, so that they can support their families. Raja's dad is a violent alcoholic. He spends half of the family's income on alcohol. Raja's family struggles to survive hard everyday. But, Raja's mother forced his father to let Raja finish high school, without doing any other work. But he refuses to fund him, and orders him to start work as accountant for their landlord. Raja's mom begs him to move to Mumbai to start a new life. Raja heeds his mom's pleas and moves to Mumbai to attend under graduate entrance exam at Ramachandra Institute of Management Studies, the top-most premier b-school in India. Then the movie resumes at a train station on New Year Day, 1999. Raja talks with a man (Manivannan in the Tamil version, Anupam Kher in the Hindi version) in the station. Due to insistence, Raja goes into a flash back. Three years ago, he reaches Mumbai, where he plans to get admitted into the prestigious Ramachandra College of management, one of the most premier institutes in the nation. He gains admission for an MBA program at the Ramachandra College in Mumbai, though he was in 41st rank, in admission tests, for the 40 member class, courtesy of the college chairman, Dr.Ramachandra (Nassar), but he doesn't realize this at first. He thinks that he managed to get a seat due to his own abilities. This was because Ramachandra saw Raja sleeping on the same enclave-side bench , where he had slept without having anything else than the thought of providing quality education to all, 40 years ago. Ramachandra was born to a poor illiterate family and his father abandoned them after his sister's birth. Out of his desire to become a student, his mother rents the baby sister for beggars, to pay fees. But the poor baby dies and this pushes Ramachandra to create the best institute in India, by hard work. He brings up his daughter, in a humble manner, all alone after the death of his wife. Raja meets Roja (Sonali Bendre) through the Internet. After a brief introduction, Raja and Roja started loving each other. They have yet to see each other and thus, they sent their pictures through e-mail to each other. As Roja checks her e-mail and sees Raja's photo, Raja enters the Net Cafe where Roja was. Then, they meet each other. They are initially shocked by seeing each other as Roja told him that she is in America and Raja told her that he is in London, although they were both in India and were studying in the same college. The very next day, Raja meets Roja again in the train station where he usually comes to board the train. Again they are both surprised and were speechless when they saw each other. However, things take a turn for the bad when they are both unable to express their feelings about each other due to fated accidents. Raja wanted to see if Roja really likes him by asking her to wear a rose on her head. But, as she walks towards the train station, her rose drops off. Unaware of this, Raja believes that Roja really doesn't like him. Ramachandra meets him and tells him to be practical. He suggests that Raja should write her a love letter. As Raja doesn't know how to write one, Ramachandra helps him. Even his daughter, Roja, helps him write a letter for Raja, unaware that it was for Raja that the father was writing it. The next day, Raja meets her in the train station and gives her his books, with the love letter inside of it. Not knowing why he gave her his books, she just skims through his books, accidentally causing his love letter to fly away. However, Roja does write a love letter to him too. As she returns his books, a long-lost friend of Raja meets him on the train station. Raja writes the address on the first page of the book and tears it off to give to his friend. Unfortunately, he wasn't aware that Roja wrote her love-letter right behind it. He feels disappointed and doesn't show interest to Roja, causing her to think that he doesn't like her. Ramachandra comes to the rescue again and asks Raja to write another love letter and give it to her the next day, which happens to be Valentine's Day. When Raja comes to express his love for Roja, he finds out that Roja is the daughter of Ramachandra, who has decided to fix his daughter up with Rajesh Gupta, a smart and wealthy golf player who completed his MBA degree in America. Rajesh's father owns the second best private University in India and wants to merge his with Ramachandra's. Roja makes a last attempt to find out if Raja likes her or not. She sends him an e-mail stating that she loves him. On the other hand, Raja doesn't want to hurt the feelings of his beloved guide and teacher, whom he respects as his father. Thus, he sends her an e-mail stating that he is unable to return his feelings for Roja. Roja begrudgingly agrees to the wedding, assuming that Raja will never fall in love with her. Raja comes to the wedding, but leaves the hall to go back to his hometown, which goes back to the beginning of the story. Coincidentally, Ramachandra overhears his conversation between Raja and his friends and realizes that he is in love with his daughter. He goes to the train station to stop Raja, asking him to return and propose to his daughter. Raja and Ramachandra reach the wedding hall just in time to stop the wedding from taking place. But as they make their way, Roja faints due to ingesting poison in a suicide attempt (this scene is not shown in the Hindi version). In the Tamil version, Raja and Roja are married on Valentine's Day, and the movie ends with showing them marrying. In the Hindi version, Raja and Roja confess their love for each other and the movie ends with them embracing. ===== The plot follows Scilla and Jake who are enjoying the pleasures and the comforts of the upper class. But the story climaxes when Jake Todd turns up murdered during the first few scenes due to his underground trading. Scilla takes it upon herself to find her brother's killer and the money he was dealing. She later finds out that he was being investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry. Though she does not find the killer, she finds the American business woman Marylou Banes with whom Jake was dealing. Marylou Banes offers her a fresh start. The story takes place around the stock market troubles in Britain. Aside from that a second story follows Billy Corman's and Zac Zackerman's attempt to take over the Albion company from Duckett. In between this takeover Corman attempts to get Jacinta Condor and Nigel Ajibala [who are the foreigners with an interest in his takeover] to buy shares in his company. They support Corman but decide to give their bid to Duckett in the end. The plot ends with Greville Todd in jail, Corman appointed as a Lord, and Scilla happily working for Marylou Banes. ===== Vasu (Ajith Kumar) is a happy-go-lucky final- year college student who is forced to contest elections in the college after being persuaded by his friends Arun (Nithin Sathya) and Uma Shankar (Venkat Prabhu). He incurs the wrath of the local MLA Varadharajan (Charan Raj), whose son is studying in the same college and is also contesting the elections. In the course of events, Varadharajan's gang attacks Vasu and his friends. Vasu's father Seenu (Vijayakumar), a tea shop owner, advises the students to take a plunge in politics and teach bad apples like Varadharajan a lesson. Taking cue from his words, Vasu does take the plunge in politics with the backing of college students and files a nomination for the assembly election in Kumbakonam constituency. Varadharajan is annoyed and angry at Vasu's presumptuousness and tells him to back off from the elections. But Vasu goes ahead with his plans. The rest is a sequence of events by which Vasu wins the admiration of masses and succeeds in getting elected as MLA. Varadharajan, unable to digest the defeat, plays a trick and burns a school, and Vasu is blamed for the death of innocent children. He gets sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment. After serving the term, Vasu comes out of prison to take revenge on Varadharajan. It is a happy ending with Vasu holding the hands of his long-love Bhuvana (Trisha). ===== In the Capital City Town Hall, a beagle on the police bomb squad sets off a false alarm. Ridiculed and rejected, the beagle leaves in shame and is abducted off the street by Cad, who takes him to Simon Bar Sinister's lab. Bitter his proposal for genetic experimentation was declined, Simon plans to prove the mayor wrong by testing his new serum on the beagle. The beagle escapes and runs amok in the lab, causing a fire and becoming exposed to various chemicals, which modify his DNA and give him superpowers. After his escape, the beagle avoids an encounter with a Rottweiler named Riff Raff and his lackeys. Dan Unger strikes the beagle with his car, but, thanks to the serum, the beagle is unharmed. Dan takes him home and names him Shoeshine after the dog licks his shoes. Dan's son, Jack, becomes jealous of Shoeshine's attention. Dan retired from the police to spend more time with Jack after his wife's death but still seems busy. Jack leaves for school and Dan for work, leaving Shoeshine at the house alone, where he, still unaware of his new powers, accidentally makes a very large mess. After coming home, Jack complains as he cleans up, and Shoeshine shocks both of them by verbally claiming it was an accident. Jack initially runs away, but after they reach a park, Jack and Shoeshine talk and bond over their respective attraction to Molly and Polly, Jack's friend and her dog. After the girls leave, Jack and Shoeshine test the latter’s powers discovering; he has super speed, strength, hearing, and smell in the process. When Molly and Polly are mugged, Shoeshine rushes to their aid, discovering he can fly. After discreetly rescuing them, Shoeshine returns home with Jack, making him promise to never reveal his powers. Cad shows up at the door with posters of Shoeshine, but Jack fools him into leaving just before Dan comes home and discovers the mess. Meanwhile, Barsinister and Cad find a new lair beneath the city, then plan a robbery to fund rebuilding the former's lab. Seeing Cad's heist on the news, Jack convinces Shoeshine to intervene. Shoeshine disguises himself and saves the hostages, but Cad escapes. Shoeshine adopts the alias "Underdog" and becomes the city's resident superhero; donning a red sweater and blue cape as his disguise. Barsinister repeatedly fails to recreate his serum and sends Cad to obtain a sample of Underdog's DNA. Shoeshine is rebuffed by Polly but gets a date with her as Underdog. Cad fails to capture Underdog but obtains his collar, which contains his secret identity's name and address. Barsinister and Cad kidnap Dan and force him to call Shoeshine for help. Shoeshine and Jack attempt a rescue, but Barsinister uses both Jack and Dan as hostages to convince Shoeshine to give up his DNA. Bar Sinister synthesizes Underdog's superpowers into pills, injects Shoeshine with an antidote to the serum, and feeds the super pills to three trained German Shepherds. He and Cad leave the family trapped in the sewers, but Dan's police experience allows him to free everyone. They pursue Bar Sinister with a hypodermic needle filled with the antidote. At city hall, Barsinister takes the mayor hostage and instructs Cad to attach a bomb rigged with a mind control serum to the roof; Molly and Polly follow Cad. Shoeshine smells the bomb and, conquering his self-doubt, enters the building despite having lost his powers. During a scuffle with Barsinister, Shoeshine accidentally rips open Barsinister's pocket and swallows a super pill, restoring his powers. Shoeshine temporarily incapacitates the German Shepherds after he hears Molly and Polly cry for help, but Barsinister eats a pill and distracts Shoeshine by tossing a shield like a Frisbee. When the German Shepherds recover, Shoeshine convinces them to turn on Barsinister, who has not treated them well. While they restrain Barsinister, Underdog appears on the roof and saves Molly and Polly, instructing them to take the mind control serum to the police while he gets the bomb out of harm's way. Dan arrives and injects Barsinister with the antidote just as Underdog buries the bomb deep underground just before it explodes. Underdog tries to escape, but is caught in the explosion, launched into space, and presumed dead. Amidst a mournful crowd, Underdog revives, leaving the former overjoyed. Dan is reinstated as a police officer, Barsinister and Cad are arrested, and Shoeshine returns to protecting Capital City as Underdog. ===== The story concerns a mountain climber named James Abram Robbons who is the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest, after having been dropped there by airplane. Robbons is picked up again two weeks later, and he reports that the summit of Everest is the location of a Martian outpost, and that the yeti are actually Martians. ===== Arul (Vikram), who works in a mill, is the third son of four brothers in a family of goldsmiths. Once, Arul's brother steals a chain due to financial circumstances. Arul took the blame for it, was labelled as a thief, and was seen as a black sheep by his father Bala Aasari (Vinu Chakravarthy). Thus, he vows never to make a gold ornament ever again. Kanmani (Jyothika), who moves into his neighbourhood eventually falls for him .However Arul does not reciprocate . One day, when Bala scolds Arul at a family gathering , Kanmani stands up for him causing Bala to insult her. Soon, Arul marries Kanmani. The setting up of the party office of the ruling party forces Arul to lock horns with MLA Gajapathy (Pasupathy) and his brother Minister Sethupathy (Kollam Thulasi), the party leader. ===== Patrick Sullivan is looking forward to a life with Sophia, until she calls into the radio show hosted by famed love expert Dr. Emma Lloyd. Emma questions Sophia’s concept of romantic love and advises her to break their engagement, which she swiftly does. Patrick is so upset that when he hears that Emma is about to be married herself, he allows his young neighbour, Ajay, to hack into public records and create a fake marriage certificate between himself and Emma. Upon going to the public records office to get a marriage license, Emma and her perfect- gentleman fiancé, Richard, are told she is already married. Emma sets out to find Patrick and give him annulment papers to sign so that she can marry Richard. Emma finds Patrick in a bar, and their initial meeting ends with her getting drunk. The following day, Patrick comes to Emma's workplace to give her the annulment papers as she is leaving for a wedding cake tasting. Patrick accompanies her to the tasting, where Frau Greta Bollenbecker assumes he is Emma's fiancé, Richard. Greta later comes to Emma's book launch because her husband Herr Karl Bollenbecker is planning to liquidate Richard's publishing house. Greta meets Emma during the banquet and tells her of the same. Patrick still has the annulment papers, so he comes to the book launch. Matters get worse when Richard sees Greta and Karl with Emma and Patrick, who is posing as Richard, but Richard agrees to go along with it when he learns that Greta thinks Patrick will charm Karl so much that Karl will decide to continue business with "Richard". Patrick invites them all to Ajay's ceremony. Emma and the other guests have a good time there, and she sees a whole new side of Patrick, who had been repulsive to her so far. There is a slight spark of attraction, but Emma flees the scene before anything can happen. Patrick decides to throw out everything related to Emma or Sophia, but instead reads Emma's book, Real Love. He comes to confront her about the book because he thinks it only points out all the bad things in a relationship. Patrick and Emma continue their argument in an elevator. Suddenly Patrick flashes his New York Fire Department badge and asks the other occupants to leave the elevator. He then locks the elevator to kiss Emma. Security staff see them through a CCTV in the elevator and ask them to leave. Emma finally has the signed and notarized annulment papers, but she considers calling off her wedding. She goes to Patrick’s lodgings and they make love that night. The following morning, Emma finds all the papers related to her and Sophia in the trash. Patrick then confesses that he had initially wanted to teach her a lesson about love but then fell for her. Emma then goes back to the honorable Richard, who still loves her and says that she wants to marry him. One day before her wedding, Patrick calls her at the radio station and tells her that he loves her. She does not answer him. The next day on her wedding day, she confides in her father, Wilder, and asks for his advice. He tells her that the decision is hers. Richard comes to see Emma in the bridal chamber. Richard had also heard the radio show the night before and tells her that he wants her to be happy, and they amicably break up. Emma sets off the church's fire sprinklers in an attempt to get Patrick to the church. Meanwhile, the fire department where Patrick works is called to the church to put out the fire. When Patrick arrives there, Emma and Patrick get married and leave in the fire truck. The final scene shifts to a year later where it is shown that Emma is pregnant and that she and Patrick are still very much in love. The movie ends with a Tamil song, "Swasame", from the movie Thenali in the background. ===== SpongeBob receives a paddle ball sent to him in the mail and begins to play with it. He is totally consumed by the challenge of hitting the ball an absurd number of times and forgets Gary for ten days. Gary feels neglected and runs away from home. SpongeBob is shaken from his infatuation with the arrival of Patrick, and cannot find Gary. SpongeBob finds a note saying that Gary has left in search of a new owner. Meanwhile, Gary has wandered into a new city. A kind old lady discovers Gary and mistakes him for one of her pets, Miss Tuffsy. Gary is showered with love and food while SpongeBob goes to work, sad that Gary is still missing. Mr. Krabs encourages SpongeBob to work, but SpongeBob misinterprets him, and he takes the day off to look for Gary. He and Patrick put up posters and signs everywhere in the hope of finding Gary.SpongeBob SquarePants: Season Four, Volume 1. DVD. Paramount Home Entertainment, 2006. At the old lady's house, Gary has been fed a lot. The old lady puts out fresh sheets of flyers given to her by Patrick. Upon reading them, Gary realizes that SpongeBob truly loves him and wants him back. He tries to leave, but instead of doing that, he ends up going to the closet, filled with empty snail shells. When the old lady tries to feed him again, Gary finds that the old lady most likely has sinister motives—she is possibly trying to fatten and then eat him. He makes his escape, but the old lady chases him out onto the streets. Gary finds an alley snail, which the old lady now mistakes for Miss Tuffsy, and takes him home instead. Back home, SpongeBob gives up on his search for Gary, and tries to forget about him by taking a walk, but his memories keep coming to mind and upsetting him. He is constantly reminded as the streets are filled with posters and signs for Gary. SpongeBob hears a meow and turns around to find Gary at his side, and he is overjoyed to see his beloved pet again. ===== Aarumugam (Suriya), known as Aaru, is a thug and dealmaker with a band of boys handpicked from the slums of Chennai. Aaru was just a child when his parents died on different occasions. Being an orphan, he was brought up by Vishwanathan's (Ashish Vidyarthi) little sister. Aaru is very devoted to Vishwanathan, whom he respects as his brother, and is ready to go miles for keeping him the most powerful person in Chennai. Vishwanathan protects Aaru because the latter gives him the violent undercover that he needs. When Vishwanathan declares war on his bitter rival Reddy (Jaya Prakash Reddy), Aaru assists him. In the process, he is attacked by Reddy's goons, but he overpowers this attempt. Things were going on smoothly when Aaru has to help Vishwanathan on an errand in protecting a girl from being dragged into a hit- and-run case. This is where he meets Mahalakshmi (Trisha). Later on, Mahalakshmi puts forward her proposal, which Aaru declines, and slaps her. Aaru understands his mistake and goes out to invite her to his life. Meanwhile, Vishwanathan plots to kill Aaru's friends during a protest which was organised by him. Aaru smells something fishy about this event and is misguided by Vishwanathan that Reddy is behind the mishap. Aaru sets out to kill Reddy and finds out that he was betrayed by Vishwanathan. Aaru realizes Vishwanathan's true, evil nature and vows to destroy his power. Aaru carefully takes out Vishwanathan's two brothers. In the climax, Aaru is seen traveling out of Chennai with Mahalakshmi without anyone knowing his location. ===== Sweeney (Anthony Newley) is a playwright on a career decline. He spends much of his time wheedling money and beer out of his artistic friend Moriarty (Isaac Hayes). One of his few highlights is weekly sex with his ex-wife Georgina (Stefanie Powers). She is remarried to a rich but vile construction developer (Henry Ramer), but Sweeney and Georgina are still in love. Sweeney's escapades end with a fake kidnapping scam. This gets the attention of two inept police officers, played by John Candy and Lawrence Dane. These two end up dressed as garbage men in the chase scene finale; everything winds up with a happy ending. Candy and Dane's characters eventually spun off their own film, Find the Lady. ===== Reza Mesghaly, known as Reza the Lizard, is a thief known in criminal circles for his ability to bare-handedly climb all walls (from which he derives his name, "the Lizard", or "Marmoulak" in Persian). At the very beginning of the film, he is arrested and charged with armed robbery, a crime that is revealed near the ending of the film, he did not commit. Nonetheless, he is sentenced to life in prison, and is met at the jailhouse by a strict warden, who says that his intention is to "make a person out of prisoners"; thus they will be led into heaven; "by force," if necessary. Reza is very restless at the prison, to the point where he steals medicine from the infirmary in order to attempt suicide. He is unable to go through with the act, however, and is stopped by his cellmate, who in the course of fighting with Reza causes the medicine bottle to break and cut open his arm. Reza is sent to the hospital to recover, where he meets a cleric, also staying in the hospital, also by the name of Reza. During his stay, the two become friends, and Reza Marmoulak overcomes his dislike of the Islamic clergy to accept the mullah after he is told a profound statement which stays with him for the rest of the film - "There are as many ways to reach God as there are people in the world." Before he is discharged back into the prison, Reza Marmoulak steals the cleric's clothing, and impersonating him, is able to escape the prison and contact one of his friends, who tells him to go to a small border village and contact a man who will give him a fake passport to cross the border with. In the meantime, the warden is informed that Reza has escaped, and seeing this as a personal blemish on his record, pursues the criminal to the border village. Arriving by train at the village, Reza is taken in by the villagers who mistake him as the new mullah who was supposed to join their mosque. The remainder of the film documents Reza's attempts to get in contact with the criminal underworld to obtain his false passport, while the police pursue him at the behest of the warden; and all along Reza tries to avoid tipping off the villagers to his actions. In the course of this, he becomes something of a hero in the eyes of the villagers, who misinterpret his attempts to track down his false passport as his visiting the homes of poor people and giving them charity. These actions continue to draw the praise of the villagers, convincing those who have abandoned faith in their religion to come to the mosque once again to hear the sermons of Reza Marmoulak, most of which are derived from his brief contact with the cleric in the prison's hospital. At the end of the film, Reza is finally tracked down by the warden, and on the night of a religious celebration at the mosque, he is arrested, without the villagers noticing. He hands over his robes to a small boy who had watched him over the course of the entire film, possibly the only person in the village who had guessed his identity all along, and goes peacefully with the warden and the police officer back to the prison in Tehran. As they are entering the car, the officer attempts to handcuff Reza, an attempt stopped by the warden and followed by his famous line, "That's not needed anymore". The film ends with a shot inside the mosque, now being finally full of eager prayers because of Reza. as the police car leaves for Tehran, the prayers look at it; probably wondering about the petty thief in it, while waiting for the great Mullah. This frame is frozen, and the same words spoken by the mullah in the hospital and the most important message of the film are heard for one last time; this time expressing Reza's destiny: "There are as many ways to reach God as there are people in the world." ===== The object of the game is to enter the ruins of Dragonfire Castle at dawn when the castle's guardian dragon falls asleep, navigate a labyrinth to the dragon's hoard at the center of the castle, and exit the castle. The game ends at sunset; any characters still in the castle at that point are automatically killed by the dragon. The player who successfully escapes from the castle with the largest amount of treasure is the winner. ===== ===== :Original Croatian character names are in parentheses. Lapitch (šegrt Hlapić), an orphaned mouse, works in a small town as the apprentice of the Scowlers—a mean-mannered shoemaker (majstor Mrkonja), and his kind-hearted wife (Majstorica). His dog, Brewster (Bundaš), keeps him company when he is alone. Master Scowler awaits a visit from the Mayor (Gradonačelnik) and his son (both pigs); Lapitch has to make sure the pigs' boots are the right size. When the piglet tries to put them on, things do not go well, and the two patrons leave for good. Lapitch tries to tell the Master it was not his fault, yet he still blames his young apprentice for the mistake. Mistress Scowler apologises for her husband's bad behaviour. While he tidies up, she tells the little mouse that she and her husband used to be happier ages ago. Lapitch wants to know why, but the Mistress vows only to tell him when he is older. Lapitch writes a letter to the Scowlers and leaves the town, wearing the piglet's boots. Although Lapitch has said good-bye to Brewster, the dog joins him the following morning. Eventually, the two of them visit a young squirrel named Marco (Marko), who lives in a house with a blue star on one of its walls, and help him round up some geese that went astray while he was tending to the flock. At evening, Marco's mother thanks them by serving a luscious supper. An awkward raccoon, Melvin (Grga), eavesdrops on the group's conversation. Hearing of a valuable treasure stored inside their house, he runs off to tell his boss, the evil Dirty Rat (Crni štakor), about the goods. When morning comes, Lapitch and Brewster say farewell to the squirrels. The road ahead, however, does not go smoothly: an afternoon of unusual weather culminates in an evening storm, and they must find shelter. When they do, under an old bridge they meet Dirty Rat himself, and sleep next to him. Because of Dirty Rat—"King of the Underworld" as he is known—Lapitch wakes up shocked to see his boots gone. As he looks for the shiny pair, he meets Lisa (Gita)—another orphan mouse—and her parrot Pico (Amadeus); both came from a circus whose ringmaster treated them badly and left them behind. During their journey, the two mice and their pets meet Melvin's hardworking mother and help her chop wood. Worried about her son's bad deeds, Melvin's mother gives Lapitch a silver coin for luck before they go off. The mouse later gives it to the raccoon, after he falls off Dirty rat's wagon. Soon, the group team up with other residents to extinguish a fire, but they make Melvin a suspect in the area's recent robbery string. In addition, the group encounters a poor cat-like warthog named Yana (Jana), whose magic powers give Lapitch the courage to face the evil Dirty Rat. After the gang comes to a circus, Lisa entertains the patrons of an under-used merry-go-round. As night falls, she reunites with her horse, Blanka (Zorka), after hearing its neigh. But a nasty surprise awaits everyone: Dirty Rat makes a deal with Lisa's ringmaster in which he vows to reach Marco's house with a fast horse, and steal the family chest. Lapitch and friends plan to stop him for good when they hear this. Later on, they meet Master Scowler, whom Melvin has just rescued. Scowler tells them he was robbed and tied up in a tree for two days. They all set forth to put an end to Dirty Rat; Melvin gives them a hand, but his boss ties him and swings him out of the way. A determined Lapitch, guided by Yana and her wise advice, comes to terms with the villain's schemes and confronts Dirty Rat. Dirty Rat is so enraged that his horse charges straight at the little mouse, about to trample him. At the last moment, a bolt of lightning splits the harness; the rat and his cart fall down a cliff, encased in huge boulders, Dirty Rat is presumably dead. The clouds clear as soon as everyone celebrates. Then, Lisa tames Dirty Rat's black horse, and gives it to Melvin, who promises to live a good life after what he has gone through. The next day, Lapitch and the rest arrive at Marco's house, where his mother shows them the family's valuable treasure; she also receives Melvin's coin. When they leave, they meet Marco's father, gone for a long time after working in a faraway land. Back home, a worried Mistress Scowler is delighted to see everyone back again—Brewster, Master Scowler, Lapitch and Lisa. By then, she and her husband finally recognise Lisa, the orphan circus star, as their lone child Susanna. The Scowlers have their happiest moment ever due to this; afterwards, Master plays a pleasant melody on his violin, and everybody dances to it. Eventually, the Scowlers rekindle their relationship, and the town dwellers celebrate along with them. In time, Lapitch becomes the most respected shoemaker they have ever known. ===== Mythili (Reema) showers love and affection on her neighbor Vishwa (Bharath) since childhood. Vishwa happens to be the only son of a rich business tycoon named Rajasekhar (Girish Karnad), who loses his mother at a young age. Mythili treats Vishwa as her younger brother and spends all her time with him. Ragunandan (Vishal), an Income Tax Inspector, turns up at Rajasekhar's house for an IT raid and happens to meet Mythili there. They eventually fall in love, and after a series of incidents, they get wed locked and later settle in Goa. The trouble begins when Vishwa reaches Goa in search of Mythili. He manages to kidnap her and bring her to Chennai. The reasons for Vishwa's obsession and possessiveness towards Mythili unfolds as the movie progresses. Ragunandan, who comes back to Goa, finds the house deserted. The next-door neighbor tells him that Mythili eloped with Vishwa. He then begins to track her down and finds that the duo had left to Chennai. Ragunandan reaches Chennai. With the help of his colleague Income Tax Inspector Harichandra (Vivek), he tries to trace Mythili out. A chance look at the video of their marriage throws light on Vishwa’s hatred towards Ragunandan. Ragunandan is convinced that Mythili did not go on her own will. He confronts Rajasekhar, but he is of no help. Finally, he traces out the location of Vishwa’s hideout. Mythili pleads with Vishwa to release her. She explains that she cannot be his wife and can see him as a son or little brother. The plea falls on deaf ears. In a racy climax on high seas, the three protagonists fight it out, and Mythili hits Vishwa with the boat oars. He plunges into the sea in an unconscious condition, taking Mythili along. Ragunandan soon saves her. Even though Mythili had killed Vishwa because of her attack on him, she is filled with remorse. ===== In the then-future year of 1985, a new television network called TunnelVision is entirely free of censorship (aided by a new Bill of Rights, written in 1983), and has thus become the most-watched channel in history. The president of TunnelVision (Proctor) is under Senate investigation led by a Senator (Hesseman) who wishes to shut down the channel due to its perceived widespread negative effects on the population. (Al Franken, who in real life was later elected to the Senate, appears in one of the segments.) The bulk of the film consists of mostly unconnected bits: commercials, shorts, and trailers for fictional movies, shown during a Congressional Oversight Committee hearing as a representative day of TunnelVision programming. At the end of the film, the committee finds in favor of TunnelVision, but the network president is shot and killed by a crazed French chef who had been a running gag throughout the film.FilmAffinity ===== The story begins in a rural village in Bihar, with the delivery of a baby girl to a village couple. Her disappointed father, who was hoping for a boy, drowns her in vat of milk in a public ceremony. Many years later somewhere around 2050 A.D., this unchecked trend leads to the village being populated mainly by males and a tiny number of older women. The now uncouth and aggressive young men of the village are desperate for wives and release their frustration through group screenings of imported pornographic films, cross-dressed dance performances, and even bestiality. They are shown to be willing to go to the lengths of human trafficking and courtship-driven emigration to procure spouses for themselves. Ramcharan (Sudhir Pandey) a wealthy man and the father of five young men finds out about a single young girl, named Kalki (Tulip Joshi), living some distance from the village and buys her from her father. She is then married to all the five sons simultaneously. Each night of the week, she is forced to sleep with one of the men, including Ramcharan. Of all the men in the boorish lot, only the youngest son Sooraj (Sushant Singh) treats her with respect and tenderness. Kalki develops a preference towards Sooraj, causing him to be killed by his jealous brothers. Kalki asks her father to help her escape but he is blinded by the money given to him as dowry, and he turns her down. A sympathetic domestic servant boy helps her to escape but he is brutally murdered by the brothers, while Kalki gets recaptured by them and they chained her to a post in a cow shed.She becomes a pawn in a game of revenge, in an inter-community conflict. The lower caste community of the village hold her responsible for the death of the servant boy, and decide to avenge the murder through gang rape. Kalki is then sent back to her husbands. Kalki becomes pregnant and everybody rejoices. A new servant boy is appointed for her care. As the news spreads, every man in the area claims paternity of the unborn child, which causes violence to break out in the village. The men kill each other off over rights to Kalki and her child. In the meanwhile Kalki goes into labour. The film ends on a violent but hopeful note, as she births a baby girl. ===== Micah represents a side-adventure of Anita Blake. Rather than follow up immediately on the various plotlines left open in the previous novel, Incubus Dreams, Hamilton has written a much shorter work focusing primarily on Anita's relationships with one of her lovers, the eponymous Micah Callahan. Specifically, Anita is called to Philadelphia to perform a zombie animation and takes Micah on the trip. While in Philadelphia, Micah and Anita have sex, discuss their relationships and his earlier traumas, and encounter some strange twists in Anita's assignment. As with some of the other later novels in the series, Micah blends elements of supernatural, detective and erotic fiction. ===== Micah apparently takes place approximately one month after the events of Incubus Dreams. (Tammy Reynolds, one of the characters in the series, is four months pregnant in Incubus Dreams and five months pregnant in Micah). As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her role as an animator, Anita must travel to Philadelphia on short notice to substitute for Larry Kirkland, who must remain in St. Louis because of complications in his wife Tammy's pregnancy. Although the assignment—reanimating a recently deceased federal witness in order to testify in an organized crime investigation—initially seems routine, Anita quickly begins to suspect that there is more to the case than she and Larry have been told. * Second, Anita continues to deal with her various personal problems, in this case her relationship with Micah, who accompanies her on the trip. Anita must come to terms with Micah's decision to reserve a nice hotel room for the two of them without telling her, and must help Micah get over two of the defining problems in his life: first, the trauma narrowly surviving a wereleopard attack that left several members of his family dead; and second, the trauma of accidentally harming a previous girlfriend during sex, due to his unusually large penis. * Third, Anita continues wrestle with her recent increase in power, first attempting to deal with the ardeur, a metaphysical effect that causes Anita to need to have sex every few hours, and second, wrestling with the vast increase in her own powers as a necromancer, which are now so powerful that her attempt to raise a single person threatens to raise every corpse in the cemetery. As usual, Anita is able largely to resolve each of these problems by the end of the novella. * The initial plot point—the animation—is not resolved until the very end of the novella. Although Anita initially wrestles with her increase in power, she is ultimately able to confine her power to a single corpse, raising only the witness, Emmett Leroy Rose. However, Anita then learns that although Rose technically died of a heart attack, the heart attack itself occurred after the defense lawyer in the investigation, Arthur Salvia, framed Rose for murder. Rose therefore considers Salvia his murderer and will not rest until he has killed Salvia. In the ensuing fracas, Anita is knocked unconscious, and Salvia is killed. * With regard to Anita's personal problems, she and Micah make some progress. Anita decides to accept that Micah surprised her with the romantic hotel, and listens to him share the traumas of almost being eaten alive by a wereleopard and of being rejected by various women. Anita sympathizes with Micah's survivor's guilt, and, in a conversation very similar to her conversation with Richard in Incubus Dreams, explains to Micah that some women do not like well- endowed men, but other women, such as Anita, do. ===== The novel tells the story of Friedrich Löwenberg, a young Jewish Viennese intellectual, who, tired with European decadence, joins an Americanized Prussian aristocrat named Kingscourt as they retire to a remote Pacific island (it is specifically mentioned as being part of the Cook Islands, near Rarotonga) in 1902. Stopping in Jaffa on their way to the Pacific, they find Palestine a backward, destitute and sparsely populated land, as it appeared to Herzl on his visit in 1898. Löwenberg and Kingscourt spend the following twenty years on the island, cut off from civilization. As they stop over in Palestine on their way back to Europe in 1923, they are astonished to discover a land drastically transformed. A Jewish organization officially named the "New Society" has since risen as European Jews have rediscovered and re-inhabited their Altneuland, reclaiming their own destiny in the Land of Israel. The country, whose leaders include some old acquaintances from Vienna, is now prosperous and well-populated, boasts a thriving cooperative industry based on state-of-the-art technology, and is home to a free, just, and cosmopolitan modern society. Arabs have full equal rights with Jews, with an Arab engineer among the New Society's leaders, and most merchants in the country are Armenians, Greeks, and members of other ethnic groups. The duo arrives at the time of a general election campaign, during which a fanatical rabbi establishes a political platform arguing that the country belongs exclusively to Jews and demands non-Jewish citizens be stripped of their voting rights, but is ultimately defeated. ===== Petals on the Wind picks up immediately where Flowers in the Attic left off: with Cathy, Chris, and Carrie traveling to Florida after escaping Foxworth Hall. Still weak from the effects of the poison that killed her twin Cory, Carrie gets sick on the bus. Henrietta "Henny" Beech, a mute African- American woman, rescues them and takes them to the home of her employer, 40-year-old widower Dr. Paul Sheffield of Clairmont, South Carolina. At first the children refuse to reveal their identities, but once Cathy is convinced that Paul genuinely cares and might be able to help them, she tells him their story. During the siblings' first Christmas with Paul, Cathy begins bleeding profusely during a ballet audition and collapses; after waking in the hospital, she is told that they had to perform a D&C; and that the bleeding was due to irregular periods (due to her near-starvation in the attic). Cathy suspects that the bleeding was actually a miscarriage, the result of her being raped by her brother, Christopher, in the attic; however, she does not mention this suspicion, telling herself that it's in the past and all that matters is her ability to dance. Though the children thrive under Paul and Henny's care and start fulfilling their dreams (Chris heads to premed and then medical school; Cathy gets into a local ballet school and then one in New York City), Cathy is still bent on revenge against their mother, thinking she is to blame for everything wrong in their lives. Carrie continues to feel anguish over Cory's death and is embarrassed by her failure to grow properly and the problems caused by her lack of height, while Cathy and Chris still struggle with their feelings for each other. Determined to live a "normal" life, Cathy rejects Chris's advances and insists that he must find someone else to love. Over time, Cathy falls in love with Paul and they plan to marry, to Chris's dismay. Paul tells Cathy the story of his wife, Julia, and how she had drowned herself and their son, Scotty, after Paul confessed to an affair. Cathy and Paul become engaged. Her ballet troupe begins performing in New York City. Cathy finishes a performance to find Paul's sister, Amanda, waiting to meet her. Amanda leads Cathy to believe that Julia is still alive and states that she knows Cathy miscarried Chris' child. Devastated, Cathy runs to a man in her dance troupe, Julian Marquet, who had been pursuing her since the day they met, and agrees to marry him immediately. When she returns to South Carolina, it is as Mrs. Julian Marquet. Only then does Cathy confront Paul about Amanda's message—and learns that Julia had been in a permanent vegetative state from her suicide attempt at the time Paul took them in, but had died around the time Cathy and Paul became intimate. Paul also insists that Cathy did not have a miscarriage. Cathy still isn't sure, but realizes that she has now revealed to Paul that she and Chris committed incest while they were imprisoned. Paul assures Cathy that he loves her; Cathy knows she has made a mistake in marrying Julian, but she feels she must honor her vows. Julian is a possessive husband and jealous of Cathy's relationships with Paul and Chris. He abuses Cathy, cheats on her, and forbids her from seeing them. He breaks Cathy's toes so she can't perform. Chris pleads with Cathy to leave Julian, but Cathy has found out she is pregnant and tells Chris that she loves her husband and wants to make their marriage work, despite Paul's and Chris' insistence that she must leave for her own safety. Julian has a car accident and is paralyzed, at least temporarily. He believes he will never dance again and commits suicide in the hospital. After Cathy gives birth to her son, Julian Janus "Jory" Marquet, she becomes more determined to destroy her own mother's life. She packs up Carrie and Jory and they move to Virginia, not far from Foxworth Hall. Under the guise of collecting Julian's insurance, she hires Bart Winslow, her mother's second husband, as her lawyer. Meanwhile, Carrie meets a young man named Alex and enjoys a sweet courtship, until he says he plans to be a minister. Frightened by the memory of her grandmother's rants about the children being the "Devil's spawn," Carrie purchases powdered doughnuts and arsenic and attempts suicide. In the hospital, Cathy reassures Carrie that Alex won't be a minister if it upsets her so much. Carrie reveals her other motive for suicide: she saw their mother on the street, ran up to her, and was angrily rejected. This only strengthened Carrie's conviction that she must be evil and undeserving. Carrie dies, and Cathy becomes even more intent on taking revenge on Corrine and soon comes up with a plan to blackmail her along with stealing her handsome young husband, Bart. Cathy refuses to stop, obsessed with making their mother pay for all the pain that the children have suffered, even after Chris discovers Cathy's plan and threatens to distance himself from Cathy completely. Though initially focused solely on revenge, Cathy falls in love with Bart, and he returns her affections. She discovers she is pregnant and believes this will be a crushing blow to Corrine. Bart is torn between his desire to stay married to Corrine and his wish to be a father but does manage to put an end to Cathy sending blackmail letters to Corrine. Cathy returns to Foxworth Hall on the eve of the annual Christmas Ball, in a replica of the gown Corrine wore to the Christmas party Cathy and Chris spied on so many years ago. She visits the room where she and her siblings were locked away and sees that it has been untouched since their escape. At the stroke of midnight, she appears in the ballroom and exposes the truth to Bart and the party guests. Bart takes Cathy and Corrine to the library where Grandmother Olivia is seated. At first, Bart believes Cathy is lying, but after hearing Cathy's whole story, he confronts Corrine. Corrine breaks down, claiming to be the real victim because her father had known his grandchildren were hidden in his home, and he wanted them to die in captivity. Corrine claims she gave the children arsenic to make them sick gradually so she could sneak them out to safety one by one and then tell her parents the children had died in hospital. Bart is visibly disgusted. Cathy demands to know what happened to Cory's body. Corrine says she stashed the body in a ravine, but Cathy accuses her of hiding Cory's body in a small room off the attic that gave off a telltale odor. Chris bursts into the library, and Corrine perceives him as the ghost of his father, her first husband. She suffers a mental breakdown and sets fire to Foxworth Hall. Corrine, Chris, and Cathy escape, but Bart and Olivia are trapped and die in the fire. Corrine is committed to a mental institution. After Chris drags Cathy from Foxworth Hall he informs her that Henny has had a stroke, and while trying to help her, Paul suffered a massive heart attack. Cathy returns to Paul, marries him, and gives birth to Bart Jr. Paul dies when Bart Jr. is still quite young, and on his deathbed encourages Cathy to be with Chris, who has loved her and waited all these years. Realizing that Chris was the right one for her all along and that she still loves him, Cathy agrees. They move to California with the two boys and live as the Sheffields. Cathy dreads what will happen if their secret is exposed, and the book ends with her stating that she has been having strange thoughts about the attic in their house and has put two twin beds up there. ===== The book is narrated by two half-brothers, Jory and Bart Sheffield. Jory is a handsome, talented fourteen-year-old boy who wants to follow his mother Cathy in her career in the ballet, while nine- year old Bart, who sees himself as plain and clumsy, feels inferior to his brother. Bart spends his time in his own world of pretend—often covering bad things that he does with fantasies he creates. He also has congenital analgesia and cannot feel pain as a result, putting him at serious risk of injury or death by infection. By now, Cathy and Chris live together as husband and wife. To hide their history, they tell the boys and other people they know that Chris was Paul's younger brother. Cathy and Chris have a passionate and very loving relationship, described by Bart who has accidentally witnessed encounters between them. Cathy is a loving mother to her sons, but shows some favoritism towards Jory. Unable to have more children, Cathy adopts Cindy, the two-year-old daughter of one of her former dance students who was killed in an accident. She longs to have a girl, as well as a child that is hers and Christopher's. Initially against it, Chris comes to accept Cindy, and Jory does as well, but Bart is very upset and resentful. Lonely from all the attention Jory and Cindy are receiving, Bart befriends the new elderly next door neighbor, who invites him over for cookies and ice cream and encourages him to call her "Grandmother." Jory eventually goes next door as well to see whom Bart keeps visiting, only to have the old lady tell him that she is actually his grandmother. Jory initially doesn't believe her, and avoids her at all costs. Bart, on the other hand, soon develops an affectionate friendship with the old woman, and she does her best to give Bart whatever he wants while making Bart promise to keep her gifts—and their relationship—a secret from his mother. The old lady's butler, John Amos, also seems to befriend Bart, but soon John Amos begins to fill Bart's mind with stories about the sinful nature of women. John Amos reveals that the old woman is truly Bart's grandmother, Corrine Foxworth Dollanganger. He also gives Bart a diary that belonged to Bart's biological great-grandfather, Malcolm Foxworth, claiming that this journal will help Bart become as powerful and successful as Malcolm. Bart begins to pretend that he is his great-grandfather, who hated women and was obsessed with their degradation. He becomes destructive and violent towards his parents and siblings; he kicks Jory in the privates, and even tries to drown Cindy in her baby pool. Jory's dog, Clover, comes up missing and is later found dead with a piece of barbed wire twisted about his neck. Bart's family notice the changes but only Jory suspects that the mysterious woman next door is responsible. At the same time, Jory starts to become suspicious of his parents' relationship. Although amazed by their love, which he describes as intense and affectionate, he notices their family resemblance and wonders why his mother would marry Paul, who was much older than her, before Chris. After Bart becomes ill from tetanus (the result of his cutting his knee on a rusty nail) and nearly dies, Jory finally tells Chris of his suspicions about the lady next door. When they confront her, Chris realises that the old lady is his mother, who pleads with him to forgive her. Indifferent to her pleas, Chris orders her to stay away from their family, especially Bart but decides not to tell Cathy about what happened, knowing Cathy's feelings about their mother might result in a violent confrontation. At the same time, Cathy is injured in an accident and told that she will never dance again. Confined to her wheelchair, she begins to write out the story of her life. Bart filches his mother's manuscript pages and is enraged to learn the truth about his parents: Cathy and Chris are brother and sister, and his grandmother locked them in an attic for years, slowly poisoning them to gain an inheritance. The news causes Bart to cling to the only person who has not yet lied to him: John Amos. He proudly calls his parents sinners and "devil's spawn". Jory finds out the truth when his paternal grandmother visits and confronts Cathy about her relationship with "her brother Christopher". At first shocked and disgusted, Jory forgives his parents after he learns of their tragic past. Cathy finally learns about the woman next door when Bart accidentally says that she gives him anything he wants, and she goes to confront their neighbor. The old woman tries to hide her identity, but Cathy recognizes her voice. Corrine admits that she is indeed Cathy's mother; she expresses remorse for her crimes against her children and begs for Cathy's forgiveness and love. Enraged by her mother's audacity at asking forgiveness after all she's done, Cathy attacks her, but then John Amos knocks both women unconscious. Working on John Amos' orders, Bart, who now believes he is a vessel for his great-grandfather's vengeful spirit, locks Cathy and Corrine in the cellar, where John Amos plans to starve them to death. Hearing this, Bart realizes how much he loves his mother and grandmother, despite their sins, and he tells Chris where they are. Before they can be reached, the house catches fire. Bart manages to unlock the cellar door but Corrine orders Bart to go back outside. Corrine saves Cathy, but as she emerges from the house, her clothes catch fire. Chris runs to her and helps put out the flames, but Corrine's heart gives out and she dies. John Amos dies inside, abandoned to his awful fate. The epilogue, narrated by Cathy once again, describes Cathy's emotional forgiveness of her mother at Corrine's funeral. For the sake of their three children, Cathy and Chris realize that they must never allow their biological relationship to be revealed. Bart seems to have recovered from the worst of his madness, but still dwells on the power wielded by his great- grandfather, whose millions he now stands to inherit. ===== The story begins fifteen years after the events in If There Be Thorns. Cathy and Chris arrive at the home of their son, Bart, which is oddly an exact replica of Foxworth Hall (which burned down in Petals on the Wind) to celebrate Bart's twenty-fifth birthday. They meet a man named Joel, who is their uncle, Corrine's brother, who was long thought killed in an avalanche. Joel explains that he was taken to a monastery to recover. He contacted Bart after learning of Corrine's death and now works as the head butler at Bart's request. Joel gives Bart bad information about God and punishment. Bart looks at Joel as a father figure; a fact that troubles Cathy greatly. Bart is still bitter towards his mother and father for their incestuous relationship, so their stay is not pleasant. He has grown into a handsome young man, but is extremely jealous, power hungry and bitter that Chris is the guardian of his money until his thirty-fifth birthday. Bart's brother Jory visits and eventually moves in with his wife. Jory, who is almost thirty, has been married to Melodie, his childhood sweetheart and ballet partner, for nine years. Soon after their arrival, they announce that Melodie is pregnant. Bart is jealous of Jory and shows an unhealthy interest in Melodie. Bart and Jory's sister Cindy, who is now sixteen, arrive and it becomes clear that Bart does not like her either. Cathy tries to make the best out of the situation, but any happiness ends when Jory is in an accident, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and unable to dance. Melodie does not deal well with Jory's disability and withdraws from him. Cathy tries to help Melodie reconnect with Jory, but discovers later that Melodie has turned to Bart for comfort and passion – the two have been having an affair. Cathy is enraged, but when she confronts Bart he says he loves Melodie, and Cathy is unsure what to do. Bart believes Melodie loves him too, but soon realizes it is an empty relationship and he is just a replacement for Jory. Jory finds out about the affair, and although hurt, tries to reconcile with Melodie, but she rejects him. Melodie goes into labor on Christmas Day, and gives birth to twins, Darren and Deirdre, whom Cathy says resemble her deceased twin brother and sister. Melodie has little interest in the babies, and Cathy cares for them, hoping Melodie has postpartum "blues" and will come around. But Melodie, not wanting to deal with two children and a disabled husband, abandons Jory and the children and moves to New York. Cathy tries to console both her sons and to keep a firm hand on the pretty and free-spirited Cindy. Bart, under Joel's influence, bans Cindy from premarital sexual acts under his roof. He physically assaults two boys he catches Cindy with. When confronted about his hypocrisy a number of times throughout the story, Bart never attempts to justify his actions but instead responds with anger and resentment towards Cathy and Chris, always blaming them for his problems. After a long period of torment from Bart, and Joel, Cindy leaves to go to a school in New York. Cathy and Chris hire a beautiful nurse, named Antonia "Toni" Winters, to help Jory recuperate. They hope Toni and Jory will end up together, but Bart begins spending time with Toni and they become lovers. Bart seems happy with Toni and tells Cathy that Toni told him she loves him. Cathy notices changes in Bart as a result of this relationship, including Bart withdrawing from Joel and being pleasant to Cindy when she comes to visit. Eventually Joel manages to influence Bart again and it sours the relationship. Toni sees the dark side of Bart after he begins to criticize and become possessive of her, and the relationship ends. Soon after, Toni falls in love with Jory and they begin a relationship, which brings Jory out of the depression that followed his divorce. Cindy returns for another visit and tells Cathy that she ran into Melodie in New York. Melodie had remarried immediately after her divorce from Jory was final and resumed her dancing career. Bart builds a chapel, in which he commands the family to attend Sunday sermons, presided over by Joel. Cathy and Chris eventually become disgusted by the "fire and brimstone" sermons and tell Bart that they will no longer attend. Bart secretly starts bringing the twins to the chapel, which Cathy overhears. She confronts Bart, and tells him to leave the twins alone, also telling Toni never to let them out of her sight, unless she knows they are with Jory. After again catching Bart bringing the twins to the chapel, Cathy decides it is time to leave, after two years in Bart's home. Chris agrees it is time to leave and to take Jory, Cindy, and the twins with them. Cathy tells Bart of her plans, and that while she loves him, she cannot be around the kind of person he has become. Cathy waits for Chris to come home from work so they can leave, but he never shows up. Chris has died in a hit and run accident and Cathy realizes how similar Chris' death is to that of their father. Bart gives a moving eulogy at Chris' funeral, is remorseful and admits that he really loved Chris and that he was a good father. Cathy is heartsick at the loss of Chris, becoming distant from her family. Cathy does come back for Bart's sake, and she and Bart become close. Bart finds his place as a televangelist who does much good and travels the world spreading his positive ministry. Bart and Cindy also make peace and Cathy sees them together singing. Joel has gone back to the Italian monastery to live out his remaining days. Jory and Toni wed, and Toni becomes pregnant. Despite all these good things and the family becoming closer than before, Cathy is still depressed and does not want to live without Chris. Cathy goes up to the attic and sits by one of the windows and, after decorating the room with paper flowers, dies. As she passes away, she remembers Chris, her mother, grandmother, and siblings, and how their innocence was stolen. It is determined that Cathy died of natural causes, but implied by the author that she died of a broken heart. ===== The "three evangelists" of the title are Marc Vandoosler, Mathias Dellamarre and Lucien Devernois, and Marc's uncle, the former, disgraced police commissioner Armand Vandoosler, appearing for the first time in this book. All three are historians. Marc studies the Middle Ages; Matthias, a historian of prehistoric man; and Lucien, a historian of World War I. All three historians are down on their luck, and decide to move into an old house, neighboring Sophia Siméonidis. One morning, retired opera singer Sophia Siméonidis discovers a beech tree in her garden that she has never seen before. Sophia is alarmed, but her husband Pierre is indifferent. Eventually she calls upon her neighbors, Marc, Matthias, and Lucien, and asks their help. They dig out the tree, and find nothing underneath it. Sophia disappears. Pierre remains unconcerned, as he believes she has gone to visit an old, Greek lover, Stelyos. But Juliette, the evangelists' other next door neighbor, expresses concern; she is sure that Sophia, her best friend, would never have gone off without telling her, and especially not on a Thursday evening, when all the neighbors regularly meet for a convivial meal at Juliette's restaurant, Le Tonneau (The Barrel). One night, Sophia's niece, Alexandra, arrives with her little boy Cyrille, running away from a failed relationship and expecting to stay with Sophia. Shortly afterward, a burned out car with a corpse is discovered in an abandoned factory yard. The body is unidentifiable, but a small piece of basalt is found, which was Sophia's lucky charm. Alexandra has no alibi, she stands to inherit a third of Sophia's substantial fortune, and her habit of driving aimlessly around at night makes her a principal suspect. Already troubled by the enigma of the tree, and increasingly desperate to divert the attention of the police from Alexandra, the three evangelists and Armand Vandoosler start to investigate, exploiting Armand's contacts with his former colleagues. ===== ===== Joss, a middle-aged former Breton sailor, begins to succeed in reviving the old family trade of town crier in modern-day Paris. Business is good, since people gladly pay five francs to hear their rants and nonsensical messages in parks and squares; every so often, ominous cryptic messages announcing the return of the plague will also be part of the day's requested cries. At the same time, chief inspector Adamsberg is surprised as a distressed woman describes that all her apartment building's doors, except one, have been marked with a large inverted "4" in black ink with the inscription "CLT." This graffiti continues to turn up throughout the city, and residents of apartments with unmarked doors are turning up dead, showing signs of rat-flea bites and blackened flesh. Inspector Adamsberg must lead an investigation that takes him through a juxtaposition of 15th-century Europe and modern-day France...or does he? Category:2001 French novels Category:Novels by Fred Vargas Category:French mystery novels Category:French novels adapted into films Category:Novels set in Paris ===== Frank, still depicted as a Vietnam War veteran, reestablishes himself in New York City by taking on the Gnucci crime syndicate. Detective Soap is assigned to "catch" the Punisher; it is purely a P.R. move as the police do not really want Frank caught as they secretly condone his actions. Frank turns the hapless Soap to his side, getting him to pass information on local crime syndicates. Against his will, Frank gains three loyal friends in his neighbors, Joan the Mouse, Mr. Bumpo, and Spacker Dave. All end up helping him in his crusade against the Gnuccis. Some of this is self-defense as the Gnuccis learn where Frank lives and stage an attack. Spacker himself suffers torture at the hands of the Gnuccis, his piercings ripped out in a fruitless attempt to gain intelligence on Frank. The Gnucci operation is slowly dismantled. Soap is promoted to police commissioner. As a gesture of thanks for aiding him, Frank gives his neighbors a large sum of Gnucci money. Joan and Spacker would play larger roles in Frank's life later. Bumpo suffers a medical accident ("something important fell out of his bottom") and moves into a hospital. ===== The story follows the two partners in a private investigation firm; Jacob Ashe is a U.S. Vietnam War veteran, while Cinder DuBois is the child of an African-American soldier and a Vietnamese woman.Cinder and Ashe #1 (May 1988) The series is set in New Orleans, Louisiana with flashbacks to Vietnam. Cinder and Ashe are hired by a farmer from Iowa to find his kidnapped daughter. As the investigations unfold, flashbacks reveal how Cinder and Ashe met, and the development of their relationship. A complication in the investigation is the involvement of a man named Lacey—who had raped Cinder when she was a thirteen-year-old girl in Vietnam. ===== Rebus finds himself with a number of problems on his hands. His wayward brother, Michael, has returned to Edinburgh in need of accommodation - with only the box-room in Rebus's flat available. While out drinking, he meets an old army friend, Deek Torrance, who admits to being involved in shady activities, telling Rebus he can get his hands on 'anything from a shag to a shooter'. Rebus spends so long out with Deek that he misses dinner with his girlfriend, Doctor Patience Aitken. Furious, she locks him out of her flat, forcing him to sleep in his own flat, on the sofa. At work, a new operation ('Moneybags') is started, aimed at putting one of 'Big Ger' Cafferty's money-lenders out of business. However, Rebus (who despises Cafferty) would rather go after the leader himself. Finally, Rebus's colleague Brian Holmes is put into a coma after being attacked from behind in the carpark of his favourite restaurant, the Elvis- themed Heartbreak Cafe. Rebus interviews Eddie Ringan, the Elvis enthusiast who owns the restaurant, and Pat Calder, Eddie's gay (and business) partner, but they prove to be of little help. Brian's girlfriend, Nell Stapleton, tells Rebus that Brian had a 'Black Book', a small notebook in which he kept interesting snippets of information. She suggests that Brian was attacked because of something in it. She also feels guilty, since she had argued with Brian just before he went to the restaurant. When Rebus recovers the book, one entry in particular catches his interest. Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seedy Central Hotel down. Although all the staff and customers were accounted for, an unidentified body was found in the remains. The entry in the black book talks about a poker game that took place on the night the fire happened. However, it is written in cryptic shorthand, with obscure nicknames instead of the real names of the poker players. Rebus's first action is to discuss the autopsy of the unidentified body with the pathologist Dr Curt, who still remembers it in grisly detail. The autopsy revealed that the dead man had been shot through the heart, as well as having suffered a broken arm some time in the past. Meanwhile, Operation 'Moneybags' is set to get into swing, with Rebus supervising one of the surveillance teams. Under his command is Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, at this time a new recruit to the force. Rebus turns to an old friend of his, Matthew Vanderhyde, an elderly blind man who helped him in Hide and Seek. In the 1950s, Vanderhyde used to go to the Central Hotel for rallies for Sword and Shield, a hardline offshoot of the Scottish National Party. He was there the night it burned down, having a drink with a friend, Aengus Gibson, also known as 'Black Aengus'. Heir to the Gibson brewing business, Aengus was a wild drunk at the time of the fire, but has since reformed. He was not on the list of people who was at the hotel due to his family's influence. The day after a night of arguments with Michael and the students, Rebus discusses Cafferty with Siobhan. Siobhan mentions the 'Bru-head Brothers', Tam and Eck Robertson, a pair of criminals who disappeared at around the same time as the Central fire. Rebus then realises that the one of the names in the Black Book refers to them, and another to Cafferty himself. When Rebus returns home, he receives grim news about his brother, who has just been found hanging by his legs from the Forth Rail Bridge. Michael is in shock and has to be taken to hospital. Fearing for the safety of his brother, Rebus decides that he needs serious protection. Remembering Deek Torrance's words 'anything from a shag to a shooter', Rebus decides to get in touch with his old friend. The following day, while overseeing the dull minutiae of the Operation Moneybags surveillance, Rebus and Siobhan hear welcome news - Brian Holmes has recovered consciousness. While he cannot remember anything about his assailant, he does tell Rebus that the final name in the Black Book refers to Eddie Ringan, the chef of the Heartbreak Cafe, who told Brian about the poker game. Rebus returns to the Heartbreak Cafe, and demands to know what happened on the night of the fire. He knows that Eddie was moonlighting at the Central, which is why he never appeared on the list of people who were there. Eddie, an alcoholic, flies into a drunken rage, hurting his assistant Willie in the process. But as Rebus turns to leave, Eddie suggests visiting a pub in Cowdenbeath. Armed with two sketches of the Robertson brothers as they might appear today, Rebus visits several Cowdenbeath pubs, asking customers if they recognise them. He has little luck, although a drunk old gambler claims he recognises one of the pictures, causing Rebus to suspect that one of the brothers may be working as a bookmaker. The next day, Rebus learns that Eddie has disappeared after a night out. Pat Calder insists to Rebus that Eddie always returns home safely, despite his alcohol problem. Willie, the assistant chef, is of little help. Rebus suspects that Eddie may have been warned off, or worse. Meanwhile, Rebus's superiors are annoyed at the effort he is putting into the Central Hotel case. Undaunted, Rebus approaches Aengus Gibson, who admits being at the hotel on the night of the fire with Vanderhyde, but insists that he left hours before the fire actually began. Rebus, however, is suspicious. Later that night, Rebus meets up with Deek Torrance, and arranges to buy a handgun from him. Chief Superintendent 'Farmer' Watson demands an explanation for Rebus's continued interest in the Central Fire, giving him twenty-four hours to come up with something concrete. Later that day, Rebus goes to Pat Calder and Eddie's flat to fill out an official missing person report. Calder reveals that Willie had cracked up trying to cope without Eddie, making a scene before leaving the restaurant. With few options left open to him, Rebus decides to talk to Morris Gerald Cafferty at his upmarket home in Duddingston. The two men's mutual loathing results in a tense confrontation. While Cafferty reveals relatively little, he does admit that the Robertson Brothers used to work for him as 'general employees', but left his service years ago. As Rebus leaves, he is certain that Cafferty was behind the attack on Michael. Meanwhile, Siobhan is out getting extra camera film for the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and walks past the Heartbreak Cafe. Smelling gas, she enters and discovers Eddie Ringan's body with the head inside the oven, an apparent suicide. Dr Curt's examination of Eddie's badly burned body turns up some suspicious findings. The deceased's liver was in good condition, even though Eddie was a persistent heavy drinker. There are also strange injuries inside the mouth. That night, Rebus meets with Deek Torrance in North Queensferry to buy the handgun, a Colt 45, which he hides in his car. Mulling over the cases, Rebus visits a Catholic church and confesses to the priest that he has bought a gun. The priest advises him to throw it into the sea. Rebus decides to do just that. Returning to St Leonards, Rebus is confronted by his immediate superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale, who demands Rebus surrender his car keys. Rebus realises that his colleagues have been tipped off about the gun. But worse is to come, as the gun turns out to be the same one used in the Central Hotel shooting five years ago. Rebus is suspended from duty. After attending Eddie Ringan's funeral, Rebus has a suspicion of what happened. After checking the reservations book for the Heartbreak Cafe, he finds out that none of the customers remember Willie making a scene and storming out. His suspicions confirmed, Rebus goes to Eddie and Pat's flat, and finds the still living Eddie Ringan hiding there. He and Pat had rendered Willie unconscious by forcing alcohol down his throat, and used his body to stage a suicide attempt. Rebus arrests Eddie, but while taking him back to the station, stops in front of Cafferty's mansion. Eddie is clearly terrified of Cafferty, and admits that he helped burn down the Central Hotel, after a blood-splattered Aengus Gibson ran into the hotel kitchens. Siobhan, having checked the medical records of a Dundee hospital, reveals that Tam Robertson had broken an arm twelve years ago. The corpse found in the remains of the Central belonged to him. Rebus confronts Aengus Gibson, demanding to know what happened at the night of the fire, but is forced to leave by Aengus's father. Returning to Fife, Rebus visits a bookmaker owned by Eck Robertson, living under a false name. Eck says that Aengus shot Tam for cheating during the poker game. Back in Edinburgh, Aengus Gibson has committed suicide. When Rebus reads Aengus's journal, it becomes clear that he thought that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Tam Robertson. The journal also reveals that it was Cafferty who forced the gun into his hand, getting Aengus's fingerprints on it. After the shooting, Aengus went berserk, starting the fire to hide the evidence. Determined to trap Cafferty once and for all, Rebus uses his contacts to set up a sting operation, with child molester Andrew McPhail being used as the unwitting bait. Cafferty is caught red-handed attacking McPhail outside the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and is arrested. With Cafferty in jail, the police are able to take a closer look at his operation. A farm in the Borders is raided, where Cafferty used to personally execute his enemies. Deek Torrance is amongst those arrested there. In exchange for leniency, Eddie Ringan agrees to testify against Cafferty. In the final chapter, Rebus accuses Nell Stapleton of being the one who knocked Brian Holmes out. Although he doesn't have any evidence, he does note that she had a motive after the arguments she'd been having with Brian. ===== Bradley Chalkers is the protagonist of the book. He is the oldest student in the fifth-grade class, having repeated fourth grade. In his school, he sits at the back of the class, last seat, last row, and never pays any attention, preferring to scribble, cut up pieces of paper, or partake in other mindless tasks which keep his mind off the lesson. He is proud whenever he receives an F on his class tests. He wants everyone to hate him because he believes that they will then leave him alone. Everyone hates him, including the teachers. A new classmate, Jeff Fishkin, comes in from Washington, D.C., and the only two remaining seats are the ones beside and in front of Bradley. Jeff tries to reason with Bradley, but fails, like everyone else. Then, a counselor named Carla is appointed, and she can't wait to meet Bradley. Carla says she wants to be friends with Bradley, and she begins to try to open him up and reveal his kind interior, which he has been trying to hide. Bradley refuses to come quietly, and his conflicting emotions with Carla and other people induce strife among his fellow schoolmates. As he meets with Carla more and more, he slowly decides to become a better person. He does his homework and forms better relationships with his parents. To help him with a book report, Carla lends him her favorite book, My Parents Didn't Steal an Elephant. Bradley thinks that the book is magical and responsible for his changes. A subplot of the book involves Jeff and a girl named Colleen Verigold (described as having "red hair and a freckled face"), who seem to have crushes on each other. Bradley thinks girls are gross and especially hates Colleen's best friend, the outspoken Lori. At the beginning of the book, Bradley becomes irritated with Jeff for saying "Hi" to Colleen whenever she says "Hi" to him. Later, Carla tells Jeff and Colleen that Zen Buddhist monks are required to say "Hi" to each other when they meet (as stated in J. D. Salinger's book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction). Later in the book, Bradley proves his friendship to Jeff by saying "Hi" to him. Towards the end of the book, as Carla helps Bradley change, he is invited to Colleen's birthday party, along with Jeff, and he even wins the party games, getting a harmonica as a prize. He also gets respect from all of the other girls. Unfortunately, Carla is not as popular with many parents of the students. Colleen's mother becomes angry with her for supposedly preaching religion (telling Jeff and Colleen about the Zen Buddhist monks) and counseling Colleen without permission. As a result, Carla is fired and becomes a kindergarten teacher. When he hears this, Bradley becomes very upset and threatens to revert to his original behavior. Although he misses saying goodbye to Carla, he does return to the school and finds a package she leaves for him. The package contains a goodbye note from her and her book. In the end, Bradley starts to come to terms with Carla's departure. He writes her a goodbye letter of his own and sends his most prized possession with it, a small china rabbit named Ronnie. ===== The Dorok prophecy: "And that one shall come to you garbed in raiment of blue and descending upon a field of gold..." Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a state on the periphery of what was once known as Eftal, a kingdom destroyed by the Sea of Corruption, a poisonous forest, 300 years ago. An inquisitive young woman, she explores the territories surrounding the Valley on a jet-powered glider, and studies the Sea of Corruption. When the Valley goes to war, she takes her ailing father's place as military chief. The leaders of the Periphery states are vassals to the Torumekian Emperor and are obliged to send their forces to help when he invades the neighboring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong military, but the Doroks, whose ancestors bioengineered the progenitors of the Sea of Corruption, have developed a genetically modified version of a mold from the Sea of Corruption. When the Doroks introduce this mold into battle, its rapid growth and mutation result in a daikaisho (roughly translated from Japanese as "great tidal wave"), which floods across the land and draws the insects into the battle, killing as many Doroks as Torumekians. In doing so, the Sea of Corruption spreads across most of the Dorok nation, uprooting or killing vast numbers of civilians and rendering most of the land uninhabitable. The Ohmu and other forest insects respond to this development and sacrifice themselves to pacify the expansion of the mold, which is beyond human control. Nausicaä resigns herself to joining in their fate. However, one of the Ohmu encapsulates her inside itself in a protective serum, allowing her to survive the mold. She is recovered by her companions, people she met after leaving the Valley and who have joined her on her quest for a peaceful coexistence. The fact that the mold can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her treks into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People, humans who have learned to live in harmony with the Sea of Corruption, confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and one of them shows Nausicaä a vision of the restored Earth at the center of the forest. Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory, where her coming has long been prophesied, to seek those responsible for manipulating the mold. There, she encounters a dormant God Warrior who, upon activation, assumes she is his mother and places his destructive powers at her disposal. Faced with this power and its single minded and childlike visions of the world, she engages the creature, names him and persuades him to travel with her to Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks. Here she enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire. She learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilization. They created the Sea of Corruption to clean the land of pollution, altered human genes to cope with the changed ecology, stored their own personalities inside the Crypt and waited for the day when they could re- emerge, leaving the world at the mercy of their artificially created caretaker. However, their continual manipulation of the population and the world's environment is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order. She argues that mankind's behaviour has not been improved significantly by the activities of those inside the crypt. Strife and cycles of violence have continued to plague the world in the thousand years following their interference. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, forcing humanity to live or die without further influence from the old society's technology. ===== BloodSpell tells the fictional story of Jered, a young Monk of the Church of the Angels, an organisation that exists to purify the Blooded, a term for those who release magical power when their blood is spilt. The story follows Jered as he joins forces with the Blooded in an attempt to gain his freedom. ===== On the Akritirian homeworld Tom Paris and Harry Kim are falsely accused of a terrorist bombing using Trilithium. They are sent to a brutal prison where inmates must fend for themselves to survive, insufficient food is delivered daily through a chute, and each prisoner is implanted with a microchip called "the clamp" that induces aggression and gradually drives them insane. When Captain Janeway tries to intercede, she is told by Ambassador Liri of Akritiri that Kim and Paris confessed to the crime. Whilst trying to defend Kim, Paris is stabbed in the stomach. Kim manages to work with one of the aliens in order to get bandages for Paris. He also tries to unite the prisoners, to no avail. Kim and the alien work together to disable the force field blocking the chute, climb it, and find that the prison is actually a giant space station. Paris goes completely mad and wrecks the device that disabled the force field. Harry, afflicted as well, attacks Paris in return but manages to hold on to his sanity. Meanwhile, the Voyager crew manages to capture the real bombers, Piri and Vel. When Janeway returns to the Akritiri and offers to exchange them for her crewmen, the Akritiri ambassador refuses, stressing that their convictions cannot be overturned. Janeway then approaches the bombers, who inform the Voyager staff that they know the location of the prison where Kim and Paris are kept. Janeway decides to free them in exchange for information on the prison's location and on how to penetrate it. Using Neelix's ship as a disguise, the crew manage to hook into the chute—which is the only means to enter the prison. A small away team consisting of Janeway, Tuvok and a few security guards infiltrate the prison, pacify the prisoners and rescue Kim and Paris. They then quickly exit the scene just as an Akritiri patrol vessel states its intention to board Neelix's ship. Back aboard Voyager, Kim is horrified at what he had almost done while afflicted. Paris convinces him to use a week's worth of replicator rations to recreate some of the meals they had discussed while in prison. ===== In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. When Rika Balletto urges her husband Ettore, a wealthy textiles producer living in Milan, to hire a bodyguard for their daughter Pinta, he is doubtful but agrees. After some searching, he finally settles for an American named Creasy. Creasy, once purposeful and lethal who served in the French Foreign Legion, has become a burnt-out alcoholic. To keep him occupied, his companion Guido suggests that Creasy should get a job and offers to set him up as a bodyguard: thus he is hired by the Ballettos, where he meets his charge, Pinta. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defences drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with her competition running: he is even spurred to give up his drinking and return to his former physical prowess. But Creasy's life is shattered when Pinta is kidnapped by the Mafia, despite his efforts to protect her. Creasy is wounded during the kidnapping and as he lies in a hospital bed Guido keeps him informed of the goings on. Soon enough, Guido returns with the news that the exchange went bad and Pinta was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been raped by her captors. Out of hospital, Creasy returns to Guido's pensione and outlines his plans for revenge against the men who took away the girl who convinced him it was all right to live again: anyone who was involved, or profited from it, all the way to the top of the Mafia. Told by Guido he can stay with in-laws on the island of Gozo in Malta, Creasy accepts the offer, to train for his new mission. While on Gozo, Creasy trains for several months, getting into shape and re-familiarizing himself with weaponry. But, to his surprise, he also discovers he has another reason to live after his suicidal mission against the Mafia: he finds himself accepted by and admiring the Gozitans, as well as falling in love with Nadia, the daughter of his host. Soon enough, he is fit and leaves for Marseille where he stocks up on supplies, weapons and ammunition: from there he travels back to Italy and then the war between Creasy and the Mafia begins. From low-level enforcers to the capos in Milan and Rome, as well as all the way to the head Don in Sicily, Creasy cuts through their organisation, killing anyone who had something even remotely to do with Pinta's kidnapping. After Creasy reveals to Rika that Ettore allowed Pinta to be kidnapped for the insurance money, Ettore commits suicide. Finally, after killing the Don, a severely wounded Creasy is taken to hospital, but pronounced dead: a funeral is held and Creasy is thought to be gone. But, unknown to all, Creasy was in fact alive and makes it back to Gozo where he is reunited with Nadia. ===== The novel opens with Annie Casteel Stonewall returning to Farthinggale Manor ("Farthy") for the funeral of her father, Troy Tatterton. Annie, hoping to finally put the past to rest alongside her mother Heaven, feels drawn to the suite that used to be occupied by her great-grandmother, Jillian. Annie soon discovers a forgotten diary hidden away in a back drawer in Jillian's suite. The diary was written by Leigh Van Voreen, Annie's grandmother and Heaven's mother. Surprised by the discovery, Annie begins to read the tragic story of Leigh. In 1950, a 12-year- old Leigh VanVoreen was the beloved daughter of cruise-ship magnate Cleave VanVoreen and his beautiful Boston socialite wife, Jillian. Leigh's life was happy until her mother left her father for Tony Tatterton, the handsome and wealthy owner of Tatterton Toys, who was about 20 years younger than Jillian. When Jillian married Tony, she and Leigh moved into Tony's estate, Farthinggale Manor. Leigh's only friend on the estate was Troy Tatterton, Tony's 4-year-old brother, and they spent a lot of time together. Eventually, Leigh was placed in Winterhaven, an exclusive boarding school for girls. During her summer vacation, Leigh served as the model for a new line of toy for Tatterton called a portrait doll. During the portrait-doll modeling sessions, Tony had Leigh pose nude and started making advances towards her. Jillian had refused to have a sexual relationship with him, claiming it would detract from her youthful face and figure. Leigh went to Cleave to ask for help, but he had remarried and was too busy with his new wife and work to listen to her problems. Leigh told Jillian what was happening, but Jillian accused her of exaggerating and blew her off. When the doll was finished, it was presented to Leigh on her birthday. Tony raped Leigh one night while Jillian was away. Leigh tried to call her close friend and tell her about the sexual assault but was too ashamed. The next morning, Tony acted like nothing had happened. Leigh didn't want to stay in her room where the attack had happened, so she hid in Jillian's room with the door locked. Tony had had a key made in the past when Jillian rejected his advances. He unlocked the door and attacked Leigh again. When Leigh tried to stop him, saying she'd tell her mother what he had done, he laughingly told her that him seducing Leigh was Jillian's idea. Upon Jillian's return to Farthy, Leigh tried to tell her that Tony raped her, but Jillian didn't believe her. She accused Leigh of lying, saying that Tony had told her Leigh was the one making sexual advances during the modeling sessions and that she had tried to get Tony to have sex with her. Leigh was shocked and saddened by her mother's decision to believe Tony over her own daughter. After a few weeks, Leigh discovered she was pregnant by Tony and confronted her mother. Jillian, convinced that Leigh had seduced Tony on purpose, screamed at her that "nice girls don't go all the way." Leigh realized Tony was right about her mother. Disgusted, Leigh told her mother that she knew Jillian wasn't a virgin before she married, and that she had chosen her own daughter as a romantic distraction for Tony to avoid having sex with him. After the fight, Leigh took some money that Tony kept in a strongbox and fled Farthinggale Manor with a few possessions and her portrait doll. Leigh decided to go live with her grandmother Jana in Texas. After leaving Boston, she purchased a train ticket in Atlanta but missed her connection and was stranded. A stranger named Luke Casteel cheered her up. After he inquired about Leigh's portrait doll, she admitted that it was modeled after her and that she had named it Angel. Luke told her that "Angel" was a better name for her than Leigh. He began to call Leigh "Angel," rather than "Leigh," after that. Leigh confided in him about the circumstances of her pregnancy and her tragic story, and he drove her to a motel so that she could rest. He returned with some food, and when Leigh asked him to stay because she was afraid to be alone, he agreed. When she woke up in the middle of the night, Luke was instantly at her side, reassuring her that he'd always protect her. He told her that he had fallen in love with her and wanted to be the father of her baby. Leigh thought she was dreaming, and when she later awoke in Luke's arms, she asked him about it. He passionately talked about his plans for the future for the two of them and the baby, and Leigh fell completely in love with him. Although they had only known each other for one day, they got married and returned to Luke's West Virginia mountain home, where young women getting married was not so unusual. After meeting Luke's parents, Annie and Toby, Leigh worked hard around the shack, and she ignored the stares or rude remarks of local residents. Luke was deeply in love with Leigh and planned to build a house in town for them and the baby. Whenever Luke drank alcohol, Leigh feared for his health and talked to him sternly, which he appreciated, and he credited her with inspiring him to be a better person. Leigh's diary ends after she started experiencing labor pains while out for a walk with Luke. She wrote about how they went up the mountain and how Luke talked about their plans for the future. He told her that she was the love of his life and that no man could ever love any woman more than he loved her. She kissed him and asked him to go back to the cabin with her to hold her. As they walked back, Leigh stopped and stared at the stars, telling Luke that when she went to sleep that night, she wanted to feel like she was going to sleep in heaven. These were the last words in her journal, and it is later revealed that Leigh died giving birth. Her death is the apparent reason that Luke later becomes the cruel man depicted in Heaven. After reading Leigh's last diary entry, Annie finds a note from a private investigator Tony hired, stating that he discovered Leigh died in childbirth due to inadequate medical care. The note also states that the child survived and was a girl. The implication is that both Tony and Jillian knew about Heaven long before she came to Farthinggale, but decided to let her grow up in poverty rather than face what they had done to Leigh. Saddened by what she has read, Annie puts the journal back in the drawer as she hears Luke calling her name. She goes to him and they leave Farthinggale to its ghosts. It is never explained how Leigh's diary was returned to Farthinggale. It is not mentioned in any of the other Casteel books, nor is it mentioned as being among the possessions Heaven inherited from Leigh. The diary is also written in past tense, rather than in present, thus implying that Leigh completed a long "entry" while she was in labor and/or shortly before her death. The presence of the note from the detective in the diary possibly negates the whole question of whether Tony knew he was Heaven Casteel's father - due to the timeline, he must have realized it was likely (although Heaven lied about the year of her birth, making herself one year younger). Additionally, in "Dark Angel", Heaven tells Tony and Jillian that her mother had only recently died, and they seem to take this as absolute fact. In that novel, Tony reacts with shock when he finally hears that Leigh died in childbirth at 14, and only then attempts to break off the romance between Heaven and Troy (as they are niece and uncle). "Web of Dreams" raises many questions about the consistency of the storytelling details and the timelines. ===== 14-year-old Dawn Longchamp leads a humble, rootless existence with her parents, Ormond and Sally Jean Longchamp, and her moody older brother Jimmy, who is 16 years old. Moving around a lot, Dawn's family does not provide much stability for her, but what her lifestyle lacks in stability, her home life makes up for in love. This erratic lifestyle seems to change when Dawn and Jimmy are able to enroll in an exclusive private school when Ormond gets a job there. It is here that Dawn's talent for singing is discovered. Her brother does not enjoy the school, feeling the weight of class differences bear down upon him. Dawn, although optimistic, does not fare much better, and is sternly ordered by the headmistress to be on her best behavior as she is of lesser social status than her classroom peers. On her first day, she also incurs the wrath of the most popular and affluent girl in the school, Clara Sue Cutler, after accidentally ratting her out on her smoking. Clara Sue then proceeds to pull mean-spirited pranks on Dawn and openly refers to her as white trash. Deeply offended, Dawn finally stops trying to like Clara Sue after this insult. However, Clara Sue's older brother, the handsome and charming Philip Cutler, does not share his sister's loathing. Phillip is kind to Dawn, and immediately shows an interest in her. He compares her beauty to that of his mother, Laura Sue Cutler, and is easily entranced. Jimmy is wary of Phillip, but does not overtly oppose Dawn's involvement with him. A shy girl who has had a sheltered upbringing, Dawn is somewhat taken aback by Phillip's immediate romantic overtures, even though she does find him attractive. Phillip urges her to date him, and after constant persuasion from him, Dawn agrees. Meanwhile, Dawn's mother, Sally Jean, has discovered that she is pregnant. This strains the Longchamps' finances, which are already tight, but Dawn is still overjoyed at the prospect of a little sibling, hoping that the baby will look more like her. Sally Jean gives birth to a little girl named Fern, but does not recover her health after the labor. She attempts several holistic ways of recovering her health but to no avail. She remains bedridden for the duration of Dawn's school year. At school, Dawn is excited by the musical opportunities now opening up to her. Her enjoyment of music culminates in her solo song, Somewhere over the Rainbow, at a school concert. Although nervous because of a prank pulled earlier by Clara Sue and her clique, Dawn draws emotional strength from the pearl necklace Sally Jean gave her earlier in the evening, which she claims are a Longchamp heirloom. Dawn's world comes crashing down after her solo performance at the school concert. Her beloved mother, Sally Jean, passes away that night. With the shock of this barely registered, what comes on the heels of Sally Jean's death truly changes Dawn's life forever. A security guard at the hospital where Sally Jean died recognizes the family, and also notices something peculiar in Dawn's appearance. He goes to the authorities, who perform an early morning raid of the Longchamp residence. Through these officers, it is revealed to Dawn that she is not Ormond and Sally Jean's biological daughter, but that she was kidnapped by them as a newborn baby, and that she is actually the daughter of Randolph and Laura Sue Cutler. Dawn is taken back to Cutler's Cove, Virginia, an offshoot of Virginia Beach. Ormond is arrested for child kidnapping. With no nearby relatives to come to their aid, Jimmy and Fern are placed in foster care. Dawn refuses to believe that Ormond kidnapped her, but the authorities prove her identity through a unique birthmark she shares with the description of the kidnapped baby. Dawn is appalled at the realization that the terrible Clara Sue is her sister; even worse, her boyfriend, Phillip, is actually her brother. These concerns fade into the background after her first meeting with Grandmother Cutler at the family's hotel, also named Cutler's Cove. Grandmother Cutler does not seem overjoyed about the return of her long-lost grandchild. She informs Dawn that she will be known by her "true" name, Eugenia, and that she will work in the hotel as a maid in order to prove that she is trustworthy. Dawn is shocked and upset by this cold treatment. She tries appealing to her real parents, Randolph and Laura Sue, but they are just as powerless as her. Randolph, though charming and handsome, has little willpower and prefers life to be as smooth as possible. Laura Sue is enchanted by Dawn's prettiness and resemblance to her, but refuses to make any effort to help her, as she is completely cowed by her mother-in-law. Dawn is also put at risk by Clara Sue's malicious tricks. Infuriated by Dawn's return, she does her best to make sure Dawn is fired by stealing jewellery and other items from the hotel guests. Dawn finds some comfort in the housekeeper, Mrs. Boston, who knew Sally Jean and Ormond Longchamp when they worked at the hotel. She cannot believe that her parents stole her, as they were always honest, hard-working people. Mrs. Boston hints that there is more to the "kidnapping" than meets the eye. Dawn's life is further brightened by a secret visit from Jimmy, aided and abetted by Phillip. Jimmy confesses that he has been in love with Dawn since they were children, but never dared show it because he felt he was sick for thinking of her that way. Dawn admits the attraction is mutual, but they find it hard to overcome their upbringing as brother and sister. This happy interlude comes to an end when Clara Sue finds Jimmy in the basement, where Dawn hid him. She tells Grandmother Cutler, who goes to the police and has Jimmy taken back to his foster parents. Dawn is heart-broken that Jimmy has to leave and is furious with Clara Sue. Jealous of her obvious affection for Jimmy, Phillip corners Dawn in her bathroom and rapes her. Desperate to get out, Dawn visits Mrs. Dalton, the woman who took care of her just after she was born, and learns that her "kidnapping" was staged by Grandmother Cutler because she is not Randolph's biological daughter but a product of one of her mother's extramarital affairs. Grandmother Cutler didn't want a non-Cutler child to grow up as part of the family, so she paid the Longchamps with family jewels, including the string of pearls, to keep them quiet and to provide for Dawn's future. Outraged, Dawn confronts Grandmother Cutler about this. The old woman eventually admits that she was behind the "kidnapping" and offers Dawn a deal: if Dawn will study singing in New York, Grandmother Cutler will use her influence to have Ormond released prison. Dawn agrees but on one condition: that she be referred to by Dawn, not Eugenia. The book ends with Dawn going to New York. ===== Dawn and Jimmy arrange to find out what happened to Dawn's daughter Christie, who was given up for adoption by Grandmother Cutler. Thanks to the hotel lawyer, Dawn and Jimmy quickly get Christie back, as the adoption process was not legal. Dawn and Jimmy make plans to marry. Although she dislikes the hotel and would rather become a singer, Dawn takes up the running of Cutler's Cove. Randolph, Dawn's stepfather and half-brother, is haunted by the death of his mother, and starts to drink excessively. The only thing that makes him happy is Christie, but he begins to wander away from the hotel, often forgetting where he is and begins pretending that his mother is still alive. Dawn marries Jimmy, and her brother Philip acts as best man. Philip, who has obsessed over Dawn since prior to finding out they were related, acts strangely during the wedding, muttering the vows under his breath as if he were marrying Dawn. As Randolph is not at the ceremony to give Dawn away, Bronson Alcott, a friend of Dawn's mother, does instead. On their wedding night, Dawn and Jimmy finally consummate their relationship. However, the honeymoon is cut short when Randolph is found dead at his mother's grave several days later. Dawn takes full ownership of the hotel and begins spending more time on the hotel than with her family. With her husband dead, Laura Sue resumes her old relationship with Bronson Alcott and they quickly marry. Bronson later confesses to Dawn that Clara Sue is his daughter, conceived during an affair that began after Dawn's "kidnapping". Soon after, Dawn discovers that she is pregnant with Jimmy's child. Dawn decides that Clara Sue should go and live with Bronson and their mother, and has Clara Sue's things moved to Bronson's house. When Clara Sue comes home and finds out about Dawn's decision, she becomes angry and attacks Dawn, causing her to miscarry. Clara Sue is ostracized by nearly everyone for this act, her mother being the only exception. The miscarriage has a devastating impact on Dawn and Jimmy. Dawn resorts to the hotel to ease her grief, withdrawing from Jimmy and Christie, and it takes a long time for them to recover from this tragic event. Phillip announces that he is engaged to a classmate, Betty Ann Monroe. Clara Sue purposely embarrasses the family at his graduation ceremony by bringing one of her sleazy boyfriends along. Phillip marries Betty Ann, but still obsesses over Dawn, to the point that he has Betty Ann dye her hair blonde, wear Dawn's nightgown and perfume, and goes to the same place where Dawn and Jimmy went on their honeymoon. Clara Sue returns to torment Dawn: she claims the hotel should be hers, because Dawn is illegitimate, but Dawn reveals that Clara Sue is also illegitimate and has no right to the hotel. She tells Clara Sue to ask Bronson if she wants proof. Since her miscarriage, Dawn seems unable to conceive; Dawn and Jimmy's frustration over this infertility grows when Betty Ann becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, Melanie and Richard. Philip tells Dawn that this works out perfectly: Melanie can be for Betty Ann and Richard for Dawn. Dawn is disturbed by this statement, but she can see Philip is trying to lead a normal life and so she doesn't tell Jimmy or cut off contact with Phillip. After the birth of the twins, Jimmy decides to visit his father and stepmother in Texas. While he is away, a drunken Philip almost rapes Dawn, telling Dawn that he could get her pregnant unlike Jimmy. Fortunately, they are interrupted when Christie starts crying; Dawn sends Phillip away, reminding him that he is now married and should try to love his wife. He tries to apologize to her, but she tells him to forget it happened. Jimmy tells Dawn that he has found out what happened to his baby sister Fern, who was adopted when his father was arrested for "kidnapping" Dawn. He found out that Fern was adopted by Clayton and Leslie Osbourne, who changed her name to Kelly Ann. Dawn and Jimmy visit the Osbournes to make sure that Fern is okay. Although they are not allowed to tell Fern who they are, she already knows about her adoption and follows them back to the hotel. She tells them that Clayton sexually abused her, so Jimmy and Dawn obtain custody of her. Fern initially seems sweet and helpful, but soon proves untrustworthy, stealing things from the hotel, smoking in the basement with older boys, and acting promiscuously. She also makes Christie and Gavin, her little half- brother, strip and try to touch each other. Jimmy continually takes her side and Fern seems to enjoy driving a wedge between her brother and sister-in-law. Dawn is upset because she cannot understand how the sweet baby she used to care for has become this resentful, deceptive teenager. Christie's father, Michael, reappears in Dawn's life. He asks to see Christie, and Dawn reluctantly agrees. Michael then claims to be remorseful and asks for a second chance, but Dawn rejects him, saying nothing can ever take her away from Jimmy. Michael then demands $5,000 from Dawn to help him get back on his feet. If she refuses, he will fight for custody of Christie. With the help of the hotel lawyer and a private detective, Dawn is able to scare Michael off. Meanwhile, Clara Sue is killed in a truck accident with another boyfriend. Laura Sue has a mental breakdown following Clara Sue's death and loses touch with reality, mixing up past and present. When she comes upon a magazine article that mirrors Fern's accusations, Dawn realizes that Fern has been lying about being sexually abused. She calls Jimmy and they confront Fern about the magazine. Fern breaks down and admits that she made up the whole story, but argues that her adoptive parents were always disappointed in her and she thought Jimmy and Dawn would treat her better as they were her 'real' family. Dawn tells her that they do want to treat her better, but that can only happen if Fern works on her attitude and stops stealing and lying to them. Fern promises that she will do better but Dawn wonders if she can really change. Sometime later, Dawn learns from Luther that Emily has died from heart failure. Dawn feels no sorrow about this, as Emily abused and judged her, but she decides they should at least visit The Meadows to check on Charlotte, who was kind to Dawn during her pregnancy. As Dawn, Jimmy and Luther sit around talking, Luther reveals that he was the father of Charlotte's baby. He sheltered Charlotte from her father and sister after they beat and starved her, and in the process, he developed feelings for her. His final revelations is that Charlotte is actually Grandmother Cutler's daughter, the product of rape by Grandmother Cutler's father. Since Emily didn't leave a will, Charlotte inherits the plantation. The book ends with Dawn telling Jimmy that she is pregnant. ===== Christie Longchamp is a promising musician whose mother owns and operates the prestigious Cutler's Cove hotel. They live nearby with Christie's stepfather Jimmy and her nine-year-old half-brother Jefferson while her Uncle Philip, his wife Aunt Bet and their twin children, Richard and Melanie, reside in the family section of Cutler's Cove. The story commences on Christie's sixteenth birthday. A grand party is being held at the hotel for her extended family and school friends, but to Christie, the only person whose arrival matters is her stepfather's seventeen-year-old half-brother, Gavin. Fern, Jimmy's younger sister and the problem child of the family, also arrives unexpectedly, mainly to upset Dawn and Jimmy (showing she has not changed since Twilight's Child). She presents Christie with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Christie throws it into her closet, appalled by her aunt's insinuations and promiscuousness. Despite Fern's wild and drunken behaviour, the party is a great success, and the evening concludes with Gavin confessing his love for Christie. The next day, Christie and Jefferson return home from school to find that Cutler's Cove has burned to the ground after a boiler in the basement exploded. Jimmy, who was in the basement, was trapped and Dawn tried to save him, but they both perished in the blaze. It is revealed that Philip and Bet are now their legal guardians, and they proceed to move into Christie's house to establish themselves as the new heads of the Cutler empire. Although Aunt Bet explains to Jefferson and Christie that they must all compromise and sacrifice, Christie notices that it is only she and Jefferson who are being asked to make sacrifices. All of Dawn and Jimmy's belongings are either removed or seized by Aunt Bet, depending on whether she likes them or not. Aunt Bet is unable to get along with Jefferson, constantly criticizing him, and Richard frames him for naughty deeds just to get him in trouble. Christie fights with her about this but to no avail. Christie then pleads with her uncle to allow Jefferson and herself more freedom, but Philip sides with his wife, as he has had little willpower since Dawn's death. After some time, Laura Sue dies, which adds to Philip's deteriorating mental state. Gradually, Christie notices her uncle is lavishing affection on her and trying to have intimate, personal conversations with her. Christie grows increasingly disturbed and worried by her uncle's behavior, especially after he gives her lingerie and she catches him watching her bathe, but it is not until her Aunt Bet finds the forgotten copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover and punishes her that her suspicions evolve into fear. Later that night, Uncle Philip, overcome by desire and fury at never having been able to possess her mother, enters Christie's room and rapes her, mixing her up with her mother as he does so. Heartbroken and confused, Christie buys bus tickets to New York so she and Jefferson can go in search of her mysterious biological father. But her father is now a rundown, drunken has-been, and in no way fits the image Christie had of him. In her disappointment, she leaves and calls the only man she still believes in, Gavin. When Gavin arrives, Christie confesses what her uncle has done, and in his fury and disgust he refuses to allow her to return home. Together they decide to hide out at 'The Meadows', the mysterious plantation where Christie was born. Her great-great Aunt Charlotte, a mentally-disabled but sweet woman, is living there with her husband, Luther, and they gladly take in the runaways. Gavin and Christie begin to explore the grounds, and gradually they learn many of the family's secrets that have remained buried inside the house, such as the fact Grandmother Cutler was raped by her father, the torture Dawn suffered at the hands of Emily when she was pregnant with Christie, and how Emily used Luther as a slave for impregnating Charlotte. Gradually, the isolation pulls them closer together, until they finally consummate their relationship, with Christie asking Gavin to take away her shame by making her love for him feel right. Then Fern and her boyfriend Monty arrive. Fern takes over the household and bullies the family, making Christie her slave as revenge for the constant disapproval of Christie's parents. She has no interest in why Christie and Jefferson are hiding out at The Meadows, assuming that Christie finally got bored of being a good girl and ran away. When Christie tells Fern about her rape, Fern's response is that Christie must have seduced him. When Jefferson cuts himself on a rusty nail and becomes terribly ill with tetanus, Christie is forced to come out of hiding to save her brother's life. Fern and Monty leave immediately when Jefferson becomes ill, fearful of getting into trouble. Phillip immediately comes to claim Christie and Jefferson and take them back 'home'. Christie is terrified of Philip, but she is so afraid for Jefferson's life that she has no choice but to return with him. Gavin tries to stay with her, but Philip forces him to leave and takes his niece back to Cutler's Cove. Locked in her room by Aunt Bet and finding her beloved Sweet 16 party dress shredded by Richard, Christie is miserable and frightened. Although she has lived in this house for almost her whole life, she no longer feels safe or at home there. Enraged by how her relatives have intimidated her, Christie tips the twins' bowls of chowder onto their laps and tells Aunt Bet what Philip did to her. This appears to drive Aunt Bet over the edge. On the brink of insanity, Philip drives Christie to the beach where he took her mother years ago, and again tries to rape her while calling her Dawn the whole time. Christie manages to fight him off, and runs to her grandmother's husband, Bronson Alcott, who finally learns what Philip has done. Philip is found to be mentally ill and delusional, and is taken away. Aunt Bet can't face the public shame, so she and the twins move out of the house to live with Aunt Bet's parents. The novel concludes with Jefferson's recovery. Christie and her brother live in Bronson's house and Christie is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Gavin. It appears that the Cutler 'curse' has finally been broken. ===== The Doctor poses as a psychiatrist to investigate strange goings on at a mental health hospital. ===== Marnie is about a young woman who makes a living by embezzling from her employers, moving on, and changing her identity. Her criminal behavior is described in detail, but her motives for acting this way remain obscure - since she is obviously a capable person who would have likely done well in an honest career. She is finally caught in the act by one of her employers, a young widower named Mark Rutland, who blackmails her into marriage. Two shocking events near the end of the story send the troubled woman to the brink of suicide and she eventually must face the trauma from her past which is the root cause of her behaviour. ===== Norman Bates, a middle-aged bachelor, is dominated by his mother, a mean-tempered, puritanical old woman who forbids him to have a life outside of her. They run a small motel together in the town of Fairvale, but business has floundered since the state relocated the highway. In the middle of a heated argument between them, a customer arrives, a young woman named Mary Crane. Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $40,000 from a client of the real estate company where she works. She stole the money so her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, could pay off his debts and they could finally get married. Mary arrives at the Bates Motel after accidentally turning off the main highway. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to have dinner with him at his house, an invitation that sends Mrs. Bates into a jealous rage; she screams, "I'll kill the bitch!", which Mary then hears. During dinner, Mary gently suggests that Bates put his mother in a mental institution, but he denies there is anything wrong with her; "We all go a little mad sometimes", he says. Mary says goodnight and returns to her room, resolving to return the money so she will not end up like Bates. Moments later in the shower, however, a figure resembling an old woman frightens Mary with a butcher knife, and then beheads her. Bates, who had passed out drunk after dinner, returns to the motel and finds Mary's bloody corpse. He is instantly convinced his mother is the murderer. He briefly considers letting her go to prison, but changes his mind after having a nightmare in which she sinks in quicksand, only to turn into him as she goes under. His mother comes to comfort him, and he decides to dispose of Mary's body, belongings, and car in the swamp, and go on with life as usual. Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Lila, tells Sam of her sister's disappearance. They are soon joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to retrieve the money. Sam and Lila agree to let Arbogast lead the search for Mary. Arbogast eventually meets up with Bates, who says that Mary had left after one night; when he asks to talk with his mother, Bates refuses. This arouses Arbogast's suspicion, and he calls Lila and tells her that he is going to try to talk to Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure who killed Mary ambushes him in the foyer, and kills him with a razor. Sam and Lila go to Fairvale to look for Arbogast, and meet with the town sheriff, who tells them that Mrs. Bates has been dead for years, having committed suicide by poisoning her lover and herself. The young Norman had a nervous breakdown after finding them and was sent for a time to a mental institution. Sam and Lila go to the motel to investigate. Sam distracts Bates while Lila goes to get the sheriff—but she actually proceeds up to the house to investigate on her own. There she finds various books on occultism, abnormal psychology, metaphysics and Marquis de Sade, in his bedroom. During a conversation with Sam, Bates says that his mother had only pretended to be dead, and had communicated with him while he was in the institution. Bates then tells Sam that Lila tricked him and went up to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then knocks Sam unconscious with a liquor bottle that he'd been drinking from. At the house, Lila is horrified to discover Mrs. Bates's mummified corpse on the floor, in the fruit cellar. As she screams, a figure rushes into the room with a knife—Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam regains consciousness, enters the room and subdues Norman before he can harm Lila. At the police station, Sam talks to a psychiatrist who had examined Bates, while the county highway crew is out dredging the swamp to uncover the automobiles, revealing the bodies of Mary and Arbogast; a media frenzy imagines countless additional victims to be uncovered if the swamp is further drained, but "the newspaper writers didn't have to foot the bill for such a project." Sam learns that Bates and his mother had lived together in a state of total codependence ever since his father deserted them when he was still a young child. Along the way, introverted, awkward, and filled with seething rage, Norman became a secret transvestite, impersonating his mother. A bookworm, he became fascinated with the occult, spiritualism, and Satanism. When his mother took a lover named Joe Considine, Bates went over the edge with jealousy and poisoned them both, forging a suicide note in his mother's handwriting. To suppress the guilt of matricide, he developed a dissociative identity disorder ("split personality") in the outside world. He retrieved her corpse from the cemetery and preserved it and, whenever the illusion was threatened, would drink heavily, dress in her clothes and speak to himself in her voice. The "Mother" personality killed Mary because "she" was jealous of Norman feeling affection for another woman. Bates is declared psychotic and put in a mental institution for life. Days later, the "Mother" personality completely takes over Bates's mind; he virtually becomes his mother. However, in a double-twist ending, "Mother" reveals she had to take over, as Norman's personality was actually the murderous psychotic one, and that "she" in fact couldn't hurt a fly. ===== Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to "exchange murders": Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy's wife while Guy is away in Mexico. Bruno informs Guy of his crime, but Guy hesitates to turn him in to the police. He realizes that Bruno could claim Guy's complicity in the planned exchange murders; however, the longer he remains silent, the more he implicates himself. This implicit guilt becomes stronger as in the coming months Bruno makes appearances demanding that Guy honor his part of the bargain. After Bruno starts writing anonymous letters to Guy's friends and colleagues, the pressure becomes too great, and Guy murders Bruno's father. Subsequently, Guy is consumed by guilt, whereas Bruno seeks Guy's company as if nothing had happened. He makes an uninvited appearance at Guy's wedding, causing a scene. At the same time, a private detective, who suspects Bruno of having arranged the murder of his father, establishes the connection between Bruno and Guy that began with the train ride, and suspects Bruno of Miriam's murder. Guy also becomes implicated due to his contradictions about the acquaintance with Bruno. When Bruno falls overboard during a sailing cruise, Guy identifies so strongly with Bruno that he tries to rescue him under threat to his own life. Nevertheless, Bruno drowns, and the murder investigation is closed. Guy, however, is plagued by guilt, and confesses the double murder to Miriam's former lover. This man, however, does not condemn Guy; rather, he considers the killings as appropriate punishment for the unfaithfulness. The detective who had been investigating the murders overhears Guy's confession, however, and confronts him. Guy turns himself over to the detective immediately. ===== Having landed on the planet of Espero, the Doctor and Fitz leave Trix in the TARDIS whilst they investigate a distress signal. As she grows bored, Trix decides to leave, but is surprised to find an amnesiac Fitz lying unconscious outside the TARDIS. They find themselves in the path of a wavefront of grey goo, and Fitz surprises Trix by being quite keen to investigate the mystery. The Doctor, meanwhile, has been befriended by Calamee, a member of the planet's ruling family. The amnesia he has been suffering from has grown worse, and he — like Fitz — has forgotten everything that has happened prior to the start of the novel. He is directed to the home of a mysterious off-worlder named Madam Xing, who restores his most recent memories and confirms that the memories lost (prior to The Burning) have been permanently deleted, rather than merely suppressed. The Doctor refuses to allow Xing to restore the memories by using a viroid unit, but does take the unit with him as he leaves. As he goes, he discovers that he is being observed via anachronistic technology. Fitz and Trix head to the city, and watch as a mob of citizens attack a "night beast" — an unknown creature that has arrived on the planet. Fitz tries to prevent the attack, but is over-powered by the mob, who kill the beast. They are led to safety by a woman named Farine, but Trix wanders away when she sees a young boy watching them. The boy offers her a device that will allow her to disguise herself much more effectively, changing her entire body on a genetic level. Trix takes him up on the offer, only to find that the "device" is actually an alien symbiote named Reo, who takes complete control of her body. Fitz is taken to the palace by Farine, who turns out to be Princess Sensimi of the ruling family. As they head to the cellars to visit a captured night beast, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Calamee step out: the Doctor has been persuaded to warn the authorities about the wavefront. He explains that it is altering living beings on a genetic level, and manages to convince the others to join him in searching for the source of the wavefront. Finding the source, the Doctor and Fitz discover that it is a crashed living spaceship called Tain, a warship from a race called the Makers who are involved in a war with a race called the Oon. Tain had removed the Doctor and Fitz's memories of finding the ship, but because of a Trojan virus in his systems he was unable to do the job properly. The Trojan created the night beasts as soldiers against Tain, but he was able to interfere in their development to make them docile. In his panic he activated the Gaian Wave, a self-defence mechanism that genetically alters the inhabitants of a planet so that they are all genetically part of the ship: its enemies will be unable to defeat it without destroying the entire planet. Trix and Reo find them, and as Tain agrees to sacrifice himself to save the planet, Reo transfers his consciousness into the ship. Trix collapses, her body unable to look after itself without Reo's control, and Tain manages to link with her and keep her alive. But this leaves the Doctor with a dilemma: if he carries out Tain's wishes and destroys him to save the planet, Trix will die. Fitz saves the day: remembering that his current body was "remembered" (Interference: Book Two) he advises Tain to do the same. Tain separates himself from the ship in a new body, and destroys Reo's consciousness inside the ship. Tain then returns his consciousness to the ship, and cures Trix. ===== The TARDIS crew arrive in the Kremlin Museum, looking for a locket that may help to reveal the nature of Sabbath's plans. However, they find the museum being ransacked by two soldiers from the future. One is overpowered, and the other escapes to the future, taking the Doctor with him. In the present day, Colonel Grigoriy Bugayev (of the Russian branch of UNIT) is investigating the thefts, and suspects corrupt businessman Vladimir Garudin. He also knows of the Doctor, and thinks that his companions may be able to help him. However, he doesn't search Trix properly, and fails to discover that she has stolen the locket the Doctor was searching for. The Doctor and the future soldier arrive in 5000 with a painting of a Russian noblewoman, which his captor insists on taking to his commander, Lord General Razum Kinzhal. Kinzhal himself has been captured by enemy forces, but manages to complete a daring escape that leaves him in the Arctic wilderness with his second-in-command, Angel, who loves him dearly. In 1812, as Alexander Vishenkov prepares to head off to face the French with his friend Captain Victor Padorin, he is given the diamond locket as a token of affection by Dusha. He loves her dearly, but is troubled by lustful feelings he has started to have for her younger sister. Dusha, meanwhile, worries about her two sisters, whom the notorious lecher Padorin seems to have set his sights on. As Trix and Fitz are escorted to Bugayev's HQ, he tells them that the collection of artefacts they were raiding seem to have a strange effect on the public; in part, they were displayed to study that effect. They are interrupted, however, when the convoy is attacked by a group of apparently possessed locals. Fitz finds himself possessed by the same force, and compelled to leave the safety on the convoy. The future soldier, meanwhile, recovers and forces Trix to aid his escape. As she drives them away from the convoy, she is surprised by a woman on horseback and crashes the vehicle. The Doctor and his soldier stumble across a bunker where a group are plotting to betray and execute Kinzhal. As the soldier grows more enraged by this, a mysterious fire breaks out from around the picture and kills everyone in the bunker. The Doctor is intrigued by this apparent pyrokinetic ability. Fitz is marched by his controlling force to the office of Victor Garudin, and then released: it is clear that Garudin himself was controlling them. He is after the Doctor's TARDIS, and fearing for his life Fitz admits that he will sell the Doctor out happily if he is rewarded suitably. Garudin shows Fitz his own personal time machine, Misl Vremnya or "Thought Time", which allows Garudin to watch history through any person's eyes. The soldier travelling with the Doctor succumbs to his injuries, but the Doctor manages to deliver the portrait to Kinzhal. He demands to know why the Lord General is stealing treasures from the past, and how the painting causes fires. Unseen by all but Angel, the Lord General's new aide tries to avoid the Doctor catching sight of her. Trix awakes to find herself on the planet Paraiso with a woman named Aphrodite, and her soldier recovering in a villa. Using the diamond necklace, Aphrodite is able to use her pool to travel back to 1812 with Trix. Once there she greets Dusha as her mother. Unknown to the two of them, Fitz and Garudin are watching the reunion through Padorin's eyes: Garudin has to leave, but allows Fitz to stay, confident that he doesn't possess the metal discipline to control a person in the past. Trix, meanwhile, tricks Aphrodite into allowing her to go back to Paraiso apparently to fetch the Doctor to help them. Instead, she intends to steal the diamond necklace that allows Aphrodite to visit her mother. Fitz is rescued by Bugayev. However, this is part of Garudin's plan, who intends to use him as a spy on the investigation. Fitz ruins this plan by convincing Bugayev to rescue Garudin's secretary as well: she is happy to betray her employer, and shows the Colonel evidence that Garudin has been using "Thought Time" to control the military leaders of the age. Bugayev can now justify a full scale raid on the industrialist's headquarters. Kinzhal admits to the Doctor that the artifacts that have been collected all amplify powerful emotions because they have been in contact with Dusha. He sent his men to gather them, but cannot travel in time himself: he and Dusha are star-crossed lovers, aliens who are forbidden from seeing each other by their own people. The Doctor agrees to help create a mental bridge between the two lovers using the time travel technology, but the device he needs has been lost in the 21st century and possibly developed in a time machine. The Doctor returns to the 21st century and is held by Bugayev, reunited with Fitz. However, once he realises that Angel, Garudin's secretary and Dusha's sister all look exactly the same, he decides to go back and visit Dusha to see what he is not being told. Fitz is still under Garudin's influence, and he intends to control the Doctor as well. As Trix arrives on Paraiso, she finds her soldier and the locket missing, and assumes he must have taken it back to his time. She heads to 5000 to try to retrieve it, but she was mistaken: the soldier has returned to 1812 to force Aphrodite to take him home, being unable to work the controls of the time machine pool. The Doctor and Fitz arrive and convince Aphrodite and the soldier to return to Paraiso. Once there, they work out where Trix has gone. Aphrodite explains that Dusha and Kinzhal are two halves of the same being, exiled for breaking their society's laws and having a child. United, the creature is more like an intelligent star, which means that if they are reunited, the Earth will be destroyed by their natural form. Trix arrives too early, and ends up having to pose as Kinzhal's aide whilst she awaits what she assumes will be the return of the locket. In the meantime, the Doctor and Fitz arrive to offer a solution to the lover's separation to Kinzhal. However, he refuses, not wanting to take the risk that something will go wrong. However, at that point they are attacked and, although they defeat the attackers, Angel is mortally wounded. She offers her body to Dusha, knowing she can heal it, and the two lovers can be together without reforming as a star. Moved by her sacrifice, Kinzhal agrees. The Doctor arranges for Dusha to arrive in the future in Angel's body, and also obtains the diamond he needed to find the true nature of Sabbath's masters. The empty locket is returned to Aphrodite on Paraiso, who vows to remain there, satisfied that her parents have been reunited. As Burgayev's raid on Garudin's headquarters is successful, the industrialist commits suicide, and the time travel equipment is confiscated and destroyed. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix are free to carry on their journey and attempt to defeat Sabbath's masters. ===== Once upon a time there lived a poor old woodcutter with his wife, who earned their living by cutting wood and fishing. The old man was honest and kind but his wife was arrogant and greedy. One morning, the old man went into the mountains to cut timber and saw an injured sparrow crying out for help. Feeling sorry for the bird, the man took it back to his home and fed it some rice to try to help it recover. His wife, being very greedy and rude, was annoyed that he would waste precious food on such a small and insignificant little thing as a sparrow. The old man, however, continued caring for the bird. The man had to return to the mountains one day and left the bird in the care of the old woman, who had no intention of feeding it. After her husband left, she went out fishing. While she was gone, the sparrow got into some starch that was left out and eventually ate all of it. The old woman was so angry upon her return that she cut out the bird's tongue and sent it flying back into the mountains from where it came. The old man went searching for the bird and, with the help of other sparrows, found his way into a bamboo grove in which the sparrow's inn was located. A multitude of sparrows greeted him and led him to his friend, the little sparrow he saved. The others brought him food and sang and danced for him. Upon his departure, they presented him with a choice of a large basket or a small basket as a present. Being an older man, he chose the small basket as he supposed it would be the least heavy. When he arrived home, he opened the basket and discovered a large amount of treasure inside. The wife, learning of the existence of a larger basket, ran to the sparrow's inn in the hope of getting more treasure for herself. She chose the larger basket but was warned not to open it before getting home. Such was her greed that the wife could not resist opening the basket before she returned to the house. To her surprise, the box was full of deadly snakes and other monsters. They startled her so much that she tumbled all the way down the mountain, presumably to her death. ===== Each of the seven castaways narrate an autobiographical story—almost totally unrelated to the events of the show—in order of their mention in the show's title theme. Their stories intersect with a character named John "Jack" Gilbert Egan, a Marine-turned-CIA operative, whose own life is the meta-narrative which ties the novel together. Each chapter features an important person or object in the lives of the castaways whose name is an anagram of "Gilligan"; additionally, a character whose name is a variant of "Susan" and Maxwell House coffee appears or is referred to in each story. ===== The Doctor takes a huge risk to restore the collapsing multiverse. ===== This story begins with Fitz and Anji working for the Good Times Inc. Company. They are working undercover for the Doctor, who is shocked to discover a company that is selling holidays in time. The climax of the story results in the destruction of billions of universes. The Doctor and Sabbath realise all time travellers must be stopped, to prevent these events from happening again. However, at the end of the book a man reveals he has a time-travel machine and proceeds to begin interfering in time once again......... ===== The story is set in an alternate universe and features Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the cover is based on a famous photo of Brunel standing in front of the launching chains for the SS Great Eastern. Set during the 1840s, the Doctor and his companions arrive during the Industrial Revolution in England, and learn that an inventor has been ordered by an alien force to construct a machine known as the Utopia Engine, a machine that will cause the entire planet to rapidly age. Anybody below the age of puberty will survive, but those above it will age to death. Brunel, who has unknowingly been supplying parts for this engine, unites with the Doctor to destroy the engine after learning of the post-apocalyptic future the Doctor has foreseen. ===== A story arc about the Multiverse collapsing begins in this novel, ending in Timeless ===== The Doctor accidentally brings the concept of reality to a world based on cartoon physics. ===== Pooja (Rani Mukerji) is a newly wed bride to Niranjan (Faraaz Khan). She comes from a middle-class family. But the innocent girl is unaware of the nasty events that would torment her later. The vicious dowry circle is first revealed when Niranjan's parents and elder sisters grumble about getting very few jewels. Niranjan keeps quiet due to his fresh marriage. A few days pass happily . Then she goes back to her father and younger sister along with her husband to stay for a few days. Her sister Neha is a college student and playful, kiddish girl. She plays innocent pranks on Niranjan, but he looks at her with twisted intentions. Pooja and Diwan saheb, her father remain unaware about this. One day, Niranjan relates his wish to his father-in-law for owning a factory . He asks Pooja's Dad to give him 10 lakh (one million) rupees. But Diwan saheb sadly refuses as he is already indebted over the years. His mansion is also mortgaged with the moneylenders. Niranjan suggests that he borrows from his relatives, but seeing his father-in-law helpless, he leaves to return home agitated. He sends Pooja a message about going back . Niranjan is in the habit of visiting brothels .Pooja's family is also unaware about that. Pooja decides to return to her in-laws now that her husband has left. Diwan saheb and Neha see her off the next day. When Pooja reaches her in-laws place, they taunt her about nobody escorting her .Pooja asks him why he left so soon. Niranjan says that he expected Diwan saheb to help with money and give loads of property without asking for it. But, they were cheated and suffered a big loss. She requests her husband to wait for their good times to arrive. But Niranjan goes away angrily. Downstairs, the whole family sees niranjan going away in anger. Chaudhrain, her mother-in-law says that if their bahu had brought good news, then Niranjan wouldn't leave the room being upset. She says that they need to do something so that Pooja gets all the money and things quietly without complaining or leave their house forever. She goes to her and says Pooja will have to make the lunch arrangements. Pooja readily agrees. Chaudhrain and Kalpita spoil the food by adding too much salt. Kalpita is the first to comment about the taste. Then Chaudhriji and Niranjan too scold Pooja. She curses Pooja saying her son is facing hardships and has to pacify the bank manager so he won't return home the whole night. Niranjan is at the brothel with the bank manager, joking around with the beautiful dancer girl. But when the brothel's senior lady murders her, he is caught there by all the group members. Then Niranjan is convicted of murder and the whole family tries everything to secure his release. Unfortunately, it is Pooja who will have to pay the price. A photographer Rajeshwar (Shahbaz Khan) has photos which can prove him innocent, but in return he wants to spend one night with Pooja. Her in-laws are shocked with that, but Pooja vows to save her husband and reluctantly agrees. She goes to meet Rajeshwar and spends the night at his house but he does not even touch her. Then Niranjan is released after the real photos are presented in the court. But after coming back home, he questions her chastity and her mother-in-law ( Himani Shivpuri) beats her and throws her out of the house. Unfortunately, she loses Niranjan's baby due to the ill- treatment. Pooja even goes to Rajeshwar's house again, asking him why he ruined her life. Then he reveals that he is Radhika's brother, the same girl whom Niranjan led to commit suicide. He says that he did so to exact his revenge from Niranjan. Rajeshwar repents and promises to help Pooja in her fight for justice. Then Pooja's divorce case goes to the court. Her in-laws even insult her father and sister . Niranjan dishonors Pooja's father by slapping him. Diwan saheb leaves the place frustrated. He requests the judge to dismiss the case after Pooja's divorce but is murdered by Pooja's sister- in-law's husband in the court. Pooja and her sister are distraught. Just like her marriage when she took her wedding vows, she circles her father's funeral pyre and vows to destroy the home which destroyed her life. Then the events begin one by one. Chaudhriji loses his town timber business. Pooja files another murder case in the court and being a qualified lawyer herself, argues on her late father's behalf. She calls Ankush, Kalpita's husband for questioning and asks him about his past life. She insults him by recounting her in-laws' comments about him. He gets very angry and takes out his revolver to shoot her but she kills him in self-defense, thus avenging her father's death. Later, when the Chaudhri family is performing Ramleela, Vandana who is out for a swim in the lake, is assaulted by Billu. The Chaudhri family goes to hunt him down and he is arrested by the police, but escapes. Then Zamindar saheb refuses to wed his daughter with Niranjan and leaves the town. Towards the end of the movie, Pooja is tied to a pier at the outskirts of the town. Her sister Neha and Billu get the news and reach the place. Then, Niranjan tries to rape her and Pooja frees her bonds of the ropes.Billu at the same time stops Niranjan by keeping pistol on Niranjan's head which he took from the police officer who was assigned to kill him by Chaudari family whom he kills for self defense. He hands over the pistol to Pooja who point the gun at Niranjan and later at Billu stating that Assaulting a women is big crime and later point it to Niranjan stating that so is destroying an innocent girl's life. chaudrain falls at her leg begging her to forgive her son and her family. She pushes her with her leg and says did they show mercy when they tied her with ropes to burn her alive, did they show mercy when her sister was about to get raped by her son. Chaudari family realises their fault when they had to go through what Pooja went through. Pooja throws the pistol towards Chaudrain and ask her to shoot her(Pooja). She refuses. Seeing Pooja isn't gonna kill Niranjan, Billy tries to walk away. Seeing this Niranjan goes behind him and stabs him with sword for assaulting his sister. Billy as reflex tried to Choke Niranjan in pain. Seeing this to save her son Chaudrain picks up the pistol and shoots at Billu, who falls down dead just before Chaudrain shoots. Accidentally Chaudrain had shot her own son now. Niranjan falls down , he folds his hands looking at Pooja as in asking apology for being a bad husband and dies. After few days Chaudari family waits outside a temple. Pooja steps out after her prayers. They apologize to her and Chaudrain says to her from now on you are not our daughter in law , you are our daughter and takes her home with them. ===== The Doctor tries to push the TARDIS to its limit, but is forced to land when it begins to break up. They land on the surface of a frozen sea of acid on the planet Endpoint, in the distant future. When the ice begins to break up, The Doctor, Fitz and Anji, flee to the nearby city of Hope, only to see the TARDIS sink to the bottom of the sea. On the city, a policeman investigating a decapitation explains that the planet is toxic, so the humans had to evolve to survive, but recently a serial killer has been decapitating people. The policeman then tells them to go to a casino for help. When they arrive The Doctor buys entry with an apple core (which is long extinct) from his pocket. Inside the casino, a group of cyborgs, calling themselves the Brotherhood of the Silver Fist, burst in and demand that the casino's owner, Silver, speaks to them. Silver, himself a cyborg, enters and drives the brotherhood out of the casino but not before talking to The Doctor. After learning that The Doctor can time travel, he offers to recover the TARDIS if The Doctor catches the murderer, which The Doctor agrees to. While Fitz and Anji rest in the casino, The Doctor finds a used tranquilliser dart at a crime scene and deduces that the murders are part of a plan committed by a visitor to Endpoint. While Fitz tries to infiltrate the Brotherhood, Anji finds apple trees being cloned from the core. Silver explains that he was born in the 30th Century, and was enlisted into the military and given his implants to prolong his life from the birth defects he suffered. In 3006, he was sent to the future to collect technology to help in a war, but was unable to return, and became a businessman on Endpoint. The Doctor learns that the people of Endpoint produce a hormone called Kallisti, which has similar effects to adrenaline, and the killer has been taking heads to give himself a permanent supply. The Doctor uses himself as bait, and when the killer attacks him, he overpowers him, only to discover that the killer is an inbred human. Then, other humans surround The Doctor and tranquillise him. Back at the casino, Anji asks Silver if he could clone her boyfriend Dave Young. Silver agrees, but demands that Anji provides him with data from the TARDIS so he can build his own time machine, which Anji agrees to. When his staff tell him that The Doctor has disappeared, Silver explains that he fitted The Doctor with a tracer, and he locates him on the sea bed. Silver then dives down to rescue The Doctor. On sea bed, where The Doctor is being held in a bunker, the humans explain that they regard the people of Endpoint as mutants, and they believe that humans should be the dominant race, so they have been experimenting with Kallisti to improve humans. Suddenly, Silver attacks the bunker and kills the humans. Fitz contacts The Brotherhood and turns them against each other, but then the image of their cyborg Queen appears and orders Fitz's release. Fitz releases the Queen, who is actually one of Silver's staff, Miraso. She explains the Brotherhood was created by Silver to control rebels and keep the public's faith in Silver. In the Bunker, The Doctor and Silver find technology capable of reversing the pollution. When activated, the sea turns into water, and the air becomes breathable again. Fitz discovers that Silver has mutants with silver skin hidden in his casino and goes to investigate while Anji trades the data on the TARDIS so that the clone of Dave can be made. The Doctor places Kallisti into the liquid computer of Silver's brain, allowing him to create Kallisti himself. The humans explain that their bunker has a hypertunnel, which can be used to quickly travel throughout space. Fitz tells The Doctor about Silver's mutants, and, with Miraso's help, breaks into Silver's office. Silver explains to Anji that he intends to use Dave's clone (Dave II) to give the human race some genetic variety. He explains that he plans to create a new race, Silverati, who all have the enhanced Kallisti, and are loyal to Silver. After conquering the empire, he plans to create time machines to spread his power further. The Doctor and Fitz are imprisoned after learning of Silver's plan. The Doctor gives Anji the TARDIS key and blows up the cell door with an explosive from his pocket. The Doctor turns Dave II into a Silverati disloyal to Silver. Dave II takes them to the hypertunnel and helps them fight Silver. Anji shoots Silver in the eye and he flees through the hypertunnel. The Doctor explains that he took the data on the TARDIS from him when they were fighting. Dave II reprograms the hypertunnel to leave Silver and his army stranded on a dead planet. The Doctor turns Dave II back into a human and Anji leaves him to create a new life for himself on Endpoint, before she leaves in the TARDIS. ===== An unarmed human starship and its crew of fifteen hundred is destroyed by a technologically less advanced alien race, later called elves by the humans because of their resemblance to the mythical creatures. Other unprovoked attacks follow. All attempts to negotiate fail; the elves fire without communicating. Eventually, the overmatched enemy is driven back to his homeworld, but the conflict does not cease. The Alliance, one of the three human power blocs, ends up mired in a twenty-year-long war. In all that time, humans get no closer to understanding why the elves fight or how to make peace. A few districts remain puzzlingly neutral, but when humans try to establish relations with one of them, it instantly joins the enemy side. In addition, not a single elf is captured alive; except for the very young, they have the ability to stop their hearts at will, and use it. Then one day, Second Lieutenant John deFranco takes a prisoner, one who deliberately allows himself to be captured. The creature speaks English, learned from a human prisoner, and calls himself the saitas. He tells deFranco he has come to try to end the war. The elf is passed along to Alliance scientists, but cannot communicate with them. He asks to speak to deFranco, a fellow soldier. As they talk, deFranco learns that the elves do not comprehend the concept of a treaty, written down on a piece of paper, and do not trust it; their way of thinking is too alien. The saitas explains that he has come to be killed, so that his death will carry away the mistakes of the war. He is willing to sign the human treaty, but the elves require a human saitas. The elf hopes that deFranco will be that one. Meanwhile, all along the front, the elves attack with the little they have left. One of deFranco's friends becomes a casualty. When deFranco realizes what the prisoner wants, he tries to leave, but the meeting place has been locked from the outside by his commanders and a grenade pointedly left inside. In the end, deFranco finds it within himself to join the saitas in completing his mission. When the recording of their deaths is broadcast, the fighting ends. An elvish delegation arrives and takes away deFranco's body for burial. The humans in turn take the elf's body to be interred on Downbelow, the Alliance world. ===== Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya revolves around two twists of fate with Ms. Ashi - one with mistaken identity and the other is a Bank robbery/fraud/embezzlement case and subsequent arrest warrants. Ashi is a free-spirited young woman who was born and raised in a very traditional and conservative Indian family who prefer arranged marriages to love-marriages. Now, as she is twenty-five years old - her family has arranged her marriage to Rohit Malhotra, son of family friends, now established in business and thus, will be residing permanently in Switzerland as - Mr. & Mrs. Malhotra. Respecting her father's guidance and wishes/customs, Ashi agrees to the marriage proposal, on the condition that she be allowed to meet her fiancé Rohit anonymously and get a chance to closely observe his character and personality. Ashi's father obliges to this condition and Ashi soon sets off to Switzerland to meet the potential suitor - Rohit Malhotra. While she is there, she learns that Rohit is away on an emergency business meeting and nobody can say exactly when he is expected to return, so Ashi stays in Switzerland for a few months - waiting for him, and in the meanwhile she meets a man called Bobby, who is smitten by her beauty and makes friends with her. He soon finds out from her that she is frustrated in her failed attempt to meet Rohit. Later after a week, Bobby cannot help himself as his heart pines for her as his wife, so he disguises himself as Rohit and tells her that he is the Rohit she has been searching/waiting for all these months! Ashi is happy that at last, she gets a chance to meet Rohit before marriage, even though it was not as she planned (as anonymous), and after a few more weeks, Ashi begins to love this new character, but then she finds out from Rohit's accomplices that Rohit is still on his emergency trip and therefore, Bobby's real identity- that he is BOBBY, not ROHIT. Anyway, she does not care and laughs it all off as she is already in love with Bobby and is ready to move on in life. Upon their return to India, Ashi explains to her family that she met BOBBY instead of ROHIT (who was and still is away on an emergency business meeting) and wants to marry BOBBY, not ROHIT. Ashi's family are at first, reluctant but then immediately after a few weeks, Bobby's family comes with a marriage proposal for Ashi. As the two families meet, greet and agree for the preparations of the soon-to-be marriage, Bobby's mother (Beena Banerjee) introduces herself as the BANK manager of the Bank in which ASHI's father (Kailashnath) is involved in a fraud/embezzlement, Bank robbery case for which a trial is on-going. In the coming months before the wedding takes place, Kailashnath is summoned to appear before the Court in relation to a major fraud case and scandal involving the Bank robbery - in which Bobby's mother testifies that Kailashnath is one of the ringleaders. When the story gets this far, Kailashnath immediately and furiously cancels his daughter Ashi's marriage to Bobby. Furthermore, he arranges Ashi's marriage to Rohit. After a whole other twist to the film, the story ends up happily with Ashi marrying her soulmate BOBBY, not ROHIT. ===== A small northern town soon finds out that a large U.S. Army base is being established for the build-up to the Normandy landings. Soon thousands of rambunctious American troops, or "Yanks" as they are known to the British, descend upon the area. On leave in the town, Technical Sergeant Matt Dyson, encounters Jean Moreton while out to the cinema. She is the fiancée of Ken, a British soldier fighting overseas, and initially rebuffs Matt's advances. He is quite persistent, and she, doubtful about her relationship with Ken, eventually accepts him. The handsome, brash American is in stark contrast to the restrained Englishmen she has known. Soon, she is keeping company with Matt, though it is largely platonic at first. For her part, Helen is a bit more worldly in her affairs. Captain John comes to her estate often, and a relationship develops. They are both married, but her husband is away at sea, and his wife is thousands of miles distant. Eventually, the kind-hearted Matt Dyson is accepted by the Moreton family, notwithstanding Jean's engagement. They welcome his visits, when he, as an army cook, often brings hard-to-find foods normally on wartime rationing and other presents. But when news of Ken's death in action arrives, Jean's ailing mother condemns their relationship as a kind of betrayal. Jean and Matt travel together to a Welsh seaside resort, where they make love but without completion when Jean calls out Ken's name. Jean is crushed, although Matt says "not like this." She feels spurned, and that her willingness to risk everything has not been matched by him, concluding that he is "not ready" for her. Shortly afterwards, the Americans ship out by troop train to Southern England to prepare for D-Day. A characteristic last-minute gift and message from Matt prompt Jean into racing to the railway station. With the town and station a hive of activity, hundreds of the townswomen, some of them pregnant from liaisons with men they may never see again, scramble to catch one last glimpse of their American boyfriends before the train leaves. Matt shouts from the departing train that he will return. ===== ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club - Hyde's - where highly connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high-profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. ===== Rebus is drafted in by Scotland Yard to help track down a cannibalistic serial killer called the Wolfman, whose first victim was found in the East End of London's lonely Wolf Street. His London colleague, George Flight, isn't happy at what he sees as interference, and Rebus encounters racial prejudice as well as the usual dangers of trying to catch a vicious killer. When Rebus is offered a psychological profile of the Wolfman by an attractive woman, it seems too good an opportunity to miss. ===== The Revolt of Mamie Stover is an allegory for the decline of American society because of the country-wide democratization that conflict made possible. Using a Honolulu prostitute to state his case, Huie shows her rise economically, socially, and politically with the aid, in part, of the federal government as she flouts local regulation (prostitution itself being legal at the time). As the war progresses, Stover becomes a war profiteer, coming to control property, accumulating vast wealth in cash, and visiting proscribed beaches in the company of U.S. military officers. The Revolt of Mamie Stover is the first volume in a trilogy, including The Americanization of Emily (1959), and Hotel Mamie Stover (1963), all of which have the same narrator. In the first and third books, he is primarily present in order to observe and report, and in the second he relates his experiences in the late stages of World War II. ===== A police raid on an Edinburgh brothel captures (seemingly by accident) popular young local MP Gregor Jack. When Jack's fiery wife Elizabeth disappears, and two bodies are found, suspicion falls on a famous local actor Rab Kinnoul. Detective Inspector John Rebus is sympathetic to the MP's problems, and interviews a member of the Jacks' social circle, Andrew MacMillan, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his wife many years before. It becomes increasingly evident that somebody has 'set up' Jack, with the intention of stripping him of his good name, political standing and maybe even his life. ===== One fall day, while Farmer Bailey is riding down the road in his truck, he hears a thump! At first, he thinks he had run over a deer, but when he gets out to see what he hit, he finds that he has accidentally run over a man. The man tries to leave, but loses his balance and falls down again. Farmer Bailey takes him to his house, where he and his wife, Mrs. Bailey, discovers that the stranger cannot talk. The Baileys call a doctor to examine him. The doctor arrives and takes the stranger's temperature with her thermometer. As the doctor holds it up to his mouth, the stranger blows on it and the mercury inside freezes. The doctor thinks that the thermometer is broken. Although the stranger isn't seriously hurt, he can't remember who he is or where he is from. The doctor gives advice to the Baileys, telling them to give the stranger shelter until he regains his memory. They do and he fits in well with the family and even helps out on the farm. One night, the stranger comes out to have dinner with the Baileys. They are having soup, and the stranger notices steam rising from his bowl. He sees the little girl blowing on the soup to help it cool. He lightly blows on his own bowl, and the steam drifts away. When he blows, Mrs. Bailey feels a draft on her spine. Bailey enjoys having the stranger as his guest, but he also notices how peculiar the weather has been. The stranger goes for a walk in the forest and notices some rabbits. They would usually stay away from humans, but they walk toward the stranger. It still feels like summer on Mr. Bailey's farm, and the summer warmth makes his pumpkins grow bigger than normal. The stranger notices the curiosities as well. He wonders why the trees on the Bailey farm are still green while all the other trees on the other farms are red and orange. One day, the stranger blows on a green leaf, and it turns to orange. This helps him regain his memory and he realizes it is time for him to leave the Baileys farm. On his last evening at the house, the stranger hugs Mr. and Mrs. Bailey and the little girl goodbye. They come outside to wave goodbye to the stranger, but he has disappeared. When the stranger leaves, fall comes to the Bailey's farm, and the trees are now all red and orange. Etched in frost on the farmhouse window is a message from the stranger that says, "See you next fall." ===== Jeab, a young man working in Bangkok, receives word that his best friend from childhood, Noi-Naa is to be married. While driving back to his hometown, the memories of his friendship with her come flooding back, and their story is told in a flashback. Jeab and Noi-Naa live in a small city in Thailand. Their fathers are rival barbers, with shops situated next to each other, with only a sweet shop to separate them. Jeab's father favors efficiency and uses an electric trimmer. Noi-Naa's father, meanwhile, has a more contemplative, artistic approach, and uses scissors. Jeab notes that the results of both methods seem to be the same. The school holiday has ended. Jeab is notorious for oversleeping, so that each day he misses the school bus and must be driven part way by his father on a motorcycle. By taking a shortcut, Jeab and his father are able to catch up to the bus, but only just in time. On the bus, other boys are introduced. Their ringleader is an overweight bully named Jack. On the bus, the children talk about what they are going to do after school. The boys decide they will play Chinese fantasy characters, while the girls plan to play "house". Because Jeab must cross a busy street to play with the boys, and he fears getting hit by a car, he stays to play with the girls, which makes him the target of much taunting by Jack and the other boys. Then, one day, Jack and his friends are playing soccer against a rival neighborhood gang. They are one player short. Jeab happens to be hanging around, and he's asked to join the game, proving his abilities. He earns the trust of Jack's gang, and passes various tests in order to join. But the one thing he must do is sever his ties to Noi-Naa. Jeab does so, quite literally, by cutting a rubber-band jump rope, which Noi-Naa is skilled at playing with. From that moment on, Noi-Naa refuses to talk to Jeab. Then, one day, Jeab gets word that Noi-Naa is moving away. And, of course, on the day she is to leave, Jeab oversleeps and misses the chance to say his final goodbye to Noi-Naa. Jeab then gets Jack and his friends to commandeer a delivery motorcycle and pursue Noi-Naa and her family in their moving truck. But the motorcycle breaks down, and the truck rolls out of sight. Jeab is to never see Noi-Naa again ... until her wedding. ===== Set during the Edinburgh Festival, this novel starts with a brutally executed corpse being discovered in Mary King's Close, an ancient subterranean street. The body has a tattoo identified with "Sword and Shield", a long-thought-defunct Scottish Nationalist group with links to sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The victim turns out to be the son of notorious gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and the plot moves towards the unthinkable prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a tourist- filled Edinburgh. ===== At West Point Military Academy in 1854, cadet Carl Rader (Van Heflin), an agent of John Brown, is dishonorably discharged for distributing anti-slavery pamphlets. His classmates Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn) and George Custer (Ronald Reagan) become second lieutenants and are posted to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, the most dangerous duty in the Army—an assignment they relish. On the way to Kansas, Custer and Stuart meet Cyrus K. Holliday, in charge of building the railroad to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his daughter Kit (Olivia de Havilland), with whom both officers fall in love. The Kansas Territory is bloodstained and war-torn, a victim of John Brown's (Raymond Massey) relentless crusade against slavery. Meanwhile, Rader has enlisted as a mercenary in Brown's army, which has been terrorizing the countryside. During Brown's attack on a freight wagon under the protection of the U.S. Army, Stuart and Custer capture Brown's injured son Jason (Gene Reynolds) and, before he dies, the troubled boy informs them about his father's hideout at Shubel Morgan's ranch in Palmyra. In disguise, Stuart rides into Palmyra, the center of the Underground Railroad, but Brown's men spot his horse's army brand. He is captured and taken to Brown at gunpoint. Attempting to escape, Stuart is trapped in a burning barn but is saved as Custer leads the cavalry to the rescue, driving Brown into seclusion. Three years later, in 1859, believing that Brown's force has been broken, Stuart and Custer are sent back to Washington, D.C., where Stuart proposes to Kit. However, Brown is planning to re-ignite war by raiding the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. When Brown refuses to pay Rader for his services, Rader rides to Washington to alert Stuart of Brown's plans, and the troops arrive just in time to crush the rebellion. Brown is then tried for treason by the state of Virginia and hanged. The movie ends with the marriage of Stuart and Kit. ===== George Armstrong Custer (Flynn) arrives at West Point in an outlandish uniform he had designed himself, which makes him appear to be a visiting foreign general. Following the misunderstanding, he signs as a cadet and begins to stack up demerits for pranks and a general disregard for rules while at the Point. When the Civil War breaks out, Custer is at the bottom of his class. Custer is walking a silent punishment tour when he is approached by Libbie Bacon who asks him for directions. Shortly thereafter, his punishment ends, and he runs after her, explaining his rude silence, and asking if he may come to call that evening. Later, Custer and other members of his class are graduated early and ordered to report immediately to Washington, D.C. for assignment. As a result, Custer misses his appointment with Libbie. Custer makes the acquaintance of Gen. Winfield Scott (Sydney Greenstreet), who aids him in getting placed with the 2nd U.S. Cavalry. He becomes a war hero after disregarding a superior's orders during a crucial battle, successfully defending a bridge for the Union infantry. Awarded a medal, he gets leave to return home to Monroe, Michigan. He meets Libbie at her home, but her father, who has been the butt of Custer's joke earlier that day, orders him to leave. Custer returns to his regiment. Due to a miscommunication from the Department of War, he is promoted by mistake to the rank of Brigadier General and takes command of the Michigan Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg. He wins the day, and many victories follow thereafter. Upon returning home to Monroe as a Union war hero, Custer marries Libbie in a lavish ceremony, but soon grows bored with civilian life and begins drinking too much. Libbie visits Custer's old friend Gen. Scott and begs him to assign Custer to a regiment again. He agrees, and Custer is given a Lt. Colonel's commission out west in the Dakota Territory. When Custer and Libbie arrive at Fort Lincoln, Custer finds the soldiers a drunken, rowdy, and undisciplined lot in need of firm leadership. His old West Point enemy, Ned Sharp (Arthur Kennedy), who has a government license to run the fort's trading post and saloon, is providing Winchester repeating rifles to the local Native Americans. Furious, Custer stops the rifle sales and permanently closes the saloon. He then instills proper military discipline in his men and introduces a regimental song, "Garryowen", both of which quickly bring fame to the U.S. 7th Cavalry under Custer's command. The 7th has many engagements with Lakota tribal chief Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn), who eventually offers peace, wanting a treaty that will protect the sacred Black Hills; Custer and Washington sign the treaty, but soon it is bankrupting Sharp's trading posts. Sharp and several others spread a rumor that large gold deposits have been discovered in the Black Hills. American settlers stream into the area in violation of the treaty, but Custer and his troops permit no infractions. To embarrass Custer, Sharp passes out free bottles of liquor to Custer's men hours before they drunkenly pass in revue, in complete disarray, before Commissioner Taipe, a politician in league with Sharp. Custer punches both Sharp and the commissioner in anger, and he is quickly relieved of his command. On the way to Washington for his Court martial Custer hears from Libbie about attempts to start the gold rush in the Black Hills and realizes from the timing that it has been fabricated, a plan that would bring much business and large profits to a select group. Outraged, Custer takes the information to the U.S. Congress, but they only ridicule him. When news arrives that the presence of gold miners has led to open conflict between the Lakota and U.S. troops, Custer appeals in person to President Ulysses S. Grant, one soldier to another, who restores him to command. Upon returning to the post, Custer comes to realize that his small band of men are the only chance to rescue a larger group to the north that is trapped. Knowing they will have little chance against such a larger force, he has a final, emotion-filled goodbye with Libbie and leads his men into battle. An even greater number of Native American tribes have come together to fight. Quickly surrounded, Custer and his forces are killed. A few corrupt politicians have goaded the western tribes into war for personal profit, threatening the survival of all white settlers in the Dakota Territories. Custer and his men have given their lives at the Battle of the Little Bighorn to delay the Native American advance. A letter left behind by Custer with Libbie, now considered his dying declaration, names the culprits and absolves the Native Americans of all responsibility; Custer wins his final campaign. ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus and Frank Lauderdale start the book with a car chase across Edinburgh to apprehend kidnappers, culminating with the two youths they are chasing throwing themselves off the Forth Road Bridge and in Rebus being injured in a car crash. Rebus's upset over this allows Rankin to show the character in a new light, revealing his isolation and potentially suicidal despair. After the unconnected suicide of a terminally ill con, Rebus pursues an investigation that implicates respected people at the highest levels of government, and due to the politically sensitive nature of what he is doing, faces losing his job, or worse. He is supported by his daughter Sammy, allowing their distant relationship to be built upon. ===== In 5th century Gaul, the shepherd Céladon falls in love with Astrée. Falsely believing that Céladon has been unfaithful to her, Astrée banishes him from her sight. Céladon throws himself into the river, but he is saved by a nymph. Céladon tries to meet Astrée again. ===== Thousands of years ago, aliens visited the Earth and became gods to the Aztecs. The aliens fathered the Pumaman, a man- god with supernatural powers who would guard the people of Earth. The original Pumaman was entrusted a gold mask with the ability to control people's minds. In the present-day London, archaeologist and daughter of the Dutch ambassador, Jane Dobson (Sydne Rome), has found the mask and deciphered its instructions: when aimed at someone, it can be used to control their mind. Her employer, the villainous Dr. Kobras (Donald Pleasence), plans to use it to control the minds of world leaders. He makes Jane his first victim. Kobras somehow learns the Pumaman will be after the mask and begins a campaign to discover Pumaman’s identity. American paleontologist Tony Farms (Walter George Alton) survives defenestration by a mysterious Native American named Vadinho (Miguel Angel Fuentes). Soon afterwards, Jane invites Tony to a party at the Dutch embassy, so Kobras' mind slaves can kill him. Later, Vadinho confronts Tony and explains about the Pumaman’s abilities and origins. He claims that Tony's full powers will develop when he wears a magical golden belt, but Tony is skeptical. At the embassy party, Kobras’ henchmen try to subdue Tony, but he manages to fight them off and escapes by flying from the roof after donning Pumaman’s magic belt. Vadinho explains Kobras' sinister scheme and persuades Tony to follow Kobras to his lair. Kobras’ henchmen swarm out to shoot down Tony, but he evades them. Meanwhile, Vadinho has used his mystical amulet to learn that Kobras is in a mansion of some kind. Tony uses an electronic position indicator, borrowed from a policeman friend, to Kobras’ lair (Stonor Park). Kobras has convened the heads of state of the entire world and begun controlling them with the mask. Kobras orders Jane to shoot Tony but her love for him helps her to resist him. Kobras fends off Tony’s attack with a force field which strips Tony of his powers. Kobras twice attempts mind control on Tony, but Vadinho helps Tony focus his mind on resisting the spell before escaping. Vadinho teaches Tony another superpower which slows down his metabolism enough to fool Kobras into believing Tony is dead. Vadinho damages the mind control apparatus by throwing a stick of dynamite. Freed from Kobras' control, Jane smashes the replica of Tony's head, which restores his Pumaman powers. He joins the fight with Vadinho and defeats all of the henchmen. Kobras escapes to a helicopter. Tony catches up to him, and with some deft aerial manoeuvring, manages to crash the chopper with Kobras inside. With the world safe, Vadinho, Tony and Jane head to Stonehenge with the mask. Vadinho summons the aliens with his amulet, and before joining them to return the mask to the Andes, he tells Tony to look for him when it is time to train his future son to be the next Pumaman. The film ends as Tony flies into the air with Jane and embraces her. ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus is working on four cases at once trying to catch a killer he suspects of being the infamous Bible John. He has to do it while under an internal inquiry led by a man he has accused of taking bribes from Glasgow's "Mr Big". TV journalists are meanwhile investigating Rebus over a miscarriage of justice. Rebus travels between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and then on to Shetland and the North Sea. ===== It is the story of the rebirth of millionaire child Deepak Rai, who accidentally shoots his friend, Suraj Prakash (Sanjay Khan) at the age of 10 and believing him to be dead, runs away from home. 14 years later, Deepak discovers that Suraj Prakash is not dead and decides to go back home with friend Kewal Sharma (Roopesh Kumar). On discovering that Deepak is a millionnaire, Kewal Sharma kills Deepak on the train journey to Deepak's home city (Anandgiri) and starts living Deepak's life. Meanwhile, the real Deepak Rai (killed) is reborn as Rekha's (Mumtaz's) brother. 5 years later, Kewal Sharma marries Rekha, who is Suraj Prakash's girlfriend. On discovering that Rekha's husband is a drunkard and a womaniser, Rekha's father dies of a heart attack and Rekha's brother (Doby, rebirth of actual Deepak Rai) comes to stay in Deepak Rai's house. Doby, aged 5 by now, knows all about the house and the estate, although he has never been there before in his present life. Suraj Prakash and friend, Inspector Darshan (Rajendra Nath) figure out the mystery behind Doby's familiarity of the place and decide to collect enough evidence against Kewal Sharma to prove him guilty of his crime of murder and deceit. The movie has whatever a Hindi movie of 1970s needed to have - good and glamorous actors, good locations and songs, a totally corrupt villain, a suffering woman, some thrill and a happy ending. Although the movie is a good entertainer, The story is really good and the main theme is well scripted, but due to poor editing, it could not make its required impact over viewers. ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus is investigating a suspected war criminal. Rebus helps a traumatised Bosnian prostitute and tries to intercede in a territory war between gangster Tommy Telford and 'Big Ger' Cafferty's established gang. Telford is known to have close links with Newcastle gangster named Tarawicz -"Mr Pink Eyes"- a Chechen people-smuggler. Rebus' daughter Sammy (Samantha) is knocked down in what looks like a deliberate hit-and-run. A Japanese gangster is killed by someone trying to frame Rebus, using his Saab car. ===== While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo, Detective Inspector John Rebus sees Darren Rough, a known paedophile, seemingly photographing children and decides to 'out' the man, in spite of assurances that he wants to reform. Later Rebus tries to help Darren, thinking better of his action, but is unable to stop him being murdered. Meanwhile, Rebus has been assigned to keep a watch on Cary Oakes, a convicted killer back from the US who, having served his time in prison, has come to Edinburgh to settle accounts from his past. His experience with both Rough and Oakes makes Rebus think out his prejudices and question how much a person is the product of his inherited nature, and how much nurture shapes that character. He has to confront this once again when he discovers that the reason behind the suicide of his police colleague Jim Margolies was fear that he was becoming like his incestuous father. Rebus also has to face up to his own past and the route he took to escape it when his friend Brian Mee and former girlfriend Janice approach him to help find their son Damon, who has gone missing. His search for answers to all his questions involves him in discovering how implicated a respected doctor had been in protecting two paedophiles then on trial for conspiring to abuse children in care homes. Darren Rough had, in fact, been brought to Edinburgh to testify against them. And while investigating Damon Mee's last appearance at a party held by Ama and Nichol Petrie, the children of a high- profile judge, he finds out that the son is a cross-dresser and had brought Damon to the party while in his female role. Another antagonist from Rebus’ past, the journalist Jim Stevens, is attempting to make a come-back by arranging an exclusive interview with Carry Oakes. The story he gets is sheer rubbish, since Oakes is an arch-manipulator who is using Stevens as a smokescreen. Realising this, Stevens joins forces with Rebus in trying to find out what Oakes’ real object is in Edinburgh. When he succeeds, Oakes stabs him to death and then goes after Rebus. But Oakes has consistently underestimated Rebus, who kicks him into the path of a speeding car while he is intent on his attack. Those left alive must continue to cope with their problems. Knowing some answers does not really resolve the divisions and imperfections in society which it is the job of Rebus and his colleagues to police. ===== In 1972, Roberto Clemente is close to making his 3,000th hit. High school student Mickey (Trevor Morgan) and his younger brother Roger (Rory Culkin) drive to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles with a learner's permit to attend the baseball game. Roger has muscular dystrophy, but that does not deter them from traveling with their grandfather (Seymour Cassel). Their mother (Lauren Holly) follows them and they are later helped by a runaway, a motorcycle gang leader, a farmer, and an emergency room doctor. ===== The Scottish Parliament is about to reopen in Edinburgh (in 1999) after 300 years. Detective Inspector John Rebus is in charge of liaison, as the new parliament is in his patch. While on a tour of Queensberry House, which is to be incorporated into the new Parliament, a fireplace where legend has it a youth was burned to death is opened up and another, more recent murder victim is found. Then, a prospective MSP called Roddy Grieve is found murdered, and Rebus is expected to find instant answers. ===== When Prince Arthur is a baby, his father, King Uther Pendragon, rules Camelot. Lavik, another king who wishes to conquer Camelot, attacks the castle. Arthur is saved by Merlin who sends him to a knight for safekeeping. For many years, this knight raises Arthur as his own son. At the age of 15, Arthur attends a tournament with his foster father. At the tournament, he finds that he is able to pull the sword Excalibur from a stone. This action proves Arthur is the legitimate king of England. As a result, Arthur's foster father reveals the truth of his royal lineage. King Arthur and his subjects decide to fight against the evil King Lavik, who is aided by the witch Medessa. ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus is thrown off a murder inquiry, just days after the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, for throwing a cup of tea at DCS Gill Templer. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - this is his 'Last Chance Saloon'. He is put with a team of officers in similar circumstances and together they are given an unsolved case to work on. This turns out to be one in which many of the team are already involved, and they all have their own secrets that they wish to keep hidden. Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for Edinburgh gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke, while working the case of the murdered art dealer, is brought closer to Cafferty than she ever expected. As always the cases are all linked and Rebus must use his trusted friends to uncover the truth before the truth uncovers him. The title is a reference to the body-snatchers of the 19th century, who were known as 'resurrectionists' or 'resurrection men'. Category:2002 British novels Category:Inspector Rebus novels Category:Novels set in Edinburgh ===== DI John Rebus, freshly treated for burned hands, faces trouble. A petty criminal who had been stalking DS Siobhan Clarke died in a fire on the night Rebus was injured. Rebus is known to have been at the stalker's house that night, but maintains that he left him unharmed and scalded his hands later at home. An ex-soldier appears to have killed two teenagers at a private school, injured one, and shot himself. The facts seem straightforward and the only mysteries are the motive and the origin of the gun. Rebus antagonises the survivor's father, an aggressive local MP who dislikes the police and is trying to make political capital out of the shooting. He also meets his long-lost cousin, whose son was one of the killer's victims and whose daughter is now being sucked into the MP's campaign. He and Clarke try to trace the gun to a local gangster, and continue on the case when Rebus is officially suspended on suspicion of murdering Clarke's stalker. Two secretive security service personnel appear and begin asking awkward questions, and Rebus traces their interest to the gunman's involvement in a classified military helicopter crash on Jura years before. Drugs are found on his boat, and they discover that he had secrets and some unusual friendships, including with local teenagers and an ex-RAF pilot. However, the motive for the shooting remains unclear, and Rebus begins to wonder whether they have the true version of events after all. Forensic evidence confirms his suspicions; the MP's son turns out to be lying. He killed his fellow-students himself, driven by motives including an angry relationship with his MP father, who faces personal and political ruin because of his son's actions. With the shooting resolved, the complex web linking many of those they have been investigating becomes clear to Rebus and Clarke: there has been drug-smuggling and money-laundering, the illegal reactivation of weapons, and the theft of diamonds intended to fund a covert government deal with Irish paramilitaries. The gangster who supplies guns was involved, and is found to be the real killer of Clarke's stalker, clearing Rebus of suspicion. Clarke confronts the key drug smuggler, who attacks her, escapes, and then crashes his light aircraft. A distraught Rebus witnesses the crash and assumes for a time that Clarke was on board and is dead. The case over, Rebus gets drunk. He revisits the scalding of his hands, and the reader learns that the accident happened at home during a blackout after his previous drinking bout, explaining why he has avoided alcohol during the events of the novel. Recent events make him reassess his life and relationships, and he plans to try to repair some of his broken family ties. Meanwhile, the MP hires a lawyer and proposes to his son that if he retracts his confession, they will try to destroy the case against him on technical grounds based on Rebus's irregular conduct, suspension, and family links to the case. Whether he succeeds is not revealed. Category:2003 British novels Category:Inspector Rebus novels Category:Novels set in Edinburgh ===== Murali (Mohanlal) returns back to his home town after spending 7 long years hardworking in gulf with an intention to settle down peacefully in his hometown. Much against to the greedy wishes of his family members, he decides to buy a second hand bus that comes along with a route permit. This is when he faces a lot of hardships. Starting From an accident because of inefficient driver(innocent) to cheating conductor to a cunning union leader, Murali's life is taken for a toss with ever growing challenges one after the other. Then he gets an offer from a labour officer but he turns down saying that he has already lost this game and he tends to move for a better job. At last it is depicted as he leaves to bombay. ===== ===== A race of alien poodles alters a 20th-century fantasy epic to aid their civil war. The Doctor infiltrates a groups of writers known as the Smudgelings, Anji experiences some very, very special effects in 1970s America and Fitz meets an old friend. The book also features a jolly hotel chef and dogs with opposable thumbs. ===== In a village on the northeastern coast of Brazil, Jusce, 17, scrapes a living by diving 30 meters, with rudimentary equipment, for lobster. His "prize" at the end of a long day of risky work is sitting close to Ana, who lives with her mother and young daughter, as she savors the drama of urban sophisticates on her favorite soap opera. Ana dreams of leaving the village to see the world. Jusce is content with the life he leads. The other fishermen, friends of Jusce's dead father, help him to buy and fit out his own fishing boat. One day an old friend, Rogério, returns from the big city to work giving dune buggy rides along the coast. The day Rogério gives Jusce a ride to Ana's place marks the beginning of their rivalry for Ana's attention. Jusce has to reinvent himself in order not to lose Ana to the adventurous life style of Rogério. ===== Ricky (Emraan Hashmi), a flirtatious womanizer, is a leading fashion photographer, who wears his heart on his sleeve. One day, he receives a call from Sheena (Udita Goswami), who asks him to meet her. Once there, the two have an argument about Sheena's friend Nisha (Tara Sharma), who was left heartbroken and contemplating suicide after being used and dumped by Ricky. Three years later, Ricky is about to hold a photography exhibition, when an unknown investor walks in and buys all the pieces before they can be displayed. The millionaire investor, Rajveer (Raj) (Dino Morea), says that the sale will be completed with one condition - Ricky must seduce and sleep with Raj's wife Sheena. Ricky is perplexed and Raj explains that he wants to leave Sheena without having to give her half of his wealth, which can only be achieved if she chooses to divorce him. After some setbacks, Sheena and Ricky begin a relationship according to plan. Raj catches Ricky and Sheena in bed, however, Sheena is unfazed. She refuses to divorce Raj and tells him she is intent on continuing with her relationship with Ricky while still being married. Realizing that Sheena wouldn't divorce him, Raj asks Ricky to return to India. Ricky refuses since he is enjoying his luxurious lifestyle with Sheena and Raj is stunned again. Nisha attends a party in Raj's mansion and afterward claims that she was raped by Ricky. The next morning, Sheena confronts Ricky, and in a fit of rage, brutally murders him with a sword. A police investigation begins, and Sheena is the prime suspect. As she is being arrested, Raj suddenly confesses to the murder. When Sheena meets him in jail, he transfers all his property to her after discussing the incident. The police search the couple's house and take a few items as evidence. A hidden camera is discovered in Raj's stress ball. Sheena's crime is discovered in the recording found on the camera. She is arrested and she transfers Raj's property back to him. It is revealed that the entire series of events was carefully planned by Raj, who is actually in love with Nisha. In the end, Raj gives Nisha the property papers as a token of his love. As the bewildered policeman stares at Raj and Nisha in the car, Raj throws the stress ball at him and casually says,"Aisa to aksar hota hai" (This happens often). ===== Raju Malhotra (Emraan Hashmi) and Rajan Malhotra (Tusshar Kapoor) study in the same college but are poles apart in every trait. While Raju is a brat, poor in studies but good in sports, Rajan is a brilliant student but a zero in extracurricular activities. The college they study in has a new and strict principal Mr. Awasthi (Paresh Rawal) who wants to transform this ill- reputed college into a most flocked one. Hence he divides the students according to their merit. So while Raju is fit for C section, for poorly faring students, Rajan easily gets access to the A section with his 90% marks. But Raju falls for a girl in A-section and hence swaps his place with a hesitant Rajan who enters C-section for the first time in his life. Mr. Awasthi comes to know of this and decides to teach them a lesson by sending their names to a quiz and dance competition. So now, geeky Rajan will have to dance while brat Raju will have to answer question hurled at him. What will Raju and Rajan do? Will they accept the challenge or just scoot off? ===== It tells the story of a reporter who concocts a false case so as to get himself convicted for first degree murder. He does this to prove that the death sentence can be given based on circumstantial evidence and that it is to be done away with. ===== Salesman Fred J. Johnson manages to hit a hole-in-one as he plays golf one day, and he writes his initials and the date on the lucky ball. He swings at the same ball once more, but sends it into a ditch instead of towards the hole. When he goes to the ditch to get the ball, he finds a dead body instead, and next to the body lies a small package, which contains plates for forging dollar bills. Fred keeps the package and realizes it belongs to another member in the same golf club, Tony Montague, when he happens to overhear the man talking to his wife, Edna. Tony finds Fred's marked golf ball and suspects that a man with the initials F.J. Has taken the package. Before leaving, Tony raises his voice on the golf course, warning "F.J." not to go to the police with the package, threatening to kill him and his whole family if he did. Fred goes back to his family, and opens the package, finding the address to a print shop with the plates. He doesn't call the police, remembering Tony's threat. When Tony and Edna get back to their boss, Lefty, they are chastized for losing the package and sent to recover it. The murder is all over the news the next day, and Fred discovers that his lucky charm is missing from the wrist band of his watch. His daughter Carol goes out on a date with a banker named Mark Bellaman, and his other daughter Ginny goes to the golf course with her beau Lester Binkey. Examining the location where the body was found, she finds her father's lucky charm. Tony goes back to the golf course to get a list of everyone who was there the day before, and pretends to be a detective investigating the murder. He sees Ginny and asks her name, then realizing she is Fred's daughter. He offers to drive her home to her father, saying he is an old friend of his. When Fred goes to send the plates to the police anonymously by mail, he is followed by Lefty, who threatens to kill Ginny if Fred involves the police. Ginny talks to police Lt. Braden about the murder and shows him her father's lucky charm she found at the crime scene. This leads Braden to question Fred, and he seems suspicious enough for Braden to order one of his men, Sellers, to tail Fred afterwards. Layer that night Ginny is kidnapped by Lefty and his gang. They tell Fred that she will be killed if he doesn't give them the plates. They agree on an exchange, but Fred won't give the plates away even after Ginny is returned safely. Tony pulls a gun on him, but his wife Edna panics and rushes to the window to scream for help. Tony shoots Edna in her back and Fred manages to knock down Tony with a gardening tool. Lefty tries to escape but is caught outside by the police. In the papers the next day, Fred is mentioned as a hero who caught the murderer.http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/89739/Shadowed/ ===== ===== A team of environmentalists, including a reporter, her camera man, and an environmentalist's famous girlfriend charter a boat and with the captain, sail to a military island. They suspect the island is hosting to illegal activities. Upon arrival, however, they find no one. They finally reach a deserted house, where they are confronted Dr. Susan Richardson, who tells them that everyone on the island is dead, including her father. Richardson's team were working on a compound that could make edible plants grow to super size, however the military intervened with plans of their own. They wanted to test the compound's effects on animals, and proceeded to feed it to several Komodo dragons and cobras. As a result, both species grows to an enormous size and begins to devour everything on the island, including the humans. The group, the doctor, and the boat captain must escape the island, while avoiding Cobra and Komodo. The military finds out that some problems are happening on the island, so they send in troops. One by one the troops are killed by Komodo. Meanwhile, the group try to escape to the lab, barely escaping both Cobra and Komodo. One environmentalist is killed, and the camera man. In the lab, Richardson tells her flashback of how the military messed things up. Now just wanting to escape the island alive, the group try to get back to the beach. On the beach they try to get to the yacht, but the military drop a bomb on it. Then a cobra comes out the water and eats two more men. The remainder of the group decide to head for a helicopter that was left behind on a mountain by the doctor's father and team. While trying to cross a river to the mountain, one environmentalist is bitten by huge leeches. That is when Dr. Richardson announces that anything that comes into contact with the animal DNA (like saliva) can turn into a huge version of its kind. On the mountaintop, the remaining five run into Komodo, who is blocking the helicopter, the Komodo notices them and begins to attack. Soon, Cobra arrives. The man who was attacked by the leeches weakly makes himself bait. With bullets not penetrating Cobra's skin, only making the giant monster he is devoured. The military sees footage of the demonic Komodo dragons and the yacht (meaning trespassers) decides to bomb the island, with the Americans still on it. Soon, Komodo and Cobra begin to fight each other. The boat driver, a retired pilot in air force, flies the three remaining women away. Both Komodo and Cobra are killed in a military bombing on the island, still in mid-battle. At the end of the film, a scientist who has escaped the Komodo, reawakens from the dead with reptilian characteristics, such as glowing green eyes and a forked tongue, revealing he is transforming into a Komodo dragon. ===== Busy attorney Hugh Mitchell wants to become closer to his son, Danny, whom he knows little. He starts arranging a luncheon, but soon finds out that Danny prefers going to the carnival. Still he attends the luncheon, and brings along his dog Rusty, a German Shepherd. All the other boys attending with their fathers are quite amused when Rusty starts fighting with another dog, and the luncheon is abruptly interrupted. The calamity that ensues enrages Hugh and disintegrates the chances of father and son coming closer. Instead Danny becomes friends with an eccentric traveling veterinarian, Dr. Francis Xavier Fay, who arrives to town. Hugh doesn't look kindly upon the friendship between his son and the doctor. In an attempt to get their son back, Hugh and his wife Ethel invites the doctor to dinner one night, hoping that the doctor will seem out of place. Bit the doctor is very comfortable in the civilized and sophisticated setting in the attorney home. Hugh decides to take Danny to the carnival to make him happy. Danny brings Rusty with him. When a man kicks at the dog, it attacks him and Hugh is quite upset with the dog's behavior, forcing it to wear a muzzle in the future. In the night, Danny run away with his dog, taking refuge in the doctor's camp in the woods. Ethel suggest they leave the boy alone for a while, and Danny gets to live in a tree house at the doctor's, with his dog. Hugh pays the doctor a visit to talk about his son, and gets the advice to try and understand and be friends with his son. Later in the night, when the doctor has fallen asleep with his gas stove on, Rusty smells the gas and tries to warn them about the danger. Rusty crawls under the trailer and is injured when the trailer collapses to the ground. Danny wakes up when the dog cries out, and wakes up the doctor, who is unconscious from the gas. Danny goes home to his parents and the doctor treats Rusty at the camp. Hugh and his son are finally reconciled and go back to the doctor's camp together. Rusty is in bandages and able to come home with Danny. Already the next day, Ethel comes to the camp looking for the dog, which has escaped and run around in the neighborhood. The doctor tells Ethel that this is perfectly normal, and decides it is time for him to leave and go to the next town.http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/75345/For- the-Love-of-Rusty/ ===== An aging apiary owner (bee-keeper) Michael Worthington meets a young ex-painter, Jamie McFarlane, on the road one day and in the process of conversation, attempts to persuade him to end his nomadic lifestyle. Jamie listens, but considers the "Bee Master's" advice useless. But shortly after, when Michael has a near fatal heart attack; Jamie promises to look after the bees until his return. Shortly after, Worthington is surprised by a twelve- year-old girl who goes by the nick-name - 'Little Scout' who would visit the apiary nearly every day. He discovers that she is an orphan and likewise takes her into his care. In her child like way, she develops a crush on Jamie while he cares for the bees that have been left in his charge. When Jamie meets Alice, the daughter of the orphanage supervisor, Mrs Ferris, he falls in love. This unexpected encounter begins to loosen his hardened heart and he begins to paint again. Jamie eventually confides in Alice that he was once married, but that he had been divorced some time ago. In reality the divorce hasn't gone through yet. He sends his paintings to a gallery in New York, where he used to be a reputed artist. His soon to be ex-wife (Marcia) finds out about his recovered ability to paint and the success his paintings make, and wants to reconcile. Alice hears about Marcia contacting Jamie, calling herself Mrs. McFarlane and is very distressed. Jamie suspects Alice of having betrayed his confidence, and Little Scout has to prove her innocence. She forces Mrs. Ferris to admit that she has spread the rumors by letting a swarm of bees loose on her. Soon the elder Michael has recovered from his heart condition and manages to reconcile all the involved persons. He blesses the union of Jamie and Alice and gives them a cottage to live in after their marriage. In turn they decide to adopt Little Scout as their daughter, thereby bringing all the bees back into the fold.http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/80133/Keeper-of- the-Bees/ ===== A student vanishes in Edinburgh and her wealthy family of bankers ensure Detective Inspector John Rebus is under pressure to find her. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near her East Lothian home leads Rebus to an Internet role-playing game in which she was involved. DC Siobhan Clarke tackles the virtual quizmaster, and thus risks the same fate as the missing girl. Category:2001 British novels Category:Inspector Rebus novels Category:Novels set in Edinburgh ===== Tony Eckhardt is shot in an anti-terrorist operation and insists that the man killed during the operation was not their intended target, the terrorist Amar Kamil. Kamil undergoes extensive facial reconstruction surgery to look like a man kidnapped to take the fall for an assassination planned to take place during an upcoming press conference. Members of the Israeli team are being killed off and Eckhardt pursues Kamil while hoping to stay alive to raise his unborn daughter. ===== The story was liberally adapted from a short sequence in the popular Chinese novel Journey to the West. Princess Iron Fan is a main character. Specifically, the film focused on the duel between the Monkey King and a vengeful princess, whose fan is desperately needed to quench the flames that surround a peasant village. ===== Detective Inspector John Rebus has no desk to work from, as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and his protegee Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene. The book uses two new settings: a sink estate divided between the indigenous population and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel). Category:2004 British novels Category:Inspector Rebus novels Category:Royal Mile Category:Novels set in Edinburgh ===== The film is set in London, mainly in the East End and docklands. When an armoured car is robbed, in a daring daylight raid co-ordinated on Tower Bridge, one of the guards is shot and killed by Mason (Victor Maddern). The gang escape on the river. Part of the gang escape northwards on the M1 motorway. The police catch up and force them off the road, killing one man. Meanwhile Mason dumps his car in a lake and takes a suitcase full of money to nearby buildings. An unseen knife-thrower kills Mason as he turns to leave. We are introduced to the characters of Barberini's Circus, including Drago (Christopher Lee), who wears a full mask to hide his fire damaged face. Manfred (Klaus Kinski) arrives at the circus seeking employment. It is revealed that Mr Big (the midget) is blackmailing Drago. An unseen person unlocks the lion and it almost kills one of the circus girls. The police are led to the circus but also require to investigate a body found with a knife next to it. The police interview the girl who was attacked by the lion and soon after is herself murdered by a thrown knife. The police (naturally) interview the circus knife-thrower. Drago confesses to his niece that he found a suitcase of money and hid it. Manfred is the next victim of the knife-thrower who this time also sets a fire. A police manhunt causes Drago to fall to his death and the suitcase of money is retrieved. However, detective Elliot (Leo Genn) decides this is not the killer. His examination of all the clues leads to a final denouement in front of the assembled suspects during a knife-throwing act. ===== Aalwar (Ajith Kumar) is devoted to his mother (Geetha) and sister (Shwetha Bandekar). But the villainous elements Lal and Vincent Asokan kill the sister and mother due to an old dispute with Aalwar. Aalwar, with revenge ringing in his mind, ends up as a killer, even while working as a ward boy in a hospital. He rechristens himself as Shiva and is out to make a statement against the venal forces. He sees himself as some kind of avatar. In fact, he bumps off the baddies under the getup of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. In the climax, Shiva turns up as Lord Narasimha and bumps off the last villain by placing him on his thighs and ripping apart his bowels and chest with his sharp claws. He successfully escapes from the police of Chennai and continues his process of "Dharma". ===== The film opens with shots of brooms and dustpans cleaning dried blood and cartridge casings in and around Swati building at the Lokhandwala Complex. TVN reporter Meeta Matu (Dia Mirza) reports that some 3000 rounds of ammunition were discharged by a large police squad at a previously peaceful residential area. The film moves to the offices of former chief justice turned private prosecutor Dhingra (Amitabh Bachchan) where he interviews the three leading members of the Mumbai Encounter Squad: Additional Commissioner of Police Shamsher S. Khan (Addl.CP S.S. Khan) (referring to A. A. Khan, played by Sanjay Dutt), Inspector Kaviraj Patil (Sunil Shetty) and Police constable Javed Sheikh (Arbaaz Khan). The main film timeline is the extended interview of the three officers by Dhingra; as the officers answer Dhingra's questions, the film flashes back to show the incidents. Dhingra asks about the Encounter Squad. Khan explains that he hand-picked 27 of Mumbai police's best-enlisted men and officers. He borrowed the concept from the LAPD SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) team to help combat crime. The film flashes back to show Khan selecting his men and putting them through intensive physical and mental training to be "fast, efficient and deadly." Dhingra is hardly impressed: He points out that if Khan "shoots to kill" he is no different from the gangsters he seeks to destroy. Dhingra asks why Khan felt he had to do this. Khan explains that following Operation Blue Star in 1984, several Sikh terrorists fled to Mumbai and began establishing a base in the city. They engaged in violence, extortion, and other subversive tactics to grow their operations. The film flashes back to show Sub Inspector Mhatre (Abhishek Bachchan), a very brave officer and disciple of Khan, pursuing and subsequently getting shot down by a group of Sikh terrorists. Khan is deeply frustrated when the Mumbai police, mired in internal bureaucracy and corruption, fail to act. He obtains clearance from the police commissioner Krishnamurthy (played by the real A. A. Khan) and sets out after the militants. Khan asks Meeta Matu (Diya Mirza) to cover the incident so as to deter future terrorists. True to Khan's words, he successfully "encounters" (it indicates summarily gunning down criminals; extrajudicial killings is the term accepted internationally) the terrorists who shot PSI Mhatre. As per Aftab Ahmed Khan the encounter with Khalistani Extremist was more dangerous and tough than Shootout at Lokhandwala. The film segues into the life of Maya (referring to Mumbai gangster Mahindra Dolas though the film never mentions Dolas specifically; played by Vivek Oberoi). Maya is the second-in-command of the "big boss" in Dubai (a clear reference to Dawood Ibrahim though the film does not mention his name) and runs Dawood's criminal activities in Mumbai. Maya recruits Bhua (referring to Dilip Buwa, played by Tusshar Kapoor) after successfully hatching a plot to eliminate Bhua's old gang led by Ashok Joshi. At this point, Maya and Bhua are at the top of Mumbai's underworld, reporting directly to the big boss in Dubai. Things heat up when Khan recognizes, through his network of spies and informers, that Maya is responsible for several criminal and possibly terrorist activities. Around this time, Maya's ambitions, fuelled by his Aai's (Amrita Singh) insistence, grow to the point where he wishes to assert his independence from Dubai and take over Mumbai himself. Khan's ATS now focuses on eliminating Maya and Bhua, and begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game where neither side shows any overt aggression but tries to disable the adversary by tactical maneuver. Khan launches "visits" to the criminals' families to try to "persuade" them to counsel the criminals to surrender. In turn, Maya and his men return the "visit" by approaching the cops in social situations. Maya visits Khan at a restaurant where Khan is having dinner with his family. Maya quietly tells Khan: "This is between your men and mine. Leave the families out of it." Khan retorts: "I did this to give you an opportunity to come clean. But now it appears that any resolution hangs off the barrel of a gun." Maya's rage intensifies when he gets thrown out by prominent city builder Wadhwani (based on the real-life builder and politician Gopal Rajwani, owner of the building that the movie was set in). Maya had demanded 4 million protection money; Wadhwani claimed to deal directly with Dubai. Maya kidnaps Wadhwani's sniveling, overweight kid. When Wadhwani complains, the big boss asks Maya to cut it out and return the child immediately. Maya quietly informs the boss that he has upped his demands and that he wants to reign supreme in Mumbai. The film also explores the personal lives of the protagonists. Khan's wife Rohini played by (Neha Dhupia) is unable to bear the constant neglect of his family life. She files for divorce. Patil's divorce is nearly upon him, too. In the enemy camp, Buwa has shacked up with a bar dancer Tanu (Aarti Chhabria) and is unable to spend any quality time with her. Fellow criminals Phatu (estranged from his parents) and RC (Shabbir Ahluwalia) (plagued by ghost-like visions of an innocent family he gunned down) have similar troubles. It all comes to a head in November 1991. The five criminals including Maya and Buwa secure themselves while holding Wadhwani's kid, in a flat at Swati building in Lokhandwala. Khan is tipped off of the location by an informant. (In Dhingra's questioning, Khan allegedly also received a call from the big boss in Dubai. Khan vehemently denies this.) Khan assembles a large squad of cops and lays siege to the location. He announces over the bullhorn that residents are advised to stay indoors and bolt their windows. A long and devastating gun battle begins. The criminals launch rocket-propelled grenades from their flat and try to escape. But they are overwhelmed by police fire, and all five criminals are eventually slain. The battle lays waste to the building: Film shots show the staircases, hallways, and several civilian flats completely pulverized by gunfire. Reporter Meeta Matu covers the action live. Up to this point, Dhingra has been negative and denigrating of Khan and his efforts with the ATS. He cites press reports and civilian complaints that condemn Khan (and the ATS) of unilateral and unwarranted excessive force in a residential locality. Charges are brought against Khan and the ATS. But when Dhingra rises to defend them as their appointed counsel, he, in a surprising twist, presents an unconventional argument as a defence. The film ends with Khan and the ATS being acquitted. ===== The Stooges work at Dimsal's Drug Store in Ithaca, New York, where they befriend Schuyler Davis (Quinn Redeker), the owner of the shop next door, who is attempting to build a time machine. With the boys' "help", the machine transports the boys, Schuyler and disaffected girlfriend Diane Quigley (Vicki Trickett) back in time to Ithaca in ancient Greece during the reign of the lecherous King Odius (George N. Neise). The King, after defeating and imprisoning Ulysses because the Stooges are believed to be gods, has a yearning for Diane. Realizing they have disrupted the proper course of history, Schuyler and the boys free Ulysses, after which Odius banishes them to the galleys, where Schuyler builds impressive muscles while constantly rowing. After an escape and shipwreck, they kill a monster with the help of Joe's sleeping pills and start billing Schuyler as Hercules at a local gladiatorial arena. The real Hercules (Samson Burke) gets wind of their game and confronts them, but after single combat the Stooges convince Hercules to help them rescue Diane in a chariot chase. The time travelers remove Odius and, navigating by observing the progress of military technology, manage to set history straight by dumping him off into the Wild West where a tribe of Native American warriors chase him off into the distance. After that, the travelers return to Dimsal's Drug Store. Dimsal touches the time machine and disappears, but eventually returns with a pillory. The Stooges manage to remove the pillory with an electric tool. ===== Phileas Fogg III (Jay Sheffield), great-grandson of the original Phileas Fogg, accepts a bet to duplicate his great-grandfather's famous trip around the world in response to a challenge made by Randolph Stuart III, the descendant of the original Fogg's nemesis. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, "Stuart" is the infamous con man Vicker Cavendish (Peter Forster) who made the bet in order to cover up his robbing the bank of England by framing Fogg for the crime. With him in this plot is his weaselly Cockney co-conspirator Filch (Walter Burke). This makes for a dangerous journey for Fogg and his servants (the Stooges) and Amelia Carter (Joan Freeman), whom they rescue from thugs during a train ride. On the way, they also: try to steal a cream pie from the galley of a Turkey-bound British cargo ship (and poke the cook in his fat behind with a gaff in the process); watch an elaborate Indian dance at a maharajah's palace, where blind-as-a-bat Curly Joe also regales the maharajah and the viceroy with knife throwing—until his disguise falls off; get captured in China by the Chinese Army, and survive Communist brainwashing in Shanghai with their interrogators turning into Chinese Stooge clones (Moe tells the Chinese general, "No brainee to washee!"). The disgusted Chinese set them adrift in a small boat; use Curly Joe's music-provoked strength to cadge food, clothes, and a trip to San Francisco from the manager of the monstrous sumo Itchy Kitchy (Iau Kea) after a demonstration in a park in Tokyo; stow away in a moving van, supposedly headed for New York. Of course, they are caught, and arrested in Canada by the British inspector (the Stooges and Amelia fake British accents so the inspector will arrest them too). Back in London, they cross paths again with the two conspirators, again disguised as police—and armed. Of course, the Stooges win out, and, as with the original Phileas Fogg, his descendant miscalculated by one day and still has a chance. Curly Joe gets behind the wheel of the Bobbies' paddy wagon and speeds across London, and young Fogg wins the bet—crashing into the Reformer's Club with two seconds to spare. ===== In 1871, Rance Roden (Don Lamond) plans to kill off all the buffalo and thus cause the Indians to riot. After they destroy the U.S. Cavalry (his real enemy), Rance and his gang will take over the West. Meanwhile, a Boston magazine gets wind of the buffalo slaughter and sends editor Kenneth Cabot (Adam West) and his associates (Moe, Larry and Curly Joe) to Casper, Wyoming to investigate. Once there, Ken's shooting skills (secretly aided by sharp shooter Annie Oakley (Nancy Kovack) earn him the job of town sheriff. Rance has his band of bad guys called in to have the lawmen wiped out, but the Stooges sneak into the gang's hideout while the gang is asleep and glue their firearms to their holsters. When Ken confronts the bad guys, the bad guys decide that a life of justice is better than crime. Meanwhile, Rance and Trigger attempt to sell firearms to the Indians, including an armored wagon containing a Gatling Gun and cannon in a turret, but the Stooges foil this plan by snapping a picture of them making the sale. ===== Mausam is the dramatic love story of Dr. Amarnath Gill, who falls for Chanda, the daughter of a local healer, Harihar Thapa, when visiting Darjeeling to prepare for his medical exams. Then he has to leave back to Calcutta for his final exams. He promises Chanda to return, though he never keeps his promise. Twenty-five years later, he returns as a wealthy man and searches for Chanda and her father. He learns that Harihar has died and that Chanda was married to a crippled old man. She gave birth to a daughter, became insane and died. Finding Chanda's daughter, Kajli, he sees that she closely resembles her mother and later discovers that after having been molested by her mother's brother-in-law, she ended up at a brothel. Amarnath had no choice but to buy her from the brothel and he takes Kajli home and tries to change her into a well-refined woman to make up for what he did to Chanda. Unaware that Amarnath is indirectly responsible for her mother's death, Kajli begins to fall in love with him. ===== In the spring of 1917 after Vimy Ridge, Sergeant Michael Dunne of the 10th Battalion, CEF survives heavy combat but suffers from neurasthenia. He is sent home for recovery as a war hero for taking out a German machine gun position. While in hospital in Calgary, Alberta, he meets nurse Sarah Mann (Caroline Dhavernas), where he had originally enlisted. David Mann (Joe Dinicol) is Sarah's younger brother, ineligible for military service due to asthma but determined to enlist. The Mann's are ostracized when it becomes known their father died at Vimy Ridge when with the Imperial German Army. The father of David's girlfriend pulls strings to allow him to enlist. Dunne feels responsible for David's wellbeing and reenlists as a private under his mother's maiden name McCrae. He promised Sarah to protect her brother. David and Michael end up in the battlefields of Belgium fighting for their lives. Sarah also enlists and follows the 10th as a nurse in triage at an Advanced Dressing Station near the front. The three arrive in Flanders in time for the Battle of Passchendaele. Dunne and Sarah soon meet up again when Dunne brings a wounded man to the aid station. Dunne's cover as McCrae is soon blown, he manages to escape punishment and is promoted to platoon leader by Lieutenant Colonel Ormond, who knew him from earlier combat, when his past actions "should have got a V.C." and because of the need for experienced soldiers as high casualties were expected. When the Canadians launch their attack, the 8th Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles), known as the Little Black Devils, faces a German counter-attack and become pinned down. Dunne's company is sent to support them. After the support company arrives, the 8th Battalion retreats from the battlefield, wrongly believing that they are finally relieved, leaving the job of holding the ground to Dunne's small force. As the reality of the war begins to set in, David Mann begins to realize the war was not what he believed it would be. Dunne's forces spend the night in their trenches, and as a result of the shelling, David begins to have an asthmatic/panic attack and Dunne calms him down, relieving the problem. The next morning the Germans counter-attack, and make it as far as the line, and both forces attack each other in close quarters combat. As the Germans retreat, David breaks down and chases them back to surrender. He jumps into their trenches and is met by a gun to the face where he begs in German. He is about to be shot when an artillery shell lands and the explosion throws him onto what is effectively a cross, created by walkway timbers from the trench. He is visually crucified by the explosion. This relates to Dunne's earlier story of the legendary report of the crucified soldier. When Dunne sees this he takes his helmet off, throws his gun down and runs to David, in a reckless attempt to keep his promise to keep him alive, getting shot in the process. He crawls to the cross on his knees, looking up at it. The Germans stop firing and allow him to retrieve David, whom he carries back to his own lines. The fighting swiftly resumes with a shell landing. David lives, but Dunne is carried to the hospital where he dies after his last words with Sarah. This happens just as the news comes in that the Canadians have captured Passchendaele Ridge. The ending scene shows David Mann, who now has only one leg and uses a wheelchair; Sarah Mann; David's girlfriend Cassie; Highway and Dunne's best friend Royster (Gil Bellows) paying tribute at Dunne's grave on his home farm. The marker has been altered to remove the "5" of 1915 and changed to 1917. The camera then pans out and the background alters to a field of hundreds of Canadian war graves with a riderless horse on the horizon. ===== Benito González is a flamboyant engineer in Melilla, with a brash and pushy personality. His dream is to build the tallest building ever in the region. After his girlfriend leaves him, he devotes himself entirely to his ambitions, deciding to let nothing get in his way. He marries the daughter of a billionaire, intending to use her father's money to realise his project. Benito waltzes his way through a career of excess, fetishes and deceptions, but the personal conflicts he unleashes ultimately send his life spiraling down to disaster. The film makes direct and symbolic references to the work of Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. ===== Bev, Donna, Marion and Cindy set out to their friends' wedding in a car. Throughout the book, Donna is restrictive about the details of the encounter when describing it to her psychiatrist. She eventually reveals that Bev was the driver. The vehicle experiences trouble and stalls on a downward sloping road. Two men stop by and instead of getting help, crush the car driving over it then cover the car with a gigantic tarp as a prelude to a sexual assault. Cindy get pinned trying to get out the rear window, her pants pulled down by one of the men with a knife. Marion, who takes a chance to save Cindy gets out of the car, and is attacked and raped. According to Donna, Bev locks the doors and won't let Marion back in, or let anyone out to help. However, a fight ensues and the two men are slain. The psychiatrist feels that Donna isn't telling the whole story and presses Donna to reveal more. It is then revealed that Donna was the one driving and that she was the one who refused to unlock the doors to save Marion. ===== Pierre Raymond (Jean-Claude Carrière) is a passionate explorer, a man who devoted all his life to the quest of the original "Secret Book", a book that exists as a legend in several religions and heresies, and was a holy book for the Bogomils, written in Glagolitic script. Led by the strange messages from the Balkans brought to him by doves, he chooses his son Chevalier (Thierry Fremont) to search where he stopped. The messages are sent from Macedonia by Pavle Bigorski, a man that identifying himself with the authentic author of "The Secret Book" from the Middle Ages. The book is supposed to contain the principle of good and evil and the principle of power, jumping across the time barrier and touched the essence of the Quest for the roots of Truth. Bigorski has three brothers, symbolizing the three regions inhabited by ethnic Macedonians. Each brother represents some aspect of the Macedonian spirit (faith, rebellion towards the social evil, defense of honour). ===== Kirari Tsukishima, a 14-year-old beauty, does not care about idols and the entertainment world because her mind is occupied by food. One day, after saving a turtle stranded in a tree, Kirari meets a boy named Seiji, who gives her a ticket to a concert to show his gratitude for her saving his pet. However, when Kirari shows up at the concert, another boy named Hiroto, tears up her ticket and warns her to stay away from Seiji, because they both live in different worlds. Kirari learns that Seiji and Hiroto are members of the idol group Ships. Finally understanding the meaning of "different worlds", Kirari refuses to give up pursuing Seiji and declares that she will also become an idol. However, being an idol requires tons of training and talent. Faced with rivals and scandals, Kirari is determined to come out as a top idol. ===== Jan Prentiss, a fantasy writer is busy at work, when a foot-long talking insect materialises before him. He declares that he is an elf, and is in fact a mutant—a "super-elf"—with new powers that he is still experimenting with. Most of his kind are telepathic. During the last ice age, they used human brains as "psychic amplifiers" to augment their own abilities. However, since the Industrial Revolution, the elves and other related beings have avoided mankind, since they are unable to manipulate electricity, and have retreated to Avalon; an island in the Atlantic Ocean cloaked in a psychic shield. Prentiss' elf, however, can manipulate electricity and possibly fission uranium. It needs to use Prentiss' brain, as a psychic amplifier, though, since Prentiss, being a fantasy writer, is one of the few humans with a mind sympathetic enough for the elf to control. When Prentiss balks at being taken to Avalon as an 'advisor', the elf threatens Prentiss' wife and ten-year-old son with physical harm. Prentiss' son comes home from school, and the elf tries to take control of his mind, too; but the boy, being a modern 1950s child, doesn't believe in "kid stuff" like fairies. The elf is unable to control both minds, and the boy crushes the elf with his schoolbooks. ===== The film is a mockumentary following the escapades of a Melbourne underworld hitman. ===== Julian Peveril, a Cavalier, is in love with Alice Bridgenorth, a Roundhead's daughter, but both he and his father are accused of involvement with the "Popish Plot" of 1678. Most of the story takes place in Derbyshire, London, and on the Isle of Man. The title refers to Peveril Castle in Castleton, Derbyshire. ===== The keep of Peveril Castle Sir Geoffrey Peveril and Major Bridgenorth had been boys together; and although they adopted different views in religion and politics, the major's influence had saved the Royalist's life after the battle of Bolton-le-Moors, and Lady Peveril had brought up his motherless girl, Alice, with her own son. After the Restoration, the Countess of Derby, who, through treachery, had suffered a long imprisonment by the Roundheads, sought protection at Martindale Castle, where Bridgenorth would have arrested her for having caused his brother-in-law, William Christian, to be shot as a traitor, had not the knight interfered by tearing up the warrant, and escorting her through Cheshire on her return to the Isle of Man. Alice was of course withdrawn from his wife's care, and it was supposed the major had emigrated to New England. Several years afterwards Sir Geoffrey's son Julian became the companion of the young earl, and, with the nurse Deborah's connivance, renewed his intimacy with his foster sister, who was under the care of her widowed aunt, Dame Christian. At one of the secret interviews between them, they were surprised by the entrance of her father, who related some of his religious experiences, and vaguely hinted that his consent to their marriage was not impossible. The next night, having undertaken to proceed to London, to clear the countess and her son from the suspicion of being concerned in Titus Oates's pretended Popish plot, Julian was conducted to a sloop by Fenella, his patron's deaf and dumb dwarf, and, as she was being taken ashore against her will while he was asleep, he dreamt that he heard Alice's voice calling for his help. At Liverpool he met Topham with a warrant against Sir Geoffrey, and on his way to the Peak to warn him, he travelled with Edward Christian, passing as Ganlesse, a priest, who led him to an inn, where they supped with Chiffinch, a servant of Charles II. On reaching Martindale Castle, he found his father and mother in the custody of Roundheads, and he was taken by Bridgenorth as a prisoner to Moultrassie Hall, where Alice received them, and he recognised Ganlesse among a number of Puritan visitors. During the night the Hall was attacked by the dependents and miners of the Peveril estate, and, having regained his liberty, Julian started, with Lance as his servant, in search of his parents, who he ascertained were on their way to London in charge of Topham. At an inn where they halted, Julian overheard Chiffinch revealing to a courtier a plot against Alice, and that he had been robbed of the papers entrusted to him by the countess, which, however, he managed to recover the next morning. Julian Peveril and Alice Bridgenorth, surprised by Major Ralph Bridgenorth (Richard Parkes Bonington, ca. 1826) Meanwhile, Christian, under whose care Bridgenorth had placed his daughter, communicated to the Duke of Buckingham a design he had formed of introducing her to Charles II, and, at an interview with her father, endeavoured to persuade him to abandon the idea of marrying her to young Peveril. Having reached London, Julian met Fenella, who led him into St. James's Park, where she attracted the notice of the king by dancing, and he sent them both to await his return at Chiffinch's apartments. Alice was already under the care of Mistress Chiffinch, and escaped from an interview with the duke to find herself in the presence of Charles and her lover, with whom, after he had placed the countess's papers in the king's hands, she was allowed to depart. Julian, however, lost her in a street fray, and having been committed to Newgate for wounding his assailant, he was placed in the same cell with the queen's dwarf, and conversed with an invisible speaker. After startling Christian with the news that his niece had disappeared, the duke bribed Colonel Blood to intercept his movements, so that he might not discover where she was, and was then himself astonished at finding Fenella instead of Alice, who had been captured by his servants in his house, and at her equally unexpected defiance of and escape from him. A few days afterwards, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, his son and the dwarf were tried for aiding and abetting Oates's Plot; but after nearly three years and the execution of at least fifteen innocent men, opinion had begun to turn against Oates. The last high-profile victim of the climate of suspicion was Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, whose unjust slaughter is retold by Scott with no small dose of bitterness. Sir Geoffrey, his son and the dwarf are, at length, all acquitted. In order, however, to avoid the mob, they take refuge in a room, where they encounter Bridgenorth, who convinces Julian that they are in his power, and allows Christian to propose to the Duke of Buckingham that several hundred Fifth-Monarchy men, led by Colonel Blood, should seize the king, and proclaim his Grace Lord-Lieutenant of the kingdom. The same afternoon Charles has just granted an audience to the Countess of Derby, when the dwarf emerges from a violoncello case and reveals the conspiracy which Fenella had enabled him to overhear. It then transpires that Bridgenorth had released the Peverils, and that Christian had trained his daughter Fenella, whose real name was Zarah, to feign being deaf and dumb, in order that she might act as his spy; but that her secret love for Julian had frustrated the execution of his vengeance against the countess. He is allowed to leave the country, and the major, who on recovering Alice by Fenella's aid, had placed her under Lady Peveril's care, having offered to restore some of Sir Geoffrey's domains which had passed into his hands as her dowry, the king's recommendation secures the old knight's consent to the marriage which within a few weeks unites the Martindale-Moultrassie families and estates. ===== The fair maid of the title is Catharine Glover, daughter of a glovemaker in Perth, who kisses Henry Gow/Smith,Gow is Scottish Gaelic for Smith. the armourer, while he is sleeping, on Valentine's Day. But Catharine has caught the eye of the Duke of Rothesay, and when Gow interrupts an attempted abduction, the armourer is drawn simultaneously into royal intrigue and highland feud. ===== Two exiled Lancastrians are on a secret mission to the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, hoping to gain his help in regaining the English crown from the Yorkist Edward IV. The two Englishmen get into difficulties in the Swiss mountains. They meet Countess Anne and her family, who are involved in the politics of the newly independent Swiss Confederation and plan to confront Charles with complaints about his conduct towards the Swiss nation. The two groups decide to travel together. Anne may have inherited magical skills from her grandmother, enabling her to perform feats which defy explanation. The travellers also encounter a shadowy organization known as the Vehmgericht or Secret Tribunal. ===== An aging minstrel seeks hospitality at Newark Castle and in recompense tells his hostess, Duchess of Buccleuch and her ladies a tale of a sixteenth-century Border feud. In the poem, Lady Margaret Scott of Buccleuch, the "Flower of Teviot" is beloved by Baron Henry of Cranstoun an ally of the Ker Clan, but a deadly feud exists between the two border clans of Scott and Carr/Ker, which has resulted in the recent murder of Lady Margaret's father, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch by the Kers on the High Street in Edinburgh. Margaret's widowed mother hates the Ker clan as a result, and is adamant in refusing her consent to any suggestion of marriage between the lovers until Henry's brave conduct results in the restoration of her young son from captivity and induces her to change her mind. The poem is concerned with loyalty to one’s homeland, but also with the manner in which the poet draws his art from his connection to his country and traditions. ===== The novel tells the story of Archie Weir, a youth born into an upper-class Edinburgh family. Because of his Romantic sensibilities and sensitivity, Archie is estranged from his father, who is depicted as the coarse and cruel judge of a criminal court. By mutual consent, Archie is banished from his family of origin and sent to live as the local laird on a family property in the vicinity of the Borders hamlet Hermiston. While serving as the laird, Archie meets and falls in love with Kirstie (Christina). As the two are deepening their relationship, the book breaks off. Confusingly, there are two characters in the novel called Christina, the younger of whom is Archie's sweetheart. ===== Raghupathy (Ajith Kumar), studying in Australia, goes to New Zealand with a friend and runs into Malavika (Malavika). They start off having petty fights but end up falling in love. But circumstances force them to separate without exchanging any information about each other. Back at home, Raghu makes friends with Prakash and chances upon his family photograph which surprisingly includes his mother Saradha(Srividya), who as far as he knew had no relations. But on questioning, his mother reveals that she was part of a large family (three brothers and a sister) but had been sent out of the family after deciding to wed someone of her own choice. Raghu travels to the village as Prakash's friend and soon endears himself to the members of his family. Turns out Malavika is the daughter of one of the brothers too. But when he learns that Prakash wishes to marry her, he decides to bow out. But Prakash, on knowing about their romance, wishes that they get together. The family elders too agree to Raghu marrying Malavika but refuse to let the alliance go any further after learning that Raghu is Saradha's son. Raghu too agrees to sacrifice his love since he does not want to wed Malavika and cause even more friction in the already fractured family. How Raghu eventually reunites the separated family and weds Malavika forms the crux of the film. ===== ===== Players control the protagonist, Lucas Nickle, as he is shrunk to a miniature size and forced to work in an ant colony. He goes on many adventures throughout his backyard. From the Cactus Garden, to the Spiders lair, Lucas must overcome the challenges and become an ant. Getting in his way is the local wasp hive and the Exterminator. After overcoming many challenges, Lucas eventually has a mano-a-mano showdown. Lucas first must shoot the Exterminators ear with the Dart bow and avoid his hands and poison. Next, Lucas must blind the Exterminator with the Larva silk squirter. Eventually, Lucas and the wasps drive the Exterminator away after stinging him in the butt. Afterwards, Lucas collects the last of the Fire crystals and returns to normal size. ===== Amanda Afflick (Mary Pickford) is a poor laundry woman working in London. She is too weak to do the hard work, but is always picked on and humiliated by her boss Madame Didier (Rose Dione). Amanda is desperately in love with the handsome customer Horace Greensmith (Albert Austin), but none of her colleagues thinks she has a chance of being his sweetheart. One afternoon Amanda gets in trouble again and is forced to work all night long. All alone, she fantasizes about her first and only meeting with Horace, eight months ago. All the fellow employees ridicule her for still having faith that he will return someday to pick up his clothes. Amanda is fed up with all her colleagues making fun of her and lies that she is a duchess, coming from a wealthy family. She comes up with a story of her having an affair with Horace. Her father found out and sent her to live in London. Meanwhile, co-worker Benjamin Jones (Harold Goodwin) has the job of collecting laundry with his cart. One day, his beloved horse Lavender is too weak to go up a hill and falls. The cart is destroyed and when Benjamin admits the truth to Madame Didier, she asks for the horse to be killed. Benjamin reveals to Amanda what will happen with Lavender and she tries to stop the horse from being killed. She eventually buys the horse and takes it into her own home. Amanda is not allowed to take the horse into her own apartment and is noticed on the streets by the wealthy and sympathizing Lady Burke- Cavendish. She offers to take the horse to live at her country place. Amanda is delighted and accepts her offer. Later, Lady Burke-Cavendish stops by to tell Amanda the horse is doing very well. Amanda lies to the fellow laundry women Lady Burke-Cavendish is actually her aunt. They are interrupted by Horace: he has returned for his laundry. The fellow workers assume he will recognize Amanda, since they were lied to he is her secret lover. Amanda is desperate and successfully pretends to be reunited with him. Horace is confused and wants to leave. While the laundry women are away she tells the truth to Horace. Benjamin walks in on them, initially trying to flirt with Amanda, but when he notices Horace's presence he leaves. Horace sympathizes with Amanda and invites her to his mansion. He changes his mind when he becomes ashamed of her. Amanda notices this and pulls back. Horace leaves and Amanda is left behind with a broken heart. She is later hired as Lady Burke- Cavendish's personal maid and now lives in wealth. She finds out Horace is a worker at the country place and they fall in love with each other. ===== Junie (Vhong Navarro), is an ice cream vendor, who goes around selling ice cream to children, and adults alike. After his shift, Junie gets in a predicament with a rival vendor Dodoy (Jay Manalo). Their manager, angered by their actions, demotes Junie to a warehouse guard. Dodoy celebrates, only to be demoted too, working a different shift than that of Junie. Junie goes home in a bad mood, until he sees the love of his life, Liana (Aubrey Miles). After dinner, Junie gets ready to sleep, to work a new job the next day. While on the job, Junie accidentally swallows a spider, thus giving him web slinging abilities, and becoming Gagamboy. After his shift, Dodoy comes in to his work, and leaves a sandwich unprotected. A roach slips into his sandwich, and as he eats it, he collapses, only to regain consciousness as a large roach. He hires two henchmen, and calls himself, Ipisman (Cockroachman). Junie and Dodoy, both try to win Liana's love. Dodoy practically gives up, only to return as Ipisman, to kidnap Liana to lure Gagamboy to his lair. There, he plans to finish off Gagamboy, but the tables turned and Dodoy was destroyed. ===== A fishing boat sinks in the English Channel in the middle of the night, and the evidence points to murder. Ex-MI5 operative Dominic Elder comes out of retirement to help investigate the explosion of the boat, as it appears that his long-time obsession, a female assassin known as "Witch", may be responsible. Using the boat to get to England from France, Witch left a subtle trail of clues to announce her arrival and to warn off Elder. But that is the least of Special Branch's worries, if Elder's well-honed intuition is correct. He has seen her work before and knows her to be a resourceful enemy, who always seems a step ahead of the authorities. With an imminent summit of world leaders to be held in London, Witch's target seems obvious. Young Michael Barclay's thoroughness leads him onto Witch's trail, with the help of his liaison in the French police, Dominique Herault. Apart from her language help and guidance around Paris, Michael is sexually attracted to her. The team of detectives and MI5 agents, and the terrorist, play cat-and-mouse with each other in Scotland, England, France, and even briefly visit a former associate of Witch in prison in Germany. Category:1993 British novels Category:Thriller novels Category:Novels by Ian Rankin Category:Works published under a pseudonym ===== Michael Weston is a professional assassin, but he also suffers from haemophilia. The wealthy father of a girl he killed by mistake years ago has sworn vengeance on the killer, hiring a private detective (Hoffer) to track him down. Rankin has said that he wrote this book under the influence of Martin Amis's novel Money and that Weston was influenced by that novel's protagonist John Self. ===== Gordon Reeve, a former SAS soldier, receives a phone call in his home in Scotland, informing him that his brother Jim has been found dead in a car in San Diego - the car being locked from the inside, and the gun still in Jim's hand. While in the USA to identify the body, Gordon realises that his brother was murdered, and that the police are more than reluctant to follow any lead. Retracing Jim's final hours, he connects Jim's death with his work as a journalist, investigating a multinational chemical corporation. Soon, Gordon finds himself under surveillance, and decides to find out more among Jim's acquaintances back in Europe. In London, he finds more hints, but no evidence for his brother's sources. After returning to his wife and son, he finds that his home has been bugged by professionals. Sending his wife and son to a relative, he determines to take on his enemy on his own. There are two parties after him: The multinational corporation, represented by "Jay", a renegade SAS member, and an international investigation corporation, somehow connected with the case. Travelling to France, in order to find out more from a journalist colleague of Jim's, they are attacked by a group of professional killers under orders from Jay, resulting in multiple deaths, and leading to Gordon becoming a police target. Gordon decides to return to the USA, where he infiltrates the investigation corporation, and learns more about the history of the case. Then he travels to San Diego, to collect more evidence, and eventually returns to England, deliberately leaving a trail for Jay. Their long enmity leads Jay to follow Gordon to Scotland, where Gordon kills him and his team in a final showdown. Gordon manages to locate Jim's hidden journalistic material, hopefully clearing Jim's and his own name. ===== Henry (Martin) and Nancy Clark (Hawn) are a couple living in a quiet Ohio town. Married for 27 years, their last child has left home and Nancy is suffering from empty nest syndrome. Unbeknownst to her, Henry has lost his job due to corporate downsizing and has an interview in New York. Nancy sneaks on the plane with him and they begin a disastrous series of misadventures. Their plane is rerouted to Boston, their luggage is lost, they are mugged at gunpoint and their daughter has used their credit card to the point where it has reached its limit. They are thrown out of their hotel by a pompous manager named Mersault (John Cleese) who also indulges in cross dressing. Forced to live by their wits on the street, the couple find themselves caught up in a robbery, chased by the police through Central Park and also finding renewed love between them. In the end, Henry aces his job interview and the two begin a new life together in New York City. Henry and Nancy (as well as Mersault openly in full-drag) go to see their daughter perform on Broadway. ===== King Krewl (Raymond Russell) is a cruel dictator in the Emerald City in the Land of Oz. He wishes to marry his daughter, Princess Gloria (Vivian Reed), to an old courtier named Googly-Goo (Arthur Smollett), but she is in love with Pon, the Gardener's boy (Todd Wright). Krewl employs the Wicked Witch named Mombi (Mai Wells), to freeze the heart of Gloria so she will not love Pon any longer. This she does by pulling out her heart (which looks somewhere between a valentine and a bland representation of a heart without any vessels) and coating it with ice. Meanwhile, a lost little girl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale (Violet MacMillan), is captured by Mombi and imprisoned in her castle. However, Dorothy runs away with the now heartless Gloria, accompanied by Pon and eventually meet the Scarecrow (Frank Moore). Mombi catches up with the travelers and removes the Scarecrow's stuffing, but Dorothy and Pon are able to re-stuff him; Gloria abandons them and wanders off. They meet the lost little boy, Button-Bright (Mildred Harris). The party travels to the Winkie Country next and arrives at the Tin Castle of the Tin Woodman (Pierre Couderc), who has rusted solid. (The Tin Woodman resides in a Tin Castle in later Oz novels, beginning in The Emerald City of Oz' (1910). Mombi reaches the Tin Castle, and the Tin Woodman chops off her head; however, this merely slows her down as she hunts for it and places it back on. (The Wicked Witch of the East in The Tin Woodman of Oz is later described as having done a similar thing to him when he was still human.) Having replaced her head, Mombi encounters Pon and turns him into a kangaroo. Dorothy, Button-Bright, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman escape from Mombi by crossing a river on a raft. As in the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), the Scarecrow's barge-pole gets stuck in the river bed and leaves him stranded, until he is rescued by a bird. At one point in this sequence, the Scarecrow slides down the pole into the river, resulting a brief "underwater" sequence featuring puppet fish and a mermaid; throughout, the Scarecrow makes asides to the camera, mostly without intertitles. (At another point, the frozen Gloria even makes a malevolent stare directly into the camera.) The party encounters the Wizard (J. Charles Haydon), who tricks Mombi by letting the group hide in the Red Wagon, pulled by the sawhorse; when Mombi attempts to follow them, the group escape out the back of the wagon. The four companions meet the Cowardly Lion, who joins them. The Wizard traps Mombi in a container of "Preserved Sandwitches" and paints out the "sand" and the plural, carrying her away in his pocket. The Scarecrow, taking a barrage of arrows, tosses Krewl's soldiers over the battlements to deal with the Cowardly Lion, who cannot climb the rope ladder over the city wall. With the support of the people, the Scarecrow is easily able to depose King Krewl. The Wizard releases Mombi, and compels her to restore Pon to his normal form and unfreeze Gloria's heart. ===== At age 28, plain and bookish Lina McLaidlaw lives a life of boredom with her retired parents in an English village. Her prettier sister has married a rising writer, but Lina never meets any men she could accept until the arrival of charming Johnnie Aysgarth, from an impoverished and disreputable family. Her father is opposed to a marriage, and everyone seems to know that all Johnnie is after is Lina's money. However they are soon married, enjoy a long and expensive honeymoon abroad, and return to a large country house that Johnny has acquired and extravagantly furnished. When Lina wonders how the jobless Johnnie has met all this outlay, and what he expects to live on, he eventually admits that he borrowed everything. Gradually the more level-headed Lina takes charge of the family finances, relying on an allowance from her father, and pushes Johnnie into finding a job. He gains a good post nearby, managing the country estate of a distant relation, while she looks after their house. She would like a baby, but never falls pregnant. After the first shock of discovering Johnnie's huge debt, and the fact that he lied, other shocks keep arriving. She discovers that he is a practised thief, stealing jewelry from a guest and from her to sell. Her inherited furniture also starts disappearing, until she tracks some of it to an antique shop. He is a forger, putting her signature on cheques. Worse, he is sacked from his job for embezzling money. Most of his takings are placed on horses, for he is an unrepentant gambler, while some are used for another pastime. Any number of local wives and daughters have had affairs with him, for which he rents a flat in a nearby town, and one of their servants has a son by him. When all this comes into the open, the childless Lina at last leaves to stay with her sister in London. There she is introduced at a party to an affectionate unmarried artist, who wants her to get a divorce and marry him. But Lina refuses to sleep with him, instead returning to her purgatory with Johnnie. Johnnie meanwhile has been plotting new ways of raising money. Going with Lina to her parents for Christmas, after dinner he gets her father to perform a trick which is too much for the old man's weak heart. His death means that Lina comes into her inheritance and Johnnie thus has access to improved means. Later, he cons an old school friend into backing a property development and, taking his gullible partner to Paris, on a visit to a brothel pours so much brandy into him that the man dies. The money he had invested remains in Johnnie's hands. In Johnnie's view, neither of these events counts as murder. His big project will be to murder Lina, collect her money and insurance, and not be detected. In this he is aided by Isobel Sedbusk, a writer of crime stories, who often visits their village and enjoys discussing foolproof ways of getting rid of people. She tells Johnnie that there is a common chemical which is tasteless if mixed in milk, kills instantly, and leaves no trace in the body. Lina is driven increasingly desperate by Johnnie's interest in murder, accentuated by discovering that after years of marriage she seems to be pregnant. When she falls ill with flu, Johnnie mounts the stairs with a glass of milk which she deliberately drinks. ===== Leila and Reza are a modern Iranian couple, content with their recent marriage. However, Leila learns that she is unable to conceive. Reza's mother insists that he, as the only son, must have children ("everything goes to the son"), despite Reza's insistence that he does not want children, and suggests that he get a second wife. He adamantly refuses the idea; his mother champions it. Leila gets caught between the two worlds; elated at spending time with Reza one moment and torn apart by his nagging mother the next. ===== Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams. One day, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to travel to "Mongibello", in Italy, to persuade Greenleaf's errant son, Dickie, to return to the United States and join the family business. Ripley agrees, exaggerating his friendship with Dickie, a half-remembered acquaintance, in order to gain the elder Greenleaf's trust. Shortly after his arrival in Italy, Ripley meets Dickie and Dickie's friend Marge Sherwood; although Ripley ingratiates himself with Dickie, Marge does not seem to like him very much. As Ripley and Dickie spend more time together, Marge feels left out and begins insinuating to Dickie that Ripley is gay. Dickie becomes upset when he unexpectedly finds Ripley in his bedroom dressed up in his clothes and imitating his mannerisms. From this moment on, Ripley senses that Dickie has begun to tire of him, resenting his constant presence and growing personal dependence. Ripley has indeed become obsessed with Dickie, which is further reinforced by his desire to imitate and maintain the wealthy lifestyle Dickie has afforded him. As a gesture to Ripley, Dickie agrees to travel with him on a short holiday to Sanremo. Sensing that he is about to cut him loose, Ripley finally decides to murder Dickie and assume his identity. When the two set sail in a small rented boat, Ripley beats him to death with an oar, dumps his anchor-weighted body into the water, and scuttles the boat. Ripley assumes Dickie's identity, living off the latter's trust fund and carefully providing communications to Marge to assure her that Dickie has dumped her. Freddie Miles, an old friend of Dickie's from Dickie's same social set, encounters Ripley at what he supposes to be Dickie's apartment in Rome; he soon suspects something is wrong. When Miles finally confronts him, Ripley kills him with an ashtray. He later disposes of the body on the outskirts of Rome, attempting to make police believe that robbers have murdered Miles. Ripley enters a cat-and-mouse game with the Italian police but manages to keep himself safe by restoring his own identity and moving to Venice. In succession, Marge, Dickie's father, and an American private detective confront Ripley, who suggests to them that Dickie was depressed and may have committed suicide. Marge stays for a while at Ripley's rented house in Venice. When she discovers Dickie's rings in Ripley's possession, she seems to be on the verge of realising the truth. Panicked, Ripley contemplates murdering Marge, but she is saved when she says that if Dickie gave his rings to Ripley, then he probably meant to kill himself. The story concludes with Ripley traveling to Greece and resigning himself to eventually getting caught. However, he discovers that the Greenleaf family has accepted that Dickie is dead, and that they have transferred his inheritance to Ripley – in accordance with a will forged by Ripley on Dickie's Hermes typewriter. While the book ends with Ripley happily rich, it also suggests that he may forever be dogged by paranoia. In one of the final paragraphs, he nervously envisions a group of police officers waiting to arrest him, and Highsmith leaves her protagonist wondering, "...was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he ever approached?" ===== Forge of Heaven takes place several centuries after Hammerfall. The transformation of Marak's World is monitored on the ground by Marak, assisted by Luz and Ian, and planetary watchers on Concord Station using taps, nanocele implants that enable watchers and those on the planet to communicate with one another. Kekellen, the ondat's representative on the station, whom no one has ever seen, is particularly interested in Marak and his activities, and uses it to help understand humans. Procyon is Marak's watcher on Concord. Unannounced, a ship from Earth arrives at the station and Earth ambassador Andreas Gide demands to interrogate Procyon about whether illegal First Movement technology is leaving the planet. Fearing Outsider contamination, Gide enters the station in a sealed mobile containment unit. Procyon assures Gide that, to his knowledge, no illicit technology is leaving the planet, but as the interview ends, Gide is shot at with an armor-piercing shell, which breaches his containment field. Gide is taken to hospital on the station, but because he has now been exposed to Outsider "contaminates", he is unable to return to the Earth ship. Procycon, concussed from the blast, wanders off and is soon lost in the station's corridors. Procyon's disappearance causes problems for the Planetary Observations Office, which oversees communications with the world below. Marak, who has become dependent on Procycon, demands to know what has happened to his watcher. Kekellen, concerned about the disruption of the Planetary Observation Project, intervenes. Using station maintenance robots, he rescues Procycon, but implants a tap in him, enabling Kekellen to keep in touch with him. It is revealed that Movement technology was leaked from the planet via the Ila's watcher on Concord and exported to Orb, a nearby station where sophisticated illicits were being manufactured. The Ila inadvertently kills her watcher when she attempts to hack Concord's tap system. With the help of the ondat, Movement operatives on Concord are neutralized and their conduit to Orb is severed. Project operations on Concord resume and Procyon returns to work as Marak's tap. On the planet, geological upheavals have resulted in a new sea forming with new weather patterns and the promise of new life evolving. The ondat, via Procyon, are now closer to Marak's World and is able to watch the planet's rebirth first hand. ===== Like other games in the Mega Man series, Rockman & Forte Mirai kara no Chōsensha takes place in the year 20XX. A group of robots from the future calling themselves the "Dimensions" attacked Symphony City, a city where people and robots lived in peace. Though without any witnesses, the one leading the Dimensions with overwhelming power is a robot that appears similar to Rockman (Mega Man in the West), who calls himself "Rockman Shadow" (Not to be confused with Quint from the Game Boy Rockman pentalogy). He is said to be a dark and wicked person completely obsessed with destruction. Rockman, who hears this news at Dr. Right's (Dr. Light in the West) laboratory, ventures to the scene despite being under maintenance. At the same time, Dr. Wily sees the dark Mega Man, and to ascertain the mystery he sends Forte (Bass in the West). Eventually Rockman Shadow and the Dimensions are defeated and their plans put to rest. ===== Life has been rough for Ranmaru Hibikiya. Bedridden as a child with a mysterious illness, he's had to spend most of his time alone, drugged, wondering if he would live to adulthood. Now, however, things are getting better for him. His health has improved; he only experiences the occasional seizure. Also, he's been enrolled in his uncle's distinguished institution, the Asao Private School. Of course, this fortuitous turn isn't without a catch. His uncle, a rather mysterious man, installed Ranmaru at Asao to serve as his spy. Ranmaru begins an innocuous investigation, not really expecting to find anything important. Soon, however, he finds himself immersed in horrifying, supernatural events that could claim his life at any moment. ===== In a boys' grammar school in Sheffield in 1983, students Crowther, Posner, Dakin, Timms, Akthar, Lockwood, Scripps, and Rudge have recently obtained the school's highest ever A-level scores and are hoping to enter Oxford or Cambridge, by taking a seventh-term entrance exam in History. The General Studies teacher, known to staff and boys alike by his nickname "Hector", is much beloved, and works alongside their deputy head and regular History teacher, Mrs Lintott. The Headmaster, known by all as "Felix", appoints a temporary teacher, Tom Irwin, to help the boys. Irwin states that he was at Jesus College, Oxford, when interviewed by the Headmaster. Prior to the entrance examinations, he says to Dakin that he was at Corpus (Corpus Christi College). Dakin discovers on his interview day at Oxford that Irwin did not attend. Irwin is little older than his students but proves to be a bold and demanding teacher, and particularly difficult to impress. As part of their General Studies, the class acts out scenes from romantic films and literature. At the conclusion of each class, Hector offers a lift to one of the students on his motorbike and it is generally known (and dismissed as a joke) that he touches them inappropriately on the ride. The only one he never takes along is Posner, a slight Jewish boy, who doesn't hide his infatuation with Dakin. Dakin, who characterises himself as an aspiring lecher, is currently pursuing an affair with the headmaster's secretary, Fiona. He is not displeased by Posner's attention, but finds himself increasingly interested in Irwin. Gradually, Dakin's quest to impress Irwin on an intellectual level evolves into a flirtatious, potentially sexual pursuit of his young teacher, who is visibly attracted to Dakin. Meanwhile, Hector's indiscretions are shockingly revealed and Felix instructs him to "retire early". The boys continue their studies and all gain places at Oxford and Cambridge, including the dimwitted Rudge, with Posner winning a scholarship and Dakin an exhibition (although both Felix and Scripps later refer to it as a scholarship). On the day they gathered at school on receiving their results, Dakin calls out Irwin on his lie of attending Oxford, Irwin admits that he studied at Bristol and attended Oxford only for a teaching diploma, then Dakin asks him out for a drink, overtly revealing his sexual interest in him, much to Irwin's confusion and repressed enthusiasm. They agree to get together that very Sunday. Dakin then proceeds to the Headmaster's office and, by threatening to reveal Felix's own sexual harassment of Fiona, forces him to reinstate Hector. As the boys prepare to leave the grammar school, Hector agrees to give Dakin a ride home on the motorbike "for old times' sake". However, before they leave, the headmaster runs out and stops them, saying that Hector should not take one of the boys. He suggests that Hector take Irwin instead. Dakin gladly hands the helmet to him, and the screen fades to white as they drive off, the boys waving happily and laughing. Off-screen, there is a motorcycle accident; Hector is killed and Irwin is injured. Dakin (in voiceover) says that Irwin had never been on the back of a bike and so may have unbalanced Hector, leading to Hector's death, and that Irwin and he never got a chance to meet that Sunday. The boys sing "Bye Bye Blackbird" at Hector's memorial service and the Headmaster gives a general speech. Mrs Lintott then turns and asks: "Will they come to my funeral, I wonder?" The school hall is shown with only the boys sitting and each recounts his life. Akthar is a headmaster, Crowther a magistrate, Timms a drug-taking dry-cleaning manager, and Dakin a tax lawyer. Lockwood, a junior army officer, was killed by friendly fire at 28 years old. Rudge is a builder, Scripps a journalist, and Irwin makes history TV programmes, though Mrs Lintott says they are more journalism. Posner is a teacher and takes the same approach that Hector did, save for the touching. The final shot shows the boys and teachers standing at the field trip lawn, with Hector's voice encouraging them to "pass it on". ===== The story revolves around a young driver, Lenny (Abrahams), working for a gangster, running various errands and asking no questions. After the kidnapping of an enemy mobster, Jimmy Berg (Bridges), a bitter feud erupts between the two groups with Lenny caught in the middle. Stuck in a van alone with Berg, surrounded by Berg's men, the otherwise neutral driver is forced to choose a side, but is torn by the decision. The film envelops the events that take place amongst various characters involved in the Mexican standoff, finally leading to a twist ending that is surprisingly upbeat. ===== The plot of the story is that five dangerous "seeds" have been stolen from their vault in the world of Evergreen and sent to Earth. The magical seeds can bind themselves to humans and prey off their desires, turning them into monsters. Natsuki, an agent of Queen Tsuyuha, is sent to Earth to seek out a Magical Warrior. He and Hiiragi Chihaya, a high school girl, meet, and she transforms into Magical Senshi Carmein. Complications arise with the arrival of the obnoxious Magical Warrior Cerulean Blue, and the mysterious transfer student, Emi Kojima. ===== Geneshaft is set in a future where genetic engineering has become the dominating technology, defining human society entirely. The government of Earth is totalitarian and as a result there has been peace for 200 years. The government is in control of human reproduction, and is in charge of all (artificial) births, as well as altering the genetic characteristics of every new individual, according to their function in society. One alteration common to all individuals limits their lifespan to 45 years, in order to limit the extent of aging so that they remain healthy and able throughout all of their adult lives. People are largely rated by the quality of their DNA, and those whose DNA is relatively unrefined, such as those of the 'white' gene type, are generally considered inferior. In order to prevent irrational behavior caused by strong emotional attachment, family structures have been disbanded, and the emotions of love and lust eliminated. The ratio of men to women is 1:9, as it is considered that males are more aggressive than females, and this was part of what led past societies to destruction. Modern society is completely peaceful, the few men typically having leading-type positions, and commonly being of gene types that grant enhanced decision-making skills, while the females are in charge of lesser positions. Men are assigned Registers - emotionless, drone-like women - whose purpose is to document all actions a man takes, as men's DNA contains elements of destructive desires that cannot be eliminated, while acting as his assistant. The story begins at the time when a 500 kilometer in diameter ring- shaped structure had appeared near the Earth five years prior. Dispatched from nearby Markanan space station, several female astronauts were about to investigate its nature when it produces a massive energy blast which destroys the space station and a large portion of the surface of the Earth, after which it disappears. This instigates the mobilization of a special group of men and women with specific genetic characteristics, who set out aboard the Bilkis spaceship to investigate the origins of the ring, and the possible connection with mysterious alien technology found in Jupiter's moon Ganymede. During their voyages they encounter several instances of the Ring technology, which they fight with the giant mecha, called 'Shaft'. The technology of Shaft is mysterious and the mecha requires very special skills to be piloted. Along the way, they also encounter situations and people which make them question their nature as 'superior', and raise doubts about how 'perfect' their society really is. ===== I'm Not There uses a nonlinear narrative, shifting between six characters in separate storylines "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". Each character represents a different facet of Dylan's public persona: poet (Arthur Rimbaud), prophet (Jack Rollins/Father John), outlaw (Billy McCarty), fake (Woody Guthrie), "rock and roll martyr" (Jude Quinn), and "star of electricity" (Robbie Clark). Production notes published by distributor The Weinstein Company explain that the film "dramatizes the life and music of Bob Dylan as a series of shifting personae, each performed by a different actor—poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock and roll martyr, born-again Christian—seven identities braided together, seven organs pumping through one life story." ===== After their college graduation, a clique of six friends went separate ways. Sun-ae moves to the United States. Hye-jin pursues her tertiary education in psychology. Hyun-jun, due to an injury to his knee, is unable to keep playing sports and is stuck working in a scrapyard. Se-hoon opens an art studio. Jung-wook works as a lawyer and is married, but has an affair with Mi-ryeong, who is now an actress. After a few years, Sun-ae returns home and tells Hye-jin she was being pursued by the supposedly deceased Kyung-ah. Hye-jin visits Se-hoon, who is haunted by dreams of a woman whose face he can't remember. Hye-jin herself begins having visions of Kyung-ah. Back when they were in college, Hye-jin befriended a girl named Eun-ju. Members of the clique began experiencing strange accidents. Sun-ae exposed Eun-ju's true identity as Kyung-ah, a girl from Sun-ae and Hye-jin's past. Kyung-ah was rumoured to be a "possessed" child who spread deaths and misfortune. One of the casualties was Hye-jin's father. Hye-jin told Eun-ju to stay away from her. That night, Hye-jin witnessed Eun-ju committing suicide. Kyung-ah kills Se-hoon. Hye-jin calls the rest of the group and Jung-wook claims Sun-ae blamed herself for causing Kyung-ah's death, and reveals she went to the U.S. to seek mental treatment, not education. Desperate to escape his job, Hyun-jun blackmails Jung-wook into becoming his lawyer. He hands over a tape showing Jung-wook and Mi-ryeong having sex, recorded by Se-hoon, who had a habit of recording people. Se-hoon also recorded Kyung-ah's death. Hyun-jun is killed next. Hye-jin angrily asks Sun-ae her why Kyung-ah is going after them. Kyung-ah appears, visible only to Sun-ae, who runs away. After almost being drowned by Kyung-ah, Mi-ryeong begs Jung-wook to stay with her, but he refuses. She breaks up with Jung-wook and is found dead in her bathroom. Hye-jin finds Se-hoon's video tape and learns what happened the night Kyung-ah died. After Hye-jin left, an altercation ensued, triggered by Kyung-ah's cat attacking Jung-wook and him trying to kill it. In the confusion, Hyun-jun fell and broke his leg, and Kyung-ah also fell and passed out from a head injury. To protect themselves, the five decided to fake Kyung-ah's suicide and push her body off a building. Kyung-ah woke up but Jung-wook killed her anyway. Jung-wook breaks into Hye-jin's apartment to find the video tape, but Sun-ae attacks him. He chases her to the same building Kyung-ah died. Fixated on protecting his career, he attempts to kill Hye-jin and Sun-ae to cover up the truth. Sun-ae impales him with a metal rod, killing him. Some time later, Sun-ae and Hye-jin meet. Kyung-ah appears, this time visible to Hye-jin as well, and kills Sun-ae so that the two of them can finally be together. ===== In Dallas, at the Southern Methodist University, news comes in about a gas which has escaped from a military facility. It starts killing everyone over 25. Hippie Coel meets and falls in love with Cilla. They discover a Gestapo-like police force will be running Dallas and flee into the country. Their car is stolen by some cowboys. They then meet music fan Marissa, her boyfriend Carlos, Hooper and his girlfriend Coralee. Marissa leaves Carlos, who finds a new girlfriend. The group meet Edgar Allan Poe, who throughout the film drives around on a motorbike with Lenore on the back and a raven on his shoulder, commenting on the action like a Greek chorus. They then have an encounter with some golf-playing bikers, after which they attend a dance and concert where AM Radio is performing and passing on messages from God. Coel sleeps with Zoe, but Cilla is not jealous. Coel, Cilla and their friends arrive at a peaceful commune where it seems mankind can start fresh. Then a football team attacks them. Eventually, God intervenes. Coel and Cilla are reunited with all their friends and there is a big party where everyone gets along. ===== Devdhar (Rishi Kapoor) is a poor orphan who in his childhood had a magnetic friendship with Manorama (Padmini Kolhapure), the only daughter of the rich and powerful Thakur. The benevolent Thakur helped Devdhar go to the city for higher studies. After eight years, Devdhar returns to his village, where he finds Manorama has grown up. After seeing her again, Devdhar falls in love. Due to the family status difference, he is unable to express his love for her. A chain of events leads to Manorama marry a rich and handsome Thakur; her husband dies the day after the marriage and she becomes a widow. After her elder brother-in-law rapes her, she returns to her parental home. When Devdhar learns of the situation, he works to rebuild Manorama's life and bring a smile to her face. Devdhar is determined to revive her faith in life and love. In doing so, he eventually has to face the wrath of the powerful Thakur, armed with age-old traditions and customs in his favor. ===== Elspeth learns from her premonitions, and her cat Maruman's prophecies, that a keeper from Obernewtyn, a feared institution where Misfits are sent to work, will come to take her there. Soon, when delivering tea to visiting Head Keeper of Obernewtyn, Madam Vega, Elspeth accidentally reveals she is a Misfit, though not to what extent, and is soon dispatched to Obernewtyn. Her first few weeks at Obernewtyn are spent in the kitchen, where she is worked to the bone. The cook's daughter delights in tormenting her. The favoured Misfit, Ariel, and farm overseer, Rushton, immediately dislike her. Later reassigned to the farm, an encounter with a pair of Misfits named Matthew and Dameon reveals she is not alone in her particular abilities. She also befriends Cameo, a delicate, pretty Misfit of whom Matthew is very fond. Elspeth, plagued by nightmares, begins to feel there is a dark secret underneath their everyday tasks. While working, Elspeth decides to test the range of her telepathic ability, "farseeking", but beyond the boundaries of Obernewtyn, a strange machine, the Zebkrahn, traps her mind. She is only freed by combining her mental strength with another anonymous mind who offers assistance. Asked by Vega to look out for "special" Misfits, her interview reveals the Doctor is a defective simpleton; his "assistant", Alexi, has no interest in Elspeth in his quest to find the "right one" who will lead him to what he desires. Elspeth and Matthew later deduce that tortuous experiments on their kind are occurring, and they resolve to escape. Cameo begins disappearing from her bed at nighttime, and Elspeth fearfully suspects that Cameo is the subject of some of these experiments. That night, Elspeth sneaks into the Doctor's office to retrieve a map and compass, but on finding forbidden books and maps from before the Great White, the "Beforetime", she realises they must be searching for something from long ago. She leaves empty- handed. Rosamunde, a fellow orphan from the Kinraide orphan home, arrives at Obernewtyn and coldly informs Elspeth that her brother Jes had discovered he also had mental abilities, but was killed by guards in an escape attempt. Rushton comforts the distraught Elspeth, and asks her why she plagues him. Fearful that someone will soon be after her as well, her group's escape plans begin in earnest. Elspeth returns a second time to the Doctor's office, but when Vega, Alexi and Ariel enter, she learns Ariel is part of the Obernewtyn family, and that they are searching for a Misfit to help them find the location of Beforetime weapons. Pre-warned that two Councilmen are coming to fetch her for questioning by the Herders, at nightfall she makes to escape but Rushton stops her. He reveals a secret network of drains which gets her safely to the farms. Once she is safely through the drains after a close shave with Ariel's pack of mad, wild wolves, she finds that the path to the farms has been obscured by a blizzard and gets lost. She nearly dies, but a Misfit named Domick finds her and locks her in the farmhouse to return later to Obernewtyn. Overhearing a conversation between her captors, she discovers they are Rushton's accomplices and were to secretly meet with a rebel group, but Rushton has gone missing. Convincing them that her powers can help find him, she makes her way on foot through the blizzard to the far mountains, with Maruman as her guide. Inside the cave network she finds a dying Cameo, who tells her the Beforetime weapons Alexi and Vega are searching for caused the Great White, but they do not know this. She also reveals it is Elspeth's destiny, as the Seeker, to destroy them. After mourning her death, Elspeth overhears that Rushton, imprisoned in the next cavern, is the true heir of Obernewtyn. Suddenly, she is captured by Ariel, who ties her to a table next to the Zebkrahn machine. Elspeth is forced to hold the diaries of Marisa Seraphim, the wife of the founder of Obernewtyn and Alexi's stepmother, and use her abilities to discover what Marisa was thinking when she wrote them to determine the weapons' location. Still withstanding the torture, Elspeth mentally enters Rushton's mind and recognises the voice of her earlier rescuer from the Zebkrahn. Rushton gives his mental strength to her to endure the pain inflicted on her by the machine. In her despair at their threats to kill him, her resistance breaks and Marissa's thoughts reveal the map to be carved into the front doors of Obernewtyn. At this point, the Zebkrahn overheats and bursts into flames. Something in Elspeth's mind cracks and she uses this new power to kill Vega, who she saw standing over Rushton with a knife. She falls unconscious as Domick and Rushton's other friends rush in. Alexi is killed, but Ariel flees into the night and is believed to have died in the blizzard. Now known to be the legal master of Obernewtyn, Rushton plans to build it into a secret refuge for Misfits. ===== Rushton returns from a journey around the highlands and immediately calls a meeting of all the leaders of the guilds (guildmerge). At the meeting, Elspeth and Pavo propose a joint expedition of their guilds to the West Coast, in order to recover an untouched Beforetime (time before Great White) book cache, as well as rescue a person with very strong mental abilities. Rushton proposes a safe house be set up in the capital, Sutrium, so they can be informed of the Council's movements, with the person to do this joining their expedition. This expedition is unanimously approved. Suddenly the cat Maruman falls into a fitful coma and Elspeth enters his mind to help bring him back. Inside his mind, a voice of an Agyllian reminds Elspeth of her promise to destroy the weaponmachines, a journey she must make alone. Later, Zarak bumps into an unknown Misfit mind while farseeking, who is a novice Herder in Darthnor cloister. Elspeth contacts the novice, named Jik, who initially believes she is a demon sent to test his faith. After subsequent conversations, she reveals she too is a Misfit and offers him a home at Obernewtyn. A small group of Farseekers rescue him, making it look as if he had drowned. Meanwhile, Elspeth, in response to the horses’ refusal to be ridden, strikes a bargain with their leader, Gahltha, that the upcoming expedition be treated as a test as to whether they can work as equals. He agrees on the condition that only Elspeth rides him, as both parties should risk their leaders. Just before the expedition sets off, a prophecy reveals Jik must join them and they must be back before the pass closes in winter, or Obernewtyn will fall. Disguised as a gypsy troop, they attempt to find a secret pass through the lower mountains, but are taken captive by armsmen of Henry Druid (infamous rebel leader). Inside the well-established camp, their mental abilities are suddenly constrained and the group are separated. After being questioned by Druid about Obernewtyn, Kella and Elspeth are invited to dinner with the men in order to arrange bonding (marriage) of them to some armsmen. The head armsmen, Gilbert, takes a liking to her and speaks at length of his life and the camp. Later, Elspeth finds a secret group of Misfits led by Druid's secret deaf daughter and learns the block on their abilities is caused by a Misfit baby. Elspeth and Kella, intended to be bonded that night, escape with the rest of the group during a large storm. Dominic, who had eluded capture, built large rafts at Elspeth's earlier request, on which the group escape their pursuers into the mountain rapids. Halfway down, they come across a ruined Beforetime city in a large cavern. After exiting the mountain via a large waterfall, they are nursed back to health by a rebel couple. In return, the group agree to go to Aborium to see if their son, Brydda, is fine. Domick leaves them to travel to Sutrium to set up the safe house. In Aborium, Elspeth asks for him at the specified inn but is taken prisoner instead. Rescued by one of Brydda's friends, she is taken to see him. Meanwhile, Kella, Jik and Pavo are taken captive by the Herders and are held in the local cloister. Realising Jik is an escaped novice, the Herders intend to send him to Herder Isle (island containing core of order) that night for interrogation. Elspeth breaks in and frees the other two, but she is too late to free Jik. With Brydda's help they are able to cause enough commotion on the wharf to rescue him. Outside the city, they, with Brydda, travel north to their destination, the ruins containing the library. The ruins are deserted as they are believed to be haunted. The group find a wild girl, capable of causing horrific visions with her mind, and discover that she is the Misfit they seek. After being coaxed with food, the girl, dubbed ‘Dragon’, eventually follows them back and joins their group. They also take back many books from the Beforetime library. After returning to Brydda's parents house, Domick rushes in to warn them of the approaching soldierguards, and tells them that Ariel is alive. Fleeing, Brydda reveals the secret pass through the mountains, which the group safely traverse with Jik's dog's directions. However, on emerging from the other side, a firestorm bears down on them. Although Elspeth is dragged to safety by Daffyd, someone she met many years earlier, Jik perishes in the flames. Elspeth convinces Daffyd to take the others back to Obernewtyn before the pass closes, as the mental barrier blocking the pain in her badly injured feet caused by the Zebrakhen had collapsed. Alone and dying, Elspeth is taken by Guannette birds (Agyllians) to the highest mountain where they teach her body to heal itself. The leader, Atthis, who spoke to her earlier in Maruman's mind, reminds her of her quest, and the existence of the Destroyer who is destined to try and use the weaponmachines. After taking months to heal, Elspeth is returned to the wintery highlands where Gahltha awaits her to take her back to Obernewtyn. There Elspeth sees a ruin, destroyed by a firestorm, and a soldierguard camp set up nearby with Rushton and others captive inside. She meets Daffyd, who reveals that the ruins are a vision caused by Dragon to fool soldierguards, who soon flee in fear of catching a deadly disease. The others, who had presumed her dead, are mystified and overjoyed at her arrival, particularly Rushton. ===== The Misfits at Obernewtyn are all experiencing dreams and nightmares in which they are terrorized by a dragon, Dragon's form on the Dreamtrails. Dragon herself remains in a comatose state and is unable to be reached mentally by the healers. Her strong aura causes all around her in Obernewtyn to experience nightmares. Rushton, Master of Obernewtyn and Elspeth's betrothed, is kidnapped while returning from a meeting with the rebels in Sutrium. The Misfits receive a letter disclosing that Rushton will lose his life if the Misfits do not join the rebellion. They immediately believe that a rebel has kidnapped their Master as Rushton had refused letting the Misfits join the rebellion. With Rushton missing, and under Elspeth's command, the Misfits join the rebellion, offering limited aid. However, they are betrayed by the Misfit-hating rebel, Malik in a decoy scheme involving soldierguards, leading to significant loss of life for beasts, Misfits and soldierguards alike. This bloodshed would have been greater if it weren't for Swallow, a pureblood gypsy recently appointed as D'rekta, 'King' of the Twentyfamily gypsies. On the east coast of the land, the rebellion is successful without trouble from the Landfolk. The west coast, however, remains occupied by the Council after a traitor spreads news of the rebellion to the Herder Faction. The Misfits had not been able to identify the traitor, most likely because he or she wore a demon band, a tainted band made by the Herders to ward off evil that also blocks Misfits' mental probes. While freeing prisoners in one of the abandoned Herder cloisters in Sutrium, the Misfits find Rushton. While not physically harmed, he is heavily drugged and suffering from delirium and convulsions. After returning to Obernewtyn with the unconscious Rushton, Elspeth travels to the City under Tor to witness for herself the discovery of a glass monument made by Cassy, a Beforetimer, who Elspeth had encountered in multiple dreams. The glass monument is of Elspeth herself, who believes that Cassy must have had futuretelling abilities. Elspeth later returns to Obernewtyn to find herself summoned onto the Dreamtrails by the oldOnes. Elspeth enters Dragon's mind, with Maruman, having been told by the latter that they would find Rushton there. Elspeth learns about Dragon's fateful past, and realizes that the cause of her delirium lies in the loss of her beloved Mother, the Red Queen. Inside Dragon's mind, Elspeth encounters and saves Rushton, who is in the form of a wounded bear. After she leaves Dragon's mind, Dragon is awakened from her coma but has no recollection of her life at Obernewtyn. Rushton recovers from his soul-less state, buy his recovery will be lengthy. Elspeth now knows that she must continue her quest for the five signs left for her by the Beforetimer, Kasanda. ===== John Baker Jr. (Lukas Haas) is a boy bored with his life at an upper middle class boarding school, and the prospect of his future running the family grocery store chain. He no longer sees the point in school, stating what's the difference if he gets a zero attendance for being three minutes late or skipping the whole class so he might as well skip the class. Now close to graduating from boarding school, his life is turned upside down when he rescues Patty Vare (Winona Ryder), a young woman he finds lying unconscious in a field. Patty regains consciousness that evening in John's dormitory. She stays awake long enough to tell him she will not go to a doctor, and then passes out and does not awaken until the next morning. She seems to recover completely and to be grateful for John's assistance; the two begin a romantic voyage of self-discovery. This is not without its problems, as other boys in the dorm quickly find out she is being hidden in his room, leading up to a dramatic confrontation with Baker's close friends where his 'best friend' becomes enraged and punches a wall, breaking his hand, while the two continue to argue over the reason as to why Baker has hidden her in his room. Throughout the film, there are continuous flashbacks of Vare's past, showing her with a famous baseball player with whom she steals a car, leading up to a drunken car crash and his death (for which authorities are searching for Vare for questioning). By the end, Vare has admitted all this to Baker and informed the authorities of the location of the body and the car (as they crashed into a river). At the police station, both Baker and Vare begin to say goodbye when they unexpectedly jump into an elevator to escape from Baker's controlling father (Chris Cooper), and drive off with a car he had earlier stolen from the school. ===== The action of the novel largely begins after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the protagonist. This occurs after he suffers a beating at the hands of a cuckolded husband (the protagonist has been having an affair with a woman called Matilda with whom he has also, apparently, been rather bored). After his supposed death, and assuming everything in the world around him to be a manifestation of his 'leftover' imagination, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the character Smurov, around whom much uncertainty and suspicion exists. ===== Famous Hollywood actor Don Bolton (Hope) is a vain movie star whose biggest fear is to be drafted into the US Army. He definitely lacks the qualities of a good soldier, and he is so afraid of loud noise that he would not last a day in the service, let alone cope with hearing a single gunshot when he is on set shooting a war film at the studio. Colonel Peter Fairbanks (Clarence Kolb) visits the studio set as a consultant for the war film, and with him he has brought his beautiful daughter Antoinett, known as "Tony" (Dorothy Lamour). Don is smitten by Tony, and also realizes that his ticket out of the Army is to marry the colonel's daughter to avoid the draft. Don manages to insult the colonel gravely when he first mistakes him for an actor and treats him disrespectfully. Even so, Don manages to go on a date with Tony, and even proposes to her, before hearing on the radio that the draft age is only going up to the age of 31. As Don is 32 he retracts his proposal, and Tony is disgusted with his intentions and cowardly behavior. Don realizes he's in love a few weeks later and wants to impress her so he decides to pretend to join the Army, using an actor as a fake enlistment officer. But at the drafting office the actor is replaced by a real officer, so he, and his assistant Bert (Eddie Bracken) and manager Steve (Lynne Overman), all get enlisted for real. They are forced to a training camp, where Fairbanks is in charge. Fairbanks tells Don that if he can make it up to corporal rank, he gets to marry Tony. This proves to be more than Don and his unfortunate brothers in arms can handle. As punishment for their shortcomings, they are constantly on kitchen patrol. Tony eventually falls in love with Don. When Don and his two companions are left at camp during a camp war game, they come up with the idea to help their team by altering the signposts in the field. The result is disastrous, as the men, and Tony, are led into an artillery range. Don is forced to overcome his fear of noise and rescue Tony. He walks through the lines of fire and takes a shot to the arm. After rescuing Tony, Don and his men are promoted to corporal rank and Don gets permission to marry Tony.http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/70515/Caught-in-the-Draft/ ===== ===== When the police discover that a mob hitman has moved in next door to the Robbersons, they want to find out what he is up to. So they set up a stakeout in the Robbersons' home. Hard-nosed, tough-as-nails Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and his young partner Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) are assigned to the stakeout, but now it's a question of whether Jake can last long enough to capture the bad guys. The Robbersons want to help, and by doing so they drive Jake crazy. ===== A human colony ship lands on an unknown planet (later named "Saybrook's Planet"). The ship's captain, Saybrook, analyzed the planet's abundant plant and animal life and discovered that it is all part of a single organism with a unified consciousness. However, that organism perceived the humans (and all the other lifeforms they have brought along) as being "incomplete" and mere "life fragments", because they were not part of the perfect planetary consciousness. In an altruistic attempt to help the humans, the planetary organism decides to make them part of itself; it induces pregnancy in all the colony ship's female animals, and all the offspring born have green patches of fur (alien sense organs) instead of eyes, a sign that they were part of the planetary organism. When Saybrook had the women in his crew examined and confirmed that they were all pregnant, he sent a sub-ether report back to Earth and then destroyed his ship with all aboard. Later, a research spaceship from Earth lands on Saybrook's Planet to investigate the report by the earlier colony ship. The crew take no chances and incinerate all life around the landing point, while carefully preventing any life from the planet from coming on board (and have an all-male crew for good measure). They confirm Saybrook's report, then set out to return to Earth to recommend that Saybrook's Planet be permanently quarantined. Unknown to the research ship's crew they carry a stowaway — a part of the planet's fauna that crawled aboard when they temporarily dropped their force fields. The small creature has been specially bred to resemble a length of wiring and go undetected. The planetary organism has never before experienced selfishness and violence and is desperate to "help" the "life fragments" (Earthlings) to become "complete", by joining consciousness with it in blissful unity. If the stowaway manages to reach Earth, it will eventually convert all life there into a single organism with a unified consciousness — and green patches of fur instead of eyes. The stowaway creature removes a section of wiring from the cockpit and impersonates it, in order to hide. It then psychically examines the minds of the humans and other organisms on the ship and is increasingly disturbed by their chaotic, conflicting existence as individuals. It is revolted by the fact that they show selfishness and competition, instead of altruism and cooperation. The creature is greatly saddened by being disconnected from the planetary consciousness, but takes solace in the fact that it will soon perform its mission and join with all life on Earth. The invasion is thwarted however, when the stowaway is accidentally killed after the research ship lands on Earth; the wiring it was impersonating controlled the ship's airlock doors, and it was incinerated when they were activated. The ship's scientist, aware of the potential threat from Saybrook's Planet, is relieved to return to the anarchy that is Earth. ===== In this semi- fictionalized account of the origins of the Black Panthers, Vietnam vet Judge (Kadeem Hardison) returns to his hometown of Oakland to find it beset by violence and police discrimination against African-Americans. Judge's friend Cy tells him about a vigilante group that's organizing against the police and introduces him to its leaders, Bobby (Courtney B. Vance) and Huey (Marcus Chong). Judge joins the movement but is soon beset by police pressure to inform against Huey. ===== The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive in Europa, a reconstructed amalgamation of 16th, 17th and 18th century Europe a thousand years in the future. Here, all sorts of historical personalities collide: for example, Lord Byron battles Torquemada's Inquisition while Mary Shelley is writing a sequel to Frankenstein. The newcomers are then accused of murdering the Pope, and to clear their innocence, helped only by a young vampire hunter and Byron, they must face the terrifying Theatre of Transmogrification. ===== Thirunavukarasu aka Thiru (Narain), a fearless karate fighter, saves the son of a local don from being killed by members of a rival gang. In return, the don Annachi (Dhandapani) hires Thiru as his henchman. Thiru's mother (Sathyapriya) and younger sister dislike his association with the gang but have to live with his decision. One day, Thiru stumbles upon Charumathi aka Charu (Bhavana), a worker at an NGO who fights injustice. A quarrel ensues between them, and they grow to dislike each other. Nobody has spoken up to Thiru before, and he admires Charu's courage. Whenever they bump into one another, Charu berates Thiru for being a gangster. Ashamed, Thiru and a few of his gangsters try to turn over a new leaf by selling toys at a sidewalk. Charu is impressed by Thiru's changed personality and decides to marry him. Her father (Raviprakash) gives her his blessings, though her uncle (Mahadevan) does not approve. However, her hopes are shattered after she witnessed a naked Thiru being clumped away in a police truck from a brothel after a raid. She gives up her plans of being with him and blames her father for not raising her well enough to make the right decision. Later that day, her father commits suicide. Charu blames Thiru for ruining her life and causing her father's death. Thiru and his friends return to Annachi. Charu's uncle arranges for her to be married to his own relative. However, Annachi's son sees Charu during her engagement and falls in love with her. Annachi threatens Charu's uncle to surrender his niece to him. After learning that Thiru is part of Annachi's gang, Charu goes to confront him. Thiru's friends reveal that he was only at the brothel that day to save his friend's family who lives there. Instead, he sees Charu's father there, who was in the company of prostitutes. In order to give time for Charu's father to flee the area, Thiru creates a distraction by attacking the police officers. They beat him up and tear off his clothes while trying to arrest him. Charu realizes her mistake and asks Thiru's friends to take her to him. Meanwhile, Thiru has devised his own plans in an attempt to thwart Annachi's plans and save Charu. He has arranged for his friends to bring Charu and her fiancé separately to the registrar's office to get them married. However, Annachi shows up and orders his men to attack Thiru. When Charu arrives at the scene, she is overwhelmed to see that Thiru has been stabbed and is fighting for his life. Only then does Annachi realize that she and Thiru are in love. He stops the attack and lets Thiru's friends rush him to the hospital. Thiru is saved, and Annachi agrees to let him go. He marries Charu, and they live happily there after. ===== The film opens with a creepy castle in Hollywood: Victor Gaghan, an evil scientist, is creating his S Club clones and chanting the words "S Club, S Club, S Club" and as he says this he is joined by fans awaiting the group as they arrive in Barcelona, Spain for their last show of their tour. After spending the day promoting and performing, the group gets excited about having some time off. Their manager, Alistair however shoots down their joy informing them that they will be leaving for Los Angeles at 7:00 A.M. the next day. At the hotel, the S Club members ignore Alistair and after they get into their room, Alistair is attacked by the scientist's assistant Susan Sealove. The next morning, the members of S Club awaken to find Alistair gone having been left with his bill. Instead of using a credit card that Rachel finds to pay the bill, they use it on pampering themselves and after going bankrupt Hannah thinks she is going crazy when she sees the cloned S Club performing live on TV at a nearby cafe. After the others start thinking they are uncanny lookalikes and discover Alistair is betraying them by managing their lookalikes, the members all decide to quickly leave the hotel and fly to L.A., only to get arrested by the police for trying to run out on the hotel bill and allegedly impersonating S Club. In jail, they learn that the warden likes to dance and to escape, they sing "Don't Stop Movin'" and get to their friend Natalie. She helps them get to L.A. by disguising them as English World Cup football fans so that they can avoid getting arrested again by the Spanish police. After failing to get close to their doubles during a live concert, they decide to switch out their Hannah, Rachel and Jon for their copies during a music video shoot. Hannah, Rachel and Jon see that the Bradley, Tina and Jo clones have no belly buttons, and are exposed to their rituals of showering together, constant rehearsals, eating strange synthetic food and being brainwashed during bed. During a CD signing session, Rachel attempts to warn a fan to call the police, only for Alistair to confiscate the signed CD and contact Gaghan, who sends his goons to capture them and take them to his lair. Meanwhile, Bradley, Tina and Jo learn that the other members' clones are unaware of being clones themselves, and are surprised when these clones shed their ritualistic routine and enjoy simple pleasures of life for the first time, such as boomerang games, real food, drinks and sightseeing. Determined to find out who created the clones, Jo researches the internet and discovers that Gaghan, a former genetics professor who was fired for illegal cloning experiments, recently purchased S Club memorabilia online, including their underwear. When their friends fail to show up as planned after being captured by Gaghan’s goons, Bradley, Tina and Jo realise that something is wrong and reveal to the other members' clones that they are copies, and urge them to overcome their programmed memories to figure out Gaghan's location. The clones make a breakthrough and remember their birthplace and Gaghan's location: Eagle Peak. Formulating a plan to enact revenge on Gaghan for the cloning, Bradley, Tina and Jo arrive at Eagle Peak with their friends' clones and run into the real Hannah, Rachel and Jon, only to be caught by Alistair while trying to escape. While the Hannah, Rachel and Jon clones run into their bandmates outside and tell them the truth of their origins, Gaghan tells the originals that he is going to take over the world through music because celebrities attract more attention than politicians (as well as the obviously greater appeal in seeing naked singers emerging from the cloning tubes as opposed to politicians), before leaving Alistair to kill the band. The clones save the band by revealing that Alistair is a clone due to his own lack of belly button and rebelling against him. In the dining area, S Club are alarmed at the clones Gaghan has created including clones of AC/DC's Angus Young, King of Rock & Roll Elvis Presley, Will Smith as Men In Black's Agent J, Victoria Beckham (as Posh Spice), Robbie Williams, Eminem, King of Pop Michael Jackson, Elton John, Madonna, George Michael, Pop Idol star Gareth Gates, and Groucho Marx (of the Marx Brothers), and encourage them to rebel against Gaghan and do what they desire. Enraged at this and clone Alistair's failure, Gaghan initiates a self-destruct sequence of Eagle Peak, which threatens to kill S Club and the clones. Both S Clubs band together to save the clones and sing "Who Do You Think You Are?" whilst the Michael Jackson clone stops Gaghan and Sealove from escaping in their helicopter, and the original group is able to stop the place from self-destructing as the clones escape. While they are alarmed by the fact that they have released a new batch of cloned pop acts into the world, clone Alistair suddenly appears and tries to kill them when suddenly the real Alistair knocks him out. Gaghan and Sealove are later arrested and the group wonder what to do with their clones when Alistair and Natalie remind them of their very busy schedules. At the end, the real S Club are seen at the beach and the clones are taking their place. They have decided that the clones will take their place when they want a holiday, and the same vice versa (it is also mentioned that the clones are getting paid in boomerangs). Nearby, the Gareth Gates clone they rescued is seen flirting with Rachel. ===== When Deep Space Nine picks up a mysterious coded message from inside the Gamma Quadrant that appears to be Cardassian, disgraced Cardassian spy Garak is asked to analyze it. He determines that the message is a distress call from his mentor Enabran Tain, who was believed to have been killed in an ill-fated Cardassian attack on the Dominion two years prior. Garak convinces Captain Sisko to allow him to travel to the Gamma Quadrant, accompanied by Worf, to search for Tain and other possible survivors from Dominion attacks. Soon after entering Dominion space, they wind up in the midst of the Dominion fleet. Worf realizes that the fleet must be assembled to invade the Alpha Quadrant. He sends a warning message to DS9 just before Jem'Hadar soldiers take him and Garak prisoner. Back on DS9, the crew receives Worf's message and realize the Dominion is coming. With reinforcements at least two days away and only Gul Dukat on hand to help out, Sisko sees only one choice—sealing the wormhole, trapping Worf and Garak on the other side if they cannot return before the operation is completed. Worf and Garak are taken to a Dominion detention center. Tain is there, on his deathbed; instead of being thankful to Garak for coming, Tain chastises him for allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Also among the fellow prisoners are the Klingon general Martok, and, to Garak and Worf's surprise, Dr. Julian Bashir—meaning that the Bashir back at DS9 is a Changeling impostor. As his last request, Tain makes Garak promise to escape. Desperate for a kind word from his mentor before the old man passes on, Garak makes a request in return: that Tain acknowledge him as his son. Tain does so, and father and son share a memory before Tain dies peacefully. His mission complete, Garak is ready to find a way out. On Deep Space Nine, the crew shoots a particle beam at the wormhole, intending to close it. However, something goes wrong. The emitter array has been sabotaged, and the wormhole remains open, allowing a fleet of Dominion warships to begin pouring through. ===== In the year 2099, Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing find themselves in new uniforms and transported to a very different Negative Zone than the one they knew. Returning home, they find the world changed and S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers chasing after them as laboratory copies of the original Fantastic Four. During a fight with a repo-man crew named Total Recall, a church dedicated to the worship of the 22nd century’s Thor is destroyed and the FF escape with an injured Human Torch to an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. hideout. They discover, through the repo-men, that the corporation Stark- Fujikawa is claiming them as "experimental subjects". They head to an Alchemax facility to prove their originality. The four encounter the new century's Spider-Man. He helps Reed study the group's DNA. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the 2099 technology, the results were inconclusive, leaving their legitimacy in question. They then break into their old headquarters at Four Freedoms Plaza with the help of their friend, Chimera, who came back with them from the Negative Zone. Before they can return to the Negative Zone to find a way home, they are attacked by a man named River Styx, the demon brother of Chimera, as well as a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers. In the course of the battle the Negative Zone door is damaged, causing a dimensional 'meltdown'. Rampaging beasts called the Mindless Ones attack, until they are destroyed by the 22nd century Doctor Strange. Strange then leaps into the future to warn the denizens of Earth of the approaching end of the world. A planetoid is headed to Earth, causing the polar ice caps to melt. This is caused by the Phalanx, an act which covers most of the Earth in water. The Fantastic Four set up headquarters in their old building to help the Earth’s future inhabitants. The Human Torch heads out to investigate the flooding, but is ambushed and captured by the Atlanteans and their leader, Attuma. The Invisible Woman and the Thing rush to his rescue, getting themselves captured as well. They find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between Attuma and the rightful ruler of Atlantis, the mutant Whisper, a former guardian of X-Nation. Despite chemical brainwashing, the three heroes help Whisper take her rightful place on the throne. Back in the city, Reed and the future Doctor Doom work with the remaining survivors. While fleeing the city towards the Savage Land, the only place on Earth free from flooding, a fleet of Atlantean ships attacks the remaining humans. The human fleet is saved from destruction by the interference of Doom’s Latverian Luftwaffe, and finally by Whisper, as she asserts her newfound control. ===== The Dominion fleet, having come through the Bajoran wormhole at the end of the previous episode, flies off toward Cardassia. Gul Dukat joins them, announcing that the Dominion has accepted Cardassia as a member, with Dukat as its new leader. At the Dominion internment camp where Garak, Worf, Dr. Bashir, and General Martok are being held, the inmates have built an illicit transmitter inside the prison walls. Garak crawls inside the walls to modify it to signal their runabout so they can escape, triggering his severe claustrophobia. Meanwhile, Worf is selected as an opponent for Jem'Hadar guards to practice hand-to-hand combat. Worf's refusal to surrender, defeating a series of Jem'Hadar opponents, inspires Garak to overcome his fears and continue working. Dukat vows to eliminate all Klingon invaders and Maquis renegades in Cardassian space. Captain Sisko persuades Klingon chancellor Gowron to reinstate the alliance between the Klingons and the Federation in order to fight the Dominion. Dukat contacts Sisko, warning that he intends to conquer Deep Space Nine for the Dominion. Sisko deploys the Defiant and three runabouts to fight the incoming Cardassian/Dominion fleet; they are joined by the Klingons and a Romulan fleet. Unknown to Sisko, a Changeling impersonating Bashir is at the helm of one of the runabouts. Back at the internment camp, the Jem'Hadar come close to discovering Garak before being overpowered by the other prisoners. Meanwhile, Worf is fighting Ikat'ika, the Jem'Hadar commander. Worf refuses to yield; Ikat'ika, impressed by Worf's determination, yields the fight. The Vorta overseer, enraged, orders Ikat'ika's immediate execution. As the troops turn their guns to Worf, Garak manages to activate the transmitter, and they are beamed away to the runabout at the last second. There, Bashir sends an urgent message to DS9. The Changeling Bashir's runabout is carrying a bomb intended to detonate inside the sun, incinerating DS9, Bajor, and the combined Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan forces. Receiving Bashir's message, Sisko orders that runabout destroyed. The Defiant takes the risky maneuver of engaging warp drive within the solar system in order to pull the runabout away from the sun and detonate it safely. No Cardassian/Dominion fleet arrives; the impending attack was a ruse. Garak, Worf, Bashir, and Martok are reunited with their friends and loved ones, and Sisko finalizes the peace treaty with the Klingons. Martok is appointed to command the new permanent Klingon presence on DS9. ===== David is emotionally insecure. He grows up in the hotel his parents manage, where he is influenced by artist Herbie Bratasky, who, thanks to his ingenuity in imitating sounds of farts, defecation and toilet flushing, is credited with "mastering the whole Wagner scale of fecal Storm and Stress". When he attends a college, he rooms with a lazy, often-masturbating, homosexual, draft-dodging, fellow student, who inadvertently adds to Kepesh's insecurity. At first, he seems to accept the odd facts about his colleague, but then he's shocked when he's told by others that he deviated from so many social norms. David, often lusting after female co-students, never has a successful date. He often annoys girls by telling them they have gorgeous bodily features. Kepesh, with a Fulbright grant in his pocket, goes to London, where he meets two sexually interested Swedish girls, Birgitta and Elisabeth. Back in America, he moves to California, where he gets acquainted with Helen, a woman dreaming of opening a store. Helen has a history of promiscuity dating back to her early twenties, when she lived in Hong Kong and other places in Asia. Helen does not feel loved by Kepesh. She refuses to do household duties because Kepesh gives her only sexual attention; unable to speak of his emotions, Kepesh submits to that "fact" and ends up doing all the housework as well as teaching literature classes and writing papers on Anton Chekhov. Kepesh separates from Helen and goes to New York to give lectures in literature, but his emotional side not yet formed or refined, he has endless sessions with a psychoanalyst and even uses his literature class (which he later calls "Desire 341" after the course number) to contrast his own desires and experiences with those portrayed in works like Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. He even persuades the students to hear about and discuss his own love life. On a visit to Prague, birthplace of the equally sexually inexperienced Franz Kafka, he dreams of visiting the still-living prostitute of Kafka who invites him to look at her crotch; presuming he wants to see why it held Kafka's interest for so long. Category:1977 American novels Category:Novels by Philip Roth Category:Farrar, Straus and Giroux books ===== A mysterious, middle-aged man wearing a dark suit and black leather gloves is the only customer in a Hoboken, New Jersey bar. He looks longingly at a picture of a woman that he keeps in his wallet. He then has a tense conversation with the bartender, in which he reveals that he once lived in Hoboken years ago, but is now passing through "on business" because he is a "travelling salesman." While the man is in the bar's restroom, a teenage boy named Lake, dressed as a cowboy and brandishing a gun, bursts into the bar. He tells the bartender that the middle-aged man is actually the "Man with No Name" (a.k.a. "Mr. Smith"), a notorious hitman on the FBI's "most wanted" list. Using a makeshift silencer, Lake shoots and kills the bartender and ambushes the "Man with No Name" when the older man returns to pay his bill. Lake, a violent but inexperienced gunman, holds the "Man with No Name" at gunpoint and reveals his intention to kill the hitman in order to bolster his own criminal reputation; but the hitman calmly outwits the teenager, lulls him into a false sense of security, and then knocks him out with a punch. However, Lake recovers, the two struggle, and Lake pins the hitman to the floor and prepares to shoot him in cold blood. During a brief exchange of words, the hitman realizes that (unbeknownst to the boy) his young challenger is the son that he was forced to abandon years earlier. Appealing to Lake's vanity, the hitman convinces the boy to engage him in a fair test of their respective skills: a fast draw. The two have a showdown, which the "Man with No Name" easily wins by shooting the gun out of Lake's hand. Instead of killing the teenager, he shoots the boy's other hand. Demoralized, defeated, and suffering from the pain of two wounded hands, the teenager slumps to floor. The "Man with No Name" then reveals that he is Lake's father; he proves it by taking out his wallet and showing the boy the picture of the woman he was looking at earlier. The woman in the picture was the hitman's beloved, deceased wife as well as Lake's mother. The hitman tells the boy that, years earlier, he had fallen in love with and married Lake's mother and had given up his life of crime. However, when Lake was a baby, a man came to challenge the hitman to showdown, and, not finding him home, killed the hitman's wife instead. Unable to take care of the boy, the hitman resumed his criminal career and abandoned Lake. Finally reunited, father and son embrace, but their reunion is interrupted when the police show up outside the bar. In order to save Lake from the consequences of the bartender's murder, the hitman quickly rearranges to the crime scene to implicate himself and make it look like a botched robbery attempt. Before the cops storm the bar, he gives Lake his wallet, tells him that he can be anything he wants to be, but also advises him against becoming a gunman. As a policeman breaks through the door, the hitman levels his gun at the cop, winks at Lake, and is killed when the policeman shoots him in the chest. ===== Chris Walters is a happily married father of two. For his 13th wedding anniversary, he sneaks home with a gift for wife Alice, a diamond brooch, and with a desire to have a romantic interlude. Interruptions ensue. If it isn't their children, Debbie, and Okkie, needing something, it's their maid, Millie, or it's Alice's mother, Lilly, on the phone. And then two delivery men arrive with a new television set. It's a gift from Alice's parents, Lilly and Arthur. Chris is not pleased. He hates television, and thinks the whole idea of TV is a needless distraction and corrupting influence on today's youth. At work, Chris has a partner, Bud, who is trying to woo a new client, Jeanette Revere, a woman who has been divorced four times. Jeanette is amazed in this day and age that a couple can remain happily married as long as the Walters' have. Over a celebration dinner, Chris lets it slip that he and Alice had sex a year before they got married. Lilly and Arthur are offended, having been under the impression that Alice didn't have sex with Chris until they were wed. They storm out. Chris is so angry, he kicks in the screen of the new TV. He argues with Alice and has to spend his anniversary night sleeping on the sofa. A gift arrives from Bud—it's another TV. Chris is irritated again, but promises not to cause a scene this time. When they turn it on, however, a show called "Kids Kouncil" has his daughter Debbie as a guest. And the child blurts out for all to hear that her parents are having marital difficulties, and had been intimate prior to their wedding. Chris again kicks in the TV. Chris storms out of the house this time. Elsewhere, Alice's parents also have a quarrel, which eventually leads to Lilly attempting to move in with her daughter. Everybody's angry now. A distraught Chris wants to come home. Alice feels no one cares about her. She intends to leave home herself. The family doctor, however, suddenly informs Alice that she is pregnant. She decides to give Chris another chance, as a gift arrives, yet another TV. This time it is from Chris. ===== Brilliant ventriloquist Gabbo (Erich von Stroheim) increasingly uses his dummy "Otto" as his only means of self-expression—an artist driven insane by his work. Gabbo's gimmick is his astonishing ability to make Otto talk—and even sing—while Gabbo himself smokes, drinks and eats. Gabbo's girlfriend and assistant Mary (Betty Compson) loves him, but is driven to leave him by his megalomania, superstitions, irritability, and inability to express any human emotion without using Otto as an intermediary. In Otto's voice, Gabbo accepts the blame for Mary's leaving and recounts all the things she did for him, but as Gabbo he denies his feelings and tells the dummy to shut up. Two years later, Gabbo has become a nationally renowned ventriloquist. He is revered for his talent, even as he is ridiculed for his eccentricity: he takes Otto with him everywhere he goes, even dining out with him, providing much entertainment to the restaurant patrons. Despite his success he continues to pine for Mary, who is now romantically involved with another singer/dancer, Frank (Donald Douglas). With both Mary and Frank performing in a show in which Gabbo is the headliner, he attempts to win her back. Mary is charmed by Gabbo's new romantic behavior, driving Frank to angry fits of jealousy. As his courtship meets with continued success, Gabbo increasingly expresses his emotions to Mary directly, without using Otto. One day Gabbo finds that in his absence, Mary has straightened up his dressing room the way that she always used to. Convinced that she wants to come back to him, he confronts her with his feelings, admitting his loneliness without her and in the process revealing that he has grown past many of his old failings, such as his superstitions and obsession with his personal success. However, Mary tells him that she loves Frank, and has been married to him since before Gabbo came back into her life. She says that she missed Otto but not Gabbo, and in a last farewell she says "I love you" to Otto. In profound frustration at this, after Mary is gone Gabbo punches Otto in the face, but immediately apologizes and embraces the dummy, weeping. He then storms onto the stage during the finale and loudly rants at the performers. He is forced off the stage and fired from the show. Mary tries to confront Gabbo afterwards, but he only looks at her sadly and walks away. Finally, workers take down the letters advertising "The Great Gabbo" from the marquee as Gabbo looks on. ===== A goalkeeper is sent off during a game for dissent. He spends the night with a cinema cashier, whom he afterwards kills. Although a type of detective film, it is more slow moving and contemplative than other films of the genre. It explores the monotony of the murderer's existence and, like many of Wenders' films, the overwhelming cultural influence of America in post-war West Germany. ===== Dr. Julian Bashir is playing a holosuite game in which he portrays a glamorous secret agent in the 1960s. His friend Elim Garak, a former spy, tags along. Meanwhile, other officers of Deep Space Nine are rescued from the explosion of a runabout by Cmdr. Eddington, who beams them out in the nick of time. The transporter is damaged by the explosion, and Eddington must store their patterns in the station's computer memory. Their physical patterns end up in the computer controlling the holosuite, appearing as characters in Bashir's simulation. Eddington informs Bashir that he can't shut down the program or let the characters die, or else the patterns of the crew members may be deleted. Making matters worse, the holosuite safeties are disabled, meaning Bashir and Garak could be hurt or killed by the game. In the game, a Russian spy, Anastasia Komananov, appears with Major Kira's likeness. Komananov explains that a mad scientist, Dr. Noah, is kidnapping elite scientists; Bashir's orders are to rescue Professor Honey Bare (with the likeness of Jadzia Dax). After escaping the assassin Falcon (Miles O'Brien), Bashir, Garak and Komananov go to a casino to speak to Noah's associate Duchamps (Worf). After a game of baccarat, Duchamps drugs the trio, knocking them out. They awaken in Dr. Noah's lair on Mount Everest. Noah (Captain Sisko) explains his plan to flood the rest of the world, wiping out the human race except for his kidnapped scientists. He has Bashir and Garak handcuffed to an underground laser that will flood the chamber with lava in five minutes. As the time ticks down, Bashir flirts with Prof. Bare, and she slips him a key. Bashir frees himself and Garak, who protests that continuing the simulation is too dangerous. Garak is about to close the program, potentially killing the other crew members, when Bashir shoots him, grazing him with a bullet. Garak is shocked, but impressed, and agrees to continue. They burst into Noah's study, and Eddington tells them he will attempt to rescue Sisko and the others in two minutes. To gain time, Bashir hits the button to activate Noah's plan, flooding the Earth. Dr. Noah is still about to shoot Bashir, but before he can pull the trigger, Eddington beams the crew's patterns out of the holosuite. Bashir and Garak end the program with relief: Bashir "saved the day" by "destroying the world". ===== The film tells the story of missionary Nathaniel "Nate" Williamson, taken to an island mission with his fiancée Sophie. Their ship, the Rona, is captained by the roguish William "Bully" Hayes, who also takes a liking to Sophie. When Sophie is kidnapped by slave trader Ben Pease, "Nate" teams with Hayes in order to find her. The two men enjoy a friendly rivalry for Sophie's affections, and she is to some extent torn between them, though committed to Nate. ===== Unlike previous Saint stories, which were straightforward realistic crime dramas, The Last Hero saw Simon Templar entering the realm of both science fiction and spy fiction. The novel starts an unspecified length of time after the events of Enter the Saint with an account of Simon Templar, The Saint, foiling an assassination attempt on a visiting prince by tricking the would-be assassin into blowing himself up. This leads to The Saint becoming a cause célèbre among the British people, to the point where the government offers him not only a full pardon for past crimes, but also a job as a sanctioned crime- buster. Templar politely refuses, saying he prefers to remain underground, his identity a secret to all but a select few. (He would revisit this decision, however, in the later story "The Impossible Crime" (featured in the collection Alias the Saint) and again in the novel, She Was a Lady.) Over the next three months, the Saint operates so far in the shadows that the general public thinks he has retired or disappeared. During this time, Templar hears from a reporter friend about troubling indications that conditions for a new war in Europe might be brewing (Templar insists that after the events of the First World War there wouldn't be another such war "for hundreds of years"). Later, during an outing in the countryside with fellow adventurer and girlfriend Patricia Holm, Templar stumbles upon a secret British government installation where he and Holm witness the testing of a deadly and mysterious weapon—the electroncloud machine, which creates a vapour capable of turning anything (and anyone) it touches into ash. Templar and Holm are about to leave when they encounter a giant of a man named Rayt Marius, an evil tycoon who wants the weapon for his own purposes. After escaping to safety, Templar determines that he and his team must steal or destroy the weapon before their government—or any other—can use it against people. Not only that, but the weapon must not be allowed to fall into Marius' hands. In order that such a weapon never be re- created, Templar also plans to kidnap the device's inventor and, if necessary, kill the scientist. Things become complicated when Marius kidnaps Patricia Holm, setting Templar off into an uncharacteristically murderous rage. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard Inspector Claud Eustace Teal also finds himself getting involved, even though the identity of The Saint remains a mystery to him. After rescuing Patricia from the clutches of Marius, Templar realises that his quest for anonymity is at an end (with both Marius and Teal now aware of who he really is) and begins to make plans to leave the country (along with his compatriots if they so choose). But first he must try to convince the inventor of the electroncloud to abandon the weapon; when the scientist indicates that he not only refuses to give up his work, but might also be mad, Templar reluctantly decides the man must die to potentially save the lives of millions. Before he can execute the scientist, Templar's base is attacked by Marius, who is revealed to be working for the same prince Templar earlier saved. During the melee, one of Templar's men, Norman Kent, completes the Saint's orders and kills the scientist; he does so after determining that whoever killed the scientist would be likely to hang for murder if caught, and out of loyalty to Templar chose to take the chance himself. It is also revealed that Kent, who had only been mentioned briefly in previous Saint adventures, harboured an unrequited love for Patricia Holm, possibly originating from a Mediterranean cruise on which Templar had assigned Kent to take Holm to keep her out of trouble (as indicated in Enter the Saint). Later, while being held at gunpoint by Marius and the prince, Kent reveals that he killed the scientist, but not before being given the man's final notes on the electroncloud. In exchange for Marius and the Prince allowing the Saint and his friends Patricia and Roger Conway to go free, Kent agrees to hand over the documents. After Templar and his group (save Kent) depart, Kent reveals that he has played a trick on Marius and had secretly passed the notes off to Simon before his departure. As the book ends, Marius shoots Norman Kent dead as he stands in front of a window to stop Marius shooting through it. The Last Hero was published 15 years before the advent of nuclear weapons, and nine years before the outbreak of the Second World War, yet contains statements that could be seen as predicting these two milestones. Perhaps coincidentally, the name Albert Einstein is mentioned in passing. The electroncloud device is only shown in action once and, while the inventor of the device is killed, and Marius states to Templar that the machine Templar and Holm witnessed in action was destroyed by his men, it is never revealed what, if anything, Templar did with the scientist's notes. It is noteworthy that "The Last Hero" was published on the same year as Olaf Stapledon's vast Science Fiction opus Last and First Man - an otherwise utterly different kind of book, yet Stapledon also included the plot element of a scientist inventing a terrible weapon of mass destruction, which must be suppressed, even at the const of its inventor's life. The Last Hero was the first of a trilogy of novels. The events of this novel (in particular the fate of Norman Kent) led to an immediate sequel, Knight Templar (a.k.a. The Avenging Saint), which was published later in 1930 and which takes place three months after the conclusion of Last Hero. In 1932, after an interval of a number of unrelated novellas and a full-length novel, the trilogy concluded with Getaway. After this book, the character of Holm fades somewhat into the background for a time, although she would return to the forefront in the novella collection The Holy Terror. The tone of the book is far more romantic and tragic than the average Simon Templar books. In most books of the series, the reader can know in advance that no matter what terrible threats and perils Templar would face, he would survive them all and live to have new adventures in the next book and the next. Conversely, in the present book Charteris drops many hints that Norman Kent is in effect "fey", meaning doomed to die—for example, his hopeless but gallant love for Patricia Holm. Norman Kent, rather than Templar, is the true protagonist—certainly in the book's later parts. With reference to this book, Caroline Whitehead and George McLeod wrote: > (...) Norman Kent is an archetypal knight-errant. Though formally a man of > 20th Century England, he lives (and dies) by the Code of Chivalry. He loves > totally his Lady, Patricia Holm—who, like Don Quixote's Dulcinea, is not > aware of that love. He is totally loyal to his Liege Lord, Simon Templar. > Like Sir Gawain in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", Norman Kent takes on > threats made to his Lord, wholly and without reservation. Not only physical > threats to life and limb, but also the sometimes unavoidable necessity to > perform dishonorable acts which would have reflected badly on the reputation > of King Arthur/Simon Templar are taken unflinchingly by Sir Gawain/Norman > Kent.Caroline Whitehead and George McLeod, "Knights Errant of the Nineteenth > and Early Twentieth Centuries", Chapter 5. The third sentence of this, however, is contradicted by Patricia herself: > "Dear Pat," said Norman Kent, "I've always longed for a chance to serve you. > And now it's come. You knew I loved you, didn't you?" She touched his hand. > "Don't, Norman dear … please! … Of course I knew. I couldn't help knowing. > I'm so sorry…" . ===== On finding that her mum has just won the lottery, Rose decides to visit Earth. Rose and the Doctor go to visit Mickey, who tells them that everyone is playing Death to Mantodeans, the game that is complementary with the console. Interested, the Doctor starts playing it, while Rose goes out. The Doctor and Robert are again interrupted by Quevvils calling to find out why the game isn't being played as expected. The door explodes before they are able to get the controlled Quevvil to respond, so the Doctor has to go back to pretending to play. He and Robert are taken to another room. All of the other prisoners are brought into the room as well, and the Doctor is told that one will be killed every time he deviates from the game. Rose makes it to the center of the game, and the Quevvils get ready to teleport, but the Doctor has Mickey send a signal that disrupts it, which atomizes all the Quevvils. Rose finds that she can move and talk on her own again. ===== Yuk Jiaolong takes up kung fu with the former rebel master Jade Fox as a way to escape an undesirable arranged marriage, while simultaneously, sword master Li Mu Bai falls in love with Yu Shu Lien when she arrives to avenge the murder of her parents. When the Green Destiny Sword turns up stolen, and the notorious female thief Jade Fox arrives to finish the ordeal, the four become enmeshed in a tangle of adventure, vengeance, and betrayal. ===== "A Letter from the Clearys" starts with a young teenage girl and her dog making their way home through the countryside after a visit to the town's post office. The main character is living with her parents, older brother and a neighbour. She feels somewhat neglected as her family are very busy building a greenhouse. In addition, while calling her dog she contrasts him with her first dog. When the protagonist arrives home she reveals that she has found a letter from their friends, the Clearys. This family was due to have visited them 'before' but never came and they had always wondered why, wondering if a letter had been delivered to another family's postbox. The family is somewhat reluctant to hear the letter read but the protagonist reads it out anyway. As Mrs Cleary asks for news about the family, the letter reveals that the older brother had been married and had a child, and also that the Clearys will have to postpone their planned visit till the next month. This ordinary cheerful letter upsets the family greatly and the protagonist states that this is not her fault, she simply found the letter. It is now revealed that the family are hiding from looters in the aftermath of a nuclear war, which happened two years earlier. The missing family members had been on a day trip to one of the many places totally destroyed in the war, while the remaining family members are desperately trying to survive a nuclear winter (hence the importance of the green house) and any starving looters. After one such attack the father's fear of returning looters led to his shooting at his daughter and killing her first dog. As the story closes the father is boarding up the abandoned post office as they cannot bear the possibility of finding another long-lost letter and any further reminder of how much they have lost. The protagonist now reveals to the reader that, far from accidentally stumbling across the letter, she had been searching for it ever since 'it' happened. The letter had indeed been placed in the wrong postbox. ===== As the story progresses, a woman (Carol) begins to have déjà vu of the same car ride on their second honeymoon with the same bloody outcome every time. It never ends. It is implied, but never said, that they have crashed on the plane to their honeymoon location and they may be in Hell or Purgatory. ===== Sarah Jane wants to meet Rudyard Kipling, and so the Doctor materializes in Victorian England. However, there is trouble: Children have vanished, lights have been seen beneath the bay, with fishermen found mutilated, and graves have been robbed. The Doctor and a whaler's doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle, join to expose a plot to mess with human evolution, while Sarah Jane and Kipling face horrors of their own. ===== In 1965, sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) and her disabled 15-year-old sister, Jenny (Hayley McFarland) enjoy themselves at a carnival. Their parents, Lester (Nick Searcy) and Betty (Romy Rosemont), who work in the carnival circuit, reconcile their previously estranged relationship and agree to go on a tour together. To cope with these changes, they decide to leave the Likens sisters in the care of an impoverished single mother named Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener), since they have befriended her children at church. Gertrude agrees to this since the parents have promised to pay her $20 per week to take care of the Likens sisters. Their stay is initially pleasant, until Lester's weekly payment fails to arrive. Infuriated, Gertrude whips the sisters with a belt in the basement. The payment, along with a letter from the parents, nevertheless arrives but Gertrude intentionally discards the letter and says nothing to the Likens girls. Her daughter, Paula (Ari Graynor), is later upset when Sylvia informs Paula’s abusive boyfriend about her secret pregnancy. Gertrude forces Sylvia to apologize for "spreading lies" and has her son Johnny (Tristan Jarred) restrain Sylvia in order that Paula can slap her in the face and punch and restrain her. The rumors surrounding Paula's pregnancy soon circulate around their school. Meanwhile, Jenny discovers the letter from their parents in the trash, prompting Sylvia to call them. The Baniszewski children notice her calling her parents and inform their mother. Gertrude believes that they stole the money from her to make the call (in reality, they had traded empty Coke bottles in for money) and burns Sylvia's hand with a cigarette. The abuse escalates as Gertrude accuses Sylvia of flirting with Andy, the father of Gertrude's infant son, and starting more rumors. Gertrude then forces Sylvia to insert an empty glass Coke bottle inside her vagina in front of her children before ordering Johnny and Stephanie's (Scout Taylor-Compton) boyfriend, Coy Hubbard (Jeremy Sumpter), to drag her across the floor and push her down the stairs into the basement as Jenny begins to weep. Gertrude assures a fearful Jenny that Sylvia will remain in the basement "until she learns her lesson". To cover up the situation, she instructs her children to maintain the fiction that Sylvia was sent to juvenile detention for her bad influence. With Gertrude's knowledge and approval, Johnny regularly invites the neighborhood children to the basement to beat and burn Sylvia for fun. Paula soon feels guilty and tells her mother that she believes that Sylvia has been punished enough. Gertrude ignores her, but the local Reverend (Michael O'Keefe) arrives, hinting that Paula has confessed to him about her pregnancy and Sylvia's ongoing abuse. Gertrude tells him that Sylvia was sent to juvenile detention. Once the Reverend leaves, Gertrude orders everyone into the basement. In the basement, Gertrude restrains Sylvia on the floor and begins branding the words "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT" on her stomach with a heated needle. When Gertrude is unable to finish, she gives the needle to her teenage neighbor Ricky Hobbs (Evan Peters) and orders him to continue the branding. That night, Paula quietly helps Sylvia escape from the basement. Gertrude is awakened by one of her daughters and tries to prevent Sylvia's escape, but Paula stops her. Ricky finds her and drives her to her parents, who are horrified by Sylvia's condition when she shows them her branding as proof. Sylvia asks them to drive her back to the Baniszewski household to make sure Jenny is okay which they do. As soon as she enters the house, she oversees a distraught Stephanie leaning over Sylvia's dead body trying to revive her with Ricky helping—to no avail. The escape is proved to be a hallucination. Gertrude believes that Sylvia is faking it until Stephanie sadly announces that Sylvia is dead. When the police arrive, one of the officers ask Ricky what happened. Jenny approaches them and tells the officer to take her so she can explain everything. At a murder trial, Jenny reveals to the prosecutor that Sylvia did not do anything to hurt Gertrude or anyone else and that Gertrude threatened her with the same treatment if she told anyone the truth. Gertrude denies any wrongdoing and blames her children and their friends for Sylvia's death. Despite this, she is declared guilty of first- degree murder and is sentenced to life in prison. Sylvia's voiceover also narrates the fates of her other murderers. In her prison cell, Gertrude sees Sylvia's ghost but before she attempts to apologize, the ghost disappears. It is also revealed that Gertrude was released on parole in 1985 but died less than five years later. ===== ===== Georgian bush pilot Valiko Mizandari a.k.a. Mimino (Vakhtang Kikabidze) works at small local airline, flying helicopters between small villages. But he dreams of piloting large international airliners, so he decides to go to Moscow to follow his dream. There in a hotel he meets Armenian truck driver Ruben Khachikyan (Frunzik Mkrtchyan) who is given a place in that hotel by mistake instead of another Khachikyan (Professor), and they have many adventures in Moscow. Always amicable and open to people, Mimino does not feel at home in the big city. Nevertheless, he becomes a pilot of a supersonic jet liner, the Tupolev Tu-144, flying all over the world. Feeling homesick, he finally comes back to his native town of Telavi in Georgia, to his family and friends. Mimino's real name in the film is Valiko Mizandari—his nickname "Mimino" () is the Georgian word for sparrow hawk, although it is stated on the back cover of the DVD that "Mimino" means falcon. ===== When the Doctor, Ian and Barbara arrive on Venus, they find an ancient civilization on the edge of extinction. Conflict brews between those who accept oblivion and those desperate for salvation. Then a space-traveling race arrives, offering to rescue the Venusians by transporting them to Earth, three billion years before man is due to evolve. But are the visitors' motivations that simple, and can the Doctor allow the sacrifice of humanity's future to save another species? ===== The Crystal Bucephalus is a future restaurant patronised by the highest of society, projected back in time to sample the food and drink of long gone eras. However, when a notorious kingpin is slain in the Bucephalus, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are immediately suspected and arrested. In order to prove their innocence, they must find the real perpetrators, and in the process uncover a conspiracy 5000 years in the making. =====