From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== In Kenosha, Wisconsin, Darcy, editor at her high school paper, and her steady boyfriend Stan are in their final year of high school and already have been accepted at good colleges. Before Darcy goes to the University of Wisconsin to study journalism, she will go on a trip to Paris with her mother for her graduation present, while Stan will go to Caltech to study architecture. With the help of Darcy's best friend Lila, Darcy and Stan spend a weekend together and Darcy becomes pregnant. They announce the pregnancy to their families at Thanksgiving. Neither Darcy's single parent mother Donna nor Stan's Catholic parents are very supportive. Respectively, they urge the young couple to have an abortion or give up the baby for adoption. Darcy plans to have an abortion, but does not go through with it, much to Stan's relief. At Christmas, the kids announce their plans to keep the baby, causing a break between them and their parents. They rent a decrepit apartment and marry to the cheers of their friends, despite the fact that without parental consent the marriage is not legal. At the urging of her high school guidance counselor, who explains that other girls will want to emulate her and become adolescent mothers themselves, Darcy drops out of high school but works toward her GED. Prom is interrupted by Darcy's water breaking. Although baby Thea (short for Theodosia) is healthy, Darcy suffers from post-partum depression, unable to even hold her daughter, and Stan struggles to pay the bills on a part-time job salary. Only when Darcy hears an intruder (who turns out to be Stan's father) and picks up her baby protectively does she break from her depression. Without telling Darcy, Stan sacrifices his Caltech scholarship because there is no married housing at the school for undergraduates. Stan and Darcy’s relationship starts to crumble with fights. Although Stan takes a second dead-end job, the bills pile up, and the couple finally moves in with Donna, which alienates Stan and Darcy, and causes Stan to drink heavily. Local neighborhood girl Michaela informs Darcy of the scholarship deception so she enlists Stan's best friend Chris in a plan to ensure he take the scholarship and go to college after all. The plan entails throwing Stan out and annulling the marriage. Stan has a bad reaction to the news and later in the night goes into a rage outside their house. Stan reconciles with his parents, but is heartbroken over the split with Darcy, who does not change her mind but becomes visibly angrily at her mother's cold attitude. At Darcy's night school graduation, Stan arrives to inform Darcy that he has applied for scholarships to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for them both. Darcy lets slip her role in the Caltech deception with Chris, and Stan chases after her as she drives away. Darcy finally tells Donna that Stan is a good man, that she loves him and Donna can either embrace them as an entire family or watch them live their lives without her. They reconcile intending to go forward with their plans to attend college in Madison in the fall. ===== In Namibia, a Sngoma named Joe Niemand recites a story about "the desert wind (soo-oop-wa), who was a man, until. by mischance, he grew wings and flew like a bird. He became a hunter and like a hawk he flew to seek his prey, taking refuge in the far corners of the world where magic still lingers, But having once been a man, he still suffer the passions of a man, "flying in the rages sometimes, and throwing himself down like a child, to vent his wrath upon the earth." and stating that the people of the great Namib refer to them as Dust Devils. A man walks on a road in the desert, and meets with a woman named Saarke driving along it, who takes him back to her house. While the two have sex, the man kills her. Meanwhile, in the town of Bethanie, Sgt. Ben Mukurob receives a phone call with strange voices speaking, as does Wendy Robinson in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the morning, the man burns down Saarke's house & leaves in her car. In Johannesburg, Wendy's husband Mark accuses her of cheating on him, leading her to leave him and drive to Namibia. Meanwhile, Mukurob and Captain Beyman investigate Saarke's house and find strange pictographs on the wall. Wendy runs her car off the road near a camper with a man near by. After the two push her car back on the road, Wendy then sees Dust Devil on the road side and offers him a ride.. Cpl. Dutoit and Cpl. Bates then find the camper with dismembered body parts inside. Mukurob drives to Joe's home that the symbols found were the work of magic, to which Mukurob scoffs. Wendy and Dust Devil continue driving and pass another hitch-hiker, but Dust Devil tells Wendy not to stop. As they pass the hitch-hiker, Dust Devil disappears. With Dust Devil secretly watching, Wendy stops at a small motel for the night and tries to commit suicide but stops herself. Wendy goes to her car the next morning and finds Dust Devil inside, who tells her that she was asleep the day before. Meanwhile, Beyman gives Mukurob documents about murders similar to the one he is following dating back as far as 1908. Wendy and Dust Devil reach the Fish River Canyon as Wendy's husband Mark, arrives in Namibia and begins his search for her. Joe takes Mukurob to a mountain cave and tells him that the murders are the work of the "naghtloper", a shape-shifting demon who gains power over the material world through ritual murder. Joe explains that the naghtloper must keep moving to work the ritual, but if he is tricked to step over a kierie stick, he will be bound to one spot and his power can be taken. Joe then gives Mukurob a kierie and a sacred root to burn to prevent the naghtloper from possessing him after it is killed. Wendy discovers human fingers among Dust Devil's belongings which leads to him to attempt to kill her which Wendy escapes. Dust Devil pursues her leading to Wendy crashing her car and escaping into the desert. Meanwhile, Mukurob releases Mark from prison as they search for Wendy. As drive through a dust storm, Dust Devil attacks them, causing the car to flip over. Mukurob handcuffs Mark to the car and heads into the storm, telling him that he has a chance since the naghtloper only takes those who have nothing to live for. Wendy reaches the abandoned town of Kolmanskop where Mukurob finds her and searches for Dust Devil. He runs into Dust Devil, who stabs him. Wendy then finds Dust Devil as Mukurob takes the kierie and puts it in front of Dust Devil as he steps forward. Wendy picks up Mukurob's shotgun and kills Dust Devil as he says, "I love you, Wendy". Wendy then walks into the desert past Mark and the car, lies on the road and pulls over a fleet of army Casspirs. The film ends with Joe saying, "The desert knows her name now, he has stolen both her eyes. When she looks into a mirror, she will see his spirit like a shawl blowing tatters around her shoulders in a haze. And beyond the dim horizon, a tapestry unfolding of the avenues of evil, and all of history set ablaze." ===== Dr. Marcus Monserrat (Boris Karloff) is an elderly practitioner of medical hypnosis. He lives with his wife Estelle Monserrat (Catherine Lacey). He has invented a device which would allow him to control and feel another person's experience using the power of hypnosis. They decide any youngster will do as their test subject. Dr. Marcus Monserrat selects and invites Mike Roscoe (Ian Ogilvy) to his house, with an offer of a 'new experience'. He uses the device on Mike and the procedure is successful: He and Estelle can feel everything Mike feels, and can also control him. After the procedure, they decide to send Mike away to conduct the experiment over distance. Mike returns to the club where his girlfriend Nicole (Elizabeth Ercy) is waiting for him. Mike takes Nicole to his apartment, and they swim in the pool. Marcus and Estelle are able to experience everything Mike feels. While Marcus wants to publish his work, Estelle wants to make up for lost time and to experience new things. She convinces a reluctant Marcus to continue with their arrangement with Mike. Next day, Estelle sees a fur jacket in a store and convinces Marcus to use Mike to steal the jacket. Marcus reluctantly agrees on the condition that they will not do it again. While Mike is at Nicole's apartment, Estelle and Marcus make Mike steal the jacket. Mike leaves without informing Nicole, who decides to go a night club with Alan (Victor Henry). Despite a cop getting involved, Mike successfully steals the jacket. Estelle realizes that they could do anything they want without any consequences. Estelle wants to experience the thrill of speed. So Estelle and Marcus make Mike borrow Alan's bike and ride very fast with Nicole on the pillion seat. When Alan confronts Mike, Estelle makes Mike assault him and his boss, Ron (Alf Joint). Estelle enjoys the experience but Marcus is shocked. He tries to prevent the fight but Estelle's mind turns out to be stronger. When Marcus confronts Estelle, Estelle assaults Marcus and destroys the experimental device, thereby preventing Marcus from reversing the experiment. Mike blanks out every time Estelle and Marcus control him. A confused Mike visits his friend Audrey (Susan George), but Estelle makes Mike kill her. Mike then goes to the night club and hooks up with pop singer Laura (Sally Sheridan). Alan and Nicole see Mike taking Laura out of the night club. The couple are dropped by a taxi in a deserted street where Mike orders Laura to sing. When she fails to follow his instructions, he kills her too. The following day, Alan tells Nicole he believes Mike might have killed the girls. Alan wants to inform the police but Nicole convinces him to talk to Mike first. The police track Mike with help of the taxi driver. Alan and Nicole confront Mike about Laura but Mike does not remember anything. Under the influence of Estelle, Mike attacks Alan again and escapes in a car. Police investigators track down Mike, and in the ensuing chase, Marcus interferes with Estelle's control. Mike's car crashes and catches fire. Back at the apartment, Estelle and Marcus are both dead due to burn injuries. ===== Crime map showing "Petra, the place of sacrifice" from Dell Mapback #105 Holidaying in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears Raymond Boynton telling his sister, "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Their stepmother, Mrs Boynton, is a sadistic tyrant who dominates her family. When she is found dead on a trip to Petra, Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of knowing whether it was murder. ===== ===== The book's frame narrative and premise is that "after dabbling in radical politics", Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a science fiction illustrator, editor, and author. He wrote his final science fantasy novel Lord of the Swastika in six weeks in 1953, shortly before dying of cerebral hemorrhageThe Iron Dream pg 245 (possibly caused by tertiary syphilis); Lord of the Swastika subsequently wins the Hugo Award and the "colorful uniforms" described therein become a regular feature of cosplayers at science fiction conventions. Hitler's other published works include the long-running fanzine Storm and the novels The Master Race, The Thousand Year Rule, and The Triumph of the Will. In a faux review following the main narrative, presented as written by (fictitious) Dr. Homer Whipple of New York University, we learn more about the background of the alternate history in which Hitler emigrated to the United States. Without Hitler's leadership, the Nazi Party fell apart in 1923 and the Communist Party of Germany succeeded in fomenting a German communist revolution in 1930. As this alternate history continues, there is reference to a "Greater Soviet Union" which took over the United Kingdom in 1948, and whose influence is growing in Latin America by 1959. The fact that Whipple refers to World War I as "the Great War" implies that there has been no equivalent of World War II in this world. The core element in the historical backstory of Lord of the Swastika is a nuclear apocalypse but Whipple gives no indication about such weapons really existing in this alternate reality. Whipple also discloses that the Empire of Japan has retained its militarism, with reference to its bushido code of conduct, while the United States vacillates against the Greater Soviet Union's ascendancy. Due to the Greater Soviet Union threat, the United States and Japan have a close military and strategic alliance. Japanese militarist values are much admired in the United States. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (collectively called the Pacific Pact) are the only major powers standing between the Greater Soviet Union and total control of the globe—yet most Americans seem unable to be roused to deal with the looming Soviet danger. Whipple wonders what the emergence of an American leader like Feric Jaggar, the hero of Lord of the Swastika, could accomplish. Finally, there is a casual mention that, while in this history Nazi Germany never came into being, it is the Soviets who have undertaken a systematic genocide of the Jews of Europe in this world's version of the Holocaust. Lord of the Swastika is lauded for its qualities as a great work of heroic fantasy. To further hammer the point, in an early edition, actual science fiction writers wrote fictional statements of praise for "Hitler's" writing skills for Spinrad to use as blurbs on the novel's back cover. Irony abounds in Whipple's review, as he argues author Hitler is obviously wrong in assuming that not much more than midnight rallies and phallic symbolism would create a large number of supporters for a movement."Indeed, in the book Hitler seems to assume that masses of men in fetishistic uniforms marching in precise displays and displaying phallic gestures and paraphernalia will have a powerful appeal to ordinary human beings. Feric Jaggar comes to power in Heldon through little more than a grotesque series of increasingly grandiose phallic displays. This is undoubtedly phallic fetishism on the part of the author, since the alternative conclusion is to accept the ridiculous notion that an entire nation would throw itself at the feet of a leader simply on the basis of mass displays of public fetishism, orgies of blatant phallic symbolism, and mass rallies enlivened with torchlight and rabid oratory. Obviously, such a mass national psychosis could never occur in the real world..." pg 249 "After all", Dr. Whipple says, "it can't happen here", a reference to the political novel It Can't Happen Here. ===== ===== International terrorist Charles Rane (Payne), whose career has been dubbed as "The Rane of Terror" by media, is arrested by the FBI and local authorities in Miami, just as he is about to undergo plastic surgery in order to evade law enforcement. The FBI make plans to return Rane to Los Angeles aboard a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar passenger aircraft, for him to stand trial. Widower John Cutter (Snipes) is a retired United States Secret Service agent and police officer who is constantly haunted by the memories of his wife's death in a convenience store robbery, and has taken to training flight attendants in self defense, including Marti Slayton (Alex Datcher). After one class, Cutter is approached by an old friend, Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore), who offers Cutter the vice presidency of a new antiterrorism unit for his company, Atlantic International Airlines. Cutter is reluctant, but Delvecchio and the company's president, Stuart Ramsey (Bruce Greenwood), convince him to accept the offer. Cutter boards as the 57th passenger on an Atlantic International flight to Los Angeles, where Marti is one of the flight attendants. Rane and his two FBI escorts are also aboard. After the flight takes off, several henchpersons in Rane's employ, posing as flight attendants and passengers, kill the FBI agents, release Rane, and secure the plane by also killing the captain. Cutter, in the lavatory at the time, manages to use the plane's on-board phone to warn Delvecchio of the situation, but Cutter is soon discovered by one of Rane's henchmen. Cutter overpowers the henchman and takes his weapon; he then uses the agent as a shield to confront Rane. Rane is indifferent and shows his ruthlessness by taking a passenger hostage and then killing him without mercy. Rane also shoots his own henchman in a further show of force. Cutter realizes he is outmatched and escapes with Marti to the plane's cargo hold, dispatching another of Rane's men, Vincent, who is disguised as a caterer. Cutter dumps the plane's fuel, forcing Rane to order the surviving pilots to land at a small Louisiana airfield. As Cutter and Marti prepare to jump from the plane as it lands, Marti is caught by Forget and he kicks Cutter out of the plane. The local sheriff, Chief Leonard Biggs (Ernie Lively), arrests Cutter, thinking he is a terrorist, and takes him to the airport building. Rane contacts the field's tower and demands refueling, for which he promises half the passengers will be freed. For every five minutes of resistance or indecision, Rane will order five passengers to be executed. Rane also asserts that Cutter is one of his own men turned against him. Biggs gives the go-ahead for refueling, and as the passengers are freed, Rane and his men escape from the plane, having given orders to those still on board to kill the rest of the hostages if their plans are interfered with. Cutter recognizes the passenger release as a diversion, escapes from the sheriff, and chases Rane and his men into a local county fair. FBI agents arrive and confirm Cutter's true identity to Biggs. Cutter is able to kill one of Rane's men and gets into a fight with Rane before police arrive and capture him. Back at the tower, Rane announces that if he does not contact the plane and give flight clearance, his men aboard have been instructed to kill the rest of the hostages. The FBI agents arrange to return Rane to the plane, escorted by two agents, with plans to have a sniper take down Rane and allow them to storm the plane to save the hostages. However, the sniper is Vincent, who kills the escorts, but is shot dead by Cutter, and Rane makes it inside safely. Rane orders the pilots to take off, while Cutter, with Biggs' help, manages to jump from a car onto the speeding plane before it takes off. Inside, Cutter deals with more of Rane's accomplices before getting into a fight with Rane. Their fight blows out one of the plane's windows and the cabin loses its air pressure, causing a door to be blown out. Cutter manages to get Rane close to the open door and kicks him out of the plane, which sends Rane, screaming in terror, out into the night sky, where he falls to his death. The plane quickly returns to the airfield, where the FBI agents secure Rane's remaining agents and the remaining hostages are freed. Amid congratulations and celebration, Marti and Cutter make their quiet escape into the distance hand-in-hand, but not before Chief Biggs offers them a ride. ===== According to the game's manual, an evil magician named Abadon was able to use his power to summon groups of evil beasts, and then built a castle for himself. He then sent out his followers to rid the peace-loving land of Merlwood of its most powerful wizards, a task that was accomplished with ease. While this was going on, a young man named Paul, an apprentice magician who lives in the land of Serenna, is preparing to go on a quest to travel across the land to learn all of the secrets from the ancient masters. However, he hears of the purging of wizards by Abadon, and instead sets out as the last wizard alive to defeat Abadon. ===== Three years after the first film, 20-year-old Charley Brewster, as a result of psychiatric therapy, now believes that Jerry Dandrige was nothing but a serial killer posing as a vampire. As a result, he comes to believe that vampires never existed. College student Charley, along with his new girlfriend, Alex Young, go to visit Peter Vincent, who is again a burnt- out vampire killer on Fright Night, much to the chagrin of Charley. While visiting Peter's apartment Charley sees three large crates being offloaded from a truck. On the way out from Peter's apartment, Charley sees four strange people walk past him, into an elevator. Charley instantly becomes drawn to one of the four, the alluring Regine. Charley drives Alex back to her dorm and begins to make out with her, only to see himself kissing Regine and pull away. An upset Alex storms off, not realizing that something is following her. Another girl leaves the dorm as Alex enters, and she is followed and killed by one of Regine's vampires, Belle. Alex, meanwhile, is unaware that Louie, another of Regine's group, is scaling up the wall outside her window, but he is startled and falls when Alex inadvertently slams her window shut on his hands. Bozworth, a bug-eating servant of Regine, makes fun of Louie before consuming some bugs. Later that night, Charley dreams that Regine comes to visit him, only to turn into a vampire and bite him. The next day, Charley talks to his psychiatrist, Dr. Harrison, who assures him that what he dreamed was only natural. Alex finds Charley bowling, per doctor's orders, and Charley agrees to go to the symphony with her. On his way there, however, he sees his friend Richie with Regine and opts to follow him. Charley climbs up to a fire escape outside of Regine's apartment, only to be horrified when he sees Regine and Belle attack and drain Richie's blood. Charley runs off to find Peter, and the two of them arm themselves with crosses and crash Regine's party. There, Charley finds Richie, but is shocked to find him alive and well, with no bite marks on his neck. Regine makes her entrance, doing an erotic dance with a mesmerized Charley. She introduces herself to Peter and Charley, and claims to be a performance artist in town for some shows. Satisfied that what he thought was Regine attacking Richie was nothing but an act, Charley leaves when he remembers his date with Alex. Peter elects to stay behind and while looking around, he notes that there are people in the corners of the room biting others on the neck. Noting the odd behavior, he draws his pocket mirror and finds that Regine and Belle, who are dancing in the middle of the dance floor, cast no reflections. Storming out of the party, Peter runs into Regine waiting for him outside. As he runs down the stairwell Peter again comes face-to-face with Regine, who reveals herself as a vampire, the sister of Jerry Dandrige, and has come to take her revenge on both Charley and Peter. Peter runs back home and hides, resolving to tell Charley in the morning what has just transpired. Charley, meanwhile, after being turned away from the symphony, returns home and falls asleep, only to be visited by Regine, who bites him on the neck while he sleeps. Charley, content with the explanation that Regine is a performance artist, is once again in denial. He begins to discuss the situation with Alex when Peter arrives to try to warn the couple about Regine but neither believe him. Peter states that he has warned them and runs back to his home, packs his belongings and departs. Meanwhile, Charley has started to show signs of being a vampire as he is becoming sensitive to garlic and sunlight. After failing to talk to his psychiatrist, he overhears a news report about Richie's body being discovered the previous night. Now believing that everything is real, Charley goes to see Peter, only to find that Peter has gone. Louie is once again stalking Alex. Louie reveals his true nature to Alex and Charley and stalks them in the school library, only to flee after Alex injures him by cramming wild roses, which are harmful to vampires, into his mouth. Alex and Charley are then arrested by campus officers. Peter, meanwhile, is also arrested by the cops after he shows up on the set of Fright Night and attempting to kill its new host, Regine, on live TV. Everyone thinks he's lost his sanity as he says, "I have to kill the vampire"; and ends up in a state hospital. Alex is bailed out by Dr. Harrison and goes to post bail for Charley, only to find that he has already been bailed out by Regine. Alex and Dr. Harrison head to the state hospital when the doctor reveals that he is in fact a vampire. He tries to bite Alex only for her to turn the tables on him and run him through with a piece of wood. She then assumes his identity as a doctor and tries to have Peter released from the hospital. A distraction intentionally caused by one of the hospital's patients, Fritzy (who actually believes Peter's story about him being a vampire hunter) allows them to escape the place. Alex and Peter head to Regine's lair in order to save Charley. They find a disoriented Charley, who is slowly turning into a vampire. They rescue him and manage to kill a now undead Richie, Belle, Bozworth and Louie before confronting Regine. She attempts to escape into her coffin, but finds that Charley and Alex have lined it with Communion wafers. Regine knocks Alex unconscious and attempts to turn Charley into a vampire, but Peter destroys her with sunlight. Some time later, Charley and Alex discuss the previous day's events, with Alex joking that no one would ever believe them. They ponder if there are more vampires out there, but agree to continue on with their lives while being prepared, just in case. They embrace each other as a bat can be heard flying away. ===== Detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) flies to New York City to find criminal Warrick Tennyson (Frank Collison). In the preceding episode, criminal Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Tim Curry) told Monk that Tennyson was involved in the murder of Monk's wife, Trudy. On the trip, Monk is accompanied by his nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), and police officers Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Lieutenant Disher (Jason Gray- Stanford). They stay at the same hotel as the Latvian ambassador, who is subsequently discovered shot to death along with his two bodyguards. Police Captain Walter Cage (Mykelti Williamson) asks for Monk's help in solving the murder. Monk notices the ambassador's coat is damp, even though it had been dry minutes before the murder. The four retrace the ambassador's movements that day, discovering that he had stopped at a bar before arriving at the hotel. Then, Stottlemeyer and Disher go back to the precinct to try to get a bead on Tennyson's location while Monk and Sharona discover that the ambassador's final words meant "This is not my coat". Stottlemeyer breaks into Cage's office to discover that Tennyson is dying in a hospital and has days left to live. Stottlemeyer confronts Cage, who says the only way he will allow access to Tennyson is if Monk solves the ambassador's murder. Monk is briefly separated from the group after accidentally boarding the wrong train at Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets. While reuniting with his partners he notices Steven Leight (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) being interviewed on a TV screen in Times Square about the recent murder of his wife. Noticing Leight eating a mint from the same bar the ambassador had last been seen, Monk insists Steven Leight is the ambassador's murderer, despite the lack of supporting evidence. To support his theory, Monk proposes that Leight stole his wife's jewelry to stage a robbery, then proceeded to the bar before calling the police. He asserts Leight and the ambassador were wearing essentially identical coats, and that they must have been switched accidentally at the bar. As rain falls, Leight locates the ambassador's hotel room, and subsequently kills both him and his bodyguards, and switches the newly wet coat with his own. Subsequently, a ballistics report confirms that Leight killed his wife and the ambassador with the same gun and Leight is arrested. Having solved the case, Monk is allowed to visit Tennyson who remembers being hired by a man who had six fingers on his right hand. Tennyson asks for forgiveness, but Monk cannot bring himself to give it. He turns off Tennyson's morphine drip saying, "This is me, turning off your morphine;" but a few moments later, he says, "This is Trudy, the woman you killed, turning it back on," and does. The foursome prepares to leave New York, having gotten a step further in solving Monk's most important case. ===== Following the rebuilding of the Gaulish village after Brutus' attack in the previous story, Chief Vitalstatistix is trying to give a speech, when he is interrupted by the bard Cacofonix, whose song causes rain. This introduces Watziznehm the fakir, who falls from his flying carpet. Watziznehm explains he was searching for the village because he needs to make it rain in his country, a kingdom in the Ganges Valley, within the following 1001 hours, otherwise Princess Orinjade, daughter of Rajah Wotzit, will be sacrificed to the gods. This prophecy is part of an evil scheme by Grand Vizier Hoodunnit, to seize the throne. Vitalstatistix agrees to send the rain-making Cacofonix to India, accompanied by Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix. All five mount the flying carpet; but their journey is often interrupted either by Obelix's insistence on stopping for food, by Cacofonix's attempts to sing, and once by a lightning strike which forces them to replace the carpet. The Gauls eventually arrive in India with exactly 30 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds to save Orinjade; but Cacofonix has lost his voice during the journey, and Rajah Wotzit's doctors proclaim that to regain his voice, Cacofonix must take an overnight bath in a combination of elephant milk, dung and hair. Accordingly, the Gauls and Watziznehm take Cacofonix to elephant-trainer Howdoo and set up the bath; but Hoodunnit sends his henchmen to kidnap the bard and take him to an elephants' graveyard to be trampled by the wild elephant herd. Watziznehm, Asterix and Obelix set out to rescue the bard, but they are stopped by Owzat, Hoodunnit's fakir sidekick. While Watziznehm and Owzat curse each other, Asterix and Obelix escape to Howdoo, with whom they embark to the elephants' graveyard. After delays by tigers, monkeys, a rhinoceros and Hoodunnit's henchmen, they find Cacofonix alive and well, his smell having placated the elephants. Meanwhile, Watziznehm defeats Owzat and recovers the Gauls on his flying carpet. At the execution grounds, Asterix saves Orinjade, while Watziznehm intercepts Hoodunnit. Cacofonix recovers his voice after a dose of magic potion, and sings, causing rain. At the victory feast in the palace, Obelix surmises that his fellow villagers might be having their customary banquet, this time without him. This is proven true; and at the banquet, some of the Gauls begin to express a desire to retrieve the bard, in fear of a drought, and Fulliautomatix the blacksmith, Cacofonix's habitual menace, appears to be missing him. ===== Marge lectures Bart on the importance of town pride after he writes his name in wet cement. Soon he realizes the joys of living in Springfield and is upset by anti-Springfield taunts coming from neighboring Shelbyville. Grampa explains this rivalry can be traced to the establishment of the two towns: Jebediah Springfield wanted a town which promoted chastity and abstinence, but Shelbyville Manhattan, founder of Shelbyville, was a proponent of cousin marriage. The next day, Springfield's lemon tree is stolen by a gang of boys from Shelbyville. Bart leads Milhouse, Nelson, Martin, Todd and Database to Shelbyville to find the tree and return it to Springfield. Bart's posse locates the tree in an impound lot where the leader of the gang that stole the tree lives. Using Ned Flanders' RV, Homer leads the boys' fathers to their sons in Shelbyville. The fathers and sons demand their tree be returned, but the owner of the impound lot taunts them and refuses to surrender it. Using a Trojan Horse strategy, Bart parks the RV outside a hospital, where it is impounded to the lot. When night falls, the Springfield men and boys emerge from the RV and tie the lemon tree to its top. The lot owner catches them but they manage to escape and return the tree to Springfield. In the aftermath, the town elders of Springfield and Shelbyville provide their own endings to the tale. In Springfield, Grandpa lauds the triumphant return of the tree by the "heroes of Springfield"; Bart and Milhouse celebrate with a glass of lemonade made from a few drops of lemon juice (and a large amount of sugar). In Shelbyville, an old man having made up a story about the tree being haunted to cover the embarrassment of losing to their rivals of Springfield. The Shelbyville kids drink turnip juice instead, much to their disgust. ===== ===== The main story concerns an innocent young man, Nur-e-Din (Franco Merli), who comes to fall in love with a beautiful slave girl, Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini), who selected him as her master. After a foolish error of his causes her to be abducted, he travels in search of her. Meanwhile, Zumurrud manages to escape and, disguised as a man, comes to a far-away kingdom where she becomes king. Various other travellers recount their own tragic and romantic experiences, including a young man who becomes enraptured by a mysterious woman on his wedding day, and a man who is determined to free a woman from a demon (Franco Citti). Interwoven are Nur-e-Din's continuing search for Zumurrud and his (mostly erotic) adventures. In the end, he arrives at the far-away kingdom and is reunited with Zumurrud. The film comprises 16 scenes:Arabian Nights DVD booklet BFI 2009 * Lady of the Moons * Zumurrud's story * Nur-e-din's search * Crowned King * Dream * Aziz and Aziza * Love is my Master * Weep as you made her weep * Garden * The Painter's story * Demon's revenge * Transformation * Yunan's story * Chamber in the sand * Dream revealed * Nur-e-din and Zumurrud ===== As with the first novel, the book focuses on the efforts of Mitchell Gant to steal the fictional prototype MiG-31 Firefox Soviet aircraft. At the climax of Firefox, Gant engaged in combat with a second MiG-31; the second novel begins mere moments later, with Gant discovering that his aircraft sustained damage in the dogfight and is losing fuel rapidly. After a brief engagement with two Soviet MiG-25s, Gant lands the Firefox on a frozen Finnish lake, whereupon the weight of the aircraft causes it to break through the ice and become submerged. Upon fleeing the lake, Gant is captured by the KGB and taken back to the Soviet Union. The West must then mount a desperate attempt to recover the Firefox from the lake, repair it, and return it to flyable condition before Soviet forces can recapture or destroy it. At the same time, Gant attempts to escape the Soviet Union. Dmitri Priabin (a KGB officer with a minor role in Firefox) has an expanded role in its sequel; his lover has been working for the Americans under the codename Burgoyne, forcing Priabin to choose between recapturing Gant and saving the woman. Unlike its predecessor, Firefox Down did not become a feature film. The book, however, depicts the MiG-31 from the movie on the cover and the text of the novel describes it as black, as it was in the movie, rather than the original silver. ===== ===== Toby Grummett, a director, is in rural Spain, struggling with the production of a commercial featuring Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. After an unsuccessful day of shooting, Toby's superior, the Boss, introduces him to a Romani street merchant who sells him an old DVD of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. By coincidence, Toby wrote and directed the film ten years earlier as a student. Toby watches the film while in bed with the Boss's wife, Jacqui. When the Boss returns to the hotel room, Toby barely escapes undetected. A flashback shows student Toby casting elderly cobbler Javier as Don Quixote. Javier initially falters in his characterization, but upon rushing to defend Angelica when a member of Toby's crew plays a prank on the teenage waitress, succeeds in embodying that "I am Don Quixote". Toby realizes that his current shoot is near the shooting location of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Taking a motorbike to Los Sueños, he learns that Angelica has moved away from her father Raul. Toby meets Javier, now working as a tourist attraction. He discovers that Javier has become convinced that he is the real Don Quixote, and that Toby is his squire, Sancho Panza. Quixote accidentally causes a fire that spreads through the town, as Toby escapes on the motorbike. On the set, police are investigating the "break in" of Jacqui's room. The police notice that Toby's bike was the one spotted in Los Sueños and take him in for questioning. En route, they encounter Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante, who demands that the officers release Toby. When they dismiss him, Quixote attacks, culminating in one of the officers being shot and the Romani man stealing the police car. Quixote supplies Toby with a donkey and clothes from the set, and they set off for adventures. Quixote notices a windmill and believes it is a giant attacking a woman. Receiving a head wound after being knocked by one of the windmill's blades, Quixote and Toby are led by the woman to a decrepit ruin occupied by impoverished people. The leader, Barbero, welcomes them warmly but locks them in an attic. That night, Toby comes to suspect that they are secretly terrorists, but soon finds that the ruin has transformed into a 17th-century village. Toby manages to evade some guards, then awakens the next morning, the night's events having seemingly been a dream, and learns that the residents are not terrorists but fearful undocumented immigrants to whom Quixote, having experienced Toby's "dream", is regaling with a tale of it. Moving on with Quixote, Toby finds a bag of old Spanish gold and attempts to hide it, but accidentally falls down a ravine into a cave. There he re-encounters Angelica, who tells him that she works as an escort, and is the "property" of Alexei Miiskin, a Russian vodka company owner entering a business deal with the Boss. Quixote leads Toby on a quest to find Angelica but soon enters a jousting match with the "Knight of Mirrors", revealed to be Raul. He and several Los Sueños townspeople had been disguising themselves in an attempt to get Javier to come home. After Quixote rides off, Raul punches Toby for indirectly causing his daughter to become an escort. Waking up, Toby finds Quixote whipping himself with thorns to prove his love to Dulcinea del Toboso. Healing his wounds by a river, Toby is found by Jacqui on horseback, dressed for a costume party at Miiskin's. Arriving at Miiskin's castle, Toby sees him behave cruelly towards Angelica and Javier. Toby tries to convince both of them to leave but Quixote refuses and Angelica is captured. Toby rescues Angelica, but finds it is Jacqui wearing a mask, who reveals that Angelica is being burned alive by Miiskin as part of his entertainment. Toby accidentally knocks Quixote out of a window; dying on the ground, Quixote gives Toby his sword, telling him that he never truly saw him as lowly. Angelica's burning is shown to be a special effect and Quixote dies while Toby recalls Quixote's claim of immortality. The next morning, Toby, now Quixote, attacks three windmills, believing them to be giants, with Angelica at his side. The two agree to call her Sancho Panza and they ride into the sunset. ===== An unnamed man, simply called "The Man in the Cube" (Richard Schaal), is trapped in a cube-like white room as he asks if anyone can hear him. A stool is brought in by a maintenance man named Arnie (Hugh Webster) who discovers it covered in strawberry jam as he wipes it down. After Arnie leaves, the Man tries to find the door. He encounters a variety of people come through various hidden doors in which each one claim that he can get out through his own door. His first visitor is a woman named Margaret (Lolo Farell) who claims that the man is her husband Ted as she appears with parents (Alice Hill and Moe Margolese) are also present. Her door closes on the Man before she can get him out. The Man then meets Mr. Thomas (Rex Sevenoaks), the manager of this entire establishment. When asked about the Cube, Mr. Thomas states that he has asked himself that question many times where it is too good to be true. Mr. Thomas shows the Man the Call Button that he should push if he ever needs anything. Mr. Thomas then works to deny the fact that there are other Cubes like this while stating that while some people are quite content and stay in the Cube, others would wish to leave. As Mr. Thomas leaves, he tells the Man that he must find his own door. Arnie returns again where he gives the Man a telephone and states that he can get him anything he wants. Arnie exclaims that the only trouble with this establishment is that there is no organization and The Man wouldn't believe the weirdos that run it. He also talks about the four tons of chocolate rabbits while mentioning that he's been working here for 14 years where there hasn't been a request for chocolate rabbits. As Arnie goes outside to call the Man to see if the telephone is working, the Man sees a brief opening until the telephone rings and Mr. Thomas briefly appears to give the receiver to him before leaving. The Man answers it and Arnie tells him that the telephone is in business. The Man discovers that his telephone only calls up Arnie. When the Man throws it towards the wall, Arnie opens it as it flies through as Arnie rewards his accuracy by giving him a chocolate rabbit. Two police officers consisting of a police sergeant (Jon Granik) and Officer Fritz (Guy Sanvido) from the MPD enter with a search warrant. They find different things in the panels of the Cube like smuggled diamonds in the chocolate rabbit, a stack of gold bullion from the Bank of Munich, vital plans of the X-74 (which was classified top secret), microfilm documenting the entire National Security System, an arsenal (consisting of machine guns, sten guns, dynamite), and a bound and gagged Dr. Kingsley (who was missing for two weeks as part of a ransom). The Man is then handcuffed by the police sergeant in an uncomfortable way as the police officers leave with everything while telling the Man to wait until they return. A house painter and decorator named Miss Bix (Sandra Scott) comes in while the Man tries to get out of his handcuffs as Arnie comes in with the mustard paint in order to decorate the Cube. She then changes her mind and wants tangerine paint as the Man struggles to get his leg out from the position the handcuffs have him in. Upon trying to hold back the info on how long the Man will be in the Cube, Miss Bix changes her mind about the paint and has shellac sprayed onto the already white Cube as she leaves. Arnie states to the Man that he is actually spraying deodorant and that Miss Bix can't tell the difference. Before leaving, Arnie stops the Man from following him since this is Arnie's door. A guitarist (Ralph Endersby) comes in and gives the Man the keys to the handcuffs which frees the Man. Upon finding a bed that manifested, the Man rests on it while the guitarist practices his music. The guitarist is then joined by the rest of his band as they sing a song to the Man about never getting out of the Cube. After the band leaves, Mr. Thomas briefly enters telling the Man that the "Rest Period" is over. A prisoner named Watson (Jack Van Evera) enters the Cube having escaped from his Cube. He notices that the Man hasn't been here for long while mentioning how his Cube had squares while the Man's Cube has rectangles. Watson tells the Man that he had to tell how many times has passed by making marks in his thumbnail which didn't work when he lost his thumbnails. Watson decides to return to his Cube to see if he left anything behind. When the Man states that if he re- enters his Cube where he won't get out again, Watson ranted about having to depend on the squares. Watson decides to go back to his Cube. When Mr. Thomas enters asking if someone else was in his Cube, the Man states that there was a visitor. Mr. Thomas states that other visitor was acting and introduces him to Jack Van Evera who asks Mr. Thomas if they can take out the part about the thumbnails. As they leave, Jack asks Mr. Thomas what the rest of these Cubes are for anyway. Before leaving, Mr. Thomas states "He was only kidding. You know that." A seductress named Cora (Eliza Creighton) enters as a couch and a liquor cabinet suddenly appear. Cora states that she always comes to the Cube. The Man sits down on the couch. As they make out, a physician named Dr. Bradowski (Eric Clavering) enters with Dr. Bingham (Moe Margolese) and a nurse (Jean Christopher) run some medical tests on the Man while Cora leaves. The doctors tell the Man his results before leaving to tend to a platypus. A professor (Don McGill) enters stating that him being here is either part of a teleplay or he's hallucinating. He even shows him the ending with him in the Cube with a girl before leaving. A black militant (Don Crawford) enters where he finds the Man's Cube is all white thinking that it's a mausoleum for whiteness while claiming that the Man will die in the Cube. The Man claims that this isn't his place and had nothing to do with the Cube's construction. When the black militant wants the Man to go out the door, the Man states that he can't since it's the black militant's door. The black militant then leaves quoting "You make me sick." A classy party manifests in the Man's cube. When Mr. Thomas arrives offering tonic to the guests, the Man tries to get some only to be blocked by a barrier. A female partygoer named Mrs. Stratton (Alice Hill) exclaims that Mr. Thomas is projected and states that nobody having a party in the Man's Cube is real. The image of the party then disappears as it shows the Man on his stool. After a panel briefly opens where an old man (Eric Clavering) asks if he has considered that he is dead and this is what his afterlife is like, the Man is visited by a scientist (William Osler) who asks the Man to define reality for him. When the Man claims that the hammer doesn't exist, the scientist proves him wrong by throwing the hammer at one of the cube's walls causing a hole in it. Arnie reprimands the scientist for breaking the wall and gives him his hammer back while he gets the wall fixed. Upon being unable to convince the Man, the scientist leaves hoping that the Man rots in the Cube. Arnie fixes the hole and leaves stating that the scientist is a real pain in the neck. A woman named Liza (Trudy Young) enters where she gives the Man a hint on how to get out which is "it's going to get worse before it gets better." Her other hint is "don't trust anybody" as she turns into an elderly-like appearance (Ruth Springford). After she leaves, Mr. Thomas enters stating that the Man's time is up and that he must leave. As the Man tries to leave through the door that Mr. Thomas claims to be the Man's door, the Man has his suspicions in which if he steps out the door, two gorillas in ballerina dresses would grab him, drag him back into the cube, throw him to the ground, and dance around him singing "Home! Sweet Home!" The Man attempts to step out and is assaulted by the ballerina-dressed gorillas (depicted as two men in gorilla suits) in the manner that he described where they substitute "home" with "the Cube." Mr. Thomas leaves stating that the Man is getting pretty good at predicting these things. Two comics (Jon Granik and Guy Sanvido) enter and tell jokes to the audience. They then turn their attention to the Man when they find that he wasn't joining in on the laughter. The Man stated that he just didn't feel like laughing. The comics then laugh at the Man before leaving. A kid on a tricycle rides around the Cube mocking the Man stating that he's never going to get out of the Cube and then leaves. A monk (Jerry Nelson) enters and disperses his wisdom onto the Man while stating that he is part of the "All." Before leaving, the monk gives the Man an orb called the Ramadar which is supposed to hold the meaning of life. After the monk leaves, the Ramadar only makes a grinding noise. The Man smashes it with the stool to find that inexplicably it is made of strawberry jam inside. Arnie comes in and cleans up the broken Ramadar stating that most people break their Ramadar. Arnie then leaves with the broken Ramadar and the broken stool. After six people bring in a coffin, the Man finds a gun is left in the room. Grabbing the gun, the man attempts to shoot himself and ink squirts onto his face. All the people he had encountered enter and laugh at him as Arnie states that this is all a joke. Enraged, he tells them he's had enough with their tricks and that no matter what happens he knows he is real. The Man then leaves the Cube as the people applaud him. The Man is then escorted into an office so that the head of the organization can sign his release. Once there, the Man reflects on the revelation of his own realness. He accidentally cuts himself with a knife while demonstrating and is asked to taste his blood. He does so and discovers his blood is strawberry jam. The head of the organization and his office fade away to reveal the Man is still trapped in the cube. As the credits roll, the Man wanders around the room one last time and then sits down on the floor apparently resigned to his fate of never getting out while the band's song is reprised in the background. ===== Cybergirl is a Blue superheroine Human Prototype 6000 living under the secret identity of ordinary teenage girl Ashley Campbell. In reality, she is a "Human Prototype 6000" from a distant planet. Her powers include super-human strength, super- human speed, and the ability to interface directly with electronic devices and computers; she is also able to physically change her appearance between that of the blue-haired, ethereal-looking Cybergirl and the less conspicuous, mousy-haired Ashley, and can alter her clothing at will. She was originally known as the Cyber Replicant Human Prototype 6000, the only one of her model to be built. Not only are her powers far and above that of earlier models, she has a much wider emotional scope than her predecessors. She ran away from her planet of origin in order to explore the beings she was modeled after, namely humans. Two other Evil Red Replicants called Isaac and Xanda are sent after her and their sole mission is to destroy her. She lands on Earth in the fictional city of River City, Australia which is modeled on and filmed in Brisbane. She meets Jackson and Hugh Campbell, who take her in, and she adopts the name Cybergirl as her superheroine identity. Jackson calls her "Cy" and she later uses her powers to make herself look more human; this identity is called Ashley, in which she poses as Jackson's cousin and Hugh's niece. The only other person besides Hugh and Jackson to know her identity is Kat, her friend and neighbour. She is pursued not only by Xanda and Isaac but also by a powerful software mogul named Rhyss. She is well loved by the populace of River City, however, and she enjoys the approval of Mayor Buxton, whose twin daughters Emerald and Sapphire are big fans of the superheroine. Ironically they snub her, as Ashley, at school. ===== Jagged Alliance takes place on the fictional South Atlantic island of Metavira, a former nuclear testing site. The nuclear tests altered some trees on the island and several years later it was discovered by a scientist, Brenda Richards, that those trees, known as Fallow trees, produce unique sap that proves to be a medical marvel. However, Brenda also discovered that the trees could not reproduce. Her assistant, Lucas Santino, realised how profitable this sap would be. He managed to convince Jack Richards, the leader of the scientific mission, that it would be beneficial to have two independent science teams. Santino consequently established a new base on the other side of the island. He immediately began to recruit new people and gradually took over the island by force. When the game begins, the player is contacted by Jack Richards and is invited to the island. There, Brenda and her father request that the player hires mercenaries through the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.Jagged Alliance Game Manual, p. 4.) to reclaim the island from Santino's forces sector by sector.Jagged Alliance Game Manual, p. 1. ===== Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), son of Henry Frankenstein, relocates his wife Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson) and their young son Peter (Donnie Dunagan) to the family castle. Wolf wants to redeem his father's reputation, but finds that such a feat will be harder than he thought after he encounters hostility from the villagers, who resent him for the destruction his father's monster wreaked years before. Aside from his family, Wolf's only friend is the local police Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) who bears an artificial arm, his real arm having been "ripped out by the roots" in an encounter with the Monster as a child. While investigating his father's castle, Wolf meets Ygor (Bela Lugosi), a demented blacksmith who has survived a hanging for graverobbing and has a deformed neck as a result. Wolf finds the Monster's comatose body in the crypt where his grandfather and father were buried; his father's sarcophagus bears the phrase "Heinrich von Frankenstein: Maker of Monsters" written in chalk. He decides to revive the Monster to prove his father was right, and to restore honor to his family. Wolf uses the torch to scratch out the word "Monsters" on the casket and write "Men" beneath it. When the Monster (Boris Karloff) is revived, it only responds to Ygor's commands and commits a series of murders; the victims were all jurors at Ygor's trial. Wolf discovers this and confronts Ygor. Wolf shoots Ygor and apparently kills him. The Monster abducts Wolf's son as revenge, but cannot bring himself to kill the child. Krogh and Wolf pursue the Monster to the nearby laboratory, where a struggle ensues, during which the Monster tears out Krogh's false arm. Wolf swings on a rope and knocks the Monster into a molten sulphur pit under the laboratory, saving his son. Wolf leaves the keys to Frankenstein's castle to the villagers. The film ends with the village turning out to cheer the Frankenstein family as they leave by train. ===== Superintendent Chalmers visits Principal Skinner at Springfield Elementary School to show off his newly purchased 1979 Honda Accord. Chalmers is distraught when he discovers the car's hood ornament is missing. Skinner orders a search of every student's locker which reveals that Nelson Muntz, the school bully, is the culprit. As punishment, Nelson is forced to return all stolen items found in his locker to their owners; he is also made to perform janitorial work with Groundskeeper Willie. Lisa is caught staring at Nelson during band practice and unwittingly causes a commotion among the band students. After she receives detention and is forced to write a contrite message on a chalkboard, she wonders aloud how Bart does this each week. Lisa realizes she has a crush on Nelson and gets Milhouse to pass a love note to him in class. Nelson thinks Milhouse wrote the love note and beats him. Lisa confesses to Nelson that she wrote the note and soon they share a first kiss at Springfield Observatory. Lisa vows to turn Nelson from a troublemaker into a sweet, well-behaved young man. However, the influence of Nelson's friends Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney prevails when they convince him to vandalize Principal Skinner's house. After Skinner calls the police, the four boys flee. Nelson takes refuge at Lisa's house and insists he is innocent; Lisa believes him until he unwittingly reveals he was involved in the boys' prank. Lisa realizes that she cannot reform Nelson and gently ends their relationship. In the subplot, Chief Wiggum arrests a scam artist for telemarketing fraud. Homer witnesses the arrest and retrieves the discarded autodialer from a trash bin. He uses the machine for a telemarketing scheme to persuade everyone to send him money under the name "Happy Dude". His phone calls annoy the whole town and Chief Wiggum catches him. Instead of confiscating the autodialer and taking Homer into custody, he shoots it and asks Homer to bring it to his court hearing lest the charges be dismissed for lack of evidence. In the closing credits, the repaired autodialer plays Homer's new, court-ordered message asking residents to forgive him by sending money to "Sorry Dude". ===== A boy named Hans witnesses his father being executed by the guillotine. Hans yells, "Papa!" The man is beheaded, and Hans runs off. Years later, an adult Hans is working as an assistant to Baron Frankenstein. The Baron, with the help of Dr Hertz, is in the process of discovering a way of trapping the soul of a recently deceased person. Frankenstein believes he can transfer that soul into another recently deceased body to restore it to life. Hans is also the lover of Christina, daughter of innkeeper Kleve. Christina's entire left side is disfigured and partly paralysed. Young dandies Anton, Johann and Karl frequent Kleve's inn, yet refuse to pay. Johann threatens to have his father revoke Kleve's license if he complains. The three insist that they be served by Christina and mock her for her deformities. The taunting angers Hans, who fights the three of them and cuts Anton's face with a knife. Eventually, Kleve throws the dandies out. They return in the night to steal wine from his inn and when Kleve catches them, they beat him to death. Hans, the son known for his short temper, is convicted. Despite the Baron and Hertz's defenses against the accusations, Hans is executed by the guillotine. Seeing this as an opportunity, Frankenstein gets hold of Hans' fresh corpse and traps his soul. Distraught over Hans's death, Christina drowns herself in the river. The peasants fish out her body and bring it to Dr Hertz to see if he can do anything. Frankenstein and Hertz transfer Hans' soul into her body. Over months of complex and intensive treatment, they cure her physical deformities. The result is a physically healthy woman with no memory. Frankenstein insists on telling her nothing but her name and keeping her in Hertz's house. Despite coming to her senses regarding her identity, Christina is taken over by the spirit of the vengeful Hans. She kills Anton and Karl, driven mostly by the ghostly insistence of Hans. Frankenstein and Hertz become rather suspicious of her behaviour surrounding the killings and take her to the guillotine where Hans and his father were executed. However, they believe she subconsciously retains the memories of Hans' father's death rather than of Hans. By the time Frankenstein realises the truth, he finds her already murdering Johann. Despite Frankenstein's pleas, Christina knows she now has no one and nothing left to live for, and drowns herself again. Frankenstein, disappointed and having apparently learnt a lesson, walks away silently. ===== After watching the latest McBain film, Grampa suffers a mild heart attack while arguing with a cinema clerk. Thinking he might die, he confesses a long-hidden secret: Homer has a half-brother. Before Grampa married Homer's mother, he and a carnival prostitute had a son whom they left at the Shelbyville Orphanage. Determined to find his brother, Homer visits the orphanage and learns that Grampa's love child, named Herbert, was adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Powell. Herbert "Herb" Powell -- who looks like Homer except he is taller, slimmer and has more hair -- owns Powell Motors, a Detroit automobile manufacturer. Herb is overjoyed to learn Homer is his half- brother and invites the Simpsons to stay at his mansion. Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are enthralled by Herb's wealthy lifestyle and kind personality, but Marge worries wealth will spoil her children. After Herb decides that Homer, an average American, is the perfect person to design his company's new car, he gives him free rein to design it. When Herb's design team ignores Homer's outlandish suggestions, Herb encourages Homer to take command of the project and incorporate his own ideas in the final design. When the new car is unveiled with great fanfare, Herb is horrified to find it is a badly designed monstrosity that costs US$82,000, forcing Powell Motors into bankruptcy. The bank forecloses on Herb's mansion and he loses everything he worked for. As Herb leaves Detroit on a bus, he angrily tells Homer that he would have been better off not knowing him. Angry, Herb disavows his half-brother. While Marge tries to console Homer, Lisa agrees Herb's life was better before he discovered he was a Simpson. Grampa arrives and scolds Homer for ruining Herb's life. While Homer drives the family home, Bart tells him his car is great. Homer is relieved to learn at least one person likes it. ===== In Connecticut in the 1920s, Martin is about to be married to Fay. When an old flame, Alice, visits him, Fay knocks him out with a champagne bottle in a jealous fit. As Martin dreams, he is seemingly in the court of King Arthur in 528. Dubbed "Sir Boss" by Arthur, Martin is directed to industrialize Camelot, which he does, including telephones, and radios. He falls in love with "Demoiselle Alisande" ("Alice") but the king's evil sister, "Morgan Le Fay" ("Fay"), kidnaps her. As Martin rescues her, he wakes up and realizes that it was Alice that he loved all along. The 1943 revival was revised by Rodgers and Hart. The setting was changed to a more topical war- time setting, and the show art showed a knight and his damsel in a jeep. "Morgan Le Fay" was turned into a "singing sorceress" anti-heroine, and the song "To Keep My Love Alive" was written especially for this revival, for Vivienne Segal to perform.Background information R&H; Theatricals, accessed April 6, 2009.Hyland, William G. Richard Rodgers (1998), , p. 151. ===== As Hurricane Barbara approaches Springfield, panicked citizens ransack the Kwik-E-Mart. After the storm, the Simpsons leave their basement to find their home unscathed. Their next-door neighbor, Ned Flanders, emerges from a heap of rubble and sees that his house is destroyed, forcing the Flanders family to take shelter in the church basement. Ned is further discouraged after learning that his business, The Leftorium, was looted after the storm. Distraught, Ned begins to believe that God is punishing him like Job. In the church sanctuary, Ned wonders aloud why God spared them the storm's wrath while directing it at him. The next day, Marge surprises the Flanders family and escorts them to their new house, which the residents of Springfield have built as an act of charity. The family's joy soon turns to dismay when they find the house uninhabitable due to its poor construction. When Homer leans on the front door, the foundation collapses. The last straw occurs when the lens in Ned's glasses breaks. Failing to contain his rage, he immediately snaps and verbally attacks everyone who tried to help, pointing out their many flaws after years of holding back. Worried he is losing his mind, Ned voluntarily commits himself to a mental hospital. He is visited by his childhood psychiatrist, Dr. Foster, who recalls Ned's childhood as an out-of-control brat raised by beatnik parents. Ned's treatment involved eight months of continuous spanking by Foster. The treatment left Ned unable to express anger until the losses he suffered from the storm made him erupt in repressed rage. Foster realizes that his earlier approach was flawed and enlists Homer to help Ned express his emotions. Foster thinks Homer is perfect for this treatment because of his and Ned's mutual dislike. After several scripted insults fail to rile Ned's anger, Homer begins to improvise. When Homer disparages his apparent like of everything, Ned admits he hates two things: the post office and his parents. Foster declares Ned cured and releases him from the asylum. Outside the hospital, Ned is greeted by the townsfolk of Springfield. Ned vows that if any of them does something that offends him, he will tell them instead of stifling his anger. Foster tells him this is a healthy boundary, but suggests Ned ease up after he tells the crowd he will run them down with his car if they make him extremely angry. ===== Martin Prince invites his classmates to his birthday party, but it ends badly after most of the partygoers get food poisoning and leave by ambulance. After the party, Bart sees Principal Seymour Skinner and Edna Krabappel kissing in Martin's pink playhouse. Bart plans to reveal what he saw, but Edna and Seymour fear they will be fired if anyone discovers their romance. They swear him to secrecy in exchange for putting Milhouse's name on his permanent record. Edna and Seymour use Bart as their gofer so they can exchange romantic messages. Bart is humiliated in front of his classmates after Seymour forces him to say "I love you, Edna Krabappel" aloud as if the message were his own. Fed up, Bart gathers the entire school in front of a janitor's closet and opens the door to reveal that Seymour and Edna are making out. Word quickly spreads throughout Springfield, with the story the students tell growing more illicit and exaggerated. After hearing his son Ralph's risqué version involving the two "making babies", Chief Wiggum reports it to Superintendent Chalmers. Chalmers gives Seymour an ultimatum: either he ends his relationship with Edna or they both will be fired. Seymour decides that love trumps his professional goals, so Chalmers fires them and demands they leave the building by day's end. Bart feels guilty when he learns that Edna and Seymour have lost their jobs. After Seymour apologizes to Bart for embarrassing him, Bart encourages him to stand up for himself. With Bart's help, Seymour and Edna barricade themselves inside the school, contact the media and make their demands: they want their jobs back and the townspeople to stop interfering with their relationship. When several parents protest that their children saw them having sexual intercourse in the janitor's closet, Seymour insists that is untrue because he is a 44-year-old virgin. Everyone is speechless, but they think it must be true because it is so embarrassing for anyone to admit. Realizing that they have overreacted, the residents leave peacefully. Chalmers agrees to reinstate Seymour and Edna, but asks them to "keep the lewdness at a minimum" during school hours. They thank Bart for helping them but tell him they are breaking up, fearing the entire town judging their relationship publicly. When a disappointed Bart leaves, they observe grade-school children will believe anything they are told before entering the janitor's closet for another tryst. ===== The game and comic book are about the teenage son of the Grim Reaper, named Death Jr. (DJ for short). His father tried many times (all of them failed) to stop his son from creating chaos at every school he has been in. Now is DJ's last chance. If he creates chaos one more time, he'll be sent to military school. He meets new friends at this school: Pandora, a girl with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and a thing for locked boxes; Stigmartha, a girl who has holes in her hands and bleeds from them whenever she's nervous; Smith and Weston, conjoined twins who are very smart and conjoined at the head; the Seep, an armless, legless, foul-mouthed kid in a vat; and the Dead Guppy, a character who speaks for himself. The friends go on a field trip to a museum, where they find a locked box that Pandora wants opened, so DJ opens it to impress her. Unfortunately, all hell breaks loose and demons run amok. It's up to DJ to stop them and revert the town back to normal, all the while making sure Dad doesn't find out. ===== Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) is an astronaut working for NASA, and his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) is a second-grade elementary school teacher. While he and Alex Streck (Nick Cassavetes) are walking in space on a mission there is an explosion that knocks out their communication with the command center. They land but when their spouses arrive to see them they are in the hospital; both asleep until they recover. Armacost eventually wakes up without problems, but Streck has a medical emergency requiring him to have an electrical cardioversion. Neither speak about the in- flight emergency. Armacost accepts a position with a New York-based company, McClaren. At a farewell party, Streck's aggressive behavior catches Jillian's attention before he suddenly dies from what NASA attributes to a stroke. At the Streck house Natalie Streck (Donna Murphy) electrocutes herself in the bath with a radio. In New York at a party, Jillian asks Spencer to tell her about the space walk incident. He answers while he starts to make love to her. At home he makes aggressive love to her. She finds out she is pregnant, and at an ultrasound discovers she is having twins. She tells the doctor that earlier in her life, after her parents died, she sought psychiatric care because she started to see her loved ones dead, including herself. Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) has been terminated from NASA because he continued to insist that something was wrong with Spencer, though all tests came back normal. Reese confronts Jillian to warn her, and she leaves in fear, wanting to believe he is crazy but knowing he is right about Spencer being different. Jillian calls Reese and he tells her that Natalie was pregnant with twins at the time of her suicide. Jillian asks what the autopsy showed about the twins and Reese tells Jillian that he needs to meet her in person to show her. Spencer intercepts him, and he goes missing. As a backup plan, he has sent her a key to a self storage locker that has a VHS video cassette that explains that there was a signal in space near Spencer and Streck when they lost contact with NASA. He believes the signal was an alien that wanted to get to Earth and traveled as a sound wave through space, taking over Spencer's body. He believes it will use her twins to pilot the McClaren plane that it is designing that disables warfare machinery. Jillian attempts a medical abortion but is thwarted by Spencer who slaps her. She throws herself down a flight of stairs and wakes up in the hospital. Spencer tells her that the twins survived the fall and intimidates her to keep her mouth shut about what happened. In a dream, Jillian sees her sister, Nan (Clea DuVall), killed by Spencer when she questions why he has Reese's briefcase. Jillian leaves the hospital on her own but Spencer follows her because of his connection with the twins inside her. At home, Jillian barricades the door and goes into the room where she dreamed her sister was killed. She sees her body on the floor, but then it is gone, presumably a vision. When Spencer breaks his way into the apartment, she has flooded the kitchen floor with water, with a radio in the sink and an extension cord plugged into the wall. She holds the ends of the cords in each hand and tells Spencer to stay away from her. She notices bloody nail marks on Spencer's hand and she knows that her sister really is dead, as she dreamed. She tells Spencer she does not know who he is, that he killed her sister and her husband. He tells her he did, and that he lives inside of her now. Water begins pouring down from the ceiling, as Jillian turned on all of the water in the bathroom upstairs. Spencer is engulfed in the water, Jillian lifts her feet off the wet floor, connects the cords and electrocutes the alien. The alien leaves Spencer's body and transmits into Jillian. Jillian has remarried and her twin sons are off on their first day of school. Her sons look back before boarding the bus with a look on their face before they smile and are on their way. Jillian assures the stepfather that he is now their father. ===== While being pursued late at night, Traver (Bernie Hamilton) steals a boat and ends up on an island off the Carolina coast inhabited by Miller (Zachary Scott), who has owned a bee farm with his recently deceased partner Pee Wee. Pee Wee, a drunk whose liver finally quit, has left behind a teenage granddaughter named Evalyn ("Evvie", played by Key Meersman), whose age is unknown. Miller is cruel to Evvie until one day he pulls back her wild-child hair and notices that she is quite beautiful. Miller plans to groom the youngster sexually for himself and goes to shore to buy her gifts. Thinking herself alone, Evvie goes about her routine at the apiary, but Traver surprises her and begs her for some honey. He gives her a dime in return. Traver winds up getting a meal back at the cabin, but when he wants to leave with a shotgun and some gas for his boat, Evvie protests. The shotgun discharges during their struggle (inside the house). Traver gives her 20 dollars for the trouble and leaves. He reaches his boat but accidentally shoots a hole in it, forcing him to return to the cabin for repair supplies. Despite this, Traver and Evvie develop trust in one another. Traver spends another night on the island fixing his boat. Evvie wakes up in the middle of the night when a raccoon gets into the coop and kills a chicken. When she opens the window, she hears Traver playing on his clarinet. Miller returns the next day, but becomes angry when he finds out he's been robbed. He takes a rifle and goes out to find the perpetrator. In the meantime Evvie hides the money by pinning it into her skirt. Traver is at his boat almost ready to leave, but runs away when he sees Miller approaching. Miller comes upon the boat, and shoots enough holes in the hull to sink it. A chase ensues. Traver finds another boat in a river, but Miller sights him as he paddles and fires a shot. Traver splashes into the water, but later emerges unscathed. Miller returns to the cabin and presents Evvie with a dress and some high heel shoes (here is the film's only Bunuelism, the shoe fetish). He seems to want to make her into a lady, but warns her away from men. Miller has Evvie sit on his lap, and seems bemused by her innocence. "Don't let anyone hold you like this," he warns her. But as he tries to kiss her, she avoids his lips. After Miller later finds the 20-dollar bill, he confronts Evvie with it. When Evvie tries to explain it, Miller insinuates that she got the money in return for sexual favors and sends her to bed. Traver bursts in and holds Miller up. He takes Miller's rifle and returns to his boat, which he does not yet realize is sunk. The next day Miller gives Evvie her money back "for telling the truth." He takes a grenade and goes out looking for Traver, whom he finds busy fixing the boat. They have a heated exchange of insults and racial epithets, but reconcile after learning that they both served in the infantry in WWII. Their shared status as veterans appears to mollify Miller's suspicions and he stops using racial slurs against Traver. Miller and Evvie leave Traver in peace to finish work on his boat, but he returns to the two cabins to keep an eye on the pair while his boat soaks. Miller offers Traver work on the island in exchange for room and board, and uses Traver's presence as a pretext for Evvie to move into his own quarters. He offers Traver the small cabin she and her grandfather used, and makes her move her bed into his. For her part, Evvie can't understand why the two men can't be friends. Traver explains why he has the gun: "It's easy for him to kill me. It's hard for me to kill him." By his reckoning, Miller has more power in that dynamic, so Traver holding on to the gun "makes us almost equal." After some coaxing from Evvie, Traver plays his clarinet. That night we see Miller kiss Evvie roughly. The implication is that he forces sex on the underage girl that night. The following day, the local preacher, Rev. Fleetwood (Claudio Brook), and another white man named Jackson (Crahan Denton) come to the island to baptize Evvie. The Reverend soon has suspicions about Miller's treatment of Evvie, while Miller finds out about a rape charge against a black clarinet player, whom he concludes is Traver. The two themes of rape and racism intertwine as the tension on the island mounts. ===== Prior to the game's events, Doctor Eggman builds a robotic assistantSonic Advance 3 instruction manual, p. 4. named Gemerl, using parts from the robot Emerl who was destroyed in Sonic Battle. Eggman attempts an experiment using the Chaos Emeralds to perform the Chaos Control technique, but it goes awry and tears the world apart. This action separates Sonic and Tails from Amy, Knuckles, and Cream, all of whom Eggman finds and captures, intending to create a segment of his impending empire on each chunk of the planet. Sonic and Tails travel through the game's seven levels to recapture their friends and retrieve the Emeralds. The final boss fight takes place at the Altar Emerald temple. If the player defeats Eggman there without having all seven Chaos Emeralds, Eggman and Gemerl escape and fall off the edge of the temple. Peace is restored to the world, and Omochao snaps a picture of the five heroes. However, the game alerts the player that the Emeralds must still be collected for the true ending. If the player defeats Eggman at the temple with all the Chaos Emeralds, Gemerl stops running away with Eggman and attacks Sonic, causing the Emeralds to scatter. Gemerl uses them to take on a giant, orb-shaped form, but Sonic also uses their power to attain his Super Sonic form. With Eggman's help, Super Sonic destroys Gemerl. Tails later finds Gemerl's broken body on a beach, repairing and reprogramming it. The game ends as Cream plays with the now non-aggressive Gemerl at her mother Vanilla's house. ===== In 1931, the working-class family Andersson of Ådalen are taking part in a massive sympathy strike for workers in the town Marma. Harald, the father of the family, catches fish and manages to support his family while maintaining a good mood. Kjell, the oldest son, works at the office of the local sawmill manager, and is taught about classical music, impressionism and French pronunciation by the manager's wife. He plays in a jazz band with his friend Nisse with whom he also discusses things like girls, erogenous zones and hypnosis. As spring commences, the manager's daughter Anna comes home for school holiday. She and Kjell fall in love, and she becomes pregnant with his child. When the sawmill is to deliver a big order to America, strikebreakers are called in from other towns. The local strikers become furious and police has to be called in to protect the strikebreakers. Still they are attacked by an angry crowd while working at the Sandviken wharf outside Kramfors. Some are thrown into the water, while others are beaten bloody. Harald takes care of an injured strikebreaker, but is confronted by a group of angry workers. He tries to argue for them to calm down and rely on discussion instead of violence, but they do not agree with his stance. Because of the turbulence, military troops arrive to ensure safety. It is also decided by the County Administrative Board that the strikebreakers should be prohibited from working, but this information doesn't reach the upset locals, who decide to march to the locality where the strikebreakers are staying to get rid of them. When the military troops fail in persuading the participants to stop, they open fire. Five people are killed and five more are injured. Among the dead are Harald Andersson, Nisse and a young girl who had only been a bystander. Around the same time, Anna returns from Stockholm where she has had an abortion arranged by her mother. When Kjell is told about the abortion by Anna's father, he interprets it as if he isn't accepted within the bourgeois idyll. A general strike is proclaimed. While Kjell is occupied as a strike guard, he meets the man who had previously argued with his father. The man claims that the father wasn't innocent, since he had helped to divide the workers. Not until now they were united. Kjell does not agree, instead claiming that education is the key to a better society. Slowly the Andersson family recover from the loss, and eventually the factories open again. ===== Guerrilla War followed the adventures of two unnamed rebel commandos (Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the Japanese version) as they raid an unnamed Caribbean Island in order to free it from the rule of an unnamed tyrannical dictator. Along the way the players vanquish hordes of enemy soldiers while attempting to rescue hostages (with large score reductions for any hostages killed in the crossfire), collecting weapons from troopers and operating tanks. ===== The film centers around Meg (Mira Sorvino), a med student who, after a traumatic experience, moves to Staten Island to live with her grandmother while she gets back on her feet. Her grandmother's care giver, Mrs. Saladino, recommends Meg for a waitress job in a family-run Italian restaurant called 'Santalino's'. There, Meg meets Raychel (Mariah Carey) and Kate (Melora Walters) and becomes fast friends with the two. Not long after starting, Meg discovers exactly what kind of clientele she is serving, the Mob. Meg becomes an adored fixture and valued asset due to her medical training, offering medical advice to several of the mobsters. One night, she becomes the focus of anger from one of the mob men, who slaps her. This leads Frankie (Christian Maelen)https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0535393/ and Mr. Santalino to kill the man. Frankie forcibly orders Meg to chop up the body. Now realizing what she has gotten into, she decides she needs to get out as fast as possible. She confides in Kate, and she discovers that Kate is actually an undercover police officer. Meg is then convinced by the police to help them in a sting operation. She is soon discovered and a shoot out ensues in the restaurant. She is believed to be dead. Raychel has moved on to a more subdued life. In the final scene, Kate returns on their birthday, July 11, and reveals that Meg is actually alive, and the girls celebrate the pact that they made the year before. ===== Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a thirtysomething aspiring writer making a living as a handyman for a community of beach houses in the seaside resort at Gruissan on France's mediterranean coast. He meets 19-year-old Betty (Béatrice Dalle), a volatile and impulsive young woman, and the two begin a passionate affair, living in his borrowed shack on the beach. After a row with him where she tears apart and smashes up the house, she finds the manuscript of his first novel, reads it in one long sitting and decides he is a genius. However, after another argument with his boss, she empties the shack and burns it down. The two decamp to the outskirts of Paris, where her friend Lisa (Consuelo de Haviland) has a small hotel. Betty laboriously types out Zorg's novel and submits it to various publishers. They meet Lisa's new boyfriend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and the four have many fun times, often fuelled by alcohol. They find work in Eddy's pizzeria but a fight erupts in which Betty stabs a customer with a fork. Zorg tries to slap her back to her senses. Though Zorg hides the rejection letters Betty finds one and, going to the publisher's house, slashes his face. Zorg induces him to drop charges by threatening him with violence, saying she is the only good thing in his life and she is all he has. Eddy's mother dies and the friends go to the funeral in Marvejols. There, Eddy asks Zorg and Betty if they will live in the dead woman's house and look after her piano shop. Zorg enjoys the quiet provincial life and makes friends with the grocer Bob (Jacques Mathou), his sex-starved wife Annie (Clémentine Célarié) and various offbeat characters, but Betty's violent mood swings are a concern. One day, after an irritating comment from Zorg, she punches out a window with her bare hand and goes on a screaming flight through the town. Happiness seems on the horizon when a home test suggests Betty is pregnant, but a lab test is negative and she sinks into depression and tells him she is hearing voices talking to her in her head. Zorg, masquerading as a woman, robs an armoured cash collection van delivery headquarters, holding the guards at gunpoint and tying them up. He attempts to use the money to buy Betty's happiness, but she fails to respond and enacts yet another prosecutable offence by luring a small boy away from his mother and taking him to a toy store. Zorg finds her and they both flee from the authorities as they rush to rescue the boy. One day Zorg comes home to find blood all over the place and Betty gone. Bob tells him she has gouged out an eye and is in the hospital. Rushing there, Zorg finds her under heavy sedation and is told to come back the next day. Going home, he receives a phone call from a publisher accepting his manuscript. On his next visit to the hospital, he finds Betty restrained and catatonic. He becomes agitated and a doctor tells him she will need prolonged treatment and may never recover her sanity. Zorg reacts by blaming her illness on the medication being administered and physically attacks the doctor. He is forcefully ejected from the hospital after a violent struggle with three orderlies. Returning in disguise, he whispers his farewells and smothers Betty with a pillow. Going home, he sits down to continue his current book. ===== Zek, the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance, arrives on the station and seems to take an interest in Quark, but it is not clear why. He tells Quark that he wants to use Quark's bar for a conference, where he announces that Quark will be his successor. The Nagus then dies, apparently making Quark's appointment permanent. Quark has a hard time adjusting to his new position, but he becomes popular among the Ferengi entrepreneurs by giving away lucrative business opportunities. Zek's son Krax and Rom attempt to kill Quark and are stopped by Zek, who appears before them still very much alive. Quark's appointment was a test to see how his son would respond in his absence, and as Zek says, "You failed! Miserably!" Quark congratulates Rom for having the lobes to try to kill him. Meanwhile, Sisko is trying to cope with the friendship between his son Jake and Rom's son Nog. His problem is seemingly solved when Rom orders Nog not to attend school; however, Jake and Nog begin spending even more time together. Jake will only tell Sisko that what they are doing is "private." In the end, Sisko finds he has nothing to worry about when he finds Jake teaching Nog how to read. ===== Heiress Joanna Stayton is accustomed to a wealthy life with her husband, Grant Stayton III. While waiting for their yacht to be repaired in the rural hamlet of Elk Cove, Oregon, she hires local carpenter Dean Proffitt to remodel her closet. He puts up with her rude and condescending attitude, and produces quality work, which is dismissed by her because he used oak instead of cedar, despite her not having specifically requested this at the start. He agrees to redo the closet, if he is paid for the work he has already done. She refuses to pay and they have an argument, during which he notes that she is inventing things to complain about because her life is so pampered and boring. This is overheard by the yacht's crew on the intercom, who applaud him for telling her off. Their argument concludes with her pushing him off the yacht and throwing his tools into the ocean. That night, as the yacht sails away, Joanna goes on deck to retrieve her wedding ring; she suddenly loses her balance and falls overboard. The next day, a story is aired on the local TV news about her having been picked out of the water by a garbage scow. She is suffering from amnesia, and is taken to the local hospital, where no one can determine her identity. Once Grant discovers that she has fallen overboard, he sails back to retrieve her. After seeing her mental state and her lashing out at hospital employees, he denies knowing her, and returns to the yacht to embark on a spree of parties with younger women. After seeing her story on the news, Dean, who is a widower living in squalor with four sons, seeks revenge by encouraging Joanna to work off her unpaid bill. Despite pleas from his best friend, Billy, not to follow through on his impulse, he goes to the hospital and tells her that she is Annie, his wife of thirteen years and the mother of his four sons. She reluctantly goes home with him and is appalled by his residence. Joanna initially has difficulty dealing with Dean's sons and the heavy load of chores, but she soon adapts. As she masters her responsibilities, she learns about the boys' school and family issues, and that Dean is secretly working two jobs to pay bills. She falls in love with him and develops motherly love toward his sons, and starts streamlining the money problems with more efficient budgeting. Joanna also convinces Dean to be a father to his sons rather than simply be their friend, as his sons are doing poorly in school and struggle with literacy, yet he simply brushes these issues aside rather than fix them. Joanna makes Dean's dream come true by helping him design a miniature golf course. Although he has also fallen in love with her, he does not tell her the truth about her real identity for fear that she will leave. Billy, who created doctored photos of the couple to cement the alibi of their marriage, tells Dean that his family needs Joanna. Joanna's mother, Edith, learns that Grant abandoned Joanna at the hospital and has been lying to her about her daughter's condition. After Edith threatens Grant (who is in Los Angeles) that she will hire mercenaries to hunt him down, he reluctantly ends the partying and returns to Elk Cove to retrieve Joanna, whose memory is instantaneously restored upon seeing him. She is shocked and hurt when she realizes that Dean lied and has been using her for months, and returns with Grant to their yacht, which is headed for New York. Joanna now finds her old lifestyle boring and pretentious. She is particularly offended by how rude and haughtily Grant and Edith treat the boat staff. She apologizes to her butler, Andrew, for her spiteful treatment of him over the years. He then helps Joanna to realize how happy she was with Dean and his sons. Joanna commandeers the yacht and turns back towards Elk Cove. The next morning when Grant finds out that Joanna loves Dean and wants to return to the life she had before regaining her memory, Grant becomes insane and takes charge of the boat; Joanna reveals she doesn't love him anymore, and Grant reveals that he purposely abandoned her and had numerous affairs with other women in her absence. Dean and the boys arrive on a Coast Guard boat with the intention of rescuing Joanna, but they are soon called away due to a sighting of salmon poachers. Dean grabs a life jacket and dives into the water towards the yacht and Joanna does likewise before letting Andrew know to tell her mother that she'll give her a phone call. Grant, now having a mental breakdown, furiously takes aim at her with a bow and arrow, only to be purposely booted overboard into the water by Andrew, who then gives his two weeks notice. After reuniting, Joanna tells Dean that all of the money and the yacht is actually hers, not Grant's. As the boys eagerly make out their Christmas lists, Dean asks Joanna what he could possibly give her that she doesn't already have. Joanna smiles and replies, "A little girl." The film ends with Dean and Joanna kissing as the boat sails off into the sunset. ===== The film begins with director Barry Blaustein discussing his love for professional wrestling and clips of him viewing employees of the World Wrestling Federation and Extreme Championship Wrestling. He then decides to travel the United States over a three-year period, endeavoring to understand the mindset of someone who would voluntarily choose to become a professional wrestler. Blaustein interviews a wide variety of wrestling personalities and ascertains their motivations. Blaustein focuses on three famous wrestlers, one at the height of his career (Mick Foley, aka "Mankind"), one contemplating retirement (Terry Funk) and one at a career low (Jake "The Snake" Roberts). He begins by following Funk, a 53-year-old man in need of knee surgery who appears unable to retire, despite the mounting toll wrestling is taking on his body. Blaustein follows him as he competes at hardcore wrestling promotion Extreme Championship Wrestling's first pay-per-view event Barely Legal. Funk also appears with his friend, former wrestler Dennis Stamp, who is eager to work as a referee in Funk's upcoming "retirement" match. Stamp discusses the fact that he has not wrestled in years, but remains in shape just in case he gets the call, and demonstrates his unusual workout regimen: jumping on a trampoline in his back yard while holding hand weights. Funk's sometime in-ring rival, Foley, is profiled next. He has been taking increasingly risky falls (or "bumps") and blows to the head, and at one point is heard talking incoherently as the result of a fall (from his Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker at King of the Ring in 1998) which briefly rendered him unconscious. Clips of Foley with his wife and children are spliced with the clips of him risking his body for the sport. Later, in the film's climax, his wife and young children (particularly his daughter Noelle) watch in horror from the front of the audience during Foley's "I Quit" match at the 1999 Royal Rumble, wherein he takes multiple unprotected shots to the head by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with a steel folding chair. For weeks after the match, Blaustein was haunted by seeing Foley's family reaction to the Royal Rumble match. Blaustein decided to show Foley and his wife the footage he captured at the event. After watching the footage, Foley admitted he felt guilty for putting his family through the ordeal, and said he never wanted put his family in that position again. Lastly, Roberts is a wrestler whose height of popularity was in the 1980s. Now he is a crack cocaine addict, and estranged from his daughter. Although he was once one of the more famous wrestlers in America, performing in front of tens of thousands of fans, he is now wrestling in small-town venues. In the course of the film, Roberts is shown attempting to reconcile with his daughter and being interviewed after reportedly smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room (the act is not shown on camera), as well as musing aloud about his increasingly illicit sexual dalliances while traveling. The careers of the three successful wrestlers are contrasted with those of wrestlers who have not yet achieved comparable success, such as two men getting started in the sport of wrestling, Tony Jones and Michael Modest, who are granted a tryout match for the WWF. In addition, Darren Drozdov is a former NFL football player who is shown in an interview with Vince McMahon. Drozdov, who can vomit at will, is called on by McMahon to vomit in a bucket as a demonstration of his ability--an ability which earned him the ring name "Puke"--which McMahon plans to use as part of Drozdov's new in-ring persona. Drozdov becomes a WWF wrestler, but at the end of the film, it is revealed that Droz was paralyzed in an in-ring accident from a botched maneuver several months later. ===== A newsreel plays, summing up the gangster life of John Dillinger in detail. At the end of the newsreel, Dillinger's father walks onto the stage and speaks to the movie audience about his son's childhood back in Indiana, which he says was ordinary and not very eventful, but concedes that his son had ambitions and wanted to go his own way. The young Dillinger left his town to find his fortune in Indianapolis, but soon ran out of money. The scene fades to a restaurant, where John is on a date and finds himself humiliated by the waiter who refuses to accept a check for the meal; John excuses himself, runs into a nearby grocery store and robs it for $7.20 in cash. He makes the clerk at the store believe he has a gun in his hand under the jacket. John is soon arrested for this felony, and he is sentenced to prison. When incarcerated, he becomes good friends with Specs Green, his cell mate. Specs is an infamous bank robber whose gangMarco Minnelli, Doc Madison and Kirk Ottoare also in the same prison. John is impressed by Specs and his experience and intelligence, and begins to look up to him as a father figure. Because John has a much shorter sentence, he decides he will be the gang's outside help when he is released, intending to facilitate their escape. As soon as John is free, he holds up the box office at a movie theater. Before he does, he flirts with the female clerk, Helen Rogers, with the result that she refuses to identify him in the police line-up after the robbery. Instead she goes on a date with John. John continues his criminal spree of robberies for money to finance the escape of Specs' gang. When he has enough, he devises a plan to smuggle a barrel of firearms to the gang at their quarry job site. The plan succeeds, they add John to their gang, then start a crime wave of robberies in the American Midwest. Specs sends John to scout for new targets because he is the only one not recognized by the witnesses at the quarry at the time of the gang's escape. John checks out the Farmer's Trust Bank, where he poses as a potential customer to get inside the office. He reports back to the gang that the security system is too sophisticated for them to bypass. Specs still wants to hit the bank, and getting tired of John's ego and trigger-happiness, he decides to get help from outside the gang. John suggests another way to get into the bank – with gas bombs. John convinces the rest of the gang of his way, and they successfully rob the bank. Back at the hideout, John demands the leader's usual double share of the loot. After John is captured but escapes from jail, he kills Specs and takes his place as the leader of the gang. Running low on cash, they decide to rob a mail train. In the process, gang member Kirk Otto is killed. The gang part for a few weeks to lay low, and John and Helen go on a big shopping spree. They meet with the rest of the gang at a cabin lodge owned by Kirk's surrogate parents. They stay there for a while, but when the elderly couple calls the police, Dillinger kills them. Later, they realize that the police are closing in on them, so they plan to head to the Western States and continue robbing banks. Before going, Dillinger and his girlfriend spend an evening at the Biograph movie theater in Chicago. Exiting the theater, Dillinger sees the police coming after him. In a gunfight, he is killed in an alley, his only money is $7.20the same as what he took in his first robbery. ===== The story revolves around a supercomputer being built in a secret government lab working on a project called Trinity. When one of the project's scientists dies, David Tennant, the ethical caretaker, discovers that he had been killed for his refusal to accept the project's ultimate aim; a merger of the human mind and the machine, in order to produce an unrivalled super computing machine. Tennant subsequently tries to piece together the truth behind the project while he and his psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Weiss are pursued around the globe. Tennant suffers from a series of regression episodes, which are considered to be seizures by his doctor, who says they are caused by overexposure to a super-MRI scan. During these episodes, he has strangely vivid dreams, in which he witnesses the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) and the history of mankind. Subsequent dreams seem to be memories of Jesus of Nazareth, something that Tennant, an atheist, finds strange and bewildering. They take a bizarre turn when he sees himself as an NSA assassin sent to kill him, and also as his dead friend, Andrew Fielding, in his last moments. In the end, it seems that someone was in fact showing him these dreams, to tell him something. ===== Krusty the Clown threatens to ditch The Itchy & Scratchy Show because the cartoon causes his ratings to nosedive during that segment of his show. Cartoon producer Roger Meyers convenes a focus group to discover why The Itchy & Scratchy Show has lost its appeal. In the focus group, Lisa explains that the show has lost its impact on audiences after being on the air for so long. Meyers decides that the cartoon needs a new character: Poochie, a dog with "attitude" who surfs, raps, and plays electric guitar. At Bart and Lisa's suggestion, Homer auditions for Poochie's voice and gets the part. To promote Poochie, he and voice actor June Bellamy make several publicity stops, where they encounter the show's hardcore fans. Homer invites his friends and relatives to watch the first Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show. However, the cartoon is full of asinine antics, with none of the show's flair or trademark violence. Unimpressed by the manic Poochie character, Homer's friends say little as they leave. Meyers decides to kill off Poochie, but Homer resolves to save him. At the next recording session, Homer goes off-script and implores the audience to give Poochie a chance. The show's production team appears moved by Homer's plea, but when the episode airs, Meyers has dubbed over Homer's voice, Poochie gets clumsily removed from the short, and a handwritten intertitle explains, "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet." The studio audience cheers as Krusty displays an affidavit swearing Poochie will never return. Homer feels betrayed but attributes the affair to the fickle nature of show business. ===== Away for two years, a woman named Mary (Ava Gardner) returns to her home in a small town (a 'whistle stop'). She attempts to reconcile with Kenny Veech (George Raft), her former romantic interest, but he is jealous and bitter, particularly after she takes up with Veech's mortal enemy, nightclub owner Lew Lentz (Tom Conway). Gitlo (Victor McLaglen), a friend of Kenny's who works for Lentz, talks him into a scheme to rob and kill Lentz at a train station as he leaves for Detroit, then hide his corpse to make Mary believe he chose not to return. Mary manages to foil Veech's plans, but she remains torn between the two men. Seeking vengeance, Lentz tries to pin a murder on Veech and Gitlo, who barely make a getaway. Gitlo and Lentz end up killing one another, and Mary finds Veech recovering from a gunshot wound to the arm he had suffered while making his and Gitlo's escape. The movie ends with them arm-in-arm, walking away to live happily ever after. ===== Two young squirrels ask their grandfather (voiced by Mel Blanc) on Christmas Eve who the "men" are in the lyric "Peace on Earth, good will to men." The grandfather squirrel then tells them a history of the human race, focusing on the never-ending wars men waged. Ultimately the wars do end, with the deaths of the last men on Earth, two soldiers shooting each other, one shoots the other soldier and the injured soldier kills the last, but slowly dies as he sinks into a watery foxhole while his hand grasps into the water. Afterwards, the surviving animals discover a copy of an implied Bible in the ruins of a church. Inspired by the book's teachings, they decide to rebuild a society dedicated to peace and non-violence (using the helmets of the soldiers to construct houses). The short features a version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" with rewritten lyrics, and a trio of carolers sing this song outside of the squirrels' house. ===== Eccentric American scientist Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) believes nuclear war with the Soviet Union is imminent, and builds a secret fallout shelter beneath his backyard in 1962. Alarmed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Calvin takes his pregnant wife Helen (Sissy Spacek) into the shelter. Due to a freak mechanical failure causing the pilot of a passing F-86 Sabre fighter jet to lose control and eject, the abandoned plane crashes into the house; Calvin assumes the worst and activates the shelter’s time-locks for 35 years. With the house completely destroyed by the crash, the Webbers' neighbors and authorities assume they were killed and their property is left abandoned. Helen gives birth to Adam, who is immersed in culture up to 1962, including TV reruns of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners and listening to pop standards by Perry Como and Dean Martin. A diner is built above the shelter which opens in 1965, where Melcher (Joey Slotnick) works for Mom (Dale Raoul) as a soda jerk. The diner becomes a pizzeria, then a punk club named Purgatory as the suburban neighborhood deteriorates throughout the decades into an inner city ghetto. Mom eventually gives the club to Melcher; the establishment closes and by 1995, he is an alcoholic living in its condemned remains. When the shelter unlocks in 1997, Calvin mistakes the now- blighted neighborhood where his home once was for a post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated mutants and decides the family must stay underground. With supplies running out and Calvin falling ill, Adam (Brendan Fraser) leaves the shelter for the first time. He meets Melcher, who encountered Calvin the previous night, bursting through the floor in his radiation suit. Melcher now worships Calvin and the elevator. Marveling at the outside world, Adam purchases supplies, but cannot remember his way back to the pub. Trying to sell his father's classic baseball cards at a hobby shop, Adam meets Eve Rustikoff (Alicia Silverstone). She stops the store owner (Bill Gratton) from cheating Adam and is fired. Eve drives Adam to a Holiday Inn in exchange for a rare card, but returns the next morning out of guilt. Adam asks her to help purchase supplies. Unaware of the value of money, Adam agrees to her request for $1,000 a week. He also asks Eve to help him find a wife from Pasadena, California, per his mother's advice, who is "not a mutant". Adam meets Eve's gay housemate and best friend Troy (Dave Foley), who provides him with advice and a fashion makeover. Eve and Troy take Adam to a 1940s swing-style nightclub to find him a wife. Adam attracts the attention of several women, including Eve's nemesis Sophie (Carmen Moré). Jealous, Eve reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Cliff (Nathan Fillion), who goads Adam into an altercation, relenting when Adam demonstrates his boxing skills, having trained every day with his father. Eve leaves. Troy returns home and explains Adam went home with Sophie. Adam returns, explaining that he politely rejected Sophie's advances, as he could only think about Eve. He and Eve kiss, but when Adam admits the truth about his past and his desire to take her to be his wife "underground", she asks him to leave. Finding the pub, where Melcher preaches to a full congregation, Adam returns to Eve's house, where she is waiting with Dr. Nina Aron (Jenifer Lewis) and her assistant to have him committed. Initially cooperating, Adam escapes asking Eve and Troy to collect his things and pay his hotel bill. In his hotel room, Troy and Eve find toiletries and clothing from the 1960s and absurdly valuable stock certificates in companies like IBM (which Calvin had written off as "worthless"), and realize that Adam was telling the truth the whole time. As Melcher and his cult load supplies into the shelter, Calvin prepares to seal his family inside again. Eve spots Adam outside the pub; they embrace, and Adam takes her to meet his parents. Impressed with Eve, Calvin and Helen agree to set the shelter's locks for two months while Adam and Eve make arrangements. During this time, Adam and Eve sell the stocks to build his parents a new home in the country, identical to their house that was destroyed, and purchase and restore a red 1960 Cadillac convertible. They help Melcher rebuild the pub into a '50s-themed nightclub after convincing him that Adam is not God. Adam reveals there was never an atomic war, the "bomb" was not a bomb and instead was a plane that had crashed into their house, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Unconvinced, Calvin plans to build a new fallout shelter as Eve watches while playing with her engagement ring. ===== A poor peasant (Kapoor) from the village, who comes to the city in search of work, is looking for some water to quench his thirst. He enters an apartment complex, whose residents take him for a thief and chase him. He runs from one flat to the other trying to escape his predicament. Along the way, he witnesses many shady undertakings in the flats where he hides. Ironically, these crimes are being committed by the so-called "respectable" citizens of the city, who by day, lead a life totally in contrast to their nighttime deeds behind closed doors. He is shocked by these events and tries to escape by evading the search parties that are patrolling the apartment building in search of the elusive thief. He is unfortunately seen, and people chase him to the roof of the building. He puts up a brave resistance and then descends by the water pipes onto the porch of a flat. He goes in to find a young girl (Daisy Irani). She talks to him and kindles a self-belief in the peasant, who determinedly tries to face the adversity waiting outside. But when he ventures out of the flat, he is surprised to find that nobody takes notice of him. He eventually leaves the apartment building, his thirst still unquenched. He hears a beautiful song and searching for its source arrives at the doorstep of a woman (Nargis) drawing water from a well. His thirst is finally assuaged. ===== Bhumika tells the life story of an actress, Usha (Smita Patil), who is the granddaughter of a famous female singer of the old tradition from the Devadasi community of Goa. Usha's mother (Sulabha Deshpande) is married to an abusive and alcoholic Brahmin. Following his early death, and over her mother's objections, Usha is taken to Bombay by family hanger-on Keshav Dalvi (Amol Palekar) to audition successfully as a singer in a Bombay studio: the first step in a process, watched approvingly by Usha's doting grandmother and with horror by her mother, that will eventually carry her to on-camera adolescent stardom, and to an ill-starred love marriage with Keshav. Usha's motives for stubbornly pursuing this relationship (culminating in a pre-marital pregnancy) with the unattractive and much older Keshav — who appears to have lusted after her since childhood — are not spelled out. Presumably, she either feels indebted to him for his loyalty to her family (of which he frequently reminds her) and for her own worldly success; or simply views him as a means to escape her abusive home. She is also a headstrong girl who clearly enjoys her acting career and is bent on challenging her uptight mother (who opposes the match because Keshav does not belong to their caste, just as she opposes cinema itself because of its presumed disreputability). Once the two are wed, Usha is shocked to find Keshav continuing to act as her "business manager", arranging starring roles for her opposite heartthrob Rajan (Anant Nag), who is himself in (unrequited) love with her. Since Keshav's own business is unsuccessful, the family remains entirely dependent on Usha's earnings – a fact that Keshav clearly resents. He thus becomes both a jealous husband with a fragile ego and nasty temper, as well as (in effect) a greedy pimp who compels his wife to take risqué work despite her dislike of her co- star and her protests that she "only wants to be a housewife" now that their daughter has been born. Not surprisingly, the relationship becomes increasingly poisoned, particularly by Keshav's suspicion (fed by star- magazine gossip) that she is having an affair with Rajan, which is partly true. Verbally and physically abused by her husband and periodically obliged to live in a hotel, separated from her daughter and mother, the desperately unhappy actress eventually instigates two unsatisfying liaisons: with the nihilistic and self-centered director Sunil Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), with whom she plots a double-suicide (which he foils), and then with the wealthy businessman Vinayak Kale (Amrish Puri), who keeps her as a pampered mistress on his palatial estate. Here Usha briefly finds a kind of "respectability" as a de facto second wife, earning a measure of love and admiration from Kale's mother (Dina Pathak), son, and bedridden first wife — but (as she learns one day when she tries to take the boy to a nearby fair) at the cost of even the most rudimentary freedom. Unable to abide by Kale's feudal patriarchal rules, she finds her only hope of escape in the intervention of her still-legitimate husband, the hated Keshav, who promptly brings her back to a Bombay festooned with billboards of her own face, and to the same drab hotel and lonely prospects. As Kale's bitter wife remarks to Usha as the latter prepares to leave, "The beds change, the kitchens change. Men's masks change, but men don't change." Usha's daughter, now grown-up, invites Usha to live with her and her husband, but Usha refuses. The movie ends with Usha, alone in her hotel room, receiving a phone call from Rajan. ===== Professor Pac learns that the evil forces have taken control of the Enchanted Castle, using black magic. The princess has vanished, and a witch named Mesmerelda is planning on stealing all four Gems of Virtue (Generosity, Truth, Wisdom, and Courage) to control the "four wonders" (areas of Pac-Land). These four areas each have enemies in them, and are blocked by mysterious force fields. Professor Pac creates a device called the Pactrometer, which allows Ms. Pac-Man to go to these areas to recover the gems before Mesmerelda can get them first. However, as the Professor is telling Ms. Pac-Man this, he gets sucked into a mirror by the witch, leaving Ms. Pac-Man with the Pactrometer. As she journeys through the areas, she is helped by video messages that the Professor placed in the Pactrometer, and by holograms of Professor Pac. As Ms. Pac-Man gathers the last of the gems, they are stolen by Mesmerelda. A battle ensues and the witch is defeated and runs away, leaving behind a key. Without the key, Mesmerelda is unable to get into the castle to reach her crystal ball, and thus cannot use the gems. Ms. Pac-Man returns to fight for the gems, and this time wins, regaining the gems. With them and the Pactrometer, the witch's spell is broken, and Mesmerelda returns to her true form as the princess. Professor Pac, Ms. Pac-Man, and the princess proceed to celebrate their victory. ===== The play opens Hippolytus cleaning semen and snot with socks that are lying about his room. He is described as 'fat' and his room is in disarray. Shortly thereafter Phaedra, his step-mother, is talking to a doctor about Hippolytus's wellbeing. The doctor deduces Phaedra's romantic affection for her step-son and warns her against consummating her affection. She confides in her daughter, Strophe, who likewise warns Phaedra against pursuing an affair with Hippolytus. Phaedra approaches Hippolytus, regardless of the warnings she has heard. Hippolytus openly speaks about his multiple sexual partners and reinforces how he doesn't care for any of them and won't care for Phaedra. Phaedra confesses her love for him, but he spurns her, telling her she will only be hurt. She then proceeds to perform fellatio on him. He is initially unresponsive, but when he reaches his climax he asserts himself in the act. During the interaction Hippolytus informs Phaedra that he has had sex with his step-sister, Strophe, and that Strophe, Phaedra's biological daughter, has also had sex with Theseus, Phaedra's husband and Hippolytus's father. It is later revealed that Strophe had sex with Theseus on the night Theseus and Phaedra were married. Afterwards, Phaedra kills herself, leaving behind a note that states Hippolytus has raped her. Strophe confronts Hippolytus about the accusation, but he refuses to deny or confirm the allegation, though the subtext implies that he did not. Whilst in prison, Hippolytus speaks with a priest who eventually performs fellatio on Hippolytus. In the final sequence Theseus has returned home and disguises himself in a crowd. Strophe, unbeknownst to Theseus, has done the same. She publicly defends Hippolytus and Theseus responds by raping and killing her. The enraged mob rips Hippolytus limb from limb, and his father disembowels him. Afterwards, when Theseus sees the corpses, he realizes that it was Strophe who he had just raped and killed and expresses regret before cutting his own throat. The play ends as a vulture flies down to consume the corpse of Hippolytus. ===== The Thai government hires a group of Chinese mercenaries led by Chan Chung to capture a powerful drug lord from the Golden Triangle Area near the Vietnamese border with Laos. The mercenaries manage to capture the drug lord, but his men are trying to set him free. Along the way the heroes cross into Vietnam and must face a sadistic Vietnamese colonel as well as protect the family of Chang Chung which lives in a village near the border. ===== Min-ah (Im Soo-jung) is a young woman who has become reserved and aloof to the world as a result of her chronic illness and deformed hand. The film quietly portrays the unconventional, yet endearing relationship between Min-ah and her mother Mi-sook (Lee Mi-sook), as well as Min-ah's development as she is befriended by the high-spirited and carefree photographer Young-jae (Kim Rae- won) who moves into their apartment complex. ===== Brad Whitewood Sr. is a career criminal and the leader of his family's gang of rural back-door criminals. Sr's criminal enterprises intersects when his son, Brad Whitewood Jr., a floundering, out-of-work teenager living in near squalor with his mother, grandmother, brother and mother's boyfriend, comes to stay with him. When his father shows up in a flashy car with a pocket full of hundred dollar bills, Brad Jr. formulates a desire to join his father's life of crime. At first Jr. starts a gang with his brother, Tommy, fencing their stolen goods through Brad Sr.'s criminal network. As a result of entanglements with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Terry, Brad Jr. seeks full entry into his father's gang, but after witnessing a murder he tries to back out. Eventually Brad Jr's gang is arrested while attempting to steal tractors, and the FBI and local law enforcement attempt to lean on Brad Jr. to get him to turn evidence on his father's gang. During Brad Jr.'s time in jail, Brad Sr. becomes convinced that Terry is a risk to his activities, thinking that Brad Jr. may confide details to Terry and that she has a big mouth. In an attempt to destroy her relationship with Brad Jr., Brad Sr. rapes Terry after getting her drunk and stoned. After a prison visit where Terry, accompanied by Brad Jr's mother, has a conversation with Brad Jr., it seems that Brad Jr. begins to cooperate with the police. The members of Brad Jr's gang are subpoenaed, and Brad Sr. feels his only recourse is to eliminate them. Brad Jr. and Terry plan to flee to Montana, but they are ambushed. Terry is killed, and Brad Jr. is seriously wounded. Brad Jr. confronts his father armed with his father's gun, but decides instead to cooperate with police. Ultimately Brad Jr. sits on the witness stand in his father's trial. ===== The entity that instigated the first Secret War, the Beyonder, visits Earth in search of enlightenment and inevitably comes into conflict with Earth's superhumans and the cosmic entities that exist in the Marvel Universe. At first, the Beyonder tries to figure out the meaning of the simple everyday tasks humans do, such as: eating, sleeping, using the bathroom, etc, then the Beyonder works for a mobster and becomes very powerful and obsessed with gadgets. The Earth's heroes are very suspicious of him and this causes the Beyonder to retreat to a lone island. Mephisto recruits an army of supervillains with boosted strength, but the Thing fights them off after he is given augmented strength as well. The Beyonder falls in love with Dazzler, and tries to start a relationship with Boom Boom, but both turn him down. It is also explained how Doctor Doom, who was killed in the "normal" timeline, was able to appear in the first Secret Wars. The Beyonder recreates Doom's body from its disintegrated particles and sends him back in time to the start of the Secret Wars, causing Doom to live them in reverse order. The Beyonder is eventually dealt with, although the heroes also have to prevent the destruction of the planet as a consequence of his actions.Avengers #266 (April 1986) Beyonder attempts to become a human while still retaining all his powers. The demon Mephisto attempts to destroy him while in this form since he is now "merely human." A sequel in the form of a single issue revealed that the Beyonder was an evolved Cosmic Cube and evolved into a being called Kosmos.Fantastic Four #319 (Oct. 1988) ===== The show is based partly on the New Romantic scene of the 1980s. At its core is the life and career of colourful pop star Boy George (who rose to global prominence in the early 1980s with his band Culture Club) and his contemporaries, including performance artist and club promoter Leigh Bowery, pop singer Marilyn, Blitz nightclub host Steve Strange (later of the electro- pop group Visage), and Philip Sallon, punk groupie and Mud Club promoter. Although George was intimate with the central figures, artistic license around relationships and time frames was taken for continuity; for example, Bowery never attended the Blitz nightclub, as he was living in Australia at the time. ===== After the death of the Apache Kid, the Rawhide Kid joins forces with the new Apache Kid to find the killer. ===== While going through his trunk full of old mementos and souvenirs, Scrooge discovers a page that he remembers having originally torn from one of Lönnrot's notebooks when they met in Scotland in the late 19th century. His three grandnephews consult their Junior Woodchucks Guidebook and find out that the notes on the page are part of Lönnrot's notes for the Kalevala, revealing the location of the remains of the Sampo. Upon hearing of this mythical machine that can produce grain, salt, and, most particularly, gold out of thin air, Scrooge sets out to find it. The Ducks travel to Helsinki, where the director of the Finnish Literature Society explains Lönnrot's notes to them and the location marked within. The Ducks travel to an island indicated in the notes, where they find Väinämöinen's legendary sword. Touching this sword awakens the spirit of Väinämöinen, which uses the body of whoever touched the sword as its locus of connection to the mortal world. He tells them what happened to the Sampo during the Kalevala times. Väinämöinen's magic brings Gyro Gearloose to the island and, imbued with Seppo Ilmarinen's spirit, he reassembles the Sampo. However, the Sampo doesn't work because it's missing a part that was stolen by Louhi, now residing in the afterlife of Tuonela, the underworld. Scrooge and Donald go to Tuonela to retrieve the missing part. However, after they have left, Louhi becomes aware of the return of her ancient enemy and summons Magica De Spell to help her get the Sampo back. Sailing back to continental Finland, Väinämöinen and the Ducks are able to fix the Sampo. Soon, the machine start producing gold from thin air. However, Magica De Spell and Louhi attack their ship. In the ensuing battle, Louhi manages to steal Väinämöinen's famous kantele, which holds such great power that she loses interest in the Sampo. As the start of her new reign, Louhi summons the sea monster Iku-Turso and orders it to wreak havoc on Helsinki. Donald goes after Iku-Turso to stop it, with the monster and Louhi being confounded by the modern city. In the process, Donald gets the kantele back and is able to lure Iku-Turso back into the sea. With Louhi defeated and his kantele returned, Väinämöinen makes the ship levitate. The Ducks are thrown off the ship, except for Scrooge who clings to Sampo. Väinämöinen invites Scrooge to come to the lands of Kalevala with him as he sees a kindred spirit in Scrooge. Scrooge, however, can't bear to lose his family and friends, so he instead abandons the Sampo. Väinämöinen throws Scrooge off the ship and congratulates him on having made the right choice. ===== Parisian illustrator Robert becomes obsessed with a young woman, Juliette. Night after night, Robert sneaks around the house to catch a glimpse of Juliette, until one day he finally gathers the courage to introduce himself. Juliette realizes that she is not happy with her fiancé, Patrick, and leaves him to be with Robert. Robert in turn is not happy with Juliette's obtrusive advances. One night, Patrick attacks Robert in a deserted area; Robert defends himself and knocks Patrick unconscious, leaving him on the shores of a nearby river. The next day, Robert is interrogated by the police. Patrick is missing, and suddenly Robert is the prime suspect. Nobody knows that Patrick has allied with Robert's bitter ex-wife, Véronique, to take revenge on Robert; he is hiding from the police in order to make them think Robert killed him. Robert's professional and private life falls apart after becoming a police suspect. The situation escalates when Juliette commits suicide, and Patrick launches a vendetta against Robert. In a final confrontation between the men, Véronique is accidentally killed, and although Patrick is defeated, Robert is again left as a suspect in an apparent crime scene. ===== The movie begins as Chicago Bears rookie running back Gale Sayers (Williams) arrives at team practice as an errant punt is sent to Sayers. Fellow rookie running back Brian Piccolo (Caan) goes to retrieve the ball, and Sayers flips it to him. Before Sayers meets with coach George Halas (Jack Warden) in his office, Piccolo tells him – as a prank – that Halas has a hearing problem, and Sayers acts strangely at the meeting. Sayers pranks him back by placing mashed potatoes on his seat while Piccolo is singing his alma mater's fight song. During practice, Piccolo struggles while Sayers shines. Sayers and Piccolo are placed as roommates, a rarity during the racial strife at the time. When they are placed together Brian is scared he didn't make the team, and Gale makes a great point saying "if you didn't make the team, we wouldn't be placed together as roommates." Their friendship flourishes, in football and in life, quickly extending to their wives, Joy Piccolo and Linda Sayers. Sayers quickly becomes a standout player, but he injures his knee in a game against the San Francisco 49ers. To aid in Sayers's recovery, Piccolo brings a weight machine to his house. In Sayers' place, Piccolo rushes for 160 yards in a 17–16 win over the Los Angeles Rams and is given the game ball. Piccolo challenges Sayers to a race across the park, where Sayers stumbles but wins. Piccolo wins the starting fullback position, meaning both he and Sayers will now be on the field together, and both excel in their roles. Piccolo starts to lose weight and his performance declines, so he is sent to a hospital for a diagnosis. Soon after, Halas tells Sayers that Piccolo has cancer and will have part of a lung removed. In an emotional speech to his teammates, Sayers states that they will win the game for Piccolo and give him the game ball. When the players later visit the hospital, Piccolo teases them about losing the game, laughing that the line in the old movie wasn’t "let’s blow one for the Gipper." After a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Sayers visits Joy, who reveals that Piccolo has to have another surgery for his tumor. After he is awarded the "George S. Halas Most Courageous Player Award", Sayers dedicates his award to Piccolo, telling the crowd that they had selected the wrong person for the prize and saying, "I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him." In a call, Sayers mentions that he gave Piccolo a pint of blood while he was in critical condition. Piccolo dies with his wife by his side. The movie ends with a flashback of Piccolo and Sayers running through the park, while Halas narrates that Piccolo died at age 26 and is remembered not for how he died but for how he lived. ===== After rejecting the advances of her boyfriend, William (Ron Nelson), mousy librarian Alice falls asleep reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The White Rabbit appears to her in a dream and she follows him into Wonderland. Finding herself in a room and too large to fit through the small door, Alice drinks a potion which causes her to shrink while her dress remains the same size, leaving her naked. While chasing the White Rabbit, she falls into a river and begins to drown, but is saved by a group of local inhabitants. After making friends with them, Alice is given a new (albeit very revealing) dress before setting off after the White Rabbit again. While walking through the woods, she begins to experiment with her sexuality by stripping naked and masturbating. The White Rabbit happens upon her and takes her to meet the Mad Hatter. After being initially uncomfortable when the Mad Hatter exposes his penis to her, Alice ultimately performs fellatio on him. She is then called to assist Humpty Dumpty, who has fallen off a wall, causing him to lose the ability to achieve an erection. The situation is rectified when Alice performs fellatio on Dumpty as well. She is then taken to meet siblings Tweedledee and Tweedledum, whom she watches having passionate but incestuous intercourse. Following this encounter, Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter continue on toward the King's Ball. On the way, they come across a couple having sex in an open field; Alice chastises them, but she is ignored. At the royal court, the King of Hearts converses with Alice, speaking with her about self-empowerment and ignoring the judgements of others; he ultimately seduces her. The Queen of Hearts suddenly appears, catching Alice and the King in bed together. A hurried trial is held and Alice is "convicted" of being a virgin. As punishment, the Queen orders Alice to have sex with her. A number of sexual escapades ensue among various characters as Alice prepares to carry out her sentence, including a brief lesbian encounter between Alice and the Queen's maids. Alice and the Queen engage in lesbian sex, but, as a result of the cunnilingus she receives from Alice, the Queen experiences an orgasm so strong, it briefly incapacitates her. The Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit assist Alice in escaping the Queen, who pursues her to no avail. Waking from her dream and thereby returning to the real world, Alice meets William again. Having experienced a sexual awakening while in Wonderland, Alice accepts William's advances and they have sex in the library. In a closing sequence, Alice travels through Wonderland naked before she and William set off toward their new home, where they live "happily ever after". ===== The focus of the novel is the growth of the company Event Horizon, founded by Julia's grandfather Philip Evans. Beset by industrial saboteurs, the company seeks help in the form of ex–Mindstar Brigade soldier turned private detective Greg Mandel. The company is leading the way in rebuilding a twenty-first-century England after the People's Socialist Party (PSP), a tyrannical communist government, had first crushed the country and then collapsed, leaving it in shambles. Initially hired to solve a mystery involving missing stocks from a zero-g satellite production facility, he is then re-hired to find the source of attacks on a stored personality of Philip Evans after the industrialist's death. ===== Blood Fever begins with a prologue during which a young girl named Amy Goodenough is aboard her father's yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean sea when it is boarded by a band of pirates under the command of Zoltan the Magyar. Zoltan's men ransack the vessel and murder Amy's father, who was unwilling to part with his priceless possessions. When Amy fails to get revenge by throwing a knife at Zoltan and hitting him in the shoulder, she is taken prisoner, but swears she will one day succeed in achieving vengeance. Following the events of SilverFin, James Bond is back at Eton where he is now a member of a secret risk-taking club known as the Danger Society. As summer holidays approach, James is given the opportunity to go to Sardinia on a field trip with one of his professors, Peter Haight and a colleague, Cooper-ffrench. While in Sardinia Bond plans to visit his cousin Victor Delacroix (a relation of Monique Delacroix, James deceased mother). Prior to leaving, Bond learns of the tragedy that took place on the Goodenoughs' yacht from Amy's brother Mark, who attends Eton and is a friend of Bond's. Bond also witnesses a mysterious group whose followers are marked on both of their hands with an "M" (double M), which James eventually learns is the mark of the Millenaria, a defunct secret Italian society that has had plans throughout history to restore the Roman Empire. Once arriving in Sardinia, James and his classmates begin a tour of the country to learn its history, during which Bond is poisoned (though the reader is not aware of it at the time) and almost killed. Bond departs from his classmates to spend time with Victor, Victor's artist friend Poliponi, and his teenage servant Mauro. Victor also hosts Count Ugo Carnifex, who is later identified as the leader of the reorganized Millenaria. Carnifex achieves the funding for such a task, as well as for his palace located high in the mountains of Sardinia, and his lavish lifestyle, by hiring pirates such as Zoltan the Magyar to plunder valuable items; however, Carnifex is a fraud who cannot actually afford to compensate his "employees". Additionally, when Zoltan arrives at Carnifex's palace, Carnifex declares ownership over Amy Goodenough, much to the great annoyance of Zoltan, whom during his travels to Sardinia had formed a unique and strange bond with Amy. Later Bond is once again reunited with his classmates who are now in a town near Carnifex's palace. One night, Bond sneaks into the palace and finds Amy's cell, but is unable to rescue her and instead informs Haight. However, Haight reveals himself to be a loyal servant of Carnifex and that he had earlier attempted to poison James for asking too many questions about the Millenaria. Carnifex subsequently tortures James by tying him up in a swamp and allowing him to be bitten my mosquitoes, reasoning that one of them will be a carrier of malaria. Bond is rescued by Mauro's sister, Vendetta, who helps him rescue Amy. Losing patience, Zoltan turns against Carnifex by flooding his palace. Carnifex is killed when the waters sweep his sea plane into him. After the destruction of the palace, Bond and Amy return to Victor Delacroix's villa, but are ambushed by Haight. Bond and Amy are saved by Zoltan, who gives his life for their protection in the process. Amy and Bond arrive at Victor's villa, where Carnifex's sister Jana is waiting for them. Bond tricks her by jumping into the sea, while Victor distracts her. Jana slips and falls into a bed of sea urchins, where she finally dies from the pain and poison. As Bond and Amy wade to the surface, Amy suddenly steps on a sea urchin. Bond knows exactly how to remove it. ===== Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office, is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through, and because of a heartbreak due to a woman he courted becoming engaged to another man. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat (the vessel is named Dulcibella, a reference to Childers's own sister of that name), not the comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. However Carruthers agrees to go on the trip and joins Davies in Flensburg on the Baltic, whence they head for the Frisian Islands, off the coast of Germany. Carruthers has to learn quickly how to sail the small boat. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands. This is based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather during a previous trip. The yacht was owned and captained by a mysterious German entrepreneur called Dollmann, whom Davies suspects of being in fact an expatriate Englishman posing as a German. The situation was further complicated by Davies having fallen deeply in love with Dollmann's daughter, Klara - who, Davies is sure, is not involved in whatever nefarious scheme her father is engaged upon. In any case, Davies is suspicious about what would motivate Dollmann to try to kill him, and believed that it is some scheme involving the German Imperial government. Having failed to interest anyone in the British government in the incident, Davies feels it is his patriotic duty to investigate further on his own – hence the invitation to Carruthers. Carruthers and Davies spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the Frisian Islands, moving closer to the mysterious site where there is a rumoured secret treasure recovery project in progress on the island of Memmert. The two men discover that Dollmann is involved in the recovery project. Carruthers and Davies try to approach Memmert. They are warned away by a German Navy patrol boat, the Blitz, and its commander von Bruning - who is friendly and affable, but still makes a veiled warning. This makes them all the more sure that there is something more than a treasure dig on the island. And meanwhile, they discover that, not only is Dollmann indeed an Englishman, he had been an officer in the Royal Navy - evidently having had to leave Britain in hurry and take up a new life as a German. Taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small boat to investigate the Memmert site. Carruthers investigates the island. He overhears von Bruning and Dollmann discussing something more than treasure hunting, including cryptic references to "Chatham", "Seven" and "the tide serving", and hear of a rendezvous at the Frisian railway station, several days ahead. The pair return through the fog to the Dulcibella, moored at the island of Norderney. There, they find Dollmann and von Bruning have beaten them and are seemingly suspicious. However, getting in the fog from Norderney to Memmert and back is a nearly impossible feat, which only Davies' superb seamanship could have achieved, and the Germans do not seriously suspect them of having done that. Von Bruning invites them to Dollmann's villa for a dinner, where he attempts to subtly cross-examine them to find out if they are British spies. Carruthers plays a dangerous game, admitting they are curious. But he convinces von Bruning that he believes the cover story about treasure and merely wants to see the imaginary "wreck". The party also serves to show that the Germans do not fully trust the renegade Englishman Dollmann and that there is some rift between them which might be widened. Carruthers announces that the Foreign Office has recalled him to England. He heads off, being accompanied part of the way to the Dutch border by one of the German conspirators - outwardly an affable fellow-traveler. But instead of embarking from Amsterdam to England, he doubles back, returns to Germany in time to be present at the conspirators' rendezvous (to which Dollmann, significantly, was not invited). He manages to follow von Bruning and his men without being noticed, and trails them to a port where they board a tugboat towing a barge. Carruthers then sneaks aboard and hides, and the convoy heads to sea. Carruthers finally puts the riddle together. The Germans are linking the canals and the railways, dredging passages through the shifting sands and hiding a fleet of tugs and barges. The only explanation is that they are going to secretly transport a powerful German army across the North Sea to invade Britain's east coast. He escapes after grounding the tugboat and rushes back to Davies. He finds him and explains how they must flee before the Germans come after them. They convince Dollmann and Clara to come with them to avoid Dollmann's being arrested by the Germans, who will think he has changed sides again. They promise Dollman immunity from being charged for treason in Britain - which, acting on their own and not having any authorization from the British government, they were not truly in a position to promise. As they sail across the North Sea, Dollmann commits suicide by jumping overboard, presumably to avoid disgrace and probable arrest. An epilogue by the "editor" examines the details of a report prepared by Dollmann, outlining his plan for the invasion force. A postscript notes that the Royal Navy is finally taking countermeasures to intercept any German invasion fleet and urges haste. ===== In the early 1930s, a Broadway musical is in rehearsal. Mona Kent is its temperamental diva star, Joan a wise-cracking chorus girl, and Hennesy the producer/manager/director. The naive Ruby arrives from Utah, with "nothing but tap shoes in her suitcase and a prayer in her heart",Kerr, Walter. The New York Times, January 5, 1969, p. D1 determined to be a Broadway star. She promptly faints into the arms of Dick, a sailor and aspiring songwriter ("It's You"). Ruby gets a job in the chorus, but Hennesy informs the cast that the theater must be torn down, and they must find another place for the show. Joan and Lucky, another sailor and her former boyfriend, renew their romance ("Choo-Choo Honeymoon") while Ruby admits her feelings for Dick ("The Sailor of My Dreams"). Dick and Lucky persuade their Captain to volunteer the use of their ship ("Dames at Sea"). Mona recognizes the Captain as a former boyfriend ("The Beguine"). When Mona kisses Dick, to persuade him to give her one of his songs, Ruby sees and is despondent ("Raining In My Heart"). Dick explains the misunderstanding and the couple make up ("There's Something About You"). While rehearsing on the actual ship, Mona becomes sea sick ("The Echo Waltz"); Ruby steps in to save the show and becomes a star ("Star Tar"). The three couples decide to marry ("Let's Have A Simple Wedding"). ===== Edmund has escaped from his family into a lonely life. Returning for his mother's funeral he finds himself involved in the same awful problems, together with some new ones. He also rediscovers the eternal family servant, the ever- changing "Italian girl". ===== Set in the early 1900s in the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina, which serves as home to a black fishing community, the story focuses on the title characters: crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, and the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully. While high on cocaine supplied by Sportin' Life, Crown kills Robbins after the latter vanquishes him in a craps game; Bess urges Crown to flee. Sportin' Life suggests she accompany him to New York City, an offer Bess declines. She seeks refuge with her neighbors, all of whom refuse to help her. Porgy finally agrees to let her stay with him. Bess and Porgy settle into domestic life together and soon fall in love. Just before a church picnic on Kittiwah Island, Sportin' Life once again approaches Bess, but Porgy warns him to leave her alone. Bess wishes to stay with Porgy, since he cannot attend the picnic because of his disability, but he urges her to go. After the picnic ends, and before Bess can leave, Crown, who has been hiding in the woods on the island, confronts her. She initially struggles to resist him but Crown rapes her. The others, not knowing exactly what has happened, leave and return to the mainland. Two days later, Bess returns to Catfish Row in a state of delirium. When she recovers, she remembers what happened. Feeling that she betrayed Porgy, she begs his forgiveness. She admits she is unable to resist Crown and asks Porgy to protect her from him. Crown eventually returns to claim his woman, and when he draws his knife, Porgy strangles him. He is detained by the police merely to identify the body, but Sportin' Life, who has fed Bess cocaine, convinces her Porgy inadvertently will reveal himself to be the murderer. In her drugged state, she finally accepts his offer to take her to New York. When Porgy returns and discovers she is gone, he sets off to find her. ===== Mr. Mackey, the school counselor, is giving a drug and alcohol prevention lecture to the class, emphasizing that smoking, drinking, marijuana, and LSD are bad. He passes a sample of marijuana around the class so that the children can learn its smell, but it is never returned. As a result, Mackey is fired, and is later kicked out of his house, leaving him homeless. A desperate Mackey gives in to trying marijuana one night in an alley, and later, LSD. Soon enough, Mr. Mackey becomes a drug-addled hippie, and meets a female hippie, with whom he decides to get married. While on honeymoon in India, Mr. Mackey is captured and taken into rehab. Mr. Mackey emerges clean from rehab and is given his job back. Meanwhile, Kyle invites Stan, Cartman, and Kenny to his younger brother Ike's bris. When they learn more about what a bris is, and misconstrue it as a party where they are going to remove his penis, Kyle tries to find a way to hide his brother from his parents and the circumcision process. Kyle puts Ike on a train to Nebraska and makes an Ike-style doll out of meat bones in an attempt to not arouse his parents' suspicions. This backfires when the doll is eaten by a dog, which leads to them to think that Ike is dead. It is at the funeral that Kyle finds out that Ike is not his biological brother, but was adopted from Canada due to the tombstone featuring the Canadian flag. Upon discovering this, Kyle decides that Ike is no longer his brother. His parents are shocked after Kyle reveals the truth, and Ike is retrieved from Nebraska. The day of the bris arrives, and Kyle is grounded for sending Ike away. When the mohel arrives to perform the bris, Ike flees to Kyle's room in terror. Seeing Ike in distress and some old pictures prompts a change of heart in Kyle, and he defends his brother fiercely before it is explained to him what a circumcision actually is, at which point Stan and Cartman decide they want to be circumcised too. They watch the process; even though the boys pass out momentarily, Kyle is relieved to see Ike unharmed. ===== Based on the children's novel by celebrated South Australian author 'Colin Thiele', this is an emotional father and son story about tuna fishing of Southern Blue Fin tuna in South Australia's Port Lincoln fishing district. Accident-prone son Snook is forever making mistakes much to the chagrin of his father Pascoe. But when tragedy strikes the fishing boat during a deep sea fishing trek in the Southern Ocean, the boy is called on to become a man in a rites of sea passage to reconcile his past mishaps and save both his father and the ship from certain disaster. Twelve-year-old Steve Pascoe is nicknamed 'Snook' by everyone in Port Lincoln. He's thin and long-faced, like the fish he's named after. At school he's no good at sport and, at home, his father scorns him. Snook joins his father and fellow crewmen on a tuna-fishing expedition, when disaster strikes. It is up to Snook to save himself and his father from a desperate situation. ===== The novel's title refers to a line from one of John Donne's epigraphs: > His mercies hath applied His judgments, and hath shaked the house, this > body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on fire with fevers and > calentures, and frightened the master of the house, which is my soul, with > horrors, and heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into me. This epigraph describes the basic theme of the novel: a troubled soul, the alcoholic Cass, is badly shaken by the "fire" of an encounter with evil, in the form of the aristocratic Mason Flagg. Ultimately, Cass' experiences with Flagg provide Cass with the inspiration he needs to redeem himself. ===== The player takes on the role of Sergeant First Class Steve R. Hawkins, assigned to the United States Special Forces ("Green Berets") camp at a strategic location of Nui Pek in South Vietnam near the Cambodian border. Hawkins and his A-Team carry out a series of various missions against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. The game ends in a massive North Vietnamese attack on the team's base camp which is ultimately abandoned by all American forces. The ground assault on Nui Pek is a recreation of the ground assault that happened at Special Forces Camp Lang Vei. ===== Andy and Tracy Safian are a newlywed couple living in a Victorian house that they are restoring in Western Massachusetts. He is an Associate Dean at a local women's college, while his wife teaches art to children. When a student is attacked and seriously wounded by a serial rapist, Dr. Jed Hill, a brilliant surgeon who has recently joined the staff of the area hospital, operates and saves her life. Money is tight, so Andy invites him to rent the third floor of their home, in order to finance the new plumbing. With his propensity to bring home sexual partners and to party late into the night, Jed quickly proves himself to be a less-than-ideal tenant. When Paula Bell, one of Andy's students, is attacked and killed by the serial rapist, Andy is the one to find her body, prompting police detective Dana Harris to view him as a possible suspect. Harris asks Andy to come to the police station and submit a semen sample in order to clear his name. While at the police station, Andy learns that Tracy has been hospitalized and is being operated on by Jed. In removing one of Tracy's ovaries, which has ruptured due to a cyst, Jed discovers Tracy is pregnant, but the stress of the procedure causes the fetus to abort. Another doctor notices that Tracy's other ovary is torsed and appears necrotic. Jed consults with Andy and advises him to agree to the removal of Tracy's second ovary, rather than risk her life. Andy painfully agrees, since this will mean that Tracy can never have children. Jed overrules the protests of other doctors that the ovary might still be healthy and he removes it. After the removal, it is confirmed that the ovary was, in fact, healthy. Tracy tells Jed she's suing him for malpractice. Jed delivers a deposition in which he launches into a monologue about his own infallibility as a surgeon, concluding with the assertion that he is literally God. Fearful of the negative publicity that would result from a civil trial, the hospital and Jed's insurance company settle with Andy and Tracy for $20 million. However, Tracy leaves Andy, telling him that she can't forgive him for the loss of her ability to have children. The serial rapist, a handyman at the college named Earl, is arrested after a struggle with Andy. He had stumbled upon hairs Earl had collected from his victims and kept among his belongings. Andy's name was cleared in the process. In the aftermath of the arrest, Dana informs Andy that his semen sample indicated that he was sterile, and that he couldn't have fathered Tracy's child. Andy confronts Tracy's lawyer, Dennis Riley, accusing him of having impregnated Tracy; Riley protests his innocence, but tells Andy that Tracy's mother — whom she had told Andy had died 12 years ago — can answer all of his questions. Riley refuses to break lawyer-client privilege, but tells Andy to take a bottle of Scotch to her. Andy tracks down Mrs. Kennsinger, who tells Andy that Tracy is a lifelong con artist. As a younger woman, she had an affair with a wealthy man, who paid for her to have an abortion; Tracy kept the money and had it done at a clinic, beginning her career as a con woman. Andy ultimately learns that Tracy arranged for Jed to move into the house so that he could begin overdosing her with a fertility drug which causes ovarian cysts when taken in excess amounts, revealing the real reason why Tracy left Andy for Jed. An angry Andy confronts Tracy and tells her he wants half of the settlement money. Suspecting that she might try to murder him, Andy implies their next-door neighbor, the ten-year-old boy who's been their seeming voyeur, is named in his will as a potential police witness to her and Jed's nefarious activities. Supported by Andy's suggestion, Jed tells Tracy to give Andy what he wants so they can leave the country, but Tracy instead suggests murdering the boy. Jed refuses to kill a child, so Tracy shoots him to death, ending their partnership. That night, with the money about to be given to Andy, she slips into the neighbor's house and attempts to suffocate the boy, only to see that the figure she had seen sitting by his bedroom window was in fact a CPR dummy. Tracy destroys the dummy and lunges at Andy, claiming that it was a set-up. Detective Harris appears and arrests her, revealing that the boy's supposed agreement to testify against her was part of a sting operation to catch her in the act of attempted murder. As Tracy is led away in handcuffs, the real boy and his mother return home; as she is put into the police car, Tracy sees that the boy is, in fact, blind. Andy leaves with Dana to have a drink of Scotch. ===== The episode opens with the relentlessly cheerful voice of the radio announcer encouraging every Villager to participate in an upcoming crafts show. Number Six is playing chess near the beach when Number Two (Leo McKern) joins him. During their conversation, a helicopter lands and an unconscious woman (Nadia Gray) is taken out on a stretcher. Later, Number Six is invited to The Green Dome where he and Number Two watch the woman wake up on the main viewing screen. Number Two says that she is the new Number Eight and that she will be Number Six's new neighbour. When Number Six returns to his cottage, Number Eight emerges, confused, and asks for directions to The Green Dome. When she returns later, she reveals to him that her name is Nadia, but she is suspicious that he is a Village spy. The day after, Nadia tries to escape by swimming out to sea but is brought back by Rover and interrogated in the hospital. In response, Number Six makes a deal, agreeing to participate more in Village life — for instance, by entering the craft show — if this puts an end to her torture. Number Six and Nadia become closer and eventually plan to escape. She tells him that she knows the location of The Village: On the Baltic coast of Lithuania about from the Polish border. At the craft show (where every entry except Number Six's is a depiction of Number Two in some medium), Number Six presents his work, a multi-piece abstract sculpture called "Escape". He is then awarded first prize and uses the "work units" he has won to purchase a tapestry, the entry of one of the other prize winners. At night, he and Nadia escape in his exhibit, which is really a carved boat, using the tapestry as a sail. When they reach land, they meet Nadia's contact. Number Six borrows the contact's watch since his own has stopped. Number Six and Nadia then hide in a packing case as they travel to London. They end up in Number Six's old office and meet his former bosses. When they suspect him of being a double agent, Number Six agrees to tell them why he resigned if Nadia is given protection. However, as he is about to talk, Number Six hears the familiar chimes of Big Ben. He looks at his watch and finds that it shows the same time — not the one hour's difference of the time in Poland. Realising that he has been tricked, he begins a search of the office and discovers a tape recorder recreating the background sounds of London. He exits the building, finding himself back in The Village, with Nadia standing with Number Two — thus revealing she was an operative all along. ===== A family in rural Texas finds a boy, Arlis, who says he is lost. They take him into their home, feed him, and give a place to sleep. But the boy later lets his father, Roy (James Caan), into the house to commit a robbery. When they are discovered, Roy brutally murders the family, which the boy witnesses. The sole survivor is a baby girl. Time passes, and Arlis (Dennis Quaid) lives a solitary life in which he drives a truckload of goods and novelties to restock vending machines and arcade games in roadside stores and restaurants. Making a stop at a roadhouse where a rowdy party is being held, he spots Kay (Meg Ryan), a woman who pops up out of a cake at the party and then passes out because she had been imbibing liquor. Arlis ends up giving her a ride home, a long drive, while continuing to make his rounds. Upon coming home, Kay sees that her husband Reese has sold the furniture, having lost their money gambling. She packs up her remaining belongings and leaves with Arlis. They spend more time together and grow close. Meanwhile, a young woman named Ginnie (Gwyneth Paltrow) now travels with a much older Roy. She is a grifter who will pretend to be a mourner in order to steal the jewelry from a dead body at a funeral home. Ginnie brings an injured Roy to his estranged son, Arlis, to tend to his injury. Passing the house where he grew up, Arlis comes to realize that Kay was the infant who survived the long-ago murders. Roy figures this out as well. He begins talking about tying up loose ends. It leads to a confrontation, and Arlis shoots Roy dead. Ginnie goes off on her own, and Kay and Arlis go their separate ways. ===== Set in the period 1784–1789, the film portrays Jefferson when he was US minister to France at Versailles before the French Revolution. French liberals and intellectuals hope he will lead them away from the corruption of the court of King Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette and toward a more democratic form of government. Although deploring the poverty of the common people, he embraces the riches of French culture and civilization. It is his first time abroad, and he takes advantage of the opportunity to extend his knowledge of liberal arts and science while absorbing the refinements France has to offer. A lonely widower, Jefferson develops a close friendship with Maria Cosway, a beautiful (and married) Anglo-Italian painter and musician. Although she becomes increasingly devoted to him, he is attached to his memory of his late wife, whom he promised that he would not remarry, and to his two younger daughters. His elder daughter is especially possessive, and Patsy becomes jealous of Maria's influence on her father. Maria becomes his confidant and correspondent, with their personal relationship becoming more affectionate as well. Later, Jefferson becomes attracted to Sally Hemings, his enslaved maid and companion of his younger daughter Polly. Three-quarters white in ancestry, she is his late wife's half- sister. Their father had taken Sally's slave mother as a concubine after he was widowed for the third time; Sally is the sixth of their children. Sally's enslaved brother James Hemings is also in Paris, learning to be a French chef for Jefferson at Monticello. When George Washington offers Jefferson the post of Secretary of State, he accepts and prepares to sail home with his family. But James, having enjoyed his freedom in Paris, is unwilling to return to the United States and urges Sally to remain with him. It is only when Jefferson promises, making an oath upon the Bible, that he will give James and Sally their freedom that they consent to return with him. Sally is also pregnant with Jefferson's child, and Jefferson extends his oath to promise freedom to all of Sally's children as well. ===== The story takes place during Japan's great civil war Sengoku period, beginning in the summer of 1581 and ending two years later. In the anime, the historical warlord Oda Nobunaga is really an evil demon killing everyone who stands in his way. An ancient prophecy says three mystical Demon Blades from three different ninja clans can end Nobunaga's unholy campaign. The story follows Kasumi no Ayanosuke, a young kunoichi (female ninja) who has escaped her village's annihilation, in her heroic efforts to reunite these three sacred weapons use them to kill Nobunaga. ===== Tom Thompson (David Schwimmer) is a 25-year-old man who sleeps in a bunk bed and lives with his mother. Tom is contacted by his high school classmate's mother, Ruth Abernathy (Barbara Hershey), to tell him that his "best friend," Bill Abernathy, committed suicide, and is asked to give a eulogy at the funeral. Tom does not remember his friend, but out of sympathy attends the funeral as a pallbearer. While Ruth struggles with her loss and Tom with his supposedly failed memory, the two develop a romance. Meanwhile, Tom's unrequited high school crush, Julie DeMarco (Gwyneth Paltrow), re-enters his life. At Abernathy's funeral, Tom's vague and impersonal eulogy confuses the Abernathy family and amuses Tom's friends. Julie, upset at their lack of respect, tries to leave as the pallbearers carry Bill's coffin out of the church. Tom, one of the pallbearers, drags the coffin and the rest of the pallbearers after Julie. He asks her if she knew Bill; she replies that she did not know Bill, but was saddened by the image of Bill in the coffin. Tom asks Julie out for coffee still holding up Bill's coffin. Bill's relatives, upset about Tom's indifference towards Bill, forcefully relieve him of his duty as a pallbearer. Visibly upset, Ruth states that Tom is in Bill's will. Afterwards, Tom calls Julie about the coffee date and Julie asks if Scott and Cynthia can come along for a double date. During dinner with Scott and Cynthia, it is apparent that Julie and Scott have more in common and listen to the same musicians. Conversation between Tom and Julie is stilted and awkward, while Scott slips up and reveals that Tom still lives with his mother. Disgusted by Scott's behavior during dinner, Tom reluctantly follows through with the plan to drive Julie home. When they reach Julie's home, Julie reveals that she remembered Tom in high school. As Tom leans in for a kiss, Julie turns her head colliding against Tom's. Julie states she had given off the wrong signal to Tom, since she is planning on moving away. Tom is rejected at the end of his second interview and goes to Ruth's to help pack Bill's belongings. While looking through pictures of Bill growing up, Ruth and Tom kiss and have sex on Bill's bed. Ruth tells Tom about Bill's father, a Vietnam War veteran, who is implied to have died in the war. Tom, in turn, tells Ruth about Bill's fictitious love interest based completely on Tom's infatuation with Julie. Tom and Ruth continue to see each other as Tom reveals more about his own affections for Julie in the guise of Bill's affections and Tom's attempts to forget about Julie in Ruth's arms. Tom repeatedly watches Julie working at a record store while parked on the street. One day after the shop closes, Tom sees Julie let Scott into the store. Jumping into the driver's seat, Tom drives by and stops to see Scott lean in to kiss Julie. When Scott sees Tom, Tom drives off. The next morning, Julie comes to talk to Tom about Scott's attempt of infidelity, not knowing Tom had witnessed the entire event. Reminiscing about high school band, Julie tells Tom that she wants to just drive away for a year just to be on her own. Julie invites Tom to a concert she had planned on going with her former fiancé, Jed. When arriving at Ruth's, Tom is rushed to a family gathering of Abernathy's. At Aunt Lucille's, Tom sees that Ruth had overheard him talking to Julie about their date later that evening. When Tom's car breaks down, Julie finds Ruth's charm bracelet, so Tom tells her that he has been helping Bill Abernathy's mother since the funeral. Julie mistakenly assumes an innocent relationship between Tom and Ruth. After a tow truck takes Tom and Julie back to Tom's house, Tom sneaks into his mother's room to get her car keys, while Julie enters Tom's room. Tom reveals he wanted to dance with her at a homecoming dance and she kisses him. As they fall into Tom's bed, Ruth calls Tom finding out that Julie is in the room with him. When Tom goes to see Brad for advice, he tells Tom to drop the bracelet with a letter into a mailbox for a clean break with Ruth. Tom does as Brad tells him and proceeds to continue dating Julie. For Julie's birthday, Julie asks Tom to go with her to meet her parents. On that morning, Tom sees Ruth carrying the envelope with her bracelet and Tom's letter, so Tom sneaks away through the back door. At brunch with Julie's parents, it is immediately apparent that her father disapproves of Tom and Julie's relationship when he keeps asking why he is there with them. After Tom pleads with Julie to abandon her plans to leave for a year, Ruth barges into the restaurant and humiliates Tom by revealing their past relationship. At Brad's bachelor party, Tom makes a scene at the strip club telling Brad not to marry Lauren. Tom says Lauren is an albatross around his neck and Scott thinks so as well. The next day, Scott apologizes to Tom and they reconcile. While talking about past crushes growing up, they both realize that there was another Tom who moved away after junior high school. Tom brings the other Tom to Ruth, who appreciates the gesture to reminisce about her son. They come to an understanding about needing someone at the time, Ruth mourning her son and Tom being rejected by his childhood crush, Julie. At Brad's wedding, Tom patches his friendship with Brad approving of his marriage to Lauren, as Scott and Cynthia appear to talk civilly together hinting of reconciliation. During the reception, Tom sees Julie and gives her the keys to his car as a belated birthday present for her trip. She hints to him from a previous conversation that she wants to dance. Tom gets a new job and moves into Julie's apartment while she is on her trip. ===== Helen and Jackson live together in New York City. At the beginning of the film, the two are driving towards the Kentucky farmhouse, Kilronan, where Jackson grew up, primarily to introduce Helen to Jackson's mother, Martha, during the Christmas holidays. They arrive late in the evening and go straight to bed. The next morning Helen awakens to Martha arranging the room, as she thought Helen was asleep in the other bedroom. During their stay Martha tries to convince Jackson to stay to help her run the farm. Helen notices that Martha cleans their room and arranges their things every day, including Helen's contraceptive. After returning to New York in the new year, Helen discovers she is pregnant after getting violently ill at work. When she informs Jackson of this, he asks her to marry him and she accepts. The wedding is held at Kilronan, where Helen meets Jackson's paternal grandmother, Alice, who tells Helen she doesn't trust Martha. Alice points out Martha is extremely smart and capable of doing the farmwork of four men. Before Alice can say more Martha interrupts. After the wedding they return to their New York apartment. Helen is assaulted by a burglar who steals her locket and makes sexual advances. When Helen tells him she's pregnant, he cuts her abdomen and leaves. The fetus is not injured. Martha arrives unannounced, saying she wants to sell Kilronan because she cannot run it alone. Helen tells Jackson she wants to move to Kentucky and in with Martha for a year and help renovate the land. Jackson tells Helen his father died in that house when he was seven and he blames himself because he ran into his father, pushing him down the stairs to his death. Jackson also tells Helen that his father had been cheating on Martha with a woman named Robin Hayes. Helen says they should go back to the farm so Jackson can face his "old ghosts". The couple move in with Martha, who attempts to divide them with subversive comments and manipulating the family friends and neighbors. When Helen goes to the doctor, she finds out Martha told him Helen wanted to have the baby at the house, even though Helen had never said that. Suspicious and increasingly annoyed, Helen talks to Alice who tells her that Jackson is not responsible for his father's death. He had landed on a nail puller at the bottom of the stairs, crushing his sternum, which, according to news reports was a freak accident. When Helen returns that evening she finds Jackson calling around asking for her whereabouts with Martha hovering close by. Helen's frigid attitude toward her mother-in-law prompts Martha to visit Alice and warn her to stay away from them. Having had enough of Martha's manipulations, Helen tells Jackson that Martha is tearing their marriage apart. He agrees to go back to New York and tells his mother, who appears to accept it gracefully. Martha is completely convinced the baby will be a boy, and that Helen is a bad influence on her son and unborn grandchild. Jackson leaves the farm on a work call, leaving Helen and Martha alone. That evening, Martha bakes a strawberry cheesecake for Helen laced with pitocin, a labor inducer. Helen wakes up the next morning, feeling strange. She discovers a baby room set up by Martha and finds the locket that was stolen from her in New York amongst the baby clothes. When Martha unexpectedly enters the room, Helen tries unsuccessfully to escape, driving to a neighboring farm and coming face to face with her attacker from New York, then attempting to escape on foot before Martha captures her at the side of the highway. Reluctantly, Helen gives birth at the house, with Martha looking on, offering assistance, but refusing to give Helen painkillers. Martha leaves the room to answer a phone call from Jackson. She tells him that everything is okay, but when Helen screams in pain, Martha hangs up. Helen eventually gives birth to a healthy boy. She begs Martha to hand her the baby, but Martha ignores her, telling the baby she is his mother. Martha tries to inject a needle full of morphine in Helen's arm, but Helen knocks the syringe away. By the time Martha retrieves it, she hears Jackson's footsteps in the house. In a scramble, she quickly cleans up, meeting Jackson at the door with the newborn baby. She tells him to leave Helen alone, as he has no idea what she's been through. The two leave Helen asleep, and Martha gives the baby to Jackson. That night, Martha enters Helen's bedroom with the syringe, but she finds Jackson awake in a chair next to the bed. Despite his mother's insistence that he return to bed, he stays, thereby thwarting her plan. The next morning, Helen awakens to see Jackson with the baby. As Helen finally holds her child she tells Jackson to ask Martha to make breakfast for them. At breakfast, Helen enters the house with an object in her bag. Helen says that it is the object that killed Jackson's father. She proceeds to tell Jackson the whole truth about his father's murder. She reveals that Robin Hayes, the "woman" Jackson believed his father had cheated on his mother with, was actually a male horse wrangler, with whom Martha had an affair. Helen also shows Jackson a vicious bruise from Martha's attempt to murder her so she could have him and their son to herself. Jackson's father was planning to leave Martha when he discovered the affair but Martha ended up killing him. Martha made Jackson think he did so she can bind him to her for the rest of his life. Jackson tells Martha that he never wants to see her again. Martha claims that Helen is only doing this because she is jealous of her. In utter disgust, Helen slaps Martha to the ground. Helen and Jackson then leave with their baby while Martha sobs on the floor, her hopes dashed. In the final scene, the couple visit Alice before they leave for good, presenting her with her great-grandson. ===== Jocelyn Bennett (Swain), is an intern at the fictional New York City magazine, Skirt. Horribly mistreated, overworked, and underpaid, Jocelyn lives for Skirt, especially the photo spreads. A spy begins to hand over Skirts spreads and story ideas to its rival glossy, Vogue. Skirt magazine finds itself in a bind and some people begin speculating who the infiltrator (everyone refers to the spy as a yuri) might be. After some fingers begin to point at Jocelyn, she seeks to apprehend the spy and clear her name. Along the way, she meets Paul Rochester (Ben Pullen), the British deputy art director at Skirt, with whom she has much in common. When she finds herself falling in love, one thing stands in her way: Paul's supermodel girlfriend, Resin (Leilani Bishop). Jocelyn continues to search for the spy but several obstacles stand in her way including Art Director Sebastian Niedarfarb (Billy Porter) who believes she is the spy and consistently puts Jocelyn down. However, as she begins to climb the ranks, she begins to stand out to the editors who realize her potential, though they quickly forget it. To make Paul jealous, she starts dating a photo shoot tech named Alex, though the relationship doesn't last. Jocelyn later learns that Resin is only dating Paul because he is related to Prince Charles. Soon after, the spy is apprehended. For her work, Jocelyn is made an assistant, on staff, and finally gets better treatment from her colleagues. During a party thrown by Skirt, Resin dumps Paul for another model, and Paul and Jocelyn get engaged. Two years later, the happy couple are shown on a PBS tour done by the newest intern at Skirt. Jocelyn has been made the senior photo editor at the magazine and Paul accomplished his dream of becoming a famous artist. They are set to be married in a few months. ===== In Chicago's O'Hare airport, advertising executive Buddy Amaral (Ben Affleck) is delayed by a snow storm for a return flight to Los Angeles, on the same airline he has just signed as a big client. He meets writer Greg Janello (Tony Goldwyn), and when his flight resumes boarding, Buddy gives his ticket to Greg so he can get home to his sons, 8-year-old Scott (Alex D. Linz) and 4-year-old Joey (David Dorfman). Buddy convinces his friend and airline employee Janice Guerrero (Jennifer Grey) to allow Greg to take his place on the flight. While spending the night with fellow stranded passenger Mimi (Natasha Henstridge), Buddy sees on television that the flight crashed. He has Janice check into the computer system to remove his name from the passenger manifest and add Greg's name. Greg's wife Abby (Gwyneth Paltrow) is woken up by news of the crash, and for many hours is torn between hope and despair, clinging to the belief that Greg would still arrive on the later flight on which he was originally booked, until his death is confirmed. Once back in L.A., the airline dictates that Buddy run a series of innocuous ads to ameliorate the tragic consequences of the crash, which win a Clio award. Plagued with guilt, Buddy makes a drunken scene at the awards show, and begins a stint in Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the steps in recovery is to make up for past misdeeds, so Buddy seeks out Abby, a budding realtor, giving her a tip on a commercial office building that Jim (Joe Morton), Buddy's partner and boss, has put a bid on. In return, Abby treats Buddy to a night at Dodger Stadium. Their relationship blossoms, even as Buddy does not tell her about being indirectly responsible for Greg's death. When the airline settles with Greg's estate, Abby next wants to put her boys on an aircraft to Palm Springs to get over their fear of flying. Buddy asks to go along with them, and soon develops a strong bond with the two boys. On the return trip, Buddy says he has a secret he will reveal the next day. It all comes apart when Mimi shows up, with a video of Greg and Buddy having a drink in the airport bar. Abby is devastated by Buddy lying to her and demands that he leave her home and her life - though also demands that he say goodbye to the boys. Buddy comes back the next day and talks to Scott, who is afraid that his father died trying to get home for a Boy Scouts Christmas tree outing. Abby harbors the same guilt for pressuring Greg to come home on the fateful flight. The victims' families sue the airline for damages, and Janice's role is revealed when Buddy is called to testify. As Abby watches on television, Buddy explains that he gave his ticket to Greg and did not take Greg's in exchange. In coercing Janice to change the roster, the airline's security procedures were compromised, which gets her fired. Buddy is excused by the judge, but still feels guilty. Buddy resigns from his firm, having compromised his client, the airline. Abby comes by to tell him that his talk with Scott had helped them both. Buddy, sensing that Abby is about to leave, asks her to help him rent his beachfront home or put it up for sale. As Buddy starts to talk about his plans, Abby realizes she can forgive him. ===== Sally Nash and Joe Therrian are a Hollywood couple celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary shortly after reconciling following a period of separation. He is a novelist who is about to direct the screen adaptation of his most recent bestseller; she is an actress he has opted not to cast in the lead role, despite the fact it's partly based on her, because he feels she's too old for the part. This decision, coupled with an ongoing dispute about their barking dog Otis with their strait-laced, non-industry neighbors, clean- and-sober writer Ryan and interior decorator Monica Rose, has resulted in an undercurrent of tension between the two as they prepare for the arrival of their guests. Among them are aging actor Cal Gold, Sally's co-star in the romantic comedy film she presently is shooting, his wife Sophia, and their two young children; director Mac Forsyth, who is helming Sally and Cal's film, and his anorexic, neurotic wife Clair; photographer Gina Taylor, whose relationship with Joe prior to his marriage and ongoing close friendship since troubles Sally; business manager Jerry Adams and his wife Judy; eccentric violinist Levi Panes; Jeffrey, Joe's roommate - and lover - at Oxford; and up- and-coming actress Skye Davidson, whom Joe has cast in the role Sally believes deservedly is hers. In an effort to dispel the simmering animosity between them and their neighbors, Sally and Joe have invited the Roses as well. The early part of the evening is devoted to charades and lighthearted entertainment. Following a series of toasts offered by the guests, Joe distributes the ecstasy Skye brought them as a gift. As it begins to take effect, the night deteriorates, accusations are made, secrets are revealed, and relationships slowly unravel. Complicating emotions triggered by the drug are the disappearance of Otis and a phone call from Joe's father bringing tragic news about his beloved sister Lucy. ===== In Regency England, an exotically-dressed woman is found in the fields, speaking a language no-one can understand. She ends up at the home of the Worrall family, the local gentry. Their Greek butler, Frixos, thinks the woman is a fraud from the start. Mr. Worrall sends her to the magistrate to be tried for vagrancy, but Mrs. Worrall agrees to care for her. Mr. Gutch, a local printer and newspaper reporter, takes an interest in the case, especially after the woman claims via mime to be Princess Caraboo. Gutch talks to the farm workers who found her and learns she had a book from the Magdalene Hospital in London on her. When the Worralls leave on a trip the servants inspect her for a tattoo, which they believe all natives of the South Seas have and are shocked to find Princess Caraboo has one on her thigh. Frixos tells Gutch he now thinks she's a genuine princess. Mr. Worrall uses her presence to recruit investors for the spice trade which will be facilitated by Princess Caraboo when she returns to her native land. Gutch brings in Professor Wilkinson, a linguist who is initially dismissive of Caraboo's story but has enough doubt to refuse to say she is a fraud. The local society finds Princess Caraboo fascinating and they flock to attend parties and soirees with her. Mr. Gutch begins investigating people connected with the Magdalene House. Lady Apthorpe takes Caraboo to a ball held for the Prince Regent, who is fascinated by Caraboo. Gutch learns Caraboo is actually Mary Baker, who worked as a servant for Mrs. Peake. Gutch sneaks into the ball to warn her she's been found out, but she refuses to acknowledge what he tells her. Mrs. Peake comes and confronts Caraboo and identifies her as Mary Baker. She is locked up. The local magistrate and Mr. Worrall want to hang her. Mrs. Worrall gives Mr. Gutch documents implicating her husband and the magistrate in a bank fraud. Mr. Gutch uses these to work a trade. He will bury the story if Mary Baker can go to America. Gutch, who has fallen in love with Mary, leaves with her for the United States. ===== Retired detective Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum) is called upon by an old friend, George Tanner (Brian Keith). Tanner has been doing business with a yakuza gangster, Tono (Eiji Okada), who has kidnapped Tanner's daughter to apply pressure in a business deal involving the sale of guns. Tanner hopes that Kilmer can rescue the girl using his Japanese connections. Kilmer and Tanner had been Marine MPs in Tokyo during the post- war occupation. Kilmer became aware of a woman, Eiko (Keiko Kishi), who was involved in the black market so that she could procure penicillin for her sick daughter. Kilmer intervened on behalf of Eiko during a skirmish, saving her life. After they'd been living together, with Kilmer repeatedly asking Eiko to marry him, her brother Ken (Ken Takakura) returned from an island where he'd been stranded as an Imperial Japanese soldier. Both outraged that she was living with his former enemy and deeply indebted to Kilmer for saving the lives of his (apparently) only remaining family, Ken disappeared into the yakuza criminal underground and refused to see or speak to his sister. Eiko, cautious to do nothing to offend Ken further, broke off contact with Kilmer. Before returning to the US, Kilmer bought Eiko a bar (with money borrowed from George Tanner) which she operates to this day, named Kilmer House in his honor. Kilmer has never stopped loving her. Ken's debt to Kilmer, giri, is a lifelong obligation that traditionally can never be repaid. Tanner believes that Ken would therefore do anything for Kilmer, including rescuing Tanner's daughter. Traveling to Tokyo with Tanner's bodyguard Dusty (Richard Jordan), they stay at the home of another old military buddy named Oliver Wheat (Herb Edelman). Kilmer visits Eiko at the bar's closing time, seeking to find Ken. Eiko's feelings for Kilmer are clearly as strong as ever. He also becomes reacquainted with Eiko's daughter, Hanako, who is delighted to see Kilmer again. Eiko tells Kilmer that her brother can be found at his kendo school in Kyoto. Kilmer travels by train to visit Ken at his kendo school. Ken is no longer a yakuza member, but will still help Kilmer. They find and free the girl. In so doing, Ken "takes up the sword" once again, attacking one of Tono's men to save Kilmer. This is an inexcusable intrusion by Ken in yakuza affairs. Contracts on both Ken's and Kilmer's lives are issued. Despite Tanner's protests, Kilmer insists on staying until the danger to Ken can be resolved. Eiko suggests he see Ken's brother, a high-level legal counselor to the yakuza chiefs. Goro (James Shigeta) is unable to intercede due to his impartial role in yakuza society, but suggests Ken can remove the death threat by killing Tono with a sword. The only alternative is for Kilmer to kill Tono himself, by any means (as an outsider, he is not bound to use a sword). Because Kilmer is known to Goro as an unusual gaijin who understands and accepts Japanese values, he proposes that Kilmer now has an obligation to Ken. After an attempt on Kilmer's life at a bathhouse, he learns that his old friend Tanner has taken out the contract on him. Tanner secretly is broke and owes Tono a huge debt. Dusty discloses that Tanner and Tono are business partners. During a violent attack on Ken and Kilmer in Oliver Wheat's house, Dusty is stabbed to death with a sword and Hanako is shot and killed. Seeking advice again from Ken's brother, Goro advises them that they have no choice but to assassinate Tanner and Tono. This will embarrass the partners in the eyes of the yakuza. Goro discloses that he has a "wayward son" who has joined Tono's clan and asks that Ken protect him should he be caught in the battle. In private, Goro then discloses the shocking family secret to Kilmer that Eiko is not Ken's sister but his wife, and Hanako their only child. Kilmer comprehends the true meaning of Eiko and Ken's rift, and Ken's anguish at the death of Hanako, all brought about by his repeated intercessions in their lives. Kilmer storms into Tanner's apartment and kills him, then joins Ken for a near-suicidal attack on Tono's residence. During a prolonged battle, after Ken kills Tono in the traditional way with a katana, Goro's son attacks them and Ken kills him in self-defense. Bearing the news to his brother, Ken moves to commit Seppuku, but his brother pleads with him not to bring more anguish to their family. Instead, Ken performs yubitsume (the ceremonial yakuza apology by cutting off one's little finger). After Ken excuses himself, Goro compliments Kilmer on his adherence to Japanese traditions, and dedication to his family. Before leaving Japan, Kilmer visits with Ken at home and asks to speak to him formally. While Ken prepares tea, Kilmer quietly commits yubitsume, and when Ken enters the room, waits for him to be seated. Sliding the folded handkerchief that contains his finger to Ken, he says "please accept this token of my apology" for "bringing great pain into your life, both in the past and in the present." Ken accepts, and Kilmer asks that "if you can forgive me, then you can forgive Eiko," adding, "you are greatly loved and respected by all your family." Ken professes that "no man has a greater friend than Kilmer-san," and Kilmer, overcome by emotion, says the same of Ken. Their obligations now apparently resolved, Ken takes Kilmer to the airport, and both men bow formally to each other before parting. ===== The upper-class Toda family celebrates the 69th birthday of their father with a commemorative photoshoot at their outdoor garden. Unfortunately, shortly after the photo session, the father, Shintaro Toda (戸田 進太郎 Toda Shintarō; Hideo Fujino), suffers a fatal heart attack. After his death his eldest son, Shinichiro (進一郎 Shin'ichirō; Tatsuo Saitō) announces that as their father had acted as a guarantor for a company which has gone bankrupt, they must help pay off that company's debts. The family sells off all their late father's properties and antiques, leaving only an old house by the sea. Meanwhile, the mother (Ayako Katsuragi) and the youngest daughter Setsuko (節子; Mieko Takamine) go and stay with Shinichiro and his wife. The unmarried second brother Shojiro (Shin Saburi) takes the opportunity to move away from Japan to Tianjin, China (which had been occupied by Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war). The mother and Setsuko soon clash with Shinichiro's wife, Kazuko, and go to stay with Chizuko (千鶴子; Mitsuko Yoshikawa), the married eldest sister. However, Setsuko's plans to go out to work are met with vehement objections from Chizuko, who finds the idea disgraceful since they are an upper-class family. Chizuko also clashes with the mother over her grandson, who has been playing truant from school. Eventually, Mrs Toda and Setsuko decide to move out to the unsold dilapidated apartment by the sea, instead of harassing Setsuko's second sister, Ayako (綾子; Yoshiko Tsubouchi), for a place to stay. Ayako and her husband are more than happy to let them stay elsewhere. The first anniversary of the father's death arrives and the family comes together for a ceremonial gathering. Shojiro arrives in time for the family dinner, and is shocked to learn that his mother and Setsuko are staying alone by the sea. He reprimands his brother and his sisters in turn, rebuking them for not doing their part as children, and urges them to leave for home at once, which they do. After dinner, Shojiro asks his mother and sister to stay with him in Tianjin, and they agree to. Setsuko tries to arrange a marriage between Shojiro and her friend Tokiko (綾子; Michiko Kuwano; JA), who has come for a visit, but Shojiro runs off to the beach before she can get them to meet. ===== Julián Torralba is a former film stuntman in Almeria, Spain. He and several of his colleagues, who once made a living in American Westerns shot in Spain, now are reduced to doing stunt shows for minuscule audiences on the decaying set built for those old Westerns. Julián wrestles with dark memories of the death of his son, also a stuntman, and with estrangement from his daughter-in-law Laura and her son Carlos. Carlos, a young boy, becomes intrigued with his late father's life and runs away to join Julián and his band of has-beens. There Carlos is initiated into the rambunctious life of these hard-drinking faux cowboys. But when Laura, a powerful executive looking for a new site for a tourist resort, learns that Carlos has joined the hated Julián, she moves to destroy even this remnant of Julián's once-proud career. Julián and the cowboys decide to fight back the only way they know how. ===== After besting Number Two at a battle of wills in "Once Upon a Time" at the apparent cost of Number Two's life, Number Six requests he be taken to see Number One. He is taken by The Supervisor to a large cavernous chamber that includes a British assembly hall with a number of masked delegates, whom the Supervisor joins, and a large metallic cylinder with a mechanical eye, labelled "1". Number Six is shown to his seat, a large ornate throne, to watch the proceedings. A master of ceremonies ("the President") announces Number Six has passed the "ultimate test" and won the "right to be individual", but there are matters of ceremony involved in the "transfer of ultimate power". The caged room where Number Two died is brought to the chamber with his body still in it; medical personnel recover the body, resuscitate him, and give Two a make-over. Number Two along with Number Forty- eight — a young modishly-dressed man — are presented as two different examples of "revolt" to the assembly. Number Forty-eight refuses to cooperate and drives the assembly to sing a rendition of "Dem Bones" before he is restrained. Number Two reveals he too was abducted to the Village and spits at the mechanical eye in defiance. Both men are taken away. The President then presents Number Six as a third form of revolt, but as "a revolutionary of a different calibre" to be treated with respect. Number Six is shown his home in London is being prepared for his return, and he is presented with a million in traveller's cheques, petty cash, a passport, and the keys to his home and car. The President says Number Six is free to go home or go wherever he wants, but requests that Number Six stay and lead them as his behaviour has been so exemplary. The President then asks Number Six to address the assembly, but as he begins each sentence with "I" the assembly drowns him out with shouts of "Aye! Aye! Aye!..." Patrick McGoohan as Number one Number Six is shown into the metallic cylinder. He passes transparent tubes holding Numbers Two and Forty-eight along with a third, empty tube, each labelled as "Orbit". Climbing a stairway, he finds a robed man in a mask watching surveillance videos of Number Six. Number Six pulls off the mask to find a gorilla mask underneath, and then under that, a man seemingly identical to Number Six. The robed figure escapes into a hatch above. Number Six locks the hatch and recognises the cylinder is a rocket like the one in "The Girl Who Was Death". He initiates its countdown, sending the President and Assembly into a panic, and an evacuation of the Village is ordered. Number Six frees Numbers Two and Forty- eight, and along with the Butler, they gun down armed guards, making their way to the caged room which is revealed to be on the bed of a Scammell Highwayman low loader. They drive away from the Village as the rocket launches from the abandoned Village. Rover (the security of the Village) deflates and is destroyed (to the accompaniment of "I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi (I Like You Very Much)") upon exposure to the flames of the rocket's exhaust. The four drive towards London. Nearing the city, Number Forty-eight alights and proceeds to hitch- hike. Just outside the Palace of Westminster, the truck is stopped by the police. The three abandon it and leave their separate ways. Number Two enters the Palace by the Peers' Entrance, while the Butler escorts Number Six back to his home, where his Lotus 7 car waits. Number Six sets off in his car, while the Butler enters Number Six's home, its door opening in the same manner as the automatic doors in the Village. The episode ends with the thunder claps from the series' opening sequence, as well as with the opening shot of Number Six driving on an open country road. ===== The book is set in the huge castle of Gormenghast, a vast landscape of crumbling towers and ivy-filled quadrangles that has for centuries been the hereditary residence of the Groan family and with them a legion of servants. The Groan family is headed by Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth Earl of Groan. He is a melancholy man who feels shackled by his duties as Earl, although he never questions them. His only escape is reading in his library. His wife is the Countess Gertrude. Large and imposing, with dark red hair, she pays no attention to her family or to the rest of Gormenghast. Instead, she spends her time either in her bedroom or in walking selected areas, in the company of a legion of birds and her white cats that alone command her affections. Their daughter is 15-year-old Fuchsia Groan. Self-absorbed, childish and thoughtless, she is also impulsive, imaginative and at times fiercely affectionate. Sequestered in the south wing of the castle are Sepulchrave's identical twin sisters Cora and Clarice Groan. Both suffered from epileptic fits in their youth, as a result of which their left arms and legs are "rather starved". They have the same vague and vacant personalities, lacking intelligence to the point of mental impairment. Both crave political power and bitterly resent Gertrude, believing that she robbed them of their rightful place in the hierarchy of Gormenghast and of any involvement in its affairs. Also important to the life of the castle is Lord Sepulchrave's personal servant, Mr. Flay, who believes in strictly holding to the rules of Gormenghast. At the beginning of the novel, two agents of change are introduced into the stagnant society of Gormenghast. The first catalyst is the birth of Titus Groan, the heir to Lord Sepulchrave, which interrupts the centuries-old daily rituals which are practiced at all levels of the castle's society, from the kitchens to the Hall of Bright Carvings in Gormenghast's upper reaches. Though he is the title character and integral to the plot, Titus appears only infrequently as an infant during his first two years of life. The second is Steerpike, a ruthlessly ambitious kitchen boy, whose rise drives the plot of Titus Groan. His escape from the kitchen during the castle celebration of Lord Titus' birth introduces change into the stultified Gormenghast society. Steerpike is Machiavellian in his rise, but he can also appear charming and sometimes even noble. ===== Vic DeSalvo (Danny DeVito) and his brother Goody are successful New Jersey trucking magnates, but Vic has a desire to make it big as a Hollywood producer. He hawks his scripts and ideas from one network executive to another, but he is turned down at each attempt. Finally, he meets an executive at a second-rate company who has just been fired for promoting a show that attracted zero viewers. To avenge himself, he accepts Vic's script and arranges for a pilot episode of Sittin' Pretty, to be filmed. The resultant episode is abysmally awful, both in acting and story, but Vic is only inspired to greater heights. The director and star actor walk out and Vic decides to act as well as write and direct. He throws a huge party to make himself known to "le tout Hollywood", but no one comes, except Francine (Rhea Perlman), a statistician at a ratings agency. They fall in love. When Francine is passed over for a promotion by her philandering and incompetent boss, she reveals to Vic how the ratings system can be bypassed and results fixed by setting up confederates in Nielsen-ratings households to skew the results. They conspire to run a scam that will make Vic's program the most-watched on television. The scam works and Vic is voted the best new actor at a grand awards ceremony, showing that many viewers (in addition to the confederates) watched his shows. But the agency has now discovered the scam, and as soon as Vic has accepted his award, he is arrested by the police. Francine and Vic are married in jail. ===== When young Chinese woman Lotus Flower sees an unconscious man floating in the water at the seashore, she quickly gets help for him. The man is Allen Carver, an American. Soon the two have fallen in love, and they get married "Chinese fashion". Carver promises to take her with him when he returns home. Lotus Flower's friends warn her that he will leave without her, and one states she has been forgotten by four American husbands, but she does not believe them. However, Carver's friends discourage him from fulfilling his promise, and he returns to the United States alone. Lotus Flower has a young son, whom she names Allen after his father. When the older Allen finally returns to China, Lotus Flower is at first overjoyed. She dresses in her elaborate Chinese bridal gown to greet him. However, he is accompanied by his American wife, Elsie. Allen has told Elsie about Lotus Flower, and it is Elsie who persuaded her husband to tell Lotus Flower the real situation. When the boy is brought to see his father, Lotus Flower pretends he is the child of her American neighbors. Later, though, she confides the truth to Elsie and asks her to take the boy to America. She tells the child that Elsie is his real mother. After Elsie takes the boy away with her, Lotus Flower says, "Oh, Sea, now that life has been emptied I come to pay my great debt to you." The sun is then shown setting over the water, and it is implied that Lotus Flower drowns herself. ===== When Joey is struggling to make ends meet by working at Central Perk, Ross suggests some alternative form of employment, and Joey looks into medical studies at the local hospital. He finds one that pays $2,000 for identical twins, and hires a fake twin, Carl, at an audition. Carl is even dumber than Joey, and the ruse fails miserably. Chandler panics when he remembers that he and Monica have agreed to hand-craft Valentine's Day gifts for each other this year, two weeks later than planned because Monica was working on Valentine's Day. After Phoebe offers him a bunny rabbit composed of Rachel's socks, Chandler fails miserably at making his own gifts. He ends up grabbing a cassette tape to stand in for a homemade mix tape. Monica, who also forgot, gives him Phoebe's sock-bunny and then launches into a furious campaign of please-forgive-me sex and homemade meals. Chandler, happy with the attention, does not correct her misconception, but his deception becomes clear when Monica actually plays the cassette tape—a homemade mix tape from Chandler's ex-girlfriend Janice for his birthday. Although she is angry, he pleads for another chance. She tries to get past it with another slow dance, but a few more seconds of Janice's voice is enough for her to storm into their bedroom alone. Rachel and Phoebe take a women's self-defense class together; Rachel feels confident about her mastery of the topic, which Ross scoffs at. Ross claims to have years of karate lessons to master the true essence of self- defense: "unagi", which Ross claims is "a state of total awareness." (Everyone asks him, rightly, if "unagi" is actually a form of sushi. In karate, the concept of this state is zanshin.) To prove that Rachel and Phoebe have not reached an "unagi"-infused state of mind, he sets up a number of "scary" ambushes on them, only to find out they are stronger than him, as in one failed ambush Rachel and Phoebe sit on him, not letting him go. Ross goes to their instructor to ask how to fight them off, but he fails to mention how Rachel and Phoebe attacked him first, making him look like someone who enjoys attacking women, especially his ex-wife. Later, Ross sees the backs of two blonde-haired women near Central Perk, thinking they are Rachel and Phoebe and attacks them from behind, only to be attacked back. As he is running away from them he pauses for a second to see Rachel and Phoebe staring at him from a window in Central Perk and he runs away in fear as he realizes the unknown women are chasing him. ===== The story is set in a United States Army base in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Major Michael Dillon (Gwynne), who is impotent, falls in love with a reporter sent to cover the camp, who turns out to be a nymphomaniac when she is gang-raped by the other soldiers in the camp. However, she realizes at the end that she will be even happier giving up her newfound lust for sex to settle down with the impotent commander. ===== A naive but caring prison chaplain, John Smallwood (Sellers), is accidentally assigned as vicar to the small and prosperous English country town of Orbiston Parva, in place of an upper-class cleric (Carmichael) with the same name, who is favoured by the Despard family, who practically run the town and operate a large factory there. Smallwood's belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are belied in Smallwood's eyes by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman (Peters) as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard (Jeans) to provide food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. His scheme spirals out of control and very soon the local traders are up in arms as they have lost all their customers. He tries to explain this to the residents but is besieged in the church hall and only just rescued by the police. As a face-saving act, the Bishop appoints the 'original' Smallwood to the parish and assigns the 'troublemaker' to the Scottish island of 'Ultima Thule'. He is made 'Bishop of Outer Space' to the British space operations based there. But when the intended pilot of the first rocket gets cold feet, Smallwood takes his place. He is last heard broadcasting a sermon over the rocket's radio. ===== Claude Gueux is a poor, hungry inhabitant of Troyes, who has received no education or help from society whatsoever. One day, missing of everything, he steals enough for three days of firewood and bread to feed his mistress and child. But he is caught, condemned to five years and sent to the Clairvaux Prison, an old abbey turned into a high-security detention center. There, the prisoners work as tailors in dirty workshops by day, and sleep in musty cells by night. Before going to sleep, they are given small portions of food to be able to survive through the following day. But Claude Gueux is a big eater, and the tiny quantities of food he is given are not large enough for him. So one of his cellmates, a young and shy criminal named Albin, spontaneously offers to share his food with him. That is the starting point of a long-lasting friendship. However, the prison is ruled by an avid, presumptuous and simply evil man, referred to as the "Director". He is jealous of Claude's innate ability to inspire friendship and obedience from all other prisoners, although he has many times used him to keep the prison under control. Seeing the friendship between Albin and Claude, he figures out the best way to irritate and hurt Claude would be to separate them forever, and he does just that. When Claude asks the Director why he has done this, the Director replies 'because I felt like it'. Claude takes this very badly, and in the following months he repeatedly asks the Director to bring back Albin to him. As the Director never does it, Claude makes a radical decision: he will kill the Director. So one day, he obtains an axe and a pair of scissors at the prison workshop, and waits there for the Director's night time inspection. When the Director arrives, he asks Claude, who isn't supposed to be in the workshop, 'why are you over here?'. Claude then asks the director one last time to free Albin. Once again, the Director refuses. The Director says 'don't mention it again, stop boring me'. Claude again asks why he did this to him, and the Director once again replies 'because I felt like it'. Claude then slices the Directors skull open with the axe and kills him. Immediately afterwards, Claude tries to kill himself with the scissors by repeatedly stabbing them into his own chest. But Claude does not die, and a judicial inquiry begins in which he admits murdering the Director and gives the reason as being that he felt like it. He then becomes ill for a few months as a result of his wounds, and when he has fully recovered, he appears before the assize court of Troyes. In court, Claude makes an eloquent speech in which he calmly tells the judge the full details of the events which had provoked him to commit the crime of murder, and he admits his guilt. However, when the King's attorney then states that Claude Gueux had committed the murder unprovoked, Claude becomes angry and he reiterates a long series of acts of extreme provocation on the part of the Director. The president of the court then sums up the case, and in doing so he only mentions the facts about Claude Gueux which are adverse, albeit incontrovertibly true. Claude is then found guilty and sentenced to death. Claude declines to appeal, but upon returning to the prison, a nun who had nursed him when he was recovering from his wounds, begs him to reconsider. He agrees out of gratitude, although he knows very well his request won't be listened to. In the following days, he is forbidden to come out from his cell or even to go to the workshops. His friends in the prison throw various objects into his room with which he could easily, according to the writer, escape from the jail. But Claude just returns those objects to the guardians. Finally comes the day in which he is to be executed, his demand for reconsideration having been refused. He is brought to a Catholic priest, to which he asks pardon for all his past sins. He sees the man that will bring an end to his life, and declares he does not consider him guilty of anything and pardons him completely. Then, a coach escorts him to the marketplace of Troyes, where a guillotine has been prepared. Before getting executed, he gives a coin, his only possession, to the priest that has come with him, and asks him to give it to the poor. Then, the guillotine's blade falls upon his neck, and he dies. A lengthy epilogue follows the story, in which Victor Hugo criticizes the lack of proportionality as between education and criminal punishment, and the cruel French society of the nineteenth century. The last part of his speech is directly meant for French legislators. ===== Wisconsin photographer and housewife Beth Cappadora leaves her youngest son, Ben, alone with his older brother for a brief moment in a crowded Chicago hotel lobby, while attending her high school reunion. The older son lets go of Ben's hand and Ben vanishes without a trace. Beth goes into an extended mental breakdown and it is left to her husband and owner of a restaurant, Pat, to force his wife to robotically care for their remaining two children, 7-year-old Vincent and infant daughter Kerry. Nine years later a young boy named Sam asks Beth if she needs the lawn mowed. Beth suspects that this boy who lives with his "father" two blocks away is in fact her lost son, and while Sam mows the lawn, she takes photographs of him to show to her husband and teenage son, who then says that he suspected the boy's true identity all along. The parents contact Detective Candy Bliss who pops in to offer wise, albeit often cryptic and conflicting, advice to Beth. It is learned that at the reunion in Chicago, the celebrity alumna Cecil Lockhart kidnapped Ben, renamed him Sam, and raised him as her own child until she was committed to a mental hospital, leaving Sam to be raised in a house only two blocks from the Cappadoras, by his adoptive father, the sensitive and intellectual George Karras. Ben was raised by a Greek-American father for nine years, while his biological parents are Italian-American. Ben is a polite, intelligent American boy who takes great pride in participating in Greek cultural rituals, much to the frustration of Pat who wants to pretend that Ben was never really abducted. Ben is faced with the cultural identity that he grew up with, and the cultural identity he would have known had he not been kidnapped. Ben's adoptive father agrees to surrender Ben to his birth family, while still living two blocks away. Torn between two worlds and having lost both of the parents that he knew, Ben expresses suicidal feelings to Beth. Ben's only memory of his biological family is one of brother Vincent and thus over a one-on-one basketball game he absolves his brother of any responsibility for his abduction, and agrees to return to live with the Cappadoras. At the end of the novel, many conflicts remain unresolved. Pat still has problems loving his sons: Ben because he can not relate to his personality and Vincent because he does not connect his teenage rebellion and cynicism to nine years of bad parenting. Beth has regained her position in the family as an equal parent, but Ben and Vincent's emotional scars may require years of intense therapy. ===== The family's leader, Teisel Bonne, seeks an ancient ruin (the Nakkai Ruins) to try and uncover a gigantic and highly valuable Refractor (Diana's Tear). He has a short rendezvous with Bon Bonne, but he and Bon are quickly subdued and captured by Glyde, a rival air pirate in the service of Mr. Loath. Tron finds out that the money used to build the Bonnes' flying fortress was funded by Mr. Loath, and can only watch helplessly, having chosen to act as Spotter for the mission. After discovering that Teisel defaulted on his 1,000,000 zenny loan, she realises that she has no choice but to pay off the loan, or Teisel and Bon will not be seen again. Seeing no other options, Tron suits up in a custom Gustaff mecha and, along with her army of 40 identical Servbots, begins her quest to pay the ransom through any means possible; especially by theft. During repeated bank robberies, Tron meets (and to an extent, befriends) officer Denise Marmalade, who repeatedly fails to stop her, even when engaging Tron in her own police-issue mecha. In the caves, the Servbots find the three Aurora Stones, help the restless spirit of a man that died trying to find the Fountain of Youth (which was, in fact, a primitive form of root beer), and help two Diggers fall in love. And in the ruins, Tron explores for valuable artifacts, including Diana's Tear (which Teisel was meant to find). After various adventures, Tron brings the one million zenny to Mr. Loath, who then claims that Teisel also owes interest on his loan, to the sum of two million zenny. She proceeds to acquire the requested money, and is then told that she owes interest on the interest. Realizing that Loath will never let Teisel and Bon go, she too is captured and placed in Teisel's cell. At this point, the player takes control of their Favorite Servbot (who has the distinctive "red head parts"), who sets off on a rescue mission. Though the Favorite Servbot succeeds in freeing Teisel, Tron, and Bon Bonne, and then defeating Glyde, Loath is still able to activate his secret weapon: the Colossus. The Bonnes at first try to attack it with the Gesselschaft's weapons, but this has almost no effect, and the Colossus' return fire causes Tron to be very seriously injured and Teisel to get thrown overboard. Thus, the Favorite Servbot and his Servbot crew have to take on the Colossus in the Gustaff. They succeed, finally defeating Loath and Glyde once and for all. And to ensure they never cause trouble again, Tron hands them into the police, saving officer Denise's job in the process (as she gets given the credit for catching them). The issue finally resolved, the Bonnes, reunited, set off for Kattelox Island. While in flight, the Favorite Servbot accidentally throws out a giant Refractor won from Loath with the trash, causing Tron and Teisel to freak out and force a pit stop to search for it. At this point, the events of Mega Man Legends takes place. ===== The plot continues with The Kid, living future life as an upbeat performer and co-owner of a club, Glam Slam, which was willed to him from Billy, who was the owner of First Avenue Club in the first film. Solitary and lovelorn, he spends his personal time composing songs, and writing letters to his deceased father. The other co-owner who was included in the will is Morris (Morris Day), his rival who now also owns his own club, Pandemonium, while desiring control of the other two clubs in the Seven Corners area, which are Melody Cool and the Clinton Club. Needing to pay the mayor of Seven Corners $10,000, Morris attempts to extort The Kid – by threatening to take full ownership of Glam Slam. Making matters more interesting is the arrival of Aura, an angel sent from Heaven to sway both Morris and The Kid into leading more righteous lives – while dealing with their attraction to her. As The Kid continues to show resistance, Morris begins to embarrass him by way of performances with his band, to steal The Kid's customers. Losing clientele and having his club defamed by Morris's henchmen, The Kid decides to challenge Morris to a music battle for ownership of Glam Slam. ===== A scene showing the two main characters. The original setting was the frontier of the Old West, where the main characters were American cavalrymen. Those stories, rarely longer than a single page, were comedic adventures about popular Western stereotypes and the absurdity of military life. One recurring feature was the blunder that lead to the Cavalry fort being besieged by outraged Native Americans, or in one case, the cavalry having to besiege their own fort after the Indians have tricked them into leaving it and taken over. As the series progressed, the stories became longer and more involved, retaining their humorous highlights. The drawing style also changed, after the death of the original artist Salverius, from overtly cartoonish to semi-realistic. In the second album, Du Nord au Sud, the main characters, Blutch and Chesterfield, travel east to join Ulysses S. Grant's army and fight in the Civil War. The 18th album, Blue Retro, describes how the characters were first drafted into the military when the war had already begun and makes no mention of the time they spent on the frontier, contradicting the events in album 2 and others. This retconned origin and continuity hiccups are not detrimental to the enjoyment and understanding of the series since each album is a stand-alone adventure or collection of short stories. Adventures at the frontier fort still occasionally take place. The two main protagonists are colorful and clashing opposites. Corporal Blutch is a reluctant soldier, highly critical of authority, whose only wish is to get out of the army and return to civilian life, often threatening to desert and coming up with ways to avoid going into yet another senseless battle. Blutch does have a heroic side and will not hesitate to fight against the Confederate troops even to the risk of his own life. Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield is by contrast a devoted and obedient career soldier, always determined that he and Blutch should be in the thick of the action. He is proud of his scars and dreams of military glory. Though strong and brave to the point of recklessness, he is clumsy and narrow-minded, unable to clearly perceive the madness of the war around him. Though their relationship is often antagonistic, they are comrades for life and have saved each other's lives many times in spite of repeated threats made by both of doing the other in. Other recurring characters include the somewhat insane, charge-obsessed Captain Stark and the bumbling general staff, headed by the anger-prone General Alexander. Historic figures are also occasionally present in the narrative: alongside General Grant, they include President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, and war photographer Mathew Brady. As happens in fiction, especially in bandes dessinées, Blutch and Chesterfield often get sent on special missions which take them all over the map, from Mexico to Canada, and mix them up in projects from railroad construction to spying on the Confederacy's secret submarine project (based on the actual CSS David). Many albums are built around historical events or characters such as Chinese immigrant labor, the treatment of African American soldiers, Charleston's submarines, and General Lee's horse Traveller. Chesterfield even goes undercover to confront guerrilla leader William Quantrill and his henchmen Jesse and Frank James. On another occasion they had to contend with a racist officer, Captain Nepel, based on the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Historical details are generally quite exact, and accuracy has steadily improved over the years. Yet the series is first and foremost entertainment and historic details are altered to suit the story. The serious drama of the plots is balanced by frequent humorous incidents and Blutch's constant sarcastic wisecracks. Although this is not strictly speaking an adult-oriented bande dessinée, the authors are not afraid of showing the reality of war in a harsh, but tactful manner, such as dead bodies in the aftermath of a battle. Military authority, especially the uncaring and/or incompetent leader is often the subject of parody and derision. ===== Songwriter Jack Morell—a reference to Village People creator Jacques Morali—gets a break DJing at local disco Saddle Tramps. His roommate, Samantha "Sam" Simpson, is a supermodel newly retired at the peak of her success. She sees the response to a song that he wrote for her ("Samantha") and agrees to use her connections to get him a record deal. Her connection is her ex-boyfriend Steve Waits, president of Marrakech Records—a reference to Village People record label Casablanca Records—who is more interested in rekindling their romantic relationship than in Jack's music (and more interested in taking business calls than in wooing Samantha), but agrees to listen to a demo. Sam decides that Jack's vocals are not adequate, so she recruits neighbor and Saddle Tramps waiter/go-go boy Felipe Rose (the Indian), fellow model David "Scar" Hodo (the construction worker, who daydreams of stardom in the solo number "I Love You to Death"), and finds Randy Jones (the cowboy) on the streets of Greenwich Village, offering dinner in return for their participation. Meanwhile, Sam's former agent, Sydney Channing, orders Girl Friday Lulu Brecht to attend, hoping to lure back the star. Ron White, a lawyer from St. Louis, is mugged by an elderly woman on his way to deliver a cake that Sam's sister sent and arrives disconcerted. Brecht gives Jack drugs, which unnerves him when her friend Alicia Edwards brings singing cop Ray Simpson (the policeman), but Jack records the quartet on "Magic Night". Ron, pawed all night by the man-hungry Brecht, is overwhelmed by the culture shock of it all and leaves. The next day, Sam runs into Ron, who apologizes, proffers the excuse that he is a Gemini and follows her home. Spilling leftover lasagna on himself, Sam and Jack help him remove his trousers before Jack leaves and Sam and Ron spend the night. Newly interested in helping, Ron offers his Wall Street office to hold auditions. There, Glenn M. Hughes (the leatherman), climbs atop a piano for a rendition of "Danny Boy", and he and Alex Briley (the G.I.) join the group, now a sextet. They get their name from an offhand remark by Ron's socialite mother Norma. Ron's boss, Richard Montgomery, overwhelmed by the carnival atmosphere, insists that the firm not represent the group, and Ron quits. Ron's new idea for rehearsal space is the YMCA (the ensuing production number "YMCA" features its athletic denizens in various states of undress; the film is one of the few non-R-rated offerings to feature full-frontal male nudity). The group cuts a demo ("Liberation") for Marrakech, but Steve sees limited appeal and Sam refuses his paltry contract. Reluctant to use her savings, they decide to self-finance by throwing a pay-party. To bankroll the party, Sam acquiesces to Channing's plea to return for a TV advertising campaign for milk, on the condition that the Village People are featured. The lavish number "Milkshake" begins as Sam pours milk for six little boys in the archetypal costumes with the promise that they will grow up to be the Village People. The advertisers want nothing to do with such a concept, and refuse to broadcast the spot. Norma then steps in to invite the group to debut at her charity fundraiser in San Francisco. Sam lures Steve by promising a romantic weekend, but Ron is taken aback by the inference that she would go through with the seduction, and Sam ends their romantic relationship. On his private jet, Steve prepares for a tryst, but rather Jack and his former chorine mother Helen arrive to negotiate a contract. Initially reluctant, Helen wins over Steve with her kreplach, and before long they are negotiating the T-shirt merchandising for the Japanese market. In the dressing room before the show, Ron, relieved to learn that Sam did not travel with Steve, proposes to her. At one point, Montgomery appears, seeking to rehire Ron as a junior partner representing the group. Following a set by The Ritchie Family ("Give Me a Break"), the Village People make a triumphant debut ("Can't Stop the Music"). ===== The film is told through the naive eyes of a diplomat's young son, Philippe, who idolises his father's butler, Baines. Baines has invented a heroic persona to keep the boy entertained, and often tells him stories of his exotic and daring adventures in Africa and elsewhere, stories such as putting down a native uprising single-handedly, killing a man in self-defence, shooting lions and so on. In reality, the butler has never been to Africa and is stuck in a loveless marriage, while dreaming of happiness with a younger woman (who he tells Philippe is his niece after the boy finds them together). After Baines has an argument with his betrayed wife, she accidentally falls from a landing to her death. However, Philippe believes that he has seen Baines murder her. The boy desperately and clumsily attempts to protect his hero when the police investigate, but his efforts only lead Baines deeper into trouble. Bobby Henrey, Ralph Richardson and Michèle Morgan in The Fallen Idol ===== When Bart complains he never gets any mail, Marge gives him the family's junk mail. He completes a credit card application under the name of the family dog, Santa's Little Helper. Bart receives a credit card issued to "Santos L. Halper" after the company misreads his application. He goes on a spending spree, buying the family expensive gifts from a mail-order catalog: smoked salmon and a radio- frying pan for Marge, a golf shirt for Homer, pep pills for Lisa and several things for himself. Undeterred by its US$1,200 price, Bart orders a purebred collie. When the dog arrives, Bart learns his name is Laddie and he is trained to perform several tasks. The Simpsons fall in love with the new dog and neglect Santa's Little Helper. When he fails to pay his credit card bill, Bart gets a call from a debt collection agency demanding payment. When the calls and collection letters persist, he enlists Laddie's help to bury the ill- gotten card. Soon repo men arrive to confiscate his purchases. When a repossessor asks for the $1,200 dog to be returned, Bart identifies Santa's Little Helper as the dog. The greyhound is herded into the truck and he watches sadly as it drives away. Realizing Santa's Little Helper is gone, the family bonds with Laddie, except for Bart, who fears for Santa's Little Helper's fate. When an exhausted Bart takes Laddie on one of his frequent walks, the collie saves the life of Baby Gerald. At the ceremony honoring Laddie's heroism, Chief Wiggum decides that he would make the perfect police dog. Bart gives him to the Springfield police force and breaks down crying while explaining to his family why they no longer have any dog at all. Homer instructs him to find Santa's Little Helper. Bart eventually learns from Reverend Lovejoy that the dog was given to a parishioner, Mr. Mitchell. Bart visits Mitchell to beg for his dog back, but he sees that the man is blind because he fails to notice his parrot has died. When Bart hears how the man and Santa's Little Helper have bonded, he grows heartsick and leaves. Later Bart makes a late-night visit to the man's home and retrieves Santa's Little Helper. While trying to escape, he traps himself in a closet after mistaking it for an outside door. Thinking Bart is a burglar, Mitchell gloats that he has called the police. Bart explains that he is just a child and the dog was originally his. Bart and Mitchell call to Santa's Little Helper so he can decide which owner he prefers. After briefly getting distracted by chasing his own tail, Santa's Little Helper chooses Bart. Chief Wiggum arrives with Laddie, who immediately sniffs out a bag of marijuana in Mitchell's pocket. As Bart and Santa's Little Helper head home, more police officers arrive to enjoy the confiscated cannabis. ===== The show follows Looney Tunes characters Sylvester and Tweety, and their owner Granny, along with bulldog Hector (Mr Bees) (who appeared in several cartoons alongside Tweety, Sylvester and Granny but was in the series given a new design similar to that of Marc Antony), as they solved mysteries, even with Sylvester still trying to eat Tweety in the middle of solving the mysteries, but Hector acted as a bodyguard for Tweety, and would even beat Sylvester up (usually out of shot, but sometimes behind a blind). The first season was dedicated to the memory of Friz Freleng, Warner Bros. animator and the original creator of the Sylvester and Tweety pairing. Freleng had died of natural causes at age 88 only months before the series premiere. Originally, the series during the first season consisted one case per episode, meaning a full-length story. Starting with the second season, the series now consists of two 11-minute stories, meaning two cases per half-hour. Other Looney Tunes characters make cameo appearances, including Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepé Le Pew, Beaky Buzzard, Babbit and Catstello, Hubie and Bertie, Foghorn Leghorn, Witch Hazel, Michigan J. Frog, Rocky and Mugsy, Marvin the Martian, Hippety Hopper, Gossamer, Count Blood Count, Sam Sheepdog, Cecil Turtle, Nasty Canasta, the Crusher, Pete Puma, Merlin the Magic Mouse, the Goofy Gophers, Hugo the Abominable Snowman, Road Runner, and latter-day Warner cartoon star Cool Cat who appears in some form in most of the episodes. Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Wile E. Coyote do not appear in this series. However, Colonel Rimfire, Cool Cat's nemesis, did appear in the series. The final episode of the series never aired on Kids' WB (in which, after decades of trying, Sylvester finally succeeded in eating Tweety, but it turns out to be a dream), but did air on Cartoon Network in 2002. ===== Born in 1913,Smith, Gene. "America is in the Heart" by Carlos Bulosan , 2013-10-17 Bulosan recounts his boyhood in the Philippines."America is in the Heart" Study Guide, bookrags.com The early chapters describe his life as a Filipino farmer "plowing with a carabao". Bulosan was the fourth oldest son of the family. As a young Filipino, he once lived on the farm tended by his father, while his mother was separately living in a barrio in Binalonan, Pangasinan, together with Bulosan's brother and sister. Their hardships included pawning their land and having to sell items in order to finish the schooling of his brother Macario. He had another brother named Leon, a soldier who came back after fighting in Europe. Bulosan's narration about his life in the Philippines was followed by his journey to the United States. He recounted how he immigrated to America in 1930. He retells the struggles, prejudice, and injustice he and other Filipinos had endured in the United States, first while in the Northwestern fisheries then later in California. These included his experiences as a migrant and laborer in the rural West. ===== Grace Beasley has been content with life as a housewife. One morning, Grace wins tickets to a concert by her favorite singer. Grace is ecstatic, but soon learns her husband is leaving her, and also that her son is leaving his wife. Grace arrives at the concert, only to learn it has been cancelled due to the murder of the singer. Grace decides to travel to England for the singer's funeral. She soon meets the closeted singer's former lover and they plot to secretly change his burial clothing to his beloved pink bathrobe. Grace and Dirk then leave for Chicago and track down and kill the Cross Bow Killer, who has been murdering singers. The adventure transforms Grace, and she faces the problems of her marriage with a new outlook on the meaning of love. ===== Andrew, taking refuge in the bathroom, describes his own version of "Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres" to a video camera (imagining that he is situated in an old library with a roaring fire, dressed in a smoking jacket and holding a pipe). His dramatic narrative of her exploits is cut short when Anya knocks on the bathroom door. He tries to explain his actions, and Anya is unsatisfied (reminding him of Buffy's irritated reaction the previous night, when he had followed her on patrol). He explains his desire to make a record of the events leading up to the apocalypse, in case humans survive, so that they will know what Buffy and her allies did. Later, Andrew talks to the video camera and uses his big white board to illustrate and explain the array of evil forces in Sunnydale. He interviews various members of the household, blithely re-imagining current and past incidents in an idealized and incorrect way. Buffy arrives at the school to find two boys fighting, a shy girl turning invisible because nobody notices her, and various other disturbances. Buffy finds Robin, who has just been injured by a thrown rock. As she bandages his head, they discuss the bizarre (yet familiar) chaos dominating the school. She explains her suspicions that the activation of the Seal of Danzalthar is behind the morning's chaos. They investigate the newly uncovered seal in the school basement. As Robin gets close to the seal, he is infused with evil. In a demonic voice, he berates Buffy for her involvement with Spike. Buffy pulls Robin away, freeing him; he recalls nothing. At the Summers' home, Andrew continues his interviews. He causes Xander and Anya to re-examine their feelings for each other. Spike uses reshoots to seem more threatening. Wood and Buffy arrive and inform Andrew he is going to help close the Seal; it is now surrounded by five possessed students and glowing with light. A magically forced memory allows Andrew to locate the magically charged knife the First wanted him to use to sacrifice Jonathan. Buffy tells Andrew that she believes that he can help her quiet the seal. They leave for the school, accompanied by Spike and Robin. They arrive to find that the school is being destroyed by ongoing student riots. Andrew tries to film their walk through the halls, but they are attacked by several students who possess enhanced strength. Buffy and Andrew make their way to the basement while Spike and Robin guard the stairway entrance. As they walk, Andrew revisits his memories of killing Jonathan, relating several different versions of the story as if each are true. They enter the basement room carefully and find five students standing around the seal, their eyes freshly cut and sealed (like the Bringers). In the Summers' basement, Xander and Anya revel in the aftermath of having sex again before talking about moving on with their lives (a conversation that fades into an awkward silence). At the school, Spike and Robin are attacked by more students. Spike inadvertently confirms that he killed Robin's mother, and Robin makes a failed attempt to stake Spike from behind; in the chaos of the fight, his actions go unnoticed. Buffy battles the new Bringers while Andrew records the scene with his camera. Once she has killed the Bringers, Buffy pulls out the knife and advances on Andrew, revealing that they must spill his blood to quiet the Seal, since he was the one who initially activated it. Buffy describes the bitter prospects for their future, and chastises his constant attempts to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. Andrew, frightened to tears, admits how willingly he had murdered Jonathan, and how he is sorry. He tells Buffy that he deserves whatever happens to him. Buffy leans Andrew over the Seal so that his tears fall on its surface. The Seal closes and becomes quiet. Buffy reveals to Andrew that tears, not blood, were necessary to close the seal; she has no plans to kill him. The students around the school are released, and the violence stops. Later, a sad Andrew talks to the camera in the bathroom again, confessing that he probably will die, and that he deserves to. Without another word, he shuts the camera off. ===== 10 years after the events of Rush Hour 2, Chinese Ambassador Solon Han, with Hong Kong Police Force Chief Inspector Lee as his bodyguard, addresses the importance of fighting the Triads at the World Criminal Court in Los Angeles. There, he starts to announce the whereabouts of Shy Shen, a semi- mythical individual of great importance to the Chinese mob, but an assassin snipes him, causing a panic. Lee corners the shooter, only to learn it is his childhood Japanese foster brother, Kenji. Lee hesitates, inadvertently allowing Kenji to escape just as LAPD Detective James Carter arrives after learning what happened over the police radio. Despite Han surviving the assassination attempt, Lee and Carter promise his daughter Soo Yung to find the person responsible. Upon her insistence, the pair head to the local Kung Fu studio to retrieve an envelope Han left her, but learn from the studio master that the Triads took Soo Yung's belongings. Lee and Carter return to the hospital and intercept a gang of French-speaking assassins before they can kill Han. After defeating them, they interrogate one of them with the help of Sister Agnes, a French-speaking nun. For her protection, they take Soo Yung to the French Embassy and leave her with French ambassador and chairman of the World Criminal Court, Varden Reynard. When Reynard and Soo Yung are nearly killed by a car bomb, Lee and Carter head to Paris to investigate further. After a painful encounter with Parisian Commissaire Revi, Lee and Carter meet anti-American taxi driver, George, and force him to drive them to a Triad hideout. While there, Carter meets stage performer Geneviève while Lee is tricked by mob assassin Jasmine, who claims to have information about Shy Shen, though Carter saves him from being killed. The pair try to escape, but are ultimately captured by Kenji's men. Kenji offers to let them live if they leave Paris, but Lee refuses and following a short struggle, he and Carter successfully escape. The duo recuperate at a hotel, where Lee reveals his relationship with Kenji and decides to continue alone. A disillusioned Carter leaves, but recomposes himself when he spots and follows Geneviève. Meanwhile, Reynard meets Lee and reveals that Shy Shen is not a person, but a list of Triad leaders and that Geneviève is Han's informant with access to the list. After locating Geneviève and saving her from an assassination attempt, the two flee to their hotel. They are attacked by Jasmine, but George rescues them out of a newfound admiration for Americans. Geneviève reveals to Lee and Carter that the Triad leaders' names were tattooed on the back of her head and that she will be beheaded if the Triads capture her. When Lee and Carter bring Geneviève to Reynard, they discover he was working with the Triads the entire time. Kenji calls to inform Lee that he has captured Soo Yung and demands he turn over Geneviève. Lee arrives at the Eiffel Tower to make the exchange, with Carter disguised as Geneviève with a wig. Kenji challenges Lee to a sword fight, during which the two fall into a safety net. After Kenji's sword cuts the net, Lee tries to save him, but Kenji lets go, falling to his death. Meanwhile, Carter saves Soo Yung and defeats Jasmine, who is killed after getting stuck in an elevator wheel. After escaping the remaining Triad members, Carter and Lee are confronted by Reynard, who threatens to kill Geneviève and frame them. However, George shoots Reynard from behind, killing him. As the police arrive, Revi tries to take credit for Lee and Carter's work, but they knock him out and leave with a victory dance. ===== The story opens in flashback, ten years before the (at the time) current continuity of the Green Lantern comic books, showing an extraterrestrial Barin Char, the Green Lantern of Sector 1522, dying when a chestburster bursts from his chest. Hal Jordan (who, at the time of the series’ publication, had long been dead) is then summoned by the Guardians of the Universe to rendezvous with fellow Green Lanterns Kilowog, Katma Tui, Tomar-Re, The Green Man and Salaak on the planet Tirama in Sector 1522. The six Green Lanterns are informed of the disappearance of Barin Char and proceed to the border world where he is believed to have disappeared. Tracing the signal from Char's displaced power ring, they enter a cavern inside a mountainous butte where they discover Char's corpse before being attacked by a swarm of Xenomorphs. Jordan decides that rather than exterminate an alien species—particularly since the Xenomorphs appear to be only the interstellar equivalent of sharks, the perfect killing machine without actually being evil—they would transport the Xenomorphs to the sentient Green Lantern planet Mogo, where they can not harm anyone. A decade later, the Signet Dawn, a Coluan long-range ore transport vessel, crashes onto the planet. Five extraterrestrials—the Xudarian Tomar-Dar, Brik, Ash, M’Hdahna and the aforementioned Salaak—appear on Earth in the apartment of Kyle Rayner, who at the time, is the Green Lantern of Earth and the only Green Lantern in existence. These five are either former Green Lanterns or were intended to become Green Lanterns at the time of Parallax’s destruction of the Green Lantern Corps, and they inform Rayner of the Signet Dawn’s crash on Mogo. The six then journey to Mogo to rescue the ship's crew. Inside the hull of the ship, they encounter Crowe, the ship's first officer, who tells Rayner that after the crash, the aliens carried off the other 37 crew members but left her for some reason. Crowe leads Rayner and the others deeper into the ship, where the Xenomorphs attack them, taking Rayner's companions captive, leaving only him, Crowe, and Salaak. When Rayner tries to grab Tomar as he is pulled down a shaft, his power ring slips off his finger and falls down the shaft. The trio then climbs down the shaft—Kyle and Salaak subsequently settling any remaining tension between them when Salaak apologizes for judging Kyle by what he was not rather than what he was—and discover five of Crowe's crewmates cocooned by the Xenomorphs, four of whom have been killed by chestbursters. The Xenomorphs then attack the trio, and Crowe and Rayner flee through a passageway, separated from Salaak. They then come across a chamber where they discover a Xenomorph queen with the remainder of Crowe's crew and Rayner's companions cocooned around the walls and Rayner's power ring on the floor. After exchanging a brief kiss for luck, Crowe jumps into the chamber firing at the aliens to distract them while Rayner goes for his ring. During this attempt, the skin on the right half of Crowe's face is ripped away, revealing that she is a gynoid. Rayner reacquires his ring. Crowe, fatally damaged during the melee, tells Rayner that he shouldn't leave the Xenomorphs alive to endanger someone else in the future as Jordan did, so Rayner destroys the Xenomorphs, rescuing the surviving Signet Dawn crew and his companions. Ash, Brik and Salaak do not survive. Rayner is left with the thought that sometimes the past comes back to haunt you no matter what one does, another reminder of the legacy of Hal Jordan that looms over him. ===== The novel is set in Ireland in the era of political upheaval between the 1916 Easter Rising and the eventual truce signed with the United Kingdom in 1921, seen through the eyes of young Henry Smart, from his childhood to early twenties. Henry, as a member of the Irish Citizen Army, becomes personally acquainted with several historical characters, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Michael Collins. Energized by Sinn Féin's victory in the General Election of 1918 and the party's establishment of the independent Irish Republic, Henry participates in the Soloheadbeg Ambush, the first engagement of the Irish War of Independence, as a lookout. Later, he becomes a gunman in the ensuing guerilla war against the British, setting barracks on fire, shooting G-men and training others to do the same. At the end of the novel, Henry comes to think that the endless violence and killing of innocent people has little to do with the concept of a free Ireland, or the prospect of a better life in Ireland and more about personal gain. ===== Kyle discovers that his dad and his mom are having marital difficulties caused by his dad's erectile dysfunction, and he and the others (Kenny, Stan, and Cartman) try to give him "a ne-rection" (which the boys confuse with "a resurrection"), unaware of what it actually is. Meanwhile, various members of the town, beginning with Kenny, start to spontaneously combust, which causes the townspeople to attend church more, and compels Mayor McDaniels to order Randy Marsh to discern the cause for the explosions. The boys get drawn into presenting the Stations of the Cross in church, with Cartman tied to the cross in the role of Jesus, after repeated pleading that he could not play any other role. Afterwards, the boys take the cross and put it up outside the church, with Cartman still attached, so that he will die and get a "res-erection" to give to Kyle's dad. Meanwhile, Randy manages to find out that the combustions are caused by people refusing to fart in front of their partners (Kenny was spending some time with Kelly, his girlfriend from the previous episode) and so he encourages everyone in town to fart every few seconds. For this, he wins the Nobel Prize and a statue is made for him, much to the ire of South Park's only other scientist, Dr. Mephesto, who wanted to win the prize for creating a Galapagos turtle with seven asses; he then plots revenge. Meanwhile, Cartman (still on the cross), is getting upset and tired that Stan and Kyle will not take him down, even going as far as claiming his mom is worried and "calling" for him. He is later taken down by Chef until he tells him it was all "just a dream" and he is still on the cross, angering him even more. Another crisis then comes up, when a heat wave hits the town, and again Randy is hired to figure out the cause. However, Mephesto beats him to it. He discovers that it is the methane gas from all the farting that led to the global warming. Randy, blamed for the crisis, is stripped of his Nobel Prize, and stoned and forced to walk through the town with his own statue on his back, being denied by his friends (as Jesus was in the Stations of the Cross). Meanwhile, Kyle's dad manages to get an erection, after seeing some attractive, young female clients undress in his office (to show him the skin cancer for which they claim Randy is responsible); after telling Kyle everything is going to be alright, Kyle is so glad for his father that he forgets about Cartman on the cross. Randy does not want to try to find a solution for his problem, since all the people in town would still hate him, even if he managed to solve the combustion/global warming conundrum. However, Stan tells him that he learned something from the Stations of the Cross: Even though Jesus was hated by all the people he knew and denied by his friends, he still did what he had to do and as he was dying, raised his right hand and stated, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" (which Kyle later points out is a quote from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). After going through extensive researching, Randy finds out that people need to fart only in moderation in order to fight against the global warming. This works well, and he ends up winning the town's accolades again, and gets his Nobel Prize back three weeks later, at which point the boys suddenly remember they had left Cartman out on the cross that long. They run to get him, and find him still alive but emaciated, having survived for three weeks on his accumulated body fat. Angered, Cartman then says (in a high pitched voice) that once he is taken down, he will kick both of them in the nuts. The song in Randy's daydream montage plays during the end credits. ===== Cleopatra "Cleo" Jones (Dobson) is an undercover special agent for the United States Government. Overseas modeling is only a cover for her real job. Cleo is a Bond-like heroine with power and influence, her silver and black '73 Corvette Stingray (equipped with automatic weapons), and her martial arts ability. While she evokes the glory of a funk goddess, she remains loyal to her drug-ravaged community and her lover, Reuben Masters (Bernie Casey), who runs B&S; House (a community home for recovering drug addicts). The film opens with Cleo overseeing the destruction of a poppy field in Turkey belonging to the evil drug lord, Mommy (Shelley Winters). Mommy employs an all-male crew and a bevy of beautiful young women catering to her many wants. When she hears about her poppies' demise, she plots revenge, ordering a corrupt policeman to raid the B&S; House. When Cleo returns to LA to arrest the police responsible for the raid, she continues to take apart Mommy's underworld drug business, thwarting her minions along the way. Cleo and Mommy face off in a showdown, in which she is trapped by Mommy in a car crusher but is saved by her friends from the B&S; House. In the final showdown, Cleo chases Mommy to the top of a magnetic crane where the two women fight. Mommy proves to be no match for Cleo, who hurls Mommy over the side of the crane to her death, while Cleo's friends defeat her henchmen. At the end of the film, as Reuben and the members of the community celebrate victory, Cleo departs the scene. She sets off to complete her mission of stemming the tide of drugs that flow into her community. ===== The story is set in Lahore (now the capital of Pakistani Punjab) in the time period directly before and during the partition of India in 1947 at the time of Indian independence. A young girl with polio, Lenny (Maia Sethna), narrates the story through the voice of her adult self (Shabana Azmi). She is from a wealthy Parsi family who hope to remain neutral to the rising tensions between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims in the area. She is adored and protected by her parents, Bunty (Kitu Gidwani) and Rustom (Arif Zakaria), and cared for by her Ayah, a beautiful Hindu woman named Shanta (Nandita Das). Both Dil Navaz, the Ice-Candy Man (Aamir Khan), and Hassan, the Masseur (Rahul Khanna) are Muslim and in love with Shanta. Shanta, Dil, and Hassan are part of a small group of friends from different faiths (some of whom work for Lenny's family) who spend their days together in the park. With partition, however, this once unified group of friends becomes divided and tragedy ensues. ===== Every year, twelve-year-old Samuel, eleven-year-old Jeffrey and eight-year-old Michael Douglas visit their grandfather, Mori Tanaka at his cabin. Mori trains his grandchildren in the art of ninjutsu. As the summer comes to an end, Mori gives each of them a new "ninja" name based on their personalities: 'Rocky', 'Colt', and 'Tum-Tum'. Meanwhile, the boys' father, Sam Douglas, is an FBI agent who stages a sting operation to entrap Hugo Snyder in the sale of warheads. Snyder escapes the trap with the use of his own ninja henchmen. Snyder decides to test Mori's fighting skill. The boys ignore Mori's orders to stay in the house and aid by defeating two ninjas on their own. Snyder threatens Mori's family if he does not get Douglas off his back, and Mori chides the boys briefly for interfering in his personal affairs. When they return home, they find their father unenthusiastic to see what they had learned during their visit and more annoyed at their new names. Emily, a friend of Rocky's, compliments his new name and agrees to ride with them to school the next day. Snyder develops a plan to kidnap the boys to use them as leverage to get Douglas to back off. Since the FBI watches them, his assistant Brown contacts his nephew Fester and his buddies Hammer and Marcus to kidnap the boys. Due to Douglas and his FBI crew's presence, they are unable to capture the boys. The next day, Fester and his friends follow the boys to school but are side-tracked by a fender bender with a police car. Emily becomes separated from the boys and encounters a group of bullies who steal her bike. At recess, the boys challenge the bullies to a two-on-two basketball game to ten, and they spot the bullies nine points. The brothers effortlessly score ten consecutive points, winning Emily's bike and respect back. That night, Colt learns that Snyder, who they assumed was a friend of Mori's, is actually the criminal their father is after. They are left with a babysitter when Jessica leaves to pick up Sam, and Fester and his friends break into the house with a fake pizza order, subduing the babysitter. They use a device in Rocky's bedroom to call Emily over and use her as a hostage. Due to an earlier trap, Hammer and Marcus run to the bathrooms sick to their stomachs, and the boys defeat Fester. Hammer and Marcus are subsequently defeated. After freeing the babysitter, the boys are overpowered by Brown and Snyder's bodyguard Rushmore. The boys escape their captivity and manage to subdue Rushmore. Snyder confronts Mori and challenges him to a fight for the boys' freedom. Due to his youth and speed, Snyder almost proves too much for Mori, until he remembers a handful of jelly beans which Tum-Tum had given him and uses them to gag Snyder. Refusing defeat, Snyder grabs a gun from one of his subordinates but is suddenly shot and subdued by Douglas. Snyder and his men are arrested. ===== DeeDee Rodgers (Shirley MacLaine) leaves the ballet company after becoming pregnant by Wayne (Tom Skerritt), another dancer in the company. They marry and later move to Oklahoma City to run a dance studio. Emma Jacklin (Anne Bancroft) stays with the company and eventually becomes a prima ballerina and well-known figure in the ballet community. While the company is on tour and performs a show in Oklahoma City, DeeDee and the family go to see the show, and then have an after-party for the company at her home. The reunion stirs up old memories and things begin to unravel. At the party, DeeDee's aspiring dancer/daughter, Emilia (Leslie Browne), who is also Emma's goddaughter, is invited to take class with the company the following day. After taking class with the company, Emilia is asked to join the company but she does not immediately accept the offer as she wants to think it over before making her final decision. DeeDee and Wayne decide that DeeDee should go to New York with Emilia, who is rather shy and does not make friends as easily as her younger sister. Meanwhile, their son, Ethan, gets a scholarship to the company's summer program while Wayne and their other daughter stay in Oklahoma City. Once in New York, they rent several rooms in Carnegie Hall with Madame Dakharova, a ballet coach. Emilia soon starts a relationship with a Russian playboy in the company, Yuri (Mikhail Baryshnikov). DeeDee runs into the former conductor of the company and has an affair with him, which causes conflict between Emilia and DeeDee. Meanwhile, Emma argues with Arnold, the choreographer, about giving her a better role in his new ballet, which he refuses and leads Emma to suggest Emilia for the role instead. It is also revealed Emma has been seeing a married man, Carter. During rehearsal, Emilia has an argument with Arnold and storms out, going to a bar and getting drunk. She then shows up for the performance that night still drunk and Emma takes care of her, which angers DeeDee. Emilia suffers when she sees Yuri getting involved with another dancer, Carolyn. Emma and DeeDee eventually enter into major conflict. DeeDee resents that Emma dotes on Emilia, when she has criticized DeeDee for choosing family life over her career while Emma chose not to have children. DeeDee accuses Emma of telling her to get pregnant and have Wayne's baby so Emma could play the lead in Anna Karenina, which Emma later admits is true. Eventually, misunderstandings are settled, with Emma and DeeDee working things out after a physical altercation. Emilia is announced as the star of the next season, and she and Yuri make up and agree to a professional partnership and nothing more. Deedee decides she is content with her life and the decision she made to leave professional ballet to have a family. Emma accepts that her performing days are numbered and she must embrace a different role within the company. DeeDee and Emma step onto the stage and reminisce together. ===== An apprentice Shaper is sent on a training mission with a Shaper Agent named Shanti by the Shaper Council. The pair are tasked with assessing the failed Shaper colony Drypeak and making contact with the pair of Shapers, Barzahl and Zakary, who were dispatched years ago to revitalize the colony. The gates of Drypeak are found unmanned, much to Shanti's disgust, the Agent and her charge are also attacked by rogue Shaper creations. When the pair gain access to the colony, they find a dishevelled Zakary who informs them that both he and Barzahl were unsuccessful in revitalizing the colony, which remains a barren desert. He also states that Barzahl has died. Zakary and the population of Drypeak behave suspiciously. Shanti is shadowed by an armed guard against her will. She instructs the apprentice, who is not guarded, to explore Drypeak and beyond in order to discover the truth behind the colony and Barzahl's disappearance. A Shaper explores a desert area with four creations, 2 "Battle Betas" and 2 "Vlish" After exploring a number of the game's locations, the apprentice gains access to a guarded tunnel and is astonished to discover what lies on the other side. Whereas the valley where Drypeak is located is a dustbowl devoid of vegetation, the lands on the other side of the tunnel are lush and green, meaning highly illegal shaping is taking place in secret. Serviles, the Shapers' slaves created from life essence, show abnormal intelligence and self-awareness. While still reeling from the revelation of what lies beyond Drypeak, the Shaper apprentice discovers that Shanti has disappeared during one of her escapes from her armed escorts, her necklace lay broken on the grass outside the tunnel. At this point, approximately a quarter of the way through the game, the player's choices expand considerably. When confronted with the apprentice's findings, Zakary confesses to being part of a plot to conceal illegal experiments from the Shaper Council. Both he and Barzahl were sent to Sucia Island, the location where the original Geneforge game is set, where Barred Shaper technology had allowed Shapers to manipulate life in countless ways. Instead of destroying the Geneforge, the pair agreed to spirit away the technology and experiment in private. Several of the intelligent serviles who lived on Sucia were brought along; a number of Shapers also followed Barzahl. Zakary remained in Drypeak to provide a front for the experimentation and rogue serviles which lay beyond the tunnel. Barzahl moved further into the valleys to build settlements and run experiments. Repeated use of the canisters can render the user cold, detached and possibly mad. When Zakary saw this happening to Barzahl the pair argued, Zakary regretted his part in the deceit. This occurred a year before the arrival of Shanti and the apprentice, Zakary had lost contact with Barzahl since the argument. Zakary pledges his loyalty to the Shaper Council once more and asks for help from the apprentice in dealing with what lies beyond the guarded cave. Using the Geneforge to empower himself and his followers, the Barzites, Barzahl intends to bestow god-like abilities on himself and his followers within the city of Rising. Barzahl cut off contact with Drypeak, preparing to repel the inevitable assault of the Shaper Council, who they wish to remain independent from. The Takers, a faction of intelligent serviles who had originated on Sucia Island, were given powers by Barzahl because they worked for him. In turn the Takers created powerful dragon-like beasts called drakons, taught the drakons how to create life themselves, and betrayed Barzahl. The Takers stand for the total destruction of the Shaper Council. The Awakened, the other servile faction in Geneforge 2, believe that Shapers should treat them as equals. They had been working with the Barzites, but the Awakened's leader Learned Pinner rejected the Barzites' view that serviles need to be controlled. Trade and communications between Zakary's now Shaper Council loyalist Drypeak and the other three factions have ceased, replaced with spies and subterfuge. The player is free to decide which faction they wish to join, if any, and to explore the game world, reacting to the characters and situations they encounter. ===== The player begins as an apprentice learning the arts of Shaping. While attending school on Greenwood Isle the player character is awoken when the school is attacked. Luckily, two Shapers are ready to join the shaper and assist to survive in the world outside. Alwan is a loyal Shaper Guardian who has only one skill, that of using his iron sword. He is trained as a Guardian, to obey without questioning. Due to there not being anyone he is able to obey, at first he is disoriented by the attack and does not know what to do. The player can get him to join only after obtaining permission from the servant mind in the school. Greta is a castout from the school because she started to sympathise with the Shapers' creations. She was an Agent, skilled in magic (starts with Firebolt but the player can get teachers to teach her other spells later in the game) and battle arts (also a sword). She is living in the village, outside the school, that is aptly named South End. She consents to joining the player's group without any conditions. It is discovered that a traitor Shaper named Litalia had orchestrated the attack on the school and other strikes against Shaper communities. She and others, including a former teacher at your school, believe that the Shapers are tyrannical rulers who make the lives of their creations miserable and should be stopped by extreme measures. The rebellion has been creating rogue spawners throughout the Ashen Isles, summoning creations that are causing chaos and attacking the Shapers and those who serve them. The player can choose between fighting for Litalia and her comrades, or allying with Lord Rahul and the Shapers and stifling the insurgency. It is found that either Alwan or Greta will leave the player's group depending on which faction the player joins. Greta will leave if the player joins the Shapers due to her thinking that the player is inhumane and Alwan will leave if the player join the rebellion because he will think the player is disloyal. ===== As German forces take over Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), a Czechoslovak scientist working on a new type of armour- plating, is flown to Britain. Bomasch's daughter, Anna (Margaret Lockwood), is arrested before she can reach the airport and sent to a concentration camp, where she is interrogated by Nazis who are after her father. Anna refuses to cooperate. Soon she is befriended by a fellow prisoner named Karl Marsen (Paul Henreid), who says he is a teacher imprisoned for his political views. Together they are able to escape and make their way to London. Anna does not know that Marsen is in fact a Gestapo agent assigned to gain her trust and locate her father. Following Marsen's suggestion, Anna places a cryptic newspaper advertisement to let her father know she is in the country. Soon after, she gets an anonymous phone call with instructions to go to the town of Brightbourne. There, Anna contacts Dickie Randall (Rex Harrison), a British intelligence officer working undercover as an entertainer named Gus Bennett. Randall takes Anna to her father, who is now working for the Royal Navy at the fictional Dartland naval base. Anna argues with Randall over her attempt to post a letter to Marsen (with an informative postmark). It does not matter, as Dr. John Fredericks (Felix Aylmer), Marsen's undercover superior in London, had tailed her to Brightbourne. Soon after, Marsen arranges the kidnapping of Anna and her father, and brings them back to Germany by U-boat. Their captors threaten to put her in a concentration camp if Bomasch refuses to work for the Nazis. Meanwhile, Randall's proposal to rescue the Bomasches is (unofficially) accepted. He travels to Berlin and infiltrates the building where the Bomasches are being held, posing as Major Ulrich Herzog of the Corps of Engineers. He dupes Captain Prada and Admiral Hassinger into believing he was Anna's lover years ago and can persuade her to get her father to co-operate. Randall spends the night with Anna in her hotel room to maintain the pretense. When the Bomasches are ordered sent to Munich, he plans to accompany them and arrange their escape. However, Marsen shows up just as they are about to leave the hotel; he has been assigned to escort them to Munich. Randall's situation is further complicated at the railway station, where he is recognised by a former classmate named Caldicott (Naunton Wayne), who is leaving Germany with his friend Charters (Basil Radford). Randall denies knowing Caldicott, but Marsen's suspicions are aroused. When the train makes an unscheduled stop (brought to a halt by a railway station guard played by Irene Handl in an early uncredited bit part) to take on troops, as war has just been declared between Britain and Germany, Marsen takes the opportunity to telephone his headquarters to have Herzog investigated. When Marsen's superiors call back to confirm there is no Major Herzog, Charters, attempting to use another telephone, overhears that Randall will be arrested when they reach Munich. The two Englishmen barely manage to reboard the train before it leaves. Caldicott slips a warning to Randall, who is thus prepared when Marsen pulls out a gun as they near Munich. Charters and Caldicott overpower first the two guards, then Marsen. After swapping uniforms with Marsen, Randall commandeers a car. They speed up a mountain road, with Marsen and his men in hot pursuit. They reach an aerial tramway; at the other end is neutral Switzerland. Randall manages to shoot all of their pursuers except Marsen, while Anna and the others escape on the tram. Randall then boards the other tram and exchanges shots with Marsen. Marsen reverses the direction of Randall's tram, but he manages to jump to the other tram as it passes. When he hits Marsen in the leg, the latter is either unable, or unwilling, to reach the controls and stop Randall from reaching safety. Randall and Anna embrace. ===== Set in 1964 in the fictitious town of Sylvan, South Carolina, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl, Lily Melissa Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. She lives in a house with her abusive father, whom she refers to as T. Ray. They have a no-nonsense maid, Rosaleen, surrogate mother for Lily. The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom. Then, after Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of "snuff juice" on three white men, Lily breaks her out of the hospital and they decide to leave town. They begin hitch-hiking toward Tiburon, SC, a place written on the back of an image of the Virgin Mary as a black woman, which Deborah, her mother, had owned. They spend a night in the woods with little food and little hope before reaching Tiburon. There, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily recognizes a picture of the same "Black Mary" but on the side of a jar of honey. They receive directions to the origin of that honey, the Boatwright residence. They are introduced to the Boatwright sisters, the makers of the honey: August, May, and June, who are all black. Lily makes up a story about being an orphan. Lily and Rosaleen are invited to stay with the sisters. They learn the ways of the Boatwrights, as well as the ways of bee keeping. With a new home and a new family for the time being, Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working as August's bee keeping apprentice to repay her for her kindness, while Rosaleen works around the house. Lily finds out that May had a twin sister, April, who committed suicide with their father's shotgun when they were younger.Kidd, p. 97 She watches June's ongoing flirtations with, and refusals of marriage to, her boyfriend Neil. Lily and Rosaleen also get to see the sisters' form of religion. They hold service at their house which they call "The Daughters of Mary." They keep a statue of "Black Mary", or "our lady of chains", which was actually a figurehead from the bow of an ancient ship, and August tells the story of how a man by the name of Obadiah, who was a slave, found this figure. The slaves thought that God had answered their prayers asking for rescue, and "to send them consolation" and "to send them freedom".(Kidd, pg. 108) It gave them hope, and the figure had been passed down for generations. Lily meets Zach, August's godson. They soon develop intimate feelings for each other. They share goals with each other while working the hives. Both Lily and Zach find their goals nearly impossible to meet but still encourage each other to attempt them. Zach wants to be the "ass-busting lawyer", which means he would be the first black lawyer in the area.Kidd, p. 121 Lily wants to be a short story writer. Lily attempts to tell August the truth but is interrupted by Zach, who takes her for a honey run. They stop at a store to pick up a few things. Zach gets arrested after one of his friends, who they had met at the store, throws a coke bottle at a white man and none of them will tell who did it. Zach and his friends are arrested and put in jail. The Boatwright house decides not to tell May in fear of an unbearable emotional episode. The secret does not stay hidden for long and May becomes catatonic with depression.(Kidd, pg. 186) May leaves the house and August, June, Lily and Rosaleen find her lying dead in the river with a rock on her chest, an apparent suicide. A vigil is held that lasts four days. In that time, Zach is freed from jail with no charges, and black cloth is draped over the beehives to symbolize the mourning. May's suicide letter is found and in it she says, "It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up."Kidd, pg. 222 August interprets this as urging June to marry Neil. May is later buried. Life begins to turn back to normal after a time of grieving, bringing the Boatwright house back together. June, after several rejections, agrees to give her hand in marriage to Neil. Zach vows to Lily that they will be together someday and that they will both achieve their goals.Kidd, pg. 231 Lily finally finds out the truth about her mother. August was her mother's nanny, and helped raise her. After her marriage to T. Ray began to sour, Deborah left and went to stay with the Boatwrights. She eventually decided to leave him permanently and returned to their house to collect Lily. While Deborah was packing to leave, T. Ray returned home. Their ensuing argument turned into a physical fight during which Deborah got a gun. After a brief struggle, the gun fell to the floor, which Lily picked up and the gun accidentally discharged, killing Deborah. While Lily is coming to terms with this information, T. Ray shows up at the pink house to take her back home. Lily refuses, and T. Ray flies into an enraged rampage. He has a violent flashback which brings him around. August steps in and offers to let Lily stay with her. T. Ray gives in and agrees. However, right before T. Ray leaves the Boatwright house, Lily asks him what really happened the day her mother died. T. Ray confirms that she did do it. ===== The gang research The First, but don't have much luck finding anything. Dawn grows impatient with Andrew's state of unconsciousness, but keeps researching at Buffy's request. Buffy asks for a book and her mother hands it to her. Joyce warns her that she needs to rest if she intends to defeat this evil, but Buffy knows the vision isn't real and then Xander wakes her up from her dream. The Ubervamp drags Spike further into a cave where the First has taken on Drusilla's form to watch Spike get tortured. At the Summers house, Dawn and Anya secretly try to force Andrew to wake and he does as Buffy walks in the room. They begin to interrogate him again about the First, but he takes some prompting before he's willing to help them. Andrew leads the gang to the school basement where the seal is still exposed on the ground, but no Spike or First Evil to be seen. Although they don't know what the seal did or does, the gang grab shovels and cover it with dirt again. On the way out, Buffy and Dawn run into Principal Wood, also carrying a shovel. Buffy and Dawn try to explain Buffy's surprising recovery from being sick and their own possession of a shovel while the principal explains himself and asks Buffy to return to work soon. At the house, Willow begins a spell to find the First, but it doesn't go the way she planned. Explosive bolts send Anya and Buffy flying while Willow is briefly possessed by the First Evil. Xander smashes a bowl used in the spell which breaks the effects and sends Willow crashing. She's fearful of the magic and hurting people and begs Buffy not to let her hurt anyone with magic. Buffy starts to leave to find the First herself, but is surprised to find Giles standing outside her front door. With him are three young girls – Kennedy, Molly and Annabelle – who are potential slayers that he's trying to protect. Giles informs the whole gang about the First's plans to destroy all slayers-in-training, their watchers and eventually the two active Slayers, Buffy and Faith. He breaks the news that the Council has been completely destroyed along with most of their records, except for the few books and references on the First he stole while there was still time. Giles goes over basic knowledge about the First Evil, explaining that it can only take on the appearance of the dead, but it's incapable of solid form. He informs Buffy that unfortunately, she's the only one strong enough to actually stand a chance of winning against the First. One of the Potentials, Kennedy, objects to the situation and wonders why they're hiding out on the Hellmouth of all places with only one person responsible for all their lives. In the cave, the Ubervamp tortures Spike by dunking his head under water while "Drusilla" lectures Spike about following the rules. Kennedy helps Willow make the sleeping arrangements around the house and ultimately, Kennedy ends up staying in Willow's room. The girls convene in the kitchen and start eating cookies after Dawn burns the meal she was trying to cook. Buffy and Giles walk and talk together as they search for an entrance to the cave Buffy remembers from the first time she encountered the First and its minions, the Bringers. Buffy unintentionally finds it as she falls through some old planks covering the ground. As she searches the caves, she's viciously attacked by the Ubervamp. She stakes the demon, but it doesn't kill him and he proceeds to beat her up badly. Buffy narrowly manages to escape the cave by climbing out and the vampire is kept at bay by the rising sun. Giles and Buffy return to the house to find the three potential slayers hanging out in the kitchen. Giles tells them all about the vampire Buffy fought, a Turok-Han. He explains that it's one of a prehistoric race of vampires that is far superior to and feared by the everyday vampires Buffy is used to. At work, Buffy researches "evil" on the Internet as Principal Woods stops to check on her. Again, in the cave, Spike is smacked around by the Ubervamp while Drusilla dances about and tries to convince Spike to decide to be on their side of the game. Spike doesn't fall for the mind tricks and earns himself more of a beating from the Ubervamp. Buffy reviews her wounds as her mother pays her another visit. Joyce talks to Buffy about evil and its constant presence in everyone and about the pressure Buffy's feeling to deal with this evil. She wakes up to find that she's still at work and had been in the middle of a meeting with a student. The student walks off and Principal Wood watches on from his office as a very tired Buffy tries to deal with the stress. Later that evening, the gang prepares for sundown and the potential danger it brings to them. The potential Slayers get weapons while Andrew tries unsuccessfully to convince Buffy and Xander to untie him. As Buffy watches for the sun to set, Giles reminds her that she's the one being depended on and then Molly interrupts, informing them that Annabelle ran off. The could-be Slayer runs through the streets of Sunnydale until she's captured by the Ubervamp and quickly killed. Buffy finds them both and is badly injured in a fight with the monster. The First in Drusilla's form gets angry with Spike as he continues to refuse to cooperate. A terribly wounded Buffy sits alone at home as she listens to Giles and Willow talk in another room. They worry about Buffy's condition and their ability to fight this thing that seems so much bigger than them all. Buffy finally comes downstairs and gives an inspirational speech about this huge challenge before them that is bigger than any evil they've ever faced. She tells the group that she's more scared than ever, but she's not about to back down now. There's a new plan: they're declaring war on this evil instead of waiting for it to make a move which Buffy says,"If they want an apocalypse, we'll give em one." ===== The film is about two pairs of identical twins separated at birth and how their lives go haywire when they meet in adulthood. Raj Tilak (Utpal Dutt) and his wife (Shammi) are on a trip with their twin sons, both of whom they call Ashok. Since they look the same, they should be called the same, is Mr Tilak's reasoning. As fate would have it, they adopt another set of twins, both of whom they call Bahadur. An unfortunate accident then divides the family, leaving both parents with one child out of each pair of twins. A few years later, Ashok (Sanjeev Kumar) is married to Sudha (Moushumi Chatterjee) and Bahadur (Deven Verma) is married to Prema (Aruna Irani). They all stay together with Sudha's younger sister Tanu (Deepti Naval). Into their lives enter the other Ashok, a detective novel aficionado, and Bahadur, a bhang (an edible form of cannabis which has been used in India since before the Vedic period) lover. Now there are two Ashoks and two Bahadurs in the same city. This is more than their families, the Jeweller, the Taxi Driver and the Inspector can handle. ===== Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) is an aspiring actor who can only find work as an extra, which he calls being a "background artist" as a means of making the work seem more dignified. Andy is accompanied on his various projects by his platonic best friend and fellow extra, Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen). Maggie is well-meaning but ditzy, often missing obvious social cues and failing to exhibit appropriate tact and subtlety in conversations. Unlike Andy, Maggie has no aspirations toward being anything more than an extra. Andy's agent, Darren Lamb (Stephen Merchant), has no real experience in the field of entertainment. He is incompetent, often taking no steps at all to find work for Andy, and even discouraging potential employers from hiring his client due to his flabby physique, age, and lack of acting experience. Darren is assisted by former soap opera star Shaun Williamson, who plays himself. Lamb frequently tries to undermine Andy by suggesting Williamson (who Lamb refers to by his former EastEnders character name, "Barry") is better suited for various acting roles that are offered to Andy. Fed up with life as an extra who is always being cut out of scenes just as he manages to get his face on camera, Andy shamelessly kisses up to celebrities and producers in an effort to try to get screen time or a line of dialogue. Although often successful in these endeavours, circumstances always arise that prevent Andy from advancing his career. Reasons include celebrities confessing that they have no real power to help, or (more often) Andy inadvertently offending the star which results in his immediate dismissal from the set. In the conclusion of season one, Andy delivers a sitcom script he has written to Patrick Stewart, who, in turn, passes it along to the BBC through his production company. Andy gets a meeting with BBC comedy producers who greenlight his project and agree to allow him to play the starring role in the show. Series Two largely chronicles Andy's frustrations with his sitcom—When the Whistle Blows—which is heavily rewritten by BBC producers, resulting in it being a lowest-common-denominator comedy that relies on a multitude of catchphrases, offensive stereotypes and silly costumes for cheap laughs. Although the sitcom is commercially successful, pulling six million weekly viewers, it is a flop with critics who mercilessly bash both it and Andy. Andy periodically gets a chance to expand his repertoire in film and on stage but manages to ruin every opportunity that comes his way by either refusing to take direction, or by once again offending bigger stars than himself. In the series' 90-minute finale, the sitcom has made Andy financially successful and recognisable to many but he is increasingly frustrated with the show's quality and with his career not moving forward. Andy is convinced to fire Darren as his agent and become a client of a larger, more professional firm which he believes will accelerate his path upward. After taping a Christmas Special for When the Whistle Blows, he announces to the live studio audience that he is quitting the series effective immediately. His career falls into total stagnation and Andy is forced to take bit parts on various long-running British television series such as Doctor Who and Hotel Babylon. Eventually, his agent ceases to take his calls. Andy's relationship with Maggie sours as he frequently ignores her and spends all of the time they spend together complaining about not getting the opportunities he feels he deserves. When he crashes his agent's lunch meeting at a posh restaurant, he is bluntly told that he will never realise his dreams of having fame, fortune, prestige and respect. Crushed, Andy reluctantly agrees to lower his expectations for the sake of remaining modestly famous and successful and is cast in Celebrity Big Brother. While staying in the Celebrity Big Brother house, Andy openly reflects upon the price of fame and grows increasingly disenchanted with the culture of celebrity worship that has manifested itself throughout Western society. His despondency culminates in an emotional breakdown during a conversation with the other housemates. He tearfully turns to the camera and apologises to Maggie, who is watching the broadcast from her flat, for ignoring her and not heeding her advice to be grateful for the things he has managed to achieve. He voluntarily departs the house, ending his tenure on the show. Moved by the unexpected outpouring of emotion, a group of journalists eagerly awaits Andy's appearance at a press conference. Andy's agent returns and tells him that his emotional turn has instantly skyrocketed Andy's profile and that a number of A-list stars are requesting to meet him. As his agent prepares to introduce him to the throng of waiting press, Andy quietly slips out the back door of the studio where Maggie is waiting for him in her car. They drive off together with Andy seemingly turning his back on show business and accepting a life of anonymity. ===== Dan Doh!! focuses on a fifth grader named Tadamichi Aoba also nicknamed Dandoh. Dandoh and his two friends are their baseball team's best players, but after an incident with their school principal, they are introduced to the world of golf. Dandoh and his friends are taught by a former professional golfer named Shinjō Mikiyasu, who believes that they can surpass even him. As Dandoh begins to play in tournaments, his friendly spirit, determination, and hard working and competitive attitude brings the best in the players around him and earns him many friends. ===== Con-artist Harry Bundage (McKern) believes that the lost treasure of pirate captain Joshua St. Edmund is hidden at Candleshoe, the large country estate of Lady St. Edmund (Hayes). Thanks to Harry's cousin Clara (Pickles), a corrupt former cleaning woman at Candleshoe, Harry has the captain's first clue; Harry recruits street-smart American foster child Casey Brown (Foster), employing her to pose as Lady St. Edmund's granddaughter, the Honourable Margaret, 4th Marchioness of Candleshoe, who disappeared at age four. Casey is the right age to pass for the long-lost Margaret and possesses several identifying scars that young Margaret was known to have. Casey agrees to go along with the con and discover further clues in exchange for a cut of the treasure. Lady St. Edmund, however, is living in genteel poverty, and Casey quickly learns that Candleshoe itself is constantly on the verge of being unable to pay its taxes. Priory (Niven), the estate's butler (who is forced to pose as various members of the household to conceal that all the other servants have been let go) manages to keep one step ahead of foreclosure by pawning the house's antiques, conducting tours of the estate, and selling produce at market. Four local orphans adopted by Lady St. Edmund assist Priory. Casey eventually becomes part of the family and decides to find the treasure for the benefit of Candleshoe, rather than for Harry. This nearly costs the girl her life when she is seriously injured trying to prevent Harry from stealing money from Lady St. Edmund. Casey, now unconscious with a severe concussion, is taken to a hospital, and remains there for several days. Meanwhile, without the money Harry has stolen, Candleshoe is unable to pay its taxes and is within days of foreclosure. When Casey learns that Lady St. Edmund is preparing to go to a retirement home and send the children back to the orphanage, she breaks down and tells them about the treasure. After unraveling the final clue together, the household returns to Candleshoe to find Harry and his crew tearing the place apart to find the hidden treasure. Casey, Priory, and the children manage to fight off the thieves until the police arrive, inadvertently discovering the treasure in the process. With Candleshoe safe and her scheme discovered, Casey, feeling she has no right to stay, prepares to return to Los Angeles, but is stopped by Lady St. Edmund, who offers her a real home at Candleshoe. Casey expresses doubt, wondering what will happen if Lady St. Edmund's real granddaughter ever returns, but she is eventually persuaded to return to Candleshoe with Lady St. Edmund. The ending is ambiguous as to whether Casey truly is the real Margaret. The four clues revealed in the hunt for the treasure: *"For the sunrise student there is treasure among books." (Refers to a message in a stained-glass window that can only be seen in the Candleshoe library at sunrise.) *"The paths of glory lead but to the grave." (A reference to the poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray.) *"He followed the eclipse for riches and fame; and, if ye would prosper, do ye the same." (Refers to a painting of Captain St. Edmund's ship, the Eclipse.) *"Underfoot, in the great hall. Look high, look low, discover all." (Refers to a statue of Captain St. Edmund in Candleshoe's great hall. The statue's foot is propped on a chest in which the treasure is hidden.) ===== 1981, Bangkok, Thailand. Sean Donahue is in the kickboxing ring against the current Thai champion. In his corner is his little brother Jake, who is cheering Sean on. Sean is able to overpower his opponent and wins after a spin kick knocks the Thai fighter out. Sean is rewarded with the championship. En route to their hotel after the fight, Jake and Sean are ambushed by some armed men. Sean is able to fight them off until he is shot at by Khan, who warned Sean he was not to have won the fight. Sean admits that it wasn't his intention but the opponent wasn't much of a contender. Khan, angry with the decision, fights Sean and obliterates him in front of young Jake. Khan performs a triple kick combination starting with a double jump kick to the head, followed by a double jump kick to the chest and a jump spinning back kick, which kills Sean. Jake, saddened and angry, races towards Khan who beats Jake up and knocks him out. It has been ten years and Jake is now a New York City detective who has gone undercover to bust a drug deal in an abandoned warehouse. Jake mocks the dealer and tells the dealer that he is a cop. The dealer laughs it off at first, until Jake reveals his badge and wire, which infuriates his fellow officers. The dealer and his two men attempt to begin fighting Jake, who resorts to a street fighting style to ultimate stop the dealer and his men. SWAT arrives and the team leader is unhappy with Jake for his actions. Back at the office, Jake is getting reamed out by Captain O'Day, who tells Jake the dealer may have a chance to call police brutality due to his actions. However, O'Day makes Jake a deal that could get him out of his potential bind. Interpol has contacted NYPD about an operation involving snuff films and wants Jake to take on the operation. When Jake learns the operation is in Thailand, Jake refuses to take the assignment. However, that night, while viewing one of the films, he learns the man who stars in the film is Khan, which triggers the flashback of his brother's death. When Jake gets a call from O'Day to let him off the hook, Jake tells him he's taking the assignment. Upon his arrival in Thailand, Jake meets his contact Anderson, who tells him that the men behind the snuff films look around for fighters to star in their films. Therefore, Jake must find a way to get attention. While this is going on, an American fighter, Dan Handel, is the latest star of Khan's new film, in which he learns the hard way about what filming is like. When Dan is cut for real and then shot at, he is shocked to discover the body of a dead woman. Khan arrives and beats up Dan before impaling him on a hook, causing his death. Jake's first attempt at a Muay Thai school proves to be unsuccessful. However, his actions grab the attention of Thasi, a Thai-American Muay Thai fighter. That night, as a reward for his latest actions, Khan is given a chance to choose a woman to spend the night with and chooses Molly, an American who came to Thailand to start a modeling career only to find herself duped with nowhere else to go. When she tricks Khan into doing a tradition of washing up for him, she escapes. When Khan sends men after her, Jake comes to her rescue and the two form a bond. The next day, Thasi follows Jake, Jake confronts him only to be beaten up. Jake is convinced that he will need more than street smarts if he plans to defeat Khan. Thasi, knowing Jake will not be able to stand a chance against Khan with his current skill, recommends a fighter named Prang, who is the only man to come close to defeating Khan. Since the devastating loss, Prang has resorted to becoming a hermit living off the Mekong River. When Jake arrives to Prang's place, Prang is completely drunk and blows Jake off. As Jake sets off to leave, Prang's chimpanzee steals Jake's passport. The next day, Jake heads to Prang to retrieve his passport and sees Prang getting mugged. Jake's attempt proves unsuccessful with Prang showcasing his martial arts skills, knocking out all of the muggers and sending them away. He admits the mugging was a ruse to see how well Jake can fight and invites him to dinner. That night, Prang tells his story of how he fought and ultimately lost to Khan. The loss caused Prang to become a drunken hermit, and yet he had wanted revenge on Khan for a long time. When Jake reveals how Khan had killed his brother ten years ago, Prang is at first reluctant to teach Jake for revenge. However, Prang sees the opportunity as redemption and decides to put Jake through a painful regiment of training. When Jake grows tired of the pain he must endure at the hands of Prang, a confrontation leads to Jake almost leaving Prang, only to apologize and decides to take the training seriously. Molly looks for Jake and must escape Khan's men. Eventually, Molly does reach Jake and the two start a romance. Jake becomes more proficient in martial arts and proves his mettle in an underground fight. When Jake begins winning his fights, it grabs the attention of Mr. McKinney, the scout for the snuff films. Jake accepts McKinney's offer. However, that night, while having dinner with Molly, Jake is stunned by the arrival of both Anderson and Capt. O'Day, who learns Jake's real reason why he accepted the mission. O'Day wants Jake off the mission, but Jake has told them he made contact and he makes his "movie" the next day. Anderson fully decides to side with Jake and at first reluctant, O'Day agrees as well. The next day, Jake is ready and heads to the location, which consists of a booby-trapped dome made of bamboo. However, when he leaves, Khan has Molly kidnapped and Prang killed. As Jake, wearing the mask of Hanuman makes his way through the first round of goons in the dome, he plays it off pretending like he doesn't know what's going on and even throws his mask to the ground. However, Khan, wearing a black mask, arrives and has Molly tied up and throws Prang's body to the bottom, watery lake where Jake is shocked. Khan and Jake start out with a sword fight until Jake is hit in the side and Khan's mask is sliced off, revealing his face. A visibly upset Jake reveals the photo of Sean from ten years ago and throws it to Khan. Khan knows who Jake is now and promises to send him to Hell. Jake says he has been there for ten years and the two go one-on-one with both nearly equally matching their skills. Khan gets the upper hand and almost sends Jake to death via impalement on a ground spike only for Jake to barely hang on to the cage. When Khan breaks a piece of bamboo as a staff to knock Jake down, Jake grabs the staff and jumps up and begins his assault on Khan. Khan attempts the triple death kick combination only to learn that thanks to Prang's training, Jake has learned to counter the three kicks. Jake finally defeats Khan, to the shock of everyone on set. When Jake attempts to get Molly, Khan gets up and runs towards Jake, who kicks Khan to the dome entryway, which falls on Khan. In his last breath, Khan grabs the rope in an attempt to send Molly to a grounded spike in the water only for Jake to rescue her. The Thai authorities arrive with O'Day and Anderson. Jake is relieved to see the film finally get shut down. The Thai authorities blow up the bamboo dome as Molly and Jake celebrate as they can start their lives over together. ===== In the tale, Macunaíma travels from his home tribe in the jungle to São Paulo and back again, with chase scenes that go all over the country of in between, in order to retrieve an amulet which he lost. The amulet had been given to him by his lover, Ci before she ascended into the sky to become a star. He encounters all sorts of folk legends and orixas along the way. The interactions which Macunaíma had with most of these characters was imagined by Andrade, though the essence of the folk lore remains true. ===== Based on the 1928 book by Mário de Andrade, the modern-day parable follows the misadventures of a black man (Grande Otelo) who is miraculously born to an old woman (Paulo José), who is supposed to be of the indigenous peoples of Brasil, in the jungles of the Amazon. Though born fully-grown, he has the heart of a playful child. After the death of his mother, he comes face to face with a spring that turns him white (Paulo José). With that change, he and his two brothers move to Rio de Janeiro, but are interrogated by street terrorists upon their arrival. Then, thanks to an affair with a white lady, guerrilla killer Ci (Dina Sfat), the film's hero fathers a black boy (Grande Otelo) with her. When both mother and child die, he embarks on a quest to recover a magical stone from a rich city dweller. In this film, the essentialist myth of the 3 Brazilian races, white, black, and the original natives of Brazil, is supposed to be represented through the protagonist, his brothers, and his mother. Throughout his adventures, Macunaíma learns some tough lessons about Brazilian life and society. Macunaima functions as an allegorical representation of the turmoil of the Brazilian military coup that had ensued. ===== ===== In 1995, World War III begins by accident when a hitman uses an miniature nuclear weapon in a hit which destroys Sicily; Italy mistakes the blast for nuclear terrorism and annihilates Libya, which destroys Israel. Africa bombs Germany, which in turn attacks France. Luxembourg bombs England. Sweden destroys itself. The Russians decide to liquidate the Americans, who in turn unleash their nuclear fleet, leaving only two continents on the verge of World War IV. In the north, America and Russia merge, containing a mutated strain of males, forming the USSSR. In the south, all that is left of womankind retreat to their territory of Vaginia. The armies of these two nations are soon at odds with each other as they perfect their most destructive weapons capable of destroying the universe. The Council of the Universe, fearing for everyone's safety, appoints Fred Hero, a retired superhero now working as a garbageman to diplomatically calm the situation down. He is given a powerful light bulb that makes him invincible. Fred firsts starts off with the USSSR and tries to persuade the nation's leader, the Comrade-In-Chief, to get rid of all of the bombs. The Comrade-In-Chief sees Fred as a lunatic and whispers to his three minions to fetch the guards. While he's waiting, The Comrade-In-Chief explains to Fred that all of the men lost their asses during World War III. The women were safe underground. When the war was over, and the women came back up and saw the men without their asses, they just laughed. The Comrade-In-Chief plans to destroy Vaginia with their weapon "The Big One" - a missile shaped like a penis. After the history lesson, Fred accidentally meets and promptly falls in love with the nation's female mascot, Liberty. Fred escapes the Comrade's lair with Liberty. When they're finally alone, Fred wishes to marry Liberty, but Liberty finds out that Fred's married. Liberty is shocked and decides to return to the Comrade. Fred then flies over to Vagina and meets the multi- breasted leader Una. Una reveals the Vaginia has a super-weapon called "Big Mama" - a spherical missile that has a vagina and nipple on it that is designed to combine with "The Big One" and thus destroy the universe. Fred once again tries to get Una to make peace with the USSSR, but this time, Una agrees, but only if he and her have sex. Fred is unable to withstand her advances, and unable to please her complex body. With no hope for peace and mad with rage at the idea of being separated from Liberty, Fred inadvertently starts the Fourth World War. While the two nations fight, Fred eventually decides to try to win Liberty's heart back and save the universe. Liberty is taken on board "The Big One", which starts to rise as Fred hurries to her rescue. He manages to get on board and escape with her to the safety of a tropical island only for them to be caught up in the final battle between both nations armies. As the two missiles circle above the sky, this gets the two nations extremely horny for each other. While the two nations have an orgy on the island, Fred tries to get back with Liberty, who still declines Fred's offer, due to Fred still being married. Just then, Fred gets a message from his wife, who says that she's seeing another man, Conan, Fred's Conan the Barbarian-like coworker. Fred and Liberty run toward each other with open arms. As they hug, "The Big One" penetrates "Big Mama" and both explode in a cosmic orgasm which causes the entire universe to be destroyed. God, who is having sex with his wife notices this but doesn't care. Fred and Liberty arrive in Heaven, and they both have sex in a lone cloud, beginning their new life together. ===== ===== The series focuses on Renton Thurston, the fourteen-year-old son of Adrock Thurston, a military researcher who died saving the world. He lives what he considers a boring life with his grandfather in a boring town. He loves lifting, a sport similar to surfing but with trapar, a substance abundant throughout the air, as the medium. He dreams of joining the renegade group Gekkostate, led by his idol Holland Novak, a legendary lifter. An opportunity to do so literally falls into his lap when a large mechanical robot, called the Nirvash type ZERO, and Eureka, its pilot and a member of Gekkostate, crash into Renton's room. Renton's grandfather orders him to deliver a special part to the Nirvash called the "Amita Drive", which releases the immense power dormant within the type ZERO called the "Seven Swell Phenomenon". Afterwards, Renton is invited to join Gekkostate, where he quickly discovers that the behind-the-scenes life of Gekkostate is hardly as glamorous or as interesting as printed in the glossy pages of their magazine, ray=out. Only one thing makes it all worthwhile for him: the presence of Eureka, the mysterious pilot of the Nirvash. Renton, Eureka, and the Gekkostate embark on an adventure that will shape their future as well as the world's. ===== A young woman gets off a bus at a bus station at night and heads to a payphone to find the number for Buffy Summers. Before she can find the number, one of the Bringers appears behind her with a knife. She backs away to escape the cloaked figure and others like him until she hits a wall, but before the Bringers can attack, Buffy arrives and rescues the young Potential Slayer. Once Buffy disposes of the Bringers, Buffy welcomes the frightened woman, Rona, to Sunnydale. At the Summers house, Willow struggles to sleep on the floor of her room while Kennedy talks constantly from her spot on the bed. Kennedy talks about the luxurious life she had when she was younger, prompts Willow to do some magic and repeatedly attempts to get Willow to join her on the bed, making Willow uncomfortable. Downstairs, Molly tells several new Slayers-in-Training about the recently killed Anabelle. Xander suggests they be quiet and sleep, but a still-bound and very bored Andrew suggests they speak louder. Buffy arrives with Rona and the gang is updated on the recent activities and findings. The gang lacks answers to most of their current problems like destroying the Turok-Han and rescuing Spike from the First Evil. The Slayers in Training are worried and lacking confidence. Giles suggests they seek answers from an oracle-like creature known as Beljoxa's Eye. Down in the cave where he's kept prisoner, Spike is approached by one of the Bringers, but for once, he fights back and breaks free of the bonds that hold him to a wall. He runs through the tunnels and finds Buffy waiting for him, but quickly is pulled away from his dream and into reality where the First Evil, looking like Buffy, is waiting for him. Giles and Anya go together to meet with a demon, named Torg, about Beljoxa's Eye. After some careful persuasion, Torg opens up a dimensional portal for the both of them to pass through. On the other side, they find themselves in a dark, windy dimension and soon come face-to-face with a caged mass of eyes, the Beljoxa's Eye. Willow gets a call from a member of the Coven in England. Andrew is freed from his bonds and Buffy attempts to scare him by asking if he's ever seen Misery, which Andrew starts comparing with the book before he realizes the implied threat. Willow informs Buffy about another potential Slayer in town and Buffy rushes off with Xander to pick the girl up before the Bringers do. As they leave, Dawn questions the usefulness of these potential slayers. The Slayers in Training work out in the basement of Buffy's house and thanks to some depressing comments from Eve, they talk about the seemingly insurmountable challenge they are facing and being called as a Slayer. Buffy and Xander knock at the room where the latest potential slayer is staying. When no one answers, Buffy kicks the door in and they find a dead blond girl lying on the ground. Upon closer inspection, they find that the girl is Eve and she's been dead for days. Back at the house, Andrew, still desperate to get on the Scoobies' good side, asks Dawn how he could be useful, but Dawn informs Andrew that Buffy gave her permission to kill him if he talks too much. Suddenly, Buffy and Xander return to the house and go down to the basement, where they tell "Eve" to get away from the others. The First in Eve's form finally reveals itself and with some thanks for all the information over the past few days and threatening comments about the future, then disappears. In the other dimension, Giles and Anya speak with the Beljoxa's Eye, which tells them that the First Evil cannot be destroyed and that its mission exists now because of a disruption in the Slayer's line, which was in fact, caused by the Slayer. The gang, all worried after the frightening invasion by the First, talk about what they are going to do. Buffy tries to keep the potential Slayers calm, but they continue to worry about whether they are prepared to handle anything that lies before them. Buffy and Willow exchange glances and then both leave the dining room, followed by a confused Xander while the others continue to panic. Back in the cave, the First approaches the Turok-Han as Eve and sends him out to kill everyone except "her." A crowd of Bringers forms outside Buffy's house that night, but do nothing but keep the Slayers from leaving. Buffy disperses weapons to the gang as they all wait for the expected attack of the Turok-Han. Willow practices some simple magic to see if the First would go after her again. Kennedy interrupts and is intrigued by Willow's skills and her past struggles with it. Willow warns her that the evil magic she's been exposed to in the past is not something Kennedy wants to see. The Turok-Han charges at the house and breaks the front door down. Willow puts up a barrier that keeps the vampire at bay, but it's almost too much for Willow and Buffy instructs everyone to run out the back. The gang encounters Bringers in the backyard, but they are destroyed and the gang runs off as the Turok-Han finally breaks through Willow's magical barrier. Meanwhile, Anya and Giles return to their usual dimension and Giles explains that the disturbance in the Slayer line was Buffy's revival from death. Anya realizes that if they had never brought Buffy back to life, the First wouldn't be doing this to them now. The gang runs down the street together and then Buffy tells them to break up. Willow and Xander lead the potential slayers, as well as Dawn and Andrew to a safe location while Buffy turns and attacks the Turok-Han. After a brief struggle, Buffy runs and tries to get the vampire to follow her. Xander leads the way through a construction site, which the potential Slayers find to be an extremely exposed and unsafe location for them hiding at. The Turok-Han appears, proving that it decided to go after the easier potential Slayers instead of Buffy. Kennedy prepares to attack the vampire, but then bright lights flood the site and Buffy appears as the potential Slayers move back to watch from a distance. Buffy tells the ubervamp that he's going to help her set an example for the other girls and begins a fight. A vicious battle ensues, but the ubervamp again proves to be stronger. As Dawn watches, she realizes aloud that Willow and Buffy planned everything as a teaching tool. A quick flashback to the panic-filled discussion at the house earlier shows that at the moment that Buffy, Willow and Xander left the others, the three were communicating telepathically about a plan to destroy the ubervamp and boost morale of the others at the same time. The potential slayers begin to worry as Buffy ends up on the losing end of the fight, but Willow tells them to wait. Just in time, Buffy turns things around and strikes the ubervamp with a few harmful blows. Buffy finally grabs a wire to wrap around the vampire's neck and pulls until she beheads the creature, turning it to dust. The Turok-Han dusted, the bruised and blood splattered Buffy ends her lesson and leads the newly confident Slayers-in- Training back home. In the cave, Spike tries to tell off the First in Buffy's form as she stands before him with a knife in hand. Buffy cuts away his bonds as Spike wraps his arm around her, realizing it's not the First but the real Buffy. She helps the sobbing vampire out of the cave. ===== Sōzō Haran was a brilliant scientist who was conducting research on Mars. He created a form of cyborg life with the ability to think for itself. These cyborgs, dubbed the , soon ran out of control and killed Dr. Haran along with his whole family, save his youngest son, the 16-year-old Banjō Haran. Banjō escapes from Mars on a rocket with a solar-powered super robot called Daitarn 3, which was built with the special metals of Mars. Now 18 years old and living on Earth in a luxurious mansion, Banjō fights against the meganoids and their leader, Don Zauser and his second in command Koros, with the aid of his faithful butler Garrison, his two gorgeous companions, Reika and Beauty, and an orphan boy named Topo. Together they must stop the evil meganoids which aspire to turn all humans into cyborgs and thus "improve" the human race. ===== The one-hour program revolved around two detectives who had their own detective agency in Los Angeles. E. L. ("Early Leroy") "Tenspeed" Turner (Ben Vereen) was a hustler who worked as a detective to satisfy his parole requirements. His partner Lionel "Brownshoe" Whitney (Jeff Goldblum) was an archetypal accountant, complete with button-down collars and a nagging fiancee (at least for the pilot episode), who had always wanted to be a 1940s-style Bogart P.I. A running joke was his penchant for reading a series of hard-boiled crime novels, subtitled "A Mark Savage Mystery", written by Stephen J. Cannell (though he never wrote such a series of novels), with Goldblum reading some passages in voice-over. He was sharper than he seemed, although a little naïve and more reasonable than his career path demanded, and had picked up karate to black-belt standard. ===== Clark's work as a lead officer in CIB was the focus of the first two series. In the first series his boss was Deakin, a tough ex-RUC Northern Irish policeman. At the end of the first series, Deakin was revealed to be a corrupt officer himself. He left the force but remained a recurring character, working freelance for the security services and others, sometimes in conflict with Clark and sometimes assisting him. At the start of the third series (after a dramatic shoot-out at the end of the second) Clark, Naylor and Connell leave the police force and work in the murky world of private security, far-right political groups and espionage. The third series ends with the betrayal of Clark and Naylor who had been masquerading as mercenaries. The betrayal is made by Connell in league with Deakin, their former boss and nemesis. It is unclear whether Clark and Naylor have died as the show ended on a cliffhanger. Rumours of a remake did circulate for some years, but Pearson confirmed in 'Watching the Detectives' that he had wanted a 'final' ending at the time and would never return to the role. Between The Lines was one of the first British TV dramas to include a bisexual character (whose sexual orientation is incidental rather than central to the plot). Maureen (Mo) Connell (Siobhan Redmond) has two significant romantic partners during the series, a husband in the first series (whom she divorces), and later on a long-term girlfriend. While some other police officers are briefly shown making disapproving comments (e.g. when she brings her girlfriend as plus-one to a police social), her bisexuality is shown as completely accepted by close colleagues, if a subject of occasional friendly banter (e.g. Mo mentions having a date that night, Tony asks "girl or boy?" and she replies sarcastically "one of each".) ===== During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, the Germans open fire on their American prisoners of war, in what is known as the Malmedy massacre, killing many troops as they try to run away. Medic Steven Gould (Alexander Niver) manages to escape with Corporal Nathan 'Deacon' Greer (Corbin Allred). Gould and Deacon are joined by two other survivors, Shirl Kendrick (Larry Bagby), a member in Gould's division, and Deacon's close friend Sergeant Gordon Gunderson (Peter Asle Holden). The four stumble on RAF pilot Flight Sergeant Oberon Winley (Kirby Heyborne). Winley explains he has important intelligence photographs he has to get back to the Allies and the group decide to try and reach the Allied lines some 20 miles away. The group fights against German troops, a winter storm, and personal conflict to return Winley to Allied territory. ===== A coalition of witches, led by self-appointed organiser Lettice Earwig, asks Granny Weatherwax not to participate in the annual Lancre Witch Trials, on account of her always winning. She agrees, becoming disconcertingly nice. ===== Penniless but full of ideas, Steve Martin (James Stewart) and Johnny Gambi (Dan Duryea), engineers who served in the Navy during World War II, walk down a quiet road on the gulf coast of Louisiana. Teche Bossier (Gilbert Roland), owner of the Port Felicity Fish Co., agrees to drive them into the shrimping town Port Felicity for five dollars. Upon reaching their destination, Gambi rents a shrimp boat from Dominique Rigaud (Antonio Moreno), although the fisherman's daughter Stella (Joanne Dru) distrusts them immediately. Gambi and Steve use the boat to show potential investor Kermit MacDonough (Jay C. Flippen) the location in which they plan to drill for offshore oil. Claiming that he has designed a drilling platform that can withstand any storm, Steve estimates that by investing one million dollars now, they will soon tap an oil reserve worth two billion. His enthusiasm is so infectious that MacDonough agrees to fund the project against the advice of his secretary, Rawlins. However, MacDonough warns Steve that he must discover oil within three months, or his company, due to huge investments made in an offshore oil lease, will put them both out of work. Several weeks later, Gambi meets and falls for Stella's younger sister Francesca (Marcia Henderson), but according to custom, she has been betrothed since childhood to Philippe Bayard. After singing a love song in the local gathering place Bon Chance, Philippe is upset to see Francesca enter with Gambi. Teche, who good-naturedly calls the oilmen "foreigners," agrees to help Steve and Gambi, but Stella refuses to accept Steve's statement that oil will be good for the town, claiming that she learned about "their kind" during her stay in Chicago. Nevertheless, the outsiders hire a crew and begin their search for oil. When Teche sees dynamite charges being dropped into the gulf, he begs them to stop, believing that the explosions will kill the shrimp and worsen an already dismal shrimping season. Steve maintains that the charges are safe, but Teche returns to town and incites the fishermen to form an angry mob. He scares the mob away by exploding sticks of dynamite behind them and he placates Stella by warning Gambi to stay away from Francesca. Steve gently advises Francesca to "go back to [her] people." With one month gone, Steve drives the building crew relentlessly and the platform and rig are completed on-schedule. He immediately orders the drilling crew to get started and the exhausted Gambi is relieved when a hurricane warning gives the men an excuse to take the night off. Gambi and his men enter the Bon Chance with Francesca, and Philippe furiously punches his rival and starts a brawl. The sheriff arrests the oilmen and Francesca angrily denounces all the men. During the storm, Stella visits Steve at the rig, determined to have Gambi fired so he stops seeing her sister. Steve explains to Stella that if he could pull up a resource that has been in the earth for millions of years, then he will truly have accomplished something. Stella finally abandons her suspicion and kisses Steve, but back in town, Philippe persuades Teche to help him destroy the oil rig. With the hurricane winds rising, Philippe climbs onto the platform and lights a bundle of dynamite, but Steve sees him and the two men fight. Philippe trips and disappears under the waves, and Steve, horrified, assumes that Stella was involved in Philippe's plot. The rig survives the storm, and in the morning, drilling begins. However, eight days before the deadline, MacDonough visits Steve and sadly delivers the news that the board of his company has voted to stop the drilling operation on the following day, fearing a penalty for non- payment on their lease. MacDonough has already spent all of his own money and the crew is unable to work for no pay. Gambi soon returns from town, announcing that he has just married Francesca. Steve punches Gambi, who in retort loudly chastises Steve for having driven him and the men too hard. Steve tells them all to leave, intending to do the drilling himself, whereupon Gambi hesitates and then persuades the crew to remain. While the men are drilling, they discover that the troublesome shrimp that have been clogging the valves are actually the huge golden shrimp that have so long eluded the local fishermen. Steve later takes Francesca to the rig, infuriating Dominique, who inflames the fisherman by declaring that the oilmen will steal their daughters and destroy the town. At Stella's request, Teche go to warn Steve about the impending mob on its way to the rig. There, Steve feigns ignorance about the golden shrimp and asks Teche if he can help him get rid of the creatures. He then addresses the furious mob to assure the men on their concerns: Francesca's marriage is a happy one and moreover, oil will bring progress to Port Felicity. Despite these words, the mob decides to destroy the structure, but at that moment, oil explodes through the rig and onto the platform. Later on, the fishermen discover that the golden shrimp bed is huge, and consequently, the conflict between the oilmen and the fishermen is resolved. Teche then convinces Steve that Stella was not involved in Philippe's plot and the lovers finally come together. ===== A musical set in the world of working-class New York, telling the story of a husband's journey into infidelity and redemption when he must choose between his seductive mistress and his beleaguered wife. ===== Twelve thousand years in the past, mankind was at mercy of the mythical creatures known as , immortal winged beings with overwhelming powers and technology. That is, until one of their kind, Apollonius, fell in love with a female human warrior, Seliane. Apollonius joins forces with the humans to free mankind from oppression, by using the legendary giant fighting robot . Eleven years prior to the story, in a disaster referred to as the "Great Catastrophe" Earth's magnetic field shifted devastating significant parts of the world and killing off many of its inhabitants. Along with the disaster came the return of the Shadow Angels who had been in slumber in their city of since their battle with Apolonius. The Shadow Angels began invading human cites to harvest human beings, dubbing them "the wingless ones," like cattle, to extract from the captured humans. Their prana serves as energy and nutrition not only to the Shadow Angels, but also to the legendary . The Shadow Angels facilitate their harvesting via giant, floating harvesting machines called which are guarded by giant mecha called . They are sentient machines, yet there are times when they are piloted by Shadow Angels. Ordinary weapons prove ineffective against the Cherubim, and rings of projectors around the remaining cities, tapping into Earth's strata to project a quantum shield to keep Shadow Angels from entering or materializing in them, provide only limited protection. However a human expedition under the leadership of Gen Fudo excavates three very technologically advanced fighter planes, and an organization called takes over the research of these planes, called , trying to identify how to use them. The three Vectors, colored mostly in white, are identified as the green , the blue , and the red . DEAVA discovers only people with special powers, called , can use the Vectors and the three Vectors are in fact the pieces of Aquarion, the same robot used to fight the Shadow Angels twelve millennia before. They also discover the Elements can ultimately unite the Vectors into one of three formations of the giant robot in battle, and can use it to fight and defeat the Cherubim. During the Elements' first sortie against the Cherubim by uniting the Vectors into a formation of Aquarion, they stumble on 13-year-old Apollo, who seems to be the reincarnation of Apollonius. They become convinced of this when he single-handedly takes control of the Vector Sol, unites the Vectors into the Solar Aquarion formation and defeats the enemy, thus causing him to be recruited by DEAVA to join their ranks. ===== Two vagabonds, Max Millan, a short-tempered ex-convict, and Francis Lionel "Lion" Delbuchi, a childlike ex-sailor, meet on the road in California and agree to become partners in a car wash business, once they reach Pittsburgh. Lion is on his way to Detroit to see the child he has never met and make amends with his wife Annie, whom he has been sending all the money he made while at sea. Max agrees to make a detour on his way to Pittsburgh, where the bank that Max has been sending all his seed money is located. While visiting Max's sister in Denver, the pair's antics land them in a prison farm for a month. Max blames Lion for their being sent back to jail and shuns him. Lion is befriended by a powerful inmate named Riley, who later tries to sexually assault Lion, and while not succeeding, physically savages and emotionally traumatizes him. Max rekindles his friendship with Lion, and becomes his protector, eventually exacting revenge by beating up Riley. After being released from prison, the two continue to have a profound effect on each other, although they have both undergone personal transformations and their roles have shifted—with Lion still traumatized and no longer carefree and clowning nor able even to laugh or even smile, and Max loosening his high-strung aggression (at one point doing a tongue-in-cheek striptease to defuse a fight at a bar and to attempt to make Lion laugh again). When the duo finally arrive in Detroit, Lion finds a payphone and calls Annie, now remarried and raising their five-year-old son. Annie is still furious at Lion for having abandoned her, and lies that she miscarried their son (adding spitefully, knowing Lion is Catholic, "He never even got born. Never got baptized. You know what that means; his soul can't go to heaven. That's what you did for your son's soul, you bastard. You sent it into limbo. That soul cannot go to heaven"). Lion is devastated, as is Annie when he hangs up after hearing the "news." When he gets off the phone, he acts overjoyed with Max about having a son. Shortly afterward, Lion has a breakdown while playing in a city park with children and later on becomes catatonic. Max promises Lion, now in a psychiatric hospital, that he will do anything to help him, and boards a train to Pittsburgh with a round-trip ticket. ===== The game is set in a fantasy world based on Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare", in which the enmity between tortoises and hares continues even after three thousand years. An evil mastermind tortoise named Devan Shell begins conquering planets, suppressing any native confrontation. One of such planets, Carrotus, is home to a peaceful hare kingdom that, once confronted by Shell, is able to provide enough resistance to fend him off. Enraged by his loss, Devan decides to kidnap Carrotus princess Eva Earlong and hide her on a distant airbase of unknown location to weaken the hares. In response, the king chooses to send Carrotus' hero Jazz Jackrabbit, who carries a blue LFG-2000 gun, to various planets conquered by Devan that might contain clues to the location of Eva's imprisonment. As Jazz travels through different worlds, he gains new weapons and meets new enemies in his pursuit to rescue the princess and save Carrotus from Devan Shell and his army of Turtle Terrorists. Jazz is depicted as a bright green jackrabbit with a red bandana, bracers and a blue "blaster" gun. ===== The film takes place during a 24-hour period. Henry Hackett is the workaholic metro editor of the New York Sun, a fictionalThe real New York Sun merged with another paper in 1950, but the film version shares the same masthead. Since the film's release, a new incarnation of the Sun has appeared, also using the masthead. New York City tabloid, who loves his job but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. He is at risk of the same fate as his editor-in-chief, Bernie White, who put his work first at the expense of his family. Bernie reveals to Henry that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and tries to track down his estranged daughter Deanne in an attempt to reconcile before his time is up. The paper's owner Graham Keighley faces dire financial straits, so he has managing editor Alicia Clark, Henry's nemesis, impose unpopular cutbacks, as she schemes to get a raise in her salary. Alicia is also having an affair with Sun reporter Carl. Henry's wife Martha, a Sun reporter on leave and about to give birth, is fed up because Henry seems to have less and less time for her, and she dislikes Alicia. She urges him to seriously consider an offer to leave the Sun and become an assistant managing editor at the New York Sentinel (based on The New York Times), which would mean more money and respectability for shorter hours, but may also be too boring for his tastes. A hot story is circulating the city, involving the murder of two white businessmen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Two African-American teenagers are arrested for the crime, which both Henry and Sun columnist Michael McDougal believe to be false charges when they overhear the NYPD discuss the arrest on the Sun office's police scanner. Henry becomes obsessed with the case, getting others from the Sun staff to investigate along with him. He blows his job offer at the Sentinel after he steals information about the case from the editor's notes while being interviewed for the job, reporting it during a Sun staff meeting. Martha discovers through her friend in the Justice Department that the businessmen were bankers who stole a large sum of money from their largest investor, a trucking company with ties to the Mafia. Henry begins to believe that it was a setup and the Brooklyn boys were likely just caught in the midst of it. Henry leaves a dinner with Martha and his parents to go to the police station with McDougal to confirm that the boys were not responsible before they print the story. They corner McDougal's police contact Richie, who, through repeated interrogation and the promise of anonymity, admits that the kids are indeed innocent and just happened to be walking by the scene of the crime when they were caught. Henry and McDougal race back to the Sun office to discover that Alicia has approved the paper's original front-page headline and story stating that the teens were guilty. This results in a physical fight between Henry and Alicia after he tries to stop the presses printing the papers with the wrong information. McDougal is threatened by an angry city official named Sandusky, whom McDougal's column had been tormenting for the past several weeks. Their drunken confrontation in a bar leads to gunfire, which gets Alicia shot in the leg through the wall. Martha is rushed to the hospital for an emergency caesarean section due to uterine hemorrhaging. Alicia is brought to the same hospital and has a change of heart. She calls the Sun office, has the print room stop the run, and the headline is corrected to Henry's suggestion, "They Didn't Do It", with McDougal's story, just in time for the following morning's circulation. The movie ends with Martha giving birth to a healthy baby boy, and a morning news radio report states that because of the Suns exclusive story, the Brooklyn teens were released from jail with no charges pressed. ===== The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in the period 2001 to 2004. According to Stross, the initial inspiration for the stories was his experience working as a programmer for a high-growth company during the dot-com boom of the 1990s.Charles Stross, On beginnings ..., Charlie's Diary, 10 June 2005. The first three stories follow the character of agalmic "venture altruist" Manfred Macx, starting in the early 21st century; the second three stories follow his daughter Amber; and the final three focus largely on Amber's son Sirhan in the completely transformed world at the end of the century. ===== In the following table, the chapter number (#), chapter name & original magazine date of publication, and a brief synopsis are given. The nine stories are grouped into three parts. {| style="margin:auto;" class="wikitable" |- !# !Chapter/Date of original publication !Part 1 : Slow Takeoff – Synopsis |- |1 |"Lobsters" June 2001 |In early-21st-century Amsterdam, Manfred receives a call on a courier-delivered phone from entities claiming to be a net-based AI working for KGB .ru, seeking his help on how to defect. Eventually, he discovers the callers are actually uploaded brain-scans of the California spiny lobster looking to escape from humanity's interference. Driven by his commitment to agalmic economics, he manages to team them up with entrepreneur Bob Franklin, who is looking for an AI to crew his nascent spacefaring project—the building of a self-replicating factory complex from cometary material. A legal precedent is established that will help define the rights of future AIs and uploaded minds. Later, Manfred's predatory fiancée Pamela forces him to impregnate and marry her in an attempt to control him. |- |2 |"Troubadour" October 2001 |Three years later, Manfred is in the throes of an acrimonious divorce, and has a daughter from his marriage to Pamela, frozen as a newly fertilised embryo. He meets Annette again, and begins a relationship with her. Three schemes—a workable state centralised planning apparatus that can interface with external market systems, a way to upload the entirety of the 20th century's out-of-copyright film and music to the net, and a plan to thwart his grasping wife and her lawyers—come together perfectly. Amber, Manfred's daughter, has been defrosted and born, and is being brought up by Pamela. |- |3 |"Tourist" February 2002 |In Edinburgh, five years later, Manfred is mugged and his memories (stored in cyberware) are stolen, forcing him to rediscover who he is and what he's doing in Edinburgh. Meanwhile, the Lobsters are thriving in colonies situated at the L5 point, and on a comet in the asteroid belt; they, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the ESA, have picked up encrypted signals from outside the solar system. Bob Franklin, now dead, is personality- reconstructed in the Franklin Collective. Manfred, his memories recovered, moves to further expand the rights of non-human intelligences. Aineko begins its own study—and decoding—of the alien signals. |- !# !Chapter !Part 2 : Point of Inflection – Synopsis |- |4 |"Halo" June 2002 |A decade later, Amber Macx —now in her early teens— finally breaks free from her domineering mother by utilising a complex plot, thought up by Manfred and Annette, in which she enslaves herself via a Yemeni shell corporation and later enlists aboard a Franklin Collective-owned, youth-crewed spacecraft, mining materials from Amalthea, Jupiter's third moon. Pamela petitions the imam Sadeq to issue an Islamic legal judgment against Amber, which she thwarts by setting up her own empire on a small, privately owned asteroid, thus making herself sovereign. In the meantime, the alien signals have been decoded, and a physical journey to a mentioned "router" is planned. |- |5 |"Router" September 2002 |The alien router, orbiting a 3-light-year-distant brown dwarf star named Hyundai +4904/-56, is visited by the spacecraft Field Circus, a Coke-can-sized mass of computronium propelled by a Jupiter-based laser and a lightsail. Amber and 62 others have uploaded themselves to become the virtualised crew. They are contacted by a group of aliens called "The Wunch", who occupy virtual bodies based on Lobster patterns "borrowed" from Manfred's original transmissions. The Wunch turn out to be thieving, third-rate "barbarians" who, after a struggle, are thwarted. Amber and a few others make the decision to travel deep into the router's wormhole network. |- |6 |"Nightfall" April 2003 |The router explorers find themselves trapped by yet more malign aliens in a variety of virtual spaces, but are eventually set free by Aineko's machinations. They discover that they are being hosted in a Matrioshka brain, the builders of which seem to have disappeared (or been destroyed by their own creations), leaving an anarchy ruled by sentient, viral corporations and scavengers who attempt to use newcomers as currency. The crew finally escape by offering passage to a "rogue alien corporation" (a "pyramid scheme crossed with a 419 scam"), virtualised as a giant slug, who opens a powered route out. Thereafter, the crew begins the journey back home. |- !# !Chapter !Part 3 : Singularity – Synopsis |- |7 |"Curator" December 2003 |Back in Earth's solar system, the crew find that "home" is now Saturn, on a floating habitat in the planet's upper atmosphere, where they meet Sirhan, son of the physical Amber and Sadeq, who both stayed (and died) at home. The crew upload their virtual states into new bodies, and find that they are all now bankrupt, unable to compete with the new Economics 2.0 model practised by the posthuman intelligences of the inner system. Manfred, Pamela, and Annette are present in various forms. Bailiffs—sentient enforcement constructs—arrive to "repossess" Amber and Aineko, but a scheme is hatched whereby the Slug is introduced to Economics 2.0, which keeps both constructs very busy. |- |8 |"Elector" September 2004 |In the increasingly populated Saturnian floating cities, Amber, Annette, Gianni and Manfred begin a political campaign to finance a scheme to escape the predations of the "Vile Offspring" by journeying once more to the router network, with Amber as the leader of the "Accelerationista" party. She loses the election (to the stay-at-home "conservationista" faction), but once more the Lobsters step in to help, by offering passage to uploads on their large ships if the humans agree to act as explorers and mappers. |- |9 |"Survivor" October 2004 |In the centuries following the singularity, the router has, once again, been reached. Learning from it, the refugees have created their own network, enabling them to explore vast distances. Habitats built around Hyundai are home to copies that wish to stay put, including child-clones. Aineko returns to make Manfred an offer that, if he accepts it, will result in Aineko leaving them alone forever. |} ===== The story of The Third Eye begins in Tibet during the reign of the 13th Dalai Lama. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, the son of a Lhasa aristocrat, takes up theological studies and is soon recognised for his prodigious abilities. As he enters adolescence, the young Rampa undertakes increasingly challenging feats until he is recognised as a crucial asset to the future of an independent Tibet. Tibet's Lamas had foretold a future in which China would attempt to reassert its authority, and Rampa is operated upon to help him preserve his country. A third eye is drilled into his forehead, allowing him to see human auras and to determine people's hidden motivations. With his third eye, Rampa can serve as an aide in the Dalai Lama's court and spy on visitors to the court as they are being received. The visitors upon whom Rampa spies include the scholar Sir Charles Alfred Bell, deemed by Rampa as naive but benevolent. In contrast, Rampa and others are certain that Chinese visitors are nefarious and are soon to attempt to bring conquest and destruction to Tibet. Tibet must then prepare for an invasion. During the story, Rampa meets yetis, and at the end of the book he encounters a mummified body that was him in an earlier incarnation. He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the planet Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today. The popularity of the book led to two sequels, The Doctor from Lhasa and The Rampa Story, and Lobsang Rampa wrote twenty books in all. ===== The story is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, around a city called the Tert. There, a bounty hunter/bodyguard named Parrish Plessis has ended up working for a ganglord called Jamon Mondo. She wants out, and her answer arrives in the form of two men wanted in connection with the killing of a journalist called Razz Retribution (In this world, the army, churches and the government have given up on the world, so it is now ruled by the media). The story is divided between the Tert, a rundown slum reminiscent of Mega-City One, and Viva City (a pun on the word vivacity), a walled suburb some forty kilometres up the coast. ===== Three years after his previous defeat by Crash Bandicoot in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Dr. Neo Cortex returns to the Wumpa Islands to exact revenge on Crash. Cortex incapacitates Crash's sister, Coco and impersonates her to lure Crash into a trap. After Crash's victory against Cortex and his Mecha-Bandicoot, Cortex and Crash are both sent plummeting down a hole and land in a cave. Enraged by his defeat, Cortex attacks Crash, and the pair engage in a prolonged fight across the cave. Upon returning to the surface, Crash and Cortex encounter a pair of interdimensional parrots named the Evil Twins, who plan to destroy the Wumpa Islands and steal Cortex's brain. After Cortex pleads for Crash's help, he is spontaneously attacked by bees and finds himself captured by Papu Papu and his subordinate tribesmen after stumbling into their territory. Crash rescues Cortex from captivity and escapes a pursuing mob of tribesmen. Crash and Cortex have another encounter with the Evil Twins, who bring a deity statue to life to attack the pair. Cortex, having learned that the Evil Twins come from the Tenth Dimension, concocts a plan and beckons Crash to his arctic lair. Crash and Cortex attempt to enter the Iceberg Lair through the front entrance, but the door is frozen shut, forcing the pair to take an alternate path inside. They inadvertently free Uka Uka in the process, who attacks them with a giant body formed from ice. Uka Uka is convinced by his twin brother Aku Aku to join forces and attack the Evil Twins themselves, but both are easily defeated. Cortex introduces the Psychetron, a device that will allow travel to the Tenth Dimension, but requires Power Crystals to function. Crash uses Cortex as an impromptu snowboard in an attempt to reach Doctor N. Gin's battleship and gather the Power Crystals, and destroys Dingodile's shack in the process. Crash's venture through the battleship eventually results in an explosion of a cache of TNT crates, which sinks the ship and propels Crash into a confrontation with Doctors Nefarious Tropy and Nitrus Brio on a distant ice floe. Crash returns to the Iceberg Lair with Cortex, where the latter is attacked by a recovered Coco, who believes that Cortex kidnapped Crash. Coco's assault sends two of the Power Crystals flying into the Psychetron, which damages the machine and paralyzes Coco in a chain reaction. Crash and Cortex set a course for Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil in the hopes of recruiting Cortex's niece Nina to assist in repairing the Psychetron. Crash and Cortex sneak into the Academy through the sewer system, where they fend off an attack from Dingodile. After Cortex finds Nina and has an encounter with Madame Amberly, he recalls the origin of the Evil Twins; when Cortex was an 8-year- old student in the Academy, he used his two pet parrots Victor and Moritz as test subjects for a prototype of his Evolvo-Ray, but the experiment resulted in the parrots being transported to the Tenth Dimension, where they would be mutated by the environment's severe "reverso-radioactivity". The trio return to the Iceberg Lair, repair the Psychetron and travel to the Tenth Dimension to face the Evil Twins. Upon their arrival, Nina is kidnapped by an evil doppelganger of Crash and taken to his desolate home on Twinsanity Island. After cornering Evil Crash, Cortex valiantly offers himself in Nina's stead, which leads to a chase. Crash, Cortex and Nina escape Evil Crash and make their way to the Evil Twins' compound, where Cortex confronts the Evil Twins and commands them back into their cage. The Evil Twins transform their cage into a giant robot and engage in a final battle with the trio. The Evil Twins are defeated and flee the compound, only to be devoured by Evil Crash when they take refuge in his home. After the trio return to their own dimension, Cortex attempts to eliminate Crash, but the malfunctioning Psychetron teleports Cortex into Crash's brain, where he is trapped with a crowd of dancing Crash duplicates. ===== Death Machine is set in the near future of 2003, in which the controversial megacorporation Chaank Armament is the world's leading manufacturer of cutting-edge weapons and military hardware. A cybernetically-enhanced supersoldier, codenamed "Hard Man", malfunctions and massacres the patrons of a roadside diner before being detained by security operatives led by John Carpenter. Soon, public outcry ensues following the incident. The majority of complaints are directed towards the company's new chief executive Hayden Cale. Chairman of the Board Scott Ridley, fearful of the potential termination of Chaank's contracts due to the bad publicity, tries to cover up the incident and numerous issues with Project: Hard Man itself. Cale demands immediate and full public disclosure, having purposely leaked a number of top-secret documents to the press in defiance of Ridley's attempts to suppress knowledge about his shadier activities. She also demands for Jack Dante, a deranged weapon designer and lead developer of Project: Hard Man, to be fired. Despite Carpenter's acknowledgement of the project's numerous fatal flaws, the board simply ignores Cale's requests, no one seeming to care about her interests except for Dante himself. Cale is warned by a junior executive about Dante's unstable behavior and the fate of Nicholson, her late predecessor. Cale goes to confront him, demanding to know about Dante's secret project in Vault 10, for which he never submits progress reports on. Far from cooperative, he instead threatens Cale. Dante blackmails her with detailed knowledge of Cale's living situation, place of residence, and personal information. Cale asks Ridley for help, but he refuses while telling her that Nicholson took a similar interest in Dante's work. However, he was killed in a mysterious accident believed to have been an animal mauling. During their confrontation, Cale manages to lift Ridley's access card so she can investigate on her own. Dante learns that Cale has the card and confronts Ridley, subsequently killing him with a mysterious weapon. Meanwhile, a trio of eco-warriors (Raimi, Weyland, and Yutani) infiltrate the Chaank headquarters in order to destroy its digitally-stored assets and send the company into bankruptcy. Carpenter calls Cale after finding Ridley's mutilated corpse which had an implanted life-sign transmitter. She investigates Ridley's death and discovers that whatever killed him came from Vault 10. Taking matters into her own hands, she terminates Dante's employment and seals the vault. Dante is about to shoot her when the eco-warriors show up and take everyone hostage. They demand access to the building's secure area in order to destroy the company's digital bonds, but Cale refuses to cooperate. Raimi goes to their alternate plan to cut through the bulkhead leading to the containment area. Dante, sensing his chance, "helps" them by suggesting they cut through one of the vaults surrounding the containment instead, suggesting they start at Vault 10. Once the vault is open, Dante jumps in and activates his invention called the Frontline Morale Destroyer (aka "Warbeast"), which promptly kills Weyland. Raimi flees, meeting up with Yutani as well as the subdued Cale and Carpenter. Dante broadcasts his demands over the monitor system, demanding that his employment be reinstated and Cale to "interface with him on a regular basis". Raimi and Yutani cancel their operation in an attempt to escape from the building, along with Carpenter and Cale. Carpenter is killed by the Warbeast inside of a lift. Later on, Raimi, Yutani, and Cale manage to reach the top floor of the building, which holds classified items, whose existence even Cale is unaware of. Among the classified items are the primary components of Project: Hard Man, including advanced weaponry and armour. Raimi suits up and downloads the Hard Man data into his brain. Fighting off the Warbeast, he manages to slow it down enough to allow an escape via an outdoor service elevator. Yutani, however, is killed by the Warbeast after hitting his head and falling in front of it. Once Raimi and Cale make it back to the surface, they have an encounter with a police officer who is quickly killed by the Warbeast as it leaped down from the rooftop. It chases Cale and Raimi back into the building. Fortunately, Raimi is able to partially incapacitate the Warbeast. However, the explosion knocks him unconscious. The machine takes Cale back to Dante. During their conversation, Raimi regains consciousness and subdues Dante. The two escape, and Hayden traps Dante inside of Vault 10 with his own Warbeast. A closing shot of Vault 10's reinforced door implies that Dante is now being hunted by his creation. ===== 1985 is in two parts. The first part, called "1984", is a series of essays and interviews (Burgess is the voice of the interviewer and the interviewee) discussing aspects of Orwell's book. The basic idea of dystopia is explicated, and term "kakotopia" is also brought up, and explored etymologically. The etymology of the word "utopia" is also deconstructed. Burgess treats Orwell as being somewhat bound by his times. Orwell is seen somewhat as a war-exhausted Brit fearing the Soviet threat along with the spectre of atomic war. Orwell is treated as handling these ideas to the exclusion of other phenomena will come to alter British society. Burgess fairly well explicates the distinction between Orwell's "Ingsoc' and the more mundane "English socialism", as Burgess sees this actuality, in the Britain of his time. The second part is a novella set in 1985, seven years in the future at the time of the novel's being written. Rather than a sequel to Orwell's novel, Burgess uses the same concept. Based on his observation of British society and the world around him in 1978, he suggests how a possible 1985 might be if certain trends continue. The main trend to which he is referring is the expanding power of trade unions. In the hypothetical 1985 envisioned in the book, the trade unions have become so powerful that they exert full control over society; unions exist for every imaginable occupation. Unions start strikes with little reason and a strike by one union usually turns into a general strike. Another major theme of the novella is the rise of Islam as a major cultural and political force in Britain, due to large-scale immigration from the Middle East; London abounds with mosques and rich Arabs. Arab property ownership plays a major role in the story's economic backdrop. The protagonist is a school teacher, and somewhat of a proponent of Classicism. He is struggling within an education system which puts more stock in more directly practical approaches to study. He is also threatened by street toughs, from day to day. He gains status with them when he loses his professional status. They are outsiders, relative to the above-mentioned system. It is fashionable among them to embrace Classical studies, with a focus on, among other things, Greek and Latin linguistics. ===== Tomás returns to Mexico after a seven-year trip around the world to visit his friends Carlos and Ana, a couple going through relationship problems. Ana is seduced by Tomás, who is also her ex-boyfriend, which causes Carlos to kick Tomás out of their home. Although instead of Tomás leaving, Ana leaves and moves across the street to the apartment of their friends Miguel and Andrea, another couple going through problems. The situation becomes a battle of the sexes when Miguel is kicked-out for cheating on Andrea and sent to live with the "guys" across the street and María, their friend, joins the "girls" in a boycott against all men. Tomas then has a fling with Andrea and gets caught in the act. After seeing the emptiness of his life, punctuated with him making a scene at a local nightclub, Tomas declares his love for Ana before apparently committing suicide by walking into an elevator shaft. ===== Peter "Junior" Potter (Hope) has graduated from Harvard and heads west to the western town of Sawbuck Pass to claim his father's fortune. Driving into town in a jalopy, wearing a comical plaid suit, he splashes mud all over a crowd of townspeople. He discovers to his horror that practically everyone in town claims to be owed money by his father, and that his father's treasure chest is empty. Strutting around town in his dramatic red and white striped Harvard blazer, Junior stalls the townfolk for as long as he can, continually making allusions to his wealth. An old-timer, Eb, convinces him the gold does exist, but it is hidden. In the saloon, he makes the acquaintance of a singing cowboy named Roy (Rogers) and a sexy saloon performer with the masculine name of Mike (Russell), who has to fend off Junior's persistent advances. In the bar, Mike and Roy sing "Buttons and Bows" while Potter raps about Harvard. Junior tries to romance Mike and she drugs him. While he is asleep, she assumes her alter ego of "the Torch" and leads her gang in a night time raid. Junior provides a perfect alibi. The townsfolk have sabotaged Junior's car, but he improvises and adds cart wheels to escape the town. He drives across the desert with two vultures hitching a ride. He goes to the ghost town of Sterling City. He finds Eb dead in a barber's chair. Roy arrives and accuses him of murder. Junior disguises himself as Roy to try to escape on Trigger. Roy is a government agent with a Smith & Wesson Model 320 Revolving Rifle hidden in his guitar case, bent on capturing her. The town is attacked by Indians. Junior is at first too scared to fight and Roy fights alone. Paleface's ghost appears and convinces him that Hell is fine. He grabs a gun and starts firing. Firing from the barber's chair, it starts to spin with shots going in random directions. One shot hits a moose head, where his father's gold begins to pour out. Mike arrives and helps in the fight. Mike and Junior escape on his improvised car. Roy fights the gang in their hideout in an abandoned mine. With a bit of accidental help from Junior, they win the fight. Junior is waiting for Mike when she comes out of prison (with four Junior Juniors). They say goodbye to Roy as Trigger has a triumphant rear-up silhouetted against the sunset. ===== The action takes place in a London hotel overlooking Hyde Park in a series of four plays: *Settling Accounts Brian Cronin and Billy Fox. Brian is a successful Welsh novelist; Billy is his manager, whom Brian has caught in the process of running off with all his money. In the film, this pair was changed to Debra and Paul Dolby, a newlywed couple from New York City who are on their honeymoon. Paul has disappeared after the couple had an argument on the plane, and now Debra is caught in a chain of increasingly ridiculous lies when she runs into his relatives at the hotel who are holding a welcoming party for the two of them. * Going Home Sharon and Lauren Semple. A mother and daughter on a shopping trip. Lauren convinces her mother to go on a date with an elderly man they had just met, even though Sharon is heavily against it. While at dinner with the man, she is puzzled by his rather eccentric mannerisms. * Diana and Sidney Sidney and Diana Nichols. A divorced couple: she is an actress, and he is living with his male lover. Now he claims he needs money from her to help pay the medical bills for his partner who is dying from lung cancer. The pair are based on characters from California Suite, played in the 1978 film by Michael Caine and Maggie Smith. * The Man on the Floor Mark and Anne Ferris. An American couple who are in London to see the Wimbledon Championships. Their plans are put on hold, however, when Anne loses the tickets, Mark's back gives out, leaving him immobile and in pain on the hotel floor, and they are asked to move because they have accidentally been given Kevin Costner's suite. With the exception of Sidney and Diana's storyline (and Brian and Billy's in the play), the plots are largely comedic. ===== Anna Coleman is an aspiring teenage musician who lives with her widowed therapist mother, Tess, and younger brother, Harry. Tess is about to marry her fiancé, Ryan, whom Anna has not entirely accepted. At school, Anna's English teacher, Mr. Bates, treats her unfairly, and she is feuding with Stacey, her former best friend-turned-nemesis. Anna has a crush on a school staff member, Jake, of whom her mother disapproves. Anna plays guitar in a band, Pink Slip, which is scheduled to audition for a gig at the House of Blues, the same night as the wedding rehearsal, so Tess forbids Anna from going. At a dinner at Pei- Pei's Chinese restaurant, mother and daughter get into a heated argument. Pei- Pei's mother interrupts their arguing to give them fortune cookies. They both read their fortunes out loud and immediately feel an intense earthquake that the rest of the restaurant is oblivious to. The next morning, Anna and Tess wake up in each other's bodies. "Anna" (Tess in her daughter's body) has to go to school and begins to understand her daughter's woes. She recognizes Mr. Bates as an old high school classmate, who is picking on Anna because her mother once turned down his prom invitation years ago, and threatens to report him to the school board unless he ceases his unfair treatment. Meanwhile, "Tess", after giving her new body a makeover, has difficulty handling the patients. At lunchtime, "Anna" and "Tess" return to the restaurant but Pei-Pei explains that only showing selfless love for each other will cause the switch to be reversed. "Tess" attends Harry's parent-teacher conference, where she reads a composition about how much he actually admires her, and decides to be nicer to him. "Anna" attempts to make amends with Stacey, but Stacey frames her for cheating and “Anna” gets sent to detention. When Jake notices “Anna” sneaking out of detention he offers to help her finish the test. Jake takes “Anna” to the file room in the teachers lounge and she realizes that she misjudged him, but he loses his enamoration towards "Anna" after she sabotages Stacey's test by erasing most of the answers and writing "I'M STUPID!" on it. Ryan surprises "Tess" with a talk show interview to discuss her latest psychology book. To disguise the fact that she hasn't read the book, "Tess" goes into an amusing tirade about getting older. "Anna" and Jake watch the interview on television and while she is embarrassed, he is impressed. "Tess" bumps into Jake at his second job, a coffee shop, and they bond over their favorite music. At the rehearsal dinner, Anna's bandmates try to convince "Anna" to sneak off to the audition, but they are caught by security. Ryan surprisingly gives "Anna" permission to go, explaining that he just wants the kids to accept him, and urges "Tess" to go support the band, finally winning her over. Since "Anna" cannot play, "Tess" plays the guitar backstage while "Anna" only pretends to play. Realizing the fun of her daughter's music, "Anna" promises to treat her daughter's band with more respect, and during the show, Jake becomes enamored with "Anna" again upon seeing her perform. Back at the rehearsal dinner, "Anna" tells "Tess" to ask Ryan to postpone the wedding, so that her daughter will not have to marry him in her mother's body. Instead, "Tess" proposes a toast, finally accepting Ryan because of how happy he makes her mom. This act of selfless love switches back Anna and Tess' bodies. Tess and Ryan later marry, she and Anna finally make up, and Anna and Jake start dating with Tess's approval. At the wedding, Pei-Pei notices her mother offering Anna’s Grandfather, Alan, and Harry two fortune cookies after seeing them argue. She immediately rushes and tackles them both, and sighs in relief to have the cookies in her hands. In the credits, Anna is playing with her band at Ryan and Tess wedding. ===== In 1986, American winery owner Nicholas "Nick" Parker (Dennis Quaid) and British wedding gown designer Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson) get married over the course of a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Elizabeth 2. However, shortly after the birth of their identical twin daughters, Annie and Hallie (both played by Lindsay Lohan), they get divorced and each has sole custody of one girl; Nick raises Hallie in Napa Valley, California and Elizabeth raises Annie in London, England. Almost twelve years later in the summer of 1998, Nick and Elizabeth coincidentally send their daughters to the same summer camp, where they meet and take an immediate dislike to one another. They begin to pull a series of pranks on each other and after one prank goes too far, the two girls are isolated together as punishment until camp is over. One night they discover they are twin sisters and hatch a plan: to switch places in order to meet the parent they have never met and eventually reunite them. Hallie imitates Annie's British accent and flies to London to meet their mother, maternal grandfather Charles, and the James' butler Martin. Meanwhile, Annie imitates Hallie's American accent and flies to Napa Valley to meet their father, Hallie's nanny Chessy, and the family dog Sammy. Upon arriving in Napa Valley, "Hallie" learns Nick has a new girlfriend Meredith (Elaine Hendrix), a child-hating gold digger, to whom he intends to propose. "Annie" sneaks out to call her sister from a phone booth but is discovered by Charles, who persuades her to reveal her identity to Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Chessy grows suspicious of "Hallie's" odd behaviour, and "Hallie" confesses she is really Annie, but they do not tell Nick. "Annie" tells Elizabeth that Nick wants to meet her in San Francisco in order to switch the girls back and the two of them, along with Martin, travel to do so. On the same weekend, "Hallie", Nick, and Meredith travel to the same hotel to discuss wedding plans. Nick sees Elizabeth for the first time in years, and they both learn they have been tricked by their daughters into meeting again, as well as Nick discovering he's had Annie in his care since the end of camp. Meanwhile, Chessy and Martin meet and grow romantically attracted to each other. Hallie and Annie recreate the night their parents met by renting out a yacht for an evening, but ultimately fail to rekindle Nick and Elizabeth's relationship. The twins resort to a last-ditch effort by demanding a three-day family camping trip, refusing to reveal which twin is which until after they return. Elizabeth tricks Meredith into taking her place on the camping trip at the last minute, much to the girls dismay. Over the course of the trip, Hallie and Annie play a number of harmless tricks on Meredith who becomes enraged and demands Nick chooses between her and them. Nick, finally seeing Meredith for who she truly is, chooses the girls over her, breaks off the engagement and calls off the wedding, much to Meredith's dismay. Back in Napa Valley, Nick shows Elizabeth his wine collection including the bottle from their wedding; they both realise they still have feelings for one another but decide it is better to go their separate ways. Elizabeth and Annie later board a flight for London, but when they arrive home, they find Nick and Hallie waiting for them (having taken a faster flight on the Concorde). Nick expresses his previous mistake of not going after Elizabeth when she left him the first time. They kiss, being watched by the girls who exclaim, "We actually did it." Photos during the credits show Nick and Elizabeth getting remarried aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, with Annie and Hallie as bridesmaids, and Martin proposing to Chessy. ===== Introverted geek Clifford Skridlow (Dan Aykroyd) is a professor of comparative literature at the financially strapped (fictional) Monroe College in Chicago. Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman), a pimp, owes $80,000 to "Mom" (Kate Murtagh), a gruff Chicago mob boss. Attempting to weasel out of his debt, Smooth invents a fictitious mobster, the flamboyant "Doctor Detroit", a ruthless chiropractor who allegedly is overrunning Smooth's turf. Clifford meets Smooth and his girls Monica (Donna Dixon), Jasmine (Lydia Lei), Karen (Fran Drescher), and Thelma (Lynn Whitfield), and has the best night of his life partying with them. The next morning, during a faculty meeting, Clifford learns about their troubles with Mom, that Smooth has skipped town, and that according to Smooth, they are now Clifford's girls. Clifford agrees to assume the persona of Doctor Detroit in an effort to help them out of their jam. Meanwhile, Monroe College anticipates a corporate endowment from Rousehorn Consolidated Industries to be presented by its CEO, Harmon Rousehorn (Andrew Duggan). If the contribution is large enough, it will allow the college to remain open. While Clifford is teaching classes, grading papers, catering a faculty party and assisting in hosting the visiting CEO, his Doctor Detroit alter ego has to find a way to get Thelma out of a solicitation charge, hold Mom at bay, and appear at the Players Ball to be proclaimed the new King of the Pimps while simultaneously appearing at Monroe College's annual Alumni Dinner. When Mom shows up at the Players Ball, she figures out that Doctor Detroit and Professor Skridlow are one and the same, and duels him with sword-length kebab skewers in front of the assembled academics. Following the defeat of Mom, the two functions combine into one joyous, spectacular party, as the ultimate fates of the characters are revealed, ending with the reveal that Clifford married Karen. ===== Colonel Suryaveer "Surya" Singh (Amitabh Bachchan) is a bitter man and ex-Army officer, hired by his friend and former comrade Captain Shekhar Verma (Arjun Rampal) to protect a little girl, Anamika R. Rathore (Rucha Vaidya), who resides in Bangkok, Thailand with her Non-resident Indian (NRI) family. He drinks alcohol frequently, and is not interested in befriending the girl. Eventually, she wins his heart and he helps her to prepare for a swim meet. One day Anamika gets kidnapped and Surya receives serious injuries in his attempt to prevent the kidnapping. Her father is not able to pay the sum to release his daughter. So Suryaveer uses all his skills to save the life of the child, only to find out about the conspiracy that is behind the little girl's kidnapping. Surya learns that Chang, Shekhar's lawyer, is behind some of this. The real mastermind behind this is Chang's brother. Surya holds Chang hostage, while Chang's brother holds Anamika hostage. When they come to exchange the people, Chang's brother reveals a great secret to Surya. Surya learns that Shekhar was all behind this. Surya kills Chang's brother's men. A great fight between Shekhar and Surya starts. Shekhar is killed, and Surya spends the rest of his life with Anamika and her mother. In the end, Anamika gets a new bodyguard and the film shows her during her swimming practice, with Surya and her new bodyguard 15 years later. ===== Several thousand years ago, the planet Cybertron was consumed by a civil war between the two Transformer factions, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime and the Decepticons led by Megatron. Optimus jettisoned the Allspark, a mystical artifact that brings life to the planet and non-biological forms, into space, but Megatron pursued it in spaceship form. Megatron crashed onto Earth, landing in the Arctic Circle and froze, and was discovered in 1895 by explorer Captain Archibald Witwicky. Witwicky inadvertently activated Megatron's navigational system, which etched the Allspark's coordinates into his glasses. The glasses eventually end up in the possession of his great-great-grandson Sam. In the present, a Decepticon named Blackout attacks and destroys a United States military base in Qatar in a failed attempt to hack the military network to find information on Project Iceman (a classified project linked to Megatron's whereabouts) and the AllSpark. A surviving team of Army Rangers led by Captain William Lennox escape across the desert, pursued by Blackout's drone Scorponok. They fight Scorponok off, aided by aerial reinforcements, and travel home with Scorponok's stinger, discovering sabot rounds damaged its armor. At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense John Keller leads the investigation into the attack. Data analyst Maggie Madsen catches another Decepticon, Frenzy, hacking into the military network while onboard Air Force One. While the hack is thwarted, Frenzy downloads files on Archibald's glasses, tracking down Sam with Barricade, disguised as a Saleen S281 police car. Maggie makes a copy of the audio signal made during the hacking attempt and goes to her hacker friend Glen Whitmann to decode the signal, but they are promptly arrested by the FBI for having classified information. Meanwhile, Sam buys his first car, a rusting 1976 Chevrolet Camaro, but discovers it has a life of its own. Sam and his high school crush Mikaela Banes are rescued from Barricade and Frenzy by the Camaro, who turns out to be the Autobot scout Bumblebee, who has to communicate through his car radio due to being mute. Bumblebee later scans a 2006 Camaro and transforms into a duplicate of it. Bumblebee takes Sam and Mikaela to meet Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ironhide, and Ratchet. Optimus explains that if Megatron gains the AllSpark, he will transform Earth's machinery into a new army and exterminate mankind. Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots travel to Sam's house to retrieve the glasses, but they are captured by agents of Sector Seven, a top-secret paramilitary government branch which was founded by seven people, led by Agent Seymour Simmons. The Autobots stop the agents but they call for backup, who take Sam, Mikaela, and Bumblebee into custody, though Optimus obtains the glasses and uses them to locate the Allspark. The humans connected to the Transformers are gathered together at Hoover Dam by Sector Seven's director Tom Banachek, who reveals Megatron, still frozen and nicknamed N.B.E. 1 (Non-Biological Extraterrestrial) by Sector Seven, and the Allspark. Simmons demonstrates the Allspark's powers by transferring its energy to Glen's phone, turning it into a violent little Transformer, but is forced to kill it when it tries to escape. Frenzy, having smuggled away in Mikaela's bag and disguised himself as her phone, disables Megatron's cryonics system and contacts Starscream, Megatron's second-in-command and acting leader of the Decepticons, who in turn summons Blackout, Barricade, Brawl, and Bonecrusher. Bumblebee is released to protect the Allspark, shrinking it to a handheld size so it can be transported to safety. Megatron escapes the dam after thawing out. Frenzy is decapitated by his own ricocheting shuriken in the ensuing battle as Keller, Maggie, Glen, and Simmons call for aerial support. Bumblebee reunites with the other Autobots as they head for Mission City with Barricade and Bonecrusher in pursuit. Optimus fights and kills Bonecrusher under some highway bridges. A battle between the Autobots and Decepticons breaks out in Mission City, during which Jazz, Blackout, and Brawl are killed. Megatron prevents Sam's attempted escape with the Allspark. Optimus arrives to protect Sam and engages in a battle against Megatron, with the latter getting the upper hand until Sam instead rams the Allspark into Megatron's chest, destroying it and killing him. Optimus salvages a shard of the Allspark from Megatron's mangled corpse. To cover up the existence of the Transformers, the United States government shuts down Sector Seven and disposes of the dead Decepticons in the Laurentian Abyss. Sam and Mikaela then start a romantic relationship while the Autobots secretly hide out on Earth, and Optimus sends a transmission into space inviting any surviving Autobots to join them. A brief mid-credits scene shows Starscream escaping into space saying in Cybertronian that it's not over. =====