From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== ===== In the year 2230, the gigantic, interstellar space ship Toronto emerges from hyperspace at the edge of a distant planetary system. The ship's owners, the multinational DDT corporation, believe that there are rich deposits of raw materials on one of the planets in the system, and the Toronto is to mine the whole planet's resources at once. The player is cast in the role of Tom Driscoll, the pilot of the exploration shuttle sent to verify the status of the planet. His shuttle malfunctions, forcing him to make a crash landing. Tom discovers that the data that described the planet as a desert world was false. Albion is a world teeming with life, secrets, surprises, and magic. It is inhabited by the sentient, tall and slender, feline-like humanoids called Iskai and the many divisions of Celtic humans that traveled magically to the planet in their era. It is up to Driscoll to alert the crew of the Toronto to the true situation to save Albion and its inhabitants. ===== The novel is the story of a young man, William Crimsworth, and is a first-person narrative from his perspective. It describes his maturation, his career as a teacher in Brussels, and his personal relationships. The story starts with a letter William has sent to his friend Charles, detailing his rejection of his uncle's proposal that he become a clergyman, as well as his first meeting with his rich brother Edward. Seeking work as a tradesman, William is offered the position of a clerk by Edward. However, Edward is jealous of William's education and intelligence, and treats him terribly. Through the actions of the sympathetic Mr Hunsden, William is relieved of his post, but starts a new job at a boys' boarding school in Belgium. The school is run by the friendly Monsieur Pelet, who treats William kindly and politely. Soon William's merits as a "professor" reach the ears of the headmistress of the neighbouring girls' school. Mademoiselle Reuter offers him a position at her school, which he accepts. Initially captivated by her, William begins to entertain ideas of falling in love with her, but then he overhears her and Monsieur Pelet talking about their upcoming marriage and their deceitful treatment of him. William begins to treat Mademoiselle Reuter with cold civility as he sees her underlying nature. She, however, continues to try to draw him back in by pretending to be benevolent and concerned. She asks him to teach one of her young teachers, Frances, who hopes to improve her skill in languages. William sees promising intelligence in this pupil and slowly begins to fall in love with her. Jealous of the attention Frances is receiving from William, Mademoiselle Reuter takes it upon herself to dismiss Frances from her post and to hide her address from William. After a long search he re-encounters Frances in a graveyard and they renew their acquaintance. It is revealed that as she was trying to make herself amiable in William's eyes, Mademoiselle Reuter had accidentally fallen in love with him herself. Not wanting to cause a conflict with Monsieur Pelet, William leaves his establishment. William gets a new position as a "professor" at a college, allowing him and Frances to marry. The two eventually open a school together and have a child. After achieving financial security the family travels around England and then settles in the countryside, near to Mr Hunsden. ===== The story starts with the del Valle family, focusing upon the youngest and the oldest daughters of the family, Clara and Rosa. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts an accidental death in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is killed by poison intended for her father who is running for the Senate. Rosa's fiancé, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, is devastated and attempts to mend his broken heart by devoting his life to restoring his family hacienda, Las Tres Marías, which has fallen into poverty and disrepair. He sends money to his spinster sister who takes care of his arthritic mother in town. Through a combination of intimidation and reward he quickly earns/forces respect and labor from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a "model hacienda". He turns the first peasant who spoke to him upon arrival, Pedro Segundo, into his foreman, who quickly becomes the closest thing that Trueba ever has to an actual friend during his life. He rapes many of the peasant women, and his first victim, Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son, Esteban García. Esteban returns to the city to see his dying mother. After her death, Esteban decides to fulfill her dying wish: for him to marry and have legitimate children. He goes to the Del Valle family to ask for Clara's hand in marriage. Clara accepts Esteban's proposal; she herself has predicted her engagement two months prior, speaking for the first time in nine years. During the period of their engagement, Esteban builds what everyone calls "the big house on the corner," a large mansion in the city where the Trueba family will live for generations. After their wedding, Esteban's sister Férula comes to live with the newlyweds in the big house on the corner. Férula develops a strong dedication to Clara, which fulfills her need to serve others. However, Esteban's wild desire to possess Clara and to monopolize her love causes him to throw Férula out of the house. She curses him, telling him that he will shrink in body and soul, and die like a dog. Although she misses her sister-in-law, Clara is unable to find her sister-in-law by any means and the gap between her and her husband widens as she devotes her time to her daughter and the mystic arts. Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca and later, to twin boys Jaime and Nicolás. The family, which resides in the capital, stays at the hacienda during the summertime. Upon arriving at Tres Marías for the first time, Blanca immediately befriends a young boy named Pedro Tercero, who is the son of her father's foreman. Blanca and Pedro grow up together as best friends despite them being of two different social and economic classes. During their teenage years, Blanca and Pedro Tercero eventually become lovers. After an earthquake that destroys part of the hacienda and leaves Esteban injured, the Truebas move permanently to Las Tres Marías. Clara spends her time teaching, caring for her husband's battered body, and writing in her journals while Blanca is sent to a convent school and the twin boys back to an English boarding school, both of which are located in the city. Blanca fakes an illness so as to be sent back to Las Tres Marías, where she can be with Pedro Tercero, but when she arrives home she finds that Pedro Tercero has been banished from the hacienda by Esteban, on account of his revolutionary communist/socialist ideas. Pedro Tercero meets with Blanca in secret adopting disguises while also spreading his ideas in the form of song to neighboring haciendas. A visiting French count to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. Esteban furiously goes after his daughter and brutally whips her. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth. Clara decides to never speak to him again, reclaims her maiden name and moves out of Tres Marías and back to the city, taking Blanca with her. Esteban, furious and lonely, blames Pedro Tercero for the whole matter; putting a price on the boy's head with the corrupt local police. At this point, Pedro Segundo deserts Esteban, telling him he does not want to be around when Trueba inevitably catches his son. Enraged by Pedro Segundo's departure, Trueba begins hunting for Pedro Tercero himself, eventually tracking him down to a small shack near his hacienda. He only succeeds in cutting off three of Pedro's fingers, and is filled with regret for his uncontrollable furies. Blanca finds out she is pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child. Esteban, desperate to save the family honor, gets Blanca to marry the French count by telling her that he has killed Pedro Tercero. At first, Blanca gets along with her new husband, but she leaves him when she discovers his participation in sexual fantasies with the servants. Blanca quietly returns to the Trueba household and names her daughter Alba. Clara predicts that Alba will have a very happy future and good luck. Her future lover, Miguel, happens to watch her birth, as he had been living in the Trueba House with his sister, Amanda. They move out shortly after Alba's birth. Esteban Trueba eventually moves to the Trueba house in the capital as well, although he continues to spend periods of time in Tres Marías. He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, whom he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that "those who have always won will win again" – this becomes his motto. Clara then begins to speak to Esteban through signs, although she keeps her promise and never actually speaks to him again. A few years later, Clara dies peacefully and Esteban is overwhelmed with grief. Alba is a solitary child who enjoys playing make-believe in the basement of the house and painting the walls of her room. Blanca has become very poor since leaving Jean de Satigny's house, getting a small income out of selling pottery and giving pottery classes to mentally handicapped children, and is once again dating Pedro Tercero, now a revolutionary singer/songwriter. Alba and Pedro are fond of each other, but do not know they are father and daughter, although Pedro suspects this. Alba is also fond of her uncles. Nicolás is eventually kicked out by his father, moving, supposedly, to North America. When she is older, Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, now a grown man, and becomes his lover. Miguel is a revolutionary, and out of love for him, Alba involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel. Fearing a Communist dictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup of the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's son Jaime is killed by power-driven soldiers along with other supporters of the government. After the coup, people are regularly kidnapped and tortured. Esteban helps Blanca and Pedro Tercero flee to Canada, where the couple finally find their happiness. The military regime attempts to eliminate all traces of opposition and eventually comes for Alba. She is made the prisoner of Colonel Esteban García, the son of Esteban Trueba's and Pancha Garcia's illegitimate son, and hence the grandson of Esteban Trueba. During an earlier visit to the Trueba house, García had molested Alba as a child. In pure hatred of her privileged life and eventual inheritance, García tortures Alba repeatedly, looking for information on Miguel. He rapes her, thus completing the cycle that Esteban Trueba put into motion when he raped Pancha García. When Alba loses her will to live, she is visited by Clara's spirit who tells her not to wish for death, since it can easily come, but to wish to live. García, fearful of his growing attachment to Alba, discards her. Esteban Trueba manages to free Alba with the help of Miguel and Tránsito Soto, an old friend/prostitute from his days as a young man. After helping Alba write their memoir, Esteban Trueba dies in the arms of Alba, accompanied by Clara's spirit; he is smiling, having avoided Férula's prophecy that he will die like a dog. Alba is pregnant, though whether the child is Miguel's or the product of her rape is unknown. Alba embraces this ambiguity, however, loving her unborn child as above all, it is her own. Alba resolves that she will not seek vengeance on those who have injured her, choosing to believe in the hope that one day the human cycle of hate and revenge will be broken. Alba is revealed to be the narrator of the novel, which she writes while she waits for Miguel and for the birth of her child. ===== The 30-minute opening sequence of the film depicts an opposed beach landing. Its graphic depiction of the violence and savagery of war was echoed years later in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.Basinger, Jeanine. "Translating War: The Combat Film Genre and Saving Private Ryan," Perspectives on History: the Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association (October 1998). In one scene during the landing, a Marine is shown with his arm blown off, similar to Thomas C. Lea III's 1944 painting The Price. As Americans are shown consolidating their gains, flashbacks illustrate the lives of American and Japanese combatants. Shifting first-person voice-over in a stream-of-consciousness style is also used to portray numerous characters' thoughts. Like Wilde's previous production of The Naked Prey (1965), the film does not use subtitles for characters speaking Japanese. The film contains large sections of voice-over narration, often juxtaposed with still photographs of wives, etc. (who are inexplicably dressed in 1967 attire rather than that appropriate for the 1940s). Many soldiers in the film shed tears, and the narrative displays an unusual amount of sympathy for the enemy. In one scene, an injured Cliff is lying close to an injured Japanese soldier in a scene paralleling the one from All Quiet on the Western Front with Paul Bäumer and Gérard Duval. Just after the two soldiers bond, other Marines appear and kill the Japanese soldier, distressing Cliff. Director, producer, and co-writer Wilde plays a Marine captain, the company commander. Rip Torn plays his company gunnery sergeant, who utters the film's tagline, "That's what we're here for. To kill. The rest is all crap!" ===== The starship USS Enterprise arrives at Minara II to recover research personnel as its star is about to go supernova. Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and Science Officer Spock beam to the surface but find the research station deserted. Chief Engineer Scott moves Enterprise to a safe distance to protect it from being bombarded by a solar flare. The landing party is suddenly transported into an underground chamber and discover that they are trapped along with a beautiful mute woman, whom McCoy names "Gem". The landing party is attacked by two aliens, Lal and Thann, from a race of humanoid beings known as Vians, who proceed to injure Kirk. Gem proves she is an empath by absorbing Kirk's injuries, briefly taking them on herself before they are healed. They search the nearby chambers and find machinery and computer systems, along with transparent cylinders, some containing the missing research personnel in grotesque poses, and three empty ones labeled with the landing party's names. Lal arrives, but Spock subdues him with a Vulcan nerve pinch and allows the group to escape to the surface. They are surprised to see Scott and a landing party waiting for them, but soon discover they are only a mirage. The Vians arrive and transport Gem and Kirk back into the underground complex, where they begin torturing Kirk with Gem only able to watch. During this, the aliens explain that they had tested the research personnel (Linke and Ozaba) similarly, but both men died from their fears. Gem and a badly injured Kirk are transported back to where McCoy and Spock are held, and Gem heals Kirk's wounds, but only after McCoy urges her to do so. The Vians demand another test subject, and McCoy sedates both Kirk and Spock to make the Vians choose him. When Kirk and Spock awaken, they understand from Gem what McCoy has done and make their escape to find McCoy near death at the medical chamber after being subjected to the Vians' tests. Kirk and Spock attempt to help McCoy but are stopped by the Vians' use of a force field. They can only stand by and watch as Gem attempts to absorb McCoy's wounds, though she seems afraid to take the entirety of them upon herself. The Vians then explain that this has all been a test for Gem as a representative of her people in this solar system. They have been trying to judge if Gem was willing to sacrifice her life for that of another; if she passed the test, the Vians would use their advanced technology to save the rest of Gem's people from the pending supernova. Gem attempts again to absorb McCoy's wounds but he pushes her away, not wanting her to die. Spock observes the force field reacts to resistant force, and theorizes that total calm would dissipate the field, allowing them the opportunity to overtake the Vians. Kirk insists to the Vians that Gem has proven her choice is to sacrifice herself, and furthermore accuses the aliens of lacking compassion. The Vians realize their error, and agree that Gem has passed the test. They return Gem and McCoy to full health, and promise to save Gem's people. The Vians and Gem disappear. Kirk, Spock and McCoy return to the Enterprise safely. After hearing the trio discussing the probability of meeting a woman like Gem, Scott comments that she must have been a "pearl of great price" and they agree. ===== Nadja is an orphan who lives at the Applefield Orphanage, in early 20th-century England. Nadja is called by Miss Appleton, the orphanage's owner, to receive a package delivered to her. The gifts sent for her thirteenth birthday are a dress and a diary. She is told in the accompanying letter that her mother is still alive. She later joins a traveling street performance act called the Dandelion Troupe in search of her mother after a fire breaks out in her orphanage. She travels the world, finding many friends along the way that teach her things about herself, ultimately having to learn the truth about her parentage and discovering her own destiny. ===== ===== Mirette lives in a boarding house in France. One day her life is changed by a man named Bellini, a famous tightrope walker, who teaches Mirette how to walk on a tightrope. ===== Following the death of her mother from a drug overdose, 18-year-old Purslane (Pursy) Hominy Will leaves a Florida trailer park, where she lives with an abusive boyfriend, to return to her hometown of New Orleans. Her mother Lorraine was a jazz singer, whom Pursy felt neglected her for her career. Pursy had dropped out of high school and left the city. The girl is surprised to find strangers living in her mother's dilapidated home: Bobby Long, a former professor of literature at Auburn University, and his protégé and former teaching assistant, Lawson Pines, a struggling writer. Both men are heavy drinkers and smokers. They pass time quoting poets, playing chess, and spending time with the neighbors; Long also sings country-folk songs. The two convince Pursy that her mother left the house to all three of them. More exactly, the truth is that Pursy is the sole heir, and the other two are limited by her mother's will as to how long they can stay in the house. Pursy moves in, acting as the most responsible member of the evolving dysfunctional family. The men's efforts to drive her away decline as they grow more fond of her. Bobby - slovenly and suffering from ailments he prefers to ignore - tries to improve Pursy by introducing her to the novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; he also encourages her to return to high school and get her degree. Lawson is attracted to her but hesitates to become involved. The three have memories of Lorraine, especially Pursy, who feels that her mother ignored her to pursue her jazz career. When she finds a cache of letters her mother wrote to her but never mailed, Pursy learns more about how Lorraine felt about her, and the identity of her biological father. ===== The story centers around the card game Duel Masters, which revolves around five civilizations consisting of Fire, Water, Light, Darkness and Nature. The original storyline follows Shobu Kirifuda, a young boy who likes to play Duel Masters. He and a few duelists are known to bring the monsters on the cards to life in their duels. Shobu engages in this card game so that he can be the best duelist like his father was. ===== Originally conceived as a musical, Car Wash deals with the exploits of a close-knit, multiracial group of employees at a Los Angeles car wash. In an episodic fashion, the film is set over a single day on a Friday in the month of July, during which all manner of strange visitors make cameo appearances, including Lorraine Gary as a hysterical wealthy woman from Beverly Hills dealing with a carsick son. Richard Pryor also appears in a cameo as a money-hungry evangelist named 'Daddy Rich' who preaches a pseudo- gospel of prosperity theology; The Pointer Sisters play the parts of his loyal (and singing) entourage, The Wilson Sisters. One main character is Abdullah, formerly Duane (Bill Duke), a Black Muslim revolutionary. Among his other misadventures in the film, the employees must deal with a man ("Professor" Irwin Corey) who fits the profile of the notorious "pop bottle bomber" being sought that day by the police. It causes employees, customers, and the owner of the car wash, Mr. B (Sully Boyar), to fear for their lives, but the strange man's "bomb" is simply a urine sample he is taking to the hospital. Mr. B's son Irwin (Richard Brestoff), a left-wing college student who smokes pot in the men's restroom and carries around a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao, insists on spending a day with the "working class" employees, since he considers them "brothers" in the "struggle". As he gets ready to go to work, he sets off motion sensors that give him the first "human car wash", which he takes in good-natured (if pot-induced) stride. George Carlin appears as a taxi driver searching fruitlessly for a prostitute who stiffed him for a fare. The prostitute, Marleen, has her own hopes shattered as a customer with whom she apparently has fallen in love has given her a false telephone number. Ex-con Lonnie (Ivan Dixon) is the foreman of the car wash who tries to mentor Abdullah while struggling to raise two young children and fend off his parole officer (Jason Bernard). Abdullah confronts Lindy (Antonio Fargas) and sharply criticizes his cross-dressing, to which Lindy coolly replies, "I'm more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get". T.C. (Franklin Ajaye) is another young employee who is determined to win a radio call-in contest to win tickets for a rock concert and to convince his estranged girlfriend Mona (Tracy Reed), who works as a waitress in a diner across the street, to accompany him. Floyd and Lloyd are musicians who have an audition for an agent at the end of their shift and spend the entire movie doing their jazz-blues dance moves in front of bewildered customers. Justin (Leon Pinkney) clashes with his girlfriend, Loretta (Renn Woods), who wants him to go back to college, but he refuses out of the feeling that a black man like him will not get anywhere in the world with any kind of education. Justin's elderly grandfather, Snapper (Clarence Muse), works as the shoe shine man at the car wash and is a follower of Daddy Rich. Other employees include womanizer Geronimo (Ray Vitte); Scruggs (Jack Kehoe), a cowboy who works as the gas pump operator; Hippo (James Spinks), an overweight employee who clearly hooks up with Marleen the prostitute; Chuco (Pepe Serna), a scheming Latino employee; Goody (Henry Kingi), a Native American employee; Charlie (Arthur French), a scruffy middle-aged employee; Sly (Garrett Morris), a con artist employee and bookie who later gets arrested right at the car wash for a series of unpaid parking tickets; and Earl (Leonard Jackson), who has the attitude of being superior to his colleagues because he does not get wet; he would appear to think that he is the supervisor at the car wash. Among everything, Mr. B constantly makes passes against the receptionist Marsha (Melanie Mayron) as an escape from his troubled home life. Mr. B is constantly tense and worried throughout the film as he fears about his car wash going out of business due to a competitor a few miles down the street. Lonnie, on the other hand, is full of ideas on how to save the car wash that he cannot get Mr. B or anyone else to listen to, mostly due to Mr. B being a cheapskate. Later at the end of the movie, Abdullah, after being fired by Mr. B for his unexplained absences, appears in the office with a gun while Lonnie is closing up, intending to rob the business. Lonnie talks him out of it, and the two commiserate at the status society has imposed on them: two proud men forced to work at a meaningless job for meager pay. It is a melancholy ending to the day as they all go their separate ways, knowing that they will be back tomorrow to do it all over again. ===== Amos and Andy run the "Fresh Air Taxicab Company, Incorporated", so named because their one taxi has no top. Their old vehicle has broken down, causing a traffic jam. Stuck in the traffic jam are John Blair and his wife, who were on their way to meet an old family friend at the train station, Richard Williams. When the Blairs do not show up, he makes his own way to their house, where he meets their daughter, Jean, who was also his childhood sweetheart. The two reignite their old flame, much to the chagrin of Ralph Crawford, who has been attempting to woo Jean himself. That night, prior to attending a meeting at their lodge, the Mystic Knights of the Sea, they are hired to transport Duke Ellington and His Cotton Club band to a party being given at the Blair estate. While they are on their way, Richard is confiding to John Blair his feelings for his daughter, and also stating that he has no intention of pursuing Jean unless he can afford to start his own business to support them. After the death of his father, Richard's family lost all their money. He has come up to New York because his grandfather used to own a large home in Harlem, and he hopes to be able to find the deed to it, in order to sell it for the money needed to start his business. He thinks the deed must be hidden somewhere on the property itself. Unknown to Blair or Richard, is that Ralph is eavesdropping on their conversation. After his discussion with Blair, Richard runs into Amos and Andy, who used to work for his father down south, and they are all happy to see one another. Having delivered their fare, the two cab drivers rush back to town to attend their lodge meeting. The lodge has an annual tradition where a pair of members must spend a night in a haunted house in Harlem, and find a document labeled, "Check and Double Check". Once they find it, they are to replace it, in a different location, with their own version, for the lodge members to find the following year. The haunted house in question in none other than the house previously owned by Richard's grandfather. As Amos and Andy are searching for their document, Ralph is also in the house with several of his cohorts, searching for the deed, in order to thwart Richard's chances with Jean. Amos and Andy find their document, but then realize they did not bring any other paper to write their message on and secrete for their lodge brothers. In searching for something to write on, they stumble on the deed to premises. As they are about to write their message on the back, they are interrupted by Ralph and his friends, who believe that the two have found the deed. In the confusion which ensues, the cab drivers hand over what everyone believes is the deed, before they scamper out of the building. However, when they return to the lodge, they realize that they had given the Check and Double Check paper to Ralph, instead of the deed. They do not know the importance of the document they have, but they recognized Richard's grandfather's signature on it, and intend to deliver it to Richard the following day. After failing to find the deed, a heartbroken Richard leaves for the railway station, intending to return home. Amos and Andy arrive at the Blair house too late to give him the deed, but race to the station and are able to hand over the deed just before Richard's train leaves. Now with the deed, Richard can sell the house, open his business, and marry Jean. ===== When Kazahaya Kudo collapsed in the snow one night and on the verge of death, he is rescued by a mysterious young man, Rikuo Himura, who takes him back to a pharmacy named the Green Drugstore. Kazahaya, apparently running from his past, takes up work at the Green Drugstore alongside Rikuo. He comments that although Rikuo rescued him, he really feels indebted to the store's owner, Kakei, whom he thanks for his current accommodation and job. While their day job is quite simple, the boys are persuaded and, in some cases, practically forced by Kakei to take on strange extra jobs outside the store, which make use of their supernatural powers. ===== A bionic policeman called Commander Stargazer recruited the SilverHawks, heroes who are "partly metal, partly real", to fight the evil Mon*Star, an escaped alien mob boss who transforms into an enormous armor-plated creature with the help of Limbo's Moonstar. Joining Mon*Star in his villainy is an intergalactic mob: the snakelike Yes-Man, the blade-armed Buzz-Saw, the "bull"-headed Mumbo-Jumbo, a weather controller called Windhammer, a shapeshifter known as Mo-Lec-U-Lar, a robotic card shark called Poker-Face, the weapons-heavy Hardware, and "the musical madness of" Melodia who uses a "keytar" that fires musical notes. Quicksilver (formerly Jonathan Quick) leads the SilverHawks, with his metal bird companion Tally-Hawk at his side. Twins Emily and Will Hart became Steelheart and Steelwill, the SilverHawks's technician and strongman respectively. Country-singing Bluegrass piloted the team's ship, the Maraj (pronounced "mirage" on the series, but given that spelling on the Kenner toy). Rounding out the group is a youngster "from the planet of the mimes", named "The Copper Kidd" and usually called "Kidd" for short, a mathematical genius who spoke in whistles and computerized tones. Their bionic bodies are covered by a full-body close-fitting metal armor that only exposes the face and an arm, the armor is equipped with a retractile protective mask, retractable under-arm wings (except Bluegrass), thrusters on their heels, and laser-weapons in their shoulders. ===== ===== Jack Torrance's alcoholism and explosive temper have cost him his teaching job at Stovington, a respectable prep school. He is also on the verge of losing his family, after assaulting his young son Danny in a drunken rage just a year earlier. Horrified by what he has become, Jack tells his wife Wendy that should he ever start drinking again, he will leave them one way or another, implying that he would rather commit suicide than continue living as an alcoholic. Now, nursing a life of sobriety and pulling in work as a writer, Jack takes on the job of looking after the Overlook Hotel, a large colonial building in a picturesque valley in the Colorado Rockies. Jack believes that the job will provide desperately needed funds and give him the time to complete his first play. Upon entering the Overlook and meeting its head cook, Dick Hallorann, Danny discovers that his psychic powers grant him a form of telepathy. Danny has an adult mentor named Tony who talks to him in his visions and shows him the future. Hallorann tells Danny that he too "shines", and that Danny can contact him telepathically anytime he needs assistance. The Torrances are given a tour of the Overlook before being left alone in the hotel for the winter. It gradually becomes evident that there is a malevolent force within the hotel that seems determined to use Danny for an unknown, possibly sinister purpose. This force manifests itself with flickering lamps and spectral voices and eventually a full-on masked ball from the Overlook's past. Danny is the first to fully notice the darker character of the hotel, having experienced visions and warnings that foreshadow what he and his parents will encounter over the winter. The ghosts also appear to Jack, led by Delbert Grady, the Overlook's former steward who murdered his entire family and killed himself at the hotel's command. Grady and the other spirits tell Jack that Wendy and Danny are turning against him, and that his only option is to kill them. They also supply him with an open bar, and he begins drinking again. As Jack's sanity deteriorates, Wendy begins to fear for her and Danny's safety. Hallorann, whom Danny had contacted telepathically, travels from Florida to Colorado, only to be assaulted by Jack with a croquet mallet and left for dead. Danny telepathically communicates with his father, who momentarily breaks free of the ghosts' grip, and then tells him that the old boiler has been neglected. Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann (who had only been stunned by the attack) escape to safety. Jack sacrifices himself to prevent the ghosts from repossessing him and allows the boiler to explode and destroy the Overlook. Ten years later, Danny graduates from high school, showing that Tony was Danny's adult incarnate self. Wendy and Halloran are present at the ceremony. Jack's spirit is also present, looking on Danny with pride. Back in Colorado, the Overlook is being rebuilt as a resort for the summer, as the ghosts of the original hotel await potential victims. ===== Temporarily blinded with his eyes bandaged, private detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is interrogated by police lieutenant Randall (Don Douglas) about two murders. Marlowe tells how he was hired by Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate Velma Valento, a former girlfriend Moose had lost track of while he was serving eight years in prison. They go to "Florian's", the nightclub where Velma last worked as a singer, but the owner died years earlier, and no one remembers her. Marlowe tracks down Jessie Florian (Esther Howard), the alcoholic widow of the nightclub's former owner, who claims not to know what's become of Velma. However, Marlowe finds a photo of Velma that Jessie hid from him, and she drunkenly blurts out that Velma is dead. Later, from outside, Marlowe observes a clearly disturbed (and suddenly no longer inebriated) Jessie make a phone call. The next morning, Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton) turns up at Marlowe's office, offering $100 if Marlowe will act as his bodyguard when he acts as a go-between in a secluded canyon at midnight to pay a ransom for some stolen jewels. In the canyon, Marlowe is knocked unconscious. When Marlowe comes to, he sees a young woman shine a flashlight on his face and then run away. The money is gone, and Marriott has been viciously killed by an amateur, with repeated blows from a blackjack. When Marlowe reports the murder, the police ask him if he knows a Jules Amthor, and warn him not to interfere in the case. Posing as a reporter, Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) tries to pry information out of Marlowe about the murder. She mentions that the jewels were jade, and he sees through her disguise. She introduces him to her weak, elderly and wealthy father, Leuwen Grayle (Miles Mander) and his seductive second wife, Helen (Claire Trevor). Grayle collects rare jade and was attempting to recover a necklace worth $100,000, stolen from Helen while she was out dancing with Marriott. Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger), a psychic healer who treated both Helen and Marriott, shows up just as Marlowe is leaving. Helen retains Marlowe to try to recover the jade, but Ann tries bribing him to keep out of it. Moose Malloy forces Marlowe to go with him to "meet a guy", who turns out to be Amthor. Marlowe suspects that Amthor and Marriott were in league, setting up Helen to get the jade, but something went wrong with the plot. Amthor has duped Moose into thinking that Marlowe knows where Velma is, or is hiding her, so that Moose will do his dirty work. Amthor has Moose strangle Marlowe, and has Dr. Sonderberg (Ralf Harolde) drug him for three days and hold the detective in his sanatorium, all in an attempt to learn where the jade is - which Marlowe doesn't know. Marlowe escapes and tells Moose how he has been tricked. Marlowe goes to Ann and realizes she was the young woman who shone the light on his face after he was knocked out in the canyon. They find a mutual attraction in each other. When Marlowe learns that the police had asked Ann's father about the family beach house, which Marriott rented, Marlowe and Ann go there, where they find Helen hiding from the police. Ann leaves to tell her father where his missing wife is. Marlowe deduces that she hired him only to set him up for Amthor's interrogations and that Ann was trying to save him from the set-up with her bribe. Helen attempts to entice Marlowe into helping her murder Amthor, who is blackmailing her, by luring him back to the beach house the next night for the necklace. Marlowe seems to go along with her plan, but finds Amthor dead, his neck snapped by a strong pair of hands. Moose is waiting for Marlowe at his office. Marlowe shows Moose the photo of "Velma" he took from Jessie, and as he suspected, it is a fake intended to throw anyone looking for Velma off the track. Marlowe tells Moose to lie low until the next night when he will take Moose to Velma. At the beach house, Marlowe has Moose wait outside while he meets with Helen - who is actually Velma - to find out what happened to the necklace, but she pulls a gun on him. She faked the robbery and the ransom to kill Marlowe after being tipped off by Jessie Florian that he was looking for Velma. Helen killed Marriott while Marlowe went down into the canyon, and was about to kill Marlowe when Ann came along, worried that her jealous father might be trying to kill Marriott. In the beach house, as Helen is about to shoot Marlowe, a lovesick Grayle shows up with Ann. He takes Marlowe's gun and kills Helen. Moose hears the shot and finds his Velma dead. Grayle admits to shooting Helen, and Moose, enraged, lunges for Grayle, who shoots him. Marlowe attempts to intercede as the gun goes off and is blinded by the flash. Three more shots are fired. His story concluded, the blinded private eye is told that Moose and Grayle shot each other in a struggle for Marlowe's gun. Marlowe is escorted out of the building by Detective Nulty (Paul Phillips), with Ann - who has been in the interrogation room all along - following them and overhearing every word. Marlowe expresses his attraction for Ann to the detective. In the back seat of a taxi cab, the bandaged Marlowe recognizes her perfume, and they kiss. ===== After the Norwegian resistance leader Royal Norwegian Navy Lieutenant Erik Bergman travels to Great Britain to report the location of a German V-2 rocket fuel plant, the Royal Air Force's No. 633 Squadron is assigned to destroy it. The squadron is led by Wing Commander Roy Grant, a former Eagle Squadron pilot (an American serving in the RAF before the US entered the war). The plant is in a seemingly impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with numerous anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by bombing the cliff until it collapses and buries the facility, a job for 633 Squadron's fast and manoeuverable de Havilland Mosquitos. The squadron trains in Scotland, where there are narrow glens similar to the fjord. There, Grant is introduced to Bergman's sister, Hilde. They are attracted to each other, despite Grant's aversion to wartime relationships. The Norwegian resistance is tasked with destroying the anti-aircraft defences of the facility immediately before the scheduled attack. When unexpected German reinforcements arrive, Bergman returns to Norway to try to gather more forces. However, he is captured while transporting desperately needed weapons, taken to Gestapo headquarters and tortured for information. Since Bergman knows too much, he must be silenced before he breaks. Grant and newly married Pilot Officer Bissell are sent in with a single Mosquito to bomb the Gestapo building. Though they are successful, their shot-up Mosquito fighter-bomber crashes on its return, and Bissell is wounded and becomes blind. A tearful Hilde thanks Grant for ending her brother's suffering. Still worried, Air Vice-Marshal Davis decides to move up the attack to the next day. However, the resistance fighters are ambushed and killed, leaving the defences still intact. Although Grant is given the option of aborting, he decides to press on. The factory is destroyed at the cost of the entire squadron, though a few crews are able to ditch in the fjord. Grant crash-lands but a local man helps Grant's navigator, Flight Lieutenant Hoppy Hopkinson, pull the wounded wing commander from the burning wreckage. Back in Britain, Davis tells a fellow officer who is aghast at the losses, "You can't kill a squadron." ===== In 1968 during the Vietnam War, a disastrous American advance leaves U.S. Marine Lieutenant Hayes Hodges wounded and his men dead. His squadmate Lieutenant Terry Childers executes a North Vietnamese prisoner to intimidate a captive officer into calling off a mortar attack on Hodges’ position; sparing the officer’s life, Childers rescues Hodges. In 1996, Hodges, now a colonel, is set to retire after 28 years as a JAG officer. At his pre-retirement party at the Camp Lejeune Officers Club, he is honored by his old friend, Colonel Terry Childers, now the commanding officer of a Marine Expeditionary Unit. Childers and his unit are deployed to Southwest Asia as part of an Amphibious Readiness Group, called to evacuate the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen when a routine anti-American demonstration at the embassy erupts in rock-throwing, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire. Escorting Ambassador Mourain and his family safely to a helicopter, Childers retrieves the embassy's American flag. Under heavy fire from snipers on nearby rooftops, three Marines are killed, and Childers orders his men to open fire on the crowd, resulting in the deaths of 83 irregular Yemeni soldiers and civilians, including children; the remaining Marines and embassy staff are saved. U.S. National Security Advisor Bill Sokal pressures the military to court-martial Childers, hoping to salvage American relations in the Middle East by placing all blame for the incident on the colonel. Childers asks Hodges to serve as his defense attorney, and he reluctantly accepts. Hodges rejects a plea deal from the prosecutor, Major Biggs, who is convinced of Childers’ guilt but privately refuses to consider the death penalty. With little time to prepare a defense, Hodges goes to Yemen, where witnesses and police claim that the Marines fired first on the unarmed crowd. Visiting the abandoned embassy and some of the wounded, he notices an undamaged security camera and scattered audio cassette tapes. Returning to the U.S., Hodges confronts Childers about the complete lack of evidence to support his version of events, resulting in a fistfight. Sokal burns a videotape revealing the crowd was armed and fired on the Marines, and forces Mourain to lie on the stand that the crowd was peaceful, and that Childers ignored his orders and was violent and disrespectful to him and his family. Hodges meets with Mourain’s wife, who admits Childers acted valiantly but refuses to testify. Captain Lee, who hesitated to follow Childers’ order, is unable to testify to having seen gunfire from the crowd. A Yemeni doctor testifies that the tapes Hodges found are propaganda inciting violence against Americans, but declares the protest was peaceful. With Sokal on the stand, Hodges presents a shipping manifest proving that the tape from the undamaged camera – the tape Sokal burned – was delivered to Sokal's office but disappeared, with footage that would likely have exonerated Childers. Taking the stand, Childers explains that he was the only surviving Marine able to see the crowd was armed. On cross-examination, Biggs goads Childers into admitting to his poor choice of words when giving his order. Childers loses his temper, declaring that he would not sacrifice the lives of his men to appease the likes of Biggs, to Hodges’ dismay. The prosecution presents Colonel Binh Le Cao, the Vietnamese officer whose life he spared, as a rebuttal witness, testifying that Childers executed an unarmed prisoner of war. During Hodges’ cross-examination, Cao agrees that Childers took action to save American lives, and that if circumstances were reversed, Cao would have done the same. After the trial, Hodges confronts Sokal about the missing tape, vowing to uncover the truth. Childers is found guilty of the minor charge of breach of peace, but cleared of conduct unbecoming an officer, and murder; Biggs approaches Hodges about investigating Childers’ actions in Vietnam, but Hodges declines to testify. Leaving the courthouse, Cao and Childers salute each other. An epilogue reveals that Sokal was found guilty of destroying evidence and Mourain of perjury, both losing their jobs, while Childers retired honorably. ===== The conference room at the Wolf's Lair after Claus von Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler's life According to Moczarski, no subject enraged Stroop more than the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler. Whenever the subject came up, Stroop cursed those involved, "in unprintable terms," as a "murderous band of generals and Jew-ridden civilians."Moczarski (1981), p. 220. Stroop blamed Germany's defeat on Germans: "A few weaklings poisoned by enemy agents and infected with subversive ideologies were all it took to undermine us. The minute we suffered military defeats, the cancerous elements in our society swung into action, organizing Mafias and creating 'patriotic discussion groups.' In the end, they destroyed our nation." Stroop proudly related his involvement in the purge of anti-Nazi Germans following the plot's failure. He expressed annoyance Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was allowed to commit suicide rather than being hanged from a meat hook.Moczarski (1981), p. 222. He also praised Roland Freisler of the Volksgerichtshof as "a fine judge."Moczarski (1981), p. 224. Stroop also boasted about his participation in dealing with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge for his involvement in the plot. As General Wilhelm Burgdorf did with Rommel, Stroop claimed to have offered the Field Marshal a choice between suicide and a show trial before Judge Freisler. To Stroop's outrage, Kluge demanded his day in court. Stroop then claimed he shot Kluge in the head. Himmler announced the Field Marshal was a suicide.Moczarski (1981), pp. 226–234. ===== In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to a 19-year imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions, and shops. In July 1980, he escaped from Victoria's Pentridge Prison in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for the next ten years. The protagonist Lindsay (according to the book, Roberts' fake name) arrives in Bombay carrying a false passport in the name of Lindsay Ford. Mumbai was supposed to be only a stopover on a journey that was to take him from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lindsay soon meets a local man named Prabaker whom he hires as a guide. Prabaker soon becomes his friend and names him Lin (Linbaba). Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother decided to give Lin a new Maharashtrian name, like her own. Because she judged his nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, she decided to call him Shantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Mumbai, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, which shelters him from the authorities. After a massive fire on the day of his arrival in the slum, he sets up a free health clinic as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnic and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community. The novel describes a number of foreigners of various origins, as well as local Indians, highlighting the rich diversity of life in Mumbai. Lin falls in love with Karla, a Swiss-American woman, befriends local artists and actors, landing him roles as an extra in several Bollywood movies, and is recruited by the Mumbai underworld for various criminal operations, including drug and weapons trade. Lin eventually lands in Mumbai's Arthur Road Prison. There, along with hundreds of other inmates, he endures brutal physical and mental abuse from the guards, while existing under extremely squalid conditions. However, thanks to the protection of the Afghan mafia don "Abdel Khader Khan", Lin is eventually released, and begins to work in a black market currency exchange and passport forgery. Having traveled as far as Africa on trips commissioned by the mafia, Lin later goes to Afghanistan to smuggle weapons for mujahideen freedom fighters. When his mentor Khan is killed, Lin realizes he has become everything he grew to loathe and falls into depression after he returns to India. He decides that he must fight for what he believes is right, and build an honest life. The story ends with him planning to go to Sri Lanka, which lays the premise for the sequel to this book. ===== Caudron Luciole & Pfalz D.III from Lynn Garrison’s collection in flight over Weston Aerodrome, Ireland German Corporal Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) leaves the fighting in the trenches to become an officer and fighter pilot in the German Army Air Service. Joining a squadron in spring 1918, he sets his sights on winning Germany's highest medal for valour, the Blue Max, for which he must shoot down 20 aircraft. Of humble origins (his father ran a hotel with 5 bedrooms), Lieutenant Bruno Stachel considers himself the equal of the aristocratic pilots in his fighter squadron and sets out to prove it. Meanwhile, Willi von Klugemann (Jeremy Kemp), resents having a commoner as his rival.Their commanding officer, Hauptmann Otto Heidemann (Karl Michael Vogler) is an aristocratic officer whose belief in chivalry and the laws and customs of war conflict with Stachel's disregard for them. On his first mission, Stachel, in a Pfalz D.III, shoots down a British S.E.5, but does not receive credit for his kill because there were no witnesses. Stachel searches the countryside for the wreckage, giving the impression that he cares more about himself than the combat death of a comrade in arms. In his defense, he points out to his fellow pilots that in his time in the trenches there were so many dead, no one had time to grieve over a single person. Soon afterward he attacks an Allied two-man observation aircraft, incapacitating the rear gunner. Instead of downing the defenseless aircraft he signals the pilot to fly to the German base. As they near the airfield the wounded rear gunner revives and reaches for his machine-gun, unseen by the admiring observers on the ground. Stachel is forced to shoot the aircraft down. Afterwards, a disgusted Heidemann believes Stachel has committed a war crime just to gain a confirmed kill. The incident brings Stachel to the attention of General Count von Klugemann (James Mason), Willi's uncle. When the General comes to the base to award his nephew the Blue Max he meets Stachel. As Stachel is a commoner the General sees great propaganda potential in him. Meanwhile, Kaeti (Ursula Andress), the general's wife, is carrying on a discreet affair with her husband's nephew. Soon afterward, Stachel is shot down after rescuing a red Fokker Dr.I triplane fighter plane from two British fighters. When he returns to the airfield he is stunned when he is introduced to the man he saved: Manfred von Richthofen (Carl Schell) – the Red Baron. Richthofen offers Stachel a place in his squadron which Stachel declines explaining his desire to "prove himself" with his current squadron. With Stachel temporarily grounded owing to a minor injury General von Klugemann orders him to Berlin to help shore up crumbling public morale. The General invites him to dinner, and after all the guests have left, he and Kaeti have sex. Upon his return Stachel taunts an outraged Willi with the news. Soon after Stachel and Willi volunteer to escort a reconnaissance aircraft. British fighters attack their Fokker Dr. 1 triplanes. Stachel's guns jam, but Willi downs three Allied planes and the rest disengage. As the two return to their base Willi challenges Stachel, partly by executing a near- perfect barrel roll, to return in formation with Stachel. Spotting a bridge, Willi dives under the wide middle span, but Stachel tops him by flying under a much narrower side one. Reluctantly Willi does the same, but, by not looking where he is going clips the top of a tower afterward and fatally crashes. When Stachel reports his death Heidemann assumes the two verified victories were Willi's. Insulted, Stachel impulsively claims them, even though he fired only 40 bullets before his guns jammed. Outraged, Heidemann reports to Berlin and accuses Stachel of lying. Yet the Air Service takes Stachel's word for it. Later, when he again has sex with Kaeti, he admits he lied. During a strafing mission covering the retreat of the Imperial German Army Stachel disobeys orders not to engage enemy fighters. One by one the rest of the squadron follow him. Afterward Heidemann confronts him with the fact that half the squadron was killed in the ensuing dogfight, yet Stachel cares only that he has shot down enough aircraft—even without Willi's kills—to qualify for the Blue Max. Enraged, Heidemann submits a report recommending court martial proceedings. The two men are ordered to Berlin. There, von Klugemann tells Heidemann that Stachel is to receive the Blue Max. Explaining that the people need a hero he orders Heidemann to withdraw his report. Germany is, he says, waging total war against Allied soldiers and civilians... and Stachel is the perfect hero for modern warfare. Sickened, Heidemann resigns his command and accepts a desk job. Later that evening the Countess visits Stachel and suggests that they elope to neutral Switzerland since Allied victory is inevitable. When he declines she says that she knows Field Marshal von Lenndorf, whom Stachel had already met when seeing in a wind tunnel a model of an upcoming monoplane whose flying characteristics are reported by General von Klugemann as "risky", and can get him a transfer out of harm's way. Kaeti storms out when Stachel refuses to give up combat flying. The next day, Stachel is awarded the Blue Max by the Crown Prince (Roger Ostime) in a well- publicised ceremony. However an enraged Field Marshal von Lenndorf telephones von Klugermann to order him to stop the ceremony. The General informs him that this is impossible. An investigation had been opened into Stachel's false claim. The General then asks how the Field Marshal knew about this. While listening on the phone he turns to his wife and realizes that she had provided von Lenndorf with Stachel's confession. When Heidemann reports that the new monoplane he has just test-flown is a "death trap", with weak struts, von Klugemann sees a way to avoid a scandal that would otherwise harm the war effort and the officer corps as well as destroy his own career. He tells Stachel, "Let's see some real flying." Heidemann is shocked to see the aircraft leaving the tarmac but is unable to stop it in time. He silently observes the General calmly watching from the office window. After several minutes the stress of Stachel's aerobatics causes the aircraft to break up and plunge to the ground. Just before it hits the ground and explodes von Klugemann rubber-stamps and signs Stachel's personnel file and says to his aide, Holbach (Anton Diffring), "Give this to the Field Marshal. It is the personal file of a German officer ... and a hero." Outside, Captain Heidemann salutes von Klugemann who walks off with his wife. The General and the Countess are driven away in a staff car while the smoke from Stachel's burning aircraft rises in the background. ===== In October 1916, fighter ace John Gresham (Malcolm McDowell) speaks to the senior class at Eton College. A year later, new recruit, 2nd Lt. Croft (Peter Firth), arrives at Gresham's temporary base in northern France. Gresham had been his house captain at Eton and is also the boyfriend of Croft's older sister. Gresham relies on alcohol to continue flying because of severe combat stress. Faced with being responsible for the safety of Croft (and the potential impact his loss would have on his sister), Gresham drinks even more heavily. Croft is forced to learn quickly on how to survive - both in the air and on the ground - because aerial combat and squadron etiquette are both merciless. In his week-long rite of passage from naive schoolboy to military pilot, his youthful adoration of Gresham is replaced with respect as he comes to understand the severe strain endured by his commanding officer. By the end of the week, Croft seems to have acquired the necessary combat skills when he shoots down his first plane. However, he is suddenly killed in an air-to-air collision with a German aircraft. Back at base, Gresham sees an apparition of an uninjured, smiling Croft through his office window. After the image fades, Gresham orders the next young replacement pilots to be sent in for his inspection. ===== The episodes in the life of a Jewish family in the Once neighborhood of Buenos Aires and the other shopkeepers in a low-rent commercial gallery are depicted in the story. The narrator, Ariel Makaroff (Daniel Hendler), is the son of Sonia Makaroff (Adriana Aizemberg) who was deserted by her husband (Jorge D'Elía) when he went to Israel in 1973 to fight in the Yom Kippur War. Yet, the father is in touch with Sonia via telephone weekly and supports Ariel and his brother Joseph (Sergio Boris). Sonia runs a lingerie shop in the gallery. Ariel is a young man in a hurry without much of a sense of direction. He's having an affair with Rita (Silvina Bosco), an older woman, pines for his former girlfriend Estella (Melina Petriella), and fantasizes of emigrating to Poland, where his family came from during World War II. He carps at his grandmother (Rosita Londner) for immigration documents that will support his claim to Polish citizenship as he wants to become "European." This forces his grandmother to remember her memories of Holocaust Poland. Ariel also visits the rabbi in order to get documents. One of them has been cut in a corner and the rabbi explains: "So, no one can use it again." \- "Oh! Like circumcision!", Ariel retorts. Like Woody Allen in "Deconstructed Harry", Burman takes an ironic stand against circumcision. At one point, the shop owners organize a race against another group of merchants. They hope to earn a cash purse and fix up the exterior of their gallery and install air conditioning. Other characters include: a large Italian family whose noisy arguments drown out the radios in their radio repair shop; a quiet Korean couple who run a feng shui boutique; Mitelman (Diego Korol) who runs a travel agency, but which is really a front for currency smuggling; and a solitary stationer named Osvaldo (Isaac Fajm). Right before the big race his father suddenly shows up in Buenos Aires. His mother confesses to Ariel that his father left Argentina and the family because she had a brief affair with Osvaldo, the retailer next door. It was a one time thing and did not mean anything but it ruined the marriage. Ariel finally gets to hear his father's side of the story: he could not get over the fact that his mother had betrayed him with Osvaldo. Elías can finally enfold his son in a long-overdue embrace, and Ariel embraces his father as well in the closing moments of the film. The grandmother sings a klezmer song over the closing credits. ===== In the opening scene, Howard Hughes loses control of his motorcycle and crashes in the Nevada desert. That night, he is discovered lying on the side of a stretch of U.S. Highway 95 when Melvin Dummar stops his pickup truck so he can relieve himself. The disheveled stranger, refusing to allow Melvin to take him to the hospital, asks him to instead drive him to Las Vegas, Nevada. En route, the two engage in stilted conversation until Dummar cajoles his passenger into joining him in singing a Christmas song he wrote. Hughes then suggests they sing his favorite song "Bye Bye Blackbird", and they do. The man warms to his rescuer and he is dropped off at the Desert Inn (which Hughes owns and therein resides) without revealing his identity as the reclusive billionaire. Most of the remainder of the film focuses on Melvin's scattered, up-and-down life, his spendthrift, trust-in-luck nature, his rocky marital life with first wife Lynda, and his more stable relationship with second wife Bonnie. Lynda leaves him and their daughter to dance in a sleazy strip club, but eventually returns, but she remains frustrated by her husband's futile efforts to achieve the American dream. Melvin convinces her to appear on Easy Street, a game show hybrid of The Gong Show and Let's Make a Deal, and although her tap dancing initially is booed by the audience, she wins them over and nabs the top prize of living room furniture, a piano, and $10,000 cash. Melvin agrees to invest in an affordable house in a new development, but while Lynda tries to keep their finances under control, he rashly buys a new Cadillac Eldorado and a boat, prompting her to take their daughter and toddler son and sue for divorce. Melvin is comforted by Bonnie, the payroll clerk at the dairy where he drives a truck, and the two eventually wed and move to Utah, where they take over the operation of a service station her relatives had owned. One day, a mysterious man in a limousine stops at the station ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes, but after he drives off Melvin discovers an envelope marked "Last Will and Testament of Howard Hughes" on his office desk. Afraid to open it, he takes it to Mormon headquarters and secrets it in a pile of incoming mail. It doesn't take long for the media to descend upon him and his family, and eventually Melvin finds himself in court, admitting he once met Hughes but vigorously denying he forged the will that finally fulfills his dreams. ===== The stories tend each to focus on a single character living on Miguel Street. As the various characters reappear in different stories, which all share the same boy narrator, the book can be seen as a type of novel. Rather like the characters of Dubliners, some of Naipaul's protagonists appear to be affected by a kind of paralysis, for example Mr. Popo the carpenter, who never finishes making anything, and the poet B. Wordsworth, who is working on the greatest poem ever written but has never written past the first line. The narrator however escapes from Miguel Street at the end of the book. Other characters include Bogart (named after Humphrey Bogart), Hat, George, Elias, an assiduous boy, Man-man, Eddoes, a junk king, Mrs. Hereira, Uncle Bhakcu, Bolo, and Edward. ===== Lisa gets teased by Sherri and Terri about her big butt, so this embarrasses her. She becomes self-conscious about her weight. Homer only makes matters worse when he tells her about the "Simpson butt", something that all Simpsons have. Bart brings home a geography test with a grade of 100, eagerly expecting a party that was promised to him if he had got a 100. Despite Homer discovering that the watermark of Bart's test is real and that all the answers are correct, he and Marge speak to Bart's teacher. Mrs. Krabappel confesses that she did not bother to fold up the map during the test, so Bart and everyone else received 100. Marge throws Bart a party, which is attended by Patty and Selma, Grampa, Grandma, Ralph, and even Martin. Milhouse can only attend via speakerphone because he is sick with measles. Bart hates the party and to make matters worse, Lisa runs up to her room crying when Marge offers her one slice of cake. Marge thinks her children no longer appreciate her, so when she finds Nelson catching tadpoles from a water fountain at the zoo, she decides to become a mother figure by spending quality time with him. They bond as Nelson tells Marge about his poor life involving his father abandoning him and never coming back. Marge brings him home so he can do some chores. Nelson's mother finds this out and does not want Marge giving them any charity. Later that night, Mrs. Muntz leaves town, and Nelson, having nowhere else to go, stays with the Simpsons. Marge lets him sleep in Bart's room, forcing Bart to sleep underneath his bed. Late one night, Bart sees Nelson sing about his missing father, and sees Lisa eat an entire Labor Day cake as she was unable to take any more starvation. As Bart walks away, Nelson also sees her doing this and after talking about the situation, he offers to help Lisa get back at Sherri and Terri for teasing her. The next day, Nelson unleashes a skunk, which sprays both of them, while Lisa and her friends point and sing a parody of Jingle Bells. Both twins are scared and flee. When Lisa and Nelson return home, they find Nelson's father, who Bart found working at a freak show in a circus. It turns out that Mr. Muntz had really gone to the Kwik-E-Mart, where he had gotten a severe allergic reaction from eating a peanut bar. Coincidentally, the circus had made a stop in the Kwik-E-Mart parking lot, and the unscrupulous ringmaster noted the allergy and kept him as a forced freak for his traveling show. Nelson's mother finally returns, after going to Hollywood and getting the lead role in Macbeth, playing Lady Macbeth. Before returning to his family, Nelson thanks Marge for making him feel good about himself and appreciates what Bart did but says that this is not enough to stop him from bullying Bart. As the family talk about the morals of the episode, Lisa admits that she still has body image issues. Homer tries to get Lisa to talk about it positively, but Lisa says that it is a "very open-ended problem" and like other women and girls, she may never entirely be content with her body image. Homer tries to goad Lisa into changing her mind, but she refuses to do so. ===== 5 year-old Shirley Blake (Shirley Temple) and her mother, Mary (Lois Wilson), a maid, live in the home of her employers, the rich and mean-spirited Smythe family, Anita (Dorothy Christy), J. Wellington (Theodore von Eltz), and Joy (Jane Withers). After Christmas morning she hitches a ride to the airport. The aviators bring her aboard an airplane and taxi her around the runways, where she serenades them with her rendition of On the Good Ship Lollipop Mary is killed in a traffic accident. When Loop, one of the pilots and Shirley's Godfather, hears about this he takes Shirley up in an airplane, explains that she is in Heaven, and that her mother is also there. When the Smythes learn of Mary's death they make plans to send Shirley to an orphanage. In order to raise attorney fees, Loop reluctantly accepts a lucrative contract to deliver an item by plane, cross-country to New York during a dangerous storm. Unbeknown to him, little Shirley had left the Smythes' home, found his airplane at the airport, and stowed away inside. When their plane loses control in the storm in the wilderness, they parachute to ground together and are eventually rescued safely. The impasse over custody is resolved when Loop, his former fiancée, Adele (Judith Allen), Uncle Ned, and Shirley all decide to live together. ===== Ivan Vasilyevich Lomov, a long- time neighbor of Stepan Stepanovich Chubukov, has come to propose marriage to Chubukov's 25-year-old daughter, Natalia. After he has asked and received joyful permission to marry Natalia, she is invited into the room, and he tries to convey to her the proposal. Lomov is a hypochondriac, and, while trying to make clear his reasons for being there, he gets into an argument with Natalia about The Oxen Meadows, a disputed piece of land between their respective properties, which results in him having "palpitations" and numbness in his leg. After her father notices they are arguing, he joins in, and then sends Ivan out of the house. While Stepan rants about Lomov, he expresses his shock that "this fool dares to make you (Natalia) a proposal of marriage!" Natalia then realizes that Lomov wanted to marry her and immediately starts into hysterics, begging for her father to bring him back. He does, and Natalia and Ivan get into a second big argument, this time about the superiority of their respective hunting dogs, Guess and Squeezer. Ivan collapses from his exhaustion over arguing, and father and daughter fear he's dead, sending them into another round of hysterics. However, after a few minutes he regains consciousness, and Chubukov all but forces him and his daughter to accept the proposal with a kiss. Immediately following the kiss, the couple gets into another argument over their dogs. ===== The angel Raguel is called upon to solve a mystery in the Silver City—an angel has been murdered and he has to find the killer. ===== Yu- Gi-Oh R takes place following Yugi Mutou's victory in the Battle City tournament. Yako Tenma, the protégé' and adopted son of Maximillion Pegasus, decides to avenge his teacher's defeat at the hands of Yugi, believing him to be responsible for Pegasus' alleged death. After taking over KaibaCorp while Seto Kaiba is in the United States, Tenma kidnaps Anzu Mazaki, prompting Yugi and his friend Katsuya Jonouchi to face Tenma's RA Project and the duel professors. Seto Kaiba and his brother Mokuba also come to the scene to rescue the company. ===== The novel opens in early 1945. Peter Marlowe, a young British RAF Flight Lieutenant, has been a P.O.W. since 1942. Marlowe comes to the attention of the "King" (an American corporal who has become the most successful trader and black marketeer in Changi), when King sees him conversing in Malay. Marlowe's languages, intelligence, honesty, and winning personality cause King to befriend him and attempt to involve him in black market deals, which bring Marlowe to the attention of Robin Grey, a British officer and Provost Marshal of the camp, who has developed a Javert-like obsession with King and hopes to arrest him for violating camp regulations. Grey is attempting to maintain military discipline among the prisoners and sees King as the antithesis of his beliefs. As the son of a working-class family, Grey follows the rules for their own sake using his position as Provost Marshal to gain a status otherwise unavailable to him in British society. Despite being an enlisted man and undistinguished in civilian life, King has become a major power in the closed society of the P.O.W. camp through his charisma and intelligence. Trading with Korean guards, local Malay villagers, and other prisoners for food, clothing, information, and what few luxuries are available, King keeps himself and his fellow American prisoners alive. Senior officers come to him for help in selling their valuables to buy food, and other officers are secretly on his payroll. Marlowe is initially put off by King's perspective and behaviour, which clash with the British upper class ideals he has been taught. He turns down a lucrative business partnership with King because "Marlowes aren't tradesmen. It just isn't done, old boy". Marlowe soon understands that King is not the thief and con artist that Grey would have him believe. Rather, King asks for the best of each man and rewards him accordingly, irrespective of class or position. Through the experiences of Marlowe, King, and other characters, the novel offers a vivid, often disturbing portrayal of men brought to the edge of survival by a brutal environment. The P.O.W.s are given nothing by the Japanese other than filthy huts to live in and the bare minimum of food. Officers from various parts of Britain's Asian empire, accustomed to having native servants provide them with freshly laundered uniforms daily, are reduced to wearing rags and homemade shoes. For most, the chief concern is obtaining enough food to stay alive from day to day and avoiding disease or injury, since almost no medical care is available. Some are degraded and come close to losing their humanity, while others display levels of courage and compassion beyond expectations. Some literally steal food out the mouths of their comrades, while others give away what they have or take terrible risks to help their friends. King decides he and his friends should breed rats to sell for food. His comrades, though nearly starving themselves, are repulsed at the idea of eating rat meat, so King comes up with the plan of only selling the meat to officers without telling them the true source. A group of officers who stole money from their underlings are later seen greedily enjoying a meal of "Rusa tikus" not knowing they are actually eating rat meat. When the camp is ultimately liberated, most of the soldiers have trouble adjusting to freedom. King loses his power and is shunned by the others. Grey ironically thanks King on the grounds that his hatred of King was the only thing keeping him alive. At the end the rats are abandoned in their cages when the camp is abandoned. The final scene shows the rats consuming each other one by one, with the final survivor becoming "king of the rats". ===== Corporal King is an anomaly in the Japanese prison camp. One of only a handful of Americans amongst the British and Australian inmates, he thrives through his conniving and black market enterprises; whereas others, nearly all of higher rank, struggle to survive sickness and starvation while trying to keep their civilised nature. King recruits upper class British RAF officer Flight Lieutenant Peter Marlowe to act as a translator. As they become acquainted, Marlowe comes to like the man and appreciate his cunning. King respects Marlowe, but his attitude is otherwise ambiguous; when Marlowe is injured, King obtains expensive medicines to save Marlowe's gangrenous arm from amputation, but, despite the fact he stays by the sick man's bedside, it is unclear whether he does so out of friendship or because Marlowe is the only one who knows where the proceeds from King's latest and most profitable venture are hidden. King has a different relationship with the lower class, seemingly-incorruptible British Provost, First Lieutenant Grey. Grey has only contempt for the American and does his best to bring him down. Then Grey has to deal with an unrelated dilemma when he accidentally discovers that the high-ranking officer in charge of the meagre food rations has been stealing. Grey rejects a bribe and zealously takes the matter to Colonel George Smedley- Taylor. To his dismay, Smedley-Taylor tells him the corrupt officer and his assistant have been relieved of their duties, and orders him to forget all about it. Grey accuses Smedley-Taylor of being in on the scheme, but the tampered weight he presented to the colonel as evidence has been replaced, so he no longer has proof of the crime. Smedley-Taylor offers to promote him to acting captain: when a troubled Grey does not respond, Smedley-Taylor takes his silence as consent. The core idea in the film, and title, is that King starts breeding rats and selling the meat to the guards, telling them it is mouse-deer. The British love of animals is doubly offended when a pet dog is required to be killed for killing a chicken, but is put to good use when it itself is cooked. A chosen few relish the meat. The stakes are raised when they get a diamond to sell. In the camp politics the collusion with the guards show them as almost equals, and it is the British Lieutenant (Courtenay) who represents the "evil" of the system, in his suppression of all enjoyment and enforcement of the internal rules. The British camp commandant summons the four other senior British officers, and they are required to go to the Japanese commanders quarters. There the commander reads a scroll while a junior officer translates. This notifies them that the Japanese have surrendered, and that the war is over. After overcoming their shock and disbelief, the prisoners celebrate – all except King. He realises he is no longer the unquestioned (if unofficial) ruler of the camp. Weaver, a lone British paratrooper appears from seemingly nowhere, walks up to the prison gates and fires a revolver in the air causing the guards to surrender. The prisoners are stunned and are too shocked by the sudden events to speak to the paratrooper, except King. That King appears fit and is well-dressed among the other prisoners clad in rags makes the paratrooper suspicious and accusatory as to how that could be. King manages to squelch a premature attempt by resentful underling First sergeant Max to reassert his rank and authority, but that only delays the inevitable. When Marlowe speaks to him before King's departure from the camp, King belittles it, saying "you worked for me, and I paid you". Australian medics arrive and take care of the wounded. They begin a checklist of inmates against the records. The Americans are put on a truck ahead of the British. Marlowe rushes to say goodbye, but is too late, and simply watches the truck of men drive off. ===== Saul Garamond returns to the flat he shares with his father in London late one evening, skipping on greetings and heading straight to bed. In the morning he is awakened by police pounding on the door, come to arrest him. It appears he is the lone suspect in his father's murder case. After spending most of a day being interrogated and in a holding cell, Saul finds he has a mysterious visitor, who introduces himself as King Rat. The two begin a one sided rooftop escape as King Rat carries Saul along. At the end of this journey, King Rat reveals to Saul that he is his uncle by way of Saul's mother being a rat and also that Saul has been set up to take the fall for his father's death. Saul follows King Rat exploring the secrets of London, from the rooftops to the sewers. Being half rat, his two primary abilities are being able to eat anything, even garbage, and squeezing into holes and shadows too small for other creatures. Meanwhile, Saul's friend Natasha Karadjian, a drum and bass musician, begins to write and record new music with a flautist named Pete. Two of their other mutual friends, Fabian and Kay, are unnerved by this stranger but find it hard not to like the music the two are making. These friends are also being pursued by the police for any information on Saul's whereabouts. After spending several days with King Rat, Saul hears whispers of the return of the Ratcatcher. This prompts King Rat to gather allies, Anansi, the spider king, and Loplop, the bird king; they are prompted to join him for their own reasons—the Ratcatcher is also after the Spidercatcher and Birdcatcher, their enemy as well. So, King Rat relates the story of living in Hamelin, the last time he really was king. But he was displaced, of course, by the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his flute. It is revealed that now the Piper travels the world seeking pests so he may kill for the fun of it. The three animal kings end the story by swearing revenge. Even with his newfound powers, Saul is forced to stay in the shadows with King Rat, but cannot forget his own friends and past. He visits Kay but the two no longer understand each other. This visit leads to Pete, being revealed as the returned Piper, finding and murdering Kay. Meanwhile, the animal kings' plans begin to fall short and they drift apart. Saul begins to push his new boundaries and explore London on his own. During this time, he meets Deborah, a vagrant. Together they return to Saul's former flat, where he finds his father's old notebook. Here finds an entry about an attack on his mother nine months before his own birth. He realises he is not King Rat's nephew but his son, by way of rape and that everything since his father's death has been a set up by King Rat, who must therefore be the murderer of the man Saul considers his father. As they discover these facts, the Piper confronts Saul and Deborah. He kills Deborah but Loplop saves Saul. The piper reveals that he cannot control Saul as he can the others, as the Piper can only play one song at a time and as such a tune that controls rats will be ignored by Saul's human side and vice versa. Saul returns to the sewers to confront King Rat, leading to a falling-out. He wants to go his own way and leave the Piper to the animal kings. Natasha and Pete have set up an act at a club, Jungle, to debut their music. Fabian is interrogated by the police again and he realises that the flute left behind when Saul was attacked belongs to Pete. He calls the police to meet him at Natasha's home but arriving ahead of them he is wounded and both he and Natasha are taken by the Piper. After wandering for a few days, Saul meets up with Anansi, who informs him of Kay's death by the Piper. He begins to notice something is wrong in the sewer as well, as the rats have disappeared, their scratching replaced by a new sound, music. He traces the sound back to King Rat's throne room, now filled with dancing and dead rats; who along with King Rat are mesmerised by the music playing on a ghetto blaster. Saul realises the title on the tape within is written in Natasha's handwriting. He finds a poster for Natasha and the Piper's show, and despite knowing it is a trap, he goes to save his friends. Saul sneaks into the club with his new rat allies and Anansi leading the spiders. Loplop, left deaf by Saul during the Piper's first attack is unable to rally his birds. However, when Natasha takes the stage to spin her records, Pete throws her a DAT, which has his flute samples on it. The layering of tracks allows the Piper to play several tunes at once, controlling the rats, clubbers and spiders all at once. Unable to defend himself Anansi is killed by the Piper and Saul is overwhelmed. However, King Rat bursts from under the stage and attacks the Piper, but proves to be only a momentary distraction. With the musical fusion playing, the entire club is under the Piper's control and all he wants to kill Saul, who will not dance for him. The music does not mesh: instead of one solo flute, two flutes compete for the overlying sound. This dissonance causes Saul to regain control just as the Piper attempts to kill him; he dodges the blow and resists the Piper. The Piper knows he cannot win a physical fight, so he tears a hole in reality by playing his flute through which he can escape, just as he tore a hole in the mountain to hide the children of Hamelin. King Rat attacks the Piper with the Piper's own flute; they both fall into the rent but King Rat jumps away, and suddenly the hole closes, the Piper on the other side. Saul and King Rat are unsung heroes of the club but they both know they can never be a part of the world they just saved. King Rat still wants his kingdom back from Saul. Saul refuses to give in and knows that if the Piper returns, King Rat will still need him, so he can't be killed to restore complete order to the rat kingdom. Saul then gathers his own band of rats and lies about King Rat's contribution, painting him as a coward and ensuring the rats will never again follow him. Saul makes the declaration that King Rat is not the one true leader of all rats and he is not Prince Rat, but he is one of them, Citizen Rat. ===== Genghis Khan ("Cambyuskan" in Chaucer's version) leads the Mongol Empire with two sons, Algarsyf and Cambalo, and a daughter, Canace. At the twentieth anniversary of his reign, he holds a feast, and a strange knight sent from "the kyng of Arabe and of Inde" approaches him bearing gifts, a motif common in Arthurian legends. These are a brass horse with the power of teleportation, a mirror which can reveal the minds of the king's friends and enemies, a ring which confers understanding of the language of birds (as some legends say King Solomon owned), and a sword which deals deadly wounds that only its touch can heal again (both the spear of Achilles and the Holy Lance have these powers). After much learned talk of the gifts, digressing into astrology, the first part of the tale ends. A subplot of the tale deals with Canace and her ring. Eagerly rising the next morning, she goes on a walk and discovers a grieving falcon. The falcon tells Canace that she has been abandoned by her false lover, a tercelet (male hawk), who left her for a kite. (In medieval falconry, kites were birds of low status.) Canace heals the bird and builds a mew for it, painted blue for true faith within and green for falsity, with pictures of deceitful birds, outside. (This image is based on flower painted walls of the garden of the Romance of the Rose.) The second part ends with a promise of more to come involving Genghis Khan's sons and the quest of Cambalo to win Canace as his wife. (The prologue hints that Canace and her brothers commit incest, as in John Gower's version of the story.II 78-9) However, it is extremely unlikely that Chaucer ever intended to finish the tale. Instead the Franklin breaks into the very beginning of the third section with elaborate praise of the Squire's gentility—the Franklin being something of a social climber—and proceeds to his own tale. ===== A lady cop infiltrates an all-female criminal gang. ===== The starship USS Enterprise enters an uncharted region of space searching for her sister ship, the USS Defiant. Sensors detect fractures in space, and a power loss affects all systems. Defiant is found adrift, and Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy, and Navigator Ensign Chekov transport across wearing environmental suits for protection. Aboard Defiant, they find the crew dead, apparently having killed one another. The boarding party discovers that Defiant is slowly fading out of our universe. At one point, McCoy passes his hand through an almost invisible man and a table. With limited transporter functionality due to the unexplained malfunctions, Kirk orders his men to return to Enterprise first. The beaming takes longer than usual, and as Chief Engineer Scott tries to beam Kirk aboard, the Defiant vanishes. Spock determines that the local space is experiencing periods of "interphase", when two parallel dimensions touch each other and objects in one can move to the other, and believes Kirk will reappear during the next one. As he explains the situation, Chekov lashes out in anger, a symptom that McCoy believes is due to their proximity to Defiant. Spock, however, refuses to move the ship, fearful of disrupting local space, which could result in the loss of the Captain. Loskene, one of the Tholian aliens With two hours before the next interphase, the Enterprise is approached by a small, unfamiliar ship. Its captain, Commander Loskene of the Tholian Assembly, asserts that Enterprise has violated Tholian space and must leave. Spock persuades Loskene to wait one hour and fifty-three minutes. When the time is up, Kirk does not reappear, and Spock concludes that the arrival of the Tholian ship disrupted the interphase. When the Enterprise is attacked by Loskene, McCoy again urges Spock to leave, believing Kirk is lost. Spock chooses to return fire and the Tholian ship is disabled, but the Enterprise takes damage as well. Scott warns that because of the damage he cannot guarantee that he can hold their position. A second Tholian ship joins the first, and the two begin weaving an energy web that cages the Enterprise. Spock determines that if the web is completed before repairs are done, they will be unable to escape. Spock conducts a memorial service for Kirk, during which another man goes insane. Spock and McCoy then view a tape left by Kirk, to be played in the event of his death, which implores the two of them to work together for the benefit of the ship. Lieutenant Uhura and Scott both report seeing ghostly manifestations of Kirk. Finally, the apparition is seen on the bridge; Kirk is still in his environmental suit and appears to be urging Spock to "hurry". With the Tholian web nearly complete, McCoy dispenses an antidote to the effects of the local space, and Spock determines the time of Kirk's next appearance. They lock onto Kirk's coordinates, and Spock orders the activation of the ship's engines, which carries them through the spatial rift to a point 2.72 parsecs away. Kirk is brought along by the transporter lock, and beamed aboard just as his oxygen runs out. On the bridge, Kirk questions Spock and McCoy about their handling of the emergency, particularly concerning the tape with his final orders. McCoy claims they did not have time to watch it, Spock confirms that they were very busy, and Kirk accepts their answers. ===== The film begins with Sallah Shabati, a Mizrahi Jewish immigrant, arriving in Israel with his family. Upon arrival he is brought to live in a ma'abara, or transit camp. He is given a broken-down, one-room shack in which to live with his family and spends the rest of the movie attempting to make enough money to purchase adequate housing. His money-making schemes are often comical and frequently satirize the political and social stereotypes in Israel of the time. ===== The film is loosely based on real life "Phantom Lover" Dan Cheung, known as such due to the ghostlike (that is, not real) nature of the women he romances. The film is set in China in the 1940s. Song Dan Ping (Leslie Cheung) was an ambitious theatre actor and owner who built his dream magnificent playhouse from where he entertained and dazzled the theatre-loving populace with his adaptation of classics such as Romeo and Juliet and other tragic love stories. His passionate and devoted performances drew the attention of To Wan-Yin (Jacqueline Wu), the beautiful daughter of a corrupt and despotic official. To Wan-Yin would sneak out of her house with her personal maid in the night to watch Dan Ping's play (he was acting as Romeo in Shakespeare's play--'Romeo and Juliet'). During the patriarchal era, romance between an actor (considered useless and without a bright future) and a rich man's daughter was definitely a taboo (it was an irony that the couple were 're-enacting' Romeo and Juliet in the movie). Hence after each performance, Dan Ping and Wan-Yin would have a rendezvous at the theatre and their love deepened to the extent that they vowed to run away from the city and to get married elsewhere. However, Wan-Yin was betrothed to a man she did not love who was reputed to be cruel and sadistic; this persuaded her to throw caution to the wind and run away from home with Song. It also turned out that Wan-Yin's father arranged the marriage (as was the custom of China at that time) to benefit himself as he sought to become allies with another official of great influence, whose friendship would help to improve his social standing. As fate dictated, the eloping couple was caught before the plan came to fruition and Wan-Yin's maid, who had assisted the eloping couple in their attempt to escape, was brutally beaten until she was crippled. Meanwhile, Wan-Yin was locked up in the house by her father to prevent her from eloping. This did not end the couple's tragic fate. Wan-Yin's fiance had arranged his men to harm Dan Ping. After disfiguring Dan Ping's face with burning acid, they set the theatre ablaze with Dan Ping and many other innocent people in it. After Wan-Yin came to know about the fire and Dan Ping's disappearance, she resigned to fate and married her fiance. On her wedding night, Wan-Yin's husband found out that she was not a virgin (he did not 'see red' on their nuptial night). Wan-Yin was then abused and eventually drove out of the house and was forced to lead a wandering life with her crippled maid. Wan-Yin soon lost all her senses as her longing for Dan Ping drove her crazy. Many years later, a group of performing arts students traveled from Beijing to perform in the city where Song Dan Ping had performed, eager to adapt his exploits and to improvise on his legendary performances. They came to the theatre hall, with its outer foundations still intact but with the internal sections terribly destroyed, and made their temporary quarters there. Many people believed Song to have perished in the fire but he was indeed still living as the students made their home in his theatre. Song, however, was badly scarred in the face and was never to reveal his once-handsome face to the outside world and earned the nickname 'The Phantom lover' by his once-loving audience. His personality was also changed as he was severely depressed and morose after the tragic incidents and had lived the life of a hermit ever since. When the students arrived at the theatre, he was slightly encouraged to reveal himself when one of the more talented students tried unsuccessfully to sing his ultimate love serenade whom he dedicated to Wan-Yin. Song later lashed out at the students' incompetence when he could no longer bear such disparaging performances of his efforts and decided to reveal himself and his scarred face to them. When the officials heard that the students tried to popularise Song in their theatre performances and reenact his glorious days, they came to arrest the students. Little did they know their evil deeds were exposed to the public who came for the performances. One by one, the accomplices to the plot to burn down the theatre were forced to confess in detail, to their crimes. Justice was finally achieved but only as a hollow victory on Song's part. In the closing moments, Song was seen holding his lover's hands. Wan-Yin had since become an invalid, and she had also become blind as a result of her ex-husband shooting her. She recognized Song, but lamented that she could not see him - a blessing for him, since she couldn't see how ugly his face had become. The two lovers finally departed the town in a coach, together at last. An epilogue reveals that Wan- Yin died a year later—probably due to the shooting injuries—and that Song never loved another woman in his lifetime. ===== British adventurer Richard Francis Burton dies on Earth and is revived in mid- air in a vast dark room filled with human bodies, some only half formed. There, he is confronted by men in a flying vehicle who then blast him with a weapon. He next awakes upon the shores of a mysterious river, naked and hairless. All around him are other people in a similar situation. Shortly after they awaken, a nearby structure, nicknamed a "grailstone," causes food and other supplies to appear in the "grails" bound to each individual. Burton quickly attracts a group of companions: the neanderthal Kazzintuitruaabemss (nicknamed Kazz), the science fiction author Peter Jairus Frigate, and Alice Liddell. Among these is the extraterrestrial Monat Grrautut, earlier part of a small group of beings from Tau Ceti who had arrived on Earth in the early 21st century. When one of their number was accidentally killed by humans, their spaceship automatically killed most of the people on Earth. Frigate and others alive at the time confirm Monat's story. Retreating into the nearby woods for safety, Burton's party chew gum provided by their grails, and discover that this gum is a powerful hallucinogen. As days and weeks pass, people's physical wants are provided for by the grails, which eventually produce a set of cloths used for clothing. Rumors reach Burton's region that the river continues seemingly forever. One night, Burton is visited by a mysterious cloaked figure, whom Burton dubs "The Mysterious Stranger," who explains that he is one of the beings who has constructed this world and resurrected humanity on its shores, and tells Burton to approach the headwaters of the river. After setting off, Burton's group encounters many adventures; but are enslaved by a riverbank kingdom run by Tullus Hostilius and Hermann Göring, against whom Burton leads a successful revolt. Göring himself is killed by Alice. After the revolt, Burton is part of the nation's ruling council. Later, the protagonists discover a person among them who they conclude is an agent of the beings who created this world. Before the man can be questioned, he dies of no apparent cause. An autopsy reveals a small device planted in the man's brain which apparently allowed him to kill himself at will. Burton is visited by the Mysterious Stranger and is warned that the beings who created this world, to whom the Stranger refers as "Ethicals", are close to capturing Burton. Desperate to escape, Burton kills himself to be resurrected elsewhere in the river valley, and continues thus to explore it. He often finds himself resurrected near Hermann Göring, who undergoes a moral and religious conversion and joins the pacifist Church of the Second Chance. After many resurrections, Burton finds himself resurrected not in the river but in the Dark Tower at the headwaters, and is interrogated by a council of Ethicals to discover the identity of Burton's "Mysterious Stranger". After fruitlessly questioning him, the Ethicals inform him that they will return him to the river valley, remembering nothing of themselves, and restore him to his friends; but the Mysterious Stranger prevents them from removing his memory and Burton resolves to continue pursuing the truth about the Ethicals and their intentions for the Riverworld. ===== Twenty years after humanity was resurrected on Riverworld, Sam Clemens is traveling with the crew of a Viking longboat, captained by Eric Bloodaxe, who is notable for having an axe made of metal. On the metal-poor Riverworld, where even a few ounces of metal is a treasure, this is a rarity. Clemens and Bloodaxe have allied in order to find the source of this metal. Clemens is accompanied on his quest by a gigantic prehistoric hominid whom he has named Joe Miller. Miller, despite being very cordial, and talking with a lisp, is a fearsome warrior because of his size, and protects Clemens from Bloodaxe's crew. Clemens is also motivated in his quest by his desire to be reunited with his terrestrial wife, Livy. Unknown to the others, Clemens had been contacted by a mysterious being whom he named X. X claimed to be a member of the beings who were responsible for resurrection, although he disagreed with their goals. He was aware of Clemens's desire to build a metal riverboat, and assured the author that the metal needed to realise this dream could be found upriver. X manages to send a nickel-iron meteorite crashing into Riverwold, not far from Clemens. Clemens and his crew manage to survive the resulting tidal wave that kills nearly everyone in the vicinity. Sadly, Clemens discovers Livy is one of the dead when her body washes up on deck. She had been in the area but will now be resurrected thousands of miles from him. In the wake of the tidal wave all the survivors in the region are put to sleep by a strange fog, and awake to discover the valley has been restored to a pristine condition. Clemens realizes that the meteor likely contains a source of metal and the crew sets out to look for it. They are soon joined by German aviator Lothar von Richthofen, a World War One ace and brother of the famous Red Baron. Lothar becomes a trusted ally of Clemens and an additional ally against Bloodaxe. When the crew reaches the area where the meteor fell, they find a new group of resurrectees who have formed a nascent kingdom. The crew quickly kill the leaders and assume control of the region for themselves. They begin mining the metal from the meteorite. However, Clemens does not trust Bloodaxe, and has his co-leader assassinated. As more metal is exhumed from the ground the technology level of the area begins to rise, including the reintroduction of firearms. While the meteorite is rich in nickel and iron Clemens needs other materials to manufacture modern conveniences. To get these resources he must trade much of his metal to neighboring kingdoms. Many of these kingdoms eye his own kingdom jealously and Clemens is constantly on guard lest he be invaded and his precious mine taken from him. Of particular concern is a neighboring kingdom led by the English King John Lackland. Eventually King John and another kingdom join forces to invade Clemens's land. However, Clemens makes a deal with King John to unite their lands. John betrays his one-time ally and forms the nation of Parolando with Clemens. As production begins on the boat, Clemens receives a rude shock when his wife arrives in the company of Cyrano de Bergerac. In the intervening years Livy has become Cyrano's lover. When the Frenchman, who is noted as one of the best swordsmen in the world, had heard of a kingdom with metal, he became obsessed with traveling there in order to obtain a proper sword. Despite his discomfort with the situation, Clemens quickly warms to Cyrano, and the Frenchman becomes part of Clemens' inner circle. The protagonists meet a later time American astronaut Firebrass, who claims to have visited the Moon, Mars, Ganymede, and orbited Jupiter. Diplomatic problems continue for Parolando, most notably with nearby "Soul City", a kingdom founded by a black nationalists. Demanding ever increasing payments for its resources, Soul City eventually attacks Parolando, almost conquering the nation until agents of John Lackland dynamite a dam, sending a wave of water to sweep the invading enemies into the river. Despite such setbacks, Clemens builds his riverboat, a side paddle wheeler which is named the Not for Hire. However, on the day of its christening, King John betrays Clemens and steals the ship. As the boat steams away, Clemens vows to build an even bigger and better boat and to exact revenge on King John. ===== The plot, set 30 years after humanity's resurrection, consists of three distinct plot lines, which come together towards the conclusion. In the first plot line, Richard Burton and his friends continue their journey up river. On their journey they encounter a group of ancient Egyptians who tell them of a mission which their Pharaoh had undertaken to reach the source of the River. Accompanied by the Titanthrop Joe Miller, who they believed to be an avatar of Thoth, they scaled the mountains at the River's headwaters and descended into a polar sea, with a large black tower in the center. On the shores they found a cave with supplies and boat. One of their number died there, bringing the story back to the Valley. Burton also discovers that his group has been infiltrated by traitors. Through hypnosis, the Neanderthal Kaz identifies Monat and Pete Frigate as agents of the alien creators of the Riverworld. When Burton goes to confront them he discovers that they have disappeared. The second plot line deals with the real Peter Jairus Frigate, who is unaware that someone has been impersonating him. One day, a ship docks near his home and Frigate recognizes its captains as two of his childhood heroes, Tom Mix and Jack London. He signs on to the crew, joining the Sufi mystic Nur-ed-Din and the African warrior Umslopogas. For years he travels with them without revealing that he knows Mix and London's identities. When he finally confronts the men, they reveal that they had been recruited by the Mysterious Stranger to find the source of the River. Eventually they come upon the metal rich nation of New Bohemia and Frigate suggests they build a balloon to reach the pole faster. However, soon after launch their balloon is destroyed after an encounter with another airship. In the third plot line, the nation of Parolando, now under the rule of President Milton Firebrass, is building an airship, which will allow them to reach the pole faster than Clemens' steamboat. Cyrano de Bergerac has opted to stay behind to help with the project and proves to be a competent pilot. Training is overseen by new arrival Jill Gulbirra, an Australian dirigible pilot and strident feminist. The airship launches and rapidly makes the journey to the pole, where they discover the sea and the dark tower described by the Egyptians. Firebrass and several others abruptly board a helicopter to fly down to the tower, but it explodes, killing them. Engineer Barry Thorne is jailed after it is discovered that he planted a bomb on the helicopter. The crew discover a doorway on the roof of the tower, but all attempts to enter it are stymied by an invisible force field. Japanese Sufi Piscator is able to make it farther than anyone and disappears into the tower. After he does not return, Jill Gulbirra decides to cut their losses and return home. On the way back, they are persuaded by Clemens to mount an attack on King John's steamship. Cyrano leads the attack, which nearly succeeds in kidnapping John, but the king escapes. In the confusion, Barry Thorne escapes and parachutes from the airship, which explodes behind him. * During the third plot line, it is revealed that Firebrass knew the alien from Arcturus and the death of most of humanity in the year 2003 AD. ===== Springfield is hit by a blizzard, so Marge calls Homer at Moe's Tavern and tells him to come home. While on the way home, Homer's view is obscured by the snow and he crashes into the family's station wagon. As both cars are completely totaled, Homer begins searching for a new car, and after several unsuccessful attempts, the family go to a car show. After an unsettling encounter with Adam West, a salesman talks Homer into getting a snowplow. Homer agrees on the basis that he can make the payments by plowing people's driveways. Homer starts his snowplowing business, titled "Mr. Plow", but he has trouble finding any customers. His advertising campaigns are unsuccessful until Lisa suggests an advertisement on late night local television. The resulting commercial and jingle attracts many customers and the business is a booming success. Homer is given the key to the city in recognition of his service to the community. Barney, after being humiliated while working as a mascot for a baby supply store, asks how he can be a success as well. Homer advises him go out and be the best Barney he can be. The next day, it is revealed that Barney has purchased an even bigger plow and has started a rival company under the title of "Plow King". Barney creates his own commercial, with Linda Ronstadt involved in singing the jingle, which defames and slanders Homer. Homer pays an agency to make him a new commercial, which turns out to be completely nonsensical. As a result, Homer loses his success to Barney, and Mayor Quimby revokes his key to the city and hands it over to Barney. To get revenge and regain his customers, Homer tricks Barney into plowing a non-existent driveway on Widow's Peak, a large treacherous mountain outside of town. Homer begins to plow driveways again, but sees a news report showing that Barney has been trapped in an avalanche. Homer immediately drives to the mountain and rescues Barney. The friends resolve their differences and agree to work together in the plow business, claiming that not even God Himself can stop them. Angered, God promptly retaliates by causing a heatwave, melting all the snow and effectively putting them both out of business. As Homer can no longer make the snowplow payments, his plow is soon repossessed, returning things to normal. However, Homer retains the Mr. Plow jacket as a memento from his earlier job, and Marge asks him to wear it to bed. ===== Candy's brother and sister arrive in Seattle In the pilot episode, smooth- talking, charismatic logging company boss Jason Bolt (Robert Brown) is faced with a shutdown of his operation as lonely lumberjacks are ready to leave Seattle due to the lack of female companionship. He promises to find marriageable ladies willing to come to the frontier town (population 152) and stay for a full year. Sawmill owner Aaron Stempel (Mark Lenard) puts up much of the expense money as a wager that Bolt will not succeed in bringing 100 suitable women; the Bolt brothers bet their mountain, Bridal Veil Mountain, home to their logging company. The Bolts travel to New Bedford, Massachusetts, recruit the women, then charter a mule-ship to take them back to Seattle. Local saloon owner Lottie (Joan Blondell) takes the women under her wing and becomes a mother figure to them, while Bolt desperately works to keep the women from leaving at the next high tide. Eventually, the women decide to give Seattle and the loggers a chance. The ship's captain, Clancy (Henry Beckman), develops a relationship with Lottie and becomes a regular character in the series. Much of the dramatic and comedic tension in the first season revolved around Stempel's efforts to sabotage the deal and take over the Bolts' holdings. Stempel became more friendly in the second and final season, which focused more on the development of individual characters and the conflicts associated with newcomers and with people just passing through. One running theme is the importance of family, as the Bolt brothers show through the closeness of their relationships, that by sticking together, democratically taking family votes, they can overcome the surprising obstacles life presents. Bobby Sherman and David Soul were propelled to pop stardom as Jason's brothers, Jeremy and Joshua. Jeremy took a prominent role, not only as the boyfriend of Candy Pruitt (Bridget Hanley), the beautiful, unofficial leader of the brides, but also as a young man with a stammer. In one episode, he is temporarily able to manage his stammer following coaching by a traveler who has come to Seattle. Upon discovering that his benefactor is actually a con artist, his faith is shaken so deeply that the stammer returns. The show addressed many social issues — racism, ethnic discrimination, treatment of the handicapped and mentally impaired, business ethics, and ecology. ===== The story concerns mainly Ethan Allen Hawley, a former member of Long Island's aristocratic class. Ethan's late father lost the family fortune, and thus Ethan works as a grocery store clerk. His wife Mary and their children resent their mediocre social and economic status, and do not value the honesty and integrity that Ethan struggles to maintain amidst a corrupt society. These external factors and his own psychological turmoil lead Ethan to try to overcome his inherent integrity in order to reclaim his former status and wealth. Ethan's decision to gain wealth and power is influenced by criticisms and advice from people he knows. His acquaintance Margie urges him to accept bribes; the bank manager (whose ancestors Ethan blames for his family's misfortunes) urges him to be more ruthless. Ethan's friend Joey, a bank teller, even gives Ethan a lesson on how to rob a bank and get away with it. On discovering that the current store owner, Italian immigrant Alfio Marullo, may be an illegal immigrant, Ethan makes an anonymous tip to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. After Marullo is taken into custody, he transfers ownership of the store to Ethan through the actions of the very government agent that caught him. Marullo gives Ethan the store because he believes Ethan is honest and deserving. Ethan also considers, plans, and mentally rehearses a bank robbery, failing to perform it only because of external circumstances. Eventually, he manages to become powerful in the town by taking possession of a strip of land needed by local businessmen to build an airport; he gets the land from Danny Taylor, the town drunkard and Ethan's childhood best friend, by a will made by Danny and slipped under the door of the store. The will was drawn without any spoken agreement some time after Ethan gave Danny money for the purpose of sending Danny to receive treatment for alcoholism. Danny assures him that drunks are liars and that he will just drink the money away, and this is indeed confirmed when Danny is found dead with empty bottles of whiskey and sleeping pills. In this manner, Ethan becomes able to control the covert dealings of the corrupt town businessmen and politicians, but he is confident that he will not be corrupted. He considers that while he had to kill enemy soldiers in the war, he was never a murderer thereafter. Ethan learns that his son won honorable mention in a nationwide essay contest by plagiarizing classic American authors and orators, but when Ethan confronts him, the son denies having any guilty feelings, maintaining that everyone cheats and lies. Perhaps after seeing his own moral decay in his son's actions, and experiencing the guilt of Marullo's deportation and the death of Danny, Ethan resolves to commit suicide. His daughter, intuitively understanding his intent, slips a family talisman into his pocket during a long embrace. When Ethan decides to commit the act, he reaches into his pocket to find razorblades and instead finds the talisman. As the tide comes into the alcove in which he has sequestered himself, he struggles to get out in order to return the talisman to his daughter. ===== Terri Fletcher is a teenager with a passion for singing and dreams of becoming a professional singer. She wants to participate in a music program that could give her a $10,000 scholarship. Her overprotective father Simon, a second-generation restaurateur, disapproves of Terri's plans, stating that being a singer may not be a worthwhile life choice. Simon believes that Terri will get hurt if she goes to Los Angeles and would prefer if she continues running the family business. Simon thinks this is the only way to keep Terri safe. Terri is very close to her elder brother Paul, who fully supports her dream, despite what their father says. At Paul's graduation-day barbecue, he has a fight with Simon, who, in the heat of it, grounds his son. Terri sneaks Paul out of the house to attend a Three Days Grace concert. On the way back, Paul was planning on going to college and leaving right now. They have a car accident and are hit by a drunk driver. Terri awakens in the hospital, where she learns that Paul was killed. Terri blames herself for Paul's death. She wants to quit singing and not attend the music program. Terri tells her mother, Frances, that if she hadn't convinced Paul to sneak out to the concert he'd still be alive. However, Frances explains that it's not her fault and that Paul would have wanted Terri to attend the program. She eventually convinces Terri to go. Frances tells Simon that Terri plans to stay with her aunt Nina in Palm DesertEbert, Roger (October 8, 2004). "Raise Your Voice". Chicago Sun-Times for the summer and allows her daughter to travel to Los Angeles. Terri arrives in Los Angeles and weathers some difficult ordeals: her jacket is stolen, her cab driver is crabby, and when she arrives at the music school at night, the door is locked; fellow student Jay lets her in and Terri arrives safely. While at the program, Terri makes new friends and learns a great deal about music, but problems arise when she is plagued by memories of the car crash which took Paul's life and finds it increasingly difficult to keep her participation in the program a secret from her father. Throughout the film, Terri develops a mutual fondness for Jay, but she faces competition from Robin Childers, who was involved with Jay the previous summer. Although Robin still harbors feelings for Jay, he does not reciprocate these feelings. Jay tries to get Robin to cease her efforts to keep him and Terri apart. On one occasion, she kisses him just as Terri walks in. Jay pushes Robin away, but Terri runs off in tears, ignoring Jay's insistence that the kiss meant nothing. Later, finding him drunk, Terri and her roommate Denise take Jay to the roof to sober up. When he does, Jay apologizes, and Terri agrees to finish the song they have been working on for the scholarship contest. At home, Simon learns of Terri's ruse and becomes furious. Simon then drives to Los Angeles to bring Terri home in an effort to keep her safe. On the final day, Simon comes to the school and Terri finds him packing up her belongings; he reams Terri for disobeying and deceiving him, and for turning his own sister and wife against him. Terri begged her father not to make same mistake like he did with Paul and make her run. She begs him to let her finish what she started and not let the summer go to waste. Ultimately, realizing how selfish he had been acting, concedes and allows her to perform. Terri and Jay then perform the song they wrote with Terri dedicating it to Paul. Even though Denise wins the scholarship prize, Simon is proud of his daughter and her talents. He is also glad that her last memory of Paul is one worth having (the concert), as opposed to Simon's own (their argument, and Paul's subsequent restriction to his bedroom). Terri's teachers hope to see her next year; Simon replies that they just might. Over the end credits, Terri performs for her parents and Nina, with Jay cheering her on. ===== Hundreds of years ago, the evil ghost king Spooky terrorized Pac-Land and the Pac-People. To stop him, the Great Wizard Pac created a powerful potion to transform five ordinary fruit into magical Golden Fruit. The knight Sir Pac-A-Lot defeated Spooky in battle, and used the Golden Fruit to seal him under a tree in the center of Pac-Village. In the present day, Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde sneak into Pac-Village at night to steal the Golden Fruit from the tree, unaware of its purpose. In doing so, they unwittingly release Spooky, who commands them to aid his plan to eliminate all Pac-People. The ghosts agree and each take one of the Golden Fruit. The next morning, Professor Pac informs Pac-Man of the trouble and asks him to retrieve the stolen Golden Fruit in order to save Pac-Land. Pac-Man travels throughout Pac-Land and across the ocean to Ghost Island, defeating the ghosts and retrieving the Golden Fruit along the way. Pac-Man eventually returns to Pac-Village, where he is ambushed by Spooky. The power of the Golden Fruit transforms Pac-Man into a new golden form, and he defeats Spooky once more, sealing him back beneath the tree. The residents of Pac-Village emerge to congratulate Pac-Man, while his dog Chomp Chomp overhears the ghosts planning to free Spooky again and chases them out of the village. ===== A wind blows worldwide: it is constantly westward and strongest at the equator. The wind is gradually increasing, and at the beginning of the story, the force of the wind is making air travel impossible. Later, people are living in tunnels and basements, unable to go above ground. Near the end, "The air stream carried with it enormous quantities of water vapour — in some cases the contents of entire seas, such as the Caspian and the Great Lakes, which had been drained dry, their beds plainly visible."Chapter 7. In London, to cope with the situation, special organizations are set up. The Central Operations Executive (COE), staffed mainly by War Office personnel, has been set up by Simon Marshall. Combined Rescue Operations deal with collapsing buildings. Donald Maitland, a doctor unable to travel to a new job in Canada because of the wind, is part of it. Maitland rescues Marshall when he is injured by falling masonry and takes him home to recover. In the basement of Marshall's home, Maitland sees military equipment labelled "Hardoon Tower" and wonders whose interests Marshall is really serving. Hardoon Tower is a pyramid-like structure intended to withstand the wind; it is being built by Hardoon, a millionaire businessman, who has a private army. Maitland's relationship with his wife Susan is ending, but when he hears that she is still in their apartment on an upper floor, while most people are underground, he goes there. Susan will not be persuaded to leave, and standing by an open window, she is carried away by the wind. As the destruction increases in London, COE decides to abandon its underground base. One of Hardoon's officers, a helmeted, taciturn figure called Kroll, arrives. Marshall thinks he is there to take him to Hardoon Tower, but Kroll kills him. Maitland is evacuated from the underground base along with Steve Lanyon, an American submarine captain, and Patricia Olsen, a journalist. Lanyon and Olsen have developed a relationship during recent experiences in Italy. They are in a group that leaves in a giant armoured vehicle with a periscope. Maitland, realizing they are passing close to Hardoon Tower and wanting to investigate it, sabotages the navigation equipment so that the vehicle goes to the tower, which they can locate by a radio signal. Hardoon receives the group so that Olsen, the journalist, can report his success. The pyramid, built over tunnels which are collapsing, starts to fall over in the wind, and Hardoon, gazing at the wind through a special window, cannot be saved. Maitland and the others, trying to escape from the destruction, realize that they are saved because the wind is starting to subside. ===== The mysterious Marauders attack a mutant named Tommy and her Hellfire Club boyfriend in Los Angeles for the purpose of following her back to New York and finding the location of the underground mutant community known as the Morlocks.Uncanny X-Men #210 The Marauders kill Tommy and hundreds of Morlocks before the X-MenUncanny X-Men #211 and X-FactorX-Factor #10 teams arrive separately and fight them, avoiding the total slaughter of the Morlocks. The two teams however do not meet during the battle and suffer crippling losses: X-Factor's Angel is crucified by the Marauders, while the X-Men's Colossus, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler are all severely wounded. X-Factor's casualties are less due to the arrival of Power PackPower Pack #27 and Thor,Thor #373-374 who help save the horribly wounded Angel and the rest of X-Factor from suffering any additional harm. Thor uses his powers to cleanse the dead from the Morlock tunnels with fire,Thor #374 which causes problems for the X-Men, who briefly believe that the firestorm was caused by the Marauders and believe that the New Mutants died in said fire.Uncanny X-Men #212 Several Morlocks, including Berzerker and Masque,X-Factor #11 make their way into the surface world and begin to work for their personal aims. Meanwhile, Wolverine saves the Power Pack and Healer from the Marauder Sabretooth. After their clash, Sabretooth follows Logan home to the X-Mansion. He destroys Cerebro, but is kept from hurting the other Morlocks when Psylocke engages Sabretooth in battle. Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men arrive, and Sabretooth falls off a nearby cliff in order to escape the X-Men, pursued into the water by Wolverine. As the fight continues in the ocean, Psylocke is able to glean some information about the Marauders from Sabretooth's mind.Uncanny X-Men #213 ===== Jenny Taylor (Amanda Bynes) is a fan of Jason Masters (Chris Carmack), a world-famous rock star, but her efforts to meet him are always thwarted by her nemesis, Alexis (Jamie-Lynn Sigler). Hoping to get another chance, Jenny takes a job at Masters' favorite Caribbean resort, joined by her best friend Ryan (Jonathan Bennett). Jenny sneaks aboard a party vessel Jason is on, and when Jason is washed overboard, Jenny jumps in to save him. Though the pair find themselves marooned in a secluded cove of a seemingly-deserted island, Jenny soon discovers that they have landed a short distance from the resort. She lets him believe they are stranded so she can make him fall in love with her. Jenny gets help from Ryan, who drives out to her location to provide her with supplies. When Alexis discovers Jenny's plan by following Ryan secretly, she also pretends to be marooned with them. While Ryan has been helping, he has also decided to act on his long-standing love for Jenny, seeking advice on asking her out. He completely transforms himself, yet when she sees him, all she talks about is Jason. Ryan confesses he can't stop thinking about her and kisses her, but when Jenny protests that they are friends he tells her that he's going home, and drives off. Jenny feels bad and tells Jason the truth about not being stranded. He gets upset at both Jenny and Alexis, promises to sue them both, and leaves them behind as he hitches a ride back to the resort. When Ryan hears that a storm is going to hit the side of the island where Jenny is he drives out to save her. As the storm builds, Jenny gets stuck in the car Ryan had abandoned to look for her, when Ryan returns just in time to save her as the car is about to slide over a muddy embankment. When he takes Jenny into a cave and lights a fire to keep her warm, she realizes that he is the one that cares for her the most. After the storm passes, Jenny and Ryan return to the resort, where Jason and his manager tell Jenny that they need her help to maintain the 'stranded' story at a press conference. Ryan proclaims his love for Jenny before he is thrown out the door by Jason's bodyguard. At the press conference, Jenny tells everyone that her boyfriend is Ryan and that Alexis is Jason's fiancee, then walks off with Ryan. As the end-credits roll, Jason is on stage in Winnipeg, unhappily dedicating a song to his wife, Alexis, who is standing at his side. ===== At the last minute, a wealthy American expatriate in Europe, Richard Sturges (Clifton Webb), buys a steerage-class ticket (the lowest class) for the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic from a Basque immigrant. Once aboard he seeks out his runaway wife, Julia (Barbara Stanwyck). He discovers she is trying to take their two unsuspecting children, 18-year-old Annette (Audrey Dalton) and ten-year-old Norman (Harper Carter), to her hometown of Mackinac Island, Michigan, to rear them as down-to-earth Americans rather than rootless elitists like Richard himself. As the ship prepares for departure, her captain, Edward J. Smith (Brian Aherne), receives a hint from the shipping company representative that a record-setting speedy passage would be welcomed. Other passengers include Maude Young (based on real-life Titanic survivor Margaret "Molly" Brown), a wealthy woman of a working-class origin (Thelma Ritter); social-climbing Earl Meeker (Allyn Joslyn); a 20-year-old Purdue University tennis player, Gifford "Giff" Rogers (Robert Wagner); and George S. Healey (Richard Basehart), a Catholic priest who has been defrocked for alcoholism. When Annette learns Julia's intentions, she insists on returning to Europe with Richard on the next ship as soon as they reach America. Julia concedes that Annette is old enough to make her own decisions, but she insists on keeping custody of Norman. This angers Richard, forcing Julia to reveal that Norman is not their son, but rather the result of a one-night stand after one of their many bitter arguments. Upon hearing that, he agrees to give up all claim to Norman. He joins Maude, Earl, and George Widener in the lounge to play auction bridge with them. The next morning, when Norman reminds him about a shuffleboard game they had scheduled, he coldly brushes him off. Meanwhile, Giff falls for Annette at first glance. At first she repulses his brash attempts to become better acquainted, but eventually she warms to him. That night, Giff, Annette, and a group of young people sing and play the piano in the dining room, while Captain Smith watches from a corner table. Second Officer Charles Lightoller (Edmund Purdom) expresses his concern to Captain Smith about the ship's speed when they receive two messages from other ships warning of iceberg sightings near their route. Smith, however, assures him that there is no danger. That night, however, the lookout spots an iceberg dead ahead. Although the crew tries to steer clear of danger, the ship is gashed below the waterline and begins taking on water. When Richard finds Captain Smith, he insists on being told the truth: the ship is doomed and there are not enough lifeboats for everyone on board. He tells his family to dress warmly but properly; then they head outside. Richard and Julia have a tearful reconciliation on the boat deck, as he places her, Annette, and Norman into a lifeboat. Unnoticed by Julia, Norman gives up his seat to an older woman and goes looking for Richard. When one of the lines becomes tangled, preventing the boat from being lowered, Giff climbs down and fixes it, only to lose his grip and fall into the water. Unconscious but alive, he is dragged onto the boat. Meeker disguises himself as a woman to get aboard a lifeboat but Maude Young notices his shoes and unmasks him in front of the others in the boat. At the other end of the spectrum of courage and unselfishness, George Healey heads down into one of the boiler rooms to comfort injured crewmen. As the Titanic is in her final moments, Norman and Richard find each other. Richard tells a passing steward that Norman is his "son" and then tells Norman that he has been proud of him every day of his life. Then they join the rest of the doomed passengers and the crew in singing the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee". As the last boiler explodes, the Titanics bow plunges, pivoting her stern high into the air while she rapidly slides into the icy water. The remaining survivors are last seen waiting in the lifeboats for help to come as dawn approaches. ===== The story relates a disabled former astronaut's account of the terrifying change he undergoes after being exposed to an extraterrestrial mutagen, during a space mission to Venus (similar to the canceled Manned Venus Flyby, but using a "Saturn 16" rocket). Arthur, the narrator, begins the story with his hands bandaged, and complains of a terrible itching both after the mission and currently. The change takes the form of numerous tiny eyeballs which break out on his fingertips. These eyeballs act as the titular "doorway" for an alien species, allowing them to see into our world, but, seeing from an alien perspective, they view humans as horrifying monstrosities which, Arthur perceives, they fear and hate intensely. Soon, the alien presence is not only able to see through this doorway, but take control of Arthur's shattered body, using him to commit terrible murders. In a desperate attempt to maintain his humanity, Arthur douses his hands in kerosene and sets them on fire, only to find out that once the doorway has opened, it cannot be so easily closed. He manages to make the alien presence go away for nearly seven years. But after the eyes reappear on Arthur's chest, he reveals that he plans to kill himself with a shotgun to prevent the aliens from committing any more atrocities. ===== Players assume the roles of citizens in the Maple World with no specific objective to win the game, but to work on improving their characters' skill and status over time. The antagonist of the game, the Black Mage, was sealed away years ago by six heroes. Fearing his resurrection, Empress Cygnus enlisted the Maple World to join her Cygnus Knights in preventing his return. However, the Black Wings were able to return the Black Mage to reality for a moment, causing a cataclysm known as the Big Bang. With the seal on the Black Mage weakening, the five heroes return to the world in a weakened state. The player's character begins a quest to restore the Black Mage's seal but instead, witnesses his revival. The Black Mage then begins assimilating Grandis with the Maple World in order to rule both worlds. ===== Norm Snively, an alcoholic clown, and his Golden Retriever, Old Blue, are doing a show at a child's birthday party. After Old Blue causes trouble at the party, Snively angrily takes him in a kennel to a dog pound, until the kennel falls out of his truck. Old Blue is homeless until he meets 12-year-old Josh Framm. After the death of his father, a pilot who died in a plane crash during a test flight, Josh has relocated with his mom Jackie and two-year-old sister Andrea from Virginia to Fernfield, Washington. Due to heartbreak over his father's death, he is too shy to try out for his middle school's basketball team and to make any friends. He instead becomes the basketball team's manager, an awkward offer by Coach Barker which he accepts. He practices basketball by himself in a makeshift court that he sets up in an abandoned allotment, where he meets Old Blue and renames him Buddy. Josh soon discovers that Buddy has the uncanny ability to play basketball, and decides to let Buddy come home with him. Jackie agrees to let him keep Buddy until Christmas and she plans to send him to the pound if his rightful owner is not located; however, she sees how loyal Buddy is and how much Josh loves him. On Christmas, Jackie lets Josh keep Buddy as a present. Following Christmas, Josh finds a tryout invitation in his locker and further realizes Buddy's talent when he discovers that he can actually shoot a hoop. These facts together prompt Josh to try out, and he gets a place on the team. At his first game, he befriends teammate Tom Stewart but earns the disdain of star player and team bully Larry Willingham. Meanwhile, Buddy leaves the backyard, goes to the school and shows up while the game is underway. He runs into the court, disrupts the game, and causes mayhem, but the audience loves him after he scores a basket. Buddy is caught by Josh after the game. The dog then sees Coach Barker abusing Tom by violently pelting him with basketballs in an attempt to make him catch better. He leads Josh, Jackie, and the school principal Ms. Pepper to the scene. As a result, Coach Barker is fired and replaced by the school's kind-hearted engineer, Arthur Chaney, at Josh's suggestion. Buddy becomes the mascot of the school's basketball team and begins appearing in their halftime shows. After the Timberwolves lose one game, the team has subsequent success and qualifies for the state final. Just before the championship game, Snively appears after seeing Buddy on television. Hoping to profit off Buddy's newfound fame, he forces Jackie to hand over Buddy as he has papers proving that he is Buddy's legal owner. Knowing they do not have a choice, Jackie forces Josh to do the right thing and give Buddy back to Snively. After a period of feeling withdrawn and depressed, Josh decides to rescue Buddy. He sneaks into Snively's backyard and finds Buddy chained up. Snively catches Josh escaping with Buddy, and pursues them in his dilapidated clown truck before crashing into a lake. Josh then decides to set Buddy free in the forest to find a new home. Initially, his team is losing at the next championship to the opposing team until Buddy shows up. When it is discovered that there is no rule that a dog could not play basketball, Buddy joins the roster to lead the team to a come from behind championship victory. Snively attempts to sue the Framm family for custody of Buddy despite lack of ownership papers. Upon seeing Buddy, Judge Cranfield is disgusted and initially reluctant on a case over a dog but agrees only under a strict condition that the case be executed seriously. After numerous protests, Chaney arrives and suggests that Buddy chooses his owner. As a fan of Chaney himself, Cranfield accepts his proposal and moves the court outside to the lawn. Buddy attacks Snively and chooses Josh. Cranfield orders that Snively be arrested for animal cruelty, while Josh and the rest of the citizens rejoice and gather around Buddy to welcome him home. ===== In 2003, Pierre Morhange (Jacques Perrin), a French conductor performing in the United States, is informed before a concert that his mother has died. After the performance he returns to his home in France for her funeral. An old friend named Pépinot (Didier Flamand) arrives at his door with a diary which belonged to their teacher, Clément Mathieu. They proceed to read it together. In 1949, fifty- four years earlier, Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), a failed musician, arrives at Fond de l'Étang ("Bottom of the Pond"), a French boarding school for troubled boys, to work as a supervisor and teacher. At the gate, he sees a very young boy, Pépinot (Maxence Perrin), waiting for Saturday, when he says his father will pick him up. The viewers later learn that his parents were killed in the Second World War during the Nazi occupation of France, but Pépinot does not know this. Mathieu discovers the boys being ruthlessly punished by the headmaster Rachin (François Berléand) and attempts to use humour and kindness to win them over. When a booby trap set by one of the boys, LeQuerrec, injures the school's elderly caretaker Maxence (Jean-Paul Bonnaire), Mathieu keeps the culprit's identity from the headmaster, while encouraging LeQuerrec to nurse Maxence during his recovery. On discovering the boys singing rude songs about him, Mathieu forms a plan: he will teach them to sing and form a choir as a form of discipline. He groups the boys according to their voice types, but one student, Pierre Morhange (Jean-Baptiste Maunier), refuses to sing. Mathieu catches Morhange singing to himself, discovers he has a wonderful singing voice and awards him solo parts on the condition that he behaves. Morhange's single mother, Violette (Marie Bunel), arrives at the school. When Mathieu goes to explain that Morhange cannot be visited because he has been locked up as a punishment, he finds himself pitying and being attracted to the boy's beleaguered mother and instead tells her that Morhange is at the dentist. Meanwhile, a cruel, uncontrollable boy named Mondain () arrives and begins causing trouble by bullying the others and generally being rebellious. After stealing a watch, he is locked up for two weeks. The choir is improving rapidly with Morhange as its lead soloist; the children are happier, and the faculty less strict—even Rachin begins to loosen up, playing football with the boys and making a paper aeroplane. After Mondain is released from lock-up, he runs away. At the same time, all the school's money disappears. After Mondain is captured, Rachin beats him, and Mondain in turn attempts to strangle Rachin. Rachin hands him over to the police, still not knowing the location of the stolen money, and disbands the choir. This causes Mathieu to teach his choir "underground", practising at night in their dormitory. Mathieu continues to meet Morhange's mother, who is unaware of his attraction to her. He plans to help her son win a scholarship to the music conservatory in Lyon. One day she blithely informs him that she has met someone: an engineer. Mathieu is dejected but expresses his feigned happiness and watches her leave in the engineer's car. The Countess, a sponsor of the school, finds out about the choir; they perform before her and others, and Morhange enchants the audience with his solo. Mathieu discovers that another boy, Corbin, stole the money that Mondain was accused of taking. Despite this, Rachin refuses to accept Mondain back at the school. When Rachin departs to accept an award from the board after taking credit for the choir, Mathieu and Maxence suspend classes and take the boys on an outing. While they are out, Mondain returns and sets fire to the school. Mathieu is fired for breaking the rules, even though he saved the boys' lives, and Maxence is suspended. As Mathieu leaves, the boys—forbidden to say goodbye—lock themselves in their classroom, sing and throw farewell messages out of the window on paper planes. Touched, Mathieu walks away, musing about how he has failed and nobody knows of his existence. Back in the present, the adult Morhange finishes reading the diary and recounts what happened afterwards: he won his scholarship to the conservatory, and Rachin was fired after his fellow teachers exposed his abuse towards the students. Mathieu, Pépinot relates, continued to give music lessons quietly for the rest of his life. The final scene (in the past again) shows Mathieu waiting for his bus after being fired. As he boards it, he looks back and finds Pépinot running after him, insisting that he come too. Initially, Mathieu refuses because it is not allowed, and he leaves Pépinot behind. Suddenly, the bus stops and Mathieu gives in: the two board the bus together. Pépinot finally got his wish, for he and Mathieu left on a Saturday, and Mathieu raised him. ===== The story follows Handsome Gunther, a poor young man whose sole possession is his anthropomorphic cat. The cat, wanting to help his owner out of poverty, decides to use his wit to turn Gunther into a prince. In his plan, the cat tries to help Gunther win the heart of the Princess. However, an evil shapeshifting ogre also has his eyes on marrying the girl. After she is captured, Gunther and his clever cat go after the Princess to rescue her before it is too late. ===== A pair of bumbling kidnappers break into the house of the president with the intention of kidnapping his wife and holding her for ransom. Things do not go according to plan when they mistakenly kidnap house maid Lizzie instead. Patti Randall is a bored and angry teenage girl who is sick of her quiet and boring town of Edgefield, Massachusetts just 60 miles from Boston. She wishes for more adventure and excitement to come to her boring town. She gets her wish when her pet cat DC walks into the kidnappers' hideout during his nightly prowl. Lizzie gives the cat a watch with "HEll" scribbled on it. She intended to fully write "HELP" on it, but had to nix on finishing and quickly put it on DC in such way to avoid being caught when the kidnappers' phone rings near her. Patti sees the watch the next morning and immediately puts it together that the watch was from Lizzie and was meant to say HELP. Nobody believes Patti, causing her to doctor the evidence by turning the last L on the watch into a P. She goes to Boston and pleads her case to Agent Zeke Kelso at the FBI and he believes her. Zeke's captain allows Zeke and his agent to tail DC during his prowl in hopes of being led to the kidnappers and Lizzie. The operation goes nowhere, causing Zeke to be taken off the case. Zeke and Patti continue investigating anyway, which leads to nothing but dead ends and eventually ends with them being arrested. Patti's manipulation of the watch evidence gets exposed shortly thereafter. Patti is punished by her parents for her actions. She is so distraught that she decides to run away and leave town. Through having met someone at the train station who is leaving for the same reasons as her, and through a personal conversation, she eventually comes to her senses and decides not to board the next train out of town. Patti sees DC digging through the town garden on her walk back from the train station. DC takes off and Patti chases him. The cat leads her to the kidnappers' hideout, where they find Lizzie bound and gagged with duct tape. Patti calls Zeke to let him know that she has found Lizzie. Zeke is still upset with Patti, and does not want to hear it. This causes Patti and DC to enter the kidnappers' hideout. Patti attempts to rescue Lizzie, but she fails and in the process gets herself and DC captured, as the kidnappers show up and surprise her. Zeke decides to re-open the case after he gets a call from Patti's parents asking if he has seen her since she went missing. Zeke investigates and follows a trail that leads him to the kidnappers. He finds Lizzie, Patti, and DC bound and gagged; Lizzie and Patti tied to chairs with their mouths duct taped, while DC sat in a litter box trapped inside a burlap sack with black cloth over his eyes. Zeke exposes the identities of the kidnappers as the seemingly harmless Ma and Pa. Ma and Pa kidnapped Lizzie because they partied away all their cash in Monte Carlo and the Riviera, plus they were also bored out of their skulls. Zeke manages to free Patti and DC while Ma and Pa escape with Lizzie in their possession. A final chase ensues as Zeke, Patti, and DC attempt to catch Ma and Pa and rescue Lizzie. During the chase, Spike the dog escapes after his fence breaks down and runs at the cat show, which causes all the cats to run out. DC joins them and run up top the roofs of each building, DC and the cats jump off and land on Ma and Pa's car, causing them to crash. Ma and Pa are arrested, Lizzie is reunited with the President and his Wife, Patti and DC are nominated as heroes, Patti is reunited with her parents. After everything is back to normal, Dusty and Rollo the two rival car repairmen are now working together, Melvin and Lu end up together. Patti has also become Zeke's partner, DC has married the cat he saw in the window earlier, and they have kittens. ===== "Darn Cat" or "DC" is a wily, adventurous Siamese tomcat who lives with young suburbanite sisters Ingrid "Inky" (Dorothy Provine) and Patricia "Patti" Randall (Hayley Mills) and enjoys an evening route wandering thru town which includes teasing local dogs, swiping food, and marking vehicles with muddy paws. One night, DC follows bank robber Iggy (Frank Gorshin) into an apartment where he and his partner Dan (Neville Brand) are holding bank employee Miss Margaret Miller (Grayson Hall) hostage. Miss Miller uses the opportunity to replace his collar with her watch, on which she has inscribed most of the word "HELP," and releases him to go home to the Randalls'. Patti discovers the watch on DC and suspects that it belongs to the kidnapped woman. She goes to the FBI and tells Agent Zeke Kelso (Dean Jones) of her discovery, and Supervisor Newton (Richard Eastham) assigns Kelso to follow DC in the hope that he will lead them back to the robbers' hideout. Kelso sets up a headquarters in the Randalls' house and assigns a team to keep the cat under surveillance, but, despite multiple attempts and a bugging system, DC eludes them in humiliating and comedic ways, culminating in a chase where he leads Agent Kelso through several back yards and a drive-in theatre. As DC ends up trying to open a pigeon cage and is discovered by the owner Gregory Benson (Roddy McDowall), who is also Ingrid's carpool, chases DC and Kelso and, out of frustration, tells Ingrid he quits being her carpool. The next day agent Kelso's supervisor Newton shuts down the operation, considering the evidence of the watch not hard enough, but Patti disguises herself as the hippie niece of her friend Mr. Hoffsteddar (Ed Wynn) the jeweler and persuades the FBI that the watch was indeed hard evidence. Patti and Kelso rescue Miss Miller and bring the robbers to justice. Subplots involve a romance between Patti's sister Ingrid and Kelso as he becomes her new carpool, and a romance between Patti herself and a surf-obsessed slacker neighbor, Canoe Henderson (Tom Lowell), and the meddling of nosy neighbor Mrs. MacDougall (Elsa Lanchester) and her disapproving husband, Wilmer MacDougall (William Demarest). At the end, it is revealed that the gray cat in the opening sequence and DC are taking their kittens on a prowl, having started a family. ===== François Seurel, the 15-year-old narrator of the book, is the son of M. Seurel, who is the director of the mixed-ages school in a small village in the Sologne, a region of lakes and sandy forests in the heartland of France. François is intrigued when 17-year-old Augustin Meaulnes, a bright young man from a modest background arrives at the school. Because of his tallness, Augustin acquires the nickname "grand". He becomes a hero figure to the class and runs away one evening on an escapade where, after having become lost, he chances on a magical costume party where he is enchanted by the girl of his dreams, Yvonne de Galais. She lives with her widowed father and her somewhat odd brother Frantz in a vast and ancient family château – Les Sablonnières – which has seen better days. The party was being held to welcome Frantz and the girl he was to marry, Valentine. However when she does not appear, Frantz attempts suicide but fails. After returning to school, Meaulnes has only one idea: to find the mysterious château again and the girl with whom he has now fallen in love. However his local searches fail while at the same time a bizarre young man shows up at the school. It is Frantz de Galais under a different name trying to escape the pain of having been rejected. Frantz, Meaulnes, and François become friends, and Frantz gives Meaulnes the address of a house in Paris where he says Meaulnes will find his sister, Yvonne de Galais. Meaulnes leaves for Paris only to learn no one lives in the house anymore. He writes to his friend François Seurel: "...it is better to forget me. It would be better to forget everything". François Seurel, who has now become a school teacher like his father, finally manages to find Yvonne de Galais and reunites her with Meaulnes. Yvonne still lives with her aging father in what is left of the old family estate, "Les Sablonnières", which is closer than the two young friends had first imagined in earlier years. Yvonne de Galais is still single and confesses to Meaulnes that he is and has always been the love of her life. Yvonne de Galais accepts, with her father's blessings, Augustin Meaulnes' marriage proposal. However, the restless Meaulnes leaves Yvonne the day after their wedding in order to find her lost brother Frantz (to whom he had once promised to help) and re- unite him with his fiancée Valentine. Yvonne remains at the château, where she gives birth to a little girl but dies two days later. Eventually François lives in the house Meaulnes and Yvonne lived in and raises the little girl there, while waiting for the return of his friend Meaulnes. While looking through old papers François discovers a handwritten diary by Meaulnes. During the years in Paris (before François brought Meaulnes and Yvonne back together), Meaulnes had met and romanced Valentine, the fiancée who had jilted Frantz on the night of the party. Meaulnes does return, after a year and eight months, having brought Frantz and Valentine back together. He discovers that Yvonne has died and left a daughter, whom he claims. Four years have elapsed since the beginning of the story. ===== Sixteen-year-old Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci) runs away from home. She is pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, Randy Cates (William Lee Scott). Not revealing her pregnancy, Dedee eventually moves in with her much older half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan), a gay teacher in a conservative, suburban community in Saint Joseph County, Indiana. Although he is living with Matt (Ivan Sergei), Bill still mourns the loss of his previous partner, Tom, who died of AIDS some time ago. Bill maintains a friendship with Tom's younger sister, Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), who idolized her brother. Dedee seduces Matt, then tricks him into believing he has impregnated her. They elope, leaving Bill and Lucia to track them down. Bill and Lucia find Dedee and Matt in Los Angeles, only to discover Dedee has stolen Tom's ashes and is holding them for ransom. Randy also finds Dedee; they inform Matt that they are taking the ashes and moving away. They escape but soon get into an argument that leads to Dedee accidentally shooting Randy. She and Matt escape to Canada. Lucia and Bill have a falling out after Lucia implies that Tom died as a result of having gay sex. Despondent, Lucia has a one-night stand with Sheriff Carl Tippett (Lyle Lovett) who had previously made unsuccessful romantic overtures to her. Lucia later discovers that she is pregnant. Bill eventually tracks down Matt and Dedee. Dedee goes into labor and Bill accompanies her into the delivery room. After giving birth to her son, Dedee returns Tom's ashes to Bill, apologizing for her actions in the past year. Dedee ends up serving time in prison, leaving her son in Bill's care while she's incarcerated. After a few months, she moves back in with Bill, while Matt goes traveling, and Lucia gives birth to her own child. Eventually, Dedee decides that her son would be better off with Bill, who is now dating Dedee's parole officer, and runs away. Dedee sarcastically concludes that sex is precisely the opposite of what people should want, leading as it does to kids, disease or, worst of all, relationships. At the end of the film, the vignettes of the various caring relationships among the characters show the opposite of superficial sexual gratification. ===== Five French soldiers are convicted of self-mutilation in order to escape military service during World War I. They are condemned to face near-certain death in the no man's land between the French and German trench lines. It appears that all of them were killed in a subsequent battle, but Mathilde, the fiancée of one of the soldiers, refuses to give up hope and begins to uncover clues as to what actually took place on the battlefield. She is all the while driven by the constant reminder of what her fiancé had carved into one of the bells of the church near their home, MMM for Manech Aime Mathilde (Manech Loves Mathilde; a pun on the French word aime, which is pronounced like the letter "M". In the English-language version, this is changed to "Manech's Marrying Mathilde"). Along the way, she discovers the brutally corrupt system used by the French government to deal with those who tried to escape the front. She also discovers the stories of the other men who were sentenced to the no man's land as a punishment. She, with the help of a private investigator, attempts to find out what happened to her fiancé. The story is told both from the point of view of the fiancée in Paris and the French countryside—mostly Brittany—of the 1920s, and through flashbacks to the battlefield. Eventually, Mathilde finds out her fiancé is alive, but he suffers from amnesia. Seeing Mathilde, Manech seems to be oblivious of her. At this, Mathilde sits on the garden chair silently watching Manech with tears in her eyes and smile on her lips. ===== A converted fishing trawler, Morning Rose carries a movie-making crew across the Barents Sea to isolated Bear Island, well above the Arctic Circle, for some on-location filming, but the script is a secret known only to the producer and screenwriter. En route, members of the movie crew and ship's company begin to die under mysterious circumstances. The crew's doctor, Marlowe, finds himself enmeshed in a violent, multi-layered plot in which very few of the persons aboard are whom they claim to be. Marlowe's efforts to unravel the plot become even more complicated once the movie crew is deposited ashore on Bear Island, beyond the reach of the law or outside help. The murders continue ashore, and Marlowe, who is not what he seems to be either, discovers they may be related to some forgotten events of the Second World War. ===== The film follows the lives of a group of gay friends in West Hollywood. Among the group is Dennis (Timothy Olyphant), a photographer who often holds the group together; Cole (Dean Cain) a handsome, charismatic actor who — often unwittingly — ends up with other people's boyfriends; Benji (Zach Braff), the youngest member of the group, with a penchant for gym-bodied men, who finds himself going through some bad times; Howie (Matt McGrath), a psychology student who is known for overthinking every situation; Patrick (Ben Weber), the cynic of the group; and Taylor (Billy Porter), who has just broken up with his long-term boyfriend. Guiding them is restaurant owner Jack (John Mahoney) who provides them with advice and jobs for some of them who work part-time as servers at his restaurant. But when tragedy strikes, and the group's newest member, 23-year- old Kevin (Andrew Keegan), attempts to fit in, their friendships are put to the test. The film also stars Nia Long, Mary McCormack and Justin Theroux, and features a cameo by Kerr Smith, who knew the director through their work on Dawson's Creek and enjoyed the script so much he asked to be a part of it, and Jennifer Coolidge as the hairdresser Betty, that all the guys, with the exception of Howie, go to for hair therapy. ===== Set in the 1980s, The Golden Gate follows a group of yuppies in San Francisco. The inciting action occurs when protagonist John Brown has his friend Janet Hayakawa place an amorous advertisement of himself in the newspaper; the latter answered, at length, by trial-lawyer Elisabeth ('Liz') Dorati. A short heyday follows, in which Seth introduces and develops a variety of characters united in part by their interest in self-actualization (often in the form of agriculture) and in part by closeness to Liz or John. Thereafter is depicted the progress of their marriage de facto until its dissolution, which results in the legal marriage of Liz to John's friend Phillip ('Phil') Weiss, and the birth of their son. Following his rejection of Liz, John finds a second paramour in Janet, until the latter and two other friends die in an automobile collision; and is himself invited to stand godfather to Liz's son. The novel brought its author the 1988 Sahitya Akademi Award for English, by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. ===== On the 15 August 1955, a chauffeur named Kishanlal Tripathi (Pran) is released from prison after taking the blame for a fatal hit-and-run accident committed by his employer, the notorious crime boss Robert Seth (Jeevan). Despite Robert's assurance that his family's welfare will be looked after, Kishanlal learned that Robert did not lift even a finger for the man's family—coming home to three starving sons and his wife Bharati (Nirupa Roy), who is now suffering from tuberculosis. Kishanlal seeks help from Robert, who instead humiliates him and orders his henchmen to kill him. However, Kishanlal escapes in one of Robert's cars loaded with smuggled gold bullion. Kishanlal returns home to find his sons abandoned by Bharati, who had left a suicide note. Kishanlal then takes his sons and leaves them at the foot of a Mahatma Gandhi statue in a public park while he drives off to draw away Robert's henchmen. In an inflamed car crash, Kishanlal is presumed dead by the mobsters and the police, but actually survives. Before his return with the smuggled gold, he is distraught to learn that his sons are gone, unaware that each of them are found and adopted by the Hindu police superintendent Khanna, a Muslim tailor named Mr. Illhabadi, and a Christian priest named Father Gonsalves. In the meantime, Bharati is struck by a falling branch following her failed suicide attempt and loses her eyesight as punishment for leaving her sons behind; she is distraught to hear from the police that Kishanlal and the boys died from the car crash. Having seemingly lost his dear family, Kishanlal angrily swears vengeance on Robert for this. 22 years later, the sons have grown up; the eldest son is now a policeman named Amar Khanna (Vinod Khanna), the middle- born is a licensed liquor dealer named Anthony Gonsalves (Amitabh Bachchan), and the youngest is a qawwali singer named Akbar Ilahabadi. The three met each other while donating blood for a hit-and-run victim, unaware that the recipient is their mother Bharati, who is now selling flowers. In the meantime, Kishanlal is now a wealthy crime lord as he used the smuggled gold to form his own crime syndicate, and that he used his connections to destroy Robert's business before forcing a penniless Robert to work for him. It is also revealed that Kishanlal also took in Robert's daughter Jenny (Parveen Babi) as his niece and that she's returning from London after graduating college. As the story unfolds, each of the three sons find themselves falling in love: Anthony falls in love with Jenny at a church sermon during Easter Sunday, Amar takes in a one-time crook named Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi) and her grandmother to his home after arresting Lakshmi's abusive stepmother, and Akbar falls in love with a young doctor named Salma Ali (Neetu Singh), whose father Tayyaib Ali (Mukri) disapproves of their relationship. Also, during a police raid on one of Kishanlal's loading docks, Kishanlal and his men were forced to escape, allowing Robert to escape with another shipment of gold bullion after shooting Superintendent Khanna. Regaining his former position as crime lord and rounding up new mobsters to his cause, Robert intends to retrieve Jenny for himself and make Kishanlal pay for destroying his business. Bharati miraculously regains her eyesight at a festival in honor of Sai Baba of Shirdi hosted by Akbar. She recognizes him as her youngest son Raju thanks to Mr. Illhabadi recognizing Bharati as the woman he rescued from the falling branch years ago. However, Kishanlal is double-crossed by one of his bodyguards Zubesko, who betrays Jenny to Robert in exchange for her hand in marriage, resulting Father Gonsalves' death by Robert when the priest tried to save Jenny. Lakshmi is also kidnapped by her abusive brother Ranjeet, who is working for Robert. Salma and Tayyaib are also placed in a house fire arranged by Robert after being taken hostage in the hospital, though Akbar saves them, resulting a grateful Tayyaib to give his blessings to Akbar and Salma's relationship. In their pursuit of justice against Robert, the three brothers discover their mutual heritage with each other along with Kishanlal and Bharati, reuniting the family once again. Determined to make Robert pay for his crimes, the three brothers pose as an elderly tailor, a one-man band, and a Catholic priest, and infiltrate Robert's mansion along with Salma, who helps Jenny and Lakshmi escape. The three brothers then reveal themselves before beating up Robert and his men and having them arrested and sent to prison for their crimes. However, Bharati is distraught to learn that Kishanlal is sent back to prison for his past crimes, but Kishanlal comforts her by saying that the only thing that matters to him is that their family is reunited once again. As such, Kishanlal is allowed to share a brief heartfelt hug with his sons, who then ride happily into the sunset with their loved ones. ===== Texas farm boy Monty Stratton (Stewart) demonstrates a knack for pitching a baseball. With the help of washed-up, catcher-turned-scout Barney Wile (Morgan), he manages to get a tryout with the Chicago White Sox during their spring training in California. He shows promise and is given a contract. On his first evening at spring training, he is introduced to a young woman named Ethel (Allyson). They start dating and fall in love. Stratton must part from Ethel to go to Chicago. When Stratton is sent down to a minor league team, he proposes marriage. Stratton is called back up to the White Sox and returns to Chicago with his newlywed bride. By the end of the season, they're expecting a child. Next season, he is pitching an away game and doesn't seem to be able to keep his mind on the game. He wishes he was with his wife who's giving birth in Chicago. When he is notified that he has a son, he throws a wild pitch and is taken out of the game—grinning from ear to ear. As his career progresses, Stratton improves so much that he's voted an all-star in the American League. In the off-season of 1938, Stratton accidentally shoots himself in his right leg while hunting on his farm in Texas. When his leg has to be amputated, it looks as though his pitching career is over. He understandably goes through a very dark, brooding period. Nevertheless, with the support of his wife and a wooden leg, Stratton learns to walk along with his baby boy. He works hard and starts practicing his pitching again. He makes an inspirational, successful minor league comeback in 1946. ===== The film begins with a bus driving along a snow-covered roadway in the Sierra Nevada between Nevada City, California, and Reno, Nevada.In the opening minutes of the film, the exterior signage and route destinations displayed on the bus identify the storyline's setting as the Sierra Nevada. Soon the vehicle gets hopelessly stuck in deep snow forty miles from the nearest town. Needing shelter, the driver "Gus" (Billy Bevan) and his four passengers find refuge in an isolated one-room log church. The passengers include "Billie" (Carole Lombard), who is an escaped criminal being escorted back to jail in New York by a deputy sheriff, "Dan Egan" (Owen Moore); a young woman, "The Kid," (Diane Ellis) on her way to Chicago to meet her boyfriend; and "Hickerson," a pompous, ill-tempered banker. In the church the group finds "Bill" (William Boyd), a self-described "hobo," who had found shelter there earlier. Tensions quickly arise in the group over their general plight, petty jealousies, and concerns about how six people are going to share the small supply of food that Bill had brought with him. After a few days being stranded, the group sees a passing mail plane high in the sky. They try to attract the pilot's attention, but he is too far away to see them. More days pass, and the group continues to ration their dwindling supplies and battle the subfreezing temperatures. To keep warm they begin to break up the church's pews and other furnishings to use as firewood in the room's potbelly stove. The group's desperation intensifies, as does a romance between Bill and Billie. Soon Bill confides to her that he too is a wanted criminal, a fugitive from Saint Paul, Minnesota. As conditions worsen, The Kid collapses from hunger and become delirious; and the church's interior becomes almost bare as more furnishings—even the church's pulpit and pump organ—are consigned to the stove. Bill and Billie finally commit to leaving to avoid being imprisoned if the group is somehow rescued. They quietly depart during the night, hoping to reach a ranger station ten miles away. Everyone else is sleeping except Dan, the deputy sheriff, who sees the two leaving; but he does nothing to stop them. After walking a short distance through snowdrifts, Bill and Billie hear and then see a search plane slowly circling overhead at low altitude. Realizing that the others inside the church will not hear the plane's engine, they rush back and awaken them. The group hurriedly builds a signal fire, which the plane's pilot sees. He parachutes a box of provisions to them with a note saying that help will be sent immediately. The next day the group sees a rescue party heading toward the church. While awaiting their rescuers, Dan observes Bill and Billie sitting together on the floor. From his coat pocket Dan pulls out Billie's extradition papers and a "wanted" notice that includes a photograph of Bill and information about his being a fugitive from Saint Paul. Dan walks over to the stove, now cold from no fires, and tosses both papers into it. Bill and Billie see him discard the papers, and they look at one another. Bill then gets up, retrieves the papers from the stove, gives them back to Dan, and asks him to drop him off in Saint Paul on his way back to New York with Billie. ===== Jagan (Madhavan) is a carefree youth who stays with his friends in a room. He plays violin well and seeks every opportunity to help others, at the same time benefitting himself. His father is an assistant of an unsuccessful politician (Delhi Ganesh) who works for two politician brothers. Their sister, Seema (Pooja), has a crush on Jagan after he saves her from some goons. On the other hand, is Jamuna (Amogha). Jamuna is a very beautiful young woman who is from Kolkata. Her father is very protective of her. Jagan spots her at a book store and falls for her instantly only to be beaten up by her father shortly afterwards. Jamuna apologises to Jagan. Jagan, unable to forget her, goes to the bookstore again in hopes of seeing her. Jamuna buys a book, kisses it and starts writing her name, only to be interrupted by Jagan. Jagan only knows her name starts with J. They have a cup of coffee and Jagan shares his interest in marrying her. Jamuna, who deeply believes in destiny, writes her name and address in a 100rs bill and tells Jagan that if either of them get hold of the bill by 1 year, she would marry him. She than pays the waiter. When Jagan goes to the waiter to take back the bill, it is given away. Jamuna goes back to Kolkata and Jagan is lost. Jagan starts looking for the bill and his friends help him. Jamuna, who is in Kolkata get a proposal from her family friend, Guna(Shasikumar). She remembers Jagan's proposal and realizes she has fallen in love with him. She also looks for the bill with the help of her cousin, Meera (Malavika Avinash). Under spam circumstances, Jagan gets engaged to Seema who later realizes the truth about Jagan look in for Jamuna. Jamuna gets hold of the bill while eating Pani Puri but the money is snatched by a petty thief. She breaks down and upon seeing this, Meera scolds her of abandoning Jagan in Chennai. Seema gets hold of the book bought by Jamuna, who purposely leaves it at the cafe where they both met, in hopes it might reach Jagan. Seema gives it to Jagan who finds that Jamuna is from Bengal after seeing Bengali words in it. Jagan goes to Kolkata and Jamuna goes to Chennai with Meera, to confess to Jagan. Their trains cross each other at Vizag yet, they fail to meet. When in Kolkata, Jagan fails to find Jamuna. In Chennai, Jamuna finds Jagan's house. It is revealed that Meera is Jagan's friend as Jagan's sister and Meera share the same hostel. When Jamuna is left alone in Jagan's home, his father introduces another boy as Jagan. Jamuna leaves for Kolkata disappointed. After she leaves, the boy tells Meera the truth. She quickly informs Jamuna. But when she meets Jagan's father, his father tells her that he lied, fearing Jagan's life under the hands of the politician brothers. Meera goes to Kolkata and tells Jamuna, who breaks down. In Chennai, Jagan finds the note. He happily tells Sheela and her brothers oppose it. Meera and Jamuna comes to Chennai, and Guna sacrifices his love. Jagan learns that Jamuna is coming to Chennai. Seema's elder brother confronts him but her second elder brother happily wishes Jagan. Jamuna and Jagan meet at the coffee shop again and unite. ===== In the story, Samael, the ruler of Hell, sends his greatest agent of evil, C. W. Saturn, to Earth, to destroy Superman morally. Saturn is able to enter our dimension thanks to Lex Luthor having used a form of magic to escape prison, leaving a 'hole' between worlds. At the same time, Kristin Wells, a history graduate student from the far future, uses time travel technology to arrive in the present, for the purpose of finding out the origin of the holiday known as Miracle Monday, which is known only to be somehow connected to Superman. She infiltrates Clark Kent's circle of friends by becoming Lois Lane's assistant. Unfortunately, because she does not belong in the present, Saturn is able to possess her. Saturn then proceeds to cause worldwide havoc, taunting Superman that the only way for him to stop it would be by killing its host--thus making him break his vow against killing. Saturn even reveals Superman's secret identity to the world, to further drive him into desperation. Ultimately, however, Superman refuses to kill Kristin, even if it means he would have to spend the rest of his life battling Saturn. At that moment, because of the rules that bind demons, Saturn is defeated, and forced to grant Superman a wish. He asks that everything that happened since Saturn's arrival be undone, and it is granted, with Saturn then being banished back to Hell. However, a lingering memory of the events remained within the souls of humanity, causing them to begin celebrating the day every year, on the third Monday of May, starting the Miracle Monday tradition. Kristin then returns to the future to reveal this fact to the public. ===== The miniseries begins in 1987. At the height of the Cold War, two US airmen monitor their radar screens at a quiet and remote NORAD facility in Alaska. Suddenly, one of the bored operators notices an unexpected blip on his radar screen. It appears to be an unidentified aircraft sneaking in on the leading edge of a weather front. He alerts his partner about the threat and begins to contact Elmendorf AFB. The other airman retrieves a silenced semiautomatic weapon from his desk and kills him. He then proceeds to shoot the remaining station personnel while they are sleeping in their bunks. Lighting a cigarette, the traitor notifies Elmendorf that the station will be out of commission for the next hour in order to repair a malfunctioning generator. The necessary blind spot has been created. Next, the Soviets launch a secret incursion into Alaska. The Soviets have inserted a cold weather special operations assault force of approximately 35-40 KGB desant ski troops led by Soviet Commander Alexander Vorashin (Jeroen Krabbé) into northern Alaska with a track-driven armored vehicle. Vorashin's orders are to seize control of a strategically located pumping station along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline so as to threaten placement of floating explosive devices in the stream of oil. This operation is being conducted in response to America's grain embargo of the Soviet Union, just as the 1980 grain embargo was in response to the 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The governments of Canada, Australia, and Argentina have joined the U.S. in the embargo. This has caused severe food shortages and domestic unrest inside the Soviet Union. A small company-sized force of lightly armed soldiers of the Alaska Army National Guard and Alaskan Scouts, who are on a training exercise, discover the presence of the Soviet invaders. At Fort Wainwright, Colonel Jake Caffey (David Soul), a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, is sent by his commanding officer to locate one of the groups of soldiers, who have already been ambushed and killed by the Soviet assault force. Colonel Caffey takes command of the Guardsmen when his senior officer, who did not believe the news of the invading Soviet troops, is killed in the first encounter with the Soviets. Caffey notifies his chain of command by radio. Upon learning of the situation, the U.S. President Thomas McKenna (Rock Hudson) orders Caffey's National Guard troops to be federalized and orders Caffey to do all he can to stop the Soviet troops. The President orders a media blackout on the emergency but then orders U.S. forces to be mobilized in response to the Soviet incursion, under the pretext of unscheduled training exercises. The President fears that the people of the United States will demand a declaration of war against the Russians for this attack. Fierce winter weather is preventing U.S. military units from bases and forts in southern Alaska from reinforcing Caffey's unit. Caffey deduces the Soviet assault unit's goal. He uses the few U.S. Army helicopters at his disposal to move his unit to a new pumping station ahead of the Soviets. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Soviet Premier Gorny (Brian Keith) has learned that the Soviet military and KGB leadership have executed this plan without his permission. He is informed of the U.S. mobilization and he orders Soviet forces to a similar posture. In Alaska, Colonel Caffey realizes that his men have an inadequate supply of ammunition, grenades and mines. Utilizing combat tactics that he learned in the Vietnam War, he sets up a defensive perimeter around the pumping station making use of surplus lengths of large-bore oil pipe to establish a position from which to ambush the enemy. The Soviet troops approach the pumping station, unaware of the American soldiers' presence until they trigger U.S. land mines buried in the snow. The Soviets suffer casualties and fall back, but continue to surround the buildings. The U.S. President and Soviet Premier secretly meet in Iceland to negotiate an end to the crisis. They are unable to reach an agreement and both return to their countries, but promise each other that talks will continue. America responds to the Soviets' continuing mobilizations, as officials recognize they are consistent with a fictional contingency plan called Красный Флаг or "Red Flag." The U.S. President orders all American ballistic missile submarines, surface warships, B-1s, and B-52s to deploy in readiness for war. He directs U.S. bombers to fly continuous paths just outside Soviet airspace. Colonel Caffey and his soldiers continue to repel the Soviet attacks on the pumping station, but his soldiers are running low on ammunition and supplies. President McKenna contacts Caffey by radio and asks him and his soldiers to hold out at all costs, hoping that the weather will break so that reinforcements can be sent to relieve them. McKenna still holds out hope for a diplomatic solution. Premier Gorny also hopes for a negotiated settlement to the crisis. However, hardline, pro-Soviet members of the Communist Party and the KGB—who remain incensed by the food shortage—suddenly launch a coup d'etat. They use a car bomb to assassinate Gorny while he is visiting the school attended by his young son, Sasha. In the meantime, the Soviet troops in Alaska launch a final assault on the pumping station. Commander Vorashin, however, has become concerned about the rapidly-growing prospect of a nuclear war, and requests a parley with Caffey. After an emotional conversation, Vorashin and Caffey agree to discontinue the fighting. However, at that moment, one of the Soviet troops—perhaps an undercover KGB asset—suddenly hurls a grenade, which kills both men. The situation collapses in bloodshed, with a sergeant of the Alaskan Scouts managing to send one final message that the last American position is being overrun. Receiving this news, President McKenna calls the Soviet leadership and discovers that Gorny is unavailable to speak with him. The Soviet leadership claims Gorny has been felled by severe intestinal flu and that their forces will withdraw to pre-crisis positions, but McKenna does not believe them and realizes that pro-war elements of the KGB are seizing control of the Soviet Union. Once the telephone conference ends, McKenna submits to the National Security Council his belief that Gorny has been killed and that total war is imminent. He is correct, for at that moment, the coup leaders decide on an all-out nuclear strike, some of them mistakenly believing that U. S. law requires the President to obtain Congressional approval before an American nuclear attack. But President McKenna has already deduced the enemy strategy. Horrified and nearly in tears, he concludes the situation is unrecoverable, and orders a full nuclear counterstrike upon the Soviet Union. ===== The setting is in Sicily. The plot concerns two separate storylines, one a romance between Palmyra and Leonidas, who were separated from their parents as babies and who were raised together by Hermogenes, who has kept their past a secret. When Hermogenes is recognized by the usurper- king Polydamas, he declares that Leonidas is Polydamas's son. However, as Leonidas's new position of prince then forbids him to marry Palmyra, much misery is brought to the couple. When the lovers refuse to stop seeing each other, Palmyra is sentenced to death. Hermogenes then steps forward and reveals that he was lying before: in fact Leonidas is his own son, he says, and he had lied in the hopes of bettering the boy by making him prince, whereas Palmyra is the real child of Polydamas. After offering proof of this new claim, Palmyra is established as princess, but again this prevents her and Leonidas from marrying. Hermogenes eventually admits that he once again was withholding information, and reveals the whole truth to Leonidas—Leonidas is the son of the rightful king, whose throne was usurped by Polydamas. As soon as he learns this, Leonidas forms a rebellion against Polydamas, wins, and establishes himself the new king, finally allowing himself and Palmyra to be married. The second storyline, which intertwines with the first, concerns Rhodophil and his friend Palamede. Palamede has fallen in love with Rhodophil's wife Doralice, and Rhodophil is in love with Palamede's fiancée Melantha. Each of the women seem to find their pursuers agreeable, and great care is taken by all parties to keep their meetings secret from each other, with disastrous results as the two couples seem to always choose the same locations and tactics for meeting. When finally the actions of everyone are discovered, Palamede and Rhodophil decide that since their tastes in women are so similar, each would be best sticking to his rightful claim. Palamede then manages to win the heart of Melantha, and amicably break off his relationship with Doralice. ===== Steve Yeowell's cover to Zenith Book one. Robert McDowell, alias Zenith, was the son of two members of Cloud 9, a super-team of the 1960s assembled by the British military who had rebelled and become hippies and psychedelic fashion icons. Zenith himself used his Biorhythm dependant super-human abilities, not to fight evil, but to promote his career as a pop singer. Shallow, spoilt, self- centred and initially cowardly, he was reluctantly dragged into the struggle against malevolent, supernatural entities known as the Lloigor or "Many-Angled Ones". The British superhuman project "Maximan" had emerged from work brought over by defecting Nazi scientists in World War II, in turn, having been developed from knowledge obtained from the Lloigor. The Nazis had created "Masterman", but the real purpose of the project was to produce host bodies strong enough to house the Lloigor's spirits. Due to those circumstances, within the story's alternate history, Berlin was the target of the first nuclear weapon, not Hiroshima or Nagasaki, mainly because both the British and Nazi supermen were fighting in Berlin at the time. The British superheroes came of age during the tumultuous '60s, and promptly rebelled, as did many teens of that time. Ultimately, Zenith's parents were killed (by American psychic agents - although that is not revealed until later in the storyline) other members of Cloud 9 disappeared, and the few remaining lost their powers and retreated into civilian life: Peter St. John, (Mandala) became a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, and Ruby Fox (Voltage), a journalist and writer. Siadwell Rhys (Red Dragon) owned a pub in Wales - where he apparently spent much of his time drunk. *In Phase I, Zenith reluctantly teamed up with surviving members of Cloud 9 to defeat the Many-Angled One called "Iok Sotot", although that proved fatal to Welshman Red Dragon. St John demonstrated his considerable mental powers by defeating Iok Sotot via a post- hypnotic suggestion previously implanted. Phase I showed that Cloud 9 only temporarily lost their powers and regained them under duress—or, in St John's case, never lost them at all. *Phase II detailed the efforts of a media tycoon modelled on Richard BransonTitan Trade novel Phase II to use Zenith and two female superhuman clones—Shockwave and Blaze—as breeding stock for a new group of super-powered humans he intended to use toward achieving world domination. Zenith was generally successful working on his own in Phase II, however he again relied on St John at times, and also a CIA agent who was killed early on. Phase II describes more of the Zenith history, and introduces Chimera, a superhuman composed entirely of thought, who eventually transformed itself into a pyramid-shaped miniature universe. *An interlude between Phase II & III introduces the concept of alternate universes, and that members of Cloud 9 who were previously thought to be dead were in fact establishing themselves in the alternate realities with other-dimensional heroes, and developing their powers and abilities. It is also first suggested (and established later on) that the Zenith universe characters are among the most powerful of all other superheroes. *Phase III involved a multi-dimensional war against the Lloigor utilising comic-book characters from other British comics from the '50s, '60s and '70s (using either the actual characters or analogs, depending on their legal status). The Lloigor, close to "ascending" and dominating the universe(s), were waiting for the infinite alternate universes to align and form a universe-sized crystal –- the "Omnihedron". The multi-universal heroes destroyed several alternate Earths to introduce a flaw into the Omnihedron and prevent the alignment, but discovered that they had been betrayed by Maximan: the destruction of the worlds removed a flaw already present in the Omnihedron. Only at the last moment did they succeed by destroying the alternate Earth that the Lloigor were using to ascend. Due to the vast cross- dimensional body count incurred in this series, a surviving superhero commented that it may have been "...a pyrrhic victory". *The final series, Phase IV, brought the story full circle as the remaining members of Cloud 9 eventually transformed into the very Lovecraftian horrors that Zenith battled in the first series—Iok Sotot, who was Zenith and Blaze's son. After destroying American society in retaliation for a psychic attempt on their own lives, they used the Sun as an incubator for their final metamorphosis into The Many Angled Ones, and after destroying the Earth they ascended to the heavens, attempting to gain control of the multiverse. St John had, however (during part two – "The Eleventh Hour" episode), trapped the Lloigor in the pocket universe created by Chimera, with the "real" universe assumed to have been saved –- although it is implied that St John had his own agenda for taking control, as by that time he was already Prime Minister of Great Britain. Zenith since returned three times to the pages of 2000 AD: In zzzenith.com, a one-off featured in "Prog 2001" set years after the end of the previous series. Zenith once again met with St John, who was still in control of the country via a telepathically-manipulated Tony Blair. Zenith, being aware of that, was not particularly bothered, and therefore, St John seemed equally unconcerned by Zenith's knowledge of the truth. St John was still in possession of the Omnihedron pocket universe containing the Lloigor, however Marconi had been experimenting with it, and St John was worried about the results gained. ===== The protagonist, Lolita Cassard, lacks confidence and self-esteem because she doesn't look like the women who fill the pages of fashion magazines. Her father, Étienne Cassard, is a respected novelist, but rarely considers the feelings of others, only thinking of himself and worrying about aging. Pierre Millet, a younger writer, doubts he will ever be successful. Meanwhile, Sylvia Millet, a singing teacher, believes in her husband's talent, but doubts her own and that of her student, Lolita. When Sylvia discovers that Lolita is the daughter of Étienne, an author whom she admires, she befriends Lolita in order to gain access to Étienne for her husband's sake. Lolita does not believe or see that Sylvia is just another person being generous to her because her father is famous. She begins to confide in Sylvia about her father, love life, and self-confidence issues. Sylvia surprisingly takes a liking to Lolita and begins to see Étienne for the man he really is. Throughout the film Sébastien, a young journalist, befriends Lolita. He is the only one with pure intents, even after he finds out who her father is. He takes a liking to Lolita, but she refuses to show any interests and is only infatuated with another boy, Mathieu. Mathieu is everything Sébastien is not. Mathieu only has interest for Lolita because of her father and mistreats her. Lolita casts all of these same behaviors on Sébastien and does not realize that he truly does like her for herself. After a crazy weekend at Étienne's cottage, Sylvia leaves Pierre because he has become just like Étienne, Lolita goes after Sébastien because she realizes he has honest intentions, and Étienne is repeatedly reminded that he is an indifferent father to Lolita. ===== The film starts with a voice-over of Jane Goodale (Ashley Judd) over the images of a scientific experiment with a bull and a herd of cows, apparently the bull never mounts a cow twice, not even if her scent is changed. He prefers a new cow. Jane says that until recently, she believed that men are all like the bull, but to understand what happened we have to go back in time. Jane is a production assistant with a talk show that has recently been syndicated, which means that the host Diane Roberts (Ellen Barkin) who wants to be the best, is always looking for the ungettable guests, like Fidel Castro. Eddie Alden (Hugh Jackman) is the producer of the talk show and is a womanizer, much to the dismay of Jane who comments on his actions with amicable critique. Eddie is looking for a roommate, but his messages on the bulletin board are sabotaged by disgruntled exes. He wonders whether Jane would like to move in, but she turns him down with a vengeance. Then they meet the new producer of the show, Ray Brown (Greg Kinnear), and Jane is immediately smitten. She tells her friend Liz (Marisa Tomei) and discusses her bad luck with men. Meanwhile, her sister is trying to get pregnant with a fertility program. Ray calls Jane and they spend an evening together and end up kissing. The next morning she calls Liz and is ecstatic. Liz gives her some advice as to how to deal with Ray and his girlfriend Dee (with whom he has trouble). Ray and Jane seem to be very much in love. The relationship evolves, and they decide to move in together. Jane puts in her notice to the landlord; Ray goes to tell his girlfriend that it is over, but doesn't tell her about the new woman in his life. Ray starts to get distant while Jane is packing to move, and over dinner he breaks it off, leaving Jane in tears. The next morning in the office Jane takes her revenge by announcing to move in with Eddie. She learns to deal with the many women in Eddie's life and the two bond over scotch and leftover food. She reads an article about the old cow syndrome and starts researching for her theory of men. Liz works at a magazine for men and needs a columnist and persuades Jane to write a column about her theory, under the pen name Dr. Marie Charles. The column that deals with the insecurity and dishonesty of men is a big hit. Everybody wants to meet Dr. Charles, so does Diane. At a Christmas party, Ray tells her he misses her and asks her out for New Year's Eve, but he stands her up. When Jane shows up at a party looking for Eddie at midnight, she can't find him and leaves in tears. Eddie spots her in the crowded room and tries to go after her but can't find her. Back at the office, Ray tries to apologize, but Diane interrupts wearing a shirt Jane bought for Ray. Jane realizes she is "Dee," and Ray is back with her. A board meeting is going to start and Eddie makes sure Jane isn't crying going in, but Jane is distracted so he covers for her. When Ray shows emotion over a Gérard Depardieu movie, Jane spills her guts over his inability to show empathy for her broken heart. After the meeting Diane, unaware of Jane's relationship with Ray, gives her advice on how to win her boyfriend back, telling her how she got hers back. At a bar, Liz follows Dr. Charles's advice and is not going to fall for the same kind of guy anymore. Jane and Eddie get into an argument over the advice of Dr. Charles. At home she tells him she has to believe the theory because otherwise she is afraid that men don't leave women - they leave her. Eddie comforts her by saying Ray is not the last man she'll ever love, and they fall asleep together. The next morning Eddie wakes up happy and comfortable while Jane freaks out. Eddie tells her not to analyse this too. He is happy that he slept the whole night with her without it leading to sex. She tells Eddie he will show his true colours and will hurt her some time soon. Eddie tells her it is not about him, but it is her attitude that is the problem. Jane gets a call and it is her brother-in-law telling her that her sister suffered a miscarriage. At the hospital she sees the true love between them and decides to tell Diane that Dr. Charles is going to be on her show. The interview is meant to be over the telephone, but Jane changes her mind mid-way and goes on the stage. She tells the audience that there is no Dr. Charles (we see Eddie leave at this point) and that the theory is ridiculous because she was hurt and needed to blame men for her pain. By this time Eddie is long gone. Jane goes after Eddie and tells him she found new love. He doesn't answer but kisses her with passion, with the dulcet tones of Van Morrison's "Someone like You" playing in the background. ===== During a man-on-the-street news interview in August 1972, an unnamed man (later identified as Barton George Dawes) gives his angry opinion of a new highway extension project. The narrative then jumps forward to November 1973, with Dawes, seemingly unaware of the underlying motivations of his actions, visiting a gun shop and purchasing two high-powered firearms: a .44 Magnum revolver and a hunting rifle chambered for .460 Weatherby Magnum cartridges. The story gradually reveals that Dawes' son Charlie had died of brain cancer three years earlier, and that Dawes is unable or unwilling to sever his emotional ties to both the industrial laundry where he works and the house in which Charlie grew up. The laundry and his entire neighborhood are to be demolished as part of the project. Dawes resigns his middle management job at the laundry after sabotaging the purchase of its new facility, and his wife Mary leaves him once she learns of both these actions and his failure to find a new house for the couple. Dawes then approaches Salvatore "Sal" Magliore, the owner of a local used-car dealership with ties to organized crime, in an attempt to obtain explosives. Magliore initially dismisses him as a crackpot, so Dawes assembles a load of Molotov cocktails and uses them to damage the highway construction equipment. He is not caught, but his actions cause only a brief delay in the project. Dawes initially refuses to accept the money being offered by the city for the house under the eminent domain statute, but changes his mind after the city's attorney threatens to publicize his brief tryst with Olivia Brenner, a young hitchhiker who had previously taken shelter at the house. Magliore has Dawes' house checked for listening devices planted by the city and later agrees to sell him a load of explosives. Dawes gives half the money from the house sale to Mary, gives $5,000 to a homeless man in a coffee shop, and has Magliore invest most of the remainder on behalf of Olivia after paying for the explosives. In January 1974, with only hours remaining before he is required to leave the property, Dawes wires the whole house with the explosives and barricades himself inside. When the police arrive to forcibly evict him, he shoots at them, killing no one but forcing them to take cover and attracting the attention of the media. Dawes coerces the police into letting a reporter - the same one who interviewed him in 1972, though neither recognizes the other - enter and speak to him. Once the reporter has left, Dawes tosses his guns out the window and sets off his explosives, destroying the house and killing himself. A short epilogue reveals that the reporter and his team ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the incident and uncovered the truth about the extension project: there was no real reason for it. Unless the city built a certain number of miles of road per year, it would become ineligible for federal funding of interstate construction projects. The city quietly began preparing to sue Mary for her share of the eminent domain payout, but dropped the suit in the wake of public outcry. ===== Spanky (George McFarland), Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), Buckwheat (Billie Thomas) and others form an army called "The Royal Protection of Women and Children Regiment Club of the World and Mississippi River". The group sees unexpected action when Union troops approach, engaging in battles more farcical than fierce. Using clowning tactics instead of military tactics, the kids stop the advance . . . and later save an adult friend from the firing squad. ===== In The Thousand Orcs, a clan of frost giants led by Gerti Orelsdottr allied with the orc King Obould Many-Arrows to send a massive army against the towns of the North. On the sidelines, four drow from the Underdark orchestrate events behind the scenes, playing each side against the other for their own advantage. Drizzt is separated from his friends during the siege at the town of Shallows. He witnesses the apparent death of the other Companions of the Hall, and turns his attention to slaughtering all of the orcs he can find, whilst reverting again to the Hunter. The other companions meet warrior dwarves of Mirabar who left because of their leader Marchion Elastuls dislike and borderline hatred for the dwarves of Mithral Hall. ===== In The Lone Drow, Drizzt Do'Urden is mourning what he believes to be the death of his closest friends. Drizzt only regains his sense of purpose after two elves (Tarathiel and Innovindil) and their two pegasi (Sunrise and Sunset) decide to help. The dwarven druid Pikel Bouldershoulders loses his left arm at the elbow by a piece of slate thrown by a frost giant. Tarathiel, however, meets his demise at the hands of King Obould Many-Arrows. Later the orc shaman Arganth Snarrl proclaims Obould a god. Meanwhile, the remaining Companions of the Hall, who survived the attack that Drizzt earlier witnessed, are fighting an increasingly desperate battle against Obould's forces. ===== Coyote Bus Lines' scientists and designers work feverishly to complete Cyclops, a state-of-the-art articulated jumbo bus, enabling man to achieve a new milestone in bus history: a non-stop service between New York City and Denver. Almost immediately after the bus's engine is equipped with nuclear fuel, a bomb goes off, critically injuring Professor Baxter, the scientist in charge of the project. Cyclops itself is undamaged, but Coyote Lines has lost both its driver and co-driver. Kitty Baxter, the professor's daughter and the Cyclops designer, is forced to turn to Dan Torrance, an old flame. Once a promising driver, Torrance was disgraced after he crashed his bus atop Mount Diablo, and was accused of saving his own life by eating all of his passengers. (Torrance blamed his co-driver for cannibalism, insisting that he himself survived by eating the seats and the luggage, and only ate part of a passenger's foot by accident.) Narrowly surviving an assault by vindictive fellow drivers with the help of "Shoulders" O'Brien, Torrance is recruited to drive Cyclops. Meanwhile, a sinister tycoon plots, with oil sheikhs, to destroy the bus. Known as "Iron Man", he is encased in a huge iron lung while directing his brother Alex to sabotage Cyclops using timebombs. Alex would prefer to use a man-made earthquake, but Iron Man insists that the bus be destroyed and discredited. Before its maiden voyage, Alex sneaks aboard and hides a bomb within the bus. Amidst public fanfare, the bus finally leaves New York, bound for Denver. Among the passengers are the Cranes, a neurotic married couple waiting for their divorce to finalize; Father Kudos, a priest who has lost his way; Dr. Kurtz, a disgraced veterinarian; Emery Bush, a man with only a few months to live; and Camille Levy, whose father died in the aforementioned Mount Diablo bus crash. At first, Cyclops's journey is a success, and Torrance triumphantly breaks the 90 mph "wind barrier" (referenced as "breaking wind"). Soon, however, disaster strikes. Investigating a mechanical problem, Dan finds Alex's bomb. He disarms it only just before an explosion rips through another part of the bus. Now unable to stop, Cyclops speeds across America. Dan is determined to achieve Cyclops's historic goal of non-stop service to Denver, but he also needs to surpass a treacherously curvy road where his father died. Dan almost succeeds, but not before a truck collides into the upper deck windshield, and the bus runs partially off the road, finding itself teetering over a cliff. To save the bus, Dan and Shoulders shift all weight to the back of the bus by pumping all of the vehicle's storage of carbonated beverages into the opposite end of the bus into the galley, as well as jettisoning all of the passenger luggage. Knowing he has only one more chance to destroy Cyclops, Iron Man is finally persuaded by Alex to use the earthquake. Unfortunately for Iron Man, Alex has somehow set the co-ordinates for Iron Man's house instead. Back on the road, Cyclops is once again heading to its destination, when, just 25 miles outside of Denver, the front and rear halves of the bus split from each other. ===== During World War II, the Germans transformed Colditz Castle into a high security prisoner-of-war camp called Oflag IV-C. Its purpose was to restrain those Allied prisoners who had attempted to escape from other Oflags and so Colditz housed various nationalities who were mainly British, Dutch, French and Polish. Among the British prisoners are Pat Reid (John Mills) and Senior British Officer Colonel Richmond (Eric Portman). Richmond is warned by the Kommandant (Frederick Valk) that "escaping is verboten" but Richmond has no intention of heeding this advice. All the prisoners are wary of Priem (Denis Shaw), the chief security officer, who is efficient and tenacious. Reid and other British officers attempt to open a manhole cover one night but are foiled by a simultaneous French attempt which alerts the German guards. Reid and La Tour (Eugene Deckers) argue about the lack of co-operation, both blaming the other. Later, a British tunnel is making progress until it meets another being dug by the Dutch officers and a collapse occurs. Richmond decides to act and proposes the creation by each nationality of escape officers who must liaise at all times to make sure attempts do not interfere with each other. Reid accepts the post for the British contingent. Soon afterwards, Winslow (Bryan Forbes) is hidden among palliasses being taken out of the castle and is not immediately caught. Richmond gains agreement for his own escape plan which hinges on his impersonation of a feldwebel called Franz Josef. This seems to be succeeding until, at the key moment, the German guards emerge and arrest all concerned. Tyler (Lionel Jeffries) is shot and wounded. Richmond, Reid and a dozen others are placed in solitary for a month and the likelihood of an informer is first discussed. This turns out to be the case when one of the Polish officers, whose family have been threatened by the Gestapo, is found to be collaborating with the guards and betraying escape plans. After two weeks on the run, Winslow is recaptured and returned to Colditz. While he is in the solitary compound, he talks to La Tour during a physical exercise session and watches as La Tour, helped by a compatriot, leaps over the barbed wire fence. Winslow runs into a guard to stop him shooting La Tour who runs to freedom. Soon afterwards, Richmond expresses annoyance that no British officer has yet made a complete escape. Reid's friend McGill (Christopher Rhodes) approaches Richmond with a new plan but says he will only disclose it if Richmond will relieve Reid from his escape officer duties so that McGill and Reid can make the attempt together. Richmond agrees and McGill convinces Reid that the plan is feasible. The escapees will be disguised as German officers but will approach the guards from the direction of the German mess. McGill argues that previous attempts have failed because the escapees came from the wrong direction. The attempt will coincide with a revue being staged in the castle theatre, to which all senior German officers are being invited. McGill is very tall and has antagonised the guards many times by reckless behaviour. Richmond realises that he will be too conspicuous and asks him to stand down so that other officers including Reid will have a good chance of making the plan work. McGill accepts Richmond's reasoning but is devastated. Next day, he attempts to scale the wire fence surrounding the exercise compound and is shot dead by the guards. Reid, on learning of Richmond's decision, says he will not let the escape attempt proceed but Richmond persuades him to do it for McGill's sake. The escape goes ahead as planned while the revue is being staged. Four men get out of the castle but two are soon recaptured. Several days later, Richmond receives a postcard with a cryptic message. He announces to the assembled and cheering prisoners that Reid and Winslow have successfully crossed into neutral Switzerland. ===== Spanky McFarland is the president of the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" with many school-aged boys from around the neighborhood as members. Alfalfa Switzer, Spanky's best friend, has been chosen to be the driver for the club's prize-winning go-kart, "The Blur", in the upcoming Soap Box Derby go-kart race. However, Alfalfa is nowhere to be found. The boys go to find Alfalfa and discover him in the company of his sweetheart Darla, with whom he is forbidden to be in love because she is a girl, which goes against club rules. Alfalfa invites Darla on a picnic, and to prove his devotion to her, he agrees to have the picnic inside the clubhouse. Unbeknownst to Alfalfa, his fellow club members find out about his plans. At the picnic, Alfalfa and Darla think they are alone, but the other club members secretly pull several silly pranks to sabotage their romantic date . When they finally reveal themselves and demand to come inside the clubhouse, Alfalfa frantically tries to convince Darla to hide in the closet, which leads her to mistakenly believe that Alfalfa feels ashamed of her. In the frenzy, a candle flame gets out of control, ultimately causing the clubhouse to burn down. Darla breaks up with Alfalfa and turns her attentions towards Waldo, the new kid in town whose father is an oil tycoon. Because Alfalfa burned down the clubhouse and also fraternized with a girl, he is assigned by Stymie to guard the go-kart until the day of the race. Alfalfa makes several attempts to win back Darla, including sending her a fake love note. When that fails, Spanky goes with him to formally break things off with Darla. They are initially denied entrance to her ballet recital, but Spanky insists that they will wait for Darla to come out; Spanky gives Alfalfa a frog to play with while they wait. They are soon spotted by the neighborhood bullies, Butch and Woim , who chase them inside the building. To escape, Spanky and Alfalfa duck into a costume room and disguise themselves as ballerinas in pink tights, tutus, and wigs. They manage to evade the bullies, but they attempt to enter another room to get out of their disguises. They are surprised to find the room filled with girls, including Darla. The boys nervously pretend to be in the recital that is about to take place, but Alfalfa almost gives them away when the frog he is still holding croaks. Darla admits that she doesn't miss him, but does miss his voice. Just as they are about to back out of the room, the ballet mistress enters and ushers them all on stage. The recital begins, as the children are performing scenes from "The Nutcracker." Alfalfa hands the frog to Spanky, but Spanky drops the frog into the waistband of Alfalfa's tights. Alfalfa squirms in discomfort as the slimy frog wriggles around in his tights, turning the show to chaos as he tries to catch it while still dancing along. The girls break out into laughter, along with the audience. The recital ends, and the boys run off stage and Alfalfa quickly ducks behind a curtain and strips out of his disguise in order to get the frog out. The ballet mistress, furious that the boys ruined her recital, confronts them and throws them out immediately, Alfalfa in his underwear and Spanky still in drag. Butch and Woim are waiting for them outside the door, so Spanky distracts them while Alfalfa sneaks out. When Spanky loses his wig, the bullies give chase. Spanky manages to lose them, but they bump into Alfalfa, who is trying to run home in his underwear. Butch and Woim chase Alfalfa into a mansion, but are turned away by the maid. Escaping through the back door, Alfalfa is chased by Waldo's Doberman, and he leaps into a pool and swims to the other side. As he climbs out, he notices his underwear floating on the surface of the pool. As Alfalfa retrieves his underwear, he discovers Darla and Waldo in a hot tub, laughing at him, to his embarrassment. At the carnival talent show the day before the race, the boys try to fund-raise $450, the cost of the lumber needed to rebuild their clubhouse. The youngest club members, Buckwheat and Porky, have unwittingly come up with $500, not realizing that their method for earning the money was not exactly honest. Their school teacher, Miss Crabtree, finds out about the scheme and confronts Spanky, but he convinces her to donate the money to be given as first prize in the go-kart derby. Alfalfa once again tries to win Darla back, this time through song, being that Darla mentioned after she dumped him that the only thing she ever really missed about him was his singing voice. Waldo and Darla have also entered the show in a duet. Alfalfa then requests the chance to perform for her and win her back. However, Waldo sabotages his attempts to serenade her by putting soap in his drinking water, causing him to burp out bubbles all throughout his song. As a result of Alfalfa's carelessness, "The Blur" is eventually stolen by Butch and Woim, so that now, in addition to having to rebuild the clubhouse, the boys need a new go-kart. They band together to build "Blur 2: The Sequel," and on the day before the race, Spanky and Alfalfa (who previously had a falling out when the latter discovers the gang's "prank list", which was the proof that the gang sabotaged Alfalfa's picnic with Darla) reconcile their friendship and decide to ride in the two-seat go-kart together. They hope to win the prize money and the trophy, which is to be presented to the winners by A.J. Ferguson. Butch and Woim make several sneaky attempts to stop Alfalfa and Spanky from winning the race. Waldo and Darla are also in the race, but they are eventually annoyed with each other, and Waldo seemingly kicks Darla out from his car. In a wild dash to the finish, and despite the many scrapes and crashes throughout the race, "The Blur 2" crosses the finish line ahead of the pack in a photo- finish between "The Blur" and "The Blur 2" literally by a hair, due to Alfalfa's pointy hairstyle. After the race, Butch and Woim are angry towards Alfalfa because he won the trophy and the prize money. They attempt to beat him up, but Alfalfa finally stands up for himself and punches Butch in the face, knocking him into a pool of pig slop. Woim, scared, jumps into the slop willingly. Along with first prize, Alfalfa also wins back Darla, after it is revealed that it had been Darla who had kicked Waldo out of their car and finished the race alone because she found out that Waldo was responsible for the bubbles at the talent show. Meanwhile, Spanky is shocked at the trophy presentation when he finally meets his favorite driver, A.J. Ferguson, who turns out to be female. Spanky confesses to Darla that he and the boys were responsible for ruining their picnic lunch. After the club house is rebuilt, the boys collectively have a change of heart towards membership and they decide to welcome Darla and her friends as well as other girls into the club. ===== In the Mexican countryside, a scavenger named Manuel finds a spearhead wrapped in a Nazi flag at the ruins of an old church. The spearhead is later revealed as the Spear of Destiny. Manuel becomes possessed and travels to the United States. In Los Angeles, occult detective John Constantine exorcises a girl possessed by a demon trying to break through to Earth, which should not be possible under the rules of a standing wager between God and Lucifer for mankind's souls. Constantine's driver and apprentice Chas Kramer waits in the car as Constantine doesn't think he's ready to exorcise demons. Constantine later meets with the androgynous half-angel being Gabriel. He asks Gabriel for a reprieve from his impending death from lung cancer caused by prolonged smoking. Gabriel declines, telling Constantine that he exorcises demons for selfish reasons and cannot buy his way into Heaven. After being assaulted by another demon, Constantine goes to Papa Midnite, a reputed witch doctor who runs a club serving as neutral ground where half-breeds do not have to conceal themselves. Constantine is admitted into the club, but the bouncer tells Chas to leave, as he can not pass the psychic entry test. Midnite does not believe Constantine's claim of demons crossing over. Constantine leaves, after exchanging hostile words with half-demon Balthazar. Elsewhere, a woman named Isabel Dodson commits suicide in a psychiatric hospital. Her twin sister, Detective Angela Dodson, refuses to believe that Isabel, a devout Catholic, would kill herself. Watching security footage of Isabel's suicide, Angela hears her say Constantine's name. Angela finds Constantine and asks him to help investigate. After they are attacked by winged demons, which Constantine believes were targeting Angela, he agrees to help. Constantine briefly transports himself to Hell through the possession of a familiar and sees Isabel damned to eternally relive her suicide. Constantine explains to Angela that he can see the true nature of the half-breeds. He committed suicide to escape his visions as a teenager and his soul was sent to Hell, but he was revived by paramedics two minutes later; for the sin of taking his own life, his soul is still condemned to go to Hell once he dies. The two examine Isabel's room in the hospital and find a clue pointing to a prophecy in the Satanic Bible that Lucifer's son, Mammon, will attempt to claim Earth as his own kingdom. To do so, Mammon requires both a powerful psychic and assistance from God. Angela tells Constantine that Isabel, a clairvoyant and a psychic, was committed by their parents. Angela had the same gift but suppressed it, and now feels guilty that she didn't corroborate Isabel's visions, having feared the treatments Isabel was made to go through. At Angela's insistence, Constantine reawakens her psychic ability through a near-death experience. She immediately finds a clue pinpointing Balthazar as an accomplice to the plot; Constantine interrogates Balthazar, who reveals that Mammon has the Spear, stained with the blood of Christ—the assistance from God. Angela, now the psychic in place of Isabel, is abducted by an invisible entity. Constantine convinces Midnite that the demons are breaking the wager's rules. With Midnite's help, Constantine finds out how the Spear emerged and Angela's location. Constantine arms himself and goes to the hospital, reluctantly bringing Chas along. The two fight their way through an army of half-demons to exorcise Angela. Chas is apparently killed by the invisible entity, which turns out to be Gabriel. Resenting God's favoritism towards humans, Gabriel plans to unleash Hell on Earth to weed out those deemed "unworthy" of God's love. Gabriel casts Constantine from the room and prepares to use the Spear to cut Mammon free from Angela. Out of options, Constantine slits his wrists. As he bleeds out, Lucifer arrives to personally collect his soul. Constantine tells Lucifer of Mammon's plan to usurp him. Confronted by Lucifer, Gabriel threatens to 'smite' him in God's honor; however, the attack against Lucifer comes up short, revealing to both Gabriel and Lucifer that Gabriel no longer has divine protection. Lucifer proceeds to burn Gabriel's wings, making Gabriel mortal. Lucifer banishes Mammon back to Hell and grants Constantine a wish out of gratitude; Constantine asks that Isabel be released to Heaven. Lucifer complies but realizes too late that he cannot take Constantine to Hell as a consequence; by selflessly sacrificing himself, Constantine is granted entry to Heaven. Infuriated, Lucifer intervenes before Constantine can be fully taken by healing Constantine's injuries and cures him of his lung cancer by pulling out the tumors in his lungs, hoping he will eventually damn himself again. Angela and Constantine depart, leaving the now human Gabriel. Sometime later, Constantine, now making an effort to quit smoking, entrusts the Spear to Angela and in a post-credits scene visits Chas's grave, where Chas appears in an angelic form. ===== Set in Scotland on one wintry day, the film focuses on eight people; a mother and daughter, Elspeth (Phyllida Law) and Frances (Emma Thompson); two young boys skipping school, Sam (Douglas Murphy) and Tom (Sean Biggerstaff); two old women who frequently attend strangers' funerals, Chloe (Sandra Voe) and Lily (Sheila Reid); and two teenagers Nita (Arlene Cockburn) and Alex (Gary Hollywood). The film consists primarily of the interactions between the characters. ===== Eva Phillips (Joan Crawford) dominates her Georgia mansion and her husband Avery (Barry Sullivan), an alcoholic mill owner who hates his wife. A cousin, Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow), is pressured into moving in with the family, and she watches in horror as Eva maneuvers to prevent the marriage of Avery's sister Carol (Betsy Palmer) to Judson Prentiss (John Ireland). Carol tells Jennifer to watch out for Eva, and that she read a book about bees and feels that Eva is like a queen bee who stings all her competitors to death. Jennifer refuses to believe such bad sentiments about Eva, and eventually becomes the putative personal assistant to Eva. That same night, Eva and Jud have a meeting in a darkened room where he tells her that their relationship and anything they had together was over because he is marrying Carol. Eva rejects this and begins to kiss him, but Judson stops kissing her after a few seconds once he realizes that he is falling back into her trap. Meanwhile, Jennifer witnesses this rendezvous from the top of the staircase and is shocked. Jud turns the light on and tells Eva that he is serious, and she warns him that he will ultimately be sorry for refusing her. When Carol and Jud's engagement is announced to Eva, Eva strongly hints at her former affair with Jud, and Carol commits suicide by hanging herself in the barn. Jennifer and Avery are drawn together and share a furtive kiss when he tells her that he is aware of Eva and Jud's past. Eva senses the developing relationship and increases her malevolent actions, and tells Avery to not interact with Jennifer any longer. When he refuses, she threatens a scandalous divorce in the press. Meanwhile, Jud, still guilty over Carol's death, leaves the house for a few weeks, but comes back one day for work. He finds out from Jennifer that it was really Eva who told Carol about his earlier relationship with Eva, not Avery as he had assumed. Now, for different reasons, both men are determined to avenge it. Avery changes his attitude completely, and acts as though he is in love with Eva. She changes her attitude and says that she is done being manipulative because her husband finally loves her. However, Jud sees through the charade and confronts Avery that his true motives for being nice to Eva is so that she will trust him enough so that he can kill her. Jud preempts his plan on the night Avery intends to commit murder-suicide and takes Eva driving. When Eva discerns that he wants her dead, she frantically attacks him, resulting in a crash over a cliff, killing them both. Now, Jennifer and Avery are free to love each other. ===== Pootie Tang, born in "a small town outside Gary, Indiana", is portrayed as a ladies' man who is "too cool for words", even as a young child. His life is marked by the deaths of his mother "Momma Dee", and shortly thereafter his father "Daddy Tang", who dies after being mauled by a gorilla during his shift at the steel mill (the third time someone had suffered that particular fate). Just before Daddy Tang's death, Pootie inherits his father's belt and is told that (as long as he has right on his side) he can "whoop anyone's ass with just that belt." As a young adult, Pootie Tang rises to fame and becomes well known for a variety of reasons. He sings in nightclubs, stars in public service announcements for children, produces top-of-the-charts music hits, and generally defeats wrongdoers with the power of his belt. Dick Lecter, the chief operating officer of multi- industrial conglomerate LecterCorp, learns of Pootie Tang's positive influence on society — and his negative influence on LecterCorp's bottom line. After his henchmen and a villain named Dirty Dee are sent away by Pootie's friends, Lecter encourages his right-hand lady, Ireenie, to seduce Pootie Tang into signing an agreement with LecterCorp that would stop Pootie Tang's influence on America's children. Pootie Tang falls for Ireenie's tricks and subsequently falls apart. His status as pop culture icon is destroyed, and he engages on a quest to "find [him]self". This journey is encouraged by his friend Biggie Shorty, who promises to wait for Pootie to return to her and to the rest of society. Pootie moves to a farm where the local sheriff decides Pootie should start dating his daughter. After his single corn stalk dies, he has a vision of Daddy Tang and Momma Dee. Daddy Tang reveals that there is nothing special about Pootie's belt; instead, Pootie must fight evil with the goodness that is inside him. After dealing with Dirty Dee and his henchman Froggy (as well as getting his belt back), Pootie realizes he must move back to the city and fight crime once again. Pootie Tang returns to the city just as Dick Lecter is unveiling the first of his new restaurant chain, Pootie's Bad Time Burgers. At a small news conference, Pootie confronts Lecter only to discover that Lecter has amassed dozens of "Pootie-alikes" who will spread the message of LecterCorp around the nation. Pootie Tang, with the help of Biggie Shorty, defeats all of these henchmen and Lecter himself. Good triumphs over evil once again, and Biggie Shorty finally gets her man: she and Pootie Tang plan to get married now that Pootie is back. Elsewhere, Dick Lecter leaves corporate life and becomes an actor, Ireenie leaves him and becomes a counselor helping at- risk teenage prostitutes, and Dirty Dee is still dirty. ===== In an empty park during fall, the title character, Geri (voiced by Bob Peterson), is an elderly man who plays a game of chess against himself, "becoming" each of the players in turn by moving to the other side of the chessboard, where he changes his personality and either puts on or takes off his glasses to show this change. As the game progresses, it seems as though there are two people playing; at one point, the hands of both "opponents" are seen within the frame. Geri's aggressive alter ego soon gains the upper hand over Geri, capturing every one of his pieces except for the king and the queen. Just one false move on the king, and the queen is captured and he can't move his king, putting him in check. However, Geri outsmarts himself by faking a heart attack to distract himself and spinning the board around, knocking over the pieces. While his alternate self is still distracted, Geri checkmates what is now his opponent's king. Finding that he is now the one who is losing and realizing what has happened, Geri begrudgingly resigns the game and hands over a set of dentures as the prize. Geri then puts them into his mouth, chuckling and basking in his victory as he sits by himself, while the camera pulls back to reveal him alone at the chessboard. ===== Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) works at a bingo hall in Liverpool, England, but dreams of becoming a stylish private investigator like those he has read about and seen in films. After finally placing an advertisement in a local newspaper announcing his detective services, he receives a mysterious offer. Even though Ginley is inexperienced and clueless at certain aspects of investigating, he comes to realize that he is entangled in a serious case involving drugs, murder and even his own family. ===== ===== An unnamed writer (obviously meant to represent Chekhov himself) suffers from writer's block and his own artistic temperament as he narrates to the audience several of his stories: * "The Sneeze" (based on "The Death of a Government Clerk") - A government clerk over-apologizes and has a nervous breakdown after accidentally sneezing on a general during a night out at the opera. * "The Governess" - A mother attempts to cheat her children's governess out of her pay by making up offenses and damages for which the governess must "compensate" but then tells her it was a test to see if she would stand up for herself, she didn't. * "Surgery" (based on the eponymous title) - A sexton visits the dentist complaining of a toothache, but the dentist's zeal for his profession begins to frighten his patient. * "Too Late for Happiness" - An older man and woman contemplate making time for each other in song. * "The Seduction" - A renowned seducer of married women sets his sights on his best friend's wife, using his friend as an unwitting accomplice in the ploy. * "The Drowned Man" - An entrepreneurial tramp pretends to drown himself to make money, calling what he does "maritime entertainment". * "The Audition" - An actress who walked four days from Odessa to Moscow to audition for the Writer's next play uses most of her audition time to gush over the Writer. * "A Defenseless Creature" - A woman with a nervous disorder harasses an ill banker to extort money for her injured husband. * "The Arrangement" - In flashback, the Writer's father takes his shy 19-year-old son to a brothel to make him a man. * "A Quiet War" (optional scene) - Two retired military commanders meet in the park to debate what makes the perfect five-course lunch. ===== The main characters of the Galatea are Elicio and Erastro, best friends and both in love with Galatea. The novel opens with her and her best friend, Florisa, bathing, talking of love. Erastro and Elicio reveal to each other their desire for Galatea, but agree not to let it come between their friendship. Eventually, all four of them begin their journey to the wedding of Daranio and Silveria, along which, in the pastoral tradition, they encounter other characters who tell their own stories and often join the traveling group. The vast majority of the characters in the book are involved primarily in minor story lines. Lisandro loses his love, Leonida, when Crisalvo mistakenly kills her instead of his former love Silvia. Lisandro avenges Leonida's death in the presence of the main party. Astor, under the pseudonym Silerio, feigns attraction for Nísida’s sister Blanca in order to avoid the scorn of Nísida’s lover Timbrio, who dies following the confusion present after a successful duel against his rival Pransiles. Astor’s grief thrusts him into hermitage, waiting to hear from Nísida. Arsindo holds a poetry competition betwixt Francenio and Lauso, which is judged by Tirsi and Damón, lauded by many within the novel as some of the most famous poets of Spain. The competition is determined to have no single winner. The wedding has controversy as Mireno is deeply in love with Silveria, yet Daranio’s wealth guaranteed him the hand of Silveria. These stories sometimes have characters that cross over, resulting in the sub-plots being intertwined at times. For example, Teolinda, whose sister Leonida played in an integral role in separating Teolinda from her lover Artidoro, finds Leonida much later with a group of soldiers. The fame of Tirsi and Damón instantly connects them with the hired wedding bards, Orompo, Crisio, Marsilio, and Orfenio, as well as the teacher Arsindo. ===== The book is set in the years during the famine in Bengal in 1770 CE. It starts with introduction to a couple, Mahendra and Kalyani, who are stuck at their village Padachinha without food and water in the times of famine. They decide to leave their village and move to the next closest city where there is a better chance of survival. During the course of events, the couple gets separated and Kalyani has to run through the forest with her infant to avoid getting caught by robbers. After a long chase, she loses consciousness at the bank of a river. A Hindu “Santana”( who were not true sanyasis but common people who took the symbol of sanyasis and left their household so as to rebel against tyrannical Muslim rulers) , Jeevanand took the daughter to his home handing her to his sister while he shifted Kalyani to his ashram. The husband, Mahendra, at this point is more inclined towards joining the brotherhood of the monks and serving the Mother Nation. Kalyani wants to help him in attaining his dreams by trying to kill herself, thereby relieving him of worldly duties. At this point, Satyananda joins her but before he can help her, he is arrested by the British soldiers, because other monks were fuelling revolt against the British rule. While being dragged away he spots another monk who is not wearing his distinctive robes and sings, The other monk deciphers the song, rescues Kalyani and the baby, taking them to a rebel monk hideout. Concurrently, Kalyani's husband, Mahendra, is also given shelter by the monks, and they are reunited. The leader of the rebels shows Mahendra the three faces of Bharat-Mata (Mother India) as three goddess idols being worshipped in three consecutive rooms: # What Mother Was – An idol of Goddess Jagaddhatri # What Mother Has Become – An idol of Goddess Kali # What Mother Will Be – An idol of Goddess Durga Gradually, the rebel influence grows and their ranks swell. Emboldened, they shift their headquarters to a small brick fort. The British attack the fort with a large force. The rebels blockade the bridge over the nearby river, but they lack any artillery or military training. In the fighting, the British make a tactical retreat over the bridge. The Sannyasis' undisciplined army, lacking military experience, chases the British into the trap. Once the bridge is full of rebels, British artillery opens fire, inflicting severe casualties. However, some rebels manage to capture some of the cannons, and turn the fire back on to the British lines. The British are forced to fall back, the rebels winning their first battle. The story ends with Mahendra and Kalyani building a home again, with Mahendra continuing to support the rebels. The song Vande Mataram is sung in this novel. Vande Mataram means "I bow to thee, Mother". It inspired freedom fighters in the 20th century and its first two stanzas became the national song of India after independence. ===== Set in Los Angeles, California this film revolves around Emily Tyler (Ashley Olsen), a surfer-girl, and her identical twin sister, Tess (Mary-Kate Olsen), a member of a high-diving team. The movie follows the two sisters as they try various strategies to get their widower father, Max (Tom Amandes) (who is a talented artist and sculptor) a girlfriend. After their first attempts end in failure, Tess and Emily team up with their friend Cody to paint an advertisement on a giant billboard situated high above Sunset Boulevard. Many women answer the advertisement through letters and through random chance, Max answers a letter submitted by a woman named Debbie. Debbie brings along her friend Brooke as a back-up in preparation for the former's date with Max. Brooke and Max coincidentally meet and take a liking to each other and Debbie agrees they should start dating. At first, Tess and Emily don't like Brooke's son, Ryan, but when an elaborate scheme by Max's business manager, Nigel, to break up the romantic relationship between Max and Brooke arises, Ryan and the girls learn to put aside their differences in order to foil the break-up plan. ===== Pandora was born with the name Lydia in the Roman Republic in the year 15 BC to a Senatorial family. She is tall, with rippling brown hair and gold-brown eyes. Like many Patrician Roman females of the time Pandora was taught how to read and write and is well versed in epic poems, especially Ovid's works. She meets Marius for the first time when he is twenty-five and she is ten. Marius asks for Lydia's hand in marriage, but her father rejects Marius' offer. Five years later, Lydia sees Marius at a festival and begs her father to allow her to marry Marius. Her father again refuses. Pandora's father holds a high rank as a Senator. But when a new emperor takes power, her family is betrayed by her own brother and killed. Only Pandora and her traitorous brother survive the massacre, and she is taken to Antioch (after changing her name) by a man who was very close to her father. There she meets Marius again, twenty years after their last encounter. Unbeknownst to her, Marius is now a vampire. She eventually finds out what Marius has become, and also that he protects and hides the Queen and King of all Vampires. Another vampire, Akabar, wants to steal the Queen's powerful and ancient blood. Marius and Pandora try to prevent him from carrying out his plan. To gain access to the Queen, Akabar uses Marius's love for Pandora against him and drains Pandora to the point of death. In order to save her, Marius is forced to make Pandora into a vampire and forced to let Akabar see the Queen, who then destroys Akabar. The pair stay together for the next two hundred years, taking care of the King and Queen of all vampires, before arguing and separating. Marius later characterized the breakup (of which he left her and she spent six months or more waiting for him to return) as being entirely his fault: He considers himself a teacher who longs to impart what he knows upon his pupils, but Pandora—being as free-spirited and highly educated as she was—had no patience to be his student. During their time together, against his objection, she did turn one of her beloved slaves into a vampire. As soon as he was turned he left the pair and was not seen again. The next time they meet again is in a Dresden ballroom in the early to late-17th century. Marius tries in vain to make Pandora leave her companion and fledgling, Arjun, and come back to him. Pandora's relationship with Arjun is of great concern to Marius, who fears Pandora is being held against her will. While she outwardly denies this, Pandora overcomes her embarrassment and admits to David in her writing that she could not bring herself to leave Arjun, citing that his stronger will propelled them both through time. The next and last time that they meet is in 1985, when she is among thirteen vampires who survived Akasha's killing spree and gathered at Maharet's house in the Sonoma compound to battle against Akasha. Pandora remains quiet and withdrawn throughout the whole ordeal, staring out the windows and saying little, rousing herself only once to say that Akasha is trying to justify deplorable "reasons" for a holocaust. Like many vampires, Pandora is a morose, despairing immortal who initially wanted immortality but soon regretted her choice and turns into a dark, indifferent cynic. Lestat thinks that Pandora was troubled in some deep, fundamental way even before she became a vampire, because she's the only vampire who doesn't receive visions of Maharet and Mekare in her dreams. During the confrontation in Sonoma, when Akasha directly asks Pandora to join with her or die, Pandora merely responds in a quiet, indifferent voice that she can't do what Akasha is asking of her, and stoically accepts the idea of being killed. Even after Akasha herself is destroyed and the thirteen vampires regroup in Armand's Night Island in Florida, Pandora still acts withdrawn from her fellow vampire kin, watching music videos all day long and completely ignoring Marius, who dotes on her lovingly. There is no sense of recovery or security in her as there is with the other vampires, and she departs from Night Island alone, still just as morose as ever. ===== The film is divided into three parts inspired by the Divine Comedy of Dante. "Realm 1: Hell" is a relatively brief, non-narrative montage composed of appropriated documentary and narrative fictional footage depicting war, carnage, and violence. The second segment, "Realm 2: Purgatory", makes up the bulk of the film. Godard, playing himself, is waiting at the airport to depart to a European arts conference in Sarajevo. There he meets Ramos Garcia, a nationalized French Israeli, who is going to the conference as an interpreter. Ramos is looking forward to seeing his niece at the conference, Olga Brodsky, a French-speaking Jew of Russian descent. Another young woman at the conference, Judith Lerner, a journalist from Tel Aviv, visits the French ambassador and entreats him to have an on-the-record conversation about Jewish-Palestinian relations ("not a just conversation; just a conversation"). Later she interviews the poet Mahmoud Darwish, who says that the Palestinian struggle defines Israel. In between these encounters, Judith surveys the city, and visits the Mostar bridge, where she reads Emmanuel Levinas (Entre Nous). Meanwhile, Olga attends Godard's lecture, ostensibly about the relationship between image and text. In addition to touching on a variety of other topics, Godard explains his opposition to the common cinematic trope of "shot/reverse shot," the cutting back and forth between two characters in a conversation or an exchange. Godard explains that presenting two characters in such a way, framed identically, regressively effaces their differences, and can be used as a tool of propaganda. Later Olga meets with her uncle Ramos, and discusses with him the philosophical problem of suicide. After the conference, Godard is back home, watering his garden. He gets a call from Ramos Garcia, who tells Godard about a young woman who ran into a theater and declared she had a bomb in her bag. She asked for one person to die with her for Israeli-Palestinian peace; everyone left the theater. The police came and shot her. When they opened her bag, all they found were books. Garcia tells Godard that he is sure it was Olga. In "Realm 3: Heaven," a brief postlude, Olga wanders contemplatively through an idyllic lakeside setting that appears to be guarded by American marines. A part on the soundtrack of the movie is made by Meredith Monk, an American composer. ===== A marble Greek bas relief explodes to reveal black men dancing the samba to drums in a favela. Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) arrives in Rio de Janeiro, and takes a trolley driven by Orfeu (Breno Mello). New to the city, she rides to the end of the line, where Orfeu introduces her to the station guard, Hermes (Alexandro Constantino), who gives her directions to the home of her cousin Serafina (Léa Garcia). Although engaged to Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), Orfeu is not very enthusiastic about the upcoming marriage. The couple go to get a marriage license. When the clerk at the courthouse hears Orfeu's name, he jokingly asks if Mira is Eurydice, annoying her. Afterward, Mira insists on getting an engagement ring. Though Orfeu has just been paid, he would rather use his money to get his guitar out of the pawn shop for the carnival. Mira finally offers to loan Orfeu the money to buy her ring. When Orfeu goes home, he is pleased to find Eurydice staying next door with Serafina. Eurydice has run away to Rio to hide from a strange man who she believes wants to kill her. The man - Death dressed in a stylized skeleton costume - finds her, but Orfeu gallantly chases him away. Orfeu and Eurydice fall in love, yet are constantly on the run from both Mira and Death. When Serafina's sailor boyfriend Chico (Waldemar De Souza) shows up, Orfeu offers to let Eurydice sleep in his home, while he takes the hammock outside. Eurydice invites him to her bed. Orfeu, Mira, and Serafina are the principal members of a samba school, one of many parading during Carnival. Serafina decides to have Eurydice dress in her costume so that she can spend more time with her sailor. A veil conceals Eurydice's face; only Orfeu is told of the deception. During the parade, Orfeu dances with Eurydice rather than Mira. Eventually, Mira spots Serafina among the spectators and rips off Eurydice's veil. Eurydice is forced once again to run for her life first from Mira, then from Death. Trapped in Orfeu's own trolley station, she hangs from a power line to get away from Death and is killed accidentally by Orfeu when he turns the power on and electrocutes her. Death tells Orfeu "Now she's mine," before knocking him out. Distraught, Orfeu looks for Eurydice at the Office of Missing Persons, although Hermes has told him she is dead. The building is deserted at night, with only a janitor sweeping up. He tells Orfeu that the place holds only papers and that no people can be found there. Taking pity on Orfeu, the janitor takes him down a large darkened spiral staircase - a reference to the mythical Orpheus' descent into the underworld - to a Macumba ritual, a regional form of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. At the gate, there is a dog named Cerberus, after the three-headed dog of Hades in Greek mythology. During the ritual, the janitor tells Orfeu to call to his beloved by singing. The spirit of Eurydice inhabits the body of an old woman and speaks to him. Orfeu wants to gaze upon her, but Eurydice begs him not to lest he lose her forever. When he turns and looks anyway, he sees the old woman, and Eurydice's spirit departs, as in the Greek myth. Orfeu wanders in mourning. He retrieves Eurydice's body from the city morgue and carries her in his arms across town and up the hill toward his home, where his shack is burning. A vengeful Mira, running amok, flings a stone that hits him in the head and knocks him over a cliff to his death with Eurydice still in his arms. Two children, Benedito and Zeca - who have followed Orfeu throughout the film - believe Orfeu's tale that his guitar playing causes the sun to rise every morning. After Orfeu's death, Benedito insists that Zeca pick up the guitar and play so that the sun will rise. Zeca plays, and the sun comes up. A little girl appears, gives Zeca a single flower, and the three children dance. ===== The show takes place in a quaint, old- fashioned neighborhood inhabited by hand puppets. It is shown from the perspective of a four-year-old named Oobi. The puppets often talk directly to the audience and encourage participatory viewing. The characters use basic vocabulary, and they speak in simplified sentences that resemble the speech structure of a child just beginning to talk. For example, "Uma, school, first day" is said in place of "It's my first day of school." Prepositions and conjunctions are rarely used. The show is intended to help develop social skills, early literacy, and logical thinking. Oobi lives in a single-story house with his younger sister, Uma, and his grandfather, Grampu. Oobi's best friend, Kako, lives across the street and often comes over to visit Oobi. Most episodes center around Oobi learning more about a simple concept like a new sport, a new place, or a holiday. Uma and Kako are the comic relief, and they often misunderstand Oobi's discoveries or provide commentary on the episode's topic. The show is meant to mirror the stage of early childhood "when everything in [the] world is new and incredible" and "when each revelation helps build a sense of mastery and self-confidence." In the second season, the episodes were extended and followed a format made up of three parts. The first part is a linear story featuring the puppets going on an adventure or making a new discovery. The second part is a set of brief interviews between the puppets and human families, centering on the main story's topic. The last part is an interactive game (usually involving rhyming, guessing, or memory) where the viewers are encouraged to play along with the characters. When Oobi was renewed for a third season in 2004, game segments were dropped in favor of longer stories. Interviews remained an important part of the show, but instead of being shown after the story, these segments were shortened and played as transitions between scenes. ===== The Cocoanuts is set in the Hotel de Cocoanut, a resort hotel, during the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Mr. Hammer (Groucho Marx) runs the place, assisted by Jamison (Zeppo Marx), who would rather sleep at the front desk than actually help him run it. Chico and Harpo arrive with empty luggage, which they apparently plan to fill by robbing and conning the guests. Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont, in the first of seven film appearances with the Marxes) is one of the few paying customers. Her daughter Polly (Mary Eaton) is in love with struggling young architect Bob Adams (Oscar Shaw). He works to support himself as a clerk at the hotel, but has plans for the development of the entire area as Cocoanut Manor. Mrs. Potter wants her daughter to marry Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring), whom she believes to be of higher social standing than the clerk. This suitor is actually a con man out to steal the dowager's diamond necklace with the help of his conniving partner Penelope (Kay Francis). ===== The world map as presented in the Land Make system. Eight locations are shown; the rankings for each Spirit of Mana for the selected artifact are shown below the map. ===== Luftwaffe fighter pilot Franz von Werra is shot down during the Battle of Britain and captured. At the POW reception centre, Air Defence Intelligence, located at Trent Park in Cockfosters, near Barnet in Hertfordshire, he wagers with his RAF interrogator that he will escape within six months. Initially, von Werra is sent to No 1 prisoner-of-war (POW) camp Grizedale Hall in the Furness area of Lancashire. His first escape involves dropping over a wall he is lying on during a group walk. He rolls over a horse and cart passes. He is spotted by some land army girls in the field but their frantic waving to the guards is mistaken for fraternisation. Only when the count is run at the end and it registers 23 instead of 24 do they realise he is missing. The CO retraces their route on horseback but it is too late, and the horse shoes give advances warning of his approach, allowing von Werra to hide. He heads into the hills. Von Werra wears his leather flight jacket donning his Iron Cross during this. This results in an intense manhunt by troops and police. He has the cheek to tauntingly wave to them from a hilltop. He lies flat in the mud on an open moor in heavy rain and they almost miss him. When they find him they are very kind and wrap him in a blanket. En-route by rail to his new camp at Swanwick he makes study of the map of Derbyshire hanging in the station waiting room. Subsequently, von Werra is sent to a more secure POW camp (based on the Hayes Conference Centre) near Swanwick, Derbyshire. During a German air raid he and four others escape through a tunnel. The others pair up, but von Werra continues alone. Reaching Codnor Park railway station, he impersonates a Dutch pilot and claims his Wellington bomber had crashed while on a secret mission. The station master telephones the police who are to then take him to the nearest airfield, RAF Hucknall, and tricks the duty officer into sending a car. However, the police arrive first, and with much bravado he delays them until the RAF car arrives. He gets to the airfield and spots a Hawker Hurricane. When his story starts to fray, von Werra creeps away and tries to steal an experimental Hawker Hurricane, getting as far as sitting and starting the engine before a pistol appears in his face and he is told "get out". Along with many other POWs, von Werra is then sent by ship to Canada. The ship arrives at Halifax, Nova Scotia, then there is a train journey. On the train ride across the country, while the guards are distracted, he escapes near Smiths Falls, Ontario, by jumping from a window. Making his way south hitching rides, von Werra finds the St Lawrence River not as solid as he has been led to believe, He then steals a rowboat and pushes it over the ice till he reaches the free-flowing section. He falls asleep in the drifting boat. He reaches the American side almost frozen to death. He is told he is in Ogdensburg, USA, where he is arrested despite claiming asylum in the then still-neutral United States. Back in England the RAF interrogator receives a postcard from von Werra, featuring a photograph of the Statue of Liberty, informing him that he has lost his bet. The epilogue states: > Despite the efforts of the Canadian Government to obtain his return, and of > the United States Authorities to hold him, Von Werra crossed the border into > Mexico. Travelling by way of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Spain, he reached > Berlin on 18 April 1941. On October 25th of the same year, while on patrol, > his plane was seen to dive into the sea. No trace of Von Werra was found. ===== In the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, during May 1973, the Cambodian national army wages a civil war with the communist Khmer Rouge group, a result of the Vietnam War spilling over Cambodia's borders. Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist and interpreter for The New York Times, awaits the arrival of reporter Sydney Schanberg at the city's airport but leaves suddenly. Schanberg takes a cab to his hotel where he meets up with Al Rockoff. Pran meets Schanberg later and tells him that an incident has occurred in a town, Neak Leung; allegedly, an American B-52 has bombed the town. Schanberg and Pran go to Neak Leung where they find that the town has been bombed. Schanberg and Pran are arrested when they try to photograph the execution of two Khmer Rouge operatives. They are eventually released and Schanberg is furious when the international press corps arrives with the U.S. Army. Two years later, in 1975, the Phnom Penh embassies are evacuated in anticipation of the arrival of the Khmer Rouge. Schanberg secures evacuation for Pran, his wife and their four children. However, Pran insists on staying behind to help Schanberg. The Khmer Rouge move into the capital, ostensibly in peace. During a parade through the city, Schanberg meets Rockoff. They are later met by a detachment of the Khmer Rouge, who immediately arrest them. The group is taken through the city to a back alley where prisoners are being held and executed. Pran, unharmed because he is a Cambodian civilian, negotiates to spare the lives of his friends. They do not leave Phnom Penh, but instead retreat to the French embassy. The Khmer Rouge orders all Cambodian citizens in the embassy to be handed over. Fearing an attack from the Khmer Rouge, the ambassador complies. Knowing that Pran will be imprisoned or killed, Rockoff and fellow photographer Jon Swain of The Sunday Times try to forge a British passport for Pran, but the deception fails when the image of Pran on the passport photo fades to nothing, as they lack adequate photographic developer. Pran is turned over to the Khmer Rouge and is forced to live under their totalitarian regime. Several months after returning to New York City, Schanberg is in the midst of a personal campaign to locate Pran; he writes letters to several charities and is in close contact with Pran's family in San Francisco. In Cambodia, Pran has become a forced labourer under the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" policy, a return to the agrarian ways of the past. Pran is also forced to attend propagandist classes where many undergo re-education. As intellectuals are made to disappear, Pran feigns simple-mindedness. Eventually, he tries to escape, but is recaptured. Before he is found by members of the Khmer Rouge, he stumbles upon one of the infamous killing fields of the Pol Pot regime, where as many as 2 million Cambodian citizens were murdered. In 1976, Schanberg is awarded a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the Cambodian conflict. During the ceremony, he tells the audience that half the recognition for the award belongs to Pran. Schanberg is confronted in the restroom by Rockoff, who harshly accuses him of not doing enough to locate Pran and for using his friend to win the award. Although Schanberg initially defends his efforts, he ultimately admits that Pran stayed because of what Schanberg wanted. Pran is assigned to the leader of a different prison compound, a man named Phat, and charged mostly with tending to Phat's young son. Pran continues to behave as an uneducated peasant, despite several attempts by Phat to catch him in his deception. Phat begins to trust Pran and asks him to take ward of his son in the event that he is killed. During the Khmer Rouge's border war with Vietnam, Pran discovers that Phat's son has American money and a map leading to safety. When Phat tries to stop the younger Khmer Rouge officers from killing several of his comrades, he is ignominiously shot. In the confusion, Pran escapes with four other prisoners and they begin a long trek through the jungle with Phat's son. The group later splits and three of them head in a different direction; Pran continues following the map with the fourth man. However, Pran's companion activates a hidden land mine while holding the boy. As Pran pleads with the man to give him the boy, the mine goes off, killing the pair. Pran continues through the jungle alone until he eventually finds a Red Cross camp near the border of Thailand. In the United States, Schanberg receives news that Pran is alive and safe, and he travels to the Red Cross camp and is reunited with Pran. He asks Pran to forgive him; Pran answers, with a smile, "Nothing to forgive, Sydney", as the two embrace. ===== Little Joe is a well meaning but weak man whose attempts at redemption are cut short when he is killed over gambling debts by big shot Domino Johnson. On his deathbed, Little Joe is restored to life by angelic powers and given six months to redeem his soul and become worthy of entering Heaven—otherwise he will be condemned to Hell. Secretly guided by "The General" (the Lord's Angel), Little Joe gives up his shiftless ways and becomes a hardworking, generous, and loving husband to his wife Petunia, whom he had previously neglected. Unfortunately, demon Lucifer Jr. (the son of Satan himself), is determined to drag Little Joe to Hell. Lucifer arranges for Joe to become wealthy by winning a lottery, reintroduces Joe to beautiful gold-digger Georgia Brown, and manipulates marital discord between Joe and Petunia. Little Joe abandons his wife for Georgia, and the two embark on a life of hedonistic pleasure. As Little Joe and Georgia celebrate at a nightclub one evening, Petunia joins them, determined to win Joe back. Little Joe fights with Domino for Petunia, and Petunia, anguished at this turn of events, prays to God to destroy the nightclub. A cyclone appears and leaves the nightclub in ruins, as Joe and Petunia lie dead in the ruins after being shot by Domino. Just as it appears that Joe's soul is lost forever, the angelic General informs him that Georgia Brown was so affected by the tragedy that she has donated all the money that Joe had lavished upon her to the church. On this technicality, Little Joe is allowed to go to Heaven with Petunia. As the two climb the Celestial Stairs, Joe suddenly wakes in his own bed. Joe had not been killed in the initial gambling-debt fracas, only wounded. All his supposed dealings with angels and demons were only a fever dream. Now genuinely reformed, Little Joe begins a new, happy life with his loving Petunia. ===== Using and subverting elements of various genres, including thriller, situation comedy and grade-B horror film, the piece is written with cynical humor, but is serious in tone. As the play begins, a serial killer is preying on young women in the city; we soon realize that Bernie is the murderer, a fact only discovered by the other characters late in the play. Narration is provided by Benita, a prostitute with psychic ability whose mental gifts will figure prominently in the resolution of the plot. ===== American archaeologist Martin Padway is visiting the Pantheon in Rome in 1938. A thunderstorm arrives, lightning cracks, and he finds himself transported to Rome in the year 535 AD. At this time, the Italian Peninsula is under the rule of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The novel depicts their rule as a relatively benevolent despotism, allowing freedom of religion and maintaining the urban Roman society they had conquered, though slavery is common and torture is the normal method of interrogation by what passes for law-enforcement agencies. In the real timeline, the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire temporarily expanded westwards, embarking on what came to be known as the Gothic War (535–554). They overthrew the Ostrogoths and the Vandals in North Africa, but this war devastated the Italian urbanized society that required the support of intensive agriculture and by the end of the conflict Italy was severely depopulated: its population is estimated to have decreased from 7 million to 2.5 million people. The great cities of Roman times were abandoned and the Byzantines never fully consolidated their rule over Italy, which faced further invasions by the Lombards; Italy fell into a long period of decline. Some historians consider this the true beginning of the Dark Ages in Italy. The city of Rome was besieged three times and many of its inhabitants did not survive to the end of the war. Thus Padway, finding himself in this Rome and knowing what the near future holds in store, must act not only to preserve the future of civilization, but to improve his personal chances of survival. Padway initially wonders whether he is dreaming or delusional, but he quickly accepts his fate and sets out to survive. As an archaeologist, he has enough understanding of various devices used before his time but after the sixth century to be able to reproduce them by the means available. He can speak both modern Italian and Classical Latin, and quickly learns enough Vulgar Latin (which was spoken at that time) to communicate effectively. Most crucially, Padway had read with great attention the book of the historian Procopius, who described the very war at whose outset Padway finds himself. Though not in possession of a physical copy of Procopius when hurled back in time, Padway had memorized his book in great detail, down to the precise details of the time and route of the various armies' moves and their tactical and strategic considerations, as well as the convoluted and violent power struggles of the various contenders for the Gothic Kingship. Thus Padway, in effect, knows the direct, immediate future of the country where he lives and often of individual people whom he meets (at least, until he acts in a way that changes that future). In addition to this specialized and uniquely useful knowledge of the current war, Padway had taken a general interest in military history, which he would eventually be able to put to very practical purposes. Padway's first idea, after he concludes that it is no illusion and that he is truly in the past, is to make a copper still and sell brandy for a living. He convinces a banker, Thomasus the Syrian, to lend him seed money to start his endeavor. He teaches his clerks Arabic numerals and double entry bookkeeping. Padway eventually develops a printing press, issues newspapers, and builds a crude semaphore telegraph system utilizing small telescopes. However, his attempts to reproduce mechanical clocks, gunpowder and cannons are failures. He becomes increasingly involved in the politics of the state as Italy is invaded by the Imperials and also threatened from the south and east. Padway rescues the recently deposed Thiudahad and becomes his quaestor. He uses the king's support to gather forces to defeat the formidable Imperial general Belisarius. Padway manages to surprise Belisarius with tactics never used in the ancient world. Then, deceiving the Dalmatian army, Padway reinstates the senile Thiudahad and imprisons King Wittigis as a hostage. In 537, when Wittigis is killed and Thiudahad descends into madness, Padway has a protégé of his (Urias) married off to Mathaswentha, then crowned king of the Ostrogoths. He also tricks Justinian I into releasing Belisarius from his oath of allegiance and quickly enlists the military genius to command an army against the Franks. The landing of an Imperial army at Vibo, led by Bloody John, and a rebellion, led by the son of Thiudahad, threaten the Ostrogothic kingdom and its army is destroyed at Crathis Valley. Padway assembles a new force, spreads an "emancipation proclamation" to the Italian serfs and recalls Belisarius after his defeat of the Franks. The armies clash near Calatia and then Benevento. Despite the lack of discipline of his Gothic forces, some simple tactical tricks and the nick-of-time arrival of Belisarius secure Padway's victory. At the end of the novel Padway has stabilized the Italo-Gothic kingdom, introduced a constitution, arranged the end of serfdom, and liberated the Burgunds, and is having boats built for an Atlantic expedition (Padway wants tobacco). The king of the Visigoths has appointed Urias as his heir, reunifying the Goths. Ultimately, due to Padway's actions, Europe will not experience what Age of Enlightenment thinkers retroactively called the Dark Ages: "darkness will not fall". ===== In this story, Matt Murdock and Elektra Natchios are both students in Columbia University, where they meet and start dating. Murdock is blind and studying law. During the course of the story, Elektra and her roommates are harassed by a rich boy, Trey Langstrom, until Elektra, a martial artist fights back. In response, Langstrom and a group of thugs destroys Elektra's father's business. Murdock, also a martial artist and possessor of enhanced senses (which compensate for his blindness), forces the thugs to confess, but couldn't stop Elektra from seriously wounding Langstrom. While Matt reveals his identity to Elektra, she forces him to choose between their love and his sense of duty. He chooses the second and they apparently part ways. ===== The book begins in the city of Turku and follows Mikael along an adventure throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The book depicts many actual historical events with a rich style, although Mikael's involvement in the events is fictitious. The historical events and millieu featured in the book include: *Denmark's conquest of Sweden, Stockholm bloodbath and eventually the downfall of king Christian II of Denmark. * Student life at the Sorbonne in Paris at this time. *Protestant reformation and related political unrest in Germany (the Poor Barons' Rebellion and the peasants' war), Luther and Müntzer themselves appearing as side characters. *Spanish monarch sending conquistadors to New World, Mikael almost made to join Pizarro's expedition. * A witch-hunt conducted by the Inquisition in a small German town, claiming the life of an innocent girl. *Wars in 16th-century Europe and expansion of the Ottoman Empire. *Plundering of Rome (Sack of Rome) during reign of Pope Clement VII The story is continued in The Wanderer, where the protagonist explores the Ottoman empire. Category:1948 novels Category:Picaresque novels Category:Novels set in the 16th century Category:Novels by Mika Waltari Category:Finnish historical novels Category:Novels about orphans Category:Inquisition in fiction Category:20th-century Finnish novels ===== Matthew Van Helsing, the alleged descendant of the famed 19th century Dutch physician Abraham Van Helsing, owns an antique shop built over the site of Carfax Abbey in London in 2000. One night, with Van Helsing upstairs, his secretary, Solina, allows a group of thieves, led by her boyfriend, Marcus, into the shop. The thieves infiltrate the shop's underground high-security vault and find a sealed silver coffin protected by a deadly defense system. Based on the level of security surrounding the coffin, Solina and Marcus decide that the coffin's contents must be valuable, so they escape with it and flee to New Orleans. When Van Helsing discovers that the coffin has been stolen, he boards a plane to America, telling his apprentice, Simon Sheppard, to remain in London. Simon does not follow these instructions and follows his mentor. Aboard their plane, one of the thieves manages to open the coffin, revealing the dormant body of Count Dracula. Dracula awakens and attacks the thieves, in the process , biting Solina , causing the plane to crash in the Louisiana swamps. Dracula survives the crash , and bites news reporter Valerie Sharpe who is reporting the crash and travels to New Orleans, where college students Mary Heller and Lucy Westerman are living. Mary is estranged from her family and has recently been plagued by nightmares of a strange, terrifying man. Van Helsing and Simon arrive in New Orleans and destroy the newly turned vampires left in Dracula's wake, except Solina and Marcus. Afterwards, Van Helsing reveals to Simon that he is in fact the original Abraham Van Helsing, who defeated Dracula in 1897. Because he was unable to destroy Dracula permanently, Van Helsing hid the body and prolonged his own life with regular injections of Dracula's blood filtered via leeches until, one day, he could discover a way to kill Dracula for good. Simon is intrigued by Dracula's hatred of all things Christian and wonders why he is also particularly vulnerable to silver. Van Helsing also tells Simon about his daughter, Mary, who was taken from England by her mother after the truth about his identity came to light. Since Mary was conceived after Van Helsing began his injections, she shares blood and a telepathic link with Dracula, who senses her existence and is in New Orleans to find her. Van Helsing and Simon try to reach Mary before Dracula does, but fail to do so before Dracula turns Lucy into a vampire. Dracula and his three new brides, Solina, Lucy, and Valerie , corner Van Helsing and kill him. Simon and Mary escape, only to be captured by Dracula shortly thereafter. On a rooftop, Dracula transforms Mary and in the process reveals his secret: he is none other than the Apostle Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus for a bribe of thirty pieces of silver. As he went to hang himself, the rope snapped and as punishment he was cursed to live for two thousand years as a vampire. After finding out that Dracula is Judas, she understands why the legendary vampire is vulnerable to silver. Two of the brides appear with Simon, Valerie having been killed by Simon after he took a wooden stick and drove its sharp end through Valerie's heart and Dracula tells Mary to bite him. However, Mary takes the opportunity to save Simon's life by faking the bite instead. Then, together Mary and Simon kill the two remaining brides. Angered by this, Dracula tries to throw Mary from the rooftop. Mary wraps some cable from a large crucifix around Dracula's neck and they both fall from the roof. Dracula hangs as he attempted to do two thousand years before, but this time the rope does not break, and he burns in the first sunlight. Mary survives the fall and is cured of her vampirism by Dracula saying "I release you" before he dies. In the end, she doubts whether the sun has truly killed Dracula. She returns him to the vault beneath Carfax Abbey and vows to watch over his ashes should he ever rise again. ===== A woman gives birth to a boy in an orphanage owned by the Widow Corney, dying as she does so. She leaves him a locket, containing a portrait of her mother, which Corney takes. Her assistant names the child Oliver Twist from his rotating alphabetical list of names. Six years later, Oliver, now working in the orphanage, requests to see his locket. Corney says he can have it when he’s twelve. Six years later, Oliver is forced on the night before his 12th birthday into drawing straws at dinner for who has to ask Corney for more food. After drawing the shortest one, she throws him out of the workhouse for daring to ask her such a question without his locket. He returns to steal it at night and heads out to London. Oliver has a dream with Dodger Once there, Oliver, hungry, is stopped from stealing an apple by a young man named Jack Dawkins, also known as the Artful Dodger, who explains that he’s a professional thief and proud of his work. He offers to take Oliver in with the band of boys he lives with and his boss, Fagin, an old and sly man who teaches the group how to steal. Upon arriving, Fagin takes Oliver's locket as Oliver is dressed and welcomed. Oliver also meets Bill Sikes-a thief and murderer to whom Fagin owes an enormous sum-and his kind girlfriend, Nancy. Dodger begins to teach Oliver about the art of thievery that same day. At night, Oliver catches Fagin admiring his treasure which he keeps hidden in a box and is threatened with death if he steals from it. However, when asked, Fagin admits that it is where he is keeping Oliver's locket. Three months later, Oliver is sent out to pick his first pocket as Dodger orchestrates the plan. While stealing a watch, Oliver is caught red-handed. Thinking quickly, Dodger grabs the watch instead and runs off with Oliver, but he escapes while Oliver is mistakenly identified as the thief. Dodger quietly hurries to court to try to rescue him, where Mr. Brownlow (the victim)'s niece, Rose, has testified for Oliver that he was not the boy, and Oliver refused to name the culprit. Rose offers Oliver to be a guest at their mansion in Grosvenor Square. There, he sees a portrait on the wall of the same lady his locket contains. When told it is Mr. Brownlow's late wife, and that they had one daughter who always carried a gold locket with that portrait, he and Rose realize that it means he may be Mr. Brownlow's grandson and her cousin. Meanwhile, Dodger manages to locate Oliver. Deciding that he knows too much about the group to be left on his own, Sikes convinces Fagin to let him kidnap Oliver with Dodger and Nancy's help. However, Nancy does so unwillingly, and Dodger refuses to put Oliver in the bag intended to be used for his abduction. Back at the hideout, Oliver confirms that he let nothing slip about the group, but tells Nancy that he loved the Brownlows. Nancy tries to return Oliver to the mansion, but is seen in the street by Sikes and forced to go back. Suspicious, Sikes hires Dodger to follow her the next day. Sikes later weasels out of Oliver that he knows where Fagin's treasure is kept. At night, he forces him to go to the Brownlow's to steal at gunpoint. Inside, Oliver purposely drops the bag of silver he's holding to wake Rose. Sikes and Oliver escape, but Mr. Brownlow sees Oliver, confirming his suspicion that he is a thief. Dodger encourages Oliver to escape if he gets the chance. The next day, Nancy goes to the Brownlows unknowingly followed by Dodger. She tells them of Oliver's abduction and agrees to return him at London Bridge at midnight. Dodger, threatened by Sikes, admits of overhearing the agreement. Still wanting Oliver to be free, he takes him to the bridge himself to throw Sikes off the trail. Unfortunately, Nancy, unaware of Dodger's plan, is murdered there by a furious Sikes who accuses her of double-crossing him. Meanwhile, Oliver has gone back to the hideout to retrieve his locket. Sikes walks in the door and sees the treasure. As he attempts to flee with it himself, Fagin arrives, followed by Dodger who stops Sikes, furious at Nancy's murder. Nancy's dead body has been found, and the police follow Sikes's dog to the hideout. Sikes locks the door, takes the box and Oliver (as a hostage) up to the roof, and leaves Dodger and Fagin below. On the roof, Oliver grabs the box from Sikes, who turns on him and slips. His neck gets caught in a coil of rope, and he is hung by the noose on the spot as the police watch. Dodger is arrested by them for his pilfering, and while Fagin negotiates with Oliver for the locket, ultimately returns it. The locket finally proves that Oliver is in fact Mr. Brownlow’s grandson by the matching of the portraits. After bidding a fond farewell to the arrested Dodger promising to see him again someday, Oliver is last seen sleeping happily in his new home. ===== The Pyramid is a political allegory set in ancient Egypt. It is the tale of the conception and construction of the Cheops pyramid but also of absolute political power. ===== Shiwan Khan, heir to Genghis Khan, is in the United States to steal military technology in order to build his own army with the intent of conquering the world. He hypnotises Paul Brent of Globe Aircraft through the electronic lights of a nearby billboard. He orders him to create a larger production run of aircraft than originally intended, with the excess being sent on to Shiwan Khan. By similar methods, he also acquired engines and weapons. The Shadow enters the story when Shiwan Khan attempts to dispose of Paul Brent. Working with Brent, The Shadow eventually tracks his opponent to his base of operations and apparently kills him when his escape plane crashes into the river. ===== Set in Peru during the 1950s, it is the story of an 18-year-old student who falls for a 32-year-old divorcee. The novel is based on the author's real life experience. Mario, an aspiring writer, works at a radio station, Panamericana, writing news bulletins alongside the disaster-obsessed Pascual. Mario has an aunt (married to a biological uncle) whose sister, Julia, has just been divorced and has come to live with some of his family members. He frequently sees her and though at first they don't get on, they start to go to movies together and gradually become romantically involved. Mario's bosses also run Panamericana's sister station, which broadcasts novelas (short-run soap operas). They're having problems buying the serials on bulk from Cuba, with batches of scripts being ruined and quality being poor, and hence they hire a highly eccentric Bolivian scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho to write the serials. The novel chronicles the scriptwriter's rise and fall in tandem with the protagonist's affair and includes episodes of Pedro's serials, in prose form. These scripts tend to shed light on what the latter is like and has done, and change depending on what he's going through. ===== Written from the viewpoint of Nathan ('the Thirteenth Disciple'), the heavily footnoted book presents an adventure and romance storyline against the backdrop of the 1st century Roman Empire. Nathan's travels lead him to Rome to fight as a retiarius, and on his return to Palestine to become involved with the Apostles, the Zealots and the Essenes. He loves Shelomith (the disciple Salome, depicted in the novel as a prostitute), who does not return his affections due to her unrequited love for Yeshua (Jesus). ===== After his Dutch trading ship Erasmus and its surviving crew is blown ashore by a violent storm at Anjiro on the east coast of Japan, Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, the ship's English navigator, is taken prisoner by samurai warriors. When he is later temporarily released, he must juggle his self-identity as an Englishman associated with other Europeans in Japan, namely Portuguese traders and Jesuit priests, with the alien Japanese culture into which he has been thrust and now must adapt to in order to survive. Being an Englishman, Blackthorne is at both religious and political odds with his enemy, the Portuguese, and the Catholic Church's Jesuit order. The Catholic foothold in Japan puts Blackthorne, a Protestant and therefore a heretic, at a political disadvantage. But this same situation also brings him to the attention of the influential Lord Toranaga, who mistrusts this foreign religion now spreading in Japan. He is competing with other samurai warlords of similar high-born rank, among them Catholic converts, for the very powerful position of Shōgun, the military governor of Japan. Through an interpreter, Blackthorne later reveals certain surprising details about the Portuguese traders and their Jesuit overlords which forces Toranaga to trust him; they forge a tenuous alliance, much to the chagrin of the Jesuits. To help the Englishman learn their language and to assimilate to Japanese culture, Toranaga assigns a teacher and interpreter to him, the beautiful Lady Mariko, a Catholic convert, and one of Toranaga's most trusted retainers. Blackthorne soon becomes infatuated with her, but Mariko is already married, and their budding romance is ultimately doomed by future circumstances. Blackthorn also ends up saving the life of a Portuguese counterpart, Pilot Vasco Rodrigues, who becomes his friend despite being on opposite sides. Blackthorne saves Toranaga's life by audaciously helping him escape from Osaka Castle and the clutches of his longtime enemy, Lord Ishido. To reward the Englishman for saving his life, and to forever bind him to the warlord, Toranaga makes Blackthorne hatamoto, a personal retainer, and gifts him with a European flintlock pistol. Later, Blackthorne again saves Toranaga's life during an earthquake by pulling him from a fissure that opened and swallowed the warlord, nearly killing him. Having proved his worth and loyalty to the warlord, during a night ceremony held before a host of his assembled vassals and samurai, Lord Toranaga makes Blackthorne a samurai; he awards him the two swords, 20 kimonos, 200 of his own samurai, and an income-producing fief, the fishing village Anjiro where Blackthorne was first blown ashore with his ship and crew. Blackthorne's repaired ship Erasmus, under guard by Toranaga's samurai and anchored near Kyoto, is lost to fire, which quickly spread when the ships' night lamps are knocked over by a storm tidal surge. During a later attack on Osaka Castle by the secretive Amida Tong (Ninja assassins), secretly paid for by Lord Ishido, Mariko is killed while saving Blackthorne's life, who is temporarily blinded by the black powder explosion that kills his lover. Lord Yabu is forced to commit seppuku for his involvement with the ninja attack and personally murdering Captain Yoshinaka. Right before he dies, Yabu gives Blackthorne his katana, and Yabu's nephew, Omi, becomes the daimyō of Izu. Blackthorne supervises the construction of a new ship, The Lady, with funds Mariko left to him in her will for this very purpose. Blackthorne is observed at a distance by Lord Toranaga; a voice-over reveals the warlord's inner thoughts: It was he who ordered the Erasmus destroyed by fire, in order to keep Blackthorne safe from his Portuguese enemies who feared his actions with the ship (since Blackthorne still has much to teach Toranaga); and, if need be, the warlord will destroy the ship Blackthorne is currently building. He also discloses Mariko's secret but vital role in the grand deception of his enemies, and, as a result, how she was destined to die, helping to assure his coming final victory. The warlord knows that Blackthorne's karma brought him to Japan and that the Englishman, now his trusted retainer and samurai, is destined never to leave. Toranaga also knows it is his karma to become Shōgun. In an epilogue it is revealed that Toranaga and his army are triumphant at the Battle of Sekigahara; he captures and then disgraces his old rival, Lord Ishido (by burying him up to his neck), and takes 40,000 enemy heads, after which he then fulfills his destiny by becoming Shōgun. A different voice-over narrates that when the Emperor of Japan offered Toranaga the title of Shogun, he 'reluctantly agreed'. ===== I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and disabled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage.Bloom, p. 19 The community of Stamps, Arkansas, is the setting for a large portion of the book. Many of the problems Maya encounters in her childhood stem from the overt racism of her white neighbors. Although Momma is relatively wealthy because she owns the general store at the heart of Stamps' Black community, the white children of their town hassle Maya's family relentlessly. One of these "powhitetrash" girls, for example, reveals her pubic hair to Momma in a humiliating incident. Early in the book, Momma hides Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin to protect him from Ku Klux Klan raiders. Maya has to endure the insult of her name being changed to Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at her eighth grade graduation ceremony disparages the Black audience by suggesting that they have limited job opportunities. A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis's championship fight, but generally, they feel the heavy weight of racist oppression. A turning point in the book occurs when Maya and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears in Stamps. He takes the two children with him when he departs, but leaves them with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, presumably by Maya's uncles. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone but her brother. Even after returning to Stamps, Maya remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, "the aristocrat of Black Stamps,"Angelou, p. 93 who encourages her through books and communication to regain her voice and soul. This coaxes Maya out of her shell. Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visits her father in southern California one summer and has some experiences pivotal to her development. She drives a car for the first time when she must transport her intoxicated father home from an excursion to Mexico. She experiences homelessness for a short time after a fight with her father's girlfriend. During Maya's final year of high school, she worries that she might be a lesbian (which she confuses due to her sexual inexperience with the belief that lesbians are also hermaphrodites). She ultimately initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She becomes pregnant, which on the advice of her brother, she hides from her family until her eighth month of pregnancy in order to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth at the end of the book. =====