Grieving widower Ben Wilson is renovating an old guest house on the outskirts of his hometown with his young daughter Hillary. Local bus driver Oscar arrives with a group of peculiarly comported and dressed tourists who insist on staying at the remote guest house instead of the town center's large hotel. When Ben aids one of the tourists, Quish, after a minor accident, he discovers that Quish's passport is inexplicably stamped with locations, dated decades apart, that correspond to famous disasters, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the crash of the ''Hindenburg'' and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Ben confronts Quish, who responds only by warning Ben to leave town. Meanwhile, Ben's vengeful father-in-law, Judge Caldwell, who blames Ben for his daughter's death, has Ben declared an unfit parent and takes custody of Hillary.
One of the Tourists, Reeve, confirms Ben's suspicions about their true nature: they are time-travelers from the future who visit famous disasters from their past. She drugs and seduces Ben, leaving him unconscious. Oscar finds and revives him. As they attempt to confront the tourists at the guest house, a meteorite strike devastates the town. Ben finds Hilary alive at Caldwell's house, and they spend the night helping survivors while the tourists stroll through the devastation in detached fascination. The next day, Ben realizes that the tourists are still in town; he deduces that they are awaiting a second disaster soon to affect a local school being used as a relief center. As he rushes there, a gas explosion destroys the building, killing Hillary and most of the other erstwhile survivors, as well as Quish, who had followed Ben. The tourists take Ben prisoner so that an official from their time, the Undersecretary, can investigate and attempt to mend Ben's "timescape." After Ben accuses Reeve of lacking humanity, she slips him Quish's passport, concealing a time travel device.
Ben travels to the previous evening. He tries to remove Hilary from Caldwell's house, but is caught and arrested. Using his one phone call, he contacts his pre-existing self before Reeve can incapacitate him. Ben's earlier self helps him escape from the jail and together the two Bens draw most of town's residents to safety at a church on the other side of town by ringing the church bells to the tune of Für Elise, his wife's favorite song. Leaving Hilary with his earlier self, Ben meets with the Undersecretary to return to his original timeframe. He warns Ben not to interfere any further and threatens to reset the timeline. Ben calls his bluff; if the Undersecretary could do that, he already would have.
Some time later, Hilary takes bookings for the completed guest house while Ben reads through old love letters from his late wife. When Hilary looks up, Ben has vanished and Hilary hears someone playing Für Elise on the piano.
In the opening scene, Michael has arranged a meeting to discuss making the Quarterly Report more exciting, unaware that the office workers are all more interested in the DVD screensaver, and believes their disappointment whenever the bouncing box on the screensaver doesn't make it into a corner are reactions to his statements. Eventually, the box does make it into a corner, and the cheering employees all leave, to his confusion.
Dunder Mifflin is preparing a party for the launch of their new website "Dunder Mifflin Infinity". Since Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) doesn't want to go to the launch party, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) invites Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), who makes Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) take her place. Only after they reach New Jersey does Jim realize that Michael received an "invitation" to a chat room, not the actual party. Jim also reveals that he turned down the Corporate job that Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) accepted. Michael returns to Scranton dejected and attempts to plan a better party. This irritates party planner Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), who has already been in an exceptionally irritable mood due to the death of her cat. She viciously and patronizingly takes out her frustrations on fellow Party Planning Committee member Phyllis, who quits the committee in frustration.
Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) decides to compete against the website to see who can make more sales. Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) keeps a running tally of reams sold, blowing an airhorn each time Dwight makes a sale. Irritated by the distraction, Jim and Pam plot a prank. They send Dwight instant messages pretending to be the company's computer system, taunting Dwight to believe it has achieved self-awareness. Dwight wins the challenge, but when he gloats to Angela about his victory, she rejects him outright and makes it clear that they are broken up for good. She also asks Pam to set her up with a single friend of hers. Pam, feeling sorry for Dwight, sends another message as the computer acknowledging him as the superior being. Andy later sets up a conference call with some of his old Cornell friends to serenade Angela with "Take a Chance on Me"; she doesn't agree to date him, but appears to be somewhat charmed by the spectacle.
Michael finally realizes that Ryan doesn't respect him, and once he gets online for the party's chat room he snaps that Dwight single-handedly outsold DMI and curses at Ryan. But his emotional reactions haven't stopped for the night: he is angered after everyone complains that he confused the office's favorite pizza place, Alfredo's Pizza Cafe (which is a real restaurant in Scranton) with a terrible pizza place, Pizza by Alfredo (which is fictional). When his coupon is then refused, he takes a stand for justice and holds the teenaged delivery driver (Kevin McHale) hostage, with both he and Dwight acting out their frustrations about Ryan and Angela, respectively. After some time, Michael realizes he is breaking the law and lets the kid go, and then heads up to crash the party in NYC and get some sushi, with Dwight joining him. They get to enjoy a little leftover food, but Michael's most cheered when one of the younger corporate workers says they liked his rant against Ryan. When Michael points out that Dwight was the one who beat the website in sales, the worker says "It was funny to see Ryan embarrassed by all that", and the two head home in good spirits.
In 1934, the researcher Maple White and his assistant Azbek discover a world populated by dinosaurs situated on a Mongolian plateau, soon after, the pair are attacked by Eudimorphodons; Azbek is killed and White survives.
White seeks out his friend, George Challenger, giving an account of his adventures, proposing a further expedition to fully explore the Mongolian plateau.
In London, Challenger organised a lecture in an attempt to convince his colleagues, Professor Summerlee and Lord Thomas, to finance the further expedition with the goal of proving dinosaurs exist on the plateau. Lord Thomas grants permission for the expedition on the condition Summerlee accompanies Challenger. Oscar Perreault, a spectator at the lecture, proposes to pay for the expedition's expenses if the scientists capture a living dinosaur, and sends his associate, John Roxton, to represent his interests. Challenger accepts the proposal.
Challenger also invites to the expedition, journalist Arthur Malone, and Maple White's daughter, Amanda.
In Mongolia, the team meets their guides, Myar and Djena. En route, their transportation suffers a breakdown, and the journey continues on foot. One of the guides is killed by a presumably prehistoric insect; however, despite misgivings, the team continues.
On reaching the foot of the plateau, Amanda is abducted by Neanderthals, prompting a search. Challenger and Roxton find Amanda suspended from a ritual framework. During the rescue, they face the Neanderthals, who they quickly defeat. The team attempts to escape the plateau in a hot air balloon. Summerlee observes nearby Quetzalcoatlus, and they attack the balloon, causing Myar to fall and an irreparable tear to the balloon, the whole team drop back to the plateau.
The team then encounters numerous challenges, including an attack from an unknown creature and an attempt by Roxton to maroon the team on the plateau.
They discover symbols on a cave wall, portraying a tribe, the ''Kerraks.'' The Kerraks interacted with prehistoric creatures and fought the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals eventually defeating the Kerraks to avoid the destruction of the 'Lost World'.
A second, larger cave is then discovered by the team, which the same one discovered by Maple White. John Roxton, in possession of a Eudimorphodon, intends to explode a dynamite charge within the cave to kill the team and escape alone, however, he is foiled by Challenger.
The team attempt to fashion a parachute using the remains of the balloon, and after suffering a further attack by the creates which inhabit the plateau, they manage to escape.
Returning to London, Challenger communicates the death of his companions to the students and, in an attempt to discourage further expeditions, he chooses to state his expedition found nothing.
In the last scenes of the film, it is revealed Malone has survived and adapted to life on the plateau.
The film begins with an elderly Paul Bultitude seeing his son, Dick, and new daughter-in-law Dulcie off after their wedding. He then directly addresses the audience, implied to be reporters, about a story he has been embarrassed to discuss for years about how he and his son have had such a strong relationship.
During the British Raj, unscrupulous Marmaduke Paradine steals the Garuda Stone, the magical eye of an Indian idol, which grants one wish to each possessor. He had been warned that the thief of the stone would have bad luck; convinced by the time he returns to England, he gives it to the recently widowed Paul, his former brother-in-law.
Paul, a wealthy stockbroker, cannot understand why his eldest son Dick is reluctant to return to boarding school after a holiday. Paul recalls the carefree days of his youth and casually wishes he could take Dick's place while holding the stone. As a result, he finds himself looking just like his son. When Dick realizes what has happened, the neglected boy uses his wish to take on his father's appearance, eager to enjoy the perks of being an adult.
Dick cheerfully sends his protesting father off to school, while he throws parties, flirts with Alice, the maid, and even carries on with his father's girlfriend Fanny Verlayne. He also enters into a partnership in a new horseless carriage business, becoming even wealthier. Meanwhile, Paul's pompous behavior soon antagonizes his classmates and the disciplinarian headmaster, Dr. Grimstone. He also puzzles Grimstone's daughter Dulcie, who cannot understand why her once-attentive beau seems to be smitten with a much-older Fanny.
Paul escapes the bullying at school and returns home, only to overhear Paradine tell Fanny how he plans to trick Dick into signing away control of his horseless carriage company. He pleads with his son to restore them back to their proper bodies, but Dick cannot remember where he left the stone. Paul finally finds it in the hands of his younger son Rollie and gets him to wish things back. Chastened by his experience, Paul becomes more understanding of Dick's situation and has Dr. Grimstone, who had followed him home, removed from the premises.
Back in the present, Paul explains that Fanny left him and that two years prior, Dr. Grimstone died of a heart attack while beating a boy. He is forever remembered for being humiliated by the Bultitudes. The Garuda Stone was stolen by an eager thief who accidentally wished himself away from the police to the North Pole. Paul warns the audience that if they were to find a green-grey stone with a handle on it to not make any wishes. Being lonely, he ended up marrying Alice the maid who gives him an earful for wasting his time telling the story.
A group of criminals wait until a wealthy man leaves to break into his house and threaten his wife and daughters. The wife and daughters take refuge inside one of the rooms, but the thieves break in. The father finds out what is happening and runs back home to try to save his family.
Domestic cat Ashley is transported, or "magicked", into the kingdom of Catatonia, a world completely run by anthropomorphic cats, where he is mistaken for a spy and is thrown into the dungeon of the royal castle. He escapes with the uncouth scrapper Bishop and together with their self-proclaimed hostage Tobias they seek an audience with the princess Tabitha hoping to resolve Ashley's predicament.
The four set out to seek for the ruins of Cataract. Along their journey they meet (or fight) a band of pi-rats, the giant hariry-legged giant spider Catawampus, the Felines for Freedom fighting force, Drongoon the scariest scaliest son-of-a-dragon that ever breathe fire, and Ethel the alchemist.
Finally they reach the ruins of Cataract and discover the lost city of Catlantis, a subterrainian treasure chest of ancient relics and long-forgotten magic and the inner sanctum of the immortal Eternity, the last of the ancient one.
A senior Royal Air Force officer is at a dinner party in Hong Kong at which one of those present, a naval commander, talks about a dream he had in which the air marshal and seven companions were flying in a Dakota which crashed on a rocky shore. The air marshal is due to fly to Tokyo the following day, but is not disturbed because many of the details differ from his planned voyage, including that a different aircraft is scheduled: a Consolidated Liberator.
However, when problems ground the planned aircraft, it is replaced by a Douglas Dakota - like the one in the dream. Then a number of additional passengers arrive, making up the total number of people on board to 13 (eight passengers and five crew members) - the same number of people as in the dream. As the flight proceeds, other circumstances occur so that eventually most of the details correspond to the dream. The Dakota has to climb to avoid bad weather, but then starts to ice up. The pilot puts it into a steep dive to shake off the ice and unfreeze the undercarriage. This succeeds, but they are now in heavy cloud and the plane has lost its guidance and radio. They believe they are heading for Yokohama Bay in Japan, but having to fly on visuals alone they need to land before sunset.
They get lost and fly around in circles. Events increasingly unfold just as in the dream, and the pilot, who knows of the premonition, starts to panic. The senior officer demands that they ditch in the sea, but the pilot wants to attempt an emergency landing on the beach. Then they run out of fuel and glide towards the mountains, but, instead of crashing as in the dream, the pilot manages to bring the aircraft down in a controlled emergency landing in deep snow on a flat section of the mountainside and all on board survive.
A businessman dies in an elevator in such a way that it seems as though no one could have committed the murder.
''Fatal Descent'' by J.D. Carr and Cecil Street (writing as Carter Dickson and John Rhode)
Carr and Street "are such expert mystery-mongers that their collaboration could scarcely fail to produce something extra special in the bafflement line. ''Fatal Descent'' is all of that." - ''The New York Times''
"London publisher shot in automatic elevator. Dr. Horatio Glass and Insp. Hornbeam pool wits - and humor - to spot the killer. Neat variation of good old 'hermetically sealed room' problem, with two authors - and their sleuths - working beautifully in harness. Verdict: Top Drawer" - ''The Saturday Review''.
A seemingly impossible murder in a private elevator draws two sleuths to the case. Inspector Hornbeam and Dr. Horatio Glass are at odds from the beginning, each dismissive of the other's theories, thus creating an atmosphere as much of competition as cooperation.
From the novel:
The elevator was perhaps six feet square by eight feet high, with steel walls painted to imitate bronze. Sir Ernest Tallant sat very quietly in the rear right-hand corner. His legs were outthrust stiffly, his back bent a little forward; and the brim of the rakish gray hat shaded his face. He might have been a grotesque parody of Little Jack Horner, if it had not been for the widening bloodstains on the left breast of his jacket. His umbrella lay beside him, also looking oddly childish like his posture. Under each roof corner of the elevator there was a tiny electric light; these four little lights illumined even the wrinkles on the backs of the man's hands, and glittered on the pieces of broken glass.
Category:1939 American novels Category:1939 British novels Category:British detective novels Category:American detective novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Novels by Cecil Street Category:Locked-room mysteries Category:Heinemann (publisher) books
Sir Henry Merrivale must solve an impossible crime when a man dies in his home in such a way that it seems no one could have been sufficiently close to him to have committed murder, and it is unclear exactly how or why he died.
The circumstances are complicated by the presence of the victim's wife, a writer of clever detective stories, the disappearance of a book in which she jots down unusual methods of murder, and a strange house guest who believes that he can kill people at a distance by the use of something he calls "Teleforce".
Category:1939 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:William Morrow and Company books Category:Heinemann (publisher) books
Monica Stanton, the pretty and rather naive daughter of a British clergyman, is the author of a surprisingly scandalous best-seller. As a result, she has been hired as a script writer for Albion Films, working with William Cartwright, a script writer from the world of detective novels.
However, she is not going to be working on her own novel—she is helping Cartwright adapt his latest detective novel, ''And So to Murder''. Tilly Parsons is a dumpy, bustling chain-smoking American woman in her early fifties who is the highest-paid scenario writer in the world, imported from Hollywood at great expense to adapt "punch up" the screenplay of another Albion film.
Glamorous movie star Frances Fleur, whose punctilious husband Kurt von Gagern selects all her parts, will be the star. Against the backdrop of Pineham Studios and Fleur's current movie, a series of mysterious attempts on Monica's life begin—they are exceptionally nasty and completely inexplicable, involving sulphuric acid.
When someone poisons Tilly Parsons' cigarette and nearly kills her, Sir Henry Merrivale helps Chief Inspector Masters to bring home the crimes to their unlikely perpetrator.
Category:1940 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Novels about writers Category:William Morrow and Company books
Nine oddly-assorted passengers aboard the ''S.S. Edwardic'' are crossing the Atlantic during World War II, with the constant threat of attack by German submarines. When one passenger is murdered, apparently for a military secret, Sir Henry Merrivale must solve the mystery. But can he contend with the fact that the killer's fingerprint doesn't match anybody on the ship?
Two people kidnap the daughter of a famous lawyer. They want money to give her back, but it's not just money they want. It's revenge.
On New Year's Eve 1968, a lesbian couple, named Brooke and Rhea, encounter the Creator of the Universe while driving on the Pearblossom Highway as they leave a party, when Brooke killed a rapist. The women are laid to rest for 40 years and awake New Year's Day 2009... as vampires. The film follows them as they are meant to lead a life of greater purpose.
Instructed to devour evil, and thereby gain eternal life, the story portrays their first 24 hours of survival as these reborn creatures. Brooke starts to go on a killing spree, to prove herself loyal to the Creator, while Rhea tries to put a stop to the chaos that Brooke started after she kills a sheriff, his deputies, a married couple on vacation, and a hitch-hiker.
The film ends with Rhea killing Brooke by impaling her with a stop sign, when Brooke refused to devour evil souls but to devour good souls. After telling her story to Lizzy, Rhea tries to start her life all over again, this time, as a vampire, not knowing that Brooke is still alive, presumably plotting her revenge.
Evelyn Hall is an English professor from the University of California. She arrives in Reno to establish a six-week residency to attain a quick divorce, which Nevada was known for at that time. After being married for 15 years, she is overwhelmed with guilt for feeling as if she is ruining her husband's mental health. While in Reno, she stays in the guest home of Frances Packer with other women awaiting their divorces. Frances also lives with Walter, her 18-year-old son and her late lover's 25-year-old daughter, Ann Childs. Evelyn and Ann are startled at how alike they are in appearance, despite their 15-year age difference.
Ann works as a change operator at a local casino and as a relatively successful cartoonist. Ann is revealed to reject significant relationships in her life, and although she is romantic with both men and women, she refuses to become attached to anyone. She is ending a relationship with her boss, Bill, that was significant enough to make her friends believe they were to be married. Ann's best friend is Silver, who works with her at the casino as a dealer, and is also a sometime lover.
Evelyn and Ann begin a friendship that evolves into a romantic relationship in which Evelyn must deal with her guilt after being asked by her husband's doctor to divorce him for his own good. Despite the symptoms of his deep and chronic depression, Evelyn takes the responsibility for the failure of the marriage and his depression upon herself, but after divulging how caustic she is to Ann, she is relieved to realize that the responsibility is not hers to take. Ann must subsequently deal with committing to a relationship wholeheartedly. Being employed by the casino, she is rather well-paid, but is stifled within the atmosphere there, though she continues to work despite her abilities.
Ann is fired from the casino after a slot machine is stolen on her shift when she is distracted by Evelyn being at the casino. Ann's previous split with Bill is not amicable, despite Bill beginning to date another of his employees. There is some suspicion that Bill is spying on Ann and Evelyn, and he threatens to contact Evelyn's husband's lawyer to notify him of Ann and Evelyn's lesbian relationship, but the divorce is finalized without his interference. Immediately after the final hearing, Evelyn and Ann decide to live together "for a while."
Tommy McGann (Scott) gets back together with his ex-girlfriend, after breaking up with her recently. But later on, the two fight, in which Tommy leaves the apartment as he pushes her out of his way. He returns later to find her dead, realising he pushed her onto the table where she fell and cracked her head. Tommy drives the body out into the woods and buries it there. Soon after, Tommy gets a new girlfriend, who secretly knows about what happened to his old girlfriend.
Toby and Les meet when Toby interrupts a crowd of paparazzi waiting to take pictures of pop diva K'harma Leeds (Allison Lohman). Les requests that Toby go get coffee for himself and two of his colleagues. On his way back with coffee, Toby is stopped by K'harma's agents from the inside of a building and asked to see if the photographers are looking.
After the photographers look away, the agents guide K'harma past Toby towards a car. The photographers catch on and rush towards the car, colliding with Toby and spilling some coffee. Later that night, Toby approaches Les outside his apartment, scaring him. He claims that he was bringing his change back from the coffee, but eventually asks to stay with him that night, saying that he is really cold and doesn't have a place to stay. The next day, Toby offers to be his assistant for free, which Les accepts. Later that night, after being thrown out of a party, Les and Toby overhear a celebrity's agent talking about where his client is getting surgery done on his penis. Toby writes down the address, and they show up there the next day. After waiting for quite some time, Les gets a shot of the celebrity, referring to it as "the shot heard 'round the world", although he only gets $700 for it.
Les offers to take Toby's headshots free of charge to help him start out his dream of being an actor. Eventually, their partnership begins to wear thin after K'harma takes Toby backstage without Les, angering the latter. The next day, at Les' apartment, Toby gets a call from K'harma, who invites him to her birthday party. Toby agrees on the condition that he can bring Les along, making it up to him.
At the party, however, even after agreeing not to do so, Les takes pictures of K'harma with Elvis Costello, getting him and Toby thrown out. Toby is extremely angry at Les, who feigns dropping his camera's memory card into a cup of coffee (unbeknownst to Toby, Les ejects his camera's battery instead) and offers to print up Toby's headshots and show them to a few people. The next day, Toby says his stomach hurts and that he cannot go with Les. After he leaves, Toby tries to leave after him only to find that Les has locked him in. He then walks into Les' room and gets on his computer, discovering the pictures of K'harma and Elvis Costello on it. Feeling betrayed, Toby escapes by way of unhinging the apartment door.
Later, we see Toby walking through the park, seemingly homeless again, until a couple nears him. He runs up to the man, and stabs him in the stomach. The woman tries to talk him out of killing her, but forgets her line. A bell rings, and it is revealed that the park is a film set, and Toby is the lead character. Les repeatedly tries to talk to Toby by calling Toby's agent until Toby finally speaks to him. Les offers to apologize over coffee, but Toby declines. Soon, Toby professes his love for K'harma on film, which skyrockets his popularity.
A jealous Les soon finds a vintage camera in his apartment, which his father gave to him. The camera is actually a hidden gun, and he resolves to murder Toby with it. At the premiere of Toby's latest film, he walks down the red carpet with K'harma. Les shows up, and raises the camera, getting ready to shoot him, but then sees him kissing K'harma, and stops. As he is trying to leave the crowd, Toby sees him and asks him to come back. They shake hands, and Les takes his picture up close. Les tells Toby to go, and Toby walks down the red carpet into the premiere. Les, although disappointed that recognition still eludes him, is proud of Toby's fame.
After the credits, Les is shown on a Hollywood talk show discussing his picture of Toby, which the interviewer refers to as "the shot heard 'round the world".
The film begins with Mr. Flip, played by Ben Turpin, in a general store, in which he flirts with the woman behind the counter, for which he is carried out of the building on a Hand truck. He travels to a manicurist where he eventually gets the pointed end of a pair of scissors, sticking up out of his chair, when he sits down. He then meets a telephone operator at her desk, he calls her on a nearby phone, and she gets revenge by shocking him with electricity, through the phone, by turning her manual generator. Next at a barber shop two women workers, get even with him by pasting his face with shaving cream and tossing him out of the building. At a bar he flirts with the bar attendants, until he gets sprayed with seltzer, by them and another patron. As the film's climax he enters a bakery and gets a pie in the face by the assistant.
''Sykes and a Big, Big Show'' features situation sketches and musical numbers, performed by the singer Ian Wallace.
On a beautiful summer day a father and mother take their daughter Dollie on an outing to the river. The mother refuses to buy a passing peddler's wares. The peddler tries to rob the mother, but the father rushes up and drives away the ruffian. The peddler then returns to his nearby camp and devises a plan. He and his female companion return and kidnap Dollie while her parents are distracted. A rescue party is quickly organized to find the girl, but the peddler and companion take her back their camp. They gag Dollie, put her in a wooden barrel, and seal its top before the rescue party arrives at the camp. Once the searchers leave, the peddler and his companion escape in their wagon. As the wagon crosses the river, the barrel falls into the water. Still sealed in the container, Dollie is swept downstream in dangerous currents. Soon a boy who is fishing along the riverbank finds the barrel, calls out to Dollie's frantic father to help him hoist it out of the water. The father unseals the barrel and daughter and parent are happily reunited.
The actor who annually plays Sinterklaas dies just before the arrival of the television crew. A mysterious new Sinterklaas named Jan (Michiel Romeyn) replaces him. Shortly after his public appearance, he rescues a child who fell into a canal, but runs away when people realize what happened and begin crowding around. He is found by the production assistant of the television show next day, and agrees to appear in television shows, when he is informed that playing Sinterklaas is a paying job. He becomes quite popular on television because of his alternative style.
Klaasje (Wendy van Dijk) has left her husband Dennis (Peter Paul Muller), because he cheated on her with a young and attractive elementary school teacher (Chantal Janzen). Dennis wants her back, but his chances seem to plummet when she has a fling with a 16-year-old boy (Valerio Zeno), whom she meets at her father's funeral (her father was the previous "Sinterklaas" actor).
Klaasje's best friend Simone (Anneke Blok), the mother of the girl rescued by Sinterklaas, is the linchpin in her family. Her husband Ted (Thomas Acda) often feels redundant. He loses his job, but he is afraid to tell his domineering wife.
Swimming instructor Victor (Paul de Leeuw) looks forward to marrying his love Kees (Daan Schuurmans), an undertaker. But Kees has doubts and fears about committed life. During the marriage ceremony, he walks away without saying ‘yes’.
Victor's sister Kiki (Carice van Houten), a saleswoman at the jewellery section of De Bijenkorf, has always dreamt of a Prince Charming. During the arrival of Sinterklaas, Kiki almost runs into Crown Prince Valentine (Jeroen Spitzenberger), while driving a horse carriage. Kiki is dressed as a campaign gift and the prince takes her in his arms as she tries to get down from the carriage. Prince Valentine falls in love with her. Next morning he visits De Bijenkorf to see Kiki. But Kiki desists from seeing him, and rejects him on the grounds that he will not take her seriously. To still come into contact with her, Prince Valentine dresses as Black Peter, does antics at De Bijenkorf for work. In the evening, he (dressed as Black Pieter) offers to drop her home and ends up having a wild night with her. The next morning, however, he sneaks away through the window without saying goodbye to Kiki. Kiki follows him to his hotel and confronts him. It turns out that Kiki knew all along that Prince Valentine was playing Black Pieter but just wanted to see how far he would go for her. They end up kissing each other.
On the night of Sinterklaas Eve, Jan again runs away before his appearance in the show. He is spotted by Ted who recognizes him to be his child's rescuer. Ted invites Jan, dressed as Sinterklaas, to his house for a beer. The neighborhood children gradually flock to his house, as word spreads of Jan's presence. The television crew also eventually comes there. During his TV interview, he speaks candidly about his life and his regrets. He also tells that the name of his son is Kees and that he abandoned his family when his son was three years old. The 5 December Special TV show comes to an end and Sinterklaas is seen walking out onto the snowy street. As he walks and looks around, all the couples are shown one by one to have found out what to do with their lives. Having found his father on the television show, Kees drives with Victor to meet him. They come across him in the middle of the road as they were driving. The movie ends with Jan, dressed as Sinterklaas, embracing Kees.
The short film is about a love triangle, in which a young lady discovers that she is in love with her boyfriend's best friend after her sweetheart dies at sea.
A mysterious millionaire, Raffles Haw, comes to reside in Tamfield in Staffordshire. Even before he arrives, people start gossiping about him. As his house is being constructed, people wonder at the number of workers, their speed, and the complete disregard for the amount of money spent. When Haw arrives, he acquaints himself with the McIntyre family, which consists of Robert, his sister Laura, and their father. McIntyre senior had been a prosperous gun merchant, but has gone bankrupt and lost his sanity. Laura is engaged to Hector, the son of the vicar, Mr. Spurling. Hector is a sailor who is summoned for Naval duty at the beginning of the novel.
Disregarding McIntyre senior as a greedy beggar, Haw sets about to alleviate the misery of the people of Tamfield through the agency of the McIntyre siblings and Mr. Spurling. He saves many families and businesses with his timely financial succour. He has limitless funds, due to having discovered a process to turn lead into gold.
With the passage of time, he becomes disillusioned because his philanthropic activities—though they improve the situations of the recipients—don't improve the recipients themselves. Instead of becoming better citizens, most become parasites reliant upon alms from the millionaire. Despondent, he seeks the counsel of his fiancée, Laura McIntyre, the one person he supposes to be true to him. Unbeknownst to him, Laura has accepted his proposal of marriage without ending her previous engagement to Hector Spurling. As Raffles and Laura are talking, Hector enters the room, his service having ended earlier than expected. When Raffles discovers Laura and Hector are still engaged, he is heartbroken. The fallen millionaire locks himself in his laboratory, destroys his equipment and his immense fortune, and later is found dead. The process that he used to build his fortune is unrecoverable.
''True Heart'' tells the story of a brother and sister who survive a plane crash that kills the pilot and their guardian and strands them in British Columbia's wilderness. They are rescued by an Aboriginal Canadian man named Khonanesta (August Schellenberg) who claims there are "bad people" (a group of bear poachers) in the forest and tells them they must get away. He leads them on a trip through the wilderness away from poachers to find their parents.
The children are eventually reunited with their parents (Michael Gross and Dey Young), who then mistakenly accuse Khonanesta of being a poacher. The man refers to "Grandfather" a bear, as a member of his people. The children clear him of the accusation.
Ultraman Nice arrives from the planet TOY-1 in a series of infomercials (1-minute toy commercials) presented during the 1999 Japanese reruns of ''Ultraman Tiga''. The 1-minute spots, advertising the wide variety of Bandai Ultraman toys, actually do have a storyline, along with some surprise guests.
Throughout the series, Alien Zagon and his monsters attacked Earth for the Bandai figures. However, at each attack, Ultraman Nice managed to defeat them and, at the end of the series, the aliens were finally vanquished.
A woodsman leaves a hut followed by a woman with their baby. Nearby some men chop down a tree. The baby is left outside the hut, but an eagle flies away with it. The mother comes outside and sees what has happened. She picks up a gun and aims, but decides against it. She tells the woodsmen and they get to the cliff where the eagle's nest is. One of the men is let down on a rope to the nest. However the eagle attacks, but he kills it and kicks it off the cliff. He then picks up the baby, is hoisted up the cliff, and returns the baby to its mother.
Ramanujan first attracted Hardy's attention by writing him a letter in which he proved that :
where the notation indicates a Ramanujan summation.
Hardy realised that this confusing presentation of the series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ was an application of the Riemann zeta function with . Ramanujan's work became one of the foundations of bosonic string theory, a precursor of modern string theory.
The play includes live ''tabla'' playing, which "morphs seductively into pure mathematics", as the ''Financial Times'' review put it, "especially when … its rhythms shade into chants of number sequences reminiscent of the libretto to Philip Glass's ''Einstein on the Beach''. One can hear the beauty of the sequences without grasping the rules that govern them."
The play has two strands of narrative and presents strong visual and physical theatre. It interweaves the passionate intellectual relationship between Hardy and the more intuitive Ramanujan, with the present-day story of Ruth, an English maths lecturer, and her husband, Al Cooper, a globe-trotting Indian-American businessman "to illuminate the beauty and the patterns — the mystery — of mathematics." It also explores the nature and spirituality of infinity, and explores several aspects of the Indian diaspora.
Ruth travels to India in Ramanujan's footsteps and eventually dies. Al follows, to get closer to her ghost. Meanwhile, 100 years previously, Ramanujan is travelling in the opposite direction, making the trip to England, where he works with Hardy on maths and contracts tuberculosis. Partition (as a maths concept) is explored, and diverging and converging series in mathematics become a metaphor for the Indian diaspora.
The plot centred on American pop singer Kate Lawrence (Branigan) wanting to embark on a career as an actress. The only job she can find is playing the lead role in an Australian theatre production of ''The Green Year Passes''. The hiring of an American causes conflict with her Australian cast and crew, and the chagrin of theatre critic Robert Landau with whom she has an affair.
During the American Civil War a young soldier loses his nerve in battle and runs away to his home to hide. There his sister puts on his uniform, takes her brother's place in the battle, and is killed. Their mother, not wanting the shameful truth to become known, closes all the shutters (hence the film's title) and keeps her son's presence a secret for many years, until two boyhood chums stumble upon the truth.
José Sirgado (Eusebio Poncela) is a frustrated horror film director and heroin addict in a tumultuous relationship with Ana Turner (Cecilia Roth). The cousin of his ex-girlfriend Marta, Pedro (Will More), sends him a reel of film, an audio cassette, and the key to his apartment despite the fact that the two have only met twice. As José and Ana listen, the audio cassette narrates the two occasions when the two men met. These occasions are shown in flashback. The first occasion was when José came with Marta to scout the family's home for a filming location. Pedro, an obsessive maker of homemade films, snorts heroin with José and asks if he knows how to film time-lapse photography. Pedro shows José his home movies, which he has never shown to anyone. Later, José, mails Pedro an interval timer that would control his camera's shutter, shooting at specified intervals.
The second occasion the two men met, José returns with Ana to watch Pedro's films, and Pedro gives Ana a Betty Boop doll that had apparently been hers as a child. Later, José and Ana, remembering this visit, decide to watch the mysterious reel of film while listening to the rest of the audio cassette. On the tape, Pedro describes his life after receiving the interval timer. Pedro explains that one night after falling asleep he discovered that his camera turned on by itself and filmed him. After developing the film, he discovers a single red frame in which the camera has lost the image of his sleeping. Curious, Pedro allows the camera to film him multiple times as he sleeps, only to discover that the red still frames are growing in number. Pedro discovers that if he does not film himself during sleep, he experiences withdrawal symptoms, similar to heroin withdrawal. Upon waking from these filmed sleeps, Pedro feels revitalized, "enraptured", and becomes convinced that whatever happens during the red portion of the film is responsible for this feeling. Unsure of what the frames mean, he asks his cousin Marta to watch him as he sleeps. As she watches one of his films, the camera moves on its own to face Marta, who disappears. When he only has one more frame left before the entire film becomes red.
Pedro sends the film, his audio instructions, and the key to José, instructing him to come to his apartment and develop the final film. José complies, finding the apartment empty, and discovers the film to be entirely red except for one frame of Pedro's face. The image begins to move, with Pedro gesturing towards the bed with a subtle smile, implying that José should also let the camera film him as he sleeps; the image becomes blurred and then changes into José's own face, which makes a similar gesture. The final scene of the film finds José getting into Pedro's bed to experience the same "rapture" as his friend.
The film starts with intertitles that reads “three fishers went sailing to the west, away to the west as the sun went down. Each thought on the woman who loved him best, and the women stood watching them out of the town.” A young married couple are enjoying life by going to the beach. They run into workers on the beach and they all seem in awe of the happy couple. The young couple goes back to the beach but the wife watches her husband go out to sea on a boat. She waves her husband and the other sailors bye and waits for them to return. Days go by and the wife and other wives go back to the beach to see if they’ve returned. Three corpses are laying in the ocean and brought back to land. The wife brings her baby back to the same beach waiting for her husband to return. Years go by and the baby is now a child and they still go to the beach waiting for his return. The daughter gets married to a young fisherman. The wife now old goes to the beach and just weeps. The couple reunites in the end after years.
Emma Norman (Odette Yustman), an engaged school teacher, shows up on a scandalous video detailing her questionable antics and behavior on a trip to the beach with friends. Videotaped while playfully faking an orgasm, the shots of Emma's bobbing head and moans are then spliced together with raw pornographic footage. After the new footage is heavily circulated over the Internet, Emma comes back home to find her friends ostracizing her and her fiancé doubting her fidelity. Once the school she works for fires her, Emma sinks into a major depression. Adding to her worries, she soon discovers that she is also the subject of stalking. Emma then becomes determined to track down the people who ruined her life.
''Ramona'' chronicles the romance between Ramona (Mary Pickford), a Spanish orphan from the prestigious Moreno family, and Alessandro (Henry B. Walthall), an Indian who appears on her family's ranch one day. Ramona's foster mother's son Felipe (Francis J. Grandon) proclaims his love for Ramona, but she rejects him because she has fallen for Alessandro. They fall deeply in love, yet their desire to wed is denied by Ramona's foster mother, who reacts by exiling Alessandro from her ranch. He returns to his village, only to find that it has been demolished by white men. Meanwhile, Ramona is informed that she also has "Indian blood", which leads her to abandon everything she has to be with Alessandro. They marry, and live among the wreckage of Alessandro's devastated village. They have a child together and live at peace until the white men come to force them from their home as they claim the land. Their baby perishes, which adds to Alessandro's mental deterioration. Alessandro is then killed by the white men. A devastated Ramona then returns with Felipe back to her family back on the ranch.
In 1992, Allen Schindler, a 22-year-old navy sailor is brutally beaten to death so bad that his body could be identified only by tattoos. The murder took place in a public restroom while Schindler was on leave in Sasebo, Japan. Schindler's mother Dorothy Hajdys, becomes distraught when the representatives of the Navy refuse to provide her with full details on her son's murder. However, a reporter from the ''Pacific Stars and Stripes'' informs Dorothy that her son was gay, which Hajdys didn't know, and that this might have been the reason he was killed. But if the Navy has anything to say about it, the entire matter will be swept under the rug. A deal has already been cut with an accomplice, who after a secret court-martial, received a four-month jail sentence, of which he served 78 days. Radicalized by the incident and its aftermath, Dorothy joins forces with a journalist to force the Navy to reveal the whole truth.
''Dr. Steve-O'' was a reality TV show where Steve-O acts as a doctor, to help males overcome their fears, thus the headline created by Steve-O, "Turning wussies into men." In every episode, Dr. Steve-O helps three different men, and makes them complete three challenges to overcome their fears.
A recently released psychiatric patient named Tom Sykes creates a home for himself in the attic of the Dreyer family's newly built house. He uses electronic devices to spy on them. Tom murders the Dreyer's beloved dog Rudolph, when Rudolph attempts to defend his family against the titular hider. After that, Tom starts to focus his attention on the mom, Julie, going so far as to watch her skinny dip in the pool. He interferes secretly in the relationship between Julie and her husband, Phil, planting bogus evidence of secret love affairs. He befriends the Dreyers' son Neal and teaches him fighting techniques. After two explosive arguments, Phil leaves the house and moves into a hotel. Seeing this as an opportunity, Sykes pretends to be a visitor who lives a couple of blocks over. His attempt to insinuate himself into their lives works at first, although the creepy neighbor Gene is the only one who distrusts him. Sykes murders two people who had accidentally discovered his bizarre goings-on and finally Julie becomes sufficiently suspicious to reject his advances. Tom loses it, and he tries to kill Julie. Phil shows up and tries to defend Julie, but Tom bludgeons him, breaking his leg. Julie gets a gun and shoots Tom in the chest, apparently killing him. The police and the ambulance arrive, summoned by Gene. Tom, still alive, awakes and desperately tries to kill both Julie and himself, but is once more thwarted when the police shoot him dead, saving Julie. Phil, who is alive but barely conscious, is taken to the hospital while Tom's body is taken to the morgue.
One after another of a company of carrier pigeons fall prey to the seductive wiles of "Queen of the Spies": Hatta Mari. The alarm is raised at pigeon headquarters when Pigeon 13 (a Mortimer Snerd-esque yokel similar to Beaky Buzzard) goes AWOL with the female Nazi spy bird. He reveals all his secrets (after she slipped him a mickey). In shame, Pigeon 13 departs to commit suicide, although after an off-screen gunshot is heard, he briefly returns to note "I ''missed''."
Later, self-described woman-hater Daffy Duck volunteers for the next mission. Hatta tries to seduce him by hiking up her skirt to reveal her shapely leg and kissing him full on the lips twice. The first kiss electrocutes Daffy and melts him like butter, but the second kiss electrocutes Hatta Mari having the same effect on her. Daffy ultimately resists her charms, but swallows his secret message when the temptress corners him. After a frenetic battle, she x-rays Daffy and broadcasts the supposed secret ("Hitler is a stinker") to Hitler himself. Outraged, Hitler declares "Dat ist no military secret!" Goebbels and Göring concur -- "Ja. Everybody knows ''dat''!"—then shoot themselves in the heads after receiving Hitler's angry glare. Daffy Duck then concludes the cartoon by saying "They lose more darn ‘Nutzis’ that way," and then going into one of his famous bouncing fits whooping.
After Hollis Woods (Ferland), a young girl with a talent for art, ran away from her last foster parents, she is placed in a new foster home with a retired art teacher, Josie Cahill (Spacek). Josie is very caring and a talented retired artist, and her life could be told in her wood work, but as she's an elderly woman, she's beginning to lose her memory (Alzheimer's disease). Over time, Hollis helps Josie significantly, and she begins to feel what it is like to be needed. Life with Josie reminds Hollis of life with the Regans, the family she stayed with during the summer whom she loved, and she relives her memories through the drawings she has made throughout her life.
When their money scam goes into the ground, two would-be thieves (Jason Lee and Crispin Glover) turn to kidnapping in an attempt to blackmail their target.
Villiers opens the novel with his main character, a fictionalized Thomas Edison, contemplating the effects of his inventions on the world and the tragedy that they were not available until he invented them. Interrupted in his reverie, Edison receives a message from his friend Lord Ewald, who saved his life some years before and to whom he feels indebted.
When Ewald calls, he reveals that he is close to suicide because of his fiancée, Miss Alicia Clary. Alicia is described as being physically perfect but emotionally and intellectually empty. She will say whatever she believes others want to hear. Far from having any ambition or goals of her own, she lives her life based on what she believes is expected of her. Ewald describes his frustration with the disparity between her appearance and her self and confides that though he can have no other, she is so hopeless that he has resolved to kill himself.
Edison replies by offering to construct for Ewald a machine-woman in the form of Alicia but without any of her bothersome personality. He shows Ewald the prototype of the Android, named Hadaly, and Ewald is intrigued and accepts Edison's offer. Edison reveals that he has invited Alicia to his residence at Menlo Park in order to set the process in motion. He then explains to the still somewhat doubtful Ewald how he will interact with the Android and how natural it will all feel.
Ewald then presses Edison to tell him why he created Hadaly in the first place. Edison relates a long story about Mr. Edward Anderson who was tempted into infidelity by a young woman named Miss Evelyn. His indiscretion, brought about by the guile of Miss Evelyn, ruins his life completely. Edison then says that he tracked down Miss Evelyn only to discover that she was not as she appeared, rather she was horribly ugly and her beauty was entirely the work of cosmetics, wigs, and other accessories. Edison created Hadaly in an effort to overcome the flaws and artificiality of real women and create a perfect and natural woman who could bring a man true happiness. Edison then takes Ewald back to Hadaly and explains to him the exact mechanical details of her functioning: how she moves and talks and breathes and bathes, all the while explaining how natural and normal Hadaly's robotic needs are, comparing them to similar human actions and functions.
After the details of the android's functioning and construction are covered, Alicia arrives and is escorted in. Edison convinces her that she is being considered for an important theater role. Over the course of the next weeks, she poses for Edison and her exact physical likeness is duplicated and recordings of her voice are made. Eventually, Edison sends Alicia away and introduces Ewald to his artificial Alicia without revealing that it is not the real thing. Ewald is very taken with her and she secretly reveals to him that she is in fact not simply an Android but has been supernaturally endowed with the spirit of Sowana, Edison's mystical assistant. Ewald does not reveal this fact to Edison but instead leaves with Hadaly-Alicia-Sowana. However, before he can reach home to his new life with his new lover, Ewald's ship sinks and the Android, who was traveling with the cargo, is destroyed.
The story of ''Days of Ruin'' is unconnected to the stories of previous games. Almost 90% of humanity has been killed off following devastating meteor strikes which have destroyed much of civilization and caused a massive dust cloud to blot out the sun, preventing photosynthesis and thereby preventing the growing of crops. Scattered survivors pick through the wreckage, and the remnants of several military superpowers patrol the ravaged landscape, some factions protecting the innocent while the others prey upon them.
Following the disaster, which obliterated much of the warring nations of Rubinelle and Lazuria, a young cadet from the Rubinelle military academy named Will escapes the ruins of the academy's mess hall and is confronted by The Beast, a former sergeant gone rogue who leads a small band of raiders. Will is rescued by Brenner and Lin of Rubinelle's 12th Battalion (nicknamed "Brenner's Wolves"), and takes on the group's cause of saving as many survivors of the meteor strikes as possible. During a search, Will discovers a mysterious amnesiac who does not remember her own name, but somehow knows detailed military information. Will later names her Isabella, and she becomes a vital part of the battalion as they put an end to the Beast's reign of terror.
One year after the meteor strikes, the 12th Battalion comes into contact with the New Rubinelle Army, and learns of the war raging between the Lazurian Army and the NRA. Brenner reluctantly sides with Greyfield, leader of the NRA, and advances on the Lazurian force, eventually defeating them at Fort Lazuria. Distraught by the ruthless execution of the Lazurian commander, Forsythe, Brenner and the 12th Battalion break the Lazurian prisoners out of an NRA internment camp before they can be executed. While the group escapes, Brenner stays behind and hides in an abandoned city to buy them some time. An infuriated Greyfield orders the use of a new weapon which completely destroys the city, killing Brenner and the NRA troops searching for him. Lin later leads a force against Greyfield, preventing the launch of a wave of deadly Caulder missiles and defeating the NRA once and for all. In the process, Lin personally shoots and kills Greyfield, avenging Brenner's death.
The 12th Battalion is unexpectedly attacked soon after by Intelligent Defense Systems, a private military contractor that had secretly supported first the Lazurians, then the NRA by supplying them with weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Caulder, leader of IDS, had taken advantage of the world's devastation to carry out horrific biological and psychological experiments that he would have been unable to undertake otherwise, such as creating and spreading a terrible new disease called the Creeper, which causes flowers to bloom from infected individuals, for the sole purpose of studying the survivor's reactions. Despite numerous demoralizing attacks by IDS and its massive bomber, The Great Owl, the battalion survives and infiltrates and brings down The Great Owl, eventually pursuing Caulder to his main laboratory and fortress, The Nest. In the end, Caulder is killed in the destruction of his lab, and the war is finally brought to an end. One year later, the village of New Hope, founded by the 12th Battalion after the conflict, begins to flourish in the new-found peace. The sun is seen rising above the nearby hills for the first time since the meteor strikes, giving hope of a brighter future.
Dorky Andy (Jake Mosser), flamboyant Nico (Jonah Blechman), jock Jarod (Jimmy Clabots), and nerdy Griff (Aaron Michael Davies) reunite in Fort Lauderdale for spring break. The plot revolves around a contest—"Gays Gone Wild!"—to see who can have sex with the most guys during the duration of spring break. The winner will be crowned "Miss Gay Gone Wild".
While Andy seems to have no problem getting men to have sex with him, Nico has not been attracting men at all. He has a frequent fantasy sequence involving a merman (Brent Corrigan). Andy is troubled, however, when he falls hard for Luis (Euriamis Losada), a charming, handsome virgin. Jarod and Griff are also having problems, as they have become a couple, and are conflicted over whether to enter the contest. Meanwhile, a trio by the name of Jasper (Will Wikle, Brand Lim, and Isaac Webster) seem to be eager to win the contest by any means.
In a subplot, the guys meet Perez Hilton on an airplane. Hilton pursues a young priest to the bathroom; he hits his head and becomes a religious zealot trying to suppress the gay activities. He is later hit in the head again and changes back.
Daisuke Senzaki was originally a diet food salesman. Due to his love of the sea, he join the Japan Coast Guard. In order to be able to work at the forefront, he enters a 50-day training course for at the Japan Coast Guard Academy in Kure, Hiroshima, and officially starts his career. Within 50 days, Senzaki endures training and hardships with candidates sent from other departments, and became partners with fellow cadet Kudo Hajime. For Senzaki, who has diving qualifications, makes it an easy job for him; but Kudo is a relatively new team member, which causes their partnership to be rather weak and for the duo to excel their worst during the training sessions.
Although Senzaki feels angry from time to time, he understands that as a diver, he must be integrated with his partner. On an accident mission to save people kills Kudo and causes Senzaki to lose his first partner. Senzaki, deeply affected by the loss of Kudo, becomes afraid of diving, and nearly decides to quit the Coast Guard. In order to cheer up Senzaki, his former instructor deliberately arranges the Mishima Yuji team, which is different compared from his own and are training rivals. As the training at sea grows intense, it brings Senzaki and his newfound team closer to death.
During the training break, Senzaki goes into a drunken disturbance, where he eventually meets Izawa Kanna near the training school and the two begin to fall in love...
Sean (Graham Kosakoski), Ritch (Brody Harms), Wes (Tyler Hoechlin), and Lauren (Kate Todd) celebrate their college graduation by breaking into Saranoc Grotto, a forest heavily marked with "No Trespassing" signs and surrounded by a tall fence. While speeding down a dirt road, they hit and kill a grizzly bear cub, sending their Jeep Cherokee into a tree and cracking the radiator. As they argue over whether they should bury the dead cub, they hear its mother coming and run. The vehicle overheats down the road, so Wes and Ritch go into the forest to find water. The grizzly bear finds and attacks Ritch. Having heard Ritch's screams to run, Wes inadvertently runs into the bear, and it attacks him. The other two arrive and rescue Wes but are unable to help Ritch. The bear kills him while the others flee to the Jeep.
The vehicle starts again, and they leave, but Wes panics and tries to force Sean to turn around and head back for Ritch, causing the car to go over a cliff. Calmer, he wants to wait for help, but no one knows where they are because they had told their families they were going somewhere else. They winch the vehicle back up to the road, but they cannot get it to start.
Sean goes alone and jogs out of the forest to find help while Wes and Lauren wait at the Jeep. He comes across a deserted shack where he finds hunting paraphernalia, a bear trap, and dead animals. As Sean leaves, the bear appears. He tries to sneak past the bear, but instead, he runs into the bear. It throws him on the shack's roof, and then he falls into a chicken coop. Hours later, he makes it back to the Jeep, but his leg is injured. Wes decides to climb a tall hill on the other side of the clearing to see if he can get a signal on his cell phone, but to no avail, and the bear nearly catches him. He quickly climbs back down and gets back to the Jeep though it will still not start. He and Lauren hide in the Jeep with the wounded Sean in the back.
The bear follows and climbs on top of the Jeep, smashing up the car and eventually overturning it before leaving as the sun sets. Sean wakes up and tells them about the deserted shack, crying about wanting to go home before he dies. Wes and Lauren turn the Jeep right side up, load him back in the car, then push the Jeep down the hilly road as a thunderstorm hits. Using the downward momentum, they arrive near the shack. While Lauren explores the shed with the trap, the bear swings at her through a window, sending her back against the trap, impaling her back. She returns to the vehicle, where the bear rips off the tailgate and drags away Sean's body.
Wes grabs a gasoline can and pours a trail from the Jeep to the woods. They lure the grizzly bear to it and then set the gas on fire. The Jeep explodes, but the bear is unharmed. They decide to try another plan and split up. Wes climbs a tree, leaving his blood-covered clothes on the ground to trick the bear. While the bear is sniffing at the clothes, Wes accidentally drops the tire iron, alerting the bear to his presence. The bear shakes him out of the tree, but he escapes and goes to the shack where Lauren has built a trap. They lure the bear into the shed and use a trigger to close the front door behind it, locking it in. They celebrate and start to leave, but the bear breaks out of the shack, and they both try to escape. Unfortunately, Wes stumbles, and Lauren tries to get him back up, refusing to leave him behind despite his desperate insistence that she should run. The bear catches up to them and kills them both.
Arthur Fane arranges an unusual entertainment for his uncle, a long-term guest, and a few other witnesses—he hires Dr. Rich to hypnotise his wife Victoria. The guests, but not Victoria, have been shown that a gun in the room is actually harmless; everyone, including Victoria, is aware that a dagger provided is made of rubber. The hypnotised Victoria is invited to shoot her husband, and refuses; when told to stab him, though, she agrees. Unfortunately, someone has substituted a real dagger for the rubber one, even though everyone in the room agrees that it would have been impossible to make the substitution.
Although Sir Henry Merrivale is busily engaged in dictating his scandalous and slanderous memoirs to a ghost writer, he takes a hand to solve the murder with his friend Chief Inspector Masters, and brings things to a head just as another death occurs.
Category:1941 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:William Morrow and Company books
Wealthy art connoisseur Dwight Stanhope, his glamorous wife Christabel and his pretty daughters, sensible Betty and neurotic Eleanor, have invited a couple of guests to their mansion "Waldemere"; Vincent James, the "weekend perennial -- charming and a bit thick" and Nick Wood, an attractive young man about whom little is known.
What is odd is that Dwight Stanhope's valuable paintings, including a Rembrandt, have been moved from the burglarproof gallery to the main floor, and their insurance policy has been cancelled. Everyone in the mansion (built by Flavia Jenner, a Victorian actress of easy virtue, and including her own private theatre) has the jitters. No one is really surprised when there's a huge clatter in the middle of the night and a masked burglar is found stabbed in front of the paintings—but everyone is amazed to see that the dead burglar is Dwight Stanhope.
Sir Henry Merrivale arrives and suspicious events begin to happen thick and fast; he mixes investigation with an uproarious performance as a stage magician at a children's show and solves the crime.
Category:1942 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:William Morrow and Company books
Elderly Dr. Luke Croxley narrates a story with a very old theme set against the English village of Lynmouth.
Rita Wainwright is 38, "a mature beauty with a weakness for younger men". Her gentle husband, Alec, more than 20 years older, seems more interested in radio broadcasts of World War II news than in his wife's notorious affair with a handsome young American actor, Barry Sullivan.
Rita and Barry decide to run away together but a radio performance of ''Romeo and Juliet'' apparently turns their minds to a romantic double suicide. After the broadcast, their twin lines of footprints lead up to the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and none return. When their bodies are found, though, it is found that both of them had been shot through the heart at very close range, "body range, with some small-calibre weapon".
Sir Henry Merrivale is in the neighbourhood posing for a portrait by a local artist (in the garb of a Roman Senator), and agrees to investigate this baffling mystery, which he solves just in time to take his place in the House of Lords.
The story is set in modern Japan. Sōko Kiryū is a beautiful first year transfer student in high school, having just moved into the area. Due to her uneasiness over the move, she has developed dizziness and fainting spells. Shortly after she transfers into the new school, she somehow causes a would-be rapist who attacks her in the infirmary to simply vanish, leaving his clothes on the floor.
About this time, a boy named Akira later known as Byakko, appears at the school and begins pursuing her. He tells her that he is Byakko, the white tiger of the west, and that he will kill her because she is the clone of the demon queen Soryū. With growing a horn, remembering a hunger for humans, and exhibiting unusual powers, Sōko is forced to accept that she is an oni even though she denies it. However, due to her growing feelings of love for Akira and her desire to become human, Sōko is determined to fight against this ill fate.
When the TARDIS goes missing in a busy spaceport, the Doctor and you must race against time and across space to find it, before the Doctor's incredible spaceship is lost forever.
The book begins with the story of David Moray, his early career as an ambitious young doctor away on business. He has promised to return to marry a woman he loves, Mary Douglas. Early on in the story he is introduced to successful people and is invited to accompany a prominent family on their ship as their personal physician. In doing so he breaks his promise to Mary and goes in another direction. Instead he briefly marries and divorces Doris, the daughter of the wealthy family he has befriended, whom he indicates was unsound mentally.
Later in David's life he is a wealthy, retired Scottish doctor living in Switzerland who is haunted by the memory of Mary. Attempting to go back to an earlier time, and too late, he returns home to seek her out and make amends. He learns that Mary has died and instead encounters her young, penniless daughter, Kathy, who is involved in mission work. He indulges in a friendship which evolves into more. Logically doubtful and not believing he can have a life with Kathy, David marries Frida, a countess whom he does not love. Not reading a letter Kathy sent, he is unaware Kathy believes they are soon to reunite. Awaiting their departure for a honeymoon cruise his ruminations are interrupted by a brief thought of the unopened letter. He then overhears his butler speaking to Kathy, who has just made a difficult journey to reach him. Overwhelmed that he could have been with her on his own terms at this location and not the mission, he is at a loss for words - David cannot explain that he has just married someone.
Frida asks to speak to Kathy alone, explaining that David found her by seeking her mother whom he failed to return for, and that David would never have returned to help her in her mission as a doctor. He needed a woman who would be strong enough to master him. Underestimating the reaction, Kathy runs out into the night to her accidental death.
Kathy was betrayed more by David's cynicism, doubt and lack of courage than by the ambition that detoured him years earlier, although that is still evidently present in his choosing a countess for social advantages.
In the end, distraught in his loss, David looks outward toward the garden and a Judas tree comes into focus. Dramatically he has not only failed his first love, but also her daughter, resulting in her death. It is not so much ironic as it is illustrative of the span of time in which he has made similar choices with consequences. The following morning his butler sees his body hanging from the tree.
Previously in the book, a Judas tree was referred to as "The Tree of Lost Souls." Some might assume David has realized at the end that he is a lost soul after having inflicted such misery on others due to his lack of morality. Others might infer the character is moral, clearly having a suffering conscience, and in hindsight merely took steps in the wrong direction.
The events of "One More Day" began in ''Amazing Spider-Man'' #544, where Peter Parker's Aunt May is shown slowly dying from a gunshot wound sustained during the events of ''Civil War'' and '' Back in Black''. Peter is forced to ask Tony Stark for financial assistance, and then seeks counsel with Doctor Strange. The latter informs Peter that he can do nothing to grant Aunt May her life back. However, he helps Peter seek the aid of several others including Doctor Doom, the High Evolutionary, Reed Richards, and Doctor Octopus. Peter attempts to go back in time using a magic spell without Strange's approval, harming himself in the process. Strange heals his wounds and sends him on his way, encouraging him to be by his aunt's side at her death.
On his way to the hospital, Peter is confronted by a little girl who says she holds the answer to his problem. He talks to the little girl, who runs off. While pursuing her, Peter encounters a group of men; a woman in red informs him these are alternate versions of himself, from alternate timelines where he never became Spider-Man. The woman in red transforms into the demon Mephisto, who tells Peter he can save Aunt May. As payment, Mephisto wants not Peter's soul, but his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane are given until midnight the following night to decide their answer and, after several hours agonizing over the choice, they agree to the deal. Mary Jane also whispers to Mephisto another, unspecified offer. Finally, Mephisto reveals to the couple that his disguise as the little girl was in fact their future daughter, but she will never exist because of their decision.
Mephisto then changes history so that Peter and Mary Jane never married. Peter wakes up alone in bed, once again living with Aunt May. He attends a party being held for his best friend Harry Osborn (previously thought to have died in ''Spectacular Spider-Man'' #200), who introduces Lilly Hollister and Carlie Cooper. Peter glimpses Mary Jane sadly leaving the party. The guests all toast to a "Brand New Day."
Strange is working on the defence of Granville Oliver. Oliver has been charged with the murder of his uncle and faces the death penalty. Strange is trying to locate Devra Stokes who can discredit the testimony of the prosecution's witness Phillip Wood. He learns that Stokes is working in a beauty salon paid for by Wood's successor Horace McKinley. She refuses to testify. Quinn is working on a separate case for his girlfriend. He believes a group of young men have the information he needs but is unable to get them to talk to him.
Dewayne Durham and Horace McKinley are considering eliminating one another's organizations to cut down on competition. McKinley's enforcers James and Jeremy Coates perform a drive-by shooting on Jerome Long and Alante Jones as they deal drugs for Durham. Durham is forced to respond and instructs Long to kill the Coates brothers. McKinley learns that Stokes talked to Strange and tries to intimidate her by sexually assaulting her. Stokes is enraged by his actions and decides to testify.
Strange and Quinn are employed to locate Olivia Elliot by Mario Durham. They find her quickly and pass the information to Durham. Durham rents a gun from Ulysses Foreman and approaches Elliot. They argue and he murders her and conceals her body in the woods. He returns the gun to Foreman and admits to firing it but claims he did not shoot anyone. Foreman rents the gun to Mario's brother Dewayne for Jerome Long. Mario goes into hiding with his friend Donut.
Long manages to kill Jeremy Coates but is shot by James immediately afterwards. Jones drives his car at James Coates and kills him but is shot as he does so. The police tie the shooting to the murder of Olivia Elliot by matching the gun. Durham learns of the link between the incidents when the police question him; he puts Mario into hiding and begins to suspect that Foreman is working against him.
Strange and Quinn are questioned by the police and give them Durham's identity. They try to track Mario themselves as they feel partly responsible for Elliot's murder but the police beat them to Donut. Donut refuses to give up Mario's whereabouts to either the investigators or the police. Mario begins to follow in Donut's footsteps and sells fake narcotics on the street. One of his customers returns and murders him.
Strange finds that his home has been burgled and his files relating to the Oliver case stolen. He has an answerphone message threatening him with obstruction of justice as one of the witnesses he interviewed gave him information that he should have passed to the police. Strange was unaware of the requirement and seeks advice from Oliver's legal team.
Strange meets with Devra and agrees to relocate her for safety. He begins to follow McKinley and tracks him to Foreman's home where he sells weapons. Strange has Quinn meet him there and Quinn tails McKinley back to his home but is noticed. Strange tracks an employee of Foreman's to a gun store and observes him buying a weapon under false pretences. He passes the information to a contact in the police. He asks Quinn to watch over Devra. Quinn leaves Devra unwatched to return to question the men about his missing girl but is again unsuccessful. He is increasingly agitated about being intimidated by the men.
Strange and Quinn meet at the beauty salon and find that McKinley has abducted Stokes. They ambush him at his home and rescue her. McKinley has had his enforcer Mike Montgomery take her son to a separate location. Quinn takes Stokes home and finds that Montgomery has had a change of heart and returned the boy. Strange cuts McKinley and McKinley threatens him in a way similar to the answerphone message. Strange leaves McKinley injured but alive. McKinley calls Foreman for help when he is unable to get hold of Montgomery and tries to recruit him into attacking Durham. When they confront Durham Foreman shoots McKinley and rants about not taking orders from drug dealers.
Despite their success with Stokes Quinn is unable to let go of his failure with the other case. He again visits the group of men, this time taking his gun, he intimidates them into giving him the information he needs which he writes down. As he drives away the men ambush and murder him at a stop sign.
Months later Oliver is convicted and faces the death penalty despite Stokes's testimony. Dewayne Durham and Ulysses Foreman have been arrested and are facing trial. Quinn's missing girl is found using the information he wrote down. Angry at his partner's violent death Strange returns to the gun store at night and burns it down.
The mailman has delivered a letter to "B. Bonny" (Bertram Bonny), but when the truck pulls out, the exhaust from the tailpipe causes the letter to drift out of the mailbox and accidentally drop into Bugs Bunny's hole. Bugs, in the middle of his morning workout (including a brief workout of his ears), eventually sees the letter and assumes it is for him (regardless of the slightly different surname); his response after reading it is a shocked "Holy cats, I've been drafted!"
Bugs's going through the Army induction center only causes some small reactions:
Once in the army, though, he quickly causes problems. His shoes are too big, so when his sergeant calls for the men lined up to "about face," Bugs accidentally ''literally'' knocks the rest of the line over like bowling pins.
The sergeant calls Bugs forward, where Bugs introduces himself as "Private Bugs Bunny reporting, your majesty, sir!" The sergeant does not believe it is really Bugs, and sarcastically refers to himself as "Sergeant Porky Pig." However, his colonel replies "And I am Colonel Putty Tat. General Tweety Pie was asking about you, Sergeant." When the Colonel inspects Bugs and orders him to "about face," Bugs knocks over the colonel with his large shoes.
As punishment, Bugs and the sergeant — now noticeably demoted to three stripes ("buck" sergeant) — take a long hike that sees both of them crawling back to their bunk (at "Camp Ono" — Ono, Pennsylvania also happens to be a hamlet near Fort Indiantown Gap, a former Army base) in the middle of the night. Bugs, after peeling back his sweating shoes, finally lies down in his bunk but is woken by "Reveille" seconds later. Bugs, intending to "''moider'' that bugler," runs out with a baseball bat and a "whack" is heard off-screen. After Bugs decides to take a bath, it is shown that Bugs really smashed a record player.
Later that morning, the colonel is furiously looking for his helmet. The sergeant finds Bugs taking his bath, using the colonel's helmet as his bathtub. After Bugs makes a comment about cleanliness being next to godliness, the sergeant throws Bugs out and runs off with the helmet full of soapy water — only to run into the colonel. The colonel then puts his helmet on and gets splashed, blowing out soap bubbles afterwards.
Now demoted to corporal, Bugs's drillmaster has Bugs "clean and dress" the camp's chickens for the officer's dinner dance that night — though Bugs has them all dressed in tuxedos.
Bugs then tries to nail a calendar to the wall above his bunk using a large ammunition shell instead of a hammer, which causes all the neighboring soldiers to flee their quarters in a panic. The corporal runs up just in time to almost get hit with the shell when it goes off — but, much to the corporal's shock, the shell pierces clean through the angry colonel's helmet, making him look like the devil.
Now reduced in rank to private, Bugs's former drill sergeant asks the now-bandaged Bugs Bunny what he has against him, asking him why he does not listen to orders, assuming Bugs is causing problems on purpose and hoping to reason with him. As he does, he starts to mention his long ears and then his fur and tail, and finally realizes he really is a rabbit and runs off to inform his superiors.
The general apologizes to Bugs for the mix-up, explaining that Congress did not pass any laws saying that rabbits could be inducted into the military. Bugs, however, wants to do his part for the military. The general tells Bugs there is something he can do — Bugs is then seen testing ammunition shells by striking the top with a mallet and marking them as DUD when they do not explode. Bugs then tells the audience, "And just think! In 30 years, I can retire!"
The film opens at the 1937 Academy Awards, where Biberman's wife, Gale Sondergaard (Greta Scacchi), wins the first ever "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar. Although the anti-Fascist sentiment in her acceptance speech gets her labelled a "commie" by some observers, she and Biberman (Jeff Goldblum) are placed under contract at Warner Bros.
He first comes under scrutiny more for his Jewish background than his political activities. Yet, with Cold War paranoia growing, a group of Hollywood directors and actors — Biberman, Sondergaard, Danny Kaye and Dalton Trumbo among them - are labelled Communists and questioned in front of Congress. After refusing to testify against his colleagues, he is imprisoned in the Federal Correctional Institution at Texarkana for a period of six months. Once released, he discovers his Hollywood career is finished.
Sondergaard suggests that her husband should direct a screenplay about the real-life 1950-51 strike waged by Mexican-American miners against the Empire Zinc Company in Bayard, New Mexico written by Michael Wilson, also a victim of the blacklist and Biberman's brother Michael. She feels the lead role of Esperanza Quintero, who rallied the wives of the unemployed miners and urged them to support their husbands, is an ideal way to jump-start her stagnating career. Biberman agrees, but after meeting with the people who participated in the strike and being inspired by their passion, he decides all roles should be played by ethnic actors.
Because the film has no studio backing and most Hollywood players fear being associated with Biberman and the project, he eventually casts local residents from Grant County, New Mexico and members of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890 to fill most of the roles. Juan Chacón, the Union Local president, is cast as the fiery Ramon Quintero opposite Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas as his wife Esperanza. Will Geer is one of only five Hollywood actors to accept a role in the production.
The FBI investigates the film's financing, attempts to steal the film's negatives and, when they can't be located, tells film-processing labs not to work on the film, incites locals who are unhappy with the film crew's presence to set fire to many of the sets and eventually deports Revueltas on bogus charges. Biberman stands his ground and completes the film, using scenes with Revueltas that were shot in her native Mexico and then smuggled into the US.
''Ys I'' begins with a cutscene showing the main character, Adol Christin, gazing out to sea at the Stormwall which appeared around the island Esteria six months ago. Determined to investigate the situation, Adol sets off towards Esteria on a small boat; however, it is sunk by the storm and Adol washes up on the shore of Esteria. He is saved by a villager named Slaff from the port town of Barbado. Adol recuperates in the home of Barbado's doctor and learns that Slaff is both the doctor's son and the head of the town's militia. The militia was formed when demons and monsters appeared on the island, at the same time as when the Stormwall formed. The Stormwall cut Esteria off from the rest of the world and completely halted the trade of silver, which is mined on the island.
Adol sets out to find out more about the island's situation in the largest town of Minea. There, he encounters a female troubadour named Reah. Reah is searching for her Silver Harmonica, which had been stolen, part of a rash of silver thefts that have occurred in the town. Linked with the thefts are sightings of a man in a dark cape. Adol then encounters the fortune-teller Sara, who tells him that she had a vision that a fiery-headed swordsman who would play a key role in Esteria's fate. She tells Adol of the six Books of Ys, named after the ancient kingdom that existed on the island seven hundred years ago. The Books of Ys contain the complete history of the rise and fall of Ys and will be instrumental in saving Esteria. Sara informs Adol that one book is in the Shrine of Solomon and sends him to the town of Zepik to speak with her aunt Jeba to learn more.
In Zepik, Jeba gives Adol the Key to the Shrine. Adol also meets the mayor of Zepik, and learns that the town's treasured Silver Bells have been stolen. The Silver Bells gave off a sound that drove evil away, and without it, Zepik is vulnerable to demon attack. Adol assumes a mission from the mayor to negotiate the return of the bells from a bandit group in the area. When Adol meets with the bandit leader Goban however, Goban protests that his group only steals from the corrupt to give to the poor, and that in fact all of the bandits' silver possessions have been stolen from them. Adol leaves them and enters the Shrine of Solomon.
Adol fights through demons through the Shrine of Solomon. In the lower levels, he rescues a young girl with long blue hair locked in a cell. The girl reveals that her name is Feena, and that a man with a dark cape imprisoned her there, but otherwise she has no memories about her past. Adol takes Feena to be looked after by Jeba, before returning to the Shrine, where he discovers the first Book of Ys on the lowest level. Returning to Minea, he finds that Sara has been murdered during his absence, with the culprit being a man in a dark cape. Sara had however already given her most important possession to a friend to present to Adol - the second Book of Ys. It is revealed that Reah was the one who has Sara's Book of Ys, and she returns it to Adol in exchange for her Silver Harmonica. He is then directed to the mine of the ruined village of Rastin for the third book. Adol sets off to the mine and recovers that third Book from its depths, and returns to Zepik. There, he finds Feena recovering under Jeba's care.
Jeba and her family are descendants of the Ys priest Tovah, and thus Jeba is able to read the ancient text in the Books of Ys to Adol. The three books narrate the story of the creation of Cleria in ancient Ys, which brought great prosperity to the land. However, one day great hordes of demons suddenly appeared and attacked. An evil leader with six greater demons led the evil forces. The people of Ys retreated to the Temple of Solomon where they were besieged. During the siege the twin Goddesses of Ys suddenly disappeared from the Temple, and soon after the evil hordes also disappeared. The six Priests of Ys created the Books of Ys and imbued with magical power so that one day they might guide a hero to save the land of Ys. The people of Ys then reasoned that Cleria had been what attracted the evil and so buried it deep in the ground. Following this, Jeba tells Adol that the remaining books of Ys must be located in the great Tower of Darm, a towering structure which rises up to the clouds. The tower is nicknamed 'The Devil's Tower' and it stands in front of a giant crater named Bagyu Ba'dead.
The bandit leader Goban is revealed to be Jeba's son, and the bandits' lair was set up in at the entrance of the Tower of Darm to protect the island after the demons appeared. Goban opens the entrance for Adol, noting that his lieutenant Dogi was also somewhere in the tower, having previously entered with other bandits in a successful attempt to destroy the monsters in the tower. Adol climbs the tower, but is soon caught by a magic trap which teleports him into a prison cell. The cell is occupied by Luta Gemma, a sleepwalking poet from Zepik who was captured by the monsters. They are soon rescued by Dogi, who is able to punch through walls with his bare hands. Dogi sends Adol to seek a man named Raba on the upper floors. Raba was a scholar visiting Esteria who was inside the Tower of Darm, studying its history, when the demons suddenly appeared. Raba gives Adol a magical amulet which allows Adol to bypass the traps of the tower. In addition, Luta is a descendant of the ancient Ys priest Gemma, and Adol is given another amulet with the power to dispel magic seals. Adol climbs further, finding two more books along the way. Near the top of the tower, Adol discovers that Reah is also in the tower, having let herself be captured and brought there so she could give Adol a magic monocle which would allow him to read the language of the Books of Ys.
After reaching the top of the tower, Adol finally confronts the final antagonist – Dark Fact, a descendant of the ancient Priest Fact. Dark Fact boasts that Adol's efforts to collect the books have only helped his plan, and that once he took Adol's five books and combined them with his own, a great power would be revealed. The two fight, and Adol is victorious. In the folds of Dark Fact's cloak, Adol finds the final Book of Ys. As Adol uses the Monocle to read the entire set of books, a powerful white light fills his vision, and a feeling of serenity overcomes him. The monsters in the land dissolve into air, leaving it at peace. The words in the books begin to disappear and the forms of the Goddesses begin to materialize before him (it is noted that Adol does not recognize the Goddesses' faces). Adol rests and decides to tell Feena all that he has seen as soon as he returns to Zepik. Slowly, the white light envelopes his entire body.
The story of ''Ys II'' continues off immediately from the end of ''Ys I''. The game begins with an animated cutscene showing figures in a dark room talking to a glowing orb about Adol. They are impressed by his having conquered the Tower of Darm, and decide to continue to observe him. The view then shifts to the final moments of ''Ys I'', with light emanating from the Books of Ys and surrounding Adol. Adol then suddenly is flown high into the sky by the magic from the books, as Feena and Reah watch from a cliff outside the tower. The magic energy deposits Adol and the Books of Ys in a flash of light in a field, where he is discovered by a girl. The view pulls back to show that Adol has landed on an island floating in the air.
A flashback to 700 years ago is shown: the two Goddesses of Ys are standing around a large glowing orb with their eyes closed, deep in concentration. Outside, a horde of demons lays siege to their location. A flying island is created, and soars high up into the sky, leaving a great crater behind. In the modern day, this island floats far above the Tower of Darm.
When Adol wakes up, he weakly asks the girl where he is. She tells him that her name is Lilia and that he is in Ys. Adol is brought to Lance Village and recuperates in Lilia's home. When he wakes up, Lilia's mother tells him about Ys and the surrounding area. Lilia's mother also asks Adol to deliver a letter to the town doctor, Dr. Flair, discussing Lilia's illness. Speaking to villagers of Lance, he learns that demons appeared on the island six months ago, which forced the villagers to abandon the nearby Rasteenie mines. In addition, most of the villagers are unaware that there is a world outside of Ys.
Adol goes to the town clinic to look for the doctor, but the doctor is not present. Suddenly, a flying pigeon arrives at the clinic bearing a message from the doctor, which states that he has been trapped in the Rasteenie mines by a cave in as he was picking herbs. Adol is asked to rescue the doctor from the mines, as only Adol could fight the demons inside. Adol agrees, and meets with the elder of the village to gain permission to enter the mines. The elder consents, but also mentions that he briefly saw two girls that resembled the Goddesses while walking in the ruins surrounding the mines. The elder also tells Adol that his having possession of the Books of Ys shows that he was guided by the spirits of the Priests of Ys to the island. The elder reveals to Adol that there is a place called the Sanctuary of Toal, connected to the Rasteenie mines, which houses statues of all six Priests, and that Adol should return the proper book to each statue in order to learn his purpose on the island.
Adol sets off towards the mines with these three goals. In the ruins outside the mines, Adol discovers a staff that grants him the potential to use magic after he touches it to a statue of the Goddesses. An elderly villager who witnesses this tells Adol that the six magics of the Priests of Ys are still scattered around the island and will be of great use in Adol's quest. Inside the mine, Adol quickly finds Dr. Flair and digs him out, delivering the letter from Lilia's mother at the same time. Dr. Flair reads it and tells Adol that he was searching the mine for the ingredients to cure Lilia's illness. In the rest of the mine Adol finds the herbs the doctor needs, as well as several magical spells. He returns to Dr. Flair with the herbs, and Dr. Flair creates a medicine for Lilia. When Lilia finds out that Adol risked his life to get the ingredients for the medicine, she is eternally grateful and swears a life debt to him.
When Adol returns the Books of Ys to the statues of the Priests of Ys, the spirits in the statues reveal that demons appeared on Ys at the same time as they appeared down below on the island of Esteria. They also revealed more about the history of Ys, stating that unknowingly, the source of demons was brought with them when they created the floating island 700 years ago around the Shrine of Solomon. Demons were created as a by-product of magic. The demons’ master resides in the Shrine of Solomon, the former home of the Goddesses and Priests of Ys. Adol must find the Goddesses and defeat the evil in the Shrine of Solomon in order to destroy all the demons forever.
Adol travels out of Lance towards the shrine at the center of the island, passing through the Glacier of Noltia and the lava filled Moat of Burnedbless, two geographical features created by the Goddesses 700 years ago as an attempted deterrent to demons attacking the shrine. In the moat, Adol discovers the Colony of Lava, whose inhabitants are all initially very hostile to him. Adol is barred from passing the bridge out of the village, but, by using the spells he has learned, he discovers that the bridgekeeper's son's Tarf was kidnapped by demons in order to force the villagers to stop Adol at Lava. Adol rescues the boy with the help of a friendly and intelligent demon named Keith, and is allowed to proceed onward from Lava.
Adol finally arrives at the village of Ramia, which stands right outside of the Shrine of Solomon. The past few months, the demons have been kidnapping villagers for use as human sacrifices. Adol meets with an elderly villager, Hadat, whose son, Sada, had recently entered the shrine in an attempt to save his kidnapped fiancée, Maria. Hadat gives Adol advice about the shrine and asks him to attempt to save Sada and Maria.
Adol infiltrates the demon filled Shrine of Solomon with the aid of a disguise spell. However, in the middle of the shrine, he is discovered by a dark-cloaked magician named Dalles (recognizable as the dark figure from the introduction cutscene). Dalles is able to see through Adol's disguise and curses Adol with a permanent demonic appearance. Returning to Ramia village to seek help, Adol is able to undo the curse with a help of a Sacred Cup that once belonged to the Priest Hadal. Any water put into it instantly becomes Holy Water, which allows Adol to escape Dalles' curse.
Continuing his infiltration of the shrine, Adol discovers the hideout of some kidnapped villagers who had escaped from captivity. Lilia is surprisingly among them, having left Lance Village due to dreams of needing to help Adol in his quest. Dalles once again makes an appearance, thanking Adol for leading him to the escapees, and turns everyone into stone, leaving only Adol unharmed so he would suffer mentally.
Undaunted, Adol keeps exploring the rest of the Shrine of Solomon, and again encounters the friendly demon Keith, who tells him that Maria is being held for sacrifice in a nearby bell tower called the Campanile of Lane. Adol enters the bell tower, fighting toward the top, defeating the demon sorceress Zava and seeing Maria along the way. At the top of the tower, Adol attempts to stop the ritual, but Dalles appears again and ensures the sacrifice is not disrupted. Adol then discovers the Dreaming Stone Idol, an artifact that is able to reverse magical petrification. He also notices that Maria has disappeared from where he had just seen her. With the artifact, Adol is able to return the stone villagers (including Sada) to normal before setting off to the innermost core of the shrine. Dalles appears once more to block Adol's way, and the two engage in a fight to the death, with Adol emerging victorious.
As Adol heads into the core, he finds that many villagers, all of them descendants of the Priests of Ys, have come to aid him. He also discovers that Maria had survived the sacrificial ritual, thanks to a magical bracelet passed down through her family. Lilia also appears, and provides Adol with a ring that can break the magic barriers barring his way. Right outside the final room, Adol discovers the two Goddesses imprisoned by magic energy. He is taunted by the voice of the master of the demons, who reveals that after 700 years, it has finally broken free of the imprisonment thrust upon it by the Goddesses and the Priests of Ys, and now demons would finally rule the world.
Suddenly, Goban Tovah and Luta Gemma from Ys I appear in the room. They had climbed the Tower of Darm after having a dream in which the Goddesses told them Ys was returning to the surface and they were needed. Goban provides Adol with Reah's Silver Harmonica, the sound of which dispels the energy binding the Goddesses. Adol is finally able to meet the Goddesses, who are confirmed to be Feena and Reah.
Reah explains the events that had led to this point: 700 years ago, after the demons had been defeated, the Goddesses sealed away the power of the Black Pearl, a great orb that was the source of magic in the society of Ancient Ys, as they had discovered the magic from the Black Pearl had caused the creation of demons as a side effect. The Goddesses also chose to stay behind on the surface of Esteria, and sealed away the magic-enhancing metal Cleria deep in the ground, after which they went into a long slumber. Centuries passed and all was peaceful, but some Cleria was accidentally mined by the inhabitants of Esteria while they were mining silver. This released enough magic to enable Dark Fact to break the seal on the Black Pearl, leading to the events of Ys I.
The Goddesses do not have the strength to seal the demons again, and must now rely on Adol to be their champion. With the descendants of the Priests of Ys and the Goddesses present, Adol is lent their power before he faces his final opponent: the sentient form of the Black Pearl, Darm. After a long battle, Adol is able to destroy it, wiping out all the demons in Ys.
Adol reappears in the sanctuary of the Goddesses, along with Feena, Reah, and all the descendants of the Priests. They all congratulate him and note that with the Black Pearl destroyed, the floating island of Ys was slowly sinking back to its original position, in the giant crater on Esteria. Tearfully, Feena says goodbye to Adol, as the Goddesses will once again enter a magic sleep to watch over Esteria and make sure the magic from the Black Pearl does not return, and she wished to confess her feelings for him before then, asking him to always remember her. They slowly part ways, as the inhabitants of Ys prepare for a new era, rejoined with the rest of the world.
Bernice Lee (Sonya Wilde) is a young woman of mixed African and European ancestry, living in Chicago with her family, and she is mistaken for a fully white woman by a white man, who tries to hit on her repeatedly. Her brother, more obviously of mixed heritage, fights off the man. Bernice's grandmother consoles her when she confides her troubles.
After a failed attempt at looking for employment as a black woman, she decides to leave town. She begins to use the name Lila Brownell and live as a white woman. On the plane to New York City, she meets and eventually marries the man of her dreams – Rick Leyton (James Franciscus) – and fails to mention her African ancestry, an important omission as interracial marriage is not a constitutional right in 1960. Rick and his wealthy family and friends are white. Her white friend Sally (Patricia Michon) and black maid Bertha (Isabel Cooley) both advise her not to tell him. She becomes pregnant, and fears the child will have black features or coloring – and gets a book to read about this unlikely possibility, which she hides. Rick eventually discovers it, and their maid claims the book belongs to her.
Lila goes into premature labor and has a stillborn child, but cries out "Is the baby black?" after she awakens from anesthesia. This leads Rick to suspect that his wife has been unfaithful. Eventually, she and her husband divorce without Bernice's having revealed her true name or past. She then returns to her family in Chicago and her original identity.
The ending is an example of the tragic mulatto trope.
Scrooge McDuck has bought land in India's Punjab region, and arrives on the scene together with Donald and his nephews to inspect what he has bought. He meets with the local maharaja to seek his help in enlisting a work force, but the maharaja openly admits to being thoroughly corrupt, diverting the millions of dollars in foreign aid sent to his province; he declines to help, since it's his people's abject poverty that keeps that aid flowing into his coffers.
Left on their own, the Ducks begin their quest, when they accidentally discover a stone pillar, dating back to 326 BC, and tells the tale of Alexander the Great's attempt to conquer Punjab. However, the conquest failed, with Alexander's men fleeing India in utter terror. The tale also tells that Alexander was seeking Shambala, an ancient Indian city containing untold riches. When Scrooge hears of this, he sets out to find the city for himself. The maharaja overhears this and follows the Ducks in secret.
The Ducks eventually find Shambala in ruins, but the city is still booby-trapped with mortal dangers. Near the main temple they find some sort of control panel with ten buttons, each based on one of the ten avatars of Vishnu. The boys stay at the control panel while Scrooge and Donald venture deeper, maintaining radio contact with the boys.
All sorts of Indiana Jones-like trap situations occur when Scrooge and Donald progress on their way, with the boys saving them every time by telling them what to do and pressing the right button at the right time. Scrooge and Donald eventually find the treasure, but it's protected with one last booby-trap. The boys are about to clear this trap too, but the maharaja has caught up with them, and prevents the boys from pushing the button, causing the treasure to be flushed into a nearby river. The maharaja pushes another button, which sets off Shambala's self-destruct mechanism. The Ducks and the maharaja flee the city post-haste.
When arriving back in the maharaja's village, the Ducks find that the river has carried the treasure there, but the villagers have already shared it among themselves, finally having enough money to abandon the village and start new lives elsewhere. Scrooge, taking the loss of the treasure philosophically, offers to discuss employing the villagers in his future enterprises in India, and they are happy to agree.
The Maharaja is left in despair. With no treasure and now the ruler of an empty village, he has no remaining pretext to collect "aid" from unsuspecting foreign nations. As the Ducks depart, Scrooge cheerfully reminds him that he still has an unlimited supply of one legacy from his ancestors: the number zero.
In 1192, Temüjin, a prisoner in the Tangut kingdom, recounts his story through a series of flashbacks.
Embarking on an expedition 20 years earlier (1172), nine-year-old Temüjin is accompanied by his father Yesügei to select a girl as his future wife. He meets and chooses Börte, against his father's wishes. On their way home, Yesügei is poisoned by an enemy tribe; on his dying breath, he tells his son that he is now Khan. However, Targutai, Yesügei's lieutenant, proclaims himself as Khan and is about to kill his young rival. Prevented from doing so by the boy's mother, Targutai lets him go and vows to kill him as soon as he becomes an adult.
After falling through a frozen lake, Temüjin is rescued by Jamukha. The two quickly become friends and take an oath as blood brothers. Targutai later captures him, but he escapes under the cover of night and roams the countryside.
Years later (1186), Temüjin is once again apprehended by Targutai. He escapes a second time, finding Börte and presenting her to his family. Later that night, they are attacked by the Merkit tribe. While being chased on horseback, Temüjin is shot with an arrow but survives. Börte, however, is kidnapped and taken to the Merkit camp.Sergei Bodrov. (2007). ''Mongol'' [Motion picture]. Russia: Picturehouse Entertainment.
Temüjin goes to Jamukha—who is now his tribe's Khan—and seeks his help in rescuing his wife. Jamukha agrees, and after a year, they launch an attack on the Merkits and are successful. One night, while celebrating their victory, Temüjin demonstrates his generosity by allowing his troops to take an equal share of the plunder. Two of Jamukha's men see this as a stark contrast to their Khan's behavior and desert him the next morning by following their new master. Jamukha chases him down and demands that he give his men back, to which he refused. This act, aggravated by the inadvertent killing of his biological brother by one of Temüjin's men, leaves Jamukha (with Targutai as an ally) no choice but to declare war on him. Outnumbered, Temüjin's army is quickly defeated. Sparing his blood brother, Jamukha decides to sell him into slavery.
Temüjin is sold to a Tangut nobleman despite the dire warning given to him by a Buddhist monk acting as his adviser, who senses the great potential the warrior carries and his future role in subjugating the Tangut State. While he is imprisoned, the monk pleads with him to spare his monastery when he will destroy the kingdom sometime in the future. In exchange for delivering a bone fragment to Börte indicating that he is still alive, Temüjin agrees. The monk succeeds in delivering the bone and the message at the cost of his life. Börte infiltrates the Tangut border town disguised as a merchant's concubine and the two escape.
Temüjin pledges to unify all of the Mongol tribes and imposes three basic laws for them to abide to: never kill women and children, always honor your promises and repay your debts, and ''never'' betray your Khan. Subsequently, (1196), he gathers an army and engages Jamukha, who has an even larger force. During the battle, a thunderstorm arises on the steppe, terrifying Jamhukha's and Temujin's armies, who cower in fear. However Temujin doesn't cower in fear, and when his army sees him riding unafraid they are inspired to also be fearless and charge Jamukha's helpless and cowering army, which surrenders immediately. Temüjin allows Jamukha to live and brings the latter's army under his banner. Targutai is killed by his own soldiers and his body is presented to the Khan as a way of appeasing him, but they are executed for disobeying the law.
A postscript indicates that by 1206, Temüjin was designated the Khan of all the Mongols—''Genghis Khan of the Great Steppe''. He would later go on to invade and conquer the Tangut kingdom by 1227, fulfilling the monk's prophecy, but spared the monastery, honoring his debt to the monk.
The story revolves around the difficult production of Roberto Rossellini's film ''Rome, Open City'' (1945).
The series explores the ancient secrets of dragons and their society.
''Gospel Hill'' tells the intersecting story of two men in the fictional South Carolina town of Julia. Danny Glover plays John Malcolm, the son of a slain civil rights activist Paul Malcolm (Samuel L. Jackson). Jack Herrod (Tom Bower) is the white former sheriff who never officially solved the murder. Their paths begin to cross when a development corporation comes to town with plans to raze Julia's historic African-American community of Gospel Hill, now fallen into disrepair, to build a golf course. John Malcolm's wife Sarah (Angela Bassett), a schoolteacher, seems alone in her opposition to the project, which is being endorsed by Gospel Hill's prominent African-American physician, Dr. Palmer (Esposito). Meanwhile, a young white teacher (Julia Stiles) comes to town and falls for a handsome young landscaper (Taylor Kitsch), whose business is booming thanks to Dr. Palmer's patronage.
In early 17th century France, the poor but virile d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the Musketeers (the King's bodyguard). He meets and falls in love with Lady Constance Bonacieux, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. Meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu learns that the Queen has given a diamond heart brooch, which was a present to her from the King, as a token of love to the Duke of Buckingham. Richelieu suggests that the King ask the Queen to wear it at a planned royal gala. Richelieu dispatches the Comte de Rochefort and Milady de Winter to London to recover the gem, which he plans to unveil at the gala in order to reveal that the Queen has been unfaithful.
The Queen asks her lady-in-waiting, Constance Bonacieux, to involve the Musketeers in the jewel's speedy recovery so that she might foil the plot. But when the Musketeers reach London, they are too late: Lady de Winter has arrived first. D’Artagnan uses his seductive charms upon Milady de Winter and steals the bauble. After a rousing sword fight, the Musketeers kill de Rochefort and rush back to Paris just in time to bring the jewel to the gala. King Louis fastens it to the Queen's shoulder just as he did when he first gave it to her.
A stranger in town meets pretty young Susan Martinez De La Cruz and accompanies her to a barbecue, where wealthy Jason Carberry is saying a few words for the recently departed Robin Randall, a citizen who got shot.
Jason objects to the stranger's presence, being Susan's guardian and protective of her. He challenges him to a shootout, but the stranger pulls his pistol before Jason's can even clear the holster. Calaveras Kate, a saloon singer who's in love with Jason, is relieved when the stranger declines to pull the trigger.
Rafael Moreno suddenly rides into town and picks a fight with the stranger. Their brawl continues until the arrival of Judge Wallace Wintrop and his niece, Sheila, who have come to town from back East and deplore all this random violence out West.
The stranger is recognized as Reb Randall, the dead man's brother. He is looking for the killer, who could be Rafael, or could be Jason, or could even be Billy Buckett, the coward of the county. The women hold their breath to see if the men they love will survive.
Film narrated about the first love of Murad Rasulov, an Azerbaijani ninth-former and a passionate football fan. He's in love with a girl two years older than him. This seemingly insignificant circumstance together with the girl's family tradition became a serious but brief obstacle for newlyweds.
The director's cut of the film released in 1988.
FSB colonel Chernov was investigating a money laundering crimes for a long time. Sent to a retirement pension, his sharpened sense of justice keep him from assured rest when Chernov suddenly founds that on a recently deceased businessman's account a millions of dollars are settling. Chernov decides to return them to Russia. But many more people dream to possess on that money...
The Dell mapback edition of 1950 is subtitled "Murder in the Zoo".
Edward Benton, director of the Royal Albert Zoological Gardens, is worried about what the year 1941 will bring to his beloved collection of snakes and reptiles; it seems as if they will be destroyed, at the request of the Department of Home Security, to prevent poisonous snakes from escaping in the case of an air raid. Nevertheless, he is still making arrangements to add to the exhibits, including a recent acquisition, "Patience", a tree-snake from Borneo.
Accomplished stage magicians Carey Quint and Madge Palliser, whose families’ professional rivalry goes back four generations, are visiting the zoo, each to research certain snakes in connection with an illusion which both claim was invented by an ancestor. They quarrel, and somehow the glass cage breaks that encloses a tropical American lizard. The lizard immediately attacks Sir Henry Merrivale, also a visitor. After the lizard is subdued, all three are led by the security guard to Dr. Benton's home on the grounds, to make their explanations and apologies. He is easily mollified, and his daughter Louise invites all three to dinner that evening. Louise is worried about her father's mental equilibrium.
When the three arrive to find what seems to be an empty house, with dinner burning away merrily in the kitchen, they are perplexed. Then they discover Dr. Benton has apparently locked all the doors and windows of his study, sealed them with paper strips, and gassed himself. Louise asks Sir Henry to investigate because she is sure that, even in committing suicide, her father would not have killed the innocent tree-snake, Patience.
Sir Henry must investigate against the backdrop of England in 1940, with airplanes constantly buzzing overhead. The involvement of two professional magicians, however, points out a path to a solution — to make people think they've experienced something which indeed they have not.
Sir Henry corners the murderer and extracts a confession in a dramatic climax that involves a rattlesnake, a mamba and a cobra.
Category:1944 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Locked-room mysteries Category:Fiction set in 1940 Category:William Morrow and Company books
Lady Helen Loring does not believe in the ancient Egyptian curse associated with an ancient artifact, a bronze lamp that is a gift from the Egyptian government. It comes from a tomb that Helen and her father, Lord Severn, helped excavate.
In defiance of the dire predictions of an Egyptian soothsayer, she brings the lamp back to Severn Hall, her ancestral home in England. At the door, Helen stepped out of the car, leaving her friends to follow her into the Hall.
Less than three minutes later, they did—and Helen had vanished. On the floor, in the middle of the vast entrance hall, were her coat and the bronze lamp.
Luckily, Sir Henry Merrivale is nearby and unafraid of any and all spirits and soothsayers; after a murder shocks the inhabitants of Severn Hall, he solves both the disappearance and the murder.
Category:1945 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Locked-room mysteries Category:William Morrow and Company books
The film is about a pizza man on a quest to find the man who stiffed him on a pizza and subsequently uncovers a plot to take over the world.
208.8.52.46 19:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
20px '''Declined'''. We cannot accept unsourced suggestions or sources that are not reliable per the verifiability policy. Please provide '''reputable, third-party''' sources with your suggestions. Third party sources are needed both to establish the verifiability of the submission as well as its notability. '''Ariel'''♥'''Gold''' 19:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
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Roger Bewlay is a murderer; the British police are sure he's a murderer, and so is noted detective and explainer of the impossible, Sir Henry Merrivale. Bewlay has married at least four women who promptly vanish on their honeymoons.
Unfortunately, Bewlay himself has also vanished.
Years later, a well-known actor receives the script of a play about Roger Bewlay from an anonymous source, which he determines to produce and in which he will star. The script contains information known only to the police, one witness and Roger Bewlay himself. That reopens the old case and involves the actor, his good-looking female director, and a woman named Mildred Lyons who soon turns up dead in the actor's bedroom.
Sir Henry Merrivale must identify Roger Bewlay's new identity and work out an extremely ingenious place to hide a corpse.
Category:1946 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:William Morrow and Company books
In 1922, Scott Mason Carter graduates from Chase Medical School in Chicago and marries Marcia. Both are light-skinned enough to be mistaken for whites. Scott has landed an internship, but his fellow graduate, the dark-skinned Jesse Pridham, wonders if he will have to work as a Pullman porter until there is an opening in a black hospital.
When Scott goes to Georgia, the black hospital director tells him that the board of directors has decided to give preference to Southern applicants and rescinds the job offer when he sees him. The couple live in Boston with Marcia's parents, who have been passing as white. Her father and some of their black friends suggest they do the same. Instead, Scott continues to apply as a Negro and is repeatedly rejected. Scott finally yields, quits his job making shoes, and masquerades as white for a one-year internship in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
There, Scott responds to an emergency. At an isolated lighthouse, he has to operate immediately on a sport fisherman who is bleeding to death. His patient turns out to be Dr. Walter Bracket, the well-known director of a local clinic. Impressed, Dr. Bracket offers Scott a position as town doctor in Keenham (a fictionalized version of Keene, New Hampshire), replacing Bracket's recently deceased father. Scott declines, explaining that he is a Negro. Dr. Bracket, though he admits he would not have made the offer had he known, recommends Scott take the job without revealing his race. With his wife pregnant, Scott reluctantly agrees. Scott and Marcia are relieved when their newborn son appears as white as they do.
Scott slowly gains the trust and respect of the residents. By 1942, when the United States enters World War II, the Carters are pillars of the community. Their son, Howard, attends the University of New Hampshire, while daughter Shelly is in high school. Scott goes to Boston once a week to work at the Charles Howard Clinic, which Jesse Pridham and he established for patients of all races.
The Carters have kept their secret even from their own children. When Howard invites a black classmate, Arthur Cooper, to visit, Shelly worries aloud what her friends will think about a "coon" staying in their home. Scott sternly orders her never to use that word again. When Arthur goes to a party with Howard, some guests make bigoted remarks behind his back.
Scott and Howard enlist in the United States Navy, but after a background check, Scott's commission as a lieutenant commander is suddenly revoked for "failure to meet physical conditions". The only position open to blacks in the Navy is steward. The Carters have no choice but to tell their children the truth. Howard breaks up with his white girlfriend. He rents a room in Harlem and roams the streets. When Shelly's boyfriend Andy asks her about the "awful rumor" about her family, Shelly confesses that it is true. He asks her to the school dance anyway, but she turns him down. In Harlem, Howard investigates screams and finds two black men fighting. When one pulls out a gun, Howard intervenes. The gun goes off and the gunman flees, but Howard is taken into custody. To a sympathetic black police lieutenant, Howard explains, "I came here to find out what it's like to be a Negro." Arthur Cooper collects his friend from the police station.
Howard and his father return to Keenham. When they attend their regular Sunday church service, the minister preaches a sermon of tolerance, then notes that the Navy has just ended its racist policy. The narrator announces that Scott Carter remains the doctor for a small New Hampshire town.
Mance was the chief visionary and engineer behind the skytower, a super space elevator which ran from Ecuador all the way into low Earth orbit. When religious fundamentalists and agents of the scheming Yamagata Corporation sabotage the skytower, however, millions are killed; Mance is faced with his own guilt for the tragedy and sees himself as ostensibly responsible. He is arrested and put on trial. Things turn out even worse for Mance when his friends, bioengineer Victor Molina and Rev. Elliott Danvers, abandon him, and he is exiled to a life of hard work and misery in the Asteroid Belt, far from his beloved wife Lara—upon whom the double-crossing Victor Molina had always harbored designs. For a time, he escapes his fate in the Belt by being inducted into the crew of an ore hauler, where for a while he contemplates his life and comes to the conclusion that he was set up.
Ultimately he falls for the captain's beautiful young daughter Addie. When the same forces responsible for the destruction of the skytower destroy the freighter, Mance manages to survive by having been outside, tethered to the ship as punishment from the captain for having been caught with his daughter. Rescued against all odds, Mance is brought to the moon to recuperate, where he is able to assume the identity of the ship's late first officer, Dante Alexios, by undergoing extensive nano reconstruction to make him appear outwardly identical to Dante Alexios.
With his new persona, Mance/Dante leads a successful engineering career, which empowers him to plot his revenge against those whom he blames for his downfall: the simple but good-natured New Morality clergyman Elliott Danvers, and Molina (who has since married Lara with whom he has a child) and the Yamagata Corporation. Mance lures the three to Mercury where he manages to infiltrate the Yamagata operations and cause financially ruinous delays to their Mercurian project by planting Martian rock samples containing organic compounds there. These he allows to be discovered by Molina, who believes them to be authentically Mercurian and heralds them as a great discovery. Finally, he frames the Rev. Danvers for the trickery in order to also ruin his career, which succeeds flawlessly—to the extent that Danvers takes his own life. Yet things go awry for Mance when he confesses to Lara that it was he who set up Molina for the fall. However justified it may have been, Lara cannot accept it, nor can she return to Mance/Dante. Crushed, Bracknell turns the focus of his ruined life to consummating his final revenge on the leader of the Yamagata Corporation himself. However, it is in trying to slowly and agonizingly destroy the life of Yamagata, by exposing him to the brutal elements of the planet Mercury for a prolonged period of time, that Mance perhaps finally realizes that revenge has ruined him, and feels regret upon hearing of Danvers' fate. Furthermore, he had caught the wrong Yamagata; it was the son of the billionaire industrialist who'd been culpable in the skytower disaster.
In the end, both Yamagata and Bracknell perish in the Mercurian wastes, but the reader is led to believe, through his last will and testament, that Bracknell in his final moments beat his demons and became human again by taping a confession of his schemes while waiting to die. At the same time, Yamagata, who was gladly willing to die if only to protect his son, tapes a message to his son, imploring him to continue his true work in taking humanity to the stars in the near future.
The game's story opens with the kingdom of Eternia in turmoil. He-Man's nemesis Skeletor has surrounded Castle Grayskull with hostile forces yet again, but this time does it when Prince Adam happened to be away in Snake Mountain to run some errands. Without He-Man around to defend the castle, the Sorceress of Grayskull must pull back all of her power reserves to break off Skeletor's forces. Unfortunately, for He-Man that means he is going to have to set off as lowly Prince Adam and slowly restore his power as the game progresses.
He-Man gets wind of what is happening in with the Sorceress and must battle his way out of Snake Mountain, traverse Eternia whilst fighting off villains such as Shadow Beasts and Beast Men, and ultimately reaching Grayskull where a showdown with Skeletor awaits.
The film, the last of a trilogy, is loosely based on the life of Xaviera Hollander, a prostitute from the Netherlands, as she attempts to make a film in Hollywood based on her best-selling book about her life. She gets involved with some of the most crooked producers in Hollywood, but beats them at their own game and films the movie without them.
The series is centered on Charles-Henri Lamontagne, an elderly widower coping with the death of his wife, and his influence on his family in Montreal. Through the script, Janette Bertrand explores sensitive issues still taboo for the Quebec society in the late 1970s.
On the Sengoku era, the heroine Suzu is a girl who is continuously sought by spirits (mononoke). However, she has mastered techniques to protect herself, which she learned from the late Shinkurou, the man she calls "Toto-sama". One day during a trip she encounters an unknown spirit; her powers awaken and activate the power of the flute she carries as Shinkurou's memento. An unknown man who reminds her of Toto-sama appears before her eyes and the spirit is defeated.
The enigmatic flute seems to have some secrets...
The story emphasizes the various characters' reactions to the event, according to their specific scientific backgrounds. Examples include a priest's speculations on the implications for religion, a psychologist's theorizing about the aliens' psyches, the scientists' consideration of the implications of the new knowledge for their own specialties, and the president's concern for the implications for national defense.
The novel is set in an ongoing Cold War scenario. Unlike typical first contact stories, there is no dialogue between the senders of the message and mankind, as the received radio signals have traveled through space for one and a half million years.
The message is received with a large radio telescope, the fictional Hercules Array, which was built on the far side of the Moon. It is later discovered that the message was sent with an artificial pulsar built by the alien race. This pulsar with the name ''Althea'' has been known by the scientists for years. It was believed to be a normal pulsar. However, what made it special was its almost perfectly regular interval between the observed pulses.
One day, some of the pulses suddenly fail to appear. This incident draws more attention to this particular pulsar, as the newly discovered gaps show a remarkable pattern.
The first gap consists of one missing pulse, the second of two missing pulses and the third gap consists of four missing pulses. The following gaps also consist of numbers representing powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, ...). The transmission of these numbers goes on for a couple of days until the pulsar falls completely silent.
The silence lasts for several weeks, until it breaks again. This time, not just a simple sequence of numbers is received by the Hercules Array. Now, a very large and complex amount of binary data is sent from somewhere close to Althea. Scientists are able to decipher this data. It consists of several mathematical and physical formulae and simple graphical information. Later, more complex information is found, e.g., parts of the sender's DNA, schematics for very advanced technology, philosophical texts or poems.
Based on a true story. Larry Winters was sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder in a Soho bar in London in 1963. Silent Scream, directed by David Hayman and starring Iain Glen as Winters, is based on the life and writing of Winters. A violent and drug addicted member of the Barlinnie Special Unit in Scotland, Larry died in 1977 of a drug overdose at the age of 34.
The film is composed of flashbacks into his younger life as a soldier in the parachute regiment and his childhood in Glasgow and Carbisdale. The memories are triggered by drugs and isolation.
Since the film deals primarily with the convict Winters, the viewer experiences his memories to the fullest. His life as a child, in which he is encouraged by his brother to do wrong, is captured in beautiful nostalgia. His life as a young man is beset with problems.
The encouragement from his older brother is clearly the cause of his dysfunction. Together the two commit crimes including robbery, breaking and entering, shooting and fighting. His older brother Don (played by Jamie Morton) almost shoots Larry in the head by accident while playing with a World War II rifle stolen previously by Don. The childhood holidays in Carbisdale are fundamental to the biography of Winters. In his own writing he describes the times as his most peaceful. The adventures of the two boys feature heavily in the film.
His life in the Parachute regiment is captured with gritty realism. Content with messing about in the military, Winters soon becomes disenchanted with the army, takes part in a brutal beating of another soldier and goes AWOL. Before running off, the viewer witnesses his indecision to take the gun his older brother gave him. The gun which sent him to prison. His own internal battle with right and wrong is what drives the film. It becomes clear that he is gifted but unstable. A writer of poetry, Winters own work gave the film its name.
His memories of childhood are frequent but one stands out above the others. The two boys are being attacked by a Glasgow gang and Larry is cornered. His brother Don steps in to save him and gives Larry a glass bottle to fight with. Larry smashes it over the head of his adversary. This represents the beginning of his violence. Later, the two boys break into a mansion house and his brother Don finds a gun and some bullets. They run off and hide in the woods where they begin to play with the weapon. Don loads it and almost shoots Larry in the head.
Years later, after several years in prison, Larry has a home visit. Meeting with his older brother (now played by Alexander Morton) and his mother in the family home is one of the most upsetting recurring themes of the film.
The local woodlanders are carrying on with their everyday life as normal until one morning when two men Harry and Joe start clearing the entire forest with their tractor. The animals evacuate as many trees fall down, and more trees are cut down including Mrs. Koala's home, and a tree knocks Blinky Bill unconscious.
At sunrise, nothing is left of the bush and every animal is left homeless. They move out of the grounds to search for a new home, including Mr. Wombat. Blinky, dazed and confused, calls for his mother, but she is nowhere in sight. Blinky rescues a young female koala named Nutsy from a cluster of fallen trees. They both run into Mr. Wombat. Nutsy tells him that Blinky has amnesia and Mr. Wombat explains to him about his life so far.
Blinky was a very mischievous sort causing trouble and receiving a scolding from Mayor Pelican, his teacher Miss Magpie and his mother for his many antics. He once encountered and escaped Ms. Pym at her general store. His mother then disciplines him and cries about the grief he is causing her. By the end of this story, Blinky is feeling very guilty about the trouble he caused his mother, so decides to find her.
Blinky and Nutsy make their way towards a riverbank where they meet up with a hard-of-hearing Granny Grunty Koala. Down the river, they meet up with Splodge and his family who tell them about what happened to Mrs. Koala who refused to evacuate out of pride in her own home. Blinky and Nutsy make their way to the waiting line where Mayor Pelican is assigning all the woodlanders to their places. Blinky approaches the mayor who is less than pleased, and orders Nurse Angelina to take the children to the leaking North Cave. Unfortunately, Blinky's mother is not here.
Blinky asks Ruff's mother for directions to the woodchip mill. Ignoring the fact there is danger there, Blinky goes to find his mother at the mill, and Nutsy follows him as they make their way through a rampaging river and the woods. They finally make it to the mill. The wood chip mill is home to the woodcutters that felled their homes.
The next morning Blinky and Nutsy witness the woodcutters reducing the animals' former homes into sawdust, narrowly escaping the circular buzz-saw. Then they stay in hiding until night time, but as they try to escape, they alert the dogs. When Blinky slingshot the security light, Harry's wife Flo urges her husband to investigate. Blinky manages to slip out of the place, but Nutsy is trapped and makes a run for it, climbing into the bedroom of the family's daughter Claire.
Blinky tearfully goes back to tell the others about the tragic news. Blinky's gang form a rescue party, forcing Marcia, a marsupial mouse, to join them. Blinky has Jacko, a kookaburra, para-drop Marcia down the chimney of the woodcutters' house taking notes of the house layout and items. Meanwhile, Nusty climbs into Claire's bed who wakes up happy to find a real koala in her bed, and manages to get her parents to let her keep the koala temporarily.
Blinky's gang sneak up to the house at night, then break into the house, but then they start up a commotion. Claire immediately hides herself and Nutsy in her bedroom cupboard. Splodge manages to fend off both the dogs and Joe, while Blinky keeps Harry and Flo locked in their bedroom. In the chaos that follows, the wood chip machines startup. Blinky gets Nutsy out of the house and they both fight off Harry. The chain of chaotic events against Harry and Joe ends them up in a water tank. Blinky locates his mother and they all leave the place in the woodcutters' truck, while Claire waves tearfully goodbye to her new-found koala friends.
''The House of the Wolfings'' is a romantically reconstructed portrait of the lives of the Germanic Gothic tribes, written in an archaic style and incorporating a large amount of poetry. Morris combines his own idealistic views with what was actually known at the time of his subjects' folkways and language. He portrays them as simple and hardworking, galvanized into heroic action to defend their families and liberty by the attacks of imperial Rome.
Morris's Goths inhabit an area called the Mark on a river in the forest of Mirkwood, divided into the Upper-mark, the Mid-mark and the Nether-mark. They worship their gods Odin and Tyr by sacrificing horses, and rely on seers who foretell the future and serve as psychic news-gatherers.
The men of the Mark choose two War Dukes to lead them against their enemies, one each from the House of the Wolfings and the House of the Laxings. The Wolfing war leader is Thiodolf, a man of mysterious and perhaps divine antecedents, whose ability to lead is threatened by his possession of a magnificent dwarf-made mail-shirt which, unknown to him, is cursed. He is supported by his lover the Wood Sun and their daughter the Hall Sun, who are related to the gods.
Belgian scientist Bertram Hammonds, along with Gomez, who survived being injured in the first film, arrives in the Lost World to drill for crude oil. He and his men begin capturing the natives for slave labor, throwing Chief Palala off the top of the plateau. He survives and is rescued by Malu and taken to a nearby village. Word reaches Edward Malone and Jenny Nielson in England, who remind Professors Challenger and Summerlee of the promise they made to Palala: that they would return to the Lost World should they be needed.
However the professors are having a feud. Challenger recently discredited Summerlee on a theory and now they aren't on speaking terms. With help from Jim, Malone and Jenny manage to bamboozle Challenger and Summerlee into coming along with each mistakenly believing they are commanding the expedition while the other is remaining in England. When they encounter one another aboard the steamship bound for Africa, they nearly come to blows. Upon arriving they are led to the base of the plateau by Malu, where she found Chief Palala.
Above, attacks by dinosaurs have set back Hammonds' work. His drilling crews accidentally tap into a volcanic pipe during a tyrannosaurus' visit, triggering a volcanic eruption that threatens to destroy the whole plateau. The initial eruption destroys the plane they arrived in. Fleeing, Hammonds and Gomez take Chief Palala's daughter hostage and threaten to kill her unless the natives show them how to leave. Suddenly Challenger and the others arrive, having come the same way they left last time, through the caves.
Challenger shoots and kills Gomez, and Hammonds is taken prisoner. After several adventures including clashes with the hostile drilling crew members, the group struggles to stop the erupting volcano. Challenger creates a new explosive, "Challengerite," with which to seal the volcano. Boxes of the explosive are put into a cave nearby but Hammonds chases Jim inside, not wanting them to set off the explosives. He tries to ply Jim with promises of wealth but Jim sets off the explosives, stopping the eruption and seemingly killing Hammonds in the process.
Afterward, Summerlee congratulates Challenger on the Challengerite, and they muse on how much longer they can keep the Lost World safe from human intervention.
The story focuses on three children who run away from their orphanage and are rescued by Heaven Eyes, a strange, innocent child with webbed hands and feet. The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Heaven Eyes was rescued by the elderly caretaker of a gigantic old printing press and storage building. He raises her lovingly and she calls him her Grandpa
The game is set on the continent of Eclipse, in the Holy Land of Zeptar. The player takes the role of a mercenary named Ruus Hardy. Returning home to Zeptar, he finds that the entire city, as well as the central tower, have been sucked into the underworld. He meets an old man who gives him the Dark One's sword, the only weapon which can injure the demons responsible. Swearing to rescue the old woman who raised him, as well as the rest of Zeptar, Ruus descends into the underworld.
Jo, a girl from Quebec, loves to draw, and she is good enough at it to win a scholarship. She goes to the city from her small town to study at a special art school, where more than anything else, she hopes to learn to paint like her hero, Vincent van Gogh. While sketching faces one day, she encounters a mysterious European art dealer who buys a few of her drawings, and commissions her to do some more. He rewards her handsomely for her work, and goes back to Amsterdam. Not long after, Jo is shown a magazine story about the "discovery" and million dollar sale of some of the drawings of young Vincent van Gogh, drawings only she and her friend, Felix, know are hers. The only thing to do is for Jo and friends to get to Amsterdam and find the mystery man. Or better still, go right to the source and speak to Vincent himself in 19th century Arles.
Jeannie has been a happily married housewife for 15 years to her astronaut husband Tony Nelson and has a teenage son, T.J. When Tony is promoted to Colonel and is about to retire from the NASA space program, Jeannie decides to give him a celebration party in their backyard. However, egged on by his colleagues to retire with a dramatic flair, Tony breaks his promise to Jeannie for one more space flight (aboard the Space Shuttle), this time with a female astronaut, Captain Nelly Hunt.
Jeannie is furious, so she decides to separate from her husband temporarily to be a more independent modern woman. In the meantime, Jeannie's always-scheming evil sister, Jeannie II is determined to have Tony for herself and she teams up with Haji, the chief genie (operating a fitness gym in the United States), to break up her sister's marriage. Jeannie II traps her sister in a bottle with a special stopper, that nobody but another genie could open.
Meanwhile, Tony's space flight is in trouble; the engines won't fire and the shuttle is on a collision course with a meteoroid.
When T.J. comes home and hears his mother trapped in the bottle, he attempts to open the bottle. At first, the stopper would not move, but his mother encouraged him to blink, like she does to invoke her powers. Jeannie encourages her son to concentrate and to blink again, this time the stopper moves. T.J. discovers that he had inherited his mother's powers and is a genie, himself. (Earlier on, T.J. sees his mother using her powers and she explains to him about his heritage, and revealing that she is a genie, and how she became a genie. She also blinked T.J. with her back to the day when she first met Tony.) After blinking, and releasing his mother from her prison, Jeannie and T.J. go to Haji, explaining the trick. Rules must have changed since 1970, because Jeannie now needs special dispensation from the chief of genies in order to do something major, like saving a human life.
Haji gives Jeannie a magic amulet and tells her to blink three times during the full moon while holding it. If she does this, Tony and the shuttle crew will be saved. But the magic comes at a terrible price—every mortal that has ever known Jeannie and T.J., including Tony, will forget that they even exist. T.J. tells his mother that they will lose dad either way, so they might as well do it so Tony lives. Jeannie invokes her magic, saving the shuttle from certain doom, and it is able to return to the ground. However, Jeannie got Haji to agree to one final night together for her and Tony, allowing Jeannie to say farewell to Tony in her heart. The next morning, while Tony is asleep, Jeannie alters the bedroom and then the house to what it might look like if Tony was a bachelor.
With T.J., Jeannie moves on with her life. The final scene shows Jeannie and Tony passing each other on the street, and Jeannie magically gets Tony's attention, indicating that they will in fact find each other again. Before the film ends, Jeannie breaks the fourth wall and says to the viewers, "Haji made me agree to an ending. He never said there couldn't be a new beginning." The film ends with Tony following Jeannie down the street.
When Oliver Whynacht and his brother Jackie return home for their estranged father's funeral, Oliver is surprised to find out that he has inherited his father's estate which includes a funeral home. Shortly after arriving Henry, the handyman tells Oliver that the funeral home is facing bankruptcy. A stressed Oliver goes out for a night of drinking with Roberta Knickel after which he hits and kills a hiker with his truck. Roberta, who is both the local coroner and funeral home embalmer, helps Oliver stage the body so that it appears like an accident. This becomes Oliver's first paying customer, encouraging the duo to intentionally kill again. Suspicion is raised as the two fight to stay out of jail and stage "accidents" all over town. Due to their mutual partnership Oliver and Roberta begin to fall in love despite Oliver's seductive stepmother Luanne. After Roberta reveals that she is pregnant, the two get married. Shortly after the truth comes out that Roberta murdered Oliver's father to lure him back into town. Roberta was using Oliver to regain ownership of the funeral home which originally belonged to her mother. The film concludes as Roberta kills Oliver and gains possession of the funeral home.
The Kaurava conflict began after a sudden appearance of a Warp Storm near Kaurava IV. Previously, the system was held entirely by the Imperium of Mankind and defended by the Imperial Guard, except for two areas—the Ork infested jungles of Kaurava II and the underground of Kaurava III, holding Necron tombs in hibernation. The warp storm leads to the awakening of the Necrons, and the arrival of Ork warboss Gorgutz, who absorbs the indigenous Orks with his own forces. Six other factions appear in the system. The Eldar under the leadership of Farseer Caerys arrive in response to the Necron awakening, their ancient enemy. The Imperial Guard comes under suspicion by the Imperium's Blood Ravens chapter of the Space Marines, and the Sisters of Battle, for suspected heresy. This forces a conflict between the three imperial factions. The Chaos warband of the Alpha Legion arrives using the warpstorm. The Tau arrive, intending to annex the system into the Tau Empire. Finally, the Dark Eldar, usually avoiding large-scale warfare, sees the chaos and confusion of the conflict as an opportunity to capture prisoners and souls.
Several endings exist:
The fate of the Kaurava System depends on the actions taken by the various factions fighting over it, but the only known details on the canonical ending initially came only from dialogue in the sequel, ''Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II''. Scout Sergeant Cyrus states that the Kaurava campaign was a failure, and that the majority of the Blood Ravens led by Captain Indrick Boreale were wiped out, costing the chapter half of its manpower in a single campaign. As a result, the severely undermanned Blood Ravens cannot afford to lose their recruiting worlds in sub-sector Aurelia and must defend them at all costs.
Martin Drake meets Jennifer West in an auction house. Three years ago, he had fallen in love with her during a brief but intense encounter on a railway platform—after which she vanished. Now it seems she is engaged to Richard Fleet, whom she has known since they were children together. And when they were children, Richard's father Sir George died when he fell off the roof of their home, Fleet House. It was generally accepted as an accident, but a series of mysterious happenings cause the case to be re-opened.
Sir Henry Merrivale, detective and explainer of the impossible, is also at the auction and revives his old antagonism with Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brale, who is Jenny's grandmother. Arthur Puckston keeps the pub across the road from Fleet House and was an eyewitness to Sir George's death.
When his daughter, Enid Puckston, is found murdered in what might be a haunted prison, Sir Henry takes a hand and reveals not only the identity of the murderer but the unusual psychology that underlies the case.
Category:1948 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:William Morrow and Company books
Sir Henry Merrivale, detective and explainer of the impossible, is visiting the United States.
He has been invited to visit millionaire Frederick Manning, to "witness a miracle" at his country home. Manning's three children are nervous about a secret which their father has threatened to reveal very soon—although it is probably not his relationship with a lady named Irene Stanley, whom Manning freely admits he is "keeping".
The morning after Sir Henry's arrival, and just as the house party hears police sirens drawing closer to the Manning home, Frederick Manning dives into the swimming pool, fully clothed, and vanishes. His clothes and hat float to the surface, but he is nowhere to be found.
Sir Henry must untangle Manning's personal and business dealings and follow the trail of clues to find Manning and reveal a criminal.
Category:1949 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Locked-room mysteries Category:William Morrow and Company books
The English village of Stoke Druid in Somerset has been plagued by a series of vicious anonymous letters written by a poison-pen who becomes known as the "Mocking Widow", after a forty-foot high rocky feature on the outskirts of the village.
A middle-aged spinster who has been tormented by the letters' suggestions of sexual immorality commits suicide. Sir Henry Merrivale is offered an incredibly rare volume of memoirs by the village bookseller if he exposes the poison-pen, and accepts. During the investigation, a young woman is frightened nearly to death by the Widow's threats to visit her in her bedroom—she sees the Widow in her bedroom at the time and place previously announced, in circumstances that seem impossible for anyone to have been there.
Then a village blackmailer who may have been the Widow's assistant is murdered, and Sir Henry brings the series of crimes home to their perpetrator.
Category:1950 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Novels set in Somerset Category:William Morrow and Company books
Sir Henry Merrivale is on vacation in Tangier, but cannot resist the opportunity to meet the challenge of a world-class criminal known as "Iron Chest", who always carried an ornate iron chest during his thefts. No one knows what Iron Chest really looks like, or how he manages to vanish without a trace after his thefts.
After a red-carpet welcome from the local constabulary, Sir Henry becomes friendly with two young English couples resident in Tangier and works closely with them to solve the mystery of Iron Chest's identity.
Category:1952 American novels Category:Novels by John Dickson Carr Category:Novels set in Tangier Category:William Morrow and Company books
In the Kingdom of Carnava, in an age when magic supports everyday life and civilization itself, peace is maintained by the queen's knights and the Rev Magic Association. Sixteen years before the game's story begins, monsters called Beast Fiends start to appear, destroying everything in their way. Mattias, leader of the Magic Association, uses the evil Demon Blade to try to seal the source of the fiends, but is sealed away himself by the elemental witches. At the time of the game setting, new Beast Fiends have been appearing, and the government overextends its forces trying to protect the entire kingdom. Meanwhile, Fatima a powerful witch of the Association with control of the rare Shadow Frost Magic goes rogue and starts a conflict with the Association, causing more trouble for the Kingdom.
Trying to solve the crisis, the kingdom starts a clandestine research project whose aim is to produce an easier way to use magic. The story starts when the kingdom has just successfully completed the research project, and devised a tool known as the "Runic Engine". Roland, a knight in training, is accidentally imbued with this new power, and fights the Beast Fiends, Master Mattias and the Shadow Frost Witch. In the course of the game, he discovers that the Rev Magic Association had covered up Mattias' turn to evil. However, he does not realise that Mattias did this to try and save the world, rather than destroy it. He later discovers that Bharva, king of the Fiends, was manipulating events, and joins with Fatima to prevent the Mage Queen Elicia, creator of the Fiends, from overrunning the world with them.
The player has a choice of having a romantic relationship with Fatima or Althea, and end game parts of the story, including the ending, will change depending on the player's pre-battle dialogue choices.
At Telford Old Hall, the past is a constant reminder in the present. Long-dead Cavalier Sir Byng Rawdon still haunts the house, and lately has been making his ghostly presence known, it seems.
During his lifetime, he etched a poem into a leaded-glass window with a diamond that is a showpiece of the historic house, along with the heavily jeweled Cavalier's Cup, a family heirloom.
When Sir Henry Merrivale and Chief Inspector Masters arrive to debunk the ghost, Masters agrees to spend the night in the Oak Room with the doors locked and windows latched.
Masters falls asleep and, when he wakes up, he finds that the Cavalier's Cup has been moved from the locked safe and left standing on a nearby table. Also, Sir Byng's sword, which was hanging outside the Oak Room, has been placed at Masters' feet.
Sir Henry and Masters must cope with Telford Old Hall's present-day inhabitants, a visiting American Congressman and Sir Henry's singing teacher in order to reveal who is behind the ghostly manifestations.
Mr. Sebastian is a former Oxford professor, who in the late 60s directs the all-female decoding office of British Intelligence. One day, while running through the streets of Oxford to attend the bestowing of an honorary degree on his friend the Prime Minister, Sebastian runs into Rebecca (Becky) Howard and her jeep. After insulting Sebastian on the spot, Becky is intrigued by him and follows him to the ceremony. After Becky is able to spell her own name backwards, he gives her a phone number to call if she wants an unspecified "job."
Becky calls the number, and after Sebastian's personal assistant Miss Elliott describes the job as being part of the "civil service," Becky is turned off by the idea. Overcoming her concerns, she calls again, and after a successful interview, obtains a job deciphering codes used by secret agents and foreign spies. Once settled in her new job, Becky slowly starts to fall for the aloof Mr Sebastian. However, problems arise when Gen. John Phillips, Head of Security, accuses Sebastian's senior Jewish decoder Elsa Shahn of being a poor security risk, because of her left-wing Communist leanings.
Sebastian convinces the Head of Intelligence to retain Shahn despite Phillips' objections, expressing how vital Shahn is to the decoding office and reaffirming that she enjoys his full confidence. Eventually, Becky and Sebastian engage in an affair, which upsets Sebastian's longtime girlfriend (and washed-up pop singer) Carol Fancy. Ultimately, Shahn betrays Sebastian's trust by providing recently decoded information to a left-wing political organisation. When confronted with the security breach by the Head of Intelligence and by Phillips' watchdog Jameson, Sebastian tenders his resignation and breaks up with Becky, thinking she was on to him. He leaves London and returns to his teaching position at Oxford University. Months later, Sebastian is visited at Oxford by the Head of Intelligence, who convinces Sebastian to return, temporarily, to the decoding office to help the Americans decipher some unidentified signals emanating from a Sputnik-type Russian spy satellite circling the earth. To prepare for this assignment, Sebastian visits a secret British eavesdropping installation, where he meets the American Ackerman, who is working on the project.
One day, while looking for Becky, who has also left the decoding department after Sebastian's resignation and break-up, Sebastian runs into Carol, who invites him to a party at her apartment "for old times sake". At the party, Sebastian is drugged with LSD and lured to the top of the building by Toby, who unknown to Sebastian, is both Carol's lover and a foreign agent. Just as the hallucinating Sebastian is about to jump off the building ledge to his death at Toby's insistence, he is saved by Gen. Phillips, who had been tailing both men, and Toby is arrested. Sebastian returns to the decoding office, and finds out where Becky lives. While visiting Becky, Sebastian discovers that he is the father of her newborn baby. During this visit, a noise from the baby's rattle provides Sebastian with the solution to the Soviet spy satellite's signals, which he eventually breaks with the help of his faithful group of decoding girls, who are summoned to Becky's apartment to decipher the Soviet code.
Players take on the role of the owner of a plant nursery, who must breed and care for more than 500 different kinds of exotic plants, all the while attempting to keep the plant store economically viable long enough to achieve the ultimate objective: breeding the six Magic Plants. Along the way, they can catch insects which are then added to a kind of "trophy" room, the duplicates of which can earn the player a significant amount of cash.
The cartoon opens in 1849, with narration by Robert C. Bruce, over a spurious map showing a sliver of land on the Eastern Seaboard labeled "USA", with all land to its west labeled "INJUN JOE'S TERRITORY". Porky Pig is leading a wagon train to California and he must keep an eye out for the Herculean Native American "Super Chief", Injun Joe. The name is a play on the famous Santa Fe train run of the same name (a frequent reference in WB cartoons), and reinforced by each character spouting smoke and crying "Woo-woo!" like a steam locomotive, each time they say Injun Joe's name. It is also a nod to an antagonistic literary character from Mark Twain's ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer''.
Porky and Injun Joe are repeatedly interrupted by a goofy bearded hillbilly named Sloppy Moe (a play on "Sloppy Joe"), who keeps repeating, "I know something I won't tell, I won't tell, I won't tell!" to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down. This goes on until Injun Joe corners Porky with tomahawk in hand, and Sloppy Moe sings his refrain once more. Injun Joe grabs him and demands, "''What'' you know, Huh???", and Sloppy reveals his secret at last, "Injun... Joe... is... ''ticklish!''", and proceeds to prove that by tickling the chief with his hands and beard. The Native American goes into a raucous laughing fit. Distracted, he backs off a cliff and falls deep into the ground, pulling the surface down with him, and causing the map seen at the beginning of the cartoon to stretch the "USA" sliver across to the west coast, so that it now reads "UNITED STATES of AMERICA" from west to east.
The cartoon closes with the narrator returning to lionize the cartoon's heroes, Porky and Sloppy Moe, and irises-out with Moe tickling the giggling Porky.
Peter Middleton is an unemployed car salesman. He rescues hungry street urchin Billy, who has been caught stealing from a street vendor, and takes him under his wing. Peter rents a room. He has no money, but Mrs. Badger, the landlady, is too kindhearted to turn the pair away.
When an acquaintance mentions that he has a client who wants to purchase a 1934 Bentley, Peter sees an opportunity to make a commission and scours the streets. He finds one and brazenly inspects it, much to the puzzlement of the chauffeur. In the process, Peter accidentally backs into Cynthia Hatch. When he pretends the car is his, she gets him to take her to a fine restaurant. She lets him believe she is also out of work, but in reality, she is the Bentley's owner. She is well known to the restaurant staff, but she asks the maitre d' to pretend to not know her to play a trick on Peter. Peter eventually confesses he has no money. She talks him into trying to see Mr. Hatch, the wealthy head of several petrol-related companies (and her father).
Peter spends all night devising a plan to make petrol stations more attractive to customers by offering additional services, such as dining, dancing and even swimming pools. Meanwhile, Cynthia asks her father to see Peter. The following day, Peter gets to meet Hatch, but Hatch turns him down without even giving Peter a chance to explain his plan. Hatch jokingly suggests he go see Blue Point, a rival which is being beaten down by his company. Peter does so, and is hired as their manager.
Peter makes Blue Point a great success, much to the chagrin of Hatch, who had been hoping to buy the struggling company. Peter hires Cynthia as his secretary, still unaware of her true identity. Within a year, Blue Point has overtaken and soared past Hatch's company. When Peter learns that a bypass is going to be built, he plans to buy sites for petrol stations along the route before Hatch hears about it. However, George Hamlin, Blue Point's publicist, has done such a poor job that Peter threatens to sack him; George betrays the plan to Hatch, who outbids Peter's company for all the sites. After Peter receives the bad news, he sees Cynthia taking money from Hatch and concludes that she betrayed him. When he confronts her, she denies it and storms out, but not before revealing that Hatch is her father. Afterward, Peter learns that the bypass will not be built for another fifteen years. Hatch offers to sell some of his holdings to Peter, those he believes the bypass will make worthless. Knowing otherwise, Peter accepts. After the sale, Hatch learns of the delay and realises he has been outwitted. However, he is not too displeased, having come to respect Peter. When Peter runs into George outside Hatch's office, he realises who the real traitor is. Peter then reconciles with Cynthia, much to her father's secret delight.
The prologue depicts the arrival in London of Mr Golspie, who has come by steamship from an unnamed Baltic country. He discusses his immediate plans with the crew.
The first chapter contains a detailed description of a fictional street in the EC postcode area called Angel Pavement, and the employees at Twigg & Dersingham. Business has not been good, and Mr Dersingham is trying to decide whom to sack. Mr Golspie arrives with a dispatch case containing a sample book of veneers and inlays, and asks to see Mr Dersingham. After a short delay, he is admitted to Mr Dersingham's office, and there is a long discussion, after which both men leave mysteriously. Mr Smeeth is baffled, especially when Mr Dersingham rings up and tells him to sack their senior traveller, Mr Goath.
The second chapter introduces the tobacconist T. Benenden, and shows Mr Smeeth's family and home life. The next morning, Dersingham still has not returned to the office, and during lunch Mr Smeeth hears an unpleasant story about the failure of an umbrella firm called Claridge & Molton. He wonders if Mr Dersingham's absence indicates that they are all about to lose their jobs. But at five, Mr Dersingham returns and informs Mr Smeeth that the newcomer has offered a cheap supply of veneers from the Baltic, and their immediate future is assured. The next evening, Mr Golspie takes Mr Smeeth out for a drink at the ''White Horse'', and tells him he ought to ask for a rise.
A new typist is employed, Poppy Sellers, and Mr Dersingham invites Mr Golspie to a black tie dinner party at his home. The party is not a success, firstly because of the incompetence of the servants and secondly because of the unexpected arrival of the daughter, Lena Golspie, who quarrels with Miss Verever and Mrs Dersingham.
The fourth chapter depicts one of the miserable weekends of the lonely young clerk, Mr Turgis, who wanders around London taking in any amusements he can afford. On the Monday after, he sees Lena Golspie for the first time, and is smitten. The fifth chapter depicts the narrow world of the typist, Miss Matfield, and her disastrous date with Norman Birtley, which is enlivened only by an accidental meeting with Mr Golspie, who gives her a box of chocolates on a whim. Later on Mr Golspie seems even more glamorous, when, shortly before leaving for a short trip, he asks her to take down letters on board the moored steamship ''Lemmala'', and pours her some vodka.
Mr Smeeth obtains a rise in salary, and after talking to Benenden, he celebrates by going to a concert at Queen's Hall, where he enjoys Brahms's First Symphony. On returning home he finds out that his daughter Edna has been sacked, but he is not terribly dismayed; he admits to his wife that he has been given a rise, something which he had been planning to keep secret. On Saturday night his wife's cousin, Fred Mitty, and his family, arrive for a party, and Mr Smeeth quickly comes to loathe them after they wreck the parlour and damage some of his clothes.
Mr. Turgis has become obsessed with Lena Golspie, and jumps at a chance to see her again when he delivers some money from her father. She is bored, and takes him out to the cinema, flirting with him afterwards. They go on a second date, but she does not turn up to a third date, and he is devastated. Mr Golspie returns shortly before Christmas, goes away again on Christmas Eve, and returns again in time for New Year's Eve, on which he contrives to take Miss Matfield out for the evening. They begin to go on dates secretly.
Mr. Smeeth falls out with his wife, and is later disturbed by the departure of the office boy Stanley and a road accident involving the tobacconist Benenden. His son George seems to be employed by crooks, and Mr Golspie makes an arrangement with Mr Dersingham which strikes Smeeth as suspicious. He goes to visit Benenden at the hospital.
Mr Turgis is consumed with jealousy, and one Friday night he turns up unannounced at Lena's home and fights with her. Thinking he has strangled her, he wanders at random through London before arriving at Twigg & Dersingham, where Mr Golspie and Miss Matfield are "working late". He admits everything in despair, and they drive to Carrington Villas, but Lena is not there – she has run off. Mr Golspie sacks Mr Turgis. He returns to his rented room and considers suicide. The next morning, Poppy Sellers arrives to deliver his last pay packet, and they have a long talk which reconciles him to the idea of spending time with her.
In Chapter 11, Mr. Dersingham breaks the news to Mr Smeeth that Mr. Golspie has swindled them all and fled; the firm faces imminent bankruptcy. Mr. Dersingham returns home, obviously tipsy in front of their friends, and his wife is infuriated. But when she is fully informed of what has happened she feels a surge of energy. Mr. Smeeth returns home, and finding the Mittys there, throws them out, an action which restores ''his'' energy, as does unexpected sympathy from Mrs Smeeth.
The epilogue depicts the unabashed Golspies shipping out from London, on their way to South America: "A string of barges passed them...a gull dropped, wheeled, flashed, was gone...the gleam faded from the face of the river; a chill wind stirred; the distant banks...retreated; and even the smoky haze of London city slipped away from them..."
In the midst of a war on Earth, a spaceport in New York sends a group of colonists to establish a settlement on Mars. The Bittering family, composed of father Harry, mother Cora, and their children Dan (referred to as Tim in some versions), Laura, and David, arrives as part of the few colonists chosen for the first wave. Harry is initially disquieted by the Martian environment, but he takes comfort in the fact that the family can return to Earth when resupply ships arrive.
Strange events begin to affect the life brought as part of the settlement effort, including the seeded grass sprouting purple, the family cow growing a third horn in the middle of its head, and other anomalies with the vegetable garden. Harry's discomfort on Mars increases and the thought of returning to Earth on the next resupply mission soon becomes his only comfort, much to the concern of Cora. This comfort is taken away as Bittering is informed that the war has led to an atomic bomb devastating New York City and destroying the only spaceport capable of supporting travel. Frantically, he begins work on building a rocket to return himself and his family to Earth. As he works on the craft, the colonists themselves soon begin to manifest Martian traits. Harry notices that his own eyes have started to turn gold, and the townsfolk's skin turns to a dark reddish brown.
Cora convinces Harry that a family swim in the canals of Mars would do him good to relax, and he hesitantly agrees. While there, their eldest son, Dan, requests to be referred to by the Martian name Linnl. Harry and Cora, now almost entirely Martian, agree easily, and the other two children quickly adopt Martian names as well. As they return to the town, the Bitterings discover that the colonists are retreating to the ancient Martian villas in the mountains, as the summer has made the valley stiflingly hot. Harry briefly expresses a wish to stay and work on his rocket but is easily persuaded to go with the rest of the colonists and come back when the weather is cooler.
Five years later, the United States, having won the war and rebuilt New York, sends a small military dispatch to recover the colonists sent to Mars, only to find their settlement abandoned. The soldiers instead encounter a large Martian settlement in the mountain villas, where the native Martians are pleasant and have a remarkable affinity for English. Convinced they had nothing to do with the original colony's disappearance, the group agrees to attempt a second, larger settlement using the town built by the first.
The grandma's boy is a timid coward who cannot muster courage to woo his girl and is afraid of his rival. His loving grandma gives him a magic charm from the Civil War that had been used by his grandfather, which gives him the courage to capture a town criminal and win the girl. The "magic charm" turns out to be the handle of her umbrella and his grandma was pretending it was magical all along.
The film opens with the following quote: "Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned." which is incorrectly attributed to Milton (quote is from William Congreve's ''The Mourning Bride'').
At a mental institution in Paris, Doctor Rameau (Oscar Homolka) discusses with the British consul the case of a man who identifies himself as Ward Andrews. The doctor believes Andrews to be English and wants the consul's assistance in verifying this. Outwardly the man may seem sane, but underneath he suffers from paranoia, suicidal tendencies and is capable of murder. The doctor takes the consul to meet Andrews, but they discover he has escaped.
Phillip Monrell (Robert Montgomery) and his former college roommate Ward Andrews (George Sanders) run into each other in London and Monrell invites his old friend back to his family home. When they arrive, they meet Stella Bergen (Ingrid Bergman), the secretary of Phillip's mother (Lucile Watson). Both men are strongly attracted to her. She is friendly with the more responsible, hardworking Ward but prefers and marries the idle Phillip instead. Ward leaves for a job in Scotland.
Phillip is put in charge of the family steel mill but is not suited to the position. He begins to exhibit signs of mental illness, in particular, abnormal suspicion that his wife and Ward are in love. Despite this jealousy, he invites Ward for a visit and hires him to be the chief engineer at the mill. Eventually, Phillip's paranoia drives him to try to kill his perceived rival at work. Ward confronts him, admits his love for Stella, quits the steel mill, and returns to London.
After a frightening moment with her husband, Stella leaves him and goes to Ward. Phillip promises to grant her a divorce if Ward will return to talk with him in person. Having prepared a plan designed to frame Ward, Phillip provokes a loud argument with him which he knows is being overheard by a servant.
Afterwards, Phillip kills himself, after ensuring that Ward will be arrested for murder. Ward is convicted and sentenced to be executed. The day before the execution, Stella is visited by Dr. Rameau. He has seen a photo of Phillip in a newspaper and informs her that her husband was a patient who masqueraded as Ward Andrews and escaped from the institution. He is convinced that Phillip committed suicide and that he would have left some message bragging about it. Phillip's mother reveals that her son kept diaries; then, Clark (Aubrey Mather), the butler, remembers that he mailed a package to Paris the night Ward visited and Phillip died. Stella and Rameau take a flight to France and find the book, which exonerates Ward.
Shere Khan the Tiger and his sidekick Tabaqui the Hyena attack a group of villagers. A young boy named Mowgli runs off in search of his parents, only to get lost. He is taken into a wolf pack and raised by wolves Akela and Raksha.
Mowgli befriends Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther, Chil the vulture, and Hathi the elephant. Mowgli learns that man poses a danger to the jungle and the animals after seeing part of the jungle destroyed by fire. Bagheera and Baloo swear to protect Mowgli from Shere Khan. Bagheera and Baloo attempt to teach Mowgli how to hunt and how to defend himself against Shere Khan.
A few of the wolves team up with Shere Khan, believing that a human does not belong in a wolf pack. During the pack's next hunt, these wolves cause Mowgli to ruin the hunt, making the pack go hungry. Upset, Mowgli decides to run away from the pack. He is trapped by some chimpanzees, who are also secretly working for Shere Khan. When Raksha races to rescue Mowgli, Shere Khan attacks Raksha and kills her. Bagheera and Baloo rescue Mowgli and take him away from Monkey Town. Blaming himself for Raksha's death, Mowgli tries to run away from the jungle. Little Raksha, Mowgli's adopted sister, runs off to try and stop him.
Mowgli comes upon a human village and sees his own kind. Mowgli then hears Little Raksha's cries for help and returns to the jungle to free her from a bear trap. Little Raksha reminds Mowgli that he took the "Hunter's Oath" and shouldn't run away. Mowgli realizes that it is time to face Shere Khan not as a wolf, but as a man.
That night, Mowgli traps Shere Khan and banishes him from the jungle. Mowgli is praised by everyone, including the wolf bullies, who admit that they were wrong about him. The role of leader of the pack is offered to Mowgli, but gives it to Little Raksha. The next day, Bagheera and Baloo give Mowgli a book featuring jungle animals. He thanks them and then runs off.
Set in the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, the protagonist is a young American named Barney Custer, of Beatrice, Nebraska, who is the son of an American farmer and a runaway Luthan princess, Victoria Rubinroth. Unaware of his royal blood, much less that he is a dead ringer for his relative Leopold, the current king of Lutha, Barney visits Lutha on the eve of the First World War to see for himself his mother's native land. As he arrives in Lutha, King Leopold has just escaped from his ten years' imprisonment at the hands of his scheming uncle, Prince Peter of Blentz. Much to his own and everyone else's confusion, Barney is naturally mistaken for the king, leading to numerous complications.
Barney meets and falls in love with Princess Emma Von Der Tann, Leopold's promised bride, and then becomes intimately involved in Luthan affairs, working to help the king and ultimately allowing himself to be proclaimed as king while impersonating Leopold to prevent Prince Peter from seizing the throne. He finally succeeds in foiling Peter's plans to become king himself by rescuing and fighting for the real king. Unfortunately, after his coronation, King Leopold discovers the shared love between Barney and Princess Emma, and Barney is forced to leave Lutha, mimicking the flight of his father years earlier, though his father left with a princess—Barney has only a soldier. Thus ends part one.
In the second part of the novel, the European skies are darkening as World War I has begun. In Lutha, King Leopold has proven himself to be a bad ruler and has not yet persuaded Princess Emma to marry him. In Nebraska, Barney's soldier friend leaves the farm to return to Lutha. Barney himself is attacked by one of Prince Peter's henchmen and he decides to return to Lutha as well. After an adventurous trip across war-torn Europe, which includes being mistaken for a spy by the Austrians and barely escaping a firing squad, Barney finally reaches Lutha, where he once again is forced to impersonate the king in order to save Lutha from the advancing Austrians. He makes a diplomatic alliance with Serbia, and defeats the Austrians in person, thereby saving Lutha. The real king Leopold, who has been his antagonist throughout the second part of the novel, is mistaken for Barney and killed by one of Prince Peter's henchmen. Barney then consents to remain as king of Lutha, married at last to Princess Emma.
On May 23, 2000, an event called the "Black Light" causes all technology on Earth to stop working for a split second - and also permanently robs every superpowered being on the planet of their powers. The cause of the Black Light is never revealed. Heroes such as the Flash, Green Lantern, and Superman are haunted by their fall from grace: Wally West, formerly the Flash, was unable to save a policeman from being shot in the head; Clark Kent, formerly Superman, could not stop a dam from bursting and destroying a town; and Kyle Rayner, formerly Green Lantern, was beaten by the supervillain Sonar, an event which drives him to obsession. J'onn Jonzz, the Martian Manhunter, now stuck in his Martian form, questions whether some individuals should have special powers, and believes the Black Light event happened to teach superheroes that just because they save lives doesn't mean they need powers to do so. Other depowered heroes, such as Rex Mason, formerly Metamorpho, see this as a turn for the better now that they are human again. Heroes who never had to rely on superpowers, such as Batman, and heroes who use technology such as Steel, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle, are forced to pick up the slack when criminal activity spikes.
Meanwhile, the technological supervillains are now in charge of the crime scene, and the only thing in their way is the nonpowered heroes. Toyman launches an assault on LexCorp in a giant robot to try and kill Lex Luthor, and Steel, despite having been critically injured during the Black Light event, tries to stop him. Toyman kills Steel by making his robot stomp on him. When Booster Gold and Blue Beetle arrive on the scene, Toyman reveals he has other tech-focused supervillains hidden inside the robot and destroys Booster and Beetle's weapons. The tech villains abandon Toyman when the National Guard arrives, because they were paid by Lex Luthor as a doublecross. Toyman is stopped by the combined forces of the National Guard and Hawkman, and Luthor comes down to gloat to Toyman.
Things are not going well for some of the retired heroes. Clark agrees to split with Lois Lane who is upset at him being a self-loathing drunk, and he later moves in with Diana Prince, formerly Wonder Woman. Green Lantern becomes obsessed with finding a way to defeat Sonar, and Linda Danvers, formerly Supergirl, finds working as a cop insufficient to bring justice to criminals. Natasha Irons finds that someone stripped Steel's lab down to nothing, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold have had their weapons stolen.
Nearly a year after the Black Light event, Supergirl, at a meeting with Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash, brings up the idea of still being heroes despite losing their superpowers. She dubs the former superheroes the Phoenix Group because like the mythical phoenix they plan to rise from the ashes. The four of them begin training with Batman and other non-super heroes. Flash leaves for a while and goes to the Flash Museum, but comes back when he learns that people are forgetting what the heroes meant.
At Zen-Gen Biotech Systems Inc., Ray Palmer, formerly the Atom, signs up for an experiment to regain his ability to shrink, despite the fact that his powers came from a belt. The scientists manage to grant Ray the ability to shrink, but he becomes stuck at six inches and the scientists place him in a dollhouse. While there, he learns the scientists are employed by Lex Luthor and that with this research they can sell superpowers to anyone who can pay. Ray tries to call J'onn, but J'onn cannot hear him because he is still small. He then leaves a message in a table in the dollhouse before he starts shrinking down into the table's subatomic structure, but he starts to grow back too fast and causes a miniature atomic blast, which proves fatal to Ray. Needing more test subjects, Luthor has a group of villains, led by the Joker, kidnap Metamorpho, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix Group finishes their training, and reveal their new identities. Supergirl is now Justice, Aquaman is now the Hand, Flash is now Red Devil, and Martian Manhunter is now the Green Man. They begin investigating Ray Palmer's death.
Clark leaves Diana when she starts to believe that all that has happened is merely a test from God and that her powers will return when it ends. Clark winds up living on the street, but receives some money in a homeless shelter from a priest. He sees firefighters rescue someone from a burning building, then moves to a secluded home in the woods.
The Phoenix Group and Batman, with help from Oracle, discover the truth behind Atom's death when Justice finds his message on the dollhouse table. They then learn of the abductions of Metamorpho, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle. The Group, along with Nightwing, head for S.T.A.R. Labs, where the Zen-Gen scientists are currently working. They find the kidnapped heroes and get into a battle with the tech villains. The Group is victorious in its debut, and the villains are arrested along with Lex Luthor.
In a final note, Kyle Rayner faces off against Sonar one last time and soundly defeats the villain, but dies when Sonar impales him on a shaft of wood. Clark goes back to Diana and stops her from killing herself. The two marry, Clark goes back to his job at the ''Daily Planet'', and the Phoenix Group looks toward the future.
Two years later, Clark and Diana have a healthy baby boy who, unbeknown to the two of them, has the ability to transform matter into whatever he wants. With his birth, he opens the door to many possibilities.
The tale is a postmodern interpretation of the Japanese folk-tale of ''Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi'' ("Heaven's Cloud-Gathering Sword"), which is taken from the collection of folk-lore in the ''Kojiki''. The action shifts between the journey of the storm-god Susanoo who has been banished to earth in human form by his sister, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, as he attempts to slay the eight-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi. Valente also portrays the serpent's side of the story with a twist; the tale told by Orochi is intercut or added to by the seven maidens who have been sacrificed to the monster.
Zingarina (Asia Argento), a rebellious Italian girl who travels to Transylvania with her best friend Marie (Amira Casar) and a young interpreter, Luminita (Alexandra Beaujard), seeking her fiancee and father of the baby she's expecting, Milan Agustin (Morgan), who has been expelled from France, the country where they had met and fallen in love. She knows he's a travelling musician and plays in a gypsy band. Zingarina finds Milan at the winter "Herod's Carnaval" (Festival of customs and traditions) but he tells her that their love story is over. The girl, angry and crushed, doesn't want to return to France or Italy. Marie is angry too so she fires Luminita because she thinks they have to leave from Transylvania.
Zingarina exploits a temporary absence of Marie (the woman was at a phone-cabine) for running away from her (leaving a note only), in order to go after Vandana, a vagrant little girl. In her aimless travel through the boulevards and the villages, Zingarina meets Tchangalo (Birol Unel), a charming travelling merchant of Turkish descent. Between them there's a kind of comprehension and solidarity; then a love feeling. Even if Tchangalo is a man without borders and without ties, he accepts Zingarina (even the idea of forming a family with her); Tchangalo also accepts Zingarina's baby, even if he's not his natural son.
The novel is set amongst the villages of the Igbo people in colonial Nigeria during the 1920s. Ezeulu is the chief priest of the god ''Ulu'', worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. The book begins with Ezeulu and Umuaro fighting against a nearby village, Okperi. The conflict is abruptly resolved when T. K. Winterbottom, the British colonial overseer, intervenes.
After the conflict, an indigenous African Christian missionary, John Goodcountry, arrives in Umuaro. Goodcountry begins to tell the villages tales of Nigerians in the Niger Delta who abandoned (and battled) their traditional "bad customs" in favour of Christianity.
Ezeulu is called away from his village by Winterbottom and is invited to become a part of the colonial administration, a policy known as indirect rule. Ezeulu refuses to be a "white man's chief" and is thrown in prison. In Umuaro, the people cannot harvest the yams until Ezeulu has called the New Yam Feast to give thanks to Ulu. When Ezeulu returns from prison, he refuses to call the feast despite being implored by other important men in the village to compromise. Ezeulu reasons to the people and to himself that it is not his will but Ulu's; Ezeulu believes himself to be half spirit and half man. The yams begin to rot in the field, and a famine ensues for which the village blames Ezeulu. Seeing this as an opportunity, John Goodcountry proposes that the village offer thanks to the Christian God instead and they may harvest what remains of their crops with "immunity".
Many of the villagers have already lost their faith in Ezeulu. One of Ezeulu's sons, Obika, dies during a traditional ceremony, and the villagers interpret this as a sign that Ulu has taken sides with them against his priest. For this apparent judgement against Ezeulu and the promised immunity by the Christian God, at the Christian harvest, taking place a few days after Obika's death, many men embrace Christianity by sending their son there with yams.
The title ''Arrow of God'' refers to Ezeulu's image of himself as an arrow in the bow of his god.
In the 21st century, a nuclear war turned most of the Earth's surface into a desert wasteland, which also resulted in the contamination of the Earth's water supply. A man named Sanga has built the fortified haven of the "Last Land", where he rules as its dictator by monopolizing the city's uncontaminated water supply. When he learns that the neighboring residents of Freedom Village are trying to dig up a well for their own, Sanga sends his underlings to sabotage their effort. Kenshiro, master of Hokuto Shinken, gets involved in the conflict between the two regions after saving Tobi, an informant hired by Freedom Village.
It's 1958 and Bruce Stevens is a buyer for a national warehouse chain who passes through his hometown of Montario, Idaho whilst en route to Boise on business. His reason involves hormones more than nostalgia, however, as a one-time girlfriend named Peg lives there now. It is at a party at her place where he meets, and quickly falls into a relationship with, a strangely familiar older woman who turns out to be one of his former, and least favorite, elementary school teachers, Susan Faine. She simultaneously hires him on as manager of her typewriter shop. Travelling salesman Milton Lumky informs Bruce of a warehouse full of imported, Japanese-made surplus typewriters, and so Stevens drives to Seattle to see this potential bounty for himself. He belatedly discovers that the typewriters all have Spanish language keyboards, and so he tries to pass these hot potatoes down along the line to his former warehouse employer. He reveals his nefarious intentions to Susan, who passes the information onto the warehouse chain which nevertheless decides to take them off his hands at a fair but unprofitable price for Bruce. He then enters a period of waffling and indecision, ultimately deciding to try altering all of the machines himself and selling them at the shop. Returning to Boise he informs Susan of his decision and sets to work, only to return the next morning to find that Susan has fired him and all of the typewriters are being loaded into a truck by one of his former co-workers at the warehouse chain. Distraught by this turn of events he rents a room and recalls one of his first encounters with Susan as his fifth grade teacher which evolves into a day dream about the pair opening up shop in Montario and ultimately moving to Denver following the purchase of an expanded facility there and living happily ever after.
Sometime between 1958 and 1962, Leo Runcible, a liberal Jew, is working in the real estate field. On learning that Walt Dombrosio, Leo's neighbor, has had a Black visitor to his house in a "lily-white" suburb of Marin County, California, potential purchasers interrogate Runcible about the matter and ultimately incur his wrath over their narrow-minded bigotry. He thereby fails to close the deal and forfeits their friendship and a precious commission as well.
But according to Leo's tortured logic it is Walt who's at fault for this unforeseen little debacle. So in retaliation Runcible opportunistically reports Dombrosio's later episode of drunk driving, leading to the loss of the latter's motor vehicle operator's license for a period of six months.
Walt's wife Sherry then drives him to and from work every day, eventually landing a job working alongside her husband. Walt, however, being as he is an insecure, misogynistic, manipulating headcase, quits his own position over this incident and continues to fume over it as the weeks and months roll by. He eventually humiliates and manhandles his wife in front of their neighbors as a prelude to forcefully impregnating her with an unwanted child which she unsuccessfully threatens to abort.
At the same time, Runcible has found what he believes to be Neanderthal remains in Carquinez, Marin County, and envisages rising property prices due to incipient archaeological interest and the avalanche of media coverage that naturally follows. As it turns out, however, Dombrosio is the culprit who modified and planted the modern human remains there to begin with. They are a legacy of the local 'chuppers' who developed facial, cranial and spinal deformations as a supposed result of the pollution of the local water supply.
The novel ends around Christmas - Dombrosio's situation is at status quo ante: Sherry now back in the house and five months pregnant, having decided to forfeit her job in the city to keep the baby Dombrosio forced on her. He overhears a Christmas party in progress at the Runcible's home, and briefly contemplates visiting to end his dispute with Runcible before deciding against it. Dombrosio is then visited by a vision of a future with his little family several years later, after Sherry has presumably given birth to a malformed baby boy due to the possible teratogenic properties of the local water supply. This vision leaves Dombrosio shaken, as his wife realizes he shares the same fears about their unborn child.
Runcible faces bankruptcy, having decided to purchase the local water company to ensure high standards of water availability for the community. The purchase of the water company has cost Runcible considerably and he is unable to make the monthly payments due on his home. Despite his principled choice to serve clean water to the community regardless of the cost to himself, he remains consumed with anger and resentment against the local community for their ingratitude at his efforts to improve the area.
In 1960, 58-year-old Jim Fergesson decides to sell his Oakland-based auto repair business and retire. This threatens to greatly inconvenience his business tenant, used car salesman Al Miller, who rents a lot from Fergesson to sell his battered but superficially reconditioned old jalopies. Chris Harmon, an entrepreneur, advises Fergesson to invest in a new super-garage located in Marin Country Gardens. Jim takes a fall in the mud and has a minor heart attack during a visit to the property to personally verify its existence. Miller is convinced that Harmon is corrupt and makes an amateurish attempt at blackmailing him over his alleged (then-illegal) sale of salacious audio recordings. At the same time Al enters employment with Harmon as a curiously unqualified salesman of Classical Music. This, as it turns out, was an innocent administrative error. Al's actual assignment now involves the mass marketing of Barbershop Music. He sees conspiracies, machinations and double-dealings where there are none and strives mightily, but ultimately fails, to disrupt the final contract-signing between Fergesson and Harmon by playing on old Jim's paranoia. The strain of it all takes its toll on a recently injured, weakened, ailing Fergesson and he dies later that night at home.
Al then discovers that his used car lot has been ferociously vandalised, although the exact time and date remain uncertain. This plays an unexpectedly important role in the unfolding of subsequent events. Things are not quite what they seem, and coincidence plays a starring role here. His wife Julie quits her job and they run off together across Nevada, whilst Lydia, Jim's widow, discovers that her late husband's deal with Harmon was, contrary to what Al had sincerely believed, completely legitimate. Al is temporarily detained after Lydia threatens to sue him for fraud. Julie leaves him forever. In a moment of true serendipity Al starts a new relationship with his married real estate vendor, a vivacious, attractive "colored" woman by the name of Mrs. Lane.
Nick, his family, and cat Horace leave Earth in 1992, because pet ownership has been criminalised on that world. Arriving at their new home, Plowman's Planet, the family encounter a series of mishaps at the hands of the planet's varied indigenous inhabitants. A wub carries their luggage, but eats a map, while werjes attack Horace, but their family befriend the aliens, leading to a gift, which turns out to be a history of Plowman's Planet itself. They make the acquaintance of the non-indigenous alien Glimmung, who secures travel for them in return for his lost history of their adopted world. The Graham family encounter duplicates of themselves, and trobes steal Horace. Nick tries to find his pet, but locates their driver, slain in a car accident, and still possessing the book. Nick has it copied, wounding the Glimmung, who rediscovers it. Nick then finds Horace with a Nick duplicate, and the cat chooses his original owner over the simulacrum.
During the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane conducts an interview with Lex Luthor, a young businessman. Luthor tells Lane about his partnership with Thomas Edison's company, and how the technology will influence the world. Luthor is interrupted mid-sentence by a spectacle which amasses many guests: a flying man is carrying the Torch of the Statue of Liberty for the exposition. The flying man introduces himself to the onlookers as Clark Kent, and explains that he has incredible powers and abilities that he wanted to use for good during the dawn of this "age of wonder". Lois tells Kent that Lex Luthor could vouch for him to work with Thomas Edison. Before Luthor can give an answer, Clark accepts and flies to Edison's compound at Menlo Park, New Jersey.
At the compound, Edison is unwilling to hire Kent. However, Kent convinces Edison by shaping a palmful of sand into a light bulb using his powers. Upon impressing Edison employee Nikola Tesla with his workload, Tesla shares his complaints with Kent about Edison, concerned that Edison takes credit for everyone's contributions. Tesla is confused why Kent chose to not take advantage of his powers for his own benefits. Clark admits that he is not seeking personal fame and fortune, but rather knowledge. Luthor argues that in his view, the business of invention is all about money.
Tesla, Luthor, and Kent join Edison's rival George Westinghouse after Edison refuses to adopt Tesla's plans for alternating current electricity. Under Westinghouse, Clark Kent, who has adopted the name "Superman", works alongside Luthor to build a hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls. Lois Lane arrives at the station to interview Kent and Luthor. Luthor claims the future lies on those who control the means of production and marketing of inventions, namely himself. Lois is shoved over the edge of Niagara Falls by a large mob of reporters summoned by Luthor, and is saved by Kent.
At the Kent residence, Clark adopts his costume. Curious to know why he has these powers, his parents lead Clark to their barn to show his "birthright": a small spaceship.
Kent shows the spaceship to Luthor, Tesla, and his coworkers, Ted Knight and Barry Allen. He tells them about his alien origins, and shows them a hologram of his birth world and its destruction. Luthor proposes to replicate the Kryptonian technology for profit. The group establishes the Luthor Company, and Ted Knight becomes "Starman" in the process of field testing a gravity rod during a thunderstorm. Knight tests the rod's energy on Kent, but the energy ricochets onto Barry Allen's experiment, causing the chemical to explode. Allen, unharmed, begins cleaning the mess with superhuman speed, thus becoming the "Human Flash".
Lane reports to Perry White that the Luthor Company is giving away cold wireless lamps for free. However, when the stocks of these lamps are exhausted, a riot breaks out. Outraged, Luthor lashes out at Kent for causing bad publicity for the company, leading to an argument over money. Kent later expresses regret to Lane over his responsibility in the riots, and Lane kisses him.
By 1897, America has become a technologically advanced nation. Kent is hosting the inauguration of the League of Science, an organization that will ensure that science cannot be misused. Among the guests, Captain Hal Jordan, whom Kent had helped select as Green Lantern of Earth, is not impressed with Kent's speech. During the party, Kent meets the Wayne family and their son, Bruce Wayne. Luthor proposes to Lane, who rejects him in favor of Kent. Kent and Lane marry within the year.
Lex Luthor falls ill with radiation poisoning while on an expedition from the Viennese Bohemian mountains. He sends a distress signal, and the League evacuates the crew and destroys the cargo. Due to radiation exposure, Luthor has lost his hair and is recuperating in a hospital. He meets with Tesla, who assures him that a prototype of their project will completed soon. Kent, who is arriving to visit Luthor in the hospital, overhears that the two are building a death ray. Kent tells Luthor that he will not allow it to be built. Clark and Lane pressure Luthor to abandon the project, but he is not convinced.
The League of Science meets in 1900, discussing how their charter prohibits weapons based on their scientific sources. The charter also prohibits League members from using their powers in political disputes, including in military ventures. Hal Jordan, who participated in a foreign war despite resigning from the military, defends his actions and calls his colleagues unrealistic. He argues that the charter should be changed, as their inventions have given nations a new reason to fight wars. Kent adjourns the meeting and leaves, but Luthor and Jordan stay and agree that America's interests must be protected. The next day, the Wayne family is bombed, leaving only Bruce alive. The League discovers that a working-class terrorist group called the Spartans is responsible, and they go to the Lower East Side to find their headquarters.
The League finds the Spartan's headquarters deserted, and are attacked by the vigilante The Green Arrow. The group is then confronted by an angry mob. The Green Arrow explains that they are workers who are tired of being mistreated, and they seek their due for building the League's utopia. Arrow agrees with the League that the Spartans cannot be condoned for the deaths of the Wayne family, and promises to capture them. Meanwhile, Jordan and Luthor meet to discuss Superman's threat to their plans.
That night, Kent and Lane meet Jordan, who says there is trouble on the moon. Clark meets Jordan there, and Jordan shoots him into deep space. On Earth, he tells the League and Lois that Kent died in space, and his body cannot be recovered. Lane emotionally breaks down, and Jordan demands to discuss what's happened with Luthor.
The issue ends with the nation mourning Superman's death. A distraught Lane lies in her living room, and Luthor knocks on her door to court her.
Ten years after the events of Issue One, America has become the most technologically advanced civilization on earth. As a result, World War I occurred years earlier than in the prime timeline.
The Green Arrow is killed while chasing two bank robbers to a warehouse facility. After the struggle, which results in the explosion of the facility, a woman emerges from the rubble unharmed and flies away. The League of Science, including its newest members Plastic Man and Ray Palmer, investigate. At the scene, they are joined by Batman, who suggests they focus on finding the flying woman.
Meanwhile, recent U.S. Secretary of Defense appointee Lex Luthor is enraged by the destruction of the warehouse, which he owned. The scientist, who is revealed to be Diana of Themyscira, is dismayed that no one could be rescued from the warehouse, but Luthor assures her that all will be okay. He promises that her mother and Amazon sisters will be free from German tyranny soon. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne discovers that Luthor's holding company owns the destroyed warehouse, and concludes that Luthor is up to something.
In New York City, the League attends a charity event hosted by Bruce Wayne concerning the war in Europe. Princess Diana talks about the plight of the Amazons and their enslavement by Germany, and thanks America's role in supporting Themyscira. Lois Lane interviews the President and Luthor, who have opposing views about America's involvement in the war. Meanwhile, Wayne learns of Diana's involvement with Luthor. She demonstrates her powers to Wayne using Ted Knight's cosmic rod, and he becomes interested in her invulnerability.
When General Hal Jordan discovers the Germans possess highly advanced weaponry, and sees British forces being slaughtered in a hopeless fight, he steps in and, despite the Germans knowing the ring's weakness, defeats the Germans. He is recalled back to the United States and is reprimanded by Luthor for breaking America's neutrality, but instead is more concerned with the Germans' possession of technology and knowledge only he and Luthor know about. Luthor admits to supplying the Germans with weapons, stating that his plan is to weaken Europe with war while construction of the Death Ray is completed. He wants to force Germany's surrender with the ray, become an American hero, and become President.
Soon afterwards, London is bombed in a nuclear attack, killing 200,000 people including the royal family and destroying Parliament. Jordan attacks Luthor, but is stopped by Diana. Luthor fatally wounds Jordan with a fire axe, and as he lays dying, Jordan commands the Green Lantern ring to find Superman. The ring soon finds Clark Kent, who has been living for years on an asteroid satellite deep in space.
America has formally declared war on Germany, and the League of Science is overwhelmed while providing humanitarian relief to the survivors of London. Barry Allen and Lois Lane are particularly affected by how inventions meant to bring innovation and good to the world have only invited death and destruction. The League notices a green streak of light, and discover Clark Kent wielding Jordan's power ring. Alongside Kent, the League prepares to stop the Germans from launching any more nuclear rockets.
Luthor discovers that Superman has returned and prepares to meet with Tesla to continue their plans. Diana, ridden with guilt over London's destruction, refuses to go. On his way to Wardenclyffe, Luthor contacts Bismarck to launch the rockets in three hours as part of his plan.
Diana is confronted by Batman. She reveals everything to him about Luthor's plans, and promises to lead him to the death ray. Batman recommends that is time for her to redeem herself. At Wardenclyffe, Luthor finds the death ray is fully operational, and Tesla wants to see his work in action. They are stopped by Batman and Diana, who inform Luthor that the President has issued a warrant for his arrest. Luthor tells them that if he is stopped, he will not be able to use the death ray to destroy rockets heading toward New York City.
In Germany, the League manages to capture the rocket base. Superman finds one of the rockets heading off course toward New York City. Luthor gives the order to shoot the rocket, but is informed it is slowing down. Superman stops the missile with his power ring and redirects it toward space. Luthor destroys the other rocket before aiming the death ray toward Superman. Meanwhile, Diana and Batman have Tesla evacuate the building. Diana is killed destroying the death ray. Luthor is arrested and sentenced to death.
In 1913, Superman announces the creation of the Justice League of Nations, a neutral zone where countries could settle disputes diplomatically. To ensure the League's trust, he places Jordan's power ring inside of a battery to be used by the Justice League of Nations to stop any nation from committing an act of aggression against another. After the inauguration, Superman and Lois Lane fly away to catch up on lost time. Meanwhile, newspapers read of Lex Luthor's execution.
As the book begins, Rachel Lennox and her adopted sister Hilary are living with Rachel's mother. Rachel's father, George Lennox, was a budding film star, but died just as his career was taking off, when the children were seven. As a result, the family is not well off; they must take in boarders to make ends meet. Hilary's mother was a dancer, and so Rachel and her mother are determined that Hilary will also become a ballerina. Hilary does have a talent for ballet, but is not at all interested in it.
Their mother dies when the girls are ten, just before Hilary's audition for the Royal Ballet School, and the girls go to live with their Uncle Tom (their father's brother), his wife Cora Wintle, and their daughter, Dulcie. Aunt Cora runs a dancing school to teach girls how to perform in troupes for pantomimes, musicals and reviews; the troupes are referred to as "Mrs Wintle's Little Wonders". Dulcie, who is almost a year older than Rachel and Hilary, is very attractive and a talented dancer, but also very spoiled by her mother.
Mrs Wintle originally intends to take only Rachel, as she is a blood relative, but she decides to keep Hilary also, when she realises how talented a dancer Hilary is. Rachel is horrified by the type of dancing taught at Mrs Wintle's school, which includes tap, musical comedy, and acrobatics, and remains determined that Hilary will continue with her ballet. Rachel must also train as a Little Wonder, and though she works hard, she has no talent for the dancing required of the "Wonders". However she does excel in ordinary lessons, and at their additional elocution and acting lessons, which puts her in competition with her cousin Dulcie without it coming to light for most of the book. Mrs Storm, their tutor, decides to teach Rachel extra elocution, because it makes her happy. Hilary continues dancing and throughout the book enjoys acrobatics in particular. Although Rachel bribes her with money to finish ballet, which seems to work Hilary also continues to excel at acrobatics. This continually makes Rachel upset.
Rachel discovers that when she is fifteen, she may be allowed to train for something else; this excites her, and she vows to send Hilary to the Royal Ballet School as soon as she can. In the meantime she works hard in her own dancing, but she is still disliked by her aunt as she is not enthusiastic and even her best efforts do not make her, though competent, a good dancer. Dulcie, meanwhile, gains a license to work as soon as she is twelve and immediately stars in a continuous line of pantomime, television and musicals. This gives her an air of unbearable conceit, and she goes through a phase of thinking nobody can dance, act or sing better than she can. Rachel soon follows, and is very much the opposite; she hates being onstage and is happy to be an understudy, and detests her uncomfortable Wonder uniform. Hilary gains a job as Dulcie's understudy, and it is clear that she rivals Dulcie as both an actress and dancer and outshines her completely in comedic value. This begins to scare Dulcie, who wonders if her position as a star is as stable as she believed. However, Hilary is unlike Dulcie in that although she loves dancing, she is lazy and dislikes putting great effort into anything.
Contributing to Dulcie's worries, for a while she is out of work, having previously been in high demand in the showbusiness world. However, an offer for a film soon comes up, and Dulcie is immediately put forward for the role; she desperately wants a film contract as hit would secure her a reputation as a star of stage and screen while still a child. Mrs Wintle is sure that her daughter will get it, saying that she sees her name in big electric lights. Dulcie goes for her film test, but clearly is not what the director is looking for. He is at a loss, as Dulcie is a pretty child and a talented actress, but cannot feel a role, as is required for the film. As it happens, Rachel has come to the film test, having had nothing better to do, and is reading when the director sees her and realising that she has the face he has been searching for, and her talent for acting, nurtured by Mrs Storm, comes to light: Rachel walks out with a film contract, and Dulcie with nothing, leaving Mrs Wintle furious with Mrs Storm for giving Rachel acting lessons behind her back; however she can do nothing. As a final attempt, Rachel considers spending the money she will make on sending Hilary to the Royal Ballet school straight away instead of when she turns fifteen, as Hilary tells her that she won't go near the place, and gently adds that it would be pointless to make her do something that does not inspire her at all, Rachel gives up on Hilary as she looks forward to her own, glittering future.
Lee Scoresby, a 24-year-old young Texan aeronaut, and his dæmon, the jackrabbit Hester, make a rough landing in Novy Odense, a harbour town on an island in the White Sea, in Muscovy. After paying for the storage of their balloon, Lee and Hester make their way into town, where Lee notes with surprise the presence of bears: some working, some just loitering about. He enters a bar to get something to eat and drink, and falls into conversation with a local journalist, Oskar Siggurdson, who explains that an election for Mayor of Novy Odense will take place later in the week. Siggurdson tells Lee that the overwhelming favourite — not the incumbent mayor, but a man called Ivan Dimitrovich Poliakov — has as a central policy a campaign to deal with the bears which hang around the town. Oskar mentions that the bears, once a proud race, now rank as "worthless vagrants". Lee learns with amazement that these bears are intelligent, can speak, and make and wear their own armour, though laws make it illegal for the bears to wear their armour in Novy Odense. At this point Lee intervenes in a conflict elsewhere in the bar, preventing the barkeeper from beating a drunk Dutch captain called van Breda, who has a ship tied up in the harbour but does not have permission to load his cargo and leave. Lee and van Breda get thrown out of the bar.
Lee finds lodgings at a boarding-house and meets some of the fellow-guests over the evening meal: a young librarian called Miss Lund, a photographer, and an economist called Mikhail Ivanovich Vassiliev. Lee and Vassiliev attend a meeting at the town hall organised by the mayoral candidate Poliakov. Armed men in purple uniforms patrol the meeting: Lee takes them for customs officers. Vassiliev corrects him, explaining that they are security men from Larsen Manganese, a large mining company that are in league with Poliakov. Vassiliev mentions that they have a large gun they are looking to use in a riot situation, but their conversation is interrupted when Lee runs into Siggurdson. Siggurdson introduces him to Olga Poliakova, Poliakov's daughter. While he is initially attracted to her, Lee is put off by her lack of intelligence. Lee falls asleep and therefore misses Poliakov's speech, but once it is over Siggurdson insists on introducing Lee to the politician. Poliakov offers to employ Lee as a mercenary, to help him take care of a situation at the harbour. Lee is about to agree when he spots another of Poliakov's associates, a man Poliakov introduces as Pierre Morton. Lee recognises the man, whom he met using the name Pierre McConville. Lee met McConville while working for a rancher called Lloyd, who got into a boundary dispute with a neighbour. This neighbour hired McConville to kill Lloyd's men one by one, including Lloyd's nephew, Jimmy Partlett, who was shot dead in front of a number of witnesses. Only one of these witnesses was willing to tell the truth in court, and when McConville was acquitted by a corrupt jury he shot the witness dead in the street and rode out of town. He was rearrested and sent to the capital of the province with an armed escort, but vanished en route. Recognising Morton as this enemy from his past, Lee turns down Poliakov's offer of employment, and leaves.
In the middle of the night, back at the boarding-house, Lee hears Miss Lund crying and asks the cause. Miss Lund cryptically asks for his advice on a matter of honour. Lee gives his advice as well as he can understand the situation, to Miss Lund's gratitude. Lee returns to his bed baffled about what has just happened, but Hester berates him, saying that Miss Lund has obviously received a proposal of marriage, and Lee advised her to accept. At breakfast the next morning Vassiliev explains that Miss Lund has a sweetheart in the Customs Office. During their conversation, Lee realises that the situation that Poliakov wanted him to deal with is most likely connected to Captain van Breda. Lee heads down to the harbour to investigate. He runs into van Breda again, who has still not been allowed to load his cargo. The two men head to a bar for a drink. Lee learns that van Breda's cargo, mining equipment and rock samples, is being held on a legal technicality, and will be impounded and sold at auction unless he loads it by the next day. Unfortunately, van Breda is being prevented from loading his cargo. The captain insists that Poliakov is waiting for his cargo to be impounded and will then buy it at a low price at auction. Lee, disgusted by Poliakov's behaviour, offers to help break into the warehouse and stand guard while van Breda loads his cargo. Van Breda gratefully accepts, and the two head for the harbour. On the pavement outside the bar, Lee is waylaid by one of the bears, who introduces himself as Iorek Byrnison. Iorek also offers to help van Breda, to get back at Poliakov. Iorek puts on the only piece of armour he currently has – a battered helmet – and the group set off, attracting a large crowd of onlookers as they near the harbour.
Talking his way past the Harbour Master, Lee stands off against a group of men guarding the warehouse. Lee shoots one of them in the hip, knocking him into the water. The other men pull him out and then scatter. At that point the Larsen Manganese men deploy the riot gun mentioned by Vassilev earlier, but before they can do anything with it Iorek overturns it and pushes it into the harbour. With Iorek's help, Lee breaks into the warehouse. Van Breda gives him the Winchester rifle kept on-board his boat, and Lee heads up the floors to deal with the two gunmen positioned up there. He shoots the first in the shoulder and gets into a firefight with the second. The wounded man tries to strangle Hester, but Lee shoots him dead. The remaining gunman turns out to be Morton, who manages to shoot Lee in the shoulder and ear. Taunting him with the story of how he killed his armed escorts – by tying one of them to the ground, binding his daemon to a horse and forcing the two apart to an unbearable distance, causing the man to die an agonising death – Morton moves in for the kill, his snake daemon advancing ahead of him. Hester pounces on Morton's daemon and drags it towards Lee, forcing Morton to come stumbling out of his hiding place in pain. Lee shoots him in the chest, declares this revenge for what happened to Jimmy Partlett, and then shoots him dead.
Outside, Larsen Manganese security men led by Poliakov have surrounded the warehouse. Before they can do anything, a group of Customs officers led by Lieutenant Haugland arrive, disperse the soldiers and crowd, and arrest Lee. Van Breda leaves with his ship and cargo, insisting that Lee keep the rifle as a token of thanks. It emerges that this is the same rifle Lee has when he is killed in his final gunfight, thirty-five years later. Haugland takes Lee back to the depot where his balloon is stored. On the way he explains that there is little the Customs board will be able to do to punish Poliakov, but they are still grateful to Lee for acting as he did. His balloon has been provisioned and made ready for departure, with all his belongings brought from the boarding house. Iorek arrives, and tends to Lee's wounds using bloodmoss. Lee has lost part of his ear. Oskar Siggurdson also arrives, but Lee pushes him into the harbour rather than giving an interview. Lee prepares to leave, thanking Haugland for his help. Haugland says that he should thank Miss Lund, who has just agreed to become his fiancée. Vassiliev comes running into the depot, warning them that Larsen Manganese men are on the way with orders to kill Lee and Iorek. Lee suggests the bear should escape with him on his balloon, and the armoured bear agrees, saying that the aeronaut is obviously a man of the Arctic. When Lee asks what he means, Iorek points to his daemon as an Arctic hare, much to Hester and Lee's surprise. The balloon then leaves and Lee, Hester and Iorek fly away together. The book ends with Lee remarking that he was amazed to learn Hester is a hare, to which she replies, "I always knew I had more class than a rabbit."
The film plot is substantially changed from that of the Broadway musical. Victor Florescu (Ramon Novarro) is a composer desperately trying to get his operetta to opening night. First his leading lady (Vivienne Segal) leaves, taking the bulk of their budget with her. Then the male lead splits, leaving Victor to fill his role. Next he calls upon an old love, songstress Shirley Sheridan (Jeanette MacDonald) to be his ingénue, but she insists that she is leaving the theater to marry her affluent, but unfaithful fiancé (Frank Morgan).
Ruby Corey, a poor backwoods girl living in the small North Carolina town of Braddock, is still in love with Boake Tackman. During high school, Ruby had rebuffed his aggressive advances, and was taken in for a couple of years by a kind wealthy businessman and his wife, who protected her and taught her the skills a lady would need. She moved back home when her father needed her help. Boake's family used to be wealthy, but after generations of profligacy all he has left is the land he has had drained and farmed. He starts a relationship with her but plans to marry a local woman with a rich family. When she hears the news, Ruby marries her former benefactor, Mr. Jim Gentry, whose invalid wife had recently died, despite not loving him.
Her background keeps her from being accepted by most of Jim's peers, most of whom decline to attend their after-wedding party. While at another party, Jim gets into a fistfight with Boake after witnessing him dancing with Ruby. Jim calls Ruby a tramp who looks like a lady but doesn't behave like one. She leaves in tears, and later that night, he apologizes. The next day Jim and Ruby go sailing, where he tells her he "doesn't mind being second best" and she admits she really does love him. A loose rope results in Jim being knocked overboard by the boom, leaving Ruby widowed and distraught.
The local paper writes that she is a gold-digger who murdered Jim for his fortune and mentions the fistfight between Jim and Boake. Jim's friends renounce her and she receives accusatory phone calls and harassment from the townspeople. Ruby uses Jim's money to begin a campaign against everyone who slighted her, calling in debts to close down people's businesses as well as the newspaper that slandered her. Her brother comes to beg her for leniency, but she throws him out, warning she is just getting started. When Boake visits, she gives him the promissary-note he had signed and which was acquired by Gentry, and offers to run off with him, but he rejects her, saying that for all her money she can't buy her way out of the swamp, and she can't buy him.
Ruby has Boake's land flooded, ruining the crops. After seeing her fury, he goes back to her. Boake and Ruby go to her father's annual duck-hunting party where she goes back to her country roots and Boake drinks away his resentment before visiting her room late at night.
While hunting the next day, Boake turns on Ruby in retaliation for her actions but she apologizes. Just then, her estranged brother Jewel Corey begins to shoot at the couple while quoting Bible verses about the wickedness of women and sinners who must be struck down. They try to hide in the swamp but Jewel shoots Boake in the abdomen, killing him; Ruby goes after Jewel and guns him down. Cradling Boake in her arms, Ruby laments her decisions.
Ruby later becomes the skipper of a fishing boat, forever looked down upon by the townspeople.
A young English man is convicted of the murder of one Captain Hamilton of the Royal Air Force and sentenced to hang, His sister and her fiancé, convinced of his innocence, ask visiting detective Charlie Chan to investigate and find the real murderer. In order to solve the mystery, Chan must visit a lavish English country manor house, where the suspects vary from the housekeeper to a lawyer. Events soon indicate that the murderer is still actively trying to avoid capture, but Charlie Chan must set a trap to reveal the criminal's identity. He turns out to be Paul Frank, a spy masquerading under the name Geoffrey Richmond, who had murdered Captain Hamilton to steal plans of a military invention Hamilton had made.
Morgen Teutenberg is an introverted 21-year-old woman nursing her dying father Fritz, who is a painter. She is developing a novel with her father's assistance. Out walking one day, she meets a very handsome young man, Royal St. Gabriel, a pianist who is quite taken with her. Royal pursues her romantically despite Morgen's lack of enthusiasm. Fritz dies very soon after Morgen meets Royal, and she is devastated by his loss and nonplussed by Royal's attention, not seeming to welcome it, but flattered by his gentlemanly manners and thoughtfulness. He buys her a radio and has it delivered to her house with a letter telling her when to tune in to a station. When she does, she hears a composition he has written for her that she imagines describes her perfectly. For five months they have a friendship characterized by Royal's unabashed love for Morgen, and her not sure how to tell him that she is grateful for his friendship, but does not want to pursue anything deeper with him.
On Christmas Eve, overwhelmed with missing her father again, she turns to Royal and they sleep together. Royal is overcome with gratitude, not believing she has given herself to him at last, but Morgen does not enjoy the experience and realizes she went to him out of loneliness. She tells him this and he is hurt by it. He travels frequently and leaves her again, unsure of how to reach her.
In his absence, she meets new neighbors who have moved into a house nearby. A 16-year-old woman named Toni lives with her aunt. They have known each other before as children and Morgen is thrilled to have Toni back so close by. In sharp contrast to her relationship with Royal, she and Toni find themselves kindred almost immediately. They spend several nights together, and are quite hesitant to leave each other. When Royal returns, he notices something with Morgen is wrong immediately. She tells him, "I am two and the other is Toni." He is stunned, but when he accepts it, for the first time she realizes how much she likes him.
Soon before Fritz dies, he comments that he will be on his way to Valhalla soon, and he is prepared for it because he is so very happy since Morgen has just finished a very good novel. He tells her that his happiness will serve as his torch in order to arrive there safely. His comment serves as the impetus for her to realize what should make her happy in her life.
Charlie Rockit's aunt and uncle are in danger of losing their farm because they need $50,000 to replace their broken tractor. To raise the money, Chuck E. Cheese, Jasper T. Jowls, Mr. Munch and Helen Henny decide to race in the Galaxy 5000 on the planet Orion (to which they travel via Pasqually's Awesome Adventure Machine).
They face many challenges, including a racing vehicle that is practically junk, a duo of cheating competitors known as the X-Pilots, and a woman named Astrid whom Chuck falls for but who's only interested in the prize money. Everything seems to go from bad to worse for Chuck, but just when he is at his lowest point, he meets a hermit named Harry who gets him to believe in himself and helps him train for the race.
During the race, Chuck overcomes the cheaters' maneuvers, getting stuck in a forest, and his own self-doubts to reach the finish line. After winning the prize, Chuck E. and his friends head home.
''Patapon'' follows the titular Patapon Tribe, a group of eyeball-like creatures. The Patapon tribe was once a flourishing nation led by their deity, the Mighty Patapon, in a journey to Earthend to gaze upon an enigmatic object simply known as "IT". The Patapon nation at one point was banished to the desolate frontier by their sworn enemy of similar eyeball-like creatures known as the Zigotons.
The story begins with the Mighty Patapon returning to a banner-wielding Patapon known as Hatapon after an undisclosed time after the Patapons' banishment. The Mighty Patapon is led back to the remnants of the Patapon Tribe to resume their journey to Earthend. Throughout their journey, the Patapon re-encounter the Zigoton tribe and other beasts. The Zigoton general, Gong the Hawkeye challenged the Patapons multiple times by using Patapon hostages and eventually having a final duel. Shortly before his death, Gong reveals to them that the Zigotons have their own prophecy, which foretells that the world will fall into chaos when the Patapons gaze at "IT". Towards the end of the game, many of the main Zigoton warriors sell their souls to the dark forces in an attempt to defeat the Patapons. Eventually, the ruler of the Zigotons, Queen Kharma, sells her soul in a final attempt to destroy the Patapons.
When she is defeated, a gateway to the Dark World opened and the Patapons are tasked to kill the ancient demon, Gorl. The Patapons defeat Gorl and reach the coastline and witness the sunrise in which they assume is Earthend and "IT" respectively. However, unfulfilled by the anticlimactic end of their journey, they conclude that "IT" is not the sun and they have not reached Earthend. Queen Kharma joins the Patapons and admits to them that the Zigotons also fooled themselves into believing the sun was "IT". The game concludes with the Patapons and Zigotons working together to build a ship.
Sergeant Peter King and Private Leslie Cuthbertson of the Royal Army Dental Corps passionately desire to see active service, but are held back. Armed with two revolvers and a handful of grenades, they plan an unauthorised mission to occupied France. They write to the prime minister, Winston Churchill, explaining their intention to fight the Germans. After they finally succeed in getting to France, they stumble across a German radar station. They blow up what they take to be the main operations room, and then the entire compound unexpectedly erupts with gunfire and explosions. They narrowly evade the Germans and escape in a boat which is later blown up by a mine; the men are picked up by the British and interrogated as possible spies. Once their identities have been established, they are returned to barracks to be court-martialed as deserters.
An aide of Churchill had seen their letter, and knew of a commando raid on the radar facility which was facilitated by a diversion due to mysterious explosions in what they discover was actually the cookhouse. The aide intervenes in the court martial, establishes their presence at the enemy radar station and conveys an invitation to tea with the Prime Minister should they ever be in Whitehall. The court nevertheless demotes Sergeant King to the rank of corporal and remands Private Cuthbertson to military prison for 28 days, lenient sentences for desertion in wartime. A note on screen tells the viewer that the men never meet again.
Efisio Mulas is a meek laborer who lives with occasional work, especially in Don Leandro Sanna's salon, and rounds up the slim balance by betting with colleagues in strength with the game "head against head". In the village the Sanna and Porcu families' conflict has lasted over a century.
The normality of the events is broken by the release, for the amnesty wanted by the pope, of the beautiful Domenicangela Piras, the turbulent girlfriend of Efisio convicted for having hurt him with a billhook. At the same time the old man of honor, Agostino Sanna, is about to instigate his nephew Don Leandro to kill Alvaro Porcu. Don Leandro does not intend to support his uncle, so it takes time, insinuating that Alvaro Porcu has been hiding in Supramonte for fear of him.
Efisio marries Domenicangela having, finally, obtained the consent of her father required by the priest, the fugitive don Liberato. Meanwhile, Agostino Sanna decides to haunt down Alvaro to kill him, but succumbs. Leandro, walking to stop his uncle, attends to his death, and, disgusted, to avoid the continuation of the vendetta, decides to move into his estate, seeking for peace.
Efisio needs money and decides to steal sheep from the estate, but the watchdog pulls him out of his pants.
During the wedding celebrations of Efisio and Domenicangela, she gets rid of those pants, throwing them in the street. The marshal of the carabinieri find them, and, having seen the bites of the dog and the blood left on them, immediately arrests him. Efisio runs away and decides to flee in Milan.
Meanwhile, a new event is about to reopen the vendetta: Giovanni Sanna, Leandro's younger brother, challenges on public square Alvaro Porcu to take revenge for Uncle Agostino, hitting his face with a glove. Don Leandro is furious, because at this point he is under threat from the revenge of Egidio Porcu, brother of Alvaro and the last surviving adult male of the family. The family risks to remain with no males. He proposes then an exchange to Efisio: he will return to Sardinia to kill Egidio Porcu, and Don Leandro, in return, will witness his innocence in the murder of Uncle Agostino. Efisio agrees, but he is incapable of killing, and, when he is back in Sardinia decides to meet his wife only. At the same time Egidio Porcu is killed by an unknown hand.
At Efisio's trial, he is declared not guilty and then he can return in his village as a free man, but he finds a hostile atmosphere. Dominicangela, in fact, is pregnant and everyone is questioning the identity of the father. For Efisio there is then a tragic dilemma: to reveal that he is the father of the about to be born (and confess his presence in the village on the day of the murder of Egidio Porcu) or undergo social stigmatization.
When Don Leandro turns his back on him, Efisio turns to Don Liberato, who makes him understanding the name of the true assassin of Egidio Porcu. Efisio then attempts to involve a young carabiniere to make him witness the man's confession, and, during a country party, tries to tease him. But precisely at the crucial moment, the assassin of Egidio Porcu expresses itself in Sardinian. The carabiniere does not understand a word, and immediately after, the murder is killed by a rival. Efisio has no option than killing the innocent Domenicangela and end up in jail. Only in this way it is possible to end this endless conflict between families and regain the respect of the people of his village.
The film ends with the sad imprisonment of Efisio with the people of his village paying him the so sought-after respect.
Fourteen-year-old Ellie Christianson lives in an affluent neighborhood with her parents, Karen and Ben, and younger sister, Inger. Beneath their privileged life-style is one tinged with dysfunction and chaos. Ben is a workaholic with a hectic schedule that keeps him away from home for most of the day. Karen, meanwhile, passes the time by pursuing an illicit love affair with the family's next-door neighbor, Lawson Smith, while her daughters are getting ready for school. She impulsively fires Lena Anderson, her housekeeper, as a means to spend more free time with Lawson, and is completely unaware that a shocked Ellie has secretly witnessed one of their liaisons.
Karen has an ongoing tumultuous relationship with Ellie, culminating in a heated confrontation one day after Ellie disobeys an order to not wear too much make-up at school. Ellie ends up remorselessly killing her mother in a fit of rage. She begins to assume Karen's wifely duties to Ben by waiting for him in bed at night, dressed only in lingerie.
However, Ben gradually develops some romantic feelings for the former housekeeper, Lena, and they eventually marry. The impromptu wedding ceremony ignites feelings of jealousy for Ellie as she wanted to be his wife all along.
While the supposed love triangle is playing out in Ellie's mind, her mother's tragic "accident" is investigated by Detective Boland. When Karen's "accident" is subsequently ruled as a murder, he names Ellie as the prime suspect. She immediately decides to run away from home, going to Portland with her dead mother's lover, Lawson, in tow.
After her family goes on an hours-long fruitless search for Ellie, she unexpectedly returns to the house. She is greeted by Inger, who knows full well what had really happened to her mother. Inger ends up murdering Ellie, essentially inheriting her "wicked" nature.
The film portrays the corrupt administration of an Apulia town during the Fascist Regime of 1937, after it has learned, in a roundabout way, of a pending anonymous visit of a government inspector from Rome. The inspector will determine if the administration adhered to the government's strict guidelines for economic and social planning.
The threat of the inspection creates terror in the administrators, who fear their misdeeds will be revealed. Most fearful are those guilty of enriching themselves from public funds, and other abuses. They resort to pathetic staged measures to make it appear that they remained "honest administrators" and "good fascists".
An unsuspecting insurer also coming from Rome, Omero Battifiori, arrives in town for his work and he is mistaken for the inspector. He is made the object of every honour and, of course, he is utterly deceived. Eventually, the real inspector arrives.
The films is about ''Pontus'' (F. Herngren) who likes his "every other week" life. One week he is a responsible father to his daughter, and the other week when his ex-wife has his daughter, he parties all the time. Pontus bigger brother, ''Jens'' (M. Herngren), is the complete opposite. He has three children and has been happily married for 20 years. But one day, the whole marriage collapses for Jens, and he is forced to move to Pontus. Over one night, their lives change radically.
French gangster Abel Davos, having been tried in absentia and sentenced to death, flees to Italy with his wife and their two children. After a successful holdup in Milan with an accomplice Raymond, they try to re-enter France by boat, but while landing at a deserted cove by night are surprised by two customs officers. After a gun battle which leaves the customs men, his wife and Raymond dead, a massive police hunt begins. Hidden with his two boys in Nice by a former associate, Abel rings Riton, an old ally in Paris, asking him and his friend Fargier to come and collect him. Riton now runs a bar and Fargier a hotel; neither wants to risk his life or reputation for a lone wanted man. However they buy an ambulance and recruit a young gangster called Éric to bring Abel and his children back in it. On the way, Éric saves a young woman Liliane, who is being attacked by a man, and she agrees to pose as a nurse for Abel, who is bandaged to conceal him.
Back in Paris, his friends tell Abel there is little more they can do for him. Éric however is sympathetic to the man's plight and, after hiding him in the building where he lives, helps him place his children with family friends. He also gets him a false passport but Abel, needing money to escape, robs the fence Gibelin. Unable to go to the police, Gibelin consults Fargier and Riton, who are both under police pressure because of their past association with Abel. They hire a private detective to find Abel's hideout, but Abel captures the man and forces the truth out of him. Realising he is betrayed, Abel starts his revenge by killing first Gibelin and then Fargier, whose wife then dies of shock. Riton, whose wife has always mistrusted Abel, co-operates with the police. As they storm Abel's hideout, Éric creates a diversion and is shot in both legs. Though Abel gets away, an epilogue says he is later caught, tried and executed.
When the ''Titanic'' sinks, infant Dorothy Hunter (Miriam Hopkins) is left an orphan. She is brought up by John Connors (Henry Stephenson), whose wife was also lost in the disaster. He goes to such great lengths to protect her privacy that, though she has grown into adulthood and acquired the title of the richest girl in the world, the newspapers do not have an up-to-date photograph of her. She returns to America, but her friend and secretary, Sylvia Lockwood (Fay Wray), impersonates her in a meeting with the managers of her fortune.
After seeing how happy Sylvia is with her new husband, Phillip (Reginald Denny), she broaches the topic of setting a wedding date with Donald (George Meeker), her longtime fiancé. He is forced to admit that he has fallen in love with someone else and was getting up the nerve to tell her. Since she is not the least bit in love, she congratulates him. However, it is too late to cancel the party in which she had planned to announce their wedding.
At the party, Dorothy and Sylvia continue pretending to be each other. Dorothy meets Anthony "Tony" Travers (Joel McCrea) and, after winning $60 from him playing billiards, takes a great liking to him. However, stung by Donald's confession that he was never sure he was attracted to her or her money, Dorothy decides to see if Tony would prefer her to the woman Tony thinks is her. She does all in her power to encourage him to court "Dorothy", even lending him money to do so. Connors warns her that she is being foolish, that no man could resist choosing such a seemingly wealthy and beautiful woman, but Dorothy is adamant. Sylvia and Phillip reluctantly play along.
Tony is invited to a weekend retreat. Connors, Sylvia, and Phillip arrive a day late, using the bad weather as an excuse to give Dorothy time alone with Tony (though there are plenty of servants at the mansion). By this point, Dorothy is deeply in love. Tony tells her how much he likes her, but then adds that the richest girl in the world "wouldn't have him anyway". Unable to bear being his second choice, she tells him that he would probably succeed if he proposed, so he does. Sylvia, having been forewarned by Dorothy, accepts him.
That night however, Tony sees Phillip sneaking into Sylvia's room. The next morning, he breaks the engagement. Dorothy claims that Phillip came into her bedroom, putting Tony to the ultimate test. When Phillip shows up for breakfast exceptionally pleased with himself, Tony punches him. Then, finally realizing who he really loves, he picks Dorothy up and carries her off to get married in spite of what he believes she did the night before.
''The Scarecrow'' is a concept album about the tragic story of a lonesome creature, emotionally isolated from his environment and suffering from a distorted sensory perception. His feelings for the love of his life unrequited, he sets off on a journey exploring his left-hand path, striving for inner peace, ploughing his way to approval and eventually facing temptation at the inner depths of the human soul. The story continues on the albums ''The Wicked Symphony'' and ''Angel of Babylon''.
A precious gem known as the Eye of Infinity, held at the Boltaire Museum, has been stolen, with Ratchet falsely accused and jailed as he is at the scene of the crime. Skeptical about his involvement, Clank infiltrates the Museum to find out more about the Eye of Infinity. But much to his dismay, Clank finds only coordinates to Asyanica Rooftops. Meanwhile, in jail, Ratchet is forced to fend off his inmates in a battle to stay alive.
Clank travels to the Asyanica Rooftops, but is held captive. He contacts the agency Gadgebots to free him.
Once freed, he sets to find information about Number Woo, the owner of Asyanica. Although he admits he took the Eye of Infinity, he actually gave the gem to a fellow villain, Countess Ivana Lottabolts.
While this is happening, Captain Qwark is writing an autobiography about adventures that never happened, such as him fighting a Mechanical Monster to save a city. Meanwhile, Clank heads to Lottabolts' snowy domain, Glaciara, and asks her for the Eye, but in the process is challenged to a dance of death. After avoiding all the traps during the dance, Ivana says the Eye has been taken to Rionosis and it is in the possession of a Kingpin. Armed with the information, Clank escapes on his snowboard.
En route to Rionosis, Clank gets a distress call that Ratchet is in trouble. Ratchet is forced to fend off more inmates in the Prison Cafeteria. Clank lands in Rionosis and begins to tail the Kingpin; however, he escapes. Clank is forced to jump on numerous gondolas to reach safety. Clank finds out that the Eye is taken to the Casino. Concurrently, Qwark arrives in Rionosis to continue his autobiography where he defeats the Jack of All Trades. Meanwhile, Clank reaches the Casino's Main Room however he is denied entry due to his not having a password. Back in jail, Ratchet reencourters Slim Cognito (a shady weapon tradesman met in ''Going Commando''). Slim trades the password with Ratchet on condition that he defeats his associates. Once he is successful, Clank gets the password and is challenged to a game of poker in exchange for the box goods he saw earlier in the Casino. But once again the gem has been taken to another destination, this time in the Venantonio Labs. At the end of Venantonio Labs is a scientist who was ridiculed for his inventions. With the help of the scientist, Clank escapes on a speedboat to Fort Sprocket, the real location of the Eye of Infinity. Concurrently Qwark arrives in Venantonio and "reminisces" his days of performing in the mermaid play.
In the prison showers, Ratchet meets the Plumber who was called to fix a broken pipe. He accidentally throws the pipe to another fellow guard. Enraged, the guard, together with the fellow inmates engage in battle yet again. Meanwhile, Clank reaches Fort Sprocket. He makes his way to the main vault but is trapped. He contacts the agency Gadgebots to release him. Once inside he finds the Kingpin went to the Spaceship Graveyard. Clank ventures into the Graveyard and the kingpin finally reveals himself – it is Klunk (his doppelganger created by Dr. Nefarious from ''Up Your Arsenal''). Klunk proceeds to destroy Clank he manages to escape on a Giant Clank Pad. Qwark arrives in the Graveyard and talks about his adventure in saving the orphanage nuns. Meanwhile, there is chaos in the Jail and Ratchet is forced to defend the other inmates from the enemies. Clank manages to locate Klunk's base of operations on Hydrano. It turns out it is an underwater base. After exploring, Clank finally is face to face with Klunk. Klunk reveals he wanted success by destroying every planet in the universe but saving it in time by Clank (who resembles Klunk) the plot thickens when Klunk will make it seem as if the fake Klunk (Clank) destroys the planets only for Clank (portrayed by the real Klunk) to thwart his plans. They engage in battle. Midway through the battle. Klunk says the Eye of Infinity is poised in the center of the universe, either way if Clank or Klunk dies, Klunk will still succeed in his plans. Qwark manages to move the Eye from destruction and saves the galaxy.
The game ends with Ratchet and Clank back in their Megapolis apartment using a vacuum cleaner which resembles Klunk. The camera focuses on the vacuum cleaner's filter. The eyes reactivate, implying he is still alive.
Pluk, an extraterrestrial robot endowed with extraordinary strength, is stranded on Earth. He befriends the boy genius Niki, his girlfriend Babette and Niki's smart dog Jupiter. They all leave Earth in Niki's spacecraft ''l'Arago X-001'', searching for Pluk's ship ''Le Cosmos''. They stop on several planets before reaching Plukastre, the home planet of Pluk.
Agent Russell Edward 'Rush' Blake (Pat O'Brien) is able to promote the singing tenor waiter Buddy Clayton (Dick Powell) as a major radio star whilst Buddy's wife Peggy Cornell (Ginger Rogers) loses out. In the end, Peggy does not lose Buddy to his "twenty million sweethearts" – his female fans.
In Crater Lake, Northern California, Dr. Richard Calkins is informed by his colleague Dan Turner that he and his girlfriend Susan Patterson have made an incredible discovery in a nearby cave system. The three head down and discover a system of cave drawings, including what appears to be a depiction of people fighting off a Plesiosaurus, thus providing evidence that dinosaurs existed at the same time as humans did. However, a flaming meteorite crashes into the lake just overhead, resulting in a cave-in that destroys the cave system and the drawings, while the three scientists are barely able to escape alive. The local sheriff, Steve Hanson, sees the meteorite crash and radios in the incident before continuing on his patrol.
Several months later, Sheriff Hanson meets with the three scientists to go search for the meteorite. Turner and Patterson dive down to the bottom of the lake, only to find out that the meteorite is still too hot to recover and has resulted in the entire lake becoming significantly warmer than before, rising to approximately ninety degrees. Somewhere else on the lake, a birdwatcher is setting up his equipment when the monster suddenly rises out of the water, moves onto the shore, and kills him.
Two friends, Arnie Chabot and Mitch Kowalski, running low on money, decide to start a boat rental service. Their first customer is U.S. senator Jack Fuller, who rents a rowboat for a quick fishing trip for $20. However, he is attacked and killed by the monster. Arnie and Mitch see the empty boat drifting in the middle of the lake and go out to retrieve it, finding only some large blood stains inside the boat. They bring the boat back to shore as evidence for the Sheriff. Then the sheriff finds many dead animals, and takes the case.
Some time later, a performer named Ross Conway and his wife Paula are on their way to a show when their car suddenly begins to break down. They stop at a gas station and learn from the mechanic that their car won't be repaired for several more days. The attendant tells them that the fastest method of transportation at this point is by boat across the lake. The couple heads down to Arnie and Mitch's dock to rent a motorboat for $25 and head out. While out on the lake, they are attacked by the monster, but manage to outrun it due to the boat's motor and run it aground. When the monster pursues them onto the shore, Ross empties the can of gasoline into the boat and sets it ablaze, fending off the monster.
Arnie and Mitch, as they walk away from renting the boat out to the couple, begin to argue about their boat-renting service. Mitch claims that he is tired of being bossed around by Arnie, and the two eventually fight. Their scuffle leads to the water, where the two discover the severed head of Fuller floating in the lake just as the Sheriff arrives. As he takes in the head for evidence, he orders them to stay away from the lake, and to not use any more boats. Realizing that the couple from earlier is still out there, Arnie and Mitch head out in another boat to search for them. They eventually discover the charred remains of the motorboat and the distraught couple, both too mortified to explain what happened to them. The couple is taken away in an ambulance, and the Sheriff issues a stern warning for Arnie and Mitch to not head back out onto the lake.
At the local diner, the sheriff spots a man who is wanted for armed robbery in the nearest town. During the crime, the clerk and another customer were killed. The sheriff pursues the suspect into the forest. After the suspect drives his car off a cliff and jumps out, the sheriff pursues him on foot. The chase eventually leads them down to the shore, where the Sheriff shoots the suspect in the knee, before stopping to hide behind a tree and reload his weapon. During the brief pause, the monster snatches the suspect, dragging him under the water. The sheriff does not hear the attack happen, but he discovers a large blood stain on a nearby rock. Meanwhile, Calkins's autopsy report comes in, and the coroner notifies the sheriff that the wounds were caused by an animal's teeth and that the attacking animal is not only of a significant size, but also lives in the lake.
When the sheriff returns the next day to the location where the robbery suspect went missing, he finds several massive footprints before the monster suddenly emerges. He fires all six shots in his revolver at it, before jumping into his car and driving away. He tells Calkins, Turner, and Patterson about the incident, and his description of the monster fits that of a plesiosaurus. While the three scientists are excited at the idea of a living dinosaur in the lake, the sheriff is determined to kill it before more lives are put at risk.
The sheriff, Calkins, Turner, and Patterson host a town meeting in the diner the next day, informing the town of the danger and what they plan to do to stop the monster. Arnie and Mitch ultimately take the scientists' side in favor of keeping the monster alive, saying it'll bring in a significant amount of money for the town. However, a man named Ferguson is attacked by the monster and barely manages to make it to safety inside the diner. The Sheriff, Turner, Patterson, Arnie, and Mitch all head outside to confront the monster, which is just outside the barricade of farming vehicles and a wall of hay bails. The Sheriff starts up a bulldozer, but Arnie attempts to stop him at gunpoint, saying that the monster must live. The Sheriff convinces him that nothing will stop the monster without killing it, and Arnie jumps in the back, shotgun at the ready. As the monster draws closer, Arnie panics and attempts to flee, only to be caught and killed by the monster. The Sheriff slams into the monster with the bulldozer, causing it to drop Arnie's corpse. When it reaches its head down to try to pick up Arnie's body again, the Sheriff drives the bulldozer forward and repeatedly slams into the monster's neck, finally killing it.
In the aftermath of the battle, the Sheriff, Calkins, Turner, Patterson, and Mitch all mourn Arnie's death, with Mitch vowing to continue the boat rental service that he and Arnie started, softly repeating "''our'' boats...''our'' boats."
An eccentric millionaire, Cadmus Cole, visits the newly founded offices of ''Ellery Queen, Confidential Investigations'', in a rare incidence of disembarkation from his yacht. The investigation company is actually the brainchild and sole responsibility of his partner, "Beau" Rummell, an established private eye. The eccentric Mr. Cole pays $1,500,000 as a retainer to hire Ellery Queen for an investigation—the details of which he refuses to divulge, saying only "You'll know when the time comes." Upon his departure, he leaves behind a well-chewed fountain pen with which he's signed the retainer cheque. Almost immediately, Ellery's appendix bursts, and Cadmus Cole is reported dead and buried at sea. Rummell, in the guise of Ellery Queen, begins to investigate both the circumstances of Cole's death and his heirs; he soon meets two beautiful young women and the case becomes complicated by romance and the appearance of a claimant under the will. When the claimant is murdered, and Rummell married to one of the beauties, the real Ellery Queen must take a hand and solve the case, using the vital clue of the chewed fountain pen.
The film tells the story of a young boy, Miles Caraday (Marquette), a jazz piano prodigy who has Tourette syndrome, and his divorced mother Laura Caraday (Draper).[https://web.archive.org/web/20091007053641/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/177439/The-Tic-Code/overview "The Tic Code - Trailer - Cast - Showtimes."] ''The New York Times''. Retrieved on 2008-06-30. Miles has a school friend, Todd (Desmond Robertson) who seems not to be bothered by Miles' condition. Miles wants to become a jazz pianist against the wishes of his classical-oriented instructor Miss Gimpole (Carol Kane).[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165986/plotsummary The Tic Code (1999) - Plot summary.] ImDb.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-30. At a local nightspot, Miles becomes friends with a jazz saxophonist, Tyrone Pike (Hines), who also has Tourette's but learned ways to cover up his condition.Thomas, Kevin. [http://www.baltimoresun.com/topic/cl-movie000803-6,0,3973115.story "The Tic Code - Entertainment, Gregory Hines, Fairfield County"]. ''The Baltimore Sun'', 2000-08-03. Retrieved on 2008-06-30.
In the film, Tyrone tells Denny Harley who bullies Miles that the reason they both tic is:
Tyrone: [...] because we both know the code.
Denny: [...] Code, what code?
Tyrone: [...] 'the tic code'.
Denny: So you and Miles made this whole thing up?
Tyrone: No, the C.I.A. did; a lot of people know about it now.
When a huge earthquake devastates a town in the French Pyrenees, a bear escapes from a circus in the confusion and later finds a small girl whose mother has been killed in the quake. The bear rescues the girl (and her teddy bear) and raises her as his own cub like a female version of Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, high in the inaccessible mountains, naming her "Pyrénée" after them. Later on she also learns philosophy and wisdom from a blind old eagle, learns to hunt and fish, and eventually has to find her way back to human society.
Sakura, upon the spring of her first year in middle school. Her mother, Fumiko, and her stepfather died in an accident when she was three; the grandmother who raised her has just recently died. One day, however, Sakura comes home and is suddenly embraced by four men aged seventeen through twenty-five. They claim to be Sakura's half-brothers, and give her a letter from her grandmother that leaves her in their care.
It is soon revealed that Sakura holds no actual blood relation with the four, as their father didn't meet Fumiko until she was already pregnant with Sakura. Nevertheless, they manage to convince Sakura that their love for her as a sister is sincere. For the next few years, Sakura and her brothers live as family, experiencing the range of familial activities: sibling fights, school plays, discoveries of old family secrets, trips to festivals, and more.
Soon after graduating from middle school, Sakura discovers she is in love with her oldest brother, Masashi Miyashita.
Frank Machianno, a retired San Diego mafia hitman, cut his ties with the Mafia many years ago. However, one day, his past catches up with him as the boss of Los Angeles family calls in for a past favor. Frank must oversee a meeting between the Detroit Combination and the Los Angeles crime family. Unfortunately, the meeting is revealed to be a "set-up", a scheme to kill Frankie. Someone from Frank's past wants him dead, and Frank has to find out why, how, and when. The problem is that the list of candidates is sizable, and Frankie is rapidly running out of time.
Otello Celletti is a war veteran from a small town in Latium. He has been unemployed since the end of the war and lives with his father, wife Amalia and their son, at the expense of his brother-in-law. When he is offered a menial job in the town's markets, Otello refuses in disdain. After fiercely insisting with the town's Mayor and by leveraging his veteran status, Otello eventually obtains a position with the local traffic police. Though he performs his duties poorly, Otello still abuses his authority to exact petty revenge upon those who had been teasing him while he was jobless.
One day, Otello finds himself offering roadside assistance to famous actress Sylva Koscina. He indulges in pleasantries with the actress, inviting her for coffee and opting not to fine her for missing her driving license and car documents. That night, during a guest appearance on the television program ''Il Musichiere'' in front of 18 million viewers, Sylva publicly greets Otello but, at the insistence of host Mario Riva, also reveals how Otello let her go when he should have fined or even arrested her.
Following the incident and under political pressure, the Mayor berates Otello for tarnishing the public image of the police force, threatening to fire him. Some time later, Otello catches the Mayor himself speeding on a dangerous curve. Believing his integrity is being tested, Otello chases the Mayor on his way to meet his mistress, eventually issuing a speeding ticket, which involuntarily exposes the Mayor's extramarital affair. Angered, the Mayor suspends Otello and appeals the fine.
Otello decries his treatment with the local monarchists, who choose him as their candidate at the upcoming mayoral election opposite the current Mayor. In a private meeting with the Mayor's party members, an invigorated Otello threatens to expose knowledge of years of mismanagement by the Mayor's administration. In response, the Mayor produces evidence of compromising information about Otello and his family: Otello's sister, who was thought to be a masseuse in Milan, is instead a prostitute; Otello himself is not legally married to Amalia, as her legal husband in pre-divorce Italy still lives; and Otello's father, whom he believed a Great War hero, had instead served time for accidentally shooting King Victor Emmanuel, a fact that if known would alienate the monarchists.
At the next day's appeal hearing, Otello relents and exonerates the Mayor, pretending he unduly fined him out of a faulty odometer reading and also withdrawing his candidacy. Some time after being reinstated as a traffic policeman, Otello is shown making way for the Mayor as he speeds once again along the same curve, only for the Mayor to crash his car and be hospitalized, thus serving poetic justice to Otello.
While a British film crew are shooting a version of ''The Duchess of Malfi'' in Venice, they in turn are being filmed by a sleazy documentary primadonna while the strange hotel staff share meals which consist of human meat. The story expands to involve a hit man, a call girl and the Hollywood producer.
The film itself makes several mentions of the Dogme 95 style of film-making, and has been described as a "Dogme film-within-a-film."
Kay is an abstract visual artist who has been plagued since childhood by a series of disturbing dreams. The intensity and frequency of the dreams have fluctuated over the course of her life, as has their content; some of her dreams are simply of glimpses of desolate locations that leave her feeling dread upon awakening, while others feature the gruesome deaths of her friends and loved ones at the hands of a supernatural force. Recently, her dreams have become more frequent and disturbing than ever, resulting in a shift in the quality of her work. Afraid that the dreams are aggravated by stress and depression, and fearful that her newfound success may be slipping away, Kay's family and friends plan a vacation for her to a small island off the coast of Georgia. Accompanying Kay are her husband David; Kay's brother Eric, who introduced her to David; and Eric's wife Brooke.
As the couples' plane prepares to land, their pilot, Marsh, informs them that he's just received notification that an Atlantic hurricane has shifted course towards the island. Marsh hurriedly drops the couple off, telling them that he has to leave the island before he's stranded there. The couples discover that, against expectations, the island is deserted, and populated largely by derelict buildings and the ruins of a once-thriving resort town. Kay informs the rest of the quartet that the island is the place she has been dreaming about since childhood, and that they are all in danger if they stay. Unable to leave due to the hurricane, the others try to assuage her fears.
The following evening, David is murdered by an unseen assailant, and Kay dreams of waking up next to his severed head. That day, she finds David's decapitated body hanging in an abandoned playhouse on the island. Eric believes that Marsh never left the island and brought the couples there to kill them, a supposition that is granted some support when Marsh is later seen on the island. Kay believes that the island has allowed her dreams to cross over into reality, and that the creature from her nightmares is responsible; a theory supported by the fact that the deaths only occur when Kay is asleep. During the night, Eric tells Brooke about Kay being given a black kitten for Christmas as a child and that it was found frozen to death in the family freezer two days later. Kay blames the creature in her nightmares for the cat's death.
As night falls, Eric goes to retrieve flares from a boathouse, and is murdered on the beach before being dragged into the ocean. Later, Brooke is attacked in the boathouse and impaled with a pitchfork. After finding their bodies on the beach, Kay barricades herself in the beach house and struggles to stay awake, incessantly drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes to remain stimulated. In the middle of the night, Marsh attempts to gain entry into the house. Kay shoots him with a flare gun which kills him and sets the house on fire. In the chaos, Kay discovers a flaming, skeletal creature waiting for her at the front door as she tries to flee.
As the grotesque creature approaches her, Kay (as a child) is woken up on Christmas morning by her parents, telling them that she had a nightmare. Kay's father then presents her with a black kitten, as Eric enters the room. Kay looks at the cat and becomes visibly frightened, as she realises that the nightmare she just had wasn't just a bad dream, but was a premonition of things to come.
Jennie Lee is the lead singer of an all-girl rock band in Baltimore named the Mystery. At her high school graduation, Jennie gives her valedictorian speech at the ceremony while fellow band member, bass guitarist Daryle is accepting a marriage proposal from her high school sweetheart Frankie. Jennie and the band are planning to go to Florida to audition for a gig at a nightclub for the summer. However, problems seem to plague their plans when, first Jennie's older brother doesn't want to let Jennie go because he feels it will dissuade her from continuing her college plans; second, the band's keyboardist has unexpectedly left the band, and third, Mooch, the drummer, insulted a gang member who then in turn destroyed the band's van. Mooch tells the band that she borrowed another van from her friend but in fact, assisted by the help of guitarist Billie, she stole the gang member's personal van.
After recruiting a male keyboard player Nicky, the band heads south to audition for the gig. Arriving at the nightclub after closing hours, the band fears they have missed their audition. Not wanting to have to return, the band finds the owner Martin Falcon's home address and decide to make him listen to them play. However, when they arrive at his beach house, they let themselves in and find Falcon is not home. They do find Hamlet, Falcon's pet Doberman Pincher dog, who, after Billy sings him a song, becomes fast friends with the band. Falcon arrives, drunk and assumes the band are thieves. Explaining who they are, Jennie pleads with Falcon to listen to their music, but Falcon informs them that they are in fact a day early, the auditions for the gig isn't until the next night. Having very little money and no place to stay, Falcon offers them the room that the winners are supposed to be staying at for the summer. The "room" turns out to be a tool shack with room enough for 5 beds. The next night, the band auditions and the overwhelming applauding crowd response convinces Falcon to hire the band for the summer.
The band members stick out like a sore thumb in the preppy beach side area they temporarily reside in, especially Mooch, who refuses to take off her black leather jacket, although the weather is hot. Daryle (who has broken up with Frankie) starts dating a local rich boy and tries to get the band invited to his parties. Billy, outside her comfort zone, starts taking more pills than usual to cope with her depression. Jennie encourages Mooch to spend time with Nicky, who seems to have a crush on her, and Jennie begins a romantic relationship with the older Falcon. Falcon tells Jennie he has a music agent friend who books bands for gigs all over Europe, and is going to be coming to the club to watch the band perform. Falcon, after learning from Jennie that she is considering moving in with him, breaks up with Jennie because he doesn't want her to give up any opportunities because of him. Billy nearly overdoses, and Frankie causes a small riot when he goes to the club and sees Daryle on stage being ogled by the local guys.
On the night the music agent goes to the club, Jennie runs out just after performing a song written by Falcon especially for the band, and the street gang finally catches up with Mooch for stealing their van. The band all help out Mooch as she fights off the leader and, finally, Hamlet the dog chases the gang from the club, who are then arrested. When asked about what the music agent said, Jennie implies that the agent loved their music but she turned down his offer for the band to play in European clubs. Upset with Jennie that she would turn down such a huge opportunity, Nicky explains to the rest of the band that the music agent did not want the band; he wanted only Jennie to stand in front of studio musicians, but Jennie decides that it wouldn't have been any fun without them. Jennie says goodbye to Falcon, and the band heads home with Hamlet now a part of the band.
Ellery Queen moves into the small town of Wrightsville, somewhere in New England, in order to get some peace and quiet so that he can write a book. As a result of renting a furnished house, he becomes peripherally involved in the story of Jim Haight and Nora Wright. Nora's father is president of the Wrightsville National bank, "oldest family in town", and when the head cashier Jim Haight became engaged to his daughter Nora, he built and furnished a house for them as a wedding present. That was three years ago—the day before the wedding, Jim Haight disappeared, the wedding was called off, and the jinxed house became known as "Calamity House". Ellery rents it, just before the return of Jim Haight, and the wedding is soon on again. Ellery finds some evidence that Jim is planning to poison Nora and, after the wedding, she does display some symptoms of arsenic poisoning. But it is Jim's sister Rosemary who dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail. Jim is tried for the murder and it is only after some startling and tragic events that Ellery reveals the identity of the murderer.
Mrs. Cornelia Potts is the elderly matriarch of the Potts family, and their large fortune was earned by the manufacture of shoes, so when a murder mystery takes place at their New York estate, it's not surprising that the newspapers refer frequently to "the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". Cornelia has had two husbands—one deceased, one living in the household—and three children by each. Her children by her first husband are all extremely eccentric. Thurlow Potts engages in dozens of lawsuits to protect the family honor; Louella believes herself to be a great chemist and inventor, a sentiment shared by no one else; and Horatio, an adult, is determined to live the lifestyle of a child of six. By contrast, her other three children by her second husband are relatively sane—the twins Robert and Maclyn, who run the business, and the beautiful Sheila. Thurlow's lawyer Charley Paxton is engaged to Sheila and invites Ellery Queen to dinner at the Potts mansion to meet the family. Thurlow challenges Robert to a duel, using revolvers from which the bullets have been carefully extracted but, when the duel is fought, Robert is shot dead because the bullets have been returned to the gun. Next, his twin Maclyn is shot in his bed, and the body is found with whip marks on his face next to a dish of broth. As Ellery postulates that the murders are somehow tied to the nursery rhyme, the next death is that of the Old Woman herself. She dies of heart failure and leaves behind a confession to the first two murders. It is only at the marriage of Charley and Sheila that Ellery finally realizes the truth of the bizarre events and unmasks the real criminal.
Ellery Queen investigates a murder that took place a number of years ago and has blighted the present-day lives of members of the Fox family.
For the twelve years following the death of Davy's mother Jessica, and the trial of his father, Davy Fox has suffered inner torture. Davy knew he loved his wife ... as well as he knew he was going to kill her. He didn't know just when it was going to happen – but when a man is born to be a murderer, it's only a matter of time before he claims his birthright. Love turns out to be a matter of life and death – and it's up to Ellery Queen to make the choice!"
Howard Van Horn, son of millionaire Diedrich Van Horn, comes to Ellery Queen with the request that Ellery investigate what Howard has been doing during a recent bout with amnesia. The trail leads to the small New England town of Wrightsville and what seems to be a love triangle with Howard's stepmother, the beautiful young Sally, from the "wrong side of the tracks" in class-conscious Wrightsville. A series of small and unusual crimes over the next nine days seem to be committed by Howard during amnesiac blackouts, and Ellery Queen suddenly realizes the bizarre pattern that underpins the series of crimes.
''Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o'' takes place on a fictional island called located slightly south of Honshū in Japan.
; : (anime) :The protagonist of the story. He is a childhood friend of Umi Hayama. He has a caring personality and is particularly conscientious about his fellow dorm residents. Every episode begins with him reminiscing about his days in the dormitory and reminiscing about his relationships with each of the girls as well as their pasts (in order Rinna, Miya, Shizu, Umi, Saeri and Naoko). He used to live with his grandparents. During the early episodes, Wataru lied to them about living in the boys' dorm. He was the only boy who wanted to live in the dorm, therefore the boys' dorm was closed the previous year and all of the boarding students from Takamidzuka high school (including the males) now live in the girls' dorm. His grandparents eventually figure out that Wataru lied to them.
; : (Windows/PSP), Kōrogi Satomi (anime/PS2) :A second year transfer student. Wataru Hoshino meets her at Takashi's bar while he's drunk. They chat and then leave. The next morning, Wataru wakes to find her asleep in his room wearing only bra and panties. When she wakes up, Wataru tells her he can't remember a thing from the night before, she slaps him and leaps from his second-story window. :She officially enters his school, joining his class and dorm the next day. She acts sullen and obstinate to both students and faculty. She skips the welcome party that the other dorm residents arranged for her, telling them that she doesn't want to make friends and face the pain of parting with them in only a year's time. Wataru shouts to her his vow to that he will force her to become friends with them. :Takashi informs Wataru that he and Rinna first met in his bar. Realizing that Rinna's general aloofness stems from his having forgotten about her, he challenges her to compete with him in the upcoming school marathon to settle the matter. If he wins, she will participate in dorm meals, and if she wins, he will leave the dorm. :Wataru arrives at the marathon exhausted due to a surprise supplementary exam. He competes even though Rinna offers to postpone their competition. His exhaustion catches up to him and he takes a shortcut to cross the finish line first. Even though he is subsequently disqualified, Rinna welcomes the excuse to join the dorm residents in another welcome party.
; : (Windows/PSP), Morisawa Fumi (anime/PS2) :A second year student just like Wataru. She is Wataru's childhood friend. She is good at cooking and cooks meals for evertone in the Tsugumi Dormitory. She has had a crush on Wataru ever since they were kids, but he is oblivious to it. :When Umi was a child, she was very shy. She doesn't like to be alone and she always hung around with Wataru when they were little. She goes almost everywhere with Wataru. Some people dislike Umi and her father because her mother and Wataru's father had an intimate relationship a long time ago.
; : (Windows/PSP), Orikasa Ai (anime/PS2) :A third years student who gets high grades and is the student council president. She seems to be an friendly and outgoing person when she is with teachers and students, but it's all put on. She enjoys teasing the boarders of Tsugumi dorm. She is like a big sister and is more reliable than Saeri.
; : (Windows/PSP), Nakata Junko (anime/PS2) :A new student who is a granddaughter of previous chairman of the board of directors of Takamidzuka senior high school and owner of Tsugumi dorm. She is the acting chairman and the temporary owner the dorm. She was brought up in the care of the Rokujou family, who founded Demizugawa Heavy Industry, but her fate changed after she met Wataru at Tsugumi dorm last New Year's Day. She is clumsy in everything she does. Has a habit of counting her steps on the stairway to their dormitory.
; : (Windows/PSP), Hitomi (anime/PS2) :A new student who is bashful in front of strangers. Her parents left her and she seldom showed her feelings when Wataru first met her. Saeri stood up for her and she began to live at Tsugumi dorm and she gradually began to show her feelings. She is quiet and small, but a good athlete.
; : (Windows/PSP), Kaori Nazuka (anime/PS2) :A second year student who transferred a day earlier than Rinna. She talks quickly, has sunny disposition and is frank with her classmates. She often approaches Wataru, but he refuses to deal with her.
; : (PSP) :A second year student who suddenly declares her love to Wataru. Although Wataru knows the names of almost everybody who lives on the island, he does not remember her name because she has a poor presence. She appears only in the PSP game.
; : (Windows/PSP), MARIO (anime/PS2) :The homeroom teacher of class 2-A, she teaches Japanese language, is the dormitory manager and the student council adviser. She is called ''Sae-chan'' by her students. She competes with Naoko even though she is a student, because Naoko is more reliable than she is.
The people of Minami-sakōjima Island, isolated far from Honshū Japan, were worrying over how to deal with depopulation. The key industry of this island is the aerospace industry owned by the Demizugawa Heavy Industry. Nevertheless, Demizugawa Heavy Industry decided to close down the factories and laboratories on Minami-sakōjima Island. Takamidsuka senior high school is the only high school on Minami-sakōjima Island. This school has a dormitory named "Tsugumi Dormitory", which was remodeled from a former schoolhouse.
There's a collusive relationship between the principal of Takamidsuka senior high school and a resort development company "Rinchu Real-estate". Together they contrive to demolish the Tsugumi Dormitory and build a huge resort hotel on the lot. The principal hopes to tie into Rinchu Real-estate's interests. As a result, he decided to stand for the Mayoralty of Minami-sakōjima Town.
The principal declares that he will close down the Tsugumi Dormitory if the number of boarders falls below five. Currently there are five boarders in this dormitory: Umi, Naoko, Miyaho, Shizu and Wataru. Next spring, Naoko will enter a University far from the island. Umi, Rinna, Miyaho and Shizu (Their fathers are engineers in Demizugawa) will move from Minami-sakōjima Island as well. Therefore, Tsugumi Dormitory will be closed down and the boarders of Tsugumi Dormitory are destined to separate from each other. Together they spend community life as the last boarders of Tsugumi Dormitory.
A transfer student Rinna enters the Tsugumi Dormitory. She behaves disobediently in the school and the dormitory. She hates other boarders welcoming her. Wataru continues trying to welcome Rinna to the Tsugumi Dormitory. One day, Wataru noticed that Rinna is an excellent long-distance runner.
The series consists of 13 episodes with the first 12 centering on the background of each of the 6 female characters, with each one of them being the "title characters" of those episodes (in order: Rinna, Miya, Shizu, Umi, Saeri and Naoko) While the 13th episode centers on the characters preparing to leave their dormitory
A strangler is killing Manhattanites, seemingly at random. The only common thread is the unusual silk cords that are used for the killings; blue for men and pink for women. Other than that, the victims come from all social classes and backgrounds, ethnicities, races, neighbourhoods, etc. The city is in a panic. Ellery Queen forms together a small group of people related to some of the victims, and some consultants, and works to determine the killer's reason for selecting these particular victims. When he finally realizes the thread that connects the victims, the murderer is revealed and peace returns to the city.
Ellery Queen investigates a series of murders that seem to be related by an old rhyme: "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, ...."
The beautiful young Laurel Hill asks Ellery Queen to investigate a series of unusual anonymous gifts that have been received by her father, Leander Hill, half of Hill and Priam, Wholesale Jewelers. Roger Priam is Leander's partner, who uses a wheelchair. The latest gift, a dead dog with a mysterious note in a silver casket around its neck, has caused Leander to have a heart attack and die. Now Roger Priam (and his sultry wife Delia, who attracts Ellery like a carnivorous plant) has started to receive unusual anonymous gifts as well. Delia's nudist son Crowe, who is Laurel's boyfriend, and a cast of servants, are also on the scene. The mysterious gifts include some poisoned tuna fish salad, a green alligator wallet, a burned book and a bundle of worthless stocks and bonds, all accompanied by cryptic and ominous notes, and it seems as though they date back to a mysterious and possibly violent incident in the past of both Hill and Priam that gets them started in the wholesale jewelry business. Ellery Queen works out the significance of the series of gifts and the link that connects the notes and arranges a dramatic surprise that traps the criminal—although the true criminal is not known until the final moments of the book.
''Birth by Sleep'' is a prequel set ten years prior to the first ''Kingdom Hearts'' game. Like the other games in the series, the player progresses through a collection of various worlds, based on various locales from the Disney animated features canon: Dwarf Woodlands from ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'', Enchanted Dominion from ''Sleeping Beauty'', Castle of Dreams from ''Cinderella'', Olympus Coliseum from ''Hercules'', Deep Space from ''Lilo & Stitch'', Neverland from ''Peter Pan'' and Mysterious Tower from ''Fantasia''. The game also features various new worlds specially created for the series by Square Enix such as the Land of Departure and Radiant Garden. Disney Town, which is the town that surrounds the castle grounds of Disney Castle, serves as the game's minigame world. Worlds such as Destiny Islands and Castle Oblivion also appear in the form of cutscenes, while the 100 Acre Wood from the ''Winnie the Pooh'' franchise, which had appeared in most other games of the series, only appears as a Command Board in ''Birth by Sleep''. The staff first chose the worlds based on the game's scenario, leading to the inclusion of Princesses' worlds. They then added the worlds of Neverland and Deep Space to add variety to the game, while Olympus Coliseum was selected to reflect the game's earlier setting compared to the original ''Kingdom Hearts''.
The three main characters are Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, a trio of Keyblade apprentices under Master Eraqus who aspire to become Masters themselves. Another Keyblade Master, Xehanort, and his apprentice, Vanitas, serve as the game's antagonists. Other characters from the previous games return, such as younger versions of Sora, Riku, and Kairi, though they are given less prominent roles. A number of characters who later come to form Organization XIII also appear in their human forms. As with the Heartless in ''Kingdom Hearts'' and the Nobodies in ''Kingdom Hearts II'', ''Birth by Sleep'' introduces a new type of enemy: the Unversed, fledgling emotions that are "not well-versed in their own existences" and feed on negativity.
As with the other games in the series, ''Birth by Sleep'' features an extensive cast of Disney characters. The most prominent of these characters is Mickey Mouse, the king of Disney Castle, who serves as a Keyblade apprentice under the sorcerer Yen Sid at this point in the series chronology. Donald Duck and Goofy, who assist Sora in most other games, appear in smaller roles. Most other Disney characters remain in their respective worlds regardless of their overall importance to the story in previous installments, such as Maleficent and Pete, who served as major antagonists between ''Kingdom Hearts'' and ''Kingdom Hearts II'', and a number of the Princesses of Heart. Some characters (such as Experiment 626, Prince Phillip, and Mickey) occasionally fight alongside the player characters in battles as partners similar to the other games, providing assistance and performing combos to help the player proceed. However, they do not follow the player around constantly like Donald and Goofy in the other games. Unlike the other major installments, which also featured casts of various characters throughout the ''Final Fantasy'' series, ''Birth by Sleep'' only features two of these characters: Zack Fair from ''Final Fantasy VII'', and the Moogles, creatures from several of the ''Final Fantasy'' games, who sell items to the player. As ''Birth by Sleep'' is a prequel of the first ''Kingdom Hearts'' title, the staff decided to add Zack to the title as he is the protagonist of the ''Final Fantasy VII'' prequel, ''Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII''.
Master Xehanort brings a comatose Ventus to the Destiny Islands after the latter's heart is damaged; a newborn heart senses Ventus's heart and connects with it, saving him. Years later, at the Land of Departure, Terra and Aqua take an exam to achieve the Mark of Mastery. Xehanort manipulates the exam so Terra fails while Aqua passes, lessening Terra's control of the darkness in his heart. Shortly afterward, Xehanort disappears and a horde of Unversed appear throughout the worlds. Learning about these developments from Yen Sid, Master Eraqus sends Terra and Aqua to destroy the Unversed and find Xehanort throughout the countless worlds. Meanwhile, Vanitas convinces Ventus to follow Terra against Eraqus's wishes, while Eraqus orders Aqua to monitor Terra's darkness and bring Ventus back to the Land of Departure.
As the three travel through several worlds, Terra attracts the attention of several villains, who offer him the whereabouts of Xehanort in exchange for assistance in their own agendas. He eventually finds Xehanort, who offers to take him in as his apprentice and urges him to use his inner darkness to gain power. He further instructs him to destroy Vanitas, the source of the Unversed, who was created from the darkness extracted from Ventus's heart. Shortly afterward, the three friends reunite at Radiant Garden, but a schism forms between them when they argue over Terra's presumed actions in the other worlds.
Ventus encounters Xehanort, who reveals his intention to recombine Ventus and Vanitas's hearts to create an all-powerful Keyblade called the χ-blade. Xehanort sends Ventus to the Land of Departure to confront Eraqus, who attempts to destroy Ventus to foil Xehanort's plan. Terra arrives to save Ventus and duels Eraqus; upon his defeat, Eraqus is vanquished by Xehanort, who enshrouds the Land of Departure in darkness and tells Terra to go to a world known as the Keyblade Graveyard. Ventus is instructed to do the same by Vanitas, as is Aqua by Yen Sid upon being informed of Eraqus's demise at Xehanort and Terra's hands.
Terra, Aqua, and Ventus reunite at the Keyblade Graveyard, where Xehanort and Vanitas reveal their plan to use the χ-blade to unlock Kingdom Hearts and start a Keyblade War, an apocalyptic event that nearly destroyed the world in the past. Terra's heart is swallowed by darkness in the ensuing battle, and Xehanort takes over his body to replace his own aging one. However, Terra's mind remains within his discarded suit of armor, which comes to life and defeats Xehanort. Meanwhile, Ventus is forced to fuse with Vanitas to create the χ-blade. Aqua and Mickey fight with the possessed Ventus and destroy the χ-blade, while Ventus engages and defeats Vanitas in a metaphysical battle within his own mind, losing his heart and falling into a catatonic state as a result.
After learning of Ventus's condition from Yen Sid, Aqua brings his body to the Land of Departure, which she transforms into Castle Oblivion to ensure Ventus will not be disturbed. At Radiant Garden, Aqua battles the possessed Terra. When Terra struggles for control of his body, Xehanort impales himself with his own Keyblade, causing him to sink into the realm of darkness. Aqua dives into the realm and rescues Terra, becoming trapped in the process. Ansem the Wise finds an amnesiac Xehanort still possessing Terra's body, while Ventus's heart reconnects with and rests inside the heart of a young Sora, the newborn who had previously saved him on the islands.
In the game's secret ending, which takes place after the events of ''Kingdom Hearts II'', Aqua meets Ansem in the realm of darkness and learns from him about Sora, who has the power to save those connected to his heart. Sora has learned of Terra, Ventus, and Aqua's fates from a letter sent by Mickey, and undertakes another quest to save them.
''Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days'' begins concurrently with the events of the original game and ''Chain of Memories''. Like the other games in the series, the player progresses through a collection of various worlds, based on various locales from the Disney animated features canon: Agrabah from ''Aladdin''; the Beast's Castle from ''Beauty and the Beast''; Olympus Coliseum from ''Hercules''; Halloween Town from ''The Nightmare Before Christmas''; Wonderland from ''Alice in Wonderland''; and Never Land from ''Peter Pan'' (featuring a string of islands new to the series rather than Captain Hook's pirate ship and Big Ben from the first game). The game also features worlds created specifically for the series by Square Enix. The most prominent world is The World That Never Was, which first appeared in the secret ending of ''Kingdom Hearts'' and serves as the game's main hub, followed by Twilight Town, a frequently-explored locale. Castle Oblivion and Destiny Islands also appear in cutscenes.
The game revolves around Roxas, who was first featured at the beginning of ''Kingdom Hearts II''. Roxas is the Nobody of Sora, the series' protagonist, born when Sora's body vanished as he briefly lost his heart and became a Heartless. Like Sora, Roxas has the power to wield the Keyblade, a weapon normally used for battling darkness. At the start of the game, Roxas joins Organization XIII, a group of powerful Nobodies who serve as the antagonists of ''Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories'' and ''Kingdom Hearts II''. The other members of Organization XIII play a prominent role, particularly Axel, Roxas's best friend who debuted in ''Chain of Memories''. The game also introduces a new member: Xion, a girl resembling Kairi who, like Roxas, can wield the Keyblade.
Other characters who are featured include Naminé, a girl with the power to manipulate memories; DiZ, an enigmatic man wrapped in bandages; Riku, Sora's best friend; and King Mickey, Riku's ally and ruler of Disney Castle. Sora is featured prominently in the plot, along with his allies Donald Duck and Goofy, though they appear infrequently in the form of several flashbacks and memory-induced scenarios. Also appearing are Pete, a persistent villain who first appears in ''Kingdom Hearts II'', and Hayner, Pence, and Olette, a trio of friends living in Twilight Town who also debuted in ''Kingdom Hearts II''. As with the other games in the series, each Disney world features several characters who appear in the films their worlds are based on; on the other hand, no ''Final Fantasy'' characters are featured apart from a Moogle managing a shop for the Organization.
The newly born Roxas is discovered in Twilight Town by Xemnas, the leader of Organization XIII, who recruits him as their thirteenth member. Unlike other Nobodies, Roxas lacks memories of his original self and develops a personality of his own as time passes. Roxas is sent on daily missions to other worlds to destroy vast quantities of Heartless and release stolen hearts with his Keyblade, which furthers the Organization's goal of creating Kingdom Hearts and becoming complete beings. Roxas is tutored by fellow member Axel, with whom he becomes close friends. After Axel and several other members are reassigned to Castle Oblivion, Roxas partners with Xion, a fourteenth member inducted shortly after Roxas. Roxas and Xion bond over their similarities, including Xion's ability to wield a Keyblade and inability to recall her human life. Some time later, Roxas falls into a coma caused by the alteration of Sora's memories, and does not revive until several weeks later, when Axel returns from Castle Oblivion as the only survivor of the group.
Over time, Xion develops a friendship with Roxas and Axel, eating sea-salt ice cream with them after missions at the Twilight Town clock tower. Xion soon falls into a coma after failing to eliminate Riku; like Roxas, she has visions of Sora after waking. In time, Xion questions her own existence, distancing herself from Roxas and Axel to learn more about herself. She eventually discovers that she is an artificial replica created as a fail-safe for Roxas, and that she has been inadvertently absorbing Sora's memories, preventing them from being completely restored. Xion is torn between staying with her friends and merging with Sora as per Riku's advice, but ultimately chooses to escape from the Organization after she begins siphoning Roxas' strength. Axel allows Xion to escape, but loses Roxas' trust. Upon learning Xion's identity from Xemnas, Roxas begins to question his own identity and defects from the Organization in search of answers, leaving Axel dejected.
At Twilight Town, Xion attacks Roxas, having been altered by Xemnas to perform her initial purpose of absorbing Roxas and becoming a perfect copy of Sora. Upon being defeated, Xion's body dissipates while her heart merges with Sora's, causing all memory of her existence to gradually vanish. Returning to the World That Never Was to stop Xemnas' plan as per Xion's last request, Roxas encounters Riku, who attempts to capture him for DiZ and resume Sora's memory restoration process, which has completely halted. When Roxas overpowers him, Riku releases the darkness suppressed within his own heart, giving him the power necessary to subdue Roxas, but also giving him the physical form of Xehanort's Heartless, Ansem, who resides in his heart. DiZ inserts Roxas into a virtual simulation of Twilight Town without any of his memories of the Organization so that Roxas may eventually merge with Sora.
The game is set after ''Kingdom Hearts II'' and follows the story of Jiminy Cricket, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy in Disney Castle. In the game, players progress through a series of levels which are virtual representations of worlds contained within the digitized version of Jiminy's journal from the first ''Kingdom Hearts'' game, and are arranged according to the order in which Sora visited the worlds originally in ''Kingdom Hearts''. These virtual worlds are based on various locales from many Disney animated films as well as original worlds seen in the first game of the series, including Destiny Islands, Traverse Town, Wonderland in ''Alice in Wonderland'', Olympus Coliseum in ''Hercules'', Agrabah in ''Aladdin'' and Hollow Bastion. Castle Oblivion also appears as the game's final level.
The main protagonist and sole player character of the game is an artificially intelligent virtual avatar of Sora, occasionally referred to in-game as "Data-Sora", created from the data from Jiminy's journal entries. Because the game's setting is based on the first game, Data-Sora resembles the original Sora in his attire from the same game. Three other original ''Kingdom Hearts'' characters—Riku, Naminé, and Roxas—similarly appear as virtual avatars of themselves. Like previous ''Kingdom Hearts'' titles, ''coded'' features numerous Disney and ''Final Fantasy'' characters who have appeared in the first game. Some characters include King Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Jiminy Cricket, Donald Duck, and Goofy, the latter two of whom appear as computer-controlled partners of Sora in one of the game's levels. The main antagonists of the game are software bugs that corrupt the data of Jiminy's journal, which take the form of red-and-black blocks and Heartless that Sora encounters in the first game. Recurring series antagonists Maleficent and Pete also appear.
Jiminy Cricket organizes his journals chronicling Sora's journeys when he discovers a line he does not remember writing: "We must return to free them from their torment" (rewritten as "Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it" in ''Re:coded''). King Mickey digitizes the contents of the journal to investigate this message, only to find the datascape has been corrupted with bugs, which take the form of red-and-black blocks and Heartless. Mickey creates a virtual Sora named "Data-Sora" to guide him through the datascape's multiple worlds and debug the journal by destroying the blocks and digitized Heartless that appear.
While this happens, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy are imported into the datascape by an avatar of the journal's uncorrupted data, which takes the form of a virtual Riku, to better assist Sora in debugging the journal. They discover that Pete and Maleficent have also entered the datascape to use it in their latest attempt at world domination. After Sora has made significant headway into his mission, Maleficent destroys his Keyblade and kidnaps Riku, but he continues through the datascape with the help of Donald and Goofy until he regains the ability to conjure the Keyblade.
Atop Hollow Bastion, Pete infects Riku's code with bugs and forces him to fight Sora, endangering the datascape. Seeing no alternative, Sora chooses to debug Riku from inside, which will cause everything in the datascape to reset, including his own memories. The debugging process also activates the bug responsible for the data's corruption, which takes the form of Sora's Heartless. Sora destroys the bug while Mickey and the others are returned to their world by Riku before the reset occurs.
With the journal debugged, Riku uncovers extra data that contains the secret to the journal's message. Mickey guides the reset Sora to an extra world based on Castle Oblivion, where he is tested by a virtual Roxas to endure the pain of having forgotten his friends. Sora defeats Roxas and is allowed access to the deepest portion of the data. There he and Mickey encounter a virtual Naminé, who reveals the real Naminé was the one who left the message after discovering a set of memories relating to people tied to the real Sora's heart—herself, Roxas, Axel, Xion, Terra, Aqua, and Ventus—while restoring his lost memories; the bugs are also revealed to have been an unintentional side effect of her message. Before disappearing, Naminé explains that it is the real Sora's duty to save these people. Mickey relays this message to the real Sora through the bottled letter shown at the end of ''Kingdom Hearts II''.
In a secret ending exclusive to ''Re:coded'', Mickey and Yen Sid discuss the location of Terra, Aqua, and Ventus. During their conversation, Yen Sid reveals that the destruction of Xehanort's Heartless and Nobody will inevitably bring about the return of Master Xehanort. To prepare for this threat, Yen Sid orders Mickey to bring Sora and Riku to him, intending to examine them for the Mark of Mastery. In a secret ending exclusive to the ''HD 2.5 ReMIX'' cinematic version, a restored Braig discusses Xehanort's plan with the time-traveling Young Xehanort before asking which of the Organization's other restored members he should take with them.
In 1935 E.C., the continent of Europa is dominated by two superpowers: The Autocratic East Europan Imperial Alliance in the east and a commonwealth of loosely allied democracies known as the Atlantic Federation in the west. The economies of both powers depend on a precious multipurpose mineral called Ragnite. Its growing scarcity results in the Empire declaring war on the Federation, sparking the Second Europan War. The Empire uses its military superiority to quickly put the Federation on the defensive. Emboldened by their progress and momentum, the Empire decides to invade the neutral Principality of Gallia to seize its rich Ragnite deposits.
When Imperial forces launch an attack on the Gallian border town of Bruhl, Welkin Gunther, son of the country's hero General Belgen Gunther, is forced to fight for his life alongside the town watch captain, Alicia Melchiott. Together with Welkin's adopted sister Isara and using Belgen's prototype tank from the first war, the ''Edelweiss'', they escape to the capital city of Randgriz and join the Gallian militia. Welkin is promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and assumes command of the newly formed Squad 7, with Alicia acting as his non-commissioned officer. Members of the squad initially question Welkin's qualifications due to a lack of combat experience. He quickly gains their trust and loyalty, however, with his brilliant tactics. Welkin and Alicia soon become romantically engaged, but tragically, Isara is killed by an Imperial sniper.
After Squad 7 wages a successful campaign against Imperial forces, the crown prince Maximilian deploys one of his commanders, Selvaria Bles, a rare descendant of the Valkyrians who are believed to have saved the ancient world from the Darcsen race. Using innate magic powers and equipped with a legendary Ragnite lance and shield, Selvaria destroys the Gallian army. Alicia is shot by Welkin's archaeologist colleague Faldio Landzaat to awaken her own latent Valkyrian powers. Alicia is able to drive Selvaria back, allowing the Gallians to advance to the border. At the cost of her own life, Selvaria uses the "final flame" after the capture of the Ghirlandaio fortress, killing the entire core of Gallian military and leaving only the militia, including Squad 7, remaining.
In an attempt to create his own empire, Maximilian uses a "land dreadnought", the ''Marmota'', to break through Gallia's defenses and steal a giant Valkyrian lance from inside Randgriz Castle. The princess reveals herself to be Darcsen - the Valkyrians rewrote history to make themselves into heroes, while an allied Darcsen tribe gained Randgriz as the spoils. With Alicia's help, Squad 7 is able to board the ''Marmota'' and send Maximilian to his demise, destroying the dreadnought and ending the conflict between the two factions. Alicia and Welkin return to Bruhl, where they marry and raise a daughter named Isara together.
''HoneyComing'''s story revolves around the protagonist Kōichirō Ogata, a male first-year high school student who does not have any interest in matters such as love or romance. The high school he is admitted to, named , used to be an all-girl school formally named , and still carries a high population of female students. He starts school with his childhood friend Asahi Kamijō, his younger stepsister Mio Ogata, and best male friend Masanori Shinozaki. Kōichirō eventually meets two more female upperclassmen from the same school named Clarissa Satsuki Maezono, and Yuma Shichiri, along with a female underclassman from an affiliated school named Marino Tagaya; Kōichirō becomes friends with them. Since the school used to only have female students, there are certain classes oriented towards girls which are still required to take, such as lessons on love and romance.
These lessons are known as , and students at Aikyō are required to take these classes on how to fall in love, and the ways of proper romance techniques. Each lesson, two people (of the opposite sex) pair up to make something, such as a meal for example, and they must form good communication if they intend to pass the test. There are also tests on practical skills which required note taking to later be studied for tests. During these lessons, students from Aikyō, and a nearby affiliated junior-high school, are combined for a total range of six grades from the lowest to the highest. Each time, forty new students from either school are chosen to take part in a special class for the ''Love-making Lessons''. The students in the special class this year include: Kōichirō, Asahi, Clarissa, Mio, Yuma, Marino, Kaoru, Masanori, and Hiroko. Two teachers are assigned to this class: Ichigo Raidō (who is in charge of the boys), and Tsukasa Kurebayashi (who is in charge of the girls).
; :Kōichirō is a first-year high school student and is the protagonist of the story. He lives in a four-person household with his father Hajime, his stepmother Minatsu, and his younger stepsister Mio; Mio is Minatsu's daughter, and is not related by blood with Kōichirō. Due to the relationship between his father and birth-mother, Kōichirō dislikes matters such as love or romance. Kōichirō's father wants to change this side of his son, so he enrolls him into Aikyō Academy because they teach lessons on love and romance. He dislikes sweet food.
; : (PC), Kyōko Fujimoto (PS2) :Asahi is Kōichirō's childhood friend, and is the same age as him; since they have known each other for a long time, she likes to address him as . She has a strong personality, however she is sometimes shown to be shy. Unlike Kōichirō, she is very interested in love and romance, and gets excited about the lessons at Aikyō about them. Again in contrast to Kōichirō, she loves sweet food, especially chocolate, so much so that Kōichirō sometimes refers to Asahi as a "chocolate junkie".
; : (PC), Aiko Okubo (PS2) :Clarissa, or simply , is a second-year student at Aikyō. Her father is Italian and her mother is Japanese, making her half Italian, and half Japanese. A year before the story began, Clarissa's grandmother on her mother's side was sick and Clarissa and her family moved back to Japan from Italy. She has a gentle personality accentuating through her kind heart and speech patterns. Due to this, she is seen as an idol at school and around her neighborhood. She is in the Gardening Club, and will often help out at the local senior citizen's home as a volunteer.
; : (PC), Maki Kobayashi (PS2) :Mio is Kōichirō younger stepsister, not related by blood, but since their age difference is not by much, she is also a first-year student at Aikyō, and is in Kōichirō's class. She has a small build, is short, and has a quiet personality. She is a delicate person, and is known to be a crybaby. She loves her brother very much, and will often go to great lengths to please him. She is in the Drama Club at school.
; : (PC), Tomo Adachi (PS2) :Yuma is a third-year student at Aikyō. Despite Aikyō transitioning to a school with both male and female students, Yuma still embraces the school as an all-girls school, and is seen as an upper-class type of girl. However, she loves the lesser expensive food of the working class, and is known to be quite a glutton in this respect. She is always reserved, and expressionless, though when she wants to talk, she will often speak with a wicked tongue. Yuma is in the Naginatajutsu Club, and is very skilled at the sport.
; : (PC), Rika Ogaki (PS2) :Marino is a third-year student at an affiliated junior-high school of Aikyō's. She was once the daughter of a rich man, but her father's business eventually went bankrupt. Due to this, she has taken a part-time job so she does not have to willingly live in poverty. She still has pride for her upbringing, and will add at the end of some of her sentences. Her school's students are combined into Aikyō's love and romance lessons, of which she is an unwilling participant; this is because she has androphobia, a fear of men.
; : (PC), Shinya Takahashi (PS2) :Hajime is Kōichirō's father. He is the manager of a small company, and returns home early most of the time. Unlike his son, Hajime can go on and on about how wonderful love and romance is, and he wants his son to be the same way; Kōichirō just treats him like an annoyance when he is like this, which is almost all the time. If he is in a quarrel, or gets excited, he yells very loudly, which is something the neighborhood has grown accustomed to.
; : (PC), Yūko Gotō (PS2) :Minatsu is Mio's mother, and Kōichirō's stepmother after his father remarried. She often gets mistaken for Mio's older sister due to her young appearance. Kōichirō and Mio were still very young when the Minatsu married Hajime.
; : (PC), Shintarō Ōhata (PS2) :Masanori is Kōichirō's best male friend, and is a fellow first-year student at Aikyō. He is a skinhead and has a strong build. Due to this, he appears as though he would fit in with the Japanese Yakuza, but he is just impulsive by nature. He has a younger sister named Koyori that he dots on constantly due to his sister complex and lolicon behavior.
; : (PC), Megu Ashiro (PS2) :Koyori is Masanori's younger sister. She does not like her brother at all and thinks of him as if he were trash.
; : (PC), Akane Tomonaga (PS2) :Kaoru, like Masanori, is a good friend of Kōichirō. He has a small build and has a reserved personality, and many of the girls at school think he is cute.
; : (PC), Natsumi Yanase (PS2) :Ichigo is Kōichirō's homeroom teacher and is in charge of the lessons on love and romance for Kōichirō's class; she heads the boys in such lessons. When she gets angry, her speech becomes rude, and with wield a naginata; she is a very enthusiastic teacher. Since Yume is in the Naginatajutsu Club, Ichigo often advises her on the sport.
; : (PC), Kei Mizusawa (PS2) :Tsukasa is another teacher at Aikyō Academy, and is also in charge of the lessons on love and romance for Kōichirō's class; he heads the girls in such lessons. He appears to be female, but almost all the students know he is male. He is always seen wearing traditional female Japanese-style clothing. He differs from Ichigo in that Tsukasa has a calm personality. Tsukasa often gives advice to Mio in the Drama Club.
; : (PC), Hitomi Nabatame (PS2) :Hiroko is Marino's roommate in the women's dormitory, and is her close friend. She wears glasses, and is a plain member of the working class. Hiroko and Marino often call each other , and as terms of endearment.
; : (PC), Akane Tomonaga (PS2) :Ryōko is a girl in the same class as Clarissa. She has a bright, vigorous personality. Without knowing exactly why, Ryōko finds herself thinking about Clarissa often.
; : (PC), Kei Mizusawa (PS2) :Mana is Marino's younger sister, and is the youngest of her three siblings. She has a similar competitive spirit as with her older sister, and is also very strong-willed.
; : (PC), Natsumi Yanase (PS2) :Mamoru is Marino's younger brother. He still has a childish attitude and is mischievous. However, he takes great care with Mana.
; : (PC), Shinya Takahashi (PS2) :Mitsutaka is a son of the distinguished Saionji family. He has a haughty attitude typical of such an upbringing.
; : :Manato is a female maid in the Saionji household. She is in charge of looking after the Saionji family, but flat-out dislikes her line of work.
Ansara played Sam Buckhart, an Apache Indian who saved the life of a U.S. Cavalry officer after an Indian ambush. When the officer died, he left Sam money that was used for an education at private schools and Harvard University. After school, he returned to New Mexico where he became a deputy marshal working for Marshal Andy Morrison. He lived in a boarding house run by Martha Commager. Other continuing characters include 8-year old Tess Logan, an orphan who had been rescued by Buckhart, and a second Deputy Marshal, Billy Lordan.
The film opens with an image of a man being burned alive on the floor of a warehouse. A figure, shrouded in darkness, walks away from this burning body in the down pouring rain.
Suddenly, the film cuts to two men in the middle of a bank heist who, coolly and efficiently, partake stacks of bonds from a safety deposit box. The two men with two more accomplices, along with a hostage in their trunk, drive towards some unknown location away from the city, soon to be revealed as the very warehouse in which the man was previously seen being burned alive. Upon their arrival, one of the criminals, whose name is Ryu, enters the warehouse to discover, to his horror, that the man in which they were supposed to pass the bonds off to now is a charcoaled corpse lying in the middle of the floor. The other three criminals enter as well and are shocked as well at the sight.
Questions begin to arise: what is their next plan of action? Do they wait until the mysterious man who hired them arrives, whom none of the criminals have met? Do they simply split the bonds and make a run for it? But soon the questions give way to accusations as the criminals begin to turn on one another, suspecting that one of them may, in fact, be the very man who hired them, and who must have set ablaze the now smoldering corpse.
The rest of the film is told in a series of flashbacks that explain events that led up to the bank heist, which are intercut with scenes in the present as the criminals begin to probe one another for answers to this confusing puzzle...
Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro receive a job from three state politicians, Sterling Mulkern, Jim Vurnan and Brian Paulson, to recover documents from a former cleaning lady, Jenna Angeline. Tracking Angeline to her sister's house outside Boston, they learn she has hidden the documents in a safe deposit box in a bank back in the city. Kenzie escorts Angeline to the bank, where she gives him one photo before being gunned down by Curtis Moore, a street enforcer for notorious gangster and pimp Marion Socia. The photo shows Socia with Paulson, who has stripped down to his socks and underwear. Angeline had only hidden one photo in the safe deposit box, and it is up to Kenzie and Gennaro to find the rest.
The ensuing investigation takes the detectives from swanky Boston hotels to housing projects in the poorest ghettos of Dorchester. Kenzie wrestles with problems of race, class, urban violence, corruption, abuse, and love. A gang war erupts between Socia and his son Roland, who has taken his own gang independent, culminating in the bloodiest night of gang violence in Boston history. A street terrorism bill that would have curbed the violence is suspiciously stalled before coming to a vote. All these events are connected to the photographs, and as they pursue the evidence, Kenzie and Gennaro find themselves hunted by both sides.
Eventually the detectives find the photos, and learn that Socia prostituted his young son with Angeline to Paulson years ago, ironically leading the boy to become a stone-cold killer. Roland gains the upper hand in the war, and Socia demands the pictures back, hoping to blackmail Roland and save himself. At a meeting with Socia, Kenzie loses control and kills him. Releasing a photo to the press with Roland's face obscured so that he will not lose his street cred and grip on his gang, Paulson is disgraced, and a victorious Roland agrees not to come after Kenzie and Gennaro.
'''''Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair''''', set in the forested land of '''Oakenrealm''', was Morris' reimagining and recasting of the medieval Lay of Havelock the Dane, with his displaced royal heirs '''Christopher''' and '''Goldilind''' standing in for the original story's Havelock and Goldborough.
In contrast to his source, Morris emphasizes the romantic aspect of the story, giving a prominent place to the heroine's misfortunes and bringing to the forefront the love story between her and the hero; the warfare by which the hero regains his heritage is relegated to a secondary role. Also unlike both the source and most of Morris's other fantasies, there is little or no supernatural element in this version of the story.
Christopher is portrayed as initially ignorant of his true identity, leading to an emotional conflict between the protagonists to reconcile their mutual love and attraction with what they believe to be the profound disparity in their social status and shame of their forced marriage. This situation is resolved when the two fall in with '''Jack of the Tofts''', who gives refuge to Christopher after his sons rescue the hero from an assassination attempt by a servant of the usurper '''Earl Rolf'''.
Jack informs Christopher of his true station and gathers together an army to help him challenge the usurper. When the hosts meet, the commander of Rolf's forces, Baron '''Gandolf of Brimside''', challenges Jack to single combat, but Christopher claims the honor from Jack and proves his worth by defeating the opposing champion.
A puppy, who is strangely born with a coat that is a shade of light blue, is rejected by all. Nobody wants to play with him or to be his friend. Even the Grey Dogs avoid him. The Black Cat, a dodger and a faker, is the only one that feigns interest. Unexpectedly, the Pirate attacks the island and using the Black Cat, kidnaps the Blue Puppy.
Along comes the Good Sailor, who always helps ones in trouble and does good things. As the Sailor sails the sea, the Black Cat tells him about the abduction of the Puppy. The Sailor decides to rescue the puppy and begins chasing the Pirate; the Pirate eventually attacks the Seaman with a sawfish which sinks the Sailor's ship. The Pirate ties the Seaman and the Puppy together with shackles.
The Pirate and the Black Cat are celebrating their victory and sing a song about their spurious friendship. The Pirate, however, gets drunk to the point of unconsciousness, allowing the Puppy to free both himself and the Sailor. After that, the Seaman confronts and defeats the Pirate. He and the Puppy return to the island as heroes. Now, nobody tries to avoid the Puppy. More importantly, however, the Puppy now has a real friend. The moral of the story is that it is not so awful to be different from others, as long as one has friends, and the respect of one's peers.
Munitions maker King Bendigo is the wealthiest man alive, and what the King wants, the King gets. What he wants is the investigative powers of Ellery Queen and his father, New York homicide detective Richard Queen, in order to investigate some threatening letters. Bendigo has an enormous security apparatus in place that is capable of dealing with threats that involve sovereign governments, but these threats are more personal. Ellery and his father are transported to the Bendigo private island and soon determine that the threats originate within the King's family. The King has two brothers, his assistant Abel and drunken sot Judah, and the King's beautiful wife Karla completes the list of suspects. Judah makes little secret of the fact that it is he who has originated the threats; he announces that he will shoot King at exactly midnight on June 21. At that time, King is locked in a hermetically sealed room accompanied only by his wife; Judah is under Ellery's observation and armed only with an empty gun. At midnight, Judah lifts the empty gun and fires—and King falls back, wounded with a bullet. Karla falls under suspicion but no gun is found on her person or anywhere in the room; similarly, Judah cannot have had a bullet in his possession, having been searched repeatedly. When Ellery learns that the Bendigo family is originally from his familiar haunt of Wrightsville, he travels there for an investigation of the King's early life. Upon his return to the private island, he solves the crime and dramatic and deadly effects follow in short order.
The story of ''Black Plague'' begins as an email sent by Philip to a friend, explaining what has happened to him and begging him to finish the work he could not. The rest of the game then proceeds as a flashback narrated by Philip to his friend in the email, beginning from where the previous game left off.
The game begins with Philip waking up in a locked room, after being knocked out by an unseen being at the end of the first game. Philip manages to escape via a nearby air-vent, and finds himself still in Greenland, in the underground research facility of the Archaic Elevated Caste, a secret organization dedicated to discovering and researching ancient knowledge. The base is abandoned and in ruins, with all its personnel either dead or transformed into "the Infected", zombie-like creatures that attack Philip when they notice him. He soon discovers that he has also been infected; however, his reaction to the virus is extremely abnormal: instead of joining the infected hive-mind, he is taken over by the mind of one of the infected, the sarcastic and malevolent Clarence who constantly taunts Philip throughout the course of the game.
Via the base's computer network, Philip is contacted by Dr. Amabel Swanson, an Archaic research scientist who has managed to survive the outbreak by locking herself in her lab. Swanson promises to help cure Philip's infection, if he will make his way to her section of the facility and rescue her. Through dialogue with Swanson, and various scattered documents found throughout the base, Philip learns that the Archaic came to Greenland to look for the "Tuurngait", an ancient entity described in native Inuit mythology as primordial spirits native to the area. Penetrating deep underground, the Archaic found and released the Tuurngait, which was revealed to be a semi-parasitic virus, heavily implied to be from another world, that soon infected the base's personnel. Philip discovers his father Howard managed to communicate with the Tuurngait, but what he learned drove him to commit suicide after sending Philip a letter ordering him to destroy his research documents.
Philip eventually manages to make his way to Amabel's lab, but Clarence causes him to hallucinate and murder Amabel. Using Amabel's lab notes, Philip manages to rid himself of Clarence by extracting him using a lab machine. The machine transfers Clarence into a nearby corpse, which he reanimates and uses to attack Philip. He is saved by the Tuurngait itself, as several Infected arrive to destroy Clarence, for Clarence now possesses an individual body and mind rather than part of "the many" in Tuurngait. The Tuurngait communicates directly with Philip, sending him into his own mind and putting him through a series of spiritual tests designed to test his ability to cooperate, show mercy, and demonstrate self-sacrifice.
Once Philip passes the tests, the Tuurngait reveals all; it is an ancient entity that came to Earth millions of years ago. It once co-existed peacefully alongside the native Inuit, using "Infected" host bodies to pass its ancient knowledge to mankind. In time mankind began to grow and expand, and the Tuurngait burrowed underground to separate itself from the human world. When the Archaic came, they disturbed the Tuurngait's ancient slumber and attempted to exploit it, and it fought back against them in self-defense. The Tuurngait explains that mankind is intelligent and compassionate as individuals, but selfish, petty, and destructive as a whole, but it believes that Philip is different from most of mankind. The Tuurngait puts itself at Philip's mercy, asking him to send a message to someone above ground, for them to destroy all information regarding the Archaic's research facility so that the Tuurngait may rest in peace. This is the same request the Tuurngait made of Philip's father Howard, however Philip thwarted it by coming to investigate instead of following his father's instructions.
Philip seemingly agrees to the Tuurngait's request, and sends an email to a friend on the surface describing his adventure. However, stating that he has more in common with Clarence than with the Tuurngait, Philip gives his friend the coordinates of the mine and tells him to come and destroy the Tuurngait. His last words are: "Kill them. Kill them all".
"Eliduc" tells the story of a knight named Eliduc who lives in Brittany. Because he is very loyal to the king, Eliduc is given many gifts and responsibilities. Jealous of the preferential treatment Eliduc receives at court, some of the other knights slander him to the king. The king banishes Eliduc from his presence with no explanation. Disappointed, Eliduc decides to leave Brittany and go to Logres (Great Britain). He leaves his faithful wife, Guildeluec, in charge of his lands while he is abroad.
Once in Logres, Eliduc hears about a king who lives near Exeter. This king does not have a son, and he is being besieged by another king who wishes to marry his daughter. Eliduc decides to fight for the king and he ultimately helps him win against his enemy. Eliduc soon attracts the attention of the princess, Guilliadon, who decides to send him two tokens of love: a belt and a ring. Eliduc accepts these gifts, and the love of the princess, in spite of his marriage. Eliduc and Guilliadon live happily for some time until word reaches him that his former king in Brittany needs him. Eliduc leaves Logres, and Guilliadon asks to accompany him. Instead, Eliduc convinces her to set a date for his return.
Eliduc returns to his king and wife in Brittany. Although he tries to hide his pain of the separation from Guilliadon, she realizes that something is wrong. When the date arrives for him to return to Guilliadon, he goes to Logres with the intention of running off with his lover. Eliduc sends his chamberlain to Guilliadon who agrees to leave with Eliduc. Once the boat leaves port, however, a tempest begins to rage. One of the sailors blames Eliduc, and Guilliadon finally learns that Eliduc has a wife in Brittany. Distraught, she faints. Thinking Guilliadon has died, Eliduc tosses overboard the sailor who accused him, and the storm subsides. When they finally reach land, Eliduc decides to go to a chapel deep in the woods where he will bury Guilliadon. He goes to visit a hermit he knows near the site, but the hermit has recently died. Eliduc's comrades want to leave Guilliadon in the tomb with the hermit, but Eliduc resists, claiming he still wants to build an abbey or church there. He leaves Guilliadon in the hermit's chapel and returns to his wife to think about the plans for his abbey.
Guildeluec is happy to see her husband but soon realizes that his mind is elsewhere. She has one of her servants follow Eliduc one day when he goes to the chapel to visit Guilliadon's body. Guildeluec soon follows to discover the source of her husband's sorrow. Seeing the young woman, Guildeluec understands immediately that this is her husband's lover; and she mourns the young woman. Two weasels run into the chapel. When the servant kills one of the weasels (both female, metaphorically representing the two women), the other one runs into the forest to find a magical flower that revives him. Seeing this, Guildeluec takes the flower from the weasel and uses it to heal Guilliadon. Not knowing that the woman she sees is Eliduc's wife, Guilliadon immediately explains her story, confessing that she did not know that Eliduc was married. Guildeluec reveals her identity and forgives Guilliadon. The two women return to Eliduc who is overwhelmed with joy at the sight of his lover. Noticing this, Guildeluec generously decides to become the abbess of Eliduc's proposed abbey in the forest and frees Eliduc of his marital bond. Eliduc goes on to marry Guilliadon and lives happily for many years. Later in life, Guilliadon enters into the convent of Eliduc's first wife, and Eliduc himself enters into a monastery. All three serve God for the rest of their lives.
Dirk and Martha Lawrence are apparently not the happiest couple in New York, despite her millions of dollars and his fairly successful mystery-writing career. Martha asks for a secretive meeting to get Ellery Queen's advice because Dirk's violent jealousy is causing problems in her life—but Dirk shows up suspecting the worst and punches Ellery into unconsciousness. Dirk apologizes the next day, telling the story of how his father had killed his mother's lover, thereby causing his over-reaction. Ellery's secretary and inamorata Nikki Porter urges him to stay involved in the situation and Nikki moves in with the Lawrences to keep an eye on things (and act as Dirk's secretary on a stalled book). Nikki soon reports that Martha actually is having a series of clandestine meetings with romantic actor Van Harrison. The meetings are arranged with innocuous envelopes that look like advertising, but with Martha's name and address written in scarlet typewriter ink. Also, the envelopes contain only a day, time and a sequential letter of the alphabet—a code that is soon linked to a New York Guidebook. By the time the meetings have progressed from "A" through to "W", Dirk has found out about the affair and followed Martha to Van's home in the suburb of Darien. He breaks in, confronts the pair and shoots them both, seriously wounding Martha, who nearly dies. Van Harrison has just enough time before he dies to leave a dying clue—using his own blood, he writes an "X", then a "Y" on the wall, and dies. Ellery must consider the significance of this dying message and finally solves it, just as Dirk's murder trial is about to conclude. After Ellery gets a private conversation with the judge, a criminal then receives justice.
Clothing designer Mary Haines lives in a beautiful suburban Connecticut home with her wealthy financier husband Stephen and their 11-year-old daughter Molly. Her best friend since college, Sylvie Fowler, is the editor of a prominent fashion magazine that dictates the latest in taste and style for New York City fashionistas. When Sylvie learns Stephen is having an affair with Crystal Allen, a perfume salesgirl in Saks Fifth Avenue, from chatty manicurist Tanya, she confides in the ever-pregnant Edie Cohen but hesitates to tell Mary, who discovers the news from the same woman after getting a manicure herself. Despite her mother Catherine's exhortation to keep quiet about what she knows, Mary confronts Crystal first, in a lingerie store, and then Steven, before asking for a divorce.
Sylvie, Edie, and writer Alex Fisher join forces to support their spurned friend, but complications arise when Sylvie, facing the loss of her job, conspires with local gossip columnist Bailey Smith by confirming Mary's marital woes in exchange for Bailey contributing a celebrity profile to the magazine. Mary is stunned by Sylvie's betrayal and ends their friendship. Mary's daughter begins to ditch school and confides in Sylvie because her mother, distracted by the upheavals in her once idyllic life, becomes more distant.
Mary is fired from her job by her father, has a makeover, and decides to open her own clothing design firm with some financial assistance from Catherine. As she begins to get her life in order, she makes an effort to bond with Molly, who reveals her father's relationship with Crystal is unraveling and reunites with Sylvie, who has quit her job. With this knowledge in hand, Mary sets out to repair her fractured marriage as she prepares to unveil her new line of womenswear in a fashion show attended not only by boutique owners but the buyer from Saks as well.
Sylvie tells Mary that she has met a guy and is thinking of giving him her real phone number. Edie's water breaks and she has a baby boy. Mary receives a call from her husband and is encouraged by the others to answer it; she then arranges a date with him. In the end, we see that a magazine titled ''Sylvie'' is published with the four friends on the cover and Alex's book is out. A hint is given about Crystal's possibly going out with Alex's ex-girlfriend Natasha. The women talk about the magazine, the book, and the joys, heartaches, and uniquely special triumphs of being a woman.
At Weston Hills Sanitarium in rural Ohio, psychiatric patient Dickie Cavanaugh commits suicide by hanging himself. Cavanaugh's sister gives permission to two gravediggers to bury the body. While the two men are digging the hole for Cavanaugh's body, they are attacked and murdered by an unseen killer who throws their corpses into the burial plot.
Meanwhile, at nearby DeWitt University, the basketball team wins a championship game, and as a result, an all-night scavenger hunt will take place the next evening for the female students. Lynn and her boyfriend-star player Teddy Ratliff celebrate the victory at the campus diner, and the waitress Barney is thrilled for the team. Lynn, Teddy, and other students attend a party that evening, where the story of Dickie circulates among freshmen who are unaware of his recent death; they are told that Cavanaugh murdered his girlfriend Patty in a jealous rage and is locked away in the sanitarium. Lynn becomes jealous over Teddy's attraction to Dawn Sorenson and misfit Mike Pryor gets into a fight with his girlfriend Sheila. Soon, school mascot Michael Benson is stabbed in his dorm room after arriving back from the party, and his bear mascot costume is stolen by the killer.
The following day, Mike Pryor is questioned by campus security officer Jim MacVey over the fight with his girlfriend; MacVey's daughter Patty was Dickie Cavanaugh's girlfriend. Later that evening, the campus radio DJ broadcasts the clues to the scavenger hunt, which are received by the girls on their portable radios. Meanwhile, the killer who is dressed in the bear costume, is armed with serrated knives mimicking bear claws.
Jane enters the girls' locker room and locates the first item of the hunt, only to be attacked from behind by the killer, who brutally slashes her throat while calling her misogynistic slurs. Shortly after, Kathy discovers Jane's body crudely strung up in the locker room showers. Kathy tries to flee before also having her throat slashed. The DJ at the radio station begins receiving phone calls from the killer, who tallies his victims; the killer also calls officer MacVey and claims to be Dickie Cavanaugh. Sheila goes down to the pond to search for another item and runs into the bear-clad killer, whom she believes to be Benson. Teasing him, she goes into an abandoned shed by the pond. While inside the shed, the killer smashes their hand through the window, slashing Sheila's throat.
Meanwhile, Lynn continues searching for items on the scavenger hunt, while Teddy visits Dawn at her apartment, where the two have sex. Lynn's friend Leslie goes to search for an item in the attic of the old chapel, where she is murdered and her body is discovered by Lynn. After calling, the police arrive and find all of the bodies, where they are suspicious of Mike Pryor and question several of the students. Dawn gets into an argument with her boyfriend, who kicks her out of their house after he tells her he knows about her affair with Teddy. Officer MacVey studies the phone calls placed to the radio station as well as files and photographs of Dickie Cavanaugh, whose death he became aware of by Dickie's doctor.
While walking home, Dawn senses that someone is following her and has a panic attack. She uses a payphone outside the student union to call Teddy's house, where he is consoling Lynn. The phone call is incomprehensible, and ends with Dawn screaming, followed by a gruff voice invoking Teddy to "come and get her." Lynn calls the police while Teddy flees to the student union. Once there, he finds Dawn bloody and wounded in the cafeteria. As Teddy is comforting her, he is stabbed by Barney, who reveals herself as the killer. Officer MacVey enters the cafeteria and confronts Barney, whom he addresses as Dickie's twin sister, Katie Cavanaugh. Katie, apparently suffering from dissociative identity disorder, responds to MacVey in alternating voices, claiming to be Dickie. After MacVey tells Katie that Dickie is dead, she reverts, and calmly tells him that Dickie is not dead, and that she brought him home from the hospital. She opens the freezer, displaying Dickie's frozen body clothed in a wheelchair and with the bear-claw weapon in his hand.
Aunt Fanny Adams, famed artist, is the most notable citizen of the tiny New England town of Shinn Corners. A noted proponent of the naturalist school ("I paint what I see") who only began painting at age eighty, her income props up the local church, school, and almost everything else in town. When she is found murdered, suspicion immediately falls on a passing tramp named Josef Kowalczyk, and a planned lynching is nearly successful. It takes the combined efforts of the town's second-most-notable citizen, Judge Shinn, and his house guest, Major Johnny Shinn, to insist upon a trial by jury. Empaneling a jury takes every eligible citizen in the village, counsel and witnesses alike, and so the trial would never withstand legal scrutiny. But Judge Shinn and Major Shinn's investigation reveals a trail of circumstantial evidence that leads to another potential killer before the mock trial's conclusion.
Scotty Parker, a college student in Southern California, is seeking a room for the fall semester at the last-minute. She is directed to a boarding house run by the standoffish Mrs. Engels; a Victorian mansion on a cliffside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Mrs. Engels lives in the house along with her teenage son, Mason, and several other college students, including Doris, Peter, and Jack. The four students become friends, and decide to go on a double date together. Afterward, Doris and Peter walk along the beach near the house. Peter, drunk, makes unwanted advances on her, and Doris leaves him on the beach. He falls unconscious, and is awakened by an unseen assailant who stabs him to death with a butcher knife.
Lieutenant McGiver and Sergeant Manny Rusin are assigned to investigate Peter's murder, and Lt. McGiver grows suspicious of Mrs. Engels and her son. One afternoon, Scotty and Doris meet in the basement laundry room, where Doris tells her she is planning on moving after what happened to Peter. Scotty returns to her room with Jack, and the two begin to have sex. Meanwhile, in the basement, a woman bursts out of a hidden door, stabbing Doris numerous times in the head and chest.
The woman flees through the secret door, which opens to a hidden staircase that travels along the house's air ducts, eventually leading to a room located off the main attic space. Scotty goes downstairs to get her laundry, where she finds a pool of blood, and Doris gone. She discovers the secret door, and ascends the staircase. At the top, she finds a narrow hallway with a door at the end. She attempts to open it, and is attacked by the woman, who pulls her inside. The commotion alarms Mrs. Engels, who enters the room from an access door in the attic and intervenes.
Mrs. Engels reveals that the woman, Victoria, is her daughter. Mason chastises his mother for having taken in boarders at the house, knowing of Victoria's violent outbursts. Mrs. Engels then reveals to Mason that Victoria is in fact his mother: After a suicide attempt, she gave birth to him, but was left mute and homicidal after undergoing a botched lobotomy at a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, Jack searches for Scotty throughout the house, but is unable to find her. He is confronted by Mason downstairs, who knocks him unconscious.
At the police station, Sgt. Rusin uncovers a file on Victoria's past and determines she has been living in the Engels home after being taken out of the psychiatric hospital; he and Lt. McGiver promptly leave to go to the boarding house. Meanwhile, with Scotty bound and gagged in a closet, Mrs. Engels attempts to console the childlike Victoria. Mason obtains a gun from his bedroom and returns to the attic, attempting to kill Victoria. In a struggle, he inadvertently shoots Mrs. Engels through the chest, killing her. With his back turned, Victoria approaches Mason. He turns around, and she stares at him blankly, moving closer with a knife. Cornered against a window, he shoots her, and then shoots himself in the head.
Scotty manages to free herself, but finds Victoria has survived the gunshot; she attacks Scotty with the knife. Jack awakens just as Lt. McGiver and Sgt. Rusin arrive at the house. They enter the attic and find Victoria collapsed with a knife in her stomach. Jack consoles Scotty as Victoria dies on the floor.
The title's "uncommon reader" (Queen Elizabeth II) becomes obsessed with books after a chance encounter with a mobile library. The story follows the consequences of this obsession for the Queen, her household and advisers, and her constitutional position.
The title is a play on the phrase "common reader". This can mean a person who reads for pleasure, as opposed to a critic or scholar. It can also mean a set text, a book that everyone in a group (for example, all students entering a university) are expected to read, so that they can have something in common. ''The Common Reader'' is used by Virginia Woolf as the title work of her 1925 essay collection. Plus a triple play – Virginia Woolf's title came from Dr. Johnson: "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claims to poetical honours."
In British English, "common" holds levels of connotation. A commoner is anyone other than royalty or nobility. Common can also mean vulgar, as ''common taste''; mean, as ''common thief''; ordinary, as ''common folk''; widespread, as in "common use"; or something for use by everyone, as in "common land".
The series is set in the year 2017, and music is delivered in a technological fashion. Previously a pop band named Lemon Angel made it big, but they only performed in large flat screens that serve as ad spaces in the city. After a while, the band disappeared, leaving no trace. Tomo Minaguchi, whose deceased senpai was somehow involved with Lemon Angel, was invited to join an audition aimed to form a new Lemon Angel band, or revive it with new members. Tomo reluctantly agrees.
As the series progresses, Tomo bonds with the other four members of the band (out of the audition), and along the way, each learn the values of trust, friendship and inner strength, as they do their best to perform for the Lemon Angel Project.
Eight years later, Mike is married with four kids and now a successful ad executive who is a vice president; Carol is a very successful Wall Street lawyer; Ben cleans pools; and Chrissy is a 17-year-old high school student with a smoking habit and who is still a good student. Chrissy goes to work with Maggie, but soon Maggie is fired. She decides to enter the election campaign herself and run against her old boss. During the campaign, Carol meets the other campaign manager, Scott Coffer, and falls in love with him and his 10-year-old son Jack. However, Carol realizes dating him could put her mom's campaign in jeopardy, so she breaks up with him. Knowing his father had real feelings for Carol, Jack takes matters into his own hands and asks her brother Mike to come up with a scheme to get Carol and his dad back together again. Mike agrees because he saw how happy his sister was with Scott. At the end of the movie, Maggie wins the election, and Carol and Scott get married.
Rick Riker (Drake Bell) is an unpopular student at Empire High School. He lives with his Uncle Albert (Leslie Nielsen) and Aunt Lucille (Marion Ross), and his best friend, Trey (Kevin Hart), who is also his confidante. Rick has a crush on Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton), but she is dating bully Lance Landers (Ryan Hansen). One day, Rick and his class go on a school field trip at an animal research lab run by terminally ill businessman Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald), who is Lance's uncle. During the trip, Rick accidentally saturates himself in animal-attraction liquid, which causes a group of animals to hump him. This also leads a chemically enhanced radioactive dragonfly to fly onto Rick's neck and bite him.
Meanwhile, Lou creates a machine designed to heal illness; testing it on himself, he gains perfect health at the cost of needing to drain life energy from a victim per day. To avoid arrest for murder, Lou becomes the villain Hourglass. During a science fair, Rick begins to experience strange physical traits which creates a number of mishaps, and later realizes that he has developed superpowers from the dragonfly bite. Rick reveals his secret to his uncle and Trey, and an argument starts between him and Albert. The next day, while visiting the bank with Lucille, Rick accidentally allows a bank robber to make off with stolen cash. The robber then shoots and injures Albert.
Rick is later met by Xavier (Tracy Morgan) who takes Rick to his school for mutants, where he meets Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, Invisible Woman, Barry Bonds and Mrs. Xavier, who convince Rick to become a superhero. At home, Rick creates a superhero costume and dubs himself The Dragonfly. As Dragonfly, Rick starts watching over the city and fighting crime, quickly becoming a media sensation, despite being unable to fly. Later, Dragonfly attempts to stop Hourglass from robbing a warehouse full of "ceryllium" as part of his evil plan but fails, allowing Hourglass to escape.
Later that night, Jill is attacked by thieves, but Dragonfly saves her and they share a kiss. Meanwhile, Landers plans to construct a machine that will kill people and give him enough life energy to make him immortal. Later that night, Landers and Lance have dinner with Rick's family and Jill, but Landers secretly learns of Rick's true identity when he notices the same injuries on Rick as on Dragonfly. Making up an awkward excuse, he and Lance leave. Landers returns minutes later as Hourglass and kills Aunt Lucille. Albert awakens from his coma, learning about her death indirectly from his moronic doctor. After a comic funeral, Jill meets Rick and offers to begin a relationship with him. However, Rick fears Hourglass will come for Jill if they were together, and therefore rejects Jill, leaving her hurt and furious.
Rick decides to end his superhero career, but knowing that Hourglass would head to an awards ceremony to kill hundreds of people, he gets Albert to take him there. At the ceremony, Rick is tricked by Landers into mistaking the Dalai Lama for Hourglass, and chaos ensues. Meanwhile, Jill discovers that Landers is Hourglass. When Hourglass clashes with Dragonfly on a rooftop, he tries to activate his machine, but Dragonfly manages to kill him with a bomb that had been comically stuck onto his genitals after being thrown by Hourglass. Jill is thrown off the side of the building by the explosion, but Dragonfly manages to grow wings and save her. Jill learns that Rick is Dragonfly due to a family ring he wears being exposed through a hole in his glove and the two begin a relationship. After being thanked for saving the city, Rick flies away with Jill, but the two are unexpectedly rammed by a passing helicopter.
After Eder shows up and confesses to what he has done. Duca's father (Aílton Graça) calls his lawyer friend to help Eder prepare his defense. Duca then goes to his long-time friend Isa's house, for whom he secretly has feelings, to tell her about the excitement. Soon after, his other friend Kid (Renan Augusto) arrives as well, and they explain the story to him as well. Duca sees Kid touch Isa's shoulder, though, and becomes jealous so he decides to return home.
The following day, Duca talks with Isa (Sophia Reis) again, and his skill for detective work by spotting flaws in her story that she did not spend much time with Kid after Duca left; he does not mention this to her, though, and finds out the truth from Kid later while they are shopping for CDs.
As the story develops, Duca continues to try to subtly keep Isa and Kid from getting together due to Isa's obvious attraction to Kid, while simultaneously looking into the murder. To this end, Duca asks permission to visit Eder in jail.
Isa eagerly volunteers to go along on the adventure, and they set out the following day. When they meet Eder, he asks Duca to give a message to his lover. Eder asks Duca to tell her not to visit him while he is in jail, and to tell her that he is fine. On the way back, Isa remembers the Pokémon pen that was confiscated from her and they return to the jail to retrieve it. Since they took the bus through a dangerous part of town, they are forced to walk the distance. The two encounter a group of men who aggressively hit on Isa, causing her to run away.
The next day at school, she brags about her adventure, embellishing the details greatly to her friends. Duca remains silent, but when pressed for details himself, he disagrees with Isa, and she storms away angrily. Attempting to get past the incident, he pretends it never happened, to the annoyance of Isa. Kid, however, is eager to have an adventure of his own and so agrees to travel to Eder's girlfriend's condo and relay the message.
After locating Eder's Lover, Soraya (Deborah Secco), they are allowed up by the doorman. She answers her door scantily clad, and invites the boys in. They relay the message, to her general disinterest, and she requests that Duca repair her automatic pool cleaning device - a product of Eder's that failed to sell well. Out by her pool, Duca notices several items which lead him to believe another man is living with Soraya. Moving inside, his suspicions are confirmed when he sees a tattooed male arm answering a phone downstairs. While leaving, they accidentally track soil from a broken vase over the carpet downstairs to the fury of the doorman. They flee, giving Kid something to brag about at school the next day as well.
Duca again visits his uncle, and this time asks him more questions. He decides that Eder is lying about his involvement and is covering for Soraya, who Duca believes is the true killer. Duca believes that his uncle is taking the fall for a woman who is being unfaithful to Eder and may be simply using Eder. He believes that Eder would never take Duca's word for it about the man living with Soraya, and so he goes about hiring a private investigator to obtain photographic evidence.
Meanwhile, during the investigation, Duca is worried that an upcoming party will lead to Isa and Kid getting together at last, so he craftily plays matchmaker with Kid and another classmate. However, upon seeing how unhappy Isa becomes after watching the two dance, Duca helps to repair the situation and leaves the party with his two friends dancing closely together.
When the investigator shows the photographs, Duca is surprised to find it showing Kid back at Soraya's condo. The series of pictures seems to suggest that the two had sex, and when Isa asks to see the photographs, Duca refuses to show them, causing yet another fight between the two friends.
Duca mails the photographs to Eder, hoping it will convince him to tell the truth to the police, and he remains not on speaking terms with his two friends for nearly a week. Isa, hoping to make up, comes to his house and has lunch with Duca and his family. Eder shows up, having obtained Habeas corpus pending his trial. He has not yet opened the package containing the photographs Duca sent him, and becomes furious upon seeing them. He rushes from the house intent on killing both his girlfriend and her new lover. Isa also sees the pictures as well and is also crushed.
Duca convinces her that they must go to Soraya's condo, though, to try to stop Eder from doing something foolish. Eder, meanwhile, attacks the man living with his girlfriend and discovers that it is Fabio, Soraya's brother. The man in the pictures, however, is Kid (although the two do resemble each other). Soraya explains the series of photographs with an innocent story; but Duca can see that she is lying. As usual, though, he does not mention it to anyone. Eder and his girlfriend make up, and Duca decides to keep Soraya's secret seeing Eder so happy. Isa and Kid also break up, though Kid tells Duca privately that he had misread the situation and never had sex with Soraya. Isa informs Duca that she and Kid broke up, to which Duca offers condolences. Isa asks him if that is really how he feels and Duca admits that he is happy they are no longer together. The film ends with the two friends kissing and Eder's fate still unknown.
Chinatsu, a vampiress from Japan, looks for her family's killer, and also her vampire sire. She mercilessly searches throughout many time periods and centuries in order to exact her revenge.
After Alex Sperling, a Harvard-bound valedictorian, loses his summer internship, he heads to Los Angeles to work for his cousin Roger. Unfortunately, Roger isn't the successful businessman he's made himself out to be (having dropped out of Harvard and becoming a pool boy). After a series of mishaps force Alex and Roger to squat in the mansion of one of Roger's clients, they join forces with a local escort to start an escort business. As the business quickly grows, the boys find themselves trapped in the middle of outlandish situations.
''Old Glory'' describes Raban's voyage down the Mississippi River in a 16-foot aluminium "Mirrocraft" powered by a 15 h.p. Johnson outboard engine. Inspired by his reading of Mark Twain's ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' as a seven-year-old boy living in Norfolk, in which his local stream is transformed into the Mississippi Valley in his imagination, Raban sets out on his own personal journey thirty years later.
It is in this book that the author develops his own unique writing style (starting to emerge in ''Arabia Through the Looking Glass''), with highly descriptive scenes of the landscape that he passes through, as well as ironic but highly incisive descriptions of the characters he meets along the way. This style is more fully developed in his later travelogues: ''Coasting (book)'', ''Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America'' and ''Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings''.
Raban's journey starts out in Minneapolis, 200 miles down from the Mississippi's source at Lake Itasca. The author feels a great deal of trepidation when he first takes out his skiff on the water, and has a quick two-hour instruction course from Herb Heichert, the friendly owner of Crystal Marine from whom he borrows the boat. He tells Raban to turn the prow of his boat into the stern wave of the huge passing tugs or towboats working the Mississippi, to watch out for floating logs and to avoid the wing-dams jutting out from the river's banks. After this crash course in river navigation, Raban then has to navigate his way through Lock No. 1, the first of twenty-six huge locks between Minneapolis and St Louis.
After a few days' cruising, the author starts to settle down and is able to take time out smoking on his corn cob pipe filled with pungent Captain Black. He stops off each night at one of the small towns lining the river: Red Wing, Lansing, Dubuque, Bellevue, Clinton, Nauvoo, Hannibal, etc. Most of them are all rather alike, with their run-down genteel shabbiness and old disused button-making factories that first arose with the decline of the river boats, following the introduction of the diesel engine. Many of the towns' inhabitants he encounters along the way are either down-to-earth farmers who still retain their sense of community through events like Saturday pig roasts, or alcoholic wealthier individuals whose lives continue to focus on their children, even though they have grown up and fled the nest in their desire to escape their small decaying hometowns.
He experiences a series of misadventures on the river itself, having to fortify himself with slugs of Jack Daniel's straight from the bottle. The worst occurs when the keeper of Lock 17 advises him to drive his boat at night and he is nearly run down by the wake of a tow, which catches his skiff broadside. Once the Missouri River joins the Mississippi, the river's character becomes more venomous; Raban now has to avoid the huge whirlpools, boils and shoaling created by the force of the two rivers' powerful struggle to become one. The author also has two romantic adventures during the first half of his often very lonely voyage—one with Judith, a teacher in Muscatine, and the other with Sally, a neurotically disorganized but highly affectionate American Jewish woman, with whom he lives for a short time in a suburb of St Louis. Over their final dinner together at the most expensive restaurant in Clayton, she calls him a 'coward' for leaving her to continue his voyage downstream. St Louis itself is a great disappointment for the author who remains unimpressed by efforts to revive the city through its convention center. He goes to the top of the Gateway Arch but all he can see ahead of him is a giant wasteland and the Mississippi itself looks like 'an open drain which had taken on the St Louis colours of rust, soot and rotting brick'.
It is now Halloween. On the strong advice of a more experienced sailor, a construction engineer from Chicago, Raban buys a $380 marine radio for communicating directly with the larger and much more powerful tugs ploughing up and down the river as well as for emergency use, admitting to his own naivety at not having obtained one earlier. Raban meets Ted and his family traveling on their 30-something-foot sloop, ''Morning Star'' out of Chicago, who, like him, are hooked on traveling, making a similar journey that also arouses the same feeling of envy in people when they hear about it.
Now that he is in the lower river, the atmosphere changes and before he reaches Memphis, Raban admits to being depressed by the river, giving a strong insight into the nature of the beast:
He feels cheered up on reaching Memphis and tracks the local mayoral election between a new hope, the black reverend judge, Otis Higgs, against the white incumbent. Becoming a part of Higgs's campaign team, the author encounters the strong race divisions in the city and his charismatic candidate's efforts ultimately end in failure. Raban leaves Memphis on board a tow, the ''Frank Stegbauer'', pushing nine barges loaded with twelve million dollars' worth of ammonia. After sharing his Thanksgiving dinner with the crew and being congratulated by its Cap on his novice piloting skills, he is eventually offloaded above Vicksburg. After a short trip to Natchez, he is taken on another tow, the ''Jimmie L.'', to New Orleans, whose garish tourist-focused vitality proves a huge disappointment.
Wanting to escape the false 'magic of the city', he looks for the end of his journey in the old floodways south of New Orleans. Traveling along the Intracostal Waterway, he is struck by the lusciousness of the vegetation around him, and the slow, meandering lifestyle of its Cajun inhabitants. After a final stop-over in deadbeat Morgan City and its fly-bitten motel, he reaches his journey's end in the seaward neck of Bayou Shaffer:
The opera is a fairly faithful adaption of the Alfred Jarry's play ''Ubu Roi'', which is itself a parody of William Shakespeare's tragedies (particularly ''Macbeth'', ''Hamlet'' and ''King Lear''), combining the subject of bloody power struggles with comedic and absurdist elements. The story centers around the titular Ubu, an ambitious but physically unintimidating and cowardly captain in service to the King Wenceslaus of Poland. Wenceslaus being deeply unpopular as the result of a poorly executed war between Poland and Russia, Ubu's wife convinces him to kill the king and usurp his throne. The power-hungry and amoral Ubu is won over by the plan and quickly sets about recruiting unscrupulous members of the king's court, chiefly fellow captain Bordure. The coup is completely successful, and the king is murdered, but his wife and his son, Crown Prince Bougrelas, escape, although the queen dies shortly after.
Ubu uses most of the treasury to shower the common people with wealth and buy their loyalty to his rule with increasingly opulent displays. The new king then sets about slowly isolating and slaughtering many of the other powerful figures in Poland, including the most influential members of the nobility, the judiciary, and the nation's financial ministers and administrators, all to feed his continuing greed for wealth and a desire for complete control of the state. He eventually turns even upon his allies, killing key figures of the revolution and imprisoning Bordure. When even these moves fail to satiate his need for wealth and power, he begins levying crippling taxes upon the common people.
Meanwhile, Prince Bougrelas has traveled to Russia and secured an alliance with the Czar, who agrees to use his army to help restore Bougrelas to power. Bougrelas returns to Poland ahead of the army and incites revolution against the now deeply unpopular Ubu. Ubu's wife conspires to steal hidden wealth from the palace, but is thwarted by Bougrelas. Meanwhile, Ubu and his remaining lieutenants engage in a series of battles with the Czar, but despite some initial success, are routed. Ubu returns to the capital where Bordure is executed. Ubu, his wife, and the remainder of their retinue then flee the country on a ship, intending to settle "anywhere worthy enough to accept us".
''Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst'' chronicles the life of Florence Broadhurst, an Australian designer who owned her own fashion design company in London during the 1930s. Later in life she moved to Sydney, Australia, and became a painter, socialite and charity fund-raiser. At 60 years old she began her most prolific and successful occupation, becoming a wallpaper designer. Florence Broadhurst was murdered in her studio on 15 October 1977, at the age of 78. The film includes interviews, dramatizations and animations which are used to illustrate Broadhurst's unusual lifestyle.
The year is 1919 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must investigate the murder of his mentor (and founder of ''The Arcanum''), Konstantin Duvall. To do so he must reunite the scattered members of the Arcanum: Harry Houdini, H. P. Lovecraft, and voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Doyle finds himself embroiled in a story of war as old as time itself, for possession of the world’s most powerful—now missing—artifact: the Book of Enoch, the chronicle of God’s mistakes, within whose pages lie the seeds for the end of everything. Peopled with the twentieth century’s most famous—and infamous—figures, the stakes go beyond the realm of humankind—into the divine.
During an excursion with the marine club, a group of children is transported to what is later revealed as the planet Noah, a strange world that holds both human inhabitants on the scientific level of the middle ages as well as various types of dinosaurs. They quickly make friends with talking ''Pteranodon'' Zans and Manua, an inhabitant of Noah, who helps them out on more than one occasion.
While trying to find a way back home, the children learn more about the new world they're in, discovering the people and dinosaurs suffer from oppression by the king as well as the church's prohibition of science. They get into conflict with General Mosar who is interested in their advanced technology and consequently have to flee from the king's army as well as the priests who try to capture Zans, who incidentally is the son of White Wing, the famous but passed leader of the rebellion.
In 1947 Portland, Oregon, infant Richard Pimentel is given up for adoption by his paranoid schizophrenic mother. She later reclaims her son from an orphanage, but his childhood with her as a single mother is turbulent, and he is largely cared for by his maternal grandmother and Chinese-American father, Dell Fong. When Dell dies in an accident at the market he owns, Richard is left in the sole care of his mother, who is institutionalized shortly after.
As an adolescent, Richard realizes that he has a gift for public speaking. Upon graduating high school in 1969, he visits Portland State University as a prospective student. Richard catches the attention of Dr. Ben Padrow, a football coach and head of the university's speech department, and recites a speech for him. Padrow harshly tells Richard that he needs to "live a full life" in order to gain perspective and hone his natural speaking skills. This inspires Richard to join the military, and he serves as a soldier on the battlefield in the Vietnam War. A close-proximity bombing causes Richard to lose the majority of his hearing, and he is left with permanent tinnitus.
Richard returns to Portland, where he enrolls at the university. There, he befriends Mike Stolz, a mercurial alcoholic, and Art Honeyman, a high-IQ writer living with cerebral palsy. Richard and Art become close friends quickly. At a roller skating rink, Richard gets into a confrontation with Nikos, the boyfriend of a fellow university student, Christine, when Richard—using his ability to read lips—observes him insulting Art from a distance. Later, Richard sees Christine on the university campus, and responds to her rideshare advertisement for a trip to Seattle to attend a Jefferson Airplane concert. Richard spends the night at Christine's house and the two have sex. He is shocked upon finding that Christine is an open relationship with Nikos, but agrees to continue dating her.
Upon graduating university, Richard begins a successful career working for an insurance agency. On Art's birthday, Richard takes him out to dinner, but the two are refused service by a waitress and manager, for fear that Art is disturbing other customers. When they protest, Richard and Art are arrested and booked on the grounds of violating an "ugly law," an ordinance targeting the poor and disabled from appearing in public spaces. The incident inspires Richard to quit his insurance job and dedicate his time to nonprofit work helping placing veterans and other people with disabilities in jobs.
In 1978, Richard is fitted with hearing aids for the first time, though they do not provide adequate hearing ability. With Dr. Padrow's help, Richard is introduced to Bill Austin, the founder of Starkey Hearing Technologies, who produce state-of-the-art hearing aids. Meanwhile, Richard, collaborating with Art, begins writing a treatise on the subject of disabled persons. Through the 1980s, Richard's career takes off as he becomes a keynote speaker for the U.S. Government, giving speeches to government agencies and sectors on training and protocols for people with disabilities; he also devises a training program to help educate the public on HIV/AIDS. However, Richard's high-profile career begins to negatively impact his relationship with Christine. When Richard cancels plans with Christine to attend a speaking engagement, Christine decides to end their relationship. Richard is further devastated when Mike commits suicide, and his mother dies in a psychiatric hospital.
Richard reconnects with Christine, now engaged to another man, and the two maintain an amicable friendship. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act is signed into congress, and Richard's efforts are recognized. Shortly after, Richard and Art celebrate Art's birthday at the diner where they were once refused service.
Set in a medieval fantasy world, Lordan is the ruler of the northern kingdom. Zoras, an evil necromancer, is in his tower made of human bones, planning to make a second attempt to overthrow Lordan, after his first attempt was defeated by Sodan, the hero.
Zoras studied ancient parchments where he learned to experiment with long forgotten spells. His new knowledge enabled him to conjure all kinds of nightmarish creatures, which he sent marching towards Lordan's castle, leaving a path of death and destruction.
To protect his twin children, son Brodan and daughter Shardan, Lordan arranged for them to be taken from the castle across the Cthol mountains to the farthest corner of the land. After Lordan's defeat and death at Zoras' hands, his children were raised by an old, bitter man, who also trained them in the art of sword combat.
Before they start their journey to defeat Zoras, the old man hands over to them the sword of Sodan. Armed with the sword, they fight their way to castle Craggamoor and face the tyrannical Zoras. After they defeat Zoras, the people accept them as the true rulers and saviors of the land.
A crew of migrant workers from three continents are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across all of England in pursuit of their various dreams of a better future.
The story centres on a group of migrant workers who hail from Eastern Europe, China, Malaysia and Africa and have come to Kent to harvest strawberries for delivery to the supermarkets, and end up living in two small caravans, a men's caravan and a women's caravan. They are all seeking a better life (and in their different ways they are also, of course, looking for love) and they've come to England, some legally, some illegally, to find it.
They are supervised by Farmer Leapish, a red-faced man who treats everyone equally except for the Polish woman named Yola, the boss of the crew, who favours him with her charms in exchange for something a little extra on the side. But the two are discreet, and all is harmonious in this cozy vale – until the evening when Farmer Leapish's wife comes upon him and Yola and in retaliation she runs him down in her red sports car. By the time the police arrive the migrant workers (and a dog called Dog) have piled into one of the trailer homes and quickly leave their arcadia, thus setting off on a journey across the length and breadth of England.
Donny Kohler is a withdrawn man in his thirties who is obsessed with fire—his fixation stems back to his childhood, during which his sadistic, abusive mother would burn him on their gas stove to "burn the evil out of him." After returning from his factory job one evening to the dilapidating Victorian home he shares with his now-elderly mother, Donny finds that she has died in her upstairs bedroom. This spurs mixed emotions—initially of excitement, as he is finally freed from her—but alternately, fear, as he begins to hear a disembodied voice in the house that seems to be hers.
The following day, Donny calls in sick to work and spends the day lining an upstairs room with aluminum, effectively fireproofing it. That night, Donny visits a flower shop right before closing, and is sold flowers for his mother by a florist named Kathy Jordan. Outside the shop, Donny witnesses Kathy miss her bus before being harangued by a group of men. When Donny offers her a ride, she accepts. Donny talks Kathy into meeting his mother, but she grows nervous once inside and attempts to call for a taxi before Donny incapacitates her.
Kathy regains consciousness and finds herself naked and chained to the ceiling of the metal-walled room. Donny enters the room in a fire suit, douses Kathy in gasoline, and burns her alive using a flamethrower. The following day, Donny fails to show up to work, and instead kidnaps a stranded female motorist, again murdering her by immolation. He then proceeds to singe his mother's corpse before dressing it in her clothing. Donny repeats the same murder scenario that night with Linda, a woman he assails at a grocery store, and arranges her alongside his mother and the other two female victims.
Donny's co-worker, Ben, phones him that night and warns him that their boss will fire Donny if he fails to show up to work again. Meanwhile, Donny is haunted by apparitions of his burnt mother, who appears to stalk him inside the house. Donny spends hours regaling stories of his life to the four corpses, which he has arranged and posed in chairs in a bedroom. Riddled with guilt over what he has done, Donny visits Father Gerritty, his local priest, to discuss the nature of evil. Donny confesses to Father Gerritty that his mother repeatedly burned him to rid him of his innate "evil."
Later, Donny accepts his friend Bob's invitation to go on a double date at a disco. When Donny's date tries to pull him onto the dance floor, she inadvertently brushes his arm over the table's lighted candle, triggering memories of his childhood abuse. Enraged, Donny smashes the candleholder onto her head, setting her hair on fire. Donny flees the disco, and en route home encounters two drunk women whom he convinces to come home with him. Bobby tries to find Donny and meets Father Gerritty on his way to Donny's house. When no one answers the front door, they break it down and rescue the two women. Donny sets Father Gerritty ablaze with his flamethrower, but Bobby manages to put out the flames and rescue him. Donny takes refuge inside his mother's bedroom. The voices express their disappointment in him, and the burned corpses come to life and attack him. He frantically fights them but dies; they drag him to the floor as the house burns down around him.
Some time later, a young boy named Michael watches the news report about Donny's death. His mother scolds and beats him for not turning off the television as she asks him to. When she leaves the room, Michael hears the same voices as Donny did, and they tell him that they have come to 'help' him.
The game follows an amnesiac young girl (Isabelle Fuhrman) that is brought to a dilapidated castle called "Gentlehaven" and set on a quest to travel to the homes of various Disney Princesses and help solve problems caused by mischievous creatures called Bogs. The player travels to several worlds inhabited by Ariel (Jodi Benson), Jasmine (Linda Larkin), Cinderella (Jennifer Hale), and Snow White (Carolyn Gardner) ultimately culminating with a battle between the player and Zara - an ex-princess who is trying to stop every girl from becoming a princess. After successfully defeating Zara the player is informed that she is a princess and that she can now travel to the world of Belle (Paige O'Hara) to solve additional problems.
Billionaire Bruce Wayne returns home to Gotham City after 12 years abroad, training for his eventual one-man war against crime. James Gordon moves to Gotham City with his wife, Barbara Gordon, after a transfer from Chicago. Both are swiftly acquainted with the corruption and violent atmosphere of the city. Gordon tries to focus on purging corruption from the Gotham City Police Department after witnessing his partner, Detective Arnold John Flass, abuses his power as a cop. Unfortunately, several officers led by Flass beat him on the orders from his corrupt superior, Commissioner Gillian Loeb. In revenge, Gordon tracks Flass down, beats him, and leaves him naked and handcuffed in the snow.
Bruce believes he is still unprepared to fight against crime despite having the skills he learned from abroad. He goes in disguise on a surveillance mission in Gotham's red-light district, but is reluctantly drawn into a brawl with several prostitutes, Holly Robinson and Selina Kyle. Two police officers shoot Bruce on sight and take him away in their patrol car. Bruce breaks free, flees from the scene and returns to Wayne Manor barely alive. He sits before his father's bust, requesting guidance in his war against crime. A bat suddenly crashes through a window and settles on the bust, inspiring him to save Gotham as Batman.
After weeks of Bruce striking as Batman, crime and corruption start to decline. He even goes after Flass, who is in the middle of accepting a bribe from Jefferson Skeevers, a drug dealer of Carmine Falcone. Batman interrupts a dinner party held at the mansion of Gotham's mayor and announces that everyone in the party shall be brought to justice for their crimes someday. Infuriated by Batman's threats, Loeb orders Gordon and GCPD Detective Sarah Essen to arrest him. The two cops later come across a runaway truck that nearly hits an old lady. Batman manages to save her life while Gordon stops the truck. Batman then flees into an abandoned building where Loeb immediately orders a bomb dropped on. He also sends in a SWAT team led by a trigger-happy commander, Branden, to kill any survivors left in the building. Batman uses a signal device to attract a swarm of bats from the Batcave as his only route to escape. After witnessing Batman in action, Selina is inspired to don a costume of her own and begin a life of crime.
Gordon and Essen have a brief affair together and spend two months dating. She, however, chooses to leave Gotham upon learning he is going to be the father of Barbara's unborn child. Gordon is left alone to investigate Bruce's connection to Batman. He travels to Wayne Manor with Barbara to interrogate Bruce, who uses his playboy charms to divert suspicion. While leaving the manor, Gordon confesses his affair with Essen to Barbara. Skeevers gets bailed with the help of a hired lawyer, but is attacked by Batman shortly after. He convinces Skeever to testify against Flass. Loeb orders the assassination of Skeevers so that he remains silent about the ties between the police force and the mafia, although Skeevers survives after all.
Batman sneaks into Falcone's manor and overhears him and his nephew, Johnny Viti. Falcone wants to target Gordon's family, so Bruce disguises himself as a motorcyclist to help Gordon. Gordon leaves home on Loeb's orders, but becomes suspicious and turns back only to discover Viti and his men already holding his family hostage. Viti flees the scene with Gordon's infant son. Gordon chases after him on Bruce's motorcycle. The two men end up fighting on a bridge until the baby falls. Bruce catches up on time and leaps over the bridge's railing to save the baby. Gordon thanks Bruce for saving his infant son's life and lets him go. Flass supplies Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent with the evidence and testimony needed to implicate Loeb, who resigns in disgrace while Branden is arrested in his place. Gordon is promoted to captain and prepares to investigate with Batman a potential plot by a criminal calling himself the Joker.
The story as told by ''The Moving Picture News'' reads:
John Girdlestone owns the firm of Girdlestone. It is a very lucrative business and John Girdlestone and his son Ezra Girdlestone are respected by everyone. Both father and son are cynics and have no other thought but for their business; after giving a donation of £25 for charity, John Girdlestone remarks to himself that it is not a bad "investment", as it will make a favorable impression on the collector, who is a Member of Parliament, whose influence he hopes to use some day. Ezra, his son, is even more of a cynic, as the elder Girdlestone's cynicism is mitigated by his supposed religiosity. However, he manifests a great acumen for business, sometimes even surpassing his father's sharpness in business matters. A series of disastrous speculations by the elder Girdlestone financially ruins the firm. After keeping the impending bankruptcy a secret from everyone for a time, he tells his son (whom he has fooled with a dummy ledger) about it. The son is disgusted by his father's rashness.
They resort to chicanery to save the firm. They plan to send an agent to the Ural mountains who will claim to have found diamond mines. They speculate that the resulting plunge in the prices of diamonds in England and South Africa will force the dealers to get rid of their diamonds quickly at absurdly cheap rates to avoid total financial ruin, which would eventually fall on them if diamonds from the Urals start pouring in the market. They will then step in and buy as many diamonds as their remaining money would allow them. Once their capital is exhausted, their agent will disappear and the discovery that the Ural diamond mines were a hoax would skyrocket the prices of diamonds once again, leaving them rich men.
Their plan works perfectly and the prices go down just as they had expected. Ezra Girdlestone travels to South Africa to buy from the dealers there while John Girdlestone starts buying in London. After they spend all their money on diamonds and get ready to call their agent back from the Urals, their plan collapses with the discovery of bona fide diamond mines in South Africa. As a fellow conspirator tells Ezra in South Africa: "Russia or no Russia, the prices will not go up!" He goes back to England and both of them sell their diamonds cheaply, which leaves them in an even more precarious situation than they already were in.
A very old friend of John Girdlestone had entrusted his daughter to him before dying. She was heir to £40,000 which she would inherit upon coming of age. John Girdlestone persuades his son to seduce the girl and marry her so that they could get their hands on the money. Ezra fails miserably not only because he is totally inept in romance, but because the girl is already in love with another man. Having exhausted all their means, John Girdlestone decides on a sinister plan. His friend's will provides that if the girl dies before coming of age, John Girdlestone becomes the sole heir. He plans to murder the girl. His son does not favour this plan, but his father persuades him, telling him that it will make the firm rich again.
An evil Queen has seized the Magical Jewels of the Kingdom of Kindness and destroyed the Golden Castle. To restore peace, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and Snow White team up to reclaim the Magical Jewels, defeat the Queen's minions and banish her from the kingdom for good.
Francis York Morgan investigates the murder of 18-year-old Anna Graham (Melissa Hutchison) in the rural town of Greenvale, Washington, in the United States. He takes on the case due to the manner of the killing: a ritualistic murder of a young woman where red seeds have been found on or near the body, similar to a series of other murders across the United States. York generates considerable friction with his dismissive attitude toward the locals, bizarre demeanor, and tendency to interrupt conversations to deliver asides to an unseen person referred to as "Zach". He is assisted by the town's sheriff George Woodman (Casey Robertson), who is scarred by a past of childhood abuse; the deputy sheriff Emily Wyatt (Rebecca Wink), who becomes a love interest for York; and Thomas MacLaine (Christopher Sullivan), George's meek assistant. Additionally, York finds himself regularly ambushed and attacked by the Raincoat Killer, who, according to the folklore of the town, kills only when it rains.
As the investigation continues, Anna's close friend Becky Ames (Amy Provenzano) and Diane (Christiane Crawford), Becky's elder sister and art gallery owner, are murdered in a similar fashion, with a mark placed nearby that York believes to be a peace symbol upside-down. He learns that the trees producing the red seeds grow in Greenvale and that there are two Raincoat Killers. The original one, who inspired the folklore, went on a killing spree after the United States military released gas made from the red seeds into the town in 1956, causing the residents to temporarily experience an uncontrollable, murderous rage. The second, the New Raincoat Killer, hopes to gain immortality by consuming the red seeds and murdering four people, who have also been forced to eat the seeds.
When Thomas abruptly disappears, York suspects his involvement in the crimes, a hunch that is confirmed when Thomas kidnaps him. While tied up, York realizes his romantic feelings for Emily, who searches for him with Forrest Kaysen (Doug Boyd), a traveling tree salesman. It is also revealed that Anna, Becky, Thomas, and his younger sister Carol all belonged to a secret sex club created by George; jealous of George's romantic interest in Emily, Thomas draws her into a physical confrontation with him and dies when he falls on a hook. York, now rescued, reveals that he believes the copycat raincoat killer is George. Emily and York find the final victim, Carol; before dying, Carol attacks Emily out of jealousy as well and forces her to ingest some of the red seeds, which sickens her to the point of unconsciousness. York leaves Emily in Kaysen's care to confront George. George confesses to being the murderer and has gained shape-shifting powers as the result of eating the red seeds; in the ensuing fight, York kills him.
Afterward, York realizes that, while George was the Greenvale killer, he could not have been responsible for the other similar murders nationwide and was likely just a pawn. He eventually discovers that Kaysen is responsible and that the symbol seen close to all the victims was a tree. York finds that Kaysen has planted a tree inside Emily's stomach, and the sight causes him to recover his repressed memories: as a child, Zach witnessed his mother (Rebecca Wink) dying with a tree sprouting from her body, with his father (David Rosenthal) and Kaysen in the room. His father was unable to kill her out of mercy, leading to a more agonising death for her, and then he killed himself. Unable to cope with the trauma, Zach psychologically switched places with his newly created other personality, York. Though unable to save Emily, Zach kills Kaysen, revealed to be a supernatural entity from the Red World and messenger of the Red Tree, and leaves the town with optimism for his future. In the closing scene, the spirits of York, Emily, Thomas, and the Greenvale murder victims are seen happily residing in a parallel plane of existence.
The film opens with Eagle Boy, a young man who is on a vision quest. It then cuts to the present, where a 17-year-old Lakota named Shane Chasing Horse is living on the Pine Ridge reservation. He is in trouble because he owes some money to a local gang—money he used to buy a beautiful ring for Mae Little Wounded, a girl he likes. Meanwhile, his mother asks him to drive his grandfather, Pete Chasing Horse, a storyteller, down to the powwow. Shane is reluctant. However, when the gang comes after him, Shane changes his mind and heads out to the powwow with his grandfather, who agrees to give him his truck once they reach the powwow. Grandfather tells Shane the story of a young Lakota man who tries to win the hand of Bluebird Woman. He also tells the story of how a thunder spirit falls in love with a Mohawk woman and brings her up into the ethereal world of Sky Woman, and of how she raised their son back in her village until he was struck by one of the villagers and brought back to live with his father.
Later, when a young redheaded man who is eager to learn about Native culture and hoping to be adopted by a Native American family asks to ride with them to the powwow, Shane says no. His grandfather then tells him the Kiowa story of Tehan, a white man who lived among the Kiowa and fought bravely alongside them, and Shane relents and lets the redhead ride with them. Shane's grandfather then tells how Eagle Boy follows the advice of a shining spirit elk, and seeks out an old woman who can give him weapons with which to slay the mighty serpent Uncegila. He is repulsed when the ugly old woman embraces him, but reacts quite differently when she transforms into a beautiful younger woman. She reproaches him, but gives him what he needs. Eagle Boy slays Uncegila, whose heart instructs him and grants him great power and prophetic visions.
Eventually, the gang members who are after Shane catch up with them, but accidentally drive their car off a cliff and into the Rio Grande River while chasing him. Shane dives in and saves them, and his struggle is contrasted with Eagle Boy's underwater battle with Uncegila. The gang members ride with them for a ways, until they and the redheaded hitchhiker leave them in order to travel with a group of attractive young Cheyenne women who are also headed to the powwow.
As they travel, Shane's grandfather tells Shane many other stories: several are about the trickster Coyote and Iktomi the spider. Another is about a young Pawnee man and his mother who are scorned by the rest of their tribe until the young man finds an unwanted dun pony who brings them good medicine. As Shane and his grandfather look up at the stars, the grandfather tells the story of the Quillwork Girl and her seven star brothers, which is about a Cheyenne girl who puts her faith in a dream and searches for seven brothers, but who must then contend with the Buffalo nation. The next story is about a young Chinook woman who sacrifices herself in order to cure her village of a terrible sickness, and the next is about a young Blackfoot hunter who cannot let go of the memory of his father.
Shane and his grandfather continue their journey, losing their truck along the way and continuing on horseback and on foot. The two become closer. However, it then turns out that Shane's grandfather has led them not to the powwow but to Shane's father's (Sam Chasing Horse) trailer home. Shane is outraged and disappointed to be tricked, but is persuaded to stay the night. The next morning Shane finally makes peace with his estranged father. However, he then becomes grief-stricken when he discovers that his grandfather had meanwhile died in his sleep. Shane decides to continue on to the powwow on horseback, and his father says that when Shane comes home he'll be there too. The ending of Eagle Boy's story is revealed: Eagle Boy decides that he wants to live like other men, and disobeys the heart by revealing it to the entire tribe (to whom it appears to be nothing more than an ordinary stone). At the powwow, Shane takes on the role of a storyteller, and children gather around him to listen.
Set in June, 1986, less than two years before Feynman's death, in Feynman's office at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the play follows Feynman through a day of his life. As the real Feynman does in his books ''What Do You Care What Other People Think?'' and ''Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'', the stage character talks directly to the audience; we learn from this and from phone calls with off-stage characters that Feynman is to appear that night playing his bongo drums in a student production of the musical ''South Pacific'', that he is expecting a delegation from the Russian Republic of Tuva, which Feynman is whimsically determined to visit (as detailed in Ralph Leighton's book, ''Tuva or Bust!''), and that he is eager to make his views known in the final report of the Rogers Commission charged with the ''Challenger'' disaster. From phone conversations between Feynman and his doctors, we also learn that Feynman's cancer has returned, and that his doctors are urging him to undergo further surgical procedures, which are not without their own risk. Feynman's conversation with the audience also touches on a number of additional topics well-known to readers of his autobiographical writings: the Manhattan project and safe-cracking, how he learned to draw, his father, as well as musings on physics and, more generally, on the nature of science and knowledge.
In the second act, the play returns to Feynman's study later at night on the same day, after the performance is over. We meet the only other character in addition to the main protagonist: a (fictional) young student by the name of Miriam Field, who has attended one of Feynman's lectures and both witnessed his bongo performance and attended the after-play party. Where Feynman had earlier grown dispirited both by his own condition and by memories of his long-dead wife, Miriam manages to pull him out of his depression. Feynman informs his doctors that he will consent to have surgery, after all; but requests that they awaken him from anesthesia if they determine that he is about to die intraoperatively, because "that would be an interesting experience".
A young couple named Jim and Lori lose control of their motorbike while riding in a forest. With Jim hurt, Lori finds no help and returns, only to find Jim dead hanging from a tree before she is killed by a trap. Weeks later, a group of campers consisting of Dennis, Margaret, Windy, Marco, Nathaniel, Boone, Eggar, Vanessa, Mike, and Melanie, arrive at the forest. The group makes a clearing and spend the night around a bonfire telling a story about a young woman who was raped and became insane, so she was put in a local mental institution, where she gave birth to a baby boy who was taken from her. When the boy was 19, he took his mother from the institution and released her to live in the forest.
The next morning, the group discover that Marco and Eggar are missing. While the others search for them, Mike takes a swim with Melanie and later they have sex, during which Mike is stabbed to death by a camouflaged killer who then kidnaps Melanie. Nathaniel and Dennis find an abandoned cabin containing an old grave. Dennis enters the cabin and Nathaniel hears him scream, only for it to be a prank by Dennis trying to scare him. While searching the cabin for food and items, they find a severed wolf's head in a cabinet and are shaken before returning to the camp.
That night, the killer appears near Margaret in her sleep and she hysterically tells the others what she saw. The campers also find Marco, who has returned to the camp. After Vanessa gets angry at the men for scaring the girls, she walks off alone to the outhouse; she screams when Mike's severed head falls onto her, and the group comes to her aid. The group spends one more night at the camp, and unsuccessfully search for Melanie who they assumed was still with Mike. In the morning they go to the cabin to look for the killer, unaware that he is down in the basement with a captured Melanie, and they flee with the rafts after finding a human hand in a glass jar. While rafting along the river, the body of Melanie is tossed onto the boat by the killer which causes panic among the group. Burying Melanie near the river, the group continues on to the end of the river and find their empty, broken-down bus. They spend the night there, but the killer attacks and gets inside the bus before the group escapes out the back door. Windy gets separated and is slashed by the killer, where the group comes to her and gives her first aid.
In the morning, the group gathers supplies and camouflages themselves. They find a knocked over redwood tree and devise an ambush on Eggar. Dennis climbs one of the highest trees, where he sets a spiked log trap. Marco begins calling out for Eggar, who appears and begins to strangle Marco with a rope. The group attacks Eggar, believing he is the killer. While Dennis is watching the rest of the group fight, the killer climbs out from the roots of the knocked over redwood tree. The killer slashes Dennis's ankle and he falls to his death. The killer rises up to scream; it is revealed that Eggar's missing, feral mother (the subject of the earlier story) is the killer. As she walks toward the group, she sets off the trap and is mortally wounded. The film ends with the group watching in horror as Eggar's mother hangs dead in the trap.
Pete is cacophonically playing his trombone through the night. The gods Jupiter and Vulcan (who look like ducks similar to Donald) are woken by Pete's noise and decide to think of some way to stop this. Donald has a similar issue. He can't sleep with Pete's noise. He goes to Pete's house, and Pete responds by blowing through the trombone as hard as he can right in Donald's face, sending Donald back into his house into a wall. Jupiter and Vulcan notice Donald wanting to stop the noise, so Jupiter decides to give him some of his power so he can get rid of Pete. Donald fires lightning bolts from his hands, makes his hands electric, and develops godlike strength and succeeds in getting rid of Pete. Jupiter and Vulcan think that their troubles are now over, and go back to sleep on their cloud. Donald notices Pete's trombone and has the desire to play it. Jupiter and Vulcan awake to see that the one whom they helped get rid of Pete is now playing the trombone himself and they collapse from the cloud with exasperation.
The film is a satire of the women in prison film genre and deliberately implements many of the tropes commonly found in such films. Such scenes include nude shower scenes, fight scenes, and a suggested romantic relationship between one of the inmates and an administrator. The overall plot involves a new influx of girls coming to the school. They are immediately confronted with Charlie Chambliss, who is the de facto leader of the school and has an exceedingly close relationship with the head of the ward, Edna. Charlie runs a secret society of girls who are loyal to her and to whom she offers protection. The two main new girls break several of Edna's rules and are punished decisively for their infractions.
Jenny comes to the school after becoming mixed up in a shoot out. When she and another group of girls arrive, they are forced to strip in front of the prison nurse and then take a shower, while being informed that they will be "inspected inside and out". Afterwards, they are forced to stand naked along a wall while the nurse sprays them with delousing fluid.
Jenny later tries to break out after befriending a male driver with whom she has a romantic encounter in the back of his truck. She makes arrangements that he will drive her off the premises but is discovered by a guard and after a scuffle she is apprehended and immediately cast into isolation, where Edna forces her to strip naked before using a firehose to spray her with cold water. Lisa is a runaway who is captured and placed in the reform school, here Jenny is confronted by Charlie and inevitably results in a fight, Jenny is swiftly overwhelmed and left lightly hurt in-front of the other girls, She suffers several losses while at the school including having the cat she adopted stomped to death by Edna. Lisa is punished with isolation. After the death of her cat, Lisa attempts to climb to the top of the tower, followed closely by Edna. When she reaches the top she stumbles backward as Edna confronts her, breaks through the barriers and falls to her death. This causes Jenny to smash through a window, which starts a riot which is only quelled when Warden Sutter shoots a shotgun into the ceiling.
The film culminates in a protest scene after Dr. Norton, a psychiatrist, forces a meeting of administrators over the conditions and treatment of inmates at the school. She intended to have Jenny testify but a doctor determines, despite all evidence to the contrary, that she is ill and will not be able to attend. Therefore, four other inmates are chosen and none of them has any complaints. During the meeting Jenny knocks out a guard and steals her keys, which allows all the girls to march out into the main open area and voice their grudges. Edna, however, gets a hold of a gun and opens fire on them. Edna shoots Charlie and climbs up the tower from which Sutter has broadcast religious-oriented messages as the girls are going to sleep. Charlie climbs a fence and commandeers a school bus, which she drives toward the tower with Edna standing at the top. Just before impact, Charlie leaps from the bus and it explodes as it hits the tower. The scorched body of Edna tumbles to the ground and many of the girls cheer. Charlie crawls and before she dies shouts out, "See you in hell!" to Edna. The final scene shows Jenny released and getting into a cab. She waves at Dr. Norton, who is implied to be in charge of the new, more benevolent order at the school, and three other girls who are still incarcerated.
George Tatum has been incarcerated in a psychiatric institution in New York City for many years after sexually mutilating and murdering a family in Brooklyn. During his incarceration, George undergoes an experimental procedure that "reprograms" his brain, reforming him into an upstanding citizen. However, he remains plagued by hazy nightmares of a violent incident from his childhood. Upon his release, George visits a peep show in Times Square, which triggers flashbacks to his mother's murder.
The following day, George obtains a car and leaves New York, heading south to the Florida home of his ex-wife, Susan Temper, their daughters Kim and Tammy, and their mischievous young son, C.J., who frequently plays twisted pranks that disturb both her and babysitter Kathy. His car breaks down en route in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, leaving him stranded overnight. There, he follows a woman home from a local bar, and brutally slashes her to death. Back in New York, George's psychiatrists discover he has fled the city, and begin tracking his movements.
Meanwhile in Florida, Susan is carrying on a relationship with her boyfriend, Bob Rosen, and struggles with her responsibilities as a single mother. Her house begins receiving numerous disturbing phone calls, which no one realizes are in fact being made by George. One night while Susan is out, Kathy receives multiple calls, which unnerve her. C.J. begins claiming he is being followed by a strange man his father George, unbeknownst to him but Susan dismisses it as another of his pranks. Later, George murders a classmate of C.J. and a teenage girl in an abandoned house during a game of hide-and-seek.
The following day, Kathy agrees to babysit the children while Susan attends a party. During the night, George infiltrates the house and murders Kathy and her boyfriend with a rock pick. After donning one of C.J.'s Halloween masks, an old man, George pursues the children, who have barricaded themselves in the upstairs bedrooms. C.J. obtains a revolver from his mother's dresser and uses it to shoot George multiple times, eventually killing him.
As he lies dying, George has a full recall of his childhood, including a memory of catching his father engaging in sadomasochistic sex acts with another woman, during which he brutally murdered them both with a felling axe. Susan returns home to find police at her house removing George's body, whom Susan hysterically identifies as her husband. C.J., sitting in a police car, winks into the camera knowingly.
The book club is the brainchild of fiftysomething six-time divorcée Bernadette (Kathy Baker), who develops the idea when she meets Prudie (Emily Blunt), a prim, married high school French teacher in her mid-20s, at a Jane Austen film festival. Bernadette plans to have six members discuss all of Austen's six novels (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey), with each member hosting the group once a month. Also inducted into the club are Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), a fortysomething librarian recently separated from her philandering lawyer husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits) after over two decades of marriage; Sylvia's 20-something lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace); Jocelyn (Maria Bello), a happily unmarried control freak and breeder of Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and Sylvia's friend since childhood; and Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a science fiction fan invited into the group by Jocelyn with the hope to match him with Sylvia.
As the months pass, each of the members develops characteristics similar to those of Austen's characters, and reacts to events in their lives similarly to their fictional counterparts. Bernadette is the matriarchal figure who longs to see everyone find happiness. Sylvia clings to her belief in steadfast love and devotion (eventually reconciling with Daniel). Jocelyn denies her own feelings for Grigg while playing matchmaker for him and Sylvia. Prudie is encumbered with her inattentive husband Dean (Marc Blucas), and free-spirited, marijuana-smoking, aging hippie mother Mama Sky (Lynn Redgrave), who dies in a car accident; Prudie finds herself desperately trying to resist her feelings for seductive student Trey (Kevin Zegers), meanwhile accusing Dean of coming on to her high-school acquaintance at Mama Sky's funeral. Allegra, who tends to meet her lovers while engaging in death-defying activities, feels betrayed because her partner, aspiring writer Corinne (Parisa Fitz-Henley), uses Allegra's life as the basis for her short stories. Grigg is attracted to Jocelyn and mystified by her seeming lack of interest in him, marked by her failure to read the Ursula Le Guin novels he hoped would interest her. He also serves as the comedic foil to Jocelyn's and Prudie's very serious takes on the books.
The last book club meeting is held on the beach. Daniel wants to join the book club after reading ''Persuasion'' with Allegra at the hospital (after Allegra suffered a concussion from an indoor climbing accident); Sylvia lets Daniel in. Grigg brings his elder sister Cat Harris (Nancy Travis), who persuades Jocelyn to take a chance on Grigg because he loves her. Allegra brings Dr. Yep (Gwendoline Yeo), who treated her concussion. Prudie, the scheduled host, does not attend; she goes to meet Trey, but reconsiders after considering what Jane Austen would do. Prudie goes home to Dean and reads ''Persuasion'' with him, helping them rediscover their love. Daniel leaves a letter for Sylvia at her doorstep; upon reading it, she accepts Daniel back.
Jocelyn finally reads the books Grigg gave to her and is surprised to find that she loves them, cannot sleep, and finishes them in a single night. Jocelyn drives to Grigg's house, realises the very early time, and snoozes in her car. When Grigg exits his house, he sees Jocelyn's car and knocks on her window. Jocelyn finally gives in to her feelings and they both passionately kiss.
One year later, the book club meets at Sylvia's library charity dinner. Grigg and Jocelyn are together; Sylvia and Daniel have reconciled; Prudie, who is pregnant, attends with Dean (who appears more enthusiastic about Austen); and Bernadette introduces her (seventh) husband.
The film is about everything from insider trading to exploding sausage, from beautiful babes to Vice Presidents who can actually spell. This comedy is all about the adventures that could only happen to Elmo Bunn, Pizza Man.
John Radley's childhood was not a particularly nice one; his father's abandonment, an abusive mother, bullied by neighborhood kids and his pets had a tendency to die on him. Only his first crush Gretchen ever treated him with kindness.
But this all ended when he was goaded into performing a balancing act, whereupon a malicious prank backfired and Johnny ended up plunging down a dried up well to greet a rock floor. Since then he has been in Oakhurst State mental hospital for over a decade. Left semi-comatose, he has only his now-distorted memories and nightmarish flashbacks for comfort.
One night the continual flood of harsh images is too much for his psyche, and he comes to find himself badly disfigured and severely brain damaged, so much so that he can no longer feel any pain. Who will care for, let alone love, Johnny now? No one, he knows (in what's left of his damaged mind). He suffers a complete psychotic break, and after venting his fury on a nurse, turns his rage towards those responsible for his condition.
Bursting out of his temporary accommodation, he storms off into the night, dead set on disposing of his old childhood tormentors, whose body parts he intends to offer up to the only person in his life who ever gave a damn about him—a certain girl by the name of Gretchen.
Isaac arrives at Aegis VII on the ''Kellion'' with Kendra and Hammond. During the journey, Isaac has been repeatedly watching a video message from Nicole. A docking malfunction crashes the ''Kellion'' into the ''Ishimura'' s landing bay, and the ship's quarantine is broken. Necromorphs kill all the ''Kellion'' crew but Isaac, Kendra, and Hammond. Isaac navigates the ship, restoring systems and finding parts with which to repair the ship, so that they may escape. They almost succeed, but the ''Kellion'' is destroyed in a further malfunction. During these events, all three survivors begin experiencing escalating symptoms of psychosis and dementia, ranging from hallucinations to paranoia.
During his exploration, Isaac learns through audio and video logs about the ship's presence and Necromorph invasion. The ''Ishimura'' s illegal mining operation on Aegis VII, which was designated off-limits by the Earth Government, was meant to find the Red Marker for the Church of Unitology. The Aegis VII colony was almost entirely wiped out by mass psychosis triggered by the Marker, causing killings and suicides. The Marker was brought aboard the ''Ishimura'', along with survivors and bodies from the colony. A combination of the Marker's influence, factional fighting and the emerging Necromorph invasion resulted in the deaths of nearly everyone aboard. Isaac finds the two remaining survivors of the ''Ishimura'' crew: Dr. Terrence Kyne, who has abandoned his belief in Unitology, and Dr. Challus Mercer, who has gone insane and worships the Necromorphs.
Despite Isaac's efforts, Hammond is killed by a Necromorph, and Mercer allows himself to be transformed by them. Another ship, the ''Valor'', arrives and is infected through an ''Ishimura'' escape pod containing a Necromorph; records show that the ''Valor'' was dispatched to remove all traces of the ''Ishimura'' s presence. Kendra kills Kyne before revealing her Earth Government allegiance, as the deranged Kyne threatened to return the Marker to the Necromorphs' controlling "Hive Mind" on the planet. The Marker was left on Aegis VII as part of an experiment, and Earth now wants it retrieved. Reunited with Nicole, Isaac sabotages Kendra's attempt to escape the ''Ishimura'', then returns the Marker to Aegis VII, neutralising the Necromorphs and initiating Aegis VII's collapse.
Kendra retrieves the Marker and reveals to Isaac that his encounters with Nicole were hallucinations created by the Marker to return it to the Hive Mind. Nicole's message had ended with her committing suicide to avoid becoming a Necromorph. Kendra is then killed by the awoken Hive Mind before she can escape with the Marker. After killing the Hive Mind, Isaac leaves on Kendra's shuttle as both Aegis VII and the Marker are destroyed. In the shuttle, a distraught Isaac mourns Nicole, and is then attacked by a violent hallucination of her.
Inocencio Prieto y Calvo receives a letter telling him that he is the heir to his uncle's fortune of two million pesos, which he has only to claim by producing his baptismal certificate as proof of identity. However, as an illiterate, Inocencio has no idea of the contents of the letter. While waiting for the local druggist to wait on him so he can have the letter read to him, Inocencio is embarrassed to see that a customer's young daughter is already able to read while he, a grown man, cannot. He leaves without telling the druggist his problem, resolved to go to school and to wait to learn the letter's contents until he can read them for himself, so that never again will he have to share private matters with others because of his own ignorance. After registering at school, he stops by the local bank to ask for a job, having quit his previous employment that morning. Leaving the bank, he meets Blanca, an attractive young woman newly arrived in town, and shows her the way to her new place of employment, partly to avoid admitting he cannot read the written address. The daughter of Blanca's employer is entertaining her fiancé, Aníbal, who finds Blanca appealing and begins to make advances on her almost immediately. These advances are spurned each time; the final time, Aníbal warns her she will regret her refusals.
Over the course of the film, Inocencio gradually learns to read, courts Blanca, and makes both friends and enemies at the bank. He foils a robbery and then a plot to make him look guilty; the bank manager is so pleased with his honesty that he gives Inocencio a 1000-peso reward, which the grateful man proceeds to spend on a new dress for his godmother, a traditional regional dress for Blanca to wear in a beauty contest, and new shoes for himself. While going about his cleaning work in the bank, Inocencio unwittingly drops the lawyer's letter — which he still has yet to read — and Fermín, a fellow employee with a grudge against him finds the item on the floor. On the day of the contest, Aníbal and Fermín, who are revealed to be cousins, conspire to make it appear that Blanca has stolen her employer's jewels and passed them to Inocencio. Though both are arrested, the trial is cut short when Fermín discovers Aníbal has betrayed him and gone alone to claim the inheritance, leading him to reveal the whole plot. Inocencio and his friends rush to Mexico City to thwart the attempt and denounce Aníbal, who is arrested at the lawyer's office after he arrives to claim the funds. The film concludes with Inocencio's and Blanca's wedding.