From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== As Golden Witchbreed opens, Christie has arrived on the technologically backward planet of Orthe ("Carrick V"), having been sent to evaluate whether it is suitable for trade and cultural contact with Earth. But Orthe, though possessing a complex social and political structure, turns out to have deliberately reverted to more primitive technologies after a catastrophe brought about by a previous technologically advanced race, the "Golden Witchbreed" or "Goldens". Unlike the Ortheans, Christie is blonde, which engenders hostility towards her as some take her to be a Witchbreed throwback. Orthe consists largely of two continents, both of them only partially habitable since the catastrophe and linked by an archipelago of islands which supports a gigantic ruined Witchbreed structure, a kind of combined city and viaduct called the Rasrhe-y-Meluur. The main concentration of Ortheans is in the Suthai-Telestre or Southland (the habitable southern portion of the Northern continent), also known as the Hundred Thousand (meaning the approximately 100,000 telestres or small self-supporting communities which are the basis of Orthean society; they elect a ruler, the Crown, every ten years who rules from the island city of Tathcaer). Isolated cities of very different culture cling to the coast of the desert Southern continent. Male and female Ortheans have social parity and authority; Orthean children do not become male or female until puberty and a few remain latent throughout their lives - children and latents are referred to by the neutral pronoun ke. Much of the novel concerns Christie's odyssey and adventures across the Suthai-Telestre, in the course of which she encounters fragmentary remains of the Witchbreed's civilization and is frequently in danger of her life. Early in the novel she befriends the charismatic Ruric Orhlandis, the one-armed female commander of the Southland army. After (just) surviving her journey through the Southlands Christie is summoned to the southern-continent city of Kasabaarde, whose Brown Tower is ruled by the mysterious 'Hexenmeister' who preserves the memory of all generations on Orthe, going back to the very alien race who first landed there and died out but brought the humanoid Witchbreed as their servitors. The half-breed survivors of the Witchbreed now live in the far southern city of Kel Harantish. Eventually Christie learns that Ruric has been behind the many attempts to kill or frame her, fearing what the corrupting Earth influence might do to Orthe. Ruric is imprisoned, escapes, fights a bitter, hopeless civil war and is driven into exile. Christie leaves the planet in sombre mood. In Ancient Light, Christie returns to Orthe ten years later, this time as an unwilling representative of an Earth company that is looking for the lost technological secrets of the almost-extinct Witchbreed race that had destroyed its own civilization in Orthe's distant past, in order to exploit them. Political cohesion has been lost and, at the same time, war is developing between two groups on Orthe, worsened by the introduction of high-technology weapons. The novel is bleaker in tone than Golden Witchbreed. Characters from that novel are re-encountered, older, changed, more cynical; others are dead. Christie experiences visions of the fall of the Golden Empire. She returns to Kasabaarde and discovers the new Hexenmeister is Ruric Orhlandis. Violence and killing spread: eventually in confused fighting in Tathcaer Ruric is killed. Christie buries her and prepares to become Hexenmeister in her stead by means of the memory transfer systems in the Brown Tower. They are destroyed before she can reach Kasabaarde by a vast explosion caused by the release of the Witchbreed weapon known as 'Ancient Light', a destroyer of organic life that leaves only crystal in its wake, leaving her with only partial memories of the lives of previous Hexenmeisters, thus preventing her (seemingly) from continuing their legacy. Category:Science fiction book series ===== After World War II, a small aristocratic family in Japan has lost all of their money. The family consists of three people: Kazuko, her brother Naoji, and their mother. Naoji is a soldier in the South Pacific and is absent throughout much of the beginning of the novel. Kazuko was married once before, but she divorced. In the family's old house, Kazuko's mother eats rationed food. Kazuko recalls a time when she tried to burn snake eggs, thinking that they were viper eggs. It is revealed that at the time of Kazuko's father's death, there were many snakes present. Therefore, snakes have become ominous in her mother's eyes. After recalling the time Kazuko burned the eggs, she reveals that she feels a snake is growing inside of her own chest. The family eventually moves to the countryside. Kazuko begins working in the fields. She claims to be growing into a "coarse woman". Naoji eventually returns. He is addicted to opium and treats his mother and sister cruelly. He also goes out every night drinking. Kazuko finds Naoji's "Moonflower Journal," which he wrote when he had narcotic poisoning. It consists of pages upon pages of unconnected gripes about the world, and how people always lie. Kazuko falls for a novelist named Mr. Uehara. She writes three letters to him, claiming to love a man named M.C., while addressing the letter to him with two combinations of M.C. after his name. “My Chekhov” and “My Child” indicate that he was in fact the one she is referring to in the letters. He does not respond. Soon after, her mother is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Kazuko sees a black snake on the porch and remembers how her father died when one was present. She yells at it, claiming to have already felt its vengeance. It does not retreat. Her mother eventually dies. After an outing with Mr. Uehara six years after she met him, Kazuko realizes that he also is not in the best health and calls him a victim. That morning, Kazuko finds out that Naoji has committed suicide. His suicide note reveals his reasons for not wanting to live anymore. Naoji believed that humans have the right to choose whether they want to live or die. He confesses his weakness and anguish out of his birth in noble class. But he protests the idea "all man is same", insisting that Marxism affirms the priority of workers, and democracy that of personal dignity. He also tells Kazuko about a woman once loved, but had difficulty writing her name. He finally reveals that her name is Suga. His last request is that he be buried in his mother's hemp kimono, something he had wanted to wear the next summer. In the last chapter, Kazuko claims that people keep leaving her. The story ends with a letter to Mr. Uehara. She reveals that she is pregnant, and that she will happily raise the child on her own. She has thrown away the old morality and is embracing a new revolutionary way of life, like Rosa Luxemburg and Jesus coming to bring a sword in Matthew 10 that she has read, very much like what all of Japan was undergoing. She says that they are "victims of a transitional period", and ends the letter addressing Mr. Uehara once again as M.C., this time "My Comedian". ===== Felix Nasmyth, the first-person narrator, is a young man who, as he tells readers right at the beginning of the book, has "always been a quitter". Without any hopes for the future, he is persuaded by one of his few friends to take part in a "summer camp"—a secluded rural area in Mendocino County, California-and grow marijuana on a large scale. The illegal business venture seems doomed from the start, but for once Nasmyth decides to prove something to himself and follow through. In the end, after many misadventures, the venture is a failure. At the same time Nasmyth has made the acquaintance of a lovely girl and has fallen in love with her. He ends his narrative on an optimistic note, returning to the girl with plans to "plant a little seed". ===== Slick lawyer Thomas Farrell (Robert Taylor) has made a career of defending Chicago mobsters in court. At a party for mob boss Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb), he meets chorus girl Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse), who accepted $100 to attend the party and another $400 from another gangster, Louis Canetto (John Ireland), from his gambling winnings. Farrell gives her a ride home, each expressing disapproval at the way the other makes money. Vicki finds her roommate Joy (Myrna Hansen) dead by suicide, pregnant by a married criminal. After a long night of questioning by police, Farrell asks that Vicki be given a raise and featured number on stage at the Golden Rooster club, which Rico owns. The lawyer and Vicki begin a romance. She's struck by the way Farrell, who is lame, uses his disability to manipulate jurors while getting Canetto off on a murder charge. A surgeon is found who might be able to properly mend Farrell's hip, so he goes to Stockholm for the operation. A cold-blooded killer, Cookie La Motte (Corey Allen), is coming up for trial, but Farrell's frame of mind has changed and he would rather not defend such a man. Rico threatens violence against Vicki if the lawyer doesn't do his job. Cookie jumps bail, tired of the long wait in court, and plans to eliminate prosecuting attorney Stewart (Kent Smith) while at-large. Cookie and his men are gunned down by other racketeers, however, at an Indiana diner. Stewart decides to pressure the mob by going after anyone connected to it. He begins by placing Farrell under arrest. Canetto goes to Vicki offering to protect her, but takes her prisoner instead. The district attorney releases Farrell, hoping to smoke out the mobsters who employ him. Canetto, caught in a crossfire, is killed. Farrell then confronts Rico, but the gangster picks up a bottle of acid that he intends to disfigure Vicki with if the lawyer refuses to do what he says. A fight erupts, with the bottle smashing into Rico's face. Eyes and face burning, he plunges from a window to his death. ===== The story of Way of the Samurai takes place in 1878, after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the start of the Meiji period, during the Satsuma Rebellion, a time when the samurai who were once at the top of Japanese society are all but outlawed. The game begins with the player, taking the role of a wandering rōnin by the name of Kenji, arriving in a fictional outpost called Rokkotsu Pass. Rokkotsu Pass is a sparsely populated village, whose main attractions include a railway crossing, a small restaurant, and an iron foundry. Three separate factions are competing for control of the Pass, each with their own agenda. The first is the new centralized government, whose army has been sweeping through the country securing power from the local warlords. The government army is well-funded and equipped with modern weaponry, including firearms and cannons, making them formidable opponents for the former samurai lords. The second faction is the Kurou family, who previously held sway in Rokkotsu Pass and continue to exert their influence on the people through extortion and intimidation. Led by Tesshin Kurou, the family is resisting the government's attempt to take control of the pass, however the samurai cannot compete with the modern army. In an attempt to secure funds, the Kurou intend to sell the iron foundry to the government. This decision by the Kurou puts them in direct opposition to the Akadama clan, whose leader, Kitcho, is the illegitimate son of Tesshin Kurou. The Akadama wish to expel the government forces from the pass, and plan to sabotage the Kurou family's attempt to sell the foundry. Caught in the middle of this power struggle are the village peasants, who are likely to be oppressed regardless of who is in control. ===== Emily Lindstrom (Evan Rachel Wood), an aspiring 14-year-old violinist, spends her summer practicing for an audition to get into the InterMountain Youth Symphony Orchestra in Salt Lake City, while her two best friends, Laurel and Jenny (RuDee Lipscomb and Haley McCormick), go off to camp. She also runs a secret-keeping business, in which other children give her fifty cents to tell her a secret, which she promises to keep; this is a talent that she is normally very good at. Meanwhile, her parents are expecting another baby and seem to care more about it than her. Philip Lenox (Michael Angarano) and his family move in next door to the Lindstroms. While helping his family unpack, he accidentally breaks a valued chess piece, unknown to his parents, and is caught by Emily as he attempts to bury it in the front garden. He pays her fifty cents to keep his deed a secret, and to hide the piece in her treasure trunk (along with other broken property from her other clients, in paper bags labeled with their names). When Emily invites Philip to join her in an afternoon tea session using her family's expensive and irreplaceable china, they accidentally break two of the teacups. She is faced with the challenge of keeping her own secret and having someone else know about it. Meanwhile, as he begins falling for her, his older brother, David (David Gallagher), enters the picture. He had been at tennis camp, but was expelled because he allegedly got drunk and was involved in a car accident. Philip tells her this family secret in exchange that she tells him a secret about her secret greetings with her friends. She starts getting upset, and says that a person who drinks and drives will do it again, before storming off. She then starts to lose her secret-keeping talent as she falls for David. He also begins falling for her, which makes Philip jealous. During her mother's baby shower, David tries to talk to Emily and she reveals that she knows how he was expelled from tennis camp. Afterward, she goes to get her violin from the roof and falls to the ground, necessitating a trip to the hospital. While she is there, her mother gives birth to her new sister, Grace. Everyone is by her hospital bed except David, who is eavesdropping behind the curtain. They ask if Grace looks like she did when she was a baby, and she reveals that she is adopted. Her birth parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was 10 months old, and it's considered a miracle that she lived. The driver was sentenced to a year in prison and, less than a month after being released, crashed into someone else's car and killed himself. Upon hearing this, David feels very guilty and understands why she despises him so much. After she is released from the hospital, she and Philip return all of the paper bags to her clients. To thank him, she kisses him on the cheek. Then David appears, and gives him her first official kiss. ===== Watts Davies (Will Rothhaar) is a 14-year-old kid who decides to take up go-kart racing, he finds a new pursuit and begins to reconnect with his father, Vic (Randy Quaid), whom he has been clashing with since the death of his mother. Watts has an intense rivalry with Rodney Wells (Joe Dinicol), his enemy and local bully. Rodney stops at nothing to make Watts look bad; and he and his crew are not above getting Watts arrested. A little later, after more trouble, Watts sadly watches as Rodney and his dad buys the kart that he had originally set his eyes upon. In an effort to bond with Watts, Vic (who is a former racer himself) helps him build a kart together and begins to train him in the fine art of kart racing, in which Watts proves to be a natural. With Vic's help and training, and a newly built kart, Watts enters the race. Throughout the film as Vic teaches Watts how to compete, the young driver begins to fall for Dahlia (Amanda De Martinis), an attractive and rebellious local girl and a graffiti artist. ===== Steampunk tells the story of a young, poor fisherman, Cole Blaquesmith, who falls in love with a teacher, Miss Fiona in the mid-18th century. Fiona is an upper-class woman, who cares for the lower class and tries to educate them, which isn't well received by her peers. Fiona gives Cole an education, despite his lack of proper manners and his initial lack of interest for literature and arts. She also opens a school for the underprivileged. The school is burned down because Fiona was teaching the lower classes to think for themselves, an unpopular notion with the people in power. Over time, Fiona starts coughing and finally falls ill. No rational doctor can help her and, in his desperation, Cole takes her to doctor Absinthe, a mad genius, who is shunned by everybody else for performing horrible experiments, including grafting pieces of animals onto other animals. Absinthe promises to save Fiona, but needs Cole to do something for him to save her. He reveals the Engine, a machine capable of traveling through time (note: it is possible that the Engine is but a part of the time machine, though a vital, irreplaceable part). He tells Cole to travel to the future and take back all books on science and any objects that he can find. Cole travels to the future and lands in London in 1954. He does as Absinthe asks him, but Absinthe betrays him and doesn't help Fiona, who succumbs to her disease. Cole feels like his heart is ripped out and decides to give Absinthe a little payback: he takes the Engine and buries it beneath Stonehenge, believing the Engine is as important to Absinthe as Fiona was to him. Absinthe is furious that Cole has hidden the Engine. He rips out Cole's actual heart and all goes dark for Cole. The first issue of Steampunk begins 100 years later: Cole wakes up in a strange coffin during the Victorian Age. His coffin was discovered by two grave-robbers, Randy and Sköm, who are attacked by Dog Soldiers, half man, half beast. Cole attacks the soldiers in a daze and defeats them, then turns on the grave-robbers, but loses consciousness. Randy takes him to safety, hoping to make some money off of Cole. When he wakes up, Cole's memory is a mess, he can recall little of his past and when he looks at himself, he's in shock: his chest is now a metal furnace and his right arm is a gigantic mechanical claw. He is informed that London is now under the rule of Lord Absinthe and has been for the last century. London is unrecognizable: dark smoke obscures the sky and leaky pipes circle ramshackle villages. Poor people are forced to live underground. The aristocracy lives at the upper levels, unaware and uncaring about anything besides themselves. Those with the money and desire can buy animal or mechanical parts to enhance their bodies as they wish. Death and destruction have become entertainment for them. Cole becomes an unwilling inspiration to the Underground Resistance led by Sir Robert Peel, while Absinthe hears of Cole's return and sends his best assassins to capture him: the demonic Faust and Victoria, a woman who would have become Queen Victoria if it had not been for Cole and Absinthe's actions. ===== In the fictional town of Putnam's Landing, Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman) is slowly going insane because his wife Grace (Joanne Woodward) insists on attending every civic committee meeting. When the government selects their town for the site of a new missile base, Grace joins a committee to prevent the building of it. Harry is made the liaison for the military, and Grace's activities cause him no end of trouble. Added to the dilemma is Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins), whose efforts to get Harry for herself lead to dizzying recriminations and misunderstandings. ===== Eddie Ogden is a 14-year-old teenager at Cedar Valley Jr. High School, and plays baseball for the Groundhogs, which is coached by his father. At the same time, Eddie likes making food, especially Eddie Dogs, which he preps after every game for him and his friends. Holding high expectations for him, Eddie's father wants him to win a scholarship for his baseball skills. Though Eddie likes baseball, he discovers an attraction to cooking after watching Bobby Flay on The Food Network. When the time comes for he and his friends to sign up for electives, Eddie encourages his friends that they should all sign up for computer science, as it is an easy elective. Eddie starts to question his choice however after he sees the home economics classroom. Eddie tricks his friends D.B. and Frankie into signing it so they all end up in home economics together. Eddie and his friends goof around and get into trouble frequently in class, but Eddie learns of a million dollar cook-off that can get him into a culinary institute. He signs up secretly, afraid of what his friends and family will think. Surprisingly, his mother learns of Eddie's interest in culinary arts and encourages him to go on. When Eddie's teacher announces to the class who is in the finals, everyone is shocked that Eddie actually entered and won. As a result, he is teased and humiliated relentlessly by his friends and the kids at school, as well as his brothers. Eddie starts spending more time on cooking and less on baseball. When his father learns of the cook-off, he is extremely disappointed. Eddie repeatedly switches between cooking and baseball as he struggles to decide between pleasing his father and pursuing his dream. In the process, he is laughed at and humiliated by nearly everyone, loses all of his friends except for Hannah who understands what its like not to be able to live up to a parent's expectations, and displeases his father. As it turns out, the day of the baseball finals and the day of the cook-off are the same, leaving Eddie to make the choice to please his father or follow his dreams. Eddie stops by the building where the competition is being held, only to find that his idol, Bobby Flay, is hosting. Ultimately, Eddie goes to the game for the sake of his father and friends, but cannot concentrate. Seeing the state he is in, his friends finally accept that he loves cooking and tell him to go to the cook- off and let them win on their own for once. With his friends now behind him, Eddie and his mother go to the cook-off, leaving his father stunned by his decision. He arrives an hour late and has no one to help him but he is determined to try his best. His friends watch the cook-off on a portable television in the dugout and see that Eddie is struggling as he has less time and no one to help. After hearing this, and seeing Hannah's mom finally supporting her, his father purposely gets himself kicked out of the game to go and help Eddie. Eddie is surprised by this, but his father proves to be a huge help during the cook off. Together, the two manage to complete the cook-off just in time. Eddie loses, but when confronted by Frankie, Bobby Flay says that he believes Eddie should have won. Eddie's father now supports him wholeheartedly and comforts him, telling him no matter what he does, he will support him from now on. Eddie's brothers even show up to finally support him after seeing the cook-off on TV. Eddie's team wins without him as his best friend, D.B., finally gets a hit. Eddie and his friends go to celebrate at his house and Eddie's cooking rival Bridget Simon (who won the cook-off) comes too and seems to share her trophy with Eddie. ===== When the babies were watching a science fiction oriented movie about a time-traveling machine, Angelica shows them her new "tapiyokie" (karaoke) machine. She forbids the babies to play with it, but, as with many of her toys, they do. Angelica is angry and chases the babies into a closet, with Angelica on the outside. Angelica starts counting to ten for them to come out, and Tommy suggests they go to "the foocher" (the future) so that they will be grown up enough for Angelica not to boss them around anymore. Angelica says multiple random numbers in incorrect order before reaching 10, so this gives the babies enough time to rig the karaoke machine into a time-travel device. At the exact moment Angelica reaches ten, Tommy pushes a button, and there is a swirling orange vortex, and the babies see themselves in the future (in their imaginations). They are now ten years older. The group stumbles out of the closet, and teenage Angelica demands her Emica CD back (Emica is a famous popstar that all the kids like). They want the CD to learn each song in hopes that Emica will call one of them up to sing with her. At the beginning of this part of the episode, nine-year-old Dil is shown to have an unusual personality, and Angelica states that it is because Phil and Lil dropped him on his head when he was a baby. Didi is washing dishes and Spike is now too old and overweight. Stu says that he has a disco dance on the same day that the group has their concert. Stu also states that he will wear his lucky zodiac necklace, one similar to Emica's. When the group leaves for school called Jim's Jr. High, Tommy, Dil and Angelica's grandfather and Stu and Drew's father, Lou, is now a bus driver. Angelica's friend, Samantha Shane (whom Chuckie has a crush on), tells Angelica that she is going to the Emica concert. Angelica lies that despite having the same last name, she and Tommy aren't related. She also says that she is going to wear the zodiac necklace that Emica (and Stu) wears. She needs Tommy to steal his father's necklace so she will look like she told the truth to her friend. She says that if he does so, she will introduce Samantha to Chuckie. Tommy plans to ask Stu if he can borrow the necklace for the night, but quickly realizes it is easier said than done when Stu says he cannot dance without it. Tommy makes a fake necklace (a round dog biscuit wrapped in gold foil with the zodiac sign drawing) and switches it out for the real necklace. Unexpectedly, Spike eats the decoy overnight, then mistakes the real necklace for another one and takes it. Stu finds out the next morning, and Tommy takes the blame for stealing it. Upset and reluctant to do so, Stu and Didi ground Tommy from attending the Emica concert, much to Dil's dismay, and because of this, Angelica refuses to introduce Chuckie to Samantha. The group is sitting in their old sandbox, feeling gloomy that their friend is going to miss the concert. Stu and Didi hire Susie to babysit Tommy while they are at the dance, as she is not able to attend the Emica concert. Lil finds the necklace in the sandbox, as Spike buried it there once he discovered it was not a dog biscuit like the decoy was, and they need to return the necklace to Stu. Tommy is reluctant to do so because he is not allowed to leave the house. Dil encourages Tommy to do otherwise. Susie (who is watching the same sci-fi film as the babies did at the beginning of the episode) catches them as they leave the house, stating that she knows when they are always up to something. She then eagerly goes with the gang to return the necklace. On the way, they ride their bikes by the concert, where Angelica, who is nervously facing peer pressure from Samantha, runs towards them to get the necklace. Tommy confronts Angelica and tells her that he cannot give her the necklace because he should not have agreed to their deal and that she should've introduced Samantha to Chuckie in the first place, and urges her, to tell the truth. Wanting the necklace but ultimately feeling remorse, Angelica admits to Samantha that the necklace belonged to Tommy's dad and also reveals that she and Tommy are cousins. As a way to try to make up, she introduces Chuckie to Samantha as "Charlie Finster, the III." Samantha shares her experiences with braces to "Charlie," as he is wearing them also, and the two are smitten with each other. As one more act of kindness, Angelica gives her ticket to Susie. They return Stu's necklace in the middle of his performance, and Stu can dance. The kids then head off to the concert, where Angelica decides to head home and let the others enjoy it. Tommy offers to give Angelica his ticket as a thanks, but as she declines, their grandfather then arrives with two tickets. One was intended for his wife, Lulu, but he gives it to Angelica because she is away on a trip. In the stadium, Emica starts to sing. She calls Tommy up to sing, but Angelica begs to be up too, and Emica agrees. After a short-lived period of getting along with singing (and flashbacks of clips from the entire gang's baby years), Angelica and Tommy start to fight over the microphone. They struggle to what seems as backstage but travel back into the closet where the episode first began (back in reality), where Angelica and the babies are fighting over the karaoke machine and end up breaking it. Angelica yells at them, saying that they have to stay away from her items for the next "bazillion" years. Tommy states he is glad that Angelica will be nicer to them in ten more years, but he spoke too soon. Angelica finds Dil's drool over her player and reaches her breaking point, and then the episode ends with Angelica chasing the babies before Chuckie asks Tommy if ten years is going to be a very long time and Angelica screams "Aunt Didi!" ===== Natalia Ríos is a lovely young girl who lives with her aunt Inés. Her aunt’s husband, Arcadio, is a shameless man who tries to rape Natalia and ends up selling her into white slavery to a gang of thugs. One of them, Valente, takes pity on the innocent young girl. He saves her and they both run away, but are soon found by the criminals. Valente confronts them to give Natalia a chance to escape and is badly wounded. Natalia is able to get away and goes back to her aunt, only to find her on her deathbed. Inés tells her that, from now on, she must live with Doña Carlota at the home of the wealthy Serrano family. When Natalia arrives at the mansion, Don Teodoro and his daughter Sandra welcome her with open arms, but his wife Apolonia, Doña Carlota’s daughter, treats her with contempt. Sebastián lives with his adoptive family: Amparo, who has always rejected him; her son Eduardo, who loves and is loyal to Sebastián, thinking they are really brothers; and the grandmother, Doña Cruz. One night, Eduardo is attacked by a drunkard and Sebastián defends him, leaving the attacker unconscious in the street. A street bum who witnessed the fight then robs and kills the man, but Sebastián is blamed for the murder and sent to prison. Years later, Natalia and Eduardo become friends in college. She is truly fond of him, but only as a friend. Eduardo, however, falls madly in love with her. Sebastián is released for good behavior and meets Natalia during an embarrassing incident where he must defend her from his inebriated friends. Even though they haven’t met again after that first encounter, Natalia and Sebastián cannot stop thinking about each other, and Eduardo and Sebastián do not realize that they have fallen in love with the same woman. Sebastián is desperate because no one will give him a job, so he decides to try his luck in Mexico City. There, fate brings him face to face with Natalia once more, and they finally confess their love for each other. Natalia promises to find him work at the Serrano family’s tuna cannery, where she herself is employed, and they both go back to Comala. Meanwhile, Apolonia is searching for the illegitimate son she had in her youth and gave up for adoption to Amparo’s husband. Amparo sees the chance to benefit her own child and tells Apolonia that Eduardo is her son. In an attempt to win his love, Apolonia gives him a job at the cannery and decides to make all his wishes come true. When she learns that Eduardo is in love with Natalia, Apolonia does everything in her power to force her to marry him, but Natalia’s love belongs to Sebastián and she will not give in to Apolonia’s pressure. It is only when Eduardo falls gravely ill and is not expected to live long that Natalia must decide whether she should marry him out of compassion, or be true to her heart and defend her love for Sebastian "Against All Odds". ===== The story follows a team of pirate mercenaries known as the Lagoon Company, that smuggles goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the early to mid 1990s.In the El Baile de la Muerte arc, the tombstone of Diego Jose San Fernando Lovelace showed that he died in the year 1991, although the North American translation/publication showed that he died in 1996. Also, in the same arc, American soldiers are seen using EO Tech holographic weapons sights, which were not developed until the mid-to-late 1990s. Their base of operations is located in the fictional harbor city of Roanapur in east Thailand near the border of Cambodia (somewhere in the Amphoe Mueang Trat district, likely on the mainland north/northeast of the Ko Chang island or on the island itself).Based on the map sen in episode 26, at 6:32 seconds in The city is home to the Japanese Yakuza, the Chinese Triad, the Russian mafia, the Colombian cartel, the Italian mafia, a wide assortment of pickpockets, thugs, mercenaries, thieves, prostitutes, assassins, and gunmen. The city also has a large Vietnamese refugee population following the Vietnamese refugees exodus after the Communist takeover of Vietnam in 1975. Lagoon Company transports goods for various clients in the American made Elco- type PT boat Black Lagoon. It has a particularly friendly relationship with the Russian crime syndicate Hotel Moscow. The team takes on a variety of missions—which may involve violent firefights, hand-to-hand combat, and nautical battles—in various Southeast Asian locations, even going as far as Phu Quoc island of Vietnam. When they are not working, the members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur which is often destroyed in firefights. ===== The story is about 6 (briefly 5) friends who run a detective company, named Soh & Co, in an old storeroom behind Alvin Soh's mother's jewelry shop. A large sign hangs outside proudly proclaiming: SOH & CO INVESTIGATORS We investigate anything No case too big or too small They are frequently roped into solving crimes that baffle the police by their suspicious clients, frowned upon by their friend in the police, Sergeant Soo, as well as Alvin's mother, Gracie Soh. ===== In 1975, a cult called Unity Fields commits mass suicide by fire at the behest of its psychopathic leader, Franklin Harris. Only one young woman named Cynthia, a child at the time of the fire, refuses to commit suicide and barely survives the burning of the house where Unity Fields' cultists lived. Nevertheless, she lies in a coma for thirteen years. After awakening in a hospital, Cynthia is plagued by horrific flashbacks of her childhood at Unity Fields, and is forced to attend experimental group therapy sessions for borderline personality disorder at the facility, led by Dr. Alex Karmen. Karmen is not sure that Cynthia belongs inside the group's dynamic, but his peer and mentor, Dr. Berrisford, convinces him to help Cynthia to gradually accostume to urban life in a world that has changed a lot in thirteen years. Eventually, Alex sympathizes with Cynthia's story and tries to help her overcome her fears and feelings of estrangement. Cynthia is disturbed by a vision she has of Harris drowning Lana, another patient, in a baptismal ceremony; moments later, Lana is found drowned in a swimming pool. Cynthia's visions become more vivid, and Harris begins to appear to her with his flesh burnt. When her roommate, Miriam, is discharged from the hospital, Cynthia has a vision of Harris in the elevator with her; however, the doors close before she is able to warn her. Miriam is found dead on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, having leapt from a window in what appears to be a suicide. Alex reassures Cynthia that she is not to blame for the deaths, but she is frequently visited by visions of Harris, who claims to have killed his friends and pressures Cynthia to commit suicide, saying that the only way to stop anyone from dying is to take her own life and join him in and Unity Fields' victims in the afterlife. A male and female patient who are lovers are later killed by the blades of an industrial fan in the utility room of the hospital, which Cynthia also attributes to Harris. She believes Harris has come back from his death to kill those around her. Ralph, a troubled masochist patient with tendency for violent outbursts, becomes enamored with Cynthia; founding himself on the edge after the deaths of his fellow members in the group, knocks down a policeman who was watching him, and goes to talk to Cynthia, who was spending the night with Dr. Karmen in order to feel safe. When he is distracted, Ralph and Cynthia take an elevator to the basement of the hospital. There, during an apparent episode of psicosis and violence, he commits suicide by stabbing himself multiple times in the abdomen. Awakening from sedation after the incident, Cynthia finds Harris sitting in her room, calling her his "love child," and urging her to commit suicide. Shortly after, Harris apparently visits Gilda (a clairvoyant patient who asked Cynthia to fight the person who is haunting her, and to stay alive) in her room. Instead of allowing him to kill her, she drinks formaldehyde she stole from a supply room, effectively killing herself. Meanwhile, Dr. Karmen discovers his corrupt peer, Dr. Berrisford, has intentionally laced the therapy group's drugs with psychogenic substances, in the hope that it will effectively make the patients suicidal, and thus corroborate Berrisford's research. Alex realizes that Cynthia's suicide is the ultimate goal for Berrisford, so he orders the nurses to call the police and Detective Wasserman, who was investigating what happened at Unity Fields before the suicides began. Alex confronts Cynthia, insisting her visions of Harris are not real. He is surprised by Berrisford from behind, who knocks him out and takes Cynthia with him. Dr. Karmen wakes up and pulls the hospital's emergency alarm, which elicits chaos. Cynthia goes to the rooftop, where Alex finds her standing on the ledge, with Berrisford at his side, encouraging her to jump. She leaps from the building, but before hitting the ground below, awakens back at the house in which the Unity Fields members committed suicide. There, she is confronted by Harris, who welcomes her; however, it is only a vision, and she awakens to Alex holding her by the arm as they both dangle over the ledge. Berrisford, knowing that Dr. Karmen has discovered his plot, stabs Alex's hand and attempts to push him to his death as well. His attempt is thwarted by the arrival of the police and Wasserman, who help Alex and Cynthia to climb back. Berrisford uses the distraction to grab one of the cops revolver, and readily insists that Dr. Karmen is responsible for altering the patients' medication and the suicides. Alex explains the police that things are the other way around and shows how Berrisford stabbed his hand. Knowing that all of his schemes have failed, Berrisford pulls the stolen revolver and pretends to commit suicide, but quickly points the gun towards Alex. Before he shoots, Cynthia finally confront his fear of Harris, realizing that Berrisford is a totally different person, and reacts by charging and pushing him over the ledge to his death. The authorities retire from the rooftop. While being comforted there by Dr. Karmen, Cynthia has another brief vision of Harris climbing back from the edge of the building and trying to grab her, which scares her for a second. Alex shakes Cynthia and reassures her that her nightmares are over and there is nothing to fear anymore. She calms down and they both tightly embrace one another. ===== In 1962 a seal drowns in a fishing net cast by financially struggling fisherman Billy Baker, much to his fury. He and the other local fishermen discuss shooting the seals as a way to improve their flagging fishing season. Toni Whitney, a seven-year- old girl, and her Rockport, Maine family subsequently adopt the seal's orphaned newborn pup, naming it Andre. The vet doesn't hold out much hope, but Toni incites him to survive, with the promise that she will be his best friend forever, and that she will always take care of him. After several failed attempts to get him to take a bottle, Toni's father, Harry, the harbor master, constructs an "artificial mother" for him out of wetsuit material, a bucket, and two feeding bottles, which he finally accepts, ensuring his survival. As Andre grows up, Toni forms an inseparable bond with him, even taking him to school for show and tell, with the help of Harry and the permission of her teacher. He becomes attached to the Whitneys, and especially to Toni. He lives in the harbor, learns tricks, and attracts a huge local following of fans. The irony of his success as an entertainer further angers Billy, who becomes increasingly jealous of Andre's and the Whitneys' success and esteem within the village. Relations between Harry and Billy deteriorate rapidly. Meanwhile, Billy's son, Mark, and Toni's sister, Paula, become romantically involved, increasing tension between Paula and Harry over Andre. Mark and Billy have a strained relationship as it is. Under pressure from his family and the locals, Harry reluctantly makes the decision to release Andre into the wild once he is weaned, but reconsiders and does not go through with it when he encounters the body of a seal covered in bullet holes at the place where he had planned to release him. In his first winter, Andre escapes the confines of the barn, and the water home that Harry built for him when the harbor froze over. He cuts himself badly, leaving a trail of blood which the Whitneys discover upon realizing that he is missing, and remains gone for the winter. However, he returns in spring, physically weak but unchanged in character, and recovers quickly from his ordeal. As Andre gets older, he continues to be scapegoat for the local fishermen, and for Paula, as he takes up more and more of Harry's time and affections. He misses her performance (which he told her he would not miss for the world) in the local Miss Liberty beauty pageant, because he has to protect Andre from a drunken Billy, who is trying to kill him with a pitchfork. Harry's relations with his son, Steve, fade into the background as he comes down harshly on him for minor transgressions, and fails to keep up with what is going on in his life. When Paula and Mark are discovered smoking in the shed when Andre exits it in a fit of coughing, Harry permanently bans Mark's presence on the Whitneys' grounds, and his and Paula's relationship. Paula decides she is leaving home, raging that Harry doesn't care about her, and that she hates him, to the anger and deep concern of her mother, Thalice. Mark tells her he knows a way to make Andre go away so that he'll never come back. Harry's job also suffers. He fails to call meetings, never checks moorings, and his relations with the fishermen become ever more strained. He also attracts the ongoing attention of the federal government, who send their inspector, Jack Adams, to inform him that he is violating the law by keeping a wild animal in captivity, as a pet. He insists that Andre is there by his own choice, but that it's too dangerous in the wild during winter. Jack pays two visits to the Whitneys' home, increasingly emphatic that Harry faces court and even jail if he does not give Andre up. However, Andre is teaching him about the intelligence and abilities of seals, and despite the risks, he is determined that nothing will put an end to this learning curve. At one point Andre saves his life when he is underwater checking a mooring, which turns out to be entangled in an active explosive. Eventually, Thalice manages to impress upon Harry the high cost of continuing his relations with Andre in the setup that they have, and he agrees to call Jack, so that he can relocate Andre to the aquarium in Boston, where he will be safe, cared for, and have plenty of company. However, before he can tell Toni, the telephone rings, and she goes down to the harbor. There she discovers that Paula and Mark have taken Andre, commandeered a boat, and are heading out to sea as dark clouds gather. Steve is charged with keeping an eye on Toni while their parents investigate, but he is engrossed in a TV program, and does not notice her slip out and launch the dinghy onto an increasingly choppy sea. On their boat, Mark attempts to shoot Andre, reasoning that he is a problem for the fishermen, but Paula finally realizes that she cares about Andre and doesn't want him to be harmed. She tries to stop Mark from shooting him, but the gun fires. Andre jumps overboard, but Paula, not seeing this, assumes his body has fallen in. Very upset and angry at Mark, she demands to be taken home. Harry and Thalice, having been informed by Toni that Paula and Mark had taken Andre, meet them on the shore. Steve, in a panic, arrives and tells Thalice that Toni has disappeared, as has the dinghy. She calls the coast guard, as the rain starts to fall, and visibility begins to deteriorate. Out at sea, Toni is struggling to maintain control of the dinghy in the face of the storm and a strong outward tide-rush. The dinghy is being tossed on huge waves, in opaque rain, and is heading towards some jagged rocks. She loses both oars, and, panicking, calls out for help. Andre, who turns out to be unharmed, swims to her rescue, pulling her away from the rocks by the dinghy's mooring rope. He then alerts Billy and Harry in their boat, leading them to Toni's location. Before she can be rescued, a large wave capsizes the dinghy. Mark, who came with Billy and Harry, jumps overboard, swims out to her, and Billy throws them both a lifebelt, pulling them to safety. Billy tells Mark that he is proud of him, while Harry comforts Toni in the back of the boat, and Andre swims away, exultant at her safety. Once back on shore, Toni is distraught to find Jack levering a caged Andre onto a transport vehicle. Harry explains to her that Andre is going to live in the aquarium in Boston, where he will be safe and cared for in ways they can't. Annie Potts, an aquarium worker, tells Toni they will take good care of him, that they will love having him there, and that she will get to visit him whenever she wants. She reluctantly accepts the notion, and tells Andre that she loves him and will visit him all the time. As summer comes around, Billy and Mark's relationship improves. Harry repairs relations with his family, and having been offered a research job in marine mammal protection, steps down as harbor master, nominating Billy to take his place. Toni comes to the realization that Andre would be happier in the wild, being a wild animal, and he is subsequently released. The Whitneys do not expect to see him again, and Toni wonders if he is making new friends with the wild seals. Multiple alleged sightings of Andre are reported, until a friend of the Whitneys spots him nearby, and informs them that he is on his way. The entire town of Rockport flocks to the harbor to watch him returning home to his family. The film ends with an adult Toni narrating that his life became legend after he made his first trip home, that he spent every winter at the aquarium, and every spring he was released to swim home to Rockport. She narrates that by the time he was twenty-four years old he could hardly see, but still made his final trip home, and that in all her past and future, she'll never have a better friend than him. ===== The novel begins with Silas Lapham, a middle-aged native of rural New England, being interviewed for a newspaper story about his rise to wealth in the mineral paint business. Despite his limited education, Lapham is a shrewd and hardworking man, an American success story. But he, his wife and two daughters feel socially awkward compared to other wealthy Bostonians. They decide to build a new home in the fashionable Back Bay neighborhood, and Lapham spares no expense in making it impressive. Tom Corey, a young man from an "old money" Boston family, shows an interest in the Lapham girls, and Mr. and Mrs. Lapham assume he is attracted to Irene, their beautiful younger daughter. Corey joins the Lapham paint business in an attempt to find his place in the world, rather than rely on his wealthy father. Tom introduces Lapham to the cream of Boston society at a dinner party, and they remain on good terms even though the occasion turns out to be embarrassingly awkward. As Tom continues calling on the Laphams regularly, it's assumed that he wants to marry Irene, and she hopes for just such a result. Tom, however, later shocks both families by revealing that he loves Penelope, the older, less glamorous but more intelligent and thoughtful Lapham sister. Though Penelope has feelings for Tom, she is held back by the romantic conventions of the era, not wanting to act on her love for fear of betraying her sister. Meanwhile, Lapham and his wife, Persis, sometimes clash over people from their past. For instance, he is very generous to the family of his fallen Civil War comrade Jim Millon, feeling that he owes the man his life. He quietly sends money to Millon's widow and gives the couple's daughter a job. Persis Lapham considers the two women irresponsible characters who are taking advantage of her husband and potentially damaging his reputation, but he insists he is paying a debt of honor. Also, Mrs. Lapham often complains to her husband that he dealt shabbily with his former business partner Milton K. Rogers, who has come down in the world since their association ended. Silas Lapham insists he was fair to Rogers. Amid the uproar over the Corey courtship, Rogers quietly reappears in the Laphams' life, asking for money for a series of schemes. Persis Lapham convinces her husband to provide the help. Unfortunately, Rogers proves to be a very poor businessman, and the Laphams' new dealings with him cause them to lose a considerable amount of money. On top of that, Lapham's major asset, the new home on Beacon Street, burns down before its completion due to his own carelessness. Mr. and Mrs. Lapham are forced to move to their humble rural home, where the mineral paint was first developed, and while they are not destitute, they are no longer wealthy. Tom and Penelope are finally able to marry after Irene accepts their romance. The elder Laphams, living in the countryside by themselves, are left to reflect on their extraordinary rise and decline. ===== Black Sun Rising takes place on the fictional planet of Erna, following the perspective of Damien Vryce, a priest of the Church of Human Unification on Erna. The tale begins with him entering the great city of Jaggonath, a mimicry of modern-day Jerusalem, as the pagan religions that advocate the worship of personal gods and the church of the One God share the city. He has come to assist the Patriarch of his Church with a new, somewhat controversial mission: teaching initiates of his Order the rudiments of sorcery with the energy force known as the Fae (detailed further in Coldfire Trilogy section). As the Church primarily resists human reliance on the Fae, the classes are opposed by the Patriarch, though held with high regard by the Matriarch whom Damien serves. While in the city, Damien Vryce enters the shop of an Adept (individuals with the ability to sense the Fae on a level akin to a sixth sense) named Ciani, with whom he begins a light- hearted courtship. Their fledgling love is abruptly put on hold, however, when Ciani's shop explodes in a Fae-related accident. Damien presumes she is dead, but her assistant, Senzei "Zen" Reese, informs him otherwise. Ciani was alive, but mortally wounded, not physically but mentally and spiritually. She had been assaulted by a gang of unknown creatures that stole from her memories, and her skills as an Adept. This has left her bereft of a will to live; an Adept sees the Fae every waking moment, giving their vision a "life" to it that regular humans could not comprehend. Without her skill however, all she can see is a dead world. Senzei had set off the store as a Sacrifice, so as to hide the fact that Ciani was still alive. Damien vows to help Ciani, and prepares to set off after the mysterious thieves. The Patriarch does not fully approve, but offers his blessing, and the aid of the Church's most valued relic: a vial of pure, liquified Solar Fae, the sacred Fire of the Church. Together with Ciani and Senzei, the trio leaves Jaggonath, tailing the sadistic creatures. ===== In When True Night Falls, Damien, Hesseth, and Tarrant land on the shores of the Eastern Continent where the order of the Church have managed to subdue the unconscious working of the Fae. Consequently, the technology of the civilization is far more advanced than the Western Continent as is seen by the casual use of explosive weapons and fireworks. While conversing with various leaders, the group learns that only women are allowed to rise to the highest ranks in the Eastern Church. Many rarely see the Matria or holy women of the Church except for odd snippets of time and it is discovered by the group that the Matria and holy women are in fact rakh disguised with tidal fae. After learning of the corruption starting on the Eastern Continent the group manage to trace it south, to the crystal palace of the Immortal Prince, and his Iezu servant, Calesta. Along the way, they rescue a young girl, Jenseny, whose father was killed and impersonated by the Prince's rakh servants. Jenseny is driven near to madness by events she has seen and her rare ability to see and control tidal fae. While scared and untrustful she manages to form a bond with Hesseth who is unable to bear children as was ritual to the rakh who journey away from their homes to mingle with humans. The Prince makes a deal with Tarrant; in return for immortality, the Hunter must lead Hesseth, Damien, and Jenseny into a trap. But there was one catch to the deal: the Immortal Prince's plans include the corruption of the Church, and the former Prophet is not willing to accept that. Meanwhile, Damien, Hesseth and Jenseny cross a seemingly endless desert populated with scraggly white trees and skeletons. Damien is hesitant to cross the desert as the skeletons indicate some form of predator but sees nothing that could possibly pose a true threat. The group decides to cross and settle down for the night under a tree. Damien and Hesseth awaken to find that the tree's roots have begun to grow into their bodies. While at first they cannot move, they both eventually break free of the trees and find that Jenseny's body has also been invaded by the roots. Damien cut away the roots but feared that they might still be harmful to the young girl. The trio keeps traveling without rest to avoid the roots of the trees. They finally find rest on a granite outcropping. That evening when Gerald returns, he kills the roots of the tree that are still inside Jenseny. Damien then Heals the wounds that are left when Gerald is finished. Soon afterwards the group notice that there are large quadrupeds headed towards them with the intent purpose of killing them. In the escape that follows, Hesseth willingly gives up her life to save Jenseny - feeling that Jenseny was much akin to a child of her own and thereby willing to possess the greatest honor in sacrifice. Tarrant joins the group at nightfall and leads Damien and Jenseny into the trap in the Prince's lands but finds a way to smuggle a coldfire-worked knife into Damien's hands. Damien attempts to kill the Prince, but the Prince's soul jumps into the body of his rakh captain. Jenseny finds the coldfire knife, and, hiding it, makes a deal with the Immortal Prince: he can have her body, and with it, her ability to work the tidal fae, a newly evolved human trait. The Prince agrees, but just as he is entering her body, Jenseny weaves a bond between herself and the Prince, and sacrifices herself to kill the Prince. Following the Prince's death, Damien and Gerald Tarrant return north where civil unrest has broken out due to the revealing of the corruption in the Church. The new leader of the Church plans to purge the Eastern Continent which in turn infuriates Tarrant as that was not Tarrant's conception of the Church. However, in Tarrant's confrontation with the new leader, Tarrant accidentally shares a "divining" of the possible fall of the Church thereby bringing the new leader to his senses and stopping the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives. By doing so, Tarrant breaks his oath to the Unnamed and endangers his life in the process - a fact Calesta is quick to catch on to. ===== A ten- year-old runaway boy named Gus takes a road trip for the purpose of collecting game piece cards from gas stations in order to spell out the word M-O-T-O-R-A- M-A for a supposed grand prize of $500 million. ===== A spaceship approaches Alpha signalling that "This is the voice of Voyager One, with greetings from the people of Planet Earth." This causes consternation in Main Mission, as Voyager One, launched in 1985, is fitted with a propulsion system (the "Queller drive", named after its inventor Ernst Queller) based on the emission of fast neutrons, which can be dangerous to anything too close. This is made clear when the two Eagles sent to investigate the incoming ship encounter violent vibrations from the drive. One manages to pull away, but the other disintegrates. Whilst it is decided that Voyager must be destroyed, Prof. Bergman argues that there must be a better way to save the huge amount of data that the ship has gathered in its travels. Dr. Ernst Linden, an Alpha scientist working in the Experimental Laboratory overhears that Voyager is returning and approaches Koenig and explains that he is "Ernst Queller" the inventor of the drive, whose identity was changed by Space Command due to issues with a previous disaster. Linden is asked if there are any means of overriding Voyager's security codes to enable instructions to be given to shut down the drive. Whilst he is attempting to do this, his assistant Jim Haines, whose parents were killed in an accident involving the Queller drive of another Voyager craft, learns that Linden is in fact Ernst Queller, the inventor of the drive. He assaults Linden, who, despite his injury, manages to shut down Voyager's engines with seconds to spare. As Alphans explore Voyager, an image of an alien appears - he introduces himself as Aarchon, the "Chief Justifier of the Worlds of Sidon". He explains that Sidon is seeking vengeance for the millions on two of their worlds who were killed when the Queller Drive poisoned them. Three Sidon warships then appear approaching Alpha, intending to destroy it, and Aarchon will not listen to Koenig's protests that Alpha was not responsible for Voyager. As the ships approach, Queller escapes from sick bay and forces his way into Voyager, taking off and heading towards the Sidon ships. After pleading for mercy, which is dismissed by Aarchon, Queller gets within range of them, activates the Queller drive, and then destroys the ship and the Sidons. ===== The books describe the activities and adventures of best friends George and Martha. These activities include taking dance classes, going to the beach and the amusement park, and playing pranks on each other. In a humorous way, the series teaches about friendship. George and Martha sometimes argue, but always make up. ===== ===== The movie opens at the start of Delphine's summer vacation. Delphine has just suffered the breakup of a relationship and her traveling companion has ditched her so that her new boyfriend can accompany her to Greece instead. She is left without plans at a time when Paris is emptying for the summer. Another friend invites Delphine to join a beach party for the weekend, but she finds that she's the only one amongst the group who is single so she quickly returns to Paris. Her family pressures her to spend the holidays with them in Ireland, but she resists. She travels alone to the Alps, but is put off by hordes of vacationers and turns around. Traveling restlessly, the theme of the movie (characterized by Roger Ebert) becomes clear: Delphine "is incapable of playing the dumb singles games that lead to one-night stands."https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/summer-1986 She meets a new girlfriend, who flirts with two young men, and she flees in anger. She recoils from the pre-packaged lines of the guys she meets in bars and on trains. She simply cannot engage in that kind of mindless double-talk any longer. Beneath her boredom is genuine anger at the roles that single women are sometimes expected to play. While in Biarritz she eavesdrops on a conversation about Jules Verne's novel Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray). According to Verne, when one sees a rare green flash at sunset, one's own thoughts and those of others are revealed as if by magic. At the Biarritz railway station she meets a young man who is travelling to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. She goes with him and together they observe le rayon vert (the green flash). ===== The main characters were based in the city of Cape Town while enemies were aliens from a distant space system -- and were often viewed as representing black protagonists by journalists overseas. The entire series was produced in Afrikaans. Plot wise, Interster was far removed from any of the Anderson stories. There was no unified government as seen in either Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons or Fireball XL5 - South Africa alone possessed interstellar flight, and alone was in contact with the first aliens to visit earth, who supposedly hailed from Alpha Centauri, the star closest to Earth. In the stories, the protagonists were concerned only with the defense of South Africa - the rest of the world was more of an abstraction. Interaction with the Centauri's was the primary interaction with South Africa. A number of fascinating concepts were explored - relative to humans, the Centauris are only the size of dolls, and their ships and technology are scaled to match. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the puppeteers are not just the human puppets, but the Centauris - for they were as intricate, but barely 10 cm high as compared with the 32 cm human puppets for simultaneous shots. The plot contained some content of interest to South African adults who could see the political connotations to some of the themes like political isolation and attack from outsiders as well as some characters. One character (a villain) bore a remarkable resemblance to the then South African President PW Botha. ===== Bernice meets the Time Lord Irving Braxiatel and soon becomes involved in the hunt for a jewel thief who is after a rare artefact. ===== Jim Scott attempts to bring peace between west-bound settlers and native Apaches. This task is made harder by a band of local outlaws. ===== ===== Having come to understand her Linyaari past, Acorna has become a member of the crew of the Condor, a salvage ship. The crew consists of the mildly eccentric Captain Becker, the ship's feline first mate RK (otherwise known as Roadkill), and Aari, a Linyaari who is still scarred physically and emotionally from his capture and subsequent torture by the Khleevi. While searching space for salvage, they come across the wreck of a ship with information indicating that the Khleevi are on the move in that sector of space, and may come to the Linyaari homeworld of Narhii-Viliinyar before long. Acorna and her friends must now warn their people and find a way to stop the oncoming Khleevi horde. ===== Four young adults – David Fielding, Susan Turner, Jim Hudson, and Jim's girlfriend, Vicki, head into the woods to look for a lost scientist, Dr. Arthur Waterman. They have a picnic and see a mysterious castle in the woods. They find that Dr. Waterman's cabin seems to have been destroyed. A forest ranger, who is Asmodeus in human form, watches over them. When the group stumbles into a cave, a strange old man presents them with an ancient book filled with magical lore and symbols. Asmodeus sends monsters – a giant ape-like creature and a green-skinned, fur-clad giant – to retrieve the book from them at all costs. The ape-like creature kills the old man. Reading through the book, David learns that it belonged to Dr. Waterman, who had experimented with its demon-summoning rituals. He lost control of the giant tentacled creature he conjured, however, which destroyed his house. The castle seems to have disappeared; however, the friends discover that it has been rendered invisible by magic. After killing Jim, Asmodeus reveals his true form, that of a winged red demon. Asmodeus kills Vicki and then attacks Dave and Susan. Dave and Susan flee to a cemetery and destroy the demon with a cross. As it dies, the cemetery explodes, killing Susan. Dave sees a shadowy giant who prophesies that Dave will be dead in one year and one day. Dave loses his sanity, and is confined to a mental hospital. One year and one day later, an evil-faced Susan arrives at the hospital to visit him. The film concludes with end credits saying "The End?". ===== Bare Essence revloves around the efforts of Tyger Hayes (Francis) to succeed in the business world. In the first episode, her new husband Chase Marshall (Corley) is killed in a racing car accident. Chase's father Hadden (John Dehner) opposes Tyger's efforts to join the family business, Kellico, but she is encouraged by Hadden's sister Margaret (Susan French) to try her hand with a new line of perfumes. Ava (Walter), the widow of Hadden's other son, is concerned that any success Tyger might have will undermine her son Marcus' (Jonathan Frakes) position in the company. Both Ava and Marcus' wife Muffin (Wendy Fulton) plot to undermine Tyger's success. To this end, Ava eventually seduces and marries Hadden. Tyger's mother, Lady Bobbi Rowan (O'Neill), falls in love with a Greek millionaire, Niko Theopolous (Ian McShane), who wants to exact revenge on the Marshalls. ===== A militaristic organisation called the N.A.C. developed a huge laser emitter, "EL", which is capable of gradually destroying the ozone layer over the course of a decade or so. In the year 1999, the N.A.C. begins an all-out offensive against every country in the world. The nations' defense forces are overwhelmed by the sheer power and size of the enemy. The player controls the mysterious "Freedom Fighter", a pilot with no official connection to any government, who flies off to stop the N.A.C. ===== Jack Carroll (portrayed by Jack Haley) and his wife (Anne Jeffreys) have an argument about their friends, but when he makes a crack that his mother-in-law is a "fat porpoise," they fight and she leaves him. Jack runs into two strange men right before they burglarize a bank, leaving Jack to be the only one to identify. Because of this, he takes a vacation to Reno and checks into the Bar Nothing Ranch. Later, the robbers come to Reno and check in. They bury a suitcase of money where Jack plans to find it with his metal detector. Jack finds the money, but is taken by another lady. This is the beginning of his troubles, where he encounters different men: a sheriff, a sailor, and a gun moll who convinces the police that she is Mrs. Carroll. Jack's wife arrives and Jack is unable to adequately explain things to her before she gets a divorce. ===== Count Lodovico is banished from Rome for debauchery and murder; his friends, Gasparo and Antonelli promise to work for the repeal of his sentence. The Duke of Brachiano has conceived a violent passion for Vittoria Corombona, daughter of a noble but impoverished Venetian family, despite the fact they are both married to other people. Vittoria's brother Flamineo, employed as a secretary to Brachiano, has been scheming to bring his sister and the Duke together in the hope of advancing his career, much to the dismay of their mother, Cornelia. The plan is foiled by the arrival of Brachiano's wife Isabella, escorted by her brother and Cardinal Monticelso. They are both outraged by the rumours of Brachiano's infidelity and set out to make the affair public; before that happens Brachiano and Flamineo arrange to have Camillo (Vittoria's husband) and Isabella murdered. Vittoria is put on trial for the murder of her husband and although there is no real evidence against her, she is condemned by the Cardinal to imprisonment in a convent for penitent whores. Flamineo pretends madness to protect himself from awkward suggestions. The banished Count Lodovico is pardoned and returns to Rome; confessing he had been secretly in love with Isabella, he vows to avenge her death. Isabella's brother Francisco also plots revenge. He pens a love letter to Vittoria, intentionally allowing it to fall into the hands of Brachiano, in order to fuel his jealousy. Though at first his plan seems to work, Vittoria manages to convince Brachiano that she is faithful and the two elope. Cardinal Monticelso is elected Pope and as his first act he excommunicates Vittoria and Brachiano, who have fled Rome. Vittoria and Brachiano, now married, hold court in Padua. Three mysterious strangers have arrived to enter Brachiano's service. These are Francisco, disguised as Mulinassar, a Moor, and Lodovico and Gasparo, disguised as Capuchin monks, all conspiring to avenge Isabella's death. They begin their revenge by poisoning Brachiano. As he is dying, Lodovico and Gasparo reveal themselves to him. Next, Zanche, Vittoria's Moorish maid, who has fallen in love with her supposed countryman Mulinassar, reveals to him the murders of Isabella and Camillo and Flamineo's part in them. Flamineo is banished from court for the murder of his brother Marcello by Brachiano's son Giovanni, the new Duke, and sensing that his crimes are catching up with him he goes to see Vittoria. He tries to persuade her and Zanche to a triple suicide by shooting him, then themselves. Vittoria and Zanche shoot Flamineo and, thinking him dead, exult in his death and their escape. Much to their surprise, Flamineo rises from the 'dead' and reveals to them the pistols were not loaded. While trying to exact his own revenge on Vittoria, Lodovico and Gasparo then enter the scene and complete their revenge by killing her. Giovanni and officers come to the scene and the play ends with Giovanni learning of his uncle's participation in the bloody acts and sending Lodovico off to torture. ===== ===== Ambitious, callous, narcissistic, and at times unethical, Henry Turner is a wealthy successful Manhattan lawyer whose obsession with his work leaves him little time for his socialite wife, Sarah, and troubled preteen daughter, Rachel. He has just won a malpractice suit, defending a hospital against a plaintiff who claims, but is unable to prove, that he warned doctors about a pre-existing condition. Running out to a convenience store to buy cigarettes one night, Henry is shot when he interrupts a robbery. One bullet hits his right frontal lobe, while the other hits his left subclavian vein, causing excessive internal bleeding and cardiac arrest. He experiences anoxia, resulting in brain damage. Henry survives but can neither move nor talk and he suffers retrograde amnesia. While in a nursing facility, he slowly regains movement and speech with the help of a physical therapist named Bradley. Henry's recovery creates a financial burden for the family. Upon returning home, Henry is almost childlike. As he forges new relationships with his family, he realizes he does not like who he once was. Sarah enrolls Rachel into an out-of-town elite school, though she is now reluctant to go. At orientation, Henry tells Rachel a lie to help her adjust to the new school. He and Sarah grow closer, as they were when they first met. Henry also misses Rachel. Henry's firm allows him to return out of deference to his previous contributions. Sarah suggests they relocate to a smaller, less expensive residence. As his firm essentially assigns him only menial work, he realizes he no longer wants to be a lawyer. While at a dinner party, they overhear several "friends" making derogatory comments about him. Henry, finding a former colleague's letters to Sarah disclosing they had an affair, becomes angry and leaves home. He is confronted by Linda, a fellow attorney, who reveals they were having an affair and that he was going to leave Sarah. Henry has second thoughts about himself and his relationships. Henry gives the hospital documents that his firm had suppressed to the plaintiff that proves his case, and he apologizes. He then resigns from the firm. He realizes that (as Sarah had said) everything had been wrong before but it is now so much better. They reconcile, then go to Rachel's school and withdraw her. She is overjoyed to be with her parents. As they leave the building, she tosses her school-uniform hat away. ===== Johnny McBride is badly hurt while hitch hiking and loses his memory when the car he is riding in crashes. Two years later, a clue leads him to his old home town, where he finds he is a murder suspect. McBride tries to clear his name of the presumed murder charges. Thugs working for the local mob boss try to end his meddling. ===== Set in Vietnam during the 1980s, Danh is a young boy growing up in Saigon. Though he should help his mother to sell noodles from a cart out of their home, he often sneaks out to buy cassettes. One day, he inadvertently stumbles into a mysterious beautiful street vendor named Tam, selling her cassette, Saigon Love Story. Intrigued about her music, Danh decides to buy the cassette, only to discover that it is blank. When Danh confronts Tam, he finds that she is penniless and unable to repay him, so she serenades him a song in her cassette. Enchanted, Danh finds a voice that has long been suppressed, a voice that is the ticket out of their impoverished life. ===== Clementi Sabourin (George Sanders), a wealthy and scandalous businessman, is found dead. Police come to investigate, and when they question Bridget Kelly (Yvonne De Carlo), who found the body, she tells them everything she knows about his past. A Czech refugee, missing and believed dead, Sabourin one day turns up to find his love Zina (Lisa Ferraday) is now married to his brother, Gerry (Tom Conway). Out of spite, he betrays his brother to the police. Sabourin learns from the police prefect that Gerry was killed resisting arrest. The prefect gives Sabourin a passport and he sets sail for America. At the port in New York he observes the shady Miss Kelly as she makes off with ship passenger Leonard Wilson's (Victor Jory) wallet. Sabourin makes a romantic play for Kelly, only to steal the wallet when her back is turned. Kelly's estranged husband Chuck (Bob Morgan) pursues and shoots Sabourin in the street, but Sabourin escapes by pushing Chuck into the path of an oncoming car. On a tip from the doctor who removes the bullet, Sabourin invests in a company that manufactures the drug penicillin. He fraudulently uses a $20,000 cashier's check from inside the stolen wallet to purchase the stock. Encountering the wealthy Mrs. Ryan (Zsa Zsa Gabor), widow of a prominent businessman, Sabourin earns a considerable sum of money for her as well by tipping her to the stock. Mrs. Ryan writes Sabourin a $20,000 loan, which he uses to cover his forged check from Wilson. His stockbroker, O'Hara (John Hoyt), spots the fraud but helps Sabourin in exchange for a share in his profit. Sabourin uses a financial statement he found in Wilson's wallet to blackmail Wilson into selling him his oil company. Sabourin orchestrates a fake oil strike to gain profit, but his investors get the last laugh when oil is really found on the property and the stock soars to $30 a share. Sabourin, O'Hara, Miss Kelly and Sabourin's lawyer Bauman (Werner Klemperer) become successful by buying struggling companies, manipulating the price of stock and throwing the companies into receivership. As he becomes increasingly "successful", Sabourin begins courting a number of women romantically, including Mrs. Ryan's young secretary, Stephanie North (Nancy Gates). He invites North to a party and finances her ambition to become an actress. When she rejects his advances, he attempts to thwart her career, but is unsuccessful, as her producer recognizes that North does indeed have talent. Sabourin then courts the affluent Edith van Renssalaer (Coleen Gray), married to a wealthy businessman. Sabourin attempts to interfere in her marriage to gain control of her stock and form a new uranium company, but Zina resurfaces one night and reveals that she learned he was responsible for his brother's death. He pledges his love to her and remorse for Gerry's death, lying through his teeth. Zina believes him, but when she sees him conspire with Edith, she kills herself and writes a note implicating Sabourin. The police arrest him, while Edith abandons him. As Sabourin's embezzling is also uncovered, the court begins an attempt to deport him to Czechoslovakia. Knowing that the communists will confiscate his money there, Sabourin instructs Miss Kelly to contact his mother. The mother is initially happy to see her son, but refuses his plan to tell the court that Sabourin was born illegitimately in Switzerland and disowns him. Miss Kelly, who has long concealed her love and concern for Sabourin, implores him to return the stolen money and tells him that his way does not work out in the end. Initially reluctant, Sabourin finally decides to return the money. No sooner does he endorse the stock certificates, O'Hara (who hitherto had qualms concerning their crooked dealings) arrives and confronts him at gunpoint. O'Hara announces that he and Bauman intend to let Sabourin be the fall guy and take all the money for themselves. A struggle ensues over O'Hara's gun in which Sabourin manages to kill O'Hara but is himself fatally wounded. As he returns home dejectedly, he sees all of his would-be victims emerging successful as wells as a billboard with the verse Mark 8:36 written on it. He also meets Kelly, and tells her that he returned the money. When Sabourin returns home, he pleads with his mother, but she refuses to see him. He then calls Kelly, leaving a message telling her that he really did love her in his own way and begging for forgiveness. Finally, he collapses on the bed and dies. The story ends as Kelly finishes reporting the story to the police and Sabourin's mother, who laments that she did not forgive her son for his crimes before he died. Kelly then surmises that it is possible Sabourin found forgiveness and peace in death, taking one last look around his magnificent house as she leaves. ===== In 2042, alien threats known as the laid waste to Japan. During a final battle against the Mimetic beasts, Goh Saruwatari defeats the alien "boss" and saves his future fiancé, Anna Aoi, with his robot, the Dannar. Now, on their wedding day, the Mimetic beasts emerge after five years of tranquility. Goh and Dannar are called to action, forcing Goh to leave Anna at the altar. As Goh struggles in his battle against the Mimetic beast, Anna stumbles upon a sealed robot known as "Neo Okusaer". She is able to activate and pilot the Neo Okusaer to save her "husband" by merging it with the Dannar to activate the Godannar's Twin Drive. During the course of the series, it is discovered that humanity is threatened by the "Insania" virus, which is spread by the Mimetic beasts. All of humanity is infected, but the virus affects robot pilots most severely, since they come into close contact with the beasts on a regular basis. The virus has the effect of transforming human males into Mimetic beasts; females are somehow immune, unless they naturally generate large amounts of male hormones. The virus is stimulated by human hormones, especially those released in great quantities during combat. During the second season, the pilots of Dannar Base struggle to balance the need to fight the Mimetic beasts with the danger of further infection. Eventually, it is discovered that Mira, Goh's former combat partner and lover, who was trapped inside a Mimetic beast for five years, is the source of the vaccine humanity needs. The series is famous for its fanservice: 'up skirt' shots, bouncing breasts, and the scantily clad female pilots. ===== In 1870, at a remote ranch in Arizona, homesteader Angie Lowe (Geraldine Page) and her six-year-old son Johnny (Lee Aaker) are performing chores at their ranch when a stranger (John Wayne) arrives on foot, carrying only his saddle bags and a rifle. The man tells them that his name is Lane, and that he was riding dispatch for the US Army Cavalry. He had lost his horse in an encounter with some Indians. Angie tells Lane her ranch hand had quit before he had a chance to break her two horses for riding, so Lane offers to break a horse himself. Lane deduces from the neglected ranch that her husband has been away for some time, a fact she confesses is true. When night falls Angie offers to let Lane sleep in her home. Hondo, meanwhile, reveals that he is part Indian and was married five years to a Mescalero woman.Many viewers have missed the fact that Wayne plays a Native American in this movie. Hondo mentions his Indian heritage about 15 minutes into the story. In Louis L'Amour's short story "The Gift of Cochise", Ches Lane (the Hondo character) was also Indian. Angie sees his rifle is inscribed "Hondo" Lane, who she knows had killed three men the year before. She attempts to shoot him, but due to the chamber being empty, Hondo is not hurt. He loads the chamber and tells her to keep it that way. Hondo tells Angie she reminds him of a woman from his past, and kisses her before he leaves. At the ranch, Angie and Johnny are beset by Apaches, led by Chief Vittoro (Michael Pate) and his main under-chief, Silva (Rodolfo Acosta). Angie is not nervous in their presence as they have never attacked her family before. This time, they begin manhandling Angie. Johnny emerges from the house with the pistol and shoots at Silva. As Silva recovers and approaches him, he throws the pistol at Silva. Vittoro is impressed by Johnny's bravery and makes him an Apache blood brother. Vittoro wonders where Angie's husband is and tells her that unless he returns soon, she must take an Apache husband as the boy needs a father. Hondo returns to his Cavalry post, where he meets up with his friend Buffalo Baker (Ward Bond). He reports to his commanding officer that C troop, which was sent to gather and bring in settlers to the north, was killed by Apaches. It is clear to the Major (Paul Fix) that the Apaches are raiding and killing settlers. In a saloon, Hondo gets into a fight with a stranger, and beats him severely. Baker tells Hondo the man called himself "Ed Lowe" (Leo Gordon), and Hondo suspects he is Angie's husband. Meanwhile, Vittoro shows Angie some prospective husbands from among his men. She insists she is still married, and he gives her a deadline: if her husband does not return by the time of the planting rain, she must take an Apache husband. Feeling guilty, Hondo leaves to return Angie's horse. Lowe and a guide (Frank McGrath) follow Hondo, who camps near a river but leaves when he detects two Indians stalking him. Lowe enters the camp and he and his guide are attacked by the two Indians. The guide is killed, but Hondo shoots the Apache about to kill Lowe. Lowe is briefly grateful but as he lies on the ground and is preparing to shoot Hondo in the back in retaliation for the beating, the more experienced Hondo spins around and quickly shoots him to save his own life. Hondo finds a tin type of Johnny on Lowe's body, confirming his identity. Hondo runs into an Apache party, and is captured. They are torturing him to get information about the Cavalry when Vittoro appears. An Indian shows Vittoro the picture of Johnny, and Vittoro assumes Hondo is Angie's husband. Silva declares the blood rite as Hondo had killed his brother. In a one on one knife fight setup to settle the feud, Silva stabs Hondo in the shoulder, but Hondo pins Silva to the ground, and gives him the option to take back the blood rite or die. Silva gives in. Vittoro takes Hondo to Angie's ranch, and when Vittoro asks if Hondo is her husband, she lies, saving Hondo. The Chief warns Hondo to raise Johnny in the Apache way and leaves. Before the Apache party leaves, Silva ultimately gets his revenge against Hondo by killing his dog, Sam, and leaving the body in front of the porch as a message to Hondo that their feud is not over. Hondo and Angie grow close as he recuperates. Hondo attempts to reveal the truth of her husband's death, but is interrupted by Vittoro's return. The chief tells them that the pony soldiers will soon return. He asks Hondo not to join them and to keep the Indians' location a secret by telling a lie. Hondo promises to do the former but not the latter, and Vittoro shows respect for Hondo's truthfulness. Angie tells Hondo she loves him. The Army arrives at the ranch, commanded by ambitious but inexperienced Lt. McKay (Tom Irish) and accompanied by scouts Baker and Lennie (James Arness). McKay is determined to protect the settlers in the area by relocating them to the Army post and defend the area against Apache attacks. Lennie reveals he discovered Lowe's body and matched the horse tracks to Hondo's horse. He wants Hondo's Winchester rifle in exchange for keeping quiet about how Hondo apparently bushwhacked Lowe. Angie overhears Lennie's demands. Hondo prepares to leave, but before he goes, he tells Angie the truth about her husband's death. Hondo also wants to tell Johnny, but she persuades him not to, telling Hondo she didn't love her husband any longer. She says it would be unkind to tell the boy the truth of his father's death and that the secret won't follow them to Hondo's ranch in California. Hondo responds to her emotional plea with an Indian word that seals a squaw-seeking ceremony, "Varlabania", which he tells her means "forever". The Army leaves to move further on into Apache territory. As promised, Hondo refuses to go with them, but tells Buffalo that McKay is leading them into a massacre. Buffalo knows, but he also knows that scouts such as he have been helping to train young West Point officers for many years. The Army returns causing the Apaches to retreat. Realizing the danger they are in Hondo, Angie and Johnny join the Cavalry and head to the fort. The column is attacked by the Apaches, and form a wagon circle that barely holds together. Amidst a chaotic counterattack to save some stragglers, Hondo loses his mount and is attacked by Silva, but amidst the dust Hondo kills him. The Indians then retreat. Lt. McKay says that General Crook will be arriving in the territory with a large force. "Buffalo" Baker says it will be the end of the Apache. Hondo proclaims "Yeah. End of a way of life. Too bad, it's a good way." The movie ends with the idea that once back to the fort, Hondo, Angie and Johnny will continue on to Hondo's ranch in California as a family. ===== The film begins with a written disclaimer: > During the film you are about to see, you will be subject to subliminal > messages and mild hypnosis. This will cause you no physical harm or lasting > effect, but if for any reason you lose control or feel that your mind is > leaving your body -- leave the auditorium immediately. The disclaimer is accompanied by a narrator, who advises viewers to take caution regarding their surroundings once the film has begun, and not to engage in conversation with any unknown individuals for the duration of the running time. In the Los Angeles theater The Rex, moviegoers watch the film within a film, The Mommy. The Mommy tells the story of John Pressman (Michael Lerner), an extremely myopic, uncontrolled diabetic who works as an ophthalmologist's assistant and is progressively growing blind. For unstated reasons, his overbearing mother Alice (Zelda Rubinstein) hypnotizes him and induces him to murder people so that he can remove their eyes and bring them back to her. One evening, John—against his mother's wishes—barricades himself inside of a movie theater playing The Lost World, where he sets about killing the patrons one by one with a scalpel. Once John's rampage becomes apparent, the surviving moviegoers attempt to flee the now sealed-off theater. The police bring Alice to the theater in an attempt to end the siege; in the course of trying to talk John down, Alice is accidentally shot to death by the police. The last scenes of The Mommy show John being placed into police custody and a detective looking upon Alice's corpse one more time. As The Mommy wears on, patrons of The Rex begin to experience anxiety attacks and disorientation in response to the events onscreen. In particular, one man grows progressively agitated, constantly checking his watch; and a teenage girl, Patty, begins to break down in tears, though she cannot entirely articulate her fear. At a key point in the film, the man exits the theater and approaches the concession stand, where he's recognized by an employee as a frequent patron of The Mommy. Patty's friend, Linda, goes to use the bathroom moments later, and witnesses The Man removing a gun from his jacket and killing the concession worker and another theater employee. The Man drags their bodies to the bathroom—an act synchronized with John killing a woman in the bathroom of a movie theater in The Mommy. Linda escapes the theater and stops a man passing on the street, whom she asks to call the police. In The Rex, the man barricades the projectionist in the projector booth and then slips back into the theater, where he holds Patty at gunpoint and begins reciting dialogue from The Mommy. When John Pressman begins his theater rampage onscreen, the man begins indiscriminately shooting patrons of The Rex, using Patty as a human shield. Outside The Rex, a SWAT team arrives, in synchronicity with the police's arrival at the theater in The Mommy. The police obtain access to the projector booth via the roof and send in a sniper. The man holds Patty hostage in front of the theater, addressing Alice onscreen and asking her to come save him. Attempts by the police to engage the man fail; when the police in The Mommy kill Alice, the man becomes enraged, throws Patty to the ground, and resumes firing into the audience; the police sniper then shoots and kills him. Patty, looking up at the screen, has a vision of John gouging out her eye with a scalpel. Outside, Patty and Linda are reunited and Patty is taken to the hospital for an evaluation. Doctors assure her that she is physically all right, though the experience was mentally scarring. As Linda leaves, she is attacked on an elevator by an unseen orderly who aims a scalpel for her throat. The orderly then proceeds to Patty's room and is revealed to be John, who assures Patty that he's only a figment of her imagination. Patty screams as John examines her eyes. As the screen cuts to black, the camera pulls back to show a movie theater of patrons watching the events onscreen, revealing that Patty's story was in fact a film within a film within a film. The credits for Anguish roll as the theater patrons leave one by one. ===== Colin (Michael Crawford) is a nervous schoolteacher working in London, observing rather than participating in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. He has little personal sexual experience and wishes to gain "the knack": in this case meaning a way to seduce women. He turns to a friend, a confident, womanizing drummer known only by his surname, Tolen. Tolen gives him unhelpful advice to consume more protein and use intuition, acknowledging intuition is not something that can be completely learned, and advocates the importance of domination of women. He then suggests that Colin should move into his home, where he and another friend "share" women. Colin boards the front door shut. The third flatmate, Tom, is obsessed with painting everything white... including the windowpanes. Due to the blocked door Tolen brings his girls in through the window. Colin swaps his single bed for a fancy old double wrought iron bed which he finds in a scrapyard with Tom. Nancy meets Colin at the scrapyard. Nancy is an inexperienced and shy young woman who has arrived to London from out of town, and is searching for the YWCA. She stops by a clothing store and is won over by the flattery of the clerk, until she overhears him repeating the same words to every female customer. From the scrapyard the three take the bed on a complex and zany journey back to the house. This includes parking it at a parking meter, moving it on a car transporter and carrying it down the steps of the Royal Albert Hall. In a public space, Tolen sexually assaults Nancy, who at first is silent, then faints. When she wakes up, she begins claiming she was raped, though this was not the case. Tolen, Colin and their friends find themselves unable to restrain her from loudly repeating the allegations, or puncturing the tyres of Tolen's motorcycle, and she runs back to the residence, where she throws Tolen's records out of the window and strips naked. The men become convinced her rape allegations reflect rape fantasy and urge Tolen to have sex with her. When Nancy emerges from the room wearing only a robe, she instead expresses more attraction to Colin, and he returns the interest. The film ends with Nancy and Colin walking along hand in hand. ===== In Ancona, Giovanni is a therapist, whose 17-year-old son Andrea is accused of stealing a rare ammonite fossil from his school. Andrea is suspended and protests his innocence, but later confesses to his mother Paola he and his friend stole it as a prank, and intended to return it before it broke. Giovanni and Andrea make plans to go jogging together, but Giovanni is called to the distant home of a patient who is severely distressed about a possible cancer diagnosis. Instead, Andrea goes scuba diving with a friend and swims into an underwater cave, where he accidentally drowns. Giovanni, Paola and their daughter Irene are left to mourn. Giovanni investigates the diving equipment model and becomes suspicious that Andrea's was defective, but Paola reminds him the verdict was that it was functioning properly. Giovanni, once a distant observer of his patients' struggles, begins having difficulty analyzing them, particularly the one he went to see on the day Andrea died, against whom he shows signs of impatience and hostility. One day, Paola receives a love letter sent to Andrea by a girl named Arianna, whom he had met at a camp. The family does not know Arianna, and never knew Andrea had a girlfriend. They realize she does not know Andrea has died and attempt to contact her, eventually inviting her to their home. Giovanni stops by a music store to buy an album, ostensibly for a friend of Andrea, but more for Andrea. A clerk gives him a Brian Eno album. Arianna arrives on her way to a destination, and sees Andrea's bedroom. She shows Giovanni photographs Andrea sent her of himself in his room, some of which are very amusing. The family welcomes Arianna and offers to host her in their home, but she informs them she is hitchhiking with her friend Stefano to spend vacation in France. The family offers Arianna and Stefano a short ride, but it lingers to a point where they drive into the night and reach Menton, in the border between Italy and France. Bidding Arianna and Stefano goodbye, the family watch their bus leave Italy and wander in the beach as a new life awaits them. ===== In the early 20th century, Henrik Bergman is studying to be a parish minister under the Church of Sweden. A poor man, he meets the wealthy Anna Åkerblom through his friend, Anna's brother Ernst. Anna is vain and stubborn, and in Henrik's belief she is elitist, yet she is also attractive and capable of enjoying pleasure. Although Henrik lives in a sexual relationship with Frida, a waitress, Anna seduces him and proposes an engagement. As Henrik and Anna begin to see more of each other, Henrik secretly continues living with Frida. While speaking with Anna's mother Karin, Henrik confesses that he feels unwelcome among the Åkerbloms. Karin tells him frankly that she feels Anna needs a mature man who can nurture her, but he is lacking on both counts. Karin also tells Anna that Henrik is still living with Frida, a fact verified by the family. Henrik and Anna stop seeing each other until Frida appeals to Anna to take Henrik back, citing his misery. While Anna is treated for tuberculosis in Switzerland, a brother is sent to tell Henrik that she no longer wishes to speak to him. However, unknown to her parents, Anna sends a letter to Ernst to be forwarded to Henrik, telling him she wishes to resume their relationship. Her parents receive the letter and Anna's father Johan opens it, after which Karin reads it and burns it. After Johan dies, Karin confesses the act to Anna, who angrily seeks Henrik. By then, Henrik is planning to go to Forsboda, a remote village in northern Sweden, to work in a parish whose head minister is aged and ailing. Anna resolves to go with him, and they marry despite their class conflicts. The Bergmans have their first son, Dag, but Henrik becomes embroiled in the local strike action, as he refuses to endorse poor working conditions and lends his church for a socialist meeting. This displeases Nordenson, who also dislikes Bergman's manner of instruction of Nordenson's daughters, as Nordenson refuses to kneel with his wife and girls. In the meantime, the Bergmans take in Petrus, a troubled orphaned boy. Later, Henrik and Anna are unexpectedly summoned to Stockholm to meet Queen Victoria, who chairs a board managing Sophiahemmet hospital and is seeking a chaplain, with the archbishop recommending Henrik. During the meeting, Victoria asks him if he believes suffering is sent by God. He replies suffering is useless and God views the world with horror, and leaves the palace fuming at having to flatter the Queen. The Bergmans decline the position, but the villagers are upset they did not hear of the offer except through rumours, and are disturbed by Henrik publicly humiliating Nordenson in church. Upset, and expecting her second child, Anna insists on sending Petrus away, saying she did not agree to a permanent adoption and she dislikes the boy. Petrus overhears the conversation, and furious, kidnaps Dag and carries him to an icy river. The Bergmans see them and give chase, with Henrik saving Dag and slapping down Petrus, after which the boy leaves. In despair, Anna decides she can no longer live in Forsboda and takes Dag to the Åkerblom house, while Henrik at first resolves to stay in the village. He finally accepts the position in Stockholm and asks Anna to come with him, and she replies this is all she wants. ===== Alexandros (Bruno Ganz), a middle-aged bearded writer, leaves his seaside apartment in Thessaloniki after learning he has a terminal illness and must enter a hospital the next day to perform more tests. He is trying to get his affairs in order and to find someone who would take care of his dog. He speaks in his mind to his dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), who appears still young to him. Alexandros hides a young Albanian squeegee kid from the police who are arresting other boys like him at a traffic stop in order to deport them. Later, he pays a visit to his 22-year- old daughter (Iris Chatziantoniou), but he doesn't tell her of his diagnosis. Instead he gives her some letters written by her mother, who she reads out loud, triggering his memories of the time when their daughter was a newborn at her baby shower. He learns that his daughter and her husband have sold the family's beach house without telling him. Also, they refuse to keep his dog with them. On his way back, Alexandros meets the immigrant boy again, and witnesses his capture at the hands of human traffickers who try to sell him into illegal adoption. Alexandros infiltrates the clandestine meeting and in a moment of confusion tries to sneak away with the kid but is stopped by the traffickers and must pay what they ask for him. He tries to put the kid on a bus and then a taxi, but he keeps running away, so he decides to take him across the border to Albania himself. Alexandros sees at the snowy mountain border an eerie barbed wire fence with what seem to be bodies stuck to it. As the pair waits for the gate to open, they have a change of mind about crossing, when the boy admits he has been lying about his life in Albania. The two of them barely escape a border sentry and make it back to Alexandros's automobile. The boy's perilous existence brings Alexandros out of his stupor and self-pity, and seemingly re-energizes him in his love for a 19th-century Greek poet, Dionysios Solomos (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), whose unfinished poem he longs to complete. The old man and the boy are connected by fear. The former over what lies ahead for him, and whether his life has had any impact; the latter over the perilous return trip to Albania on a path over the mountains lined with land mines, as well as traffickers. Alexandros pays a visit to his housekeeper, Ourania (Helene Gerasimidou). She is manifestly smitten with him, but is in the middle of a wedding party and dances between her son and his bride. The scene plays on until Alexandros interrupts. He leaves the dog with her, and then the dance and music, which had stopped, resume as if nothing had halted them. The boy goes to the ruins of a hospital, mourning another young boy, Selim, via a candlelight vigil, with dozens of other youths. The pair take a bus trip and encounter all sorts of people, from a tired political protester to an arguing couple to a classical music trio. They also look out the window as a trio of people on bicycles pedal by them, oddly dressed in bright yellow raincoats. The boy departs in the middle of the night, stowing aboard a huge, brightly lit ship whose destination is unknown. Alexandros enters his old home. He looks about, exits out the back door, and into the sunny past where Anna and other friends are singing. They stop, ask him to join them, then they all dance, and soon, there is only the poet and his wife in motion. Then, she slowly pulls away, and he claims his hearing is gone. He also cannot see her, it seems. He calls out and asks how long tomorrow will be, after he had told her he refuses to go into the hospital as planned. She tells him tomorrow will last eternity and a day. ===== Donissan (Gérard Depardieu) is a very zealous rural priest of the Catholic Church in 1920s Pas-de-Calais, who nevertheless finds himself in spiritual and moral turmoil. He submits his worries to his dean Menou-Segrais (Maurice Pialat) and admits that he believes he is unfit to be a parish priest, as he nearly failed his seminary. Menou-Segrais reminds him that it is not too late for him to choose another vocation, but Donissan persists. Meanwhile, a teenaged parishioner, Germaine (also known as "Mouchette") (Sandrine Bonnaire), meets with her much older lover Cadignan, a marquis. Her father has learned of their affair and has become upset, and she begs him to take care of her, lest she run away. However, when he reveals that he must repay his debts and can only afford to provide a country home for her, she is bored and unimpressed; she declares that she will instead choose one of her other lovers, Gallet, a doctor who is married with children, and who can afford to keep her as a mistress in an apartment in Paris. Cadignan soothes her, and she stays the night. The next morning, Mouchette accidentally kills him with one of his rifles as she is playing with it. Guilt-stricken, she washes her bloody shoes before eventually meeting Gallet. After having sex with her, he ignores her repeated confession that she murdered Cadignan (as the death was ruled a suicide) and dismisses her insistence that he is the father of her unborn baby. Disappointed that he is more concerned with the idea of his wife discovering the affair than her impassioned threats of suicide and pleas for him to pay for her abortion, Mouchette departs. Menou- Segrais, annoyed at his parishioners' discomfort with Donissan, sends the latter to assist at a parish located in a village miles away. Donissan travels by foot and encounters a horse trader, who turns out to be Satan. After failing to seduce Donissan, the horse trader warns him that his unwavering faith is a temptation to sin in itself. Donissan faints and awakens alone before reaching the village. Eventually he encounters Mouchette, and experiences a psychic connection where he can see her life and thoughts, and insists that she must repent for her sin of killing Cadignan. Unnerved at his knowledge and warnings, Mouchette leaves, and is later so overwhelmed with his words and her guilt that she commits suicide. Donissan discovers her body and brings her to the church altar, where he disturbs Menou-Segrais and Mouchette's parents by laying it out and claiming that he is trying to save her soul. Donissan's superiors are outraged by his outdated actions and demand he be punished and transferred, but Menou-Segrais becomes impressed by his passion, and fights for him to stay at the parish. Donissan becomes uncomfortable when his faith makes him a local celebrity, and his moral turmoil continues. Eventually he is called to visit a sick child, but when he arrives, he finds the boy already dead. After an impassioned plea to God, the child is restored to life. However, this action, as well as his newfound fame, makes Donissan increasingly ill. One night he is attacked by Satan and asks God to keep him alive if there is still use for him. He recovers and returns to the church to hear parishioners' confessions. After the last parishioner leaves, Menou-Segrais goes to the confessional and discovers Donissan dead inside. ===== The film opens in Yugoslavia with the Petrovic family watching their son Stepjan winning a soccer game. Their other son Andy works on his farm, and can't play soccer at all, after falling into the well by accident. One day, Andy discovers Gus can kick a soccer ball long distances when Andy shouts, "Oich". Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the California Atoms are a professional football team owned by Hank Cooper (Ed Asner) and coached by the inept Coach Venner (Don Knotts). They are the worst team in the league and have not won a game in years. Cooper also owes a lot of money to two mobster bookmakers named Charles Gwynn (Harold Gould) and Cal Wilson (Dick Van Patten). When Cooper tells them he cannot pay his debts, the bookies give him a last chance bet: if the Atoms win the upcoming Super Bowl, all gambling debts will be forgiven, but if they do not win, Gwynn and Wilson will take ownership of the team. Desperate to draw in fans, Cooper looks for a great half time show. His secretary, Debbie (Louise Williams), sees a story in her parents' Yugoslavian newspaper about Gus. Debbie flies to Yugoslavia and hires Gus and Andy. After Gus is a hit in his first halftime show, Cooper and Venner decide to put him in the game as a place kicker. The other team protests, but as the rule book does not require a player to be human, Cooper allow Gus to kick, And able to kick a field goal from anywhere in the field, the Atoms win. The Atoms go on to win their next few games thanks to Gus, and move to first place in their division. The only catch is that Gus will only kick when Andy holds the ball and shouts the command. Debbie is assigned to watch over Andy and Gus, since she can speak Serbian. A romance begins between them, aided by Gus. Gwynn and Wilson, realizing their deal with Cooper is backfiring, hire two incompetent criminals named Crankcase (Tim Conway) and Spinner (Tom Bosley) to stop Gus from playing and make the team lose. Through their schemes, Crankcase and Spinner cause the Atoms to lose two games. Despite the losses, the Atoms make the playoffs. Andy becomes a celebrity, but his parents remain unimpressed, saying he only holds the ball for Gus. Before the playoff game, Spinner convinces Andy that Debbie has been injured in a car accident. When Andy arrives at the hospital, Crankcase locks him up. Without Andy, Gus refuses to kick, and the Atoms fall behind. In the final quarter, Debbie dresses up in Andy's uniform and convinces Gus to kick a field goal, scoring the winning points. Andy, who managed to escape, arrives after the game is over. He tells Debbie his father is right: Andy is nothing, and anyone can hold the ball for Gus. With the Atoms headed to the Super Bowl, Spinner and Crankcase steal Gus and replace him with an ordinary mule. Spinner and Crankcase check into a local hotel and lock up Gus with them and Gus breaks the TV and the hotel room door. At the Super Bowl, Andy quickly realizes the mule he has is not Gus, and he and Cooper leave by helicopter to search for Gus. When the two criminals watch the game on TV, Gus goes wild and escapes. In a long comic sequence, Crankcase and Spinner chase Gus into a local supermarket where they unsuccessfully attempt to recapture the mule. The criminals make a huge mess in the supermarket, including a bag of flour, stepping on bottles of Ketchup and Mustard, making a mess of themselves, destroying dinnerware on display, getting in the way of a strong man who beats one of them up, landing in a basket of balls for the children, one of them fell into a live lobster tank, and finally, attempting to ride Gus, who throws one of them into a huge ready made cake, destroying it completely. Running from the supermarket, Spinner and Crankcase are apprehended for mule napping and for causing an extended amount of damages in the supermarket. Gus is spotted from the air by Andy and Cooper. They airlift Gus to the Super Bowl and arrive in the fourth quarter. With Gus back in the game, the Atoms make a comeback. With 3 seconds left on the clock, the Atoms are down 16–15 with the ball on their own 5-yard line. Gus lines up for a field goal attempt, but slips in the mud and misses the football. In the scramble for the ball, Gus knocks it over to Andy, who runs 95 yards for the touchdown. Andy and team walk off the field to celebrate their win. ===== Chicago residents Neil Randall (Gerard Butler) and his wife, Abby Randall (Maria Bello) have the perfect life and a perfect marriage. With their beautiful young daughter, Sophie, they are living the American dream until Sophie is suddenly kidnapped. Neil and Abby have no choice but to comply with the abductor's demands. The kidnapper, Tom Ryan (Pierce Brosnan), an apparent sociopath, takes over their lives with the brutal efficiency of someone who has nothing to lose. In the blink of an eye, Neil and Abby's safe and secure existence is turned upside down. Ryan doesn't want their money and instead wants their life to be systematically dismantled and destroyed, piece by piece. With time running out, Neil and Abby realize they have to submit to Ryan's challenges over the next 24-hour period. Tom asks them how far will they go to save their child, and gives them a series of tasks to complete before they can have their daughter back. He requires them to withdraw more than $130,000 from their bank which is all the money they have. After they give Tom the money, he burns it and throws into a river along with their wallets. Tom then requires the pair to get $300 from nowhere in a part of the town where they don't have any friends. Abby pawns her bracelet and Neil his watch to get the $300. Tom requires Abby to deliver a document to Neil's office within twenty minutes, and Tom shows Neil a copy of document that contains details of Neil's hacking into customer accounts, which if leaked will ruin Neil. Neil watches Abby deliver the document from a distance. Neil and Abby think that Sophie is being held in a hotel, and they try to rescue her, only to get caught by Tom. As punishment, Tom makes Abby take off her dress and put on an enticing short dress in front of both him and Neil. Tom has one last test for Neil to save Sophie, in which he requires Neil to enter a house and kill the occupant - a coworker named Judy who Neil has been having an affair with. Neil is greeted warmly by Judy, and is desperately confused as he sees a picture of Tom on the mantel and learns that Tom and Judy are married. Tom enters the house and tells Neil to shoot Judy or he will kill Neil's daughter Sophie. Neil pulls the trigger but the gun isn't loaded. Tom reveals he knows about their affair and tells Neil his daughter is safe at home. As they return home, Neil lies to Abby and tells her that his boss was having an affair with Judy and Tom mistook Neil for that person, which is why Tom had tormented them the whole day. When they return home, Sophie is asleep and has been there the whole time. Abby reveals to Neil that their daughter had never been kidnapped, and Tom had concocted the entire day to let Neil experience for one day the pain he has undergone. Neil says that Abby has ruined his career by delivering the document to his office, but she tells him it was blank. Abby has paid Neil back for 24 hours a portion of the pain she has experienced since learning of his affair, revealing she was involved in the deception. ===== A group of students are preparing for a school dance. Rock arrives with a damaged ticket and is denied entry by Mr. Temple and Principal James. After leaving, Rock is provoked by a group of thugs to vandalize the Principal's car. When Pierre Dulaine comes on the scene, they all run off. The next morning, Pierre arrives at the school to see the Principal. After explaining that he witnessed her car being vandalized, Pierre offers to take over the detention shift and teach them ballroom dancing. She agrees, although she feels sure that he will not last more than a day. His first class goes badly due to the scepticism and uncooperative personalities of the students. When Pierre returns the next morning, Principal James explains that the reason LaRhette had refused to dance with Rock the day before was because Rock's brother was involved in a gang war, in which one of the casualties was LaRhette's brother. At Pierre's dance studio, Caitlin is under pressure to learn to dance because her cotillion is approaching. She feels a failure and envies Morgan for her graceful sensuality, remarking to Pierre that she is "like sex on hardwood." This gives Pierre an idea of how to reach out to the kids in detention. He invites Morgan to give them a demonstration of the tango, which inspires the students to be more willing to learn. Caitlin decides to join them for dance class and practices with Monster. Though the other students suspect her of wanting to "tell her upper class friends that she's slumming" at first, they learn to accept her when she admits that she feels better with them. LaRhette, the daughter of a prostitute, cares for her younger siblings while her mother works the streets. One night, she runs out of the apartment and to the school after one of her mother's clients attempts to rape her. While practicing her dancing, she runs into Rock, who'd gone down there to sleep after losing his job and getting kicked out of his house after a physical confrontation with his drunken father. They fight and are caught by security. Principal James wants to suspend them both, but agrees to give them extra detention with Pierre instead. Pierre tells the class about a dance competition that he wants them to enter. Gradually, the students begin to trust Pierre; Kurd even visits his apartment to discuss his sexual problems. When the detention basement is flooded, Pierre takes the students to his dance studio to practice. The youngsters become disenchanted by the skills of Pierre's students there as well as the $200 entrance fee for the contest. However, Pierre manages to inspire them again and promises to pay the fee. LaRhette and Rock, who have now learned to respect each other, are assigned to compete in the waltz, and rivals Ramos and Danjou learn to share Sasha during practice. Mr. Temple complains about the school's resources being wasted on the dance program. When Pierre is brought to a meeting with the parents' association, he convinces them to keep the program going after demonstrating how ballroom dancing has taught the students "teamwork, respect, and dignity". On the night of the contest, Rock is told by the gang he has joined that he must participate in a theft. He intentionally shoots the sprinkler system, setting off the alarm, and all have to flee. At the competition, it is announced that a $5000 prize will be given to the winning team. Monster intervenes in the cotillion and saves Caitlin from tripping. Sasha, Danjou, and Ramos perform an impressive three-person tango but are disqualified because the event is a partner dance. Morgan is awarded the prize but defuses the tension by calling it a tie and giving Sasha her trophy. Principal James is impressed with the success of the program and tells Pierre she is making it permanent. Rock arrives at the last minute to dance the waltz with LaRhette, whom he kisses at the end. The final credits roll as Pierre's students triumphantly dance to hip hop music, having tampered with the sound system. ===== The series stars Rebecca Romijn as Pepper Dennis, a television reporter for an evening news broadcast at the fictional television station WEiE (specifically with a small i) in Chicago. The series also starred Rider Strong as Chick, Pepper's cameraman who has an unrequited crush on her, Brooke Burns as Pepper's sheltered and somewhat flaky sister Kathy Dinkle, Lindsay Price as Kimmy Kim, Pepper's closest friend and WEiE's makeup artist and Josh Hopkins as Charlie Babcock, the station's news anchor. One of the focal points of the show was the love-hate relationship between Pepper and Charlie. ===== The film centers around a group of terrorist who take over a nuclear power plant and a security guard at the plant who tries to stop them. ===== In 1865, the proletarian General Gurko Lanen (George Sanders) becomes the behind-the- scenes dictator of the Grand Duchy of Lichtenburg located in the Balkans. Gurko suppresses the clergy and the free press and imprisons the Prime Minister Baron Von Neuhoff (Montagu Love). The rightful ruler of the Grand Duchy, the Grand Duchess Zona (Joan Bennett), hopes to get aid from Napoleon III of France and makes her escape pursued by a troop of Hussars loyal to Gurko. While on a hunting trip, the visiting Count of Monte Cristo (Louis Hayward), rescues her. The Count escorts the Grand Duchess Zona to a neutral country, but Gurko's Hussars violate international neutrality to return the Grand Duchess and her lady-in-waiting back to Lichtenburg. The count has become romantically enamored of Zona and undertakes to help her, visiting the Grand Duchy where he falls in with the underground resistance movement of Lichtenburg. He befriends the loyal Lt. Dorner (Clayton Moore) of the palace guard who knows a variety of secret passages leading from the Grand Ducal Palace to the literal catacombs of the Grand Duchy. Discovering that Baron Von Neuhoff is to be executed, the Count gains entry to the palace through his previously being asked for a large loan of French Francs by Gurko and plays the role of a cowardly fopish international banker. There he overhears Gurko meeting with the French Ambassador (Georges Renavent) who raises the issue of human rights in the Grand Duchy. Gurko counters him by saying he is signing a non aggression pact with Russia protecting Lichtenburg from any French threats. Gurko schemes to gain the nation's loyalty by marrying the Grand Duchess and keeping the pact with Russia a secret. The count becomes a masked freedom fighter named "The Torch" after the underground newspaper in order to save the Grand Duchy. He then sets out to right the wrongs and capture the heart of the woman he loves. ===== In seventeenth-century Paris, poet and supreme swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac (José Ferrer) stops a play from being shown because he ostensibly cannot stand the bombastic style of the principal actor, Montfleury (Arthur Blake). An annoyed aristocratic fop, the Vicomte de Valvert (Albert Cavens), provokes him into a duel by tritely insulting Cyrano's enormous nose. Cyrano first mocks his lack of wit, improvising numerous inventive ways in which Valvert could have phrased it (much to the amusement of the audience). He then composes a ballade for the occasion on the spot and recites it during the sword fight. With the last line, he stabs his opponent. Cyrano's friend Le Bret (Morris Carnovsky), Captain of the Gascony guards, warns him he has made powerful enemies of his victim's friends, but he is unconcerned. When Le Bret presses him to reveal the real reason he hates Montfleury, Cyrano admits that he became jealous when he saw the actor smiling at his beautiful cousin Roxane (Mala Powers). He confesses that he is in love with her, but harbors no hope of it being returned because of his nose. When he receives a request from Roxane to see her in the morning, he is finally emboldened to act. Then pastry chef and fellow poet Ragueneau (Lloyd Corrigan) approaches him for help. Ragueneau has learned that a nobleman he had mocked with his verses, the Comte De Guiche (Ralph Clanton), has hired a hundred ruffians to teach him a lesson. Cyrano escorts him, kills eight of the horde, and drives off the rest. The next day, before he can tell Roxane of his feelings, she informs him that she has fallen in love with a handsome guardsman, Christian de Neuvillette (William Prince), though she has not even spoken to him. Cyrano hides his devastation and agrees to help her. Cyrano befriends the young man, who is in Cyrano's guardsmen unit, and discovers that he is infatuated with Roxane, but is too inept with words to woo her. To help him, Cyrano composes Christian's love letters to Roxane, which she finds irresistible. Later, Christian decides he wants no more help and tries to speak to Roxane face to face, but fails miserably and she re-enters her house in an angry huff. Cyrano, hiding in the bushes, comes to his rescue, but this time by imitating Christian's voice and speaking to Roxane from under her balcony. He is so eloquent that he (unintentionally) wins a kiss for Christian from Roxane. When the arrogant Comte De Guiche, who is also wooing Roxane, pressures her to marry him, Cyrano delays him long enough for her to wed Christian instead. Furious, De Guiche, Christian's commander, orders him to join his unit immediately for a war against the Spanish, preventing the couple from spending their wedding night together. With Cyrano under his command as well, De Guiche earns the swordsman's respect by his conduct in the war. From the field, Cyrano sends Roxane letters every day, supposedly written by Christian. Roxane visits her husband in camp and tells him that she now has fallen in love with him not merely for his looks but because of his words, and would love him even if he were ugly. Realizing that she really loves Cyrano, Christian gets his rival to agree to tell Roxane the truth and let her decide between them. But before the opportunity arises, Christian volunteers for a dangerous mission and is fatally wounded, silencing Cyrano. Roxane enters a convent in mourning. Years pass, with Cyrano visiting Roxane weekly, having retired from the military and writes satirical articles mocking the nobility. De Guiche, who has also befriended her and has come to respect Cyrano, has overheard a courtier plotting against Cyrano. De Guiche warns Roxane that Cyrano's life may be in danger. One night, Cyrano is lured into an ambush; the poet is run down by a carriage. Near death, he hides his injuries and goes to keep his appointment with Roxane for the last time. His secret love for Roxane is finally revealed when he recites from memory the last of his love letters, which she has kept, but it is too late. Cyrano first slips into delirium, then dies, leaving Roxane to mourn a second time. ===== Buhei Mikai is a successful actor and film director, and is making a film about a middle aged married couple, both of whom are dying of cancer. After he vomits blood when he is with his mistress, Buhei's wife takes him to the hospital, where the doctor diagnoses him with terminal cancer and operates on his stomach. However, he withholds this information from Buhei, and tells him he has an ulcer. After a remission, Buhei again becomes ill, is operated on for a second time, and is confined to hospital. Gradually he guesses that he must be suffering from cancer, despite constant reassurances to the contrary from his wife and doctor. After a suicide attempt, the doctor and wife decide to tell him the truth. After wrestling with his conscience, Dr Ogata also allows Buhei to direct the final scene of his film, even though the effort will shorten his life, and agrees not to administer drugs that would prolong his life at the cost of more pain and suffering. Buhei completes his film. He tells the doctor how grateful he is that he was honest about his condition and could live his final weeks to the full. In the last scene, he dies, surrounded by his wife, doctor, nurse and members of the film production crew. ===== The game is set in Buddie World, a peaceful world inhabited by pill- shaped creatures called "Buddies". One day, an eclipse occurs, and crates fall from the sky. After finding weapons inside the crates, the Buddies are segregated by colour and begin fighting for supremacy. As the violence spills into other regions of Buddie World, the player learns that the other teams are being assisted by a scientist called Doctor Madasalorrie, who has also been experimenting on animals in Buddie World. The player eventually meets Madasalorrie and persuades him to defect. However, he later goes missing and is presumed dead after failing to destroy an enemy-run factory, forcing the player to complete his mission. It is later revealed that the crates came from the Baddie Moon, which is inhabited by cube-shaped creatures called "Baddies". The Baddies dropped the crates to Buddie World and filmed the ensuing carnage for a television show. The player travels to the Baddie Moon and is tasked by the president of Buddie World with killing the Baddies and destroying their capital city, which is the source of the crates. The player later learns that Madasalorrie is still alive and is a Baddie disguised as a Buddie. He helped boost the ratings of the Baddies' TV show by having the Buddies kill each other with more lethal weapons. The season finale of the show involves Madasalorrie using a death ray to destroy Buddie World. The player kills Madasalorrie, rescues the moon's aliens before the moon's largest volcano erupts, and destroys Madasalorrie's most powerful killing machine, restoring peace and order to Buddie World. ===== Choi Chang-hyeok (Park Shin-yang) is driving in his car, when he suddenly finds himself followed by the police. In the following chase he tries to get away, but as his car emerges from a tunnel it goes over the side, down a cliff and he is killed in the burning wreck. The reason he tried to get away, is that he had just left the Bank of Korea, where he was part of a scam, that got him and his four accomplices the neat sum of 5 billion won. He died, one of his accomplices was caught, and the other three disappeared – and so did all the money. Eol-mae (Lee Moon-sik) was the one caught by the police, and they try to get him to talk and reveal the scam and his accomplices. In flashbacks we see how the plan was hatched, and get to know the criminals. The police tries to find out more about the killed Chang-hyeok, and find his brother, who is the owner of a used book store. He has been at odds with his deceased brother, but now gets a big life insurance. This interests Seo In-kyeong (Yum Jung-ah) very much. She has been living with Mr. Kim (Baek Yoon-sik), who is a veteran con-artist and the money-man in the scam. In-kyeong got to know Chang-hyeok – and now wants to get to know his brother. ===== As Lugg is reading aloud the obituaries one morning, he comes across one for an old school nemesis of Campion. Remarkably, an anonymous letter inviting Campion to the funeral has also appeared in the morning post. R.I. “Pig” Peters is dead. So says the doctor that treated him. Five months later, Campion receives a panicked call from a friend, something about a murder. Campion drives down to the friend’s home where her father reveals the most assuredly dead body of R.I. “Pig” Peters, his head caved in no more than 12 hours earlier. Amazingly enough, some of the visitors from Peters' first funeral also appear, along with some not-so-grieving acquaintances of the late Pig. The little village is becoming very crowded. Now begins Campion’s search, which leads to a missing body, a grisly scarecrow and one too many beers for Lugg before he discovers the madman that planned more than a few murders. This is the only Albert Campion story told in the first person by Campion. ===== The evil Duke of Coffin Castle lives with his good and beautiful niece, the princess Saralinda, in a castle so cold that all the clocks have frozen at ten minutes to five. Several suitors have tried to court the Princess, but the Duke's policy is to test their eligibility by assigning them impossible tasks. A few days before Saralinda's twenty-first birthday, Prince Zorn of Zorna arrives in the town disguised as a minstrel. He falls in with an enigmatic guide known as the Golux. Soon after, he is arrested for singing mocking songs about the Duke in public. The Duke learns "Xingu"'s true identity, and decides to allow him to court Saralinda. The Duke assigns Zorn the task of finding a thousand jewels, and sets a deadline 99 hours hence, which is too little time for Zorn to obtain the jewels from the kingdom of Zorna. In addition, the Duke demands that Zorn must also find a way to restart the thirteen frozen clocks. Zorn and the Golux travel to the home of Hagga, a woman who had been given the magical ability to weep jewels rather than tears. She tells them that she has wept so much, in order to provide jewels for others, that she can no longer weep from sadness; the only time she weeps is when she weeps from laughing. She adds that such jewels, produced by weeping with laughter, will turn back into tears a fortnight (fourteen days) later. Undeterred by this, the Golux and Zorn obtain a thousand of these short-lived jewels of laughter from her. The Prince and Golux return to the castle, with the jewels. With the help of Saralinda, the Golux finds a way to restart the clocks as required. Presented with the thousand jewels and the sound of the thirteen clocks striking, the Duke is forced to admit defeat. Zorn and the Princess happily depart by ship, first to the kingdom of Yarrow (where Saralinda's father lives) and then on to the Prince's homeland of Zorna. A fortnight later, while the Duke is gloating over his jewels, they transform back into tears. The angry Duke, deprived of his vengeance and his profit, is then killed by a nightmarish monster called the Todal, sent by the Devil as punishment for failing to do sufficient evil. ===== Cullen James is a young woman dwelling in two worlds. A happy housewife by day, by dream she is one of several questers after the Bones of the Moon. Somehow, though, one of these worlds is starting to carry over into the other, in frightening ways. The Bones of the Moon of the title are five bones that give power over the dream world in which Cullen James spends her time. ===== After ten months without a break, Sub-Commander T'Pol notes efficiency on board Enterprise is down, and suggests shore leave on Risa. Captain Archer agrees. En route, however, Archer receives a transmission from Admiral Forrest, informing him of a Vulcan Ambassador in need of extradition. With the closest Vulcan starship over a week away Enterprise is ordered to retrieve and deliver her to the Vulcan cruiser Sh'Raan. Arriving at Mazar, Archer and T'Pol are surprised to hear the Ambassador has been expelled for abuse of her position. Archer is called to the bridge and speaks to a Mazarite captain who requests that V'Lar be returned for further questioning. He stalls for time to contact Starfleet, but the Mazarite ship opens fire. During the battle, the aft phase cannons disable the enemy ship's engines, allowing Enterprise to escape. Confronting V'Lar, Archer finds her unwilling to reveal more, stating that it is a matter for Vulcan High Command only. Archer then orders Ensign Mayweather to set a course to return to Mazar. Later, after speaking with V'Lar in private, T'Pol persuades Archer to continue the rendezvous with the Sh'Raan, but Enterprise immediately comes under attack from three Mazarite ships. Archer opts for flight but even at Warp 5, the Mazarite ships still gain steadily. V'Lar suddenly confesses that her reputation was intentionally sullied to make the Mazarites believe she would no longer be a credible witness against corrupt officials. V'Lar offers to surrender herself for the safety of the crew, but Archer refuses. Stalling for time, Archer informs the Mazarites that V'Lar suffered injuries and is in critical condition, allowing them to board Enterprise. The Sh'Raan arrives and threatens to destroy the Mazarite ships unless they surrender immediately. At this point, Archer's ruse is revealed, and V'Lar appears unharmed. A grateful V'Lar tells them that their bond of trust and friendship bodes well for future human-Vulcan relations. ===== Map of "Chairman Island" The story takes place in March 1860 and opens with a group of schoolboys aged between eight and fourteen on board a 100-ton schooner called the Sleuth moored at Auckland, New Zealand, and preparing to set off on a six-week vacation. With the exception of the oldest boy Gordon, an American, and Briant and Jack, two French brothers, all the boys are British. While the schooner's crew are ashore, the moorings are cast-off under unknown circumstances and the ship drifts to sea, where it is caught by a storm. Twenty-two days later, the boys find themselves cast upon the shore of an uncharted island, which they name "Chairman Island." They go on many adventures and even catch wild animals while trying to survive. They remain there for the next two years until a passing ship sinks in the close vicinity of the island. The ship had been taken over by mutineers, intent on trafficking slaves. With the aid of two of the surviving members of the original crew, the boys are able to defeat the mutineers and make their escape from the island, which they find out is close to the Chilean coast (Hanover- Island located at 50°56’ S, 74°47’ W). ===== The game is set in mid-1930s Middle America with a variety of characters, puzzles, and outcomes. The plot, size, and direction of each game are randomly generated at the start, with locations and items being different every time, though each storyline has a pre-scripted resolution. ===== The story lines are centered around a fictional hotel in Oslo, its employees, and the Anker-Hansen family. From the start, CEO and widower Georg Anker-Hansen (Toralv Maurstad) was one of the most central figures in the series and his romance with the escort girl Ninni Krogstad (Henriette Lien) was the main story. After a year Georg died of incurable cancer in the pancreas, and Ninni inherited the entire concern, which led to major conflicts with Georg's dominating mother, Astrid (Sossen Krohg), and especially Georg's children, Juni (Anette Hoff), Jens August (Kim Kolstad), and Julie (Elin Sogn). So far, the series was mostly inspired by the history of Janni Spies, where Janni Brodersen married the much older Danish tourism king Simon Spies, and inherited millions when he died. It gave the idea to the hotel-owner Georg Anker-Hansen and the escort girl Ninni Krogstad. The story of Georg's daughter Juni was also pretty much in the center in the beginning, due to her alcoholism. It received great attention in Norwegian media. The show received even more attention when the half siblings Jens-August (Kim Kolstad) and Charlotte Iversen (Kristin Frogner) began a relationship without knowing that they were siblings. Later, the series focused on topics such as racism, kidnapping, rape, abortion, trafficking, drugs, pyromania, homosexuality, murder and other controversial topics. In autumn 2004, episode No. 1000 of the series was sent, where Toralv Maurstad made a guest appearance as Georg in some of the characters dreams. In January 2006, the series changed its genre and appeared as a more innovative and modern soap with more action, humor, sex, violence and drama. The show received massive media publicity because of its controversial content and early prime time. After the sudden change in the series, the viewing rates decreased, and this resulted as of January 2007, that the show gradually returned to its old style. Years later it was discovered that Georg's deceased wife, Ingeborg Anker-Hansen, had an affair with Harald Hilldring, which resulted in the birth of Julie Anker-Hansen, who was the artist and the outsider of the family. She learned about this through her mother's diaries. Julie also claimed Georg responsible for her mother's illness, and among her siblings, she's the one who have the smallest issue about being against her family's opinions. Jens August came out of prison at the start of the series, because he killed a young man driving under influence of alcohol. He also had a past with his father's new girlfriend, Ninni, and the relationship between Jens August and Ninni was always tense. In the summer-cliffhanger of 2007, Jens August returned to the series, after being deserted on an island for two years. The plane was sabotaged by one an assassin sent by Scott Wallace, brother of Rolv Espevoll. Rolf, who was introduced to the Anker-Hansens in 1998. He had a brief affair with Juni during his 4 years working at the hotel. In 2002, he was set up for a murder, and later found guilty and sent to prison. He was released in 2006, where he in a short time with his brother Scott kicked out the Anker-Hansens of the hotel and their own concern. Throughout the few months they were in charge, Scott and Rolf developed a tense and hatred relationship. After some tense weeks, Scott wanted to get rid of Rolf, and planted a bag of cocaine in his hotel-room. Since Rolf recently was released from jail, this was a crucial move from Scott. After an anonymous call by him to the police, Rolf was arrested and was most likely to be convicted for drug-dealing. Rolf figured out that Scott was behind it all. And at the day of his trail, he ran off from the court. He visited Juni at Ankerseteren, gagged her, stole a rifle and ran down to the hotel, where he started shooting in the lobby. He killed 20 people including 2 people who held weapons too. Daphne wanted revenge from her ex for leaving her. When she pointed the gun at him, Rolf waited behind and shot her. The other one wielding a weapon was Julian, who was threatening his girlfriend, Benedicte, who've he had molested recently. Rolf ran into Julian and Benedicte when Julian was about to shot her. In a cheeky manner, Rolf pointed the rifle on Julian asking him to apologize to Benedicte for treating her bad. Nevertheless, Rolf shot Julian, who died instantly. Ironically then, Rolf saved 2 people from getting killed. He then went up to the office, where he pushed Scott out on the roof and talked straight out about everything he hated about him. Scott was already shot in his arm, and was not able to defend himself. Rolf ended up killing himself in the end. In November 2007, June Anker-Hansen and Jens August Anker-Hansen was about to sell Virtual Window, a project developed by businesswoman, Nadia Selam-Tefari, who worked at Cæsar. Junis boyfriend at the moment, Magnus Falsen presented the Virtual Window to his lodge, Vox Populi, which seemed positive to the project. Many new main characters arrived in 2008, including Gaute Ormåsen who came 2nd in the Norwegian Idol in 2003. He played the role of the musician and bartender Marius Nordheim. Per Christian Ellefsen joined the cast as the businessman Tom Ivar Johansen. In addition viewers were introduced to his two daughters, Cecilie and Cathrine. In November 2008, Tom Ivar died of bone cancer in addition to a fall from the main staircase at Hotel Cæsar, after accidentally being pushed down by his daughter Cathrine. Cathrine admitted when Tom Ivar was comatose, that she hoped he would die. Cathrine felt that she always was his second daughter after Cecilie, who he admired and loved openly. In April 2009, Victoria Lunde, Junis daughter, came back to the series after many years in Belgium. She had turned into an alcoholic, which she probably inherited from his mother. Initially, Victoria held this hidden, but after several incidents throughout the fall of 2009, Juni figured out that her daughter needed help. In the spring of 2009, Cathrine broke off from the Anker-Hansen Group, and started her own hotel chain, the Black Diamond. Jens August joined her after having a serious conflict with his family. Nevertheless, he returns to his family later. In October 2009, Jens August's wife, Liv died, when she was hit by a car. Weeks later, she appeared in Jens Augusts "visions". Juni's ex-husband and Victoria's father, Ragnar Lunde also had a guest role in the autumn of 2009. He had married an Asian woman and converted to Buddhism. When he left, Victoria joined him to go to rehab back in Brussels, Belgium. In November the same year, Jens August and Ninni's son, Georg jr., or "Goggen", returned to Norway after being sent to boarding school in Switzerland at young age. He later started a relationship with Runa Jørgensen, step-daughter of his own uncle, Svein. He was Ninni's brother, and had at the moment a rocky relationship to Goggen. In February 2010, Astrid's centenary was celebrated in 2000th episode of the show. At the end of this episode, Astrid got a stroke, and it turned out that she had cerebral hemorrhage. She survives, but loses her voice capability. However, Astrid died a month later. This spring, Juni found out that Ingeborg is not her mother, as she thought over the years. Her real mother was her former nanny, Dagny Dallimore (who came into the series in late 2009). Before Juni was born, her family thought Ingeborg was not able to have a child. Therefore, Dagny said yes to carry Georg's baby. Astrid, Ingeborg and Georg set it up to make Juni think she was Ingeborg's daughter. Dagny was allowed to continue meeting her daughter as her nanny. But when Astrid and Ingeborg thought Juni and Dagny was to close, they blackmailed Dagny into leave the country. She moved to Australia, where she married a priest and got another daughter, Rose. Dagny told Juni about this. She also told Juni that Rose had a rough patch in her life, and that she had broke off all her contact to Dagny. Juni decided to go to Australia and find after her. Meanwhile, Junis daughter, Victoria, had completed her treatment in Brussels, returned to Oslo in April 2010. This spring, Cathrine's hotel chain, Black Diamond, hit bankruptcy as a result when the chain's investor, Elliot Hiltun, was arrested for economic crimes, and thus get all their financial assets frozen. In the 2010 season finale, a huge fire started during a family dinner at Ankerseteren. Three people, Dagny, Ragnhild and Cecilie, were killed in the fire. ===== Dark Rift takes place far in the future, sometime after the events of Criticom. Gameplay spans three dimensions: the Neutral Dimension (where Earth is located), the Dark Dimension (home to demons), and the Light Dimension (home to energy beings). Although the creatures of the Dark Dimension are demonic, there is no indication that the inhabitants of the Light Dimension have any angelic qualities. The crystal (the acquisition of which is the main motivation of the characters of Criticom) turns out to be the Core Prime Element of a Master Key, one which holds the power to all the secrets in the universe. The Master Key was found eons ago lodged in a spatial tear. When it was retrieved it burst into three pieces, sending two pieces into alternate dimensions, and widening the tear into the game's namesake Dark Rift. ===== ===== Stéphane, a young French man from Paris, travels to Romania. He is looking for the singer Nora Luca, whom his father had heard all the time before his death. Wandering along a frozen road, he meets old Izidor, a Rom and tries tell him of Nora Luca. Drunken Izidor only hears the handful of Romani words and takes Stéphane to his village, determined to teach the boy the Romani language. Stéphane believes that Izidor will take him to Nora Luca when the time has come, so he lives in the Roma village for several months in Izidor's house, as Izidor's son Adriani has been arrested. Izidor is happy to have him as a guest, calling him "his Frenchman" and fixing the young wanderer's worn-out shoes. The other Roma dislike Stéphane at first, insulting him in their language and believing him to be a lunatic, tricking him into saying rude words and even into entering a tent where women are bathing. Stéphane gradually wins them over by showing his respect for their music and culture and is rewarded with an intimate look into every aspect of Roma life, from a raucous wedding to a bittersweet funeral. The only person in the village who speaks any French is the young Sabina, a divorced Romani dancer who is blatantly hostile towards him at first, but the pair eventually bond through a series of trips across the countryside to record traditional Romani music. One day, just as the pair are beginning to make love for the first time, Adriani returns after many months in jail. The village rejoices, but the men soon have to leave to work at a performance and the two lovebirds sneak off to be together. While they are away, Adriani goes to the local bar, where he murders a man that he accuses of being responsible for his imprisonment. Adriani escapes, but a mob follows him and burns the village to the ground, killing him. Stéphane and Sabina return to find the smoldering ruins and are both devastated. They hurry to the concert venue and tell Izidor, who races outside and begs the earth to open and reunite him with his son. Stéphane leaves the village and drives to the mile marker where the film opened. Grief-stricken, he smashes all the tapes he recorded during his travels with Sabina on the stone marker and buries them. He then drinks from a vodka bottle, spills some on the "grave" of the tapes, lays the bottle of the "grave" and then dances as Izidor did at his brother's funeral. A shot of the back of the car reveals Sabina sleeping in the back seat. She wakes up, notices the impromptu "funeral" that Stéphane is holding and smiles before the screen fades to black. ===== The game begins in the city of Bowerstone, where the protagonist, a young child known as Sparrow, lives in poverty with his/her older sister, Rose, and dreams about living in Castle Fairfax, the home of Lord Lucien. Their dreams are cut short when they hear a commotion at the market. A man known as Mystical Murgo is selling 'magical' wares and a magic box that grants a wish. Convinced by an old woman named Theresa, Sparrow and Rose decide to collect the five coins required for the box by completing jobs. During this time, they save a dog, which later takes up residence with them. When they finally collect the money needed, they buy the box and wish to live in Castle Fairfax. However, the box disappears in a flash of light, seemingly having failed to work. In the middle of the night, they are awakened by a guard, who escorts them to Castle Fairfax on Lucien's order. Overjoyed at their wish coming true, the two follow eagerly. After meeting Lucien and telling him of the box, he asks them to step in a circle on the floor, which emits a blue light but turns red, to Lucien's anger, upon his touch. Proclaiming that they are not any of the three "Heroes" he is seeking, and one of them is a fourth Hero, he kills Rose and wounds Sparrow, who falls out of a window. Upon waking up, Sparrow learns that they survived the fall due to their heroic line, and was rescued by Theresa and the dog. Ten years later, Lucien has been rebuilding the Tattered Spire, which grants the user enormous power. Sparrow is told by Theresa that they are the descendant of a great hero, and destined to bring Lucien's downfall. However, they must first find three heroes in order to defeat Lucien with their combined powers. Given the quest to stop Lucien's plans, the Hero begins a great journey, enlisting the aid of Hammer, the Hero of Strength; Garth, the Hero of Will, and Reaver, the Hero of Skill. Reaver, who is a former pirate living in Bloodstone, tells the Hero to take a Dark Seal to his friends in Wraithmarsh. The Seal turns out to be an item marking its bearer for sacrifice to the Court of Shadows, allowing Reaver to stay young forever. The Hero has a choice of either sacrificing their youth or the youth of a young woman trapped in the Court. The Hero then returns to Reaver at his mansion, which turns out to be a trap as Reaver has brought Lucien to attack the Hero, aiming to collect the bounty on them. However, Lucien turns on Reaver, causing him to rejoin the Hero. The Heroes perform a ritual near the old Guild of Heroes, but are attacked by Lucien, who kills the Hero and their dog and captures the others. The Hero is taken to a dream-like paradise, set when they were a child. The Hero forces their way through the nightmares, arrives at the Spire, and defeats Lucien with a music box from the nightmares. Lucien is killed by either the Hero or Reaver. Theresa then appears and grants the Hero one of three wishes: "Sacrifice", which will resurrect the thousands of people killed during the construction of the Tattered Spire; "Love", which will resurrect the Hero's dog, sister, and family (if the Hero was married); or "Wealth", which will grant the Hero one million pieces of gold. The Heroes then part ways and Theresa tells the Hero that while Albion is theirs to enjoy, the Spire is hers. In the DLC See The Future, the Hero visits Theresa once again at the Spire. Theresa shows the Hero a vision of the future showing them as King or Queen of Albion, and also a child in the crib by the throne who will become a great hero, setting the background for Fable III. ===== The story beginsThe plot summary is extracted with alterations from Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern – Volume 2, ed. Charles Dudley Warner, 1896. See "Aucassin and Nicolette" by Frederick Morris Warren, pg. 943. with a song which serves as prologue; and then prose takes up the narrative. It recounts the tale of Aucassin, son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, who so loved Nicolette, a Saracen maiden, who had been sold to the Viscount of Beaucaire, baptized and adopted by him, that he had forsaken knighthood and chivalry and even refused to defend his father's territories from enemies. Accordingly, his father ordered the Viscount to send Nicolette away, but instead the Viscount locked her in a tower of his palace. Aucassin is imprisoned by his father to prevent him from going after his beloved Nicolette. But Nicolette escapes, hears Aucassin lamenting in his cell, and comforts him with sweet words. She flees to the forest outside the gates, and there, in order to test Aucassin's fidelity, builds a rustic home to await his arrival. When he is released from prison Aucassin hears from shepherd lads of Nicolette's hiding-place, and seeks her bower. The lovers, united, resolve to leave the country. They board a ship and are driven to the (fictional) kingdom of "Torelore", whose king they find in child-bed while the queen is with the army. After a three years' stay in Torelore they are captured by Saracen pirates and separated. The wind blows Aucassin's boat back to Beaucaire - where he succeeds to Garin's estate. Meanwhile another wind carries Nicolette to "Cartage" (perhaps a play on Carthage or Cartagena). The sight of the city reminds her that she is the daughter of its king. She informs the king and soon it is planned that she should marry a Saracen king. She avoids this by disguising herself as a minstrel. She then sets sail for Beaucaire to rejoin her beloved Aucassin. There, before Aucassin who does not immediately recognize her, she sings of her own adventures and the love between them. Finally, in due time she makes herself known to him, and the two marry. The story ends by saying that now the two have found (lasting) happiness the narrator has nothing left to say. ===== The story postulates a transportation device (supervised by a dinosaur-like race of aliens) which can transmit an exact copy of a person's body to distant planets. The original body is disintegrated once reception at the destination is confirmed. In the story a woman is teleported to an alien planet, but the original is not disintegrated because reception cannot be confirmed at the time. Reception is later confirmed, and the original, not surprisingly, declines to "balance the equation" by re-entering the scanning and disintegrating device. This creates an ethical quandary which is viewed quite differently by the cold-blooded aliens who provided the teleportation technology, and their warm-blooded human associates. ===== The story takes place in the year 2096 in the town of New Canaan, Connecticut, and centers on Peter Cage, who goes by the nickname "Mr. Boy". Peter has lived for 25 years but possesses the body of a 12-year-old as a result of continually undergoing genetic modification ("twanking") to reverse his biological clock. This process is done at the direction of his wealthy but emotionally distant mother. His mother has assumed the form of a three-quarters scale replica of the Statue of Liberty (also through gene twanking), which Peter lives inside. Peter has only ever interacted with his mother through robotic avatars which she controls – her private quarters in the statue's head are inaccessible. Peter spends much of his time socializing with other wealthy children, including his best friend Stennie, who has been twanked to resemble a "grapefruit yellow stenonychosaurus". The children indulge in orgiastic gatherings such as "smash parties", where they destroy valuable antiques and kill animals. Peter and his social circle look down on members of the working class, referring to them as "stiffs". At school, Peter sees and falls in love with a girl named Treemonisha Joplin (named for the opera Treemonisha by ragtime composer Scott Joplin). After introducing himself to her, Peter learns that she comes from a working class family who operate a floristry business in a shopping mall. Peter brings Treemonisha to parties, but finds himself increasingly disillusioned with his life of privilege, and worries that the milieu of wealth and nihilism is having a corrupting influence on Treemonisha. In the story's climax, Peter angrily storms his mother, expressing resentment of his upbringing. He says that he intends to leave behind his life of comfort and become a working stiff, despite Treemonisha urging him against this and warning him that he is unprepared for a life of poverty. Peter forces entry into her sanctum in the head of the statue, and is surprised to find a cold cleanroom filled with computing hardware. Unbeknownst to him, his mother had been dead all along, existing only as a "downloaded intelligence". Peter leaves with Treemonisha, hoping that being poor is better than "being rich and hating yourself". In the final line, Peter asks Treemonisha to call him "Pete", rather than the "Mr. Boy" moniker he had previously used throughout the story. ===== Tau Zero follows the crew of the starship Leonora Christine, a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women aiming to reach the nearby star Beta Virginis. The ship is powered by a Bussard ramjet, which was proposed 10 years before Anderson wrote the book. This engine is not capable of faster-than-light travel, and so the voyage is subject to relativity and time dilation: the crew will spend 5 years on board, but 33 years will pass on the Earth before they arrive at their destination. The ship accelerates at a modest constant rate for most of the first half of the journey, eventually achieving an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, and the goal is to decelerate at the same rate during the second half of the journey by reversing the ram scoop fields. However, the Leonora Christine passes through a small nebula before the half-way point, damaging the deceleration field generators. Since the Bussard engines must be kept running to provide particle/radiation shielding, and because of the hard radiation produced by the engines, the crew can neither repair the damage nor turn off their ramjet. The text consists of narrative prose interspersed with paragraphs in which Anderson explains the scientific basis of relativity, time dilation, the ship's mechanics and details of the cosmos outside. As there is no hope of completing the original mission, the crew increase acceleration even more; they need to leave the Milky Way altogether in order to reach a region where the local gas density, and the concomitant radiation hazard, are low enough that they can repair the decelerator. The ship's ever-increasing velocity brings the time dilation to extreme levels and takes the crew further and further away from any possibility of contact with humanity. The initial plan is to locate and land on a suitable planet in another galaxy. Millions of years would have passed since their departure, and in any case they would be millions of light years from Earth. However, they find the vacuum of intergalactic space insufficient for safety; they must instead travel to a region between superclusters of galaxies to make repairs. They do, but the extremely thinly spread matter is then too dispersed to use for deceleration. They must wait, flying free but essentially without the ability to change course, until they randomly encounter enough galactic matter to decelerate enough to search for habitable planets. To make the waiting time shorter, they continue accelerating through the galaxy clusters they encounter, more and more closely approaching the speed of light with tau, or proper time, decreasing closer and closer to zero. Throughout the story, Charles Reymont, the ship's Constable, fights to keep hope alive in the confined community and at the same time maintain order and discipline, sometimes at great emotional cost to himself. He explains his system to his partner Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling: The storyline is similar to that of the long poem and later opera Aniara, in which the ship was unable to stop and doomed to travel endlessly, but Tau Zero has a more upbeat ending. By the time the ship is repaired, tau has decreased to less than a billionth and the crew experience "billion-year cycles which pass as moments". But by the time that they are ready to attempt to find a future home, they realize that the universe is approaching a Big Crunch. The universe collapses (a process the starship survives because there is still enough uncondensed hydrogen for maneuvering outside the growing singularity) and then explodes in a new Big Bang. The voyagers then decelerate and finally disembark at a planet with a habitat suitably similar to Earth, on which the vegetation has a vivid bluish- green color. ===== Restored text edition, Ace Books, 1978 Big Planet had been colonized hundreds of years prior to the start of the novel by misfits, faddists, cultists and anti-government advocates from Earth. The environment is Earth-like, including the surface gravity: even though the planet is much larger than Earth (hence the name), it is much less dense, resulting from a scarcity of metal. As a result, a large number of technologically backward societies have developed, many of them ruled by petty tyrants and prey to lawlessness, murder and mayhem. Commissions from Earth have visited Big Planet at irregular intervals for 500 years to little effect: the majority of them are never heard from again. The latest, headed by Claude Glystra, arrives to try to stop the illegal importation of arms from Earth and halt Big Planet's slave trade, especially targeting Charley Lysidder, the ruthless, expansion-minded Bajarnum of Beaujolais. However their starship is sabotaged by Lysidder's agents and crashes near a quaint village called Jubilith, near Beaujolais. The survivors attempt to reach Earth Enclave, 40,000 miles away, armed with little more than their wits and a few modern hand weapons. A Jubilith resident, Natilien-Thilssa, whom they call "Nancy", insists on tagging along, despite Glystra's opposition. The team begins to dwindle as Lysidder's efforts and the dangers of Big Planet take their toll. Nevertheless, by sheer tenacity, resourcefulness and some luck, Glystra manages to triumph over Lysidder, despite the presence of Lysidder's agents within his own small group. Among the many societies, benign or bizarre, that Glystra and his companions encounter along the wind-driven monoline (their version of the yellow brick road), is the quasi-utopian society of Kirstendale. At first, it appears to be based on snobbish principles, but an odd twist reveals it to be surprisingly egalitarian. ===== Shrek 2s storyline follows a similar plot compared to that of the film Shrek and Fiona are on a journey to the Kingdom of Far Far Away to visit Fiona's parents. Shrek's in-laws are not happy that a crude ogre is married to their daughter Fiona and the battle for acceptance ensues. The game covers things not shown in the film. Plot elements are delivered primarily through a storybook interface (text and illustrations) shown before each level. ===== In the premiere issue, the character of Omega is shown as the last surviving member of an unnamed alien race. He escapes the mechanical beings who have devastated his planet in a ship headed to Earth. The story then cuts to James-Michael waking up in bed having dreamed the events that just occurred with Omega. In his waking world, James-Michael and his parents are moving to New York City from the mountains so he can improve his socialization skills after years of home-schooling. En route to New York the Starlings' car is driven off the road and both of James-Michael's parents are killed, but not before the boy discovers that both of them were robots. James-Michael collapses into a coma and awakens a month later in a private hospital exhibiting an eerie lack of emotional response to his parents' deaths. The hospital is later attacked by one of the mechanical beings that destroyed Omega's home world, and Omega himself appears to defend James-Michael. The superhero and the android fight but the conflict ends when James-Michael himself destroys the alien mechanism with energy bursts from his hands (an effect used by Omega in James-Michael's dreams). After this beginning, the story follows James-Michael's life as he is fostered to two young women in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. The series explores the problems he encounters in a strange new place, and his trials and friendships in a New York City public school. Issues of racism and bullying are addressed, although the stories' focus is on how the reserved and detached James-Michael relates to the world around him. Meanwhile, Omega the Unknown becomes a superhero figure in New York City, tending to fight only second-string supervillains (though he did once confront the Hulk) with a variety of outcomes. Otherwise, Omega tends to appear when James-Michael is in danger and then takes a more proactive role. As the series progresses Omega and James-Michael eventually meet and interact, although the nature of their relationship remains unclear. Omega himself is killed in the 10th and final issue, leaving the mysteries of the story unresolved. ===== The Year is set in a fantasy world several years after the end of its domination by commercial tourism from our world. The University formerly produced large numbers of competent wizards who served as tour guides; current staff aims to produce competent wizards who gradually repair the damage caused by tours. It suffers financially because tuition demand is down, which greatly concerns the faculty, and educationally from its long practical focus, which barely concerns the few who have noticed. The head, wizard Corkoran, is obsessed with becoming the first man to visit the moon and devotes much time to that, but there is little research or innovation generally. The senior wizards have all retired; the middle-age and young know of no other way. Wizard Corkoran has selected children from wealthy families to fill his own first-year tutorial, hoping that a current appeal for donations will be fruitful. His class turns out to be unusual in other respects too. All six are talented, some in ways they do not yet understand, some encumbered by jinxes. Not one of the families is likely to donate because they have status rather than money, or their fortunes have recently slumped, or their children are here with grudging permission or none. Prince Lukin's father has not permitted him to be at the University, and his kingdom is also very poor; Ruskin is an escaped artisan dwarf, which is the third lowest and here to receive an education so the unjust ranking system can be overthrown; Felim ben Felim is a member of the royal family of Ampersand, whose Emir has vowed to send assassins if he is to attend; and Claudia, the half-sister of Emperor Titus, is here partially hiding from the Senate, who despise her for being half Marsh. Evidently, only one is personally wealthy, the beautiful Olga who does not divulge her name or even her region. Elda is the youngest daughter of Derk, the final Dark Lord before the revolution and head of a most important family now. But she is a griffin, appearing at first glance to be frightening and inscrutable, and her father does not approve of university education. The classmates quickly become fast friends, and two soon fall in love. They form common opinions of their teachers and courses, and undertake together some undirected extracurricular study. They all run afoul of Wizard Wermacht, a domineering man who teaches multiple subjects in a routine fashion. When Derk visits Elda, he has half a mind to take her home, but actually gives them a reading list strong in magical theory, especially the work of university founder Policant. Educationally that is a success although it does not help their grades. Every other visit from home is a crisis for the classmates and often for the entire university. From the east a royal family sends seven assassins. Two Imperial Senators and a cluster of ruling class dwarves bring political and economic pressures. Olga's father proves to be the pirate of the Inland Sea. Two royalties arrive leading armies. Prince Lukin trades Ruskin to be his "servant" for the Book of Truth, which Olga had stolen from her father when she fled from an arranged marriage, and from which lies disappear. The Senators are arrested by Emperor Titus. Eventually, the three more powerful and mature of Elda's six siblings get involved, human brother Blade and griffins Kit and Callette. Chancellor Querida also returns, the former University head who plotted successfully against the tourist industry. Jointly with a few others they secure the University and set it on the right track. ===== The film is based on the story of Erzsébet Bathory, a Hungarian countess in the 16th and 17th centuries. Her story takes place in a part of the Kingdom of Hungary that is now Slovakia. In this retelling, the Countess is a healer who conducts medical experiments and rudimentary autopsies in a "hospital" beneath her castle. She forms a relationship with a reputed witch, Darvulia, who saves her from poisoning. The witch promises Erzsebet a son and eternal beauty. In return, Erzsebet must sacrifice both love and her reputation. Darvulia becomes Erzsebet's companion. Meanwhile, maidens in the area have been dying of seemingly unrelated causes, and Erzsebet is seen bathing in a large tub of red liquid as the girls' now-mutilated corpses are buried nearby. Two monks later conclude that the water is not blood but is simply colored red by herbs. After her husband Ferenc Nádasdy's death, Erzsébet quarrels with his scheming friend György Thurzó, who tries to proposition her at her husband's funeral. Thurzo's lover, who is gifted with herbs, offers to help him get revenge for the rejection. Soon afterward, Erzsebet begins to have surreal visions and episodes. In one of these, she stabs a woman to death with scissors. Afterwards, she confesses to Darvulia that she can no longer tell dream from reality. Darvulia discovers that someone has been placing hallucinogenic mushrooms in Erzsébet's drinks; Erzsébet cannot remember clearly and believes Darvulia responsible. She has the woman thrown out. Thurzó and his wife then capture Darvulia and torture her, cutting out her tongue. Before she dies, she writes Thurzó's name in blood on her cell wall. Erzsébet swears vengeance on him. Thurzó enlists Erzsébet's sons-in-law and other allies to prosecute her for witchcraft. When their plans repeatedly fail, they nonetheless capture the Countess and torture members of her household to try to obtain incriminating information. The servants are then executed for their alleged crimes, and Erzsébet is imprisoned. Despairing over her separation from her son, she lies on her bed and begins to sing a hymn; the flames from her candles rise and engulf her in flames. Upon hearing of her death, Thurzo concedes that she has once again made the move he least expected, as when they once played chess together, and admits that he has always loved her. ===== Sara, who lives in London, is a representative for a major Hong Kong bank and is about to turn 54. Her sisters, Gorgeous Teitelbaum and Pfeni Rosensweig, arrive to help celebrate the birthday. Gorgeous is Dr. Gorgeous with a radio-advice program; Pfeni is a world traveler. Various friends and boyfriends also arrive for the party. In particular, Mervyn, a friend of Pfeni's boyfriend Geoffrey, falls instantly in love with Sara. ===== In 1985, Connor MacLeod is confronted by an old enemy, Iman Fasil, in the parking garage of Madison Square Garden. After a sword duel, MacLeod beheads Fasil and experiences the Quickening—the result of a one immortal killing another— a powerful energy release that affects the immediate surroundings, destroying many cars. After Connor hides his sword in the garage's ceiling, NYPD officers detain him for murder, later releasing him due to lack of evidence. Connor's history is revealed through a series of flashbacks. In the Scottish Highlands in 1536, Connor is about to enter his first battle as the Fraser Clan is at war with the MacLeod Clan. The Frasers are aided by the Kurgan (the last of the Kurgan tribes) in exchange for his right to slay Connor. In battle, the Kurgan stabs Connor fatally, but is driven off before he can decapitate him. Connor makes a complete recovery and is accused of witchcraft. The clan wishes to kill him, but chieftain Angus mercifully exiles him. Banished, he wanders the highlands, becoming a blacksmith and marrying a woman named Heather. Don Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, recently of Spain but originally Egyptian, finds Connor after tracking his old foe the Kurgan to Scotland. He explains that he, Connor, the Kurgan and others were born immortals and are destined to battle each other, save on "holy ground." When only a few are left, they will be drawn to "a faraway land" for the Gathering and battle for the Prize, the power of all the immortals through time. MacLeod only wants a quiet life, having a family with Heather. Ramírez reveals that immortals cannot have children and believes they must ensure evil people like the Kurgan do not win the Prize, or else humanity will suffer an eternity of darkness. Ramirez then explains the overriding belief of all immortals: "In the end, there can be only one". Ramírez trains MacLeod and the two become friends. One night, while Connor is away hunting, the Kurgan finds and duels Ramírez, who warns him MacLeod is now ready for him. The Kurgan kills Ramirez and leaves the area. Years later, Heather dies of old age, prompting Connor to wander Earth. He adopts Ramírez's katana sword as his own, a unique weapon made by a Japanese "genius" in 593 BC. In 1985, it is the time of the Gathering, and the Kurgan is compelled to come to New York, where Connor now lives as an antique dealer under the alias "Russell Nash," working with his confidant Rachel Ellenstein. The director's cut reveals Rachel is MacLeod's adopted daughter, a child he rescued from Nazis during World War II. Brenda Wyatt, a metallurgy expert working for the police as a forensic scientist, finds shards of Connor's sword at Fasil's murder scene and is puzzled they come from a Japanese sword dated around 600 B.C. but made with medieval-era methods. Brenda witnesses the Kurgan attack "Nash" and the two fight briefly before police arrive, forcing them to flee. She meets with "Nash" twice afterward, hoping to learn about the paradoxical sword. Connor likes her, but tells her to leave him alone. Connor reunites with Immortal Sunda Kastagir, a friend who doesn't wish to fight. After they part ways, the Kurgan duels Kastagir, killing him. Brenda investigates "Nash" and finds evidence he has lived for centuries. On Heather's birthday, Connor lights a candle for her in a Roman Catholic Church, as he has done every year. The Kurgan arrives and confirms he and the Highlander are now the last remaining Immortals. He also reveals he raped Heather after killing Ramírez. Disgusted, but prohibited from fighting on holy ground, Connor leaves. Brenda confronts Connor, who explains his true identity. After spending the night together, they part company (due to Connor's immortality making him sterile), but the Kurgan finds Brenda and kidnaps her to draw out Connor. Connor decides it is time to leave behind the "Russell Nash" identity, regardless of his survival. He says goodbye to Rachel and confronts the Kurgan at Silvercup Studios in Queens. After a long duel, Connor kills the Kurgan and earns the Prize. Connor returns to Scotland with Brenda and reveals he's now a mortal man who can age and have children. He is also now "at one with all living things," able to read the thoughts and feelings of people all around the world. He hopes to encourage cooperation, understanding, and peace among humanity. ===== An egocentric artillery Captain and his venomous wife engage in savage unremitting battles in their isolated island fortress off the coast of Sweden at the turn of the century. Alice, a former actress who sacrificed her career for secluded military life with Edgar, reveals on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary, the veritable hell their marriage has been. Edgar, an aging schizophrenic who refuses to acknowledge his severe illness, struggles to sustain his ferocity and arrogance with an animal disregard for other people. Sensing that Alice, together with her cousin and would-be lover, Kurt, may ally against him, retaliates with vicious force. Alice lures Kurt into the illusion of sharing a passionate assignation and recruits him in a plot to destroy Edgar. ===== Amber, Homer's "Vegas wife" from "Viva Ned Flanders", dies of a drug overdose, so the Simpson family attends her funeral. Bart, bored and looking to go home early, plays a game of paddle ball. The game, however, goes awry when the ball flies into several people's mouths, causing mayhem. Homer and Marge are faced with the angry churchgoers, who have had enough of Bart's antics. As a result, he is forced to see a competent psychiatrist (from "Brake My Wife, Please") who suggests Bart get a drum set in order to harness his anger and the energy he has and find the focus and discipline that he needs. Bart gets a kit and instantly becomes a natural at it, imagining that every drum and cymbal is Homer's face. He practices non-stop, even while asleep, and, in the style of "The Hardest Button to Button"'s video, he walks through Springfield while drumming and leaving a copy of his drum kit behind him, every time he plays it, and literally runs into The White Stripes on the street, earning Bart an enmity with them. They then try to chase him in the same fashion, until they stop in the middle of an open bridge and fall into a nearby garbage barge. Eventually, his drumming drives Homer and Marge mad and Lisa suggests to her parents that she can take Bart to a jazz brunch. Lisa asks Bart to jazz along with her quintet, which he does. Bart easily overshadows everyone, including Lisa, and a legendary jazz group asks him to play with them, much to Lisa's anger, especially as she is the more experienced and passionate of the two. Lisa then tries to overtake Bart in his passion of skateboarding, which ends in failure. Marge, who does not want Lisa to compete against Bart, decides to let her adopt a puppy in order to make her happy. At the animal shelter, Lisa picks the cutest puppy over a very sick dog that would otherwise die. But at night, the sick dog comes in a ghost-like form to tell her that his fate is doomed because she chose the other dog over him. Lisa decides to go back and adopt the sick puppy, but after seeing how sick many of them are, she decides to adopt them all in order to save their lives. On her way home, many other animals join her, including a horde of circus animals. Having nowhere to put them, Lisa puts them in the attic. After dinner that night, Lisa goes into the attic and finds Bart and his jazz group with the animals she rescued. A tiger bites Bart's arm, causing extensive nerve damage that leaves him unable to play. In order to raise money for the operation he needs, Bart organizes a benefit concert. Meanwhile, Lisa is informed that her animals will be taken to a pound and killed if she cannot find a suitable home for them. The benefit is a success, and Bart feels empathy for Lisa and decides to use the money to build a home for the animals. The other musicians begin to discuss the idea of holding another benefit to repair Bart's arm. ===== The Simpson family go to see Grampa perform at the Senior Olympics. After they leave, Moe calls Homer to remind him about a fishing trip to celebrate his birthday. When the family returns, Homer realizes he forgot Moe's birthday when he sees Moe sitting outside on their front steps. That night, Moe writes an angry letter to the family, and the dramatic writing inspires Lisa to choose Moe for her "interesting person" report at school. At Moe's residence, a run-down hotel, Lisa finds his notes on the wall and arranges them to form a poem. She submits this to American Poetry Perspectives, and the poem is approved, with author Tom Wolfe inviting Moe and the Simpson family to Vermont to attend a literary conference. After Moe sees another poet ridiculed and exiled for admitting he had help with writing, he falsely claims that he wrote and titled his poem all by himself, devastating Lisa. Moe is featured on a writing panel. Lisa attends and encourages him to share his inspirations, although he insists that he does not have any. However, without Lisa's help, Moe struggles to write a poem in time for a dinner in his honor; when he sees Lisa enter, he improvises a poem about her, thanking her for helping him write poetry. Lisa forgives Moe and they walk out of the dining hall together. ===== On a trip to the extremely rundown Springfield Mall (Bart says that this is because Mayor Quimby's father was murdered there), Homer happens across the Time–Life Carpenter's Library, and Marge encourages him to buy them. Homer's interest in carpentry fades, and Marge decides to use them herself to fix up the house, starting with her broken nightstand. She begins to learn more about carpentry and Lisa suggests to Marge that she try to earn some money as a handywoman, thus opening up "Simpsons Carpentry". However, potential clients (Superintendent Chalmers and Krusty the Clown) turn her down, dismissing the idea of a female carpenter. Commenting on how people expect carpenters to be male, Marge develops a plan. She uses Homer as a front to the customers, while Marge, hiding in an accompanied red tool chest, does all of the work as Homer rests in the toolbox, and switching back when the customers come to check on Homer's work. While business is going great, when she is out buying supplies Marge becomes discouraged by Helen Lovejoy and Lindsay Naegle, who taunts her for being Homer's "helper". That night, Marge tells Homer that she feels he is taking too much credit and wishes she would get some recognition for the work. Homer, however, does not want to be humiliated by revealing his wife has done everything. Marge continues to get angry after an incident in which Homer mocks Marge's carpentry skills with Lenny and Carl, and when he tells her he has been hired for the biggest commission yet in repairing Springfield's old wooden roller coaster, "The Zoominator", she quits and tells Homer he will have to do the work by himself. Homer tries to fake his way through being a foreman in front of his newly hired construction crew, but they eventually abandon him when he reveals he cannot pay them and does not know anything about construction. The big reopening day arrives, and Homer stands in front of a crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of the refurbished roller coaster. Marge has a video camera at the ready, so she can catch Homer being exposed as a fraud on tape. When revealed, the crowd is in awe at the seemingly repaired roller coaster, but with a hit from Homer's popped cork from his champagne, the coaster starts to break, becoming as rundown as it had been before. Still not wanting to admit the truth, Homer proves the coaster is safe by riding it himself, even though there are large gaps in the track. Acting quickly, Marge repairs each broken piece just before Homer's cart runs over it. While riding, Homer finally reveals to the crowd that Marge has done all the handiwork. The crowd applauds as the coaster comes to a stop at the beginning, and just as Marge is about to tell Homer that she loves him, the entire roller coaster structure comes crashing down on top of Homer. At the hospital, Marge visits Homer, who is immobilized in a full-body cast, and he sweetly tells her that marriage is the real rollercoaster and he is thrilled to have Marge as his "safety bar". Meanwhile, a note is sent out from the school, informing parents that someone at the school has a peanut allergy so foods containing peanuts will no longer be allowed on school premises. An indignant Bart claims it to be unfair not to disclose the identity of the "kid", but he soon discovers the "kid" is actually Principal Skinner. With this newfound knowledge, and with the assistance of a peanut on a stick, Bart forces Skinner to do his bidding (publicly humiliating and injuring himself). After being advised by Comic Book Guy that the only way to stop Bart is to find his "kryptonite", Skinner breaks into the Springfield General Hospital and searches through medical records of Bart in the night. He finds out that Bart is allergic to shrimp. The next day, Skinner counters Bart's peanut stick with his own: a shrimp on a stick. Bart and Skinner clash Star Wars style with their respective "sticks" with "Duel of the Fates" played in the background. They eventually get led into a Thai food factory in the "Little Bangkok" section of town. They battle over a rickety catwalk, which is straight over the top of a vat of shrimp-peanut mixture. Skinner sees this and attempts to end the battle, but Bart defiantly rushes at Skinner, causing both of them to topple into the vat, and putting them in the hospital in the same room as Homer for their allergic reactions, though the reactions are just hives. Skinner is outraged to hear that Marge thinks Bart saved Skinner's life, and the two proceed to throw shrimp and peanuts at each other to set off their respective allergies again, and a disgusted Marge decides to head over to the maternity ward observation room to see the new babies. ===== Big Al (Angus Macfadyen), and his girlfriend Kat (Milla Jovovich), are small-time crooks dealing in guns and stolen goods in Queens, New York City. They seem to have a fun relationship full of sex and booze. Living in a shabby apartment, they both traffic in illegal handguns while also cleverly avoiding the NYPD and ATF. However, Vic (Sarah Strange), Kat's best friend (and ex-lover) still has a crush on her, hates Big Al and doesn't approve of the relationship. Big Al is almost arrested in a police sting, but is released when they realize he is unarmed...as Kat was holding the guns. Returning home, they catch a thief trying to take their new TV out the window, and Big Al gives him a beating. They call the police and berate them for not catching the 'real crooks', all the while surrounded by the stolen goods that are their livelihood. Meeting up with his old partner, Reilly (Stephen Dorff), they steal a car as Al tries to convince him to come back to help Al run the gun business. However, Kat has plans on her own; she wants to sell guns on her own to provide since she wants to move out of Queens and into a classier neighborhood, maybe by the beach. She meets up with Jose (Vincent Laresca), a drug dealer and Big Al's rival, and sells him a gun. However, Clancy (Tony Munch), a local snitch working for Al, notices them. Kat returns home and pretends to have been out with Vic, upsetting Al. When Jose brazenly comes to Al's local bar and comes on to Kat, Al, Clancy, and their friends punish him by appearing to cut off his fingers. Al comes home later, and based on comments from Clancy, accuses Kat of having sex with the 'spic'. He forces her to confess to lying to him and then beats her up, leaving her with a black eye and bleeding lip and even cuts off chunks of her hair. After he leaves the apartment the next day, Vic and Reilly come over to console her, swearing revenge, but Al arrives home and in the ensuing scuffle, AL fires a shot that grazes Kat, and then is arrested and detained. At the police precinct, Kat is questioned by Liz (Aisha Tyler), a member of a battered women`s group that offers protection via sanctuary or court order. Liz explains that Al doesn't really love her, and she used to be in an abusive marriage of her own. However, Kat refuses to press charges but ultimately decides to leave. Subsequently, Big Al sneaks in through the window as she is packing, threatens her with death if she ever leaves and says there is nowhere she can hide from him. When Liz and Vic arrive to take her, he convinces Kat to tell them she wants to stay. Liz threatens to `end him` if he ever touches Kat, but they ultimately leave without her. While convincing Al the relationship is back the way it was, she secretly devises a plan; seeming to seduce Vic, Reilly, Jose and Liz, and telling each of them she`ll do anything to be rid of Big Al. After convincing Al to stay home one evening, a hooded figure takes Big Al's special jacket with his name on it, his registered .45 handgun, and shoots Clancy. The next day, Big Al goes into church and threatens the priest, Father Duffel (Hardie Lineham), saying that he abhors weakness. Leaving, he is arrested for Clancy's murder as a crowd of locals watch from across the street, Kat, Vic, and Reilly among them. Later at the police station, Big Al begs Kat to find the real killer, knowing he has been set up, but can't figure out who did it. Slowly Kat reveals that she is behind the plot, and is now in charge. Later, Reilly and Vic discuss who the killer is, and then realize they both fear the hard change in Kat, and decide to start a relationship together. Soon enough, Kat meets up with the hooded killer: it was Liz. Kissing, Liz says now they can be together but Kat explains she only used her, and thanks her for her advice about being a strong woman (`Lips, tits, hips`) and leaves Liz heartbroken. Kat picks up the gun business and the film ends with her narrating the whole story from the beach neighborhood she wanted to live in before walking away. ===== ===== ===== The year is 2452. Festina Ramos is an Explorer, assigned to the Technocracy Fleet ship Jacaranda. Her specific physical "qualification" for her job is a large port-wine birthmark on her right cheek. She and her fellow Explorer and partner Yarrun Derigha (who is missing half his jaw) are the two Explorers assigned to the ship; they lead the isolated existence typical of Explorers, isolated from the healthy and attractive members of the fleet as from the "beautiful people" of the larger society. Then Festina and Yarrun are plunged into a crisis: they are assigned to escort a Fleet admiral named Chee to planet Melaquin. Melaquin is the great question mark in the Technocracy's domain: for forty years Explorers have landed there, only to lose contact and disappear, cause unknown. The High Council has now acquired the habit of sending its troublesome admirals to Melaquin in the company of a team of Explorers, to rid itself of embarrassments without scandal or controversy. The fact that Explorers are lost in the process is accepted--since Explorers are expendable. Admiral Chee is precisely the kind of embarrassment the high council wants to dispose of, quickly and quietly. Well beyond the century mark in age, when doses of Youthboost are no longer effective in prolonging his life and health, he is "clearly unstable, possibly senile"--or else "suffering from Don't-give-a- shit-itis". Though they try to avoid the duty, and then concoct a plan of escape from their apparent sentence to oblivion, Festina and Yarrun must accompany Chee to the surface of Melaqiuin. There, things go quickly and badly wrong: Festina accidentally kills Yarrun while attempting an emergency tracheotomy, Chee dies of a stroke, and Festina is cut off from her ship, alone on Melaquin. The planet reveals itself to be amazingly Earth-like--so much so that it is clearly not natural, but a result of terraforming and genetic modification. Festina quickly meets one of the inhabitants of the planet--"A nude woman made of glass...like an Art Deco figurine." Their meeting does not go as the Explorer corps intends for first-contact situations. Eventually, though, the two establish contact; the glass woman introduces herself: "My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats." She has learned English from the previous Explorers who came to the planet. A product of sophisticated genetic engineering, she is human, but flawlessly beautiful and possessing enhanced strength and intelligence; yet she has the emotional maturity of a spoiled child. Through Oar, Festina gains contact with the dying subsurface civilization that lingers on Melaquin, begins to unravel the mysteries of the planet, and pursues the trail of the Explorers who came before her. Now "friends", Festina and Oar set off in search of the other Explorers and the truth behind Admiral Chee and the high council's involvement with Melaquin. The two find the Explorers building a spaceship; if the Explorers can get to interstellar space and send a distress call, the rules of the League may mandate that they be rescued and returned to society--if the Fleet does not stop them first. In due course Festina meets an old flame (a cross between a schoolgirl crush and the love of her life), who reveals himself to be a profound danger instead of a welcome ally. Oar sacrifices herself for her friend, and Festina manages to return to the Fleet and the Technocracy in a way she could never have anticipated. ===== Prof. Takeshi Aikawa is researching the location of an ancient Indian princess, Princess Surya of Gupta Empire. Prof. Aikawa's grandson, Ryu, becomes involved when the mysterious cult attacking Ryu and his spoiled girlfriend Yukari and ransacks his grandfather's apartment in search for information about the princess until Ryu witnessed as he discovered the manuscript which actually was an ancient Indian sex manual called Kamasutra. So, Ryu goes to India to help his grandfather. There, he finds his grandfather's assistant, Shakti, who introduces him to learn the techniques which found in Kamasutra. Ryu and Shakti flight towards to Prof. Aikawa locations, however, they're kidnapped by an ancient Indian cult, the Naga Tribe, who's also looking for the princess and takes them into the Palace of Naga. Ryu is sexually drained and physically debilitated while in captivity, but his grandfather and adventurous Indy Yakko manage to save them. After that, Prof. Aikawa's group goes to Khajuraho Temple to find a golden cup-like artifact called the Sex Grail, which is sealed inside of Rama's sculpture and with it they able to locate and retrieve the frozen princess Surya, who was resting at Himalayas, with using the grail to revive Surya from suspended animated state. Meanwhile, having failed at obtaining the grail, the person behind the attacks, the Old Master, dies and his son, Prince Rudra of Naga Tribe assumes the leadership for the tribe, he also raping Jody, the Old Master's personal doctor in the process. He then personally kidnaps Surya with the intention of obtaining her love juice to be used with the grail. Rudra then tries to obtain the grail and succeeds by deceiving Ryu into an exchange of the princess for the grail. After obtaining the grail (and kidnapping Ryu in the process), he sends his henceman, Hige Godzilla to trick Yukari into raping Surya for them. Yukari does so and is also captured and is jailed along with Ryu before they are crushed and stuck by a wall trap. Yakko, however, is able to track them down and rescues them. While trying to escape, they're confronted by Rudra, uses his mystical power to attacking them. Despite all of this, they still escape. Prince Rudra, now in possession of the Sex Grail to married princess Surya, as they proceed with the wedding ceremony, however, they're interrupted by the attack of Captain Austin, an American soldier and Jody's father, who betrayed and take revenge on Rudra for raped his daughter. He manages to escape by the Boat of Garuda along with Surya and the grail, but is soon followed by Austin, Prof. Aikawa, Yakko and Ryu. With help of the Sex Grail, Rudra opens a portal to enter them into the earthly paradise of Shambhala which hidden inside the waterfall, he is soon followed by Ryu and Yakko with help of Captain Austin. As they entering to Shambhala, Ryu and Yakko find a giant golden egg-shaped vessel, the Sacred Egg, floating like a sun, they continued to rescue Surya. In the meantime, Prof. Aikawa goes to Khajuraho once again to finds another way of entering to Shambhala along with Shakti, Yukari and Hige, by using the grail counterpart, the Cup of Death, and join them in a foursome position which similarly to Khajuraho's erotic sculpture. As prince Rudra and princess Surya enter the Sacred Egg, Prof. Aikawa and his allies (who's appear naked in foursome position) appear before him. Soon after, Ryu and Yakko also arrive and Ryu manages to catching Rudra just as he enters the egg with Surya, in which the grail falls outside the egg, just as the Sacred Egg elevates itself and fly towards into the space. Rudra and Ryu engage in fight, but they're interrupted by the group of celestial angels who reside the egg, they give Ryu and Rudra a final task to performed in group sex based on the Kamasutra, as only one can be together with Surya. Ryu decides that he wants to do it with her, and so Rudra takes out from the egg by a Nāga-like creature, killing him. As angels disappear, leave only Surya and Ryu and they both have sex in eternal pleasure, lust and desire. Having fulfilled its purpose, the Sacred Egg now split in two, one takes Ryu and the other Surya, and then fall down to Earth. By this time, Prof. Aikawa, Yakko, Shakti, Yukari and Hige manages to get all of them back from Shambhala to Earth using the Boat of Garuda with the help of the Sex Grail. As they return, Prof. Aikawa's group saw the two Sacred Egg, the one fall into a river and Ryu released while Surya still inside the other, floating in the sky. Surya fulfilled her promises with him, lying in fetal position to eternal sleep, which a Sacred Egg gets smaller and attaches itself into the grail. After that, the next day, the Sex Grail and the Sacred Egg now is then returned to its original place, with Surya (and Ryu's DNA) inside and sealed into the sculpture, while Ryu and his group leave from India and returned to Japan in safely. ===== Set in inner-city Woolloomooloo in Sydney, New South Wales in 1930, the neighbourhood nice guys are led by Fatty (real name Hubert Finn), an ambitious 10-year-old with an eye for making a quid. From shady frog jumping contests to a fixed goat race, Fatty uses his enterprise to raise enough money to buy a crystal set (radio without a separate power supply) that's worth seventeen shillings & sixpence (17/6), more than his Dad is able to save up in a year. Bruiser Murphy the bully and his gang try to stop him. Fatty uses his brains against his enemies' brawn to eventually triumph. ===== Gregory Kingsley is a boy who is abused by his father and placed with social services by his mother. The foster family he is put into proves to be the type of nurturing environment he needs. He ends up taking his mother to court, to have her parental rights revoked, in hopes of being adopted by his foster family. The story is based on a real life case of child abuse. ===== Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken character pictures The first act takes place outside a spa overlooking a fjord. Sculptor Arnold Rubek and his wife Maia have just enjoyed breakfast and are reading newspapers and drinking champagne. They marvel at how quiet the spa is. Their conversation is lighthearted, but Arnold hints at a general unhappiness with his life. Maia also hints at disappointment. Arnold had promised to take her to a mountaintop to see the whole world as it is, but they have never done so. The hotel manager passes by with some guests and inquires if the Rubeks need anything. During their encounter, a mysterious woman dressed in white passes by, followed closely by a nun in black. Arnold is drawn to her for some reason. The manager does not know much about her, and he tries to excuse himself before Squire Ulfheim can spot him. Unable to do so, Ulfheim corners him and requests breakfast for his hunting dogs. Spotting the Rubeks, he introduces himself and mocks their plans to take a cruise, insisting that the water is too contaminated by other people. He is stopping at the spa on his way to a mountain hunt for bears, and he insists that the couple should join him, as the mountains are unpolluted by people. Maia takes Ulfheim up on his offer to watch his dogs eat breakfast, leaving Arnold alone with the mysterious woman. He quickly realizes that she is Irena, his former model. Irena constantly refers to herself as being 'dead'. During their conversation, she explains that posing for Arnold was akin to a kind of 'self murder', where he captured her soul and put it into his masterpiece, a sculpture called Resurrection. He confesses that he has never been the same since working with Irena. Though Resurrection brought him great fame and an abundance of other work, he feels a similar kind of death as Irena feels. Irena mysteriously alludes to killing all of her lovers since posing for Arnold. She claims to always possess a knife, and also admits to murdering every child she has had, sometimes while they are still in the womb. When Irena asks where Arnold is going after his stay at the spa, she dismisses the idea of the cruise and asks him to meet her up in the high mountains. Maia returns with Ulfheim, asking Arnold if they can abandon the cruise and join Ulfheim on his mountain hunt. Arnold tells her that she is free to do so and says that he is thinking of going that way himself. The second act takes place outside a health resort in the mountains. Maia finds Arnold beside a brook. She has spent the morning with Ulfheim. The couple return to their discussion of Arnold's unhappiness, and he confesses that he has grown tired of Maia. He wants to live with Irena because she had the key to the lock which holds his artistic inspiration. Their relationship was never sexual, because Arnold felt it would have ruined Resurrection. Maia is hurt but insists that Arnold should do as he pleases. She even suggests that perhaps the three of them could live together if she cannot find a new place to live. Irena enters, and Maia urges Arnold to speak with her. The pair cast flower petals into the brook and reminisce sentimentally about their long-ago collaboration. At one point, Arnold refers to their 'episode', and Irena draws her knife, preparing to stab him in the back. When he turns around, she hides the knife. Arnold asks Irena to come live with him and work with him again, explaining that she can unlock his artistic vision once more. She insists that there is no way to resurrect a partnership like theirs, but they agree to pretend they can. Maia returns with Ulfheim, on their way to a hunt. She is happy and explains that she feels like she is finally awake. She sings a little song to herself, "I am free...No longer in prison, I'll be! I'm as free as a bird, I am free!" The final act takes place on the rocky mountainside, with narrow paths and a shabby hunting hut. Maia and Ulfheim enter already in an argument over his sexual advances. Maia demands to be taken down to the resort. Ulfheim points out that the path is too difficult for her and she will surely die on her own. Arnold and Irena come up the path from the resort. Ulfheim is surprised that they have made it on their own, since the path is so difficult. He warns them that a storm is coming. Since he can only guide one person at a time, he agrees to take Maia down the path, and urges Irena and Arnold to take shelter in the hut until he can return with help. Irena is horrified at being rescued. She is convinced that the nun will commit her to an asylum. She draws the knife again to kill herself. Arnold insists that she should not. Irena confesses that she almost killed him earlier, but she stopped because she realized he was already dead. She explains that the love that belongs to their earthly life is dead in both of them. However, Arnold points out that they are both still free, insisting that "we two dead things live life for once to the full". Irena agrees but urges that they must do it above the clouds of the gathering storm. They agree to climb the mountain so that they can be married by the sunlight. As they happily ascend out of view, Maia's song is heard in the distance. Suddenly, an avalanche roars down the mountain. Arnold and Irene can be seen carried to their deaths. The nun has followed Irena up the mountain and witnesses the horror with a scream. After a moment of silence, she says "Pax vobiscum!" (Peace be with you), as Maia's song still lingers in the air. ===== The player takes the role of Assil, the son of a respected architect in Cairo. Assil is a party animal but at some point one of his party-nights turned out sour. When he tries to have some fun in the pyramids with two friends of his, he accidentally breaks some urns and thus disturbs the mummy resting in the pyramid. The mummy punishes Assil by placing a death curse on him, and now he has 24 hours to remove the curse and save himself. Later in the game Assil meets the Arabian ambassador's daughter Thara, who is also a playable character. Jan Klose, Creative Director at Deck13 Interactive, also cited Monkey Island to be an influence for the Ankh series. ===== Willard Young is a 10-year-old boy who is sent by his mother to stay with her best friend Lily Reed, who lives in the Delta shrimp-fishing country in a town called Paradise. At that town, Willard meets 9-year-old Billie Pike. Despite Billie being a troublemaker, she becomes friends with Willard. Lily and Ben also become fond of Willard despite the tragedy of their 2-year old son’s death. Soon, Billie teaches Willard to face his fears although Billie has troubles of her own. When Billie finds out her dad is a skater, she goes to a skating area with Willard only for her dad to tell her to leave much to Billie’s dismay. Later at a party, Billie tells Willard his father left him and his mother for another woman. Upon hearing this, Willard becomes so upset that he runs away and goes missing for a while. When Ben finds him, he doesn’t trust him until he saves him from a bad accident. Later in the film, Lily blames herself for her son’s death but Ben reassures her. Towards the end of the film, Willard has to go home and he sees his mother’s new baby. The film ends with Lily and Ben kissing under their porch. That doesn’t mean that they have recovered from the tragedy but it does mean that they have regained their love. ===== Ryan Jeffers suffers a disability to his leg preventing him from trying out for sports and fitting in with other kids at school. He is currently the waterboy of his school's football team and has a crush on quarterback Brad's girlfriend. He often seeks escape through comic books and dreams of adventure, hiding the depression of his disability from his mother Kathryn. One day, the owner of his favorite restaurant, his friend Ming, gives him a manuscript of Tao representing the five elements: Earth, Fire, Water, Wood and Metal. He advises Ryan to live his life no matter his physical limits. That night, Ryan and his best friend Chucky are approached by Brad and his friends who suggest an initiation for their group. Leading them to a water plant, Ryan is told he needs to cross a narrow pipe in order to sign his name on a wall of graffiti. Chucky recommends to Ryan, "why don't we make like Tom, and Cruise?" Ignoring Chucky's protests, Ryan attempts to cross the pipe. During this time, a water pipe opens up and throws Ryan into the water. Ryan wakes in a strange forest and is attacked by assailants who are drawn off by a creature from the lake. He screams and runs in fear, but soon realizes his leg works. He meets a dwarf-like man named Mudlap where a beautiful girl named Elysia drives him off. She tells Ryan that he is in Tao. Ryan tells her about the manuscript, which had been stolen with his backpack. Believing it to be the Manuscript of Legend, Elysia takes Ryan to Master Chung and he meets four of the five warriors, anthropomorphic kangaroos each representing an element: Lai, Warrior of Wood; Chi, Warrior of Fire; Tsun, Warrior of Earth; and Yee, Warrior of Metal. He is told that Yun, the Warrior of Water had left them following an earlier conflict. Ryan thinks that the creature that saved him is Yun and that he has the manuscript. He is told that the manuscript would be sought by Komodo, a warlord who betrayed the Warriors and is stealing from the Lifesprings of Tao in order to stay young forever where the Warriors are protecting the last Lifespring. While talking to Elysia, Ryan is captured by Mantose, Barbarocious, and Dullard, but is saved by Yun who admits he doesn't have the book leading Ryan to believe Komodo has it. He convinces Yun to return to the Lifespring. Ryan flees, wanting to return home, but Mudlap leads him into General Grillo's arms and he is saved by Chung. Yun, Yee and Chi go after the manuscript and fall into a trap after being betrayed by Elysia, who joined Komodo as vengeance against Yun for killing her brother by accident. They are nearly killed in a trap, but narrowly escape using their skills and they return to the Lifespring to prevent Komodo from ambushing the others. Komodo attempts to kidnap Ryan, but instead fights Chung. The battle is brutal, but Chung is defeated and killed by Komodo who then makes off with Ryan. When Ryan awakens at Komodo's palace, Elysia explains of Yun killing her brother and tries to convince him to read from the book so that Komodo could possibly invade his world for more Lifesprings. Ryan realizes he can't read the book and this upsets Komodo, who tries to strike Ryan down. Elysia interferes and is struck down by Barbarocious. Komodo kills Barbarocious in rage as Ryan escapes. Komodo, now growing unhinged, returns to the Lifespring and challenges the Warriors to one-on-one combat, splitting into five versions of himself. He taunts and defeats the warriors while Ryan, after getting an apology from Mudlap for his betrayal, finds an inscription in the manuscript. Facing Komodo and taunting him, Ryan tricks Komodo into using his power on him, weakening him so that the warriors can use their powers to purify his spirit, reforming him to a kind man while purifying his surviving army. Ryan, now mortally wounded, is surrounded by his friends and Yee astonishes his comrades by thanking Ryan as he speaks for the first time in many years. Suddenly, Ryan is back at the water plant before crossing the pipe. Realizing his desperation to fit in led to his accident, he changes it this time and refusing to go through with it. The water pipe opens like it did before, trapping Brad on the other side. His insults to his friends only prompt them to leave him behind for the police to find. That night at home, Ryan apologizes to his mother for an earlier argument. When he goes to bed, he offers to tell his dog, Bravo, about Tao. ===== After getting dumped by his girlfriend Tiffani von der Sloot (Rebekah Kochan), University of Arizona student Caleb Peterson (Scott Lunsford) commiserates with his roommate Kyle (Jim Verraros), who notes that while he has trouble getting the men he wants, he could get any woman because he is gay. Later at a party, Gwen Anderson (Emily Stiles) dumps her boyfriend after he comes out to her. Caleb sees her and becomes infatuated and meets Marc Everhard (Ryan Carnes), with whom Kyle is infatuated. Marc, meanwhile, sees Caleb and is instantly attracted. Kyle comes up with a crazy scheme. He tells Gwen that Caleb is gay so she'll set him up with Marc. Kyle figures that Caleb can use Marc to get to Gwen, while Kyle uses Caleb to get to Marc. Also, Tiffani lives next door to Gwen and Marc so seeing Caleb date Marc would make her crazy. Caleb and Marc go out on a date then go back to Marc's place to watch a movie. Marc tries to put the moves on Caleb, who is unresponsive. Suddenly Gwen, who is stuck at a friend's house and bored, calls. She talks to Caleb, relaxing and seducing him verbally while Marc takes advantage by performing oral sex on him. Gwen hangs up to come home and Marc masturbates next to Caleb. Caleb, feeling confused and insecure, leaves. He passes Gwen on her way home and she seduces him again, this time physically. They have sex in his convertible. Caleb goes home and goes to bed. The next morning, Marc calls Caleb and leaves a message. Kyle overhears it and realizes that Marc and Caleb had sex. As Kyle storms into his room, Marc calls back. After the call Caleb goes to Kyle and tells him he has invited Gwen and Marc to dinner to clear everything up. He also says that he knows Kyle has feelings for him and that if he were gay he would love him back, and the two share a small kiss. Gwen and Marc come over for dinner and Caleb is chagrined to see that Kyle has invited Caleb's family as well. Kyle convinces Gwen to "pretend" to be Caleb's date and Marc to "pretend" to be his. Dinner is going well, if a little awkwardly, until Tiffani inexplicably crashes the party. Gwen takes it upon herself to out Caleb to his parents (Murph Michaels and Mattie van der Voort). His parents take it quite well and everyone ends up in a bizarre group hug. After Caleb's family and Tiffani leave, Gwen verbally attacks Kyle, thinking he is trying to steal Marc from Caleb. She makes it clear that "someone like Marc" would never go out with "someone like him." Caleb convinces Marc to talk to Kyle and Gwen figures out the entire scheme, which she thinks is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for her in light of the lengths to which Caleb went to sleep with her. Marc goes to talk to Kyle and tells Kyle that he was into him all along, having feigned disinterest this whole time. They finally kiss. In a post-credits scene, Marc and Kyle are shown shirtless, making out in his bed; it is implied they are about to have sex. ===== Having fled the besieged Ragnar Anchorage, the convoy of refugee spaceships is relentlessly pursued and attacked by Cylons. The colonial fleet must execute a faster-than-light (FTL) jump every 33 minutes to escape the Cylons, who consistently arrive at the new jump coordinates approximately 33 minutes later. After over 130 hours and 237 jumps, the fleet's crew and passengers, particularly those aboard Galactica, have been operating without sleep while facing the strain of nearly constant military action. Upon the 238th consecutive jump, Olympic Carrier (a commercial passenger vessel with 1,345 souls aboard) is left behind and the attacks unexpectedly cease, allowing the fleet some respite. When the vessel arrives three hours later, President Laura Roslin and Commander Adama order Capt. Lee "Apollo" Adama and Lt. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace to destroy it, believing that it has been infiltrated by Cylons and now poses a threat to the fleet's safety. The colonial pilots destroy Olympic Carrier while the rest of the colonial fleet jumps away. Baltar's internal Number Six explains to him that God is looking after his interests, implying that a scientist aboard Olympic Carrier was preparing to reveal Baltar's unwitting collusion with the Cylon attack on the colonies. After the fleet's last jump, the Cylons do not return, and the President's survivor whiteboard aboard Colonial One, the result of a fleetwide census, is updated with one additional soul (to 47,973) with the birth of the fleet's first child aboard Rising Star—a boy. Meanwhile, on Caprica, Lt. Karl "Helo" Agathon is captured by a Cylon patrol and then "rescued" from his Cylon captors by a Number Eight in the guise of his crewmate Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, who shoots a Number Six to free him. ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== Suspecting that Commander Adama may be a Cylon agent due to recent odd behaviour, President Roslin tells Dr. Baltar that Adama should be the first person to undergo the now-functioning "Cylon Detector" blood test, a process that takes eleven hours to complete. A lone Cylon Raider appears when Adama is suspiciously off-ship. A combat air patrol disarms it, but Col. Tigh deploys a Raptor to gather data on the enemy. Shortly after, Adama appears with Tigh's estranged wife, Ellen, who everyone thought had died in the initial Cylon attacks. Adama is suspicious of her sudden appearance and orders Dr. Baltar to put her blood test ahead of anyone else's. After dinner with the reunited couple, where Ellen shrugs off Adama and Roslin's questions about her sudden reappearance, Commander Adama and Apollo go to Baltar's lab to check on her test results. A harried Baltar explains that Adama's and Roslin's conflicting orders have prompted him to switch between the tests twice already, delaying results. Tigh barges in and (prompted by Ellen) accuses Adama of pursuing his wife sexually. The shouting is interrupted by a call from CIC that the Cylon Raider has changed course, seemingly to make a kamikaze dive towards Galactica. Since Tigh had already launched Vipers on a hunch, the Raider is destroyed and the fleet saved. Adama congratulates, then asks Tigh not to let anything (like his erratic wife) compromise his performance or let anything separate their friendship. When her test finishes, Baltar declares Ellen to be a non-Cylon. Afterwards, however, talking to Number Six, Baltar refuses to confirm to her whether or not these were the real results. Back on Caprica, Helo and Sharon avoid capture by running through a sewer system. At Sharon's suggestion, they head to the city of Delphi where they can find a ship and escape off Caprica. ===== President Roslin experiences a hallucination of snakes produced by the herbs she is taking to fight her breast cancer. Later, Priestess Elosha tells her about a prophecy of a leader of the human race in exile: the leader receives a vision of 12 serpents and later dies of "a wasting disease." The Priestess questions the president if she's indeed dying and both are surprised to seemingly confirm manifestation of ancient prophecy. An asteroid made of tylium is discovered, but it is being mined by Cylons. Commander Adama decides to take the asteroid by force and, with help from Starbuck (who is unable to fly a Viper because of a knee injury she received), comes up with a plan that uses the civilian fleet to draw out the Cylon Raiders. President Roslin is briefed on the plan and approves. The raid begins with Cylon Raiders moving toward civilian freighters, but more are sent toward Galactica, initiating a dog fight that draws the Raiders away from the freighters, which the briefing did not anticipate. Just as all seems lost, the freighters unveil a secreted squadron of 12 Vipers led by Apollo, who now have a clear path to the asteroid. Adama admits to Roslin that he strategically concealed this part of Starbuck's plan in her initial briefing. In an attempt to perform in Starbuck's out-of-the-box style, Apollo avoids the facility's defenses by flying through the mine tunnels. He bombs its tylium containers, setting off a large explosion and destroying the base while leaving several years' worth of tylium for the fleet to mine. Dr. Baltar is surprised at the success, as he had only been guessing when asked to identify the location of tylium containers. Head Six prompts him to begin thinking that he may have a role to play on behalf of the Cylon God that he had previously mocked, whilst Gaius is beginning to be faithful, encouraged as a chosen "instrument of God". On Caprica, Helo and Sharon hide from the pursuing Cylons in an abandoned stable. They flee after spotting a nearby group of Cylon Centurions led by a Number Six copy, the first indication to Helo that there are humanoid Cylons. ===== President Roslin reconstitutes the Quorum of Twelve, a representative body within the Colonial government. Tom Zarek, who had called for Roslin's resignation, is nominated to fill the vacant role of Vice President. Worried that Zarek may try to assassinate her if he wins, Roslin initially drafts her friend and confidante Wallace Gray to run against Zarek. After Gray proves uncharismatic, she pushes him aside in favor of Gaius Baltar. Apollo and Starbuck arrest a man named Valance who has smuggled a handgun aboard Cloud Nine, the ship where the Quorum meeting is being held. They suspect that he may have ties to Zarek but find him dead in his holding cell in an apparent suicide. Baltar wins the election. Zarek warns Roslin he will be back during the presidential election in six months and claims he did not kill Valance. On Caprica, Helo and Boomer prepare to hijack a Cylon ship to escape the planet when he sees another Number Eight copy that looks just like Boomer. Realizing that she, too, is a humanoid Cylon, he flees. ===== ===== With Commander Adama shot in the chest by Boomer, Col. Tigh is forced to take command as a Cylon Basestar arrives. Tigh has the fleet take an emergency faster-than-light jump to escape, despite the stranded survey team on the planet Kobol. When Galactica jumps, however, the rest of the fleet is not there. Tigh interrogates Boomer in the brig. Boomer, horrified at her own betrayal, urges him to kill her, but he refuses. A medic is forced to operate on Adama in Dr. Cottle's absence. In a sequence of flashbacks, Tigh recalls how Adama got Tigh back into the Colonial Fleet following the First Cylon War. In order to find the fleet, Tigh has Galactica jump back to orbit around Kobol with the ship's computers networked together (something Adama would have vehemently opposed because of the dangers of Cylon hacking) to calculate the jump coordinates before the Cylons can destroy Galactica. He also paroles Apollo, still in the brig for his attempted mutiny, so that he can command the Vipers in the coming battle. As the battle rages, the Cylons attempt to hack Galacticas network, but Lieutenant Gaeta's software firewall appears to hold. A Cylon Heavy Raider crashes into Galactica shortly before Galactica jumps and meets the fleet. A group of Cylon Centurions emerges from the Heavy Raider. On Kobol, Crashdown orders the survivors to take cover in a nearby forest. In an attempt to recover medical supplies that they left behind, he has Tarn, Chief Tyrol and Cally retrieve them, but Cylons kill Tarn before they get back. On Caprica, Helo stops Starbuck from shooting Caprica-Boomer. As they argue, Boomer steals Starbuck's Cylon Raider, stranding them. ===== Having just jumped away from a battle with Cylons and rejoined the civilian fleet, a Cylon virus forces Galactica to switch to a limited emergency power as the crew fights off a boarding party of Cylon Centurions. Apollo releases President Roslin from the brig and she makes her way to sickbay just as the last of the Centurions are destroyed. With Galactica safe, Doctor Cottle makes his way to operate on a still-critical Commander Adama. On Kobol, Tyrol and Cally return to the rest of the stranded survey team with the medical kit they had retrieved for a wounded Socinus only to learn that his death is inevitable. Tyrol reluctantly euthanizes him with lethal dosage of painkillers. On Caprica, Starbuck and Helo stop at Starbuck's old apartment, where they listen to a recording of Starbuck's father playing the piano as Starbuck reflects on her life. They retrieve the keys to Starbuck's truck and escape the city in it. ===== In "Scattered", Head Six told Baltar that they would have a child. Crashdown ordered Specialist Tarn to retrieve medical supplies to treat the wounded Specialist Socinus, but Tarn died in a Cylon ambush. In "Valley of Darkness", Chief Galen Tyrol and Specialist Cally brought the supplies, but Socinus died anyway. ===== When civilian ships protest martial law, acting commander Tigh orders Marines to take withheld supplies by force. On the civilian ship Gideon, Marines open fire on a hostile but unarmed crowd of civilians, killing four. Fearing a split in the fleet, President Roslin and Apollo enlist help from Racetrack and Dualla to escape the brig, and go into hiding with Tom Zarek, Roslin's erstwhile political enemy. Tigh has Chief Galen Tyrol thrown in a cell with Boomer who has recently been found to be a Cylon. He then orders Baltar to determine whether he is also a Cylon. Instead, Baltar injects Tyrol with poison and demands that Boomer reveal the number of Cylon agents still secretly aboard the fleet. After Boomer guesses that there are eight agents, Baltar administers the antidote and later clears Tyrol of being a Cylon. On Caprica, Starbuck and Helo encounter humans who survived the initial Cylon attacks and formed a resistance group. After a firefight and a Mexican standoff, the two groups persuade each other they are not Cylons by discussing sports. Back on Galactica, a still-weak Commander Adama resumes command. Tigh confesses he has made mistakes, but Adama sympathizes with the pressures of command. An angry crowd gathers to witness Boomer's transfer to a specially-constructed holding cell. During the transfer, Specialist Cally shoots Boomer, who dies in Tyrol's arms declaring her love for him. ===== ===== In the previous episode, "The Farm", Adama returned to command following an assassination attempt by the Galactica copy of Boomer (Galactica-Boomer). Roslin led almost a third of the fleet back to Kobol to search for a way to Earth. Starbuck left Caprica with Helo and the Cylon known until then as the Caprica copy of Boomer (Sharon). ===== In "Resistance", Tigh ordered supplies taken by force from civilian ships. On the civilian ship Gideon, Marines commanded by Lieutenant Joe Palladino opened fire on a hostile but unarmed crowd of civilians, killing four. Biers is preparing a report on what she calls the "Gideon massacre." Hoping to influence Biers to produce a more "balanced" report, Adama grants her unrestricted access to document life aboard Galactica. Biers conducts frank interviews with crew members and captures some pilots' hijinks on camera. After Kat overdoses on stimulants and botches a landing, Biers follows her to Galacticas sickbay. There, she discovers Doctor Cottle treating Sharon for a complication with her pregnancy. Adama confiscates the footage, but Biers secretly keeps a copy. She then records the crew during a successful defense against incoming Cylon Raiders and uncovers a disgruntled Palladino as the perpetrator of death threats and an assassination attempt on Tigh. In her final report, Biers describes arriving on Galactica with a bias against the crew but changing her mind. Pleased with the report, Adama recommends it be shown throughout the fleet. On Caprica, several Cylons also watch the report, as well as the secret footage of Sharon. Its then revealed that Biers herself is a Cylon as another copy sits with the other Cylons. The Raider attack was so that the footage could be transmitted to the Cylons. Biers confirms that both Sharon and her child survived and calls the child "a miracle from God." ===== In "Valley of Darkness," a computer virus created by the Cylons shut down Galacticas power, but Lieutenant Felix Gaeta seemingly purged it. In "The Farm," Commander William Adama sentenced Specialist Cally to 30 days in Galacticas brig for killing the Number Eight copy (Boomer) who shot Adama. Gaeta determines that the Cylon virus is still active, is responsible for a series of malfunctions aboard Galactica, and threatens to take full control of the ship. Adama enlists Sharon's help. She confirms Gaeta's diagnosis and warns that a Cylon attack is imminent. Hundreds of Cylon Raiders and Heavy Raiders appear and hold formation, preparing to activate the virus. Forced to trust Sharon, Adama allows her to interface directly with Galacticas systems by inserting a fiber optic cable into her hand. Sharon helps delete the virus and broadcasts a virus of her own to the Cylon ships, rendering them helpless and easy pickings for the Vipers. Sharon is summarily returned to her cell. Helo is ostracized by his crewmates for his relationship with Sharon. Haunted by memories of Boomer, Tyrol does not join the celebration of Cally's release. Tyrol and Helo argue about their respective relationships with Number Eight; the argument comes to blows. Inspired by Lee "Apollo" Adama's comment that "no one's expecting any miracles," Tyrol begins to build a new starfighter from salvaged parts. Despite initial skepticism, crew members from throughout the ship join the project. At Helo's suggestion, Tyrol uses carbon composites for the exterior, making it stealth capable. The completed fighter, known as the Blackbird, makes a successful maiden flight with Starbuck as test pilot. At the Blackbird's dedication ceremony, President Laura Roslin, who has just learned she has weeks to live, praises the fighter's construction as "an act of faith." Tyrol reveals that the fighter is named Laura in her honor. Helo reconciles with his crewmates, and Tyrol visits Sharon in her cell. ===== A large unknown ship appears on Galacticas DRADIS. After a tense moment, the ship is identified as the Battlestar Pegasus, a Colonial vessel previously believed destroyed in the Cylon attack on the Colonies. Cain boards Galactica with an armed escort and welcomes the crew "back to the Colonial Fleet." Cain relates to Adama and President Laura Roslin how she ordered a risky maneuver to escape the initial Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. Adama recognizes Cain as his superior, but Cain promises not to interfere with Galacticas internal affairs. Cain declines to resupply the fleet's civilian ships and integrates the battlestars' crews, transferring Apollo and Starbuck to Pegasus over Commander Adama's objections. Cain's executive officer, Colonel Jack Fisk, tells Colonel Saul Tigh how Cain shot his predecessor for refusing an order. Fisk claims his story is a joke, but Tigh believes it is true and relates the story to Adama. Adama reiterates his willingness to follow Cain, to both Roslin and Tigh, and insists that Apollo and Starbuck obey their transfer orders. Baltar visits Gina,She is not named in the episode; executive producer Ronald D. Moore gave the name in his podcast commentary on "Pegasus". a Number Six copy held prisoner aboard Pegasus. He and Head Six are horrified to discover that the Pegasus crew has systematically tortured and raped Gina. Baltar attempts to establish a rapport with Gina by providing food and confessing to his involvement with another Six copy on Caprica. Helo and Tyrol rescue Sharon from imminent rape by a Pegasus interrogator but accidentally kill the interrogator in the process. Cain denies Adama's request that Helo and Tyrol be given a jury court-martial and sentences them both to death for murder and treason. Adama demands that Cain return them to Galactica and orders Vipers to escort a Marine assault team to Pegasus. Cain refuses and sends the Pegasus Vipers to intercept Galacticas. ===== A young woman, named Noah, lives alone in a small apartment New York City. She is a mentally disturbed flower child, who retreats into her past, yearning for lost innocence. She recalls her childhood, searching for a "safe place." As a child, whose real birth name was Susan, she met a charismatic magician in Central Park who presented her with magical objects: a levitating silver ball, a star ring, and a Noah's ark. In the present day, Noah is currently and romantically involved with two totally different men named Fred and Mitch. Fred is practical, but dull. Mitch is dynamic and sexy, her ideal fantasy partner. Neither man is able to totally fulfill her needs. ===== In "The Farm", Starbuck promised Sam Anders she would return to Caprica to rescue him. In "Pegasus", Apollo and Starbuck plotted to steal the stealth-capable Blackbird to obtain reconnaissance photos of a mysterious ship escorted by a large Cylon fleet. Cain sentenced Helo and Chief Galen Tyrol to death for accidentally killing an officer to rescue Sharon. Adama ordered Galactica's Vipers launched toward Pegasus, and Cain ordered the Pegasus Vipers to intercept them. ===== After conducting a praying ceremony, the three oldest children of the alien Fog Mother hunt for an ideal human to feed to their newly hatched siblings. They find Kana, the young friend of environmentalist reporter Kouji Segawa, when he is investigating pollution at the lake. Protecting Kana from the villains as they escape, Kouji is thrown over a cliff by the reptilian Agito and dies; Kana is taken by the insectoid, Zu. Kouji is resurrected by the Earth Spirits as Kamen Rider J to fight the Fog Mother with the Earth Spirits' emissary, Berry, as his guide. With Fog Mother sensing Kouji's presence, Agito tries to finish the job and is killed by J. Kouji enters the Fog Mother's domain, facing Zu in her true form. J kills Zu as they crash into the fortress which is Fog Mother. After Zu dies, Kouji learns about Fog's intention to let her new brood devour humanity as Garai completes the ritual, sends Kana to the hatching chamber and manhandles Kouji. Berry intervenes to free Kana from Fog's spell before he is struck down by Garai; Kana is sent down to her death, and Fog Mother begins attacking a nearby city to prepare for her children's awakening. J fights Garai in his true form (Cobra Man) in a heated battle. After he kills Garai, J is digested by Fog Mother as he tries to save Kana. Absorbing the life energy around him, J kills Fog Mother's newborn offspring, escapes from her bowels and assumes the Jumbo Formation. After ripping Kana out of Fog Mother, J kills the monster. Escaping Fog Mother's destruction, Kouji brings Kana to a peaceful place as Berry watches from a distance. ===== Roslin lies near death in Galacticas sickbay. Doctor Cottle reports abnormalities in Sharon's unborn child's blood. Believing the child a threat to the fleet, Roslin orders her pregnancy terminated over Baltar's objections. Head Six, who regards Sharon's child as hers with Baltar, appears to Baltar and insists he intervene. Roslin's decision outrages Sharon and Helo, the child's father, who obstructs the entrance to sickbay. Baltar defuses the standoff by announcing that a transfusion of the fetus's abnormal blood may save Roslin's life. The procedure cures Roslin's cancer within days. In a sequence of delirious flashbacks, Roslin recalls negotiating an end to a teachers' strike on Caprica as Secretary of Education. Her conciliatory approach angered then-President Richard Adar, with whom she was having an affair, but she refused to back down. She also recalls seeing Baltar with a Number Six shortly before the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. A civilian crew member sabotages some ammunition. An investigation reveals she is a member of Demand Peace, an underground group of Cylon sympathizers. Admiral William Adama feigns negotiation with Demand Peace only to arrest its representative, Royan Jahee, when he arrives on Galactica. Demand Peace bombs a fuel refinery ship. Roslin meets with Jahee, agrees to hear his group's case, and warns that further violence will lead to harsh measures. Baltar meets secretly with Gina on Cloud Nine. Gina rejects his sexual advances but invites him to join Demand Peace; Baltar refuses. Head Six laments that saving Roslin's life prevented Baltar, who is Vice President, from becoming President. Baltar concludes from a letter Roslin wrote to him in the event of her death that she will never trust him. Jahee returns to Cloud Nine and presents Gina with a gift from Baltar: a nuclear warhead Adama provided Baltar for research purposes in an earlier episode. ===== Haunted by his near-death experience after ejecting from the Blackbird, Apollo begins sleeping with Shevon, a prostitute on Cloud Nine who reminds him of his pregnant girlfriend who died in the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. Dee asks Apollo whether their relationship is going anywhere; he brushes her off. President Laura Roslin decides to crack down on the black market within the fleet. Commander Jack Fisk at first advises against it but then volunteers Pegasus to take the lead. Fisk is later found garrotted in his quarters. Assigned to investigate the murder, Apollo discovers Fisk was heavily involved in the black market, and that Vice President Gaius Baltar and Colonel Saul Tigh were among Fisk's trading partners. Roslin privately asks Baltar to resign; the suggestion insults Baltar and redoubles his determination to stay in office. Responding to an emergency call from Shevon, Apollo rushes to Cloud Nine to find her bruised and distressed. Thugs enter Shevon's room and attack Apollo. As he is being strangled, a gangster tells Apollo to stop investigating Fisk's murder, threatens Shevon and her daughter Paya if he refuses, and knocks Apollo out. Apollo wakes to find Shevon and Paya gone and the wielder of the garrote murdered. Tom Zarek enters the room soon after. He claims he refused to join Fisk's smuggling network and suggests that the murderer's corpse was given to Apollo as "a way out" of his investigation. Apollo is not dissuaded, so Zarek mentions a man named Phelan who runs the black market and gives Apollo the location of his ship. On Phelan's ship, Apollo discovers the black market is hoarding antibiotics and trafficking in children; Paya is among their prisoners. Phelan, who turns out to be the gangster from before, reveals that Shevon works for him and defends the black market as necessary. Apollo offers Phelan amnesty if he will release Shevon and Paya and shut down his operation. When Phelan refuses, Apollo wrests a bodyguard's handgun and kills Phelan. Apollo acknowledges that the fleet needs the black market and so doesn't shut it down. However, he warns the smugglers to remove the human smuggling, hoarding and murder parts of their operation or he will shut them down. Roslin objects but acquiesces to the resolution. Zarek makes his way aboard Phelan's ship surrounded by his men, indicating that Zarek will take over the black market. Shevon refuses to see Apollo again, saying she cannot replace his lost love. Dee returns to Billy Keikeya. ===== Drunk in the pilots' mess, Starbuck vows to destroy Scar, a Raider known as the Cylons' ace of aces and dreaded for his sneak attacks. Kat challenges Starbuck, getting her to bet her beer stein labeled "Galactica Top Gun". Later, Kat interrupts Starbuck during a briefing, breaks her record in a test of shooting a side arm accurately while dizzy, and chastises her after her advice gets a rookie pilot killed by Scar. Sharon warns Starbuck that Scar is likely so competent and bloodthirsty because "he" has died and been resurrected many times. With the Cylon Resurrection ship gone, destroying him would make his death permanent. Starbuck is troubled by memories of Anders, whom she promised to rescue from Caprica; Admiral William Adama and President Laura Roslin have refused to order a rescue mission. After the rookie's death, she drunkenly comes on to Apollo but rejects him during foreplay. They fight over her feelings for Anders. She leaves and continues drinking while watching archival gun camera footage of Scar. Later, Starbuck is hung over and assigns another pilot to take her place on patrol. When Scar kills her inexperienced wingman, Kat blames Starbuck. They trade insults. Starbuck taunts Kat for her fear of Scar, and Kat punches Starbuck. Apollo arrives, cutting the altercation short. He orders the two pilots to fly together to protect a mining operation in an asteroid field. As Starbuck and Kat patrol in their Vipers, Kat pursues a Raider she believes to be Scar. As Starbuck checks behind them, the real Scar appears and damages Starbuck's Viper. Starbuck plays chicken with Scar, to Kat's horror. Remembering her promise to Anders, Starbuck swerves at the last moment. She lures Scar into Kat's line of fire, and Kat shoots him down. Back in the mess, Starbuck yields her stein to Kat and toasts a succession of pilots who have perished since the war began. She claimed previously that she could not remember their names. Later, while practicing boxing with Helo, she admits that, before she met Anders, she would have not thought twice about dying in the process of killing Scar, while Helo tells her that letting Kat take the shot was the right decision. She tells Helo that she can't get over the hope that Anders might still be alive, despite the unlikelihood. Helo suggests that before meeting Anders, Starbuck had something to die for, but now she has something to live for. ===== The press has learned that a Number Eight model Cylon is being held in Galacticas brig. Admiral Adama insists to President Laura Roslin that Sharon is a valuable source of intelligence. Billy, Roslin's chief of staff, urges Adama to tell the fleet about Sharon. Billy proposes marriage to Dee, but Dee turns him down. Later he discovers Dee on a date with Lee in a bar on Cloud 9 and is heartbroken. Gunmen led by Sesha Abinell take over the bar, demanding that the Admiral hand over Sharon. Learning that Abinell is seeking revenge for her husband's death in a Cylon attack, Adama refuses and orders Starbuck to plan a rescue with several Marines. A ruse by Lee convinces the gunmen that the bar is losing oxygen, giving Starbuck an opening. Her attempt backfires, and she accidentally shoots Lee during the confusion. Dee and Billy attend the bleeding, unconscious Lee. Roslin argues to Admiral Adama and Colonel Tigh they cannot give in to terrorists. As Abinell threatens Ellen Tigh, who is among the hostages, Adama agrees to hand over Sharon, but not alive. Adama sends over the corpse of Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, the Number Eight copy who shot him and died, to give Marines time to storm the bar. Abinell shoots Boomer's corpse but discovers the deception shortly after. She orders Dee killed. Against Dee's advice, Billy grabs a gun and shoots the would-be executioner dead. As he dies, the executioner also shoots and kills Billy. The Marines kill the remaining gunmen, including Abinell, and free the hostages. Roslin mourns Billy, whom she described as "the closest thing I have to family left". Dee awaits Lee's recovery in Galacticas sickbay as Starbuck looks on. ===== Apollo, freshly promoted to Major, is assigned to the Battlestar Pegasus to assist her new captain, Commander Barry Garner, the ship's former senior engineer. When two Pegasus Raptors sent out on a routine training mission by Captain Starbuck disappear from DRADIS, Commander Garner places all blame on Starbuck, implying that she is negligent. On Galactica, Rya Kibby, a pregnant teen stowaway is discovered who seeks an abortion by Dr. Cottle. She requests political asylum while her Geminese family demands that she be returned to them. When the issue is brought to President Roslin, she initially embraces the legality of abortion prior to the Cylon attack, but is pressured by the representative of Gemenon - an important constituency for Roslin's run for reelection. When discussing this with Admiral Adama, he points out the need of babies for the survival of the human race. Vice President Baltar provides a calculation that at the current rate humanity will become extinct in 18 years. On Pegasus, Starbuck concludes that the missing raptors may have jumped away to answer a phony distress call, a common Cylon tactic. In light of the danger, Admiral Adama orders a cautious recon mission to find the missing ships. Commander Garner, discounting Starbuck's theory, jumps the Pegasus to the location where they find the missing crews dead and are attacked by three Cylon Basestars. With the FTL drive damaged, Garner places Apollo in command of the ship and rushes to repair the FTL drive. Apollo is able to fend off the attacking Basestars and buy time for Garner's engineering. Garner succeeds in repairing the FTL drive but dies in the process. Apollo jumps the Pegasus back to safety and is rewarded by his father by being promoted and appointed Commander of the Pegasus. Back on Galactica, President Roslin issues an executive decree banning abortion but not before allowing the Gemenese girl to terminate her pregnancy and granting her asylum, thereby infuriating the Gemenese representative. During a press conference, Vice President Baltar publicly denounces Roslin's decision and announces his candidacy in the upcoming elections. ===== Daphne's close friend, Holly Graham, has asked the Mystery Inc. crew to help her investigate the disappearance of her uncle, Professor Alexander Graham, a genius and inventor. The five arrive at the mansion, known as Mystic Manor, where they are greeted by Holly; she recounts how Daphne has told her about their past cases before inviting the group to come inside, but Scooby and Shaggy refuse. Fred, Daphne, and Velma follow Holly inside, leaving Shaggy and Scooby outside alone. When Shaggy goes to obtain a box of Scooby Snacks he notices hanging from a gnarled tree, he pulls on one of the branches and falls into a trap door. Frightened, Scooby explores the grounds and discovers a nearby playground where he collects a monster token, receives some clues for the mystery, and eats all of the Scooby snacks. He then enters the mansion and discovers Holly locked in a room. She explains that a specter called The Mastermind appeared, kidnapping Fred, Daphne, and Velma before imprisoning her, and gives him a map of the region for getting around. Unable to navigate the rest of the mansion, Scooby returns to the front yard where he speaks with Graham's gardener (Don Knotts), who gives him a shovel. The shovel allows him to obtain a key to the nearby fishing village. Between the Fishing Village and the docks to the ocean, Scooby encounters Shaggy once again, who assists him with unlocking an entrance to the piers of the village before, again, vanishing without a trace. Soon Scooby comes to an old lighthouse, where he acquires one of Graham's inventions: a pair of springs, which allow him to double jump. Scooby uses this ability to obtain a key to the mansion's topiary garden. The Mastermind, voiced by Tim Curry. Scooby makes his way back to the mansion grounds. He navigates the topiary garden, where he obtains one of the professor's inventions: a helmet, allowing him to destroy attacking monsters and bash through cobwebs. Scooby explores the mansion, making his way through numerous rooms, the library, and the attic, before arriving at the top of a tower. He meets The Mastermind, who reveals that he is responsible for resurrecting the monsters and ghosts the group has unmasked, before revealing Velma trapped in a cage, which is guarded by the Black Knight, the first monster Scooby ever encountered. Scooby is able to destroy him by pressing switches which electrocute him, before freeing Velma from her cage. She flees in terror, claiming to see the Creeper. Scooby does not follow her as he does not see the Creeper anywhere in sight. Following this, Scooby explores a local cannery, along with the overhangs and some interconnected tunnels under the mansion, which lead him to a nearby cemetery. He rescues Shaggy from some monsters, before discovering Daphne held hostage by The Mastermind. The Mastermind proceeds to summon the Green Ghost, which attacks Scooby with green fire and electricity. Scooby is able to contain the Green Ghost with Daphne's help. Suddenly, Holly emerges from the brush. She and Daphne fall through a concealed door when Daphne rests against a tombstone, leaving Scooby alone once again. He uses a newly acquired invention, an umbrella, to explore a chain of old shipwrecks. Eventually, Scooby discovers Fred imprisoned in one of the ship's brigs, where he is confronted by The Ghost of Redbeard. He attacks Scooby by summoning numerous ghosts, but Scooby is able to smash him by dropping a treasure chest on his head. Velma arrives, still claiming to be chased by the Creeper. Fred discovers an image of the monster stamped on her glasses, and they head off to search for Graham's concealed laboratory. Meanwhile, Scooby and Shaggy indulge themselves with food, but Shaggy is scared off by The Ghost of Captain Cutler. Scooby acquires another of Graham's inventions: bubblegum, which he uses to trap monsters from being able to attack him. Scooby makes his way back to the overhangs, where he begins navigating the dungeons under the mansion. He encounters numerous ghosts, which he is able to destroy and avoid using his newly acquired inventions: air-bubbles. Scooby eventually discovers Professor Graham's laboratory, which has become overrun with monsters, namely the Funland Robot and the Space Kook. Scooby rescues Shaggy from being eaten by a shark, before continuing onward into another room, where he reunites with the rest of the gang and Holly. Fred reveals that the ghosts are entirely fake: The Mastermind has been using holographic images of monsters and ghosts from their past to terrorize them. He constructs a plan, which calls for Scooby to distract The Mastermind. Scooby fights and defeats The Mastermind, stunning him. He is sucked up through a tube which spits him out in the mansion's parlor. The gang and Holly make their way back to the first floor of the mansion. They unmask The Mastermind, only to discover Professor Graham in the costume. Velma argues that none of the clues make sense, before holding her glasses up to a mirror. The light reflected off the glasses and mirror reveal Holly operating a control panel behind a holographic wall. They realize the Holly they have been with the entire time has been a hologram when Shaggy attempts to touch her shoulder, but instead falls through her. Holly was able to escape the mansion and swap costumes with an incapacitated Professor Graham, making him look guilty. She was able to reconstruct images of the monsters, due to Daphne previously revealing details about the cases the gang had worked in the past. Holly admits to the scheme as a way of enabling her to take commendation for Graham's new invention and make money off of it, before she is sent to jail. Shaggy attempts to eat some food, only to discover it is a holographic image made by Scooby before saying "Scooby-Dooby-Doo!" ===== The episode primarily takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica. After the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, the copy of Number Six (Tricia Helfer) that was responsible for disabling the Colonial defense system (affectionately known as "Caprica-Six") and Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (Grace Park), after being shot by Specialist Cally ("Resistance") were both "downloaded": a standard Cylon practice of rebirth which takes place if a model is to perish, and have both been hailed as Cylon heroes due to their efforts in infiltrating human society. Both are having difficulties in adjusting to life on Caprica. In particular, Caprica-Six is having visions of Gaius Baltar (James Callis) that only she can see, much like Baltar's visions of Caprica-Six, and Boomer is having problems accepting her Cylon nature to the point of the denial, even in danger of being "boxed", which means storing a Cylon's memories without consciousness out of its body. Number Three (Lucy Lawless) asks Caprica-Six to help Boomer in this regard. However, when Caprica-Six starts to associate more with Boomer, they both realize that the holocaust the Cylons effected was a sin. They also come to the conclusion that due to their unique perspectives, Number Three is searching for a reason to box them both. Caprica-Six and Boomer are next shown conversing with Number Three. While the three move up a stairwell, explosives set by the resistance led by Samuel T. Anders (Michael Trucco) detonate, trapping Anders, Three, Boomer, and Caprica-Six in a parking garage. While Anders is originally shielded and hidden by the blast, Caprica- Six breaks her leg. Number Three offers to euthanize her, but Caprica-Six refuses as she suspects that Number Three will take the opportunity to box her. Shortly afterwards, the three find Anders who Number Three intends to kill before being stopped by Boomer and Caprica-Six. As Number Three goads them, Boomer and Caprica-Six understand that their unique view of humanity through their love for Baltar and Galen Tyrol gives them a perspective that makes them a threat to the Cylon status-quo. When Number Three attempts to kill Anders, she is killed by Caprica-Six who, along with Boomer, allow Anders to escape. Recognizing that it will take some time for Number Three to resurrect and report them, Caprica-Six and Boomer form a pact to change the Cylon perspective of humanity together before finally being rescued from the collapsed parking garage by the other Cylons. The episode's secondary plot takes place on Galactica. The copy of Number Eight that defected from the Cylons gives birth by cesarian section to a baby who she and Karl Agathon (Tahmoh Penikett) call "Hera". However, President Laura Roslin, and her secretary, Tory Foster, and Dr. Cottle conspire to fake Hera's death fearing what would happen if the Cylons knew the child lived. President Roslin also did not want Hera to be raised by her Cylon mother, Sharon, whom she still does not trust. At the end of the episode, the child is given to a woman who believes the child was born on Pegasus, while Helo and Chief Tyrol (Aaron Douglas) scatter the ashes they believe to be Hera's into space. ===== While hiding out from the police, five of Gotham's notorious criminals - the Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Killer Croc - gather at the criminals-only Stacked Deck Club. While passing the time with a game of cards, their conversation focuses on their mutual foe, Batman, whom Two-Face doubts is one person. While Croc assumes him to be a robot, Penguin correctly theorizes that he suffered some crime-related trauma in the past that made him who he is. Eventually, the talk on the subject leads each to argue over who came closest killing Batman, in which each criminal details their own story about how they "almost got 'im". Poison Ivy recounts how she had unleashed poisonous gas on Halloween, through thousands of pumpkins, only for Batman to thwart her plans by overcoming a trap she had created for him when he began investigating the sudden ill effects that Gotham's inhabitants suffered from, and capturing her. Two Face recounts how he had staged a robbery at a mint for $2 million in two dollar bills and had managed to take away Batman's utility belt and strap him onto a giant penny that he planned to catapult, only to find that he had stolen his coin and used it to break free, before apprehending him and his gang. Killer Croc attempts to detail how he nearly defeated Batman with a "big rock" during a battle in a quarry; unlike the others, none of the villains opt to listen to his story or learn how it went wrong. Pengiun recalls how he had turned a zoo aviary into a home for dangerous birds as part of a plot to kill Batman with several poison-beaked hummingbirds, only for the Dark Knight to soak them in water with the aviary's sprinkler, survive an attack by a cassowary, and inject himself with an antidote; Penguin was forced to flee as a direct result. With his cohorts having told their stories, Joker recalls how he had been close to killing Batman the night before. After capturing the Dark Knight, Joker commandeered the set of a late-night talk show, holding the studio audience hostage. With help from his gang and Harley Quinn, Joker intended to kill his nemesis on live television through a "laugh-powered electric chair" and pumping the studio with laughing gas. Before Batman was subjected to a lethal dose of electricity, Catwoman broke into the studio, distracting Joker in the ensuing fight long enough for the Dark Knight to escape. Before she can keep Joker from fleeing the studio, Harley managed to knock Catwoman unconscious from behind, with Joker instructing that she be hidden away. With his story over, Killer Croc question Joker on what he did with Catwoman, to which he answers that she was taken to a cat food factory to be dealt with once he was finished at the club. To Joker's surprise, Croc attacks him, revealing himself to be Batman in disguise. As the other villains prepare to deal with him, Batman reveals that they were lured there as part of a sting operation organised by Gotham police, who were present in the club, in an attempt to find out Catwoman's whereabouts from Joker. While Commissioner Gordon and Detective Bullock arrest the group, Batman heads out to the factory. At the cat food cannery, Batman finds Harley Quinn taunting a bound, gagged and enraged Catwoman. Catwoman is tied down to an assembly line, set to be ground up and mixed with supplies of cat food. Harley attempts to escape by turning on the conveyor belt, forcing Batman to choose between apprehending her and saving Catwoman. Harley bolts while Catwoman struggles fruitlessly against her bonds, moaning frantically into her gag. Batman, finding the machine's power switch, is able to capture Harley and rescue Catwoman. As Harley is arrested, Catwoman thanks Batman for the rescue, to which he states he owed her one for saving him from Joker's scheme. As Catwoman discusses their relationship and makes a pass on him, Batman pulls off his trademark disappearing act, leaving her to smile and mutter to herself "Hmm. Almost got 'im." ===== Four men on a bachelor party in New York ride the subway and, along with two strippers from the club, accidentally get off at a station that closed down in the 1970s. Trapped in the tunnels beneath New York, they witness the murder of a transit cop by three transients and find themselves on the run for their lives. ===== Richard Thayer, a shy, unassuming man (Valentino), is in love with a sheltered young woman, Elizabeth ("Beth") Lane (Myers). While the feelings are mutual and Richard wishes to propose, he can never find a moment to speak to Beth alone—she is constantly surrounded by admirers and her overprotective father (Wadsworth Harris). Richard explains his predicament to his friends, young married couple William and Maude Harcourt (Charles Dorian and Mary Warren). They agree to help by hosting Richard and Beth at a private dinner at their home. Beth's father agrees to let her dine with the Harcourts, but insists that she keep to an 11:00 curfew. The evening of the dinner William Harcourt receives a telegram from a prospective business associate, Bradford (William Dyer), informing him that he is arriving that night for a surprise visit. The announcement throws the Harcourts into a panic. William has recently mortgaged his home and life savings to buy a copper mine; he is counting on a $1-million investment from Bradford to save his business and house. He does not have any servants to welcome the millionaire, having fired them earlier in the day in a fit of rage. Working together, the four friends devise a plan: Richard and Beth will pose as the Harcourts; the real Harcourts will play the servants because they are familiar with the layout of their house. The scheme initially works, but things quickly deteriorate when Bradford, an eccentric, overbearing man, starts flirting with Maude Harcourt and insisting that Richard and Beth turn in for the night. The situation worsens when Beth misses her curfew and her father shows up at the Harcourt home to look for her. Eventually, everything is solved, but not before Col. Lane is locked in the pantry, Richard falls out a window and William is tossed out of his own house. ===== Framework Poster for Italian version Shortly after renting an old country house, film star Paul Henderson mysteriously disappears and Inspector Holloway (John Bennett) from Scotland Yard is called to investigate. Inquiring at the local police station, Holloway is told some of the house's history. He then contacts the estate agent Stoker (John Bryans) renting out the house, who elaborates further by telling Holloway about its previous tenants. Method For Murder (Fury #7, July 1962) Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott), a hack writer who specialises in horror stories, and his wife Alice (Joanna Dunham), move into the house. Charles begins working on a novel focusing on Dominic, a murderous, psychopathic strangler; Charles becomes simultaneously enamoured and disturbed by the character. Charles soon starts to see Dominic (Tom Adams), who begins stalking and tormenting him. Charles begins seeing a psychologist, Dr. Andrews (Robert Lang), who suggests Dominic is a split personality formed by him getting into Dominic’s mindset to write the novel. Charles’s visions of Dominic become even more pronounced. He sees Dominic strangling Alice, only for her to claim that Charles had been strangling her. At another session with Dr. Andrews, Andrews suggests Dominic is the result of darker sides of Charles’ personality being released by writing the novel, though Charles is sceptical. Suddenly, Dominic arrives and strangles Dr. Andrews while Charles watches in horror. At the house, Dominic approaches Alice, only to reveal that he is actually Richard, her lover. Richard, an actor, had been pretending to be Dominic to drive Charles insane, so that Alice and Richard could take the money made from his novel and run off together. Alice gets a call from the police, and learns that both Dr. Andrews and Charles had been strangled to death. Alice asks Richard why he had killed them, as it was not part of the plan, only for Richard to reveal he now believes he is Dominic. Richard/Dominic then strangles Alice while laughing maniacally. He is later arrested by the police, still laughing. Waxworks (Weird Tales Vol. 33 #1, January 1939) Retired stockbroker Philip Grayson (Peter Cushing) moves into the house. Though initially he occupies himself with his hobbies, he quickly becomes lonely. One day, while wandering around tow, he happens upon a wax museum. Grayson explores the museum and finds a sculpture of Salome which resembles a dead woman he had been in love with. The museum’s proprietor (Wolfe Morris) explains that he based the likeness of the sculpture after his late wife, who had been executed after murdering his best friend. Disturbed, Grayson vows never to return. His friend, Neville Rogers (Joss Ackland) arrives at his home while travelling on business. Grayson eagerly invites him to stay the night, and it becomes clear the two had both been romantic rivals for the same woman; however, the two had reconciled after her death. The next day, Grayson takes Neville around town, and the two spot the wax museum. Though Grayson tries to persuade him not to, Neville enters the wax museum and spots the sculpture, becoming obsessed with it. Neville tries to leave town, but is unable to abandon the sculpture. Staying at a local motel, he calls Grayson and informs him of his predicament. When Grayson arrives, he finds Neville has left for the wax museum. Grayson goes to the museum, and finds Neville’s severed head has been added to an exhibit. The proprietor arrives and reveals he had framed his wife for his friend’s murder, so that he could cover her corpse in wax and keep her to himself forever. However, men continue to become enamoured with her, and some, like Neville, become obsessed, which puts him into a murderous rage. The proprietor then murders Grayson with an axe, and adds his head to the Salome exhibit. Sweets to the Sweet (Weird Tales Vol. 39 #10, March 1947) Widower John Reid (Christopher Lee) moves into the house along with his pyrophobic young daughter Jane (Chloe Franks). John hires former teacher Ann Norton (Nyree Dawn Porter) to tutor Jane. Ann gradually bonds with Jane, and she helps Jane get over her fear of fire and teaches her how to read, but begins to suspect John is abusive: he does not allow her to play with other children or own toys, and does his best to keep her isolated. Norton confronts John about his parenting, and asks if he blames Jane for the death of his wife, to which John responds that he is glad his wife is dead. Norton manages to get John to allow her to buy Jane some toys; when John discovers a doll amongst the toys bought, he snatches it from Jane and tosses it in the fire. Jane begins to secretly read books about witchcraft. One night, during a blackout, John discovers some of the candles are missing. John angrily questions Jane about this and slaps her, to Ann’s horror. Jane secretly uses the missing candles to form a wax voodoo doll, which she uses to leave John bedridden. He reveals to Ann that Jane’s mother was a witch, and that Jane is as well. The reason for his parenting methods were to stop Jane from harming anybody. When Jane begins to attack John via the doll once again, he instructs Ann to find the doll and take it from Jane to stop her from killing him. Ann finds Jane standing next to the burning fireplace holding the doll; Ann tries to convince her to give her the doll, but Jane tosses the doll into the fire. Ann listens in horror as John burns to death, as Jane smiles evilly. The Cloak (Unknown May 1939) Temperamental veteran horror film actor Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee) moves into the house while starring in a vampire film being shot nearby. Henderson, a great fan of the horror genre, is angry over the lack of realism in the film, particularly over his character’s, a vampire, cloak. He decides to purchase a more accurate cloak, and to that end stops at an antique shop run by the enigmatic Theo von Hartmann (Geoffrey Bayldon). Von Hartmann offers him a black cloak after listening to Henderson’s demands, and Henderson purchases it. Before he leaves, von Hartmann tells him to use the cloak for its intended purpose. While in his makeup room, Henderson finds that when he wears the cloak, he has no reflection. Later that day, while shooting a scene where he sucks the blood from his costar and girlfriend Carla (Ingrid Pitt), Paul begins genuinely trying to suck her blood even after the scene ends. A horrified Carla demands he stay away from her. At midnight, the witching hour, Paul puts in the cloak again as a test. He grows fangs and begins to fly, much to his horror. Paul reads in the newspaper that von Hartmann’s shop had burned down, and von Hartmann’s corpse had been found inside; the corpse was identified as being several years old. Paul realises that von Hartmann was a vampire, and that he gave Henderson the cloak so that he could pass his powers onto Henderson, allowing him to die. Henderson apologies to Carla, and invites her over to his home. He explains to her his predicament, but she is sceptical and demands he prove it by putting on the cloak. Henderson is reluctant, as it is midnight, but he ultimately complies. Paul is relieved to find that nothing happens, but he quickly realises that the cloak had been swapped out for a prop. Carla dons the cloak and reveals she is actually a vampire sent to turn Henderson into another vampire, as most vampires admire his portrayal of vampires. Carla flies towards a screaming Henderson and begins to turn him into a vampire. Framework Holloway refuses to believe Stoker and goes to the house, despite it being nearly midnight and the house having no electricity. He explores the house by candlelight, eventually breaking into a locked basement when he finds and kills Henderson, now a fully transformed vampire. He is himself then killed by Carla. The next morning Stoker walks up to the house and breaks the fourth wall talking to the audience - asking if they understand the secret of the house: That it reflects the personality of whoever is living in it and treats them accordingly. He muses that perhaps the audience would be suitable, and "that there is nothing to fear, provided [they're] the right sort of person". ===== Laurie Harding (Paulo Costanzo) is a small shop clerk in the local Calgary mall. His world is full of tragic accidents - crosswalks, elevators, escalators and virtually anything associated with commercialism or technology is parodied as objects of fear and tragedy. An elevator plunges 30 stories. A woman's scarf is caught in an escalator, strangling her to death. A man is struck by a car, right before Laurie had the premonition to not cross. His own world is full of fear of these very events, his predictions of them, and his dependence on his less-than-sympathetic sister, Michelle (Camille Sullivan). Michelle heads product development at the company Global Safety Inc., whose mission is to provide products to combat the "Fear Storm" which assails the city. With their "Early Warning 2 Safe System tm", the PDA-like device warns you of danger ahead of time and the "Safe Bracelet tm" senses your fear and allows you to beep for help. Along with Laurie's prophetic powers, and the endless onslaught of accidents, the movie is full of absurd events: a mall announcer who continually requests a speaker of x foreign language - without any apparent reason; the same mall's population which slowly dwindles, being virtually empty by the film's end; an entire classroom population which is accosted simultaneously by hiccups; Some of these are more apparently satirical of pop culture: to comfort himself, Laurie repeats commercial refrains, such "Rice-A- Roni, the San Francisco treat"; his girlfriend, Dot (Emily Hampshire), does a survey on "how the clothes you wear define you" - one she both detests and is obsessed by. These events are framed by the pretextual plot of Laurie conquering his fears -- and by extension, the fears of those around him. However, by the film's end, it is doubtful that anything has been changed or achieved. ===== The film follows the experiences of a promising athlete named Steve and his friends who live in a small southern California town. Steve's three friends, Duff, Seb, and T, all come from wealthy families and spend most of their time getting high, drinking at parties, and harassing Ahkmed, a convenience store clerk. After finding a gun in a girl's house, Duff starts violently pursuing a life of crime with T, the loudmouthed instigator with a Napoleon complex, at his side. After Duff kills a kid who volunteers at the police department, the story fades away and we come back to find Steve returning home from college a year later just after being successful in college baseball. Steve came back to get his dream girl, Heather Smith, who told him that if he made it as a baseball player she would consider dating him. Steve runs into Duff's gang. Things spiral out of control for Steve as we learn that Duff and T have become submerged in what they think is one of the hardest gangs ever. In fact, shortly after Steve joins up with Duff and T, he witnesses them kill a man in broad daylight in the middle of the street over $80. As the story unfolds, it is clear that Heather is being used and abused by her new boyfriend Todd, whom she is reluctant to leave for Steve. Later Steve convinces Seb, who broke his ties with Duff's crew, to come out and party with Duff and the old gang for a night. T insults two Korean men by calling them Gooks, who then fire an Uzi into Duff's car, killing Seb. Duff and T were later sold out to a crooked undercover cop and the older brother of the man who was previously shot over $80. They killed T and then a narcotics officer, and his team busted the door down and were all killed. The end of the movie has Steve and Duff driving along the street when a couple of young kids throw something at Duff's car causing the two get to out of the car and chase after them. As they get near the kids, one of them turns, pulls a gun, and shoots Duff and Steve, killing them both. ===== ===== In 1888, Mary Kelly and a small group of London prostitutes trudge through unrelenting daily misery. When their friend Ann Crook is kidnapped, they are drawn into a conspiracy with links to high society. The kidnapping is followed by the gruesome murder of another woman, Martha Tabram; and it becomes apparent that they are being hunted down one by one as prostitutes are murdered and mutilated post-mortem. The murder of Martha and her companions grabs the attention of Whitechapel Police Inspector Frederick Abberline, a brilliant, yet troubled, man whose police work is often aided by his psychic "visions." His colleague, Sergeant Peter Godley, tries to grasp his friend's wild theories. Abberline's investigations reveal that the murders, while gruesome, imply that an educated person is responsible due to the precise and almost surgical method used. Ann is found a few days later in a workhouse having been lobotomized after officials and doctors supposedly found her to be insane, though it is implied this was done to silence her. Abberline consults Sir William Gull, a physician to the Royal Family, drawing on his experience and knowledge of medicine. During this meeting, it is revealed Abberline is struggling with opium addiction. Gull's findings, coupled with his superiors impeding his investigations, point Abberline to a darker and more organized conspiracy than he originally thought. Abberline becomes deeply involved with the case, which takes on personal meaning to him when he and Mary begin to fall in love. Abberline deduces that Freemason influence is definitely present in these crimes. His superior, a high ranking Freemason himself, then makes direct intervention and suspends Abberline. It is then revealed that Gull is the killer. He has been killing the witnesses to painter Albert Sickert's forbidden Catholic marriage to Crook, who bore his legitimate daughter, Alice. Sickert is actually Prince Albert, grandson of reigning Queen Victoria, and therefore Alice is heiress to the British throne. Gull boasts to Abberline that he will go down in history for giving "birth to the 20th century." Abberline draws his gun, vowing that Gull will never see the 20th century, but before he is able to shoot Gull, he is knocked out by Ben Kidney, another Freemason. The Freemasons try to have Abberline eliminated without leaving any witnesses, but Abberline fights back and kills two of the assassins by overturning a carriage. Abberline tries to save Mary, but arrives too late, and blames his superior for not helping him or Godley on the cases. Abberline does nothing but watch Mary's mutilated body being taken away. Gull's increasingly sinister behavior lends an insight into his murderous, but calculated, mind. Rather than publicly charge Gull, the Freemasons decide to lobotomize him to protect themselves and the Royal Family from the scandal. Gull defiantly states he has no equal among men, remaining unrepentant up to his lobotomy, resulting in him becoming invalid just as Ann had been. Abberline goes to the Ten Bells Tavern in Whitechapel and receives a mysterious letter, which he soon realizes is from Mary. As it turns out, Gull mistook a sleeping Ada for Mary and killed her instead. Abberline decides not to look for her as a way to offer her protection, as the Freemasons are watching his every move. Abberline then burns the letter, knowing that he can never have a normal life with her. Years later, Mary is seen living with Alice as her daughter, in a cottage on a cliff by the sea. Abberline is found dead in an opium den of an overdose by Sergeant Godley. Godley places coins with Queen Victoria's image on them over Abberline's eyes, pats him on the arm, and tells him to "Good night, sweet prince." ===== Ryan (Shane West) is a bit of a geek with eyes for the school sex bomb, Ashley (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), which induces cringing in his neighbor and best friend, Maggie (Marla Sokoloff), a cute, intellectual girl. But popular jock Chris (James Franco) has his eye on Maggie, and he offers to help Ryan win Ashley if Ryan will help Chris with Maggie. So begins a two-headed variation on Cyrano de Bergerac; Ryan composes soulful e-mails for Chris, and Chris advises Ryan to treat Ashley like dirt, which seems to be the only way to get her attention. At first, neither finds it easy to change their ways; Chris comes on too strong, and Ryan is too nervous to be a jerk. But as they start to succeed, Ryan begins to see Maggie in a new light and wonders if he's pursuing the right girl. He realizes Ashley is not meant for him, and tries to convince Maggie about Chris's affection for her. Maggie is reluctant to take him "back" at first, but then realizes Ryan has a change of heart. ===== Bernard lives happily with his wife Arlette and young son Thomas in a village outside Grenoble. One day a married couple, Philippe and Mathilde, move into the house next door. Bernard and Mathilde are shocked at meeting each other because years before, when both single, they had a stormy affair which ended painfully. At first Bernard avoids Mathilde, until a chance meeting in a supermarket reawakens long-buried passions and soon, while openly good neighbours, in secret they pursue an affair. Though both find the strain of living their normal family and working lives unbearable, it is Bernard who cracks first. After publicly revealing his violent passion for Mathilde at a garden party, he keeps away from her and the two households try to get on with their lives. But the rejected Mathilde then cracks and, after publicly collapsing at the tennis club, is hospitalised with depression. When she is released, she finds that to get far away from Bernard her husband has moved them out of the village. One night Bernard is woken by a banging shutter on the empty house next door and gets up to investigate. In the house, he spots Mathilde in the darkness. After they have made love on the bare floor, taking a gun out of her handbag she shoots first him and then herself. ===== It is 1999 and Sierra Leone is ravaged by major political unrest. Rebel factions such as the Revolutionary United Front frequently terrorize the countryside, intimidating Mende locals and enslaving many to harvest diamonds, which fund their increasingly successful war effort. One such unfortunate local is fisherman Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) from Shenge, who is separated from his family and assigned to a workforce overseen by Captain Poison (David Harewood), a ruthless warlord. One morning, Vandy discovers an enormous pink diamond in the river. Captain Poison tries to take the stone, but the area is suddenly raided by government troops. Vandy buries the stone before being captured. Both Vandy and Poison are incarcerated in Freetown, along with Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a white Rhodesian gunrunner, whose family was killed in the Rhodesian Bush War. Archer, also a veteran of the 32 Battalion fighting in the South African Border War, was jailed while trying to smuggle diamonds into Liberia. They were intended for Rudolph van de Kaap (Marius Weyers), a corrupt South African mining executive. Hearing of the pink diamond in prison, Archer arranges for himself and Vandy to be freed from detention. He travels to Cape Town to meet his employer: Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo), an Afrikaner formerly with the apartheid-era South African Defence Force, who now commands a private military company. Archer wants the diamond so he can sell it and leave the continent forever, but Coetzee wants it as compensation for Archer's botched smuggling mission. Archer returns to Sierra Leone, locates Vandy, and offers to help him find his family if he will help recover the diamond. Meanwhile, RUF insurgents escalate hostilities; Freetown falls to their advance while Vandy's son Dia is among those rounded up to serve as a child soldier under a liberated Captain Poison. Archer and Vandy narrowly escape to Lungi, where they plan to reach Kono with an American journalist, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly); in exchange, Archer will provide her evidence of the illicit diamond trade. The trio arrive in Kono after a harrowing journey, where Coetzee and his private army—contracted by the Sierra Leone government—prepare to repulse the rebel offensive. While Maddy gets out with her story, the two men set out for Captain Poison's encampment. Dia, stationed with the RUF garrison there, is confronted by Vandy, but having been brainwashed he refuses to acknowledge his father. Archer radios the site's coordinates to Coetzee, who directs a combined air and ground assault on the camp; Vandy finds Captain Poison and beats him to death with a shovel as the mercenaries overwhelm the RUF defenders. Coetzee then forces Vandy to produce the diamond, but is killed by Archer, who realizes Coetzee would eventually kill them both. Dia holds the pair briefly at gunpoint, but Solomon confronts him again and unbrainwashes him by revealing who he really was, resparking Dia's memory. Pursued by vengeful mercenaries, Archer discloses he has been mortally wounded and entrusts the stone to Vandy, telling him to take it for his family. Vandy and his son rendezvous with Archer's pilot, who flies them to safety while Archer makes a final phone call to Maddy; they share final farewells as he asks her to assist Vandy, and gives her permission to finish her article. Archer finally takes in the beautiful African landscape before dying. Vandy arrives in London and meets with a van de Kaap representative; he exchanges the pink diamond for a large sum of money and being reunited with his entire family. Maddy takes photographs of the deal to publish in her article on the diamond trade, exposing van de Kaap's criminal actions. Vandy appears as a guest speaker at a conference on "blood diamonds" in Kimberley, and is met with a standing ovation. As many as 40 countries signed this agreement to handle the sale of illegal diamonds. However, it is up to the buyer to buy diamonds that are completely free from conflict. ===== Inside a small shack, a robed figure —dubbed "God Killing Himself" in the film's credits— disembowels himself using a straight razor. After removing some of his internal organs, the character dies. A woman, Mother Earth, emerges from his mutilated remains. She brings the corpse to arousal and uses his semen to impregnate herself. Time passes and Mother Earth, now visibly pregnant, stands beside a coffin containing God's corpse. Wandering off into a vast and barren landscape, Mother Earth later gives birth to Son of Earth, a malformed convulsing man. He is soon abandoned by his mother, who leaves him to his own devices. After an untold period of time wandering across the barren landscape, the Son of Earth encounters a group of faceless nomads who seize him by his umbilical cord. Upon being captured, the Son of Earth begins to vomit organic pieces, which the nomads excitedly accept as gifts. They then throw the man into a fire pit, where he burns to death. Son of Earth is resurrected by Mother Earth, who comforts her newly reborn offspring before they continue together across the barren landscape. The nomads soon return and proceed to attack the Son of Earth as Mother Earth stands in a trance-like state. Turning their attention to her, the nomads knock her to the ground, rape her, and murder her as her son watches helplessly nearby. Once the nomads have left, a group of robed figures arrive to carry away Mother Earth's mutilated, disemboweled remains. The group returns to murder and disembowel her son, burying pieces of both mother and son into the crust of the earth. As time passes, the burial site soon becomes lush with flowers. Grainy photographs of God Killing Himself are shown. In the final scene, Mother Earth and her son appear in a flashback, this time wandering through a forest. ===== A motley crew of Australian militiamen or 'chocos' from the 39th Battalion are stationed in a New Guinea village just after the Japanese invasion. The 39th Battalion are the only troops available to hold off the Japanese advance until the AIF arrives to relieve them. The story centres on an infantry section of the 39th Battalion. The section with their platoon commander, a veteran AIF lieutenant (Ben Barrack) who has served in North Africa, is on forward patrol when they are attacked by a Japanese force. The lieutenant is killed early in the battle and the section, led only by a recently promoted lance-corporal, Max (Simon Stone), decide to fall back. One of the men, L/Cpl Wilstead (Ewen Leslie), is bayoneted in the face by a Japanese soldier, and a Bren gunner called Blue (Christopher Baker) offers to stay and provide cover. However, the remaining men are cut off and surrounded in the dense jungle, with little hope of escaping. The Australians try to remain hidden until nightfall, when Darko (Travis McMahon) and Jack (Jack Finsterer) decide to go and find out where Blue is. They stumble across Blue, who is tied up and being tortured by Japanese soldiers. Darko and Jack look on helplessly as the Japanese soldiers bayonet him in the stomach and groin, and finally decapitate him with a sword. They return to their hiding place, shaken by what they have seen. The Japanese ambush the section and they run further into the jungle. Caught behind enemy lines in harsh terrain, Jack, to whom the others (including his brother, Max, have deferred) tries to maintain command of a small group of men. Suffering from malaria and dysentery, the remaining six men decide to make their way to Isurava, where the remainder of the 39th are fighting a desperate battle. One of the soldiers, Sam (Steve Le Marquand), has been injured in the leg and orders the rest of the section to leave him behind. They refuse and he struggles along with a crutch. After a full day of walking, the men are exhausted. The next morning they awake to find Sam gone, having hidden himself in a hollow tree stump to avoid holding them up. The men continue and are ambushed by a Japanese patrol. The Japanese soldiers are all killed, but Max is badly wounded by a gunshot to the stomach and is unable to walk. He is carried by all the men. The section makes it to a village that has been destroyed by the advancing Japanese, and the Australians decide to take refuge. They bury the dead native villagers and an argument arises between Jack and Darko, a tough soldier who carries the section's Bren gun, over Max. Darko wishes to leave him behind as he is slowing the section down and they are needed at Isurava. Jack, however, wants to stay with him. However, Max decides to stay and let the others go and Johnno (Tom Budge), who has severe dysentery, stays with him. The men agree, and Jack, Darko and Burke (Luke Ford), Darko's number two, head off to Isurava. The journey becomes treacherous and Burke's dysentery is getting worse. Meanwhile, at the village, a few Japanese soldiers arrive to search the village and in a desperate attempt to save the life of his mate, Johnno fires at the Japanese and runs into the jungle; however, he is tracked down and gunned down by the Japanese. A day or so later a New Guinea tribesman comes back to inspect the village and finds a badly wounded Max in the hut. After a gut-wrenching climb, Jack, Darko and Burke are found by Australian troops, who take them to Isurava, where the situation is in dire straits. The AIF has finally arrived but they too are weak from the trek to Isurava. The 39th is no longer a capable fighting unit, and almost all of the men are too sick or wounded to fight. The three men check themselves into a makeshift field hospital for treatment. However an AIF officer comes in and asks for any available men from the 39th to help hold the line. Jack, Burke and Darko volunteer and they are assigned to a position held by men of the 2/16th Battalion. That night the Japanese attack in waves against the Australian positions. The Australians, who are only equipped with rifles and machine guns, desperately hold off the Japanese. The Japanese are gunned down by the superior firepower of the Australians, but in the final seconds of the fight Burke is shot through the chest and dies in Darko's arms as the fight rages on. The Japanese end the assault and the battle is over. The next day, the scant remainder of the 39th is paraded at Isurava village. The men are tired and haggard and receive news that they will be taken off the line and that they have just saved Australia from an imminent invasion. After the speech by the 39th's colonel (William McInnes), Jack and Darko withdraw with the rest of the soldiers. (The Australians withdrew from Isurava to take up positions at Brigade Hill.) While withdrawing, Jack and Darko spot Max being carried by Fuzzy wuzzy angels to an aid station. He has survived. ===== In Coup d'Etat, Tao places a device in the hands of the U.S. Government that allows them to enter the Bleed, where it exploded, damaging a vessel of an alien race and starting an interdimensional war. The crossover had important consequences for the Wildstorm Universe with the Authority taking control over the U.S. Government and Stormwatch: Team Achilles being forced underground. For Stormwatch: Team Achilles and Wildcats 3.0, most of these consequences could not be explored as both series were cancelled shortly afterwards. The Authority taking control of the U.S. Government led into the events of The Authority: Revolution. ===== The series begins with Automatic Kafka's first nanotecheroin trip. As Kafka ponders where his life has gone since the $tranger$ disbanded, The Warning is approached by the National Park Service who want to use Automatic Kafka for clandestine missions. Kafka avoids being trapped into service with the NPS by doing celebrity product endorsements and later hosting a lethal gameshow called The Million Dollar Detail. After an issue focusing on a side character, the series moves to The Constitution of the United States, who leads a group of mercenaries in an attack on a jungle camp. As he finishes, a mysterious flight of military planes bombs the camp with exploding babies. He then returns to the United States, where he embarks on a career as a porn star. Meanwhile, Kafka and Helen of Troy are enjoying a tryst when The Warning summons them to a social call with an old arch-enemy, Galaxia. Helen and Kafka both balk at the reunion, but eventually warm to the experience. Shortly thereafter, The Warning tricks Galaxia and kills him to power a machine that manufactures the mysterious exploding babies. As Kafka wrestles with the suicide note left by his drug-dealer/assistant, a phantom butterfly arrives to "rescue" him "from the possible tedium of another so-called 'story arc'." The butterfly takes him to a comic shop, where he meets Joe Casey and Ashley Wood. The authors explain to Kafka that "You've been operating under different rules than most superheroes. You're part of an ongoing marketing experiment. Kids aren't flocking to superheroes like the used to, so now we've got superheroes for adults." Because they do not want to share their creation with other writers and artists, Casey and Wood erase Kafka as the last issue ends. ===== The queen of darkness, Erinyes (エリニュス), has kidnapped Princess Electra (エレクトラ姫). The four heroes: Ward (ウォード), Emilio (エミリオ), Charles (チャールズ) and Karl (カール) embark on a quest to save the princess. They compete with each other to reach the Castle of Darkness and defeat Erinyes, so one of them might be able to marry the rescued Electra and rule the land (the eponymous "Exvania"). Each of the lords has their own ending sequence, but Karl's is slightly different from that of the other three (as Princess Electra is horrendously ugly, and when he throws a bomb at her to fend her off, it explodes in her hand and blows both of them up, causing him to mix Greek text with Japanese Kanji in the quotation ΟΧΔ口Ο口Χ! which reads as "OCHD Kuchi O Kuchi CH!"). Greek text was previously used by Namco for Face Off, in 1988, when one of the members of the losing team said the phrase ΟΔΧ (which reads as "ODCH") on the continue screen in the "versus" mode. ===== This is a book in two parts. The first, "The Enigma of Innocent Smith", concerns the arrival of a new tenant at Beacon House, a London boarding establishment. Like Mary Poppins, this man (who is tentatively identified by lodger Arthur Inglewood as an ex-schoolmate named Innocent Smith) is accompanied by a great wind, and he breathes new life into the household with his games and antics. During his first day in residence the eccentric Smith creates the High Court of Beacon; arranges to elope with Mary Gray, paid companion to heiress Rosamund Hunt; inspires Inglewood to declare his love for Diana Duke, the landlady's niece; and prompts a reconciliation between jaded journalist Michael Moon and Rosamund. However, when the household is at its happiest two doctors appear with awful news: Smith is wanted on charges of burglary, desertion of a spouse, polygamy, and attempted murder. The fact that Smith almost immediately fires several shots from a revolver at Inglewood's friend Dr. Herbert Warner seems to confirm the worst. Before Smith can be taken to a jail or an asylum, Michael Moon declares that the case falls under the purview of the High Court of Beacon and suggests that the household investigate the matter before involving the authorities or the press. The second part, "The Explanations of Innocent Smith", follows the trial. The prosecution consists of Moses Gould, a merrily cynical Jew who lives at Beacon House and considers Smith at best a fool and at worst a scoundrel, and Dr. Cyrus Pym, an American criminal specialist called in by Dr. Warner; Michael Moon and Arthur Inglewood act for the defence. The evidence consists of correspondence from people who witnessed or participated in the exploits that led to the charges against Smith. In every case, the defendant is revealed to be, as his first name states, innocent. He fires bullets near people to make them value life; the house he breaks into is his own; he travels around the world only to return with renewed appreciation for his house and family; and the women he absconded with are actually his wife Mary, posing as a spinster under different aliases so they may repeatedly re-enact their courtship. Smith is, needless to say, acquitted on all charges. ===== The story takes place during the Rapture. Millions of people suddenly vanish and frantic "survivors" of the disappearances begin their search for their friends and families, as well as answers to what has happened. Among them are pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe Steele and Cameron "Buck" Williams, and pastor Bruce Barnes, who begin to discover that the Rapture has taken place. Meanwhile, Buck follows an unknown, but charming, Romanian politician named Nicolae Carpathia, who quickly attracts millions of followers - seemingly overnight. ===== Amber and Ashes is set in Krynn shortly after the death of Takhisis at the end of the War of Souls. Magic is back, and so are the gods. But the gods are vying for supremacy, and the war has caused widespread misery, uprooting entire nations and changing the balance of power on Ansalon. The mysterious warrior-woman Mina, brooding on her failure and the loss of her goddess, makes a pact with evil in a seductive guise. As a strange vampiric cult spreads throughout the fragile world, unlikely heroes—a wayward monk and a kender who can communicate with the dead—join forces to try to uproot the cause of the growing evil. It begins with Chemosh talking to himself in an abandoned temple about his plans to rule the pantheon and obtaining living servants as opposed to the dead. Shortly after, Mina and Galdar are seen. Mina is grieving the death of Takhisis and is about to kill herself when Chemosh intervenes and makes her his lover. It is then that the plot to create the Beloved of Chemosh begins. ===== Cole Cash also known as Grifter is supposed to meet up with his friend John Lynch in a bar. Both were soldiers in Team 7 and despite their differences over the years, they still trust each other. He then finds out that Lynch has been shot and is in a coma. Cole decides to avenge Lynch and find out who killed him. His investigation leads to Tao, a former member and enemy of Grifter's team the Wildcats. Grifter is contacted by Holden Carver, a member of Tao's organisation, who turns out to be a sleeper agent. Lynch is the only one who knows about Carver's status as an agent and Carver hopes that Grifter can help him now Lynch is in a coma. Grifter promises to bring in Carver, but returning to his room, he finds Tao. Tao tells Grifter that he had been under Tao's influence and that in fact Grifter himself was the one who shot Lynch. Tao then erases all memory of the past few days from Grifter's mind. Grifter returns to the bar to wait for Lynch, leaving Carver within Tao's organisation with no hope of extraction. ===== A group of Baker fans, ranging from ex-associates to ex-wives and children, talk about the man. Weber's film traces the man's career from the 1950s, playing with jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, and Russ Freeman, to the 1980s, when his heroin addiction and domestic indifference kept him in Europe. By juxtaposing these two decades, Weber presents a sharp contrast between the younger, handsome Baker — the statuesque idol who resembled a mix of James Dean and Jack Kerouac — to what he became, “a seamy looking drugstore cowboy-cum-derelict”, as J. Hoberman put it in his Village Voice review. Let's Get Lost begins near the end of Baker's life, on the beaches of Santa Monica, and ends at the Cannes Film Festival. Weber uses these moments in the present as bookends to the historic footage contained in the bulk of the film. The documentation ranges from vintage photographs by William Claxton in 1953 to appearances on The Steve Allen Show and kitschy, low budget Italian films Baker did for quick money. ===== After Peter Bonamy suffers a heart attack, and subsequently leaves hospital, he leads his life more carefully than before. His wife Jane and daughter Rosemary molly-coddle him, and he also attends a heart-attack survivors group. Bonamy, from the comfort of his south London home, finds himself doing little, especially as he can not even drive his Porsche. The first episode of the series was largely a re-make of the 1983 pilot episode. Unusually for a television sitcom, there was no audience at the recordings. ===== Kenneth Talley Jr. is a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran living in his childhood home with his boyfriend, botanist Jed Jenkins. At the beginning of the play, he is due to return to his former high school to teach English, but has decided not to. Visiting Ken and Jed are Ken's sister, June Talley, and her daughter, Shirley, as well as Ken and June's longtime friends, John Landis and his wife Gwen, inheritor of a large industrial copper conglomerate. John is ostensibly visiting to purchase the Talley house for Gwen to convert to a recording studio, so that she can have a career as a country singer. Unbeknownst to anyone but June, John and Ken, Shirley is actually John's daughter, and the visit is also his attempt to gain joint custody of Shirley. Ken, meanwhile, believes that the singing career is a way of distracting Gwen so that John can take over her business. Other visitors include Weston Hurley, Gwen's guitarist, and Ken's aunt, Sally Talley, who still has her husband Matt's ashes in a candy box a year after his death. The play culminates with a "bidding war" between Sally and John for the house, after it is revealed that Ken planned on selling it to Landis. Sally ultimately outbids Landis and says she will give the house to Jed so he can finish his garden. ===== The film opens in 1956 Massapequa, New York, with a 10-year-old Ron Kovic playing with his friends in a forest. On his Fourth of July birthday, he attends an Independence Day parade with his family and best friend Donna. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy's televised inaugural address inspires a teenage Ron to join the United States Marine Corps. After attending an impassioned lecture by two Marine recruiters visiting his high school, he enlists. His decision receives support from his mother, but upsets his father, a World War II veteran. Ron goes to his prom, and dances with Donna before leaving for basic training. In October 1967, Ron is now a Marine sergeant on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam, during his second tour of duty. He and his unit kill a number of Vietnamese villagers after mistaking them for enemy combatants. After encountering enemy fire, they flee the village and abandon its sole survivor, a crying baby. During the retreat, Ron accidentally kills Wilson, a young private in his platoon. He reports the action to his superior, who ignores the claim and advises him not to say anything else. In January 1968, Ron is critically wounded during a firefight, but is rescued by a fellow Marine. Paralyzed from the mid-chest down, he spends several months in recovery at the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York. The hospital's conditions are poor; the doctors and nurses ignore patients, abuse drugs, and operate using old equipment. Against his doctors' requests, Ron desperately tries to walk again with the use of braces and crutches, only to damage his legs and confine himself permanently to a wheelchair. In 1969, Ron returns home and turns to alcohol after feeling increasingly neglected and disillusioned. During an Independence Day parade, Ron is asked to give a speech, but is unable to finish after he hears a crying baby in the crowd and has a flashback to Vietnam. Ron visits Donna in Syracuse, New York, where the two reminisce. While attending a vigil for the victims of the Kent State shootings, they are separated when Donna and other protestors are taken away by police for demonstrating against the Vietnam War. In Massapequa, a drunken Ron has a heated argument with his mother, and his father decides to send him to Villa Dulce (The Sweet Villa), a Mexican haven for wounded Vietnam veterans. He has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute, whom he falls for until he sees her with another customer. Ron befriends Charlie, another paraplegic, and the two decide to travel to another village after getting kicked out of a bar. After annoying their taxicab driver, they are stranded on the side of the road and argue with each other. They are picked up by a truck driver who takes them back to Villa Dulce. Ron travels to Armstrong, Texas, where he discovers Wilson's tombstone. He then visits the fallen soldier's family in Georgia to confess his guilt. Wilson's widow Jamie expresses that she is unable to forgive Ron, while his parents are more sympathetic. In 1972, Ron joins the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and travels to the Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. As Richard Nixon is giving an acceptance speech for his presidential nomination, Ron expresses to a news reporter his hatred for the war and the government for abandoning the American people. His comments enrage Nixon supporters, and his interview is cut short when police attempt to remove and arrest him and other protestors. Ron and the veterans manage to break free from the officers, regroup, and charge the hall again, though not successfully. In 1976, Ron delivers a public address at the Democratic National Convention in New York City, following the publication of his autobiography. ===== ===== In the opening chapter Howells introduces the Talbert family, middle-class New England proprietors of a silverplate works that turns out ice-pitchers and other mundane household items. Daughter Peggy Talbert has just returned from her coeducational college engaged to a harmless but rather weak young man named Harry Goward. Eventually, after many twists and turns introduced by the subsequent contributors, Harry Goward is dismissed as a suitor, Aunt Elizabeth is sent off to New York City, and a more suitable mate for Peggy is found in a college professor named Stillman Dane. Peggy marries Dane and the couple sails off to Europe with Peggy's brother Charles and his wife Lorraine for a honeymoon tour. ===== Joëlle (Pénélope Lamour) is a beautiful executive at an advertising company who is married to Eric (Jean- Loup Philippe). Her vagina is infected with a mysterious affliction, ostensibly after she is seduced by an attractive blonde girl, and begins to talk and lead her to indecent sexual acts. However, it is soon revealed that her problems root from her sexual hardships and obsessions as an adolescent. In the finale, she has sex with Eric and passes the "infection" to his penis. ===== Mustafa speaks with a woman whose Quran was thrown to the ground by a guard, while detainees line up behind her to use a pay phone. In the upper left corner, the hope meter is shown. Escape from Woomera opens with three screens of text that explain the game's background. Players assume the role of Mustafa, who paid smugglers to bring him to Australia after his parents were killed by the Iranian secret police. After the boat transporting him crashed in the Ashmore Reef, Mustafa was brought to the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, where he was given the identification number "RAR-124". After three months, Mustafa was informed that his request for asylum was denied, and that he would be repatriated to Iran. Believing that he would be tortured and killed upon his return, Mustafa decided to escape Woomera.Coyer, Dowmunt, and Fountain (2011), 174. Because the game was never completed, only a small portion of the intended gameplay exists. During the playable segment, Mustafa, through conversations with other detainees, discovers that another detainee is planning an escape but needs a pair of pliers to make the attempt. Mustafa must join a work detail to gain access to the pliers, hide the pliers in a garbage can to prevent them from being found during a search, recover them at night (which requires Mustafa to find a way to pry open the area that the garbage cans are stored in), and deliver them to the other detainee. The playable section ends when Mustafa delivers the pliers.Coyer, Dowmunt, and Fountain (2011), 174–175.Poremba (2013), 2–4. Other interactions during the playable section include speaking with a detainee who, after complaining that a guard threw her copy of the Quran to the ground, mentions the existence of a partially built tunnel from a previous escape attempt. ===== Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, and Scrappy-Doo are on their way to Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls, where they have been hired as gym teachers. Once there however, they find that it is actually a school for girl ghouls. The pupils include Sibella, the daughter of Count Dracula; Elsa Frankenteen, the daughter of Frankenstein's monster; Winnie, daughter of the Wolfman; Phantasma (usually called Phanty for short), the ghostly daughter of a phantom; and Tanis, the daughter of the Mummy – all parodies/tributes to the Universal Monsters of the 1930s–40s. Other residents of the school are a floating white hand; an octopus who is the school's butler; Legs, a spider that helps with the upcoming volleyball match; Miss Grimwood, the headmistress; and her diminutive pet dragon Matches. Frightened by this, Shaggy and Scooby are initially hesitant, but eventually they agree to stay as gym teachers. The following morning begins with the class and the new teachers taking ballet lessons. Gym class soon starts, to train the girls for their upcoming volleyball match against the boys of the neighboring Calloway Military Academy. The boys rig the volleyball with a remote control, but because of an accidental squirt of ketchup, the boys lose the remote, Scooby accidentally swallows the remote and it allows the girls to win instead. The girls' fathers come for Open House on Halloween night. As they leave due to various reasons, they warn a fearful Shaggy and Scooby not to let any harm come to their daughters or they'll be in big trouble. The power- hungry witch, Revolta, the self-styled Witch of the Web, and her minion the Grim Creeper plan to kidnap the girls and make them her slaves. She starts by hypnotizing Shaggy into taking the girls on a field trip to the Barren Bog. That same day, the Calloway Cadets are at the bog. With the help of Revolta's spider bats, Revolta and the Grim Creeper capture the girls and Revolta makes a potion that will turn them evil forever at the stroke of midnight. Scooby, Scrappy, Shaggy and Matches, along with the Calloway cadets, manage to save the girls and Revolta's plan is foiled. Despite being well liked by all their students, Shaggy and Scooby run away in terror when new monsters such as an alien, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla Kaiju enroll their own daughters at the school for the following year. As they leave, they see the girls and Matches wave them goodbye. Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy then give them a last werewolf howl before driving off into the night. ===== The film follows two young friends, Kiran, a Hindu, and Delilah, a Catholic, from their first meeting as young children to young adulthood, when they realize their love for each other. A student in their same class, Rajan, has a crush on Delilah and he asks Kiran to pen love letters to her on his behalf. Kiran does so as it allows her to express her love to Delilah without having to be ostracized by her family and society. Eventually Delilah discovers the truth behind the letters and poetry, and admits her mutual love to Kiran. This begins a delicate love affair, despite social taboos against homosexuality. Their love affair is severely impeded when Rajan discovers Kiran and Delilah stealing a moment of intimacy in the woods. He informs Amma, Delilah's mother, of what he witnessed. Amma confronts Delilah, who reveals her love for Kiran. To save the family from disgrace, Amma arranges a marriage for Delilah with a suitor who had recently visited with intent on finding a bride. Delilah reluctantly consents to the marriage. Kiran tries to convince Delilah to run away with her after gaining support from her uncle who lived in a distant place, but Delilah tells Kiran that it's not possible and tells her that what had existed between them was over. While Delilah's wedding proceeds as planned, a heartbroken Kiran walks to a cliff overlooking a waterfall, where she and Delilah had once gone together. At the same time, Delilah is about to take her marriage vow but stops. She runs out of the church and yells Kiran's name. Kiran looks behind her but doesn't see anyone. She reaches for a cocoon on a branch and slips on the edge, but is able to stop the fall and pull herself up. As she lays on her back, Kiran sees a blue butterfly flying above her. Delilah looks up to the sky and sees a blue butterfly in the air. ===== Like much Gothic fiction, The Werewolf of Paris opens with a frame story in which the author explains his struggle with the fantastic elements of his tale. Here the narrator, an anonymous American working on his doctoral research in Paris, discovers a manuscript in the hands of some trash-pickers. He describes it as "the Galliez report: thirty four sheets of closely written French, an unsolicited defense of Sergeant Bertrand Caillet at the latter's court-martial in 1871." A descendant of the cursed Pitamont clan, which destroyed itself in a long feud with the neighboring Pitavals, Bertrand is born one Christmas Eve to an adolescent girl who had been raped by a priest, Father Pitamont. Bertrand grows up with strange sadistic and sexual desires which are usually expressed as dreams. Sometimes the dreams are memories of actual experiences in which he had transformed into a wolf. His step-uncle, Aymar Galliez, who raises the boy (along with his mother Josephine and a servant Françoise), soon learns of Bertrand's affliction. Bertrand flees to Paris after his assault on a prostitute, his incestuous union with his mother, and his murder of a friend in their home village. Aymar tries to find Bertrand by studying the details of local crimes, such as the mutilation of corpses and various murders. Bertrand joins the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, doing little fighting and finding love from a girl who volunteers at a canteen, the beautiful and wealthy Sophie de Blumenberg. Sophie, a masochistic and obsessed with death, helps Bertrand avoid the violent effects of his transformation by allowing him to cut into her flesh in order to suck her blood. Aymar finds Bertrand in Paris during the Paris Commune, but thinking that love has cured Bertrand, he decides not to take action. Fearing that he'll accidentally kill Sophie, Bertrand goes out one night to feed on someone else. He is caught attacking a fellow soldier and arrested. Aymar supports burning Bertrand at the stake, and provides the court with a summary of Bertrand's crimes, but the court sentences him to treatment at the infirmary of La Santé prison. Aymar transfers Bertrand to an asylum after the reactionary Versaillists have retaken Paris, with great loss of life among the Communards, who are executed en masse. Unbeknownst to Aymar, Bertrand suffers in a small cell, drugged when he is visited by his uncle. Bertrand eventually commits suicide by jumping from the building with another inmate whom he delusively believes is Sophie. Their deaths are similar to a suicide fantasy that Bertrand and Sophie enjoyed; the real Sophie had previously committed suicide on her own, unable to deal with her separation from Bertrand. The narrative proper is followed by a grisly appendix citing a municipal report on the cemeteries of Paris. The report indicates that the grave of one "Sieur C ... (Bertrand)" contained the body "of a dog, which despite 8 years in the ground was still incompletely destroyed." ===== Fire Time takes place on the planet Ishtar in the "Anubelea" system, located 300 parsecs away from the Sun. Ishtar's peculiar orbit around the three stars of the Anubelea system (Bel, Ea, and Anu) results in the "Fire Time", a dramatic increase in heat every thousand years as the "demon star" Anu approaches the planet. As the northern hemisphere heats up, large numbers of Ishtarians flee south, leading to a collapse of civilization. The northern natives (Valennen) take advantage of the Gathering's (southern natives) culture to win two victories in Valennen territory. The presence of visitors from Earth (also engaged in their own war off-planet at Nasqua) raises the prospect of changing the dynamics of history, though, with Earth involved in an interstellar war of its own, human aid is not guaranteed. {| class="wikitable" |+Properties of the members of the Anubelea system !Name !Short description !Stellar classification !Luminosity !Temperature !Mass !Mean distance from Bel !Aphelion from Bel !Perihelion from Bel |- |Bel |Yellow dwarf |G2V | |5800 Kelvin | | - | - | - |- |Ea |Red dwarf |not given |not given |not given |not given |6000 AU | - | - |- |Anu |Red giant |not given | |not given | | - |224 AU |40 AU |} ===== Two Arkansas firemen, Vince (Bill Paxton) and Don (William Sadler), meet a hysterical old man in a burning building. The old man hands them a map, prays for forgiveness, then allows himself to be engulfed in flames. Outside the fire and away from everyone else, Don does a little research and finds out that the man was a thief who stole a large amount of gold valuables from a church and hid them in a building in East St. Louis. The two decide to drive there, thinking they can get there, get the gold, and get back in one day. While looking around in the abandoned building, they are spotted by a gang, led by King James (Ice-T), who is there to execute an enemy. Vince and Don witness the murder, but give themselves away and only manage to force a stalemate when they grab Lucky (De'voreaux White), King James' half-brother. Barricading themselves behind a door, they continue trying to find where the gold is at. Adding to their troubles is an old homeless man, Bradlee (Art Evans), who had stumbled in on them while they were trying to find the gold. King James eventually calls in some reinforcements. While doing some reconnaissance, Raymond (Bruce A. Young), the man who supplies guns to King James, finds Don and Vince's car and the news of the gold, and figures out why "two white boys" would be in their neighborhood. Raymond manipulates Savon (Ice Cube), one of James' men (who would rather just kill Don and Vince than follow James' approach of trying to talk to them) into shooting at Don and Vince, which eventually leads to Lucky's being shot himself. (Savon: "I guess he wasn't too lucky, huh?") King James is now furious and runs after Don and Vince, who have now found the stash of gold (having determined the map was drawn with the intention of looking UP at the ceiling, instead of down at the floor) and are trying to get out with it while avoiding King James. The gold changes hands several times, once with Savon, then again with Bradlee, while people are shooting everywhere. Eventually, Don and King James meet and end up killing each other. Savon and Raymond also kill each other. The building they were in gets burned to the ground. Vince encounters Bradlee outside the building, and Bradlee tells Vince to run. (Vince cannot drive away, since Raymond ripped out the wires in his engine, gave him four flat tires, and cut the line to his CB radio). Once Vince is out of the way, Bradlee picks up the haul of gold that was left behind and walks away, laughing. ===== Esther Blueburger is a 13-year-old Jewish outcast at her posh private school. Things are no better at home, where her twin brother is beginning to develop into a sociopath and her controlling mother pressures Esther to conform. She finds her only friend in a duck called Normal, and she frequently prays into a toilet asking God to "get me out of here". After escaping her own Bat Mitzvah, Esther bumps into Sunni, a rebellious girl from the local public school, who she had observed and spoken to on previous occasions. The two girls form a friendship, and Esther begins attending Sunni's school, unbeknownst to her parents, under the guise of a Swedish exchange student. She revels in the easygoing nature of the public school and enjoys spending time with Sunni's friends and Sunni's laid-back single mother, Mary, who works as a stripper. As Esther gains popularity and submits to numerous acts of peer pressure - including attacking a girl from her old school - her friendship with Sunni starts to deteriorate. At her old school, meanwhile, her classmates have been led to believe that she was chosen for an elite social experiment, and when she returns she is treated like royalty. Esther later discovers that Mary has died in a motorcycle accident, and a grieving Sunni is transferred to Esther's private school under her grandmother's care. Ultimately deciding that being true to herself is more important than fitting in, Esther discards her pretenses and renews her friendship with Sunni. ===== To her owners, apartment-dwellers on the upper East Side of New York's Manhattan Island, Rhiow looks like nothing more than their little black pet cat: a sweet-tempered, good-natured little creature who shakes them down for food at every opportunity, is always ready for a cuddle, and never ventures any further away than the apartment's terrace. But a lot more could be said about Rhiow...for when her humans aren't looking, she has a life of her own that they don't dream of. Rhiow is a wizard, and heads an elite team of other feline wizards whose job is to keep the Grand Central worldgates running. With her teammates Urruah (a dumpster-living, foodie tomcat with a yen for opera) and Saash (the "Scotty" of their team, cerebral and witty, but always scratching at fleas that aren't there), they help keep the city's wizardly public transport system purring along. ...Until one morning matters get suddenly complicated with the arrival of Arhu, an abrasive feral tom-kitten in the middle of his Ordeal—the potentially deadly initiation through which every wizard must pass to come into his or her power. The chain of events triggered by Arhu's adoption into their team leads Rhiow and her companions out of their own New York and into another, more ancient, and far deadlier one—to a confrontation with the Lone Power that's intent on the destruction of cats and humans alike. There, Rhiow and her team must deal with not only the sudden danger wound together with Arhu's fate, but a terrible secret concealed in the heart of the feline underworld, ready to burst out in annihilating force into the world of men, which as wizards they're sworn to protect. Now the cat- wizards' only hope of success lies in their uneasy bond with a race of creatures who've been their enemies for all time—and now hold the key not only to their own survival, but that of the human race... ===== After Susan is discharged from the hospital, Dr. Ron arrives in her hospital room to bring her home and to ask her a few questions. Ron asks if she happens to know anyone named Mike, because while under anesthesia Susan professed her love for Mike, much to Ron's chagrin. Susan lies and assures Ron that he is mistaken and that she is not seeing anyone. He then asks if she is married to Karl Mayer because of Nurse Hisel's run-in with him. Susan tells Ron that the relationship is platonic and that Susan only re-married Karl because he has an excellent insurance plan. Ron feels sad that Susan could not afford medical care but is still upset that she did not tell him. Later, Susan invites Dr. Ron and Karl over for dinner where they actually have a good time in each other's company. The plot thickens when Karl purposely breaks a pipe which proceeds to leak. Karl then asks Ron to go across the street and alert the plumber, whom he refers to only as "Delfino". Ron then hurries across the street and explains the situation to Mike. As he gathers his tools, Mike tells Ron to call him by his first name. Immediately, Ron runs out of the house where Susan is already on the street chasing after. Susan then falls out of her wheelchair making it look as if Ron pushed her. Mike sees this and tells him threateningly to never to hurt her. While Mike walks away, Dr. Ron shoves him but the fight is soon broken up. Susan is then left on the street alone. Soon after, Mike tries to patch things up but only makes matters worse since Susan is still angered because of their break-up. She soon regrets her words when Dr. Ron breaks up with her over the phone. Gabrielle is puzzled when their adoption lawyer continues to present them with "ugly" mothers. Gabrielle tries to convince the lawyer and Carlos that she wants a "pretty baby" meaning that the mother should be at Gabrielle's standards. The Solises find no luck until the lawyer introduces them to Libby, a pole dancer. Libby satisfies Gabrielle's standard for beauty, and it appears that Libby will consent to the adoption. However, after Libby finds out that the Solises are Mexican, she refuses to give them the baby since she feels they may be "underprivileged". Gabrielle scoffs at this and offers Libby a gift to guarantee the baby. Libby agrees which satisfies Gabrielle. Little does Gabrielle know that Libby knows the identity of the father and that she is planning to just use them to get what she wants. Bree begins attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and befriends her sponsor, Peter. Bree manages to lie to Peter stating that she has been sober for a while and that she is only there to please her son who is convinced she has a problem. Peter tries to delve deeper but Bree avoids his questions. Later at a department store, Bree purchases a few clothing items and has a glass of wine. She then spots Justin and Andrew from a distance at the check out corner. Bree asks why Andrew is there, as he is supposed to be grounded. He shows Bree her credit card, which he stole from her purse. When she says that she'll bring this up in court, Andrew blackmails her. He threatens to lie under oath and say that Bree sexually molested him when he was younger. Bree has no choice but to do nothing. Horrified by the situation, Bree needs a drink. "And leave the bottle," she tells the man. Bree gets extremely drunk and passes out in a dressing room. Hours later, Bree realizes that the store has closed, and she is locked in. Bree tries to escape and gets stuck in the security fence. Bree is humiliated by the situation. She doesn't known whom to call, and she decides to settles on her A.A. sponsor, Peter. After helping her, Peter and Bree talk about what happened in the car. Bree reveals that she doesn't like herself anymore, and Peter brings her to realize that she does have a drinking problem. Lynette and Ed hire a new partner to the advertising firm, Veronica, who is a young mother. When she asks Lynette if she will be able to breastfeed her son Donovan, which she says was a problem at her last job, Lynette tells her it should not be a problem. However, when the other partners learn that Donovan is 5 years old, they find it a little abnormal that she is still breastfeeding. Ed then forces Lynette to confront her and ask her to close the drapes but also to wean him off, as he fears the firm could suffer if a client comes in and sees it. Although Veronica initially defends herself saying that breastfeeding keeps weight off her like exercise can't. And when Lynette confronts her over the age factor, she further defends it with the health advantages of breastfeeding that are proven and she goes on to compare Donovan's behavior in the nursery with the Scavo boys as "proof" of this. She then firmly warns Lynette of legal action if she persists. Later, when it seemed that all was lost, Lynette spots Donovan asking for his mom and asks him if he would like a chocolate milk instead. Donovan takes a liking to the milk and does not want his mother's milk anymore. This causes Veronica to become upset since without nursing she will become fat again. Lynette tries her best to comfort her but is satisfied that her scheme was a success. Meanwhile on Wisteria Lane, Matthew Applewhite wants to buy Danielle a present for her birthday but cannot because he does not have a job. He asks his mom Betty for money but she does not want him to buy a present for Danielle. He then tells his mother that they should put Caleb away since they will not have to hide anymore and he will be safer. Betty scoffs at this and offers Matthew twenty dollars. When Danielle arrives home, she finds Caleb hiding in her bedroom and he offers her a gift. Danielle tells him to go home, but when Caleb refuses, she shoos him out calling him a freak. Caleb, angered and hurt, runs out of the house. ===== Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a tobacco industry lobbying firm that promotes the benefits of cigarettes. He utilizes high-profile media events and intentionally provocative rhetoric in order to highlight what his clients view as an unfair crusade against tobacco and nicotine products. The political satire is heightened by Naylor's informal association with lobbyists from other industries that are subjected to routine vilification in the media, e.g. Polly Bailey, a lobbyist for the alcohol/spirits industry, and Bobby Jay Bliss, who represents the firearms industry. Collectively, they form what is known as the M.O.D. Squad, a reference to the title of a police drama, although in this case, "M.O.D." stands for "Merchants Of Death". A pivotal point in the plot occurs when Naylor is kidnapped by a clandestine group who attempt to kill him by covering him with nicotine patches. The search for the perpetrators of the crime leads to surprising results. In this respect, the plot mirrors one of Buckley's other satirical novels, Little Green Men. ===== Celebrity musician Eric Wood (Richard Baskin) plans to record an album of songs written by Carroll Barber (Carradine), who has been living in England. Carroll's aging manager Susan Moore (Viveca Lindfors) brings Carroll to Los Angeles for the recording sessions, and rents him a house from real estate agent Ann Goode (Sally Kellerman). Ann is unhappily married to furniture store owner Jack Goode (John Considine), who is pursuing their young housemaid, Linda Murray (Sissy Spacek). Linda in turn wants a relationship with her friend Kenneth "Ken" Hood (Harvey Keitel), a married young executive. Susan expects Carroll to resume a past affair they had, but he rejects her and instead has sex with Ann when she shows him his house. Ann tries unsuccessfully to continue the affair by dropping in on Carroll at home and bringing Linda over to clean. However, Carroll shows himself to be a womanizer, seemingly incapable of connecting with anyone. He visits his wealthy father Carl, whom he has not seen in three years. Carl, with the help of Ken Hood, has built the small Barber family dairy into a major business. Carroll ends up having affairs with receptionist Jeannette (Diahnne Abbott) and his father's photographer mistress Nona (Lauren Hutton). Ken works long hours at the Barber business and neglects his wife, Karen (Geraldine Chaplin), a housewife and mother who is obsessed with taxi rides and the Greta Garbo film Camille. While Carroll is drinking and driving through the city, he randomly meets Karen and is drawn to her. He takes her to his home but when he tries to romance her, she reveals she is married (though not to whom) and departs. She later leaves him her telephone number, but refuses to take his repeated calls. Linda, who has moved into Carroll's spare room, invites Ken to visit her there, where he meets Ann. Just before Christmas, Ken is thrilled to learn that Carl has made him partner in the business, but Karen is not happy that he will be spending even more time at work. On Christmas Eve, Ken gets drunk and calls Ann, but their date ends badly as Ken can't stop thinking of his wife. Meanwhile, Jack and Linda spend the evening together, which also ends badly when Linda asks Jack for money. Jack and Ann, both disappointed, return home and have sex with each other. An angry Susan reveals to Carroll that Eric doesn't like his songs, and that she and Carroll's father bribed Eric to record the album in order to get Carroll to come to Los Angeles. Susan and Carl each hoped to build their separate relationships with Carroll, only to be thwarted by his lack of response. Karen, the only person who seems to have truly piqued Carroll's interest, finally appears at his home, but just as they are about to have sex, Ken telephones, upset and looking for his wife. Upon realizing that Karen is Ken's wife and seems primarily interested in her husband, Carroll leaves while Karen and Ken are reconciling on the phone, just as Linda arrives home. Linda, eavesdropping, hears the voice of Ken, her own crush, on the phone, saying the same things to Karen about relationships that he earlier said to Linda. Linda furtively disconnects the phone, then tries to bond with Karen, who imitates Garbo in Camille. Carroll goes to the recording studio and discovers that Eric Wood has decided not to finish the album. ===== The game stars a young witch named Ripple, an apprentice to a terrifying witch. Ripple has just broken a promise she made to the witch and took a peek inside a forbidden book, freeing six demons. Unless she can catch all six and get them back inside the book, the witch will turn Ripple into a frog. Ripple sets off on her quest with her two Elf-Star friends, known as "Star Maidens": Topsy and Turvy. ===== After leaving South Park to join the "Super Adventure Club", Chef returns and the boys quickly notice that he is acting strangely as he expresses a desire to have sex with them. They go to the Super Adventure Club headquarters and discover that the group is made up of explorers who travel worldwide, molesting children. When the explorers' leader, William P. Connelly, unsuccessfully tries to hypnotize the boys, they realize that the club has brainwashed Chef. In an attempt to restore Chef to his former self, the boys take him to a strip club. Chef returns to his old self, but the Super Adventure Club members appear, and kidnap him. The boys follow them back to their headquarters and rescue Chef. As they are leaving, Connelly reminds Chef why he joined the Super Adventure Club in the first place, telling him that his life will be grand and eternal if he stays with them. Though the boys plead him not to, Chef walks back towards the club. However, the bridge that Chef is crossing suddenly gets struck by lightning and collapses, causing him to fall to his apparent death. As a funeral for Chef is held back in South Park, the Super Adventure Club members resurrect Chef as Darth Chef, now fully embracing the club's ethics. ===== The film starts with an adoption ceremony presided over by five old women (Beshkempir literally means "five grandmothers"), in a village in Kyrgyzstan. The movie then flashes forward a decade or so to show the coming of age of the adopted child - Beshkempir. He is shown indulging in childhood pranks and activities with friends in a rural setting, like stealing honey from beehives and going to watch screened Hindi movies. However, approaching adolescence leads the boys to spy on a village woman's breasts, make clay models of the female form and pretend to make love and eye girls. Beshkempir is even shown as the message carrier between an older boy and his girlfriend. Rivalry over a girl Aynura leads to Beshkempir's friend divulging the fact of his adoption to Beshkempir by calling Beshkempir a foundling, who had been unaware of his roots till then. Even though his grandmother denies the story, Beshkempir is upset, and this leads to numerous scuffles with his friend. Hostility is also shown between Beshkempir's adoptive mother and his friend's mother on numerous occasions, culminating in the friend's mother coming to Beshkempir's house to complain about Beshkempir beating up his son. Beshkempir's adoptive father beats Beshkempir over the incident, who runs away and joins a fisherman. Meanwhile, Beshkempir's grandmother dies and asks that Beshkempir be told the truth in her will. Beshkempir is located and brought home, and is reconciled with adoptive family and friends. The funeral ceremony shows Beshkempir suddenly growing up by giving the customary speech at the funeral where he pledges to repay his grandmother's debts (if any) and to forgo any outstanding debts to his grandmother. The film ends with Beshkempir courting Aynura and a brief shot of an engagement ceremony. ===== The plot was conceived by Sheikh Mujib in an attempt to ignite an armed revolution against West Pakistan that would result in the secession. Two of the accused, navy steward Mujibur Rahman and the educator Mohammad Ali Reza, went to Agartala, Tripura, a city in North-Eastern India to seek Indian support for an independent Bangladesh. The alleged conspiracy was uncovered by the Lieutenant Colonel Shamsul Alam, who commanded the East Pakistan Detachment of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It was during this time that an officer of the East Bengal Regiment, Rauf ur Rahman, who was in league with the conspirators made an attempt on Alam's life. Alam displayed great bravery and chased the would-be assassins; for this Alam was awarded the Sitara-e-Basalat, the highest award for bravery in action during peacetime. In all, 1,500 Bengalis were arrested in connection with the plot in 1967. In January 1968 the Home Department of Pakistan declared that it had detected a scheme to destabilise Pakistan and break the Eastern wing through an armed revolt, and had arrested 8 people. Later on 18 January, the Department implicated Sheikh Mujib as well. He and others were arrested on 9 May 1968, and were subsequently released, only to be arrested later. At the time of the trial, the existence of a conspiracy between Mujib and India for the secession of East Pakistan was never successfully proven. "The Agartala contacts however did not provide solid evidence of a Mujib-India secessionist conspiracy in East Pakistan, and in its absence the accusations were to prove extremely counterproductive given the prevailing political atmosphere." A confession in 2010, however, revealed the charges as fact. ===== In Sicily in 1860, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina enjoys the customary comforts and privileges of an ancient and noble name. War has broken out between the armies of Francis II of the Two Sicilies and the insurgent volunteer redshirts of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among the rebels is the Prince's remarkably handsome and dashing nephew, Tancredi, with whose romantic politics the Prince shares some whimsical sympathy. Moved by the uprising, the Prince departs for nearby Palermo. Garibaldi's army conquers the city and Sicily from the Bourbons. The Prince muses upon the inevitability of change, with the middle class displacing the hereditary ruling class while on the surface everything remains the same. Refusing to bend to the tide of necessity, the Prince departs for his summer palace at Donnafugata. A new national assembly has called a plebiscite which the nationalists win 512-0, thanks to the corruption of the town's leading citizen, Don Calogero Sedara, who sees his daughter, the exquisitely beautiful Angelica, as a ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility. Bringing her with him to the villa of the Salinas, he watches as both the Prince and Tancredi fall abjectly in love with her. Realising his chance, he effectively pimps his daughter to the aristocracy, and Tancredi offers his hand. The Prince sees the wisdom of the match because he knows his nephew's vaulting ambition and need for ready cash, which Angelica's father, greedy for familial prestige, will happily make available. With the mutual blessing of the Prince of Salina and Don Calogero, Tancredi and Angelica become engaged. A visitor from the constituent assembly comes to the villa. He begs the great scholar and nobleman to join the senate and help direct the ship of state; he hopes that the Prince's great compassion and wisdom will help alleviate the poverty and ignorance to be seen everywhere on the streets of Sicily. However, the Prince demurs and refuses this invitation, claiming that Sicily prefers its sleep to the agitations of modernity because its people are proud of who they are. He sees a future when the leopards and the lions, along with the sheep and the jackals, will all live according to the same law, but he does not want to be a part of this democratic vision. He notes that Tancredi has shifted allegiances from the insurgent Garibaldi to the king's army, and wistfully recognises that his nephew is the kind of opportunist and time-server who will flourish in the new Italy. A great ball is held at the villa of a neighboring Prince, and the Salinas and Tancredi attend. Afflicted by a combination of melancholia, the ridiculousness of the nouveau riche, and age, the Prince wanders forlornly from chamber to chamber, increasingly disaffected by the entire edifice of the society he so gallantly represents – until Angelica approaches and asks him to dance. Stirred and momentarily released from his cares, the Prince accepts, and once more he resembles the elegant and dashing figure of his past. Disenchanted, he leaves the ball alone and asks Tancredi to arrange carriage for his family, and walks with a heavy heart to a dark alley that symbolises Italy's inordinate and fading past, which he inhabits. ===== Joan Mitchell (Jan White) is the 39-year- old wife of a businessman, Jack Mitchell (Bill Thunhurst). They live in suburban Pittsburgh with their 19-year-old daughter Nikki (Joedda McClain), a college student. Joan is attractive for her age, but unhappy and discontented with her housewife role. Jack is successful, but busy, domineering, and occasionally violent, embarking on long business trips every week. Joan has been seeing a psychotherapist because of her recurring dreams about her husband controlling her. He makes repeated references to needing to "kick some ass"—a colleague's, his own child's, his wife's. Eventually, he strikes Joan in the face. Joan and her friends learn about a new woman in the neighborhood named Marion Hamilton (Virginia Greenwald) who is rumored to practice witchcraft. Prompted by curiosity, Joan and one of her friends, Shirley (Anne Muffley), drive over to Marion's house one night for a Tarot reading. It turns out that Marion is the leader of a local secret witches' coven. Joan and Shirley drive home to Joan's house, where they meet Gregg (Raymond Laine), a student teacher at Nikki's college (with whom Nikki has a very casual sexual relationship). The four drink and talk. Gregg shows an interest in Joan, who rebuffs him. Joan throws Gregg out of her house after he cruelly tricks Shirley into believing that she has smoked pot. After taking Shirley home, Joan returns home to hear Nikki and Gregg having sex. Turned on, she quietly goes to her bedroom and begins touching herself until Nikki walks in on her. The next day, a furious Nikki leaves without telling anybody where she is going, and soon afterward Jack leaves for yet another one-week business trip, with Joan feeling more lonely than ever. Joan buys a book about witchcraft. She conjures a spell to make Gregg attracted to her, and soon they are engaged in an affair. She also has increasingly terrifying nightmares, in which she is attacked by an intruder wearing a Satanic mask. As she explores witchcraft further, practicing rituals and researching spells, Joan's world continues to change. The police tell Joan they have found Nikki in Buffalo, New York and that she will be coming home in three or four days. After one last sexual encounter with Gregg, Joan tells him she does not want to see him again. After another terrifying nightmare involving the masked intruder, Joan shoots and kills her husband, who has unexpectedly returned home early from his trip. Whether this event is accidental or intentional is not revealed. Joan is initiated into Marion's coven in an elaborate and campy ritual. The language used by the women makes reference to treasuring each coven member as part of the sisterhood. Cleared of her husband's death, which was ruled an accident, Joan attends a party with her friends. Prompted by a compliment on her beautiful and youthful appearance, she quietly reveals that she is a witch. She smiles wryly when people around her refer to as "Mrs. Mitchell", or simply "Jack's wife". ===== ===== ===== During the Great Depression in 1933 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, baroness Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) announces a competition to find the saddest music in the world, as a publicity stunt to promote her company, Muskeg Beer, as Prohibition is about to end in the United States. The prize is $25,000 "Depression-era dollars" and musicians from all over the world pour into Winnipeg to compete. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a failing Broadway producer, decides to enter the contest representing America, even though he is Canadian and originally from Winnipeg. An old fortune teller predicts his doom, but Chester mocks this prediction by having his nymphomaniac amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) masturbate him. Also entering the contest are Chester's father Fyodor (David Fox), representing Canada, and his brother Roderick (Ross McMillan), representing Serbia as "Gavrilo the Great" (even though he is also Canadian). It is revealed that Fyodor is in love with Helen, who he had once hoped to marry. However, Helen and Chester had an affair, and an accident involving the three occurred when Fyodor stepped out in front of Chester's car as Helen was performing oral sex on Chester. Helen's legs were both amputated as a result, and Fyodor became an alcoholic, while Chester left for Broadway. With Chester returned, and his relationship with Helen renewed, Fyodor swears off drink and fashions prosthetic legs filled with beer in an attempt to earn Helen's love. Roderick meanwhile discovers that Chester's girlfriend Narcissa is his missing wife, who has forgotten both their marriage and their son after the boy's death (Roderick carries the boy's heart in a jar, preserved in his own tears). Helen rigs the contest to favour Chester/America, and Fyodor/Canada quickly loses after singing "Red Maples Leaves," although Roderick/Serbia advances. Although Roderick and Narcissa have sex, she still doesn't remember their marriage, and he accidentally breaks the jar containing his son's heart (which is pierced by a glass shard), and although Helen loves her new glass beer legs, she still hates Fyodor. Fyodor then drinks a leg's worth of beer and falls through the concert hall rooftop to his death. Helen appears in Chester's final performance, but her legs leak and explode when Roderick plays. Roderick then changes his tune to play "The Song Is You," which he had sworn not to perform until reunited with his wife. The song recovers Narcissa's memory and Chester, meanwhile, is stabbed to death by Helen (using a long shard from her glass legs). Chester refuses to let this sadden him, and staggers away, accidentally setting the building on fire with his victory cigar. Chester dies playing "The Song Is You" on the piano as the building burns. ===== The sequel continues with runaway pirates, who vow that they must kill Dragon Ma to take revenge for their late captain. On recommendation of the Chief of Marine Force, Dragon Ma is transferred to be in charge of the district of Sai Wan after the Superintendent, Chun, is thought to be staging his arrests. Chun, however, has an excellent record and the "criminals" he has been engaging are shot and killed, so there is no evidence against him. Dragon Ma and his subordinates later meet Yesan and her cousin, Carina, at a teahouse selling flowers to raise funds. He later learns that Carina is a member of the Chinese revolutionaries headed by Dr Sun Yat-sen. Dragon identifies himself as the new superintendent of Sai Wan Police Station, after realizing that all of his policemen except one has been taking bribes. Ho, the only upright policeman around, tells them that a gangster named Tiger Ow with gambling dens and other illegal businesses is the kingpin of the town. When his men are too cowardly to confront Tiger, Dragon is forced to confront him with only Ho and his three friends he brought with him from the Marine Police. After a big fight where the policemen are badly outnumbered, the Marine Police show up with guns and force the gangsters to surrender. After one last fight with Ow, all the gangsters are sent to prison, inspiring the police at the station to do a better job. Dragon is then put in charge of the Governor's security for a birthday ball he is throwing for his adopted daughter. Chun corroborates with a group of revolutionaries to implicate Dragon in a theft of the Governor's diamond pendant. Dragon is arrested. After the ball, Carina is kidnapped by agents of the Empress Dowager, who are working with Chun; they trap her in a wardrobe at Yesan's house. Yesan, Li, Ma, and Ho arrive. Li hides but ends up threatened by one of the imperial agents. Ma and Ho, who are handcuffed together, enter the bathroom. While they are in the bathroom, the commissioner arrives. As Yesan hangs up his uniform, Ma and Ho see the keys to the handcuffs. They break free and hide under the bed, losing the key to the handcuffs. They see the Imperial Agents with Carina in the wardrobe. Then Yesan and the commissioner sit down to talk. The Commissioner demonstrates how to handcuff two people by handcuffing himself to the armchair but can not break free. Chun arrives to visit Yesan, and the commissioner hides under the bed, where he sees Ma and Ho. Yesan finally gets Chun to get out of her house, when Ma, Ho, Tung and Yesan defeat the Imperial agents. Eventually the Imperial Agents are arrested, the revolutionary chief escapes, and Dragon is handcuffed by Chun so that he can be brought to the main prison. Carina flees town with the help of the revolutionaries. Chun arranges for Dragon to be killed by a prison warden. The pirates attack both Dragon and Chun with axes, but they are eventually driven off after the police show up. Dragon is handed over to the prison warden, tied up in a sack, and thrown into the sea. The revolutionaries save Dragon and take him back to their hideout above a medicine store, where they try to enlist him. Dragon refuses to actively help them, saying that he is just a Hong Kong cop. The head of the pirates falls sick, and the pirates enter the medicine store to ask for some herbs. Dragon intervenes and offers to pay for their medicine, causing the pirates to think much better of him. The Imperial agents arrive and apprehend most of the revolutionaries, to gain possession of the black book. Dragon helps Yessan and Miss Pak escape while safeguarding the book. After a frantic run and fight scene, he defeats them with the help of the pirates. The Police Commissioner arrives with a huge police cohort and orders the arrest of Superintendent Chun, now fully aware Chun is trying to murder Dragon. Chun tries to run, but a large bamboo-and-wood stage facade falls on Chun while he attempts to retrieve his moneybag. Dragon, on order of the Commissioner, takes charge of the police. During the end credits, a small vignette featuring Chan singing the theme song, appears above the credits roll. ===== Maureen Folan, a 40-year-old spinster, lives in the Irish village of Leenane, Connemara, in the early 1990s with her 70-year-old mother Mag, for whom she acts as caretaker. While Maureen is out, the Folan home is visited by Ray Dooley, a young man, who invites both women to a farewell party for his visiting American uncle. When it seems Mag is incapable of remembering this message, Ray writes it down for Maureen. As soon as he leaves, Mag destroys the note in the furnace. Upon Maureen's return, she admonishes her mother for depending on her as if she were an invalid; despite her bad back and burnt hand, Maureen thinks Mag is capable of doing more for herself. Maureen has already learnt of the party from Ray, whom she passed on her way in, so she punishes Mag for her dishonesty by forcing her to drink lumpy Complan. Maureen, a virgin who has only ever kissed two men, buys a new dress and attends the party. She brings Ray's older brother, Pato, home with her. Pato is a construction worker who lives primarily in London, though he is unhappy both there and in Leenane. He reveals that, although he has barely spoken to Maureen in 20 years of acquaintance, he has secretly thought of her as "the beauty queen of Leenane" for a long time. She brings him to her bedroom. In the morning, Mag empties her bedpan into the kitchen sink, a daily habit that disgusts Maureen. Pato emerges from the bedroom and prepares breakfast for a shocked Mag, revealing that Maureen insisted he not sneak out. Maureen then emerges, dressed only in her underwear, and flaunts her intimacy with Pato in front of Mag. Incensed, Mag accuses Maureen of having deliberately burnt her hand by pouring hot oil over it, and then reveals that it is actually she who is legally responsible for Maureen after having signed her out of an English "loony bin." After Mag goes to find the papers that prove this, Maureen tells Pato that Mag burnt herself trying to cook unsupervised, but she admits that she truly did suffer a nervous breakdown while working as a cleaner in England, 15 years earlier, when she was unable to endure the teasing of her English coworkers. She claims Mag sometimes tries to tell lies about the past, thinking Maureen is unable to discern them from reality. Pato is sympathetic, telling her that his opinion of her is unchanged. However, when he urges her to dress herself for warmth, she becomes insecure about her appearance and throws a tantrum. Mag returns with the documents, but Pato ignores her, departing after telling an upset Maureen that he will write to her. Some time later, Pato writes from London, telling Maureen that he is going to work for his American uncle in Boston, and he wants Maureen to come with him as soon as she can. The letter also reveals that he was unable to perform sexually when they were together, but he tells her that it was only because he had drunk too much. He also tells her that there will be a going away party for him. He sends the letter to Ray, with explicit instructions to put it directly into Maureen's hands. However, when Ray comes to the house, Maureen is out and Mag convinces him to leave the letter with her, playing on his resentment of Maureen for failing to return his swingball that fell in the Folan yard when he was a child and for snubbing him recently in the street. After Ray leaves, Mag reads and burns the letter. On the night of Pato's farewell party, Maureen is aware of Pato's plans but assumes he is uninterested in pursuing a relationship. However, she tells Mag that it was she who ended things with him. When she continues to talk about the sexual encounter, Mag teases her and accidentally lets slip that she is aware of Pato's impotence. Seizing on it, Maureen tortures Mag with hot oil until she confesses the letter's existence and contents. Leaving Mag writhing on the floor, Maureen quickly puts on her dress and rushes out to the party. She returns home after midnight, telling an unmoving Mag that she caught Pato at the train station before he left, and they recommitted themselves to one another. At the end of the scene, Mag slumps to the floor, dead. Maureen has bashed her head in with the poker. A month later, Mag's funeral is held following an inquest that exonerated Maureen. Ray visits, bringing word from Pato. However, it soon becomes clear that Maureen imagined her reunion with Pato; he actually left by taxi without ever seeing Maureen. And now he has become engaged to a woman with whom he danced at the party. Maureen asks Ray to send Pato a message, "The beauty queen of Leenane says 'Goodbye.'" Ray leaves after discovering and seizing his lost swingball. Left alone in the house, Maureen puts on Mag's sweater, sits in her rocking chair, and adopts her mannerisms. ===== According to the Marvel website, new series features Psylocke who finds herself in the Mutantkind world, "but when a face from her past returns only to be killed, she seeks help from others who feel similar to get vengeance." ===== Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) carries a camera everywhere he goes. He becomes obsessed with the idea of fear after seeing a frightened man shove a knife into his eye to commit suicide. Wishing to understand the fear that the man must have felt before his death, Masuoka descends into a labyrinthine underground area beneath the city, where he sees human-like creatures that walk on their hands and knees and whimper like dogs. While searching the tunnels and passages, Masuoka encounters a homeless inhabitant who warns him about the "Deros". He then meets the ghost of Kuroki, the man who killed himself, and learns more about the underworld. After hours of searching, Masuoka discovers a mountain range with a village built by the underground dwellers. He finds a naked girl (Tomomi Miyashita) chained to a wall. He takes her back to his apartment and notices she doesn't eat, drink, or speak. The girl, whom Masuoka dubs 'F', appears to be something other than human, and Masuoka becomes obsessed with understanding her. He sets up cameras that enable him to observe her from his cell phone when he leaves the apartment, and checks on her regularly. On a trip to the shopping mall, Masuoka sees F speaking to someone off camera, and a menacing man in black appears behind him. When he returns to the apartment, a woman in a yellow jacket is hiding in the stairway outside his door. Inside, Masuoka finds F in convulsions and unsuccessfully attempts to feed her. He discovers that twelve seconds of camera footage is missing, and receives a mysterious phone call from a payphone warning him that he is in serious trouble. After being beaten with his camera by a stranger whom he filmed, Masuoka cuts his finger on the broken lens and returns home. He discovers that F survives on blood when she licks his finger, and cuts himself to feed her further. Masuoka begins to care for her by providing animal carcasses, deciding to treat F more as a pet than a human. The woman in yellow confronts him in the street, saying the girl is his daughter Fuyumi and asking where she is. Masuoka denies having a daughter and runs away, returning to the apartment to find it has been broken into and F has vanished. He wanders the streets searching for F and encounters the man in black, who expresses his disappointment in Masuoka's handling of her, speaking to him telepathically in the same voice as in the phone call. When Masuoka gets back to the apartment, he finds that F has returned and sees her hands are bloody. When Masuoka leaves his apartment, the woman in yellow follows and demands that he speak to her. He walks to an alley without speaking, and turns his camera on. The woman says she wants to see her girl, at which point Masuoka stabs her to death. Later, he murders a young girl whom he met under the pretense of filming pornography. He drains their blood into bottles and feeds it to F. Masuoka calls the payphone and speaks to the stranger, who agrees that Masuoka is taking better care of F now. While filming for a news crew at the scene of the second murder, Masuoka sees a woman he filmed in her apartment previously. He takes F out of the apartment, and leaves her in a karaoke room to travel on his own for a period. Sitting on a dock, Masuoka discusses his interest in fear with Kuroki. Masuoka becomes homeless and sleeps in the park where he killed the young girl. He briefly admits to himself that he murdered his wife and a stranger and treated his daughter like an animal, before seeing a pair of Deros and finding a cell phone that leads him back to his apartment to find F. His wife's ghost appears behind Masuoka in the elevator, and he enters the apartment to find F weak on the floor. F speaks to him for the first time, and he cuts his mouth at the corner to feed her. At the end of the film, F leads Masuoka back down into the underworld, and films him as it appears he has finally discovered the same fear that initially intrigued him. ===== Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling the story based on Ka's journals and correspondence. This narrator sometimes provides the reader with information before Ka knows it or foreshadows later events in the story. At times, the action seems somewhat dream-like. The story is set in the city of Kars which creates a sense of alienation for Ka as the city is unlike anywhere else in Turkey, due to its history as a Russian garrison town. Ka is a poet, who returns to Turkey after 12 years of political exile in Germany. He has several motives, first, as a journalist, to investigate a spate of suicides but also in the hope of meeting a woman he used to know. Heavy snow cuts off the town for about three days during which time Ka is in conversation with a former communist, a secularist, a fascist nationalist, a possible Islamic extremist, Islamic moderates, young Kurds, the military, the Secret Service, the police and in particular, an actor-revolutionary. In the midst of this, love and passion are to be found. Temporarily closed off from the world, a farcical coup is staged and linked melodramatically to a stage play. The main discussion concerns the interface of secularism and belief but there are references to all of Turkey's twentieth century history. ===== Phil (McGregor) is a successful advertising executive and Maisie (Millar) is his young and hedonistic wife, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when Phil inherits his great-great grandfather's secret diaries. He becomes obsessed with research into solid geometry contained in the diaries and is fascinated by the theory of "a plane without a surface." His pursuit of this mythical geometric concept tears his marriage apart. The film is interspersed with flashbacks showing Phil's great-great grandfather discovering the same mysteries of the supernatural side of geometry as Phil is uncovering by reading the diaries. Eventually Phil follows the instructions buried in the diaries and begins carefully folding a large sheet of paper in on itself like a lotus flower, then the folded paper emits a bright light, folds over itself and disappears. On seeing this, he dedicates his life to understanding more about the diaries and his great-great grandfather's mysterious disappearance. He goes on to become obsessed with this transformation and the discussion in the book which links it to 'sexual intercourse positions' of which the diary claims there are only 17. After a love-making session with his wife, he proceeds to place another of the paper lotus flowers in the center of her curled body. As she curls into a foetal position unknowingly around the paper flower, she somehow completes the flower folding as had previously been achieved with just the paper. She spins around the paper flower several times and disappears, emitting tones of shock and fear. The film ends with Phil alone in bed. ===== In a twist departing from the standard superhero formula, White Dragon is a narcissist, forever worried about her good looks, even as she's fighting with Feather, a blind assassin nicknamed "Chicken Feathers" because of his propensity for using chicken feathers as his calling card. Chicken Feathers is first challenged by White Dragon, an elderly woman with proficient skills in martial arts to almost match his, but not quite enough. Thinking that she has been fatally wounded, White Dragon transfers her kung-fu knowledge into empty shell Black Phoenix, turning the young woman into the prettiest martial arts expert around. The downside to having these extraordinary powers, which she does not fully understand, is bad acne, which she manages to prevent only by doing "noble" deeds like robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Phoenix is reluctant to take on her new role at first, but soon becomes interested in tracking down Chicken Feathers when she learns that her love interest, Second Prince Tian Yang, might become his next target. Using her flute-playing as bait, White Dragon finally faces Chicken Feathers in an attempt to defeat him before he can carry out the assassination. Chicken Feathers proves to be too good for the new White Dragon, however. When White Dragon tries to exploit his "weak points," she ends up injured(breaking her leg while trying to kick Feathers in the nuts) and dependent on Feathers, who does nurse her back to health after their heated battle. While Chicken Feathers plays nurse, White Dragon seeks to find his true weak point to stop him once and for all. What she finds instead is that Chicken Feathers has fallen in love with her, and that he is growing on her as well. After a while her leg healed and Chicken Feathers found a letter for Second Prince Tian Yang and had it read by the town's doctor. This letter made Chicken Feathers thinking that Black Phoenix already has a boyfriend, namely the Second Prince Tian Yang. Chicken Feathers confronted Phoenix Black with this and they ended up struggling. Accidentally the girl stabbed her flute into the back of Chicken Feathers, which gave him a moment of sight. She ran away. The Third Prince, brother of the Second Prince, apparently hired Chicken Feathers to kill his brother, this was revealed at the very last scene. ===== In Punguna, Na Woon-gyu plays the role of Nicolai Park, a veteran of the Russian army, who has returned to Korea from European battlefields. Broke, hungry, and unable to find employment, he is taken in as a boarder by Kim Chang-ho. Chang-ho's friend, Cha-duk becomes romantically involved with Hae- ok, who had sold herself to support her parents. Cha-duk's wife, Yeong-ja becomes involved with Nicolai, who rejects her proposal to run away with him. The romantic complications spiral until Yeong-ja kills Cha-duk. The film ends with Nicolai departing for destinations unknown while the other boarders bid him farewell. ===== Arrow Flash follows the protagonist Zana Keene (named Anna Schwinn in the European release, and Starna Oval in the Japanese release) as she fights against hostile aliens. The game contains references to Gundam and Macross. ===== John Henderson (Albert Brooks) is a successful science fiction writer who is finalizing his second divorce. He is perplexed by the issues he has with women, realizing that none of them supported or encouraged him. John decides to initiate an experiment that will help him understand what went wrong in his relationships: he moves back in with his widowed mother Beatrice (Debbie Reynolds), occupying the same bedroom he had as a child. His sports agent brother Jeff thinks John is oversensitive to their mother's criticisms, while John believes that their mother favors Jeff. John's relationship with his mother is characterized by constant bickering and power struggles; both are perfectionists strongly committed to their respective points of view. John believes she's overly critical of him, while Beatrice contends that he unfairly blames her for his personal failings. A rare bright spot in their relationship appears when she takes an interest in John's word processor and impresses him with her fast, flawless typing. Beatrice seems surprised by his interest in her life but is reluctant to discuss it. When Beatrice cancels her plans to visit Jeff, he has a meltdown and an argument with his wife over his need to keep in constant contact with his mother. Jeff's wife tells him that he may need to evaluate his relationship with his mother just as much as John. John and Beatrice go to the zoo, where they finally reach some common ground. When they return home, Jeff is waiting; upset by the aborted visit, he came to talk Beatrice into visiting for the weekend. All three argue and Jeff leaves alone, with John satisfied that Jeff's the "sickie" while John is "pretty darn healthy to begin with." Beatrice tells John that she has a friend, Charles, who comes through San Francisco every few weeks and stays over a few days, but while John is there this visit will be just for one day. John is surprised that she would call someone she is intimate with not important, but she dismisses it, saying they "just have sex occasionally". John meets Charles, who knows a lot about John because, as he tells John, Beatrice brags about him when he's not around. Beatrice and Charles go to dinner; in the car they discuss the evening, with Beatrice refusing to have anything more than dinner because of her son's visit. While alone at the house, John discovers a box of novel and short story manuscripts that his mother wrote in her youth. He learns she was a skilled writer who went to college on a scholarship, only to have her talent discouraged by her husband and the prevailing social expectation that mothers should not have careers outside the home. John realizes now that his mother's passive aggression toward him stems from the fact that his career is a reminder of her unfulfilled ambitions. Beatrice admits that John's observation is correct, leading to a warm reconciliation. The film ends with John meeting a single female fan of his novels, and Beatrice beginning to write a story based on John's moving in with her. ===== The plot concerns a young couple who have made a marriage vow with each other. Their marriage is thwarted when the woman is forced to marry a rich gangster. A fighter for justice called "Field Mouse" stops the wedding, killing the gangsters, and returns the bride to her betrothed. ===== This film is a melodrama telling a story of greed and lust. It begins with millionaire Min Bum-shik's wife and a steward plotting Min's murder in order to collect his money. Rapes, murder and prison sentences follow in the convoluted plot. ===== The plot concerns three characters who have lost hope in continuing their lives in Korea—Kokosu (Lee Geum-ryong), an old man who has lost his farmland; Dong-min (Na Woon-gyu); and Jong-hui (Jeong Ok), who had been betrayed by her boyfriend. Kokosu had been a bugler in the Korean military during the last days of the Korean Empire. Seeking a better life in northeast China, the three are attacked by Chinese "majeok" bandits and the Japanese while attempting the ice-covered Tumen River crossing of the China–North Korea border . With his last breath, Kokosu blows the army bugle he had carried with him all his life. Dong-min takes the bugle and continues playing it. ===== A young law student, Armand (Rudolph Valentino) becomes smitten with a courtesan, Marguerite (Alla Nazimova). Marguerite is constantly surrounded by suitors, whom she entertains at her lavish apartment. She also has consumption and is frequently beset by bouts of illness. Armand sees Marguerite at the opera and, later, pursues her when he attends one of her private parties. She rejects his advances at first, but eventually returns his affection. The two live happily together until Armand's father, seeking to protect his family's reputation, convinces Marguerite to end the relationship. She finally relents and runs away to a wealthy client, leaving a note for Armand. When Armand finds the note he is shattered. The sorrow eventually turns to rage, and he decides to plunge into Parisian nightlife, associating himself with Olympe, another courtesan. When he sees Marguerite at a casino, he publicly denounces her. Marguerite gives up her life as a courtesan and quickly finds herself in massive debt. Her illness also takes a heavy toll. Eventually, as she lies dying in bed, her furniture and belongings are repossessed. She persuades the men taking her belongings to allow her to keep her most precious possession: a book - Manon Lescaut - Armand gave to her. Marguerite dies lying in bed in her apartment holding the book Armand gave her, wishing to sleep where she is happy dreaming about Armand. Marguerite's maid Nanine, and her newlywed friends Gaston and Nichette are at her bedside as she dies. Unlike the original novel, the film does not depict Armand and Marguerite ever seeing each other again after the casino scene and offers no suggestion that Armand ever learned of Marguerite's sacrifice and true feelings for him. ===== Wealthy children's author Cathryn (Susannah York) receives a series of disturbing phone calls in her home in London one dreary night; the female voice on the other end, sometimes cutting in on other phone conversations, suggests mockingly that her husband Hugh (René Auberjonois) is having an affair. Hugh comes home, finding Cathryn in distress. As Hugh attempts to comfort her, Cathryn witnesses a different man who is behaving as if he were her husband. She screams in horror and backs away, only to see her vision of the figure revert to her husband. Hugh attributes her outburst to stress and her pregnancy. He decides to take her on a vacation to an isolated cottage in the Irish countryside, where Cathryn can work on her book and take photographs for its illustrations. Immediately upon her arrival, however, Cathryn hears voices saying her name and sees strange apparitions: While preparing lunch one day, she sees her husband Hugh pass through the kitchen, then transform into her dead lover, Rene (Marcel Bozzuffi). Rene continues to appear to her around the house, and even speaks with her. Cathryn's paranoia and visions become increasingly pervasive, and are exacerbated when a local neighbor and ex- lover, Marcel (Hugh Millais), brings his adolescent daughter, Susannah (Cathryn Harrison), to visit. Cathryn becomes unable to distinguish Hugh from Rene or Marcel, as the men shift before her eyes. One day, Rene taunts Cathryn, asking her to kill him if she wants rid of him, and hands her a shotgun. She shoots him through the abdomen; Susannah, startled by the gunshot, runs into the house, and finds Cathryn standing in the den, having shot Hugh's camera to pieces. Cathryn claims the gun accidentally fired when she was moving it. Seeking solace, Cathryn goes to a nearby waterfall, where she often sees her doppelgänger staring back at her. After one such occurrence, she returns to the house, where Hugh tells her he has to leave for business. She drives him to the train station and returns to the house, where she finds Marcel waiting inside. He begins to undress to have sex with her, but she stabs him through the chest with a kitchen knife. The next morning, she encounters a local elderly man walking his dog, and invites him to come inside for coffee, in spite of the fact that Marcel's corpse apparently lies in the living room (which suggests that she regards the "murder" as an hallucination, like her shooting of Rene); the old man declines the invitation. Later in the evening, Susannah stops by the house, and remarks that her father was not at home when she awoke that morning. Cathryn is alarmed by this, as it could mean that she really did kill Marcel. She is relieved to hear that Marcel did return drunk after midnight, and invites Susannah in for a cup of tea since, logically, Marcel cannot be dead on her living room floor. Susannah asks Cathryn if she looked like her when she was young before ominously saying, "I'm going to be exactly like you." After having tea, Cathryn drives Susannah back home. Marcel comes out of the house and attempts to talk to Cathryn, but she drives away. While on a stretch of road through a desolate field, Cathryn witnesses her doppelgänger again, attempting to wave her down. Back at the house, she finds both Rene and Marcel's corpses have reappeared in the living room. Cathryn leaves again, and encounters her doppelgänger at a bend in the road; this time she stops. The doppelgänger begs Cathryn to let her into the car, and the two begin to speak in unison. She then hits the doppelgänger with the car, throwing her off a cliff and into a waterfall below. Cathryn then drives back to her home in London. At her home, she goes to take a shower. While in the bathroom, the door opens, and the doppelgänger walks inside. Cathryn screams in terror, "I killed you," to which the doppelgänger responds, "Not me." The final shot shows Hugh's corpse lying at the bottom of the falls. ===== Ginger, a yellow tomcat, and Pickles, a terrier, are partners in operating a village shop that offers a variety of goods including red spotty handkerchiefs, "sugar, snuff, and goloshes". Ginger inspires fear in their mouse customers and Pickles their rabbit customers. Ginger's mouth waters as the mice leave the shop with their parcels. However, the pair have a poor grasp of business, extending unlimited credit to absolutely anyone. Consequently no one ever pays for their purchases and the till remains empty. The shopkeepers are eventually forced to eat their own goods. Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Samuel Whiskers, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny. The inclusion of these characters in the illustrations was a clever marketing device and established an artistic consistency from tale to tale in Potter's Peter Rabbit universe. Pickles cannot afford a dog licence and is frightened of the policeman (a German doll with a stitched-on hat). He is certain he will receive a summons. The two go over their records and think their customers will never pay them. When the policeman delivers the rates and taxes at the New Year, Ginger and Pickles decide to close shop thus creating great inconvenience for the villagers. Ginger grows stout living comfortably in a warren and is shown in one illustration setting traps. Pickles becomes a gamekeeper who is shown pursuing rabbits. In the tale's lengthy coda, Tabitha Twitchit, the proprietor of the only other village shop, exploits the situation and raises the prices of everything in her shop. She refuses to give credit. Mr. John Dormouse and his daughter Miss Dormouse sell peppermints and candles, but the candles "behave very strangely in warm weather" and Miss Dormouse refuses to accept the return of candle ends from disgruntled customers. Finally, Sally Henny-penny sends out a printed poster announcing her intention to re-open the shop. The villagers are delighted and overwhelm the shop on its first day. Sally gets flustered counting out change and insists on being paid cash but offers an assortment of bargains to the delight of everybody. Potter put a crowd of familiar characters from the Peter Rabbit universe into the tale such as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Samuel Whiskers and Peter himself. It would prove a clever marketing device. From the literary angle, the many familiar characters create tension and suspense for the reader as most are the natural prey of the eponymous merchants. The reader wonders if the two shopkeepers will control their predatory instincts long enough to make a sale. =====