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The main protagonist is Conrad Hart who, in Flashback, destroyed the planet of hostile aliens called the Morphs and went into suspended animation in a spaceship that floats aimlessly through outer space. In the year 2190 (50 years later), he is found by the Morphs and imprisoned in the Lunar prison of New Alcatraz. There, he is rescued by a man who introduces himself as John O'Conner, who tells him that the Morphs beat him to Conrad's ship, and leaves Conrad a few items "of interest" (a PDA and a handgun), before destroying the camera. On the PDA is a message from John, who tells Conrad to sneak around the base. Mandragore agents left a radar-scrambler there. Conrad soon makes it to John's ship. As they blast off, Morph ships start attacking them. They teleport to Mandragore base Shadow just as the ship is destroyed. They meet Sarah Smith, the leader of the Mandragore resistance. Later, in a meeting with Mandragore commander Hank, she tells Conrad that while he was in suspended animation the Morphs attacked Earth with superior forces, which made the governments surrender. The Mandragore has far fewer people, but they refuse to give up. Agents then call Sarah and tell her that they have found the location of Professor Bergstein: Morph asteroid base D321. Sarah sends Conrad and John there to rescue him. Conrad eventually finds Bergstein, who tells him that the base must be destroyed because it contains the Morph's new mind-manipulating weapon. He gives him a datacube (similar to the holocube that is in Flashback), which he explains contains a virus that he programmed in. The virus will blow up the base when the datacube is connected to the core. They connect the virus to the core and escape the base with John as it blows up, along with the asteroid itself. Conrad is then sent to a mining facility on Mars and gets the coordinates to a Morph base, where he rescues and meets Ageer. He tells Ageer about his previous adventures. Ageer tells Conrad that he and his people, an ancient alien race referred to as the "Ancients", want to join the Mandragore and can lead them to victory. Soon, Ageer tells Conrad that he must find the oracle in Pluto, the homeland of the Ancients. Conrad travels to Pluto with Ageer, who then tells Conrad that the oracle will lead him to the pyramid. As he travels, he finds a glass eyeball that he gives to a hand creature that then gives him the oracle. The oracle does lead Conrad to the pyramid, which Ageer uses to give the history of the Ancients to Conrad: "The Ancients live in peace until the Morphs arrive. The Ancients think that they come in peace and they welcome them. However, the Morphs attack the ancients. The Ancients put their souls in the pyramid, which is then captured by the Morphs." The Morphs stole the pyramid and a new and apparently invincible creature, the Super Morph, arrives to kill Conrad. After avoiding him, he is teleported by Ageer to a Morph base in which he makes through looking for the stolen pyramid. In the meantime, he sees John telling Master Brain that their plan has become a success; with his identity, he has managed to infiltrate Shadow and put in an active detonation device. Master Brain tells John that someone is spying on them. John looks back, sees Conrad, and then transforms into his true identity: the Super Morph. After avoiding him, Conrad quickly takes the pyramid with a Morph ship and returns to Shadow, which is then attacked by the Morphs. Conrad fights his way through the Morphs as agents get killed. Conrad gets a key from a rescued soldier, which gives him access to the command room, where Conrad meets Hank. He tells Conrad that Sarah can give him the code to disable the detonation device, but she has been taken hostage by a Morph. Conrad gets to the floor and saves Sarah, who then gives him the code and teleports away. After Conrad disables the device, Ageer and Hank enter the command room as Sarah explains their new plan. The Ancients have given the Mandragore the ability to know where the central Master Brain is on Easter Island in planet Earth. She and Conrad will teleport there and destroy it. As they arrive, they separate. Conrad eventually teleports to the central Master Brain and throws the oracle in front of it. As he then teleports away, the oracle disappears and leaves behind the pyramid, which now contains the souls of the Ancients. The Ancients then fight the central Master Brain. The Ancients sacrifice themselves in order to destroy the central Master Brain. As Conrad flees Easter Island, it starts exploding, and the Super Morph gives chase. From here there are two endings: * If Conrad reunites with Sarah and goes to the ship, they enter it and Sarah begins starting its engines. The Super Morph attempts to attack, but Sarah pulls down on a control stick, directing the jet blast of one of the engines upon the Super Morph, killing it. Sarah then skillfully pilots the ship off Easter Island just as it explodes. As the ship rendezvous with a fleet of other vessels, Hank, on behalf of the Mandragore, transmits his congratulations and appreciation to Conrad on his efforts in destroying the Morphs. As Sarah pilots the ship into hyperdrive back to Shadow headquarters, a voice-over of Conrad is heard explaining that he was no longer alone. He speaks of the ships behind him, consisting of people on their way to Earth in a homecoming upon the defeat of the Morph menace after many decades of trying exile. Conrad, confidently declaring that no one would ever be alone again, anxiously rejoins his comrades of the Mandragore at Shadow headquarters. * If Conrad gets to the ship alone, then he does the exact things that Sarah does in the other ending, including killing the Super Morph. However, he must fly off of Easter Island on his own. He successfully does just as Easter Island explodes. Hank seems unaware of Sarah's death as he does not mention it when he transmits his congratulations to Conrad. Although ships are converging on Earth and the Morphs have been destroyed, Conrad's future relationship with the Mandragore is left unknown. 

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Travis was born in 1900, yet he has not aged since 1919, because he accidentally called up a demon from hell named Catch as his servant, presumably forever. Ever since then, Travis has been trying to get rid of Catch, but he is unable to do so because he has lost the repository of the necessary incantations. He traces their whereabouts to a fictional town called Pine Cove, along Big Sur coast, where he thinks the woman he gave them to may be residing. Interactions with the townspeople and with a djinn, who is pursuing Catch, create considerable complications. Several characters from this novel continue their lives in later novels by Moore. Catch appears in a later book (Lamb), but a much earlier period of history; in addition, the setting of Pine Cove itself is revisited for The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and The Stupidest Angel. The fictional town of Pine Cove is described as being within easy driving distance of San Luis Obispo, California, and seems to be modeled after the town of Cambria, California. 

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In 1949, Joe King, pilot for hire and owner of the Amazon Queen airplane which he uses for his work, arrives at a hotel in Rio de Janeiro to transport his next customer, famous film actress Faye Russel, only to be ambushed by his Dutch rival Anderson. Locked in a hotel room and trapped by Anderson's goons, Joe quickly gains assistance from Lola, a showgirl at the hotel and a former love interest, and escapes, making it back to the airport with his mechanic Sparky, just in time to stop his rival taking Faye. Wasting no time, Joe quickly pilots the Amazon Queen towards the location of Faye's shoot, only for a storm to cause him to crash-land in the Amazon jungle. After getting Faye and Sparky to safety, Joe begins searching for help, soon encountering a parrot named Wedgewood with a message for help. Seeking out the person the message was for, Joe meets with Trader Bob, a merchant who lives amongst an indigenous tribe in the jungle, who soon asks for his help in rescuing a princess named Azura from Floda, a lederhosen company that Bob suspects is a cover for something much more sinister. Joe quickly begins searching for the jungle, encountering an entire tribe of Amazon women who capture him and took in Faye when she decided to seek help herself. Released by the tribe, Joe agrees to help them rescue Azura as well. Finding the princess within a hidden base beneath Floda, Joe frees her and returns to her tribe, only to find himself coming face-to-face with Floda's leader - Dr. Frank Ironstein, a mad scientist who seeks to conquer the world by turning Amazon women into dinosaur warriors through the use of his DinoRay invention. Seeing that Joe was smart to get around his security, Ironstein coerces him into helping him find an artifact from a temple that he requires known as the Crystal Skull, threatening to harm Azura if he doesn't. Left with no choice, Joe agrees, and heads for the temple, navigating traps and puzzles and eventually finding what he needs. Returning it to Ironstein, Joe quickly finds himself betrayed and trapped in Floda's base, but soon escapes and goes after Ironstein with the help of Anderson, his former rival having originally been hired by the scientist to assist but later deciding to turn against him. Heading into the valley, Joe assists in trying to find Ironstein and manages to stop him, saving the day, before taking the scientist's Zeppelin and flying into the sunset with Azura. 

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The protagonist, Yang Guo, is the orphaned son of Yang Kang, one of the antagonists in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, who is also the sworn brother of Guo Jing. The couple Guo Jing and Huang Rong take care of Yang Guo for a short period of time before sending him to the Quanzhen Sect on Mount Zhongnan for better guidance in moral values and orthodox martial arts. In Quanzhen, Yang Guo is often picked on and bullied by his fellow students, and discriminated against by his master, Zhao Zhijing. Yang Guo flees from Quanzhen and ventures unknowingly into the nearby Tomb of the Living Dead, where the Ancient Tomb Sect is based. There, he meets Xiaolongnü, a mysterious maiden of unknown origin, and becomes her apprentice. They live together in the tomb for many years until Yang Guo grows up. Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü develop romantic feelings for each other, but their romance is forbidden by the prevailing norms of the jianghu (or wulin, the community of martial artists). Throughout the story, their love meets with several tests, such as the misunderstandings that threaten to tear them apart, and their encounter with Gongsun Zhi, whom Xiaolongnü almost marries at one point. Finally, after their reunion and marriage, Xiaolongnü leaves Yang Guo again, owing to her belief she cannot recover from a fatal poison and promises to meet him again 16 years later, to prevent him from committing suicide. While Yang Guo is wandering the jianghu alone, he meets several formidable martial artists and a giant eagle, and improves his skills tremendously after learning from them. His adventures gradually mold him into a courageous hero and perhaps the most powerful martial artist of his time. Yang Guo serves his native land by helping the Han Chinese people of the Song Empire resist invaders from the Mongol Empire. At the end of the novel, he is reunited with Xiaolongnü and they leave to lead the rest of their lives in seclusion after receiving praises and blessings from the wulin. 

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As its name suggests, Earth 2140 takes place in the year 2140. Previous wars have left much of the Earth a nuclear wasteland, forcing most of the world's population into underground cities. Tensions rise between the Earth's two major factions, the Eurasian Dynasty (ED) and the United Civilized States (UCS), as both sides vie for the world's steadily dwindling resources. A UCS raid on an ED base is enough to ignite the rivalry into full-scale war as the ED fails in its bid to control Mexico and the UCS counterattacks Scandinavia, Great Britain, France, and the Iberian Peninsula. 

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The player acts as a "WarWizard", a powerful magic-using character that fights and completes quests. WarWizard features VGA graphics and sound effects, but touted greater emphasis on gameplay than on anything else. One notable feature of the game was its combat mode, which featured the ability to target specific parts of an opponent's body, hampering movement or disabling the opponents altogether, rendering them unable to flee from the battle or to retaliate. The same thing could also happen to the player, WarWizard, himself. 

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The film is based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, with the Mumbai underworld as its backdrop. Miyan Maqbool (Irrfan Khan) is the right-hand man of Jahangir Khan (alias Abba Ji) (Pankaj Kapur), a powerful underworld don. Maqbool is grateful and feels a close connection and personal indebtedness to Abba Ji. Seeing their close relationship, but also sensing Maqbool's ambition, two corrupt policemen (Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah) predict that Maqbool will soon take over the reins of the Mumbai Underworld from Abba Ji. Nimmi (Tabu) is Abba Ji's mistress, but she and Maqbool are secretly in love. Nimmi encourages Maqbool's ambitions and persuades him to kill Abba Ji to take over as Don. Maqbool is torn between his love for Nimmi and his loyalty to Abba Ji, but he begins to prepare the ground for becoming a Don, by ensuring that others in the line of succession cannot interfere. Finally, Maqbool murders Abba Ji in cold blood while he is in bed at night, with Nimmi next to him. Maqbool gets away with the murder and takes over as Don, just as planned; but both he and Nimmi are haunted by guilt, seeing Abba Ji's ghost and unable to wash the blood from their hands. There is also suspicion, within the gang, of Maqbool's role in the death of Abba Ji, and eventually the lovers meet a tragic end. In addition to the portrayals of the three tragic heroes, the film offers performances by supporting cast members, in particular Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah. The two open the film in their roles as black comic relief corrupt police inspectors-cum-astrologers, predict the fall of Abba Ji—who has them on his payroll—and the rise and fall of Maqbool. Contrary to the original play, the corrupt cops are not just passive soothsayers. In an effort to sustain what they refer to as "balancing forces," they are also actively involved in shaping events, like aiding in providing information to Abba Ji's enforcers to wipe out a rival gang, using subtle nuances in coercing Maqbool to shift loyalties, deliberately botching an "encounter" attempt on Riyaz Boti (Macduff) and subsequently setting up an alliance between a rival politician (the incumbent one was backed by Abba Ji) and a fleeing Guddu (Fleance) and Riyaz Boti against Maqbool. 

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Martin W. Harrow (David Wayne) is a compulsive child-murderer, and the public demands of the mayor and police that he be caught. The police start a crackdown on criminal operations, dive bars and hangouts in the city, hoping that the murderer will turn up in one of the many raids. This pressure is preventing the city's crime syndicate from doing business, and its boss, Marshall (Martin Gabel), organizes his forces to find and stop the murderer so that the police will stop the crackdown and Marshall can go back to business as usual. Meanwhile, Police Inspector Carney (Howard Da Silva) has a psychiatrist examining patients who have been released from mental hospitals as possible suspects. At the same time that the police focus on Harrow, finding incriminating evidence - the shoes of the dead children - in his apartment, the criminals track him down with his intended next victim. They capture him, and place him on trial by his "peers" in the Los Angeles criminal underworld. Harrow makes an impassioned plea for his life, explaining that he is unable to stop himself from committing his unspeakable crimes. Just as he is about to be killed by the crowd, the police arrive to take him away, but not before Marshall has shot and killed his alcoholic lawyer, Dan Langley (Luther Adler). 

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A man named Billy Colman rescues a redbone hound under attack by neighborhood dogs. He takes it home with him so that its wounds can heal. In light of this event, he has a flashback to when he was a ten-year-old boy living in the Ozark Mountains. The book is Wilson Rawls own story with Billy Colman as the fictional character who wants nothing more than a pair of Redbone Coonhounds for hunting. After seeing a magazine ad for coonhounds, Billy spends the next two years working odd jobs to earn the $50 he needs to buy two puppies. Billy's dogs are delivered to Tahlequah, over 20 miles away. Billy decides to walk the distance. As he returns with the dogs, he sees a heart carved on a tree with the names "Dan + Ann" and decides to name the puppies Little Ann and Old Dan. With his grandfather's help, Billy teaches his dogs to hunt. Both dogs are very loyal to each other and to Billy. The first night of hunting season, Billy promises the dogs that if they tree a coon, he will do the rest. They tree one in a huge sycamore, which Billy believes is far too large to chop down. Remembering his promise to his dogs, Billy spends the next two days attempting to chop down the sycamore. Exhausted, Billy prays for the strength to continue, whereupon a strong wind blows the tree over. Billy and his hounds become well-known as the best hunters in the Ozarks. Billy's grandfather makes a bet with Rubin and Rainie Pritchard that Old Dan and Little Ann can tree the legendary "ghost coon" that has eluded hunters for years. After a long, complicated hunt, Old Dan and Little Ann manage to tree the raccoon, but having seen how old and smart the ghost coon is, Billy cannot bring himself to kill it. Billy tries to stop the Pritchards from killing the raccoon, leading to a fight with Rubin. The Pritchards' dog Old Blue joins the fight, provoking Old Dan and Little Ann to attack Old Blue to drag him away from Billy. Rubin tries to drive Billy's dogs away with an axe, but trips, falls on the blade, and dies. Billy is deeply troubled by the tragic turn of events, but does not regret his choice to spare the ghost coon. Billy's grandfather enters him into a championship coon hunt against experienced hunters. The hunt is scheduled during a particularly cold week and many of the other hunters are forced to give up, but Billy, who is used to mountain winters, is able to reach the final round. On the last night, Old Dan and Little Ann trap three raccoons in a single tree, but a sudden blizzard forces Billy to take shelter. The following morning, the dogs are found covered in ice but still circling the tree. All three raccoons are captured and Billy and his dogs win the championship and a $300 prize. One night while the trio is hunting, a mountain lion attacks the dogs. Billy fights to save his dogs, but the mountain lion turns on him. The dogs manage to save Billy by killing the mountain lion, but Old Dan later dies of his injuries. Over the next few days, Little Ann loses the will to live and finally dies of grief atop Old Dan's grave, leaving Billy heartbroken. Billy's father tries to comfort his son by explaining that he and Billy's mother have long wished to move to town where their children can get an education, but could not afford to do so without the extra money brought in by Billy's hunting. Knowing that Billy's dogs would suffer in town and that Billy would be devastated to leave them behind, they intended to allow Billy to live with his grandfather. Billy's father believes that God took the dogs as a sign that the family was meant to stay together. On his last day in the Ozarks, Billy visits Old Dan and Little Ann's graves and finds a giant red fern growing between them. Remembering a legend that only an angel can plant a red fern, Billy also comes to believe that perhaps there truly was a higher power at work. The adult Billy closes by saying that although he hasn't returned to the Ozarks, he still dreams of visiting his dogs' graves and seeing the red fern again one day. 

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Pil-gu is a high school athlete and the leader of an underground club called Shock. Along with the Shocks, the judo club and a girls' club called Sexy Wave led by Hee-jeong cause plenty of trouble and mayhem in the school. The arrival of a pretty young teacher named Yoo Yuna gets the students in gear for another big scheme. Each club sets up a strategy to lure the new teacher. After beating numerous contenders, Pil-gu approaches Yuna. 

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Springfield holds a ceremony dedicating their newest national park, Geezer Rock, a rock formation which resembles the face of an old man in profile. As Lisa Simpson prepares to read a poem there at the behest of Mayor Quimby, she notices that there is a small tree growing in the eye of the rock. Fearing that it will destroy Geezer Rock over time, Homer, who claims that “It's time to do something I have never done—help an old man!”, rushes over and pulls it out, believing he is doing the right thing. Unfortunately, this causes Geezer Rock to fall apart, and everyone runs for their lives — except for Mr. Burns, who winds up in a landslide. Smithers is fearful he has lost Mr. Burns. Lisa is saddened that no one ever heard her poem, and she publishes it on Marge's suggestion. Meanwhile, it turns out that Burns survived the horrible landslide through slithering his way out and subsisting on centipedes, insects and mole milk (he claimed the mole had nursed him as her own though he in fact picked one of her offspring and tossed it aside while he took his place and suckled on her, as shown in his flashback). However, Springfield's local news instead reports on the destruction of Geezer Rock and then labels Mr. Burns as being a hateful man nobody liked and signs off by thanking Geezer Rock for doing what everyone else was too scared to do and kill Mr. Burns. To improve his image, Mr. Burns decides to purchase every media outlet in Springfield, instead of being a kinder person reformed by a near-fatal rockslide. Lisa distributes the very first issue of her newspaper, The Red Dress Press, which is well received. She enlists the help of Bart, Milhouse Van Houten, Martin Prince, Nelson Muntz, and Ralph Wiggum among others, to publish her newspaper's second issue. Burns acquires all media outlets in Springfield except Lisa's newspaper. His views are even promoted on Itchy & Scratchy (which he now writes and directs) in an episode promoting nuclear power. Later, Burns tries to bait Lisa with ponies in an attempt to acquire her newspaper, but she will not give up; this causes the ponies to hiss and bare their teeth at her to her shock, and she leaves. Lisa is saddened that all the others left her, but is relieved when Bart decides to stay and help Lisa publish more issues. Burns gets back at Lisa by cutting off the Simpsons' power, so Lisa is forced to write her next issue through an old mimeograph Principal Skinner used in Vietnam. Mr. Burns finally wins the war by having a talk with Homer (and even drugging him) so he can dish some dirt on Lisa; the following day's Springfield Shopper boasts the headline, “LISA’S A TOTAL WACKO, IMPLIES FATHER”, and goes further by humiliating Milhouse's crush upon her. Lisa writes her final "I Give Up" edition and shuts down the Red Dress Press, but Homer responds by creating his own newspaper, The Homer Times, and other people, such as Lenny, Groundskeeper Willie and Patty and Selma, also create their own newspapers to help her, thus showing that the little guy is not powerless against the media, cheering her up. Burns gets upset that, while he succeeds in defeating Lisa and her journal, he soon finds that he cannot stop people criticizing him. As a result, he is forced to acknowledge that no one besides Rupert Murdoch can truly control the whole media. However, since Burns is too narcissistic to concede defeat (which he hates), he goes out on a shopping spree with Smithers for relief. 

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The following is transcribed from the game's promotional brochure. 

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In part, it was a portrait of Harold Geneen, the chief executive of ITT from 1959 until 1977. Geneen was a legendarily hands-on manager, who believed it necessary to penetrate through layers of "false facts" to get to the "unshakable facts" about any of the markets or divisions of his conglomerate. In terms of its broader themes, though, this book was one of a spate of early-70s books that promoted the thesis that multinational corporations were taking over the traditional prerogatives and functions of national governments. In a review of Sampson's book in the Sunday Telegraph, Sir Frank McFadzean, Vice Chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell, took issue with that thesis. Such corporations are "prisoners of their past investments," he wrote, because "even the most puny government can nationalize, and the only redress is to seek compensation." Although as Sampson's book shows ITT has used other means of redress to defend its own business interests from nationalisation, that have not been confined to the courts. These have ranged from supporting the 1930s military takeover by General Franco in Spain, investing in Hitler's war machine throughout World War II, and funding a CIA-backed coup led by General Pinochet in Chile 1973. 

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Harris's narrator Henry "Author" Wiggen, a star pitcher, tells the story of a baseball season with the New York Mammoths, a fictional team based on the New York Giants, as noted in the author's book Diamond: The Baseball Writings of Mark Harris. In the novel, Wiggen befriends a slow-talking catcher from Georgia named Bruce Pearson who is more ridiculed than respected by his teammates. When Pearson learns he is terminally ill with Hodgkin’s disease and is to be sent to the minor leagues, Wiggen rallies his teammates to keep the catcher among them and inspires Pearson to become a better player before his time runs out. 

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Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian-Spanish- Caucasian descent (who typically claim pure Spanish blood). The central character Danny inherits two houses from his grandfather where he and his friends go to live. Danny's house, and Danny's friends, Steinbeck compares to the Round Table, and the Knights of the Round Table. Most of the action is set in the time of Steinbeck's own late teenage and young adult years, shortly after World War I. The following chapter titles from the work, along with short summaries, outline the adventures the dipsomaniacal group endure in order to procure red wine and friendship. 

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Bernard Valcourt, a documentary filmmaker from Quebec, has been sent to the Rwandan capital Kigali to set up a television station. He falls in love with a Rwandan girl, Gentille, who in reality is an ethnic Hutu, but she is often mistaken for a Tutsi. With the Hutu government encouraging violence against Tutsis, Gentille's life becomes endangered. Encouraged by his love for Gentille, and a desire to complete a documentary to bring the tragedy of AIDS to the attention of the outside world, Valcourt refuses to leave Rwanda. When the two are married, they become separated, leaving Valcourt believing that Gentille has been killed. He then determines to document her life story, and sets out to discover the story of her final days. 

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There are three cases in this book. The first might be called "The Double Murder at Dawn"; the case describes the hazardous life of the traveling silk merchant and a murder which is committed to gain wealth. The second, "The Strange Corpse", takes place in a small village and addresses a crime of passion which proves hard to solve. The criminal is a very determined woman. The third case, "The Poisoned Bride", addresses the poisoning of a local scholar's daughter, who marries the son of the former administrator of the district and dies mysteriously on her wedding night. This case contains a surprising twist in its solution. All three cases are solved by Judge Dee, the district magistrate, detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one person. His powers are vast, and some of the things he can do would be manifestly illegal in a Western judicial system - such as grossly intimidating a witness or suspect, up to and including the extraction of a confession by torture. As against that, making a false judgement could be far more perilous to Dee's kind of magistrate than to a modern western one. Exhuming a dead body without proving that the dead person was murdered would be an act of Sacrilege which would the cost the Judge his job (which very nearly happens to Dee in the course of the book). If the judge had sentenced a person to death and the executed person prove afterwards to have been innocent, the Judge would be himself executed - having made an honest mistake would not be a sufficient plea to save him. Should an innocent person die under torture, both the judge ordering the torture and all members of staff administering the torture would suffer the capital punishment - and members of Dee's staff urging him to cease torture when the suspect proves obdurate shows that they are aware of that dire risk to themselves. The three cases offer a glimpse into the lives of different classes in traditional Chinese society: adventurous traders who travel vast distances along the trade routes up and down the land of China, and who are sometimes targeted by robbers and sometimes form dubious partnerships or turn outright robbers themselves; the small-scale shopkeepers and townspeople, who live within a narrow circumscribed life of routine which some find stifling; the gentry of literati, who by long tradition were considered as the land's rulers and so considered themselves. Any official departure of Judge Dee from the court compound (which also includes his private living quarters) is done with fanfare, accompanied by a large retinue of constables and officials. This approach is sometimes useful - especially when suspects are to be overawed and intimidated, or recalcitrant local officials intimidated into fully cooperating with an investigation. Sometimes, however, Judge Dee finds it expedient to go out incognito and carry out an investigation in disguise. He carries off very well the disguise of an itinerant physician; as Van Gulik points out, knowledge of medicine was expected of Chinese literati. Conversely, Judge Dee is less successful in passing himself off as a merchant, a member of a completely different social class; an observant merchant quickly unmasks him as what he is, a member of the Literati elite. Fortunately, it turns out that this observant merchant is not the wanted criminal; on the contrary, he is an honest merchant, with his own accounts to settle with the criminal, who become a very valuable ally. Judge Dee acts according to very strict ethics, regarding himself as duty bound to enforce justice, seek out, and severely punish all wrong-doers, high or low. Some remarks made by various characters and references made to other magistrates make clear that Dee's conduct is far from universal among District Judges. Others of Dee's colleagues might have been more lenient with a suspected murderer when he was a member of a rich family and an outstanding student of literature; or would not have exerted themselves to catch the murderer of a "small" shop-keeper in a minor provincial town; or would have thought more of lining their own pockets than of seeing justice done. Judge Dee's honesty and probity were proverbial - which is why tales were told of him even more than a thousand years after his death. 

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So long a letter, or in its original French publication, Une si longue lettre, is written as a series of letters, known as an epistolary novelhttps://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/so-long-letter, from the main character Ramatoulaye Fall to her best friend Aissatou following the sudden death from heart attack of Ramatoulaye's husband Moudou Ba. The letter is written while Ramatoulaye is going through 'Iddah, a four month and ten day mourning process that widow of the Muslim Senegalese culture must follow. Ramatoulaye begins her first letters by recalling and describing the emotions that flooded her during the first few days after her husband's death and speaks in detail about how he lost his life. She transitions the tone and time by discussing the life she had with her husband, from the beginning of their relationship to his betrayal of a thirty year marriage by secretly marrying his daughter's school best friend to the life he had with his second wife. Throughout this short and compelling novel, Ramatoulaye details to Assiatou, who experienced a similar but different marital situation, how she emotionally dealt with and changed by his betrayal, his death, and being a single mother of many. 

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Alerted to impending trouble by the TARDIS's Cloister Bell, the Fourth Doctor decides to stay out of trouble, and instead repair the TARDIS's broken chameleon circuit by materialising around a real police box on Earth and recording its exact dimensions with Adric's help. With those, he can give the mathematicians of the planet Logopolis the right block-transfer computations to repair the circuit. The Master learns of the Doctor's plan, and materialises his TARDIS around the police box first, causing a recursion loop with the Doctor's. The Doctor eventually breaks his TARDIS out of the loop, but when they step outside, he sees a figure in white, the Watcher, telling him to go to Logopolis immediately. En route, they find they have gained a passenger, Tegan Jovanka, an airline stewardess who entered the Police box seeking help for a broken-down car. At Logopolis, everything seems normal as the Doctor provides the Monitor, the lead mathematician, his measurements to give to the others and perform their verbal calculations. They soon discover that the Master had arrived first, with several of the mathematicians killed by his tissue- compression eliminator. The Master's TARDIS materialises, and he and Nyssa, under his hypnotic control, seize the control center and use a device to silence the other mathematicians, demanding the Monitor to explain the purpose of a radio telescope on the planet. The Monitor begs for the Master to stop the silencing device. The Master does so, but to the Monitor's horror, the mathematicians remain silent, and they find the planet starting to turn to dust. The Monitor quickly explains that their calculations were used to power Charged Vacuum Emboitments (CVEs) which were used to funnel off excess entropy from this universe to prevent its approaching heat death; without the CVEs, entropy is taking over. The Monitor urges the Doctor to use their program to open a CVE, before he disintegrates. The Doctor and Master agree to work together and, after releasing Nyssa, bring Tegan with them to the Master's TARDIS and depart for Earth. Adric and Nyssa try to follow in the Doctor's TARDIS, but initially end up far outside the universe, and watch as entropy obliterates the sector of space with Nyssa's home planet, Traken. However, they fix the controls to track and follow the Master's TARDIS to Earth. The Fourth Doctor regenerates into the Fifth Doctor. On Earth, the Doctor and Master use the radio telescope of the Pharos Project – from which the Logopolitans modelled theirs – to send the CVE program, while the Doctor's companions help to waylay the project's guards. However, the Master locks the Doctor out of the control room, and broadcasts a message across space, effectively blackmailing the rest of the universe to submit to him before he activates the program. The Doctor climbs out onto the telescope to stop the broadcast and reinitiate the CVE, ending the Master's threat; the Master quickly flees and escapes in his TARDIS. The Doctor falls off the telescope a great distance, as Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan gather around him. The Doctor has visions of his past companions and enemies. His three companions see the Watcher appear, and the Doctor explains that "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for." The Watcher touches and merges with the Doctor, causing him to regenerate into the Fifth Doctor. 

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Two alien college students, Zinnak and Yoof, are doing their thesis on heroes in Earth culture. To further their study, they send through the mail EEMs or Extreme Enhancement Modules that, when opened, endow the recipient with superpowers. Due to the incompetence of Yoof, an EEM is sent to Lou Martin, a slacker, instead of Martin Louis, an upwardly mobile young lawyer and philanthropist. Lou receives superhuman strength and intelligence. Unfortunately, because Lou is so lazy, he is only able to use his intelligence either subconsciously or during moments of extreme concentration. Despite this flaw, Lou was an erudite and intelligent individual already. Gaining powers is actually an inconvenience to him. Lou's EEM is designed to attract trouble and the other superhumans whom Martin would have chosen to lead. The other "superheroes" are Val Andrist, the environmentalist daughter of an Ice Cream magnate who can fly; Francis Dutton, an aromatherapist hippie with a sonic scream; Lauren Isley, an elderly woman who can predict the future (but is so absent-minded she got confused with the past); a cat that became a giant when scared; and "Gecko", a nerdish man who can stick to walls. EEMs were also gifted to a group of supervillains and attracted to one another in order to ensure battles would occur (e.g. the loser-turned-monster Nunzio, whom Lou brain-damaged via unintentional electrocution). Other stories involved a Nazi dinosaur from a parallel universe named Tyrannosaurus Reich, a demon-possessed toddler, carnivorous alien worms, an overly adoring fan of Lou's that tried to kill him to make him more famous, and an alien time traveler that destroyed time. 

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Teenagers Sherlock Holmes and John Watson meet and become good friends as students at Brompton Academy, a school in London. Watson is introduced to Elizabeth Hardy, who is Holmes' love interest. He is also introduced to Rupert T. Waxflatter, Elizabeth's uncle, a retired Brompton professor and inventor, Master Snelgrove, the chemistry teacher, Mrs. Dribb, the school's nurse, and Professor Rathe, the fencing instructor who warns Holmes that he is too emotional and impulsive. Meanwhile, a mysterious hooded figure uses a blowpipe to shoot Bentley Bobster and Reverend Duncan Nesbitt with hallucinogenic thorns, causing the men to experience nightmare-like hallucinations (Bobster thinks to be attacked by a cooked bird and by his own possessions, while Nesbitt thinks he sees a stained-glass figure of a knight come to life and try to kill him), resulting in their deaths by jumping out of a window and being run over by a carriage. Holmes suspects foul play about the murders, which were presumed to be suicides, but is rebuffed by Scotland Yard policeman Lestrade when he suggests a connection between the deaths. Holmes is later expelled from Brompton after getting framed for cheating by his rival, Dudley. As Holmes reluctantly prepares to leave, Waxflatter is shot with a hallucinogenic thorn and accidentally stabs himself while trying to fend off imaginary gremlins. As Waxflatter dies, he whispers the word "Eh-Tar" to Holmes. Holmes secretly meets with Watson and Elizabeth and begins his investigation into the murders. During their investigation, the trio uncover the existence of Rame Tep, an ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris worshippers. The cult's main weapons were blowpipes, which were used to shoot thorns dipped into a solution made of plant and root extracts which, when injected into the bloodstream, causes the victim to experience realistic, nightmare-like hallucinations. Holmes, Watson, and Elizabeth then track the cult to a London warehouse, where the Rame Tep are performing human sacrifices in a secret underground wooden pyramid-shaped temple. After they interrupt their sacrifice of a young woman, the Rame Tep members pursue the trio and shoot them with thorns, but the three manage to escape into a cemetery. They begin to experience hallucinations (Elizabeth being buried alive by her uncle, Watson being force-fed by sentient pastries, and Holmes seeing his father angry for him telling his mother of his unfaithfulness and later seeing a real Rame Tep member as his father trying to kill him), but they survive. Holmes, Watson and Elizabeth are later reprimanded by Lestrade, who still dismisses Holmes' deductions. Holmes leaves him several poison thorns for analysis, and Lestrade pricks his finger on them as he tries to brush them off his desk. The following evening, at Waxflatter's loft, Holmes and Watson discover a picture of the three victims and a fourth man, Chester Cragwitch, who is the remaining victim. However, they are discovered by Professor Rathe and Mrs. Dribb, who plan to expel Watson and Elizabeth in the morning. That night, while Elizabeth heads to Waxflatter's loft to salvage his work, Holmes and Watson head to see Cragwitch, who explains that in his youth, he and the other men had discovered an underground pyramid of Rame Tep and the ancient tombs of five Egyptian princesses while building a hotel in Egypt. Their find led to an angry uprising by the people of a nearby village, which was violently put down by the British Army. The men returned safely to England. However, a local boy of Anglo-Egyptian descent named Eh-Tar and his sister vowed revenge against them after their parents were killed in the attack, and also seeking to replace the bodies of the five Egyptian princesses. Cragwitch is then shot by a poisoned thorn and tries to kill Holmes, but is knocked unconscious by Lestrade, who reconsidered Holmes' advice after he had suffered the hallucinations himself. As they return to the school, a chance remark by Watson causes Holmes to realize that Eh-Tar is none other than Professor Rathe, but he and Watson arrive too late to stop him and Mrs. Dribb, who is revealed to be Eh-Tar's sister, from abducting Elizabeth. Using Waxflatter's latest invention, a flying machine, Holmes and Watson travel to the warehouse just in time to prevent Eh-Tar from sacrificing Elizabeth as the fifth and final "princess". They accidentally burn down the Rame Tep pyramid, killing several cult members, and Mrs. Dribb is shot through her own blopipe by Holmes and catches fire in her panic. Eh-Tar escapes with Elizabeth and Holmes is knocked unconscious but Watson saves them both, destroying Eh-Tar's carriage by attaching a chandelier chain to it, in order to lift an unconscious Holmes out of the burning temple. Eh-Tar tries to shoot Holmes, but Elizabeth intervenes and takes the hit instead. Enraged, Holmes duels Eh-Tar and finally manages to get the better of him when Eh-Tar falls into the frozen River Thames, presumably to his demise. Holmes returns to Elizabeth's side and holds her as she dies. Afterwards, attending Elizabeth's funeral, Holmes decides to transfer to another school to get his mind off Elizabeth. As he exchanges goodbyes with Watson, Holmes explained how he deduced the identity of Eh-Tar. Watson also points out that "Rathe" is "Eh-Tar" spelled backwards, a clue that Holmes failed to notice. Watson gives Holmes a pipe as a Christmas and farewell present. As Holmes leaves in his new detective outfit, Watson's older self (the Narrator) expresses that he was certain he would have more adventures at Holmes' side. In the post-credits scene, Eh-Tar is revealed to be alive; he checks himself into an Alpine inn with a new name, "Moriarty", foreshadowing his role as Holmes and Watson's future nemesis. 

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The plot revolves around the elderly Balbir and her daughter Min who have a difficult and tempestuous relationship. Though both Sikhs, they have been largely ostracised from the local Sikh community following the suicide of Balbir's husband Tej some years before. Seeking to secure her daughter's future, Balbir presses Mr Sandhu, a respected figure in the local gurdwara, to look into potential marriage partners for her daughter. Subsequently it emerges that Mr Sandhu had been conducting a gay affair with Tej, and that Tej had killed himself out of shame that it would be revealed. Mr Sandhu goes on to rape Min in the gurdwara, though this is covered up by others in the temple. Balbir later kills Mr Sandhu with a kirpan, and Min forms relationship with Elvis, her mother's black care-worker. 

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The film opens with a woman, Flora Bosch, walking her dog down an empty, darkened city street. As she passes by a manhole, a creature attacks Mrs. Bosch and drags her and the dog into the sewers. George Cooper, a once-prominent fashion photographer, has since forgone fame and fortune and is living with his girlfriend Lauren. His current project is photographing New York City's homeless population, specifically those known as "undergrounders", or people who reside within the bowels of the city. NYPD Captain Bosch has a personal interest in the recent flood of missing persons being reported to his precinct, as Flora, his wife, remains missing. Bosch interviews A.J. "The Reverend" Shepherd, who runs the local homeless shelter. A.J. believes that the recent events are part of a massive government cover-up and has the evidence to prove it. Bosch's superiors know more than they are letting on and seem to be taking their cues from Wilson, who works for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It turns out that monsters are lurking beneath the streets; beings that were once human, but have been mutated by radioactive, chemical toxic waste into hideous, flesh- eating creatures that prey on the homeless who live in the underground. Given the recent drop in the underground transient population, the creatures have resorted to coming to the surface through sewer manholes to feed. Through a series of events, both George and A.J. find themselves trapped in the sewers, a reporter gets involved and eaten, and Lauren has a problem with both a clogged shower drain and a mutant that comes up through the sewer access point that she opened in the basement of her apartment building. A.J. and George meet up and discover that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is directly involved in the slaughter that has been going on. Although the political bureaucracy has forbidden the NRC to transport the toxic wastes through New York because of the large-scale danger to the public, it has secretly been hiding the waste by-products, marked as "Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal", beneath Manhattan in the abandoned subway tunnels. The underground homeless population has been coming into contact with these by-products, turning them into the mutated creatures. To protect this secret, Wilson plans to seal the sewers, open up some gas lines and asphyxiate the C.H.U.D.s and any witnesses of their existence, despite the inherent danger to the city. In the meantime, Lauren is attacked by the mutants in her apartment and narrowly escapes them. Later that evening at a diner, two police officers and the waitress are killed and carried off by the mutants, finally drawing the public's attention to the disappearances. George and A.J. recover a camera set left behind by an NRC crew slain by the mutants during a previous clean-up attempt and use it to report their findings to Bosch. Confronted by Bosch, Wilson runs off, and later shoots Bosch while the latter helps A.J. and George escape from a manhole. Wilson then tries to run George and A.J. over with a truck, but A.J. fatally shoots Wilson with Bosch's gun, and the truck explodes as it drives into the manhole. 

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Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy) is a carefree and fun-spirited girl, living off the ample trust fund of her late rock legend father, Tommy Gunn. Molly falls for singer Neal Wolf (Jesse Spencer) when he plays at her birthday party thrown by her best friends, Huey (Donald Faison) and Ingrid (Marley Shelton). They have a night of passion but he leaves in the morning, saying that he can't stay in Molly's carefree life. Adding to Molly's misfortune, she finds out that her father's accountant embezzled her money, so she is left penniless and homeless. She moves in with her best friend Ingrid, who tells her that in order to stay with her, she must find a job. Molly begins work as a nanny of an eight-year-old hypochondriac and neat freak named Lorraine "Ray" Schleine (Dakota Fanning) who is the daughter of Roma Schleine (Heather Locklear), a music executive who is too busy to notice Ray. Ray's father is in a coma and is being treated at home by a private nurse which causes Ray to stifle her emotions to maintain order. Although she enjoys ballet, she refuses to freestyle and often quotes Mikhail Baryshnikov: "Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun." Molly attempts to show her how to have fun, which at first causes much conflict between them, but eventually Ray opens up to let Molly in. Molly continues to pursue Neal and holds onto his lucky jacket in hopes of seeing him again. After a baking accident, Molly causes a fire that damages Neal's jacket. She redesigns it to fix the damage but Neal breaks up with Molly when he sees it, claiming he has to pursue his music career and does not have time for her flightiness. Soon after, he gets a record deal with Roma and has a hit music video with a song that Molly inspired him to write, all while wearing the jacket Molly made. Disgusted, Molly agrees to Ingrid's suggestions to sell off her possessions so she can prove that she is growing up. However, after a fight, Ingrid kicks Molly out, and Molly goes to live with Huey. But one night, after fighting with and feeling hurt by Neal again, Molly spends the night with Ray after feeling alone at Huey's apartment and finds Neal one morning, having slept with Roma. The budding friendship between Molly and Ray continues to develop when Molly takes Ray to Coney Island and explains that when her parents died, she ran away to Coney Island and rode the tea cups. She encourages Ray to talk to her comatose father, and promises that it will help him improve. However, Ray's father dies the next day, and Ray tells Roma to fire Molly. In Roma's office, Molly calls Roma out for never paying attention to her daughter. As she leaves, Molly bumps into Neal, who begs to get back together as she was his whole inspiration. Molly turns him down and coldly tells him that he is selfish and only cares about her when she can give him something. Ray runs away from home and Roma begs Molly to find her. Molly finds Ray at Coney Island, riding in the tea cups. At first, Ray tries to be angry with Molly for raising her hopes but then she collapses into Molly's arms, crying, finally coming to terms with her grief. Molly, deciding to take charge of her own life, takes Ray's advice to auction off her late father's guitar collection to an unknown buyer; this enables her to afford her own place. At the wake for Ray's father, Molly meets other musicians who ask her to design their clothes after seeing Neal's jacket in his video. She and Ingrid also make up and Molly finds Ray to apologize as well. She promises to stay friends with Ray and enrolls in design school after realizing her talent for fashion. Molly arrives at Ray's recital late and is pleased to see Ray is wearing the tutu Molly designed for her earlier. She is surprised when Ray dances freestyle to Neal singing "Molly Smiles", a song written for her by her father when she was a child. He plays using Tommy Gunn's acoustic guitar, while the remaining ballerinas dance with the other guitars from her father's collection, revealing that he was the anonymous buyer. In a voice over, Ray says that the end was a new beginning for all of them. 

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Once installed as king, following the death of his father, Edward II summons his friend and lover, Piers Gaveston, back to England from exile abroad, and showers him with gifts, titles and abiding love. Their relationship is fiery and passionate, but it is the focus of gossip and derision throughout the kingdom. Upon his return, Gaveston takes revenge on the Bishop of Winchester, who had been responsible for his banishment from England during the previous reign, by personally torturing him. Kent, Edward's brother, is the first to protest about Gaveston's return. Many others feel the same way, including the Bishop of Winchester and Lord Mortimer, who is in charge of the kingdom's military forces. Nevertheless, Edward defends his lover from his mounting enemies. A pleasure-seeker, Edward is quite distracted from affairs of state, much to the distress and anger of the court (sombre men and women in business suits). Queen Isabella, Edward's French wife, vainly tries everything to win him back from his lover, but she is mercilessly rejected by her husband. Love-starved, Isabella turns to Gaveston, who inflames Isabella's desire by whispering obscenities in her ear, and then mocks her responsiveness. The handsome, hedonistic and opportunistic Gaveston repels everyone except the King. His enemies join forces and threaten Edward with dethronement and exile; Edward is forced to comply with their wishes and sends Gaveston away. The lovers' separation is serenaded by Annie Lennox’s rendition of Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye". The queen hopes that once Gaveston is away she could reconcile with her husband, but he rejects her once again. In a last effort to regain her husband's affection, she allows Gaveston to return. The king and his lover resume their relationship, but their enemies are ready to strike back. Isabella and Mortimer, who has become her lover, plan to rule the realm through Edward and Isabella's young son, the future Edward III. When Kent tries to save his brother, he is murdered by Isabella. The nobles are soon plotting to get rid not only of Gaveston but also the king. Mortimer, their leader, is a military man and practising sadomasochist who takes a grim pleasure in personally torturing Gaveston and the lovers' friend Spencer, who he addresses as "girl boy." Their torture takes place while there is a clash between the police and members of the British gay rights organisation Outrage. After Gaveston and Spencer's assassinations, Edward, who has been thrown in a dungeon, is executed by impalement on a red-hot poker. This hideous fate is presented as a nightmare from which the imprisoned king awakens. The executioner, when he does arrive, tosses away his lethal weapon and kisses the man he was sent to kill. Back in the castle, Mortimer and Isabella enjoy their triumph just briefly. The king's young son, Edward III, who all along has been neglected by both parents and who has witnessed their quarrels, has donned his mother's earrings and lipstick and, while listening to classical music on his Walkman, walks atop a cage that imprisons his mother and Mortimer. 

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Captain Reiker (Curd Jürgens), a Dutch sea captain, sets off on what he intends to be his last slave-ship voyage. After capturing slaves with the complicity of an African chief (Habib Benglia), he then starts his voyage for Cuba. Along with the slaves below-deck, the passengers include his mistress, the slave Aiché (Dorothy Dandridge), and the ship's doctor, Doctor Corot (Jean Servais). Tamango (Alex Cressan), one of the captured men, plans a revolt and tries to persuade Aiché to join him and the other slaves. When the captured slaves do rebel, Tamango manages to hold Aiché hostage. A deadlock between the two sides then develops and Captain Renker states he will fire a cannon into the ship’s hold and kill all the slaves unless they give up. Aiché is given a chance to leave by Tamango but after looking up the ladder that leads out of the hold (and towards life), chooses to stay with her fellow slaves. The captain makes good on his threat and shoots the cannon into the hold, literally silencing the slaves' songs.Miller, pages 224, 231, 233 

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The screenplay by Sig Herzig, Val Guest, and Elliot Paul, based on a story by director Wesley Ruggles, revolves around comedian Jerry Sanford (Sid Field), who arrives in London believing he has been hired as the star of a major stage production, when in fact he's merely an understudy. Thanks to his daughter Peggy (Petula Clark, already a screen veteran at age fourteen), who sabotages the revue's star Charlie de Haven (Sonnie Hale), he finally gets his big break. The premise allows for a variety of musical numbers and comedy sketches performed by, among others, Kay Kendall in her film debut and Tessie O'Shea. 

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A spacecraft, presumed to be of alien origin, is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, estimated to have been there for nearly 300 years. A team of experts, including marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin (Stone), mathematician Dr. Harry Adams (Jackson), astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding (Schreiber), psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman (Hoffman), and U.S. Navy Capt. Harold Barnes (Coyote), are assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state- of-the-art underwater living environment located near the spacecraft. Upon examination of the spacecraft, they determine that it is not alien at all, but rather American in origin. However, its technology far surpasses any in the present day. The ship's computer logs cryptically suggest a mission that originated either in the distant past or future, but the team manages to deduce that the long dead crew were tasked with collecting an item of scientific importance. Goodman and Halperin discover the ship's logs, which show the ship encountering an "unknown event" (thought to be a black hole) that sends the vessel back in time. Goodman and the others eventually stumble upon a large, perfect sphere hovering a few feet above the floor in the ship's cargo bay. They cannot find any way to probe the inside of the sphere, and the fluidic surface is impenetrable; the crew attaches importance to the fact that the sphere reflects its surroundings but not the humans. They return to the Habitat, and Harry comes to believe that everyone on this team is fated to die. His rationale is that the black hole is referred to as an "unknown event" in the logs, but due to time travel they have foreknowledge of the entire mission. During the night, Harry returns to the spacecraft, is able to enter the sphere, and then returns to the Habitat. The next day, the crew discovers a series of numeric-encoded messages appearing on the computer screens; the crew is able to decipher them and comes to believe they are speaking to "Jerry", an alien intelligence from the sphere. They find Jerry is able to see and hear everything that happens on the Habitat. A powerful typhoon strikes the surface, and the Habitat crew is forced to stay in the Habitat several more days. During that time, a series of tragedies strikes the crew, including attacks from aggressive jellyfish and a giant squid, and equipment failures in the base, which kill Ted and the team's support staff. The survivors, Beth, Harry, and Norman, believe Jerry is responsible. While waiting for rescue, the three realize that the hazards are manifestations of their own fears: all of them have entered the sphere, which has given them the ability to make their imagination real. Norman discovers that they had misinterpreted the initial messages from Jerry, and that the entity speaking to them through the computers is actually Harry himself, transmitted while he is asleep. Under the stress of the situation, Beth has suicidal thoughts which causes the detonation mechanisms on a store of explosives to engage, threatening to destroy the base and the spacecraft. They race to the Habitat's mini-sub, but their combined fears cause them to re-appear back in the spacecraft. As a psychologist, Norman is able to see through the illusion. He triggers the mini-sub's undocking process and overrides the others' fears that they will not escape the destruction of the Habitat and spacecraft. The sphere is untouched by the explosions. The mini-sub makes it to the surface as the surface ships return. As Beth, Harry, and Norman begin safe decompression, they realize that they will be debriefed and their newfound powers discovered. They agree to erase their memories of the event using their powers; this assures that the "unknown event" paradox is resolved. The sphere rises from the ocean and then accelerates off into space. 

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Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is one of the leading actors of his day, particularly famous for his portrayal of female characters, predominantly Desdemona in Othello. His dresser, Maria (Claire Danes), aspires to perform in the legitimate theatre but is forbidden because of a law, at that time in effect, forbidding theatres to employ actresses. This law was enacted by the Puritans prior to the restoration of the House of Stuart. Instead, she appears in productions at a local tavern under the pseudonym Margaret Hughes. Her popularity is aided by the novelty of a woman acting in public, which attracts the attention of Sir Charles Sedley (Richard Griffiths), who offers his patronage. Eventually, she is presented to King Charles II (Rupert Everett). Nell Gwynn (Zoë Tapper), an aspiring actress and Charles II's mistress, comes upon Kynaston ranting about women on stage and seduces Charles II into banning men from playing female roles.In actuality, it was not that men were banned but that women were allowed on stage. "Women as actresses" (PDF). Notes and Queries. The New York Times. 18 October 1885. Archived from the original on 27 April 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-14. "There seems no doubt that actresses did not perform on the stage till the Restoration, in the earliest years of which Pepys says for the first time he saw an actress upon the stage. Charles II must have brought the usage from the Continent, where women had long been employed instead of boys or youths in the representation of female characters." Kynaston, having gone through a long and strenuous training to play female roles, finds himself without a guise by which to keep the attention of his lover, George Villiers (Ben Chaplin), the Duke of Buckingham, as the latter never had intentions to lead a homosexual life and Kynaston has lost the acceptance of London society which had started to circulate rumors about their association. He is reduced to performing bawdy songs in drag in music halls, while Maria's career thrives, although her ability to emulate Kynaston falls short because, as she says, Kynaston never fights as a woman would do. Called upon for a royal performance, Maria panics and her friends implore Kynaston for coaching, during which she coaches him to develop his ability to regain a theatrical career in male roles. He agrees, with the proviso that he replace the company head Thomas Betterton in the role of Othello. Maria becomes a theatrical star. 

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After returning home from a five-year prison sentence, John "Goldie" Mickens, has a plan to achieve money and power in Oakland, California by becoming a pimp. Goldie's criminal ways juxtapose his brother Olinga's Black Nationalist efforts to save the community from drugs and violence. With Slim as his partner and Lulu as his head prostitute, he organizes a team of women and quickly rises to prominence. His success catches the attention of Fat Man, the heroin kingpin that Goldie worked for before heading to prison, and Hank and Jed, two corrupt and racist white detectives. Goldie refuses to work for Fat Man again, and dismisses the detectives' requests to stop his brother from ridding the streets of drugs. As a result, his mother is assaulted which eventually leads to her death. Even though Olinga is disappointed in Goldie because he "brought death to their house," he agrees to help him get revenge. They develop a plan with Slim to seek revenge, but their plans fall apart when Hank and Jed kill Slim at their rendezvous point. They reveal that they are responsible for Goldie's mother's death, causing Goldie and Olinga to kill them both. Realizing that Oakland is now too dangerous, Goldie hugs his brother goodbye and leaves the city on a charter bus. 

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Two scientists decide to settle the question of racial superiority by leaving two children—a white girl and black boy—alone on an island to be raised without speaking by only a nurse, Norah. The British scientist Samuel Bates believes that the girl will emerge as the leader, while the French scientist Jean-Louis Belavoix believes that the two races can not live in peace and the children will ultimately murder each other. The experiment begins to run into problems when Bates and Belavoix argue about the validity of cranial measurements. Meanwhile, Bates's long suffering assistant Nicholas Quartley falls in love with Norah and decides to rescue her from the island. 

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Barry Gabrewski is a troubled and bullied asthmatic boy who lives with his widowed father, Jerry (Beau Bridges), in Houston, Texas. A loner, Barry has vivid daydreams about being Chuck Norris' sidekick, battling against Norris' movie enemies, who are often personified by Barry's everyday bullies such as Randy Cellini (John Buchanan). Noreen Chan (Julia Nickson-Soul), his favorite teacher, often plays the damsel in distress in these daydreams. Barry wants to learn the martial arts, but is rejected by the arrogant dojo owner Kelly Stone (Joe Piscopo) for being too weak. Instead, he is taken on as a student by an old Chinese man called Mr. Lee (Mako), Noreen's sly uncle and the owner of a local Chinese restaurant, "Frying Dragon". Mr. Lee finds creative ways to teach Barry to defend himself from his bullies. Lee devises training methods that increase Barry's endurance, which helps his asthma. Lee also deduces Barry's hero worship of Norris, and from that at least some of Barry's daydreams. He creatively incorporates this into Barry's training, creating training scenarios that seem more dangerous than they are so that Barry will feel heroic for succeeding at them. Lee enters himself, Barry, and Chan into a local team Karate tournament but is a bit stymied to learn that a team must have four members. Norris is attending the tournament as a guest, and at Lee's urging, Chan convinces Norris to join the team. Norris is both willing to help an ardent fan and has his own motivation for participating: he has encountered Stone on several prior occasions and wants to teach him "a lesson in humility". Barry is stunned to find himself working together with his hero. The tournament involves four events: Breaking, Men's Weapons, Female Kata, and Freestyle fighting. Stone's team narrowly defeats Chan in the Female Kata, but Lee defeats Cellini, one of Stone's students, in Breaking. True to his word, Norris defeats Stone in Freestyle fighting, and Barry—aided by a vivid daydream—scores a victory in Men's Weapons. The result is a tie between Stone's team and Lee's team. In the tie-breaker, Lee is allowed to choose the participants, and chooses Barry and Cellini, saying Barry is the member of the team with "something to prove". Stone chooses the event, Breaking. Barry is dismayed to be confronting Cellini in the latter's best event, but Lee tilts the odds in Barry's favor by using a small amount of lighter fluid to set Barry's bricks on fire. Faced with a much more heroic-seeming task, Barry wins. After the tournament, Barry is seen talking to Norris, thanking him for his help. Norris vanishes, and it is implied that Barry has found the strength to live his life without the need for his daydreams. Before the movie fades to black, a young boy finds Barry's Chuck Norris magazine. With an excited "Wow" the camera pans out to reveal the young man is in a wheelchair. 

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In 1973, Father Jebediah Mayii (Nielsen) casts out the devil from the body of young Nancy Aglet (Blair). Seventeen years later, in 1990, Nancy's body is possessed once again, however, while watching The Ernest and Fanny Miracle Hour, a prosperity gospel broadcast by two hucksters. After a visit to the hospital, and a visit from Father Luke Brophy (Starke), Brophy concludes that Nancy is indeed possessed. Mayii, however, refuses to perform the exorcism, claiming he is too weak, and that both he and Nancy barely survived her previous exorcism. Brophy then visits the Supreme Council for Exorcism Granting. Ernest and Fanny (Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab) of The Ernest and Fanny Miracle Hour are also present. Ernest concludes that an exorcism is warranted, and convinces the Council to televise Nancy's exorcism. They agree, believing it will convert millions, so Ernest presents Ernest and Fanny's Exorcism Tonight to the network. Feeling he may be needed, Mayii visits "Bods-R-Us", a gymnasium, to restore his physical strength. There, Brophy approaches him, informs him of the televised exorcism, and attempts once more to convince Mayii to conduct the exorcism, though he refuses again. The night of Nancy's exorcism arrives, presented by Ernest and Fanny. After a montage of attempts to free Nancy's body using phone donations, song, and insults ("You're so tough, how come you possessed a woman's body?"), Ernest and Fanny's Exorcism Tonight is announced as having the largest audience in history. Upon hearing this, the devil, in Nancy's body, sets the studio on fire, causing the audience to flee. He reveals to Ernest and Fanny that he used them to get the largest audience, and turns them into a pantomime horse. Using the camera, the devil tries to claim the souls of the viewing audience, but is stopped by Brophy, who destroys the camera. The devil announces he knows another way to claim their souls, and runs away, heading for a satellite transmitter. He is pursued by religious figures from around the world, who have gathered at Brophy's command. Brophy teases the devil about his defeat to Mayii. Back in the studio, the devil successfully uses the camera to lure Mayii to him for a rematch. The exorcism, with commentary by "Mean Gene" Okerlund and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, is ineffective until the devil mentions that he hates Rock 'n Roll. Turning the TV studio into a live concert, the song "Devil with a Blue Dress On" is played to the devil by the various religious figures, including The Pope on guitars. The devil is tormented so that he is finally driven from Nancy's body, declaring "I'll be back!". 

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As the Matoran of the island of Mata Nui prepare to return to their ancient home of Metru Nui, Turaga Vakama begins to tell the tales of its fall a thousand years ago... 

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Peter Vollmer (Dennis Hopper), the leader of a small and struggling Nazi group, is mocked and ridiculed by the crowds he preaches to on street corners. Ernst Ganz (Ludwig Donath), the elderly Jewish man that Peter has had a sympathetic, uncle-like relationship with since he was an abused and neglected kid, offers him shelter and compassion but not respect. Ernst spent nine years in Dachau and recognizes that Peter's politics stem from a childish desire for the respect of others. This pains Peter, who openly confesses that he sees Ernst as his father, since his real father physically abused him and his mother was never around. Beginning one night, Peter is periodically visited by a shadowy figure who teaches him how to enthrall a crowd. The figure teaches Peter how to speak. The figure pays Peter's rent at the hall where he holds rallies, and instructs him to arrange the death of one of his followers, Nick, thereby creating a martyr to rally everyone around. Following the figure's instructions and assistance, Peter is considerably more successful and his group's following grows. Ernst becomes fearful that Peter may actually succeed in igniting another Holocaust. He disrupts a rally, accusing Peter of being "nothing but a cheap copy" of the German Führer while Peter cowers before his surrogate father. After the failed rally, the shadowy figure rebukes Peter for his failure and says that from now on he will be ordering Peter rather than instructing him. Peter demands to know who his mysterious benefactor is. The man steps forward from the shadows to reveal himself to be Adolf Hitler (Curt Conway). He orders Peter to kill Ernst. Peter steels himself enough to complete the task. Hitler congratulates him and asks how it felt. Peter replies that he felt immortal. Hitler responds, "Mr. Vollmer! We ARE immortal!" Afterwards, police arrive to arrest Peter for conspiracy to murder Nick. Shot while fleeing, Peter is astonished by the sight of his own blood. Hitler's shadow appears on the wall behind Peter, who gasps out, "There's something very wrong here...Don't you understand that I'm made out of steel!?" 

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Don's Plum is centered around a friend group of young twenty year olds who meet at a restaurant called "Don's Plum" every Saturday night. The four male friends usually each bring a girl with them to all hang out. Drama ensues, including verbal and physical altercations between the friends and other members in the restaurant. There is very little concrete plot, with more of a "friends hanging out" movie. 

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U.S. government agent Leon S. Kennedy (Paul Mercier) is on a mission to rescue Ashley Graham (Carolyn Lawrence), the U.S. President's daughter, who has been kidnapped by a mysterious cult. He travels to a nameless rural village in Spain, where he encounters a group of hostile villagers who pledge their lives to Los Illuminados, the cult that kidnapped Ashley. The villagers were once simple farmers until becoming infected by a mind-controlling parasite known as Las Plagas. While in the village, Leon is captured by its chief, Bitores Mendez, and injected with Las Plagas. He finds himself held captive with Luis Sera (Rino Romano), a former Los Illuminados researcher. The two work together to escape, but soon go their separate ways. Leon finds out Ashley is being held in a church and rescues her. They both escape from the church after Osmund Saddler (Michael Gough), leader of Los Illuminados, reveals his plan to use the plaga they injected into Ashley to manipulate her into injecting the president of the United States with a "sample" once she returns home, allowing Saddler to begin his conquest of the world. After killing Mendez, Leon and Ashley try to take refuge in a castle but are attacked by more Illuminados under the command of Ramon Salazar (Rene Mujica), another of Saddler's henchmen who owns the castle, and the two become separated by Salazar's traps. Meanwhile, Luis searches for pills that will slow Leon and Ashley's infection, as well as a sample of Las Plagas. He brings the two items to Leon but is killed by Saddler, who takes the sample, while the pills to suppress the infection remain in Leon's hands. While in the castle, Leon briefly encounters Ada Wong (Sally Cahill), a woman from his past who supports him during his mission. He battles his way through the castle before killing Salazar. Afterward, Leon travels to a nearby island research facility, where he continues the search for Ashley. He discovers that one of his former training comrades, Jack Krauser (Jim Ward), who was believed to have been killed in a helicopter crash two years prior, is responsible for her kidnapping. Ada and Krauser are working with Albert Wesker (Richard Waugh), for whom both intend to secure a Plagas sample. Suspicious of the mercenary's intentions, Saddler orders Krauser to kill Leon, believing that no matter which one dies, he will benefit. After Krauser's fatal defeat, Leon rescues Ashley, and they remove the Plagas from their bodies using a specialized radiotherapeutic device. Leon confronts Saddler, and with Ada's help, manages to kill him. However, Ada takes the sample from Leon at gunpoint before escaping in a helicopter, leaving Leon and Ashley to escape via her jet-ski as the island explodes. 

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In the boardroom of the Elmer J. Fudd Corporation, the board of directors meets to discuss a serious threat to the company's future. The CEO, Elmer Fudd, is suffering from mental illness and believes himself to be a rabbit. The board unanimously agrees to commit Elmer to "Fruitcake Sanitarium" ("It's Full of Nuts"). Elmer, now wearing a rabbit suit, sees Bugs Bunny walking past and lures him to the window with a carrot. Bugs goes inside while Elmer hops out the window. Bugs lies in Elmer's bed to "keep it warm for him." Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Oro Myicin arrives to begin treating Elmer's delusion and is stunned to see Bugs instead. He declares Bugs as the worst case of "rabbitschenia" he has ever seen. Dr. Myicin tells Bugs that he is not Elmer J. Fudd, Bugs is Elmer J. Fudd. Thinking that Myicin is a "screwball," Bugs then attempts to psychoanalyze the doctor instead. Irked, Myicin gives Bugs a pill, which makes him very vulnerable to suggestion. Once it takes effect, the doctor forces Bugs to repeat again and again, "I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht." Dr. Myicin releases Bugs (now sporting morning dress and a Derby hat) from the sanitarium as "cured" of the belief that he is a rabbit and convinced that he is Elmer Fudd. Upon picking him up, Elmer's chauffeur tells Bugs that since it is Wednesday, he has packed his forest clothes and shotgun. Bugs decides to relax by hunting. Dressed in Elmer's hunting clothes, Bugs follows "wabbit twacks" to a rabbit hole. Chomping a carrot, Elmer pops out. Bugs pulls the shotgun away and prepares to shoot Elmer, who causes the weapon to backfire by plugging the barrel with his finger. After a short chase through a stream, which includes Bugs taking an underwater shot, Elmer bounds into a cave. Bugs props the gun against a tree, leans into the cave and declares, "Come out, wabbit, or I'll bwast you out!" Meanwhile, Elmer has exited the cave through an adjacent opening, tossed the shotgun aside and taken its place against the tree. Bugs grabs Elmer, points him into the cave and Elmer says, "Bang, bang!" Bugs is fooled, and ventures into the cave to see. In the pitch dark, Bugs strikes a match to reveal a huge bear standing beside him. As Bugs flees with the bear chasing him, Elmer calls out the suggestion that Bugs play dead. He does so and the bear buries him under a cliff ledge. Bugs then falls out of the underside into a stream far below. Returning to his rabbit hole, Elmer is shocked to find Bugs waiting for him. Aiming his shotgun in Elmer's face, Bugs yells, "No wabbit's gonna outsmart Elmer J. Fudd!" Before he can fire, an IRS agent taps Bugs on the shoulder and asks, "Pardon me, did you say you were Elmer J. Fudd?" Bugs replies, "Yes. I am Elmer J. Fudd, miwwionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht." Bugs is then arrested, for non-payment of $300,000 in back taxes. As the tax collector hauls Bugs away, Elmer turns to the camera and says "I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!", then dances the Bunny Hop and hops away. 

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Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard brings Holmes a mysterious problem about a man who shatters plaster busts of Napoleon. One was shattered in Morse Hudson's shop, and two others, sold by Hudson to a Dr. Barnicot, were smashed after the doctor's house and branch office had been burgled. Nothing else was taken. In the former case, the bust was taken outside before being broken. Holmes knows that Lestrade's theory about a Napoleon-hating lunatic must be wrong. The busts in question all came from the same mould, when there are thousands of images of Napoleon all over London. The next day, Lestrade calls Holmes to a house where there has been yet another bust-shattering, but there has also been a murder. Mr. Horace Harker found the dead man on his doorstep after investigating a noise. His Napoleon bust was also taken by a burglar entering through a window. It, too, was from the same mould. Also, a photograph of a rather ape- ish-looking man is found in the dead man's pocket. The fragments of Harker's bust are in the front garden of an empty house up the street. Holmes concludes that the burglar wanted people to see what he was doing, for there is a streetlamp here, whereas the bust could have been broken at another empty house nearer Harker's, but it had been dark there. Holmes tells Lestrade to tell Harker, a journalist for the Central Press Syndicate, that he is convinced that the culprit is a lunatic. Holmes knows that this is not true, but it is expedient to use the press to convince the culprit that this is what the investigators believe. Holmes interviews the two shopkeepers who sold the busts and finds out whom they were sold to, and where they were made, Gelder & Co. A couple of his informants also recognize the ape-ish man in the picture. They know him as Beppo, an Italian immigrant. He even worked in the shop where the first bust was broken, having left his job there only two days earlier. Holmes goes to Gelder & Co. and finds out that the busts were part of a batch of six, but other than that, the manager can think of no reason why they should be special, or why anyone would want to destroy them. He recognizes Beppo's picture, and describes him as a rascal. He was imprisoned for a street-fight stabbing a year earlier, but has likely been released now. He once worked at Gelder & Co., but has not been back. His cousin still works there. Holmes begs the manager not to talk to the cousin about Beppo. That evening, Lestrade brings news that the dead man has been identified as Pietro Venucci, a Mafioso. Lestrade believes that Venucci was sent to kill the culprit, but wound up dead himself. Beppo is caught. After sending an express message, Holmes invites Dr. Watson and Lestrade to join him outside a house in Chiswick where apparently Holmes is expecting another bust-breaking. Lestrade by now is exasperated with Holmes's preoccupation with the busts, but comes. They are not disappointed. Beppo shows up, enters the house, and comes back out of the window minutes later with a Napoleon bust, which he proceeds to shatter. He then examines the pieces, quite unaware that Holmes and Lestrade are sneaking up behind him. They pounce, and Beppo is arrested. He will not talk, however. The mystery is at last laid bare after Holmes offers £10 (£ in ) to the owner of the last existing bust, making him sign a document transferring all rights and ownership of the bust to Holmes. After the seller has left, Holmes smashes the bust and among the plaster shards is a gem, the black pearl of the Borgias. Holmes was aware of the case of its disappearance from the beginning. Suspicion had fallen on the owner's maid, whose name was Lucretia Venucci - the dead man's sister. Beppo somehow got the pearl from Pietro Venucci, and hid it inside a still-soft plaster bust at the factory where he worked, moments before his arrest for the street-fight stabbing. After serving his one-year sentence, he sought to retrieve the hidden pearl. He found out from his cousin who bought the busts, and through his own efforts and confederates’, even found out who the end buyers were. He then proceeded to seek the busts out, smashing them one by one to find the pearl. 

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The band is a three-piece vocal group dominated by their utterly untalented lead singer "M*Pete". When they are caught lip-synching before the release of their first album, scandal erupts (fed also by their manager's physically assaulting an elderly male and an elderly female member of the Salvation Army and the revelation that M*Pete's 16-year-old girlfriend is actually only 12) and they are dropped by their record company. They consider leaving the music industry, but their manager gets them a sponsorship deal with a Norwegian fish finger manufacturer. Ultimately they bounce back to fame after an appearance at the HitAwards Norwegian music awards show. 

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Asato's catchphrase: Series introduction: Asato Tsuzuki has been a 'Guardian of Death' for over 70 years. He has the power to call upon twelve shikigami, mythical creatures that aid him in battle. The manga portrays Tsuzuki's relationship with the shinigami in much more detail. Tsuzuki is the senior partner of the Second Division, which watches over the region of Kyūshū. In the anime, the story begins when Chief Konoe, the boss, and the other main characters discussing recent murders in Nagasaki. The victims all have bite marks and a shortage of blood, which leads to the case being known as "The Vampire Case." After some food troubles, Tsuzuki travels to Nagasaki with Gushoshin, a flying creature/helper who can speak, and together they do a bit of investigating. The rule is that Guardian of Death are supposed to work in pairs, and until Tsuzuki meets up with his new partner, he needs someone to watch him. However, Gushoshin gets held back by groceries, and Tsuzuki is on his own. While exploring Nagasaki, Tsuzuki hears a scream and has a run-in with a strange white-haired woman with red eyes, who leaves blood on his collar. Taking this as is a sign that the woman might be the vampire, Tsuzuki tries to follow her. He comes to a church called Oura Cathedral, where he meets the story's primary antagonist, Muraki. Doctor Kazutaka Muraki is initially portrayed as a pure figure, with much religious and color symbolism. He meets Tsuzuki with tears in his eyes and Tsuzuki, thrown off, asks if Muraki has seen a woman recently. Muraki says no body has been in the church, and Tsuzuki leaves. Tsuzuki later learns that the woman that he encountered is Maria Won, a famous singer from China. From there Tsuzuki continues through Nagasaki into the area of the city known as Glover Garden, where he is held at gunpoint from behind. His attacker tells him to turn around, and when he does, he discovers a young man glaring at him. He suspects this man is the vampire. Tsuzuki is then saved by Gushoshin. Afterwards Tsuzuki learns that the boy is Hisoka Kurosaki, his new partner, and the rest of the story is heavily based on character development and the relationships between characters. Later in the Nagasaki Arc (the first fourth of the anime series, and the first collection of the manga), Hisoka is kidnapped by Muraki, and the truth about his death is revealed. Tsuzuki rescues him after his "date" with Muraki, and the series follows the relationship between these three characters, supported and embellished by the rest of the cast. 

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A bumbling screenwriter, Julius K. Moomer, is becoming desperate for a sale after years working on unproduced scripts. When his agent mentions that he is submitting another writer's pitch for a television series about black magic, Julius pleads to be allowed to be given first crack at the series. Knowing nothing about the subject, he attempts some research but turns up only an actual book of black magic. While experimenting with the book he accidentally conjures William Shakespeare, who says he is at the service of the conjurer. Deciding not to waste Shakespeare's talent on a television pilot, Julius directs him to write a film. The producers decide that Shakespeare's script, "The Tragic Cycle", though archaic to the point of being almost incomprehensible, has potential. His task finished, Shakespeare proposes to leave. Julius argues that if he stops writing now Shakespeare will lose his chance at Hollywood fame and become forgotten. Shakespeare at last says he will attend a rehearsal for the film and stay on if it does justice to his script. At the rehearsal he is so horrified at the revisions by the sponsor that he assaults the leading man and storms out. Julius's next assignment, a TV special on American history, seems doomed to failure until he remembers his book on black magic, and uses it to conjure up Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Pocahontas, Daniel Boone, Benjamin Franklin, and Theodore Roosevelt to act as consultants. 

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After Nova Robotics goes bankrupt due to the destruction of one of their robot prototypes by Captain Skroeder, one of their programmers, Benjamin Jahveri (previously known as Jabituya) starts up his own business, "Titanic Toy Corporation", that specializes in making sophisticated toy robots that he makes by hand from the back of his truck. For two days, Ben has been in a big city implied to be New York City peddling his toy robots on the street corners. One robot wanders away from his stand and makes its way into the office of Sandy Banatoni, an assistant buyer for Simpsons' toy department. Sandy tracks Ben down and orders 1,000 of his toys. Overhearing this offer is con artist Fred Ritter, who smooth-talks his way into brokering the transaction between Ben & Sandy, becoming Ben's business partner in the deal, and later acquires the funding Ben needs from a loan shark. Ben and Fred move into a derelict warehouse which is the base of operations for thieves who are tunneling into a bank vault across the street to steal a set of jewels known as the Vanderveer Collection. The thieves (Saunders and Jones) attack Ben and Fred and destroy their equipment, preventing them from completing Sandy's order. However, Ben's friends Stephanie Speck and Newton Crosby have sent Johnny 5, a human-sized sentient robot whom Ben helped to create. When Saunders and Jones return, Johnny fends them off, then sets up self-defense mechanisms should they try to break in. Johnny sets to work mass-producing the toys to meet Sandy's deadline but later leaves to explore the city. He runs afoul of many people, who are rude and unfriendly. However, he befriends one man, Oscar Baldwin, who works at the bank across the street from Ben and Fred's warehouse. Fred, having learned that Johnny is worth $11,002,076.17, tries to sell the robot. Discovering this, Johnny escapes into the city, is taken into police custody, and is placed in the stolen goods warehouse, where he is claimed by Ben. Johnny uses his robotic abilities to help Ben court Sandy. With time running out before the Vanderveer Collection is moved from the bank, Saunders and Jones lock Ben and Fred in the freezer of Doo Wah's Chinese restaurant and Deli. It is revealed that Oscar is the mastermind of the heist, and he tricks Johnny into finishing the tunnel leading to the vault. Ben and Fred get Sandy to save them, using polyphonic renditions of songs that Ben learned on his date with her as clues to their location. Having discovered the Vanderveer Collection, Johnny deduces Oscar's true intentions but is attacked by Saunders and Jones and is severely damaged. Fred attempts to repair him by breaking into a Radio Shack and following Johnny's guidance. Johnny then locates Oscar and traps his accomplices. However, Oscar flees and steals a boat. Johnny uses a dockside crane and swings Tarzan-style to capture Oscar, who is later apprehended by the police. After Johnny's main power supply runs dry, Ben keeps him alive with a defibrillator. Following these events, Johnny is fully repaired and becomes a celebrity, while Sandy, Ben, and Fred start a new company with Johnny as its mascot. He and Ben later take the Oath of Allegiance to become United States citizens. After the ceremony, when questioned by reporters about his thoughts on becoming the country's first robotic citizen, a gold-plated Johnny leaps into the air and exclaims, "I feel alive!" 

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The film is set in Ming Dynasty, China. Li Yilong (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is the town bully, known for his boorish manners and reckless attitude which have endeared him to no one, save his sister Feng (Vicki Zhao) who has a curious penchant for cross-dressing. It is apparent early on that both these siblings are such misfits they have virtually no prospect of marriage. Faye Wong is cast as a runaway princess who is dressed as a man, a disguise which fools both Long and Feng. Long immediately decides that he likes his new-found friend so much that he will entrust his sister's hand in marriage to "him". The princess, of course, cannot marry another woman and tried to fend off Long's suggestions of a match; but also, she is attracted to Long. Emperor Zheng De (Chang Chen) also leaves his palace temporarily to search for his missing sister. He dresses like a commoner and by a twist of fate meets Feng. He is smitten with Feng, and begins to court her, while keeping his imperial identity secret from her. His motives for leaving the palace also included the fact that he is unhappy and lonely at court and wants to escape the smothering influence of the Empress Dowager (Rebecca Pan), his mother, who plays a dictatorial role in the actions of her son. A convoy of imperial guards try to protect him while he is out in town and bring the Emperor back to the palace, but unsuccessfully. The Princess is also assisted by her "fairy godmother" (Athena Chu) in marrying her match. The Empress Dowager hears of her wayward children and storms Long's house, where her children are holed up, only to hear that they wish to marry two commoners with unwholesome and eccentric tendencies. The Emperor is adamant about marrying Feng and the Empress Dowager relents, but Long is unable to pass a "ring test" to prove he is the destined one and the Empress Dowager forbids his marriage to her daughter. All ends well, however. After a separation, Long is enlightened by the "fairy godmother" and passes the "ring test". He is reunited with the Princess, the Empress Dowager accepts him, and happiness reigns. 

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A long time ago, in ancient Trøndelag, the nisses lived merrily in their caves, unknown to the human populace of Trondheim. One day, the wicked nåsås arrived. The nåsås killed many nisses and drove them out of their caves. The only cave the nåsås missed hid the Den Store Kloke Boken (the big wise book). If nåsås ever possess the Boken, they will discover the secret to increasing tax rate up to 100% and infiltrate all positions of bureaucracy and rule the world. The good old gammel nok, the surviving leader of the nisse, sent the three bravest nisses, Hansi, Fritz and Günther, on a quest to find the winding key of the play dose, a musical box playing his life-tune. Good old gammel nok warned our heroes of the dangers of the nåsås and gave them the 'Den Store Kloke Boken' to consult for wisdom. 

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Poutou the daughter of Gousti Bagus is in love with Nyong. She attends a barong dance depicting a mythical struggle between a demon and men but is only interested in Nyong who is also there in the crowd of spectators. Nyong is invited to the home of Gousti Bagus and Poutou the next day. He is on his way when he sees Poutou's sister Saplak bathing and is smitten. Nyong writes on a leaf for Saplak to meet him during the temple dance (Legong) Potou is to dance at. It is to be her last temple dance and Potou is very happy until she finds the note and learns of the betrayal. She goes to the bridge and sees the pair together and commits suicide. Gousti Bagus puts her body in a funeral pyre and burns it so she may be reincarnated. 

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On December 16, 1985, in a remote wooded cabin, a mob informant is under protection by the FBI. They are ambushed by a hit squad who brutally slaughter the bodyguards and the witness. One of the agents killed is Blair Shannon, son of FBI Agent Harry Shannon, who vows revenge. After capturing a man posing as a motorcycle cop, small-town sheriff Mark Kaminski goes home to his alcoholic wife Amy, who resents what their lives have been reduced to and in a drunken fit throws a cake at him. Kaminski once worked for the FBI, but five years ago he brutally beat a suspect who sexually assaulted and murdered a young girl. Kaminski was given the option to "resign or be prosecuted" by ambitious prosecutor Marvin Baxter, who is now Special Federal Prosecutor heading up a committee investigating the dealings of Luigi Patrovita, the strongest of the Chicago Outfit Dons. Due to a leak within the FBI ranks causing their agents to be killed, Shannon recruits Kaminski for an unsanctioned assignment to infiltrate and dismantle Patrovita's organization. Kaminski fakes his own death in a chemical plant explosion and posing as convicted felon Joseph P. Brenner. He manages to get an audience with Patrovita's right-hand man Paulo Rocca, and convinces them of his worth by harassing Martin Lamanski, a rival mob boss who is trying to move in on his former boss Patrovita's territory. While at Patrovita's casino, hidden in a basement level of a high class hotel, he makes the acquaintance of Monique, who works for Rocca's top lieutenant Max Keller. Kaminski continues to work his way into the good graces of the Patrovita family, including devising a plan that recovers $100 million of heroin and cash seized by the feds from one of Patrovita's hideouts and simultaneously assisting in Lamanski's assassination. Keller isn't convinced that 'Brenner' is who he says and manages to find proof of the deception, showing Kaminski's photo to a police informant who previously arrested the real Brenner. The leak the FBI has been looking for is revealed to be Baxter, who is forced to stay close to Patrovita. Kaminski accompanies Keller to a cemetery for a hit job, but discovers that the target is Shannon, forcing Kaminski to blow his cover and kill Keller. In the ensuing shootout, Shannon is severely wounded and crippled. Kaminski escapes with Monique's assistance. He tells her to go to the airport and wait for him. After gathering an arsenal of firearms, Kaminski raids one of Patrovita's gravel pits, killing everyone and stealing a large amount of drug money. He then sets off for Patrovita's casino, where he embarks on a killing spree, single-handedly wiping out all his soldiers, including the men directly responsible for the murder of Blair and his fellow FBI agents. Rocca and Patrovita retreat to a back room, but Rocca is cut down in a barrage of gunfire. Patrovita flees into an office pleading for his life, but Kaminski mercilessly guns him down. On his way out, he encounters a whimpering Baxter and offers him a gun with the same line Baxter gave him five years earlier: "Resign, or be prosecuted. Any way you want it." Kaminski starts to walk off, and when Baxter attempts to shoot him, Kaminski turns and shoots Baxter dead in self-defense. After driving to the airport, Kaminski hands a duffel bag containing $250,000 in cash to Monique and gets her on a chartered plane, telling her she is free and can start a new life with no obligations to anyone. During the aftermath, Kaminski is reinstated with the FBI and is reunited with a pregnant Amy. Kaminski visits a despondent Shannon, who refuses to undergo physical therapy. In order to thank Shannon for helping him, Kaminski asks him to be his child's godfather in exchange for completing his therapy, which Shannon accepts. 

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William Pitt Ferrars, a rising Tory politician with ambitions to the cabinet, is disappointed of his hopes by the fall of the Tory ministry of the Duke of Wellington in 1832, and his party's overwhelming defeat in that year's parliamentary election. He retires from his opulent house in Hill Street, London, to the modest country estate of Hurstley; his failure to reenter the government in Sir Robert Peel's brief ministry in 1835, and his inability to secure a parliamentary seat in the subsequent elections, leads his wife to die of sorrow and disillusionment, and subsequently to his own suicide. He leaves behind him two adolescent children, Endymion and Myra, who are determined to redeem their father's legacy. Endymion has received a clerkship in Somerset House, a government office, and takes lodgings at the home of the Rodneys, former protegees of his parents; at Somerset House he becomes acquainted with fellow clerks Trenchard, Seymour Hicks, and the aspiring but pretentious novelist St. Barbe; Trenchard lays the foundations for his future career by introducing him to the debating club of the politically-minded Bertie Tremaine. In the meantime his sister is hired as a companion to the daughter of Adrian Neuchatel, a great Whig magnate and banker. Myra becomes a favorite member of the household, and her position enables her to introduce Endymion to the high society of the Whig party. Myra herself is wooed and won by Lord Roehampton, secretary of state in the Melbourne ministry. This places her in a position to forward Endymion's career, and she recommends him for private secretary to the Whig cabinet minister Sidney Wilton, an old friend of her father. Her brother distinguishes himself. In the elections of 1841, however, the Whigs are voted out of office, and Endymion loses his position. He compensates for this by getting elected to parliament in a constituency controlled by the Whig Lord Montfort, whose wife Endymion has befriended. In Parliament, under the guidance of Lord Roehampton, Endymion's makes his mark among the Whig opposition; and when his party returns to power in 1846 he becomes under-secretary of state to Lord Roehampton; when the latter dies of overwork, Endymion resigns rather than serve under his successor. Meanwhile, Prince Florestan, a pretender in exile from his country, whom Endymion knew at Eton, has returned to his country and successfully established himself on his throne. He now offers the widowed Myra (whom he has met at the Neuchatels) the crown as his queen. She accepts. Endymion, devastated at this separation from his sister, finds consolation in the love of Lady Montfort, whose husband has died. Although his party is soon again evicted from government, he is now a prominent member of the out-of- power Whigs, headed by Sidney Wilton; with the fall of the Tory ministry Sidney Wilton becomes Prime Minister, and Endymion his secretary of state; through success in foreign wars and prosperous management of relations with the continent, Endymion makes himself the natural successor to Sidney Wilton. When the latter resigns, Endymion is charged by the queen with the formation of the next government. 

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A jockey named Grady is lying alone in his room after being banned from horse racing for life for fixing races by horse doping. He drinks in his depression, and rues his five-foot height, which horse riding had served to compensate for. He then hears a voice. The voice introduces himself as "the alter ego" and claims to live in Grady's head. He argues with the alter ego, trying to justify his life and his actions, even lying about his crimes, but the alter ego knows all about him. Grady is offered the chance to change his life with one wish. Grady says his greatest wish is to be big. After Grady wakes from a nap he finds his wish has been granted; he is now close to eight feet tall. Ecstatic, Grady calls his ex-girlfriend over the phone, but she dismisses him. He boasts that he can find more girls who will appreciate him because of his newfound height. The alter ego remains unimpressed, feeling Grady hasn't made good on any of his promises. He derides his dumb and "cheap" wish, and says that Grady could've wished to win the Kentucky Derby fairly, or perform a heroic act. A telephone call from the racing commission informs Grady that he has been reinstated and can jockey again. Grady joyfully thanks everyone who petitioned to give him a second chance, but the alter ego laughs at him. Grady realizes he has become even larger, about 10 feet tall — too tall to ride a horse, or properly fit in his own apartment. Devastated, the now-giant Grady wrecks his room and pleads with the alter ego to make him small again. The alter ego denies the request, and instead replies, "You are small, Mr. Grady. You see, every time you won an honest race, that's when you were a giant. But right now, they just don't come any smaller." 

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In the town of Brixton, Georgia, widow Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) is a clairvoyant fortune-teller. Jessica King (Katie Holmes), the fiancée of the local school's principal, Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), disappears. Annie receives a vision revealing that Jessica has been killed and her corpse thrown into a pond. She informs local sheriff Pearl Johnson (J.K. Simmons) of her vision, and despite his skepticism, Johnson searches a pond at the home of Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves), the abusive husband of one of Annie's clients, Valerie (Hilary Swank). Donnie had previously threatened Annie and her three children after Annie advised Valerie to leave him. Valerie permits the search while Donnie is absent, but he returns while the search is proceeding. The police find Jessica's corpse in the pond and Donnie is arrested for her murder. During his trial for Jessica's murder, it is revealed that Jessica and Donnie had an affair. Donnie is convicted and sent to prison. Buddy Cole (Giovanni Ribisi), a mentally ill acquaintance of Annie's, harbors a hatred for his father, and tries to explain to Annie why, but Annie is preoccupied and refuses to listen. That evening, Buddy's mother calls Annie to come to their house, as Buddy has snapped and has his father bound to a chair. Buddy sets his father on fire, and it is revealed that Buddy's father sexually abused him as a child. Buddy is eventually taken to a mental hospital. Later, Annie receives another vision revealing that Donnie is innocent. She asks prosecutor David Duncan (Gary Cole) to reopen the case. After Duncan declines, Annie counters that if he does not do so she will reveal David and Jessica's affair, which she witnessed. Duncan attempts to bribe Annie in exchange for her silence, but Annie refuses. Annie tells Wayne that Donnie is not responsible for Jessica's death, and that Duncan will not reopen the investigation. At Wayne's suggestion, he and Annie drive out to the pond that night, where Annie learns from a vision that Wayne is actually the murderer. Wayne confesses to Annie that he was angry after he discovered that Jessica was cheating on him with Donnie. Wayne attempts to kill Annie by striking her in the head with a flashlight, but Buddy appears and knocks him out. Annie and Buddy lock the unconscious Wayne in the trunk of Annie's car. To stop her head wound from bleeding, Buddy uses a baby's bib that Annie had lent him earlier. The two drive to the police station. Annie tells Buddy that he will have to return to the mental hospital, and he waits in the car while she enters the station. When she returns to the car with the police, Buddy has disappeared. When Annie explains to Johnson what happened at the pond, he informs her that Buddy could not have aided her, as he had died by suicide at the mental hospital earlier that day. 

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The main plot of the story focuses on the steadily deteriorating conditions of the Keroro Platoon, a group of five, frog-like alien soldiers from Planet Keron of the Gamma Planetary System. The platoon's mission is to invade and conquer Earth (known to the aliens as “Pekopon”), but fail miserably at each attempt. Platoon leader Sergeant Keroro (or Keroro Gunso), is childish, incompetent, and has little to no interest in conquering the planet, instead spending most of his time indulging in his hobbies which include of making plastic Gundam models, watching TV, or coming up with schemes to make more money to indulge in his new hobbies. Aside from Keroro, there are four other members of the Keroro Platoon: adorable but violent Private Second Class Tamama; bellicose yet tenderhearted Corporal Giroro; intelligent but mischievous Sergeant Major Kururu; and disciplined but traumatized Lance Corporal Dororo. The largest obstacle in the way of their mission is the Hinata Family, who must take care of the Keroro Platoon due to the Keron Army deserting the latter on Earth. Keroro is kept busy with manual labor and constant abuse, primarily from the family daughter, Natsumi. Each member of the platoon finds himself in the care of a human: Giroro's human is Natsumi Hinata, whom he falls in love with; Keroro's human is Fuyuki Hinata, who considers the Sergeant his only true friend; Kululu's human is Mutsumi Saburo, who discovered him; Dororo's human is Koyuki Azumaya, a fellow ninja; and Tamama's human is his equal in bipolar insanity, Momoka Nishizawa. All are tied to the Hinatas in some way throughout the events in the anime and manga. 

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It is Christmas of 1924, three months after Alone in the Dark. "Supernatural Private Eye" Edward Carnby and his partner Ted Stryker are investigating the kidnapping of young Grace Saunders. The trail of clues leads to an old mansion named "Hell's Kitchen" - the home of an infamous gangster boss and his gang. Edward decides to pick up the trail when he learns of Ted's disappearance in the mansion. Unfortunately, Edward soon finds out that Ted has been murdered. Carnby eventually finds out that the mobsters are the corporeal forms of the spirits of pirates that plundered the sea hundreds of years ago, the lot having sold their souls in exchange for eternal life through voodoo magic. Fighting his way into the house and ultimately onto a pirate ship hidden in the cliff on which Jack's house is built, Edward must survive, discover the secret of the pirates' apparent immortality, rescue little Grace, and find out why the pirates are so interested in her. 

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After he inherits some money, Harold Bissonette (mispronounced by his pompous wife as "biss-on-ay") decides to give up the grocery business, move to California and run an orange ranch. Despite his family's objections and the news that the land he bought is worthless, Bissonette packs up and drives out to California with his nagging wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard), self-involved daughter Mildred (Jean Rouverol) and bothersome son Norman (Tommy Bupp). As they pass several prosperous orange groves, his wife softens and figures he made a good purchase. The information about the orange grove is confirmed: his barren plot contains only a tumbledown shack, and a tumbleweed. Disgusted, his wife and family are walking out on him. As he sits down on the car's running board, the car collapses under his weight. However, just when Harold is about to lose all hope, his luck takes a dramatic turn: a neighbor informs him that a developer is desperate to acquire his land in order to build a grandstand for a race track. Finally standing up for himself, and to his nagging wife, Harold holds out for a large sum of money (including a commission for the friendly neighbor), as well as a demand that the developer buy him an orange grove like the one in the brochure he has been carrying throughout the film. The film ends with Harold sitting at an outdoor breakfast table squeezing orange juice into a glass, while his happy family takes off for a ride in their new car. The now-contented Harold pours a flask of booze into the small amount of orange juice in the glass. The film is a chronicle of the "many titanic struggles between Harold Bissonnette and the universe. There will be battle of wills between father and daughter, between male and female, between man and a variety of uncontrollable objects."Simon Louvish, Its a Gift, BFI Film Classics, p.10 The plot is almost secondary to the series of routines which make up the film. Over the course of the picture, Harold fails to prevent a blind customer (and Baby LeRoy) from turning his store into a disaster area; attempts to share a bathroom mirror with his self-centered, high-pitched gargling daughter; has a destructive picnic on private property; and in the film's lengthy centerpiece, is driven to sleep on the porch by his haranguing wife, and is kept awake all night by neighbors (including further trouble with the mother of the baby who caused damage in his grocery store), salesmen, and assorted noises and calamities. A well-known, and often somewhat misquoted Fields comment occurs at the climax of the film, as Harold is haggling with the developer, who angrily claims that Harold is drunk. Harold responds, "Yeah, and you're crazy; and I'll be sober tomorrow and ... you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!" The windfall for Fields' character and the resultant happy ending of this film echo the climax of his earlier 1934 release, Man on the Flying Trapeze. 

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In the near future, violence has become something of a national sport and television news has fallen to tabloid depths. Patrick Hale, a globe-trotting reporter with access to a staggering array of world leaders, has ventured to the Arab country of Hegreb to interview his old acquaintance, King Ibn Awad. Awad has learned that the President of the United States may have issued orders for his removal; as a result, Awad is apparently making arrangements to deliver two suitcase nukes to a terrorist, with the intention of detonating them in Israel and the United States, unless the President resigns. In the intricate plot that unfolds, nothing is quite the way it seems, and Hale finds himself caught between political leaders, revolutionaries, CIA agents and other figures, trying to get to the bottom of it all. 

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Former journalist Danny Pastor has relaxed in Puerto Vallarta over the past year with María de la Luz Santos, a 22-year-old woman whom he'd first met as a cantina waitress. They moved in together shortly thereafter, and Luz asked Danny to marry her, but he kept her at arms' length. One night when Luz went off by herself, she got pregnant by a drunken college student. Danny paid for her to have an abortion, and that incident made up his mind about her. One night as they relaxed in the El Niño cantina, Danny heard a gunshot and rushes outside to see two men dead. One was an American Navy officer, and the other was a software engineer ready to sell his company's work on failure analysis to the Taiwanese government. Back at their apartment, Danny and Luz met a man who identifies himself as "Peter Schumann" and needs to get north of the Rio Grande quickly. Paying Danny five thousand in cash, Schumann arranges his passage in a rusting Ford Bronco named Vito. The film adaptation featured a Jeep Wagoneer instead of a Ford Bronco. Unaware at first of the nature of their journey, Luz wants to go with them to see her grandparents' graves along the coast. When she met with them for the trip, Luz wore blue jeans and a shirt that read "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze" with two halves of a lime dripping down the center. Danny saw in the story of this trip a great opportunity for a literary comeback. As they travelled north, Danny, Luz, and Schumann evade American military and Mexican authorities. Schumann later revealed that he's really former Marine sniper turned mercenary Clayton Price; he was commissioned to kill the engineer, but he took his job personally when he shot the naval officer. During the Vietnam War, Price was abandoned behind enemy lines by the officer who commanded the helicopter. After commandeering the backroads of rural Mexico, Price arranged to have a helicopter meet him near an abandoned silver mine at Zapata. After a fiesta the night before, Luz decided to go with Price because she's fallen in love with him. As Price put it, "I'm not sure I'm capable of loving at all. But, Danny, you love too timidly. I'm not sure which is worse. You have this offhand way of treating her most of the time, as if she's a partially reformed street whore. . . . She told me about her past. She says I treat her with respect. You figure it out." In a standoff with authorities, Price and Luz are killed. Danny heads back to Puerto Vallarta through Mazatlán, but he's arrested when the gun Price used in the double murder is found behind his apartment's toilet. Despite the evidence being circumstantial, Danny serves seventeen months of a ten-year prison sentence before he's released with a one-way ticket to Laredo. Although ordered never to return to Mexico again, Danny does so to find Price and Luz's graves in the Zapata cemetery. Price's marker was removed, but Danny exhumed Luz's coffin and reburied it in Celaya, where her grandparents were buried. During his time in prison, Danny wrote a manuscript about his adventures with Price and Luz as they rode north, but he never saw it again. 

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After starring in a commercial by Mr. Burns for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Homer decides to be an actor. As he fills out a Screen Actors Guild form at home, Lisa points out that he has only written his middle initial, J, in the blank for his middle name. Neither Homer nor Grampa knows that name, but Grampa takes Homer to a farm where Mona, Grampa's wife and Homer's mother, spent some time during her days as a hippie. The farm is run by two middle- aged hippies, Seth and Munchie, who were friends of Mona. They point out a mural that she painted based on an incident at Woodstock, which is dedicated to Homer and reveals his middle name as Jay. Seeing how carefree his life would have been as a hippie, Homer decides to become one. He dons a dirty old poncho left behind by Mona and begins to carry a frisbee, but is dismayed to learn that Seth and Munchie are running an organic juice company at the farm. He persuades them to accompany him on a "freak-out" ride through Springfield, disrupting the citizens' daily lives with silly antics. When the three return to the farm afterward, though, they find that Homer's frisbee has jammed the juicing machinery and caused the loss of an entire shipment of the farm's products. Seth and Munchie angrily order Homer to leave. To set things right, Homer sneaks back to the farm at night, picks and processes all the vegetables he can find, and delivers the juice shipment to Springfield. In so doing, he unknowingly harvests a hidden field of peyote, which Seth and Munchie had intended for their personal use as recreational drugs. The juice causes intense psychedelic hallucinations in those who drink it, and the police quickly trace it to the farm and move in to arrest Homer, Seth, and Munchie. Homer defends Seth and Munchie by placing himself in the officers' path, reminding them of the morals and values from the 1960s, and placing a flower in the barrel of each officer's rifle. When Chief Wiggum fires, Homer ends up hospitalized with one of the flowers lodged in his skull. 

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The novel begins in Manchester, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working-class families. John Barton is a questioner of the distribution of wealth and the relations between rich and poor. Soon his wife dies—he blames it on her grief over the disappearance of her sister Esther. Having already lost his son Tom at a young age, Barton is left to raise his daughter, Mary, alone and now falls into depression and begins to involve himself in the Chartist, trade- union movement. Chapter 1 takes place in the countryside where Greenheys is now. Mary takes up work at a dressmaker's (her father had objected to her working in a factory) and becomes subject to the affections of hard-working Jem Wilson and Harry Carson, son of a wealthy mill owner. She fondly hopes, by marrying Carson, to secure a comfortable life for herself and her father, but immediately after refusing Jem's offer of marriage she realizes that she truly loves him. She, therefore, decides to evade Carson, planning to show her feelings to Jem in the course of time. Jem believes her decision to be final, though this does not change his feelings for her. Meanwhile, Esther, a "street-walker," returns to warn John Barton that he must save Mary from becoming like her. He simply pushes her away, however, and she's sent to jail for a month on the charge of vagrancy. Upon her release, she talks to Jem with the same purpose. He promises that he will protect Mary and confronts Carson, eventually entering into a fight with him, which is witnessed by a policeman passing by. Not long afterward, Carson is shot dead, and Jem is arrested for the crime, his gun having been found at the scene. Esther decides to investigate the matter further and discovers that the wadding for the gun was a piece of paper on which is written Mary's name. She visits her niece to warn her to save the one she loves, and after she leaves Mary realizes that the murderer is not Jem but her father. She is now faced with having to save her lover without giving away her father. With the help of Job Legh (the intelligent grandfather of her blind friend Margaret), Mary travels to Liverpool to find the only person who could provide an alibi for Jem – Will Wilson, Jem's cousin and a sailor, who was with him on the night of the murder. Unfortunately, Will's ship is already departing, so that, after Mary chases after the ship in a small boat, the only thing Will can do is promise to return in the pilot ship and testify the next day. During the trial, Jem learns of Mary's great love for him. Will arrives in court to testify, and Jem is found "not guilty". Mary has fallen ill during the trial and is nursed by Mr. Sturgis, an old sailor, and his wife. When she finally returns to Manchester she has to face her father, who is crushed by his remorse. He summons John Carson, Harry's father, to confess to him that he is the murderer. Carson is still set on justice, but after turning to the Bible he forgives Barton, who dies soon afterward in Carson's arms. Not long after this Esther comes back to Mary's home, where she, too, soon dies. Jem decides to leave England, where, his reputation damaged, it would be difficult for him to find a new job. The novel ends with the wedded Mary and Jem, their little child, and Mrs. Wilson living happily in Canada. The news comes that Margaret has regained her sight and that she and Will, soon to be married, will visit. 

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San Drad (a possible mistranslation of Japanized English San Dorado, サン・ドラド), California, has been overrun by the Aliens, and the cybernetically-enhanced Major Dutch Schaefer and Lieutenant Linn Kurosawa of the United States Colonial Marine Corps have been abandoned by their superiors and are cornered by a swarm of the Alien drones. Before they can be killed, a pair of the Predators appear and destroy the Aliens. The Predators offer an alliance with the two cyborgs in order to stop the Alien infestation. The players take control of up to three of four characters: Dutch, Linn, a Predator hunter, and a Predator warrior, and battle the Aliens through seven stages. After destroying the Aliens' hive, the characters discover that the Alien presence on Earth is the result of a bio-war project headed by the renegade General Bush working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation. They board Bush's military ship as it lifts off, kill the Alien Queen after it kills him, and program the ship to crash into San Drad, triggering a huge explosion that eliminates all Alien life on Earth. The Predator warrior then gives his wrist blades to Dutch and Linn in recognition of their skills as warriors, before the Predators depart back into space. Linn asks the Predators why they chose to help them, and the Predators' vague reply makes her and Dutch wonder whether they will have to fight them the next time they return to Earth. 

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Young Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) lives with his widowed mother Heloise (Mary Healy). The bane of Bart's existence is the hated piano lessons he endures under the tutelage of the autocratic Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). Bart feels that his mother has fallen under Terwilliker's influence, and gripes to their plumber, August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes), without result. While hammering at his lessons, Bart dozes off and enters a musical dream. In the dream, Bart is trapped at the surreal Terwilliker Institute, where the piano teacher is a madman dictator who has imprisoned non-piano-playing musicians. He built a piano so large that it requires Bart and 499 other boys (hence, 5,000 fingers) to play it. Bart's mother has become Terwilliker's hypnotized assistant and bride-to-be, and Bart must dodge the Institute's guards as he scrambles to save his mother and himself. He tries to recruit Mr. Zabladowski, who was hired to install the Institute's lavatories ahead of a vital inspection, but only after skepticism and foot-dragging is Zabladowski convinced to help. The two construct a noise-sucking contraption which ruins the mega-piano's opening concert. The enslaved boys run riot, and the "atomic" noise-sucker explodes in spectacular fashion, bringing Bart out from his dream. The movie ends on a hopeful note for Bart, when Mr. Zabladowski notices Heloise and offers to drive her to town in his jeep. Bart escapes from the piano and runs down the street to play, with his dog Sport joyfully capering at his heels. 

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On his usual Sunday afternoon stroll, the narrator, a French literature professor at a women's college, watches icicles dripping from a nearby eave with intense meditation. He walks on, and is distracted by the reddish shadows cast by a parking meter and restaurant sign. He runs into D., a former colleague who casually informs him that Cynthia Vane, with whom the narrator had formerly had a short relationship, has died. The narrator recounts his memories of Cynthia and her younger sister Sybil. The married D. had an affair with the narrator's student Sybil. Cynthia first approaches the narrator in hopes of recruiting him to end the affair, instructing the narrator to tell D. that he should either divorce his wife or resign. He confronts D., who tells the narrator that he and his wife are moving to Albany, ending the affair. The following day, the narrator gives his French literature class, which includes Sybil, an examination. When marking Sybil's exam that night, he finds a suicide note. He calls Cynthia only to find that Sybil has committed suicide. After Sybil's death, the narrator begins seeing Cynthia and immerses himself in her philosophies of spiritualism and the occult. He attends parties along with Cynthia's circle of believers, and listens keenly to her theory that the dead control events great and small. Unconvinced, the narrator ridicules Cynthia's searches for acrostics, and playfully criticizes her party guests, to which Cynthia fiercely reacts by calling him a "prig" and "snob." This ends their relationship. The story returns to the narrator's encounter with D. Having learnt of Cynthia's death, he is suddenly frantic, fearful, and incapable of sleep, preoccupied with the idea of Cynthia's ghost returning to haunt him as her philosophies suggested. He tries to fight her spirit by searching for acrostics in Shakespeare. His search fruitless, he falls asleep and awakens to find everything seemingly in order. He scoffs at the "disappointing" show, and the final paragraph reads: 

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The play is composed of seven vignettes. The first takes place at a union meeting of taxi drivers, where union boss Harry Fatt tries to dissuade the men from striking. A few drivers ask of the whereabouts of Lefty, their elected chairman. Fatt reminds them their elected committee is already present, then lets Joe, one of the drivers, speak. Joe says that he is not a "red boy", citing his status as a wounded war veteran, but complains that any driver who expresses dissatisfaction with working conditions is labelled a "red" (slang for communist) by the bosses. He says his wife has convinced him to strike for higher wages. In the second vignette, set a week before that union meeting, Joe comes home to find that his furniture, not yet paid for, was repossessed. Joe's wife Edna urges him to lead a strike and demand a living wage. Joe argues that strikes do not work and that he would lose money while on strike. Edna criticizes the union as benefitting only its leaders. Joe admits the union bosses are "racketeers" but refuses to stand up to them. Edna announces she is going back to her old boyfriend, since he earns a living. Joe protests, and Edna implores Joe to start a workers' union without the racketeers. Joe, swept up by her passion, tells her he is going to find Lefty Costello. The next vignette features Fayette, an industrialist, and Miller, a lab assistant. Fayette raises Miller's salary as a reward for his loyalty, and reassigns him to a new laboratory where Miller will help create poisonous gas for chemical warfare. Miller loses enthusiasm, but Fayette believes the world is on the brink of war, and that the U.S. must be ready. Miller grows distraught, reminiscing about his brother who died in the previous war. Fayette expects Miller to provide a weekly confidential report on the project's leader Dr. Brenner. Miller refuses to do any "spying", insisting he would rather lose his job than agree to such terms. Miller's outrage grows and he punches Fayette in the mouth. In the fourth vignette, Florence tells her brother Irv that she loves her boyfriend Sid. Irv urges her to break up with Sid, since he earns too little money as a taxi driver. Sid enters and Irv exits. Sid says he knows he is like "rat poison" to her family and knows that she is reconsidering whether to marry him. He laments their lowly status as "dogs" under the thumb of powerful rich men. He is upset that his brother, a college boy, has swallowed the "money men's" propaganda and joined the navy to fight foreigners who are, ultimately, just like himself. Florence says she will follow Sid anywhere, but he tells her to be realistic. Back at the union meeting, Fatt brings up Tom Clayton, who took part in an unsuccessful strike in Philadelphia. Clayton says that his experience taught him that Fatt is right about not striking. Clayton's brother runs into the meeting and identifies Clayton as a company spy who has been breaking up various unions for years. Clayton leaves and his brother voices skepticism of Fatt's claimed ignorance of Clayton's true identity. The next vignette occurs in the hospital office of the elderly Dr. Barnes. The younger Dr. Benjamin enters, upset that he has been replaced for surgery on a patient in the charity ward by an incompetent doctor named Leeds, the nephew of a senator. Barnes reveals that the hospital is shutting the charity ward because it is losing money. It is also firing some staff, including Benjamin. Though Benjamin has seniority, he is being fired because he is Jewish. Barnes takes a phone call and learns that the patient has died in surgery. Benjamin is furious, saying he was skeptical of the ideas of radicals until now, and vowing to fight on even if it means death. A man named Agate talks to the taxi drivers, insulting their weakness and insulting Fatt. Fatt and his armed guard try to detain him, but Agate eludes them. Agate says that if "we're reds because we wanna strike, then we take over their salute too!" He makes a Communist salute. Agate incites the drivers with fiery rhetoric about the rich killing them off. He tells them to "unite and fight!" and not to wait for Lefty, who may never arrive. A man runs in and reports that Lefty has just been found, shot dead. Agate yells to his fellow union men, "Workers of the world... Our Bones and Blood!" and leads them in a chorus of "Strike!" 

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The backstory of Syndicate is contained in the manual, instead of the game itself. As multinational corporations gained power and influence they came to exercise direct influence over the world's governments, eventually replacing them, controlling the lives of people through commerce. One such "megacorp", named EuroCorp, invented the "CHIP", a device inserted into the neck which alters a person's perception of the outside world, numbing their senses to the misery and squalor around them. It also opened the user to suggestion and manipulation by the megacorps. Before long the megacorps became corrupt crime Syndicates, fighting amongst each other for monopoly over CHIP manufacturing and control over populations. The game puts the player in charge of a self- named corporation in a near-future cyberpunk-style world in the year 2096. The teams of up to four cyborg agents - who according to the game's intro cutscene, are ordinary civilians who have been captured, cybernetically enhanced and reprogrammed. The agents are used in a series of missions, which include assassinations, infiltration, theft and "persuasion" (using a device called a Persuadertron to capture individuals of importance, or hordes of civilians, police and others to act as cannon fodder). New agents can also be Persuaded and added to your roster, to replace those who have been injured or killed. Losing all your agents results in a Game Over screen, as your corporation sets your control airship to self destruct and crash. During the course of the game, the player establishes worldwide dominance with their established syndicate, one territory at a time, while engaging and eliminating rival syndicates (such as The Tao, Sphinx Inc., and The Castrilos) and putting down internal mutinies. The finale sees the squad eliminating wave upon wave of enemy agents on the Atlantic Accelerator research station: victory declares the dawn of a new Empire across the Earth. 

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Albert, an aspiring rapper and suburban kid who idolizes the gangsta rappers he sees on TV, and his friends Euripides and Otis decide that they want to start a rap group. Unfortunately, even though all three of them are talented, they have no connections and no image with which they can market themselves. In order to get their name heard and build up a reputation, they appeal to local crime kingpin and nightclub owner Gusto, along with his sidekick and henchman 40 Dog, to ask for a spot on the bill at his club. During their meeting, by complete coincidence, the police rush in and throw Gusto in jail. Gusto believes that the trio set him up, swearing revenge when he is released from prison. Taking advantage of the situation, Albert steals his criminal background and identity, renaming himself "MC Gusto" while Euripides and Otis take the names "Dead Mike" and "Stab Master Arson", respectively. Pretending to be newly released convicts, they form the hardcore gangsta rap group CB4 (Cell Block 4) and successfully sign with Trustus Jones, a local music mogul. CB4 quickly becomes the hottest band on the charts with controversial hits like "Sweat from My Balls" and "Straight Outta LoCash", and their rise to fame is documented by an aspiring director and his cameraman. However, an ambitious politician seeks to shut them down for obscenity charges, tensions between the group arise over one member's gold-digging groupie girlfriend Sissy, and the strain of the charade takes its toll on Albert's family life and relationship with his wholesome girlfriend Daliha. To compound this, the real Gusto escapes from prison and exacts his revenge by making Albert take part in a record store robbery, exposing his face to the CCTV cameras and then taking the tape as a tool for blackmail so he can profit from Albert's success. CB4 breaks up, with Dead Mike becoming an Afrocentric rapper while Stab Master Arson establishes himself as a successful DJ, leaving Albert to wallow in self-pity and his growing addiction to drugs. One day, he gets a call from Mike that Trustus is dead, having choked to death in terror when Gusto pointed a gun at him in a restaurant. Fed up with Gusto taking everything he has, Albert decides to set up a sting operation to nab the gangster by having Sissy seduce him and then trading places with her to entrap Gusto so the police can arrest him and send him to prison for life. Albert accepts that he is not a gangsta and makes a comeback under his own name. He persuades Mike and Stab Master Arson to reform the group, and they embark on a highly successful reunion tour. 

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Xuxa Meneghel is parodied in the episode by character Xoxchitla. Marge discovers that the Simpson family has run up a large telephone bill due to several calls to Brazil. After the phone company cuts off the family's service and Homer repeatedly injures himself trying to restore it, Lisa admits that she made the calls in order to stay in touch with Ronaldo, an orphan boy she has been sponsoring. She had been receiving monthly letters from him until recently; when they stopped, she called the orphanage where he was staying and was told that he had gone missing. When Lisa plays a videotaped message from Ronaldo, telling her that he used her money to buy a pair of dancing shoes, Homer, Marge, and Bart decide to fly to Brazil with her and find him. They leave Maggie in the care of Patty and Selma. Once the Simpsons arrive in Rio de Janeiro, they begin searching for Ronaldo—first in the city's slums, then at his orphanage—but without success. When they split into pairs to cover more ground, Homer and Bart are robbed by a gang of children and later kidnapped in a taxicab. Bart escapes to tell Marge and Lisa, and the kidnappers take Homer to a hideout within the Brazilian rainforest and demand $50,000 for his release. Unable to pay the ransom themselves or find anyone in Springfield to lend them the money, the remaining three Simpsons begin looking for Homer. They get caught up in a Carnaval parade, during which Lisa finds Ronaldo—now working as a flamingo-costumed dancer on a popular children's television program. He explains that the shoes he bought led to this job and a high salary, and gives the Simpsons the $50,000 they need. When they arrive at a meeting point arranged by the kidnappers—on adjacent aerial lift cars above Sugarloaf Mountain—they find that Homer has developed Stockholm syndrome and made a scrapbook to remember his kidnapping. They throw the money across and Homer jumps to the family's car, only for the cables to break and send them tumbling down the mountainside. They survive unharmed, and Homer thanks his family for being there to get him out of trouble. Bart is immediately swallowed whole by an anaconda, but is not troubled and begins dancing to samba music. 

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Rena is a suicidal teenage girl whose father is serving a long prison sentence. The boy she likes only uses her for sex and other teenage girls tease her relentlessly. Rena and her family travel to the father's prison for the annual family picnic. Things seem to be going just fine, but he eventually becomes abusive and angry. Rena's brother Jay, who is secretly gay, wanders off to tour the prison with another inmate named Buddy. Rena's half-sister Barbie sneaks off to the conjugal visit trailers and engages in sexual intercourse with her stepfather (Rena's father), unbeknownst to the family. After this activity is witnessed by Buddy and Jay, the other inmates watch as Buddy makes her squeal like a pig in exchange for not reporting it to her mother. Jay and Buddy bond, and when the tour is over they secretly kiss passionately. Rena tells her dad that she's pregnant, news which the father does not handle well. When Rena's mother later discovers that her husband is having an affair, they get into a physical fight. When the guards see this they attack him and he stumbles backwards and falls on Rena. Rena rushes to the bathroom, finding that she's bled, and lost the baby. She breaks a picture frame and uses the glass shards to slit her wrists, but Jay saves her just in time. Rena's mother (Madge) and the children realize that the father is abusive and that continuing to support him has been holding the family back. Rena realizes that her "fond" memories of her relationship with her father were self-delusions. Madge announces that she is moving the family to Florida. Rena tells her boyfriend about the miscarriage and when he expresses indifference, she causes his prized car to drive into a swimming pool. The end shows the family leaving home for Florida, with Rena's now ex-boyfriend running through the yard screaming at her. 

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In post-Soviet Russia, civil war erupts as a result of the ongoing conflict in Chechnya. Military units loyal to Vladimir Radchenko, a Russian ultra-nationalist, take control of a nuclear missile installation and are threatening nuclear war if either the American or Russian governments attempt to confront him. A U.S. Navy , , is assigned to a patrol mission to be available to launch its missiles in a pre-emptive strike if Radchenko attempts to fuel his missiles. Captain Frank Ramsey is the commanding officer, one of few submarine commanders left in the Navy with combat experience. He chooses as his new XO Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter, who has an extensive education in military history and tactics, but no combat experience. During their initial days at sea, tension between Ramsey and Hunter becomes apparent due to a clash of personalities: Hunter is more analytical and cautious, while Ramsey has a more impulsive and intuitive approach. Two incidents bear this out. A fire breaks out in the galley, resulting in the death of the chief mess officer via cardiac arrest. Hunter helps the mess crew fight the fire, but Ramsey chooses to order a missile drill in the midst of the chaos. Hunter, partly due to disagreement with the drill, is late reporting to missile control. Ramsey chastises Hunter for the appearance of discord in front of sailors. Later, Hunter observes a fight between two sailors over a trivial matter and believes the crew's morale is suffering. Ramsey's response is to collectively chastise the Alabama crew as a whole via the 1MC system over a lack of battle focus. Alabama eventually receives an Emergency Action Message, ordering the launch of ten of its missiles against the Russian nuclear installation, based on satellite information that the Russians' missiles are being fueled. Before Alabama can launch its missiles, a second radio message begins to be received, but is cut off by the attack of a Russian loyal to Radchenko. The radio electronics are damaged in the attack and cannot be used to decode the second message. With the last confirmed order being to launch, Captain Ramsey decides to proceed. Hunter refuses to concur as is required because he believes the partial second message may be a retraction. Hunter argues that Alabama is not the only American submarine in the area, and if the order is not retracted, other submarines will launch their missiles as part of the fleet's standard redundancy doctrine. Ramsey argues that the other American submarines may have been destroyed. When Hunter refuses to consent, Ramsey tries to relieve him of duty and replace him with a different officer. Instead, Hunter orders the arrest of Ramsey for attempting to circumvent protocol. The crew's loyalty is divided between Hunter and Ramsey, but the Chief of the Boat sides with Hunter ("by the book") in having Ramsey relieved of command and confined to his stateroom, putting Hunter in command. Alabama is attacked again by the Russian submarine. Alabama destroys the submarine, but is hit by a torpedo it failed to elude during the attack. The submarine's main propulsion system is disabled and the bilge bay is taking on water. As the crew frantically tries to restore propulsion, Hunter orders the sealing of the bilge with sailors trapped inside, preventing too much water from being taken on but causing the sailors to drown. Just before the submarine reaches hull crush depth, the propulsion is restored. The officers and crew loyal to Ramsey unite and retake the control room, confining Hunter, the Chief of the Boat and a few others to the officers' mess. The radio team continue to work on repairing their communications systems but the Captain is determined to continue without waiting for verification. Hunter escapes his arrest and gains the support of the weapons officer in the missile control room, further delaying the launch and leading the Captain to proceed to missile control to force the weapons officer (who is the only man on board who knows the combination to the safe with the firing trigger to actually launch the missiles) to comply with him - by threatening to execute one of his men. Hunter, alongside officers and men loyal to him storm the ships command centre, removing the captains missile key seconds before the Captain could launch, disabling the launch systems. Ramsey and his men return to the control room, resulting in a Mexican standoff with both sides heavily armed and refusing to back down. But with the radio team reporting they are near success, the two men agree to a compromise; they will wait until the deadline for missile launch to see if the radio can be repaired. The two men discuss whether Lipizzans stallions came from Spain or Portugal, and whether they are born white or black. After several tense minutes, communications are restored and they finally see the full message from the second transmission. It is a retraction ordering that the missile launch be aborted because Radchenko's rebellion has been quelled. Ramsey at that point turns command over to Hunter and returns to his cabin. After returning to base, Ramsey and Hunter are put before a naval tribunal at Naval Station Pearl Harbor to answer for their actions. The tribunal concludes that both men were simultaneously right and wrong, and Hunter's actions were deemed lawfully justified and in the best interests of the United States. Unofficially, the tribunal chastises both men for failing to resolve the issues between them. Thanks to Ramsey's personal recommendation, the tribunal agrees to grant Hunter command of his own sub while allowing Ramsey to save face via an early retirement. Ramsey admits Hunter was right that the Lipizzaner stallions came from Spain. 

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While in post-production on a low-budget slasher film, Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry (Travolta) is told by his producer that he needs a more realistic-sounding scream and better wind effects. While recording potential sound effects at a local park, he sees a car careen off the road and plunge into a nearby creek. The male driver is killed, but Jack manages to rescue a young woman, Sally (Allen), and accompanies her to a hospital. There, a detective interviews Jack about the accident, and Jack asks Sally out for a drink. He learns that the driver of the car was Governor George McRyan, and that Sally was his escort. Associates of McRyan attempt to conceal Sally's involvement, and persuade Jack to smuggle her out of the hospital. Jack listens to the audio tape he recorded of the accident, wherein he distinctly hears a gunshot just before the tire blow-out that caused the accident. He learns from a news report that, seemingly by coincidence, Manny Karp (Franz) was also in the park that night and filmed the accident with a motion picture camera. When Karp sells stills from his film to a local tabloid, Jack splices them together into a crude movie and syncs them with the audio he recorded, becoming suspicious that the accident was actually an assassination. Unbeknown to Jack, Sally and Karp were both co-conspirators in a larger plot against McRyan, a presidential hopeful. A rival candidate had hired Burke (Lithgow) to hook McRyan with a prostitute, take their pictures, and publish them so that McRyan would drop out of the race. However, Burke decided to alter the plan by blowing out the tire of McRyan's car with a gunshot, thereby causing an accident. When the authorities arrived to find McRyan with Sally, Karp would be there to film it all. Although Burke had not planned for McRyan to be killed, he is little bothered by the development since that still accomplished the goal of eliminating McRyan. Aware that Jack and Sally are trying to prove that the car's tire was shot, Burke plots to destroy Jack's evidence and kill Sally. He begins murdering local women bearing a resemblance to Sally, whose deaths are attributed to a serial killer, "the Liberty Bell Strangler", so that he can cover-up the future murder of Sally. Jack draws Sally into his own private investigation of the incident. Though initially reluctant, she eventually agrees to cooperate with him. When they go out for a drink, Jack reveals how he left his prior career in the police force after a wiretap operation he was involved in led to the death of an undercover cop. To help Jack investigate McRyan's murder, Sally steals Karp's film, which, when synced to Jack's audio, clearly reveals the gunshot that precipitated the blow-out. Nevertheless, nobody believes Jack's story and every move he makes is immediately silenced by a seemingly widespread conspiracy. A local talk-show host, Frank Donahue (Curt May), asks to interview Jack on air and release his tapes, to which Jack eventually agrees. Burke follows the development through a tap on Jack's phone, calls Sally as Donahue, and asks her to meet him at a train station with the tapes. When Sally tells Jack about Donahue's call, he becomes suspicious. He copies the audio tapes, but does not have time to copy the film before Sally's meeting. Shadowing a wired Sally from a distance, Jack is alarmed to see that his supposed contact is actually Burke. Immediately realizing that she is in danger, Jack attempts to warn her, but Sally and Burke slip out of range and into a parade. Jack makes a mad dash across Philadelphia, attempting to head them off and rescue Sally, but crashes his Jeep and is knocked out. By the time he awakens, Burke has gotten the film from Sally and thrown it into a river. He then takes Sally to a rooftop and attacks her. Still listening in on his earpiece, Jack spots them. Jack takes Burke by surprise and manages to stab him to death with his own weapon, but it is too late: he has already strangled Sally. A devastated Jack takes her lifeless body in his arms. Burke's death, combined with the loss of the film, ties up the last loose end. Jack's audio tapes alone are insufficient to prove a gunshot and the cover-up is a success. Jack begins listening to the recording of Sally's voice over and over again, becoming obsessed with it. In the last scene, he is back in the editing room and has used Sally's death scream in the exploitation film. The producer is ecstatic that he found a perfect scream and plays it multiple times, forcing Jack to cover his ears. 

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At Riftgard, an isle in the far north, the ferret king, King Agarnu, and his cruel offspring, Princess Kurda and Prince Bladd hold sway over a Ratguard army and enslaved creatures. One of the slaves, Trisscar Swordmaid escapes with her friends Shogg and Welfo, southward to Mossflower. In the attempt, her friend Drufo is killed. Meanwhile, Kurda hires a pirate ship, the Seascab, captained by Plugg Firetail, to take her to Mossflower, where she must find the royal artefacts of Riftgard to seal her queenship. In Redwall Abbey, rebellious Dibbuns Ruggum and Bikkle run away into Mossflower Woods. They discover Brockhall, the ancestral home of badgers, but are chased away by serpents. Fortunately, they are rescued by the Skipper of Otters and Log-a-Log Groo, and they bring with them a golden pawring with strange markings. US cover of Triss Sagaxus, heir to Salamandastron, and his friend Bescarum Lepuswold Whippscut (who go by Sagax and Scarum respectively), leave the mountain for adventure with Kroova Wavedog, in his ketch the Stopdog. Scarum's father, Colonel Whippscut of the Long Patrol, searches for them in the name of Lord Hightor, the Badger Lord. Sagax finds a bow on the ketch (the property of its previous owners) with similar markings to the pawring. They disregard it and decide to journey to Redwall, and on their way, they wind up in possession of a dagger with the same pattern. Triss and her friends, in their ship, see the same markings. Triss is able to interpret them as an R, H, O, and R, standing for "Royal House of Riftgard". On the journey, they become dehydrated, but are rescued by the hedgehogs of Peace Island. Welfo remains with her newfound love, Urtica, while Triss and Shogg continue south. They cross paths with Kurda on the Seascab in the middle of a lightning storm, but the contraband vessel escapes. Meanwhile, the Redwall denizens try to explore Brockhall, but it is inhabited by three serpents, one of which wears a crown with the Riftgard pattern. The adders, Zassaliss, Harssacss, and Sesstra, are the children of Berussca, an adder slain by and who in turn slew King Sarengo, Agarnu's father; they remain bound by Sarengo's mace and chain. Ovus, a tawny owl, brings Bluddbeak, an ancient red kite from afar to defeat the adders, but in their attempt, both birds die. Mokug, a golden hamster who had been Sarengo's slave, is rescued and brings with him a message in Riftgard script. Martin the Warrior visits Skipper's niece, Churk, in her dreams, giving the Redwallers the hint they need to decode the message, but it is a riddle that's difficult to interpret. Elsewhere, Sagax, Scarum, and Kroova are captured by the crew of the Seascab, and the Stopdog is destroyed. Triss and Shogg meet up with them, and together they are able to escape. Kroova and Shogg set up a hidden stake that injures Plugg, and his tail falls off, though he reattaches it with pine resin. Kurda and her vermin then cross paths with the Redwallers, who fend them off, while Triss, Shogg, Sagax, Scarum, and Kroova enter the safety of the abbey. Triss sees the Sword of Martin and is immediately drawn to it, wielding it as the Redwallers continue to battle the Ratguard army. Bladd is killed by a falling pot of oatmeal, and Plugg is killed by the snakes, while Kurda concentrates her efforts on destroying the denizens of Redwall. Eventually, Skipper's niece helps solve the riddle, which leads the Redwallers to Brockhall. There they encounter both the Ratguards and the snakes. During the ensuing battle, Shogg, Sagax, and Triss kill Sesstra, Harssacss, and Zassaliss, but Shogg is poisoned and dies by Triss's side. Later, Triss and Kurda face off, but Kurda falls on her own sword and dies. Triss, Kroova, Sagax, Scarum, Groo, Skipper, Mokug, and others sail to Riftgard and free the slaves. There, King Agarnu is drowned by the slaves. Kroova stays on Riftgard with the sea otter Sleeve, and the others return to Redwall Abbey. 

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A high school girl named Himeno Awayuki is attempting to adjust to her new life after her widowed father remarries wealthy widow Natsue. While taking a short cut to school, Himeno jumps out of a bush and lands on Hayate, the Knight of Wind. After some arguing Himeno wants to punch Hayate, but he blocks her hand causing a powerful light. Later she meets the other Leafe Knights who tell her that the red snow that has been falling on the town recently is being caused by the Princess of Disaster who is awakening, and that she is using demon larva to absorb Leafe, the essence of all life. They ask Himeno to become the Prétear and help them protect the world. Himeno is initially reluctant, believing they are trying to play a trick on her. When a larva attacks them and begins stealing leafe, Himeno agrees to help. Hayate tells her to take his hand and she merges with him to become the Wind Prétear. After adjusting to her new powers, Himeno is able to defeat the larva. As the series progresses, Himeno finds herself slowly falling in love with Hayate, who is initially cold and refuses to acknowledge her as the Prétear. Eventually she learns the Princess of Disaster was once a girl named Takako, who was the last Prétear. She had not enjoyed fighting, but did it anyway, also falling in love with Hayate. When he could not return her feelings, her anguish caused her powers to turn to evil, changing her into the Princess of Disaster. Mawata, one of Himeno's stepsisters, has been overwhelmed with grief since the death of her father and holds herself distant from her family. She and Himeno temporarily connect over their shared feelings, but Mawata is hurt when she sees Himeno with Hayate. Mawata is in love with Sasame, but it is revealed that he was in love with Takako. He throws away his status as a Leafe Knight and joins Takako to become her Knight of Darkness. Takako uses Mawata's love for Sasame to hurt her even more, enabling Takako to use her to fuel the Great Tree of Fenrir. The town is overrun by the Great Tree. To protect the rest of her family, Himeno reveals her Prétear powers to them, then begs them to escape while she rescues Mawata. Instead, the family refuses to leave Mawata behind and put themselves in great physical danger to rescue her. Hayate and Sasame engage in a battle to the death, and Himeno climbs the Great Tree of Fenrir. Himeno's family starts attacking the bubble holding Mawata, calling to her desperately. Himeno continues up the tree to confront the Princess of Disaster. Mawata is freed and safe in the arms of her family. Takako doesn't want her to go and becomes desperate calling out for Sasame who appears after beating Hayate in battle. Fenrir asks Sasame to kill both Hayate and Himeno, but he is convinced by Himeno not to. Believing that not even Sasame loves her, Takako tries to kill herself, but Sasame shields her and dies. Takako comes back to her true self realizing that she loved Sasame too. Out of control, the tree captures Takako. Himeno tries to save her and she's attacked by the tree. Hayate shields her and then he dies in her arms. To stop the tree, Himeno by herself becomes the legendary White Prétear and pours out a massive amount of Leafe. The town is restored, the Leafe Knights healed, and Sasame and Hayate are brought back to life. Hayate awakens to find the others crying over Himeno's lifeless body, lying in the grass as if she were sleeping. In agony, he holds her, then kisses her, which restores her life and enables her to awaken. At the end of the series, Himeno and Hayate are a couple, Himeno and her family are closer, Mawata is happier, and Takako is seen quietly sitting with Sasame. 

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At the start of the series, Ito Miura meets the beautiful transfer student Makoto Amano, and the girls become instant friends. Their personalities are completely different—Makoto is calm, quiet, and beautifully feminine, while Ito speaks, dresses, and behaves like a boy—but they share the same dream: becoming an actor. As soon as Makoto gets on stage at the drama club, it is clear she has talent, enough so she is cast as Juliet in the upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Ito as Romeo. However, Makoto has a rival for the role in Tsugumi Nomura, an upperclassman who is obsessed with the boyish Ito. Worse, Ito learns Makoto's secret: "she" is actually a "he". Makoto's strict father wants him to inherit the family dojo, and made a bet with his son—if Makoto shows he has the skill to pose as a female for his last two years of high school, he can become an actor as he wishes, but if anyone discovers his gender, he must stay home and accept the dojo. Ito agrees to keep Makoto's secret so that he could continue with his dream. The series follows Ito and Makoto during their last two years of high school, as they work to improve their acting and keep Makoto's secret. They start out just as friends, but continue as boyfriend and girlfriend. One of the obstacles they must face is keeping their relationship a secret from their family and friends, both because of Makoto's assumed gender and it would expose his secret. They must also worry about Makoto's jealous arranged fiancée, Takayo, and her brother, who has a strong sister complex, and Ito's various suitors. All the while, the drama club performs various plays, some of which are essential to demonstrating Makoto's acting skill to his father. 

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The first part of the novel is laid out as an opera, with act and scene numbers as chapter titles and each of the characters being assigned a singing voice. Joseph quickly begins to suspect that Cynthia's entire family is engaging in incestuous behaviour, and that her mother Mimi is building a golem in the basement. The first part of the novel ends (operatically) in death. The second part is presented somewhat more conventionally, as Joseph attempts to recover from the events of the first part; this half of the book follows the form of a 12-step program. The first section of the novel is printed in black ink, while the 12-step program is printed in dark red. Category:2000 American novels Category:Novels by Daniel Handler Category:Jewish American novels Category:Novels set in Pittsburgh 

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In a future society, all nineteen-year-olds go through a process known as "the Transformation", in which each person's body is changed to a physically attractive design chosen from a selection of numbered models. The process also slows deterioration due to age and confers immunity to disease, extending human lifespans, as well as making unspecified psychological corrections. Due to the overwhelming popularity of female model 12 and male model 17, all adults wear name badges to avoid confusion. Eighteen-year-old Marilyn Cuberle decides not to undergo the Transformation. Nobody else can understand Marilyn's decision, and those around her are confused by her displeasure with the conformity and shallowness of contemporary life. Her "radical" beliefs were fostered by her now-deceased father, who gave Marilyn banned books and came to regret his own Transformation years earlier, committing suicide upon the loss of his identity. When Dr. Rex is told about her decision, he has Marilyn confined to a hospital room against her will, ostensibly to psychologically examine her and cure her of her reason for refusing the procedure. Marilyn suspects that despite not being legally required, the Transformation is not optional, and is being maintained by the leaders of society to ensure conformity. Her best friend Valerie, who has already undergone the Transformation, shows no emotional reaction to Marilyn's protests, even when she is driven to tears. Marilyn realizes that no one who has undergone the Transformation remains capable of any sympathy with or understanding of her. She attempts to escape from the hospital, but due to a post-hypnotic suggestion planted during her stay, she instead goes to the operating room to undergo the Transformation. Dr. Rex, who operated on Marilyn, comments that some people have problems with the idea of the Transformation but that "improvements" to the procedure now guarantee a positive result. Marilyn reappears, looking and thinking exactly like Valerie. "And the nicest part of all, Val", she gushes, "I look just like you!" 

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Every episode had a different theme to it (e.g., "Hawaiian Day" or "Astronaut Day") and saw the Anipals usually getting into some sort of trouble, not wanting to do whatever their happy-go-lucky host had in mind for the day. The Comedy Central version of TV Funhouse premiered in December 2000 and was not picked up for a second season. Interviews with Smigel indicate that Comedy Central believed in the show but was disappointed in how it went over budget every episode. Smigel has also expressed how difficult the show was and how tedious the puppet-live animal segments were to shoot. The show was released on DVD July 22, 2008 under the title Comedy Central's TV Funhouse. 

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The basic lore of the series is built around a Queen who fairly and wisely rules a Cosmos. By balancing elemental forces with the help of nine Guardians, she keeps the various planets in her domain stable and her people content. However, the powers of the Queen and the Guardians fade over time, and successors must be appointed. In the first game and its various remakes, the protagonist is a 17-year-old girl named Angelique Limoges who has been chosen by the current Queen and her aide Dia as one of two candidates from the Royal Smallney Girls' Academy to become the next Queen. She is transported to the Flying City to begin her final examination. Each of the candidates is given a land to populate. Whoever finishes populating their land first wins and becomes the next Queen. It is done with the help of nine Guardians who use their powers to make the people of the candidate's land happy, or to devastate their rival's lands. Along the way, the candidates become friends with the Guardians and can fall in love. If they choose love, they forfeit their chance to become Queen, but will live happily ever after. The story expands in later titles, but most entries in the series feature one of a succession of girls named Angelique as the protagonist, with ever larger casts of characters. The roster of potential love interests swells to 19 characters in later titles. 

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The film begins with a close-up of the inscription above the stage in the ballroom of the Blackpool Tower: "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear", from the poem Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare. As the camera pans around the ballroom giving a view of the dancers, a voice-over explains that in Japan, ballroom dancing is treated with suspicion. Shohei Sugiyama (Kōji Yakusho) is a successful salaryman, with a house in the suburbs, a devoted wife, Masako (Hideko Hara), and a teenage daughter, Chikage (Ayano Nakamura). He works as an accountant for a firm in Tokyo. Despite these external signs of success, however, Shohei begins to feel as if his life has lost direction and meaning and falls into depression. One night, while coming home on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, he spots a beautiful woman with a melancholy expression looking out from a window in a dance studio. This is Mai Kishikawa (Tamiyo Kusakari), a well-known figure on the Western ballroom dance circuit. Shohei becomes infatuated with her and decides to take lessons in order to get to know her better. Shohei's life changes once his classes begin. Rather than Mai, his teacher is Tamako Tamura (Reiko Kusamura), who becomes an important mentor to him. He meets his classmates: Tōkichi Hattori (Yu Tokui) who joined to impress his wife, and Masahiro Tanaka (Hiromasa Taguchi) who joined to lose weight. He also meets Toyoko Takahashi (Eriko Watanabe), another student. He further discovers that one of his colleagues from work Tomio Aoki (Naoto Takenaka) is a regular at the dance studio. Tomio, who is balding and mocked at work for his rigid ways, is revealed to be leading a secret life as a long- haired (via a wig) ballroom dancer. Though distant from her, the classes increase his infatuation for Mai. His secret thus becomes twofold: not only must he hide the lessons from his wife, he must also hide them from his friends and colleagues as it is considered embarrassing according to traditional Japanese customs to participate in Western ballroom dance. Later, after being rebuffed by Mai, Shohei discovers to his surprise that his passion for ballroom dance outweighs his infatuation with her. Indeed, dancing, rather than Mai, gives Shohei the meaning in life that he was looking for. Masako, noticing his odd behavior, thinks that he is having an affair, prompting her to hire a private detective to follow him. Meanwhile, along with his classmates, Shohei enters an amateur competition, only to find out that his wife, having finally learned the truth from the detective (who has now become a devoted fan of ballroom dancing) is in the audience. Surprised by this, he stumbles and nearly knocks his dance partner to the floor. Though he is able to catch her, he accidentally rips the skirt of her dress off. Both leave the contest. Later, they learn that Tomio won the contest. When Tomio is ridiculed at work after his colleagues read of his success in the newspaper, Shohei stands up and tells them not to make fun of something they don't understand. At home, Shohei's wife tries to understand her husband's new passion by asking him to teach her to dance as well. He is invited to a farewell party for Mai, who is leaving for Blackpool. At the party, Mai joins him to dance, asking him "Shall we dance?" 

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The story follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau), a successful ophthalmologist, and Clifford Stern (Woody Allen), a small-time documentary filmmaker. Judah, a respectable family man, is having an affair with flight attendant Dolores Paley (Anjelica Huston). After it becomes clear to her that Judah will not end his marriage, Dolores threatens to disclose the affair to Judah's wife, Miriam (Claire Bloom). She is also aware of some questionable financial deals Judah has made, which adds to his stress. He confides in a patient, Ben (Sam Waterston), a rabbi who is rapidly losing his eyesight. Ben advises openness and honesty between Judah and his wife, but Judah does not wish to imperil his marriage. Desperate, Judah turns to his brother, Jack (Jerry Orbach), a gangster, who hires a hitman to kill Dolores. Before her corpse is discovered, Judah retrieves letters and other items from her apartment in order to cover his tracks. Stricken with guilt, Judah turns to the religious teachings he had rejected, believing for the first time that a just God is watching him and passing judgment. Cliff, meanwhile, has been hired by his pompous brother-in- law, Lester (Alan Alda), a successful television producer, to make a documentary celebrating Lester's life and work. Cliff grows to despise him. While filming and mocking the subject, Cliff falls in love with Lester's associate producer, Halley Reed (Mia Farrow). Despondent over his failing marriage to Lester's sister Wendy (Joanna Gleason), he woos Halley, showing her footage from his ongoing documentary about Prof. Louis Levy (psychologist Martin S. Bergmann), a renowned philosopher. He makes sure Halley is aware that he is shooting Lester's documentary merely for the money so he can finish his more meaningful project with Levy. Cliff's dislike for Lester becomes evident during the first screening of the film. It juxtaposes footage of Lester with clownish poses of Benito Mussolini addressing a throng of supporters from a balcony. It also shows Lester yelling at his employees and clumsily making a pass at an attractive young actress. Lester fires him. Cliff learns that Professor Levy, whom he had been profiling on the strength of his celebration of life, has committed suicide, leaving a curt note, "I've gone out the window." When Halley visits to comfort him, he makes a pass at her, which she gently rebuffs, telling him she isn't ready for another romance. Adding to Cliff's burdens, Halley leaves for London, where Lester is offering her a producing job; when she returns several months later, Cliff is astounded to discover that she and Lester are engaged. Hearing that Lester sent Halley white roses "round the clock, for days" while they were in London, Cliff is crestfallen as he realizes he is incapable of that kind of ostentatious display. His last romantic gesture to Halley had been a love letter which he had mostly plagiarized from James Joyce. In the final scene, Judah and Cliff meet by happenstance at the wedding of the daughter of Rabbi Ben, who is Cliff's brother-in-law and Judah's patient. Judah has worked through his guilt and is enjoying life once more; the murder had been blamed on a drifter with a criminal record. He draws Cliff into a supposedly hypothetical discussion that draws upon his moral quandary. Judah says that with time, any crisis will pass; but Cliff morosely claims instead that one is forever fated to bear one's burdens for "crimes and misdemeanors". Judah cheerfully leaves the wedding party with his wife, and Cliff is left sitting alone, dejected. Ben the rabbi, who is now blind, shares a dance with his daughter while the voice of Prof. Levy is heard, saying that the universe is a dark and indifferent place which human beings fill with love, in the hope that it will give the void a meaning. 

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Bobby has ties to the local mafia boss, Max, but works as an honest mason for Max's construction projects. He fights in amateur boxing matches on the side, but his career is lackluster (five wins, five losses, one draw). Struggling to support his stripper girlfriend Jessica and her daughter Chloe, Bobby decides to do a mafia job for Max. Against his better judgment, he brings along his ne'er-do-well friend Ricky. Bobby and Ricky go to New York to act as Max's representatives for a money laundering deal with his East Coast partner, Ruiz. They meet Jimmy, who will be their driver, and Horrace, who is connected to both Max and Ruiz. Ricky and Bobby squabble throughout their trip as Ricky tries to live large while Bobby wants to stay cautious and stick to the letter of Max's instructions. Ruiz has a low opinion of the pair, but sends them off to show his criminal contact, the Welshman, a good time. Gaffing several times along the way, the pair eventually manage to arrange a deal between Ruiz and the Welshman's Westie contacts. Ricky grows suspicious of Ruiz, and insists that they bring a gun to their meeting with the Westies. Bobby adamantly refuses. On the day of the meet, Ricky has disappeared, but Jimmy insists that Bobby carry on with the meeting. As Bobby begins to grow suspicious of Jimmy, he meets with the Welshman and the Westies. The Westies double-cross Bobby and the Welshman, but Ricky arrives from a side entrance with a gun. A Westie recognizes Ricky's weapon as a starter pistol and a fight breaks out. Jimmy arrives with a real pistol and sends the boys away while he deals with the Westies. Back in Los Angeles, Bobby severs all business ties with Max. Arriving home, he discovers Jessica in bed with a client and snorting cocaine. Bobby tries to convince Jessica to clean up her act for Chloe's sake, but Jessica refuses. Instead, she asks that Bobby take custody of Chloe and leave. In an epilogue set at Chuck E. Cheese's, we learn that Bobby and Ricky are now raising Chloe together, although the two friends still bicker constantly. 

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An astronaut, Major Robert Gaines, is orbiting Earth in his space capsule. Suddenly, his communication systems stop functioning and he blacks out, waking up on Earth with no memory of his return. He appears to be none the worse for his experiences and is released to the custody of his family. However, inconsistencies quickly pop up. His daughter senses that he is not the same person. His house has a white picket fence that he's never seen, though his wife insists that it was there when they bought the house. Everyone calls him Colonel (confirmed by the rank insignia on his uniform) when he knows he's a Major, and he insists that the President of the United States is John F. Kennedy, a man whom no one else has ever heard of. Gaines concludes that he has slipped into a parallel universe. His acquaintances see this as nonsense until a mechanic reports his space capsule is not completely identical to the one he was sent out in. Gaines is summoned to examine the capsule, but when he approaches it he is gradually returned to the point at which he left his own universe. He lands his craft safely and reports what happened to his superiors. They are prepared to write it off as a nightmare, but controllers on the ground subsequently receive another transmission—from Colonel Robert Gaines. The transmission cuts out a few seconds later, and the Colonel disappears from radar. The Major returns home and happily confirms that his daughter now recognizes him and the white picket fence is absent. 

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A joint operation between the FBI and the MVD leads to the death of the younger brother of an Azerbaijani mobster. In retaliation, the mobster contacts and hires a professionally trained, globally operating hitman, whose real name is never revealed, operating in the codename of the "Jackal" to kill an unidentified important American target. The Jackal demands $70 million for the operation, to which the mobster agrees. He also demands the first half to be paid in advance and the remainder on completion, adding that if there is an information leak, he will keep the first $35 million. Meanwhile, the MVD capture one of the mafia members. During the interrogation, the henchman reveals the name "Jackal". This, coupled with documents recovered from his briefcase, leads the FBI and MVD to assume the target for the retaliatory hit is FBI Director Donald Brown. As the Jackal begins his preparations for the assassination—utilising a series of disguises and stolen IDs in the process—the FBI learns of one person who can identify him. FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston and Russian Police Major Valentina Koslova turn to a former IRA sniper named Declan Mulqueen, who had a relationship with an ETA militant named Isabella Zancona, who they believe can identify the Jackal. Mulqueen agrees to help in exchange for their best efforts to get him released from prison. It's later obvious that Mulqueen has a personal motive for hunting the Jackal: the assassin betrayed Mulqueen and Zancona in Libya, also wounding Zancona while she was pregnant with Mulqueen's child, causing a miscarriage. Zancona provides information that can help identify the Jackal, including the fact that he is American with military training and combat experience in Special Operations and was stationed in El Salvador. Zancona gives Mulqueen a key to a drop box that has a clean passport and $10,000 cash for him to go back to Ireland. However, Mulqueen has given Preston his word not to run so that he can find the Jackal. Meanwhile, the Jackal arrives in Montreal to pick up the weapon he intends to use but is notified by his Internet contacts that a group of hijackers have located and are pursuing his weapon. He kills the leader of the hijackers using an totally toxic substance sprayed on his car. After evading them, he hires small-time hood/gunsmith Ian Lamont to design and build a control mount for it, demanding Lamont's silence and that he return any documents that the assassin gave him. Underestimating the threat represented by the man, Lamont tries to blackmail him for more money; the Jackal kills him while test-firing the weapon. The FBI discovers Lamont's remains and, with Mulqueen's help, deduce that the Jackal plans to use a long- range, high cyclic rate weapon, i.e. a heavy machine gun for the assassination. With the help of a Russian mole in the FBI, the Jackal realizes that he is being tracked by Mulqueen with assistance from Zancona, and he infiltrates her house after receiving an FBI access code from his source. Instead of Zancona, however, he finds Koslova and Agents Witherspoon and McMurphy. He kills the agents and mortally wounds Koslova. The Jackal says that Mulqueen "can't protect his women," which she repeats to Mulqueen before she dies. As the Jackal executes his final preparations, Mulqueen realizes that his target is not Brown, but the First Lady, who is due to give a major public speech at a new Chemotherapy Center. The Jackal (pretending to be gay) has in the meantime been dating a gay man, in order to gain a parking permit to be used for his assassination plot. The Jackal goes to his house to rig the gun up in his minivan. A news report comes on the television, telling how the authorities are looking for him, with a drawing of him but in a disguse. The gay man does not see the news report but The Jackal kills him in cold blood as he did not want any people left alive that know his face. During the opening of a hospital for which the First Lady is giving a speech, The Jackal plans to shoot her via remote control. Arriving just in time, Mulqueen successfully sabotages the Jackal's weapon by shooting the telescopic mount, while Preston blocks a bullet meant for the First Lady. Mulqueen then destroys the vehicle containing the weapon. With his plan disintegrating, the Jackal flees into the subway. After a cat-and-mouse chase through the subway tunnels, Zancona wounds the assassin and Mulqueen shoots him dead. A few days later, Preston and Mulqueen stand as the only witnesses to the Jackal's burial in an unmarked grave. Preston reveals that he is going back to Russia to pursue the mobsters behind the Jackal, and that Mulqueen's request to be released was denied, but he will likely be moved to a minimum security prison. Preston's heroics in saving the First Lady have made him a hero in the FBI. Knowing that his current clout will prevent any real backlash against him, Preston turns his back on Mulqueen, allowing him to go free. 

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Paul is an upper-class young man who is about to start at a grande école, one of the system of mostly public colleges to which students are admitted based on a highly competitive process and whose graduates often gain prestigious employment. He has chosen to live with two new roommates instead of his girlfriend Agnès. As a result, with his studies, he has little time to see her. Agnès perceives cracks in their relationship when she suspects Paul's attraction to one of his new roommates, the aristocratic Louis-Arnault. Paul denies any homosexual attraction, but Agnès decides to make a bet with him: whichever of them beds Louis-Arnault first, wins. If she does, Paul must stop exploring his sexuality; if he does, she will leave him. Before the bet plays out, Paul meets Mécir, a young Arab worker, who becomes besotted with him. With Mécir, Paul goes on a journey of discovery that changes many of his ideas about class, cultural differences and sexuality. 

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The story is set in a 19th-century-like England, in a small town called Draftingshire-Upon-Topsmart. An orphaned Pip is on his way to visit his parents' grave. While there, an escaped convict appears and threatens Pip. Pip, out of the goodness of his heart, aids the convict by giving him food and cutting the convict's handcuffs. He then goes home, where his sister's husband Joe reads an advertisement about a Miss Havisham seeking a boy to play with her daughter. Pip goes and meets the daughter, Estella, who constantly insults him. Miss Havisham hires Pip and throughout their playtimes he eventually falls in love with Estella. Pip fears Estella could never marry a commoner like him. However, an offer comes for Pip from an anonymous benefactor to move to London and learn how to become a gentleman. Pip assumes the benefactor is Miss Havisham and accepts. In London, Pip meets his roommate Mr. Pocket who tells the story of Miss Havisham: she got engaged but was left at the altar, causing her to stop all the clocks in the house and never leave the house again. Pip spends the rest of his time in London learning how to be a gentleman. After his time in London, he shows up at Miss Havisham's house, where she tells Pip that he can find Estella at a party at the palace. At the ball, Pip and Estella dance, and talk about how Pip is now a fine young gentleman. Estella says that she has no heart, and cannot love. Just before Pip asks Estella to be his girlfriend, her boyfriend, a modernly American seventeen-year-old named Steve, enters the scene. Pip, saddened, runs to tell Miss Havisham, only to find that she approves of Steve. Miss Havisham is glad that Estella has broken Pip's heart and she explains that she has Estella break men's hearts to use their tears to power her "Genesis Device". She desires youth and wants to use the device to switch bodies with Estella. She then uses robot monkeys to attack Pip. Pip escapes and falls unconscious, awakening back home with Joe and Pocket. The anonymous person who sent Pip to London is revealed to be the escaped convict Pip met at the beginning of the story. Because of Pip's kindness, the convict led a life of goodness and became a millionaire. Sending Pip to London was his way of repaying Pip for the good that Pip did for him. The four of them, Pip, Joe, Pocket, and the convict, decide to stop Miss Havisham. The group returns to the mansion discovering a bunch of men and boys with broken hearts and Miss Havisham powering up her device. Despite difficulties, such as the convict getting killed by an acid-spewing Miss Havisham, Pip manages to convince Estella to leave the machine, destroying it and setting Miss Havisham on fire. Fleeing the burning mansion, Pip's group and the hostage males escape as Estella finally declares her love for Pip. Ending the story, the narrator states that the characters "all lived happily ever after, except for Pocket, who died of Hepatitis B." 

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The scene where the cats smoke, read comics, lounge and drink wine which was eliminated on the WB and the BBC. The neighborhood's cat owners all (literally) throw their cats out for the night. Porky Pig attempts to do the same, but his four cats (a tall black and white lisping cat (Sylvester), a medium-sized tabby named Gerald, a diminutive kitten named Pedro, and a dumb drunkard cat named Jose) attempt to turn the tables and throw him out into the snow. Porky states that he's starting to hate pussycats. Porky bangs on the door, demanding to be let in, but the cats pop out of the door and proclaim in unison, "Milkman, keep those bottles quiet!", and then slam the door in his face which soon leads to a battle between Porky and his cats for the house. While the cats are lounging around, Porky bursts through the window, making an incredibly menacing face. He chases them around the house until one of them throws him into a cabinet full of dishes and a teapot. Porky retaliates by setting his pet dog "Lassie" on the cats. The cats see the dog's shadow and run for their lives, not knowing that "Lassie" is for real only a shadow puppet created with Porky's fingers and he doesn't for real have a dog. When Sylvester finds out that they've been tricked, he and the others plot revenge, which is exacted by having the cats create a War of the Worlds-esque sensation about invading aliens, disguising themselves as the aliens and driving Porky into a panic over "Men from Mars!". Porky gets frightened and tries to shoot them with a gun but the cats, now dressed like Teddy Roosevelt, charge at Porky with swords and run him out of the house once and for all and winning the battle. Homeless, alone, and cold in the snow, Porky turns to the camera and asks the audience if they have a vacancy for a house. 

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The narrator, like Aquin himself, turns his adventures into a spy thriller to while away the time he is forced to spend in the psychiatric ward of a Montreal prison, where he is awaiting a trial for an unspecified revolutionary crime. The novel was translated by Penny Williams in 1967, and later again by Sheila Fischman. 

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The story of the game follows on from Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, with Maximo still searching for his lost love, Sophia. He is again accompanied by Grim (a Grim Reaper). However, their search is interrupted as a series of mechanical creatures start to attack villages and slaughter the village folk. These creatures are the Army of Zin, an ancient army powered by lost souls, who were supposedly locked in the vault of Castle Hawkmoor after the last battle with them 500 years ago. However, they are now free, due to the actions of the mysterious warlord, Lord Bane. 

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Harmon Gordon, a wealthy old man married to a much younger woman named Flora, is exhausted by his wife's youthful and selfish lifestyle. Seeking to keep up the pace, he asks his scientist brother Raymond to inject him with an experimental youth serum. Raymond firmly refuses at first, saying that the serum has had mixed results even in laboratory animals and won't be ready for testing on humans without decades of refining. Moreover, he abhors Flora for her callous treatment of his brother, and is not enthusiastic about any step to strengthen their marriage. However, when Harmon suggests he will commit suicide rather than lose Flora, his brother reluctantly agrees to administer the serum. At his brother's instructions, Harmon rests after taking the serum. He wakens to find himself a young man, to Flora's surprised delight. However, before Harmon can enjoy his new youth, the regression continues, and hours later he has become a toddler. Flora tries to leave, but Raymond insists she must stay and raise the infant Harmon or be cut off from Harmon's fortune. He threatens to take legal action against her if she abandons the child. Finding a stroke of poetic justice in what has happened, Raymond points out that by the time Harmon has regained adulthood, his position with Flora will be reversed, with Flora being old. When she bemoans the fact that everything is now on Harmon's side, Raymond shrugs, "Well, you see, Flora? As you get older, see how wise you get?" 

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In 1967, Wallace V. Whipple, owner of a vast Midwestern manufacturing corporation, decides to upgrade his plant to increase output by installing a machine named the "X109B14 modified transistorized totally automatic assembly machine," which leads to tens of thousands of layoffs. Some former employees try to convince him that the value of a man outweighs the value of a machine, but their protests fall on deaf ears. His plant manager, Mr. Hanley, reminds him that Whipple's father, who ran the factory for 40 years, while profit-driven, had a sense of responsibility to his factory workers, and their pride in their work. Whipple coldly responds that while his father only "doubled" his factory production, his competitors quadrupled theirs. Dickerson, an angry veteran foreman, tries to smash a machine but is shot and injured by Whipple. While Hanley visits Dickerson in the hospital, Whipple is only concerned about his equipment. Hanley confronts Whipple about it and is summarily fired after being shown the machine replacing him. Whipple proceeds to replace secretaries with automated dictation machines, thinking that powder room breaks and maternity leave are inconveniences. Whipple eventually fires all his human employees after replacing them with machines, which then turn on him by spitting out the harsh demeaning recorded parting words of his former employees back at him over and over, driving Whipple to insanity. Eventually, the board of directors find him neurotically obsessed with machines and retire him. Whipple joins Hanley at the bar opposite his factory and expresses deep sorrow at his misfortune as he rambles about how it isn't fair that machines are replacing men, his poetic justice for caring more about machines in the first place. He also admits that he's lonely because he's not married and has no family and that he feels cast aside like a used part. The last scene reveals Whipple's replacement to be a robot (Robby the Robot), which swings Whipple's key on a chain the same way he used to. 

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Barbara Polk has lived with her elderly, abusive uncle Simon Polk for 25 years — even though she hates him — as she is the only heir to his fortune. Simon constantly harangues his niece, calling her various unflattering names and insulting her in creative ways. He uses a laboratory in the basement of his house to develop inventions, and has forbidden her from going down there to see his latest project. When she sneaks into the basement to peek at it, the two have a verbal altercation. Simon catches her and raises his cane to strike. Barbara blocks with her arm, causing him to fall down the stairs and break his back. Frustrated with his feebleness, nagging, and constant demands of hot chocolate, Barbara declines to assist and watches him lose his life. Following Simon’s death, his lawyer Mr. Schwimmer reads the will to Barbara: to inherit his estate, she must live in the house and look after his last invention, a robot also named Simon. Although its behavior and speech are very mechanical at first, it engages in AI learning as time goes on. It eventually acts and sounds just like him — right down to the old man’s limp, which it develops as a result of damage from Barbara’s attempt to destroy it by pushing it over backward. The robot repeats insults that Uncle Simon had programmed, berating Barbara as a “bovine crab” and “peanut-headed sample of nature’s carelessness.” Since Mr. Schwimmer makes regular visits to ensure that Barbara is taking proper care of the robot, as per the stipulations of the will, she has no choice but to submit to its continuing verbal abuse and demands — including bringing it hot chocolate as she did for Simon — or risk being disinherited. 

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An elderly woman, Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper), receives strange anonymous phone calls in the middle of a stormy night. During the first calls she hears only static. Later she hears a man moaning and she repeatedly demands to know who is calling. The man continues to call and keeps repeating "Hello?" over and over. Finally he says, "Hello? Where are you? I want to talk to you." Elva, terrified, screams at the man to leave her alone. The phone company traces the calls to a telephone line that has fallen in a cemetery. Elva and her housekeeper, who believes the calls are the result of a bad connection, visit the cemetery where she finds that the line is resting on the grave of her long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted on having her own way, and Brian always did what she said. Brian died a week before they were to be married. That day, she insisted on driving, lost control of the car and hit a tree. The accident crippled her and caused Brian to fly through the windshield, killing him. Now that she can talk to him again, she won't have to be alone. At home, she picks up the phone and calls to Brian's ghost, pleading with him to answer. He replies that she told him to leave her alone and that he always does what she says. Then the line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed. 

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During a fishing vacation to Trelawney in an unidentified country, Mr. Robinson (his first name is never given) receives word that the Movement, a protest group with the tacit approval of the government, is planning a General Strike. Mr. Robinson's landlady, Mrs. Blunt, is given notice that the government is claiming her land as eminent domain. The pressures of mass industrialization and scattered reports of Movement activity lead Robinson, Blunt, Alex, Mr. Lawson, and Sheila Willis to seek refuge in the country of Avalon before the borders are closed for good. Avalon is not specifically identified in the story; only a glimpse is seen of white sandy beaches there at the book's end. Category:1965 British novels 

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A contest has begun with big prizes for the first person who discovers the Lost World. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have already taken off to find it, leaving a disgruntled Dixie Kong behind. Deciding to prove herself every bit as capable as them, Dixie partners up with her little cousin Kiddy Kong. Unfortunately, Baron K. Roolenstein and the Kremling Krew are also searching high and low for the fabled land. While never stated outright in the game, it's believed that the setting is the Northern Kremisphere, as the level archetypes are the same as in Donkey Kong Country 3 which took place in the Northern Kremisphere. While the levels have the same environments and the Donkey Kong Country 3 bosses return, the worlds and stage layout are all unique. Wrinkly Kong is the only non-playable Kong family member to make an appearance. A character simply titled Bear or "Brothers Bear" gives Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong hints and can teleport them to another world as well as hosting them a card mini-game. He bears a resemblance to Bazaar Bear from Donkey Kong Country 3. The Animal Buddies Ellie the Elephant, Enguarde the Swordfish, Squawks the Parrot, and Squitter the Spider all return. Donkey Kong Land III also marks the only time in a Rare Donkey Kong game where Donkey Kong doesn't actually appear. Diddy Kong appears in the game, but his only appearance is on the Extra Life Balloons. 

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The opera tells the story of the very building in which it was performed. Soon after the building was commissioned and work had commenced the State Premier who administered its genesis died. The opera suggests that the Premier believed that if the work was not sufficiently advanced and there was a change of government then the project would be cancelled. Therefore, the foundation work was commenced before the architect had solved the problem of how to build the main structure of the building. The time and cost estimates were also understated to ensure work commenced. There were many other engineering and design problems that had not been solved when work had commenced. The opera supports the idea that the architect was fully competent to solve these problems and indeed was able to provide solutions that were far more elegant than anything that anyone less inspired, less talented and at one with a vision could provide. Some time after that there was indeed a change of government. There was much hostility toward the building and the new government was not willing to let the architect complete the project. Much scandal was made of the time and cost of the project. The state bureaucracy wrested control from its architect and the architect's intentions for the interiors of the building were never realised. The architect left the country and disowned the building. Characters in the opera include the politicians, the architect, an engineer, socialites, and a prominent conductor (the maestro) who betrays the cause of opera for the cause of concert music (see full cast list below). There are also two young artists who firmly identify their future with the building. The names of the characters do not match their real-life counterparts and there are, no doubt, certain other fictional elements. There is a large chorus and the music is quite accessible, with several bright choral climaxes. The opera consists of two acts, with a total of 15 scenes including Parliament House, the construction site and the suburban backyard where the young artists spend time with their families. The opera concludes leaving the audience with a sense of loss for the complete vision that was never realised but also with an enormous sense of gratitude and wonderment that as much of that vision that has been completed has been. The opera was broadcast on television by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the Friday evening following the world premiere performance. Lyndon Terracini, artistic director of Opera Australia, announced that the work will be performed as part of the 2016 season of the Sydney Opera House, retitled as Sydney Opera House: The Opera."Opera Australia 2016 Season: New Versions of Old Favourites, Obscure Verdi" by Ben Neutze, Crikey, 11 August 2015 

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Young Pooja Sahani (Rani Mukerji), Raj Khanna (Hrithik Roshan) and Tina Kapoor (Kareena Kapoor) are childhood friends. While Raj has always been attracted to the vivacious and beautiful Tina, he is completely unaware of the quiet Pooja's love for him. Raj's father (Kiran Kumar) decides to move to England with his family to take up a new job. Before leaving, Raj makes Tina promise to write to him via e-mail. Tina, a fun-loving and popular girl, soon becomes occupied with other things. Meanwhile Pooja writes to Raj asking about his days in London but instead of her name she signs as Tina, thinking that a letter from Tina will surely bring his reply and also to help Tina keep her promise. While exchanging e-mails, Raj and Pooja realize they have many things in common, and their e-mails bring them close to each other. A decade and a half later, Raj returns to India for a short vacation. By now, he's in love with the girl he has been writing to and believes he can recognize her at first sight. He states that his love for Tina is enough for him to pick her from any crowd so they never exchange any photographs whatsoever. When the three of them finally meet, Raj, to simple girl-next-door Pooja's disappointment, completely ignores her and is smitten by the typically beautiful Tina, who is initially unsure but slowly becomes attracted to him. However, during the two weeks of his vacation, he cannot help but notice that the real Tina is completely different from the Tina he knew from the e-mails. He also starts a friendship with Pooja and is impressed by their common interests, without realizing she is the one he is really in love with. Tina, despite of being well aware of the fact that she is not the one who Raj has been talking to over the last 15 years, cannot resist herself from reciprocating Raj's continuous flirt and ends up falling in love with him. By the end of Raj's 2 weeks trip to India, their parents see their blooming love and gladly announces the engagement of Raj and Tina. Heartbroken, yet happy for her bestfriends, Pooja decides to never disclose the secret. Raj returns to London, where Pooja coincidentally arrives for an interview. Raj takes Pooja to a church that he frequently visits and finds her accidentally humming the tune of a song he wrote to her about years ago. He realises that Pooja is the one who had been writing to him all those years since he shared the information about the church and the song in the e-mails. They discover their love for each other and decide to get married. Back in India, Tina's father (Sachin Khedekar) suddenly dies, leaving Tina alone in the world as an orphan. His last wish was that Tina would marry Raj, and Pooja's parents say that they will perform all the rituals as Tina's parents. Knowing that Tina also has feelings for Raj and she is now alone, Pooja refuses to marry Raj, as she does not want to break Tina's heart. Raj's parents also agree to the marriage, unaware of the relationship between Raj and Pooja that developed in London. Raj insists on telling his parents the truth but Pooja stops him. He angrily vows to her that he will only marry Tina if Pooja marries someone else on the same day. Everyone comes to London for the wedding ceremony of Tina and Raj. In London, Rohan Verma (Uday Chopra) is a friend of Raj's who has always been attracted to Pooja. After constant flirting of Rohan and ultimatum from Raj, Pooja bows to the inevitable and agrees to marry Rohan on the same day as Raj and Tina. That way, she hopes to satisfy Raj's condition and ensure Tina's happiness. Rohan realises that Pooja does not love him, but keeps up the charade nevertheless. On the day of the marriage, Tina realises that Raj is really in love with Pooja, as she sees Raj's ancestral bracelet with Pooja, she changes from her wedding attire to simple clothes. At the altar, Raj knocks over the pot of wedding vermilion by mistake, some of which falls into Pooja's hair, which is traditionally a sign of marriage. Just as Pooja is about to wipe it off, Tina stops her, saying that she is not alone and is glad to have such great friends willing to sacrifice their love for her. Pooja approaches Rohan to apologise, but he is not at all angry. He is glad to have made new friends. The movie ends with Pooja and Raj getting married. 

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Davey Osborne is an 11-year-old boy living in San Antonio, Texas. His father, Hal, is a military air traffic controller, who has problems relating to his son. Davey imagines the fantasy world of Cloak & Dagger, an espionage role-playing video game existing between fiction and reality. Davey befriends Kim, a girl living nearby. Davey recruits Jack Flack, the game's main character. He wants to live an action-packed life like Jack, and he carries around a water pistol as his "gun" and a softball as his "grenade". Davey spends much time playing the game and spending time with Jack as an imaginary friend. One day, Davey's friend, Morris, who owns a game shop, sends Davey and Kim on an errand, where Davey witnesses a murder. Before the victim dies, he gives Davey a Cloak & Dagger video-game cartridge which contains important military secrets that must be given to the FBI. Davey seeks help from the authorities but they do not believe him. Spies, led by Dr. Rice, chase Davey across the city. Along the way, Jack helps Davey evade the pursuers. However, Davey's sense of morality and concern for his friend Kim collide with Jack's harsh methods. Davey is cornered by the spies along the River Walk. During the fight, Jack urges Davey to lure two of the spies into the "Crossfire Gambit", causing one to kill the other. Jack convinces Davey to pick up the gun of a dead spy, but rather than shoot Rice, Davey panics and runs away down a dead-end path. Rice arrives and corners Davey, taunting him. When Davey proves unwilling to shoot first, Jack tries to get Rice's attention. Standing in front of a blank wall (and holding his Agent-X bulletproof beret in front of him for protection), Jack dares Rice to shoot him. Davey looks to Jack, warning him not to do anything, and Rice instinctively turns and fires at the wall, thinking "Jack" is a hidden ally. An enraged Davey fires his pistol, killing Rice. Realizing that Jack had tricked him into shooting the spy, Davey discards the pistol, pulls the miniature of Jack out of his pocket and breaks the miniature on the concrete. Blood begins to pour from the bullet holes that now riddle Jack's body, and he collapses. While expressing regret about the rule, "...leaving when they stop believing," Jack confesses Davey was always his favorite playmate. Distracting Davey by asking for a smoke, Jack fades away into nothing. When Davey calls to Jack, saying he can't do it alone, Jack's voice reassures him that he always could, and tells him to save Kim. Earlier, Davey had been befriended by an elderly couple but they turn out to be enforcers allied with the spies. Davey manages to escape them, but without the game cartridge, and he chases the couple to the airport where they are attempting to flee the country. At the airport, Davey pretends that they are his parents and that they are abandoning him. When security intervenes, Davey tells the guard the proof is the game cartridge he knows they have. Cornered, the couple kidnap Davey and commandeer a plane, unaware that Davey has brought the bomb which the spies had planned to use to kill Kim. The spies request a pilot, and Hal, who has arrived at the airport with Kim's mother, volunteers to be the pilot. As the plane moves to the runway, Davey tries to summon Jack for help; his father hears him and identifies himself as "Jack Flack" and calls Davey to the cockpit. When the female enforcer shows up to bring him, she discovers the bomb and panics, calling for her husband. Hal gets Davey out of the plane through the cockpit window. Davey runs after the plane down the runway, calling for his father, until the plane explodes, destroying the cartridge and the enforcers in the process. Then a figure appears and approaches him, looking like the silhouette of Jack Flack before revealing that he is his father. As the two embrace Davey asks how he was able to escape, and Hal replies, "Jack Flack always escapes." 

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Dil Maange More!!! is the story of Nikhil Mathur’s (Shahid Kapoor) quest for true love. His passions are his town Samarpur, a small hill station in Uttarakhand and football. He is desperate to fall in love with one woman but ends up with three women in his arms ready to swear undying love for him. He is first shown in love with Neha (Soha Ali Khan), his girlfriend of four years. Neha, an ambitious girl, leaves their town to go to Mumbai to become a flight attendant. Nikhil follows her to bring her back. In Mumbai Railway Station, Nikhil bumps into Shagun (Ayesha Takia),a dominant, combative girl. She instantly shows her disliking towards him. Though the two part ways, fate has something else in store for them, as he starts living above Shagun's house. Shagun always argues with him whenever they meet. On the other hand, he gets in good terms with her mother Kavita (Zarina Wahab). He also gets to know that Shagun's father left them when she was 12 because of which she doesn't trust anyone and puts a strong facade for everyone, though she is really soft from inside. Nikhil continuously tries to convince Neha to return; he does not succeed. He lands a job in a music store, which is run by A.R. Rehman (a parody of A.R. Rahman) (Gulshan Grover), exactly opposite the institute where Neha is training. There, he meets coworker Sarah (Tulip Joshi) . Nikhil keeps trying to convince Neha but only gets rejection. In the end, on her first flight day, she breaks up with him. Dejected, he decides to return to Samarpur. Sarah, having heard about Samarpur from Nikhil, requests to accompany him. He agrees. At Samarpur, Nikhil finds Sarah to be totally opposite of Neha. His mother likes her too and he is relieved to know that Sarah is in love with Samarpur and won't have any problem in settling there. Convinced that she also has some feelings for him, he decides to talk to Sarah about it. But suddenly, Sarah demands to leave Samarpur for some reason and promises to call him once she reaches Mumbai. But Nikhil never receives the call. He comes back to Mumbai to find Sarah. However, he gets to know that Sarah already has a boyfriend and she did everything to make him jealous, thinking that he is cheating on her, which disheartens Nikhil. He decides to finally leave Mumbai for good this time. He goes to say goodbye to Shagun's mother. There he reads Shagun's computer diary and learns that she is actually in love with him. He couldn't take another heartache and decides to leave. Learning that Nikhil is leaving for ever, Shagun runs to the Railway Station and finds Nikhil sitting on a bench. Fate seems to be playing again, Nikhil's train didn't arrive that day. He decides to take one more chance and proposes to Shagun and she accepts, but things turn as Neha returns, wanting him back. When Shagun sees Neha hugging Nikhil, she leaves fuming in anger, believing him to be cheater just like her father. Nikhil tells Neha to leave him alone as he is in love with Shagun. Kavita (Shagun's Mother) requests Shagun to talk to Nikhil for one last time and listen his side of story as well. A.R. Rehman believing Sarah to be the reason of Nikhil's agony tries to fix him up with Sarah, who has apparently returned after realizing that her boyfriend was a fraud. She hugs him and again, Shagun, who has come to talk to Nikhil, sees them and goes berserk. After hearing the whole story from Nikhil, A.R. Rehman arranges a party at a yacht; all the girls attend. They argue, and all three fall in the water. Nikhil quickly goes to help but only saves Shagun, who doesn't know how to swim. Meanwhile, Nikhil, thinking that he has lost Shagun forever, returns to Samarpur. Shagun finally realizes that Nikhil really loves her and follows him to Samarpur, where the two decide to live there happily ever after. As Shagun is confessing her love, we see Neha, Sarah, and A.R. Rehman saying that their plan was successful, implying that everything was just an act to get Nikhil and Shagun together. 

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The novel opens on an overcast October 23. Two friends - William "Will" Halloway and Jim Nightshade - both on the verge of their fourteenth birthdays, encounter a strange lightning rod salesman, Tom Fury. He announces that a storm is coming their way. The salesman gives Jim a lightning rod because he tells the boys that one of their houses is in danger and they do not have money to buy one. Throughout the night, Will and Jim meet up with townsfolk who also sense something in the air: The barber says that it smells of cotton candy and licorice. Among the townspeople is Will's 54-year-old father, Charles Halloway, who works in the local library, and who broods philosophically about life and the past. Both Mr. Halloway and the boys learn about the carnival that is to start the next day. Will's father sees a sign in a store window that advertises Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, while Jim and Will find a similar handbill in the street. They are excited that a carnival has come so late in the year, but Charles Halloway has a bad feeling about it. The boys run out to watch the carnival arrive at three in the morning. As the train pulls in, the smoke billows in circles and solidifies as the carnival. Mr. Halloway talks about this time of night as "soul's midnight", when men are closest to death, locked in the depths of despair. The boys go the next day to explore the carnival and encounter their seventh grade teacher, Miss Foley, who is dazed after visiting the Mirror Maze. Jim insists on coming back that night and Will agrees, but when they bump into the lightning-rod salesman's abandoned bag, they realize that they must stay to learn what happens after dark. After investigating all of the rides, they go up to a carousel, which has an out-of-order sign. Mr. Cooger suddenly grabs Will and Jim after they climb up on horses and he informs them the merry-go-round is broken. Another man arrives and tells him to put them down, introducing himself as Mr. Dark and says that the huge man's name is Mr. Cooger. Mr. Dark pays attention only to Jim, who is enthralled by what he sees. He then tells the boys to come back the next day and offers them passes to the carousel. They run away and then hide and wait. Both witness Mr. Cooger riding backwards on the carousel (as the music plays backwards), and when he steps off, to their shock, he is twelve years old. They follow young Mr. Cooger to Miss Foley's house, where he pretends to be the nephew she was expecting. Jim tries to talk with him, because he wants to ride the carousel, but Will stops him. Jim takes off in the direction of the carnival. When Will catches up, Mr. Cooger is riding the carousel growing older, and Jim is about to join him. Will knocks the switch on the carousel and it flies out of control, spinning rapidly forward. Mr. Cooger ages over 100 years before it stops, and Jim and Will take off. They return with the police, but Mr. Cooger is nowhere to be found. Inside the tents they find him all set up as a new act, "Mr. Electrico", a man they run electricity through. Mr. Dark tells the boys to come back to the carnival the next day. Will tries to keep his father out of the situation, promising him that he will tell all soon. That night, the Dust Witch floats by in her balloon to find Jim and Will. Will lures her to an abandoned house and destroys her balloon with a bow and arrow. They later both dream of a bizarre funeral for the balloon, featuring a giant, misshapen coffin. The next day the boys find a girl crying on the curb and realize she is the former Miss Foley made young again but also totally blind. They assist her to her house, but when they return they're cut off by a parade. The carnival is out searching the streets for the two of them. The boys hide, and Will's father spots them hiding under a storm drain in front of the cigar store. The boys convince him to keep quiet. Mr. Dark later arrives to talk to him. Mr. Halloway pretends not to know the two boys, whose faces are tattooed on the man's hand, but when the Witch comes and begins to sense the boys' presence he blows cigar smoke at her, choking her and forcing her to leave. Mr. Dark then asks Charles Halloway for his name, and Will's father tells him he is the town library's janitor. That night Will and Jim meet him at the library where he has done research into his own father's ministerial notes. The carnival arrives once a generation, and leaves in the midst of a giant storm. Mr. Dark appears, and the boys hide in the book stacks. He discovers both of them and crushes the janitor's hand when Mr. Halloway attempts to fight him. The tarot witch casts spells on the boys to mesmerize them and also tries to stop Mr. Halloway's heart. Just before he is about to die, Charles looks at the Witch and begins to laugh hysterically. His laughter wounds her deeply and drives her away. He then follows Mr. Dark to the carnival to rescue the boys. At the carnival, Charles triumphs over Mr. Dark, finds his son in the mirror maze, kills the Witch with a smile on a bullet, and destroys all the mirrors in a matter of minutes, all through the use of laughter and cheer. Then he and Will search for Jim. Mr. Cooger turns to dust and blows away before he can be saved by the carousel. Jim runs to the merry-go-round and rides it forward. Will tries to stop him and grabs onto his leg. They both end up going for a ride before Will jumps off and rips Jim away from the machine. Jim falls into a stupor, close to death. A child comes begging them to help him, but Mr. Halloway recognizes the boy as Mr. Dark. He holds the boy tight and kills him with affection, because Mr. Dark cannot survive in such close contact with someone so happy. The carnival falls apart as Will tries to revive Jim. They save Jim by singing and dancing and laughing, their happiness bringing him back from the edge of death. 

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The film is about a girl, Fiza (Karisma Kapoor), whose brother, Amaan (Hrithik Roshan), disappears during the 1993 Bombay riots. Fiza and her mother Nishatbi (Jaya Bachchan) desperately hold on to the hope that one day he will return. However, in 1999, six years after his disappearance, Fiza, fed up with living with uncertainty, resolves to go in search of her brother. Driven by her mother Nishatbi's fervent hope and her own determination, Fiza decides to use whatever means she can—the law, media, even politicians—to find her brother, which brings her into contact with various characters and situations. When she does find him, to her horror she sees that he has joined a terrorist group. She forces him to come home, and he finally re-unites with their mother. However, his allegiance and thoughts make him want to return to the terrorist network, led by Murad Khan (Manoj Bajpayee). A confrontation with two men who harass Fiza leads to Amaan revealing his involvement with the terrorist network in front of his sister, mother, and the police. His mother's grief and disappointment eventually lead her to commit suicide. Fiza tries once more to find her brother, with the help of Aniruddh (Bikram Saluja). Amaan has been sent on a mission to kill two powerful politicians; when he does succeed in assassinating them, his own terrorist group tries to kill him. He escapes and Fiza follows him. They confront each other and with the police closing in on him, he asks her to kill him. As a last resort to give him an honourable end, Fiza kills her brother. 

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Raj is a happy and free-spirited Indian-American bachelor who visits his ancestral homeland in Mumbai, to attend his cousin's wedding. Once in India, he finds himself pushed towards marriage by his overzealous uncle (Satish Shah). His uncle's employee, Namrata (Aishwarya Rai) chaperones Raj on a series of set- ups/dates, all of which he deliberately sabotages. During the course of the wedding ceremonies, Raj discovers that he is falling for Namrata. After some deliberation, he decides to tell her, but to his surprise, he discovers she has a 7-year-old son, Aditya. Raj is confused but forms a strong fatherly relationship with Aditya. Raj's uncle informs him that Namrata's husband disappeared right before Aditya's birth, and has never returned to his son or wife. Finding a letter that Raj had written confessing his feelings, Namrata gets upset thinking Raj tried to use her son to get close to her. She attempts to distance herself from him, but a stubborn Raj follows her to Aditya's boarding school, having promised the boy to pose as his father. On being prodded by Raj, she tells him that her husband Sanjeev left her for another woman whilst she was pregnant. Namrata and Raj begin to bond. After some months, Raj decides to introduce Namrata to his mother. A short while later, he finds out that Sanjeev (Arbaaz Khan) has returned and is looking to reconcile with Namrata. Namrata is aghast and makes it clear that she does not want anything to do with him. Sanjeev refuses to leave, becoming stubborn and persistent, threatening her with a lawsuit for custody of Aditya. After a chance meeting, Raj invites Sanjeev to his home for dinner. Aditya is present and is affectionate with Raj, calling him "Dad." Sanjeev becomes jealous and angry, insulting Raj and his family. After learning of Sanjeev's bad behaviour towards Raj, Namrata finally gets the courage to stand up to him. She publicly tells him off and also admits that she is in love with Raj. Sanjeev is ashamed and disappears once again. Six months later Raj and Namrata decide to get married, and are soon expecting a child. 

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The series centers on The Pink Panther's two sons: pre-teen Pinky, his brother, toddler Panky and their friends in the Rainbow Panthers crew (the pretty Chatta, fighting Rocko, gibberish-talking Murfel, overalls-wearing Annie, and mixed-up-talking Punkin). Each episode shows the Rainbow Panthers coming together in friendship as they learn about growing up and take on a group of lions called the Howl Angels. Featured in each episode would be short three to five minutes cartoons featuring The Pink Panther bookending the main cartoons with Pinky and Panky. 

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Cooper Chance and his girlfriend Amber are looking for shelter from a storm when they come across Ghoulhaven Hall, a mansion owned by Baron Von Ghoul. When Cooper calls him a creep, Von Ghoul kidnaps Amber in retaliation. Cooper chases after Amber, encountering the many ghoulies inhabiting Ghoulhaven Hall. Crivens, the mansion's butler, agrees to assist Cooper, guiding him through the manor. Cooper eventually finds Amber, but before the two of them can escape, the mad scientist Dr. Krackpot appears and transforms Amber into a hideous ghouly. Cooper asks the cook Ma Soupswill for help, and she tasks him with collecting three ingredients she needs to synthesize a cure. Along the way, he is aided by the mansion's other inhabitants, including groundskeeper Fiddlesworth Dunfiddlin, Soupswill's skeletal assistant Mr. Ribs, and cleaning lady Barbara Buffbrass. After gathering the ingredients, Soupswill gives Cooper a jar of the cure. When Cooper pours the cure on Amber, Soupswill is shown to have mixed up one of the ingredients, resulting in Amber transforming into a bigger, hostile ghouly. Cooper is nearly overpowered by Amber, but Soupswill arrives and applies the correct cure, transforming Amber back to normal. Cooper and Amber prepare to leave the mansion, but Mr. Ribs begs Cooper to help free other children imprisoned throughout the manor. Crivens tells Cooper that Von Ghoul has the key to free the children, but the door to his quarters is locked by a powerful spell, which can only be broken using a counterspell that is in three pieces scattered throughout the mansion. Cooper collects the three pieces and enter's Von Ghoul's quarters, but finds that Crivens is already there seemingly attacking Von Ghoul and retrieving the key. When Cooper attempts to take the key, Crivens attacks him and removes his disguise, revealing he was Von Ghoul all along. Cooper fights and defeats Von Ghoul, throwing him out of the mansion and collecting the key. Cooper then follows Mr. Ribs throughout the mansion and races to free all the children before the mansion's doors are permanently locked, trapping them inside forever. If Cooper succeeds in freeing all ten children before time runs out, he and Mr. Ribs are ambushed by imps outside the mansion. Cooper is knocked unconscious and Mr. Ribs is decapitated, but before the imps can feast on them, Ma Soupswill arrives and fights back the imps. Cooper regains consciousness and is thanked for his efforts by Soupswill, Mr. Ribs, Dunfiddlin and Buffbrass. Cooper and Amber then walk off to a nearby village, unaware that Baron Von Ghoul is following behind them in his makeshift plane. If Cooper does not save all the children in time, the scene in which Soupswill defends Cooper and Mr. Ribs from the imps is omitted. 

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Roger and Rover are the two main characters. Rover the dog is frequently kidnapped by robots. The player, Roger the owner, must enter robot territory and get him back, hence the name "Rescue Rover". 

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The program is set in the fictional town of Junctionville, New York around the turn of the 20th century. Santa Claus is offended by an anonymous letter printed in the town's newspaper (and signed "all of us") claiming that he doesn't exist. In response, Santa returns the entire town's letters to them unopened. Upon reading the anonymous letter printed in the newspaper, Father Mouse -- a mouse assistant to the human clockmaker Joshua Trundle -- immediately suspects that his brainy son Albert is its author. Albert confirms his suspicions, repeating the letter verbatim to him. Father Mouse and the Trundle Family devise a plan to appease Santa by building a singing clock tower for him, built with a special recording to play a song to coax him not to bypass Junctionville on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, Albert enters the clock to explore it without permission, and inadvertently causes it to malfunction in front of the whole town, seriously damaging Trundle's professional reputation. Furthermore, the Mayor, publicly embarrassed at the clock tower's failure, refuses to give Joshua access to it for repairs. Confessing his mistake, Albert volunteers to repair it himself and Father Mouse tells Joshua of the situation before waiting at his bed with worry on Christmas Eve. Although Albert does not complete his task until about one minute after the midnight deadline, the clock does play its song within earshot of Santa which convinces him to turn around and come to town after all. 

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The story follows Chun Hyang (춘향), the spirited, beautiful, yet headstrong daughter of a mudang in a Korean village. Her name means "spring fragrance" (the shun-ka in the original Japanese title; Chinese: Chūn-Xiāng). A master of martial arts, Chun Hyang rises to the occasion when the Yangban, a tyrannical warlord, takes control of her village. He tried to kidnap one of her friends despite Chun Hyang's bold nature and formidable abilities, but there is little hope of freeing her village unless the amhaeng'eosa, a secret Korean government agent, arrives and catches the Ryanban in the act of abusing his powers. When Mong Ryong, a somewhat lecherous but enchantingly handsome traveler appears, and apparently has fallen heads over heels with Chun Hyang, she reluctantly accepts his help to rescue her mother, who has been captured by the Ryanban. Unfortunately, they are too late; Chun Hyang's mother has already killed herself to preserve her honor. Mong Ryong reveals himself the amhaeng'eosa and passes judgment on the Ryanban, though remains rueful that he could not do so before Wall Mae's death. Devastated, Chun Hyang does not know what else to do with her life, but Mong Ryong asks her to continue traveling with him. She agrees and they continue on, meeting many more people. 

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Each story of The One I Love consists of seven pages of manga and an accompanying essay. *: A girl asks to meet her boyfriend in the park after they have had a fight. She wants to apologize, but she does not know what to say. She wears a kimono instead. When she meets her boyfriend, she finds that he is dressed up too; he had the same idea as she did. *: A girl reflects on the word "cute" with her boyfriend. She cannot visualize "cute," so she does not understand why it makes her happy when he says that she is cute. *: A girl has doubts about staying with her boyfriend, who has a very demanding work schedule. In the end, he skips work to visit her, and she decides that their romantic relationship will work out. *: A young woman working at a bakery reflects on a past unsuccessful relationship with a younger man. In the end, a younger bakery worker asks her on a date, and she is hopeful that their romantic relationship will work out. *: A girl working in a design company thinks about her past relationships, and one of her coworkers, whom she does not get along with. When a design job goes wrong and that coworker offers his ideas, she realizes that she is in love with him. *: A girl reflects on her childhood sweetheart, who introduced her to playing the harmonica. *: A girl panics as she decides what to wear to meet her boyfriend. When she is late to meet him, she realizes that her boyfriend always thinks she is pretty no matter what she wears. *: A girl has a dream about her boyfriend ending their relationship, and she is worried that it is a premonition. *: A girl confesses her love on Valentine's Day. *: A young woman has doubts about marrying her boyfriend. In the end, she realizes that even if they marry, nothing will change between them. *: A young woman wonders if her long-distance boyfriend is being faithful. In the end, she finds out that he is very dedicated to her. *: A young woman about to be married is nervous about her future. She is worried that she might change, but her husband reassures her that they will change together. 

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Dawn Davenport, a delinquent high-school student, goes berserk when her parents refuse to buy her the shoes she wants for Christmas because "nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels": she destroys presents, topples a Christmas tree on her mother, and flees the house. Dawn hitchhikes a ride with a lecherous man, Earl Peterson, who drives her to a dump where they have sex on a discarded mattress. Dawn becomes pregnant, but Earl refuses to support her. She gives birth to a daughter, Taffy, a brattish child often beaten and severely punished by her mother. Dawn works various jobs, including stripping and waiting tables, and engages in criminal activities such as burglary and street prostitution with former high-school friends Chiclette and Concetta. Dawn begins frequenting the Lipstick Beauty Salon and marries Gater Nelson, her hair stylist and next-door neighbor. Donald and Donna Dasher, the fascist owners of the beauty salon, recruit Dawn in a scheme to prove "crime and beauty are the same". They entice Dawn to commit crimes by promising her fame, supplying her with drugs and money, and photographing her crimes to stoke her vanity. Gater's aunt, Ida Nelson, is distraught over her nephew's marriage because she hopes he will "turn nelly" and take a male lover. When the marriage fails, Dawn persuades the Dashers to fire Gater, who moves to Detroit to work in the auto industry. Ida blames Dawn for driving Gater away and exacts revenge by throwing acid in her face, leaving Dawn hideously disfigured. The Dashers discourage Dawn from having corrective cosmetic surgery and use her as a grotesquely made-up model. They kidnap Ida, imprison her in a large birdcage in Dawn's apartment, and give Dawn an axe to chop off her hand as revenge for the acid attack. Taffy, now a teenager, is distressed by her mother's criminal lifestyle and convinces her to reveal the identity of her father. Taffy finds her father living in squalor and drinking excessively. She stabs him to death with a chef's knife after he tries to sexually assault her. Taffy returns home, falsely claims she was unable to locate her father, and announces she is joining the Hare Krishna movement. Dawn warns her she will kill her if she does. Dawn, now with bizarre hair, make-up, and outfits provided by the Dashers, mounts a nightclub act. When Taffy appears backstage chanting mantras in religious attire, Dawn fulfills her threat and strangles her to death. Dawn brandishes a gun onstage during her nightclub act and begins firing into the crowd, wounding and killing several audience members. When police arrive to ostensibly subdue the crowd, they shoot several audience members themselves. However, they allow the Dashers to leave when they claim to be upright citizens caught in a bloody rampage. Dawn flees into a forest, but is soon arrested by the police and put on trial for murder. At the trial, the judge grants the Dashers immunity from prosecution for testifying against Dawn. The Dashers feign innocence and completely blame Dawn for the crimes she committed at their behest; they also pay Ida to lie on the witness stand. Although Dawn pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, the jury finds her guilty and sentences her to die in the electric chair. As a priest says a prayer and Dawn is strapped to the electric chair, she thanks her fans for her notoriety before being electrocuted. 

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Peggy Gravel, a neurotic, delusional, suburban housewife, and her overweight nurse, Grizelda Brown, go on the lam after Grizelda smothers Peggy's husband, Bosley, to death. The two are arrested by a cross-dressing policeman who gives them an ultimatum: go to jail or be exiled to Mortville, a filthy shantytown ruled by the evil Queen Carlotta and her treasonous daughter, Princess Coo-Coo. Peggy and Grizelda choose Mortville, and engage in lesbian prison sex. They become associates of self-hating lesbian wrestler Mole McHenry, who wants a sex change to please her lover, Muffy St. Jacques. After confiscating a lottery ticket from Peggy, Mole wins the Maryland Lottery and uses the money to obtain gender reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, Muffy is repulsed by Mole's phalloplasty and insists she cut it off, so Mole gives herself a penectomy. Most of Mortville's social outcasts—criminals, nudists, and sexual deviants—conspire to overthrow Queen Carlotta, who banishes Coo-Coo after she elopes with a garbage collector, who is later shot to death by the guards. Coo-Coo hides in Peggy and Grizelda's house with her dead lover. When Peggy betrays Coo-Coo to the Queen's guards, Grizelda fights them and dies when the house collapses on her. Peggy, however, joins the queen in terrorizing her subjects, even infecting them (and Princess Coo-Coo) with rabies. Eventually, Mortville's denizens, led by Mole, overthrow Queen Carlotta and execute Peggy by shooting a gun up her anus. To celebrate their freedom, the townsfolk roast Carlotta on a spit and serve her, pig-like, on a platter with an apple in her mouth. 

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Lady Divine is the owner and operator of a show titled The Cavalcade of Perversion, a free exhibit of various perversions and fetish acts and obscenities, such as the "Puke Eater". The show is free, but the various performers must persuade and even physically drag reluctant passers-by to attend. As a finale to every show, Lady Divine appears and robs the patrons at gunpoint. This arrangement seems successful to Mr. David, Lady Divine's lover, but Lady Divine becomes bored with the routine and decides to murder the patrons rather than merely robbing them. After escaping the murder scene, she comes home to Cookie, her prostitute daughter, and her new boyfriend Steve, a member of the Weather Underground. Lady Divine receives a call from Edith, proprietor of the local bar, who informs her that Mr. David had been at her bar with another woman (Mary Vivian Pearce). Lady Divine heads there to catch them, but is raped on the way by two glue-sniffers. Meanwhile, Mr. David and his new lover Bonnie—a woman who desperately wants to be part of the troupe—engage in sex acts at the home he shares with Lady Divine, during which Bonnie anally penetrates him with a dildo. While Lady Divine contemplates her rape, the Infant of Prague appears and leads her to a church. Making her way uncertainly into the church, Lady Divine prays, but is then approached and seduced by a strange young woman named Mink. They have a sexual encounter in the church pew, the woman inserting a rosary into Lady Divine's rectum while describing the Stations of the Cross. Now lesbian lovers, Lady Divine and Mink go to Edith's bar with the intent to kill Mr. David and his mistress, but they are too late: David and Bonnie, his lover (who have by this time decided that they have to kill Lady Divine to protect themselves) have left. Mr. David returns to Cookie's house to kill Divine, but finds only Cookie and fellow performer Rick there. An argument ensues, and Bonnie accidentally kills Cookie. They tie up Rick and hide Cookie's corpse just before Divine and Mink return. When Bonnie tries to shoot Lady Divine, Divine attacks and kills her with a knife. She then turns on Mr. David and eviscerates him as well, devouring his internal organs and becoming more frenzied. Rick appears and surprises Mink, who shoots him. In a fit of anger, Divine accuses Mink of betrayal and stabs her. Divine becomes even more crazed upon finding her daughter's body hidden behind the couch. Exhausted from the ordeal, Lady Divine collapses on a couch and is raped by a giant lobster named Lobstora. In the aftermath (mumbling "You're a maniac now, Divine"), she destroys a car, then wanders Baltimore trying to kill anyone she can. The film ends with the appearance of the National Guard, which surrounds Lady Divine on the street and shoots her, accompanied by the sound of "America the Beautiful". 

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In the Ming Dynasty, there were four scholars, whose literary and artistic skills are unmatched in China. Tong Pak Fu (Stephen Chow) is the most famous, for having eight wives in addition to his expertise as an artist, poet, and calligrapher. However, Tong's wives are all gambling addicts and unappreciative of Tong's artistic skills. This leads to Tong's quest for a woman who can truly appreciate his strengths. The Tong Family comes from a pedigree of martial art masters. They have two major enemies: the Evil Scholar, a notorious swordsman known for The Deadly Scholastic Sword (書生奪命劍), and an evil ex-girlfriend of his father's. Due to these rivalries, Tong Pak Fu is forbidden by his mother to use any form of martial arts. One day, Tong stumbles upon the convoy of the House of Wah and meets Chow Heung (Gong Li), one of the four maids in the House of Wah. This chance encounter convinces Tong that he has finally found his true love. On the advice of a boatman, Tong pretends to be a lowly servant 9527 in order to gain employment in the House of Wah. Tong finds life as a servant very difficult, until after a night incident (which involved the saving of Chow Heung from rape by the Wolf gang), Madame Wah (Cheng Pei-pei) discovers that Tong is actually educated. After some persuasion by Chow Heung, Tong is hired as an assistant tutor for Madame Wah's two young sons, being renamed as Washington. After the accidental death of the main tutor of the House of Wah, Tong is promoted to senior tutor and manages to get closer to Chow Heung. The House of Wah is then suddenly visited by Chancellor Wah's political rival, Prince Ning, who is planning a coup. During the visit Prince Ning shows off a painting of Tong Pak Fu. Slowly the showing turns violent as the Evil Scholar, now a subordinate under Prince Ning, fights and injures Madam Wah. Tong steps in to stop the battle but, in turn, destroys the Tong Pak Fu painting Prince Ning brought. Prince Ning seizes the opportunity to blame the House of Wah for insulting him and destroying the painting. Tong quickly grabs Chow Heung, lies to Prince Ning that the painting they had was a fake and the real one is in the Wah House. Chow Heung attempts to recreate the painting in the study to pacify the situation, but doubts that her painting skills can fool Prince Ning. While she was rambling, Tong completed a re-creation of the painting. Prince Ning doubts the painting, but has his own scholar verify that is it indeed a Tong Pak Fu painting and not a fake. Embarrassed Prince Ning leaves hastily and vows to kill the entire House of Wah. However, in reproducing a painting and fighting off the Evil Scholar, Madame Wah is able to deduce Tong's true identity and poisons him. It is then revealed that Madame Wah was the former love rival of Tong's mother and still hold grudges against his father. With his strength nullified, Tong is then held prisoner in the Wah's tinder room. Several days later, the Evil Scholar returns to annihilate the entire House of Wah. Madame Wah attempts to defend the family but is almost killed. At the last minute, Tong appears and, after a fierce battle, kills the Evil Scholar. As a reward, the House of Wah gives Tong Chow Heung's hand in marriage. Tong then discovers that Chow Heung is just as much a gambling addict as his other eight wives. 

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A deranged nanny (Maelcum Soul) kidnaps young girls and forces them to model themselves to death in front of her boyfriend (David Lochary) and their crazed friends. One of the spectators (Divine) fantasizes that he is Jackie Kennedy, and relives the JFK assassination in his mind. 

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The movie features random scenes of Maelcum Soul in nun habit drag, a priest drinking a beer, a woman being attacked with an electric fan, a drag queen riding a motorcycle, and Divine playing hide and seek. The soundtrack is played back from tape in the room during the screening, and includes radio advertisements, rock songs, a press conferences with Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, and tune by the Shangri-Las. 

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Prior to the events of the series, Sydney Bloom was the daughter of Dr. Joseph Bloom, a computer scientist who was working on developing virtual reality. His wife Nora Bloom, a neurochemist, was also involved in the project. Sydney's father, and her sister Samantha, died in a car accident in 1978. Now in 1995 Sydney is a telephone lineworker and computer hobbyist. One day she accidentally discovers that she can enter an advanced type of virtual reality, where she can interact with other people. Her actions in the virtual world have an effect on the real world. She subsequently agrees to use her abilities to help a mysterious secret organization called the Committee. She receives her covert assignments from Frank Morgan, and later from Oliver Sampson. Sydney's friend Duncan advises her and helps her when he can. The show frequently uses inconsistencies in continuity and a distinctive color scheme as clues to suggest what is actually happening at various points throughout the series. 

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On Saturday, December 13, 1941, at 7:01 a.m. (six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor), a Japanese submarine surfaces off the Californian coast. The sub is commanded by Commander Mitamura. A Nazi Kriegsmarine officer, Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, is along as an observer. Mitamura wants to destroy something "honorable" in Los Angeles and decides to target Hollywood. Later that morning, a 10th Armored Division M3 Lee tank crew, consisting of Sergeant Frank Tree, Corporal Chuck Sitarski, and Privates Foley, Reese, and Henshaw, are having breakfast at a cafe where dishwasher Wally and his pal Dennis both work. Wally is planning to enter a dance contest at a club that evening with his girlfriend, Betty Douglas. Sitarski instantly dislikes Wally, particularly his civilian attire, and trips him, causing a fight. In Death Valley, crazy, cigar-chomping United States Army Air Forces Captain Wild Bill Kelso lands his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter near a roadside store and gas station; while refueling, Kelso accidentally blows up the station. In Los Angeles, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell attempts to calm the public who believe California will be attacked by Japan. At a press conference at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, Captain Loomis Birkhead, Stilwell's aide, meets his old flame Donna Stratton, who is General Stilwell's new secretary. Aware that Donna is sexually aroused by airplanes, Birkhead lures her into the cockpit of a B-17 bomber to seduce her. When his amatory attempts fail, Donna punches him and knocks him out; as he falls, Birkhead accidentally releases a bomb, sending it rolling towards the podium just as the General promises, "There will be no bombs dropped here." The assembled reporters and audience panic and scatter as the bomb strikes the grandstand and explodes, though Stilwell and the crowd are unhurt. At the Santa Monica ocean side home of Ward Douglas and his wife Joan, Wally is told by Betty and her friend Maxine, who have both just become USO hostesses, that they are only allowed to dance with servicemen as they are now the only male patrons allowed in the club. Wally is forced to hide in the garage when Betty's father Ward, who disapproves of Wally, appears. Sgt. Tree and his tank crew arrive and inform Ward and Joan that the army wants to install an anti-aircraft battery in their yard; Sitarski begins flirting with Betty when Wally falls from the loft where he was hiding. Wally and Sitarski recognize each other from the cafe, and Ward and the soldiers pick up Wally and dump him into a passing garbage truck. Meanwhile, the Japanese submarine has become lost trying to find Los Angeles after the ship's compass malfunctions. A landing party goes ashore searching for "Hollywood" and instead discovers Hollis "Holly" Wood, a lumberjack, who is selling Christmas trees. After Hollis is taken prisoner aboard the sub, he is searched and the crew is excited to find a small compass which was the toy surprise inside a box of "Popper Jacks". Hollis snatches the compass and swallows it. After the crew attempts to make Hollis pass the compass by forcing him to drink prune juice, he manages to escape from the submarine and swim to shore. Later that evening, Ward's neighbor, Angelo Scioli of the Ground Observer Corps, installs Claude and Herb in the Ferris wheel at the Ocean Front Amusement Park where they have volunteered to spot and report enemy aircraft. Herb has brought his ventriloquist's dummy along, much to Claude's annoyance. Meanwhile, General Stilwell attends a showing of the Walt Disney film Dumbo at a theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Determined to get Donna up in an airplane, Birkhead drives her to the 501st Bomb Disbursement Unit in Barstow, where the mentally unstable Colonel "Mad Man" Maddox shows them the unit's aircraft. The demented Maddox, convinced the Japanese have a secret airbase hidden in the alfalfa fields of Pomona, lets Birkhead and Donna borrow a plane, after Birkhead offers to go on a reconnaissance flight in an attempt to locate the fictional Pomona airfield. Donna, aroused by at last being up in an airplane, eagerly begins to ravish the nervous Birkhead during the flight. Outside the USO club, Sitarski literally kicks aside Wally and drags Betty into the dance. Wally eventually sneaks in by knocking out a member of the Shore Patrol and stealing his uniform. He snatches Betty from Sitarski, and they end up winning the dance contest whilst evading Sitarski, who is being relentlessly pursued by Maxine. As the contest ends, Sitarski finally punches Wally, setting off a brawl between soldiers, sailors and zoot suiters. The free-for-all spills into the street and becomes a riot. Sgt. Tree arrives with his crew and breaks up the melee, just as L.A. goes to Red Alert with unknown aircraft sighted over the city. At the Douglas' home, Ward spots the surfaced submarine offshore. Birkhead and Donna, still in the throes of passion, fly over L.A., where anti- aircraft batteries open fire. Kelso pursues Birkhead's plane and shoots it down, causing it to crash into the La Brea Tar Pits. He then spots the submarine near the amusement park, but before he can return to attack, his plane is shot down by Claude and Herb, who are still in the Ferris wheel, mistaking Kelso's P-40 for a Japanese "Zero". Back on Hollywood Boulevard, Sitarski is dragging away Betty, when she is rescued by Wally, who knocks Sitarski out cold. Kelso, who has crash landed his plane on the street, informs them of the sub near the amusement park. Sergeant Tree, knocked silly during the melee, tells Wally to go after the submarine. Wearing an Army uniform, Wally commandeers Tree's tank and heads toward the amusement park. Back at the Douglas home, Ward begins firing the anti-aircraft gun at the submarine, all but destroying his house in the process. The sub returns fire, hitting the Ferris wheel, which causes it to roll down a pier and into the ocean, sending Claude, Herb and the dummy into the water. The tank fires at the sub and then sinks when the pier collapses and Wally, Dennis, Tree and the crew jump into the ocean. Kelso has stolen a motorcycle and drives it off the pier, and he swims to the submarine, where he is captured by the Japanese; undaunted, he declares, "Turn this tub around! You're takin' me to Tokyo!" On Sunday morning, December 14, Stilwell and soldiers arrive at the remains of the Douglas home, where the other protagonists have gathered and spent the night. Ward delivers an inspirational speech to everyone present, vowing that their Christmas will not be ruined by the enemy; to symbolize his point, he nails a Christmas wreath to his front door, jarring the unstable house so that it collapses down the hillside. Stilwell, observing the motley disheveled crowd who have begun arguing and fighting, tells Sgt. Tree, "It's going to be a long war", and he walks away. 

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The film opens on the assassination of the president of the fictional "banana republic" of San Marcos and a coup d'état that brings Gen. Emilio Molina Vargas (Carlos Montalban) to power. Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen) is a neurotic blue collar man who tries to impress social activist Nancy (Louise Lasser) by trying to get in touch with the revolution in San Marcos. He visits the republic and attempts to show his concern for the native people. However, Vargas secretly orders his men, disguised as Vargas's opponents, to kill Mellish, to make the rebels look bad so that the U.S. will send Vargas financial aid. Mellish evades Vargas's assassins, but is shortly after captured by the real rebels. Vargas declares Mellish dead regardless, leaving Mellish no choice but to join the rebels for two months. Mellish then learns, clumsily, how to be a revolutionary. When the revolution is successful, Esposito, the Castro-style leader, goes mad. The rebels decide to replace him with Mellish as their president. When traveling back to the U.S. to obtain financial aid, Mellish (sporting a long fake beard) reunites with Nancy and is exposed. In a classic courtroom scene, Mellish tries to defend himself from a series of incriminating witnesses, including a reigning Miss America and a middle-aged African-American woman claiming to be J. Edgar Hoover in disguise. One of the witnesses does provide testimony favorable to Mellish, but the court clerk, when asked to read back this testimony, replies with an entirely different, wholly unfavorable rendition. Mellish is eventually sentenced to prison, but his sentence is suspended on the condition that he does not move into the judge's neighborhood. Nancy then agrees to marry him. The film ends with the between-the-covers consummation of their marriage, an event that was over much more quickly than Nancy had anticipated. 

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In this book, you are introduced to Nancy's best friends, Elizabeth "Bess" Marvin and George Fayne, complete opposites. George is a brave, sporty tomboy, while Bess is a girly, shopping, scaredycat. One of Bess and George's cousins, Alice Regor, travel with Nancy to their Aunt and Uncle's ranch in Arizona where the cousins' aunt attempts to keep up a ranch she received as payment of a debt. Nancy reunites Alice with her long-lost artist father, who is suffering from amnesia. She also uncovers the mystery behind why an old mountain woman is guardian of a beautiful young girl, all the while enjoying mountain life, including horseback riding, a flash flood, being lost in the mountains overnight, and a dangerous mountain lion. 

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After an introductory sequence during which chickens are beheaded on a chopping block, the main action begins. Platinum blond bombshell Mary Vivian Pearce begins her day by riding the bus and reading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. Bombshell is later seduced by a hippie degenerate "shrimper" (foot fetishist), who starts molesting her feet while she fantasizes about being Cinderella. She is then hit by a car driven by Divine, a portly blonde who was trying to pick up an attractive hitchhiker whom she imagines naked. Divine places her in the car and drives distractedly around Baltimore experiencing bizarre situations, such as repeated visits by the Blessed Virgin Mary (Margie Skidmore)—during which Divine exclaims, "Oh Mary ... teach me to be Divine". Divine finally takes the unconscious Bombshell to Dr. Coathanger, who amputates her feet and replaces them with bird-like monster feet which she can tap together to transport herself around Baltimore. 

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Chs. 1-4: Harvey and Lizbeth Durant arrive to witness the cutting of their embryo. Svengaard, a low-ranking doctor, tries to convince them to skip the procedure, but they are adamant and insist on their right, all the while secretly communicating their contempt for Svengaard in a silent Courier code. Potter, a high-ranking surgeon, arrives to perform the cut. During the procedure, he is shocked to discover that the embryo has qualities not seen in millennia; superior genetics in the areas of intelligence, plus vocation for immortality and full fertility. Obligated to destroy it, Potter is surprised to find himself unwilling to do so, aided by the on-the-spot collusion of one of the nurses who sabotages the record of the operation. Ch. 5: Max Allgood, Boumard and Igan arrive at the Hall of Counsel for an audience with the Tuyere. Tachy-Security monitoring has detected something amiss with the Durant embryo cutting. The nurse has been arrested, but has died under interrogation. The Optimen Calapine, Nourse and Schruille playfully mock their subordinates, always with a faint undercurrent of menace. Calapine flirts with Allgood in a semi-bemused fashion. The Tuyere order that Svengaard be brought before them. Boumard and Igan are revealed to the reader as Cyborg agents. Ch. 6: Svengaard is interrogated by the Tuyere. Badly frightened, he fumbles and grows agitated under their mockery, becoming insubordinate. The Tuyere calm him down by a display of magnanimity, reminding him of their power, wisdom and seniority. Ch. 7: In a service area under the Seatac Megalopolis, the Durants have gone into hiding. They meet with the Cyborg Glisson, who informs them of events, tells them that a strange external force had (beneficially) interfered with the cutting process of their embryo, and orders them to stay put. The Durants chafe under its unfeeling, domineering manner, hoping to one another to one day be free of the Optimen and Cyborgs. They scheme to deliver their baby the unheard-of natural way, and keep it out of reach of both. They wonder if the interfering power is God. Ch. 8-9: Svengaard detects activity in the hospital vat room, where the embryo is kept. Investigating, he is rendered unconscious and abducted from under the nose of Max Allgood's surveillance. Ch. 10-11: Potter is escorted through the streets of Seatac by a resistance agent. Near their destination, they are intercepted by security forces. Potter's escort sends him ahead, revealing himself as a combat cyborg and decimating the pursuers until it is destroyed. Potter is spirited away by the resistance. The Tuyere - and many other Optimen - watch the battle live, the long-unfamiliar thrill of violence awakening odd sensations in them. Ch. 12: In a resistance safehouse, Igan tries to recruit a recalcitrant Svengaard. Failing, they sedate him and make plans to evacuate Seatac, which they suspect the Optimen are about to genocidally purge of all life. Ch. 13: The Durants, Boumard and Igan (their cover blown) and a gagged Svengaard are moved out of Seatac in a hover-truck driven by a Cyborg, later revealed to be Glisson. At a checkpoint, Svengaard cries out briefly, causing them to be traced. Glisson changes their destination. Ch. 14: The Tuyere wipe out Seatac through a combination of poison gas and sonic weapons. They find themselves surprised by their unstable emotional reactions to the event. Ch. 15: The occupants of the truck observe the destruction of Seatac; Svengaard's faith in the Optimen is badly shaken. The Durants notice that Boumard and Igan are in the early stages of cyborgization. The truck proceeds to a ramshackle safehouse in the forest. Ch. 16: The Tuyere receives a field report from Max Allgood. Calapine, growing suspicious of his behavior, scans him with her instruments, discovering that he has accepted Cyborg implants. Enraged, she kills him remotely. Calapine and Schruille decide to run Tachy-Security themselves, finding themselves oddly stimulated by the prospect of an even more active involvement in violence. Potter is revealed to have died offstage in Seatac. Calapine and Nourse both require treatment for enzyme imbalance. Ch. 17: The occupants of the cabin decide that the apathetic Svengaard cannot be trusted, and should be killed. Harvey asks him if he wants to live; Svengaard suddenly finds that he does. He offers to care for the Durant's child, an offer Harvey accepts as he does not trust the cyborgs Boumard and Igan. The security forces of the Optimen surround the house and disarm (literally) Glisson. Ch. 18: The Tuyere debate what to do with the prisoners. They speculate that, if the infection of viability spreads, wiping out all the Folk and starting over is not out of the question. They decide to have the prisoners brought to themselves for interrogation. Ch. 19: A full assembly of Optimen meet in the Hall of Counsel. The prisoners are brought in, immobilized in a solid block. The Optimen begin to feel odd emotions, spiraling into greater and greater instability. Glisson asserts that reintroducing them to firsthand violence was a Cyborg ploy to destabilize the delicate equilibrium of the Optiman mind, and that the Cyborgs have won. A semi-hysterical Calapine converses with the prisoners, verging on killing them, but abruptly releases them instead. The Optimen descend into insanity; several, including Schruille, are killed in a stampede. The former prisoners try to help. Ch. 20: Calapine and the former prisoners discuss the new status quo. Glisson's gloating is cut off when a biological solution is proposed. Svengaard thinks that he will be able to stabilize the Optimen, and introduce the beneficial mutations of the Durant embryo on a wide scale, giving the Folk a lifespan of at least 12 - 15,000 years - longevity without the pernicious ossification of immortality. The novel concludes on a note of guarded optimism. 

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The main plot involves Dr. Caligari's experiments with her patients at the C.I.A (Caligari Insane Asylum), where she transfers glandular brain fluids from one patient to another. Two of her main patients, Mr. Pratt, a cannibalistic serial killer, and Mrs. Van Houten, a nymphomanical housewife, are the primary subjects of her mindswapping. Mrs. Van Houten becomes the cannibal and Mr. Pratt the nymphomaniac, although they seem to still retain some elements of themselves as well. Apparently, Caligari's unconventional idea is to cure people by introducing equally opposite traits to balance out disturbed minds, but this is never explicitly stated in the film. Several other doctors, a married couple (Mr and Mrs Lodger) become concerned with Caligari's experiments and approach Mrs. Lodger's father, Dr. Avol, who confronts Caligari only to fall victim to her mindswapping and receive an injection of Mrs. Van Houten's brain fluid, turning him into a transvestite nymphomaniac. Sex is a prominent theme throughout the movie, especially for Mrs. Van Houten, who appears topless and performs masturbation at several points, but there are no hardcore scenes, as this was released as an R-rated feature. By the end of the film, Mrs. Van Houten has injected Dr. Caligari with her own nymphomaniacal brain fluid and herself with Caligari's ancestor's (the original Dr. Caligari from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari); thus the patient becomes the doctor, the doctor becomes the patient and the inmates are left to run the asylum. 

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Sonny Mann (Olyphant) is released early from prison and returns home to the Florida Panhandle and tries to collect $200,000 owed to him by his former cohorts, Fred Vance (Forsythe) and his nephew Eddie (Lucas). He enters into a love triangle with best friend Dave (Brolin), a sheriff, and his wife, Ann (Wynter). 

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In a near dystopian'RoboCop Trilogy': Life in Dystopian Future Detroit. popMATTERS.com(November 7, 2010). Retrieved on August 26, 2020. future, Detroit is on the verge of bankruptcy after failing to pay off its debts to conglomerate Omni Consumer Products (OCP). The OCP chairman intends to have the city default on its debt, then foreclose on all public property, effectively taking over its government and allowing for a radical urban redevelopment plan. To rally public opinion behind the project, OCP sparks an increase in street crime by terminating the privatized Detroit Police Department's pension plans and cutting salaries, triggering a police strike. RoboCop remains on duty with his partner, Anne Lewis. They raid a manufacturing plant of Nuke, a new designer drug that plagues Detroit. The cartel's leader Cain and his adolescent accomplice Hob escape. RoboCop has flashbacks to his previous life as Alex Murphy, and has begun watching his wife and son outside their home. Still grieving over the death of her husband, his wife brings litigation against OCP, complaining of harassment. After he is dressed down by his handlers, RoboCop tells his wife that Murphy is dead. OCP struggles to develop RoboCop 2, a police droid intended for mass production to replace the striking police force, which is fitted with the brains of dead police officers like the original RoboCop. However, the resurrected police officers keep committing suicide upon activation. Psychologist Dr. Juliette Faxx convinces the Chairman to let her control the project, this time using a criminal with a desire for power and immortality instead of police officers. Cain, a drug kingpin with a messianic following who is also addicted to Nuke, fears losing his grip in the wake of the Delta City project, and uses corrupt police officer Duffy to undermine OCP and RoboCop's enforcement efforts. RoboCop tracks down Duffy and beats the location of Cain's hideout out of him. He confronts Cain's gang at an abandoned construction site, but he walks into a trap and is overwhelmed. The criminals cut apart RoboCop's body and dump the pieces in front of his precinct. Cain has Duffy vivisected for revealing their location and forces Hob to watch. RoboCop is repaired, but Faxx reprograms him with hundreds of confusing new directives at the insistence of the OCP Board of Directors, severely impeding his ability to perform his duties. RoboCop eventually clears these by shocking himself with a high voltage transformer and rebooting his system. Murphy motivates the striking officers to aid him in raiding Cain's hideout. As Cain tries to escape, RoboCop wounds and apprehends him. Hob escapes and takes control of Cain's drug empire. Believing she can control Cain via his Nuke addiction, Faxx selects him for the RoboCop 2 project and disconnects his life support. Surgeons place his brain in a heavily armed robotic body and reactivate him. After failing to pay the city's debts via voluntary fundraising, the Mayor is contacted by Hob, who offers to retire the city's entire debt in exchange for a "hands off" policy towards Nuke, thereby nullifying OCP's scheme and preventing Delta City's construction. Threatened by this move, OCP sends Cain to the meeting. Cain slaughters everyone but the mayor, who escapes. RoboCop arrives to find a wounded Hob, who identifies the attacker before dying. The chairman presents an unveiling ceremony for Cain and Delta City, their redevelopment plan. When he presents a canister of Nuke, Cain's uncontrollable addiction causes him to attack the crowd. RoboCop arrives and fights Cain, and their battle extends to the street. RoboCop recovers the Nuke canister and Lewis uses it to distract Cain. RoboCop leaps onto his back, shoots through his armor and rips out his brain, ending Cain's rampage. The Chairman and Johnson decide to scapegoat Faxx to free OCP. As Lewis complains that OCP is escaping accountability again, RoboCop insists they must be patient because "we're only human". 

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The film opens on ancient Greek ruins where a chanting Greek chorus introduces and narrates the story of Lenny Weinrib. Lenny is a sportswriter in Manhattan, married to ambitious curator Amanda. The couple decide to adopt a baby, a boy they name Max. Lenny is awed by their son who, it becomes increasingly clear, is a gifted child. Lenny becomes obsessed with learning the identity of Max's biological mother. After a long search, Lenny is disturbed to find that she is a prostitute and part-time porn star, who uses several names but confesses her birth name is Leslie Ash, and she likes "Linda" because it means “beautiful” in Spanish. Lenny makes an "appointment" to see her at her apartment. Linda is a bit of a ditz with a crude sense of humor and delusions of becoming a stage actress. Lenny does not have intercourse with her but instead urges her to get away from prostitution and start a wholesome life. Linda becomes angry, refunds Lenny's money, and forces him to leave. Lenny, however, is determined to befriend her and improve her life. He first manages to get Linda away from her violent pimp and then attempts to pair Linda with a former boxer, Kevin. They appear to be a well-suited couple until Kevin discovers Linda's background. Meanwhile, Lenny and Amanda have been drifting apart, due to Lenny's obsession with Linda, but also Amanda's career and her affair with her colleague Jerry (Peter Weller). Amanda tells Lenny she wants to explore her relationship with Jerry. Lenny and Linda console each other over their break- ups, and end up finally engaging in intercourse. However, the next day Lenny reconciles with Amanda, and they realize that they are still in love. Linda tries unsuccessfully to get back with Kevin but on the drive back to Manhattan, she sees a helicopter dropping out of the sky. She pulls over and gives the pilot, Don, a ride. It is revealed by the Greek chorus that they will end up married, although Linda is now pregnant with Lenny's child. Some years later, Linda (with her daughter) and Lenny (with Max) meet in a toy store. They both have each other's children but do not realize it. Linda thanks Lenny for everything he did to help her and then leaves Lenny dumbstruck. The film ends with the Greek chorus singing and dancing. 

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The people of Harford Road are firmly divided into two camps: the neuters, the puritanical residents who despise anything even remotely carnal; and the perverts, a group of sex addicts whose unique fetishes have all been brought to the fore by accidental concussions. Repressed Sylvia Stickles finds herself firmly entrenched in the former camp. One day, after leaving her promiscuous daughter Caprice (nicknamed Ursula Udders because of gargantuan breasts and a penchant for indecent exposure while dancing at a local dive bar) locked up over the garage, under house arrest "for her own good", Sylvia is smacked on the head by a passing car and meets Ray-Ray Perkins, a local mechanic and self-styled "sex saint" who opens her mind to a whole new world of sensual pleasure, as he and his followers search for the ultimate sex act. Eventually, through a series of bizarre head knockings, everyone in the Harford Road area of Baltimore becomes a sex addict, as Ray-Ray shoots semen out of his head and becomes the messiah of "Let's Go Sexin'!" 

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In 2080, on a colony on the Moon called Little America, retired smuggler and ex-convict Pluto Nash (Eddie Murphy) buys a nightclub in an attempt to fulfill his long-time wish and also to prevent the murder of the club's previous owner, Anthony Frankowski (Jay Mohr), by mobsters Gino (Burt Young) and Larry (Lillo Brancato). With the help of a Hispanic assistant and an android named Bruno (Randy Quaid), Pluto rebuilds it into a very popular nightclub. Seven years later in 2087, a young woman named Dina Lake (Rosario Dawson), the daughter of a friend of Pluto's, is stranded on the Moon and tries to earn money for transport back to Earth. Pluto gives her a job as a server. Pluto is accosted by Mogan (Joe Pantoliano) and Kelp (Victor Varnado), henchmen of mysterious entrepreneur Rex Crater, who wants to buy the club. When Pluto refuses, the henchmen destroy the club. Pluto, Dina and Bruno manage to escape. Pluto's friend Rowland (Peter Boyle), a retired police officer who is a friend of his mother's, learns that Rex Crater has associates linked to human cloning. While Pluto and Dina investigate further, Crater's assassins strike, but Pluto and Dina escape by hijacking a limo driven by a holographic chauffeur. Their investigation further links Zoroaster Marucci (Alec Baldwin) to Crater. They are again attacked and chased by Crater's henchmen, but they escape and are then rescued by Felix Laranga (Luis Guzmán), a local smuggler who idolizes Pluto Nash. They infiltrate Crater's casino/hotel at Moon Beach. Pluto finally confronts Crater, who reveals himself to be a clone of Pluto. Crater has shot both Marucci and Dr. Runa Pendankin into orbit and established his own criminal enterprise. When Morgan and Kelp arrive, Crater kills them for their incompetence. He and Pluto then fight, with Crater ultimately being thrown through a window to his death. Sometime later, a celebration is held at the rebuilt Club Pluto with Nash as the owner. 

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Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is a successful architect and lives a peaceful life with his wife Anna (Chandra West) until her unexpected death. Eventually, he is contacted by Raymond Price (Ian McNeice), whose son has also died. He says he has recorded messages from Anna through electronic voice phenomena (EVP). While Jonathan is initially dismissive and angered, he later learns about his wife's tragic drowning. Desperate, he begins to believe that the recorded voice is indeed that of his wife, and becomes obsessed with trying to contact her himself. He is warned by a psychic, Mirabelle Keegan (Keegan Connor Tracy), that she takes measures to avoid hostile entities, but EVP is an indiscriminate process that offers no such safeguards. A woman named Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger), who also came to Raymond for his EVP work because she lost her fiancé, befriends Jonathan. Raymond is found dead. Jonathan begins to be followed by three demons attracted by his obsession with EVP, and finds that some of the messages he receives are from people who are not yet dead, but may soon be. Jonathan hears cries from a woman whom he finds in a car with a child. He is able to save the child, but not the woman. At that woman's funeral, which Jonathan and Sarah both attend, Jonathan approaches the husband and tells him about what happened. The latter thanks Jonathan for saving his son but then demands to be left alone. Afterwards, Jonathan sees images of another person, a missing woman named Mary Freeman, while working with his EVP devices. Sarah is later seriously injured by a fall from a balcony while possessed by the demons, that incident which was foreshadowed by Sarah's image being among those on the EVP devices. Jonathan locates the site of his wife's death by following signs on recordings and he also finds his wife's abandoned car. Jonathan finds a set of computers and electronic equipment on site. A construction worker (Mitchell Kosterman) from his company, who has been doing his own EVP work, is holding Mary captive. He has been under the control of the demons to kill all these people, including Anna. The three demons torture Jonathan by breaking his arms and legs and cause him to fall to his death, but a SWAT team along with Detective Smits (Mike Dopud) arrives and are able to save Mary by shooting the construction worker dead. After his funeral, Jonathan's voice can be heard on the radio through static interference saying "I'm sorry" to his son. The child recognizes the voice and smiles. Sarah, at the graveside in a wheelchair, is menaced by odd noises. Right before the credits, the camera flashes to a TV where Jonathan and his wife are visible. 

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The family is creating an enormous jigsaw puzzle. After they realize a jigsaw piece is missing, the family look for it. Homer looks through Marge's memory box and sees a poster of Moe's Tavern's opening (advertised as Meaux's Tavern) with Marge's writing on it. It says that Homer made the opening the worst day of her life because due to him becoming drunk and ditching her to play Asteroids on an arcade machine with his friends, after which he was sent to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. This leaves Homer concerned why Marge stayed with him; he then finds a hospital appointment card dated two days later, confirming she was pregnant with Bart. When Homer confronts Marge about the letter, she says she was just upset that night, but is forced to admit that Homer did, and still does, things which annoy her. Homer then realizes Marge has been resenting him behind his back. The next day, they argue again and Homer leaves the house. He spends some time at Kirk Van Houten's apartment, but the generally depressive mood of the apartment complex where he lives drives him out. Homer then reads a newspaper saying that there is a place available. Finding out that the place is in Springfield's gay district, Homer moves in with a gay male couple, Grady and Julio. Homer has a visit home after taking Bart and Lisa out, but Marge and Homer still argue. At the gay bar, Homer tells Grady and Julio that his relationship with Marge is low. The next day, Homer sees Marge and the kids, who have brought "Weird Al" Yankovic and his band, who play a song called "Homer and Marge", a parody of John Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane", to tell Homer that Marge loves him. Marge then asks Homer out on a date, but he is nervous while preparing for his date and drinks too much margarita. Meanwhile, at the venue of the date, Marge anxiously awaits Homer's arrival. When he arrives, she is upset that he is late and drunk, and leaves him. Back at the apartment, Grady tries to comfort Homer by telling him that he will find someone else, and kisses him romantically. Homer realises that Grady is in love with him and jumps out of the window, heading to Moe's Tavern to get some advice from Moe. Homer is about to come to the realisation that all of his problems are caused by alcohol when Moe forces beer down Homer's throat, giving him alcohol poisoning. After Homer awakens, Dr. Hibbert tells him that the incident was not as bad as the night he first treated him for alcohol poisoning. Homer says it was the night that destroyed his marriage. Hibbert disagrees and plays a tape from the past of Homer's first alcohol poisoning. Marge says that she loves him in the tape. Marge appears and says she still does and they reconcile. Years later, an elderly Dr. Hibbert is watching the tape and remarks that he made tapes because he suspected a nurse of stealing sponges. Then for the first time he sees footage of the nurse sneaking past the hidden security-camera while gathering up a huge armful of sponges. 

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