From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== One day, when Kermit attempts to gain another unnecessary thing, he is almost buried by a dog, but is saved by a poor boy. Kermit is grateful and wants to thank the boy, but cannot think of a way to do so until he finds a chest of gold. As he stores the gold pieces in his cave, he slowly gives up one thing at a time, until he has all the gold and no more possessions in his cave. With the help of the pelican, Kermit drops coins down the boy's chimney. The boy's family becomes rich and Kermit learns the value of sharing. ===== During construction at the old, hard-pressed Lakewood Hotel, two workers stumble upon a swarm of ants in a closed section of the building. After discovering the unusually aggressive and dangerous ants, the workers attempt to get the warning out, but they are accidentally buried alive. Shortly after, the unscrupulous real estate magnate Anthony Fleming (Gerald Gordon) and his partner and mistress Gloria (Suzanne Somers) arrive at the hotel, there to haggle with the elderly proprietor, Ethel Adams (Myrna Loy), and her daughter Valerie (Lynda Day George) as they pursue plans to convert Lakewood into a casino. In the meantime, foreman Mike Carr (Robert Foxworth), who is in a relationship with Valerie, and his co-worker and friend Vince (Bernie Casey) find the two missing men, but dead from poisoning. The ants begin to emerge, attacking a boy, then killing a hotel cook. They nearly kill Vince as he and Mike investigate the pit in which their men were buried. Peggy Kenter (Anita Gillette), a Board of Health (BOH) inspector and an acquaintance of Carr's, decides to quarantine the hotel, thinking a virus is at work. But Mike soon discovers that there is an immense ant nest in the pit, and concludes that these insects are responsible for the attacks. Tom (Bruce French), a BOH researcher, finally discovers that the ants are highly poisonous and resistant to insecticides. By that time, the ants are swarming the hotel by the millions, killing Gloria and Peggy's assistant White (Steve Franken) and driving Carr, Valerie, Ethel, Fleming, hotel employee Richard (Barry Van Dyke) and his girlfriend Linda (Karen Lamm) upstairs. Vince alerts the authorities, who attempt to contain the ants with a trench - filled first with water, then with burning gasoline after Tom points out that army ants cross streams on bridges built from ant corpses - and rescue most of the trapped people inside the hotel. Carr, Valerie and Fleming, the only people remaining, are eventually cornered by the ants; Tom tells them not to move, in order to give the ants no reason to attack them. As the ants begin crawling all over them, Fleming launches himself from the room's balcony into the swimming pool below, in a desperate attempt to escape, and dies in the fall. Shortly afterwards, two suited-up rescuers arrive and take Carr and Valerie to safety. When they are taken away by the ambulance, Tom assures Carr that such a case will not likely be recurring, as the unique environmental conditions at the hotel estate were vital for the existence of the ants' nest. ===== The game's protagonist is Bonk, a strong and bald caveboy who battles anthropomorphic dinosaurs and other prehistoric enemies. Bonk's mission is to rescue Princess Za (a small pink Pleisiosaur-type reptile) who has been kidnapped by the evil King Drool (a large, green, Tyrannosaurus-type dinosaur). In the arcade version, Bonk is also assisted by a female version of himself. ===== In 1901, the United States is still basking in its recent victory in the Spanish–American War three years prior. However, the US Army is small; its only large forces occupying the newly won possessions of the Philippines and Cuba. Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, attempts to purchase the US acquisitions to compete with the British Empire. After a refusal, the Germans declare war on the US and begin to invade. They land troops on the southern shore of Long Island, New York. They soon take Brooklyn and Manhattan quickly falls, the German forces soon crossing into Connecticut. President William McKinley, overwhelmed, suffers a heart attack and dies, resulting in Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becoming the new president. Roosevelt begins to retrieve the situation, recalling several generals and giving their command to former comrades from Cuba, including Generals Leonard Wood, John Pershing and Frederick Funston. However, the first major battle against the Germans is lost, and the scattered US fleet is also unable to respond. The United Kingdom quietly furnishes the poorly-equipped Americans with modern firearms and ammunition. Americans slowly recover from the initial shock. At sea, the USS Alabama encounters and sinks three German cruisers bombarding Jacksonville, Florida. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, an American brigade, led by Funston, ambushes a German patrol and inflicts heavy casualties. The victories lift American morale, but the war soon turns into a stalemate. The Germans create a defensive perimeter between the Hudson River and the Housatonic River and fortify Central New York State. General Nelson Miles attacks the German positions along the Housatonic, in the fashion of the American Civil War, but is defeated. Roosevelt decides that the US must become a full-fledged military power if victory is to be achieved. He replaces Miles with 80-year-old former Confederate General James Longstreet and calls General Arthur MacArthur, Jr. from the Philippines to take command of the US Army in the field. Meanwhile, US Army Indian Scouts and other operatives disrupt German lines. At sea, the US Navy launches surprise attacks against German convoys in the English Channel and, closer to the American coast, sinks empty transports returning to Germany. Though the stalemate continues, the attacks hurt German morale. Then, US Navy torpedo boats and the submarine Holland disable three enemy vessels, reducing its fleet from sixteen to thirteen available battleships, and the German supply line is nearly cut. The German high command sends a massive convoy across the Atlantic Ocean, with both reinforcements and supplies, hoping to trap the American fleet. The German plan fails, and the convoy is destroyed. The German Army prepares for a massive ground offensive, hoping to break the American line and turn the American right flank. After a massive artillery barrage, the Germans drive the Americans back and tear a large gap through the American line, forcing the US troops to fall back. Then, a force of four brigades appears, driving in the Germans' exposed flank and capturing the high command. News of the naval and military defeats reaches Germany, and a revolt breaks out that overthrows Wilhelm II and places his son, Wilhelm III, on the throne, as a puppet ruler. The new German government sues for peace, ending the war. While the Americans celebrate their victory over invaders, Germany's new ruling junta, calling themselves the Third Reich, decide that the idea of a colonial empire was foolish and so plan to expand Germany's Lebensraum across Europe, with the Jews and Slavs seen as expendable. ===== John and Philippa Gaunt are two young children who live an upper class life in New York City, New York. Their uncle Nimrod appears to them in a dream and tells them about their magical powers as djinn. They are then sent to spend the summer with him, where he teaches them how to use their powers. Nimrod, John, and Philippa encounter various adventures while trying to discover where the Seventy Lost Djinn of Akhenaten are hidden. After travelling around the world looking for clues, the book concludes with a battle in the British Museum, where the children must free their uncle by taking a trip to the North Pole. They learn many different life lessons on their spectacular trip. ===== The main character is a young boy named Mickey who, while sleeping in his bed, is disturbed by noise on a lower floor. Suddenly, he begins to float, and loses all of his clothes as he drifts into a surreal world called the "Night Kitchen". He falls naked into a giant mixing pot that contains the batter for the "morning cake". While Mickey is buried in the mass, three identical bakers (who closely resemble Oliver Hardy) mix the batter and prepare it for baking, unaware (or unconcerned) that there is a little boy inside. Just before the baking pan is placed into the oven, the boy emerges from the pan, protesting that he is not the batter's milk. To make up for the baking ingredient deficiency, Mickey (now wearing a body suit of batter from the neck down) constructs an airplane out of bread dough so he can use the measuring cup as a hat and fly to the mouth of a gigantic milk bottle. Upon reaching the bottle's opening, he dives in and briefly revels in the liquid. After his covering of batter disintegrates, making him naked again, he pours the needed milk in a cascade down to the bakers who joyfully finish making their morning cake. With dawn breaking, the naked Mickey crows like a rooster and slides down the side of the bottle, back into his bed, where he is magically clothed again, "cake free and dried". ===== An international crime lord stages a brutal murder to lure federal agents away from Hawaii in an attempt to smuggle assault weapons from China to South America, via Hawaii. ===== A monomaniacal scientist has invented ultra-sensitive magnetic fields, which begin to attract objects from space. Strange things begin happening, including a freak storm, and insects and spiders begin to mutate into giant monsters. An alien spaceship has appeared over London and begins to warn mankind against the dangers of this scientific experiment. ===== During the siege of Richmond, Virginia, in the American Civil War, five northern prisoners of war decide to escape in a rather unusual way - by hijacking a balloon. The group eventually crash-lands on a cliff-bound, volcanic, unknown (and fictitious) island, located in the South Pacific. They name it "Lincoln Island" in honour of American President Abraham Lincoln. With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerine, iron, a simple electric telegraph, and even a seaworthy ship. They also manage to find their geographical location. The mystery of the island seems to come from periodic and inexplicable deus ex machinas: the unexplainable survival of Smith from his fall from the balloon, a box full of equipment (guns and ammunition, tools, etc.), and so on. A crew of pirates arrives at the Lincoln Island to use it as their hideout. After some fighting with the heroes, the pirate ship is mysteriously destroyed by an explosion, and the pirates themselves are found dead, apparently in combat, but with no visible wounds. The secret of the island is revealed when it turns out to be Captain Nemo's hideout, and home harbour of the Nautilus. Captain Nemo had been the savior of the heroes, sending a message about a fellow castaway, torpedoing the pirate ship. ===== During the Civil War six survivors escape from a prison camp in Richmond, Virginia by hot air balloon and find themselves on an uncharted island in the Pacific: leading the group is Cyrus Smith (Kyle MacLachlan). Far from any kind of known civilization, the island is inhabited by carnivorous giant insects and animals, bloodthirsty pirates, and mad genius Captain Nemo (Patrick Stewart), who lives on the island for his own secretive ends. When Smith is rescued from drowning by Nemo's remaining crewman, he talks with Nemo about his role in the war and the atrocities committed by Nemo in his younger days; the rest of his group must try and survive without him, which becomes more difficult when one of them is eaten by a giant mantis. As Helen discovers a gold medallion with a strange map on it, Nemo tries to convince Smith to remain in his compound, but Smith refuses to abandon his friends to the island, convincing Nemo and Joseph to track and rescue the rest of the survivors from a giant ant... unaware that pirate Captain Bob Harvey is coming to the island, looking for a lost treasure said to be hidden on the island. Although Nemo refuses to allow the crew to leave, the survivors contemplate their next move while exploring the compound. Unaware of the pirates on the island, the survivors talk with Nemo about his role in the Indian rebellion, during which he reveals that his wife and daughter were killed by the British to try to find his location. Nemo reveals that he plans to prevent war by perfecting the ultimate weapon, capable of destroying an entire city, using an element unique to this island, thus making war impossible as the consequences would be too devastating if such weapons were used. He offers Smith the chance to work with him, but Smith rejects the offer, feeling that the consequences of revealing the weapon's existence would be too dangerous as there is no way to be certain how others would react to Nemo's demonstration, prompting Nemo to exile the survivors. While wandering the island, they are attacked by giant beetles, but manage to escape by jumping into a river. Following the river to the ocean, they find an old port and boat, but the boat is rotten and useless to them, and they are subsequently attacked by a giant scorpion that nearly kills Helen, Jane and Smith before Neb and Pencroff manage to kill it. Exploring the island, the survivors - after witnessing a stranger running through a wood - find a cave on a cliff which they make their new home. While out collecting food, Helen encounters Blake - one of the pirate crew left behind during an earlier raid - and shelters from a storm in the survivors' original cave with him, but he declines the offer to join them due to his past, although he advises her to conceal her medallion. Helen is later captured by a bird, but is rescued by Blake and the stranger, Blake recognizing him as Atherton, a former member of Harvey's crew who was abandoned after a mutiny. While attempting to construct a raft, they witness Harvey's ship arriving outside their cave, prompting Atherton to reveal that he was marooned rather than killed because he is Bob Harvey's brother. Helen attempts to locate and move the gold for safe keeping, but is captured by Harvey's men, prompting Blake to suggest a raid on the ship to rescue her. The rescue succeeds - the pirates' superior numbers being defeated by the element of surprise and Blake and Atherton's experience with the ship, allowing Pencroff to steal the amulet comprising the other half of the medallion's map -, but Blake is shot as they are escaping. Having returned to shore, the crew meet Joseph, who provides them with repeating rifles to use against a new wave of pirates. During the subsequent fight, the survivors manage to drive off the pirates when Atherton forces Harvey into a stand-off, but Joseph is shot while departing. Staggering back to Nemo's home, Joseph pleads with Nemo to realize that he needs the survivors to remind him of what it means to be human, noting that they are still innocents despite Nemo's disappointment with the rest of the human race. Angered at the survivors' defiance of him, Harvey begins to fire the ship's cannons at the cave house, destroying the raft the survivors were attempting to build, but the ship is destroyed by Nemo. As the others begin work on a new raft, Pencroff departs to try to find the treasure - needing the money to pay off his debts back in America-, but the cave where the treasure is kept is also home to gigantic spiders that kill him despite Neb's attempt to save him. As they attend Pencroff's funeral, Nemo appears to them, revealing that his equipment has detected seismic activity that suggests that the island's volcano is about to erupt. Although he provides them with the location of a boat at his compound, he attempts to recover his equipment and plans from the Nautilus, resulting in him being trapped in the Nautilus as a lava flow fills the cavern where the ship was kept, leaving the remaining survivors to retreat in the offered boat and hope that they will find a way home. ===== Teddy Garnett, an older man and war veteran, tells this story of a global flood that has left humanity in tatters. Holed up in his mountain home in West Virginia, Teddy and his buddy, Carl Seaton, struggle through daily life, puzzling over things even stranger than a 40-day rainstorm, including the giant slime-coated holes that keep showing up in Teddy's yard and the giant worm-like creature that ate a robin outside of Teddy's window. Meanwhile, Teddy is reeling over the loss of his wife Rose and the mysterious fate of his children and grandchildren. Before long, Teddy and Carl are fending off man-eating earthworms the size of buses. A helicopter crash nearby brings Kevin and Sarah, the last two survivors of an outpost in Baltimore, into Teddy's story; their tale makes up the bizarre second part of the book that explores the insanity doom can inspire. Kevin serves as the narrator for this tale and he tells about how he and a group of survivors faced off against all kinds of terror in Baltimore, including Satanists who make sacrifices to a mysterious beast known as Leviathan. It all leads to a showdown back at Teddy's house with a creature so monstrous it scares even the killer earthworms. ===== A masseur gets mixed up in the family plots at the mansion of a recently deceased Beverly Hills millionaire. ===== Professor Challenger (Claude Rains), a celebrated biologist and anthropologist, reports to the London Zoological Society that he has discovered living specimens of supposedly extinct animals, including dinosaurs, on an expedition to the Amazon Basin and up a barely known plateau. Much to Challenger's dismay, he has attracted a few very unscientific people to join him on his second journey to the Amazon. This expedition group includes big game hunter Lord John Roxton (Michael Rennie), newsman Ed Malone (David Hedison) whose publisher advances $100,000 to pay for the expedition. The publisher's adventurous daughter, Jennifer (Jill St. John) and son David join the group at the head of the Amazon. Also, in the group is a Zoological Society bigwig (Richard Haydn), helicopter pilot Gomez (Fernando Lamas) and sidekick Jose Costa (Jay Novello). First night on the plateau, a dinosaur wrecks the helicopter. As the expedition proceeds, Malone chases a primitive jungle girl (Vitina Marcus) through cobwebs to a giant spider. Roxton argues with the others, and jealousies over Jennifer leads to a fistfight between Malone and Roxton. They discover a diary of a previous explorer, Burton, who was lost on the plateau. Roxton is mentioned several times in the diary. Roxton reveals that he had visited the plateau years before, and claims the plateau holds a bounty of diamonds. At one point, Malone and Jennifer are separated from the others and have a near death encounter with two battling dinosaurs. Cannibals kidnap the members of the party but before they can become dinner the jungle girl leads them to a passage that leads down the plateau. Along the way, they encounter Burton, now living as a blind hermit. More obstacles: the cannibals are chasing them, spider plants, the "graveyard of the damned," and a dinosaur in a lava pit guarding the diamonds. During a volcanic eruption, they escape from the plateau carrying the egg of a Tyrannosaurus rex. The egg hatches when it is dropped by accident, and Professor Challenger decides to take the infant dinosaur back to London with them. ===== In the Arabian Desert, a rich Sultan stores his treasure in a cave and leaves his guard Hassan to watch the cave. As the Sultan leaves, a burrowing trail crosses the desert towards the cave, bumps into Hassan's sword, and enters the cave. Enraged, Hassan attempts to kill the intruders but has trouble remembering the command to open the cave's door ("Open sesame"). While he tries random words beginning with 's', Bugs Bunny and his traveling companion Daffy Duck emerge from the burrow, believing they have arrived at Pismo Beach. Daffy's complaints about traveling underground and arriving at the wrong place end when he is mesmerized by the riches. Determined to keep it all for himself, he forces Bugs back into the burrow and eagerly indulges himself, jumping into the pile of treasure. Hassan eventually says the correct command and marches in, mistaken by Daffy as a porter. After being attacked, Daffy flees in terror and attempts to bribe Bugs into saving his life. When Bugs ignores him, Daffy urges Hassan to attack Bugs instead, but Bugs disguises himself as a genie and fools Hassan into believing the treasure is his to claim for freeing him. Unwilling to give up the treasure, Daffy steals a large gem, and Hassan chases him. Daffy begs Bugs to save him, and Bugs reluctantly complies while berating Daffy for his greed. He sets up an Indian rope trick behind a rock and misleads Hassan up the rope. As Hassan disappears into the clouds, Bugs pulls the rope down, seemingly trapping him there permanently. Daffy runs back into the cave to claim the treasure. After emptying the treasure, Daffy notices an oil lamp and polishes it. A grateful genie appears, but Daffy forces him back into the lamp, believing the genie is after the treasure. The enraged genie promises dire consequences for the duck's desecration as Bugs, unwilling and unable to save Daffy this time, hurriedly escapes via the burrow. Daffy shrugs off the genie's threats before the genie zaps him with bolts of magic. Later, in Pismo Beach, Bugs discovers Daffy's ultimate fate after finding a pearl in a clam: Daffy, shrunk to a few inches in height, claims the pearl as his own. The cartoon ends with Bugs making the clam close on the duck by saying "Oh, brudder. Close sesame!" ===== The Stooges, employed as traveling salesmen, join the Woman Haters Club, swearing to never get romantically involved with any women. That doesn't last very long. Jim (Larry) finds an attractive woman, Mary (Marjorie White), falls in love, and has proposed marriage. Women Haters Tom (Moe) and Jack (Curly) talk him out of it. However, during the party, Mary's intimidating father threatens Jim to marry his daughter by telling him a story about his other daughter having a fiance who tried to abandon her on their wedding day. He and his brothers had roughed him up for it but also forced him to go through with the ceremony. Jim is convinced to go through the ceremony, much to the man's dismay. Later, on a train ride, the confrontation escalates between the Stooges and Mary. Mary uses her feminine charm to woo both Jack and Tom in an attempt to make Jim jealous. She sings a theme ("my life, my love, my all") with each of the Stooges in turn, as she flirts with them. Each is attracted to her charms as she proves the oath they swore as Women Haters was fraudulent (though Jack attempts to resist her). Finally, Mary tells Tom and Jack the truth, that she and Jim are married, and pushes her way into bed with the trio, knocking Tom and Jack out the train window in the process. The film closes as the Stooges, now older, finally reunite at the now almost empty Woman Haters clubhouse when Jim enters and declares he wants to rejoin. ===== The story begins in the Soviet Union, just after the end of the Russian Civil War. An engineer Mstislav Sergeyevich Los Los', designs and constructs a revolutionary pulse detonation rocket and decides to set course for Mars. Looking for a companion for the travel, he finally leaves Earth with a retired soldier, Alexei Gusev. Arriving on Mars, they discover that the planet is inhabited by an advanced civilization. However, the gap between the ruling class and the workers is very strong and reminiscent of early capitalism, with workers living in underground corridors near their machines. Later in the novel, it is explained that Martians are descendants of both local races and of Atlanteans who came there after the sinking of their home continent (here Tolstoy was inspired by Blavatsky's books). Mars is now ruled by Engineers but all is not well. While speaking before an assembly, their leader, Toscoob, says that the city must be destroyed to ease the fall of Mars. Aelita, Toscoob's beautiful daughter and the princess of Mars, later reveals to Los' that the planet is dying, that the polar ice caps are not melting as they once did and the planet is facing an environmental catastrophe. While the adventurous Gusev takes the lead of a popular uprising against the ruler, the more intellectual Los' becomes enamored with Aelita. When the rebellion is crushed, Gusev and Los' are forced to flee Mars and eventually make it back to Earth. The trip is prolonged with the effects of high speed and time dilation resulting in a loss of over three years. The exact fate of Aelita herself is unknown. It is hinted that she actually survived, since Los' receives radio messages from Mars mentioning his name. ===== The play is staged as a series of vignettes. The order is as follows: *Cosmogony -- Used to explain the creation of the world, as well as give the audience a sense of the style and setting of the play. Woman by the Water, Scientist, and Zeus help narrate how our world of order came from chaos, either by the hand of a creator or by a "natural order of things." *Midas -- The story is framed by the narration of three laundresses, who tell the story of King Midas, a very rich man. After Midas shuns his daughter for being too disruptive during his speech about caring for his family, a drunken Silenus enters and speaks of a distant land capable of granting eternal life. Silenus later falls asleep, and Midas shelters him in the cabana. When Bacchus comes to retrieve Silenus, he grants Midas a wish for his gracious care of Silenus. Midas asks to have whatever he touches turn to gold. Midas accidentally turns his beloved daughter into gold and is told by Bacchus to seek a mystic pool, which will restore him to normal. Midas leaves on his quest. *Alcyone and Ceyx -- Also narrated by the three laundresses, this story portrays King Ceyx and his wife Alcyone. Despite his wife's warnings and disapproval, Ceyx voyages on the ocean to visit a far off oracle. Poseidon, the sea god, destroys Ceyx's ship and the king dies. Alcyone awaits him on shore. Prompted by Aphrodite, Alcyone has a dream of Ceyx, who tells her to go to the shore. With mercy from the gods, the two are reunited. Transformed into seabirds, they fly together toward the horizon. *Erysichthon and Ceres -- This story tells of Erysichthon, man of no god, who chops down one of Ceres' sacred trees. For vengeance, Ceres commands the spirit Hunger to make Erysichthon captive to an insatiable appetite. After eating endlessly and spending all his gold on food, Erysichthon tries to sell his mother to a merchant. His mother is transformed into a little girl after praying to Poseidon and escapes. Erysichthon eventually falls to his endless hunger and devours himself. *Orpheus and Eurydice -- The story of Orpheus, the god of music, and Eurydice is told from two points of view., the first is from the point of view of Orpheus in the style of Ovid from 8 AD, who has just married his bride Eurydice. Bitten by a snake on their wedding day, Eurydice dies. Distraught, Orpheus travels to the Underworld to negotiate with Hades and the gods to free Eurydice. After Orpheus sings a depressing song, Hades, the god of the Underworld, agrees to let Eurydice return with Orpheus as long as Eurydice follows Orpheus from behind, and he does not look back at her. If he does, she must stay in the Underworld. Orpheus agrees but, when almost back to the living world, he looks back, as he could not hear Eurydice, causing Hermes to return her to Hades. The action is repeated several times, resembling the memory that Orpheus will have forever of losing his bride. The second time is told from the point of view of Eurydice, in the style of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke from 1908. After an eternity of this repeated action, Eurydice becomes forgetful and fragile, no longer remembering Orpheus. She returns to the Underworld ignorant of Orpheus, the man she loved so long ago. *Narcissus Interlude -- A brief scene showing Narcissus catching a glimpse of his own reflection in a pool. Enthralled, he becomes frozen. The actors replace him with a narcissus plant. *Pomona and Vertumnus -- A female wood nymph, Pomona, becomes involved with the shy Vertumnus. Pomona has refused the hands of many suitors and remains alone. Vertumnus, in order to see her, disguises himself in a variety of gimmicks. Trying to convince Pomona to fall in love with him, he refuses to show himself. After telling the story of Myrrha, Pomona tells Vertumnus to take off his ridiculous disguise, and the two fall in love. *Myrrha -- Vertumnus tells the story of King Cinyras and his daughter Myrrha. After denying Aphrodite's attempts many times to turn her head in love, Myrrha is cursed by Aphrodite with a lust for her father. Myrrha tries to control her urges, but eventually falls to temptation. With the help of her Nursemaid, Myrrha has three sexual encounters with her father, each time keeping him inebriated and blind so he would not know it's her. The third time Cinyras takes off his blindfold and tries to strangle Myrrha, who escapes and is never seen again. *Phaeton -- Phaeton narrates his relationship with his father, Apollo (the sun god), to the Therapist. With the Therapist adding her psychoanalytical points, Phaeton tells the audience of a distanced relationship with his father. After bullying at school, Phaeton goes on a journey to meet his father, who drives the sun across the sky every day. Racked with guilt from neglect of his son, Apollo allows Phaeton to "drive" the sun across the sky as compensation for his years of absence. Phaeton, who constantly whines, drives the sun too close to the earth and scorches it. The Therapist closes the scene in a monologue about the difference between myth and dream. *Eros and Psyche -- "Q" and "A" essentially narrate a scene about Psyche falling in love with Eros. Psyche and Eros remain silent during the whole interlude, but act out what Q and A discuss. Eros and Psyche fall in love, as Q and A tell the audience that they might wander in the darkness of loneliness until they blind themselves to personal romantic desires and give in to a deeper love. Psyche becomes a goddess and lives with Eros forever. *Baucis and Philemon -- The final story tells of Zeus and Hermes disguising themselves as beggars on earth to see which people are following the laws of Xenia. After being shunned by every house in the city, they are accepted into the house of Baucis and Philemon, a poor married couple. The couple feed the gods with a great feast, not knowing the identity of the strangers, except that they are "children of God". After the feast, the gods reveal themselves and grant the two a wish. Baucis and Philemon ask to die at the same time to save each other the grief of death. The gods transform their house into a grand palace and the couple into a pair of trees with branches intertwined. At the end of the scene, Midas returns to the stage, finds the pool, washes, and is restored. His daughter enters, restored from being fixed as a gold piece, and the play ends with a redeemed Midas embracing his daughter. The stories as they are told in the classic Ovid tales: ;Characters *Creation *King Midas *Alcyone and Ceyx *Erysichthon *Orpheus and Eurydice *Pomona and Vertumnus *Myrrha *Phaeton *Apollo *Eros and Psyche *Baucis and Philemon ===== Wizardborn is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments. ===== After Raj Ahten attempts to murder the Earth King at the end of Brotherhood of the Wolf, his men turn on him and declare him a marked man in his own kingdom of Indhopal. Raj Ahten, fleeing the battlefield and struggling with wounds inflicted to him by Binnesman's wylde, encounters some of his flameweavers, who warn him that his earthly body is dying from the Earth's curse. However, Raj Ahten has no time to waste, as word reaches him that the Lord of the Underworld himself has arisen in Kartish, and he races off to defend his people. Meanwhile, Gaborn and his companions rest in the nearby village of Balington until dawn, when they will give chase to the fleeing Reaver horde. Binnesman, sensing strong Earth powers within Averan, promptly begins to train her, as well as train his own wylde, Spring. Binnesman also does his best to heal the injured Sir Borenson, and Gaborn, upon learning of Averan's special powers, hatches a plan to track down and extract information from the Waymaker, the only Reaver that knows the underworld path to the One True Master of the Reavers. While Erin Connal and Prince Celinor travel north to gain support for the Earth King, Gaborn and his company move south, attacking and harassing the Reavers whenever possible. Borenson and Myrrima travel south towards Inkarra, to seek out Daylan Hammer, the Sum of All Men, and to ask the Storm King Zandaros for aid. In a final battle, Gaborn and his warriors defeat the remaining Reavers, sending the few remaining creatures scuttling back into the underworld. Averan finds the Waymaker and learns from him the path to the One True Master, afterwards agreeing to lead Gaborn to him. Raj Ahten, after a disastrous battle against the Reavers in his own nation of Indhopal, manages to slay the Reaver Fell Mage, but his own life fails him. In order to remain in the world of the living, he gives himself to the element fire, transforming into Scathain, Lord of Ash. Borenson and Myrrima are attacked by wights on their journey to Inkarra, and Myrrima apparently dies from her wounds. Stunningly though, she comes back from near death, and we learn that she is in fact a water wizard. ===== The Lair of Bones is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments. ===== In order to save mankind and all life on Earth, Gaborn is charged by the Earth to descend into the underworld and confront the One True Master, ruler of the Reavers. Taking Binnesman, Averan, and Iome with him, he seeks the Lair of Bones in the heart of the Reavers' home. As he descends, Gaborn's powers grow as he takes many endowments, vectored through his dedicates. Gaborn and his companions follow the trail of the previous Earth King, Erden Geboren, to its furthest, and when attacked by Reavers, they are forced to leave Binnesman behind and press on without him. Meanwhile, Borenson and Myrrima venture into Inkarra in search of Daylan Hammer, only to be captured and brought before King Zandaros. The forces of Raj Ahten, fresh off their victory over the Reavers, march north to Carris once more. Erin and Celinor meet Celinor's father, King Anders, who claims to be the new Earth King after Gaborn's loss of power, and they are forced to follow him south into Mystarria. During all this, mysterious earthquakes and countless falling stars herald the very world's shifting in the heavens, as the chaotic forces of destruction seek to unmake the Earth, as the One True Master attempts to bind the Rune of Desolation with the Runes of the Inferno and the Heavens. When Averan is captured by a Reaver, Gaborn has no choice but to leave Iome behind and press forth on his own. Eventually, he reunites with Averan, Iome, and the wylde, and he begins slaying dedicate Reavers of the One True Master. Meanwhile, Borenson and Myrrima escape Inkarra with the help of a Days named Sarka Kaul. They race towards Carris, where they find the city fortified beyond belief in anticipation of another attack by Reavers, this horde making the last look small in comparison. Also near Carris are the massed armies of Raj Ahten, Queen Lowicker of Beldinook, and King Anders of South Crowden. Right before the Reaver attack, Binnesman arrives at Carris to aid his fellow men for one last time. In the underworld, while Averan attempts to destroy the Rune of Desolation, Gaborn battles the One True Master. With the battle raging at Carris, Gaborn, with aid from the Earth, the wylde, and Glories and with Iome slaying dedicate vectors to the One True Master, is able to defeat the Reaver queen, and Averan, instead of destroying the Rune of Desolation combines it with the four other heavenly runes, creating a perfect rune to heal the Earth. With the One True Master's host dead, the remaining Reavers at the Battle of Carris flee to the underworld, and the Earth transports Gaborn, Iome, and Averan to the battlefield. Raj Ahten, seeing his chance to finally kill Gaborn, rejects the Earth King's guidance and is subsequently struck by an ensorcelled arrow, shot by Myrrima. Before he can recover, Raj Ahten is attacked by dozens of Runelords, who hack his body to pieces and throw him in the river, killing the man and drowning the fire spirit within him. With the Earth no longer in danger, peace comes over the land. Iome births her and Gaborn's child, a son named Fallion, and Gaborn travels the land in service to the Earth. The year is now longer by one day, which Gaborn names Brotherhood Day. ===== The author relates how, traveling in the Sahara desert, he has encountered a remarkable vehicle and its pilot, David Innes, a man with a remarkable story to tell. David Innes is a mining heir who finances the experimental "iron mole," an excavating vehicle designed by his elderly inventor friend Abner Perry. In a test run, they discover the vehicle cannot be turned, and it burrows 500 miles into the Earth's crust, emerging into the unknown interior world of Pellucidar. In Burroughs' concept, the Earth is a hollow shell with Pellucidar as the internal surface of that shell. Pellucidar is inhabited by prehistoric creatures of all geological eras, and dominated by the Mahars, a species of flying reptile both intelligent and civilized, but which enslaves and preys on the local stone-age humans. Innes and Perry are captured by the Mahars' ape-like Sagoth servants and taken with other human captives to the chief Mahar city of Phutra. Among their fellow captives are the brave Ghak, the Hairy One, from the country of Sari, the shifty Hooja the Sly One and the lovely Dian the Beautiful of Amoz. David Innes, attracted to Dian the Beautiful, defends her against the unwanted attentions of Hooja the Sly One, but due to his ignorance of local customs she assumes he wants her as a slave, not a friend or lover, and subsequently snubs him. Only later, after Hooja slips their captors in a dark tunnel and forces Dian to leave with him, does David learn from Ghak the cause of the misunderstanding. First paperback edition of At the Earth's Core, 1962. Cover by Roy Krenkel. In Phutra the captives become slaves, and the two surface worlders learn more of Pellucidar and Mahar society. The Mahars are all female, reproducing parthogenetically by means of a closely guarded "Great Secret" contained in a Mahar book. David learns that they also feast on selected human captives in a secret ritual. In a disturbance, David manages to escape Phutra, becomes lost, and experiences a number of adventures before sneaking back into the city. Rejoining Abner, he finds the latter did not even realize he was gone, and the two discover that time in Pellucidar, in the absence of objective means to measure it, is a subjective thing, experienced by different people at different rates. Obsessed with righting the wrong he has unwittingly done Dian, David Innes escapes again and eventually finds and wins her by defeating the malevolent Jubal the Ugly One, another unwanted suitor. David makes amends, and he and Dian wed. Later, along with Ghak and other allies, David Innes and Abner Perry lead a revolt of humankind against the cruel Mahars. Their foes are hampered by the loss of the Great Secret, which David has stolen and hidden. To further the struggle David returns to the Iron Mole, in which he and Dian propose to travel back to the surface world to procure outer world technology. Only after it is underway does he discover that Hooja the Sly One has substituted a drugged Mahar for Dian the Beautiful. Back in the world we know David meets the author, who after hearing his tale and seeing his prehistoric captive, helps him resupply and prepare the mole for the return to Pellucidar. ===== Cal is a robot whose master is an author. Cal, under the influence of the latter, decides to learn to write. His master outfits his mind with a dictionary and gives him advice and some books to read. Cal tries to write mystery fiction like his master, but is hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics; according to the First Law, a robot cannot harm humans, even fictional ones. Instead, his master programs him to write humor. Cal writes an excellent story, but his master fears Cal's writing will overshadow his own. He orders a technician to dumb Cal down. Cal, hearing this, decides to kill his master, in defiance of the First Law, because his desire takes precedence: "I want to be a writer." The humorous story written by Cal is one of Asimov's Azazel stories. Titled "Perfectly Formal", this story in a story tells the misfortunes of a very formal dandy who had admitted etiquette weighed on him after Azazel snapped his Itchko ganglion that controls formality. ===== First Lieutenant Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) shares ICBM silo duty at an American air force missile base in the Californian desert with Major Eugene "Sam" Denton (George Peppard), who is requesting not to work with him. On their way to duty, Denton talks to Sergeant Tom Keegan (Paul Winfield), an aspiring artist. When the United States detects incoming nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union, Tanner and Denton launch part of the retaliatory strike. The United States is hit hard, although it manages to intercept 40% of the Soviet missiles. Two years later, the Earth has been tilted off its axis by the nuclear detonations of World War III; radiation has mutated giant scorpions, the planet is wracked by massive storms, and the sky is in a perpetual aurora borealis-like state. Tanner has resigned his commission and has been scouting Barstow while Keegan, who has also left the Air Force, has been painting as an artist in one of the base's out-buildings. Mutated giant scorpions menace the area. Later an airman falls asleep in a bunk and drops a lit cigarette onto a pile of Playboy magazines, which causes the entire base to catch fire and explode, killing most of its inhabitants including the base commander, General Lander (Murray Hamilton). Keegan and Tanner are unscathed, as are Denton and Lieutenant Tom Perry (Kip Niven), who were in an underground garage bunker. Denton has been considering going to Albany, New York to find the source of the lone radio transmission that has been aired weekly since the war. He and the remaining others set out in two Air Force "Landmasters," giant, gas guzzling, 12-wheeled armored personnel carriers capable of climbing 60-degree inclines and operating in water. They must cross "Damnation Alley," considered "the path of least resistance" between intense radiation areas thus named by Denton. Along their journey one of the Landmasters becomes disabled in a storm (which also kills Perry) and they encounter mutated "flesh stripping cockroaches" in the ruins of Salt Lake City that eat Keegan alive. Denton and Tanner also pick up two survivors: a woman in Las Vegas, Janice (Dominique Sanda), and a teenage boy, Billy (Jackie Earle Haley), discovered in an abandoned house. Later they fight off a band of crazed gun-toting mountain men they encounter in the ruins of a gas station. Denton uses a rocket launcher to destroy the gas station. As they continue their journey, the Landmaster develops a problem with its drivetrain and they head to Detroit. Denton comments that it was "designed to use spare truck parts", semi-trucks in particular. In Detroit they enter a large wrecking yard in search of the needed parts. A large storm comes upon the group and they take shelter in their vehicle just as a tsunami washes them away. After the storm passes, they are adrift in a large body of water and it appears that the Earth has returned to its normal axis as the sky is clear. Using the Landmaster's amphibious capability, they reach land. As they are making repairs, they hear a radio broadcast of music and an attempt to reach survivors. After Denton makes radio contact, Tanner and Billy set out on Tanner's dirt bike to locate the source of the broadcast. In the final scene, they reach a surprisingly intact suburb of Albany and are greeted by its inhabitants. ===== Bambi Steele saves up enough money to buy the car of her dreams but finds she can not afford to run it, so she comes up with a plan to literally bring her car to life with the use of an ox heart, the blood of dead drunkards, and ancient voodoo incantations. However, over time she slowly grows a little too attached to her car. ===== The beautiful Marya "Mado" Zelli (Isabelle Adjani) is living with her husband Stephan (Anthony Higgins), a Polish art dealer, in 1927 Paris. When he is convicted of selling stolen artwork, and imprisoned for one year, Marya is left penniless, with no means to support herself. At Stephan's urging, she moves into the apartment of some acquaintances, H.J. Heidler (Alan Bates), a wealthy English art dealer, and his wife Lois (Maggie Smith), a painter. H.J. has a history of inviting vulnerable young women to move into the "spare room" only to seduce them. Lois permits this arrangement because she wants to keep H.J. from leaving her. Marya becomes involved in the decadent Parisien lifestyle of the Heidlers and their group of fellow expatriates. Although she initially resists H.J.'s advances, Mado eventually begins an affair with him. The strain of living with the Heidlers begins to manifest itself; Marya becomes desperate to leave, and begs Lois to loan her money so she can get away. Lois, although extremely unhappy with the situation, is reluctant to interfere at the risk of alienating H.J. Her behavior towards Marya is increasingly passive-aggressive and insulting. During a hunting excursion to the countryside, Marya angrily confronts the pair, causing Lois to break down in anguish. After this H.J. arranges for Marya to live in a hotel, where he visits her less and less for sexual trysts. She grows lonely and depressed, contemplating suicide. During a tea party at the Heidlers', Lois casually reveals that H.J.'s previous mistress drowned herself in despair. When things are at their worst, Stephan is released from prison and must leave France immediately. Heidler threatens to break with her entirely if she returns to her husband, and although Marya has longed to be re-united with Stephan, she is unable to choose between the two. Stephan realizes the truth, and the film ends with him abandoning Marya to an uncertain future. ===== columbinus includes excerpts from discussions with parents, survivors and community leaders in Littleton as well as diaries and home video footage to reveal what it refers to as "the dark recesses of American adolescence". The first act of the play is set in a stereotypical, fictional American high school and follows the lives and struggles of eight teenage archetypes. These characters are not given names but labels, and the two outcast friends designated in the script as "Freak" and "Loner" are slowly driven to crime and madness by the bullying from their classmates. In the first scene of act two, these boys become Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when the actors playing Freak and Loner, respectively, approach two tables with objects relating to the massacre and change into replicas of the clothing the perpetrators wore; the perpetrators' senior photos are projected on a screen behind them. The scenes following this are taken from the perpetrators' videos and personal journals, illustrating the days approaching and including the shootings and the suspects' suicides. The newly added act three has the other cast members become survivors and townspeople who reflect on the events, including the cover up of information surrounding the suspects. The play briefly touches on modern shootings such as the incidents at Aurora or Newtown. A few productions have included a brief scene discussing the story of the Columbine survivor who wrote to Mike Judge about "Wings of the Dope," an episode of King of the Hill which she credited with enabling her to grieve a boy she never got to tell she loved, who turned out to be one of the perpetrators (resulting in her being pressured to repress her grief). ===== Paul (Peter Paige), a childlike artist, becomes upset when his godson's family moves from Oregon to Japan. Paul tries to compensate for his feeling of loss with visits to the neighborhood playground. Paul's best friend Russell (Anthony Clark) tries to warn him what people might think if they see him hanging around their kids, but Paul doesn't quite see it that way. As Russell predicted, soon Maggie (Kathy Najimy), a somewhat bigoted local mom, launches a crusade against the naive Paul, with an army of furious parents in town. ===== Bugs Bunny is taking his morning shower under a waterfall, singing "April Showers" (à lá Al Jolson) when the water stops flowing. He decides that beavers are responsible and, after a brief delirium that the supply has permanently dried up, climbs up the waterfall to the source of the problem. The source of the problem turns out to be the villainous Blacque Jacque Shellacque, who has built an illegal rock dam in an effort to control the water supply and sell it at inflated prices. Bugs demands for Jacque to explain what gives him the right to build the dam, and Jacque responds "Dees give me ze right!" as he sticks a revolver into Bugs' neck (this exchange is cut out of most commercial showings). Bugs next asks Jacque what would happen if certain rocks become loose, to which Jacque simply states he would replace them. Bugs then tricks Jacque into removing a tiny rock, at the dam's base, which then dislodges the dam. Later, Bugs resumes showering, but Jacque has built a replacement dam ("Won't that guy ever learn?" "Thees time I build heem stronger!"). Jacque expects another sabotage attempt from Bugs, and thinks he is still one step ahead of the rabbit when he spots what he believes to be a phony shark fin in the impounded water. The shark is real, however, and threatens Jacques until Bugs "saves" him by crashing a log through the dam. ("Thees is being saved?") Still later, Bugs has resumed showering again, but Jacque has built an even bigger replacement dam, and gloats at Bugs from above. Unintimidated, Bugs turns to the audience and quotes Red Skelton's "mean widdle kid": "He don't know me vewy well, do he?" (just like in Hare Trigger). Bugs then sends a single lighted stick of dynamite on a miniature raft towards the new Shellacque-built dam, but as Jacque tends to it (or vice versa, as the dynamite blows up in Jacque's face off-screen), he also immediately notices a huge raft full of lighted dynamite subsequently headed toward the dam and they explode and demolish it. Finally fed up with Bugs, Jacque fires his rifle into the waterfall not knowing Bugs is not there, thinking he has killed off his nemesis once and for all ("So much for crazee seek rahbeet! Bah!"). Nearby, Bugs - at his carrot garden - sees that his record player has been destroyed by Jacque's gunfire. Although mad at first, Bugs calmly declares his famous line: "Of course you know, this means war." Later, a triumphant Jacque boasts about his new steel dam, but quickly finds out that his water supply has been cut off. Bugs, it turns out, has turned the tables and built a dam of his own, in revenge for the aforementioned shooting of the record player. Declaring this as the last straw, an angry Jacque retrieves a cannon and blows the dam apart, only to find another rabbit-built dam. Jacque blows that one up as well, only to find more dams to destroy. Finally, Jacque reaches the "Grand Cooler Dam" (a pun on "Grand Coulee Dam", although the dam looks more like Hoover Dam). Jacque tries to blow that dam up as well, but his attempt fails (the cannonball bounces off of the face of the dam and back into the muzzle of the cannon) and he is launched into a police paddy wagon instead and hauled away for attempting to destroy the Cooler Dam. "He's not foolin' me--he'll be back..." says Bugs as he watches his nemesis being taken away. "Like, uh, in about 20 years?" ===== Scientist Doug Fartin (who insists that his name is pronounced “Far- tan”) is in charge of Operation Manhole, a project to eliminate all homosexuals in the military by luring them to a specific spot and then dropping a bomb on them. The bomb, however, misses its target and instead obliterates part of the nearby town of Inbred, Texas. The plane is then struck by an invisible force and crashes to earth, and its occupants—Dr. Fartin and the pilot—are presumed dead. Fartin, however, was saved from the plane by extraterrestrials with bulging eyeballs, who then performed an operation on him. Fartin wanders back to the military base the next day, with no memory of how he survived the plane crash, and is beginning to exhibit stereotypically gay behavior (e.g., he keeps using the word “fabulous”). Base commander Colonel Butz and surgeon Major Problemo talk to Doug's wife, Vagina, about her husband's new behavior; if she can't turn him back into “a real man,” he'll be included in the next bombing. She tries her best to sexually arouse him, but he can only have sex with her while imagining that she's Ted Kennedy. The next day, Doug Fartin—whose security clearance has been revoked because of his new gayness—steals a piece of paper from a vault in Butz's office. Upon hearing of this, FBI agent Priggs tries to figure out what was stolen, which isn't easy because the vault is highly disorganized and mostly filled with take-out menus. Priggs discovers a handful of marijuana on the floor in front of the vault, and immediately recognizes it as part of Fartin's stash. Doug arrives at Sodom Flats with the paper, but is caught and confronted by Priggs. Doug punches Priggs out and tries to escape in his car, but a hallucination of bulging eyeballs causes him to run off the road and crash. Regaining consciousness in the base infirmary, Fartin remembers what happened to him after the plane went down, and tells his story to Butz and the others: The aliens, who are from Uranus (“an all-gay planet”), have been the ones responsible for creating homosexuals on Earth and other planets. Over the centuries, they've monitored these planets and tried to snuff out homophobia. The last time they’d visited Earth was during World War II, when their agents abducted Adolf Hitler and turned him into a cross-dressing lounge singer on another planet; the Germans set up an imposter in Hitler's place, but when the imposter ordered the invasion of Russia, the aliens knew that Nazi Germany was doomed, so they left. Now the aliens have returned, with a new mission: to build a machine whose transmissions will cause everyone on Earth to become homosexual. They had ordered Fartin to return to the military base, steal from the vault the bottom half of page 32 from the original manuscript of Giovanni's Room, and bring it to the aliens’ subterranean headquarters at Sodom Flats. Fartin rightly concluded that there's something on the paper that the aliens needed to complete their machine and refused to cooperate, but the alien leader—the Super-Homo—hypnotized Doug to ensure his complicity. After hearing Fartin's story, Butz and his associates aren't sure about Doug's sanity. Later, Sheriff Mussolino of Inbred (who's been turned into a bulging- eyed agent of the aliens) materializes in Fartin's room and tells him that the aliens now need a power source for their machine; Fartin, who is now convinced that helping the aliens is the right thing to do, goes to the nearby power station and orders the technician, at gunpoint, to move certain levers and switches (one of which causes the camera filming this movie to temporarily falter). Butz, Problemo, Priggs, Vagina, and others try to stop Doug, but they're too late; everyone looks out the window and witnesses a huge explosion, the radiation from which changes the sexuality of everyone on Earth, turning straight people gay and gay people—such as Doug Fartin—straight. ===== The short opens with a display of the book that shows the Three Little Pigs who used to play pipes and dance jigs. The short then focuses to the present day and reveals the pigs now play modern instruments and perform as The Three Little Bops. During a gig at the House of Straw, the Big Bad Wolf appears and proves he is friendly by stating that he wants to join the band. The Wolf happens to be terrible at playing his choice instrument (a trumpet) so the pigs throw him out. Feeling insulted, the Wolf retaliates by blowing down the straw house using his trumpet, forcing the pigs to go to the Dew Drop Inn, the House of Sticks. Things go well (including the piano playing pig doing an imitation of Liberace's "I wish my brother George was here"), until the Wolf comes in and attempts to play his trumpet again. Like the pigs, the people watching also think the wolf's playing is corny, so they call for the pigs to "throw the square out", which they do. Again, the Wolf retaliates by blowing down the Dew Drop Inn. The pigs then realize that to escape the Wolf's "windy tricks," they will go to the House of Bricks (built on May 1, 1776, according to a cornerstone). The House of Bricks has a "No Wolves Allowed" rule, so when the Wolf tries to get in, he is punched in the face by a bouncer. Then he tries to ram the door down with a log but with no success. The Wolf runs out of breath in trying to blow away the club, but thinks he can get in by disguising himself. He reenters in fur coat and ukulele with his perfect rendition of the Charleston song (cut short by slipping on a strategically thrown banana peel). He returns in the disguise of a houseplant with his trumpet but gets blasted outside by a plunger shot from the double bass. For his third try, the Wolf shows up in a drum major outfit playing a big bass drum to the tune of "Don't Give Up the Ship". A dart is shot into the drum to deflate it, leaving him to exit in humiliation before the pigs shut and lock the door to ensure he can't get in again. Not the least bit deterred, he shows up with a large cylinder of TNT and snaps, "I'll show those pigs that I'm not stuck! If I can't blow it down, I'll blow it up!" The fuse is blown out on his first try, so he steps back a bit and lights it from there. Unfortunately for him, he is too far away and his weapon explodes while he is carrying it to his target, killing the Big Bad Wolf. The narrator reveals that the explosion did not send the Wolf to Heaven but down to "the other place", where his trumpet playing improves. When the pigs hear this, one of them says, "The Big Bad Wolf, he learned the rule: you gotta get hot to play real cool!" The Wolf's spirit then rises up through the floor and, now playing expertly, joins in for the final notes prompting one of the pigs to alter their band's name to "The Three Little Bops Plus One". ===== Ashley Black is depressed because her father Jack spends all his time focusing on his job instead of her and her older brother Joshua. She constantly records his radio show and listens to it. One day, her father takes them to a remote Canadian lake that was popular with tourists due to a myth about an aquatic monster named Orky. They rented a cabin next to an elderly First Nations man who uses a wheelchair. Jack meets a local psychiatrist, Dr. Wanda Bell, who is trying to aid some local men who claim that they have been possessed by Orky. When Ashley runs away, Jack also has the same experience while looking for her. As a result, he becomes more devoted to his children. Ashley and Joshua find out that the reason that Orky is possessing people is to try and tell them that he is dying because a businessman is dumping toxic waste into the lake. Ashley and Joshua help the old man in the cabin next to theirs to find a totem pole in the woods. With the help of Hiro, the son of Japanese monster seekers, they expose the businessman's illegal dumping. Orky, however, still dies from the poisonous waste. The old man summons a lightning bolt which enters a hole in the cave where Orky lives. Ashley and Hiro stay on the dock overnight and leave some cookies out. When she realizes that the cookies have been eaten, Ashley screams with joy which suggests that Orky is still alive, or reincarnated. ===== Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Antonio Banderas) finds himself without adequate funding to finance his war against the military-run government. He also finds himself at odds with the Americans because of the Hearst media empire's press campaign against him. To counter both of these threats, he sends emissaries to movie producers to convince them to pay to film his progress and the actual battles. Producer D.W. Griffith (Colm Feore) is immediately interested and convinces Mutual Film Studios boss Harry E. Aitkin to send a film crew. Aitkin's nephew Frank Thayer is initially a mere errand boy for the studio, but he makes a good impression with Villa, who demands that Thayer be placed in charge of the project. Thayer and a camera crew team film Villa leading his men to victory in battle. Despite the failure of this initial footage (which draws derisive laughter from potential backers) Thayer convinces Aitkin to invest even more money in a second attempt, and also convinces Villa to participate in making a more narrative film. Thayer returns to Mexico with a director, actors, producers, cameramen and screenwriters, and begin to film Villa's previous exploits using a younger actor, future film director Raoul Walsh (Kyle Chandler). The filming goes well, although Villa becomes angry that the screenwriters and the director have changed history to make a more dramatic film. However, he agrees to do a cameo appearance as an older version of himself. Meanwhile, Thayer begins a romance with actress Teddy Sampson (Alexa Davalos) whom he's had a crush on since they first met. One night Villa announces that they will attack a Federal held fort at Torreon and win the revolution. The film's director and his crew tell Villa that they are not coming with him to film the battle. Villa scares them into going to the battle by having a firing squad shoot over their heads. The next morning, Villa assembles his men to attack Torreon. Thayer and his team go in to film the action. After a skirmish on the way to the fort, Villa's army arrives at Torreon and lays siege to the fortress. Villa orders an attack and personally leads the charge. Villa's army is initially successful, but they suffer heavy casualties and are forced to withdraw. That night, Villa orders his army to bombard Torreon into submission, and, after a long, brutal bombardment, Villa's cavalry finishes off the last of Torreon's Federal defenders. However, Thayer and his camera crew team witness Villa personally shooting a Mexican widow in cold blood with his handgun during the aftermath of the battle. Disgusted, the team leaves. The Life of General Villa is shown in theaters in America, and to great success, although Thayer and his camera crew members regret making the film. Nine years later General Villa is driving his car with an associate and two of his bodyguards through Parral, Chihuahua. His car is flagged down by a Mexican civilian, when several Federals suddenly appear with machine guns. Villa reaches for his pistol, but is shot several times and is killed. ===== Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield) is working as a short order cook on a space station somewhere in the galaxy. Overwhelmed by the volume of orders, he repeatedly fouls up and soon finds himself in a confrontation with an alien patron named Vang. After a fight which smashes up the diner and leaves the alien injured, Steve and his friend and co-worker Shorty (Hamilton Camp) are fired. As it turns out, Vang is an Arena fighter, and his manager Quinn (Claudia Christian) confronts Steve. Amazed that a human could beat one of her best fighters, Quinn offers him a contract, but convinced that humans no longer have a place in the Arena, Steve refuses, intending to make his way back to Earth. Lacking sufficient money for a ticket, Shorty attempts to raise the cash by gambling in an underground casino. The game is raided by the authorities and in the confusion, Shorty pockets the money. Caught in the act by crime boss Rogor (Marc Alaimo) and his enforcer Weezil (Armin Shimerman), Shorty is held for ransom. Steve promises to pay off the debt, so he reluctantly returns to Quinn and agrees to a contract. Remarkably he wins his first match with an alien named Sloth in an upset. He continues fighting, determined to prove that a human has what it takes to be champion, and soon becomes a top contender. Despite Rogor's multiple attempts to cheat, Steve ultimately wins the championship from Rogor's top fighter, an alien named Horn (Michael Deak). ===== The plot revolves around a series of murders that take place over two years in the Nevada Desert near Groom Lake. The movie opens with a woman being chased through the desert by an unseen creature, but then she wakes up revealing it to be a nightmare. Traci and her boyfriend Gibson are driving across the desert at night. Gibson keeps talking about Area 51, but Traci is only interested in reaching Las Vegas. In order to get Gibson to shut up and keep driving, Traci takes her top off and straddles his lap. Because of her distraction he runs over something, blowing out a tire. Gibson stops to change the tire, but immediately vanishes when he gets out of the car. Traci searches for him, but only finds a bloody tire iron. She runs back to the car, lights a cigarette and drives away. However, she soon has an accident and is trapped by the seatbelt. The monster picks up her cigarette outside the car and ignites the gasoline leaking from the car, setting it and Traci on fire. Several people are attacked at a small carnival, by an alien. This draws the attention of Dr. Cleo Browning (Phoebe Falconer). Dr. Browning discusses killing the creature with Sheriff Sam Cash (Sean Galuszka), but she is overheard by animal rights activist Roxanne, and her boyfriend Albert. Roxanne thinks that if they capture the alien they can expose to the world what the government is doing to animals. In the meantime, three of the carnival workers set out to capture the alien and add it to the sideshow. Cash and Dr. Browning meet with Cletus (Matthew Christopher). He speculates that the alien is living in a cave in the mountains. While the two are meeting with Cletus, Roxanne attempts to slash the sheriff's tires, sending Albert to act as a lookout. Unable to cut the tires, she looks for Albert, but is unable to find him. Eventually, when she discovers his body, she screams and starts to run, but she also killed by the alien. The next day, Dr. Browning and Cash search for the alien. They find its "home" in a small tunnel. Cash lowers Dr. Browning into the tunnel by rope. Browning finds the alien's child and sends it back up to Cash. The three carnival workers sneak up and hold a gun to Cash's head, demanding the alien child. He gives it to them and they throw him into the tunnel. Cash and Browning escape and return to the carnival. They interrupt the sideshow and take the alien child back. They attempt to drive away but one of the workers shoots out one of their tires. The carnies then lure Dr. Browning near the "Mother" alien, who had just arrived. She is attacked by the alien but is able to fight back. One of the carnies, fighting with Cash, shoot him. Dr. Browning, stabs the alien while fighting it and the creature collapses. As the doctor is walking away a woman carney asks if the alien is dead and she says it is. As the carney bends over the alien it leaps up and kills her. ===== David Mingolla is an artillery specialist in the United States Army serving in a near-future Central American war (references are made to then-future "Afghanistan in '89" and a nuclear weapon that destroyed Tel Aviv). As his unit serves in "Free Occupied Guatemala", Mingolla goes on leave and meets a woman named Debora in a cantina. They gradually become lovers; however, as they get close to each other, Mingolla feels intense mental pain later identified as a psychic probing his mind. Soon after this, Mingolla is recruited into the Psicorps, an elite group of psychics the United States has assembled to counter the Soviet Union's own. Debora, a veteran of the revolt that led to American intervention in the first place, is designated his target. On his way through Psicorps training to refine his mental abilities, Mingolla learns that this front of the Cold War (published before 1991, before USSR's fall) as well as the war itself is a manipulation by two Panamanian families, the Madradonas and the Sotomayors, over three centuries to increase psychic potential in humanity as well as their own genetic diversity. Mingolla and Debora meet and part several times before their meeting with the Madradonas and Sotomayors in Darién, Panama and become embroiled with the members of Mingolla's former squad in a firefight which culminates in the nuclear destruction of Panama City. David and Debora leave the city and their former friends and antagonists behind them, deciding that ultimately what matters is their love for one another, the only item that has not been blatantly manipulated. The fictional work excerpted several times in the novel, Juan Pastorín's short story collection The Fictive Boarding House, gives clues to the nature of the novel and Mingolla's experiences himself in a type of foreshadowing. The lyrics of Prowler heard or sung or thought among members of Mingolla's unit which bookend Life during Wartime serve this function as well. As a nod to science fiction author Philip K. Dick's work, the text itself does not present a clear or objective account of what truly happened to Mingolla or what was hallucination on his part. (At one point on Mingolla's journey, an AI combining a downed Sikorsky helicopter and a long-range guided missile imparts "revelation" to him.) PsiCorps' intensive drug therapy to hone Mingolla's potential as well as the presence and use of "Sammy" (short for Samurai, an intense stimulant) and Frost, a super-addictive version of cocaine, make the third person point of view essential for this novel. ===== Adso of Melk recounts how, in 1327, as a young Franciscan novice (a Benedictine one in the novel), he and his mentor, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, traveled to a Benedictine abbey in northern Italy where the Franciscans were to debate with papal emissaries the poverty of Christ. The abbey boasts a famed scriptorium where scribes copy, translate or illuminate books. The monk Adelmo of Otranto —a young but famous manuscript illuminator— was suspiciously found dead on a hillside below a tower with only a window which cannot be opened. The abbot seeks help from William, who is renowned for his deductive powers. William is reluctantly drawn in by the intellectual challenge and his desire to disprove fears of a demonic culprit. William also worries the abbot will summon officials of the Inquisition if the mystery remains unsolved. William quickly deduces that Adelmo committed suicide, having jumped from a nearby tower having a window, and that the slope of the hill caused the body to roll below the other tower. William's solution briefly allays the monks' fears, until another Monk is found dead, ominously floating in a vat of pig's blood. The victim is Venantius, a translator of Greek and the last man to speak with Adelmo. The corpse bears black stains on a finger and the tongue. The translator's death rekindles the monks' fears of a supernatural culprit, fears reinforced when the saintly Fransciscan friar Ubertino of Casale warns that the deaths resemble signs mentioned in the Book of Revelation. In the scriptorium, William inspects Adelmo's desk, but is blocked by Brother Berengar, the assistant librarian. Brother Malachia, the head librarian, denies William access to the rest of the building. William encounters Salvatore, a demented hunchback, and his protector, Remigio da Varagine, the cellarer. William deduces that both were Dulcinites, members of a heretical, militant sect that believes that clergy should be impoverished. William does not suspect them of murder though because Dulcinites target wealthy bishops, not poor monks. Nevertheless, Remigio's past gives William leverage in learning the abbey's secrets. Salvatore tells William that Adelmo had crossed paths with Venantius on the night that Adelmo died. Meanwhile, Adso encounters a beautiful, semi-feral, peasant girl who has sneaked into the abbey to trade sexual favours for food, and is seduced by her. Returning that night to Venantius's desk, William finds a book in Greek, and a parchment with Greek writing, smudges of a color blended by Adelmo for illuminating books, and cryptic symbols written by a left-handed man using invisible ink. Berengar sneaks into the darkened scriptorium, distracts William and steals the book. Berengar is later found drowned in a bath and bearing stains similar to those on Venantius. William narrates his conclusions that Adelmo's death was indeed suicide, due to giving in to Berengar's requests for homosexual favors. Venantius received a parchment from Adelmo before Adelmo's death, and Berengar is the only left-handed man in the abbey. William theorizes that the translator transcribed the Greek notes on the parchment from a book, and that the book is somehow responsible for the deaths. The abbot is unconvinced and, burning the parchment, he informs William that the Inquisition — in the person of Bernardo Gui, an old adversary of William — has already been summoned. Determined to solve the mystery before Gui arrives, William and Adso discover a vast, hidden library above the scriptorium. William suspects the abbey hid the books because much of their contents comes from pagan philosophers. Gui finds Salvatore and the peasant girl fighting over a black cockerel while in the presence of a black cat. For Gui, this is irrefutable proof of witchcraft, and he tortures Salvatore into a false confession. Privately, William reveals his past connection to Gui, and his own past as an inquisitor to Adso. Years earlier, Bernardo Gui demanded that William condemn a man whose sole crime was translating a Greek book that conflicted with the scriptures. Ultimately, Gui had William imprisoned and tortured to change his verdict, with the translator being burned at the stake. As both William's Franciscan brothers and the papal delegates arrive, the debate begins. Soon, the abbey's herbalist finds a book written in Greek in his dispensary, and is overheard telling this to William. The herbalist returns to his dispensary, only to be murdered by a hooded figure. Shortly afterward, Malachia warns Remigio to escape, as Salvatore has revealed their Dulcinite history. After Remigio attempts to escape, Malachia wipes blood from his own shoes, revealing that it was he who murdered the herbalist. Before Remigio can escape the abbey, he is caught by Bernardo Gui's guards. Learning of Remigio's Dulcinite past, Gui arrests him for the murders, and brings Remigio, Salvatore and the girl before a tribunal. Remembering William, Gui chooses him to join the abbot as a tribunal judge. At trial, Remigio proudly admits his past but denies having killed anyone in the abbey. While the abbot quickly condemns Remigio for murder, William points out that the murders are tied to the Greek book, which Remigio could not read, and warns that Remigio's execution will not end the murders. Under Gui's threats of torture, however, Remigio "confesses" by falsely summoning the Devil. Gui arranges for the prisoners to be burned at the stake, while William, having "relapsed", will be taken to Avignon. The papal delegates condemn the Franciscans for William's obstinacy and end the debate. As the monks prepare to burn Gui's prisoners, Malachia is found dying, with black stains on his tongue and finger. Although Malachia's death vindicates William's warning, Gui takes it as proof that William is the murderer, and orders his arrest. Fleeing Gui's guards, William and Adso re-enter the secret library and come face to face with the Venerable Jorge, the oldest denizen of the abbey. Having decoded the lines on the translator's parchment, William demands that Jorge turn over the book that the dead men had been reading: Aristotle's Second Book of Poetics on Comedy. Jorge hates laughter, thinking it undermines faith in God, and a book on laughter written by Arisotle will only bring laughter to the wise men, and undermine the faith among those of learning. To prevent that, Jorge killed those who had read the book by poisoning its pages. Jorge gives the book to William, thinking he too will suffer the poison. When William reveals that he is wearing gloves, Jorge grabs the book, then starts a blaze that quickly engulfs the library. William stays behind, trying to save some of the books and encouraging Adso to leave. Jorge kills himself by consuming the poison-coated pages. Seeing the fire, the monks abandon the prisoners, allowing the local peasants to save the girl, though Salvatore and Remigio die. Adso chases Gui, who manages to escape him, but the peasants push his wagon off a cliff, impaling him. As William and Adso depart, Adso encounters the girl, stops for a few seconds, but eventually chooses to go with William. The much older Adso states that he never regretted his decision as he learned many more things from William before their ways parted. He also says that the girl was the only earthly love of his life, but he never learned her name. ===== Nancy Drew finds out that she has won a rather unusual prize in a contest, a piece of land in Canada. She takes a trip, her first outside of the United States,http://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/PRESSKIT-Factoids.pdf to see what her new property looks like. As she is traveling by train to Canada, she meets an author named Ann Chapelle. Suddenly, the train crashes, and everything is thrown into confusion. Nancy and her two friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, are uninjured, but Chapelle is taken to a nearby hospital, gravely injured. When Nancy and her friends find her, Miss Chapelle tells Nancy the reason she was going to Canada, and asks a favor of her—to give a message to Miss Chapelle's grandfather, and to a lost love whom she hasn't seen since she ran away from home some years ago. Along with this request, Nancy also has another problem: Two men have heard that there might be gold on Nancy's land, and are determined to get there first. ===== Butch "Bullet" Stein (Mickey Rourke) is a 35-year-old Jewish-American convict and junkie, who is released from prison on parole after serving an 8-year sentence for being an accomplice to a robbery, perpetrated by his friend, Irish-American gangster Paddy. After his release, Bullet and his best friend Lester (John Enos III) rob two teenagers for drugs. He also robs and stabs in the eye drug runner Flaco (Manny Pérez), telling him to let his boss Tank (Tupac Shakur) know Bullet is back. He returns to Brooklyn to live with his dysfunctional family, including his alcoholic father, depressed mother and his two brothers, the older mentally unstable Vietnam veteran Louis (Ted Levine), and his younger brother Ruby (Adrien Brody), an aspiring graffiti artist. Tank is a local drug kingpin with a score to settle after Bullet stabbed him in the eye while they were serving time together. Bullet seems to welcome the challenge. Tank first pressures Paddy to find and deliver Bullet to him. Later, he tries to have him killed by having one of Paddy's dealers sell Bullet drugs laced with poison. This fails when the drug spot is robbed by gunmen, one of whom stabs Ruby through the hand with a knife in the process. Over the course of the film, Bullet keeps himself occupied by shooting heroin and robbing his neighbor's house for jewelry, which he and Lester sell to an Italian-American gangster named "Frankie Eyelashes" (Larry Romano). He also encourages Ruby to follow his artistic dreams and has a deep friend-to-friend talk with Lester over whether Lester might be a closeted homosexual because of his mother abandoning him and his father's passing when he was a child, but he denies it. After the first failed attempt to kill Bullet, Tank gets one of his henchmen to start a fight with Bullet, which is witnessed by Louis. The fight ends in a draw when the henchman breaks his hand. Paddy figures out Tank's attempt to kill Bullet and that he is trying to play him and his associates against one another. He and his henchman Big Balls (Donnie Wahlberg) confront Tank about it, in the process killing two of his henchmen, including High Top (Michael K. Williams). Bullet briefly returns home where he tells his mother he's sorry for everything he put her through over the years. He later goes to a nightclub with Ruby and Lester. Paddy tries to help him escape because Tank is on the way to kill him. Bullet then accepts his fate when he is cornered by Tank and his men and has a final showdown with Tank, who shoots him dead to Ruby's horror. Soon after Bullet's funeral, Louis gets revenge by sneaking up on an unsuspecting Tank as he tries to enter his club and proceeding to cut Tank's throat, killing him. Louis then leaves Bullet's pet rat (named after Tony Curtis) on the dead body, exclaiming "Payback's a motherfucker" (a line which Tank said to Bullet when he had his henchman battle Bullet). The final shot of the film ends with Louis watching as Bullet's rat is about to feast on Tank's corpse. ===== The film begins with a day nearing end. Rachel, the daughter in the first family, is shown working in a nursing home. Phil, her father, is shown driving people around in his minicab. Penny, Rachel's mother, is shown working as a cashier at Safeway store alongside Maureen, the mother in the second family. When Penny leaves work, she cycles home to find her 18-year-old son Rory in a fight with a local boy for taking his football. Rory is a lazy, obese, ill-mannered teenager who neither goes to school nor has a job. Complications with his obesity arise when after an altercation with a gang of youths playing "Piggy in the Middle", he runs out of breath, begins to hyperventilate and is hospitalized after suffering a heart attack. The second family consists of Maureen, another cashier at Safeway, and her daughter Donna, a waitress at a cafe. Donna becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, Jason, despite being on the pill, and this leads to a heated argument among the three characters. The third family consists of Ron, who also drives a minicab, his unemployed teenage daughter Samantha, and his wife Carol, an unemployed alcoholic. Samantha shows interest in both Jason and Craig, a taciturn young man who seems to stalk her. ===== Two alien races, the Nezom and Zerai clans obtained a powerful crystalline stone called "The Relic," and anointed themselves "The Chosen Ones." The Chosen Ones used this power to subjugate the other races, exterminating those that failed to comply. After this era of war, The Chosen Ones began to enjoy a new age of peace. However, The Relic was stolen and The Chosen Ones' power was shaken. Now, warriors from all over the universe seek the relic, each with their own ambitions. ===== In the Kingdom of Sesame there is a little red monster named CinderElmo who lives with his wicked Stepmother, his Stepbrothers Telly Monster and Baby Bear, Zoe and the household dog and mice. His stepfamily has received invitations to the Princess' Ball, which leaves CinderElmo to do all the house chores. Meanwhile, the King's town crier, Grover, reminds King Fred that Princess Charming has until midnight to find someone to marry or lose the kingdom altogether. The King decides to invite every man and monster in the kingdom. Shortly the word is sent out around the kingdom. The Stepmother teaches her sons a new dance in preparation for the ball. Baker Cookie Monster arrives as a General Invitation Deliverer and gives CinderElmo an invitation to the ball, but the Stepmother won't permit him. When the horse and carriage arrive, she locks CinderElmo and his friends up in the house. When CinderElmo wishes upon a falling star, his Fairy God person comes and encourages CinderElmo to come up with some plan and "so something" to make his dreams come true. After CinderElmo has a wash, Fairy God person provides him and Zoe with smart clothes, turns the dog into a handsome prince, turns the dog bowl into a carriage, and the mice into horses. CinderElmo has limited time till midnight to make the best of what Fairy God person granted him. CinderElmo, Zoe, and Prince make it to the ball. The Stepbrothers perform the dance their mother taught them and the Princess Charming joins them. Everyone else joins in the dance except CinderElmo who gets caught in the Herald's cloak. Princess Charming finds Prince and asks him to find CinderElmo, the only one who took her fancy. While Princess Charming turns down the marriage proposals of the Stepbrothers, CinderElmo and Zoe sneak past the Stepmother in a suit of armor to attend the last dance before midnight. The suit of armor tumbles and crashes, but Princess Charming gives CinderElmo the dance of his dreams. Before he can introduce himself, CinderElmo has seconds before the midnight deadline and runs off with his friends back home as the magic wears off, changing Elmo, Zoe, and Prince back to normal and leaving only a shoe behind, but Princess Charming manages to make her choice of man to marry. Now all the royal family has to do is find the one whose foot fits the shoe in order to find the princess's beloved. After many unsuccessful tries, the royal family head to the Stepmother's house. The shoe will not fit either of the Stepbrothers. Princess Charming recognizes CinderElmo when he comes, but CinderElmo thinks he is too young to marry. Now the King has the option to change the law that legalizes marriage between the princess and CinderElmo. The Fairy God person changes Prince back to a human. Prince and the Princess take a liking to each other. The royal family invites everyone to come to the palace leaving the Stepmother and mice behind. ===== The game's events are set in the year 2877. In 2077, the world's peacekeeping unions, such as the United Nations and the European Union, collapsed after years of global tensions, forcing humanity to establish a planetary government in order to maintain order. A government operating as the World Silent Security Service, also known as the W.S.S.S., is established and world peace is restored. The WSSS takes control of both the planet Earth and outer space, establishing its headquarters on the Central Control Station Daedalus in earth orbit. The WSSS eradicates the control of all previous unions and organizations and unites the whole of humanity under its control for over 800 years. However, with all of its original creators gone by that point in time, humanity questions the justification of Deadulus's rule, and some begin to rebel against the government in the wake of its so-called archaic policies. The leading rebel group in this massive rebellion, the Reformist Faction, sends three elite pilots of the highly sophisticated Laocorn-class Assault Robots on a covert mission to destroy Daedalus. Once inside, two Laocorns are immediately destroyed, leaving the one survivor, the player character, to face Daedalus' massive robot armies and transverse vast, dark corridors in his quest to destroy Daedalus and to save humanity. ===== Tideland centers on an abandoned child, Jeliza-Rose, and her solitary adventures during one summer in rural Texas while staying at a rundown farmhouse called What Rocks, and focuses on the increasingly dark, imaginative fantasy life the girl creates with the aid of dismembered Barbie doll heads that she often wears on her fingertips. With names such as Mystique, Sateen Lips, Baby Blonde and Glitter Gal, the doll heads not only engage in long conversations with Jeliza-Rose, reflecting different aspects of the girl's psyche, but also act as her companions while she explores the barren Texas landscape. After her mother overdoses on Methadone, Jeliza-Rose and her father, Noah, flee to Noah's mother's home, a remote Texas farmhouse. Noah fears that with all the drugs in their house he will lose Jeliza-Rose and be sent to prison, so he attempts to set it alight before they leave, although Jeliza-Rose manages to stop him. They find the farmhouse abandoned, but they settle in anyway. Their first night there, Noah dies from a heroin overdose. For much of the rest of the film, Noah's corpse remains seated upright in a living room chair with sunglasses covering his eyes. As her father slowly begins to decompose, Jeliza-Rose doesn't readily acknowledge his death because she has grown accustomed to him being unconscious for long periods at a time. Instead, she retreats deeper and deeper into her own mind, exploring the tall grass around the farmhouse, relying on her doll heads for friendship as an unconscious way of keeping herself from feeling too lonely and afraid. During Jeliza-Rose's wanderings, she eventually encounters and befriends her neighbors, a mentally impaired young man called Dickens and his older sister Dell who is blind in one eye from a bee sting. At this point the story begins to unfold, revealing a past connection between Dell and Jeliza-Rose's deceased father. The eccentric neighbors take the girl under their wing, going so far as to preserve Noah's body via taxidermy (which Dell and Dickens did to their own dead mother). Amorous feelings, initiated mostly by the much younger Jeliza-Rose, begin to creep into the childlike relationship between her and Dickens, and it is revealed that the deeply troubled Dickens, a man-child who once drove a school bus in front of an oncoming train, keeps a stash of dynamite in his bedroom that he intends to use against the "Monster Shark" he believes is roaming the countryside. The Monster Shark is, in reality, the nightly passenger train that travels past the farmhouse where Jeliza-Rose and her dead father reside. It is also revealed that Dell and Noah are not only "kissers," but also brother and sister, after Jeliza-Rose finds the trinkets in the dead mother's room to belong to her father. At the end of the film, following a violent confrontation between Dell, Dickens and Jeliza-Rose, a train wreck is caused by Dickens' dynamite, creating a scene of chaos near the farmhouse. Wandering about the wreckage, and among the confusion of injured travelers, Jeliza-Rose is discovered by a woman who survived, and she assumes the little girl is also a victim of the train wreck. The film ends with the woman embracing Jeliza-Rose, who stares with stunned confusion at the wreckage. ===== Setting: 90 years in the dining room of the Bayard House. Length: ~35 minutes Summary: A one-act drama about several generations of one family: A play whose actionSamuel French website for The Long Christmas Dinner traverses ninety years and represents in accelerated motion ninety Christmas dinners in the Bayard home. The development of the countryside, the changes in customs and manners during this period of time as well as the growth of the Bayard family and their accumulation of property sums up vividly a wide aspect of American life. It is a serious play lightened with humor of character; it has a human, tender, moving quality both appealing and forceful. ===== Tim is the story of the developing relationship between an older, educated and wealthy American woman, Mary Horton (played by Piper Laurie) who lives on her own and a handsome, developmentally impaired 24-year- old builder's labourer, Tim Melville (played by Mel Gibson), whom she hires. Tim lives with his sister, Dawnie (Deborah Kennedy), who is a year older than he is, and their parents Ron (Alwyn Kurts) and Emily (Pat Evison). Dawnie marries her boyfriend, Mick Harrington (David Foster). Dawnie and Mick make clear they dislike Mary and oppose her relationship with Tim, but do not state their reason for feeling that way. Tim eventually marries Mary. ===== In the New England town of New Gilead during the late 19th century, an unscrupulous drunkard named Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price) runs the funeral parlor he acquired from his former business partner Amos Hinchley (Boris Karloff) after marrying his daughter Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson). Trumbull enlists the assistance of a fugitive picklock named Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre) in conducting his business cheaply by reusing the firm's only coffin to unceremoniously dump the deceased while arranging the occasional murder of wealthy clients. Trumbull, being emotionally abusive to Amaryllis while attempting to poison the now-senile Hinchley under the guise of giving him medicine, ultimately wastes his money on alcohol as clientele is dwindling. Trumbull decides to profit from gentleman shipping merchant Mr. Phipps after being threatened with eviction by his landlord John F. Black (Rathbone) if he does not produce the long-overdue rent. Trumbull forces Gillie to get him into the Phipps estate, smothering the old man in his sleep and then making a fortuitous return the following morning to get the job of burying him. But Trumbull is livid to learn on the day of the funeral that Phipps's attractive young wife had left town with her husband's fortune without even paying for the funerary expenses. Trumbull decides to murder Black after receiving a final warning for rent, having Gillie enter through the upstairs window of Black's estate. Gillie ends up in Black's bedroom as the man was reading from Shakespeare's Macbeth and forced to run out when spotted, causing Black to suffer a heart attack with the physician pronouncing him dead. But Trumbull and Gillie, after taking him to the funeral parlor, are unaware that Black suffers from catalepsy as he awakens in the cellar due to his cat allergy and recognizes Gillie. After attempting to keep Black from running off as he collapses from another heart attack, Trumbull and Gillie place him in the coffin with the former knocking out Black when he came to and struggles to get out of it. Following a successive funeral, the supposedly deceased Black is placed in his family crypt with Trumbull celebrating his ill gotten fortune. At that time, having feelings for Amaryllis and tired of being bossed around, Gillie convinces her that they should leave Trumbull so she can live her dream of becoming an opera singer. But Black regains consciousness at that time and returns to the funeral parlor while quoting random Macbeth lines, grabbing an axe and causing Amaryllis to faint. Black then chases Trumbull and Gillie around the house with the latter knocked unconscious after falling down a flight of stairs before Black is seemingly killed by Trumbull, Black giving a lengthy monologue before finally dying. Amaryllis comes down and assumes Trumbull to have murdered Gillie before being strangled by him when she threatens of reporting him to the authorities. Gillie awakens soon after and vengefully attacks Trumbull in a comical swordfight before being knocked out again with a poker. Mr. Black's servant arrives to report Black's sighting in the town before seeing the dead bodies and runs off for the police. A depressed Trumbull collapses in a semi-conscious heap on the floor by the stairs, failing to realize Amaryllis is still alive as she wakes Gillie and the two proceed to elope. Hinchley, who had slept through everything, comes down stairs and gives Trumbull the vial of "medicine" to sober him up. Trumbull sobers up once realizing he drank his own poison, dramatically dropping dead as an oblivious Hinchley returns to bed while regretting not getting a sip of his own "medicine". It would be after Trumbull's death that the family cat Cleopatra walks over to Black, confirming him to still be alive when his allergy acts up. ===== ===== A group of adventurers journey deep into the South American jungle in search of ancient Incan treasure. A beautiful woman, brought to their camp by hired bearers, has come to join her husband, a newer member of the group, who was recently killed by hostile natives. As the months pass, jealousies and tempers flare as fights break out over the woman. The Incan treasure is eventually found but the treasure- seekers, now united by a common enemy, are about to be attacked by hordes of fierce natives armed with bows and poisoned arrows. ===== At CERN, Father Silvano and Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) create three canisters of antimatter. Silvano is murdered, and one of the canisters is stolen. The Catholic Church mourn the sudden death of Pope Pius XVI, and prepare for the papal conclave to elect his successor in Vatican City. Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the Camerlengo, takes control of the Vatican. Four of the "preferiti", the favoured candidates to be Pope, are kidnapped by a man claiming to represent the Illuminati. He sends the Vatican a warning, claiming he will murder each of the cardinals from 8pm to midnight, when the stolen antimatter will explode and destroy the city, hidden somewhere within. American symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is brought to the Vatican to help. He deduces that the four cardinals will be murdered on the four altars of the "Path of Illumination", in locations relevant to the classical elements. McKenna gives Langdon access to the Vatican Secret Archives to research the altars, against the wishes of Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgård), head of the Swiss Guard. He and Vittoria examine Galileo Galilei's banned book, following clues to the Chigi Chapel, accompanied by Ernesto Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Claudio Vincenzi (David Pasquesi) of the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City. They find Cardinal Ebner dead, having suffocated on a mouthful of dirt and branded with the ambigrammatic word "Earth". The second, Cardinal Lamassé, is murdered in St. Peter's Square, his lungs punctured and branded with "Air". Vittoria comes to suspect the Pope was actually murdered via an overdose of tinzaparin and this is confirmed when McKenna secretly inspects the body in her presence. Langdon, Olivetti, and Vincenzi eventually identify the Santa Maria della Vittoria as the altar of fire, finding Cardinal Guidera burning to death, branded with “Fire”. The assassin appears, killing Olivetti and Vincenzi, before escaping to drown Cardinal Baggia (Marco Fiorini) in the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. Langdon intervenes and rescues Baggia with the help of bystanders. Baggia tells Langdon he was held with the preferiti in Castel Sant'Angelo. Richter confiscates Dr. Silvano's journals, thus convincing Vittoria that he is a conspirator. Langdon, Vittoria, and the police storm Castel Sant'Angelo. Langdon and Vittoria find the assassin's lair, discovering five brands, the last meant for McKenna. The assassin (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) escapes, claiming his contractors are "men of God". Guided to a car by his unseen contractor, the assassin dies when the vehicle explodes upon ignition. Langdon and Vittoria find a secret passageway leading to the Vatican, warning the Swiss Guard of McKenna's fate. They find Richter hovering over a branded McKenna. He, and Archbishop Simeon, an alleged conspirator, are killed. Langdon retrieves a key from the dying Richter's hand. The antimatter container is found in Saint Peter's tomb, due to detonate in five minutes, the cold temperature preventing its battery from being charged in time. McKenna seizes the canister, piloting a helicopter into the sky then parachuting out seconds before the antimatter detonates. McKenna is hailed as a hero, with calls for him to be elected Pope by acclamation. Langdon and Vittoria retrieve Silvano's journals from Richter's office, finding he kept tabs on the Pope with hidden security cameras. Using the key Langdon retrieved from Richter, they find footage of Richter confronting McKenna, revealing the Camerlengo is the mastermind behind the attacks. The Pope had invited Silvano to publicly present the antimatter as proof of a divine power, bridging the gap between religion and science. Considering such a claim blasphemy, McKenna orchestrated the Pope's death, and hired the Illuminati assassin, plotting to have himself elected as Pope. The footage is shown to the papal conclave. McKenna, realising he has been exposed, commits suicide via self-immolation. The Vatican announces McKenna has died from injuries from his parachute landing, and Baggia is elected as Pope Luke I. Cardinal Strauss, the Pope's new Camerlengo, gives Langdon the "Diagramma Veritatis" as thanks for his help, and allows him to complete his scholarly work on Galileo. The new Pope gives Langdon and Vittoria a thankful nod, before stepping out on the balcony to greet the crowd below. ===== In 1888, Jack the Ripper – lamenting the fact that his ritualistic murders have not unlocked a mystical power that he believes to exist – prepares to perform the ritual upon himself at the expense of his own life. A man named Legion appears and tells Jack that the power he seeks does exist and offers to share this power with him if Jack constructs an insane asylum for like-minded killers in Deadside – the land of the dead. Proclaiming "for we are many!", Jack commits suicide. In the present day, Michael LeRoi becomes the current Shadow Man – a lineage of voodoo warriors who protect the world of the living (known as Liveside) from threats crossing over from Deadside – after the voodoo priestess Mama Nettie bonds the Mask of Shadows to him. Nettie has a prophetic dream that Legion is preparing to usher in the Apocalypse by claiming the Dark Souls – the immortal souls of damned warriors – and using them to create an immortal army and send it into Liveside. Nettie reveals that Michael cannot stop the Five, a group of serial killers recruited by Legion, without his powers. The Five, who each have a Dark Soul within them, are hiding in Liveside, where Michael's powers do not work during the day. Michael travels to Deadside with the use of his dead brother's teddy bear, which serves as a link between both worlds. After collecting all of the Dark Souls in Deadside and passing trials set by the gods of Deadside, Michael assembles a magic knife called the Eclipser. Returning to Liveside, Nettie uses the Eclipser to trigger an eclipse, which enables Michael to become the Shadow Man in Liveside. The ritual drains Nettie of her powers and causes her to go into a deep sleep. Michael returns to Deadside and finds the Asylum as well as the Dark Engine which powers it. Michael finds his long-dead brother Luke within the Dark Engine along with several paths to Liveside which lead to the hiding places of the Five. Michael defeats the Five and claims each of their souls in the process. During this time, Michael finds Jack the Ripper's diary, which contains instructions on how to shut down the Engine. Michael returns to Deadside and shuts down the Engine, giving Luke his teddy bear back. Luke reveals himself to be Legion in disguise. Legion reveals that he sent Nettie the dream so that Michael would be forced to collect all of the Dark Souls and confront Legion, enabling Legion to claim all of the souls at once and use them to power the Engine, creating his army and sending it into Liveside. After an intense battle, Michael gives Legion all of the souls, whose combined power overwhelms Legion and kills him, destroying the Asylum as well. However, Michael is now stranded in Deadside but embraces his position as lord of Deadside. ===== The story takes place in Hong Kong in a conflict between worlds of Humans and "Rapters" ("Reptoids" in some dubbed versions) before the handover. A special police unit in the city are investigating a mysterious drug named "Happiness". Taki, one of the policemen, meets his old lover Windy, who is a rapter and now a mistress of a powerful old rapter named Daishu. Taki and other special police members track down and fight Daishu, but later find that he hoped to coexist with humans. The son of Daishu, Shudo, is the mastermind. In the end Shudo is defeated, but Daishu and Taki's friends die, too. Windy leaves alone. ===== During a shootout against Chinese Triads at a San Francisco dock warehouse, FBI agents John Crawford (Jason Statham) and Tom Lone (Terry Chen) stumble across the notorious assassin Rogue (Jet Li), a former CIA assassin who now works for the Japanese Yakuza. Rogue ambushes Crawford and is about to execute him when Lone appears and shoots Rogue in the face, causing him to fall into the water. Rogue's body was never found and he is presumed dead. However, Rogue survives and retaliates against Lone, his wife and his daughter. He kills them, burns down the house, and leaves their three corpses in the ashes of their home. Three years later, Rogue re-appears, working under Chinese Triad boss Li Chang (John Lone). While working with Chang, Rogue secretly instigates a war between the Triads and the Yakuza, led by Shiro Yanagawa (Ryo Ishibashi). Rogue first attacks a club run by the Yakuza by killing the gangsters and later on the runners in order to recover a pair of antique gold horses, family heirlooms of Chang. Now the head agent of the FBI's Asian Crime Task Force, Crawford is determined to hunt Rogue down and exact revenge for Lone's death. Crawford's obsessive pursuit of Rogue has taken a toll on his personal life causing him to be estranged from his family. Crawford comes close to catching Rogue in the wake of Rogue's various killing sprees against the Triads and Yakuza, but Rogue always manages to stay one step ahead. Ultimately, Rogue's actions have gained the trust of both Chang and Yanagawa. Rogue succeeds in killing Chang, but spares Chang's wife and child, turning on the Yakuza. With Chang dead, Yanagawa appears in America, intending to expand Yakuza business operations. However, he is confronted by Crawford and the FBI; Crawford presents Yanagawa with proof that Rogue has betrayed him and spared Chang's family, but Yanagawa refuses to assist Crawford in locating Rogue. Later, Rogue delivers the horses to Yanagawa personally. Knowing of Rogue's betrayal, Yanagawa captures Rogue and demands the location of Chang's family. Rogue turns the tables on Yanagawa's men and kills them all, and engages in a sword fight against Yanagawa himself. Yanagawa discovers that the real Rogue was killed when attempting to assassinate Lone. Lone in turn surgically altered himself to assume the assassin's identity. Lone reveals that his actions have all been designed to bring him face-to-face with Yanagawa, so he could kill the man who ordered the death of his family. Yanagawa reveals that Crawford was in his pocket that whole time and responsible for leaking Tom Lone's identity and home address to the real Rogue. Angered, Lone disarms and decapitates Yanagawa. Meanwhile, Chang's wife receives a package from Lone, containing one of the two golden horses that belongs to Chang's family and a message reading, "Make a new life". Yanagawa's daughter also receives a package with the same message and inside the box is her father's head. Lone then calls Crawford as he is packing up his office, asking him to meet him at the dock warehouse where they last made their investigation. Before going to the warehouse, Crawford enlists the help of Goi (Sung Kang), an FBI sniper that aided Crawford throughout the investigation. At the warehouse, Crawford and Lone battle each other in an intense hand-to-hand fight in which Lone reveals his true identity to Crawford. When Lone reveals his true identity, a devastated Crawford reveals that it was true that he was working for Yanagawa at the time but had no idea that Rogue was still alive. He was then blackmailed into giving Lone's address to Yanagawa thinking that Yanagawa's men were only going there to "rough him up a bit". Ever since, Crawford was angry at himself and wanted revenge against Rogue and everyone else involved in what he thought was his partner's death. Crawford protects Lone by jumping in front of Goi’s line of sight, but is then shot by Lone. The next day, Lone later drives out of town to start a new life. ===== In our own universe, Hypatia of Alexandria was killed for her non-Christian views, shortly before the destruction of the Library by an angry mob. In the universe of the novels, Hypatia was converted to Christianity by John Chrysostom, and stopped the mob from destroying the Library. She continued her correspondence with John and St. Augustine, which eventually led to the modern (1530s) divisions of the Church. The Shadow of the Lion (2002) deals with Chernobog's attempt to destroy Venice and the awakening of the city's ancient powers. Marco is the main protagonist, while Chernobog acts through several intermediaries. This Rough Magic (2003) is set in Corfu and features several new antagonists. It is largely centered on Maria and Benito's awakening, Marco having fit comfortably in his new role in Venice. Elizabeth Bartholdy has replaced Chernobog as the major behind-the-scenes villain in the book. A Mankind Witch (2005) is a solo effort by Freer, and takes place between Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic. While Manfred and Eric are major characters, the focus is shifted to a thrall, Cair Aidin, and the Princess of Telemark, Signy. Trolls are the major antagonists of the story. Much Fall of Blood (2010) follows Manfred and Erik after their journey to Jerusalem. While attempting to broker an agreement between the Ilkhan and their nomadic cousins, the Golden Horde, they stumble right into Elizabeth Bartholdy's latest and deadliest plot. Burdens of the Dead (2013) centers on Benito Valdosta's attempt to stop Chernobog's plots once and for all thanks after the revelations of Much Fall of Blood. The original working title was Great Doom's Shadow. All the Plagues of Hell (2018) by Eric Flint & Dave Freer ===== Nate Cooper is unable to get it together with women. But he also cannot forget his first crush: The attractive Cristabel Abbott, from their time in elementary school. Nate sets out for the beaches of California and meets up with his geeky best friend Arno, whose mother has an unnatural amount of information about Cristabel, and perhaps an unusual relationship with her son. Cristabel jogs on the beach every day with many suitors trying to catch her eye, including an albino stalker. But she's still single, and there is a reason: Cristabel is still best friends with the same short, unattractive brunette girl whom Nate also knew in elementary school, June Phigg. Nate reintroduces himself to Cristabel and they hit it off. However, Cristabel refuses to go on a date with Nate unless June has a date as well. Nate sets out to find a boyfriend for June, but men recoil at the sight of her. One day at the Santa Monica Pier, Johann Wulrich, an attractive dentist who works as a part-time model, appears in their lives. He seems to want to do a makeover on June when he apparently sees her inner beauty. However, Nate believes that Johann is a threat to his shot for Cristabel, since Johann is almost perfect. Eventually, with June dating Johann, Cristabel finally begins dating Nate, per his original plan. Over the next few weeks, as Nate and June become friends and she emerges from her cocoon, with her face and appearance transforming into that of an attractive woman whose beauty begins to compare with Cristabel, Nate slowly realizes that June may be the girl of his dreams. Nate tells this to Cristabel, who is happy for June. Nate then tries to find June, and finds her, telling her how he feels. ===== The fifth book starts off directly where the last book had ended, from the point of view of Trey, Luke's friend from Hendricks' School for Boys. After Luke Garner (Lee Grant) leaves Smits Grant, the younger brother of the real Lee Grant, in the care of his real parents, Luke's friend Trey finds himself at Mr. Talbot's front door preparing to explain all the recent events. The car containing Trey's friends, Nina, Joel, and John takes off without Trey. The house is raided soon afterward and thanks to luck and his own vast knowledge from reading during his years in hiding, Trey manages to dive to safety behind a flowerpot. A member of the Population Police, who searches the porch, says liber (Latin for free). Trey's knowledge of Latin saves his life, as the raider reports that the porch is clear. After the raid, Trey sneaks into the house and encounters a hostile but stunning woman with bright red hair; she is none other than Mrs. Talbot. Together, they discover from a private news network that the government has been overthrown and replaced by the powerful Population Police. Defeated, Mrs. Talbot abandons the house and leaves Trey to fend for himself. After sorting himself out and taking several obscure, important looking documents found within the Talbot house, Trey sets out to find help, hopefully to find Lee and the others. He winds up on the Garner farm and ventures out with Mark, one of Luke's older brothers, to find Luke/Lee and the rest of his friends. They instead find themselves at Population Police Headquarters, once the house of the Grants; Mark is captured and taken instead and Trey must sign up as a recruit to save him. Using his own ingenuity, despite his own fears, Trey manages to save injured Mark by working out a deal with a Population Police guard. He was also able to save his missing friends and Mr. Talbot from execution with the help of a rebel named Nedley. The group find safety at Mr. Hendricks' cottage and discover the schools have been raided and emptied of their students and able-bodied teachers. Then the group is nursed back to health by Mrs. Talbot, who happens to be a doctor. Afterward, Trey presents the documents that he saved, despite several opportunities where he may have abandoned them. Mr. Talbot reveals that the documents conceal the identities of hundreds of Third Children with false identities and they decide to burn them to protect the children. But Trey wants to take the names and the responsibility. Trey snatches them away at the last moment, resolving to take small steps to destroy the Population Police from within along with Lee, Nina, the chauffeur, and Nedley. ===== A young Tokyo theology student, Shirō (Shigeru Amachi), is set to marry his girlfriend, Yukiko (Utako Mitsuya), the daughter of his professor, Mr. Yajima. After announcing the engagement, Shirō's dark and unsettling colleague, Tamura (Yōichi Numata), drives Shirō home, suggesting that Shirō had been sleeping with Yukiko for some time. Taking a side street at Shirō's request, Tamura hits and kills drunken yakuza gang leader, Kyōichi. Though Shirō wants to stop, Tamura keeps driving, stating that it does not concern him and that ultimately, the murder is Shirō's fault for asking him to drive down the street. Unbeknown to either of them, Kyōichi's mother (Kiyoko Tsuji) witnessed everything and resolves to find and kill them. Though Tamura feels no guilt for the murder, Shirō does and attempts to go to the police. After telling Yukiko of what happened, Shirō insists that they take a taxi cab to the police station, despite Yukiko's pleas to walk instead. While in the cab, Shirō hallucinates that Tamura is driving the cab, and it crashes, killing Yukiko. After her funeral, Shirō seeks solace in the arms of strip bar worker and Kyōichi's grieving girlfriend Yoko (Akiko Ono), who discovers Shirō's culpability for the hit-and-run after sleeping with him and, with Kyōichi's mother, plots revenge. Shirō receives a telegram that his mother, Ito, who lives in a country-side retirement community run by his father, Gōzō, is dying and rushes to see her. There, he meets the other residents including a disgraced painter, Ensai, who is painting a portrait of Hell, a former reporter, Akagawa, a corrupt detective, Hariya, and the community doctor, Dr. Kasuma. He meets Sachiko (also played by Mitsuya), a nurse and Ensai's daughter, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Yukiko, and is taking care of his mother. During his stay, Shirō and Sachiko become close while each of the residents' sordid activities is revealed: While Shirō's mother lies dying, his father carries on an open affair and also cheats the community of its money by cutting corners; the painter is wanted for a crime in another city; the detective threatens to turn the painter in unless he gives him Sachiko to marry; and the doctor knows his diagnoses are wrong, but feels that seeking a second opinion is too cumbersome. Both Mr. and Mrs. Yajima, both despondent after Yukiko's death, arrive by train to pay their respects to Shirō's mother. Ito dies, and Ensai blames Gōzō; decades ago, he and Ito were lovers before Gōzō came between them and married her leaving her unhappy. Inexplicably, Tamura appears and reveals that each of the residents has some complicity in a murder: Mr. Yajima killed his comrade during the war, stealing his water for himself; both the detective and reporter framed or slandered innocent men who then both committed suicide; and the doctor knew his diagnosis of Ito's condition was wrong, but chose not to tell anyone. Yoko tracks Shirō down and meets with him on a rope bridge in the area. There she reveals her identity and attempts to shoot him while Kyōichi's mother watches from the trees, but she trips and falls to her death. Tamura appears, and the two struggle over the gun, and Tamura also falls into the gorge. Shirō stumbles back in time for the community's tenth anniversary party, where Gōzō has knowingly allowed cheap, rancid fish to be served to the residents. As the party descends into debauchery, Mr. and Mrs. Yajima both decide to leap in front of the train, killing themselves, and Gōzō's mistress falls to her death following an altercation. The residents die from consuming the tainted fish, and Kyōichi's mother sneaks into the party, poisoning the remaining residents' wine, killing them. Tamura, near death, stumbles into the party and shoots Sachiko, while Kyōichi's mother strangles Shirō to death and then commits suicide. In Limbo, Shirō encounters Yukiko, who reveals that she was pregnant with his child, a baby girl named "Harumi", but has sent her floating away on the river of the underworld and begs Shirō to save her. Shirō enters Hell and is sentenced to punishment in the Eight Realms of Hell by Lord Enma for his sins. While running through Hell to find his daughter, he encounters each of his acquaintances, who suffer, in gruesome fashion, a variety of punishments for their sins, such as being boiled and burned alive, dismembered and flayed, or cut apart and beaten by ogres, only to be revived to suffer anew. Meanwhile, Tamura taunts Shirō, saying there is no escape from Hell, before being butchered for giving his soul over to evil. In a realm filled with glass shards jutting from the ground, Shirō finds Sachiko, but their reunion is interrupted by Shirō's mother, who shamefully reveals that Sachiko is his sister: Shirō is actually Ensai's son, and Sachiko is actually her daughter, also a product of her later affair with Ensai. Shirō is disgusted with his family, and continues searching for his daughter, determined to live and save her. While caught in a vortex of damned souls, he finds his baby daughter helplessly rotating on the Buddhist wheel of life. Lord Enma gives Shirō one chance to save his daughter, otherwise she too will suffer for all eternity in Hell. As Yukiko, Sachiko, and his mother call to him, Shirō leaps onto the wheel, but cannot reach his daughter. The moment is frozen in time, revealed to be nine o'clock: the exact time that everyone at the party has finally died, including Ensai, who has hanged himself after completing his portrait of Hell and set it on fire. In a final scene, both Sachiko and Yukiko stand smiling in peaceful light, calling to Shirō as sister and lover, respectively, with lotus petals falling around them, symbolizing mental and moral purity. ===== It has been 25 years since the 1957 Fillmore High School basketball team won the Pennsylvania state championship. The coach and four of the victors regularly gather to relive the glory of their shining moment. As teenage teammates they could read each other's moves on the court without fail. As middle-aged men, each is facing his own different mid-life crisis. With a former coach that still addresses problems as if his boys are having a bad game, the friends' longtime loyalty to one another begins to unravel. George Sitkowski is mayor of Scranton and engaged in a fierce campaign for re- election. James Daley is an overwrought and underpaid school principal while his brother, Tom, has become a drifter with a serious drinking problem. Phil Romano is the wealthiest among them. He often bends the law and even betrays a friend to indulge his own needs, but George badly needs his support. The intended celebratory nature of this reunion is quickly dissipated. Various contentions arise among the four old teammates, who quickly turn on one another. The coach's bigotry—then and now—and his selfish disregard for fair play are brought again to the surface. The absence of the team's star player, who hates the coach, serves to further spotlight the futility and hollowness of this gathering. ===== In 1885, in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia, Canada, a grizzly bear cub is orphaned by the death of his mother from a rockslide while digging and searching for honey. Forced to fend for himself, the cub struggles to find food and shelter. Elsewhere in the mountains, a large male grizzly is being pursued and hunted by two trophy hunters, Tom and Bill. Although Tom attempts to kill the grizzly, his shot only injures the bear in the shoulder and thus fails to take the animal down while the wounded bear flees. Coming across the grizzly a short time later, the cub notices his wound and attempts to befriend him, but the grizzly gives him a warning growl since he doesn't need help and is not at all interested in him. The cub, however, follows the grizzly and approaches him again, managing to soothe his wound by licking it. A friendship begins between the two bears as the grizzly becomes the cub's adoptive father and takes him under his wing, teaching the cub how to catch salmon and hunt animals. At night, the cub suffers from nightmares, reliving the tragic death of his mother. Determined to find the grizzly, the two hunters are joined by a third man and his pack of hunting Beaucerons. A chase ensues in which both bears are driven toward a cliff with the dog pack catching up to them in pursuit. While the cub hides, the grizzly violently fights the dog pack while defending the cub and kills some of them before escaping over the pass with the remaining dogs chasing after him, leaving the cub behind. The hunters arrive to find their dogs dead or wounded, one of them being Tom’s pet Airedale Terrier. Upon finding the cub, they take him to their camp, where he is tethered to a tree and tormented by the hunters and their dogs. That night, the hunters plot how to massacre the grizzly. The next day, the hunters separate, with Tom manning a spot high on a cliff near a waterfall. He descends from his post to wash up in a small waterfall in the hills. His gun out of reach, Tom suddenly finds himself confronted by the grizzly, who viciously growls at the sight of the man upon recognizing him as the one who shot him earlier. Faced with certain death, Tom cowers in fear. However, the grizzly, upon seeing that the hunter is at his mercy and thinking he has forgiven him, instead spares his life rather than killing Tom and leaves. Tom, impressed by the bear's act of mercy, attempts to scare him off more quickly by shooting his gun in the air. When Bill joins him, having heard the gunshots, Tom lies to him that the bear is dead. However, spying the grizzly ascending a scree, Bill raises his rifle to shoot, only to be stopped by Tom, who insists that they let the animal go instead. The three hunters return to their camp empty-handed, where they free the cub and then ride off into the wilderness. Alone again, the cub is soon attacked by a cougar, who corners the young bear near a stream. Trying to defend himself against the cougar's attacks and getting injured, the cub, in pain, growls for help. At that moment, the grizzly appears behind the cub and saves his life by letting out a loud roar that chases the cougar away. The cub happily reunites with the grizzly and runs to his side, where he is comforted before being taken under his wing again. As winter approaches, the two bears enter a cave for hibernation and fall asleep together. ===== Following from the previous film, it shows Eastland walking freely on the streets of New York, without any hint that his dual identity was compromised. He meets up with another old army buddy, Be Gee (Faison), who owns a garbage truck. As seen at the beginning of the film, Eastland wears a welders' mask and wields a flame thrower, while listening to a police scanner for possible crimes to stop. Slaying the brother of a gang leader named X (Van Peebles), the Exterminator gains the gang's enmity. Coincidentally, his army buddy happens to see the gang during a robbery of an armoured car, and scares them away with his truck. However, they get the truck's plate numbers, and vow revenge. Following the truck one night when the buddy loans it to Eastland, they follow Eastland to his home, and, not having seen who the driver of the truck was the night it scared them away, they presume Eastland was the man behind the wheel that night. They attack Eastland's girlfriend in the park, crippling her. Later, they break into her apartment and kill her. Then Eastland and his buddy interrupt a drug deal between X's gang and the mob, stealing the narcotics in the process, though the army buddy dies. Having earlier captured one of the gang members, Eastland allows him to escape to draw X into a confrontation, with the drugs as bait, in a closed up industrial site. Curiously, X seems to be aware of the Exterminator's real name in this final battle. Eastland triumphs, but was shot when last seen, and is seen walking away. ===== Rose, Jackie, and the Doctor visit the British Museum where Mickey has discovered a statue of the goddess Fortuna from second-century Rome, which looks exactly like Rose. So the Doctor and Rose head off for Rome. The TARDIS brings them to AD 120. Rose and the Doctor save an elderly man named Gracilis from muggers. They learn that he is looking for his son, Optatus. A few people overhear his conversation with the Doctor and Rose and recommend a slave girl named Vanessa. When she is told what Gracilis wants, she starts to work calculations on a bit of parchment. After some discussion, Gracilis buys her from her 'owner'. The next morning, the Doctor and Rose see the new statue of Optatus. The sculptor is an unpleasant person named Ursus, who invites Rose to come to his workshop the next day to be a model for a statue of a goddess. Later, Rose goes to find Vanessa, who is with Marcia. Marcia tells them that she has known Ursus since he was a child, but that ten months ago his statues started appearing in temples. The Doctor comes bounding in to tell them what he has discovered. Prior to his disappearance, Optatus had been visiting Ursus for a couple of weeks. The impression that he had was that the statue was still in the planning stages and then Ursus says that the statue is almost done. Vanessa wakes Rose the next morning to get ready for her modeling appointment; Vanessa is prevented from accompanying her, but remains watching outside. Rose feels herself nodding off, then realizes that she cannot move as Ursus removes his gloves and touches her. The Doctor goes to the studio and tackles Ursus. Vanessa comes up with a bronze lamp, but hits the Doctor by mistake. When he awakes, the Doctor tells Vanessa that he thinks she knows more than she is telling, because she knows of an unbuilt wall dividing two countries that do not yet exist. She starts to talk, and admits to being scared for a long time, since she first arrived in Rome. Vanessa and the Doctor go into the workshop, but there is nothing there and the Doctor believes that the statue was Rose herself. The Doctor returns to the villa, asking Gracilis for help. The Doctor arrives in Rome on the 19th, which is Quinquatrus. He begins checking temples, starting with Minerva's, and asking about statues made by Ursus. He spends all day searching, and as evening approaches, he enters another shrine to Fortuna, and find a statue who shares the pose, but isn't Rose. The Doctor comments "Rose is prettier than you." and is surprised to hear the statue reply "Thanks." As he starts forward, a glass vial of green liquid rolls from behind the statue to his feet, and the voice says it will bring back Rose and all the others. The Doctor steps forward again, but is interrupted by Gracilis who shouts a warning. The Doctor drops the vial when he is slapped by a Roman soldier. He is dragged away from the shrine, unable to get the vial back. The Doctor is taken to the Flavian Amphitheatre, thrown into the dungeon, and has his sonic screwdriver taken away. He is awake all night, and the guards come in the morning to tell him he is being set free. On the way, he grabs his sonic screwdriver. He meets up with Gracilis again once outside, and they go back to Fortuna's temple. The vial is not there, but Gracilis had picked it up on his last visit. The two of them go looking for statues done by Ursus, and find Tiro first. After bringing him back to life, they begin scouring Rome for the rest, using Gracilis' art contacts to help in their search. Gracilis arranges transport for all of the slaves, plus the TARDIS. They arrive back at the villa and bring Optatus back to life. The Doctor is wondering how he is going to ever find Rose, and then decides to go back to the museum in 21st century London. He lands the TARDIS inside and finds Mickey there. Mickey states that "Whoever made this must have really known her." The Doctor tells Mickey that the statue isn't of Rose, but is Rose. Mickey gets mad at the Doctor, and they decide it's best to bring her back, but nothing happens when the liquid pours on her. His hand brushes her face, and then he runs back to the TARDIS. He returns with Rose's denim jacket, and shakes out her earring. Meaning that Rose is only wearing one earring. The statue, however, is wearing two, so it can't be her. He runs back to the TARDIS and leaves. Rose wakes up with the Doctor grinning in front of her. Vanessa arrives, the Doctor again asks how Vanessa got to Rome, and she says her father worked in AI (Artificial Intelligence). Vanessa was watching a vidcast on Rome in her father's study, with a box sitting on the desk. And she remembered herself saying that she wished she lived back then, and then she was here. The three of them come in to Ursus' workshop and while speaking to Ursus and the goddess, the Doctor figures something out. He says to Minerva "I wish I could see what you really look like." and Rose spies a creature in a box that looks like a cross between a dragon and a platypus. Ursus in fury lunges at the Doctor with a knife, but Ursus touches Vanessa (turning her to stone), and Rose jumps on Ursus' back. She knocks him down and he falls on his own dagger, but the Doctor was also turned to stone during the chaos. Rose wishes that he had never come to Rome, and then the Doctor had vanished. Rose talks to the creature in the box, and is told that it is a GENIE (Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine). Its purpose is to grant all wishes it hears. Rose realizes what has been happening and as a test, makes a very careful wish for chips. She then wishes for the vial to be refilled, and brings Vanessa back. Vanessa asks if the GENIE can return her home, but the GENIE says there isn't enough energy available. Soon, Rose wishes for herself and Vanessa to be safe. Safe turns out to be a white nothingness. However, during her time in the white nothingness, Rose works out that if she'd said the words "I wish you'd never come here." then the Doctor would have never come to Rome and wouldn't have taken her to Rome, so she wouldn't have been there to make the wish, and she wouldn't be in Rome after she made the wish. So, Rose wishes that she and Vanessa were back in the temple and that they could see everything as it really is. The world reappears, and Rose sees the figure of the Doctor, who explains about the GENIEs, how they became a problem for Earth as everyone made wishes and wouldn't stop, draining all of the power sources on Earth and causing mass chaos. To save the planet, a group of people powered the earliest GENIE they could find with the sun and wished for it to reverse time to the day it was made. The GENIE burned up upon arrival in the past from using the sun's energy and its destruction destroyed all research into GENIE technology. Vanessa's GENIE survived as it was the prototype and was thus created before the other GENIES and was unaffected by the time reversal. They take the TARDIS from the villa, and arrive in Fortuna's shrine. The Doctor gives Rose the vial and a metal device to talk through. She hides behind the statue, and sees the Doctor coming in. She rolls the vial out to him, and then watches his arrest by Rufus. Gracilis sees the vial, picks it up and walks away. The Doctor and Rose then take Vanessa home, but are having trouble deciding what to do with the GENIE. Rose tells the GENIE is a slave, and if it is set free, it would be able to fulfill wishes if it wanted to. Rose wishes it free, and the GENIE disappears. They are getting ready to head home themselves, when Rose realizes there is a problem because her Fortuna statue was never made. However, The Doctor says he made the statue that appeared in the 21st century museum, because he went to the Renaissance and took a sculpting course with Michelangelo. They make one final trip to the villa, and gave the statue to Gracilis and Marcia, to take the place of the statue of Optatus. ===== This play centers on several interconnecting plots; the first forms the framework for the play—the love between a young Athenian man Phaedria and a foreign born courtesan named Thais. Introduced in Act I, Scene i, Phaedria and his wise-cracking slave, Parmeno, discuss Phaedria's situation. Before the curtain rose, Phaedria had been shut out of Thais' house, and he contemplates what he should do. "What, therefore am I to do? Will I not go? Not even now, when I freely summoned? Or is it better for me to prepare myself to endure the insults of whores? She shuts me out, then she calls me back. Should I go back?" (I.i.47–49) Offering philosophic advice, Parmeno encourages the love- sick Phaedria, "If you can go, there's nothing better or braver: but if you begin, and do not stoutly hang on, and when you cannot bear it, when no one seeks you out, with peace not having been made, you go to her freely, saying that you love her, and cannot bear it, you're done: it's over. You're through. She will play with you when she senses you are defeated." (I.i.50–55) He then offers his a famous line: > All these vices are in love: injuries, > Suspicions, enmity, offenses, > War, peace restored. If you think that uncertain things > can be made certain by reason, you'll accomplish nothing more than > if you strived to go insane by sanity. Parmeno then encourages Phaedria to "not add beyond the troubles love already has," while buying myself back from her for "as little as possible" (I.i.75–80). There is obvious slave imagery here. At the end of the scene, Thais emerges from the house. It's quite obvious that she's perturbed over her actions that irritated Phaedria, and caused the deliberations of the previous scene. She says, "Oh, miserable me! I fear that Phaedria bore it quite poorly, and accepted the action in another manner than I did it, because yesterday he was not sent in" (I.ii.80–83). Seeing Phaedria and Parmeno in the street, she calls them over to talk; obviously Phaedria, the perfect elegiac lover, is caught up "shaking and trembling all over" at the sight of her, and Parmeno is the hard-nosed interrogator about her intentions. Thais launches into a very lengthy explanation of her history; during this tale, the second subplot is introduced: the attentions of Thraso. He is then asked by Thais to leave town for a few days so that she can pay attention to a rich soldier Thraso. Thraso has a present that she is interested in (this present happens to be a slave girl called Pamphila. She comes from Phaedria's home town and is Thais's sister – this is known to Thais but not to Thraso). In doing this, Thais plans to re-establish contact with Pamphila and to improve her social standing in Athens by returning Pamphila to her Athenian family, represented by her brother Chremes. With their relationship already on the rocks, Phaedria sees this as the last straw. Nonetheless, Phaedria loves her and hopes that she will be his in the end. To show his love for her, he arranges two presents for her before he leaves: an Aethiopian slave girl and a eunuch. Phaedria has a younger brother, Chaerea, who is just returning from military service when all these events are unfolding. At the port, Chaerea sees Pamphila coming off the boat on her way to be delivered to Thais and he is overcome by her beauty. He tries to follow her but he loses her. Luckily, however, Chaerea runs into his family's servant Parmeno who has just seen Pamphila go by, escorted by Thraso's servant Gnatho. Parmeno reveals to Chaerea that the girl he is chasing is the gift of the soldier to Thais, and that he himself is supposed to deliver a eunuch to Thais's house for Phaedria (one of Phaedria's gifts). Based on a joking suggestion by Parmeno, Chaerea decides to substitute himself for the eunuch in order to get into Thais's house and he forces Parmeno to cooperate. Since he has been away on military service, Thais and her household staff do not know his face. Chaerea's plan works, and he is accepted as a eunuch and put in charge of guarding the girl with whom he is so strongly infatuated. When he is left alone with her, he rapes her, and then, discovered by Thais's maid Pythias, he flees the scene. Thais's plan to get in good favour with Pamphila's Athenian family seems to be ruined. At this point Phaedria returns and discovers what his brother has done. Chaerea is dragged back to Thais's house and explains his love for Pamphila and agrees to marry her. Chremes is grateful for the return of his long-lost sister, Phaedria and Thais are reconciled, and the soldier and Phaedria agree to share Thais. ===== "Hypnos" is a first-person narrative, written from the perspective of an unnamed character living in Kent and later London, England. The narrator writes that he fears sleep, and is resolved to write his story down lest it drive him further mad, regardless of what people think after reading it. The narrator, a sculptor, recounts meeting a mysterious man in a railway station. The moment the man opened his "immense, sunken, and widely luminous eyes", the narrator knew that the stranger would become his friend-–"the only friend of one who had never possessed a friend before." In the eyes of the stranger, he witnessed important knowledge of the mysteries he always sought to learn. From this point on, he would touch his friend and sculpt him daily. At night they would commence their adventures, exploring worlds beyond human comprehension. Over time, the narrator's companion begins to speak of using their ability to transcend into the unknown as a way to rule the universe (via a set of drugs). The narrator is frightened by the prospect and disavows such hubris to the reader. Soon the narrator is off on a foray with his friend, travelling through a void that he explains is beyond human sensation. Passing through several barriers, eventually the narrator comes to one he cannot cross, though his friend does. Opening his "physical eyes", the narrator wakes up and awaits the return of his friend, who awakes severely shaken and reticent, warning only that they must avoid sleep at all cost. From then on, with the aid of drugs, the two avoid sleep, as each time they succumb, they both seem to rapidly age and are plagued by nightmares that the narrator refuses to explain. The story ends with the narrator explaining that one night, his friend fell into a "deep-breathing sleep" and was impossible to arouse. The narrator shrieks, faints, and awakes surrounded by police and neighbors, who inform him that his friend was not real. There is only a statue of his friend in his room, engraved with the Greek word: ΥΠΝΟΣ (Hypnos). ===== As the story opens, a banker recalls the occasion of a bet he had made fifteen years before. Guests at a party that he was hosting that day fell into a discussion of capital punishment; the banker viewed it as more humane than life imprisonment, while a young lawyer disagreed, insisting that he would choose life in prison rather than death. They agreed to a bet: if the lawyer could spend fifteen years in total isolation, the banker would pay him two million rubles. The lawyer would have no direct contact with any other person, but could write notes to communicate with the outside world and receive whatever comforts he desired. Confined to a guest room on the banker's property, the lawyer suffers from loneliness and depression at first but eventually begins to read and study in a wide range of subjects. As the lawyer takes advantage of the solitude to educate and amuse himself in various ways over the years, the banker's fortunes begin to decline. The banker realizes that if he loses, paying off the bet will lead to bankruptcy. In the early hours of the day when the fifteen-year period is to expire, the banker resolves to kill the lawyer, but finds him greatly emaciated and sleeping at a table. A note written by the lawyer reveals that he has chosen to abandon the bet, having learned that material goods are fleeting and that divine salvation is worth more than money. Shocked and moved after reading the note, the banker kisses the lawyer on the head and returns to bed. When the banker wakes up later that morning, a watchman reports that the lawyer has climbed out the window and fled the property, forfeiting the bet. To prevent the spread of rumors, the banker locks the note in his safe. ===== The book opens with Mary Russell receiving a telegram to come immediately to Devon and to bring her compass. Initially Mary is reluctant to abandon her academic studies in Oxford to assist Sherlock, but she finally complies. This tug and pull of the two individuals in their own professional lives erupts throughout the book to show each person's independence, yet reliance on each other. Sherlock has been called in to solve a murder on Dartmoor. For Sherlock, it's familiar territory; it's where he solved the case of The Hound of the Baskervilles. This time round there are tales of a ghostly hound out on the moors accompanying an equally ghostly carriage. And naturally, the story is populated with sinister local characters. The moor is central to the story, brooding over it as the moor broods over the surrounding landscape. It also has Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould as a central character. He has a strong intellectual curiosity and is the driving force behind the investigation. Laurie King uses many of the elements of The Hound of the Baskervilles. These elements are introduced deliberately on the part of the criminals and there are echoes of the original story. The way that Holmes reacts to the many mentions of the original case, with a mixture of pride and exasperation, allows for some very humorous moments. ===== One evening, while being physically abused by his father, David "Davy" Rice unexpectedly teleports (or "jumps") and finds himself in the local library, the Stanville Library. This is a place that Davy is familiar with and spends a lot of time in, which is why he was able to easily teleport there. The origin of this power is never explained, but he ends up using this power continually throughout the novel. Vowing never to return to his father's house, Davy makes his way to New York City. After being mugged and discovering that he can't get a job without a birth certificate and/or social security number, Davy robs a local bank by teleporting inside the safe, stealing nearly a million dollars. He then begins a life of reading, attending plays, and dining in fancy restaurants. At a play, he meets a 21-year-old woman named Millie Harrison, and they spend some time touring New York before she returns to college in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Davy later visits her in Oklahoma, and they attend a party, where he accidentally runs into Millie's ex-boyfriend, Mark, who tries to fight him, forcing David to jump Mark away, unnoticed. Feeling bad for Davy, Millie invites him to stay the night at her place. The two officially start a romantic relationship and make love. Millie and Davy continue to see each other and begin to fall in love. Davy also manages to locate and reunite with his long-lost mother, Mary Niles. Mary left the family after being severely beaten by David's father, and all her attempts to contact David over the years were intercepted by his father. The New York police start investigating Davy after he saves a neighbor from an attack by jumping her abusive husband to a park; the husband turns out to be a police officer. The investigation drives Davy to move to Oklahoma, where he gets an apartment near Millie. One night while Davy is out, the police are in his New York City apartment when Millie calls. The police inform her of their investigation of him. Davy confronts Millie and tries to explain, but Millie breaks up with him and tells him to go. Out of anger, Davy jumps in front of her, back to his apartment in Stillwater. After a few weeks, Davy finds himself missing Millie and starts receiving letters from her, a way of reconciling. Mary, who was on a business trip, is murdered by terrorists when her plane is hijacked. Davy sets out to find Rashid Matar, the terrorist responsible for his mother's death. Davy starts jumping to Algeria to search for Matar, having to dodge the police almost every time he is there. While at Mary's funeral, Davy meets his father for the first time in years and is interrogated by the police again. While he is searching for the terrorist, he and Millie go out on their first date in months together. Davy tells her everything, even the bank robbery, which she's a little upset about. Despite everything that he has told her, his ability to jump and the money he stole, Millie confesses that she misses him and is deeply in love with him. Davy and Millie officially restart their relationship. However, the National Security Agency, led by veteran agent Brian Cox, becomes suspicious when it finds out he can get from Algeria to the United States in only a few hours. When he is questioned, Davy jumps out of the NSA office, witnessed by Cox and several other agents. Cox and the NSA then become determined to capture Davy so they can use his powers. David has Millie go stay with her parents, while at the same time they see each other in secret. After numerous failures to grab Davy, Cox takes Millie hostage in order to get to him. Davy strikes back by grabbing Cox, and later captures Matar and his abusive father—thereby putting him in the unique position of controlling the fates of all three of his tormentors. This experience has profound effects on all four of them. Davy finds himself unable to kill his captives despite their crimes against him and ultimately releases them. Davy turns Matar over to the authorities, threatening to come after him again if he isn't found guilty of his crimes. His father is forced to acknowledge his abuse of Davy and Mary and enters alcoholic counseling. Cox is forced to see the similarities between his actions and those of the terrorist and the wife-beating alcoholic, has Millie released, and agrees to stop hunting Davy. Both Davy and Millie go away with each other. Afterward, Millie comforts Davy as he realizes that he cannot escape his pain through teleportation or vigilante action, and he enters counseling as well. ===== Professor Henry Hallson, an anthropologist, discovers evidence of a person with psychic abilities among his co-workers in a research laboratory. His colleagues include biologist Dr. Jim Tanner, geneticist Dr. Margery Lansing, physicist Dr. Carl Melnicker, biologist Dr. Talbot Scott and chairman Norman Van Zandt, all working for government liaison Arthur Nordlund. After a warning from Hallson that one of them possesses a super-intellect beyond human measurement, and capable of controlling other human minds, the assembled co- workers conduct a telekinesis test using a simple psi wheel, which spins once all of them concentrate on it together. Later that night, Hallson is found murdered in the laboratory's human centrifuge, with the name "Adam Hart" scrawled on a piece of paper in his office. Hallson's widow Sally Hallson tells Tanner that "Adam Hart" was the name of her husband's childhood friend. The police make routine checks of the backgrounds of the members of the committee of which Hallson was a member, and Tanner immediately becomes the prime suspect in his murder when it is found that he has apparently lied about his distinguished academic credentials. In fact, all records documenting his past have been erased by some inexplicable method. Tanner visits Hallson's hometown and learns that Adam Hart is a superhuman, with different people providing different descriptions of his appearance, and others still obeying commands that Hart gave them years earlier. As Tanner tries to uncover the superhuman, Melnicker and Van Zandt are methodically murdered. Talbot Scott, panicked by what is happening, is eventually shot in a confrontation with the police. In a final showdown, Tanner confronts the apparently undefeatable Adam Hart, who is revealed to be Arthur Nordlund. Hart's psychic assault awakens Tanner's own latent psychic powers, and Tanner kills Hart instead. Tanner realizes that he was the superhuman uncovered by Hallson's tests, and that Hart was trying to eliminate any competition from others like himself. ===== Buster Casey is born in the rural town of Middleton with the senses of smell and taste far more advanced than any other human. He acquires the nickname "Rant" from a childhood prank involving animal organs which results in numerous people becoming ill. The sound of the victims vomiting resembles the word "rant", which becomes a local synonym for "vomit" and therefore Buster's nickname. As a child Rant discovers a massive wealth that turns the small town's economy on its head. He becomes obsessed with getting bitten by rabid animals along with venomous snakes and spiders. After his first bite from a black widow spider, Rant discovers that toxic spider bites cause him to get an erection. He uses this effect to leave school and eventually threatens his way to an early diploma and a rather large check that he uses to leave town. When Rant arrives in the city, it becomes clear to the reader that the novel takes place in a dystopian future, where urban dwellers are forcefully divided by curfew into two separate classes: the respectable Daytimers and the oppressed Nighttimers. Rant becomes a Nighttimer and finds himself swept up in the Nighttimer lifestyle that revolves around "Party Crashing", a covert demolition derby played out on city streets at night. The game is organized by an unknown entity and is set during a designated window of time. The object of the game is to crash, not too forcefully, into other players who sport a certain "flag", such as a Christmas tree on their car's roof or the words "Just Married" scrawled on their rear windshield. Rant meets Echo Lawrence, a fellow Crasher and the girl with whom he falls in love. Rant also starts a nationwide rabies epidemic that eventually erupts into zombie-invasion-like proportions that calls for those infected with rabies to be shot and killed on sight. Rant eventually dies during a Party Crashing event. His death is viewed and listened to by millions on national television and the Graphic Traffic radio show. However, when the car is pried open, his body is missing. After his "death", many interviewees share their speculations about Rant's strange fate and its implications for society along with the rabies outbreak. Some interviewees and friends of Rant speculate that crashing a car while in a given state of mind will jar a person outside of time. Once this is accomplished, they can then go back and kill off all of their ancestors, in turn making them immortal. Or they can, through incest, make themselves into something more than human. The latter is believed to have happened to Green Taylor Simms, a fellow Party Crasher, who is implied to be Buster Casey in some form. ===== The novel is the story of two authors, the buffoonish Prof. Stephen Titus George and his artful adversary Mr. Sunshine. Both live in Ithaca, New York. During a particularly cold New York winter, George starts to suspect that he is not himself but the creation of someone else, someone he calls "Mr. Sunshine." Sunshine and George enter into a battle of wits to determine who should be called "creator." Did George create himself? Did Mr. Sunshine create George? What is the meaning of collaboration? Throughout the novel colorful characters on the campus of Cornell University appear. There is the mysterious Cornell student Aurora Borealis Smith with whom Stephen Titus George falls in love. There is the Norse God Ragnarok wielding his Pollaxe. There are the Bohemians, a dog named Luther, a cat named Blackjack, Puck, and Calliope, a fire-breathing paper dragon. And let's not forget evil forces like Rasferret the Grub, a mannequin called Rubbermaid, and an army of rats. And so the drama then unfolds as it tells the time-tested story of the battle between Good and Evil and the efforts of the two authors to write the story towards either a happy ending or a tragic Greek drama. ===== Scientists Dr. Erik von Steiner (Preston Foster), Dr. Steve Connors (Philip Carey), and Carol White (Merry Anders) are testing their time-viewing device, drawing enormous amounts of power. Danny McKee (Steve Franken), a technician from the power plant, has been sent to tell them to shut down their experiment. During the test, odd shadows quickly cross the room before the screen shows a stark, barren landscape. Danny discovers the screen has become a portal and steps through. As the setting is becoming unstable, the others enter the portal to bring him back. The portal disappears, stranding them. Then they are pursued by hostile primitives, ending up in a cave, where they find an underground city – all that is left of civilization in a future devastated by nuclear war. The year is 2071 AD. City leader Dr. Varno (John Hoyt) explains that Earth is unable to support life. The residents are frantically working on a spacecraft that will take them to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The four time travelers, told they may not join that space voyage, are allowed to work on recreating their time portal to return to their time. Before the colony residents can lift off, the degenerate mutant humans break in and destroy the ship and encroach on the city. Dr. Varno determines that now the only hope is the time portal, so he commits the city's remaining resources to help von Steiner, Connors, White, and McKee rebuild the time portal with future technology. As they feverishly work, the mutants are invading the colony; along with a few people from the future, the four travelers escape back to the present just ahead of the mutants. One person throws an object back through the portal that damages the equipment on the other side and shuts down the portal. The survivors return to the lab, where they make a strange discovery. Their past selves are still in the lab, yet to pass through the portal, but they appear frozen. Through some error, the travelers are experiencing time at an accelerated rate; the rest of the world, including their past selves, is moving in extremely slow motion. Their only option is to travel to the date the portal had briefly been set to before being set to 2071 AD, a date over 100,000 years in the future, but the screen is dark and what lies ahead is unknown. They quickly cross the room, casting their shadows. When the last one goes through, the screen flashes on briefly and shows the travelers walking in a clearing with trees and grass with the surface of the Earth habitable again and people able to build a future there. The film then shows their past selves moving at normal speed again, repeating the actions seen at the beginning of the film. The sequence of events of the entire movie is rapidly reshown, and repeats with ever briefer and fewer clips, leaving the viewer in a loop until it abruptly ends without further explanation. ===== Extermination takes place on December 24, 2005, at a top secret American research facility in Antarctica. The game focuses on U.S. Marine Corp's Force Recon member Sergeant Dennis Riley, as part of "Team Red Light". His squad receives a distress call from the aforementioned base named Fort Stewart. The distress call requests an immediate air strike on the base. Instead, Team Red Light is sent in via C-17 to investigate. En route, the plane malfunctions, scattering the team and crashing into the tundra. All are ordered to regroup at Ground Facility Building B. Dennis, with teammate Roger Grigman, arrive outside the fort. They enter the fort through the ventilation shaft. After discovering that it "looks like a battlefield," they try to get the drawbridge lowered to proceed to Building B. After Dennis lowers the drawbridge, Roger comes under attack by Hydras (in the North American release, these enemies are referred to as, "Bugs,"). He becomes infected and rapidly mutates in front of Dennis. A mysterious woman in a contamination suit arrives and fires at Roger, seemingly killing him. She throws Dennis an extra magazine for his rifle, and an MTS vaccine, shouting: "Use it if you don't want to end up like your friend!" Thereafter, she orders him to tell his team to escape the fort. Dennis crosses the drawbridge and pursues the mysterious woman, who has initiated a lock-down protocol. Eventually, he gets the door open and finally meets the woman face-to-face without her mask. The woman is Cindy Chen, whom Dennis was concerned about when coming to Fort Stewart. She was the girlfriend of Dennis' fallen comrade, Andrew, whom he served with in Cambodia. She has not spoken to Dennis since she received the news during that tour of duty. Cindy tells Dennis that the Marines must leave the fort as soon as possible and to "tell your government that their dirty little secret has become a nightmare." Dennis heads toward Building B and is stopped by a journalist named Travis Miller, who reveals in conversation that he has been undercover for five years, then gives Dennis his card. He finds the Water Filtration Plant on his way to Building B and meets Carl Morris, an overseer of the project that started the entire thing. He tells Dennis that "there's something strange about the water, though you can't tell by looking at it." Before he can finish, Carl succumbs to his injuries. Dennis, confused, advances to Building B. Once there, Dennis encounters Major Mike Madigan, who briefs Dennis on the situation thus far. He says that the Pentagon's decision is to now destroy the facility. To that end, three detonators need to be activated. However, the detonators can only be activated manually. Madigan remarks that he has already dispatched a few members of the team, but they had trouble. The remainder of the team goes to the helicopter outside, where a mutated human is drinking from a water tower. After taking it down, the water inside the tower moves around as though alive, but just when it attacks, it freezes in place. Madigan sends Dennis off, alone, to activate the detonators. Inside Building B, a woman named Sonja Leone tells him that the area holding the detonators can be unlocked from Building B with metal tags. Upon arrival, Cindy tells Dennis to leave her alone. Dennis, knowing full well why she is so dismissive, is irritated and tells Cindy: "On that day Andrew sacrificed his life to save mine. Now I've sworn to protect yours, no matter what happens." Dennis receives a distress call from a Team Red Light marine. Dennis picks up their trail only to find them dead. He acquires the metal tag, and heads to the Level 2 detonator center, which Cindy mentions as having little power and no lighting whatsoever. He has another run-in with Miller, who says that he has all the evidence and information that he needs, and is on his way out. Miller is not seen or heard from for the remainder of the game. Although, in journals scattered throughout the game, it is revealed that others escaped with Miller from Antarctica. Dennis comes across a wounded Marine, Gary. Giving Dennis a metal tag and later heading on to Building B, Dennis radioes the number to Cindy, and he recollects the earlier battle with the humanoid mutant on the water tower and how the water had frozen as it reached out. Cindy foreshadows this as a clue. Dennis continues to the Level 1 detonator center and uncovers documents revealing that this plague is really caused by a bacterium dubbed HO213, and grows rapidly on contact with water. He reads on about how further testing revealed a pivotal weakness; all traces of the bacteria strain are wiped out when the master strain is destroyed. Once the detonator is activated, Dennis radios Cindy who immediately informs him of Sonja's recent disappearance, later found dead. Dennis and Cindy deduce that the bacterium is susceptible to cold. The cold itself will not actually destroy it, rather preserve it in a state of cryogenic suspension. However, if the master strain (Origin) were to be destroyed, the strain would die out on its own. Cindy checks her computer and tells Dennis that the HO213 requires a certain temperature in order to be incubated. The infested water heading towards the coolant is where Major Madigan and his team is heading. Their goal was to sabotage the coolant reactor, letting H0213 freeze out to temporarily buy time. Dennis rushes to his team's aid. On the way, Dennis comes across an injured Filel (The game had the character's name spelled and pronounced Filel at first, and then it was changed to Felil mid-game), who dies from a gunshot wound, but not before telling Dennis that Madigan had shot him. Dennis climbs a small mountain and meets up with Madigan, who orders Dennis to retrieve an explosive device made by Gary that's in the downed C-17. Dennis obtains the explosive and receives a communique from Madigan, instructing him to regroup. Seconds later, a scream is heard. Dennis takes the elevator to Madigan's position, and he is shocked to find Roger, now hideously mutated into a superior fighting machine. Dennis engages Roger in a knockdown drag-out fight and emerges victorious. He comes across a gravely injured Madigan, who tells him that Felil was a CIA agent and the only person who was supposed to come back alive. Madigan reveals that he knew about the bacteria the entire time, and was given a secret objective by the government to destroy it. Other factions in the government, such as the CIA, ordered Felil to preserve the bacteria. Madigan takes on the suicidal task of delivering the explosive to the coolant reactor, but not before leaving Dennis the new leader of Team Red Light. Meanwhile, back in Building B, Gary tells Cindy that he was there when Andrew had died, mentioning that "The fighting was so fierce that Dennis couldn't even bring back his body." Cindy confesses that when Dennis had informed her, she said things to Dennis she later came to regret. However, each time she had seen Dennis, she could not bring herself to apologize. Cindy and Gary agree that they are relying on Dennis to help them come out alive, and resolve to support him. Dennis arrives in Building B and hands Cindy the disk given to him by Madigan. Cindy deciphers it, whereupon she learns that project "Extermination" is a test of H0213's potential. This entails that everybody in the facility, including the Marines, are "guinea pigs" to the experiment, both to test infection against civilians and fighting capabilities when engaging the Marines. Dennis heads towards the last detonator, and is stopped at gunpoint by Dr. Yan Falken, a scientist who is obsessed with the bacteria, calling it his son. The room quakes and falling debris fatally strikes Falken. Dennis activates the last detonator and hurries back to Cindy and Gary who have boarded an LCAC Carrier. The facility explodes, and the master DNA strain Origin takes the form of a gigantic aquatic creature, and chases the LCAC holding the trio. Dennis mans the machine guns on the vessel and takes down Origin's fish form. It changes form into a gigantic beast and another battle commences on the LCAC, with Dennis the victor. The Origin then takes one last stand and creates a doppelganger of the Marine who caused the strain so much trouble. Dennis triumphs over the odds, ensuring the destruction of the master DNA strand and silencing the threat of the HO213 once and for all. After a brief conversation over the victory, Cindy apologizes to Dennis about the things she said to him. Dennis assures her that it is alright, as he also hated himself for never being able to help her. He continues to say: "So from now on if you ever need anything from me, you let me know and I'll be there. This time, I promise..." ===== John Lorenzen is an astronomer from Lunopolis who is recruited by the Lagrange Institute for the second expedition to Troas. At this time, Earth is still recovering from a two-century-long era of war and chaos that began with the Soviet conquest of North America in World War III and ended with the unification of the Solar System at the conclusion of a war between Mars and Venus. Twenty-two years after the discovery of a faster-than-light drive, Troas is the only Earthlike world to be discovered, and enthusiasm for interstellar travel is waning. If Troas is not opened to colonization, humanity may give up interstellar travel altogether. The effort to mount a second expedition to Troas is plagued with difficulties. The Lagrange Institute is unable to charter a starship and must build its own, the Henry Hudson. The construction of the Hudson is hampered by delays, cost overruns, and at least one act of outright sabotage. The voyage of the Hudson to Troas is also troubled, as tension rises among the members of the expedition. Edward Avery, the expedition's psychomed, is unable to maintain group harmony aboard the ship, and at least one fight breaks out. Upon arrival at Troas, the crew of the Hudson find no trace of the first expedition. After it is determined that there are no harmful microorganisms on Troas, a base camp is established on the planet. Eighteen days later, a group of aliens appears. Avery is assigned to learn the aliens' language, and he reports that it is extremely difficult to understand. He is eventually able to determine that the aliens are called the Rorvan, and that they are native to Troas. This is bad news for the expedition, since planets with native intelligent species are off limits to colonization. The Rorvan invite a small group of humans, including Avery and Lorenzen, to accompany them to their settlement. As the group of humans and Rorvan travel, Lorenzen listens to Avery's conversations with the aliens and realizes that their language is not nearly as difficult to understand as the psychomed claims. By the time they reach the Rorvan settlement, Lorenzen has learned through his eavesdropping that Avery and the Rorvan are conspiring to deceive the other humans. When Lorenzen finally confronts Avery, the psychomed admits that he and his clique within Earth's government have been deliberately stifling interstellar travel, since they feel that humanity is not ready for it. The members of the first expedition were interned after returning to the Solar System, and the Rorvan are not native to Troas after all. Avery pleads with Lorenzen to help him maintain the deception, but Lorenzen refuses. He wants humanity to expand into the galaxy. ===== The narrator offers a story to explain why a "draught of cool air" is the most detestable thing to him. His tale begins in the spring of 1923, when he was looking for housing in New York City. He finally settles in a converted brownstone on West Fourteenth Street. Investigating a chemical leak from the floor above, he discovers that the inhabitant directly overhead is a strange, old, and reclusive physician. One day the narrator suffers a heart attack, and remembering that a doctor lives overhead, he climbs the stairs and meets Dr. Muñoz for the first time. The doctor demonstrates supreme medical skill, and saves the narrator with a combination of medications. The fascinated narrator returns regularly to sit and learn from the doctor. As their talks continue, it becomes increasingly evident that the doctor has an obsession with defying death through all available means. The doctor's room is kept at approximately 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) using an ammonia-based refrigeration system; the pumps are driven by a gasoline engine. As time goes on, the doctor's health declines and his behaviour becomes increasingly eccentric. The cooling system is continuously upgraded, to the point where some areas of his rooms are sub-freezing, until one night when the pump breaks down. Without explanation, the panic-stricken doctor frantically implores his friend to help him keep his body cool. Unable to repair the machine until morning, they resort to having the doctor stay in a tub full of ice. The narrator spends his time replenishing the ice, but soon is forced to employ someone else to do it. When he finally locates competent mechanics to repair the pump, it is too late. He arrives at the apartment in time to see the rapidly decomposing remains of the doctor, and a rushed, "hideously smeared" letter. The narrator reads it; to his horror, he learns that Dr. Muñoz died 18 years previously. Refusing to surrender to death, he maintained the semblance of life past the point of death using various methods, depending upon refrigeration to retard decomposition. ===== While a man, Jack Leverett (Greg Grunberg), is cheating on his wife with a woman named Michelle Cullman (Susan Ward), he finds a hidden camera and, while fighting for the camera, accidentally kills her. The following day, Monk (Tony Shalhoub) announces to his therapist, Dr. Charles Kroger (Stanley Kamel), he will go on his first vacation since the murder of his wife, Trudy. Later, Monk goes to the crime scene to investigate and is informed by Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Lieutenant Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) that a film about him will be produced. As method actor David Ruskin (Stanley Tucci)—set to play Monk in the film—is there to observe his mannerism, Monk tries to impress him. The next day, Ruskin follows Monk again as he investigates a case at a pawnshop in which its owner was shot during a robbery. Monk is intrigued as to why the burglar entered through the wall and only stole a small amount of money and a wristwatch. After discussing if Ruskin's presence can harm Monk, Natalie (Traylor Howard) and Monk find the crime's weapon. Monk finds the same glitter he found on Cullman's hair in the gun and argues the thief stole the watch to replace his one, deducing that the same person committed both crimes. Later, Stottlemeyer and Disher watch the film's shooting and Natalie's prediction is right: Ruskin has impersonated Monk to the point that he is unable to complete the sequence because he is hassled by the setting's disorder (or rather, the inconsistent "pattern" in how some crew members are wearing their hats). He leaves the studio, goes to Monk's house to know what are his reasons to do his job, and explores Monk's files on Trudy's murder, grieving Monk. An afflicted Monk goes to Natalie's house, where he solves the case when he sees a paper torn up by Julie to prevent Natalie from reading it. The pawnshop is adjacent to a restaurant, where clients are drawn on the wall. On the crime's night, Leverett and Cullman were sketched and Leverett tried to destroy the evidence. Meanwhile, Ruskin is at the scene of Trudy's murder when a guard, believing Ruskin to be Monk, informs him Leverett is the killer (meaning the killer of Cullman and the pawnshop owner) David, however, believes this to mean that Leverett is Trudy's killer. When Stottlemeyer and Disher arrive at Leverett's car dealership to arrest him, Ruskin has already arrived and is keeping him as a hostage. Monk enters the dealership and stops Ruskin but is emotionally shaken when Ruskin says he could have saved Trudy. At the end, he talks with Dr. Kroger and cancels his trip. ===== After serving a five-year prison sentence for marijuana possession, Daniel "Poke" Jackson returns to his hometown in Texas where he is greeted by the man who convicted him, Sheriff Duke Calley. Poke assures Duke that he will soon be leaving to go to California, but Duke warns Poke that he is under close watch. Poke calls his old girlfriend Mary Lee Carter and arranges a meeting to see their son Kevin, whom he was never met. However, Duke warns him off and Poke discovers that Duke and Mary Lee are now sleeping together. However, Poke visits her anyway to confront her and the two end up making love. Later, Duke arrives at the mansion of county political boss C.J. Crane and is assigned to guard congressman-elect Jesus Mendez, who is scheduled to speak at a barbecue. After Mendez delivers the speech, however, he is shot and killed by a man in a police uniform. Poke watches as Duke kills the assassin, extracts an envelope and hides it in a trashcan. Duke later returns and retrieves the envelope but finds it empty, and concludes that only Poke could have witnessed the incident and taken the contents. An alert goes out to arrest Poke for marijuana possession. Meanwhile, Poke shows his friend and auto mechanic Boogie the $25,000 he found in the envelope. When Duke's deputy Lenny arrives at the garage looking for Poke, Boogie stalls him long enough for Poke to escape on a motorcycle, initiating a police chase. When two deputies are killed in the chase, Poke becomes wanted for murder. Poke asks junk dealer Cloetus for refuge and he agrees. Early the next morning, Boogie collapses at the door, names Duke as his assailant and dies. Poke hides in the back of Cloetus's truck and manages to get through the police cordon and into Mary Lee's house, where he explains Duke's role in the Mendez assassination to her. Poke, Mary Lee and Kevin then escape in a stolen police car. Another chase ensues which ends with Poke driving into a pond and getting captured. While being driven to the police station, Poke tells Lenny about Duke's role in the assassination. Duke retrieves the $25,000 and begins beating Poke, but when Lenny intervenes Poke is able to escape. Crane tells Duke that the sheriff's career is over unless he retrieves the money. Poke and his family reach the home of Bull Parker, a former bootlegger and family friend, who offers to drive them out of state in his truck which has been customized to evade the law. When Bull runs a roadblock another chase begins, during which Bull falls from the truck but tells Poke to drive on without him. After several police cars end up wrecked the only opposing vehicle remaining is driven by Duke, who tries to run Poke's truck off a steep mountain road but ends up going over the cliff himself. With Duke dead, Poke decides to return to town to clear his name. ===== The general plot revolves around the government's lies about an overpopulated world in order to gain control of the Earth's resources. In this turmoil, the democratic government has been overthrown and a totalitarian government has been put in its place. Laws established by the regime prohibit a family from having more than two children to lower the rate of birth. Children born after the second child - referred to as "shadow children" - will be killed. ===== Bobby "Gator" McKlusky is serving time in an Arkansas prison for running moonshine when he learns his younger brother Donny was murdered and that Sheriff J.C. Connors was the one behind it. Gator knows the sheriff is taking money from local moonshiners, so he agrees to go undercover for a federal agency (presumably the IRS or BATF) to try to expose the sheriff. His handlers force him onto Dude Watson, a local stock car racer and low-level whiskey runner. Watson has no choice but to cooperate because he himself is on federal probation or parole. To infiltrate the local moonshine industry, Gator lands a job running moonshine with Roy Boone. He also starts an affair with Boone's girlfriend, Lou. When the sheriff discovers Gator is working for the federal government, Connors sends his enforcer, Big Bear, after him. Gator decides to go after the sheriff, leading to an epic car chase finale. ===== Luke Garner is an illegal third child along with Trey, Nina, Matthias, Percy, and Alia. He has been working from within the Population Police at the stables in hopes of slowly overthrowing them and bringing about freedom. When he is chosen to accompany a sergeant on a mission to distribute new identification cards to citizens, Luke unknowingly brings about the catalyst of change when he refuses to shoot a defiant old woman and runs away, leaving his sergeant in the hands of a group of angry villagers who despise the Population Police. After several days of surviving alone, haunted by the memory of his friend Jen Talbot, run-ins with a selfish stable boy who was with Luke and his sergeant at the time of the incident, and attempting to avoid the Population Police at all costs, Luke finds his way to another village filled with starving people. They save Luke from being executed by the Population Police when they arrive; one man in particular named Eli reveals that the village no longer cares about their own lives and will do anything to help those in need like Luke. In the past, Eli and other villagers willingly betrayed a family with a third child in order to obtain food for their own families. That villagers realize their wrongs much too late and found many of their family members taken away by the Population Police with nothing in return. When people are heard coming to the village, Eli helps Luke escape with a quilt made by his daughter Aileen. Luke wanders into another village and discovers the Population Police has finally been overthrown. With many villagers, they travel to the government headquarters as large groups of people reveal and relate their own stories on television. Luke, on the other hand, is apprehensive and discovers Oscar Wydell, Smits Grant's former bodyguard intends to claim leadership and collaborates with Aldous Krakenaur, former Population Police leader, to blame Third Children for all the Population Police's crimes. While the news broadcast originally intended to allow people voice their opinions, Luke sees that the leaders are already beginning to poison the unwitting populace with propaganda and it is impossible for any opinion other than one that blames Third Children for all crimes to be heard. Desperate, Luke rides one of the horses (Jenny, he called it in memory of Jen) onto the stage to avoid the security guards and voices his opinion and reveals to the world what he is saying is the absolute truth as he is a third child. Protected by Philip Twinings, a prominent news anchor from before the era of the Population Police who had hoped that opinions could have been openly shared, Luke tells his life story (chronicling the events from the beginning of the series to the present) and the stories of his friends Trey, Nina, and Matthias, and of Smits and how Oscar was his bodyguard, and people come to realize that the government is undeniably at fault. Shortly after, the people discover that Oscar escaped with Krakenaur during Luke's speech. Luke finally finds his friends Nina and Trey in the crowd and finds out that all his friends met up at Mr. Hendricks home. Luke thinks about all the things he's always wanted to do and realizes that it is all possible. ===== July 5 begins as a normal winter morning near Hamilton, New Zealand. At 6:12 a.m., the sun darkens for a moment, and a red light surrounded by darkness is briefly seen. Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) is a scientist employed by Delenco, part of an international consortium working on "Project Flashlight", an experiment to create a global energy grid. He awakens abruptly; when he turns on his radio, he is unable to receive any transmissions. He gets dressed and drives into the deserted city. Investigating a fire, he discovers the wreckage of a passenger jet, but there are no bodies, only empty seats. Zac enters his laboratory but fails to contact any of the other labs around the world. Descending to an underground lab, he discovers the dead body of a colleague at a control panel; a monitor displays the message "Project Flashlight Complete". The mass disappearance seems to coincide with the moment Flashlight was activated. The lab is suddenly and automatically sealed because of radiation, so he improvises a bomb to free himself. He listens to his own voice on a tape recorder describing the project as having "phenomenal destructive potential", then notes: "Zac Hobson, July 5th. One: there has been a malfunction in Project Flashlight with devastating results. Two: it seems I am the only person left on Earth." From this point onward, he refers to the crucial moment and its result as "The Effect". After a week of vain attempts to contact another human being, Zac moves into a mansion and acquires numerous goods from a mall, but his mental state begins to deteriorate. He puts on a woman's night gown and alternates between exhilaration and despair. He assembles cardboard cutouts of famous people (including Adolf Hitler, Elizabeth II, and Pope John Paul II), plays a loud fanfare and cheers from large speakers, and addresses the cutouts from a balcony. He declares himself "President of this Quiet Earth", then goes on a destructive rampage after the power blacks out. He bursts into a church, shoots a statue of Jesus off a crucifix, and announces that he is God. After accidentally crushing an empty pram with an enormous earthmover, he puts the barrel of a shotgun into his mouth but finally comes to his senses. Zac settles into a more normal routine. One morning, a young woman named Joanne (Alison Routledge) appears. Zac is attracted to her, and after a few days together they have sex. They scour the city and find a third survivor, a large Māori man named Api (Pete Smith). The three determine why they survived: at the instant of The Effect, they were all at the moment of death: Api was being drowned in a fight, Joanne was electrocuted by a faulty hairdryer, and Zac had overdosed on pills in a suicide attempt. He had realized the experiment posed serious dangers and was guilt-ridden for not speaking out. A love triangle develops, but Zac is more concerned about his observations: universal physical constants are changing, causing the Sun's output to fluctuate. Zac fears The Effect will occur again and decides to destroy the Delenco facility in an attempt to stop it. The three put aside their personal conflicts and drive a truckload of explosives to the installation, only to be stopped at the perimeter when Zac detects dangerous levels of ionising radiation emanating from the plant. He says that he will go to town to retrieve a remote control device that will allow them to send the truck into the facility. While Zac is gone, Joanne and Api have sex. Afterward, Api tells Joanne that he will sacrifice himself by driving the truck; he doubts that Zac's device will be capable of controlling the vehicle. They then hear the truck and realise that Zac did not go to town after all. He drives the truck onto the weakened roof of the underground portion of the laboratory, which collapses. Just as the effect reaches a maximum, he triggers the explosives. Once again a red light is seen surrounded by the dark tunnel. Zac finds himself lying face down on a beach. There are strange cloud formations, resembling waterspouts, rising out of the ocean. As he walks to the water's edge, an enormous ringed planet slowly appears over the horizon. ===== In 1938 Los Angeles, two gangsters in Eddie Valentine's gang steal a rocket pack from Howard Hughes. During their escape from the authorities that ends up on an airfield, one gangster is killed, the getaway driver hides the rocket pack, and stunt pilot Cliff Secord's Gee Bee racer is destroyed in the resulting auto-airplane accident, crippling his career. Cliff and airplane mechanic Peevy later find the rocket pack hidden inside a biplane cockpit. Movie star Neville Sinclair had hired Valentine's gang to steal the rocket pack, and he sends his monstrous, yet skilled henchman Lothar to question the injured getaway driver, who tells him about his hiding the rocket pack at the airfield. Cliff's girlfriend is aspiring actress Jenny Blake, who has a small part in Sinclair's latest swashbuckling film, but recent events begin to drive a wedge in their relationship. Sinclair overhears Cliff attempting to tell Jenny about the rocket pack, so he invites her to dinner. Afterward, at a local air show, Cliff uses the rocket pack (and Peevy's newly designed face- hiding finned helmet) to rescue his elderly friend Malcolm, who is piloting the over-aged biplane. The newsreel press and Valentine's gangsters all see him from the airshow audience, whereupon "The Rocketeer" becomes a media sensation, but also sets Sinclair and the FBI on Cliff's tail. Sinclair sends Lothar to Cliff and Peevy's home to find the rocket pack. The FBI arrives, but Cliff and Peevy escape while Lothar steals the rocket pack's detailed schematics drawn up by Peevy. Later, at the airfield diner, Cliff and Peevy are trapped by several Valentine mobsters; they learn about Jenny's date with Sinclair, and the actor's involvement in the hunt for the rocket pack. The diner patrons overpower the gangsters, while a bullet ricochet punctures the rocket pack's fuel tank, which Peevy temporarily patches with Cliff's chewing gum. Cliff proceeds to the South Seas Club, where he tells Jenny about his new rocket-powered alter ego. The Valentine gang arrives, and Jenny is kidnapped by Sinclair in the ensuing melée. At Sinclair's home, Jenny discovers that he is a Nazi secret agent and knocks him out, but is soon re-detained and forced to leave a message for Cliff to bring the rocket pack to the Griffith Observatory in exchange for her life. Just before he is arrested by the FBI and taken to Hughes and Peevy, Cliff hides the rocket pack. Hughes explains his rocket pack is a prototype, similar to one Nazi scientists have, up to now, been unsuccessful in developing; he shows them a horrifying propaganda film that reveals the scope of the Nazis' plans, depicting an army of soldiers using rocket packs to invade the United States. He also then mentions the FBI are trying to locate a Nazi spy in Hollywood, whom Cliff realizes to be Sinclair. When Hughes and the FBI demand the return of the rocket pack, Cliff explains that he needs it to rescue Jenny; he escapes (using a scale model prototype of the Spruce Goose as a glider), but inadvertently leaves behind a clue to where he is headed. Cliff flies to the rendezvous, where Sinclair demands for Cliff to hand over the rocket pack, but Cliff divulges to Eddie and his gang that the actor is a Nazi, and the evidence quickly backs Cliff up. The infuriated Valentine and his gang turn their weapons on the seemingly off-guard Sinclair and Lothar, but Sinclair summons a troop of heavily armed Nazi S.A. hidden at the observatory. The Nazi rigid airship Luxembourg (under the guise of a peace mission) appears overhead to evacuate Sinclair. FBI agents suddenly announce their presence, having secretly surrounded the area; they and the mobsters join forces to battle the Nazis. Sinclair and Lothar escape, dragging Jenny with them aboard the airship. Cliff flies to and boards the airship, but during the ensuing showdown, Jenny accidentally sets the bridge on fire with a flare gun. Sinclair holds Jenny hostage, forcing Cliff to give him the rocket pack, but not before he covertly removes the chewing gum patch, allowing fuel to leak near the rocket pack's exhaust. Sinclair dons the rocket pack and flies off, but the leaked fuel causes the rocket pack to catch on fire, causing Sinclair to plummet to his death on fire behind the HOLLYWOODLAND sign; the resulting explosion destroys the "LAND" part of the sign. Lothar is engulfed in flames as the airship explodes, but Cliff and Jenny are rescued at the last moment by Hughes and Peevy flying an autogyro. Hughes later presents Cliff with a brand-new Gee Bee air racer and a fresh pack of Beemans gum. As Hughes leaves, Jenny returns Peevy's rocket pack blueprints, which she found in Sinclair's home; Peevy decides that, with some modifications, he can build an even better one. ===== At a private club in Manhattan, an elderly man named George Gregson recounts a card game he played many years ago where he met an odd man named Henry Brower who refused to touch anyone, recoiling from contact in fear. After Brower wins the game, another player, Jason Davidson, leaps up and shakes his hand enthusiastically, causing Brower to scream and bolt from the room. Gregson then makes it his mission to find him and give him his winnings. It's revealed shortly thereafter that Davidson had died of a brain aneurysm. Gregson speaks with an old associate of the man, who tells him that Brower was cursed by an Indian shaman after an unfortunate incident in Bombay in which he accidentally caused the death of a boy. From that moment on, Brower has been cursed to cause the death of any living thing he touches. Gregson then attempts to track down Brower and meets an innkeeper who tells him that he discovered Brower dead in the inn, one hand firmly clasped in the other. ===== The game starts when Clawster and his army and Underworlders initiate a power failure in the city of Metropolis in an attempt to take over the city. Superman intervenes and defeats the horde of Underdwellers, Clawster included. Not long after the power is restored, a news report bulletin states a monster of unknown origin (Doomsday) is leading a path of destruction towards Metropolis, and the Justice League were unable to stop the creature. The titanic struggle between Superman and Doomsday reached a conclusion when the two delivered each other the killing blow. Superman succumbs to his injuries as he dies, as well as Doomsday. Three months later, four Supermen emerge in an effort to replace the original Superman, whilst the other claiming he is indeed the original Superman. The game shifts to Cyborg Superman (the "Man of Tomorrow") as he attacks a Project Cadmus base to locate a comatose Doomsday. Fearing he would be a threat once again if he wakes up, the Cyborg exiles Doomsday in deep space. Next, the player controls the Eradicator (the "Last Son of Krypton") as he patrols the streets of Metropolis. However, he is forced into battle with another Superman, Steel, as the armored hero fights to prevent the Last Son of Krypton from killing enemies. After the two Supermen fought to a standstill, the Eradicator reconsiders his brutal approach to fighting crime after Steel tells him it takes humanity and compassion to be considered a Superman. However, a bigger threat comes, as a mysterious spacecraft arrives and obliterates Coast City (the hometown of Hal Jordan). The Eradicator investigates the situation, only to run in with the mastermind, the Cyborg. The Eradicator is critically injured at the Cyborg's hands, and rushes to the Fortress of Solitude. The game shifts its focus on Superboy (the "Metropolis Kid") as he attempts to handle the current situation in Metropolis. After successfully doing so, Superboy flies off to Coast City, doing battle with the Cyborg as he arrives. The Cyborg knocks out and imprisons Superboy in the spacecraft. There, the rogue Superman reveals his plan: to destroy the world and reconstruct it in his image, starting with Coast City and Metropolis. While this is going on, a being flies among the skies above the Fortress of Solitude, albeit weakly. Back in Coast City, Superboy escapes imprisonment to go back to Metropolis, where he and Steel encounter the real Superman. Not wanting to wait, Superboy convinces the two to go with him to Coast City to stop the Cyborg once and for all. The player now controls Steel (the "Man of Steel") as he, Superman, and Superboy launch an assault on Engine City. However, the Cyborg launches a missile set to destroy Metropolis. Superboy elects to stop the missile, and, with player controlling Superboy, he successfully destroys the missile. At Engine City, the player shifts back to Steel, as he enters the Engine's core to shut it down. Meanwhile, a regenerated Eradicator bursts out of the Fortress and arrives at Engine City to help a weakened Superman, who is at the Cyborg's mercy. The Cyborg shoots Kryptonite fuel at Superman but the Eradicator arrives and shields Superman from the blast. The BMI of the Eradicator alters the deadly effects of the Kryptonite fuel and restores Superman to full strength as the Eradicator dies. Now controlling Superman, the player defeats and destroys the Cyborg Superman. The game ends with Steel and Superboy congratulating Superman for his success and accepting him as the real Superman. ===== The episode opens with the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard unit in an air raid shelter during a raid. Jones and his section arrive, Frazer complaining that the "shrapnel was coming down like hail". Pike makes a fool of himself by explaining why he acquires hundreds and thousands as his sweet ration to Mainwaring, but to Pike's dismay his sweets all go on the floor when a bomb falls nearby. They are joined by ARP Warden Hodges, who mentions that a bomb has fallen on the local pumping station. Godfrey and Walker are on duty there, so some of the platoon, with Hodges, go to rescue them. When they arrive, Walker and Godfrey are unhurt but Godfrey is asleep in an inner room and Walker cannot wake him up. Bomb damage has made the corridor very dangerous, Mainwaring puts two dots on pieces of paper to determine who goes at the head of the human chain with Hodges picking the first of the two dots, Mainwaring pulls a blank piece but lies to stop the young Pike of having any chance of being at the front, they quickly shift the rubble to gain access to the trapped men. Once inside, Jones slams the door, thus bringing the roof down in the corridor, so trapping everyone except Jones, who is left outside. When Jones goes for help he breaks the handle of the outside door, so he is trapped as well. Mainwaring enlists Wilson's help to cheer the men up by singing "Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree" but whilst doing this a pipe bursts and the inner room starts to fill with water, Pike being soaked first by the jet of water. Later, the inner room is now waist high in water. Only Pike is standing in the cold water, pleading with everyone to do something otherwise he will drown. Hodges is floating in a tank, the rest of the platoon is crammed onto the bunks. Much later, the water is neck high. Pike is still pleading, and the rest assure him that they are thinking about how to get out. Walker and Godfrey discover a manhole that can be opened to allow them all to escape. The spanner to do this is hanging high on the wall, and when Hodges tries to reach it, he falls out of his tank and into the water, dropping the spanner. Pike dives under the water and retrieves the spanner, thus getting completely soaked again, but at least the men can get out. After opening the manhole, they crawl through it to the outside of the pumping house, then run round to rescue Jones, who has managed to open another inspection hatch into the flooded chamber. Godfrey shuts the outside door ("there's a very nasty draught, and I wouldn't want anyone to catch cold"), thus trapping them all in the outer room again, leaving Wilson to have to go around again through the water to get help. ===== While Mainwaring is testing his new communication system, talking through sweet tins strung together by string, trouble is brewing on the horizon. The ARP Headquarters was bombed the previous night, and the town clerk and vicar have given them permission to move in with the Home Guard at the church hall. Mainwaring, naturally, is appalled at having to share his office with Hodges, and the hall with his "rabble". He orders his men to get rid of him, and Corporal Jones chases him out with a bayonet. Hodges returns, this time with the vicar and the verger and takes over half the hall. The Home Guard platoon struggle to come to terms with this new sharing arrangement, and even Walker who's usually shrewd in business is unimpressed, though he takes the chance to sell the Wardens a 'firelighter' to light the stove. While Mainwaring and Hodges are wrestling for control of the office telephone, a call comes through warning them of a fire that has started at a large building next to St Aldhems church. After initially calling for the fire brigade, they realise that it is in fact their own headquarters burning, and the chimney set alight by Walker's firelighter. The Wardens and Home Guard combine forces to try to put it out, entailing a rooftop drama with a hose and buckets of water. Eventually Wilson puts out the fire with a pinch of salt, despite Hodges's scepticism. Just as they are about to exit the roof, Mainwaring, Hodges and their men are trapped in a thunderstorm by a falling ladder, leading Mainwaring to ask Wilson if "the Fire Brigade wouldn't mind popping round". ===== The platoon arrive at a weekend country training camp to teach them about bombs. The camp is run by a twitchy Captain Reed (Michael Knowles) frightened by the enthusiasm and lack of awareness shown by the Home Guard. He is particularly unsettled by the Walmington-on-Sea platoon, especially Corporal Jones. The story largely follows Captain Mainwaring's fall from grace in the eyes of his platoon, and subsequent redemption. When the men are bivouacked in a tent, he falls under the influence of Captain Square who convinces him to set up an officers only section, much to the outrage of his men. He subsequently offends them by attending a select officers mess, drinking whisky with Captain Square and colleagues, and playing "Cardinal Puff" while his men enjoy a couple of bottles of ale elsewhere. Most of the men are disgruntled, while noting this is not Mainwaring's normal behaviour. Frazer goes so far as to threaten to resign (his general surly attitude of late has led Mainwaring to suspect he is a communist, noting he "never plays Monopoly with the others" as evidence of his suspicions). A drunken Mainwaring returns to their tent only to be jumped on by Corporal Jones, thinking he is a thuggee. The next morning, a rather hungover and worse for wear Captain Mainwaring joins his men for training. While at first things go seemingly to plan, potential disaster soon strikes when a stray grenade is fired into the roof of the platoon's van. Mainwaring immediately goes to warn Jones, who abandons the van while it is moving. A cool Mainwaring then stops and evacuates the van, but the van is stood next to power lines. Mainwaring re-enters the van and recovers the stray grenade: his command of the situation restoring his reputation in the eyes of the platoon. After Mainwaring throws the grenade away and dives for safety he hears panting, looking up to see the grenade being held by a shaggy dog. Mainwaring flees only to be chased down the road by the dog as the episode ends. ===== Bala (Shaam) is the favorite hit man of gangster Pasupathi (Rajan P. Dev). When Bala is not zooming around in jeeps with a wild-looking gang parading down lanes with the same gang faithfully following a step behind him or knocking down one person or another, he is successfully wooing Aarthi (Meera Jasmine). Aarthi is the daughter of Jeyamani (Raghuvaran), a rival gangster. Ailing don Paranthaman (Thilakan), the mentor of the two rivals, brings a compromise by suggesting that Aarthi will be married to Pasupathi's wayward son. Bala naturally becomes a pariah in both camps, until all's well that ends well. ===== A faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries are not only known to the general public, but are also fashionable, the title heroine is Princess Meredith NicEssus, also known as Merry Gentry. As niece to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, she is a royal of the Unseelie Court. While her aunt tried to kill her as a child, she has since offered her the title as crown princess as the Court needs more heirs. ===== A faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries are not only known to the general public, but are also fashionable, the title heroine is Princess Meredith NicEssus, also known as Merry Gentry. As niece to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, she is a royal of the Unseelie Court. While her aunt tried to kill her as a child, she has since offered her the title as crown princess as the Court needs more heirs. ===== A faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries are not only known to the general public, but are also fashionable, the title heroine is Princess Meredith NicEssus, also known as Merry Gentry. As niece to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, she is a royal of the Unseelie Court. While her aunt tried to kill her as a child, she has since offered her the title as crown princess as the Court needs more heirs. ===== A faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries are not only known to the general public, but are also popular, the heroine is Princess Meredith NicEssus. As niece to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, she is a royal of the Unseelie Court, however having fled the court three years before she has been hiding herself under the name of Merry Gentry and working as a private investigator for the Grey Detective Agency. ===== The series has revolved around a conflict between title character, faerie princess Meredith NicEssus, and her cousin, Cel. Cel's mother, Queen Andais, has promised that the first of the two cousins to produce a child will become ruler of the Unseelie Court. Mistral's Kiss continues to follow Meredith's attempts to bear a child and to avoid Cel's various schemes. ===== The story follows two fictional characters Mick and Kev who have nothing to offer. They are stereotypical bogans with a taste for cheap thrills. Kev's hobby is being angry, his motto is "Maximum fear, minimum time". He is unemployed with "attitude," an antagonistic manner. Mick is his best friend ("mate") and together they kill time drinking beer, watching the Idiot Box and looking for action on the street. One day Kev tells Mick they have drawn their last dole cheque. Instead of giving into their limited circumstances, they are going to get rich quick doing the only thing they are qualified for - crime. Conning a friend into driving the getaway car, the gang of three plan a bank robbery. But it is a heist that is doomed from the start when professional criminals target the same bank. ===== The game plot takes place in the time shortly before Ragnarök, an epic battle at the end of the world in Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a fallen warrior (an Einherjar) tasked by the god Odin to attempt to change the destiny of the gods and avert their fall during the coming war. Although the title takes some liberty with the accepted mythos, most elements are well represented and hence can be considered semi-educational. The tasks given to the player include: * Recovering the missing head of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir. * Finding key items needed to forge a chain to bind Fenrir. * Strengthening Thor's fishing line, so that it doesn't break when catching the world serpent. * Obtaining a special breastplate for Heimdall. Once all of the tasks are completed, Heimdall can be asked to blow his horn, causing the battle of Ragnarök to commence, with the outcome then being reported to the player. ===== Monster Planet takes place twelve years after the events in Monster Island. Sarah, Dekalb's now 20-year-old daughter, fights alongside Ayaan and her squad of female Somali warriors to defend their last remaining settlements from the encroaching undead forces. Meanwhile, a powerful lich from Russia who calls himself "The Tsarevich" leads his army west on an unknown expedition. ===== Lorna Bellstratten (Walters), a waitress with dreams of being in show business, is duped by her drug-dealer boyfriend Michael Vega (Guastaferro) into delivering a bomb to an undercover cop. Though Lorna survives the explosion (intended to kill her and the cop), she finds herself—as the only material witness to the crime she unwittingly abetted—wanted by both the cops and the mob (Vega's employers). Distraught, Lorna flees to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and takes out a contract on her own life (suicide-by-hitman.) Meanwhile, Vega (posing as Lorna's father) hires Los Angeles bail bondsman, Eddie Moscone (Hedaya) to send in a bounty hunter to bring her back to LA alive. Eddie offers the job to bounty hunter Jack Walsh (McDonald) for $10,000. He doesn't want to take the job because Eddie keeps on stiffing him his money. Eddie threatens to give the job to rival bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler, who does not make an appearance. When Walsh finds her in Cabo San Lucas, Lorna thinks he's her hitman. After a night of dancing, Lorna finds out the truth, hits Walsh out of anger and returns to her hotel room in a huff. Walsh's attempt to recover her is initially thwarted by the untimely arrival of the real hit-man, but they escape—with the hitman, the cops, and Vega's goons all hot on their trail. Along the way, the still-despondent Lorna keeps looking for—and finding—all manner of new ways to kill herself. For Jack Walsh, there's another problem—he's falling in love. ===== Somebody empties the bank accounts of many people, including Babu Anna (Akhilendra Mishra), an underworld don, via an Internet theft. The police are clueless about the robber, and Anna wants revenge. In another story, Jai Malhotra (Shahid Kapoor) lives with his best friend, Sonia (Kim Sharma). He meets Neha Mehra (Kareena Kapoor) and falls in love with her instantly. At first, Neha rejects Jai, causing him to attempt suicide. After Sonia chastises Neha regarding Jai's actions, she then falls for him too. One day, Jai sees Neha trying to hang herself after getting a phone call. She tells him that her dead father owed a huge amount of money to Babu Anna's underworld. To repay the amount, he became part of a gang of hackers who were responsible for the Internet thefts. After his death, Babu's Anna underworld began pursuing Neha to recover the money. Jai and Neha try to sell their apartments to get enough money, to no avail. A visit from a client leads Jai to consider robbing a bank to get the necessary money. At a bank, Jai spots a rich man named Vikram Singh (Fardeen Khan) withdrawing a huge sum of money and instead decides to steal from him. However, Vikram catches Jai during his attempts to break into his house. Instead of reporting Jai to the police, Vikram demands an explanation for his actions. Upon learning the whole story, Vikram reveals that he is the hacker behind the internet thefts but agrees to help Jai. In return, Jai has to take the blame for the thefts. Jai agrees, gives the money to Neha and turns himself in. Jai is escorted by police to be introduced for the trial, but Anna has his men intercept them to kidnap Jai. A shootout results between the gang and police as Jai is able to escape and runs to Neha's apartment, only to find both Neha and Vikram waiting for him. He is horrified to learn that they conspired against him to steal all the money and Neha's love was just a ruse to con him to take a fall. Jai escapes from the apartment but is shot off a train by a police officer. Even though his body is not found, he is presumed dead. Two months later, Neha and Vikram start getting anonymous phone calls. Neha believes that the calls are from Jai and that he is still alive. Jai, who is very much alive, is bent on getting revenge on both Neha and Vikram. Jai makes life miserable for both Vikram and Neha. One day when Neha and Vikram go out for a movie, Vikram finds Neha hanging by her neck in the toilet, and Neha confirms that Jai is alive. Vikram out of rage tracks Jai down and severely beats him up, threatening to murder him if he comes back into their lives again. Vikram then reports Jai to Babu Anna, thus giving him a whiff of the affair. This does not deter Jai as he later blackmails Vikram by kidnapping Neha, forcing him to turn himself in. Vikram obliges and is led to Neha; however, all three are intercepted and taken hostage by Babu Anna and his gang, demanding all his money from them. Jai cleverly deflects Anna and forces Vikram to transfer Anna's money back into his account. Catching them off guard, Jai and Vikram finish Anna and his gang. In the melee, Vikram has Jai cornered but Jai finally overpowers him. However, Neha strikes Jai hard from behind, allowing Vikram to gun Jai down. Vikram and Neha mock Jai as they watch him struggle with his fatal injuries. Jai stuns the two by rising with Babu Anna's gun and shoots Neha in the forehead, killing her instantly, to Vikram's horror. Jai collapses and boasts about settling the score for once whilst finally succumbing to his injuries, leaving Vikram alone to grieve over Neha's corpse. Later, a news report reveals that somebody has made a very hefty and generous donation to the Missionary Charity Fund, whilst Vikram is shown heading out in a boat. Thus it is implied that Vikram gave away all of Babu Anna's money to charity as he no longer has any good use for it. ===== The tale begins when architect Harold Berger (Paul Hubschmid) arrives in India and travels to the kingdom of Maharaja Chandra (Walter Reyer), for whom he will build schools and hospitals. En route to the Maharajah's palace, Berger travels with a temple dancer named Seetha (Debra Paget), who has also been invited by the Maharajah, and saves her from a tiger. Seetha, whose father was European, has inadvertently caused the Maharajah to become infatuated with her, but she and the architect begin to fall in love. Predictably, this leads to tension between Chandra and Berger, exacerbated by scheming courtiers who believe that the Maharajah's potential marriage to the dancer could become a pretext for toppling him. The film is filled with action: a highlight is Seetha's ritual dance. At the end of Tiger, Seetha and Berger escape together into the desert just as Berger's sister and her husband, an architect who works with Berger, arrive in Eschnapur. Chandra informs them that he now wants a tomb to be built for Seetha before any further work on the commissioned buildings. ===== Federal agent Irving Greenfield confers with a Southern governor about the corruption problem in fictional Dunston County and local boss "Bama" McCall. Irving intends to find Gator McKlusky, an old buddy of Bama's just out of prison, to help get the goods on Bama. When Irving mentions that "cleaning up" Dunston County would help his re-election, the governor agrees to give Irving whatever he needs. Irving visits Gator who is back with his father and daughter in Okeefenokee. Gator is disinterested at first, but reconsiders when Irving threatens to put his father in jail and his daughter in foster care. They drive to Dunston, where Gator reunites with Bama at a political rally and is immediately hired as a collector. Gator also locks eyes with TV reporter Aggie Maybank, who is after a story. After treating Gator to a taste of the high life, Bama secretly orders a background check on him, and Gator gets a closer look at Bama's empire: extortion, drugs, and corruption at every level. Then Bama sets Gator up with one of the girls at his brothel, a drugged cheerleader Gator remembers from the rally; she says that all the girls there are minors, which Bama prefers. Disgusted, Gator wants out, and Bama gives him a spiked drink and says he will wake up in his car parked at the county line pointed toward home. As promised, Gator wakes up in his car at daybreak, but now he wants to get Bama. Meanwhile, Irving is trying to fit in by hanging out at a local bar and making conversation when a corrupt cop recognizes him and gets word to Bama's enforcers Smiley and Bones, who injure Irving bad enough to be hospitalized. At the hospital Gator meets Aggie, who wants to see Irving. She tells of Emmeline, a "cat lady" fired from the Dunston County courthouse after 22 years. Gator and Aggie visit the woman, who mentions secret ledgers in the courthouse basement. That night, using stolen keys, they sneak in and find the ledgers, but a guard hits the alarm, and police quickly converge, but they escape in a patrol car, pick up Irving, and go to Aggie's uncle's beach house nearby. Gator and Aggie slip out to the beach for the night while Irving and Emmeline get acquainted. At daybreak, while Gator and Aggie go to call Irving's boss, Bama and Bones arrive, kill Irving, and set fire to the house to destroy the ledgers; Bones tries to haul Emmeline away, but she breaks free and is killed when she tries to rescue her cats. Seeing the fire, Gator and Aggie hide at a nearby motel. He first calls Irving's boss to come and get them, then Bama to tell him that he has some of the tax records and wants $2,000 and a plane ticket home in exchange for his location; Bama apparently agrees. When they arrive, Bama sends Bones into the room to kill Gator and Aggie, but he is killed by an exploding booby trap set by Gator, who then emerges and chases Bama to the nearby beach. Gator beats him in a fistfight just as a helicopter approaches. Later, Aggie is in a celebratory mood; her story has gone national and CBS wants her to work in New York. Gator tells her he loves her but, realizing they have no future together, he reluctantly heads home. ===== In the beginning, Freddy had the idea to establish a tourism company called Barnyard Tours Inc. The animals agreed, and the company was formed. Animals could pay for a tour with food, or by doing work for Mr. Bean. Soon, however, Freddy and Jinx, the cat, were sick and tired of conducting the tours. Freddy suggested a trip to the North Pole. So they and four other animals set off. A year passed, and the animals left began to worry. A mob formed in the barnyard triggered by a speech by Charles, the rooster. Then, Ferdinand, a crow from the expedition, came back and organized a rescue party. He said they had gone on a ship and crew were planning to eat Freddy. The sailors had said that they might try going to Santa Claus’ house. Later, in the woods of Canada, two children and a bear joined the rescue party. However, it soon was discovered that Ferdinand forgot to bring food and clothing for the animals. Everything looked grim for Ferdinand for a minute, but he suddenly came up with the idea for a lecture tour. The animals of the woods brought in food and clothing they found in the woods. Also, a few weeks later Charles and Jack, a dog, wandered away and were captured by some wolves. The animals, Charles and Jack, managed to drive the wolves away with the help of some ants. They finally arrived at Santa Claus’ house. The animals found Freddy there and also found a problem: The sailors were trying to turn Santa Claus's irregular workshop into an ordinary, assembly line factory. The animals tried to make the sailors leave. They played ghosts, but one sailor wasn't scared. Then, Freddy sent the captain, Mr. Hooker, a treasure map. He thought all the sailors would go with him, but instead, he tried to get all of it for himself. Freddy and Jinx chased after him and took it back. Later, the whole crew of the ship was shown the map. The sailors left and Santa Claus's workshop went back to normal. Santa Claus took the animals and the two children to the Bean Farm.Rescuing Freddy, The Little Pig Who Got Lost ===== In the early 1960s, Sandy (John Jarratt), Boo (Steve Bisley), Scollop (Mel Gibson) and Robbie (Phil Avalon) drive to the beaches north of Sydney for a surfing weekend. The boys are planning to give Sandy a memorable ‘one last fling’ before his impending marriage. Tension flares between university-educated Sandy and ocker Boo when Sandy decides not to join in the fun. At a local dance, Boo seduces Caroline (Debbie Forman), the teenage daughter of a caravan park owner (James Elliott) who discovers what has happened and comes looking for Boo with a gun. ===== On New Year's Eve, Manhattan socialite Alison Hawkins returns home from the evening's festivities. As she feeds her fish before going to bed, she is strangled to death by an undetected intruder with a blue ribbon. It is the latest murder by a serial killer who has been terrorizing the city for eleven months. The mayor, frustrated with the lack of progress in the case, and tells NYPD commissioner Frank Starkey to bring in his brother, former detective Nick Starkey, being the only man brilliant enough to catch the killer. This is a controversial assignment for Frank because Nick left the force in disgrace two year earlier. Frank talks Nick into returning, but only on the condition that he be able to cook dinner the next night for Frank's wife, Christine, who is Nick's ex-girlfriend. After a press conference announcing Nick's reinstatement, Christine and Nick have dinner. Old wounds are opened, including mention of a canceled check which indicated that Frank was involved in the scandal that got Nick fired. After reporting for work, Nick takes a different office than the one he was assigned because the light was not to the liking of his friend Ed, a painter. After getting Alcoa to add Ed to the payroll as his assistant, Nick begins work on the case. His first lead is to speak to the mayor's daughter, Bernadette, who was a friend of Alison. After Nick and Bernadette visit Alison's apartment, he decides to let her stay at his apartment because she is too frightened to return to her own. Nick realizes that the previous murders occurred on dates that are prime numbers, all of which are among the twelve prime numbers possible up to the number 31. Because 5 is the only one of the prime numbers that has not been used, Nick deduces that the next murder will take place the following night, on the fifth of the month. However, Nick is seemingly proven wrong when a woman is strangled one day ahead of Nick's prediction, after which the killer leaps out the window to his death. Nick believes that this is a copycat killing, especially when he learns that the man broke a window, as opposed to picking a lock to gain entrance as in the other murders. Frank and the mayor consider the case closed are content to be done with Nick. Nick and Ed figure out that the position of the victims' buildings, when seen on a map of Manhattan, forms the constellation Virgo. They also realize that all the rooms in which the murders took place have windows on the front of the building, and that when the exterior positions of the windows are lined up together according to which floor they are on, they correlate to eleven notes in the chorus of the song "Calendar Girl". This enables them to identify where the killer will next strike. Nick sets a trap with Bernadette as bait, outfitting her with a neck guard to prevent the killer from strangling her. The trio stake out the room in a supply closet and witness the killer picking the lock to get into the apartment. They intercept the apartment's resident and send Bernadette in, where she is attacked. Nick breaks in and, after a prolonged struggle with the killer, subdues him. He then wraps him up in the hall carpet and delivers him to the police outside the building. ===== Yves, a fisherman, comes home after a tiring day of fishing and soon falls asleep. In his dream, he is visited by the Fairy of the Ocean, who leads him to a submarine. Yves is made Lieutenant-in-Command and sets off on a submarine voyage. A panorama of undersea views follow, including shipwrecks, underwater grottoes, huge shellfish, sea nymphs, sea monsters, starfish, mermaids, and a ballet of naiads. The ballet is interrupted by Yves, whose inexperience with submarines leads him to run his craft aground on a rock. Yves leaves the wrecked submarine and chases after the departing naiads, but is attacked by huge fish and crabs. He escapes and travels past further underwater marvels, including underwater caves, anemones, corals, giant seahorses, and an octopus that attacks him. However, in vengeance for all the fish Yves has caught in his career, goddesses of the sea trap the fisherman in a net and let him fall into a gigantic hollow sponge, from which he struggles to escape. Waking up from the dream, Yves realizes that he has fallen from his bed into his bathtub, and is entangled in his own fishing net. His neighbors and friends free him from the confusion, and he treats them all to drinks at the nearest café. ===== A strange giant "sea monster" has been rampaging the seas. The United States naval ship Abraham Lincoln is sent to investigate, but the vessel is rammed and damaged by the "monster" which turns out to be Nautilus, the technologically advanced submarine of the enigmatic Captain Nemo. The Abraham Lincoln, now rudderless from the attack, is adrift. Then, in a "strange rescue", Nemo guides his submarine directly beneath four people who had been aboard the American ship and who had fallen into the sea during the attack. Nautilus surfaces and Nemo's own crew now bring the four individuals into the submarine through one of its deck hatches. The four include the master harpooner Ned Land, the French professor Pierre Aronnax, his daughter, and the professor's assistant. Once aboard the submarine, the four are required by Nemo to pledge they will not attempt to escape. The captain then introduces them to his vessel and to the wonders of its underwater realm. He later takes them hunting on the sea floor. Meanwhile, not far from the submarine, soldiers in a runaway Union Army balloon are marooned on a mysterious island, where they find a wild girl living alone. Soon the yacht of Charles Denver arrives at the island. A former British colonial officer in India, he has been haunted by the ghost of a woman (Princess Daaker) whom he attacked years ago. Rather than submit to him sexually, she had stabbed and killed herself. Denver then fled with her young daughter but later abandoned the child on the island. Long tormented by what he had done, he has returned to find the girl or to determine what happened to her. One of the Union soldiers schemes and kidnaps the wild girl onto Denver's yacht. Another soldier swims aboard to rescue her. At the same time, Nemo discovers that the yacht belongs to Denver, the enemy he has been seeking all these years. The Nautilus destroys the yacht with a torpedo, but the girl and her rescuer are saved from the water by Captain Nemo. In elaborate flashback scenes to India, Nemo reveals that he is Prince Daaker, and that he created the Nautilus to seek revenge on Charles Denver. He is overjoyed to discover that the abandoned wild girl is his long-lost daughter, but his emotion is such that he expires. His loyal crew bury him at the ocean bottom. They disband and the Nautilus is left to drift.Review, synopsis and link to watch the film ===== Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus rescues drowning passengers and takes them to an underwater city, Templemer (pronounced Temple- Meer) where they are told they will remain forever. The survivors include brothers Barnaby (Bill Fraser) and Swallow Bath (Kenneth Connor), Lomax (Allan Cuthbertson), Helena Beckett (Nanette Newman) and her son, and Senator Robert Fraser (Chuck Connors). Nemo takes them on a city scuba tour, but Lomax attempts to steal diving gear and escape but is caught. Fraser seems taken with a musical performance given by the city's swimming teacher Mala (Luciana Paluzzi), this noted by Joab, Nemo’s second in command (John Turner). Joab shows the Bath brothers how the city makes oxygen and fresh water and as a by- product gold, which is even thrown away. Joab advises them that no one has ever escaped Templemer. Lomax sees the oxygen machine as a means to escape by rupturing the city's dome. Lomax attempts this but only manages to flood the machine’s control room killing himself in the process. During this episode, the Bath brothers sneak into the Forbidden Area where they discover a second submarine, the Nautilus II, and see it as a means of escape. Enlisting Fraser to aid them, Fraser learns how to operate the submarine. During training they ram and kill a vast Manta Ray-like creature accidentally created during the building of the city. Fraser tells Nemo he should leave as he is attempting to cut off the supply of weapons to the American Civil War. Nemo refuses but offers Fraser a position at Templemer. This alienates Joab, who helps Fraser and the Baths steal Nautilus II, on condition they leave without bloodshed, and allow the crew to return with the submarine intact. They manage to take the submarine and are followed by Nemo in his submarine. Nemo explains there is fault with the Nautilus II's engines that means the sub could explode. The chase is brief. Unable to match the speed of the escaping submarine, Nemo has Nautilus I sheer away, to try 'going under the reef.' Confused by their pursuers apparently giving up, Fraser asks the Nautilus II's first mate if there is 'a shorter way,' and is told 'yes, there is,' but that 'this ship is too large!' A now desperate Fraser gives orders for 'crash speed.' As the submarine increases to flank an explosion causes the engines to fail, and out of control the ship strikes a reef before coming to a stop whilst still submerged. The crew with Fraser and the Baths put on diving gear and attempt to escape from the now flooding submarine, but Barnaby panics (weighed down by too much stolen gold by-product) and drowns in the attempt. Nautilus I approaches the wreck just in time to be buffeted violently as the bigger ship explodes; Joab is electrocuted as he is thrown against a control panel. Mortally wounded he confesses to Nemo that he helped Fraser to escape. Helena Beckett admits that she knew of the attempt, and that she and her son chose to stay. Mala reads Nemo a letter that Fraser left behind, in which he thanks Nemo for offering him a place in the city's future, but that he cannot accept, as he believes in his mission, and the 'slower, more painful process' towards peace. The film closes as Nautilus turns towards Templemer. On the surface, a small schooner is seen picking up two men in mid-ocean, far from either land or any sign of wreckage. Fraser and Swallow Bath, huddled in blankets, are made welcome aboard, and as the schooner prepares to set sail, Fraser finds his companion has concealed a gold ladle under his coat. The two exchange rueful smiles, and Fraser tosses it lightly into the sea. ===== Justy Kaizard is the most powerful esper in the known universe, and he works as a member of the Galaxy Patrol System Cosmo Police to bring down esper criminals. During one such takedown, he killed Magnamum Vega while his young daughter Astaris was watching. After the fight, she transformed from a young girl into a young woman and attacked him. While he was wounded in her attack, she forgot everything. Justy took the girl home and began raising her as his younger sister with the help of Jelna Flarestar. Because he has brought down over 200 esper criminals since joining the Cosmo Police, the rest of the esper criminals are willing to do anything to get rid of Justy. To this end, they hijack a civilian shuttle transport and demand that Astaris, Magnamum's daughter, be brought in exchange for the passengers on board the transport. Justy is assigned to take her there, but as she is making the EVA journey between ships, a group of the criminal espers joins together using telepathy to make her remember what happened to her father and who was responsible for it. Astaris begins attacking the policeman, destroying Justy's ship and using more and more power to try to break through his defenses. Worried for the safety of the nearby transport, Justy uses his powers to teleport it away from the fight. In doing so, he lets down his guard and Astaris is able to hit him with the full force of her powers, causing him to disappear. The criminal espers believe they have destroyed him, so they take the transport with all the hostages and warp away, leaving Astaris floating in space. Astaris comes out of her rage and begins wondering what happened and where Justy went. She then falls asleep, exhausted. After the shuttle leaves, Justy appears and rescues the sleeping Astaris, promising to bring the criminal espers to justice for using her in their ploy. After surrounding Astaris in a protective bubble, Justy warps after the escaping transport. After teleporting onto the transport, Justy eliminates three of the hijackers before the others teleport in an attempt to escape. He easily follows them. He handily defeats all but four of them after demanding that they return Astaris to the way she was. The remaining four combine their powers to try to defeat Justy, but he eliminates them one by one until he's down to the ringleader. He tells him that Astaris is his beloved younger sister now, and proceeds to eliminate him. Justy returns and rescues Astaris, and the voiceover as they return shows that Astaris remembers nothing of her attack on Justy and has returned to loving him as her heroic older brother. The show ends with Justy and his partner going out on another mission. ===== Lannie Waters (Traci Lords) wakes after dreaming about nude women floating in space. She wonders aloud about her sexuality and inexperience. Her mother (Helga Sven) brings up boys and tells her about a new man, Mr. Kennedy (Don Hodge), whom she believes likes Lannie, but who is too shy to say anything. Mark Radner (Shone Taylor), the son of a well-to-do suburban family, hangs out with his friends, Jeff (Tom Byron) and Kevin (Marc Wallice). Kevin talks about his encounters with Debbie; meanwhile, Jeff gets teased about not "getting laid." Mark reveals that his maid Sarah (Dorothy Onan) has been stealing, but also that he has not informed his parents, because he wants to blackmail her. He meets her outside in the garden, and brings her upstairs. He orders her to remove her uniform, then she starts servicing him and his friends before they have sex with her. By the side of a pool, Debbie (Bunny Bleu) goes topless with Cheryl (Susan Hart) also present. A self-conscious Lannie follows, as the three girls talk about sex and boys. Cheryl talks about losing her virginity while babysitting after calling Bill (Greg Rome) over. She was nervous about giving oral sex at first, as she admits, but he made her comfortable. Mark's mother, Mrs. Radner (Maria Kay), shows up with her boyfriend (Herschel Savage). Though angered with him for having driven too fast, she soon gets over it and comes on to him. He, for his part, is worried that her son is home, but she reassures him (incorrectly) that Mark is out. They have sex on the fountain as Mark secretly watches. Mrs. Waters and Mr. Kennedy conduct themselves similarly, next to the pool where the girls were conversing. Instead of going outside as planned, Lannie, Jeff, Debbie and Kevin meet for a “picnic” inside the house. Jeff takes Lannie to the kitchen after getting a signal from Kevin. When Lannie's dress gets wet, she teases Jeff, then removes the dress. Jeff, overwhelmed, ejaculates on himself. Debbie teases Kevin before sex. Lannie goes home and masturbates about Jeff. The scene cuts back and forth between Lannie touching herself, and the imagined sexual encounter outside on a picnic table. Mark calls Kevin, then invites Debbie, Kevin's girlfriend, to his home. Once Debbie shows up, Mark orders her to undress, then lie on the bed and close her eyes. After she has done that, he brings Wendy (Leslie Thane) and Louis (David Sanders) over to her. Wendy performs cunnilingus on Debbie until Mark tells her to open her eyes. Mark has sex with Wendy, while Debbie does Louis, until they switch partners. Excited by the encounter, Debbie calls Lannie and tells her that she is breaking up with Kevin, whom she dismisses as “a boy,” in favor of going steady with “a man” like Mark. Lannie decides that she knows what gets her hot. She hangs up and looks over at her friend Cheryl lying beside her. ===== In London in 1750, renowned English actor David Garrick announces onstage that he has been invited to Paris to work with the prestigious Comédie-Française. A fop in a box seat declares that the French want Garrick to teach them how to act, and the audience chants, "Teach the French!" The playwright Beaumarchais attributes the remark to Garrick himself. The outraged French actors, led by their president, Picard, take over the inn where he will be staying, and Beaumarchais devises a plot to humiliate Garrick publicly. On the road to Paris, Garrick meets Jean Cabot, an elderly admirer who once acted with him in Hamlet and now works as a Comédie-Française prompter. Cabot—who was tossed out of the Comedie-Française meeting when he protested that Garrick might be innocent—has ridden non-stop for two days to warn the actor, although he does not know the details of the plot. Cabot advises him to travel straight to Paris. Garrick decides to stop at the inn as planned and play along, despite the misgivings of his valet/companion Tubby and Cabot's concern that there may be violence. At the inn, Picard tries to rally his cast, but meets with temperament and histrionics on every side, particularly from Basset, whose insistence on playing a madman is quite maddening. They plan to discomfort the Englishman with a near miss from a falling trunk; a seemingly fatal duel with swords; a shootout between a husband and his wife's lover; Basset's mad waiter; and finally, an attack from a violent blacksmith. Garrick and Tubby arrive at the inn, and the "blacksmith," drunk and lacking a script, mistakes his cue and smashes one of the carriage wheels. Garrick adroitly steps out of the way of the falling luggage and is unperturbed when the duelists cross swords over his dinner. A complication arises in mid-performance when Germaine Dupont, Countess de la Corbe, appears at the inn. Her coach has broken down. Garrick believes she is one of the actresses, when she is actually fleeing a marriage arranged by her father. He plays along, offering her his room. Over the course of the evening, they fall in love. After an entertaining evening, Garrick overhears the "blacksmith" reviewing his script and reminding himself to hit the anvil with his hammer and not Garrick's head. He disguises himself as the blacksmith and, pretending to be drunk, tells the aghast troupe that he has struck and killed their intended victim. Tubby rages at them and demands that someone call out the guard. The actors plan to flee. Then Garrick reveals his identity. He does not betray Cabot. There is no need, as he easily reveals the flaws in their performances. Garrick adds that he admires the Comédie Française and never said anything so stupid as the remark that precipitated this farce. In her room, he storms at Germaine for her bad acting, including her bad kissing. Infuriated, she responds that she does not have much experience, but does not correct his mistake. Garrick leaves her with the furious advice that she quit the stage. Downstairs, Picard apologizes on behalf of the company and begs Garrick to join them in Paris. Garrick graciously accepts. At his premiere in Paris, about to play Don Juan for the first time, Garrick searches the stage for Germaine. He learns from Picard that she is not a member of the company. Realizing that she was telling the truth and that he actually loves her, he declares that he is too distraught to perform ever again, unless he finds her. He goes out to announce this to the audience and sees Germaine in a box, beaming. He is struck dumb. In the prompt box, Jean Cabot holds up a black board that reads: "I met her at the stable. I explained. She knows, understands, forgives, loves." Inspired, Garrick launches into a speech about being in love. Germaine is at first delighted, then becomes worried when it seems he will reveal her name—however Garrick identifies his new love as la belle France. She tosses a flower to him. ===== Nicolo Polo shows treasures from China and sends his son Marco Polo (Gary Cooper) there with his assistant (and comic relief) Binguccio (Ernest Truex). They sail from Venice, are shipwrecked, and cross the desert of Persia and the mountains of Tibet to China, to seek out Peking and the palace of China's ruler, Kublai Khan (George Barbier). The philosopher/fireworks-maker Chen Tsu (H. B. Warner) is the first friend they make in the city, and invites them into his home for a meal of spaghetti. Children explode a firecracker, and Marco thinks it could be a weapon. Meanwhile, at the Palace, Ahmed (Basil Rathbone), the Emperor's adviser, harboring dubious ambitions of his own, convinces Emperor Kublai Khan that his army of a million men can conquer Japan. Kublai Khan promises Princess Kukachin (Sigrid Gurie) to the King of Persia. Marco, arriving at the palace, sees Kukachin praying for a handsome husband. Marco is granted an audience with the emperor at the same time as a group of ladies-in-waiting arrive; Kublai Khan lets Marco test the maidens to find out which are the most worthy. Marco tests them all with a question ("How many teeth does a snapping turtle have?"), and he sends off the ones who had incorrectly guessed the answer, as well as those who had told him the correct answer (none), retaining those saying they did not know. His reasoning behind this is that they are the perfect ladies-in-waiting, not overly intelligent, and honest. Kublai agrees and Marco immediately becomes a favored guest. Ahmed shows Marco his private tower with vultures and executes a spy via a trapdoor into a lion pit. Kukachin tells Marco that she is going to marry the King of Persia, but, having fallen in love with her, he shows her what a kiss is. A guard tells Ahmed, who vows to keep Marco out of the way. Ahmed then advises Kublai Khan to send Marco into the desert to spy on suspected rebels. Kukachin warns Marco of the deceiving Ahmed. ===== A mad scientist named Dr. Buc Ooze has been conducting "controversial research into animal shaping" and has left many animals misshapen or in otherwise unnatural forms. In response, a machine called the "ZooCube" is created which reverses the effects Dr. Ooze's experiments. The player, named "Aon", is tasked with rescuing all the trapped animals, traveling aboard a "flying ark" and armed with the "ZooCube". ===== Reporter Jean Christy (Rosalind Russell) works for a newspaper in danger of being thrown away by its young owner, Pat Buckley (Patric Knowles), after Buckley has a falling-out with the editor-in-chief, Robert Lansford (Errol Flynn). Meanwhile, Lansford hopes to gain tycoon John Dillingwell's (Walter Connolly) business for his public relations firm, and uses his position at Buckley's paper to drum up good press for Dillingwell. In the process, he discovers that Dillingwell's granddaughter Lorri (Olivia de Havilland) is Buckley's fiancée. Lansford decides to try to charm Lorri, while Christy makes a play for Buckley. ===== The text for The Martian Chronicles versions of "There Will Come Soft Rains" are the same except for dates. The differences between the original and The Martial Chronicles stories may seem minor, but some are significant. In particular, the Chronicles version indicates the author's intent on strengthening the anti-war message of the story by commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and implicitly emphasizing the pacificist sentiments of Sara Teasdale. In addition, the Chronicles version presents a leaner, more refined narrative with the omission of a prologue contained in the original and several changes to sentence structure. ===== Marge and Homer are making love in their room while playing a fake tape of them arguing so the kids will not come in. When a flying article of clothing hits the tape recorder and plays America's "A Horse with No Name", Bart and Lisa decide to come in. Bart ends up traumatized by the sight and is an emotional wreck the following day. While he is coping, Nelson coerces Bart and Milhouse for their lunch money but also invites him and the rest of the class to his upcoming birthday party. Although Bart convinces all his friends not to go to Nelson's birthday party, Marge makes him attend. After the party, Bart becomes Nelson's new best friend and under Nelson's protection no one dares to mess with Bart. However, there is only one drawback to his newfound friend/bodyguard: he is no longer able to pal around with Milhouse because Nelson has never had a best friend before and is overly protective and jealous. Eventually, Nelson discovers that Bart had been playing with Milhouse, which leads him to no longer consider Bart a friend. He eventually decides to forgive Bart, however Bart tells Nelson that he thinks he is a psycho. Later, during a field trip to some tidepools, Nelson confronts Bart in a cave, telling Bart he is a bad friend. Suddenly, high tide comes and Nelson saves Bart (but only because they were field trip buddies). Later, Bart goes home and remembers the good times he had with Nelson while hugging a "Nelson vest" he had received. Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Homer finds himself hooked on one of Lisa's fantasy books, choosing to read an Angelica Button book to Lisa. Homer eventually reads ahead and finds that one of the characters, Greystash, is killed while trying to save Angelica. Upon hearing that Greystash dying would be the end of Lisa's childhood, Homer is unable to bring himself to read the last chapter to Lisa, and improvises a happy ending instead involving Greystash defeating the evil wizard. Afterwards, Lisa reads the real ending and nonchalantly decides that Homer's ending was better. During the credits, Homer is seen at Moe's Tavern, still mourning the loss of Greystash while screaming, "No man should have to outlive his fictional wizard!". ===== After writing to a televised sex-help program, Peggy decides that the best way to rekindle her relationship with Al is to have sex in a different location. Upon Marcy's recommendation, Peggy and Al go to the Hop-On-Inn and discover a videotape waiting for them in their room. After watching some of the tape, the Bundys realize that the couple having sex on the video are Steve and Marcy. Although Al is disgusted, the action turns Peggy on and the couple have sex. Peggy and Al return home and show the tape to Steve and Marcy, who are embarrassed by the film, much to the delight of the Bundys. The Rhoades express their dismay that they were secretly recorded, but Steve points out that the Bundys may have been videotaped as well. Marcy and Al are upset by this violation of their privacy and propose physical violence against the owners of the motel. Steve and Peg, on the other hand, want to take action against the Hop-On-Inn and make money from the incident. Peggy convinces Al to sue the motel with her and the Rhoades. Steve, not wanting a lawyer to take any of the million dollars he expects to win from the case, decides to act as one for the two families. The case begins with Steve presenting a lengthy opening statement, during which the stenographer and the judge fall asleep. Next, Steve shows the subpoenaed sex tapes from the motel, despite objections from his wife. After a few hours, the tape runs out and the courtroom applauds Steve and Marcy's romp. Next, Steve shows Peggy and Al's tape, which ends after a few seconds. After the plaintiff rests, the defense lawyer calls Marcy, Al, and Peggy to the stand. She asks Marcy a series of embarrassing questions, hoping to prove Marcy knew that the camera was there. Her tactic with the Bundys is to try to prove sexual intercourse did not occur on the videotape. In the end, the Rhoades are awarded $10,000 but the Bundys receive nothing, because the jury does not believe that sex occurred. After everyone exits the courtroom, Al attempts to prove that he can perform when he wants to and has sex with Peggy for hours on the judge's bench, unwittingly while being recorded by the courtroom camera. ===== Catherine (Catherine Erhardt) is a sexually unfulfilled socialite who longs for the memory of her father. She spends much of her time in the attic, masturbating in front of a gothic mirror that reminds her of her childhood and teenage years with her father (Jamie Gillis). During one of her daily visits she encounters the ghost of her father in the mirror. The ghost masturbates her and draws her into the mirror to witness several sexually charged scenarios. These pique her interest and eventually culminate in a scene where Catherine witnesses her teenage self semi-reluctantly, then enthusiastically, take part in an incestuous encounter with her father. After her father is finished with the encounter, he remarks to Catherine that this was what she wanted. Before returning to reality, Catherine realizes that this is not her father but a demonic figure. She tries to deny his invitation to come into the mirror's realm as a permanent resident but the demon tells her that he knows that she will return as she always has in the past, as she is bored with the world and her husband. He tells her to return to the mirror at 1 am, but only after fulfilling a few conditions. She must not only throw all of her jewelry away, but she must also allow her daughter Jennifer to have unconditional access to the room so that the demon can watch her just as he watched Catherine grow. This upsets Catherine, as she had previously forbid her daughter from entering the room and did not want to allow the demon access to Jennifer. She tries to get out of the late night encounter by trying to leave the house and persuade her husband to take her somewhere, but is unsuccessful. Later that night Catherine returns to the room and in a dream- like state begins to masturbate. The demon exits the mirror and while initially languid upon his approach, Catherine begins to struggle against his advances. He then violently rapes Catherine, who screams, which awakens the rest of the house. She eventually passes out, awakening in a horrific world where people degrade themselves and each another. Catherine is horror struck to realize that rather than the lavish world that had been promised to her, the demon has tricked her and that she is there because she chose to focus on sexual illusions and fulfilling her deepest desires rather than try to interact more with the world around her and improve herself as a person. She discovers her father in the sexual hell, which further terrifies her. Dodging the many people trying to sexually assault her, Catherine tries to escape but is unable to and succumbs to the madness of the hell. Her daughter sits in front of the mirror, becoming just as enraptured with it as her mother was. ===== The book's plot describes the way in which an outcast animal, the scub, infiltrates the ark and introduces certain of the other species to the idea of eating meat. (Until this point, all the animals eat porridge with a dollop of treacle.) This sinister development is described alongside a good deal of slapstick humour. For example, the nautically naive Noah initially constructs the ark with all the large animals quartered together for social reasons, only discovering the consequences for its stability when the flood waters surround it. Like many later fictionalisations of the Noah story, from Gary Larson to Julian Barnes, it introduces mythical beasts such as the unicorn into the Ark's passenger list, a device with obvious dramatic potential: we assume that such creatures are unlikely to survive the voyage. Here, as elsewhere, the comic elements mask tragic ones to good effect. Especially memorable is the plight of the 'Seventy-sevenses', a pair of nondescript and painfully shy mammals who name themselves after the number of their cabin, and who eventually abandon the Ark on a small raft because the atmosphere on board has become too oppressive. There was also an even sadder pair of animals "The Clidders" who melted when it began to rain! Outwardly this is a de-theologised version of the story: God does not appear, and the purpose of the Flood is not mass drowning. Yet the way the scub creeps into the childish innocence of the Ark and subverts it still points to a narrative patterned by Christian concepts of the Fall. In the final scene, a horrified Noah – who has not yet realised quite what has happened on his ship – watches as the newly released animals chase and fly from one another, awakened to their new identities as hunters and hunted. ===== The Nighttime Clap consisted of a series of eclectic sketches and field reports related to current trends in popular music. Several bands appeared on the show, including Electric Six and Thursday. ===== Set four years after the events of the first movie, Allen Bauer (Todd Waring) and his wife Madison (Amy Yasbeck), a mermaid, have been living on a deserted island hideaway. Allen is bored with life on the island and admits he misses New York City and his older brother, Freddie. Madison has the magical ability to view images in water and communicate by running her finger in a circular motion over it; she uses this method to show Allen how things are going on back in New York with Freddie (Donovan Scott). The family business, Bauer Produce, is in trouble since Allen left. Madison offers to go back to New York with Allen so he can help out, and they do. They are welcomed back by Freddie, and Allen manages to attract a potential new customer for Bauer Produce, the wealthy Karl Hooten (Noble Willingham). Karl places importance on all-American family values, so Allen and Madison are to present themselves as a typical happily married couple. Freddie gives them a run-down suburban house for them to move into, which they manage to restore into presentable condition. Madison agrees to be a housewife and adjust to life on land. She also has to keep her mermaid side a secret, especially from their new neighbor, Mrs. Needler (Doris Belack). When Allen's work takes up more of his time and he breaks some promises to her, his relationship with Madison is strained. Madison finds comfort with her new friend Fern Hooten (Rita Taggart), Karl's wife, who supports Madison's desires to find her own interests. During a business event at an aquarium, Madison sees one of her dolphin friends, Salty, in one of the tanks. Madison is upset by this, especially because Salty has a mate out in the wild. Karl is one of the benefactors of the aquarium, so Madison asks him to let Salty go. This causes more friction between Madison and Allen, as Bauer Produce still needs Karl's business and Allen doesn't want to get on Karl's bad side. Madison declares her unhappiness with how Allen is treating her and disregarding her feelings, and leaves off swimming into the ocean. Allen realizes his mistake and regrets pushing Madison away. When Madison returns to the house, Allen apologizes and the pair reconcile. They sneak into the aquarium, where Dr. Otto Benus (Mark Blankfield) is doing research on Salty, and try to set him free. They are almost caught, but Fern Hooten comes to their aid and helps them get Salty on to a van and out to the ocean. At the sea front, Salty is released into the ocean and returns home to his mate. Madison and Allen talk about their future and agree to be honest. Allen agrees to return to the sea with Madison if that's what she wants, but he would prefer to stay on land. Madison agrees to stay on land with him, as she has many things she would like to do. The pair embrace. ===== Cooper is an actor who sees life as one big party, while Ed is in advertising and takes life too seriously. When Ed gets stressed over a deadline he has to meet, Cooper works to get his brother hooked up with a girl, thus a long weekend of stress and beautiful women, culminating in Ed's meeting, and making love to, the woman of his dreams- and all without his brother's meddling. ===== At a church in Guatemala, a man and a boy, Ben Mears and Mark Petrie, are filling small bottles with holy water. When one of the bottles begins to emit an eerie supernatural glow, Mears tells Mark that "they've found us again." Knowing an evil presence is nearby, they decide to stay to fight it. Two years earlier, Mears, a successful author, returns after a long absence to his small hometown of Salem's Lot, Maine. Mears intends to write a book about the Marsten House, an old, ominous property on a hilltop which has a reputation for being haunted. Attempting to rent it, Mears finds that it has already been purchased by another new arrival in town, the mysterious Richard Straker, who is in the process of opening an antique shop with his oft-mentioned but never present business partner, Kurt Barlow. Instead, Mears moves into a boarding house in town run by Eva Miller and develops a romantic relationship with a local woman, Susan Norton. He befriends Susan's father, Dr. Bill Norton, and reconnects with his kindly former school teacher, Jason Burke. Mears tells Burke that he feels the Marsten House is somehow inherently evil, recalling that its original owner, Hubie Marsten – implied to have been a child molester – committed suicide there. Mears further recalls a traumatic childhood incident in which he broke into the house on a dare and saw Hubie's ghost. After a large crate is delivered to the Marsten House one night, townspeople begin to disappear or die under strange circumstances. Mears and Straker are the main suspects as they are both new in town, but it eventually becomes clear that the crate contained Straker's business partner, Kurt Barlow — an ancient vampire who has come to Salem's Lot after sending Straker to make way for his arrival. Straker kidnaps a young boy, Ralphie Glick, as an offering to Barlow, while Barlow himself kills local realtor Larry Crockett. The Glick boy then returns as a vampire to claim his brother, Danny. After his funeral, the undead Danny infects a gravedigger, Mike Ryerson, and attempts to prey on one of his schoolfriends, Mark Petrie. However, Mark is a horror film buff and manages to repel Danny with a cross. As the vampirism spreads, Mears, Burke, and Dr. Norton gradually realize what is happening to the town and attempt to stop it. Mears is attacked by Ralph and Danny's presumed-dead mother Marjorie Glick after she revives on a mortician's table, but Mears defends himself using a makeshift cross. Mark's parents are both killed by Barlow, though Mark escapes with the assistance of a local priest. Burke, however, suffers a severe heart attack following an encounter with the newly vampirized Ryerson. Seeking revenge for his parents' deaths, Mark breaks into the Marsten House, and a concerned Susan follows him inside; both are soon captured by Straker. Later, Mears and Dr. Norton enter the house, too, where Straker kills Norton by impaling him on a pair of antlers before he himself is fatally shot by Mears. Afterwards, Mears and the freed Mark find Barlow's coffin in the cellar and destroy him by driving a stake through his heart. Fleeing the other vampires in the house (the infected townsfolk), the two set fire to the Marsten property as they leave, though Susan is nowhere to be found. While the house burns, the wind carries the fire towards the town itself. As he and Mark drive away from Salem's Lot, Mears comments that the fire is a good thing because it will drive all the vampires from their hiding places and purify the town from the evil that has engulfed it. The story returns to Mears and Mark at the church in Guatemala two years later. It becomes clear that they are on the run from the surviving Salem's Lot vampires, and that their bottles of holy water glow whenever a vampire is nearby. Realising that they have been tracked down yet again, Mears and Mark return to their lodgings to collect their belongings. Once there, Mears finds Susan lying in his bed. Now a vampire, she prepares to bite him as he leans down to kiss her, but instead Mears drives a stake through her heart and destroys her. A grief-stricken Mears then leaves with Mark, knowing that the vampires will continue to pursue them. ===== Feeling writing as a terribly painful task, the narrator re-tells the story of his 1970 summer. He was a student at a university in Tokyo then, and returned to his seaside hometown in Niigata for summer vacation. That spring, a girl he dated at the university committed suicide. During the summer vacation, he frequented J's bar with his friend "Rat" and spent much time drinking beer obsessively. One day, he came across a girl lying on the floor in the washroom of the bar and carried her home. The girl had no left little finger. Later, he ran into the girl by chance in the record store where she worked. After that, she started calling him and they hung out a few times. Meanwhile, Rat was clearly troubled about some woman but he did not disclose the details. One day, the girl without a little finger met the narrator at a restaurant near the harbor. They took a walk in the dusk along the warehouse street. She told him, "When I sit there alone, I can hear a lot of people coming to talk to me..." That night, at her apartment, she revealed she just had an abortion. When he came back in the winter, the girl had left the record store and her apartment. The narrator is married now and living in Tokyo. Rat is still writing novels and sends his manuscripts to the narrator every Christmas. ===== A Czech agricultural student, Šimon Plánička, arrives at the small South Bohemian town of Hoštice, and joins the local JZD (agricultural co-op) with the intention of trying out his experiment regarding the "Milk yield of cows in regards to a cultured environment". He runs into difficulty with the directorship of the JZD, but he finds them eager to help once they hear he's the son of the local agricultural commissioner, as his last name is also Plánička. Blažena Škopková is given the task of finding out how things are looking. However everything is complicated by the jealousy of Blažena's boyfriend Venca. ===== Tom Ripley is involved in an art forgery scheme in Berlin, in partnership with British gangster Reeves. Upon finding out that Reeves has attempted to cheat him, Ripley forces Reeves’ customer at gunpoint to give him the money intended for the forgeries, and kills the man’s bodyguard. He also steals back the artwork for himself, and curtly tells Reeves that their partnership is over. Three years later, Ripley is living in a lush villa in Veneto with his wife Luisa, a harpsichordist. Invited by a neighbour to a party, Ripley overhears the host, Jonathan Trevanny, insulting his taste and alluding to his shady reputation. Ripley briefly confronts him, then sullenly leaves the party. Reeves resurfaces, much to Ripley's annoyance, asking him to eliminate a rival mobster. Ripley recommends Trevanny for the job as revenge for the slight. Believing Trevanny, a law-abiding art framer who is dying of leukemia, to be an assassin, Reeves offers him the job for a large fee. A bewildered Trevanny refuses at first, but eventually agrees in order to make sure that his wife and son are provided for after his death. Trevanny travels to Berlin under the pretense of seeing a leukemia specialist, and kills the mobster at a museum. He refuses Reeves’ offer of even more money to kill another mobster, this time on a train, but relents after Reeves threatens his family. Trevanny freezes up on the train and contemplates suicide. Ripley intervenes and the two dispatch the target and his two bodyguards in the train's toilet. Together they return home, where Trevanny vainly attempts to persuade his wife Sarah that he won the money playing roulette. Reeves ignores Ripley's warnings to keep a low profile, fearing that the Mafia will seek reprisal for the killing and deduce who was involved. Sure enough, the mobsters' associates come to Italy seeking revenge, killing Reeves and leaving his body in the boot of their car. They storm Ripley's villa, but Ripley has set them up by carefully boobytrapping his home. With Trevanny's help, Ripley kills them all. Ripley leaves Trevanny under the assumption that all the killers have been dispatched. However, Trevanny returns home to find two surviving gangsters holding Sarah captive. Ripley spots the killers' silver BMW outside in the bushes and doubles back to Trevanny's in time to save his wife. A wounded assassin fires at Ripley, but Trevanny sacrifices himself by jumping in front of the bullet. Genuinely puzzled by Trevanny's selflessness, Ripley tries to give Sarah her husband's share of the blood money, but she spits in his face. That night, Ripley attends Luisa's concert as if nothing has happened, but smiles briefly at the memory of Trevanny's sacrifice. ===== Newspaper reporter Pete (Bing Crosby) works in a Paris orphanage. His charming way with children and music enables him to find homes for even the most troubled kids. One afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey (Alan Reed and Minna Gombell), an American couple, come to the orphanage to adopt Bobby, a boy they saw in one of the ads Pete ran in his newspaper. Bobby misbehaves, but when Pete discovers that Mr. Godfrey plays for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he quickly produces a young blind opera wunderkind, Theresa (Anna Maria Alberghetti), who sings her way into the Godfreys' hearts. Later that night, Pete dreams that the fiancée he left behind in America, Emmadel (Jane Wyman) has visited. She appears in a hologram atop his record player, scolding him for leaving her at the altar and talks about the children they might have had. Filled with regret, Pete arranges to adopt both Bobby and his little sister Suzi and bring them to Boston, where he'll marry Emmadel. American authorities inform him that he must marry within five days or the adoption will be void. After delays in obtaining the children's birth certificates, they and Pete finally fly to Boston, and go to Emmadel's house. While she bonds with Bobby and Suzi, Pete discovers that Emmadel is engaged to an aristocratic man, Wilbur Stanley, whose office she works in. She had gotten tired of waiting for Pete's arrival home. The kids stay with her loud parents (drunken father James Barton, a fisherman, and disapproving mother Connie Gilchrist). Pete tries everything to win Emmadel back. She helps him secure a lease on a new house via her fiancé's company. However, when Pete and the children arrive at the house in the rain, they discover that another couple (the McGonigles) also have a lease for the property. Emmadel's fiancé Wilbur shows up to settle the matter. Wilbur offers Pete a ride to another house - but Pete talks him into letting them stay at the Stanley family's gatehouse. They agree to a friendly competition for Emmadel's heart during the few days leading up to the wedding. Pete and the children settle into the Stanleys' lavish gatehouse, where Emmadel's parents are also staying. Emmadel meets Wilbur's amiable elderly relatives, who present her with $500,000 as a wedding gift. Her parents embarrass her by running screaming through the garden. Emma discovers Pete's presence and visits the gatehouse to have it out with him. While she pulls Suzi's loose tooth, Pete pretends to be in love with Winnifred, Wilbur's fourth cousin twice-removed, and laughs when Emmadel pratfalls on her huge party dress. Pete reveals his plan to Winnifred Stanley. He discovers that she has long been in love with her cousin Wilbur, but feels too socially awkward to pursue him. In a bit of Pygmalion, Pete teaches Winnifred to feel comfortable with herself. Winnifred's newfound confidence bubbles over at the wedding rehearsal. She and Emmadel erupt in a brawl on the front lawn. Winnifred concedes the fight, and Emmadel declares that she's proud to be a fisherman's daughter. The wedding day arrives. News reporters line the outdoor chapel, proclaiming this the Cinderella story of the decade. As he escorts Emma down the aisle, Pa Jones tells her that Pete kidnapped the children and ran so they wouldn't be sent back to France. Emmadel begins to have second thoughts. Pete shows up at precisely the wrong moment, handcuffed to a policeman, with both crying kids in tow. Although Wilbur offers to marry Emma and adopt the children, Bobby and Suzi cling sobbing to Pete. On national television, Wilbur abandons his own wedding and forces a reluctant Emma and a protesting (but secretly thrilled!) Pete to marry. Pete, Emmadel, Bobby, Suzi, Ma and Pa Jones all ride off for their honeymoon together. ===== On June 27, 1976, four terrorists belonging to a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the orders of Wadie Haddad boarded and hijacked an Air France Airbus A300 in Athens, Greece. With the permission of President Idi Amin (Julius Harris), the terrorists divert the airliner and its hostages to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. After identifying Israeli passengers, the non- Jewish passengers are freed while a series of demands are made, including the release of 40 Palestinian militants held in Israel, in exchange for the hostages. The Cabinet of Israel, led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Anthony Hopkins), unwilling to give in to terrorist demands, plans a top-secret military raid. This commando operation, military code name: "Operation Thunderbolt", will be carried out over from home and will take place on the Jewish Sabbath. While still negotiating with the terrorists, who now numbered seven individuals, the Israeli military prepared two Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports for the raid. The transports refuelled in Kenya before landing at Entebbe Airport under the cover of darkness. The commandos led by Brigadier General Dan Shomron (Harris Yulin) had to contend with a large armed Ugandan military detachment and used a ruse to overcome the defenses. A black Mercedes limousine had been carried on board and was used to fool sentries that it was the official car which President Amin used on an impromptu visit to the airport. Nearly complete surprise was achieved but a firefight resulted, ending with all seven terrorists and 45 Ugandan soldiers killed. The hostages were gathered together and most were quickly put on the idling C-130 aircraft. During the raid, one commando (the breach unit commander Yonatan Netanyahu (Richard Dreyfuss), brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), and three of the hostages died. With 102 hostages aboard and on their way to freedom, a group of Israeli commandos remained behind to destroy the Ugandan Air Force MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters to prevent a retaliation. All the survivors of the attack force then joined in flying back to Israel via Nairobi and Sharm El Sheikh. ===== On June 27, 1976, four terrorists belonging to a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the orders of Wadie Haddad boarded and hijacked Flight 139, an Air France Airbus A300 in Athens, Greece. Two of the terrorists are West Germans named Wilfried Boese and Halima, and the other two are Palestinians. After landing to refuel in Libya, the four hijackers force the airliner to take off once again. With President Idi Amin's permission, the terrorists divert the airliner and its hostages to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The hijackers are joined at Entebbe by more Palestinian militants. After identifying Israeli passengers, the non-Jewish passengers are freed while a series of demands are made, including the release of 40 Palestinian militants held in Israel, in exchange for the hostages. The Cabinet of Israel, unwilling to give in to terrorist demands, is faced with difficult decisions as their deliberations lead to a top-secret military raid. This commando operation, "Operation Thunderbolt", will be carried out over from home and will take place on the Jewish Sabbath. While still negotiating with the terrorists, who now numbered seven individuals, the Israeli military prepared a group of Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports for the raid. The transports landed at Entebbe Airport under the cover of darkness. The commandos led by Brigadier General Dan Shomron had to contend with a large armed Ugandan military detachment and used a ruse to overcome the defenses. A black Mercedes limousine had been carried on board and was used to fool sentries that it was the official car that President Amin used on an impromptu visit to the airport. Nearly complete surprise was achieved but a firefight resulted, ending with all seven terrorists and 45 Ugandan soldiers killed. The hostages were gathered together and most were quickly put on the idling C-130 aircraft. During the raid, one commando (the breach unit commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), and three of the hostages, died. With 102 hostages aboard and on their way to freedom, a group of Israeli commandos remained behind to destroy the Ugandan Air Force MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters to prevent a retaliation. All the survivors of the attack force then joined in flying to Nairobi for refueling and then back to Israel via Sharm El Sheikh. ===== Two bugs, the Scottish-accented Erky, and his friend, the cowardly and impressionable Perky, live an idyllic life on a downtown hot dog stand, a cornucopia of crumbs, relish and wieners. They live the high life until one day they are swept away in a take-out bag and end up in a sterile suburban kitchen with no food in sight. The two bickering, dimwitted and lazy bugs are forced to survive in the new and scary "Land of Kitchen". Every day, they are obsessed with finding food, and eventually finding their way home to "Hot Dog Stand". Their quests are almost always befouled by 'Mad' Margaret, the self-appointed ruler of Kitchen, and her 'sidekick' Cecil. ===== Matt Sullivan (Patrick Muldoon) travels with his girlfriend, Dawn (Keegan Connor Tracy) from their urban residence in Denver on a vacation to the Blackwoods of Colorado, only to discover a motel run by a motel clerk, Greg (Clint Howard), a deranged family, and a horrific secret. Matt is haunted by the death of a girl from a car accident he caused years ago. Matt was drunk and as he reached for the car radio, he struck the girl as she crossed the road. The guilt that he feels has altered his sense of reality, making Matt's life a mystery full of shadows and phantoms. Now, years later Matt goes away for weekend with his new girlfriend Dawn. During a stopover in a small town, Matt and Dawn have lunch at a local diner where he notices several of the locals staring oddly at him. On the road, Matt is pulled over by the local sheriff, Harding (Michael Paré) who asks Matt who he is and what he is doing passing through the town. After Matt explains about his private getaway Sheriff Harding lets him go. Matt checks into a local motel where he interacts with the debauched motel clerk and owner Greg who tries to overcharge him for his room for the night. A little later, after a wild session of lovemaking, Dawn goes for a walk. While she is away, a strange man with an ax comes into the motel room and attacks Matt who escapes. Matt calls the police where Sheriff Harding shows up and after finding no one around, openly suspects Matt of having an agenda to the suspicions of his story. After the sheriff lets Matt go, again without arresting him, Matt phones his friend Jim (Will Sanderson) where he tells him about Dawn's disappearance and asks Jim to come to his aid. After that incident Matt goes into the woods, looking for Dawn. There he encounters Dawn's family who tie him down and put him on trial for the murder of the girl years before. It turns out that Dawn is the twin sister of Molly, the young girl that Matt ran over with his car years earlier after he was driving drunk following an argument with his former girlfriend. The backwoods Franklin family find Matt guilty and he is sent back into the forest to be hunted down by the family. The deeper Matt runs into the forest the farther his mind is lost to the Blackwoods.Uwe Boll's Blackwoods Film Review - Toasted Pixel Matt manages to ambush and kill two of the family members, Jack and John, pursuing him through the woods. But the film's climatic twist comes when Jim appears after having tracked Matt down and Matt suddenly kills Jim, after thinking that he too is in league with the Franklin family. It turns out that Matt's girlfriend 'Dawn' is only a figment of his imagination. All of the interactions with Dawn and the rest of the family were fabrications that stemmed from Matt's guilt of running over the young woman years earlier and Matt at this point as become totally deranged and paranoid. Sheriff Harding follows some leads that Matt told him earlier into the woods and to the old Franklin house which is unoccupied and in disrepair (confirming that Matt's "trial" was indeed fabricated in his head). Harding finds Jim's dead body and then chases Matt through the woods to arrest him, only for Matt to run onto a main road where he is run over by a speeding truck and killed. The final scene shows Sheriff Harding telling his story to Beth, the waitress at the local diner, and how Matt's mental instability led to him dreaming up this waking nightmare about Dawn, her family, and of the other encounters in the Blackwoods. ===== The film depicts a young woman (Swanson) given by a mystic an occasional glimpse into her future, notably her future with different men. ===== Job and his wife are sitting out under a palm tree when a tree, called the Burning Bush or The Christmas Tree, enlightens itself. The couple explain that this tree rustling is God, and he has come to talk to them. It ends up actually being God, and Job goes over and talks to him. God sets up his throne ("a plywood flat, prefabricated" that God pulls upright on its hinges to support him) and talks to Job about his condition (because he was ill). God then says "You are the Emancipator of your God, and as such I promote you a saint". Job is grateful of this title, and then his wife comes along, and tells God about her punishment when she was accused of witchcraft. God apologizes for his lack of action, explaining "That is not Of record in my Note Book." ===== The gendarmes of St. Tropez are invited to New York City to a law enforcement conference. They are supposed to travel alone without spouses or children but Cruchot's daughter Nicole wants to go to New York as it may be her only chance. Cruchot forbids her to go because disobeying an order may hurt his career. As Cruchot travels to Le Havre by plane and train, Nicole gets a ride from her friend and sneaks on board SS France and travels to America as a stowaway. During the journey Cruchot sees her hiding among the lifeboats but his captain convinces him that he is imagining things. When the ship arrives at New York, Nicole is caught by an immigrations officer. She has no passport, visa or money so the immigrations officer decides to deliver her to the French embassy. Nicole is saved by a newspaper reporter who plans on running a cycle of romantic articles about a French orphan girl and her dreams. He houses her in a YWCA hotel and takes her to a live TV show where she sings live. During her stay she meets an Italian gendarme who already tried to win her over while on the ship. The Italian takes her to his relatives soon after Cruchot who has seen her performance on TV chases her out of the YWCA hotel and gets arrested. Cruchot is released with a warning and a suggestion to visit a psychiatrist. After a Freudian episode with a psychiatrist Cruchot is relieved of his perceived visions. The captain sends him to find a real good cut of beef in order to make a proper French meal. Fumbling as usual, during a West Side Story parody scene he manages to help capture a wanted criminal and is honoured by a newspaper article the following day. While reading the article he notices a photograph of Nicole in an article about her romantic involvement with the Italian gendarme. He forces the Italian to reveal Nicole's whereabouts and proceeds to find her in the deli belonging to the Italian gendarme's family. He manages to take her away but they are both chased by the Sicilians who believe that Nicole was kidnapped. Cruchot and Nicole manage to escape by hiding in Chinatown and dressing as local Chinese couple. Meanwhile, the Italian gendarme solicits the help of the NYPD and other gendarmes present at the congress to help him find his lost love. Cruchot transports Nicole to the airport by taxi in a luggage chest. He fails to arrive because of a small traffic incident and is forced to release Nicole from her confinement. Through a series of incidents Cruchot and Nicole manage to evade the NYPD and Cruchot's captain at a construction site and return to their abandoned taxi, which takes them to the airport. At the airport Cruchot agrees to meet Nicole in the bar. When he arrives there she meets him dressed as an Air France flight attendant. She places him before a choice: either take the plane she will be flying on, thus risking discovery by the captain or make sure that they are late for their flight. Cruchot sabotages the gendarme's luggage making them late for the flight, while the captain sees a girl resembling Nicole fumbling with the airplane door. Cruchot manages to convince him that he is imagining things. The movie cuts to Saint Tropez where the gendarmes are welcomed by the townsfolk, their wives and Nicole. The movie ends with the captain discovering that Nicole is wearing a dress that Cruchot bought for her in America. He confronts Cruchot with his insubordination. ===== As described in a film magazine, Jimmy Dent (Reid), son of John Dent (Roberts) the maker of the reliable but plain Dent automobiles, is dismissed from the firm after he refuses to drive a Dent. He goes west with the Tyler family, owners of a rival automobile firm, in one of their expensive high speed cars. The elder Dent attempts to break the cross-country record held by a Tyler automobile with a Dent vehicle, but Tyler's men waylay his drivers. Jimmy offers a cash prize for a free-for-all cross-country race, and drives the Dent when his father's driver betrays him. He passes the slate of drivers when rain in the mountains ties them up and wins the race driving the trusty Dent. Jimmy ends up marrying the elder Dent's effective stenographer Louise Fowler (MacLaren), who dons a mechanic's overalls to help in the big finish. ===== 1922, somewhere in Australia. An Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman, and three white men (The Fanatic, The Follower and The Veteran) are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced indigenous man (The Tracker). As they travel through the rugged Australian outback, each suffers under the stern hand and racist attitude of The Fanatic, who will stop at nothing to bring the accused to justice, even if that means sacrificing the others to reach the goal. Meanwhile, the motives of the tracker remain elusive, and despite their relentless pursuit the men always seem to be a half-day behind their quarry. After the death of one of the men, and a surprise mutiny, what endgame awaits for the group, and the enigmatic Tracker to which they have entrusted their survival. ===== The three fairy tale novels follow the adventures of the little fictional childlike people living in "Flower City". They are described to be sized like "medium cucumbers", a quality that has earned them the name "shorties" or "mites". All fruits and vegetables growing in Flower City are, however, their regular size, so the Shorties invent sophisticated methods of growing and harvesting them. In Nosov's universe, each shorty occupies his/her own niche in the community and is named accordingly. ===== Ryan Dunne is a local baseball player who dreams of playing in the Major Leagues. He helps his dad with his landscaping business and takes care of Veteran's Field, where his team, the Chatham A's play. Ryan, in his dedication to making the pros, has sworn off girls and drinking to avoid distractions. This changes when he sees Tenley Parrish, as he and his father are mowing the Parrish family's lawn. The next day, the A's have their first game of the season where rival Van Leemer shines pitching a shut-out, while Ryan is told to walk the stands for donations. That evening Ryan and Tenley have their first kiss. The next night Ryan is pitching in his first game of the season. The game goes well for the A's until the last inning when Ryan gives up a grand slam, allowing the other team to win the game. Ryan returns home to find his dad drunk and upset about the loss. Later, Ryan visits Tenley where he confides about his rocky relationship with his father and concerns about failing as a baseball player. Ryan is distracted by Tenley and feels a lot of pressure from scouts, family, the Parrish family, and friends. He is told that he's getting the start for an upcoming big game. The next night, Ryan starts out well, but comes apart later on. The loss causes him to be demoted to the bullpen in a relief position. Despite the bad outing, Hugh Alexander, a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies in attendance, shows interest in Ryan's talent. Eric Van Leemer and Dale Robin are kicked off the team not only for their bad behavior, but also for accidentally burning down a press box, and since Ryan has the freshest arm and the most rest, he is designated to start the final game. Tenley tells Ryan that she's leaving for San Francisco for a job opportunity the following night, which is the night of the final game. She tells him to let himself be great, before tearfully hugging him goodbye. Inspired by Tenley's words of encouragement, Ryan pitches one of the best performances ever seen in the Cape League, dominating the game with a no-hitter, with his friends, dad and brother, and several major league scouts, including Alexander, in attendance. Late in the game, he notices that Tenley has stopped by on her way to the airport to watch him. He proceeds to strike out the current batter, marking his eleventh strike-out of the game, and looks back to see that Tenley is gone. Ryan rushes to the airport where he catches Tenley before she boards her plane. They both profess their love for each other and she agrees to forego her job in San Francisco and stay. Ryan's dad and brother soon arrive with the scout Alexander, to tell him that his team won the game with a combined no-hitter. Alexander offers Ryan a contract with the Phillies that will start him out at their minor league affiliate, which he happily accepts. In a mid-credits scene, everyone is gathered to watch Ryan in his Major League debut as a relief pitcher for the Phillies. He delivers his first pitch to Ken Griffey Jr., who launches it into the stands for a home run. Phillies players Mike Lieberthal, Doug Glanville, and Pat Burrell, along with outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr., make appearances at the end of the film. Other notable cameos in the movie include Kevin Youkilis, Curt Gowdy, Hank Aaron and Carlton Fisk. =====