From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The sorcerer Zinixo has taken control of Hub, but life goes on as normal. As Zinixo and his Covin track down Rap and friends, Rap must get the word out to the other sorcerers about the plans to join together and destroy Zinixo. Having escaped across the Cenmere Sea, the group takes to ship and sets sail. ===== Lt. Kenneth Braden (James Garner), a newly trained U.S. Navy Frogman, is unexpectedly ordered to report for duty without being able to notify his new girlfriend, Sally Johnson (Andra Martin), in whom he has taken a serious interest. He is informed that she is an officer of Naval Intelligence and was responsible for a recent confirmation of his character and fitness for a special mission. Submarine commander Stevenson (Edmond O'Brien) (whose crew's morale is shaky because of the arguably unnecessary death of a crew member on his last mission) is ordered to take Braden to the island of Kosrae to photograph a code book at the Japanese radio station located there. The skipper originally told Braden that he would have to swim a considerable distance, fighting strong currents, but upon arrival he decides to enter Lelu Harbor and remain there while Braden carries out his covert mission. After Braden returns, Stevenson dictates a letter accusing himself of putting his submarine and crew in danger in order to make Braden's mission easier. When they reach Pearl Harbor, Braden obliquely informs Stevenson that his crew "lost" the letter. To Braden's surprise and delight, Sally Johnson is waiting at the dock to greet him. ===== Texas cowboy, Lincoln Costain (James Garner), gets "shanghaied" in San Francisco, then jumps ship and washes ashore on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, right into the arms of widow Henrietta MacAvoy (Vera Miles) and her son (Eric Shea) who are struggling to make a living as farmers. A lot of wild cattle often trample their crops, so Costain gets the idea to start cattle ranching instead. The Hawaiian farm hands don't readily take to the American cowboy culture, and Calvin Bryson (Robert Culp), is a banker with eyes to grab Henrietta's land and maybe Henrietta herself. ===== In the sleepy California coastal town of Eden Landing, police chief Abel Marsh returns from vacation to learn that divorcée Jenny Campbell has been killed by her pet Doberman on the shore of her beachfront home. Abel, who has a bemused affection for his small town and its eccentric denizens, visits Dr. Warren Watkins, the veterinarian who tranquilized the dog when it was found over Jenny's dead body. Abel meets Watkins' new nurse, Kate Bingham, who objects to the dog being euthanized when it is so well behaved. When Abel asks, she tells him the dog’s name is Murphy. Sarcastically telling Abel that "they only kill their masters," she shows him how Murphy responds readily to voice commands. When she says that dogs usually attack the throat, it makes Abel wonder why the dead woman's bites were only on her extremities, and he orders an autopsy. The pathologist discovers that Jenny died from drowning in fresh water laced with salt. He also learns that Jenny was pregnant. Abel realizes that Murphy did not cause her death, and that her injuries came from the dog pulling her dead body out of the ocean. Abel goes to Jenny's house, but before he can examine it, a man, who Abel only glimpses from behind, runs away from the scene. Abel discovers that the bathroom has been scrupulously cleaned, and that everything in the house that would have revealed the presence of a second person has been removed. He finds a photograph of a nude man and woman, holding hands and running on the beach away from the camera. However he is unable to identify either person. Abel questions Jenny's ex-husband, wealthy playboy Lee Campbell, who reveals that he divorced his sexually adventurous wife because she fell in love with another woman. Abel returns to the dead woman’s house with Kate, ostensibly because he wants her help in looking around and the police force has few scientific resources. Kate, who has softened toward Abel and has become attracted to him, confirms that the bathtub was cleaned with industrial disinfectant, and he tells her it is the likely scene of the murder. Despite his previously voiced antipathy toward dogs, Abel takes Murphy in and they begin to bond. Kate and Abel's relationship progresses also, and they spend the night together. Abel is summoned by Capt. Daniel Streeter, his long-time friend and the head of the sheriff's department. Streeter questions Abel's handling of the case but agrees that he should remain in charge. Abel, travelling with Murphy, goes to the dead woman’s house to conduct a previously arranged interview with Lee Campbell. Near the place, waiting at a one-way tunnel signaled by red and green lights, Abel is jolted by a speeding car rushing through. Abel proceeds to the home, only to find that it is on fire. Abel becomes aware of someone lurking nearby, but he is unable to capture the arsonist, who escapes in Campbell's sports car. A tire on Abel’s car has been slashed, so he is unable to give pursuit. When Abel breaks into the bedroom to call the authorities, he finds Campbell, who has been stabbed. By the time the police arrive Campbell has died and the home has been reduced to ashes. A young patrolman explains to a furious Abel that the emergency crews were greatly delayed in getting to the scene because a sports car was blocking the tunnel. Back at his home, Abel and Kate are talking in bed when Murphy jumps up to sleep with them. While wondering why Murphy did not bark at the arsonist, Abel taps him on the snout, unaware that it is a command for the dog to assume attack mode. Kate successfully gets Murphy away from Abel and off the bed, but Abel, spooked, returns the animal to Dr. Watkins. In the morning Streeter and his deputies arrive to take over the case. Streeter attempts to upbraid Abel about the second murder, but Abel refutes his criticisms. As Streeter is talking, he mutters about Murphy's strange name. This prompts Abel to wonder how Kate knew the animal's name, as the dog had not previously been treated at the veterinary clinic. He looks at the photo that he found at the dead woman’s home, of the naked man and woman on the beach, and thinks the woman is Kate. He rushes to her boardinghouse room and demands to know how she knew Murphy's name. Kate, sadly realizing that Abel suspects her, does not answer him until he tosses her onto her bed menacingly. Shaken, she relates that it was Dr. Watkins who told her the dog’s name. Abel drives to the clinic and watches as Watkins plays with Murphy, including tapping him on the snout to make him attack and then employing the correct command to stop him. Deducing that Watkins has known Murphy for a long time, Abel arrests him for the murders. However Watkins escapes by injecting Abel with an animal euthanasia drug. Abel manages to radio in a call for help but passes out while chasing Watkins. Abel wakes up in hospital. He learns from Streeter that the drug has been flushed from his system and Watkins has so far evaded capture. The next morning Abel tries to find Kate at the clinic, but discovers that she has quit and the veterinary equipment is being packed up by a moving company. When Abel questions Streeter about the search for Watkins, he deduces that the doctor is hiding where the police are unlikely to look, in the doctor’s own home. Abel sneaks into the house and levels his gun at Watkins. The doctor seems resigned to being arrested, but asserts that he did not kill anyone. As they walk downstairs, Watkins' wife hits Abel from behind. Watkins runs outside, where he is shot by Streeter. Abel yells in frustration, having realized that Mrs. Watkins, not her husband, has committed the murders. Over her husband's dead body, Mrs. Watkins reveals that she was indeed Jenny's lover, but that when Jenny seduced the doctor as well, and then became pregnant by him, she could not take it. She killed Jenny and Lee Campbell, and her husband helped to cover both crimes. Abel is saddened as Kate comes around to say goodbye. He painfully admits that he briefly considered her a suspect. After watching her taxi depart, Abel radios Streeter and asks him to follow Kate to learn where she is going. ===== Shadow Chasers features strait-laced British anthropologist Jonathan MacKensie (played by Trevor Eve), who works for the fictional Georgetown Institute Paranormal Research Unit (PRU). MacKenzie's department head, Dr. Julianna Moorhouse (Nina Foch), withholds a research grant to force him into investigating a supposed "haunting" involving a teenage boy (Bobby Fite). He is paired with flamboyant tabloid reporter Edgar "Benny" Benedek (Dennis Dugan) to reduce the length of the investigation, over Moorhouse's objections. Benny and Jonathan did not get along, but managed to solve the case despite their differences. The episodes featured Jonathan and Benny grudgingly learning to respect and admire each other. ===== At age 13, Bobbie leaves the violent, abusive home where he was raised, and this book details his following year. He has an older girlfriend, carries a gun, takes drugs, and is on an ever-tightening spiral to hell, his crimes escalating until they include murder. The plot, which highlights Bobbie's increasing dependence on the highs of violence, emphasizes a frightening reality. ===== While no cohesive plot is apparent from the vignette style of the trailer, it can be pieced together that Batman has been murdered, and his killer remains at large. Dick Grayson is long since retired from his superhero days and raising a family with his wife Barbara Gordon. After his former mentor's death, however, he decides to resume his crime-fighting days as Robin. Remarkably, Grayson does not take up the Nightwing identity. The filmmakers said they chose this because many people outside the comic book community are unfamiliar with Nightwing and they wanted to appeal to a wider audience. Commissioner Gordon is aware of Grayson's secret identity and assists him by supplying official documents. In addition, Gordon provides the voiceover narration at the beginning of the trailer. The head of the investigation into Batman's death is indicated to be Chief O'Hara, a character from the 1960s Batman TV series, who apparently also knows Grayson's identity (noting that Grayson's "crimefighting days are over") His role is suspicious since he strongly wants Grayson to not become involved, even to the point of aligning with Selina Kyle/Catwoman to eliminate Robin and shouting at reporter Clark Kent that he wants "him [presumably Grayson] out of the equation!" O'Hara is also seen rolling up his sleeves, preparing to assault an angry captive Gordon. * Grayson is aware of Superman's secret identity; he addresses him as "Clark". Superman apparently is also motivated (obviously from O'Hara) to discourage Grayson's return to crimefighting and three angry confrontations between the characters are shown, in and out of costume. Grayson is also angered to violence by the sight of a Superman comic book, suggesting a strongly negative history between the two. Other comic books also appear of characters from the film, including Wonder Woman and Catwoman. Fiorella used his own comic book collection for this scene. * Longtime Batman villains the Penguin and The Riddler briefly appear, with a larger role taken by The Joker. A brief scene adapted from The Killing Joke appears, with Barbara Gordon crawling away from a door as the Joker breaks in. Afterwards, the Joker is seen walking through a park with the Graysons' daughter. * In three brief appearances, Wonder Woman is shown deflecting bullets from her bracelets, snaring Robin in her golden lasso, and mourning over what appears to be the body of Superman. * The Green Lantern (caucasian and dark-haired, suggesting either Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner) has a momentary appearance, standing next to a fallen Robin, though the context is unexplained. *All in all, the trailer suggests the Justice League wants to stop Grayson from announcing Batman's death. The filmmakers clarified that it was never their intention to portray the other superheroes as villains. They might be rather ordered to stop Dick because he is heading down a dangerous road. It is implied that Batman may not actually be dead, and Fiorella's commentary on the "Behind the Scenes" video confirms that this ambiguity was his goal: "I wanted to make people wonder if in fact Batman had really been killed." ===== 'Why the Whales Came' is about ten-year-old Gracie Jenkins, who lives on Bryher, a small island off the western coast of Britain, in the year 1914. "You keep away from the Birdman," Gracie's Father had warned her. The Birdman lives alone in a cottage that stands all by itself on a hill in the south part of the island. Gracie's father knows stories about him that he thinks are too horrible to tell her. The Birdman used to live on Samson Island, which people say has a curse on it. Gracie and her friend Daniel have a fleet of toy boats they have made. When the lake where they usually sail the boats is taken over by bad-tempered swans, Daniel talks Gracie into coming with him to a cove near the Birdman's cottage. She's scared, but she finally agrees. Soon they find themselves on the most frightening adventure of their lives. Gracies dad also goes to war and dies. The whales in the novel are narwhals, a type of whale with a long, spiralling horn on the front of its head. In their adventure, Gracie and Daniel find a narwhal's horn. Later, they have to decide whether to help a stranded narwhal. They then rescue the narwhal. Later, the Birdman comes back to Bryher, and he is welcomed back by everybody. ===== Although it's Christmas Day 1940, Captain Mainwaring is unable to forget his sense of duty and orders his men to parade as normal. Sergeant Wilson, being more relaxed about the festive affair, says they can wear civvies. Mainwaring does not like the sergeant's sudden burst of decision making and subsequently, the men arrive at the parade all dressed as Father Christmas, with various reasons why. Mainwaring views this as proof that you cannot be seen to let discipline drop for one moment. GHQ have come up with an idea of using telegraph poles as a means of exercise and Mainwaring runs through the instructions with his men and as usual, forgets the age of some of them, especially when he shouts 'jump' to the aged Private Godfrey and expects him to sit cross-legged on the floor. Eventually Mainwaring has to show them how it's done, but everyone is saved by the bell as the Major phones through to the office with his seasonal greetings. Mainwaring returns to the hall and delivers a speech which shows how confident he is regarding the outcome of the war. In return, the men show their respect and affection for him as they wish him and each other a Merry Christmas. ===== Below-average pre-medical student Jeffrey Marx (Guttenberg), after being rejected by prestigious medical schools, is sent by his father (Bill Macy) to a seemingly sub-standard medical school in Central America. Jeffrey eventually discovers the plight of local villagers in need of medical assistance. With the help of fellow students (including romantic interest Hagerty), he illegally provides medical services to the villagers. Eventually, the school's authoritarian dean (Arkin) discovers the students' activities and decides to prosecute. However, the dean dismisses the charges at the urging of the villagers. ===== Trudy "Tru" Walker is a teenager who aspires to have her own TV show. Tru is somewhat unhappy with her life. Her twin brother, Eddie, has autism caused from losing oxygen at birth and as a result, it causes him to act like a young child, which is often the source of chaos when in social situations. Although Eddie is affectionate, his behavior often frustrates Tru because she feels as if she is unable to reason with him. She is also angered by the harsh way her brother is treated by members of her peer group. Furthermore, she is often frustrated with her mother because it seems as if Eddie is the sibling who is favored. Although Tru feels sorry for Eddie, she is tired of being unable to pursue normal activities. Tru is ecstatic when she hears about a video contest, the winner of which will get his or her own TV show. When Tru reveals this news to her mother, Tru is mildly disappointed at her mother's reaction because her mother does not appear to share her daughter's enthusiasm. Tru is at a loss in respect of what she should choose as the subject of her documentary. When her English teacher encourages her to select a topic which is meaningful to her, Tru decides to take her teacher's advice. With the documentary contest submission deadline looming, Tru is very anxious to come up with a suitable topic. When she screens her video, her friends find it boring and uninspiring. Tru then explores a subject which is personal to herself: she makes a video about her brother in which she highlights the positive influence that Eddie has had upon her life. She also reveals that living with a brother with a disability is often stressful and draining. A sub-plot of the movie is Tru's relationship with her mother Judy. Another source of frustration in Tru's life is that she thinks her mother does not understand her. Thus, she seeks help on an online forum where she receives support from someone who refers to herself as Deedee. This on-line personality helps Tru through her tough times. Deedee convinces Tru that nothing great has ever been achieved without sacrifices and that she'll be rewarded for showing her true self. Later on in the film, after an argument between mother and daughter, Tru's mother repeats the advice that Deedee has given to Tru, leading Tru to reach the correct conclusion that Deedee is in fact Tru's mother. Once again, Tru becomes cross with her mother. When the Walker family attends a street fair, Tru confronts her fears in respect of how cruel people can be towards persons with disabilities. Tru notices that Eddie is wearing a new hat. When Tru asks him where he got the hat, Eddie points to a group of teenage boys. Tru reminds him that he should not accept anything from strangers. One of the group members is a boy from school that Tru likes by the name of Billy Meyer. It later transpires that the members of the group spat in the hat that Eddie was wearing. Tru is devastated and disgusted. When Billy tells her that she is a freak just like her brother, Tru pushes him off the bridge into a creek below. Tru decides not to reveal to her parents what happened, thinking that they won't understand (although she does tell her mother later on in vague detail). Matters become more positive for Tru when she receives a letter telling her she won the contest, which means that her video will be broadcast on television. Tru worries that everyone at school will make fun of her because of the personal things about herself she revealed in the video. To make matters worse, Tru's father is caught up at work (he is a brain surgeon) and is not able to get home in time for her show. In the film, the relationship between father and son is strained because the former often lashes out verbally and is harsh towards the latter. Unknown to the family, Tru's father watches the show on a hospital television and is touched by what he sees. At school the next day, all of the students seem to have loved and appreciated Tru's show. They clap in the hall for both Tru and Eddie. Tru's father asks his daughter why he does not feature prominently in the film. She reluctantly shows him the footage of him she did have, which shows him in a bad light. Another theme of the film is the father's inability to relate properly to his son. Throughout the film, the father constantly snaps at Eddie and finds it difficult to be patient with him. Tru and Eddie understood that his father's job was stressful and we are sorry and they understand. Their father realize he needs to be a better father to Eddie and realize that no one should live like that. So the video is a reminder how to be better. Tru comes to the saddening realization that as time passes she will live a normal life by going off to college, having a career, getting married, and maybe having children of her own and Eddie will always be the same. Mr. Walker starts trying to make more time for the family and be more patient with Eddie. Tru and her mother endeavour to talk to each other and Tru insists that she will actually listen. Eddie and Tru sit down together to watch a soccer match they both played in. Eddie continuously rewinds to a play in which Tru passes the ball to Eddie and he makes a goal. Tru exclaims "Eddie, come on! We've watched this scene like ten times. Let's move on. It's not like it's going to change." Eddie replies "I like it. I don't want it to change. It's you and me. Being twins." ===== The fictional love story between Emily Hudson, the daughter of the wagon train's pastor, and Jonathan Samuelson, the son of the local Mormon bishop, plays out against the build-up to the tragedy itself. The film begins with the deposition of Mormon leader Brigham Young. The Baker–Fancher party is then depicted crossing Utah on its way to California. The party encounters a group of Mormon militiamen, who advise them to move on. Bishop Jacob Samuelson defuses the situation but is disturbed to learn that the Fanchers have a woman wearing men's clothing and are delivering racehorses to California to be used in gambling. He is also upset to learn that some are from Missouri, whose inhabitants he blames for the death of Joseph Smith and for persecuting Mormons. He instructs his sons Jonathan and Micah to keep an eye on them. A scene follows in which the pastor for the Fancher party praises God for their deliverance, while Bishop Samuelson thanks God for delivering the gentiles (non-Mormons) into their hands for divine punishment. As the Mormon leadership prepares to defend Utah from an attack by the federal government, Samuelson's son, Jonathan, develops a relationship with the daughter of the pastor, Emily. At the direction of Brigham Young, local Mormons are directed to massacre the gentiles using their allies, the Paiute Indians. By pointing to a rival Indian tribe as their mutual enemy, John D. Lee, the adopted son of Brigham Young, convinces the Paiutes that it is God's will to kill the migrants. Jonathan objects to the plan, which his father has just conveyed to the local Mormons, and is imprisoned by his father. Jonathan has become disillusioned by the Mormon faith not only because of the planned massacre, but because of what he allowed to happen to his mother. In a flashback earlier in the film, Jonathan remembers that his mother was ordered away by a senior religious leader who took her as his wife; she returned to get her children, for which she was executed in full view of Jonathan and his father. The Fancher party repels the Indian attack, and the local Mormons are forced to complete the mission themselves. The Mormon militia under the command of John D. Lee is ordered to kill anyone who is old enough to talk. John D. Lee offers to lead the Fancher party to safety; however, they lead them instead to an ambush in which they are all killed. Escaping his imprisonment, Jonathan arrives too late to save them and his lover, Emily, who is killed by his father. John Lee is executed for his role in the massacre in 1877 and Brigham Young denies any knowledge or involvement. ===== Based on Piersall's shattering tell-all biography, the film traces Piersall's rise from the sandlots of Waterbury, Connecticut, to the Boston Red Sox professional baseball team. Karl Malden plays his domineering father who pushes him further and further. Unable to withstand the pressure, Piersall suffers a nervous breakdown and goes to a mental institution. After a long period of therapy, Jimmy realizes that he has excelled in baseball to please his father — not for his own gratification. ===== Binbō Shimai Monogatari's plot revolves around two sisters, a junior high school student named Kyō and an elementary school student Asu, who live alone. Their mother died the same year she gave birth to Asu and a few years later, their father, faced with a large gambling debt, ran away, abandoning them. They work together to live their lives and go to school in spite of the difficulties they face, receiving help from the people around them from time to time. ===== Jasper Bloodshy (Dale) runs the rough-and-tumble town of Bloodshy—named after him because he founded it—which lives in fear of Jasper's gunslinging son Wild Billy (also played by Dale). Jasper has just found out he has another son named Eli (again, played by Dale), who lives in Philadelphia. It turns out that years ago, Jasper's crazy ways were too much for his bride from England, so she left—leaving behind one twin—and returned to England. With the help of his English butler Mansfield, he writes a new will that mentions Eli, then fakes his death by pretending to fall off a cliff in front of Bloodshy's corrupt mayor Ragsdale (McGavin) and sheriff Denver Kid (Knotts), both of whom he has just told about his second son. Eli turns out to be the opposite of Wild Billy. He works as a Salvation Army missionary in Philadelphia with orphans named Roxanne (Debbie Lytton) and Marcus (Michael Sharrett). When Eli receives a telegram informing him about his father's death, a father that he did not know existed, he decides to accept the invitation to come to Bloodshy for his inheritance, bringing Marcus and Roxanne with him. Their stagecoach is held up by the Snead brothers, a group of outlaws that Ragsdale has sent to run off Eli. Unfortunately, nobody was told that Jasper's other son was a twin, so they mistake Eli for Wild Billy (the first of many to mistake the two). The Sneads return to Bloodshy, but did cause the stagecoach to run off, leaving Eli, Marcus and Roxanne stranded. On their way to Bloodshy (by foot), they meet a woman named Jenny (Valentine) who is also headed for Bloodshy to start a school. They head for the town together. Mansfield brings the will to Sheriff Denver to deliver to Ragsdale. From there, it is learned that a contest is involved in the inheritance. The contest is a miles-long obstacle course known as the Bloody Bloodshy Trail that involves operating train engines, crossing a gorge using a rope, climbing a mountain and driving a wagon. During the contest both Eli and Billy realize that Ragsdale has set them up to kill each other so that he would collect the entire fortune. Both brothers make up and expose Ragsdale for what he really is. Soon after, Ragsdale is imprisoned and Denver Kid becomes the new mayor. ===== On an asteroid prison, a group of dangerous aliens known as Krites are set to be transported to another station. The Krites engineer an escape and hijack a ship, prompting the warden to hire two shape-changing bounty hunters to pursue them to Earth. Studying life on Earth via various satellite television transmissions, the first bounty hunter assumes the form of rock star Johnny Steele, while the second remains undecided, thus retaining his blank, featureless head. On a rural Kansas farm, the Brown family sits down to breakfast. Father Jay and mother Helen send teenage daughter April and younger son Brad off to school while waiting on mechanic Charlie McFadden. A former baseball pitcher, Charlie has become the town drunk and crackpot, with claims of alien abductions foretold by messages through his fillings. Playing with self-made, overly potent fireworks and Charlie's slingshot, Brad takes the blame when Charlie accidentally shoots April and is grounded as a result. On the roof that evening, Brad mistakes the Critters' crashing spaceship for a meteorite; Jay and Brad investigate and interrupt the creatures consuming a cow. The creatures thereafter kill and feed on a local police officer, and later besiege the farm and cut its electrical connection. While checking the circuit breaker, Jay is attacked by one of the Critters and, being severely wounded, just barely manages to escape. In the barn, April is about to have sex with her boyfriend Steve when he is killed by the one of the Critters; the creature itself is slain when it devours one of Brad's lit firecrackers. The remaining Critters sabotage the Browns' and Steve's cars, forcing the Browns to hole up inside the main house. Meanwhile, the two bounty hunters search the town for the Critters, causing a panic at the church and bowling alley, with the second hunter assuming the form of various townspeople, including Charlie. Brad escapes the farm to get help and runs into the bounty hunters, and upon learning of their true nature and intentions, he leads them to the Critters' location. The last surviving Critters kidnap April and return to their ship when the bounty hunters arrive, and attempt to flee. Charlie and Brad manage to rescue April, but Brad drops a large firecracker he intended to use to destroy the ship when the Critters discover their escape. Just as the Critters take off and destroy the farmhouse out of spite, Charlie throws a Molotov cocktail made from his whiskey bottle into the ship, causing a fire which detonates the cracker and kills the Critters. The bounty hunters leave in their ship after giving Brad a handheld device to contact them in case of future invasion, and also restore the house. Unbeknownst to them, Critter eggs can be seen in the barn inside a chicken's nest that seem to be ready to hatch. ===== Misha seeks to escape her party-girl past and enroll in college. ===== Three American servicemen land in the Philippines and request the aid of a group of guerillas in the fight against the Japanese. The Japanese secret police learn of this and hold the children of the village hostage, threatening to kill one of them every hour until the Americans are handed over, but the Americans and guerilla fighters rescue the children and capture some Japanese prisoners after a difficult battle. When Lt. Craig hesitates and does not shoot two escaping Japanese, Jersey says that he is cracking under pressure. The Americans unsuccessfully interrogate the prisoners for information about beach defenses and troop movements but Paco, leader of the guerillas, successfully obtains the information through torture. Lt. Craig is distraught that the prisoners are then executed by the guerillas. The bandit leader Ramundo offers information about Japanese positions and movements in exchange for the Americans' radio. When the Americans are unable to give it to him immediately because they still need it to send information about the Japanese positions and movements, Ramundo angrily shoots the radio and flees. The Americans sneak into a Japanese shortwave station but Burnett is killed after transmitting the information through Morse code. Paco provides cover fire so that Jersey can carry Burnett's body away but then Paco is shot and killed as well. Ships of American troops arrive to fight the Japanese but Lt. Craig and Jersey sorrowfully remember the dead along with Maria and the other guerillas. ===== "I was born of darkness. My father's eyes closed before mine opened. I am not of this world or the other, and I have the right to be what I am ". Regeane is a half- Saxon and half-Frankish woman whose father, Wolfstan, died because of her mother, Gisela. Wolfstan was a shape shifter, a man who could change from human to a very large wolf while her mother, Gisela, was frightened at the abnormality that her husband displayed. Due to Gundabald's urgings and pressure, Gisela grew to believe that Wolfstan was an offspring of the Devil Himself and eventually lured him to his death. When Gisela birthed Regeane, she was relieved to find no abnormalities. Leastwise, not yet. When Regeane experiences her first sign of adulthood, she changes into this beautiful silver wolf. Gisela panics and forces poor Regeane to drink filthy concoctions, to pray for hours, to go to church, to promise never again to change as long as she lived. Etc. In return for that promise, Gundabald would take care of Regeane for a long time. But when Gisela dies, the whole family falls into poverty and corruption, ending up with tattered cloths, temporary lodging in Rome and Regeane chained by the neck in the basement. Gundabald treats her worse and worse while Hugo, his son, is a more drunken wastrel than ever. Together, the expert wastrel (Gundabald) and the apprentice wastrel (Hugo) use up the money while Regeane is locked up in the house. But Regeane fights back and she finally escapes from the imprisonment when Gundabald's mood turns when he finds her a wealthy mountain lord by the name of Maeniel to marry her. Regeane escapes to Lucilla's villa, where Lucilla, Hadrian (the Pope), Antonius and many others befriend her and her smaller friend Elfgifa. Antonius, who is a leper, is Regeane's friend and she ventures forth into the World of the Dead to find a cure for him before it is too late. On one of those many trips, she meets three wolves - one black, one gray and one red. Unknown to her, the gray wolf whom she desires is Maeniel, her future husband and lord. On first sight, they both fall in love. A few days later, Maeniel pays an unannounced visit to Lucilla's villa, where he drowns his future bride with more than a king's ransom of wealth. After the wedding feast, a dispute is begun when an assassin tries to kill Maeniel while he is occupied with Regeane. Regeane stops him by breaking his wrist bone with one hand over Maeniel's shoulder, grabbing him by the broken wrist. Due to the excessive bruising a normal woman could not have caused, he finds out that Regeane is, in fact, the silver wolf whom he desires. What follows next is a desperate battle between Maeniel and Scapthar as the champions fight to see whether or not Regeane is to burn at the stake. Maeniel wins and Scapthar is left for dead. Finally, Gundabald is the last to be killed and Regeane finally learns that Maeniel, her love, is the gray wolf. ===== The plot is a twist on the usual Elmer-chasing-Bugs cartoon, with the bunny's pursuer this time being a dopey Native American. The Indian's body shape, along with the glasses he wears, suggest that he is meant to be a parody of Ed Wynn, although the voice does not match. Most of the episode is spent with Bugs getting vengeance by "thinking up some more deviltry for that Apache." At the climactic moment, Bugs, looking at the camera, says "Imagine this guy! Just who does he think he is to be chasin' me?", the Indian answers, holding Bugs at arrow-point, "Me? Me last Mohican!". "Last of the Mohicans, eh?", Bugs says, "Well, look, Geronimo, cast your eyes skywards." Looking up, he sees several storks carrying infant versions of the goofy Indian, and passes out. Bugs, laughing hysterically, happens to cast his own eyes skyward, and sees hundreds of storks carrying infant bunnies, who shout, in unison, "Eh, what's up, Pop?" Bugs then passes out, falling on top of the unconscious Indian. Iris-out. ===== After attending preparatory school and college in the Eastern United States, Wing Foot (Richard Dix) returns to his Navajo tribe and renounces their customs and beliefs, becoming an outcast among his own people. He later secretly visits the village of a rival tribe in order to see Corn Blossom (Julie Carter), his sweetheart, who has also been to school in the East. Her people discover his presence, and he is forced to flee into the desert, where he discovers oil. White prospectors also find the oil, and Wing Foot races them to the claim office, filing his claim first. Faced with marriage to a man she does not love, Corn Blossom takes refuge in the Navajo village. Her people come to take her back, and a pitched battle between the tribes is averted only when Wing Foot arrives and tells both tribes of the new good fortune of the Indian nations. He then claims Corn Blossom as his own. ===== Worf's relationship with Jadzia Dax hits a rough spot, and he plans to discuss his feelings during their vacation on Risa. They arrive — along with Bashir, Quark, and Leeta — at the beautiful, climate controlled "Pleasure Planet", and Worf meets Arandis, the social director of the Tembiti Lagoon resort. He is dismayed to learn that Arandis is a former lover of Curzon Dax, one of Dax's previous lives. Worf is approached by Pascal Fullerton, leader of the New Essentialists, a group bent on "restoring the moral and cultural traditions of the Federation". Worf immerses himself in New Essentialist literature and attends the group's rally. Fullerton warns that Risa's focus on pleasure indicates that the citizens of the Federation have become weak, and will be defenseless if an enemy attacks. Later that night, a group of Essentialists vandalize the Risian Solarium. Dax realizes that the attack is just a stunt to convince vacationers that they are vulnerable. That evening, Worf accuses Dax of not taking their relationship seriously. The next day, Worf sees Dax with Arandis and is overcome with jealousy. He tells Fullerton that he knows how to drive the guests from Risa. Soon afterwards, a powerful storm rocks Risa, putting an end to the resort's outdoor activities. Fullerton and Worf reveal that Worf has rigged an uplink device to sabotage the planetary weather grid; Risa will experience a rainy climate for the next few days. Many guests are furious, and some leave the resort. Worf is satisfied, but Fullerton decides to go one step further. Dax accuses Worf of destroying Risa because he does not trust her. He reluctantly reveals that his restrained attitude results from a childhood incident during a school soccer game, in which he accidentally killed a human schoolmate. Ever since, Worf has felt obligated to hold back his emotions for fear that he might hurt someone else. Dax begins to understand, but the moment is interrupted when a powerful earthquake shakes Risa. They rush to Fullerton's headquarters and Worf takes back the uplink and ends the shaking. He reminds Fullerton that trust is also a traditional Federation value. After the weather grid restores the resort's pleasant climate, Worf is ready to enjoy what is left of their vacation, now that he has learned to trust Dax. In a side plot, Bashir and Leeta end their romantic relationship because Leeta is in love with Quark's brother Rom. ===== The setting is Qualinost, Pax Tharkas, and the borderlands between Qualinost and Thobardin. ===== This is the story of Lucía, a restless kid who suffers a domestic accident and loses a tooth. Santiago, her father, an unemployed chef and Pilar, her mother, a successful architect with work to spare, ease her with the illusion that Ratón Pérez will stop by her room that night, take her tooth and replace it with some money. What they don't know is that the alert sign is already being spread... A little mouse spying the situation warns another mouse who then warns another who warns another who finally warns... Ratón Pérez! who lives on a boat anchored at the port along with hundreds of mice who gather the teeth, clean, sculpt and polish them to turn them into shiny round pearls. These are taken through the city sewers to a jewelry store own by Morientes - an old friend of Pérez that trades them paying the teeth's weight in gold coins. What should have been a routine job for the mythical mouse won't be tonight since the most heartless and ambitious thugs decide to kidnap Pérez and take control of his boat and his fortune. This would be the end of the story for everyone except for Lucía who - with the help of her cousin Ramiro - disobeying her parents and not measuring the consequences will try to rescue Pérez unleashing a fascinating adventure that will prove that you don't have to be a kid to believe. The story was based partially on the Ratoncito Pérez, a character in Spanish folklore similar to the Tooth fairy. ===== ===== The game shares the same fictional universe with Earnest Evans, and happens several years later. It also features many references to H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The game takes place in New York City during the late 1920s, when cult leader Henry, the gangster Al Capone (Vincente DeMarcoto in the American localization), and a sorceress named Restiana plot to awaken the ancient and malevolent god Hastur. There are some people that have descended from Hastur's ancient bloodline, one of which is the young Peruvian sorceress, Annet Myer. With some assistance from Earnest Evans, Annet attempts to stop the cult from resurrecting Hastur using the very spells of this bloodline. ===== Nearly all reviewers of the book mention the byzantine nature of the plot. Louis Menand in The New Yorker gives a simple description: The New Yorker Menand, Louis, "Do the Math: Thomas Pynchon's latest novel", The New Yorker, November 27, 2006 edition, posted November 20, accessed November 28, 2006 : "[T]his is the plot: An anarchist named Webb Traverse, who employs dynamite as a weapon against the mining and railroad interests out West, is killed by two gunmen, [...] who were hired by the wicked arch-plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe. Traverse's sons [...] set out to avenge their father’s murder. [...] Of course, there are a zillion other things going on in Against the Day, but the Traverse-family revenge drama is the only one that resembles a plot [...] that is, in Aristotle’s helpful definition, an action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The rest of the novel is shapeless [...]" As to the multitude of plot dead-ends, pauses and confusing episodes that return to continue much later in the narrative, Menand writes: : "[T]he text exceeds our ability to keep everything in our heads, to take it all in at once. There is too much going on among too many characters in too many places. [...] This [including tone shifts in which Pynchon spoofs various styles of popular literature] was all surely part of the intention, a simulation of the disorienting overload of modern culture." ===== Holly (Norman Lovett) tracks an unidentified object near to Red Dwarf and brings it aboard. When Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) sees it, he quickly believes it to be a stasis capsule carrying a dormant member of an alien race that can give him a new body. However, when he leaves it in the observation room and awaits it being cleared of quarantine, Dave Lister (Craig Charles) makes a closer inspection and finds it to be one of the ships' jettisoned garbage pods. When Holly admits to him that he didn't say anything about this to Rimmer as a joke, Lister decides to keep quiet as well.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 48. While leaving Rimmer to carry out fruitless examinations of the pod, Lister becomes curious about Cat (Danny John-Jules) and his sudden disappearances for "investigating", and decides to learn more about his people. Lister learns the Cat race lived their lives according to five sacred religious laws (of which Lister himself would have broken four of them because of his lifestyle), and that Cat's race destroyed itself in holy wars over minor details of their heaven "Fuchal" (based on a misunderstanding of Lister's future plans on Fiji). When Cat disappears again, Lister follows him to the ship's cargo hold, whereupon he discovers Cat has been attending to one other survivor - an elderly and blind cat priest. Learning that he is dying, Lister overhears him questioning his faith to his race's god "Cloister", and asks Cat to burn his priest's hat. Lister opts to prevent this and convinces the priest he lived an admirable life and will soon reach "Fuchal", causing the priest to be joyous on his final day before he dies.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 49. Returning to the upper decks, Lister joins Rimmer to examine the pod's contents after its quarantine period is over. When Rimmer begins to see garbage and doubts what he originally thought, he finally deduces angrily what he was investigating over the episode's closing credits. ===== While snooping through Kristine Kochanski's quarters for her hologram disc, despite the fact they were not decontaminated, Dave Lister (Craig Charles) contracts a mutated strain of pneumonia. The condition causes Lister to become delirious and experience hallucinations, all of which become physical in presence, including fish raining in his sleeping quarters (which Cat (Danny John-Jules) later eats), and the Mayor of Warsaw from 1546 appearing and then spontaneously combusting. Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) later reveals this to Lister, before stating that he also caused two men to appear in the Drive Room. Lister discovers that the men each symbolise a part of his personality: Confidence (Craig Ferguson), who appears as a tall, tanned, flashily-dressed game show host-type man; and Paranoia (Lee Cornes), who appears as a stooped, pallid, black suit-clad little man.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 49. Despite Rimmer's warning that they are symptoms of his condition and thus dangerous, Lister spends time with Confidence and quickly figures out through him that Rimmer hid Kochanski's hologram disc in the solar panels outside their sleeping quarters. Rimmer soon learns that someone smashed the Medical Unit's computer to prevent Lister receiving treatment, and warns Lister that he is in mortal danger. Rimmer assumes that Paranoia is the culprit, since he has disappeared. While on a spacewalk to recover the hologram disc, Lister questions Paranoia's actions, only to learn that Confidence was the culprit and had murdered the other to spend more time with him. Confidence soon pressures Lister into suicidal acts, and dies from the vacuum of space when he removes his helmet. After recovering, Lister prepares to use the disc after retrieving it, but discovers when he uses it that Rimmer planned for this by having it contain a second hologram of himself.Howarth & Lyons (1993) p. 50. ===== The film is based on Zane Grey's 1923 novel of two brothers, one an honest cowpoke, the other a gambler. When Adam Larey (Jack Holt) confronts his younger brother Guerd (James Mason) about his gambling addiction, the latter is accidentally shot. A distraught Adam, believing he has killed his own brother, flees into the desert. He later learns that Guerd was merely wounded and returns to the loving arms of beautiful Billie Dove. ===== ===== Set during the Japanese occupation of China, The Fortune Code tells the story of the occupants of a POW camp. When Wah Ying-hung (Andy Lau) manages to escape from the camp to meet up with his sweetheart, he learns that she is a spy. After being enrolled in the secret service he is sent back into the camp on a secret mission. His mission is to get the code to a Swiss bank account which will release funds to save China; the only person who knows the code is known as the God of Fortune and is held captive in the camp. ===== Inspector Sam Lam (Lo Lieh) leads a drug raid and arrests the wife of Hoi Lung Triad leader Woody (Bill Lung) and the latter pleads with Hung Hing Triad leader Koo Sau-chung (Pau Fong), an ally of Sam, to negotiate with Sam to release his wife. Sau-chung meets up with Sam in a restaurant where the former was abducted by thugs and let off in the middle of the highway while the latter was shot dead by killers. Inspector Leung Chun- pong (Roy Cheung) of the Kowloon Regional Anti Triad Unit suspects Sau-chung being behind the murder of Sam and leads his squad to search the Koo mansion but leaves after failing to find any evidence. Sau-chung's third son, York (Andy Lau) arranges his father to flee to Taiwan to avoid arrest and clear connections with Sam in order to preserve the latter's reputation as an officer. Sau-chung appoints his eldest son, Mark (Jason Pai), as leader of Hung Hung before leaving but personally entrusts York to look over the triad and their businesses. Later, after Sau-chung's second son, Michael (Tommy Wong) injures Woody's head believing the latter set his father up, Woody's close ally, Keung Wan Triad leader Fred (Lung Fong) sabotages him claiming Sau-chung was behind the drug raid and framed Woody for Sam's murder and prompts Woody to send his underlings to kill a number of Hung Hing's gangsters. While the Hung Hing Triad is coming up with a strategy to Hoi Lung, York sets up a negotiation with Sam, buy York was ambushed by Fred's thugs on the way and fights them off. Afterwards, Leung finds out York and Mark were going to Macau he leads his squad at the ferry port, but they were ambushed at the parking lot by Fred's hitmen, where Mark recognizes one of them as Sam's murderer. A firefight ensues where Mark was mortally wounded. After Mark's death, York was elected as the new leader of Hung Hing and he orders a mass killing of Hung Lung and Keung Wan's gangsters in major gang fights and York, Fred and Woody were arrested by Leung and detained by 48 hours. After the three were released, Leung orders his subordinates to closely tail them. York reunites with his girlfriend, Jenny (Yu Li), before leading his underlings to kill Fred's hitmen after finding their hideout. Leung steps in to stop York, but joins forces with York after the latter saves him from being shot and kill the hitmen. Instead of arresting York, Leung lets him off while informing him that the police has found out his father is innocent for Sam's murder. Sau- chung returns to Hong Kong and Woody wants to negotiate a settlement with him, but Michael suspects Woody to have something dirty up his sleeve so he leads his underlings and attack Woody at his office where Woody stabs Michael during a scuffle. When Woody runs to hide in the restroom, Fred shoots him dead. Leung attempts to persuade York to cooperate with the police but York is determined on seeking revenge on Fred to avenge his brothers and delays his wedding with Jenny. While Sau-chung and York hold a Taosist ritual memorial for Mark and Sam, Fred arrives with his entire gang armed with machetes while York also leads out his armed gang. A group of riot police officers led by Leung warns them to drop their weapons but Fred disregards it and charges in with his gang, leading to a major gangfight. During the chaos, York confronts Fred in a scuffle before the latter runs off to a nearby construction site. York gives chase and eventually disables Fred while Leung follows and draws his pistol at York to prevent him killing Fred, but York kills Fred by cutting the ropes of suspending cement tube which falls on Fred, and is arrested. Despite being responsible for catching Sam's murderer and smashing the Hung Hing, Hoi Lung and Keung Wan Triads, crime rate has also risen up by 80% since Leung joined the Kowloon division and as a result, he was transferred to be an instructor of the police academy. Leung then visits York in prison, stating they would be an unbeatable crime fighting duo if York was an officer, while York also states they would be invincible if Leung was his triad partner. ===== The setting is Vienna, 1900. Professor Bernhardi is a Jewish physician, director of the Elizabethinum, a clinic named in honor of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. A young woman in his care is dying of sepsis following an abortion. Unaware that she is on the brink of death, she is happy and believes herself to be recovering. Father Reder, a priest summoned by a nurse arrives to give the patient the last rites but Bernhardi refuses him admission. He wants to spare her the anguish she would suffer were she to realize that she is about to die. The priest argues that she must be absolved of sin before she dies, especially since she has undergone an abortion. While Bernhardi and Father Reder are arguing, the girl dies, having been told by the nurse that the priest arrived. Her death was hastened by having realized that her condition was terminal and she died in a state of fear. A press campaign causes public outcry. False testimony and fabrications about Bernhardi striking the priest inflame the endemic antisemitism. Bernhardi faces trial. Professor Ebenwald, a man with influence among corrupt judicial officers offers to pay a bribe so that Bernhardi can avoid trial. He will do this on condition that Bernhardi agrees to instate a Christian physician rather than Dr. Wenger, a Jewish physician Bernhardi had wanted to appoint based on merit. Bernhardi refuses Ebenwald's suggestion. Bernhardi is visited by Father Reder. Reder admits that Bernhardi acted properly and in accordance with his duty as the patient's physician. Bernhardi asks why Reder did not say as much during the legal proceedings. He answers that he could not because that would have been to acknowledge that Bernhardi had more right to send him away than he had right to administer the last rites. He claims that he stayed silent because of divine inspiration which compelled him to protect the church. When Bernhardi questions him about this, he accuses Bernhardi of refusing admission to the patient because of hostility towards the Catholic Church. The verdict of the trial is given. Bernhardi loses his post in the clinic he helped to found, is sentenced to two months in prison and loses his license to practice medicine. He refuses to appeal the decision. The play ends with a philosophical discussion of the case between Bernhardi and a friend, Winker, following Bernhardi's release.https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026341630#page/n85/mode/2up ===== After spending 13 years in jail for killing one of his opponents Chat Chai in the dressing room after breaking up the fight because of a quarrel with his girlfriend Pim, Mong Fu (Andy Lau), a washed up Muay Thai kickboxer returns to Thailand to look for his old love. Upon arrival in Bangkok, he finds out that she died and that he has a 14-year-old daughter. He finds the orphanage and meets his daughter and starts a relationship with sister Mioko who runs the orphanage. To clean his past, he challenges the current and more than 15 years younger champion, who wants to avenge Chai. ===== Bounty hunter Charlie Chan (Andy Lau) is entrusted by his godfather, Boss Ng (Cheng Gwan-min), to protect a priceless copy of the Koran while transporting it for display in an exhibit to save his godfather's insurance company when the latter agreed to protect it for unscrupulous businessman, Sung Kam-wing (Wong Chi-keung), who is actually scheming to consume Ng's insurance company by hiring master thief Cheuk Fei-fan (Teddy Robin) to steal the Koran. On the other hand, Charlie's friendly rival, sharp shooter Ma Wan-lung (Norman Chui) also wants to steal the Koran for his girlfriend (Charlene Tse), whose grandfather had died stealing it, and her father have also gone mad for it. Charlie, Cheuk and Ma cross paths in a party hosted by Sung in his mansion and make their intentions clear before engaging in a game of show hand to determine who will have the Koran, which Cheuk wins using trickery but dissatisfies Ma, who challenge him to a Mexican stand off and hands him his revolver. Cheuk backs off and declares the match a draw, but Charlie wants to gamble with Cheuk in game of Russian roulette with Ma's revolver and fools Cheuk when Charlie shoots himself twice safely since he have emptied the revolver, knowing Ma's habit of loading only five bullets, and Cheuk leaves after Sung steps in. The next day, Charlie splits the guards of Ng's Insurance Company into five groups to go five different directions to transport the Koran from Sung's mansion to the exhibit, with each group carrying a metal case, while Charlie keeps the Koran on himself, accompanied by a rookie guard, Siu-ming (Chin Ka-lok). Charlie stops to bathe in a bathhouse during the way and was attacked by a pair of thugs named Double Trouble (Shing Fui-On, Chiu Chi-ling) hired by Sung, but Charlie easily dispatches and kills them before arriving at the exhibit revealing he actually put the Koran in one of the cases which have all safely arrived. On the day of the exhibition show, Ma and his girlfriend arrived disguised respectively as a doctor and pregnant woman and attempts to steal the Koran when the latter pretends to be ready to give birth and the exhibit being evacuated, but was foiled when a real doctor and nurse arrive. Charlie then tells Siu-ming to follow Cheuk and his younger daughter (Sandy Lam), but does a terrible job and takes a beating but the father and daughter intentionally allow him to continue following them and he informs Charlie that Cheuk has hired gold counterfeiter Ka Yik-chan (Wu Ma) to make a fake Koran. The same night, Charlie re-encounters a beautiful woman (Rosamund Kwan) in bar (who he has previously encountered in a train) who gets drunk and stumbles into his car and he drives her back to her hotel and leaves after she sobers up and falls asleep. Charlie then visits Ka and pays him to make another fake Koran for him, which he uses to swap to real one at exhibit while also revising the security system which allows the Koran to descend and be hidden after closing at the end of the day. That night, Ma manges to break in to exhibit and steals the fake Koran on display and Cheuk and his daughter hold Ng hostage to demanding Charlie to hand out the real Koran, which causes Ng to distrust Charlie and forces him to hand out the real Koran. Ng is later visited by the beautiful woman who claims to the Koran to return to Charlie but decides to throw it away instead as Charlie is not present. Thinking that is the real Koran, Ng swaps his with hers before she leaves and meets up with Cheuk, who turns out to be her father, which Charlie witnesses. Right after Cheuk receives his payment from Sung in his mansion and leaves, Ma sneaks in to steal the Koran but Cheuk's elder daughter stops him and they fight for the Koran, which Charlie joins in shortly after. Sung's henchmen then appear to stop them and Charlie, Ma and Fan's daughter fight them off before continuing their fight for their Koran where the latter gets hold of it with the help of her sister while Charlie and Ma were dueling. Charlie and Ma confront Cheuk at a hotel where he was preparing to leave with his daughters and Cheuk suggests a three way Mexican duel, each using only one bullet (with Cheuk using a dagger instead of a pistol) and Cheuk pretends to get shot in order to fool Charlie and Ma into shooting each other, which was unsuccessful as the latter two figured it and Cheuk challenges them to fistfights instead. Much to Charlie and Ma's surprise, Cheuk turns out to be a highly competent fighter and unable to defeat him alone, so Charlie and Ma join forces to fight Cheuk and dispatches him. Cheuk admits defeat and leaves the Koran behind and exits with his daughters before Charlie and Ma fight against one another until Ma's girlfriend stops them informing them the Koran Cheuk left behind was fake and they attempt to chase Cheuk but is too late as he and his daughters have boarded on a train. Later, Charlie is approached by a candy selling street vendor who was entrusted by Cheuk's elder daughter to give Charlie the Koran. ===== Luther Sledge (Garner), a wanted outlaw, is visiting his prostitute girlfriend, Ria (Antonelli), when one of his gang is shot over a poker game. Sledge kills the murderers, and is recognized by an old man (Marley), who follows him. Sledge waylays the old man, who then relates a tale of a periodic gold shipment that is heavily guarded by forty riders, but stops at a prison where the old man was incarcerated for years. Sledge assembles his regular gang (including Joyce, Bice, Gutherie, Beetle, Kehoe and Hooker), they investigate the story, and equip themselves for the endeavor. The local sheriff (Preston) recognizes the old man from the prison, causing a shootout, and Sledge and his gang flee. The gang begins observing the gold guards and testing their defenses. Seeing how difficult it is to approach, the gang decides to get into the prison, turn the prisoners loose, and steal the gold in the ensuing havoc. Sledge is taken to the prison by Ward (Weaver), who poses as a US Marshal needing to lock up his prisoner for the night. The warden (Garrone) is reluctant to incarcerate Sledge because he thinks it is the sheriff's business, but the sheriff arrives and attacks Sledge for killing a deputy earlier, convincing the warden to allow them to stay in a cell for the night. Later, Sledge, Ward, and nearby prisoners overpower the warden, killing him in the process. Taking his keys, they free the remaining prisoners, who begin to take over the rest of the prison. Sledge's gang dynamites the prison gate, creating enough noise to be heard in town, and the gold guards head to the prison. The gold is held in a safe in a cell, but only the warden knew the combination. Sledge locks the old man up in his former cell, adjoining the cell with the safe, which he heard being opened for years. By sound, the old man guides Bice (Corazzari) through opening the safe. The gold guards arrive and encounter armed, rioting prisoners and Sledge's gang. Ward is killed in the battle with the gold guards. The sheriff arrives again, and is killed in a running, horseback rifle-fight with Sledge. The gang escapes and later stop to split the gold, with Sledge taking a double share, which the old man notes aloud. A musical montage shows a myriad of poker hands in which it appears the old man wins a substantial amount of the other outlaws' gold. Playing against Joyce, the old man finds that he has been cheated with sand substituted for gold dust and kills him. Guthrie (Piani) objects to this, and angrily leaves after Sledge defends the old man's actions. Sledge then proceeds to win the old man's gold at poker, and most of everyone else's as well. Sledge leaves with his winnings despite the gang's protestations, and the old man proposes they kidnap Ria. With her, they follow Sledge to a Spanish Mission town, deserted for a local festival. Now leading the gang, the old man attempts negotiating with Sledge, while one of the others tries to ambush him. Sledge is wounded while killing the bushwhacker, Kehoe, but still refuses to bargain, so the old man reveals their kidnapping of Ria, who is then badly hurt by Bice throwing her from a high wall. A horrified Hooker vows to kill Bice when they get the gold. Hearing her screams, Sledge abandons the gold while fighting his way to Ria, who says they did not need the gold to be happy, and uses her dying breath to warn that Bice is behind him with a rifle. Sledge kills Bice, then Hooker (Akins), and wounds the escaping old man, who threatens that he has hidden the gold where it can never be found without him. Remembering Ria's words, Sledge kills the old man and rides away empty-handed as the town refills with locals. ===== A man (James Garner) wakes up on a New York park bench to find that his mind is a total blank. He has no identification on him, just a slip of paper in his pocket with a phone number on it. The number leads to Gloria (Angela Lansbury), who doesn't recognize him but gives him money out of pity. For the purpose of identifying himself to people he meets, he invents a name, spotting a Budweiser beer truck go by just as a jet plane wings by overhead. Now calling himself Buddwing, he spots a woman on the street he thinks he knows and calls out "Grace!" Turns out her name is Janet (Katharine Ross), but a flashback of a romance with her from college days goes through Buddwing's mind. He experiences similar flashbacks after meeting Fiddle Corwin (Suzanne Pleshette), who is an actress. They share a romantic fling, but images of her contemplating suicide flash through his mind. The Blonde, a socialite, is on a scavenger hunt, just for kicks. Buddwing accompanies her to Harlem, where her goal is to get into a dice game. While there, a passing remark jogs Buddwing's memory. He recovers from the shock of an incident involving his wife and a pregnancy, ultimately remembering who and where he was before his blackout. ===== Flash used to be a talented baseball player, but now he's a homeless recovering alcoholic who sells stolen watches on the streets of San Francisco, California. Elsewhere, Emily Laedecker, better known as Chu Chu, is a one-woman Latin band that wears a Carmen Miranda-inspired outfit who performs on the waterfront to make money, but she is angered when Flash arrives to sell watches in her public performance space. Luck seems to smile at them when they find a briefcase with stolen government documents in it. So they scheme to return it to its rightful owner but only if they can get $50 for their trouble, maybe even more. Instead of the expected reward money, all they get is a load of trouble with a variety of agents coming after them to get the briefcase and the documents back. ===== An American fashion photographer, Ben Morris (James Garner), goes to Guadagil, a remote village in South America, to take pictures of model Alison Duquesne (Eva Renzi) for a lipstick ad. One of the lipsticks is called "Pink Jungle". She arrives soon after Ben does, escorted by Raul Ortega (Michael Ansara) from the tourist board. Within minutes of being landed the helicopter in which they arrived is stolen, leaving Ben and Alison stranded in the village. Ben is hassled by Colonel Celaya (Fabrizio Mioni), a security officer anxious to get a promotion to the capital, who is convinced Ben must be a spy for the American government. But a search of Ben's baggage finds only camera equipment and lipstick. Ben and Alison go to the town bar, where they are joined by Ortega. Meanwhile, two thugs assault and kill the helicopter driver, wanting information on how it had come to be stolen. The thugs are joined by Ortega, who is revealed to be their leader. To relieve their boredom Ben and Alison rent a car to drive to the nearest town. On their way the car is stopped at gunpoint by the same man who stole the helicopter. He forces them to take him with them. The hijacker is a boisterous South African adventurer, Sammy Ryderbeit (George Kennedy). He tells them he and his partner have a map to a fabulous diamond mine, but they need $2,000 to equip an expedition to get there. In a bar in town Ben and Alison meet with Sammy’s partner, an English ex-army man Captain Stopes. Also in the bar are Ortega and his men. Ben and Alison believe the entire tale of the diamond mine is a swindle. However, when Stopes is murdered in his hotel room, with Ben and Alison and Sammy suspected and pursued by the police, Ben is compelled to finance the diamond mine expedition as a way for he and Alison to sneak out of town. They are watched doing so by Ortega and his men. Along the trail Ben, Alison and Sammy encounter McCune (Nigel Green), a devious Australian who claims to be Stopes's former partner and says he has the only actual map to the mine. He surreptitiously substitutes Sammy’s map for his own, which he pretends is the one he has always had. McCune demands to take over the leadership of the expedition, in return he will give the others a small share in the mine. Although they distrust him, the three reluctantly agree. While resting up for the next day all the men posture about, demonstrating excellent marksmanship with pistols. Almost immediately after they resume their search the men start fighting with each other. That night McCune demands that the men allow him to bed Alison. Sammy says nothing, but Ben will not allow it and he and McCune fight. Ben and Alison have a private conversation in which they admit to having fallen in love with each other. Later that night McCune sneaks out of camp to leave a message, along with the map he tricked out of Sammy, along the trail. During the next day the expedition pauses to rest out the sun’s hottest hours. While the others are asleep McCune takes off with the supplies and mules, leaving them to die of thirst. But he is pursued by them, and when he takes a wrong turn it allows them to catch up with him. He hears them coming and takes up a position to shoot Ben, but just as he is about to fire he is shot dead by Sammy. They search McCune’s body for the map, and not finding it realize he must have left it for others. Just then a helicopter is heard and seen flying overhead. The three proceed to where the helicopter had landed, and see Ortega sitting in front of a tent counting diamonds. The helicopter arrives again, bringing in more diamonds, but this time the men flying in have seen the three. The members of the helicopter party spread out to attack them, but in the shootout that follows the three prevail and Ortega is captured. Sammy flies Ben and Alison (and Ortega, their prisoner) back to Guadagil, saying he knows someone there who will buy the diamonds and pay in American dollars. But as soon as the others exit the helicopter he takes off, with all the diamonds. Ortega turns out to be an underground leader long wanted by local law officials. They are so pleased in at last having him in custody that they don’t care about anything Ben and Sammy may have done. Ben and Alison are desperate to leave. Ben talks to the jubilant Colonel Celaya, who has taken the credit for having captured Ortega, hoping the officer will arrange to have them flown out. The colonel will not help with that, but does say he is sorry for having initially mistaken such a bungler as Ben for a CIA agent. Ben walks to a private spot, converts his camera into a two-way radio, and sends a message to his contact person. Ben is not just a photographer, he is a U.S. government agent sent to quell a revolution led by Ortega. Because of Sammy's assistance in accomplishing the mission, Ben tells his contact to allow Sammy to get away. ===== The Moondreamers are a group of celestial people who create and deliver pleasant dreams to Earth children. Their main enemy is the evil Queen Scowlene who attempts to keep everyone awake at night with her nightmare crystals. ===== A search is on for stolen diamonds and a government agent has been killed trying to recover them. When an unsuspecting William Beddoes arrives in Lisbon on behalf of an American bank, he is mistaken for the dead agent's replacement. Hatton-Jones of the British embassy comes to Beddoes' aid. Also taking an interest is Aurora Celeste, the dead man's lover, as well as Steve Antonio, a smuggler, who is being pursued by Amy Franklin (a woman who, as a young girl, once had a crush on him). All of the above end up aboard a yacht belonging to Dr. Mathieson, who appears to be the mastermind of the crime and knows where the hidden diamonds are. Beddoes ends up engineering an escape for all and the gems wind up safely in the hands of Hatton-Jones, the dead agent's actual successor. Beddoes books a flight for home, assuming he will never see any of these people again, but Aurora steals his passport so that he could not leave. ===== USAF Major Lincoln Bond (William Holden) was captured during the Korean War and subjected to torture, finally cracking after 14 months and signing a confession used for propaganda. Upon his release, he took a year to recover from the ordeal before showing up at the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, hoping to return to work as a test pilot. His old buddy, Colonel McKee (Charles McGraw), tries his best for him, but the base commander, Brigadier General Banner (Lloyd Nolan), turns him down because he cannot trust him to be stable. A complication is that the general's secretary and love interest, Connie Mitchell (Virginia Leith), is an old flame. Bond presses for a job and accepts the general's offer of routine flying in support. Banner is a hands-on leader, taking the most dangerous assignments himself. When Bond flies the new Gilbert XF-120 fighter, he finds dangerous structural problems that threaten its imminent acceptance by the Air Force. He claims he did not press the aircraft beyond its design specifications, but no one believes him, especially H. G. Gilbert (Ralph Moody), the head of the company that built the fighter. When the general tries to replicate Bond's maneuvers, nothing untoward happens. Afterward, Bond sees Banner nearly collapse in the locker room, but Banner shrugs off the incident. The two begin to trust each other, especially when Banner is endangered in a test flight and Bond calmly and expertly comes to the rescue. Then Major Joe Craven (James Garner), another close friend of Bond's, is killed when a wing of his XF-120 tears away, confirming Bond's warning. Bond's rehabilitation is endangered when a drunk Major "Bromo" Lee (Murray Hamilton), Banner's top test pilot, tries to pick a fight with him at the officers club. Bond reacts badly to being held by a bystander, invoking memories of his Korean War imprisonment, and punches Bromo twice. With an appreciation that both men were to blame for the altercation, Banner gives Bond the assignment he craves: the rocket-powered X-2, which is designed to fly to the edge of outer space. The general insists, however, on piloting the first test flight at full power, despite strong pressure from his superior, Lieutenant General Bryan Shelby (Paul Fix), to let a younger man take on the dangerous job. When Bond is assigned to fly the last half-power test before the main flight, he goes to full power without authorization and barely survives a high-altitude bailout when the aircraft goes out of control. The base flight surgeon tells Banner that only a young, fit person could have survived, leading the general to accept a promotion and transfer. He recommends Colonel McKee as his successor. Although Banner offers to take Connie with him to his new assignment, she decides to stay with Bond. ===== The story opens with Superman struggling with the fact that he could not save all the people that were caught in The Vanishing. He visits Father Leone, a priest suffering from cancer, in his church. Superman tells him how he was in outer space saving Green Lantern Kyle Rayner when The Vanishing occurred, outlining his feelings of guilt as he feels he abandoned Earth when it needed him most. This is a first of several 'confessionals' between Superman and Father Leone. At their next encounter, Superman explains how he traced the source of The Vanishing to an unnamed foreign country in the Middle East. In the midst of a war, Superman removes from one side all of their weapons; on the other he faces General Nox, a military leader intent on taking over the country. Nox refuses to stand down and, along with his super-powered minion Equus, fights against Superman's interference. Equus is injured and, in a last-ditch attempt to escape, activates the Vanishing Device, creating a second "Vanishing", which vanishes himself, General Nox and 300,000 more inhabitants of Earth. This leads to Superman having to face the anger of the public and the JLA. Taking control of the Vanishing Device, Superman and Father Leone travel to the Fortress of Solitude, where they try to perfect the device so that Superman can vanish himself to discover where the other people were taken. Before he gets a chance to do so, he is confronted by Wonder Woman, who attempts to stop Superman from carrying out his plan. She believes Superman's efforts are likely to result in his death, amounting to a suicide mission. The Fortress of Solitude is also visited by Mr. Orr, who tracked Father Leone via a painkilling injection Orr administered earlier. Orr is a mercenary who is working for a mysterious group of powerful individuals described by Orr himself as having "80% of the world population working for them in one way or another." Superman fights Wonder Woman and then tells her that the Fortress is set to self-destruct. He also asks her to save Mr. Orr and Father Leone. Moments before the Fortress explodes, he vanishes himself, transporting him to Metropia, the paradise world he had created in the Phantom Zone. In Metropia, Superman is reunited with Lois Lane. He also learns of General Zod's existence in Metropia. It turns out that it was this Zod who was behind The Vanishing, as he was trying to build an empire in Metropia. The robots that Superman built attack Zod, Equus, who is now working for Zod, and Zod's other followers. The robots are destroyed, which prompts Superman to attack, defeating Equus and Zod. He transports everyone back to Earth and destroys Metropia. During the last moments of the alternate world, Superman tries to help Zod by saving his life, which the latter refuses to allow. As this is occurring, it is shown that Mr. Orr has talked to Father Leone about Superman. Mr. Orr has learned of Father Leone's cancer and says that he can cure him. The "cure" actually turns out to be a horrific biological experiment that transforms him into an enhanced version of Equus, called Pilate. Upon his return to Earth, Superman has to confront the Father Leone version of Equus. Disgusted at what he has become, he asks Superman to kill him. Horrified at this request, Superman refuses to do so. As Leone continues to argue with him, a recovered Equus attacks, probably thinking that Father Leone, a construct like himself will help him in fighting Superman. Father Leone, however, in a last act of desperation, lunges at Equus, driving them both into a fiery nova in the background, which transports them to an island where they continue to fight. Lois and all the others that disappeared in The Vanishing return to Earth. Having restored the victims of The Vanishing, Superman has saved the day again. He proceeds to construct a new Fortress of Solitude in the midst of a 'jungle'. Reminiscing about the events, he asks himself, while he has saved countless millions of lives over the years, who will save him when the end comes. With these threads tied, the story ends, however, the issues of Mr. Orr and the mysterious organization are left unresolved. ===== In a city of the future, a group of bored wealthy women begin dabbling in ancient satanic rituals, unaware that their rites are actually working. The beast of pure evil, Golem100, is raised each time the group practices their ritual, embarking on a rampage of rape, torture and murder. The demon is tracked through the physical and spirit worlds by Gretchen Nunn, a master of psychodynamics; Blaise Shima, a brilliant and famous chemist; and a clever local police officer, Subadar Ind'dni. ===== Andy Schaeffer is a spoiled mama's boy who usually gets his way. He breezes through college, while girlfriend Susan Daniels works hard at a job to pay for her education. She isn't sure where their relationship is going. Andy's grades begin to worsen, and he's being drafted by the army. Andy reports for basic training at Fort Ord, making it clear to everybody there that he'd rather be anyplace else. ===== The film starts with the penance of Sage Bhadra (Sarath Babu) who becomes a hill with the blessings of Lord Rama. In later centuries, Dammakka (Sujatha), the tribal lady, and worshiper of Lord Rama unearths and looks after the idols of Rama on the hill and awaits someone who can constructs a temple there. On the other hand, Gopanna and his cousin Kamala fall in love and marry after a small conflict with their parents. After the marriage, Tanisha, the emperor of Golconda, with the recommendation of Akkanna and Madanna (the uncles of Gopanna), appoints Gopanna as Tehsildar of Husnabad. Thus, a Muslim who had been the Tehsildar to the place is dethroned for the sake of Gopanna. That ignites disgust among a few groups who attempt to murder Gopanna. However, Dammakka saves him while he lies unconscious on the bank of Godavari. She shows him the place of Bhadragiri and Gopanna becomes an ardent devotee of Rama. After a series of incidents, he decides to construct the Rama Mandir on the hill. He collects funds from people and with the help of Kabirdas, his guru, completes the construction of the temple. Lord Rama, Lakshmana, Seetha, and Anjaneya live in invisible forms in the place during the construction. They keep on guarding Gopanna until he accomplishes his mission. Thus, with immense bhakti on Lord Rama, Gopanna becomes Ramadasu. The enemies of Ramadasu pass on a negative message to Tanisha about him, stating that he constructed the temple with money taken from other people without the king's permission. Exasperated, Tanisha imprisons Ramadasu. After many ordeals faced by Ramadasu in prison, Lord Rama, and Lakshmana appear to Tanisha in a dream and pay the required amount to him. Then Tanisha releases Ramadasu from prison and discovers that the two who cleared the debt were Lord Rama and Lakshmana. After being released from prison, Ramadasu is frustrated that he never obtained a darshanam (appearance/glimpse) of Rama. He realizes that Rama is in his heart and cuts open his chest. Sri Rama and Sitamma appear from his heart and heal his wounds. Rama offers Gopanna the chance to go to Vaikunta as a living man, a boon granted to few. When Gopanna asks what is there in Vaikunta (The Highest Heaven), Rama says there is only happiness and no need to pray. However, Gopanna can only find happiness in saying Rama's name. As the only man ever to refuse Vaikuntha, Rama grants his wish: Ramadasu's spirit will remain forever in the Bhadrachalam Temple. The movie ends with Kancherla Gopanna, now Sri Ramadasu, looking down fondly at the temple in the modern day. ===== Captain Buck Devlin, and cavalry troopers Sergeant John Maitland and Private Wilbur Clegg, recently mustered out of the army, head to Devlin's brother's homestead to settle down. They arrived just in time to drive off an Indian attack, but are too late to save his brother. Faulty ammunition cost him his life. The three men set out for Medicine Bend to find out who sold the ammunition. The community also gives them all their funds to buy badly needed supplies. On the way however, they are robbed of everything – the money, their horses, even their uniforms. Fortunately, they happen upon a Brethren (in Christ) congregation (who have also been robbed), and are given spare clothing. Devlin decides it would be a good idea to pretend to be Brethren while in town. They quickly connect the robbers, and later the defective ammunition, to Ep Clark. Clark controls the mayor and the sheriff, and has his gang waylay pioneers heading west and force other local traders out of business. Devlin has Maitland and Clegg infiltrate Clark’s shady business by taking jobs at his store. Meanwhile, he goes to work for defiant competing merchant Elam King and his niece Priscilla. After gaining their trust, Devlin learns that King has a secret wagon train of goods, including weapons, coming in from St. Louis. Devlin starts stealing back Clark's ill-gotten gains at night, including his mother's brooch from saloon girl Nell Garrison, Clark's reluctant girlfriend. Clark, now suspicious of the three strangers in town, tries to lure Devlin into a trap, but barely fails. He does, however, have the sheriff arrest Maitland and Clegg. They are swiftly sentenced to hang, but Nell has taken a great liking to Maitland and persuades Sheriff Massey to do one right thing in his life and free the prisoners; unfortunately, he is shot in the back by one of Clark's men. Nell then gets Brother Abraham, leader of the local Brethren congregation, to help foil the hanging and rescue the two men. Devlin finally comes for Clark. They brawl (ironic, given the film's title), and Devlin is briefly knocked unconscious; his life is saved when Clark tries to shoot him with bad ammunition. Clark then grabs a scythe, but is fatally impaled when Devlin knocks him down. Devlin and Maitland prepare to ride into the sunset with Priscilla and Nell respectively. Clegg surprises them by deciding to stay and serve a "hitch" with the Brethren. ===== Douglas Breen, a deranged young New York City record salesman, writes a rambling letter to stage and film star Sally Ross. Sally's assistant, Belle Goldman, has been intercepting Douglas's numerous disturbed letters, responding herself and asking him to stop. Douglas feels ignored, and becomes determined to meet with Sally and consummate "his love" for her. Sally has recently taken a job in a musical stage production, and has been reconnecting with her ex-husband, Jake Berman, who has arrived from California to film a movie. After Belle receives another explicit letter from Douglas, she brings it to Sally's attention; Sally scolds her for being rude to the fan, and brushes it off, saying she has had to deal with many fans who have had extensive "fantasies" about her. Meanwhile, Douglas begins stalking Sally, sitting outside of her apartment building, and following her to her stage rehearsals. He decides to hand-deliver a letter to her while she is rehearsing for the musical, but watches the man at the studio give the letter to Belle, whom he realizes is the assistant who has been writing the nasty responses to him. After the rehearsal ends, Douglas follows Belle into the subway, where he slashes her face open with a razor. She survives the attack, but is hospitalized. When police press her for information, Belle cannot recall the return addresses written on the obsessive letters to Sally, and Sally informs them that she does not keep the fan mail she receives. Increasingly enraged by his lack of contact with Sally, Douglas manages to break into her apartment and murders her maid, Elsa, in the bathroom. Sally returns home with a private investigator, and finds Elsa's body in a pool of blood, and her apartment in shambles. A threatening letter addressed to Sally is left behind, reading: "Dearest bitch, See how accessible you are? How would you liked to be fucked with a meat cleaver?" Sally, distraught, flees New York and retreats to a secluded house in the country, where she is visited by Jake. Meanwhile, at a bar, Douglas meets a man who cruises him for sex. The two go to the rooftop of Douglas's building, where the man begins to perform oral sex on him, but Douglas stabs him to death and lights his body on fire. Douglas leaves a suicide letter with the body in an attempt to lead police to believe the body is his own, and that he took his own life. The opening night of the musical arrives, and Sally reluctantly returns to the city to perform. Douglas sits in the audience, watching her. After the show, Sally sits in her dressing room with the costume designer, Hilda. Douglas kills both Hilda and a nightwatchman while Sally removes her makeup. He confronts Sally in her dressing room, covered in blood, and chases her through the empty theater. She strikes him in the face with a riding crop. Douglas slaps her across the face, throwing her to the floor, and beats her with the crop. As he tries to kiss her, Sally tells him he is pathetic. His rage subsides, and he embraces Sally, begging her to love him. As he holds her, she plunges his knife into his neck. He collapses, landing in one of the theatre's chairs, the knife still in his neck. Sally leaves the theatre, and a voiceover of Douglas's first letter to her plays. In it, he says: > Dear Miss Ross, I have finally worked up enough courage to write you. You do > not know me, but who I am does not matter. If there is such a thing as a > soul, which is the basis of all life...then you are my soul. And your life > is my life. This is the first letter of what I hope will be an everlasting > correspondence. Your greatest fan, Douglas Breen. ===== Abhiram is a manager in an ad agency owned by his paternal uncle Prasad. He despises women and expresses his hatred every minute of the day. However, his workplace is populated by women and he has to deal with it. Prasad, the chairman of the company, appoints Harika as the new assistant manager and Abhiram hates that yet another female employee has joined his office. He places a bug under her desk and uses it to steal her idea for a lipstick ad. He later accuses her of plagiarism, belittling her and questioning her originality. Eventually Harika gets fed up of Abhi’s verbal abuse and goes to Prasad to submit her resignation. Prasad asks her to think about it and tells her about Abhiram's past and why he despises women. Abhi lost his parents when he was only two years old and his grandfather raises him. Abhi is the only heir to their family business and he enjoys life in his own carefree way. He meets and falls in love with Maheswari, who is the niece of an employee in Abhi's grandfather's company. Alarmed that Abhi is just playing around with his niece, Maheshwari's uncle takes her away to his hometown and arranges her engagement with another man. Abhi goes to where Maheswari is and attempts to assure her uncle that he is going to marry her and that he's serious about their relationship. But on the way to his grandfather's home, they meet with a serious accident, resulting in Abhi's loss of consciousness. When Abhi wakes up, his grandfather tells him that Maheswari has married another person, showing him the invitation card. Abhi feels cheated and starts to hate all women, thinking that they are all superficial and treacherous. After listening to this, Harika feels sympathy towards Abhi's pain and his child-like mind. She decides to stay with the company and Prasad promotes her as manager and demotes Abhi to being assistant manager for some time. Though infuriated, Abhi has no choice travel with Harika to Paris on a business trip. There they become close and Harika helps him with his phobia of water. Abhi starts to fall for Harika but is disappointed and distances himself from her when she reveals that she is engaged to be married. After they come back to India, Abhi behaves in a childish manner to get over his disappointment. Harika reciprocates his feelings but is confused about getting married as Abhi won't express his feelings to her. Meanwhile, Abhi's aunt reveals that Maheswari actually died in the accident they were in and they hid that information fearing that Abhi might not be able to recover from the shock of hearing such horrific news. Abhi realizes it was foolish of him to hate women but is too shocked to express his feelings to Harika. At last, Harika tells Abhi that her future marriage was her parents’ choice not hers, indirectly indicating that she is ready to come to him if he asks. Prasad comes to know that Abhi and Harika have feelings for each other and encourages Abhi to go and confess his feelings. But Abhi says that it is Harika who should say it and not him because previously as he did everything as he wanted, he lost Maheshwari. Finally, Harika confesses her feelings over a phone call but due to network disturbance, Abhi isn't able to reply. Thinking that Abhi rejected her, she continues to go for her marriage. But in the end, Abhi reaches her and asks her to marry him and she breaks her previous engagement and marries him. ===== A newly ordained minister accepts a summer job with a dynamic TV evangelist only to find deep conflicts between the latter's conventional activities servicing his community's spiritual needs and his power wielded as a TV celebrity. ===== Aravind is a father who strives to provide his children more than what they ask for, often overriding their choices. Aravind's youngest son, Siddhu, however, does not want to be controlled as such. He makes himself a point that two crucial aspects of his life—career and life partner—shall be chosen by him alone. One fine morning, Aravind asks Siddhu if he would join their construction company. Siddhu who desires to start his own company, politely asks for a more time lying that he is yet to finish a course. The following week, Aravind gets Siddhu engaged to Subbalakshmi without his consent. Subbalakshmi, like Siddhu, is also a child who's life is micromanaged by her father. Much to the dismay of Siddhu, she doesn't seem to mind it. When contemplating his options at a temple, Siddhu accidentally meets Hasini and is attracted to her energetic nature and cheerfulness. The couple begins to meet regularly. As the days go by, Siddhu grows to admire the ever-friendly Hasini as someone who does what she loves and he discovers many small things which make him happy to be in her company. Soon he realizes that he has fallen in love with her. Alongside this, Siddhu applies for a bank loan to start his own construction company. When his love for Hasini deepens, he proposes to her while also confessing that he is engaged to Subbalakshmi against his wishes. On learning this, Hasini, though dejected for a while, comes back to him a few days later. She advises Siddhu to break off his engagement, indirectly accepting his proposal. At this juncture, the ecstatic Siddhu is seen by a furious Aravind. On being admonished by Aravind back home, Siddhu expresses his disinterest in marrying Subbulakshmi. When asked for a reason to like Hasini, Siddhu replies that if they let Hasini stay with their family for a week, all their questions shall be answered. He also convinces Hasini to stay at his house after lying to her father, Kanaka Rao that she is going on a college tour. When Hasini is introduced to Siddhu's family, she gets a lukewarm welcome. As she settles down, they begin to like her. Hasini finds it difficult to adapt to the living habits of the authoritarian Aravind's household but stays for Siddhu's sake. Meanwhile, Aravind reprimands Siddhu when he finds out about his bank loan and career plan, only to further enrage Siddhu. During this phase, Siddhu and Hasini begin to grow apart owing to the tensions in the house. One day, the family attends a wedding where Hasini cheers up the ceremony with her joyous nature. Coincidentally, Kanaka Rao who happens to be around recognizes Siddhu as the drunken young man whom he encountered on an earlier occasion. Hasini realizes her father's presence and quickly exits to avoid his attention. After saving their face, Siddhu admonishes Hasini for her antics at the wedding. The sullen Hasini moves out of the house saying that she does not find Siddhu the same and that she cannot put on an act if she continues her stay in the house. After getting back to her home, she rebuilds the trust her father has in her while Siddhu is left forlorn. Siddhu's mother, Lakshmi confronts Aravind on Siddhu's choices and wants. In the process, Siddhu opens up his heart, leaving Aravind to repent on his overprotectiveness. Siddhu requests Subbulakshmi and her parents to call off the marriage. While they relent, Aravind tries to convince Kanaka Rao about Siddhu and Hasini's love. When Kanaka Rao disapproves, Aravind suggests to let Siddhu stay with them for a week. After a week's stay, Kanaka Rao is convinced, letting the couple unite. ===== Stan and Ollie are musicians who are traveling by train to their next gig in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, a popular vaudeville performance location at the time. They manage to board, but Ollie is annoyed that Stan has left the music behind. They then antagonize a short gentleman (Sammy Brooks) by sitting on him. While looking for their berth they enter a private car and frighten a woman who is dressing for bed. Her angry husband comes out and rips the coat of a man who had nothing to do with the intrusion. The man, seeing another innocent man, proceeds to tear up his coat. This leads to a tit-for-tat of clothes tearing. Stan and Ollie spend most of the trip trying to change into pajamas and get comfortable in a cramped upper berth. By the time the duo manage to sort themselves out, the train has reached their stop. In their haste to deboard, they leave their instrument behind. The clothes-tearing battle has, by now, involved the whole train, and the conductor gets stripped to his underwear and some rags trying to get through. ===== Thrilled to finally move into a full-sized house in Lucifer Falls, New England, Carlton and Eloise Davis along with their children Jennifer, Corwin, and R.E. arrive at their new home on a dark, gloomy night. As they enter and search for a light switch, they are spooked by an old man named Neil Witherspoon who warns them about the house's tragic history telling them to beware of the Boogedy Man. After Mr. Witherspoon leaves, the family checks out their new home. While Corwin and R.E. inspect the ground floor, Jennifer looks around upstairs. She hears someone sneezing and sees a blue light emanating from behind the door at the end of the hallway, but when she opens the door the room is empty. Meanwhile, the boys have made their way to the house's eerie basement, where R.E. finds a toy rocking chair that fits his teddy bear perfectly. Just when it seems that they might find something supernatural, Carlton flips on the lights, which show nothing but old furniture and other clutter. The boys grudgingly return upstairs, but on his way up, R.E. notices that his teddy bear has disappeared. The next morning, the family gathers for a breakfast filled with gags: funny glasses and rubber eggs that squirt water. Jennifer complains about the strange sneezing, but Carlton reassures her that ghosts aren't real. That night, Jennifer walks down the hallway, drawn by the sneezing and the strange glow (now green) from the door at the end of the hallway. She opens the door, only to be blasted with bright lights and a strange wind. She faints as maniacal laughter is heard. Later that night, her family wakes her, and she informs them that she saw the Boogedy Man, describing him as having a yucky, grilled cheese sandwich like face. Opening the door, Carlton discovers green footprints running up the wall of the room. He peels a few off the wall, and is able to stick them to himself, prompting him to quip "Honey, look, the Boogedy Man walked all over me!" He assumes that it's all part of a gag set up by Mr. Witherspoon. After Corwin and R.E. witness the kitchen cabinets and appliances move on their own, they go into town with Jennifer to look for answers. They find the Lucifer Falls Historical Society, which is run by Mr. Witherspoon. Amused by the children's curiosity, he produces an old pop-up book and tells them the tale of William Hanover, a grouchy old pilgrim man who fell in love with the lovely widow Marion 300 years ago. Marion did not reciprocate his feelings, so Hanover struck a deal with the Devil selling his soul for a magic cloak which granted him mystical powers. He kidnapped Marion's son Jonathan and, casting his first spell, accidentally destroyed his own house (located on the same spot as the Davises' current home), killing himself, Jonathan, and Marion. All three remained as ghosts; Boogedy and Jonathan (who had a cold when he died) are trapped inside the house, and Marion is unable to enter and get her child back. The children return home and tell their parents about the situation, but Carlton and Eloise are more interested in showing off their new gags, such as a lifesize mummy. As Carlton begins to assure the children that the house isn't haunted, paranormal activity peaks: the harpsichord plays on its own, the lights flicker, and the mummy appears to come to life, dancing wildly, prompting Eloise to exclaim "That's it! Time to call a realtor!" Eloise and the children are scared enough to leave, but Carlton convinces them to stay for the night, camped out together in the living room. Eloise wakes up for a midnight snack, and encounters the ghost of the Widow Marion, who relates her story from outside the back door. Eloise wakes the rest of the family, and explains to them that Marion told her the only way to get rid of Boogedy is to take away his magic cloak. The Davises arm themselves with household items and head upstairs to search for Boogedy. R.E. hears a noise, and goes off on his own, towards the basement; Corwin notices his absence and follows. Carlton, Eloise, and Jennifer approach the door at the end of the hallway, but discover that the glowing green light is this time nothing more than a green light bulb—Boogedy tricked them. In the basement, Corwin finds R.E struggling to recover his teddy bear from the thief, who turns out to be young Jonathan's ghost, who still has a cold after all these years. He explains that he borrowed it only because he was lonely. Feeling sorry for him, R.E. lets him borrow the teddy bear, and Jonathan tells them stories about the previous families that Boogedy chased away. They're interrupted by heavy breathing; Mr. Boogedy is coming. The boys run upstairs, reuniting with the rest of their family in the living room as Mr. Boogedy appears with a bright flash of green light. The Davises run for cover behind boxes of gag items, with Boogedy shocking anyone who nears him with bolts of electricity from his fingers. Corwin attempts to attack Boogedy, but he uses his magic to turn his assault against him. Boogedy likewise uses magic to disable Carlton, Jennifer, and Eloise. R.E grabs the vacuum cleaner and sneaks behind Mr. Boogedy, shooting the plastic balls at him. Boogedy, not deterred, takes control of the vacuum, making it chase R.E. around the room. R.E. hides behind Boogedy, and the vacuum takes hold of Boogedy's cloak, sucking it right off of his back. Without his cloak, Mr. Boogedy seems powerless, and disappears. The cloak itself pops out of the vacuum cleaner, and Corwin tosses it into the air, saying "Boogedy boogedy boo!" makes it disappear in a flash of green light. Widow Marion and Jonathan appear, and the Davises look on as the ghosts embrace and then disappear in a dance of light. The house is supposedly no longer haunted, but the Davises hear Boogedy's voice grimly intoning "Wanna bet?", leaving open the possibility of his return. ===== In the final year of World War II, units of the United States Army are in the foothills of the Alps between France and Italy, trying to dislodge a unit of German soldiers from a supply post in the middle of a small village. 1st Lt. Sam Loggins (Frank Sinatra) is in charge of an artillery observation unit that has just lost its radioman. A truckload of fresh young soldiers arrive, one of whom, Corporal Britt Harris (Tony Curtis) admits to radio training and experience—Harris is immediately appointed the unit's radioman by Loggins. Harris reveals himself at once as a lady's man and a schemer, acquiring girlfriends, food, and other luxury items. Corporal Lindsay (Edward Ryder), in charge of the unit's paperwork and logistics, reveals Harris' story to Loggins: Harris is the son of a wealthy textile mill owner in New Jersey—in order to avoid criminal charges of trying to bribe a member of the local Draft Board with a car, Harris has "volunteered" for combat duty in Europe. Harris does show bravery while rescuing a group of men trapped in a minefield and while attacking a German bunker single-handed, but Loggins still has his reservations about the man. The Colonel (Karl Swenson) grants Loggins and his unit leave in the seaside town of Nice. While walking by himself on a quay, Loggins is attracted to Monique Blair (Natalie Wood) – they go to dinner, and she explains she was born in America, but has lived in France since she was a small child. She's unwilling to go out with Loggins again. Loggins ask her to meet him in the same cafe the next week at 8PM. The next week, Loggins waits at the cafe, Monique doesn't show, and he walks out despondent, only to be asked to have a drink by an older American woman who has apparently been waiting for him. He finds out it is Monique's mother, who was checking him out, he passed, and she takes him to her palatial home to join Monique. The two spend a great deal of time together each time Loggins gets his Saturday night pass. One night he tells her he loves her, and Monique finally reveals to him that she is afraid to get involved with a US soldier because her now-dead father was a Negro, and she has seen the general bigotry all American soldiers seem to have. Loggins is confused and leaves, not sure about his feelings. After a week of anguished consideration, Loggins decides to put aside the former prejudices he would have had about Monique's parentage, and goes to see her. She and her mother are delighted to see Loggins. Loggins invites Monique to go out on a date with him. They end up going to a smokey jazz cafe, where they are surprised to see Harris play a fantastic jazz solo on a trumpet, to the acclaim of the entire French crowd. Harris joins Loggins and Monique at their table, and Loggins is left on the sidelines as Harris and Monique are immediately drawn to each other. Harris and Monique dance closely late into the night. After Loggins takes Monique home, she asks Loggins to tell Harris about her Negro father. Back on surveillance duty of a town where the Germans have set up, Loggins does so, and it doesn't seem to bother Harris. Then the Germans begin shelling their observation position. After three days of shelling, Loggins suggests to Harris that they should infiltrate the village on a covert mission to observe from a church tower in the middle of town; Loggins goes in to see the Colonel who says he'll pass the idea on up to Headquarters. The next weekend, Loggins and Harris return to Nice to visit Monique. Once again, Loggins is forced to the sidelines as the handsome and smooth-talking Harris takes over. Loggins returns to his hotel room alone. Harris and Monique stay out most of the night. When Harris returns to the hotel, he tells Loggins he's asked Monique to marry him, and she has said yes. Loggins is shattered, but he puts on a brave face. He tells Harris about the paperwork he will need to fill out to get the army's permission to marry. When they return to their unit, Harris immediately asks for the marriage permission form. Two months pass, and Harris still hasn't received an answer from the army on his request to marry. On his way to report to the Colonel, while talking to Corporal Lindsay, Loggins finds out that Harris had indeed picked up the completed paperwork 3 weeks earlier. In fact, Harris had told the corporal that the whole thing was a gag. Loggins is furious when he hears this. Thereafter, the Colonel tells Loggins that Headquarters has approved the covert operation of Loggins with Harris as his radioman—Loggins asks for a few hours leave for both of them to take care of some important personal matters in Nice, to which the Colonel agrees. Loggins and Harris go to the Blair mansion, and Loggins forces Harris to admit to Monique that Harris is not going to marry her. Monique runs away in tears. Harris tries to explain himself to Loggins ("it was a kick"), and Loggins punches him out. Loggins then goes out to find Monique. It turns out she had tried to drown herself, but a fisherman fished her out of the water while she was still alive. Loggins tries to talk to her, but she doesn't want to talk to him. Back at the US Army base, Loggins and Harris prepare for their mission. Soon after leaving, Loggins tells Harris he is going to kill him. Harris responds that reaction "works both ways". They eye each other suspiciously and cautiously. However, Loggins clarifies that Harris won't 'get it in the back'. On the mission, they encounter and kill a German soldier together. The duo establishes themselves at 2 AM in the church tower, calls in, and reports their observations, especially that a hidden section of the village contains an enormous German artillery/ammo dump. Loggins sends an order back to the base to begin a bombardment at 4 AM that will certainly destroy most of the village. They leave the tower, and are soon discovered by a German patrol. Harris is shot by the Germans and dies after Loggins drags him out of the line of fire, but Loggins is pinned down. The German officers, panicking at the thought of American soldiers in the village, order an immediate evacuation. Hearing this, Loggins grabs the radio and tells the US artillery to begin firing right now. Shells fall on the village and the ammo dump, and everything blows up. The movie ends with Loggins relating how he was found under the rubble still alive by US troops, and brought to a hospital, where his right arm was amputated. He had gotten two letters from Monique. In one of them she says that she has learned that Harris was killed. She also tells Loggins that her mother has died. When Loggins is finally released from the hospital after many months, he decides to go to Nice to visit Monique one last time before returning to the States. He finds that she is now heading up a school for war orphans. She invites Loggins to come into one of the classrooms. As a tribute to Loggins and all the American soldiers who fought to free France, the children sing a song of appreciation. During the singing, Monique and Loggins look earnestly at each other. Will their romance bloom once again? ===== Ann Wilson (Janet Leigh) catches her strait-laced husband, Columbia University Assistant Professor of Chemistry David Wilson (Tony Curtis), kissing another woman. From David's perspective, he was the one being kissed innocently, the woman in question being a grateful transfer student. However, Ann wants a divorce. On the advice of David's friend, TV writer Michael Haney (Dean Martin), David tries to convince Ann that he is really an FBI agent, the kiss all in the name of national security. Ann falls for it, but is so impressed with what her husband does for a living that she can't keep quiet about it. Michael is so impressed with Ann's gullibility and patriotic urging of her husband Dave to do more "secret missions" that Michael sets up a date with two blondes with the promise of spending a weekend together with them. The indiscretions cause a number of complications, including some with the real FBI, the CIA and hostile foreign secret agents. ===== Nihaal Singh (Sunny Deol) is an honest and beloved constable from Punjab. A chance encounter with the criminal Romeo (Kamaal Khan) changes his life forever. Romeo is an unstoppable mercenary who moves from country to country in a wave of terror. When Nihaal Singh unwittingly aids the terrorist in his escape, Nihaal is labeled a traitor. He finds himself suspended from his job, ridiculed, and hated by his village. Meanwhile, Romeo has taken his merciless campaign to New York City. Intelligence reports reveal that Romeo has entered the US in a plot to kill the President. Now, FBI are desperate to find Romeo, but the villain is a man without a face and therefore invisible. The only person who knows what the menace looks like is Nihaal Singh. The FBI recruits Nihaal Singh to come to New York and aid them in capturing Romeo. Guided by bilingual FBI Agents Suzanne Kaur (Shilpi Sharma) and Manoj Bhatnagar (Thomas Tevana) among others. Later, Nihaal and Suzanne fall in love. Nihaal hunts Romeo for the safety of America. He asks for one thing in return of Romeo's capture: to bring the villain to his hometown in Punjab, thereby clearing his name and restoring his former glory. ===== On the trail, Ben Kane, a former Dodge City lawman, comes across Billy Young, who has no horse and was abandoned by partner Jesse Boone soon after the killing of a Mexican general. Kane lets young Billy accompany him to a town in New Mexico where he has a job waiting for him as deputy sheriff. Kane's real aim is to find the man who murdered his son. In town, Kane learns from dance-hall girl Lily Beloit that two men who run the town, John Behan and Frank Boone, secretly intend to gun down Kane first chance they get. Frank Boone may be the one Kane is looking for, but Jesse, who is Frank's son, lands in jail first, accused of shooting Doc Cushman. Kane and Lily become lovers. Billy, meanwhile, springs Jesse from jail, but feels guilty once Lily reveals to him what happened to Kane's son. After he deals with Behan and the older Boone, the deputy turns in his badge, but recommends Billy for the job. ===== On a Northeastern United States college campus. Derrick Webb, Cathy Jones (referred to as simply "Jones") and Travis are students as well as roommates. They all take a Communications class with Professor Goodwin, in which the subject of gossip is brought up. For their final project, the three decide to start a rumor and track the results. One night, while at a nightclub, they run into Naomi Preston and her boyfriend Beau Edson. It is common knowledge through the campus that Naomi is saving her virginity for marriage. Jones, in particular, has a problem with Naomi's wealth and sense of entitlement. Furthermore, Naomi seems to have started a rumor about Jones having sex with Goodwin. While at the party, Derrick meets a girl and brings her upstairs. At this point, the girl becomes ill; Derrick then notices Beau and Naomi in the adjacent room kissing. Beau attempts to have sex with Naomi but is rejected. Derrick, Jones and Travis proceed to begin a rumor that Naomi and Beau had sex. Naomi soon discovers the rumor, but denies it to her friends and becomes convinced she was raped by Beau; under the encouragement of her friends, she reports it to the police. As a result, Beau is expelled. It is eventually revealed that Derrick and Naomi came from the same hometown and were a couple in high school; much like Beau, Naomi refused Derrick and Derrick raped Naomi. He denied the allegation and said Naomi made it up so her father wouldn't be upset with her; as a result, his popularity at school skyrocketed, so he moved after graduation and intentionally wanted to spread a rumor about Naomi as revenge. Beau learns this, and the two fight. Derrick manages to manipulate Beau into thinking they're both victims of Naomi's lies. Derrick goes to Naomi's dorm to confront her, but she attacks him and he leaves. The next day, Naomi is pronounced dead and, because of Derrick and Naomi's past (plus the new marks on Derrick's face), campus police accuse Derrick of killing her. Investigators come to his apartment to search for clues and their suspicions intensify. Under the overwhelming psychological pressure, Derrick confesses to raping Naomi to Travis. The investigation was proven to be a setup by Jones, Travis and Goodwin. To Derrick's surprise, following his admission, Naomi steps forward. ===== Kishore Kumar Sharma (Kishore Kumar) gambles and tricks people to make money. On being confronted by his mother, he decides to find a job and lands one in Mumbai, where he continues wooing Asha (Nutan). Kishore's father and his friend were murdered by the notorious Anantram who now wears a mask to hide his true identity, continues manufacturing spurious medicines and also passes as Nutan's uncle. The firm employing Kishore is run by Anantram and his two henchmen Sevakram and Bihari. Anantram goes to murder Kishore in the hospital, but drops his monocle, which makes Inspector Dilip (Iftekhar) suspicious. He manages to take Anantram's fingerprints on Sohan Lal's wallet and figures out the truth. What follows is a dramatic air-borne sequence where Anantram is beaten by Kishore and shot by Nutan. Kishore manages to land the airplane after the pilots lose consciousness. ===== Shanti (Nutan) is married off to Kewal (Rehman) on the eve of Partition. But while the two families move away to Delhi from Lahore, she inadvertently is left behind, and is forced to share a roof with Abdul Rehman (Pran), who has a sister of Shanti's age in India. When she returns to India five years later with her son, she is first welcomed by the husband with open arms but disowned when the child identifies himself as Anwar, and his father as Abdul Rehman. Even her own father refuses to give her shelter, though in the years she had lived with Abdul Rehman she hadn't even seen his face. Physically and emotionally shattered, Shanti tries to commit suicide after leaving Anwar in a remand home, but is rescued by an outlaw, Chhalia (Raj Kapoor) who as time and events progress, flips for the lady. Rehman lands in Delhi to settle old scores with Chhalia and threatens to kidnap Shanti. The bloody fight that ensues between the two adversaries eventually ends in a truce. The hurried climax, set amidst Dussera festivities, has Chhalia bringing about a rapprochement between the estranged couple, and himself walking into infinity, while Rehman is reunited with his sister on the return train. ===== Suzanne, a 15-year-old Parisian girl, lives with her volatile, abusive family: her furrier parents and older brother Robert, a writer. She's dating a boy named Luc, who complains about not seeing her as much as he would like. At a cafe, Suzanne mingles with sailors and an American visitor. She and the American head outdoors and have sex, though the experience leaves her miserable. She tells a friend she regrets her unfaithfulness to Luc, but she breaks up with him and becomes increasingly promiscuous. Her father is close to Suzanne but reacts with suspicion and violence when Suzanne goes on a double date with her cousin Solange. When Suzanne returns, her father expresses concern with her changing demeanor, saying she smiles less and seems increasingly bored. He also discloses he has found another woman and is planning to leave the family. Several days later, Robert tells Suzanne their father has left, and Robert assumes management of the household. Suzanne continues her affairs, though she admits she is unable to feel love. Her mother is desperately unhappy and grows increasingly frustrated with Suzanne's skimpy clothes, her letters from boys, and her attitude at home. Her brother and mother both beat Suzanne during family arguments. Luc returns to Suzanne and asks her to resume their relationship; she refuses. Miserable, Suzanne asks Robert to send her to boarding school, saying she can no longer tolerate home life and has contemplated suicide. She says she is only happy when she is with a man; Robert professes an inability to understand this. Back in Paris, Suzanne begins a more serious relationship with a young man named Jean-Pierre. While she still says she is unable to feel love, she becomes engaged. Luc reappears and begs her to cancel the wedding. Though she confesses she has considered doing that, she tells him that Jean-Pierre provides her with inner peace for the first time. At a celebratory dinner party, the father unexpectedly shows up, questioning the happiness of the family and revealing Suzanne has been visiting him. He later shows up to see Suzanne leave for her honeymoon, but with another man, leaving Jean-Pierre behind. ===== ===== The action is centred on the Monastery of Kennaquhair, probably based on Melrose Abbey in south east Scotland, on the River Tweed. At this time, circa 1550, the Scottish Reformation is just beginning, and the monastery is in peril. A love story is interwoven as the Glendinning boys fall in love with Mary Avenel. Edward ends up becoming a monk, and Halbert finally marries Mary, after service with the Earl of Murray. ===== Three sisters; Teresa, Mary and Catherine, come together before their mother's funeral, each haunted by their own demons. The play focuses on how each sister deals with the death and how it directly affects them. The three each have different memories of the same events, causing constant bickering about whose memories are true. As the three women get together after years of separation, all their hidden lies and self-betrayals are about to reach the surface. A theme of the play is, eponymously, memory. The sisters' memories interact with each other, and show that despite synchronicities of time and place they cannot agree upon one unifying experience. This is echoed in Vi's final speech, which portrays Alzheimer's disease as being adrift among a series of islands of your own identity. The sisters drift around their own islands of memory, unable to agree on one particular point, and yet are unified by their familial bond (Vi comments that "some things stay in your bones"). The play exhibits the unity of time, place and character present in a tragedy, as the play seems to take place at one time, in one space and without change in the characters' outlooks. However, because the comedy here is so often interspersed with the tragic it may be said to be a tragi-comedy. ===== Village Chief Shangang is not a bad man, but he often metes out justice as he sees it without regard to the law. To punish a woman accused of beating and otherwise abusing her old mother-in-law, Shangang has her bound and exhibited in the village in humiliating fashion, after which the woman hangs herself in front of his door. Her husband threatens to report Shangang to higher authorities, and eventually prosecutors Su Qiang and Xiao Ding come to investigate after being tipped off by an anonymous letter. They find that they have to take Shangang away for his illegal treatment of the woman, and when the villagers complain, Shangang himself tells them to uncomplainingly accept the law. ===== Lupita Gómez is a young teacher who recently left her people to go to work in Mexico City at the "Patria Unida" school, as recommended by her godfather Don Joaquín. There, she becomes a 2nd grade teacher. Lupita meets a group of children in her class whom she begins to adore. Her relationship with the children sends the cast on a series of comedic adventures. ===== The House of Gohda, where the Azuma Ninja Clan reside under the service of Lord Gohda, is on the brink of war with the neighboring country of Ogawara. As a new recruit in the Azuma Ninja Clan, the protagonist is sent to assassinate those who are assisting the country of Ogawara, including army generals and spies who have infiltrated the House of Gohda, as well as recover stolen items and rescue prisoners. In between thwarting the country of Ogawara's plans, the protagonist also receives missions in which he or she eliminates evil people such as abusive monks and greedy merchants. There is no connection between Tenchu Z's plot and those in the previous games, nor are there any returning characters with the exceptions of Rikimaru and Lord Gohda. ===== Tokyo, A.D. 2063: the Yakuza warlord Hideaki has seized total control of Honshū's underworld while ruthlessly crushing all opposition. But his true dream is the overthrow of the government itself. Japan's hard-line military junta will do anything to stop him and they have found the ultimate pawn to set their plan in motion: Renjiro, the chief advisor to the notorious gangster. Caught between a lifetime of honor and loyalty to his Yakuza clan and the iron-fisted might of the military elite, Renjiro will find that the only way to stop a civil war and avoid total annihilation is to play both sides against the middle. ===== A TV game show writer, waking up after an alcoholic blackout, discovers that someone is out to destroy his life. ===== In the future, a band of immortals (some who are famous historical characters, some who have tried their best to avoid becoming so), including Herb Wells, Ned Curzon (nicknamed Grand Guignol), Hillel, and Sam Pepys have only one requirement for membership: don't die. Through their extensive social network, they come across a brilliant Cherokee physicist named Sequoya Guess, who himself has only very recently learned of his peculiarity and the catches and loopholes that come along with it. This creates a swift change in Guess's day-to-day life that is as much a shock to his friends as to himself. At the same time, the world's scientists are collaborating to bring together a supercomputer named Extro that will monitor and control all mechanical activity on Earth. The immortals create a plan to subtly harness Extro to aid them in their quest for knowledge and use some of the experience they've gained to assist it in its task. Working outside of expected behavior, Extro instead seizes control of Dr. Guess, leaving the only people who know what's going on — the Immortals and Guess's nearest friends — to grapple with the heart and mind of a malevolent machine in the body of an Immortal, a powerful and ingenious man who cannot be killed. ===== Anton Mordrid is a wizard sent to Earth by a being called the Monitor, to stop the evil wizard Kabal from opening the gate to Hell. Kabal needs the Philosopher's Stone and several alchemical elements to complete the spell and open the gate, unleashing his minions from the Fourth Dimension upon the Earth. Mordrid watches for signs of Kabal's presence for 150 years; as the time of their epic battle approaches, Mordrid assumes the role of a criminal psychologist, and becomes the mysterious landlord to Samantha Hunt, a research consultant to the police. Dr. Mordrid detects a series of thefts of the elements that Kabal is seeking, and Mordrid begins to search for his nemesis. Samantha is persistent in her attempts to penetrate Mordrid's secretive life. The battle for Earth spills over into the Magic Dimension where the gate is closely guarded by other good wizards. They are no match for Kabal, who defeats all but one of them. This survivor confirms Kabal's plans for Mordrid, and Mordrid returns to Earth to prepare his defenses. When Mordrid is arrested for murder, Samantha attempts to help prove his innocence. Mordrid reveals his true nature and his mission to her, and she agrees to help him escape. In the final showdown, Kabal and Mordrid do battle within the Cosmopolitan Museum with Kabal animating the Tyrannosaurus skeleton on display to threaten several police officers while he opens the portals to his demonic realm. Mordrid animates a nearby American Mastodon skeleton to battle the dinosaur while he deals with Kabal. Using his wits and his magical power, Mordrid narrowly manages to kill Kabal by having the mastodon impale him on its tusk while he's distracted, preventing the destruction of reality as we know it. His mission accomplished, Mordrid is called by The Monitor to cross over once again into the Magic Dimension and leave the Earth behind. ===== In the summer of 1939, Jean takes his family for a stay with his widowed mother. He works as a butcher in Paris and with him is his Dutch wife Eva and their only child Marie, who is 12. Marie falls in love with the local doctor Alexandre, a Jewish bachelor aged 30. He enjoys her lively and intelligent company until late one night she comes to the house where he lives alone and offers herself, upon which he has to reject her. Shortly after this she undergoes her first period and is taught by her grandmother to be more careful with men. Her place in Alexandre's life is taken by her mother, who begins a full-blown affair while Jean is away helping to bring in the harvest. The grandmother teaches Marie that this is something which can happen, but one must not talk about it and must seek to reconcile the married couple. When Jean comes back, Alexandre keeps away until at the village festival he asks Eva for a dance, upon which Jean punches him and a brawl develops. Everything ends with the outbreak of war. ===== Ken Tani (Shō Kosugi), a martial artist and special operative for the American government codenamed "Black Eagle", is summoned by his superiors after an F-111 carrying an experimental black ops laser tracking device was shot down over Malta by Russian forces. A group of elite KGB agents led by Colonel Vladimir Klimenko and his brutal and enigmatic right-hand man Andrei (Jean-Claude van Damme) have been dispatched to Malta to retrieve the device for their own ends. Tani, alongside CIA agent Patricia Parker (Doran Clark) and his sons Brian (Kane Kosugi) and Denny (Shane Kosugi) travel to Malta to find the device before Andrei does, leading to an eventual face-to- face encounter. ===== The Living and the Dead opens in London's Victoria Station. Elyot Standish bids farewell to his younger sister Eden in a manner that is not particularly emotional or final. Elyot returns to an empty house, somberly observing the memories that remain amongst its silent possessions. Chapter 2 takes the reader several decades earlier, where a young Kitty Goose begins to find her way through England's upper classes. Catherine marries Willy Standish and bears him two children, but separates some years afterwards due to Willy's infidelity. Catherine's children, Elyot and Eden, are raised by her maid Julia and, during World War I, by surrogate guardians. Following the war, Catherine, living on the dwindling remnants of pre-war affluence, struggles to relate to her children. Elyot, a Cambridge graduate and professional writer, isolates himself in intellectual pursuits. Eden, a bookshop attendant, is influenced by left-wing politics. As the Spanish Civil War rises in the conscience of British society, the Standishes are forced to face their inner dissatisfactions. This is brought into focus by the failures of their sexual relationships. Catherine, who finds herself irrelevant in a much-changed world, pursues a romance with the younger Wally Collins, an American musician. The relationship is severed when Wally loses interest in Catherine, who spills her emotions whilst drunk at a fashionable party. Elyot, whether with family or with women, never allows himself a relationship of any depth. He distances himself from both Muriel Raphael, an artistic socialite, and Connie Tiarks, an unattractive but devoted childhood friend. The two are complete opposites, yet neither satisfies the purposeless Elyot. It is Eden who suffers the most tragedy, yet, paradoxically, offers the best hope of a meaningful existence. Her first lover, a married man, discards her to pursue an overseas position. The secrecy surrounding her abortion isolates her further from her family. Her second romance with the leftist Joe Barnett gives her a long-sought happiness, but this is taken away in cruel circumstances. Joe, facing his own conscience, disappears to Spain and is killed in action. It is Joe Barnett's firm direction that all others fail to achieve. With the death of Catherine to cancer, Eden decides that her rightful place is in Spain, even without her deceased lover. At the station, Elyot does not expect to ever see her again, and thus the reader understands the full significance of the opening chapter's sterility. The Living and the Dead raises deep questions about life, death and those in between. ===== In the year 2007, a woman is preparing for a party, while her husband is tinkering with a communication device for their new baby. A sudden lightning bolt affects the television, causing the baby to levitate and vanish. In the year 1992, a 4th grader named Natsumi Mizuki is separated from her parents for a day, because her father's company only bought 2 tickets for their move to England, so they had to buy her a ticket for the following day. She is upset because her parents gave away her pet dog. Her aunt Izumi (her mother's younger sister), an aspiring manga writer who hates dogs and babies, comes to live with Natsumi. They do not get along very well, with Natsumi calling her 'Oba-san' (Auntie) instead of 'Onee-san' (Big sis) as she would prefer. While watching a movie, the baby appears in front of Natsumi. She becomes determined to raise the baby, not wanting to trust her with the clumsy policeman. Through the strange heart-shaped device, Natsumi and Izumi learn that the baby's mother is Natsumi Mizuki from the year 2007! She is a married 24-year-old, and pleads with her past self to take care of the baby until they can determine how to return her. The device is also linked with a clasp around the baby's neck that notifies Izumi when the baby needs her, through transmitting her emotional state. Natsumi and Izumi continue to quarrel over how to raise the baby, and worry about time paradoxes that could occur. Natsumi must now try to raise her future daughter, attend school, and foil her aunt's attempts to foist the baby onto other caregivers. Izumi is pressured into watching the baby while Natsumi is at school, in exchange for free board, since she lost her apartment. During this time, she tries to focus on creating her manga without distractions. Will she succeed in fifteen years? ===== The story is that of a conniving countess (played by Lili Bech) coming between a gay sculptor, Claude Zoret (Egil Eide), and his bisexual model and lover, Mikaël (Lars Hanson), ultimately leading to Zoret's death in a raging storm at the base of a statue of Mikaël as the mythological Icarus. ===== Chambers plays the rich, happy and assertive fashion model Sandra Chase, whose sexual appetite is – per the title – insatiable. The film begins as it ends, with her masturbating. She has an old-fashioned aunt who appears in a series of flashbacks. The movie has little plot or storyline, and "only the barest minimum of real-world narrative conflict." It consists mainly of one sex scene after another with some filler sequences added to pad the runtime to feature- length movie standards. While one scene has Chambers' character overhearing her friend having sex, all the other "action" scenes features Chambers as an active participant. In the first scene, Chambers and Serena perform cunnilingus on each other. Next she performs fellatio on a young man (played by Richard Pacheco) making deliveries who has run out of gas whom she encounters while driving her Ferrari Dino. In the third scene, presented as a flashback, Sandra is ravished on a snooker table by the gardener of her father's estate (played by David Morris). The incident is revealed to be Chambers' character's first sexual experience, and may be meant to explain her later sexual behaviour. The scene has been called "uncommonly brutal". Although Chambers says, "No, please stop," the movie makes it clear she is a willing participant, as she tells her friend, "I just loved being held down and made love to by him". The fourth scene features Jessie St. James paired with John Leslie. In the fifth scene of the movie, Chambers has sex with two men (Morris and Mike Ranger) and a woman (Jessie St. James), followed immediately by anal sex with a semi-erect John Holmes.Williams, p.179 As soon as Holmes is finished, Chambers utters her last line of the movie whilst masturbating: "More, more, more."Williams, p.154 ===== Pyrrhus lives in the city with his housemate Leucon. He works as a waiter, then as a hustler. One day he hears his father Achilles has left him some inheritance in Troy, and he decides to claim it. On the ship, he sleeps with Corythus, a sailor. He soon learns he needs to seduce Philoctetes and get his bow for a prophecy to come true. He grows attached to the old man, though the latter also has an affair with Paris. Finally, Philoctetes breaks the bow. Pyrrhus meets Leucon again in a hospital where Pyrrhus is waiting to see his lover Philoctetes, who is very sick; the latter realizes he no longer has feelings for Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus understands that he has grown and accepted his sexuality and is able to live openly, something Leucon cannot do. (The novel hints that he probably never will.) ===== When the Chandragupta Sabha led by Radhagupta (the then minister (Mahaamatya) of the Mauryan Empire) decided that Kunala would proceed to subjugate the revolt of Takshashila (Taxila), Tishyaraksha conceived a plot. The plot succeeded after the conquest by Kunala. As per the plot, Ashoka had to request two very precious jewels from the governor of Takshashila which were believed to have been the most unusual of their kind. The decisive language of the letter written by Tishyaraksha was sent by Ashoka who did not understand the hidden meaning and therefore could not explain it to Kunala. However, Kunala immediately understood the hidden meaning, but due to his love for his father and his loyalty towards Magadha, he felt forced to remove his own eyes. Then he sent both of his eyes to the court of Magadha at Pataliputra. Ashoka realized his fault but by then it was too late. Immediately Radhagupta ordered Tishyaraksha's death. However, it is believed that Tishyaraksha committed suicide after finding out this news. ===== In 2003 Italy, Attilio de Giovanni, a comical and impassioned poetry professor and the divorced father of two teenage girls, is hopelessly in love with Vittoria, a coworker and writer. Vittoria is the subject of Attilio's many dreams that center around a wedding between him and Vittoria. Attilio's strenuous courtship is unsuccessful, yet he does not lose hope, despite the fact that Vittoria obviously does not share the same feelings. She tells him that she will agree to marry him only when she sees a tiger walking on the snow. Vittoria leaves for Iraq to write the biography of the poet Fuad, Attilio's close friend who is returning to his country after 18 years living in France. In Baghdad, she is wounded as collateral damage during the invasion of Iraq. By impersonating a Red Cross surgeon, and Attilio sneaks onto a flight to Baghdad in a desperate attempt to save her life. He finds Vittoria in an Iraqi hospital lying in a coma, and like thousands of Iraqis caught in the crossfire, she will inevitably die due to low medicine supplies. Fuad directs Attilio to an old Iraqi pharmacist, who suggests ancient treatments that manage to keep her alive, temporarily. Attilio locates scuba gear to provide Vittoria with oxygen and a flyswatter, which he jokingly calls the "weapon of mass destruction" the US is looking for in Iraq. Still needing more medicinal supplies to revive Vittoria, Attilio journeys to an Italian Red Cross encampment and returns with more comprehensive supplies that will nurse Vittoria back to health. Attilio then goes to Fuad's house to report his success, but finds that Fuad has hanged himself. Attilio had not picked up on Fuad's behavior and speech earlier in the film indicating his suicidal plans, for he had been too preoccupied with trying to save Vittoria. Just before Vittoria emerges from her coma, Attilio is mistaken for an enemy combatant and is captured by the US Army, but is soon freed and allowed to return to Italy. In the final scenes it is revealed that Vittoria is actually Attilio's ex- wife. They were likely separated because of Attilio's excitability and insane diversions, along with his earlier involvements with another woman. Attilio awkwardly visits Vittoria and their children several times, clearly showing his infatuation in her. On the same day Attilio returns to his country, there is an animal breakout at the circus. Vittoria, driving her car, stops to see an escaped tiger in the middle of the road under falling pollen from the jasmine trees that resembles snowfall. Though Attilio refuses to admit he is the "wonderful stranger who saved her," Vittoria suddenly recognizes his familiar way of kissing her forehead in the same manner that the stranger had kissed her when she was comatose in the hospital, as well as how Vittoria's missing necklace (which Attilio took to safeguard earlier) is seen hanging from his neck. ===== The novel is a first- person account narrated by Kenneth Watson, who lives in Flint, Michigan with his parents, Daniel and Wilona Watson, his older brother Byron, and younger sister Joetta. The opening chapters establish Kenny as a very bright and shy 4th grader who has difficulty making true friends until Rufus Fry arrives in town from Arkansas. Rufus is also bullied by the students at Clark Elementary for his "country" clothes and accent, making Kenny reluctant to befriend him at first, but they are soon inseparable. Kenny is alternatively bullied and protected by his 13 year old brother Byron and his friend, Buphead, whom he calls "an official teenage juvenile delinquent". Byron has been retained twice because he often skips school and is still in 6th grade. He invents a series of "fantastic adventures" which constantly get him into trouble and include playing with matches in the house and setting things on fire, abusing his parent's credit at the corner grocery store to buy himself treats, and getting a "conk" hairstyle against his parents' orders. Daniel and Wilona eventually become so frustrated with their inability to "straighten out" Byron that they decide to send him to Birmingham, Alabama to live with Grandma Gloria Sands (Wilona's mother) for at least the summer and possibly an entire year. As soon as the school year concludes, the Watsons ready their car ("the Brown Bomber") and embark on a road trip from Flint to Birmingham to deliver Byron to his grandma. Kenny had been looking forward to the "battle royal" between his grandma and Byron, but is disappointed when just a few sharp words from the "old, old lady" have Byron speaking respectfully and generally behaving himself, causing Kenny to seek out his own "adventures". Grandma Sands warns the children to avoid a particular local swimming hole because of a dangerous whirlpool, which Kenny misheard as "Wool Pooh" due to her thick Alabama accent. Kenny wants to swim there anyway, and is frustrated when Byron and Joetta refuse to go along. Ignoring the warnings of both Grandma Sands and Byron, Kenny jumps into the seemingly tranquil pool and edges deeper and deeper water until the whirlpool catches him and almost pulls him down, but Byron saves him. Remembering his grandmother's words, he imagines that a strange monster he thinks is the mysterious Wool Pooh swam up from below to grab his ankle and pull him under. Byron later insists that there was nothing else in the water, but Kenny is convinced that the Wool Pooh actually exists. Shortly afterwards, a bomb goes off at a nearby church where Joetta is attending Sunday school. Kenny wanders into the still-smoking church in the immediate aftermath looking for his sister, but instead sees the Wool Pooh in the smoke clinging to a torn girl's shoe that looks like Joetta's. In shock, he walks back to Grandma Sands' house without anyone noticing that he had been at the church, and he's again shocked and confused to find Joetta already there. She claims that it was Kenny who had called her away from the church and led her home, and she does not even know that a bombing had taken place right after she'd left Sunday school. As soon as they realize that Joetta is safe, the Watsons decide to immediately return home to Flint, trying to avoid explaining the full implications of what has happened to the children. Kenny is unable to process the events in Birmingham and avoids his family and friends over the ensuing weeks, instead spending many hours hiding behind the sofa. Byron eventually coaxes him out and gets Kenny to talk about what happened, which finally brings a flood of tears from Kenny. Encouraging his little brother to "keep on stepping", Byron explains that although the world is not perfect, he has to keep moving on. ===== After accidentally meeting, Mridula (Nagma) and Arun (Prabhu Deva) fall in love. The young couple both come from affluent families, and so, to test whether they will be suited for a long term relationship, they both decide to live together. However, a few months into their relationship, Arun and Mridula get in an accident and Arun dies. A devastated Mridula is unable to get over his absence, and before long starts seeing Arun in strange visions everywhere she goes. Her family eventually decide that relocating to another country might help Mridula move on, and so they send her to the UK. Once she arrives there, she meets Mano (Raja), a young man attracted to her. She knows that her parents expect her to fall for Mano. But as she can't move on, she runs away. She meets David who looks exactly like Arun. She follows him and finds out where he lives and works. Whenever she tries to talk to him, he denies his relationship with her and says he doesn't know her. However, she later finds out that her father had Arun sent away as he had helped with Arun's sister's marriage and had threatened to let it all go downhill for her. Arun moves to the UK in hopes that he can forget about Mridula but he can't and when he meets her, he realises this. When Mridula's father finds out Arun is still alive, he tries to kill him. However, he realises his mistake and lets the lovebirds reunite. ===== Fred is treating the Mystery Inc. gang to share in his birthday present: a mystery cruise, compliments of his parents Skip and Peggy. While preparing for the ship launch, Scooby and Shaggy have a creepy encounter with a sinister-looking cloaked man, whom the duo are sure is up to no good. The gang meet the hyper Cruise Director, Sunny St. Cloud, and the captain, Captain Crothers. The Captain says they are bound for the Bermuda Triangle, and St. Cloud promises some creepy intrigue. A montage of sloppy "mysteries" that are staged by St. Cloud and Captain Crothers follow, which the gang solves with ease. This peeves the other guests, who have no mysteries to solve now. Soon they rescue Rupert Garcia, a man lost at sea, who tells of an encounter with ghost pirates. The gang naturally assumes that this is a setup to another mystery. He is taken below deck as a man in a jet-pack appears from the sky and lands on deck. He turns out to be Biff Wellington, an English billionaire who is known to be fun-loving yet eccentric. He plans to stay on the ship as well. That night, the gang attends a costume party dinner. The creepy cloaked man appears on stage, who turns out to be Mister Mysterio, a famous hypnotist. Shaggy and Scooby are picked from the audience to demonstrate his powers, but they prove immune to his hypnotism: yet the audience falls under the trance. Mysterio dispels the hypnotism and disappears in a puff of smoke. The creepy fog then engulfs the cruise ship. The ghost pirates led by Captain Skunkbeard and his first mate Wally, wreak havoc, chasing the cruise guests, whom all mysteriously disappear. Skip and Peggy are kidnapped, and the pirates retreat back to the galleon and leave (after sinking the cruise ship). At this time, the gang realizes it is a real mystery, and they and Rupert are the only ones left aboard the damaged ship. With his help, they follow the glowing trail left behind by the galleon and arrive in a secret harbor. There, they find Rupert's old ship, and then are captured by the ghost pirates, who take them aboard their galleon. The pirates are looking to find a meteor of mystic power, which fell into the triangle 200 years ago and could be pinpointed using Rupert's antique painting and his skills as an astrophotographer. The gang is tied to the mast along with Skip, but there are no other cruise guests around. The galleon enters the heart of the triangle, and begins to see past ghosts from the triangle: The Flight 19, USS Cyclops, even a sea serpent. Amidst this, the gang manages to escape and explore below deck. They find a lot of modern equipment that was used to project the ghostly images just witnessed. The ship enters an odd ring of rocks, and pulls up the meteor, which glows golden yellow. The gang then engineer a trap, which fails. The pirates then attempt to re-capture the gang, leading to a trademark Scooby-Doo chase sequence, in which the entire pirate crew are captured by Scooby and Shaggy. Captain Skunkbeard is revealed to be Wellington, and Wally is revealed to be Mysterio. The rest of the pirates turn out to be the cruise guests, Rupert's shipmates, and past conquests of the pirates. Wellington explains that Mysterio convinced him that he was the reincarnation of a pirate years ago, and could use the meteor to teleport back in time. Mysterio used this ruse to get Wellington to finance the search for the meteor. The crew were just hypnosis victims under Mysterio's power. Mysterio's true motive was that the meteor itself is pure gold and he was going to steal it to make himself rich, but then he is stopped by Scooby. At this time, a volcanic reaction hits, and the gang deduces the forces of the triangle want the meteor back, so they drop it back in the water, and some steering by Fred narrowly gets the galleon out of the ring as it crumbles into the sea. The cruise guests use the galleon as a large party boat as they sail back to Miami to drop off the villains to the authorities. ===== Malik Solanka, a Cambridge-educated millionaire from Bombay, is looking for an escape from himself. At first he escapes from his academic life by immersing himself into a world of miniatures (after becoming enamored with the miniature houses on display at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), eventually creating a puppet called "Little Brain" and leaving the academy for television. However, dissatisfaction with the rising popularity of "Little Brain" serves to ignite deeper demons within Solanka's life, resulting in the narrowly avoided murder of his wife and child. To further escape, Solanka travels to New York, hopeful he can lose himself and his demons in America, only to find that he is forced to confront himself. ===== Mikey and his stepmother Rose are contract killers and lovers. The two continue with their line of work despite the fact that Rose is suffering from cancer. Organized crime kingpin Clayton suspects that his pregnant wife Vicki may have been unfaithful, so he hires Mikey and Rose to kill her. Upon entering Clayton's mansion, Rose heads for Vicki's bedroom while Vicki is on the phone with her best friend Neisha. But as Rose enters Vicki's bedroom, Vicki's water breaks and she goes into labor. Taking pity on Vicki, Rose uses her prior medical training to deliver Vicki's baby, a boy she later names Anthony. Afterward, Mikey and Rose drive Vicki and her infant son to a local motel. At Rose's request, Mikey calls Dr. Don, Clayton's private doctor. Dr. Don arrives with his drug addicted nurse/lover, Precious. Dr. Don provides medical assistance to Vicki and her baby before leaving. Over Mikey's objections, Rose insists that they take Vicki and her infant son to a safe place. The four end up in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Neisha arrives at Clayton's mansion, demanding to know where Vicki is. Clayton becomes nervous that Neisha knows too much and pays Mikey to kill her, which he does by poisoning. Mikey and Rose then move Vicki and her son to a house in upstate Pennsylvania. Mikey carries on with the contract killings alone as Rose has become too ill to accompany him. At the baby's first birthday party, Rose decides she would rather die than suffer from cancer. She and Mikey have sex in the woods, and she has Mikey shoot her as she reaches orgasm. Before she dies, Rose makes Mikey promise to protect Vicki and her baby. Mikey, Vicki, and Anthony live safely for seven years. Sometime later, Precious discovers Dr. Don performing oral sex on a patient. Hurt and betrayed, Precious leaves his office while threatening to get her revenge. Vicki becomes concerned about Anthony when she sees him watching Mikey assemble a gun. She later asks Mikey to leave, saying that he does not have to protect them anymore. Mikey realizes that he has grown attached to Anthony and tells Vicki that he wants to stay. Clayton finds out from Precious that Vicki and Anthony are alive. Clayton then kills Precious in front of Dr. Don, then shoots him in the leg. Mikey, deciding that he no longer wants to kill, determines that his next contract kill will be his final one. When Mikey checks into a hotel he opens the file on his contract, only to find a picture of himself and Vicki leaving their house. Mikey then calls Vicki. Clayton's bodyguard instead answers the phone, causing Mikey to rush home and right into Clayton's trap. Clayton tortures Mikey in the basement, in part by snipping off one of his fingers with a pair of hedge clippers. Vicki and Anthony are forced to watch. Clayton then turns around to taunt Vicki. At that moment, Mikey disarms the thug who held him down during the finger snipping. During the ensuing struggle, Mikey manages to overpower Clayton and the remaining thug. Clayton recovers and is about to shoot Mikey when Anthony shoots Clayton in the back. After sending Vicki and Anthony outside, Mikey kills Clayton's two unconscious thugs. Mikey then does the same to Clayton after commenting to him just how proud of Anthony Clayton probably is. Mikey, Vicki, and Anthony escape. Anthony ask Mikey if he is his son, and Mikey replies that he is. Mikey also cautions Anthony to watch out for people like Clayton and his men; the boy responds, "We'll kill 'em." ===== An earthquake releases a bunch of mutant cockroaches that can create fire by rubbing their cerci together. Eventually, most of the bugs die because they cannot survive in the low air pressure on the Earth's surface, but a scientist, Professor James Parmiter (Dillman), keeps one alive in a pressure chamber. He successfully breeds the mutant cockroach with a modern cockroach, creating a breed of intelligent, flying super-cockroaches. ===== Commanders Worf and Jadzia Dax plan their long-awaited wedding. Since Dax will be joining Worf's surrogate family, the House of Martok, she agrees to endure the traditional evaluation by the mistress of the house, Martok's wife, Sirella. Dax is surprised to learn that as a non-Klingon she will almost certainly fail to gain Sirella's favor. Learning that Sirella disapproves of Dax, Worf asks Martok to intervene, but Martok refuses to interfere with Sirella's prerogative. Worf invites his son Alexander, as well as Captain Sisko, Chief O'Brien, and Dr. Bashir to join him and Martok in Kal'Hyah, the traditional Klingon "bachelor party". The four of them are disappointed to learn that unlike what they imagined the Klingons' idea of a bachelor party to be, the Kal'Hyah is actually a multi-day ceremonial ordeal featuring fasting, bloodletting and other physical trials. Dax struggles to meet Sirella's exacting standards. When asked to recite the history of the Sirella's family, Dax infuriates her prospective mother-in-law by revealing her discovery that Sirella has no imperial blood, and is descended from a concubine. Dax throws herself a pre-wedding party. In the midst of the drinking, debauchery, and a fire dance by Dax's friend Lieutenant Atoa, Sirella enters, and demands Dax join her for a ritual. When Dax tells her to leave, Sirella threatens to cancel the wedding. The confrontation ends with Sirella declaring Dax an enemy. The next morning, Worf informs Dax that Sirella has forbidden her to join the House of Martok. He asks her to beg Sirella's forgiveness, but Dax refuses to endure any further humiliation just so Worf can have a Klingon ceremony. Worf and Dax call off the wedding. Martok convinces Worf to apologize to Dax, but she refuses to change her mind. Determined to see the lovers wed, Sisko goes to see Dax. She describes the indignities to which she has been subjected, reminding Sisko that, as Curzon Dax, she was Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Sisko points out that even though she shares Curzon's memories, she is a new person, and that Sirella sees her only as a young woman who wants to marry into her family. Sisko states that Dax knew what she was getting into when she agreed to marry Worf, and she must honor the traditions of his people. Warmed by her deep love for Worf, Dax follows Sisko's advice, and they are married with Sirella's blessing. ===== The platoon are excited by the broadcast, which they will be performing from the church hall where a microphone and radio speaker have already been set up. There is a great deal of excitement in the platoon, though the typically cynical Chief ARP Warden Hodges bets they will "make a right mess of it"; he then leaves to go and listen on the Verger's wireless. During a run-through practice of the script, the BBC producer, Mr. Willerby Troughton-Maxwell (who is heard from Broadcasting House over the speaker), annoys Captain Mainwaring by telling him he doesn't sound like an officer, and suggesting that he and Sergeant Wilson switch parts. Mainwaring points out very firmly "I am the officer and he is the sergeant, and that's the way it's staying!" Meanwhile, Lance Corporal Jones irritates both Troughton-Maxwell and the BBC sound engineer present at the broadcast by continually banging on the microphone. Sergeant Wilson's lines have been written to be spoken in a Cockney accent which doesn't suit him too well. The rest of the men play-up to their usual roles. The BBC sound effects team are unable to make it to the broadcast because their van has broken down, and so the platoon are forced to imitate the required coastal noises (namely wind, waves and seagulls, the latter being Private Pike's only contribution) themselves. Later, the platoon is ready and waiting to go on the air, but strangely nothing seems to be happening; not even the BBC engineer knows what is going on. Hodges enters to ask "What happened to you lot?" and says that the programme is all over; he has just been listening to the King's speech and "Old Mother Riley's Christmas Party is on now". Troughton-Maxwell apologises, revealing that a preceding broadcast from Hong Kong overran and the platoon's contribution has had to be dropped, because the BBC could not keep His Majesty waiting. The platoon take their revenge by all banging repeatedly on the microphone. ===== Captain Bill Fathom was captain of a submarine called the Argonaut. He and his crew would have various adventures, similar to those of Clutch Cargo or Jonny Quest. ===== In 1928, Esteban Rigores lies wounded on a beach after taking part ina failed coup against the brutal regime of Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez. Fearing death is near, he orders Basilio, his mute servant, to search for Adriana, his daughter, and leave her his fortune. Neither Esteban nor Basilio know what Adriana looks like. When Basilio asks the girl's mother, Beatriz Ayala, now married to Salvador Asensio, one of Gomez's ministers, about the girl, she lies to him that her daughter died in childbirth, or at least that is what her parents told her. Unconvinced, Basilio goes to the house of Don Alejandro, Esteban's friend. There, she meets Adriana, and he immediately recognizes her as Esteban's daughter. But Adriana doesn't know her origins, believing she is an orphan adopted by Alejandro out of charity. Although Alejandro and Encarnación, his wife, have always been kind to Adriana, she is nothing but a glorified servant. Their children, the selfish María Consuelo looks down on her, idealistic Luis Alberto loves her secretly, and young María Eugenia who's always seen Adriana as a sister, now resents her when she realises her fiancé is attracted to the girl's beauty. Ma. Eugenia's fiancé, the arrogant Captain Mauricio Lofiego, is a man used to getting whatever he wants, a trait he has inherited from Purificacion Burgos, his mother. Purificacion is not only one of the richest women in Venezuela, but she's also got General Gomez's ear. Few people are know that Burgos's fortune comes from prostitution. Adriana gives Alejandro the documents she's unable to read since they're written in French and English. Alejandro discovers that Adriana is now the owner of a huge fortune. That same evening, Mauricio breaks off his engagement with María Eugenia and makes love to Adriana. Alejandro sees him leaving the girl's room and vows revenge. Several attempts are made to separate Adriana and Mauricio, but their love grows stronger, especially after she discovers she is pregnant. Meanwhile, a recovered Esteban and Beatriz have joined efforts to investigate the whereabouts of their child. Adriana plans to escape with Mauricio, but she disappears mysteriously. Under the orders of Alejandro and Purificacion, she is taken to a mental asylum where she is subjected to horrible tortures, and she loses her baby and her mind. Believing Adriana lied to him, Mauricio married Maria Eugenia. Several years go by, and Adriana has lost her beauty and mind, but she has two friends at the asylum, the kind Helena, and Saul, a political prisoner. When Gomez dies, Saul escapes the asylum together with Adriana and Helena. Adriana finds Basilio who directs her to her father Esteban who had escaped to Paris. Esteban will utilise his fortune to restore his daughter's beauty and educate her. In 1941, Adriana returns to Caracas, rich and powerful, newly transformed as Ximena, but she is called "La Dueña", and ready to take revenge against the families that locked her up. ===== The game opens with a self-proclaimed general named Kilbaba (Mubaba in the Super NES version) seizing control of an unnamed, fictional Gulf state. Installing himself as dictator, Kilbaba quickly begins fortifying his position with military weapons and installations, including facilities for building nuclear bombs. The United States decides to send in a single helicopter, piloted by the player's unnamed character and aided by a co-pilot, to infiltrate and destroy Kilbaba's forces in a series of swift strikes. Altogether, four missions need to be resolved: *In the first level (Air Superiority), the player must destroy several enemy airstrips and their support facilities, as well as liberate an exposed pro-American spy who holds important information about Kilbaba's next plans. *The next mission (Scud Buster) entails locating and destroying a chemical weapons plant and a number of scud launchers wielding chemically charged missiles, and evacuate local and American non-combatants and P.O.W.s. *The third mission (Embassy City) revolves around rescuing a U.N. inspection team, destroying a biological weapons plant and those bio-warhead missiles ready for deployment, as well as rescuing a large number of hostages, including the personnel from a local American embassy. *In the final stage (Nuclear Storm), the player must - among other things - prevent the destruction of a major oil production facility, disable a nuclear power plant and several finished parts for nuclear weapons, and finally take down Kilbaba himself. Kilbaba attempts to escape in a bomber plane armed with nuclear bombs, so the player must destroy him and his plane before it leaves the runway. The game's plot was felt by commentators to be a thinly disguised reference to the Gulf War, while comparisons were drawn between Kilbaba and Saddam Hussein, and between the game's unnamed desert setting and Iraq. ===== Damud Hellstrike, the Prince of Darkness, has taken away the Golden Axe and put an evil curse over all the warriors. However, one of the heroes has their curse relieved and is sent to set things straight – lift the curse off the others, defeat the villain and return with the Golden Axe. ===== Luke is a restless and reckless drifter and Jon is a relatively timid and pessimistic film critic. Both are gay and HIV positive. After an unconventional meeting, and after Luke kills a homophobic police officer, they go on a road trip with the motto "Fuck everything." ===== A young married couple, Celia (Meredith Monroe) and David (Matt Keeslar), move into a new home and meet their seemingly venerable neighbor Harold (George Wendt). Harold is in fact a psychotic killer who has created a family using the skeletons of his former victims. His family consists of a wife and a daughter, and later a father and a mother, all of whom Harold seems to believe are fully alive. He dresses them in clothing, moves them around the house, and talks with them as if they can talk back. He also hallucinates that a teenage girl was asking him to kill her so his "daughter" could have a sister, and at dinner, he hears Celia express a desire to have rough sex right there on the table. There is also the hint that he replaces family members when he finds a new victim. Celia and David, however, have a secret of their own: years ago, Harold killed their daughter, and they have been tracking him down ever since. They lure him into a trap and exact their revenge. David says they can torture him 10 to 14 more days, and Harold's frightened reaction appears behind the end credits. ===== Major Robert Parrish (Dale Robertson) of the 7th Cavalry is considered by some to be his own worst enemy because he's not a "team player". Formerly one of the youngest Colonels in the Union Army during the American Civil War, he is now a company commander under Lt. Colonel (formerly Brevet Major General during the Civil War) George Armstrong Custer (Douglas Kennedy). His fiancée Kathy (Mary Murphy), daughter of Parrish's commanding general, breaks off their engagement because he has not risen in rank. Parrish gains no friends amongst the civilian community when he chastises them and threatens to "break heads" when they violate Sioux lands. Custer and Parrish's exasperated General and once prospective father-in-law reassigns Parrish and his company to the Bureau of Indian Affairs where Parrish is outraged at the treatment of the Indians and refuses to carry out the orders of the Indian Agent to shoot his escaping charges. Parrish is court martialed and visits his former commanding general--now President of the United States--Ulysses S. Grant--who demotes him to Captain. Parrish convinces the President to come to the Western frontier to meet Sitting Bull and prevent a war. Back in the West, now Captain Parrish meets Kathy who has announced her engagement with Charles Wentworth (William Hopper), a former major and now a war correspondent. Using captured Indians, including Sam, a former slave now a Sioux, Parrish meets with Sitting Bull (J. Carrol Naish) who agrees to meet the President in a secret meeting. Further conflicts with the Sioux lead Custer to lead his Regiment out assigning Parrish to guard supplies. Following the Battle of the Little Bighorn that eliminates Custer, most of his men, and his romantic rival Wentworth, Parrish tries to befriend Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse (Iron Eyes Cody). As Parrish knows the US Army's plan of attack, he leads the Sioux to safety in the North. Parrish is court-martialed again, stripped of his rank, and sentenced to death by firing squad for treason. As the execution is about to take place, Sitting Bull comes to the fort to speak with President Grant. Parrish had told him "the Great Chief will understand," believing he would show mercy to him because his only intention was to prevent more killing. Sitting Bull's pleads with Grant to spare his life. Grant then commutes his sentence to being discharged from the service. ===== The story concerns a deadly feud between two rival bike gangs. The Angels are out for revenge against their rival gang, the Las Vegas Hotdoggers, who severely beat their leader, Mother (Michael Greene). Mother is just returning to the Angels and his old lady, Marlene (Jennifer Gan), had become the property of Fingers (Richard Rust), the new head of the clan. When Mother reappears, he quickly reassumes the gang's leadership and rights to the strawberry blonde, lascivious, foul-mouthed Marlene. The Angels go looking for the Hotdoggers at their hang out, a bar in Las Vegas. Not finding their rivals, the Angels ruin the bar and terrorize the local citizenry. A lone Hotdogger betrays his gang and tells the Angels of a secret mine to hang out in the desert where they can find his gang. Later that evening, Marlene and Mother are riding his chopper around Vegas, when a showgirl in a car catches his eye. He leaves with the showgirl and returns to find Marlene is livid with rage. Setting out into the desert, the Angels and Mother argue about what to do and how to travel through the said desert. Marlene angrily insults Mother. The mother gets angry and says that everyone in the gang can have Marlene. No one in the gang accepts, so Mother takes off on his own. The Angels and finally Mother meet again at the mine hideout with the Hotdoggers. A dynamite stick brings the Hotdoggers out of the mine for a brawl with tire chains, knives, fists, and boots. The Hotdogger leader steals Angel's bike, but Mother rides him down and finishes him off while the Angels look on and cheer. After taking revenge on all the Hotdoggers, Fingers and Mother fight it out at the end, but only one can be the leader of the Angels. ===== Today view of Saint-Tropez port, and arriving sequence in film, also with many film action filmed there. Ludovic Cruchot (played by Louis de Funès), a highly uptight gendarme in a small French village, has been reassigned to the seaside commune of Saint-Tropez under the orders of command sergeant major Gerber (played by Michel Galabru), who takes no lip from his outspoken new subordinate. In addition, his daughter Nicole quickly adapts to the life in the city and, much to Cruchot's traditional-minded chagrin, begins to mix with the local carefree youths who often blatantly defy her father's official authority. Soon, the gendarmes find themselves confronted with a major problem: a group of persistent nudists. Any attempts to arrest them in flagrante delicto is foiled by a lookout; but after several failures, Cruchot manages to hatch a master plan and succeeds in getting all the nude swimmers arrested. Later, Cruchot discovers that his daughter and her boyfriend have stolen and crashed an expensive Mustang sports car into a ditch. Unbeknown to any of them, the car belongs to a gang of robbers who have stolen a Rembrandt painting, which is still in the trunk. Cruchot manages to get the car out, but realizes that the objects he threw out of the car to fix a puncture, including the painting, are valuable items. The man who pretends to own the painting then kidnaps Cruchot, but Nicole and her friends knock out the group that kidnapped her father, and the painting is returned to its rightful owner. ===== Ever since their childhood, Ryōta Satō and Chika Koizumi have been close friends, going so far as to pinky swear to marry each other. The story begins when they are both now in their fifth year of elementary school in class 5-2 together with their group of friends Yūki Asano, Kazumi Aihara, Natsumi Hirakawa, Megumi Hidaka, Kōji Imai, Tsubasa Kawai. While making his way to sixth year, much to his own dismay, Ryōta is often forced unwillingly into compromising situations. ===== Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell) is a teenage loner who lives on his father's (Ciarán Hinds) large estate near Peebles. His hobby is spying on people from his tree house. Hallam is convinced that his stepmother, Verity (Claire Forlani), is responsible for his mother's death by drowning two years earlier. Hallam's sister leaves home to attend university and it becomes clear that Verity and his father want Hallam to move on as well. Hallam initially refuses due to his suspicion of Verity, but she uses his diaries first to have sex with him and then to blackmail him into leaving. To escape his father and stepmother, Hallam travels to Edinburgh. Upon arrival in Edinburgh, Hallam sees Kate (Sophia Myles), an administrator at the Balmoral Hotel, located in the city centre. Kate bears a striking resemblance to his late mother. He manages to persuade her to give him a job as a kitchen porter in the hotel. Hallam makes his home in the clock tower of the hotel because of its vantage point over Kate's home in a top flat, where he can spy on her. He also spies on Kate through a skylight on her roof, clambering over the roofscape to reach his vantage point. Hallam learns that another senior hotel employee, Alasdair (Jamie Sives), is having an extra-marital affair with Kate. Alasdair then discovers Hallam's lookout in the clock tower. Hallam attempts to blackmail Alasdair with the knowledge of his adultery, but Alasdair dismisses him. Hallam retaliates by finding Alasdair's wife and child and thereby demonstrating the ability, if he wishes, to inform her of the affair, which forces Alasdair to give him back his job. Hallam eventually works his way up to being a front-of-house porter at the hotel. On his eighteenth birthday, Kate invites Hallam to have a few drinks after work. Whilst drunk, Hallam reveals his continuing love for his late mother. This seems to fascinate Kate, as she "likes creepy guys". A complex relationship starts to build between Hallam and Kate from this point. Kate first invites him home with her that night, and when she attempts to seduce him, he begins to get uncomfortable and instead they sleep in the same bed. The next day, he asks her on a date and she rejects him. Later, she asks him to one of the hotel rooms and they have sex. When Hallam is watching Kate, Alasdair confronts her and begins to act violently. Hallam comes through the skylight to save her, which results in her finding out that he had been spying. She tells Alasdair to leave. She punishes Hallam by making him stand nude and explain to her why he was spying. She feels bad for him after he tells her about his mother and she lets him stay. She puts on the dress that Hallam keeps that used to be his mother's. When Hallam sees her, he cries, and they fall asleep together. At this time, Hallam's father and stepmother track Hallam down because of his having reported his suspicions about his mother's death to the police in Edinburgh. Hallam's father has run up significant debts and needs to develop some of the land on the estate, but Hallam is entitled to consultation under his mother's will. Hallam refuses to co-operate due to his suspicion of Verity. Hallam's hatred of Verity consumes him entirely, and he tries to drown her in the loch by his father's house. However, his humanity takes over and he revives her. Only at this point does his father reveal that he had made no attempt to prevent Hallam's mother from committing suicide. This revelation allows Hallam to realise that his anger is in fact with his mother for leaving him. This cathartic moment enables him to move on for the first time, and the film ends with him happy and content walking the streets of Edinburgh. ===== Fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, mankind is decimated and the surviving nations—the western- influenced Market and the Russian-influenced Confederation—have agreed to outlaw traditional open war. In their place, disputes are settled with gladiator-style matches between giant robots operated by pilots called "robot jox" who are contracted to fight ten matches. The Confederation champion is Alexander (Paul Koslo), who has killed his last nine opponents thanks in part to a spy in the Market leaking information to the Confederation. The Market's champion, Achilles (Gary Graham) has won nine fights and will fight his final match against Alexander for the territory of Alaska. Achilles is supported by robot designer "Doc" Matsumoto (Danny Kamekona) and strategist Tex Conway (Michael Alldredge), the only jox to win all ten of his contract fights. As Achilles gets the upper hand in the match, Alexander launches a rocket fist at him. The projectile goes out of control and heads toward the bleachers. Achilles intercepts the projectile but his robot takes the full force of the impact and is knocked into the crowd, killing over 300 people. The referees declare the match a draw and order a rematch, but Achilles, shaken by what happened, declares this was his contractual tenth match and announces his retirement. He goes to live with his brother Philip and his family, and finds he is publicly branded a traitor and a coward. Meanwhile, a new jox is chosen to face Alexander, a genetically engineered "gen jox" named Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), who is the first female jox. Worried for Athena and attracted to her, Achilles returns to the Market and agrees to fight Alexander again, infuriating Athena. As Achilles' robot is rebuilt, Matsumoto refuses to divulge any knowledge of its new weapons so it cannot be leaked by the spy, and Conway confides in Achilles he believes Matsumoto is the spy. Conway confronts Matsumoto in his office. Matsumoto reveals he has analyzed Conway's final fight and deduced that the "lucky" laser hit Conway claims allowed him to defeat a clearly superior opponent was in fact deliberately aimed; Matsumoto accuses Conway of being a Confederation agent. Conway confesses and shoots Matsumoto, who secretly records the deed as part of the mission briefing. Conway informs the Market leadership that Matsumoto was the spy. On the day of the fight Athena drugs Achilles and steals his jox suit to commandeer the robot. Unable to stop the fight once she takes the field, the Market decides to support her. While watching Matsumoto's briefing on the robot's new weaponry, the footage of Conway killing Matsumoto is played and Conway jumps down the robot's elevator shaft to his death. Alexander takes the field against Athena. Athena takes the early advantage, but Alexander overpowers her and incapacitates the robot. The fight is declared in Alexander's favor and referees order him to stand down. Achilles arrives on the field and takes over the robot from Athena while Alexander smashes the referee hovercraft; the two jox stand to continue the fight. Both robots take to the air and a short space battle ensues. Alexander critically damages Achilles' robot, forcing him to crash land and flee for cover to the arm of Alexander's robot Athena sliced off earlier in the fight. Achilles hotwires the arm to launch its fist at Alexander, destroying his robot. Alexander emerges from the wreckage and the two battle with poles before Achilles finally convinces Alexander a match does not have to end with the death of a jock. Alexander throws down his weapon, and they salute each other with the jox's traditional "crash and burn" fist bump. ===== The story is a "sprawling, episodic adventure story, a comedy of brash manners and something of a detective mystery", according to Roderick Watson. It revolves around the abandoned wreck of the Flying Scud at Midway Atoll. Clues in a stamp collection are used to track down the missing crew and solve the mystery. It is only in the last chapter that different story elements become linked. Stevenson described it as a "South Sea yarn" concerning "a very strange and defective plan that was accepted with open eyes for what seemed countervailing opportunities offered". The book sold well but reviews were mixed, with a New York Times reviewer concluding that: The loosely connected stories reflect how Stevenson and Osbourne wrote the book. Each contributed different sections, but agreed to develop characters and descriptions of places they both knew well. The following are examples: * The schooner Equator (1888–1953) inspired the story. Its remains are preserved in a shed at Marina Park at the Port of Everett, Washington. * Jack Buckland was a handsome, happy-go-lucky fellow passenger with Osbourne and Stevenson on the 1890 Janet Nicholl voyage.The Cruise of the Janet Nichol among the South Sea Islands A Diary by Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson (first published 1914), republished 2004, editor, Roslyn Jolly (U. of Washington Press/U. of New South Wales Press) He inspired the character of "Remittance Man" Tommy Hadden.Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Biography, 2 vols. John A. Steuart, (1924). Boston: Little, Brown & Co.Treasured Islands: Cruising the South Seas With Robert Louis Stevenson. Lowell D. Holmes, (2001). Sheridan House. James Cowan, (1937). R. L. S. and his Friends Some Stevenson Memories. New Zealand Railways Magazine, 12(2):59-61. ===== The spinship Helix has not yet reached a suitable destination when it receives a distress signal from a binary star system. Four of the five shipboard AI (apparently formerly of the TechnoCore; in characteristic Simmons fashion, each is patterned after a famous literary figure, in this case, Japanese: Saigyo, Lady Murasaki, Ikkyu, Basho, and Ryōkan) decide that the call is worth investigating, not least because of the further anomaly that the orbital forest around the lesser of the two stars, which the AIs intend to resupply their ship from, is of neither Ouster nor Templar construction, though they may have settled on it. The AIs awaken certain crewmembers, and together they enter the system, where they are greeted by hundreds of thousands of space- adapted Ousters; they importune the Helix to save their civilization from an enormous and ancient harvester spaceship (which gathers food, air, and water), which visits every 57 years, and is so programmatically inflexible that it sees the Ouster and Templar settlements as infestations of the tree-ring, and attempts to cleanse it by eradicating them. Over the centuries, the colony's technological infrastructure has been steadily ground under by its assaults, and many die attacking or being attacked. A brief assay of the harvester's defenses (for the 57 years have elapsed since the last visit, and the harvester has arrived) by one of the Helix armed vessels reveal the ancient device to be minimally defended and weakened by age; easily destroyed. However, the harvester is presumably being used by its creators, and destroying it might be tantamount to condemning that civilization to slow starvation and death. Even despite its misdeeds, the crew of the Helix cannot countenance that possibility, though they saw no inhabitants in the other, red-giant system. Since they cannot get to the system normally before the harvester strikes again, the crew votes to risk the Helix and its hundreds of thousands of stored inhabitants by making a very short Hawking drive jump. The jump succeeds, and they begin scanning the system for life. On an inspiration, they scan inside the red giant star, and discover a truly ancient rocky world which the star had enveloped in its expansion. It is honey-combed, and occupied by a curious oxygen-breathing race, whose primary method of technological communication is via modulated gravity waves (explaining the failure of previous attempts to contact the harvester). Aboard is Ces Ambre, the only survivor of the family which took in Raul Endymion; though she is not an Aenean, she received the Aenean nano-technology; she cannot freecast, but she is capable of empathatic communication with the more than 3 billion "modular... so fibrous" minds in the cinder planet. She successfully explains the harm their harvester has caused. They are devastated to learn of what they had done, and immediately transmit a gravitonic sequence which would reprogram the harvester (they offer further to commit collective suicide to atone for their crimes, but the Spectrum feels that this is not needed), as indeed it does. They also reveal the reason they stubbornly stay in their original planet and constructed the harvester and tree-ring: they like their home, and don't want to leave. Ces Ambre offers a vial of her blood to the tree-ring inhabitants; though she is not philosophically an Aenean and refrains from using her abilities, she feels that the natives should have the choice. The crew return to hibernation, and the AI direct the Helix on its way under Hawking drive. Mysteriously, the Shrike, Dem Loa (Ces Ambre's mother), and "Petyr, son of Aenea and Endymion" appear on the bridge. Petyr briefly communes directly with the AIs, healing Basho's psychological conflicts, and directing them to divert the Helix to a nice, but challenging system. He and Dem Loa then vanish, apparently using the Shrike as a method of locomotion. ===== Chronologically, the sequence of events in the game begins millennia ago. Mother is an ancient water deity who is imprisoned below the earth upon the creation of light. At the same time, Mother's mate, Otoshigo, fled to the depths of the ocean. Over time, Mother has remained always determined to return to the surface, and as such, has sent out avatars ('possessed' human beings over whom she exerts a degree of control) to prepare the way for her return. However, they continually fail to achieve their mission, and never return to the Underworld. In 1976, an underwater cable was cut, and all power to Yamijima Island was lost. The four- year-old Shu Mikami finds a young woman washed up on the shore of the island. The woman, Kanae, bears an extraordinary resemblance to Shu's dead mother, and he and Kanae soon become inseparable, as she moves in with Shu and his father. However, the Yamijima locals instinctively fear her because of her aversion to sunlight. Kanae is actually an avatar of Mother, whose mission is to manipulate Shu into opening the seven gates of the Underworld, which are located on Yamijima Island, and which keep Mother imprisoned. However, before Kanae can complete her mission, Tsuneo Ohta determines she must be killed. On a stormy night, Shu is awoken by the villagers, who have caught Kanae in the act of killing Ryuhei. Shu discovers the body of his father, but he flees when he sees another man in the doorway of the house – the man is in fact his older self. Kanae escapes the villagers and reunites with Shu, but when trapped by the group on the pier, the stone walkway gives out underneath them and they fall into the ocean. Shu manages to swim to a small boat, but Kanae drowns as Shu watches; the experience proving so traumatic that he goes blind. Meanwhile, Mother sends a tsunami to destroy the villagers in revenge for the death of Kanae. Local authorities are subsequently at a loss as to explain how Yamijima's undersea power cable was severed, or how the entire population of the island disappeared. In 2005, Ryuko Tagawa has been sent to earth as another avatar. However, she finds living as a human so comfortable, she forgets her original purpose and settles into a normal life. Meanwhile, Yuri Kishida, an innocent young girl, is kidnapped by Mother and hidden in a warehouse in Sanzu Harbor. Mother creates another avatar using Yuri's identity, and sends her to visit Ryuko, killing her for failing in her mission. Yuri then heads to Sanzu Harbour to watch the departure of the protagonists for Yamijima Island, as Mother knows that amongst them is the person who will release her. At the harbor, Mamoru Itsuki, Shu Mikami, Soji Abe, Akiko Kiyota and Ikuko Kifune board a small boat heading for Yamijima Island. Mamoru wants to investigate the mystery of 1976 for a magazine article. Shu is returning to the island in an attempt to rediscover the lost memories of his childhood. Soji has been accused of Ryuko's murder and, along with Akiko, is fleeing to the island. Ikuko is a dock worker and is on the boat as a deckhand, although she has found herself inexplicably drawn to the island for some time. En route, a large mass passes by the boat unseen by anyone, the waves turn red, a storm appears from nowhere, and a tsunami capsizes the vessel, splitting the passengers up. At the same time, a military helicopter carrying Private Yorito Nagai, Major Takeaki Misawa and Sergeant Hiroshi Okita crashes on Yamijima Island, killing Okita. Soon however, Okita transforms into a shibito, forcing Yorito to shoot him. Already on Yamijima is Shigeru Fujita, a police officer who has come to investigate reports from 1986 of a young woman on the apparently deserted island. Also present is Ichiko Yagura, a young schoolgirl, who regains consciousness on board the Bright Win, a ferry that has run aground on the island. The Bright Win disappeared during a tsunami in 1986, but has inexplicably appeared in the present day, with Ichiko its only inhabitant. Meanwhile, the villagers who disappeared in 1976 have also reappeared on the island in the present day, although to them, it is still 1976. Upon regaining consciousness on the pier, Mamoru sets out to explore. He soon encounters a shibito and then meets Yuri, apparently fearful for her life. Yuri tells Mamoru that her mother is imprisoned "in the island," and she needs his help to save her. As Mamoru and Yuri proceed, they are accosted by Tomoe, who attacks Yuri, calling her a witch, and accusing her of being the same entity as Kanae. Mamoru and Yuri flee and then encounter Yorito and Takeaki. However, Yuri is afraid of the soldiers, and seems unable to bear the light from their torches. As the group talk, a huge red tsunami suddenly appears nearby and an earthquake rocks the island as a siren rings out. Meanwhile, Shu awakens near his old house, which, to his amazement, hasn't changed. He enters the house to see his four-year-old self holding the body of his dead father. At that moment, Tsuneo arrives at the house with the intention of killing Kanae, but Ryuhei resurrects as a shibito and chases Tsuneo. Elsewhere, Shigeru soon encounters Ichiko, and they too meet Tsuneo. Shigeru is dumbfounded that Tsuneo is still on the island after so many years. However, before their eyes, Tsuneo transforms into a shibito and attacks them. He corners them in an ammo depot, but as he moves in to kill Ichiko, she smiles at him, causing him to panic and flee. Meanwhile, Tomoe is being chased by a group of shibito, and falls down a ravine, impaling herself on an antenna and dying. After surviving the tsunami, Takeaki and Yorito board the Bright Win. Takeaki, however, begins to act strangely, having taken some hallucinogenic medication, and Yorito splits up from him. Elsewhere, following the earthquake, Soji has been split up from Akiko, but he soon encounters Shu, and they head to an abandoned amusement park, where Shu believes he can rediscover his lost memories. At the same time, Yuri leads Mamoru to the same park where she manipulates him in the same manner Kanae had attempted to manipulate the young Shu. Yuri proves successful, and Mamoru opens the seven gates to the Underworld. They head down into the depths, and Yuri reveals her true form, Mother. Mamoru falls victim to Mother's hypnotic power, but as he walks towards her, Ikuko arrives, and uses her psychic power to bring him back to his senses. Also arriving on the scene, Soji sees Mother as his murdered flatmate, Ryuko, whilst Shu sees Mother as Kanae. Unable to resist her call, Shu gives himself over to her and is enveloped. Elsewhere on the island, Mother's siren sounds, signifying her release, and prompting Ichiko to attack and kill Shigeru. Back in the Underworld, Mother, now free from her prison, gives birth to hundreds of yamirei - albino slug-like creatures. Soji, Akiko, Ikuko and Mamoru flee, but Ikuko and Mamoru become trapped. As they are about to be killed, a group of shiryos (the spirits that animate the dead and turn them into shibito) pour down into the abyss and begin to fight with the yamirei. Ikuko and Mamoru use the opportunity to escape. Back in the park, Ikuko successfully destroys the seven gates, preventing the Underworld from spewing forth any more yamirei. Those that have already gotten out take the form of yamibito and set about converting the island's shibito into yamibito. As Mamoru and Ikuko escape through the amusement park they are surrounded by yamirei. However, dawn breaks, and the light sensitive yamirei are destroyed. Ikuko then tells Mamoru that they are both on their own from this point, and she leaves. Upon coming back to her senses, Ichiko is horrified to see the dead Shigeru at her feet. She has a flashback of falling overboard the Bright Win and sinking to the bottom of the ocean. However, it is then revealed she was resurrected and possessed by Otoshigo. Meanwhile, Shigeru is resurrected as a yamibito. Takeaki encounters Ichiko, but instinctively knows something is wrong. As he demands answers, Yorito appears, and fearing for Ichiko's life, shoots Takeaki in the back. Yorito leaves with Ichiko but they are set upon by a dog-like yamibito. Ichiko flees, and when Yorito finds her she has again become possessed by Otoshigo and embarks on a mindless killing spree, laying waste to any yamibito she encounters. Yorito finds Ichiko's bracelet, given to her by Noriko in 1986, and uses it to bring her back to her senses. Meanwhile, Mamoru boards the Bright Win in an attempt to destroy as many yamibito as he can, knowing it was his fault they were released. He soon discovers that Tomoe has transformed into a dog yamibito and now roams the ship. Having fled the Underworld, Akiko notices the appearance of a massive pylon reaching into the sky. She follows a psychic trail that leads her to the place where Shu and Kanae fell into the sea in 1976. Shu contacts Akiko from beyond the grave and asks her to save his father, Ryuhei, who has transformed into a kou-yamibito, a grotesque human/yamirei creature much stronger and more deadly than a normal yamibito. Shu leads Akiko to a sacred tree branch which is traditionally used on the island to keep evil spirits away from the bodies of the dead. Akiko also finds a mysterious artifact, the Anunnaki Remains. Eventually, Akiko destroys Ryuhei, stabbing him with the branch and freeing his soul. His body then transforms into the Mekkoju tree. Akiko then receives another psychic vision – the murder of Ryuhei. In the vision, Kanae flees covered in Ryuhei's blood, but as she passes a mirror she looks into it and sees the face of Akiko. In the real world, Akiko collapses to the ground, and when she raises her head, she now looks and sounds like Kanae/Yuri; Akiko, no longer able to resist Mother's power, has become another avatar. Ikuko soon discovers the Anunnaki Remains lodged into the Mekkoju tree, which is now itself entwined in the tower. With it, she destroys Shigeru, who has also turned into a kou- yamibito, freeing his soul. Meanwhile, on the Bright Win, Mamoru and Yorito join forces and set out to scale the tower. Mamoru has come to believe that the reality in which they now reside is a fake, a copy of the real world where time has folded back on itself. He believes that the purpose of the pylon is to reach the point where the artificial world intersects with the real world, and it is here where Mother will pass from the fake reality into the real one. He and Yorito ascend the tower and obtain a Mekkoju branch for Tsuneo, now also a kou-yamibito. Tsuneo knocks Yorito off the tower, but Mamoru manages to destroy Tsuneo, also freeing his soul. Having apparently survived his fall, Yorito loses his composure and vows to destroy every yamirei and yamibito once and for all. He discovers the yamirei are using an old school as a lair and he destroys it with a flare gun. He also kills and frees the soul of Okita, before being confronted by Takeaki, who has also transformed into a kou- yamibito. Yorito is able to defeat Takeaki, but immediately upon doing so, Ichiko appears, her face swollen into a single eye. She then transforms into Otoshigo and attacks Yorito. However, he is eventually able to destroy the creature, celebrating, as he believes the nightmare is now over. Meanwhile, back on the tower, Ikuko and Mamoru are reunited. Ikuko is able to stab Tomoe with the Mekkoju branch, finally freeing her soul. At the same time, Mother scales the tower in an attempt to reach the real world. As she does, the tower crumbles as the fake reality begins to fracture. With that, Mamoru and Ikuko are sucked into Mother's plane of existence. As they battle against her, Akiko/Kanae appears, imploring for Shu's forgiveness. In a final effort of will, Akiko is able to exert control over her body, and kills herself by plunging the Annunaki Remains into her stomach, simultaneously injuring Mother, and allowing Mamoru and Ikuko to destroy her. At this point, another red tsunami washes over the island as the fake reality is replaced with the real one, and the timeline is purged. Lying together on the pier, Mamoru and Ikuko are bathed in sunlight as the dawn breaks. Looking into the sun however, Ikuko squints, as if the light hurts her eyes. At the same time, Soji is joined on the beach by Tsukasa, and together, they sit and look out at the sun. It is also revealed that with the purging of the timeline Soji's past has changed. The National Times reports that a man named Ichiro Nakajima was beaten to death by his flatmate Noriko Kifune. In the wake of Mother's death, Ryuko Tagawa never existed, and hence Soji is no longer a wanted felon. Elsewhere, Yorito awakens on a dimly lit boulevard. As he comes to, he notices yamibito strolling past, casually going about every day activity; one pushing a pram, one purchasing items from a stall, child yamibito playing. In the sky, the sun is hidden beyond an apparently permanent total eclipse. Unable to tell if what he is seeing is reality or an illusion, if he is in the realm of the yamibito or imagining it all, he begins to scream and opens fire on the yamibito, gunning down many of them as they attempt to flee. At the very end, Kyoya Suda, the protagonist of the first game, arrives on Yamijima Island still carrying the Homuranagi sword and the Uryen, swearing that he will destroy every single monster that is still lurking on the island. ===== One night in Beverly Hills, California, a truck carrying hazardous materials crashes, releasing a deadly chemical. The citizens of Beverly Hills are sent to quarantine in a hotel in Century City, while the police and the EPA agents stay behind to keep an eye on the valuables and clean up the town. However, the spill is a cleverly executed hoax masterminded by the head of L.A.'s football team, Robert 'Bat' Masterson. The police officers and DEA agents are bitter ex-cops eager for a piece of what the citizens have hoarded from them. Within the 70 minutes that it will take for the National Guard to arrive, they plot to loot every home and business in the city. However, one man has been forgotten in the rush to get everyone out. Aging football player Boomer Hayes was in his hot tub, expecting to get lucky, when his lady friend, Laura Sage went to see what was going on and was taken in the rush to evacuate everyone. The officers thought that "Boomer" was her dog, but checked anyway. After taking care of one of the cops sent to kill him, Boomer is trapped in the hot tub by an officer, but before he can shoot him, he's shot from behind. Ed Kelvin, a cop in on the whole thing but disgusted by the ruthless murder of the Mayor (he was told there would be no killing), fills in Boomer on the whole situation, and Boomer decides to help bring in the real police, who are locked in the station's hazmat suit room. Donning his jersey, injecting cortizone for his bum knee, and enlisting Kelvin's help, Boomer will spend the next 70 minutes attempting to stop the robbery and bring Masterson to justice, while evading ex-cops and the hired thug Benitez, who has commandeered a SWAT tank and is gunning for Boomer and Kelvin. ===== William Horatio Ambrose (Guinness) wants desperately to live up to the proud family tradition; the Ambroses have always been mariners (even if not distinguished ones), hence their family motto, "Omnes per Mare" ("All at Sea"). In humorous vignettes, Guinness portrays six of his ancestors, starting with a confused caveman perpetually going in circles in his coracle and ending with his own father's ignominious demise at the Battle of Jutland. Ambrose has a debilitating problem however: he suffers from violent seasickness. As a result, his contribution to the Second World War consists of testing cures for the malady. When he retires from the Royal Navy as a captain, he purchases a dilapidated late Victorian era amusement pier (the closest thing to a command of his own) with his life savings. The workers are an apathetic bunch, led by an insolent Figg (Victor Maddern), who quits as soon as the new owner begins imposing some semblance of discipline. With the assistance of his new second- in-command, a former RN rating named Tommy (Percy Herbert), and much hard work with help by a group of bored local teenagers, Ambrose soon has the pier repaired. Then he has to deal with the local town council, headed by the crooked Mayor Crowley (Maurice Denham) and the hostile Arabella Barrington (Irene Browne), who mistakes him for a Peeping Tom when they first meet. Every time he comes up with an ingenious way to make his business profitable, they see to it that the council outlaws it. When Crowley decides to confiscate and demolish Ambrose's pier and Barrington's bathing huts (under compulsory purchase) to further his own business interests, she resigns from the council and informs Ambrose. He counters by registering his property as a "foreign" naval vessel (christened the Arabella), under the flag of convenience of the easygoing country of "Liberama", which puts it outside the town's jurisdiction. He soon attracts many happy, paying passengers for his stationary inaugural "cruise". Thwarted, Crowley hires Figg to take his dredger and demolish the structure late at night. Using a seasickness remedy suggested by Barrington, Ambrose is able to take to sea and foil the scheme (with his ghostly ancestors watching approvingly), but in the process, part of the pier becomes detached and floats away. He remains aboard to prevent salvagers from claiming it and drifts over to France, where he is hailed as a naval hero. ===== Lily Macintosh (Scacchi), an upper-class British woman living in India, has struggled since the birth of her child and is in need of a nanny. An Indian military nurse known as Cotton Mary (Jaffrey) takes the post; she is an ambitious woman who is eager to be part of British society. She seems kind at first, but her true nature gradually reveals itself as she manipulates everyone around her to get what she wants. ===== On March 20, 1980 an earthquake of 4.1 on the Richter Scale strikes Mount St. Helens, signalling the first signs of volcanic activity there in 123 years. During the earthquake, a flight of quail becomes disoriented and smashes into the windshield of an Aerospatiale SA341G Gazelle helicopter in use for logging operations. The helicopter's pilot, Otis Kaylor (Ron O'Neal), makes a successful emergency landing, only to be accused of nearly killing a group of loggers. Shortly afterward, United States Geological Survey volcanologist David Jackson (David Huffman) arrives to investigate the activity. Upon arriving in the small town of Cougar, Washington, he quickly befriends Linda Steele (Cassie Yates), a single mother who works as a waitress at a restaurant named Whittaker's Inn. While at Whittaker's Inn, he stirs up concern with its owner, Clyde Whittaker (Albert Salmi), and a group of farmers and loggers. Meanwhile, the 83-year-old owner of the Mount St. Helens Lodge, Harry R. Truman (Art Carney) has a defiant attitude toward the idea of leaving his home on the slopes of the volcano. After the State of Washington declares a danger zone around the volcano and prohibits anyone from entering it, owners of property inside the prohibited area demand access to their property. To appease them, the state government agrees to let them into the danger zone as long as they sign waivers agreeing that the state has no liability for death or injury they suffer due to volcanic activity. On April 30, 1980, state officials in Cougar give them waivers of liability to sign. As the volcanic activity increases, so does the attraction between David and Linda, and the two eventually fall in love. Presumably on the day before the eruption, David packs Linda and her son off to safety and stays behind for the scientific work he still needs to do on a ridge a few miles north of the volcano. Later that night, he pays a last visit to Harry. On the morning of May 18, 1980, David hikes to a ridge 6 miles (10 km) north of Mount St. Helens to monitor a massive bulge that has been growing on the north face of the mountain for the past few weeks, while Harry goes fishing in Spirit Lake at the foot of the mountain. At 8:32 a.m. PDT the mountain's entire north face collapses in a massive landslide, causing the mountain to explode in a lateral eruption. The eruption kills both David and Harry and continues for hours. Pyroclastic flows destroy everything in their path, and lahars sweep down into the valley of the North Fork Toutle River, taking houses, trees, and bridges with them. Linda soon realizes the horror of the day's events when a radio announcer declares that David was one of the first victims. The film ends with a scene of a small tree growing amidst the barren moonscape of the post-eruption North Fork Toutle River valley. ===== The movie opens with Isabella Ford (Embeth Davidtz) in a pathetic state, traveling alone from Selmouth to Addisford on foot although she will be having a baby in a short while. In a deserted cabin on the way, she gives birth to a stillborn baby. She buries it and continues her journey to Addisford. She arrives there late in the evening and meets Ben Wainwright (Tom Bell), the lamplighter at Addisford. He asks her about herself and if she has any relatives in Addisford. Bella replies that she does not have any and she came looking for a man by the name of Arch Wilson (Greg Wise). Ben does not know him and seeing her plight, takes her to his house. He tells his wife (Gemma Jones) to get Bella washed up. Bella, now clean and dry, sits at the dinner table while Ben introduces his family. Ben has three children. Matty (Kenneth Anderson), Con (Ben Chaplin) and Jedd (James Purefoy). Matty, the youngest, is a shoemaker, Jedd is a soldier, and Con does not have a specific profession. He does the household chores and helps his parents around. Bella is unable to eat anything during the dinner, starts crying, and faints when she stands up to go to bed. Mrs. Wainwright puts Bella to bed and feeds her some soup after a while. Bella refuses to have more and falls asleep. She wakes up in the midnight and remembers the intimate moments with her lover, Arch. She falls asleep again and wakes up in the morning. From the window, she sees Mr and Mrs. Wainwright seeing off Jedd, who is going back to the army. After Jedd is gone, Bella prepares to leave. Mrs. Wainwright gives Bella her daughter's coat and tells her that she died of rheumatic fever. She asks about Bella's family and learns that she has nowhere to go. She tells her that she can stay and she will have to do her share of household work, if she chooses to stay. She also suggests she fetch leather from the factory for the shoes. Bella agrees to stay. That evening, Bella takes a pair of shoes that she received as a present from Arch to Matty in order to have a sock put in them since they are large for her feet. Matty tells her that it can't be done as the shoes are "cheap Yankee ones" and machine made. Bella is slightly surprised on hearing that the shoes are cheap. Matty tells her that he will make her a new pair. The next day, Bella leaves for Aylesburgh to fetch leather. Con secretly follows Bella and when confronted by her, asks her if she would like to come out with him sometimes. Bella tells him that she has no mind to go out with anyone. Con asks her to forget that he asked her out and leaves. One day, after Jedd arrives, he and Bella go for a walk into the woods where Jedd flirts with her. That evening, Jedd and Ben go to the pub, where Jedd plays pool against Arch, who is a rent collector. Late in the evening, Arch drops off a drunken Jedd and Ben at their house and drives away just before Bella could see him. Jedd continues to flirt will Bella even at the house and Con does not like it. The next day, crop harvest begins and the entire family goes to work in the fields. During the break from work in the afternoon, Jedd insists that Bella is not comfortable and takes her to a more shady spot by carrying her in his hands in spite of Bella's polite protests. Jedd also forcefully offers her water and Con, who can't take it anymore, attacks Jedd with a scythe. Jedd retaliates with a rake. Mrs. Wainwright intervenes and disperses them. That night, the squire arranges a dinner party for all the villagers and Bella dances with each of the brothers in turn. When dancing with Con, he steps on her foot as he is not a good dancer. They get away from the crowd and Bella asks him why he fought Jedd. He explains that it was because Jedd did not listen to her and continued to offer her water. She requests Con to watch his temper as she does not want any troubles in the family which took her in. The next day, Bella sees Jedd off at the station and also finds Arch there. She follows him to his house and so learns that he is married and has a child. She decides to leave Addisford, while Mrs. Wainwright agrees since she set her sons one against the other. When Con arrives home, his mother tells him that Bella is gone. He runs to the station and tries to convince Bella to stay. Bella tells him that she had been with another man and tells about the baby. Con replies that she did nothing wrong, that he loves her and that her past does not matter. Bella returns home and Mrs. Wainwright receives her coldly. The next day, as they are sitting for breakfast, Mrs. Wainwright announces that Matty had left for London. Con and Bella attend a party where she runs into Arch, and blames him for lying to her. During breakfast the next day, Con suddenly proposes to Bella before his parents, and Bella accepts the proposal. Con takes Bella for boating in the river and there they meet Arch again. Arch makes fun of them and when the bullying gets worse, Con, in a fit of rage, kills Arch with a stone, in spite of Bella's attempts to stop him. Con and Bella decide to flee Addisfordh. During the night they take refuge in a deserted house far from Addisford. Con is disgusted with himself and scared. Bella comforts him and professes her love for him, and they make love. The next day, they continue to Selmouth where they will be taking a boat to leave for Dublin. In Selmouth, Con notices that Bella is acquainted with a lot of the men in town and he becomes suspicious of her. At one point, when he sees Bella talking to the captain of the boat, he has a vision of the captain and Bella kissing, laughing at him and he slapping Bella hard on the face. He realizes that he can't live with Bella due to his critical mentality. He tells her that he doesn't trust himself with her, and is going to turn himself in as he can't live with the guilt. He asks her to say goodbye. Bella protests violently, but he leaves and turns himself in. On the day of Con's execution, when Bella comes to visit him, she runs into his family. Mrs. Wainwright tries to attack her, yelling "Damn you! Damn you!!". At the end of the visit they are overcome with emotion and hug each other. Con is hanged as Bella is on the train to from Addisford to Selmouth. In the closing scene, Bella is shown standing on the boat deck, on her way to Dublin. She touches her stomach and smiles slightly to herself, which suggests that she is pregnant with Con's child. ===== In The Miner, the 19-year-old protagonist decides to flee his hometown of Tokyo after his relationship falls apart. He encounters a grotesque figure who specializes in recruiting cheap labour, and is persuaded to work in a copper mine. The story follows his journey towards and descent into the mine. The protagonist's perceptions and later reflections are described in great detail, such that a "split-second of visual clarity" is accorded three pages of analysis. The protagonist does not get along with the other "animalistic" miners, but eventually meets an educated individual who is, like himself, fleeing from a failed relationship. This miner convinces him to return to his former life. The novel ends with the protagonist emerging from the mine. Outside the mine, he remarks on the beauty of a flower and the ugliness of the miners. He then visits a clinic for a mandatory examination, and is reminded of human mortality by the scent there. He passes the same flower and no longer finds it beautiful, nor does he find the miners ugly: > As always, the miners were looking down at me from their barracks, chin on > hand. Their faces, which before had filled me with such loathing, now seemed > like clay dolls' heads. They were not ugly, not frightening, not hateful. > They were just faces, as the face of the most beautiful woman in Japan is > just a face. And I was exactly like these men, a human being of flesh and > bone, entirely ordinary and entirely meaningless. ===== Castle Crashers is set in a fictional medieval universe. It begins with four knights attending a party in a king's castle. During the party, a dark wizard arrives, stealing a mystical gem and capturing four princesses. The king sends the knights to retrieve the gem, rescue his daughters, and bring the wizard to justice. The knights encounter several enemies along the way, including, but not limited to, other knights, multiple encounters with a cyclops and his friend, thieves, a giant "catfish", factory workers, monstrous oceans with ninja pirates, demons, necromancers, and alien invaders. As the knights progress they succeed in rescuing the princesses, and ultimately the journey culminates in a final showdown with the wizard. The knights emerge victorious from the confrontation, having defeated the dark wizard, rescuing all of the king's daughters, and recovering the mystical gem. The knights then ride the reclaimed gem through several empty battlefields on their trip back to the castle. At the castle the king brings one of his daughters for one of the knights to kiss, her face veiled throughout the entire game. As with previous levels, the players fight to the death to claim a kiss from the princess. However, when the winner tries to do so this time, the princess is revealed to be a clown that blankets the screen in an animation. ===== “The Summer of the Beautiful white Horse” is narrated by a nine- year-old Armenian boy named Aram, a member of the Garoghlanian tribe, living among the lush fruit orchards and vineyards of the San Joaquin valley in California. One morning Aram is awakened at four in morning by his thirteen- year-old cousin Mourad, who is thought to be demented by everyone except Aram, and has a way with animals. Aram is astonished to see that Mourad is sitting on a beautiful white horse. Aram had always wanted to ride a white horse, but his family is too poor to afford one. However, in spite of being poor, the Garoghlanian tribe is noted for its honesty and trust, as a result, it is unthinkable that Mourad would have stolen the horse. Aram felt that his cousin couldn't have stolen the horse. Mourad’s crazy behavior was considered to be of natural descent from their uncle Khosrov, even though his father, Zorab, was a practical man. Uncle Khosrove was an enormous man who was always furious, impatient, and irritable. He would roar for everyone to stop talking and say It is no harm, pay no attention to it. In fact, one day, when his son came and told them that their house was on fire, Khosrov silenced him by roaring "Enough. It is no harm". Aram was invited to ride on the horse with Mourad. The idea of Mourad stealing the horse drained away from Aram's mind as when he felt that it wouldn't become stealing unless they offer to sell the horse. They enjoyed rides on the horse for a few hours. After a short time of riding, Mourad wanted to ride alone on the horse. Aram had the same longing, but when he sat on the horse and kicked its muscles it reared and snorted and raced forward, eventually dropping Aram off its back. After half an hour they found the horse and hid it in the barn of a deserted vineyard of a farmer named Fetvajian which had once been his pride. That afternoon, an Assyrian farmer named John Byro—an Assyrian friend of the Garoghlanians—came to Aram's house. He reported to Aram's mother that his white horse which had been stolen a month ago was still missing. Hearing this, Aram concludes that, Mourad must have had the horse for a long time. Khosrove, who was at Aram's house when Byro came, shouted -“it's no harm" to such an extent that Byro was forced to leave to avoid responding. Aram ran to Mourad to inform him about Byro's arrival. Aram also pleads with Mourad not to return the horse until he could learn to ride. Mourad disagrees saying that Aram would take at least a year to learn, but promises he would keep it for six months at most. This became a routine. Mourad came daily to pick Aram to ride, and Aram continuously fell off the horse's back after every attempt. Two weeks later, when they were going to take the horse back to its hiding place, they met Byro on the road. The farmer was extremely surprised. He recognized his horse but refused to believe that the boys had stolen it. Later the boys return back the horse quietly. That afternoon Byro came to Aram's house to inform that the stolen horse has been returned. He thanks God because the horse has become better tempered and well behaved too. ===== In a dark satire of The Matrix, Leo, a pig on a seemingly bucolic family farm, is approached by Moopheus, an anthropomorphic bull. Moopheus shows Leo that the farm he has known is an illusion, and that he is really trapped in a horrific factory farm. Leo and Moopheus then work to break out of the Meatrix and help others do the same, with some help from a third character, Chickity. The animated short aims to encourage consumers to purchase organic food products and free- range meats. ===== In the film, Donald Duck is portrayed as an everyman who has just received his weekly pay. He is met by two physical manifestations of his personality — the classic "good angel on one shoulder, bad devil on the other shoulder" dilemma common to cartoons of the time — identified as the "thrifty saver" and the "spendthrift." The "good duck" appears as a slightly elderly duck with a Scottish accent who wears a kilt and Scottish cap and urges Donald to be thrifty with his money so he can be sure to pay his taxes for the war effort. The "bad duck" appears as a zoot suit-wearing hipster who urges Donald to spend his duly earned money on idle pleasures such as "good dates". The good angel reminds of other "dates": the dates when his taxes are due.In the 1940s, unlike modern times, income taxes were paid directly by workers every three months rather than directly deducted from employee paychecks and paid by employers on behalf of the employees. The narrator explains that Americans should "gladly and proudly" pay their income taxes which are higher that year "thanks to Hitler and Hirohito." Good duck A tug-of-war ensues between "spend" and "save" with Donald caught in the middle. Eventually the two sides give way and crash on opposite ends of Donald to reveal the "true" selves: the doors of the bad duck's club are revealed to be swastikas and the bad duck himself turns out to bear a resemblance to Hitler (his bow tie is now a swastika and he has grown Hitler's characteristic mustache), while the wall the good duck has crashed up against resembles the flag of the United States. The narrator then asks the audience if they are going to "spend for the Axis" or "save for taxes". Having made the seemingly obvious choice, Donald is assumed to shake hands with the bad duck, but it is revealed that he heads over to the bad duck to punch him out at the last second. He then goes to proudly pay his taxes with the good duck. The second part of the film is a montage entirely recycled from The New Spirit, showing how the taxes are being used to make planes, bombs, ships, and other war materials. It then shows them being used against Axis forces, along with the repeated slogan "Taxes... to (bury, sink, etc.) the Axis", accompanied by the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (the "V for Victory" theme).Internet Archive ===== Caprona is a city-state in the Italy of Chrestomanci's world (World Twelve A), which never united as a nation-state. The houses of Casa Montana and Casa Petrocchi, both renowned for being powerful magician families, have been feuding with each other for generations. The city has begun to lose its "virtue," and the states of Florence, Siena, and Pisa intend to take advantage of this by uniting to conquer Caprona. The only way to save the city is if the true words to the Angel of Caprona, both a hymn and a powerful spell, can be found and read aloud. The story is told through the eyes of the young Tonino Montana and his brother Paolo. They are both members of Casa Montana, one of two spell-houses in Caprona, the other being Casa Petrocchi. The two spell-houses are deadly rivals; the two families are both convinced that the decline of Caprona is all the fault of the other spell-house, and refuse to work together under any circumstances. Tonino is, unknown to himself or the rest of Casa Montana, a talented enchanter; however, he is unaware of his ability, and prefers to spend his time reading. Paolo is more outgoing and friendly, and does better at school. When representatives of both houses are called to the Duke of Caprona's palace, they both go. Whilst there, they meet members of the Petrocchi family for the first time, and they also encounter the Duchess, a powerful woman who appears to be the true ruler of Caprona. ===== The story is about a cricket from Connecticut named Chester who gets caught on a train for New York. After stumbling on the subway, Chester ends up in Times Square. Mario Bellini, who helps his parents run a newsstand, finds Chester and takes him to the newsstand, as he wants to keep the cricket as a pet and for good luck. Mama Bellini is worried that the cricket will give the family germs, but Papa Bellini is more easygoing about the cricket's presence. At the newsstand, Chester meets Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat, who spend their time scrounging the city for food and other thrown-away items. They show him Times Square, which Chester finds overwhelming, although he also sees its beauty. During the story, Chester reveals his musical chirping talent. Mario takes Chester to Chinatown, where he buys Chester a cricket cage from the Chinatown shop owner Sai Fong. At one point, Chester accidentally eats a two dollar bill from the newsstand cashier. Mama Bellini wants Chester to go, but Tucker gives part of his coin collection that he has collected from scrounging to save Chester and replace the money. Later, the three friends have a party at the Newsstand, and Tucker accidentally knocks over a box of matches and sets the newsstand on fire. Mama Bellini blames Chester. However, at the right moment, Chester chirps Mama Bellini's favorite song, which she sings along to and which also leads her to change her mind. It soon becomes clear that Chester has a perfect memory for music, as he chirps opera selections, which surprises Papa Bellini. Chester decides to go home to Connecticut. He gives a final concert that causes Times Square and blocks of New York City to fall still, with everyone stopping to listen to the music. Mario plays one last time with Chester at the newsstand after that last concert, and falls asleep after a while. Later that same night, after Chester gives a farewell chirp to Mario, Harry and Tucker take Chester to Grand Central Terminal so that Chester can hop on to a train. At Grand Central, they all say good-bye. Later, when Mario wakes up as his parents have returned, he realizes later that Chester has gone home, but accepts this by saying: "And I'm glad." The story ends with Tucker telling Harry that maybe they'll visit the Connecticut country area one day. There have been sequels concerning the trio after this iconic book. ===== Roopa is a woman with self-respect, determined at her decisions, and yet lovable and sensitive. She works in an ad agency along with teaching classical music part-time. Along with Anita, she also works on weekends at a nursery. After losing her parents at a young age, she fends for herself. She is engaged to Rahul, a rich Marwari whom she fell in love with. On the night of the wedding, she is confronted with Rahul's mother who insists Roopa to wear a North Indian dress. Roopa, however, has always desired to wear her mother's sari for her wedding. The argument turns ugly while Rahul keeps mum tacitly supporting his mother. Roopa finally decides to call off the marriage after realizing that her freedom and individuality are not being respected by them. Anand is the son of a rich industrialist who unintentionally killed Roopa’s parents in a car accident, thereby losing mental stability. Anand brings his father to Roopa's wedding hoping that his blessings for the wedded couple would bring solace to his soul. At the wedding, however, Anand witnesses the turn of events and finds that Roopa is the woman for him. In order to try his luck in wooing Roopa, he drops his studies in the US and decides to move into a room next to her house. They frown, fight, argue with each other all through his stay there. Anita who is aware of Anand's love for Roopa helps him by giving tips to get closer to her. A few months later, Rahul's mother dies and Roopa is the one he approaches to seek solace. She gives all the support as a friend to Rahul during his difficult days. On the other hand, the affection between Anand and Roopa is on and off, with arguments on trivial issues. Anand continues to put in his efforts till one day drunken Rahul appears at Roopa's house only to forcibly convince her to marry him. Anand gets frustrated and kicks him out of the house and blames her for choosing Rahul over him. Trying to win back the love of Anand, she cooks for him. Anand rejects and leaves the house. After a few days, they both meet again at a Dandiya night, where Roopa confesses her love him. Later, Anand reveals that his father is responsible for her parents' death. Though she shocked by learning this, she decides to forgive that event and move on with her life and agrees to marry Anand. ===== Elliot Slater is a young, attractive, Australian professional photographer living in Southern California. Having always been uncomfortable with his sexual proclivities, which tend toward the BDSM realm, he signs up for a dominatrix- themed vacation on a private tropical island known as "Eden" in the hopes of working through his discomfort. Unbeknownst to him, before embarking on his journey of sexual discovery, he has unwittingly photographed an international jewel thief of whom no other photos exist. The jewel thief Omar and his criminal partner Nina are intent on recovering the film in order to retain Omar's anonymity. They follow the photographer to the island resort run by the dominatrix, Mistress Lisa Emerson, posing as vacationers. Following a tip that Omar is on the island, undercover police officers Fred Lavery and Sheila Kingston also arrive, Sheila in the guise of a vacationer and Fred as a handyman. When a submissive asks Sheila what he can do to please her, she tells him to go paint her house. Comedic antics ensue amid the activities of scantily clad guests and employees, acting out their dominant and submissive fantasies. In the course of Elliot's experiences as Mistress Lisa's personal submissive, including a scene where she ties him up and fondles his naked body (especially, his bare buttocks, which she also spanks), the two begin to fall in love. The action comes to a climax on a quick trip to New Orleans, where Lisa reluctantly admits her feelings for Elliot, all the while tailed by Omar, who attempts to kill them. Fred and Sheila save the day, sending Omar and Nina to jail, and receive commendations for solving the case. Elliot returns to Eden and proposes to Lisa, who says yes. Also, the submissive who spoke to Sheila makes good on her request: he has her house painted. ===== Thomas & Sarah follows the adventures of Thomas Watkins, the chauffeur, and Sarah, the house and nursery maid, after leaving service at Eaton Place in 1910. Sarah is pregnant, and according to their last episode of Upstairs, Downstairs they have married, but according to Thomas & Sarah they "never got round to it". In addition, a two- part short story, entitled The Spin of the Wheel, that bridges the gap between them leaving Eaton Place and the start of Thomas & Sarah, was written by Alfred Shaughnessy and published in the TV Times in the 23 December and 6 January issues. ===== Dr. Lawrence Angelo is a scientist working for Virtual Space Industries (VSI) in "Project 5", a secret research facility that attempts to increase the intelligence of primates using psychotropic drugs and virtual reality (VR) training. Dr. Angelo is reluctant to use the research for military purposes, and after one of the chimps escapes and shoots a guard, Dr. Angelo is given a forced vacation. While taking notes on the need for experiment with a human subject, he discovers Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), a man with an intellectual disability who makes his living by doing odd jobs such as mowing the grass (hence the title of the movie). Angelo takes in Jobe, subjecting him to VR treatment. The first experiments quickly increase Jobe's intelligence, but after an accident, Dr. Angelo stops the experiments. The Shop, a secret agency overseeing Project 5, reinserts the drugs responsible for Jobe's violent behavior into the program and speeds up the treatment. As Jobe develops telekinetic powers, he starts to take revenge on those who abused him before he began the treatments, and plots to take over all of the computers in the world. The SNES version continues the storyline after the point where it ends in the film. Jobe transfers his mind into VSI's computers, and from there is able to corrupt and destroy information systems all over the world, a course of action which is implied to bring about World War III. With society in complete meltdown, Dr. Angelo discovers that Jobe has been acting under the control of a person known as the Doomplayer, who is the head of The Shop, and poised to take over what remains of the world. With Jobe apparently having been erased now that he has served his purpose, Angelo sets off to put an end to The Shop once and for all. ===== The inhabitants of Planet Bomber lived in peace, protected by five spirits, until the evil Buglear and his Robot Army invaded. The Spirit Pictures, the source of the spirits' magical power, were destroyed, splitting Planet Bomber into five pieces. Bomberman arrives to restore the Spirit Pictures and reassemble Planet Bomber. ===== Various college students try to survive the 'finals' period; literally. Common incidents at the learning institution include murders, world-changing wars and various cults. ===== Bloodsport III reintroduces the character Alex Cardo (Daniel Bernhardt) from Bloodsport II. As Alex travels to India and gambles in a casino, masked men steal money and a package from the casino, but not before Alex beats up several of the men. After the robbery, the casino owner convinces Alex to retrieve the package (a bag of diamonds) from the robbers, since they belong to a mob boss named Duvalier (John Rhys-Davies). Alex does so, and Duvalier invites him to a dinner party he's hosting as thanks. At the party, Duvalier shows Alex his top fighter, the Beast, and tries to convince Alex to fight in his upcoming Kumite. Alex refuses, since he does not fight for profit, much to Duvalier's ire. To provoke him into fighting, Duvalier has Sun (James Hong), Alex's mentor, teacher, and spiritual "father", killed. Alex turns to Leung (Pat Morita) to whom he was indebted in Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite. Leung directs him to the great shaman, Makato "the Judge", to whom Alex must turn for guidance. (The Judge is Sun's brother who developed his own variation of Sun's Iron Hand technique). The judge teaches him to fully channel the energy in his mind and body in order to rout the Beast in the Kumite. By this point however, Duvalier has invested everything in the Beast and no longer wants Alex in his Kumite for fear he will upset the odds. When he is unable to block Alex's entry, he has his men stationed at the entrances to the tournament arena. Alex gets round this by posing as one of the entourage of another fighter. Both Alex and the Beast make their way through the Kumite, and face each other in the finals. Alex is initially outmatched by the Beast's great physical strength and endurance, and takes a severe beating as a result. Eventually, he remembers his training, and is able to knock out the Beast. He refrains from killing Duvalier, knowing that it won't bring Sun back. ===== Sharon Myers (Sarah Parish) unexpectedly turns up at a school reunion party being held in her birthplace of Luckwell, twenty years after leaving the village. She has returned to her hometown to take up the position of Detective Inspector, after recently being promoted. She bumps into her childhood best friend, Helen Andrews (Poppy Miller), who is heavily pregnant, and attending the party with her current husband, Phillip (Paul McGann). Helen is unaware that Sharon and Phillip know each other, and that they had an affair shortly before she discovered she was pregnant. During the party, Sharon notices that Phillip is making eyes at new schoolteacher Lesley Tenant (Nicole Lewis). The following morning, Sharon is given an early wake up call by D.S. Harry Fielding (Mark Benton), who informs her that a body has been found in a nearby lake. Sharon arrives at the scene to discover the body is none other than Lesley Tenant. Initial reports suggest that she was stabbed to death, and that her handbag, mobile phone and necklace have all been stolen. Suspicion initially falls on Phillip, but Sharon is quick to dissuade the idea that he could be the killer. Phillip is arrested, but after an initial round of questioning, he is released without charge. Meanwhile, D.C. Marcus Watson (Andrew Buchan) discovers that only three necklaces of the kind Lesley was wearing have been bought locally in the past six months, one of which was purchased by a cash-buying customer, who matches Phillip's description. After a series of e-mails are discovered on Lesley's hard drive, signed "Love from P", Harry is determined to haul Phillip in again, but Sharon convinces him to bide his time, and instead look into one of Phillip's work colleagues, Paul, who was in a relationship with Lesley up until six weeks before her death. Meanwhile, after being invited round for supper by Helen, Sharon goes in search of some old childhood photos in Helen's garage, and unexpectedly comes across Lesley's necklace, hidden inside a music box. Sharon confronts Phillip, but he denies murdering Lesley. During their heated confrontation, Sharon's rage turns into lust, and the pair end up having sex. Sharon informs Phillip that she intends to protect him, whatever the cost. The next day, Harry and Marcus interview Paul, and he confirms that he was the one who sent the series of e-mails. Harry, however, informs Sharon that Paul denied all knowledge of the e-mails, and that in her absence, he has applied for a warrant to search Helen and Phillip's house. The search proves fruitless, but in order to disguise her loyalty to Phillip, Sharon orders a search of his workplace. During the search, Harry finds a tube of lipstick hidden behind a cabinet. The lipstick is sent for forensic analysis, and Phillip is re-arrested. However, once again, a lack of evidence leads to his subsequent release. When he is forced to explain his absence to Helen, the unduly stress causes her to collapse, and she is immediately taken to hospital. Later that night, Sharon meets with Phillip, unaware that Harry is watching her every move. Early the next day, Sharon hauls Harry in after discovering he lied about who sent Lesley the illicit e-mails. In order to point suspicion in Harry's direction, she accuses him of holding a flame for Helen, and alleges that his grudge against Phillip is purely personal. Harry, however, fires back with the accusation that Sharon has been protecting Phillip and that he was witness to her meeting with him the previous night. Unwilling to show bias, Sharon questions Phillip once more, but when Phillip questions her about Lesley's necklace - which as far as her colleagues know, is still unaccounted for - Harry realises that Sharon hasn't been telling him the whole truth. Suspecting that Sharon may tamper with the DNA evidence found on the lipstick in Phillip's office, Harry asks the lab to contact him - and him only - with the results. As suspicion gradually begins to fall on Sharon, Phillip approaches Harry and warns him that he believes he is being framed. Harry and Phillip covertly break into Sharon's house, and they find Lesley's missing mobile phone and handbag. Phillip suspects that Sharon is framing him in order to prove her ability to control, and to eventually end his relationship with Helen. Realising that Sharon has gone to pick Helen up from hospital, Harry telephones the hospital, but is told that Helen was discharged twenty minutes previously. Racing across town, they find Sharon and Helen down by the riverbank, engaged in a tussle on a jetty. Phillip suspects that Sharon is trying to kill Helen, just like she killed Lesley. During the tussle however, Sharon falls from the jetty and subsequently drowns, seemingly closing the case. Her death is recorded as accidental by the coroner, and the investigation into Lesley's murder is closed. Helen and Phillip's baby is born, and they subsequently hold a welcoming home party. During the party, Phillip goes to look for some firecrackers, and finds a piece of Lesley's jewellery in the garage. Phillip realises that Sharon is not the killer, and that Helen in fact murdered Lesley after witnessing them having sex on the night of the school reunion. ===== Scotty Pelk is a socially inept film geek who works at a video store called Video Connections in Portland, Oregon. His biggest claim to fame is his website, www.scottysfilmpage.com (which has yet to receive a hit). He is a hard worker, but eventually gets fired for being too much of an annoyance to the customers. In a funk, he visits several video stores around town to try to find a job, but none of the stores are hiring. While traveling on the MAX to the Portland Staffing Resources office, Scotty sees a young woman, Niko, reading a book called The Films of David Cronenberg. He is infatuated and chases her down to talk to her about Cronenberg, but she essentially brushes him off. At the Portland Staffing Resources office, Scotty finds a job working with auto parts. He is confused and lost during his first day at work, all the while continuing to talk about movies with his co- workers. On the way home, he sees Niko again and joins her for coffee, and she invites him to her art show later that night. During the show, Niko kisses Scotty to make her ex-boyfriend, Brandon, jealous. Later, the two go out and sit in Niko's car to talk. Scotty smokes marijuana with her, and they head to a party afterwards. At the party, Scotty gets drunk with two guys who are also film fans. Scotty constantly calls Niko over the next few days, trying to ask her for a date. She eventually says yes, and they go out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Afterwards, they watch a movie and then go to a bar. Brandon shows up at the bar and upsets Niko, ending their date. Scotty continues to obsess and call Niko frequently, but she does not answer her phone. Eventually Niko picks up, but she brushes him off. On the way to visit Niko with flowers and a balloon, Scotty sees Niko and Brandon kissing. Niko then informs Scotty that she and Brandon have gotten back together, indicating that her interest in Scotty had been a ruse to make Brandon jealous. Scotty goes home and, in a fit of rage and self-loathing, destroys the bouquet of flowers and balloon he had bought for Niko. Scotty is shown masturbating in his bathroom (one of several such scenes), when he is interrupted by the phone ringing. A Willamette Week newspaper editor is calling Scotty to do an article on him after hearing about his website from the two guys at the party. Once the article is published, Scotty's website becomes popular around the city and he becomes a local celebrity, and eventually gets his own office. While Scotty is signing autographs at Video Connections, Niko walks in after having a fight with Brandon. After talking a little, Niko and Scotty get back together and kiss. Finally, the film cuts back to Scotty masturbating, with the implication that the phone call and all that followed was only a masturbatory fantasy. Reviewer D.K. Holm compared the surprise ending to Nabokov's An Affair of Honor and Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. ===== Russ Richards (John Travolta), the weatherman for a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania television station, is revered as a local celebrity by his viewers, and fame affords him such perks as a reserved parking spot and his own booth at Denny's, where an omelet bears his name. His eternally optimistic demeanor conceals the fact his snowmobile dealership is on the verge of bankruptcy due to an unusually warm winter. His friend Gig (Tim Roth), a shady strip club owner, suggests an insurance scam will free Russ of his financial problems, but when the scheme fails to pay off, Russ finds himself even deeper in debt and the target of a hitman named Dale (Michael Rapaport). Gig then proposes Russ rig the Pennsylvania Lottery with the help of his amoral girlfriend Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow), a ditzy model who pulls and announces the winning numbers on television, and her oddball cousin Walter (Michael Moore), who will pose as the owner of the lucky ticket. Their plan works, but before the $6.4 million jackpot can be claimed, everything begins to unravel. First, Walter gets greedy, refuses to hand the winning ticket over to his cousin and Crystal's physical confrontation triggers Walter's ultimately fatal asthma attack. Sleazy station manager Dick Simmons (Ed O'Neill), who also is sleeping with Crystal, tries to blackmail her and Russ when he discovers what they have done, and others who have uncovered what appears to be the worst kept secret in town demand their share as well. Mayhem and murder ensue, prompting lazy detectives Lakewood (Bill Pullman) and Chambers (Daryl Mitchell) to initiate an investigation they hope will not be too taxing. Russ decides to sell the ticket to Dick for $100,000 to get clear of the debt he owes to Dale. Crystal is irate, and she immediately seduces Dick to get back into her share of the winnings. Dale breaks into Dick's house and tries to rob the ticket from him, but the police arrive, and Lakewood ends up killing him. On his way home, Lakewood comes across Russ who has jackknifed and overturned an 18-wheeler as he tries to unload his snowmobile inventory on another dealer. Fearing Lakewood has come to arrest him, Russ flees with his $100,000 on a snowmobile but crashes into a tree. At the hospital, Lakewood gives him a ticket for operating the snowmobile without a license and explains what happened to Dick and Dale. Russ goes to Dick's hospital room and steals the lottery ticket back. He gives it to Wendy the waitress from Denny's (Maria Bamford) and moves to Florida where he becomes a successful host of a gameshow called "Lucky Numbers". ===== The story ends with the arrival of a hunched figure on the protagonist's doorstep Daniel Upton, the story's narrator, explains that he has killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and that he hopes his account will prove that he is not a murderer. He begins by describing Derby's life and career. Derby had been interested in the occult even as a very young boy. This is what caused him to befriend Upton. The two would chat about dark mythology in their spare time. Whenever Derby came over to chat he always used the same knocking pattern of three strokes, a pause, and then two additional strokes on the knocker. Upton had always been able to identify Derby this way. Derby's parents had always doted on him and he had a particular reliance on them, especially his mother. Her death had sent him into a depression, and it took him quite a long time to recover. Upton then tells of Asenath Waite, a female classmate of Derby's at Miskatonic University, daughter of Ephraim. Edward and Asenath soon wed after bonding over their love of the occult. Despite his qualms Derby moves into the old Crowninshield House, with three servants from Innsmouth. A few years later, people start to notice odd changes in Derby's abilities. Sometimes he drives off by himself, even though he has never been taught to drive. Occasionally he is driven back by a chauffeur or mechanic while he huddles in the back seat of the car. Derby confides in Upton, telling him strange stories about Asenath. One night he comes to the door in a panic and starts describing how he will never let her do a certain thing to him again. He tries to hint at how he believes that her father, Ephraim Waite, may not actually be dead. In the midst of this story he abruptly stops, as if some hypnotic spell has come over him. Upton is later called to pick up Derby, who has been found in Chesuncook, Maine, rambling incoherently. On the trip back, Derby tells of Asenath using his body, and is certain that it is in fact Ephraim who resides in the body of Asenath. Derby tells Upton, "She [Asenath] jots down a note in writing that’s just like her father’s manuscripts, stroke for stroke." Before finishing his story, Derby has a small seizure and rapidly changes personality, asking Upton to ignore what he might have just said. Upton however sees a change in his eyes. He thinks they look like Asenath's eyes, then that they look perhaps more like Ephraim's eyes. A few months later, Derby shows up at Upton's door and says he has found a way to keep Asenath away and to stop her from using his body, implying some sort of spell or ritual. Derby finishes renovations on his old family house, yet seems strangely reluctant to leave the Crowninshield Home. Upton receives a visit from Derby, who begins raving about his wife and father-in-law, and how he can still feel her, him, it, clawing at his mind while he sleeps, trying to get hold of him. Upton gets Derby to sleep, but then has him taken to a sanitarium in Arkham. The Sanitarium calls Upton to tell him that Derby's "reason has suddenly come back," though upon visiting Upton can see it is not the true personality of Edward Derby, but the person he had encountered on the ride home. Upton is roused from his sleep by a knocking at his door, using Edward's old signal of three-and-two strokes. Upton believes it may be Derby, but opens his door to find a dwarfed, humped messenger concealed under Derby's large coat, carrying a letter from Derby. The letter explains that Derby has in fact killed Asenath and buried her body in their cellar. But he should have realized that Asenath's (possibly Ephraim's) soul is partially detached from her body, and that the soul will live on until the body is cremated. Asenath had succeeded in taking control of his body while he was in the sanitarium, which means that "the thing on the doorstep" is actually Derby inhabiting Asenath's putrefying corpse. The note implores Upton to go to the sanitarium to kill Derby, who has now been permanently possessed by Ephraim's soul the way he imagines the original Asenath once was. Upton does so, though he reveals that he is afraid of having his soul transferred as well. ===== Soviet Army troops cross the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan into Pakistan. John Rourke is conducting classes in Pakistan and witnesses the invasion. Rourke then attempts to return home to the United States. The Soviet leaders launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. and the U.S. president retaliates in kind. Nearly two hundred million Americans and over a hundred million Soviets are killed in the ensuing nuclear exchange, and tsunamis hit both California and New York. Rourke is on a Boeing 747 bound for Georgia when the missiles hit, and the pilots are blinded by the explosions. Rourke manages to crash-land the plane near Albuquerque, New Mexico and teams up with Paul Rubenstein, another survivor of the crash. With Soviet airborne forces landing on U.S. soil, and almost every other major U.S. politician dead, the U.S. president commits suicide to prevent a forced surrender. Rourke's family become refugees after a gang of looters attack their farm. Searching for a NASA astronaut who knows about a mysterious "Eden Project", Rourke enters Soviet-occupied Athens, Georgia, and is captured. Varakov has a job for him: Rourke is to kill Karamatzov, who has beaten Natalia on suspicion of adultery with Rourke. A National Guard officer joins forces with a cult of wild-men to infiltrate a remaining missile silo and use the missiles to destroy Chicago. While Rourke's family fight with the resistance and the Soviets experiment with cryonic suspension, Rourke and Natalia fight the wild-men to save the city. Rourke finally finds his family in Tennessee, and takes them to his survival retreat. To save themselves from war-induced climate change (specifically, the ionization of the atmosphere due to unexplained side effects of the nuclear exchange), the KGB loot Eden Project cryonics research from the Johnson Space Center, while Rourke and Natalia fight through Soviet troops, feral dogs, and cannibals to discuss the coming 'end of the world' with Varakov in Chicago. Rourke and Natalia break into 'The Womb', a Soviet survival habitat in what used to be NORAD, to prevent the KGB from destroying the Eden Project shuttles on their return to Earth. The two take cryonics equipment allowing the Rourkes, Paul, and Natalia to survive the impending climatic catastrophe. Almost all life on the Earth's surface is wiped out, with Varakov dying in Chicago. Rozhdestvenskiy, searching for Rourke in Georgia, dies in a climactic shootout with him, even as the world's atmosphere ignites above them. Having planned a five hundred year cryogenic sleep to await the returning Eden Project shuttles, Rourke awakens Annie and Michael early, raising them until their late teens. He then returns himself to cryogenic suspension so they'll be adults by the time that he and the others awaken. Michael explores the post-apocalypse world, finding tribes of cannibals surrounding a pre-war fallout shelter where the occupants rigorously maintain a limited population, sending excess workers outside to die. The Eden Project (an international project) returns and lands in Georgia at a makeshift runway created by the Rourkes and they form a colony there. The Soviet Union has survived in massive underground shelters and continues their conflict with the Rourke family across the globe. Nazi Germany also survived in an underground shelter in South America but the Nazi regime is overthrown through the efforts of Rourke and his family. The now democratic German colony become staunch allies of Rourke. Iceland's inhabitants survived in hollow volcanoes and join the Rourke family in their battles. A particularly dramatic book, Mid-Wake, details how the United States survived in an underwater colony in the Pacific. A Soviet colony nearby also survived and both colonies have continued the war over the last five centuries. The Chinese survived in three underground cities and become involved in battles as well. The books end with an alliance of the freedom-loving states defeating the evil regime states and peace returning to the Earth. ===== Wealthy James U. Sperling approaches Nero Wolfe to investigate Louis Rony, an admirer of Sperling's younger daughter Gwenn. Sperling wants Wolfe to find evidence that Rony is a member of the American Communist Party. Wolfe is reluctant since he believes Rony has connections to “Z”, a shadowy criminal mastermind who has crossed Wolfe's path before. Nevertheless, Archie Goodwin is dispatched undercover to Sperling's Westchester estate to see if he can discover any grounds to convince Gwenn to break off the relationship. Present at Sperling's estate are his family, including his wife, his son and two daughters; Rony himself; Paul Emerson, a controversial conservative radio commentator who is sponsored by Sperling's corporation; and Webster Kane, an economist and friend of the family. Madeline, the eldest daughter, reveals that she is aware of Archie's true identity, having read about his exploits with Wolfe and nursed a crush on him. That night, Archie plans to drug Rony, but when he switches drinks he discovers that Rony's drink was already spiked. The next night, Archie offers to drive Rony back to New York, but instead arranges for Wolfe's operatives, Saul Panzer and Ruth Brady, to pose as robbers and waylay them. Once Rony is knocked unconscious, Archie searches him and discovers a membership card for the Communist Party under the name of William Reynolds. Returning to New York, Archie learns from Wolfe that “Z” has given Wolfe a deadline to withdraw from the case. After the deadline passes, the greenhouse on the roof of Wolfe's house is attacked with machine-gun fire, destroying many of the orchids there. Wolfe meets with Sperling and his family and explains that while he cannot necessarily prove that Rony is a Communist, he can prove that Rony is a member of “Z”’s criminal organisation, but it is Gwenn’s decision whether he is to proceed. That night, while everyone is awaiting it, Gwenn goes missing, prompting Archie and Madeline to search the grounds for her. Gwenn is found and reveals that she has contacted Rony and asked him to meet with her so that she can break off their relationship. Following this, Archie discovers Rony’s body; he has been hit by a car and moved into bushes away from the estate’s driveway. When investigators arrive, evidence is found on Wolfe’s car that it was the one used to run over Rony, and therefore Archie is suspected. Then Webster Kane steps forward, claiming to have borrowed Wolfe’s car the previous night and to have accidentally run over Rony in the dark. Satisfied by Kane’s confession, the investigators prepare to rule Rony’s death an accident, but when Sperling attempts to pay Wolfe off, Wolfe becomes convinced that Kane’s confession is false and determines to discover what really happened. Later, an anonymous package arrives at Wolfe's house, containing $50,000 cash by way of reparation from “Z”. But on his weekly radio broadcast, Emerson ridicules Wolfe and his investigation and Archie is sent to the Sperling estate to locate evidence that Rony was struck down before being run over. There Archie discovers a stone that is later proved to be the weapon. Wolfe now contacts Lon Cohen, the city editor of the Gazette, and puts a plan into action. Over the next three days, with information provided by a secret contact, Archie drafts and submits a series of reports detailing confidential meetings of the Communist Party, which are then published in the Gazette. Wolfe subsequently meets two senior party officials and convinces them to aid him by identifying the man they know as William Reynolds, against whom Wolfe has fabricated evidence to suggest that he is the informant to the papers. Now Wolfe gathers the suspects and pressures Webster Kane to refute his previous confession. Once he has done so, the party leaders arrive to expose Kane as William Reynolds. It emerges that Kane fabricated the earlier confession of accidental manslaughter in order to avoid being suspected of murder after Rony had discovered that he was secretly a Communist. For payment, Wolfe demands that Sperling end Paul Emerson's contract, thus forcing Emerson off the air. “Z” calls Wolfe to congratulate him on solving the case and sends another package to offset Wolfe's expenses. The money is set aside as an emergency fund to be used should they ever have to face “Z” head-on from hiding. ===== Walter Gilman, a student of mathematics and folklore at Miskatonic University, rents an attic room in the "Witch House", a house in Arkham, Massachusetts that is rumored to be cursed. The house once harboured Keziah Mason, an accused witch who disappeared mysteriously from a Salem jail in 1692. Gilman discovers that, for the better part of two centuries, many of the attic's occupants have died prematurely. The dimensions of Gilman's attic room are unusual and seem to conform to a kind of unearthly geometry. Gilman theorizes that the structure can enable travel from one plane or dimension to another. Gilman begins experiencing bizarre dreams in which he seems to float without physical form through an otherworldly space of unearthly geometry and indescribable colors and sounds. Among the elements, both organic and inorganic, he perceives shapes that he innately recognizes as entities which appear and disappear instantaneously and at random. Several times, his dreaming-self encounters bizarre clusters of "iridescent, prolately spheroidal bubbles", as well as a rapidly changing polyhedral-figure, both of which appear sapient. Gilman also has nightly experiences involving Keziah and her rat-bodied, human-faced familiar, Brown Jenkin, which he believes are not dreams at all. In other dreams, Gilman is taken to a city of the "Elder Things" and even brings back evidence that he has actually been there—a miniature statue of an "Elder Thing" which he breaks off from a balustrade within the city. The statue is made of unknown materials and a strange kind of alloy. Gilman's odd experiences seem to escalate as he dreams that he signs the "Book of Azathoth" under the commands of Keziah, Brown Jenkin, and the infamous "Black Man." Gilman is later taken to Azathoth's throne at the "Center of Chaos" by this group and is forced to be an accomplice in the kidnapping of an infant. He awakes to find mud on his feet and the news of his involved kidnapping in the city's newspaper. On Walpurgis Night, Gilman dreams that both Keziah and Brown Jenkin are sacrificing the kidnapped child in a bizarre ritual. He thwarts Keziah by strangling her, but Brown Jenkin bites through the child's wrist to complete the ritual and escapes into a triangular abyss. As he awakens, Gilman hears an unearthly sound that leaves him deaf. He tells fellow boarder Frank Elwood his horrific story. The next night, Elwood suddenly witnesses Brown Jenkin eating its way out of Gilman's chest. The landlord soon abandons the house and evicts his tenants. The house is condemned by the building inspector. Later, a gale wrecks the roof. Workmen sent to raze the building years later find Keziah's skeleton and her books on black magic. A space between the walls is found filled with children's bones, a sacrificial knife and a bowl made of some metal which scientists are unable to identify. A strange stone-statuette of the star-headed "Elder Things" from Gilman's dreams is also discovered. These items are put on display in Miskatonic University's museum, where they continue to mystify scholars. The skeleton of an enormous deformed rat with hints of human or primate anatomy is soon discovered within the attic's flooring; this baffles academia and disturbs the demolition workers so greatly that they light thanksgiving candles within a nearby church in celebration of the creature's demise. ===== In post-nuclear Alaska, a fascist group ("The Ownership") battles rebels in hopes of possessing a massive weapon—the "Equalizer 2000" of the title, created by the ex-Ownership Captain Slade who joins the rebellion to defeat Mayor Lawton, who killed Slade's father (a The Ownership's field commander) and too he wants to kill General MacLaine, The Ownership's leader, to be the new leader. ===== The story begins with Detective Malone describing an on-duty incident in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that gave him a phobia of large buildings. Back-tracking to where it all began, the Brooklyn waterfront slum Red Hook is described in detail, with its gangs and crime, and hinting at an occult underbelly. The "case of Robert Suydam" is then told to be the driving force behind Malone's federally ordered involvement at Red Hook. Suydam's demeanor changes suddenly. Known as a shabby recluse, he is seen around town looking younger and more radiant. News arrives of his engagement to a well-to-do woman, while, at the same time, there is an increase in local kidnappings. A police raid, involving Malone, uncovers nothing useful from Suydam's Red Hook flat save a few strange inscriptions. After Suydam's wedding, he and his bride leave on a ship. Aboard, a scream is heard and, when the crew enter Suydam's stateroom, they find him and his wife dead, with claw-marks on his wife's body. Later, some strange men from another ship come on board and lay claim to Suydam's body. Malone enters Suydam's flat to see what he can find. In the basement, he comes across a door that breaks open and sucks him inside, revealing a hellish landscape. He witnesses human sacrifices and a ritual that reanimates Suydam's corpse. Malone is found in the basement of Suydam's flat, which has caved in inexplicably above him, killing everyone else inside. The tunnels and chambers uncovered in the raids are filled in and cemented, though, as Malone recounts, the threat in Red Hook subtly re-emerges. ===== Jaque is in a terrible situation after being caught having sex with the daughter of the dreaded businessman Oscar Cabos; his boss. The day after receiving the most savage beating of his life, Jaque is confronted by Mr. Cabos, who accidentally trips and loses consciousness. Jaque then asks his friend, Mudo, to aid him. Leaving Cabos in his office, a childhood friend that now works as the company's janitor, who was betrayed by Cabos then takes revenge by stealing and wearing Mr. Cabos' valuable clothes. When Jaque and Mudo arrive, Cabos is half naked and they take him to the bathroom while they decide what to do. When Cabos' former friend leaves the building to take his car, he is intercepted by two kidnappers who think he is Cabos, one of whom is actually his own son, who wanted to kidnap Cabos to make him pay for what he did to his father. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Jaque and Mudo decide, in order to avoid a possible accusation to take Cabos with them and then decide what to do with him, so they flee with him in their car. While leaving the parking lot, they cross roads with the kidnappers, stopping on a street light. Both couples have a body in their respective trunks, and feeling nervous, they smile at each other in order to look casual. Then, they both go opposite directions. While driving, Jaque and Mudo get cut off the road by an impolite bus driver. They confront him in a mid-road stand off and insult each other; Jaque calls the driver "cross-eyed", which makes him remember his tumultuous past, being rejected by everyone, including his fiancé, for being cross-eyed. He gets very angry and rams his bus against Jaque's car and flees. The crash causes the trunk to get stuck, and as a consequence, they cannot get Mr. Cabos out of the car. To aid them, Mudo calls his friend, the legendary pro wrestler Ruben "Mascarita" (who hates being called Mascarita) and his sidekick, Tony "the Cannibal", a man-eating dwarf. They then agree to go to a bar and there decide that the best plan is throw Cabos' body in his house, as a massive party is taking place that evening, and make him believe he drank himself to unconsciousness. After toasting for the plan to work, a rugby player in the bar recognizes "Mascarita" and calls him by that name. A huge fight "Santo" style takes place. While "Mascarita" takes away all of the students in the table, another group of students from a billiards table get mad and provoke him again. "Mascarita" prepares for more, but Tony stops him. "Mascarita" understands and tells Jaque and Mudo to leave with him and let Tony do his thing. They are seen outside the bar while noises and shouts are heard from inside. Tony then exits the places, spitting out a ring, taken from one of the students finger, thus explaining the nickname "Cannibal". Meanwhile, the kidnappers arrive to a girl's house, leaving the abducted tied in a chair with a bag on his head. They now attempt to call Cabos' house and inform his wife that they have him and ask for ransom. However, the maid is confused about the call and hangs up repeated occasions. After the wife takes the phone, she interprets this as an excuse for her husband not to show up at the party, and hangs up again. After being worn out from the bar fight, "Mascarita", Mudo and Jaque go to the latter's apartment to change clothes for the parties occasion. While Jaque is selecting a presentable shirt, Mudo and "Mascarita" are annoyed by the neighbor's bird and go to the door and complain. They stay a while waiting for an answer. Then Jaque's girlfriend arrives to argue with him for standing her up and not taking her to her father's party. Angrily, she leaves and takes Jaque's car (with Cabos still in it). When Mudo and "Mascarita" finally hear the neighbor's voice, Mudo flips out and starts screaming for him to shut his bird up. The neighbor then opens his door (after unlocking around five locks) and points two Tec-9's at each of their faces. He explains his emotional bondage with the bird and threatens them to not complain again. After that, Jaque tells them to get going. Ironically, Jaque's girlfriend, Cabos' daughter, is also the kidnapper's ally's friend. She goes to her house and asks her to join her to her father's party. The kidnapper's leader then appears from their hideout and pretends to be her boyfriend, and the three go to Cabos' party. In the party a series of mix-ups occur, resulting in the dumping of Cabos' friend by mistake and Cabos being left in Jaque's house. He then returns to his house, and finds his wife having sex with Tony. Tony escapes out the window. Cabos chases him and sees his friend lying in the yard, who wakes up to the sight of an angry Cabos and subsequently receives a golf club to the face. ===== While riding his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, a genealogist seeks shelter from an approaching storm. He enters an apparently abandoned house, only to find it occupied by a "loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man", speaking in "an extreme form of Yankee dialect... thought long extinct." The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and furniture predating the American Revolution. At first, the old man appears harmless and ignorant towards his guest. However, he shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator how it made him hunger for "victuals I couldn't raise nor buy"- presumably human flesh. It's suggested that the old man was murdering travelers who stumbled upon the house to satisfy his "craving", and has extended his own life preternaturaly through cannibalism.S.T. Joshi. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. San Bernardino CA: Borgo Press, second ed, revised and expanded, 1996, p. 62 Soon, a now frightened narrator realizes the old man has been alive for over a century. Still, the old man denies he ever acted upon such a desire. Suddenly, a drop of blood falls from the ceiling, clearly coming from the floor above, and splashes a page in the book. The narrator then looks up to see a spreading red stain on the ceiling; this belies the old man's statement. At that moment, a bolt of lightning destroys the house. Fortunately, the narrator survives to tell of his ordeal. ===== Set in 1989 New Jersey, it tells the story of the turbulent interracial relationship of Lisa, who is Black, and Marc, who is Italian-American. The book also explores how incidents in New York City influence the politics and social climate of northern New Jersey. ===== A radio show guest is poisoned on the air during a plug for the show's sponsor, a soft-drink manufacturer. The negative publicity, and the low bank balance at tax time, brings Nero Wolfe into the case — and into his first recorded encounter with a shadowy master criminal. And Be a Villain is the first of three Nero Wolfe books that involve crime syndicate leader Arnold Zeck and his widespread operations. The others in the Zeck Trilogy are The Second Confession and In the Best Families. In each book, Zeck — Wolfe's Moriarty — telephones Wolfe to warn him off an investigation that Zeck believes will interfere with his crime syndicate. Each time, Wolfe refuses to cooperate, and anticipates that there will be consequences. The title is from Act I, Scene V, line 114 of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which the prince says of his murderous uncle King Claudius, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Remarking on the change from Stout's title to More Deaths Than One for the British edition, Rev. Fredrick G. Gotwald wrote, "It seems strange that the name was changed in a country from which the original came."Gotwald, Rev. Frederick G., The Nero Wolfe Companion, volume 3, page 49 ===== On location in San Fernando Valley Jerry Ferro is turning 40 years old and is not what you would call a success. He works part- time in construction as a carpenter and part-time as a boxing instructor at a fitness center near Los Angeles. He drives a beat-up pickup truck and loses both the construction job and the woman in his life. An amateur Golden Gloves boxer long ago, Jerry is asked one day if he would be willing to spar with an up-and-coming fighter named Malice Blake. He takes a beating, but surprisingly lands a one-punch knockout. Due to his strong left hand, Jerry's boxing nickname was "The Hammer," though a running joke depicts people assuming the nickname describes Jerry's work as a carpenter. He is noticed by Eddie Bell (played by real-life boxing coach Tom Quinn), a coach who will train boxers trying to qualify for the next Olympic Games. Bell invites him to come to the Olympic tryouts. Jerry is clearly too old and out-of-shape, so he isn't interested. But his friend and co-worker Oswaldo Sanchez gives him encouragement, as does Lindsay Pratt, an attractive lawyer who works out at the gym and has caught Jerry's eye. Jerry comes to the tryouts. He is mocked by Bell's top light-heavyweight contender, Robert Brown, which motivates Jerry to get into shape. He goes into serious training, loses weight and needles Brown, telling him there's "a new sheriff" in town in the light-heavyweight division. What Jerry doesn't know is that Coach Bell privately sees Jerry as no more than a sparring partner and motivator for Brown, who is a legitimate Olympic candidate but who has a weakness against hard-hitting left-handers like Jerry. By falsely boosting Jerry's hopes, Bell can avoid paying him the usual $100 per day for a hired sparring partner. Jerry drives team members to the first stage of the Olympic qualifying eliminations in Phoenix, where because of his age and lowly status he is immediately paired against the No. 1 contender. Coach Bell has gotten all he wanted out of Jerry and is so apathetic about the outcome that he deserts Jerry's corner in the middle of the bout. Motivated by the memory that he has never finished anything he ever started, Jerry scores a shocking knockout. He and Brown both advance to the next round of the competition, to be held in Pasadena. When Brown learns that Coach Bell has lied to Jerry about his prospects, Brown begins to sympathize with Jerry and to bond with him as unlikely friends. Unfortunately, they will need to fight each other soon, with only one able to qualify for the Olympics. On top of that, Lindsay has a job offer that would require her to move out of state. Jerry knows he has little future in boxing, no matter what happens next, so he needs to get his priorities straight as he and Brown head toward a showdown in the ring. In the final round of the competition, Jerry and Brown go up against each other. Lindsay decides to stay in California. At the fight, right as Jerry is about to win and KO Brown, Jerry instead hugs him and lets Brown win. The film ends with all three at a party at their house and Jerry becoming Brown's trainer. ===== It is late 1598, shortly before the Battle of Noryang, the final confrontation of the Imjin War. The remnants of the Japanese invasion force are desperate to go home, but are also driven by personal motivation to beat their greatest adversary, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, once and for all. Self-serving Ming generals and Joseon officials also fear Yi's growing popularity and its impact on their personal base of power. These incidentally combining ambitions fan King Seonjo's paranoia and make him eventually fear that Yi might come after his throne, and after a series of what he calls acts of high treason, he decides to have Yi arrested. Yi, on the other hand, is determined to teach the Japanese a lesson for the atrocities they committed on the Korean people, and despite orders to remain quiet while the Japanese are to pull out without anymore bloodshed, he rallies his naval force and prepares for the upcoming engagement. The battle commences and the Japanese are dealt a crippling blow, but Yi is fatally wounded by an arquebuse bullet. As he lies dying, the plot backtracks on the important events of Yi's life, from his boyhood to his military career, his efforts before and during the Japanese invasion, his disgrace at the hands of his king, and his reinstatement, back to the battle of Noryang, where he succumbs to his wound just as victory is declared. ===== Seenu (T. Gopichand) is a loyal servant and the right-hand-man of faction leader Reddeppa (Devaraj). He and Sailaja (Moon Banerrjee), Reddeppa's daughter, grew up together. Nayudamma (Vijaya Rangaraju) is an archrival of Reddeppa. Factional feuds between them have resulted in the loss of a number of lives among their groups. When Reddeppa realizes that his daughter and Seenu are in love, he swings into action, trying to kill Seenu. The rest of the story is about how Seenu secures Sailaja's hand in marriage and how he unites the forces of followers in both the warring groups to teach their masters (Reddeppa and Nayudamma) a lesson or two. ===== The setting is Argentina, 1965. El Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a petty thief, and Angel (Eduardo Noriega), a drifter, meet in the toilets of a Buenos Aires subway station, and from that moment they are inseparable. They become known as "the twins", but their relationship is in fact that of lovers and, soon, as partners in crime. At a point when their relationship is already turning difficult, the plot sets in. Their love and loyalty to each other is tested when "the twins" join a plan to hold up an armored truck together with a group of seasoned gangsters: their swaggering straight cohort Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), a sedative addict who's been carrying on an affair with the luscious Vivi (Dolores Fonzi); a 16-year-old nymphet; the trio's boss Fontana (Ricardo Bartis); and the elderly lawyer Nando (Carlos Roffé), who is past the days of any professional illusions and helps make connections to find a good team for the crime. Angel is wounded by police gunfire during the robbery, provoking Nene to kill all of the guards and police in a fit of rage. Two police officers are among the victims, and so the police of Buenos Aires start a major search for the culprits. They soon find a lead to Vivi's apartment, where the gang had been hiding out, but by this time, all except Vivi have escaped to neighboring Uruguay. The police force Vivi to give away their plans, and the search is broadened to Uruguay. Meanwhile, the gang needs to wait for new passports (to be arranged by a dubious character played by Héctor Alterio) for their escape from Uruguay. They take refuge in an empty apartment in Montevideo, but the organisation of the documents takes longer than originally planned. The waiting is especially hard on Nene: Angel—who is described as constantly "hearing voices" and seems to suffer a slight form of schizophrenia—has been rejecting intimate contact with Nene since at least the beginning of the escape, for reasons indirectly connected with his condition. Nene eventually decides to break curfew and "get some air", and he, Angel, and Cuervo go and enjoy themselves at a fair. That evening outside of the apartment is not their last though, partly because Angel continues to reject any contact and does not even speak to Nene anymore. On one evening, Nene ends up verbally and sexually abusing another gay person, but finally he meets the prostitute Giselle (Leticia Brédice) and starts a relationship with her, even mentioning a solo escape with her. When Nando is caught by the police, the group is forced to abandon their refuge. Fontana goes off on his own, but Nene brings Angel and Cuervo to hide out in Giselle's apartment before they leave the city at night. Angel had sensed that Nene had been cheating on him, and he soon understands where Giselle fits in. Before it can come to a fight, however, he also hears from Giselle that Nene still cares for him and suffered from his rejection. Giselle tells Nene that she has a cousin who lives near the border and she can arrange passage, but not for three men the police are after. She says that a couple, a man and a woman, will be able to get across easily. When she forces him to choose between her and Angel, he chooses Angel. Nene tells Giselle that he will find her and kill her if she turns them in. Despite his threats, Giselle goes straight to the police to turn in the gang. Before the group takes to their heels, police have already surrounded the building. At first, the trio believes they will be able to escape, thinking that the police will not endanger the haul (several million dollars) or the lives of a large number of policemen. In high spirits, the three of them set to defend the apartment and their freedom, while Nene and Angel rekindle their relationship and spend some short and erotic moments of mutual happiness. After the first wave of attacks, a contented Angel even says the "voices" he always heard have fallen silent. The group soon finds out, however, that there is no way out. Cuervo dies in an attempt to sally, and Nene and Angel remain waiting for the next wave of police attacks on the apartment. Seeing that they can save neither their own lives nor the money, they burn the entire haul in a final outburst of joie de vivre. Finally, Nene catches a bullet and dies in Angel's arms. Angel still holds Nene and sends intermittent volleys of bullets in the direction of the approaching police. When the screen fades to black, the audience is left with the sound of the final fusillade of police machine gunfire, implying that Angel has committed suicide by cop. ===== In the summer of 1942, American Lieutenant Colonel Robert T. Frederick, a War Department staff officer with no prior combat or command experience, is summoned to Britain where he is selected by Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to raise a commando force composed of both American and Canadian personnel for operations in German-occupied Norway. Back in the U.S., Frederick arrives at the derelict Fort William Henry Harrison in Montana where he receives his American troops — all of whom are jailbirds, ne'er-do-wells, and misfits. When the hand-picked elite Canadian contingent arrives there is immediate friction with the Americans and chaos ensues. By the time Frederick manages to overcome the national differences and mold the First Special Service Force into a highly trained commando unit, he is informed that the Allied High Command have had a change of heart and offered the Norwegian missions to British troops. Left without a role, the brigade is ordered to be disbanded and its soldiers reassigned. Frederick remains undeterred and manages to persuade Lieutenant General Mark Clark to give his men a chance to prove themselves with a new mission in Italy. Clark's skeptical deputy commander, Major General Maxwell Hunter, orders the 1st Special Service Force to reconnoiter a German garrison in an Italian town, but Frederick decides to go one better and capture the entire town. In the process, they earn the nickname "Die Teufelsbrigade" — The Devil's Brigade. Convinced now of the ability of Frederick's men, Lieutenant General Clark promotes Frederick to full Colonel and gives them a task no other Allied troops have managed to accomplish — to capture Monte la Difensa. Facing severe obstacles, the Devil's Brigade attacks the undefended eastern side of the mountain by scaling a cliff the Germans believed could not be climbed. Reaching the top as a unit, they take the stronghold despite considerable losses, allowing the Allies to continue their advance north into Italy. ===== As the story opens, the fierce, barbaric empire of Atlantis is ruled by King Kron. His brother Thalok is high priest of the bloody state cult, which demands human sacrifices, hearts torn out in Aztec fashion. Kron’s wife has given birth to a daughter, who is called Astera and at this same time a beautiful blond woman is shipwrecked on the Atlantean coast. She dies after giving birth to a girl who grows up as the bosom companion to Astera. King Kron names the orphaned child Atla. When the young women are about twenty years old, Prince Herekla of Cacara in Phoenicia invents the magnetic compass. Herekla derives the basic idea from Chinese merchants. King Kron recognizes the power of Phoenicia, and is willing to betroth his daughter to Herekla. Herekla comes to Atlantis to accept his bride. Love, however, does not honor contracts, for Herekla and Atla fall in love. Astera, in turn, falls in love with Zemar, the virtuous son of the vile, ruthless priest Thalok. Thalok, who has long lusted for the throne and the gorgeous blond Atla, murders Kron, usurps the crown, and is about to start his persecutions. But as the four lovers flee Atlantis in various ways (agreeing to meet at the island of Surchi), Atlantis sinks beneath the sea. Thalok, in pursuit of the refugees, is killed by a poisonous serpent, the pet of an amorous sorceress-lover he had discarded. The lovers now pair off. Zemar and Astera go to found a new Atlantis in the west, presumably Central America, while Herekla and Atla make their way to Phoenicia. As a Magian explains, when moral virtue is dead, physical changes take place, with catastrophe the result. This is why Atlantis sank. Atla novel cover artwork Category:1886 American novels Category:1886 fantasy novels Category:American fantasy novels Category:Atlantis in fiction Category:Harper & Brothers books Category:Phoenicia in fiction ===== Mr Dingle (John Mills) seeks to interest his pupils in music in order to enjoy life, while the new strict headmaster, Mr Frome (Cecil Parker),believes Dingle is ruining the children's traditional education. Mr Dingle's pupils come up with a way to raise money by playing to crowds in the street and persuade him to help them. When this fails they decide to jazz it up and bring in some younger kids to help. This initiative is a success and, with the help of one of the pupil's parents, they are able to buy new musical instruments. The total cost, £200, is to be paid in instalments of £2.10s. per week which Dingle personally signs for. However, when Mr Dingle ends up on the front page of the local newspaper, the headmaster locks the instruments up. The pupils manage to get them out of the locked cupboards, rehearse and put them back without anyone noticing. Mr Dingle takes a second job playing the piano in his local pub for £4 a week plus free beer. However, he is spotted by one of the teachers who reports him to Mr Frome, who sacks him for it. The children protest about Dingle’s dismissal by organising a strike and a sit-in. Children from other schools also stand outside in protest. Eventually, order is restored as Mr Frome relents and allows Mr Dingle to return. The children carry both out triumphantly to the tune of Top of the Form. ===== Mini 4WD racing is an interesting hobby in where kids and adults compete using customized motorized miniature cars. Every year, competitions revolving around the hobby circulated around the world, with both kids and adults test out their spirit and passion in racing and companies developing new technologies and innovations for Mini 4WD. The story revolves around the competitive Seiba Brothers: Go and Retsu, who were once constantly arguing on each other to see who's the best racer. However one day after a community-sponsored race, they both met Dr. Tsuchiya, the head of the Tsuchiya Racing Factory who gave them two Mini 4WD Cars of the prototype Saber Series: Sonic Saber and Magnum Saber. With his advice on telling the twins to customize them for the upcoming race, they are now determined to win and race to victory and set off to their wildest race of their lives. While meeting both friends and enemies in the Mini 4WD Racing world. ===== ===== Bubbles, clean for three days, meets with Walon at a park. Walon gives Bubbles some frank advice, while telling him about how he caught HIV and infected his girlfriend. Avon and Stringer meet with Wee-Bey and tell him to contact Omar to negotiate a truce. Stringer convinces Avon to take a step back from the game and insulate himself further from his organization. Avon gives up his pager so that his subordinates will have to contact him through Stringer. McNulty visits Phelan, who seems to have lost his stomach for the Barksdale investigation. Pearlman later informs McNulty that Phelan has been cast off the mayor's re-election ticket. D'Angelo ignores Donette as she plans out a home for their family, and walks out without giving her the money she is asking for. He waits for Shardene outside of Orlando's strip club, but she refuses to talk to him. Freamon traces the Barksdale stash to a payphone in Pimlico. Every time a resupply is needed, they page the same number and the return call comes from the same payphone. Carver and Sydnor are the only detectives available to watch the phone, as Herc is on a training course for the week. The next day, Santangelo identifies Little Man using the tower phone, and Sydnor soon finds the respondent. Freamon instructs Sydnor to follow the resupply man and tracks him to a suburban house. Later, Freamon organizes Sydnor and Prez to surveil the house as garbage men. Orlando is arrested by narcotics cops when he tries to buy cocaine from an undercover officer, Troy Wiggins. He gives them Avon's name to try to avoid his charge and the detail gets involved. When Orlando is transferred to county jail, he is identified by Marvin Browning, a Barksdale crew member serving time, who phones in Orlando's whereabouts. Levy visits Orlando, but only to take his name off the club's liquor license; now that he has a record, Avon is severing their ties. Daniels suggests they could use Orlando in a buy bust to move up the ladder. In a meeting with Burrell and Major Raymond Foerster, Daniels makes a case for waiting, but Burrell insists on a buy bust. After working out that Wallace is squatting in the projects and tapping power from a vacant apartment, McNulty bribes Officer Bobby Brown and his partner with a case of beer and some crab cakes to wait for him to return home. Greggs informs McNulty that Omar has contacted her and needs medical care for his shoulder wound. Wallace gives up Stringer, Wee-Bey, and several other tower soldiers in Brandon's murder. Afterwards, Daniels and Pearlman decide to place him with his grandmother on the Eastern Shore, as there are no funds for protective custody. Later, Daniels drives Wallace to his new home and notices that he is in withdrawal. McNulty discovers that Elena has organized an emergency hearing to limit his visitation rights. The judge dismisses the suggestion and asks them to deal with the problem themselves. McNulty tries to convince Elena that he loves his family, but she reminds him that she has photographs of him meeting with Pearlman. While going out drinking with Cheryl and some friends, Greggs is asked how she knew she wanted to be a cop and tells the story of an adrenaline-fueled arrest. Cheryl looks uncomfortable throughout, but when Greggs acknowledges her misgivings, the two kiss. Omar meets with Stringer to discuss a truce under Proposition Joe's supervision. Despite Omar wearing a wire, the detectives come away with little new information. Stringer does not deny a link to Brandon's murder, but is quick to shield Avon's name from the discussion. When Stringer does not reject Omar's demand for $5,000, he realizes the truce is a trap and boards a bus to New York City. McNulty sees him off and asks him to keep in touch. Avon, Stringer, and Wee-Bey later discuss the meeting, while Shardene tries to listen in with little success. Bubbles meets with Greggs and asks for her help getting a place to stay clean; she agrees to give him some money the following day. With no other option, Daniels organizes a buy bust and Greggs is sent in undercover. Savino meets with Orlando and they drive to another location, with Greggs sitting in the back. However, the bust goes awry when Savino abandons the car and two gunmen open fire on the car, killing Orlando and wounding Greggs in the neck and chest. ===== Based on a true story from the case files of a real- life Wiccan, Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, Sacred Evil is the story of three women separated by a twenty-year-old secret: a nun, a Wiccan and a girl in search of her mother. The nun is Martha, a 45-year-old withering woman who lives in a secluded convent in Calcutta. Even in the sanctuary of the Church, she is haunted by a specter that threatens her sanity. The Wiccan, Ipsita, is called upon by the unconventional Mother Superior to heal Martha's soul. The task is difficult as Martha is reticent in talking about the events in her past. Using her skills as a healer and her training as a Jungian psychotherapist, Ipsita gradually opens the door to Martha's story of the one who haunts her. An Anglo-Indian girl called Claudia grows up with the angst of not knowing her mother Maureen, alienated in her Indian surroundings by her blue eyes and blonde hair. The story now goes back and forth as events from Claudia's life begin to intersect Martha's and Ipsita tries to sort out the tangled threads of the past and present. In her search for the lost Maureen, whom everyone says looked much like her, Claudia becomes obsessed with her mother's image. She begins to turn into her mother. Like her, she seeks out and falls in love with a foreigner, Pierre, a young Frenchman who is in Calcutta for a doctorate. But Pierre is never sure who is in love with him, Claudia or Maureen. As she tries to heal Martha with centuries-old Egyptian rituals of the Wicca, Ipsita learns of Claudia's struggle to keep her sanity and Martha's attempts to save her soul -- how she tried hard to bring her to the Church and let God heal her. Ipsita also learns that somewhere the attempts failed. Something happened. Claudia's burden became Martha's. With her own efforts failing to heal Martha's spirit, Ipsita is led to a startling discovery in the end which makes her wonder if the sacred will ever be as strong in us as the evil is. ===== New York drug dealer Monty Brogan is arrested for drug possession with intent to sell, and sentenced to seven years in prison. He spends his last night of freedom with two friends, contemplating his uncertain future and the decisions he made that brought him to this point. ===== Armed & Delirious tells a surrealist story about the Crotony family, who torture animals. The family is targeted by the Great Rabbit, one of their escaped captives, who kidnaps them and steals Granny Crotony's cookbook. Granny then seeks to defeat the Great Rabbit, rescue her family and retrieve her cookbook. ===== While "joy-hunting" together in Canada, Wild Thing is shocked when her father Wolverine is kidnapped in front of her eyes. Elsewhere across the world, one of the Ladyhawk sisters is abducted as well. These events get the attention of the Watcher Uatu. After the first appearances of the original Fantastic Four, and the defeat of Loki which caused the creation of the first group of Avengers, a new line of heroes have emerged in a possible future timeline. These heroes now form the groups of A-Next and the Fantastic Five (F5), while other heroes such as Spider-Girl, the Green Goblin, and Darkdevil remain solo. At the Avengers Compound, the headquarters of A-Next in the future, the young heroes are busy being trained by Captain America. At a local hospital, Iron Man has just visited a still comatose Scarlet Witch. After leaving her room, he hears noises in it, and when he re-enters it, she has been kidnapped as well. At her home, young May "May Day" Parker, alias Spider- Girl, is busy taking care of her baby brother Ben, while being watched over by her parents Peter Parker and Mary Jane. After that, she leaves for school. Meanwhile, the Thing of the F5 walks over the main streets of the city, when they suddenly start to crumble. Ben realizes he is in danger and sets off an alarm to alert his teammates. Peter later discusses recent events with Phil Urich, alias Green Goblin. They are attacked by a gigantic robot which manages to abduct Peter. A panicking Phil contacts May about this. She, the Buzz, the other Ladyhawk and the Green Goblin dive into a tunnel that was created by the robot that kidnapped Peter. There, they meet up with all the members of A-Next who discovered the same tunnel earlier. Meanwhile, somewhere else, an unconscious Peter is dragged by the robot into a dark realm. An ancient Doctor Strange tries to gain the assistance of Doc Magus, but he prefers to work on his own. Doc Magus uses his astral form to scan the entire world for the missing heroes, which leads him to a dark cave. There, he is attacked by a dark entity that defeats and then kidnaps him as well. At Avengers Compound, Captain America is exercising alone. Thunderstrike realizes Cap is feeling down because of his old age and promises him that he does not have to worry about it because A-Next will follow him anywhere. Cap and Thunderstrike are called to an A-Next meeting where they discuss possible villains who could be behind the kidnappings. They suspect: Kala, the Queen of the Underworld; Tyrannus, Master of the Subterraneans; Terrax the Tamer; the Living Lava Man; or Mole Man, the ruler of Monster Isle. They also inform the X-People of the situation, but Jubilee, their leader, decides that they work better on their own, causing J2 and Wild Thing to wonder why they ever bothered to try join the X-People; they are glad they decided to stay with A-Next. The team decides to split up to investigate the different possibilities. At Barton's Dojo, American Dream and Freebooter discuss things with retired hero Hawkeye. Soon a crack in the ground is made and the heroes are kidnapped as well. The Fantastic Five depart to Monster Isle, only to discover that the Mole Man is dead, and that a statue has been built in his honor. Spider-Girl, Captain America and Thunderstrike learn about the kidnappings at Barton's Dojo. They jump into the hole together with J2 and Wild Thing. There, they discover a weird portal. After entering it, the heroes are immediately attacked by robot- like creatures and start to fight them. Soon the mastermind villain reveals himself to be Loki. He wants revenge on the Avengers, realizing he helped create them years earlier, and shows that he holds the missing heroes prisoner in life-size crystals. Mary Jane fears for her husband's safety. Spider-Man returns home, but he seems different, and his eyes have turned completely evil, causing MJ even more fear. Spider-Girl and the other heroes are still being attacked by the robot-like creatures. Cap and Thunderstrike are defeated and kidnapped, and Spider-Girl suggests she and J2 retreat while they can. Meanwhile, in the city, Spider-Man confronts DarkDevil the hero he dislikes most. The two fight each other. The Vision returns to the Avengers Compound where he finds Stinger discussing matters with Jubilee, who promises to contact them when she learns anything new. The Vision explains that he has arrived at the request of the President of the United States, G. W. Bridge, who believes that the kidnappings could threaten the nation. Jarvis arrives suddenly to inform the two that all of the missing heroes have mysteriously returned. Jarvis also alerts them to the Spider-Man/DarkDevil battle in midtown. Captain America, Wild Thing and Thunderstrike are put in chains. Elsewhere in the caves, Loki manages to kidnap Nova as well. Loki injects Nova with a dark mist, which causes him to become evil and to side with him. J2 and Spider-Girl return to the caves and set their teammates free. They later find Nova captured in the same crystals as before and set him free as well. Meanwhile, Loki has set up two sides of heroes against each other: the ones he kidnapped and turned evil against the unaffected heroes. The heroes begin fighting each other: the Human Torch fights the Hulk, and his flames reveal some robotic body parts covering the Hulk. Hulk manages to defeat the Human Torch by throwing water over him. The Hulk is almost taken down by Psi-Lord and the other F5. Hulk still feels angry about being called "Banner" and Loki uses his magical influences to make the Hulk even angrier. The Hulk uses his gigantic fists to punch the ground, which creates an earthquake throughout the city, destroying some buildings and, at the same time, defeating the F5. While some other heroes are injured along the way as well and are taken care off by medical staff, the others worry about what to do. In Asgard, Thor and Captain America try to figure out what is wrong with the heroes. Discouraged and concerned about his performance, Cap determines he should limit his role in the matter. Elsewhere in Thor's castle, the Vizier notices that Nova is acting strangely and senses that Nova has been turned evil. He uses his magic spells to bring Nova back to normal and plans to do the same with the other Earth heroes. Nova also remembers what happened to him and reveals to his teammates that Loki is behind everything. Together, the Thing and Wolverine are battling the heroes, but Wolverine is stopped by Stinger and the Hulk. Thor transports himself and the others on Asgard back to Earth to confront the Hulk and the "evil" heroes. Meanwhile, Spider-Girl's spider-sense warns her of a mysterious presence which she cannot see. Dormagus and the Vizier use their combined magic powers to make Loki reveal himself, and the heroes all fight each other. Captain America notices a gem hanging on Loki's neck, and smashes it with his shield. Loki apparently used this gem to help him turn the heroes evil. Once the gem is destroyed, the heroes, including the Hulk, revert to normal. A furious Loki releases a deadly blast against Captain America, injuring him. Thor releases a blast from his hammer which will send Loki into Limbo forever and the Hulk decides to join him to make sure that Loki remains there. Captain America dies, and Thor uses his hammer to grant Cap's soul immortality. The soul floats into the skies, and creates a shiny bright star in the form of Cap's shield, meant to inspire the heroes and future generations to come always. ===== The purpose of obliterating the Muslim mosque on the Haram al-Sharif, considered together with the Al-Aqsa to be an "abomination", was to "awaken" Jews, and lay the groundwork for the creation of the Third Temple. The Jewish underground had two different ideas about how to destroy the Dome of the Rock. One proposal was to crash a plane packed with explosives into the mosque. One member of the group was an IDF expert in explosives who had access to sufficient ammunition and material stolen from the Israeli army to carry out the plan. ===== Cunda (Kingsley) lives deep in the Brazilian rainforest and is intent on making enough money so he can marry a widow in his village. However, his trade - capturing snakes for scientists - pays very little money, and he's in direct competition with other suitors. One day, Cunda is bitten by a snake, and he crawls to the river to recover. While going through the agonizing recovery, he has an hallucination of four chimpanzees sitting in the river. Recovered, he returns home and finds the four chimpanzees waiting for him, and his efforts to shoo them away fail. Knowing that chimpanzees are not native to Brazil, he decides that they are a kind of supernatural gift for him. Believing this, he decides to take them to "the city" to sell them. The journey isn't easy from the start; he discovers that he can't tie them on a rope and drag them, and the only way is to coax them. They stumble into a gold-panning camp, where Cunda is forced to work in order to pay off an old debt. When one of the monkeys is taken as payment, Cunda must figure how to retrieve the monkey and escape. Later, he, the monkeys and the adults of a village are kidnapped by mercenaries. Cunda and the monkeys escape, along with a village woman who refuses to leave his side. Arriving at a small town, a confusing sequence results in one of the monkeys disappearing, and Cunda becoming the servant of the local rich woman who has taken it upon herself to take care of the monkeys. Cunda now has to solve these two problems, and deal with the fact of the village woman's attraction to him plus his growing fondness of the monkeys. ===== King (voiced by Daisuke Gori) leads denizens of the Dark World to conquer both Earth and Vecanti. He seeks a home for his people before the destruction of his planet. Against this common foe, Yuko Asou finds help in her new girlfriends, a Dark World warrior- maiden named (voiced by Yūko Mita), who was a demon born in the Dark World and uses a deadly whip, and her own sister (voiced by Aya Hisakawa), who grew up within Vecanti and became strong in the ways of magic. Furthermore, the Valis sword is shown to be capable of more than what Yuko has accomplished with it thus far. During the course of the game, Yuko rescues the kidnapped Cham and Valna from captivity. A visit to the ruler of Vecanti, , unleashes the blade's full potential, which culminates in a climactic battle between the three girls and Glames as well the returning antagonist from the first game, Rogmes (voiced by Koji Totani). The Valis warrior defeats them both, and for her dutiful and unwavering service, Yuko is permitted to step down from being a guardian and become a goddess in Vecanti, leaving Earth behind forever. The Valis sword retires to the heavens as well, as the dream world prepares itself for prosperity, while Cham and Valna wave good-bye to Yuko as she departs to take on her new role. ===== The film is set around 1938. During an auction, Mr. Boormans is put into a psychiatric hospital after he bid 32,000 Belgian francs for a worthless piece of paper. Frans Laarmans visits the psychiatrists claiming Boormans is not crazy and there is a story behind the bid. When Laarmans's mother dies, the Laarmans family decides that Laarmans should pay for the embalming of her corpse. As he does not have the money, Laarmans visits Boormans, who is the publisher of the World Magazine for Finance, Trade, Industry, Art and Science, a publication Boormans claims is sold worldwide and translated into many languages. He represents it as a reputable consumers' journal, comparing different companies in the same industry. Boormans informs Laarmans that, by coincidence, the next edition is about the funeral and undertaking industry. Boormans visits the undertakers and a deal whereby his company will be featured in the magazine. The offer comes with two conditions, namely that in addition to the normal print and distribution, the undertaker must order a large number of copies for own purposes, and that the purchase of the magazines will be at a significant discount if the undertaker in turn gives Laarmans a discount for the embalming services. The undertaker agrees. Boormans, who is looking for a new assistant, hires Laarmans and sends him out in search for new customers. Mrs. Lauwereyssen, the owner of a business in elevators, is interested. In addition to the copies of the magazine distributed by Boormans, she agrees to purchase a further 100,000 copies for own purposes. Laarmans then finds out the "World Magazine" is a fraud, in that the magazine is not distributed to the public, but only the copies purchased by the featured company exist. The magazine does not have any subscribers and is, in effect, merely an expensive advertising brochure using unproven figures and fake competitors. Only the information of the customer is "valid", although it too is also based upon lies and twisted figures. It turns out Mrs Lauwereyssen only placed the order as her company is almost bankrupt. She now hopes to become an international awarded entrepreneur. The extra money she is about to earn will be used for acute surgery on her infected leg. Laarmans feels sorry for Mrs Lauwereyssen and tries to convince her not to sign the contract or to reduce the amount of obliged prints, but is not able to convince her. Later he speaks with Boormans in an attempt to void the contract or to reduce the price and Boormans agrees that Mrs Lauwereyssen can pay the invoice on 12 month terms. In meantime Mrs Lauwereyssen is aware she has been swindled. She is so upset she refuses to pay last instalment. Some time later, Boormans and Laarmans meet Mrs Lauwereyssen at the market. Her leg has been amputated. Boormans feels remorse and makes up tells her there has been a calculation error and offers 32,000 Belgian francs as a credit note. However, Mrs Lauwereyssen does not want to take the money. A dismayed Boormans decides to give the money to Mr Van Kamp, another customer he cheated, and who is now in financial problems. Van Kamp also refuses Boormans money. Boormans conscience continues to trouble him and he sues Mrs Lauwereyssen in an attempt to force her to take the money. The judge dismisses the case as there is no evidence that Mrs Lauwereyssen paid too much. Some time later the elevator company becomes bankrupt. When Boormans and Laarmans attend an auction, Boormans, still having moral qualms, bids 32,000 Belgian francs for a worthless piece of paper. Laarmans resigns and starts a shop selling cheese. He meets Mrs Lauwereyssen who forgives him, as she feels that she should have known the magazine was a fraud. Furthermore, when she signed the contract she knew that her leg was not able to be saved and that an amputation was inevitable. The film ends when Laarmans meets Boormans in a museum. Boormans intends to talk the curator into taking 1.5 million copies for the next release of the "World Magazine". ===== The game takes place in the Danger Room, a training area for the X-Men inside the X-Mansion. A virus transmitted via satellite has infected the Danger Room, disabling control and safety limits. The X-Men must endure the unpredictable behavior of the Danger Room until the virus can be located and eliminated. Once the virus is eliminated, the X-Men discover that Magneto is behind the computer virus and the final stage involves a battle with him. ===== Dorothy Lamour and Bing Crosby in the trailer Josh Mallon (Bing Crosby) and Ace Lannigan (Bob Hope) are best friends and work aboard the same ship. As their ship returns to the US after a long voyage, they see all the other sailors being mistreated by their wives and girlfriends, and the two friends pledge never to get involved with women again. Unfortunately, this vow is tested almost immediately. First, Ace is confronted by the family of a former lover, Cherry, who insist he marry her. Then Josh, who is the son of rich shipping magnate (Charles Coburn), has to fend off his fiancée, Gloria (Judith Barrett), and his father's wishes that he settle down and take over the family business. Things get worse when Josh and Ace get caught up fishing and turn up late for a party to celebrate Josh's engagement. Gloria's hostile drunken brother starts a fistfight and a news reporter takes photographs that cause a scandal. Josh and Ace flee to Hawaii and then head for Singapore. However, the pair only get as far as the island of Kaigoon before their money runs out. They rescue Mima (Dorothy Lamour), a local (but not native) woman, from her abusive dance-partner, Caesar (Anthony Quinn), and she moves into their hut. Soon Mima is running the two men's lives, much to their chagrin. The trio try to make money in several different ways, including trying to sell a spot remover that is so bad it dissolves clothes. When Josh's father finally locates his wayward son, he and Gloria fly out to bring Josh back to face his responsibilities. The resentful Caesar leads them to where Ace, Josh and Mima are enjoying a local feast. By this point, both Josh and Ace have fallen in love with Mima. She is heartbroken to learn that Gloria is Josh's fiancée. Ace proposes to Mima, but before she can accept, Josh returns. The two friends almost come to blows over Mima, but then decide that she should choose between them. Mima picks Ace. Josh boards an ocean liner with Gloria and his father. Meanwhile, Caesar informs the local police that Ace is on the island illegally. Ace is arrested when he cannot produce a passport, but manages to escape. He and Mima flee aboard a ship, but Ace comes to realize that Mima really loves Josh. When Josh's ship docks at a tropical port, a passenger complains about a terrible spot remover that disintegrated his suit jacket. Josh realizes that Ace and Mima must be on the island. When he finds them, Ace tells his best friend that Mima really loves him. ===== The film starts with con-artist Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) singing "You Lucky People, You" as a side-show caller at a circus advertising an act featuring his friend Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope). "Fearless" poses as a human cannonball, but he quickly substitutes a dummy at the last minute and hides in a secret compartment. The flaming dummy sets the big tent on fire and the two of them flee. Their subsequent acts show 'Fearless' doing more dangerous acts, usually getting injured. When Chuck brings the next 'great idea', wrestling a live octopus, 'Fearless' finally balks and wants to go back to the states. At a fancy restaurant, they're sent champagne by a wealthy man, diamond baron Charles Kimble (Eric Blore). The festive mood turns sour when the police show up, but Kimble bails them out. They decide to go home to the United States, but when Chuck goes to get the tickets Kimble invites him onto his yacht for a drink. 'Fearless' is busy packing and when Chuck comes back, he finds out Chuck has spent all their money, five thousand, on the deed for one of Kimble's diamond mines. It seems like a good deal, until they find out Kimble is an eccentric who would sign over anything and the deed is worthless. Furious at Chuck losing all their money, 'Fearless' ends their partnership. Later that evening, 'Fearless' comes back with a fistful of money, claiming to have 'sold' the diamond mine to some guy at a bar for SEVEN thousand. They start to leave only to be confronted by the same man, Monsieur Le Bec (Lionel Royce). 'Fearless' had inflated the story a little, so Le Bec and his huge bodyguard want Chuck and 'Fearless' to accompany them to actually see the mine. Chuck and 'Fearless' manage to escape and jump onto a boat bound for Africa. Stranded in Africa, they are propositioned by Julia Quimby (Una Merkel) to help rescue her friend, Donna LaTour (Dorothy Lamour), from being sold at a slave auction. They bid 150 in local coin on her to rescue her. Unbeknownst to both of them, Julia and Donna are also con-artists and take half of the payment to get food. Donna reveals to Julia about the seven thousand Chuck and 'Fearless' have and how she has convinced them to take her and Julia on a safari across the country, not telling them it's to see Donna's wealthy boyfriend. As their journey continues, with the help of an announcer and a montage, Chuck and 'Fearless' both vie for Donna's attention. During a moonlit canoe ride, Chuck proclaims his feelings singing "It's Always You" and Donna realizes she's starting to fall for him too. Julia tells Donna it would be foolish to give up her wealthy boyfriend for a side show crooner. Donna finally confides to 'Fearless' that despite her feelings for Chuck, her heart belongs to another. Thinking its him, 'Fearless' agrees to tell Chuck. Chuck refuses to believe 'Fearless', who is practically skipping, but then Julia comes in and tell them both about the rich boyfriend. Chuck and 'Fearless' finally learn they've been duped from the beginning and everything had been a set-up. They angrily run into the jungle to confront her. While she is swimming in the nude, a pair of leopards appear and tear her clothes while she hides in the reeds. Upon seeing her torn clothes, Chuck and 'Fearless' assume she's dead. They bury her clothes and have a funeral, all while Donna watches. During their attempt at a eulogy, they admit that despite the fact she lied to them, they both loved her. Chuck and 'Fearless' start to sing "It's Always You" and burst into tears, until Donna sings to them and then they both turn on her. They storm off into the jungle and the safari leaves without them. While trying to find their way back, Chuck and 'Fearless' stumble upon skeleton-laden caves. They jokingly bang on the drums only to summon a local tribe of natives. The natives, thinking they are gods, adorn them with jewels and give them food. Chuck and 'Fearless' thinks it is great until the natives decide to test them by throwing 'Fearless' in a cage with a giant gorilla. After a comical wrestling match, in which 'Fearless' loses, the natives prepare to cook them both, until they use their infamous 'patty cake' routine to escape. They return to civilization, haggard, dirty and penniless until they hock the jewels they had received from the natives. 'Fearless' reluctantly lets Chuck go to get the tickets. When he comes back empty handed, 'Fearless' is crushed, until Chuck presents Donna and Julia. Donna gave up the rich boyfriend because she's in love with Chuck. When 'Fearless' asks what they are going to do for money, Chuck springs another 'great idea' and the film ends with the four of them again doing a carnival act, this time sawing a woman (Julia) in half. ===== ===== The limited series begins with Reed and Sue Richards investigating a strange phenomena in another galaxy. Reed realizes that Earth may be in danger within a week. However, before he can send a message to warn Earth, an alien vessel causes a sun in the middle of the galaxy to overload and implode, creating a massive shockwave that destroys his ship. The occupant of the alien vessel is revealed to be Dominas the Wavemaster, a Herald of Galactus. Dominas flies toward the Shi'ar Imperial Throneworld, where he battles Gladiator and the rest of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. On Earth, the rest of the Fantastic Five receive Reed's transmission. They rush into a rescue operation while Doom stays behind to warn the President and the other heroes. Doom informs A-Next of the current situation, but they are busy dealing with their lifelong adversaries, the Red Queen and her Revengers. Jarvis sends A-Next the emergency call and Stinger calls her team back, realizing that protecting Earth is more important than fighting the Revengers. Vision discusses matters with G. W. Bridge, the current President of the United States, who is not sure how to handle things. At Barton's Dojo, American Dream trains with Freebooter and Hawkeye. American Dream is considering leaving the Avengers, which disappoints Hawkeye. At school, May Parker chats with her friends about her future plans and later leaves to perform her daily role as Spider-Girl. She receives a call from Stinger, who is summoning all of the reserve Avengers. Dominas continues to wreak havoc on the Shi'ar Throneworld, and his master Galactus prepares to devour it completely. While Lilandra is ushered into safety, her Imperial Guard do their best to protect her world. Despite the Guards' efforts, Galactus's elemental converter drains the planet dry. Galactus reveals to Dominas that he no longer desires to merely sate his hunger, but to gather energy with the intention of evolving to the next level. The newly birthed Captain America star is vital to his plan. Galactus decides to absorb Asgard next. The Fantastic Five head to the galaxy where Reed and Sue's ship was destroyed, but find nothing. However, they receive a signal and head straight toward it. As they hoped, the signal is coming from Reed and Sue. Sue had created a force field to protect them both while their ship exploded. Once the F5 find their missing teammates, they advise the President about the situation and head back home to help deal with it. Reed Richards has a long-standing plan to stop Galactus if it should ever become necessary. Meanwhile, Thor leads his mighty warriors into battle against Galactus. Galactus sends for his robotic troops to protect him. Spider-Girl and Vision arrive at Avengers Compound. Vision has already sent Nova and Earth Sentry into space to investigate matters. He orders the other A-Next members to wait. The situation worsens when the Revengers show up again, and A-Next want to take them down. Vision refuses to allow this because of the President's orders. The gods realize they are outmatched against Galactus. While Thor is taken prisoner by Galactus, the other Asgardians escape. Dominas also apprehends the Odinsword for its cosmic power. Galactus absorbs the entire world of Asgard with the sword he finds. Back on Earth, Vision has agreed to send in a few members of A-Next to battle the Revengers, including Spider- Girl, Stinger, Mainframe, and Thunderstrike. As Thunderstrike faces Sabreclaw, he suddenly loses his powers due to the demise of Asgard. As Thunderstrike's secret identity is revealed, Spider-Girl and the rest decide to let the Revengers escape to bring their teammate into safety. Dominas attacks the Watcher, destroying the moon in the process. He telepathically announces the imminent destruction of Earth to its populace, causing widespread panic. Many of the Great Powers of the Universe gather at the far edge of reality to discuss Galactus's latest actions. They unite their power to send a Galactus- destroying bolt towards Earth, knowing that it could destroy the entire Milky Way. Reed Richards makes a desperate decision to use his single-shot transdimensional cannon, which is his one hope of stopping Galactus, against the bolt and its originators. Galactus arrives on Earth, causing tremendous planet-wide destruction and chaos. While the heroes do their best to keep everyone safe, Dominas reveals that Galactus plans to destroy the entire universe so a new "Big Bang" can take place and an entire new universe can be formed. The Captain America star is to be the focus, and all the gathered living energies are to be directed at it in a recreation, on a far greater scale, of the sun-implosion at the beginning of the miniseries. As Reed Richards realizes, that was merely a test run. The Silver Surfer learns of his former master's plans, and arrives on Earth to deal with it. He and Dominas face each other. The Surfer triumphs, absorbing Dominas's Power Cosmic and becoming even more powerful than before. He then focuses on Galactus. The Fantastic Five, A-Next, X-People, and Revengers all team up to stop Galactus. The Surfer's Power Cosmic and Scarlet Witch's reality-altering power combined enable Reed's machine to destroy Galactus's barrier, and Stinger, American Dream and Spider-Girl manage to reverse the effect of Galactus' device, causing him immense pain through an overload of energies. Death appears before Galactus in a vision, and she laments that though he'd ever been one of her most loyal advocates, Galactus was always destined to die. As the Surfer eventually faces the dying, energy-saturated Galactus, they somehow merge into a new unnamed entity who declares that a new form of energy, the "Power Essential," has been born through the union. Instantly repairing the damage Galactus caused on Earth, the entity vows to be a builder of worlds and a guardian of life, bringing life and joy to dead planets. He can thus be seen as the "anti-Galactus". He is a silver giant, clad in a silver armor similar to Galactus', who travels by cosmic surfboard. As the heroes watch the entity leave, new allies are made, and while some may only last for a while, others will be explored further in the future. They look upon the sky, and see the Captain America star once again. ===== The film takes the form of a docudrama in which actors who are cast as FBI Special Agents speak to camera about the war on gangsters in the mid-1920s through the late-1930s. Using contacts with gun molls, agents track down criminals. The film dramatizes the crime careers, and final capture or deaths of John Dillinger, the Barker Gang (Ma Barker, Fred Barker, Arthur Barker, Alvin Karpis), Bonnie and Clyde, Homer Van Meter, Doc Barker and Pretty-Boy Floyd. The "docudrama" does not portray events, many situations, or the FBI Special Agents accurately. For instance, the name of the FBI Special Agent who was killed in the Kansas City Massacre on June 17, 1933 was Raymond J. Caffrey, and it was not his first day with the FBI. Names of all FBI Special Agents who have been killed in the line of duty may be found on the FBI Hall of Honor. ===== In 1837, Swiss governess Elisabeth Laurier (Sophie Marceau) agrees to bear a child for an anonymous English landowner in return for money needed to pay her father's debts. They meet over three nights at a lonely island hotel. Despite their wish for detachment, they develop a deeply passionate connection during their lovemaking by firelight. Their feelings grow after they converse on the beach and at the hotel. Nine months later (10 August 1838), Elisabeth gives birth to a girl, and as agreed, she gives up the child to the care of the English landowner. Over the coming years, Elisabeth never forgets her child. She begins to keep a journal of watercoloured flowers and plants, adding a page for each holiday and birthday they are apart. The anonymous Englishman is Charles Godwin (Stephen Dillane), a landowner and struggling sheep farmer, who can barely keep the debtors of his philandering father, Lord Clare, at bay. Charles's wife, Amy Godwin, is paralysed and catatonic due to a horseriding accident. Amy's sister, Constance (Lia Williams), runs the Godwin household. Seven years after giving up her daughter, Elisabeth gets hired as the new governess for the child, who is named Louisa. Initially, Charles rejects Elisabeth, and demands that she leave immediately. However, Constance insists that he should give the new governess a month to find a new situation. Showing Elisabeth the catatonic form of his wife, Charles forces Elisabeth to swear never to reveal to Louisa or anyone the nature of their previous relationship. Louisa (Dominique Belcourt) is a spoiled, ignorant, wilful, and foulmouthed child—unloved by anyone except her father. Though she acknowledges the father's loving relationship with his daughter, Elisabeth is appalled by the lack of control Charles exercises over the girl. He refuses to use any forms of discipline in her upbringing. Unable to keep Louisa at her lessons, Elisabeth locks the child in the classroom. When he discovers this, Charles is furious and roughly manhandles Elisabeth in an effort to extract the key to the schoolroom. While Charles wants his daughter to enjoy life as much as she can, Elisabeth is determined to teach her daughter how to behave to be loved by others, and to be educated so she can determine her own path in the world. To convince Charles to support her approach, Elisabeth promises she will never harm the girl, and whatever she does to Louisa she will also do to herself. Outside of class, Louisa spends all of her spare time in her lakehouse, a small belvedere on the estate in the middle of a pond, which can only be reached by boat. Here, Louisa pretends she has a mother. At first, Elisabeth watches clandestinely from the boat docks while Louisa is in the lakehouse. However, when she finds out that Charles swims naked there in the morning, she begins to go to watch Charles too, leaving before he can see her. In the classroom, Elisabeth paints picture cards to teach the seven-year-old how to read. She also tells Louisa a tale about the firelight: Elisabeth finds that this helps Louisa concentrate on her lessons, knowing there is a time at the end of the day when there are no rules. Increasingly attracted to Elisabeth, Charles asks her to promise him that they can never be close like they once were. But Elisabeth doesn't answer. Charles even talks about the three of them leaving together, but Elisabeth says she knows it is impossible, as he has obligations to his estate, family, and wife. Charles suddenly announces that the entire estate is being appraised for sale, purportedly to cover his overwhelming debts. On a bitterly cold night, Charles consults his conscience as to whether his wife, Amy, would want him to release her from her catatonic prison of ten years. He opens the windows of her bedchamber, removes her covers, and allows the fire in her room to go out, leaving her to die of exposure. With Amy's death, her sister Constance expects to be Charles's choice as a new wife. However, she concedes a dignified defeat when she realises Charles's depth of feeling toward Elisabeth. Elisabeth confronts Charles and asks him if he killed Amy, which he admits. They both feel strong guilt, but no regret. Soon after, Louisa looks through Elisabeth's room and discovers the illustrated journal dedicated to "My English Daughter". Louisa confronts her governess who confirms she is in fact her mother. After the sale of the Godwin's estate, Charles, Elisabeth, and Louisa leave on a snowy day to begin their new lives together as a family. ===== A woman named Karen (Strasberg), who is suffering from a growing tumor on her neck, enters a hospital in San Francisco. After a series of X-rays, the doctors begin to think it is a living creature: a fetus being born inside the tumor. Eerie and grisly occurrences begin; the tumorous growth perceives itself – himself – to be under attack as a result of the X-rays used to ascertain its nature, which are starting to stunt and deform its development. The growth is the old Native American shaman, Misquamacus; he is reincarnating himself through the young woman to exact his revenge on the white men who invaded North America and exterminated its native peoples. Karen's boyfriend, psychic fortune teller Harry Erskine (Curtis) contacts a second Native American shaman, John Singing Rock (Ansara), to help fight the reincarnating medicine man, but the kind of spirits he can summon and control appear to be too weak to match his opponent's abilities. ===== The story begins with a morose and brooding Detective (Duane Sharp) receiving a phone call from a local temple, saying someone is about to die. At the temple, a meditating monk (Howard Fong) is seen falling over, apparently dead. The Detective shows up moments afterwards and begins to question the other monks in the temple. He receives cryptic answers to all his queries from Ed (Ezra Buzzington), Jane (Debra Miller) and the Master (Kim Chan), to his rapidly growing frustration. The Detective continues to treat the case as a murder, although both Jane and Ed insist that they did not kill the dead man. An agitated Ed directs the Detective to meet him at midnight for an unspecified purpose. In the meantime, the Detective rants at the Master, who remains unperturbed, before discovering that his gun is missing. Ed meets with the Detective and commits suicide with the Detective’s gun. The Detective, stunned by Ed’s sudden death and haunted by visions of his deceased wife Nora (Jennifer Siebel), is comforted by Jane. The two eventually make love. Afterwards, the two talk, and the Detective is alarmed to realize that he cannot remember his own name. Jane reveals that she is dying. Distressed, the Detective says he cannot go through the heartbreak of losing someone again, and goes to the Master for his insights on life and death. The master says that he doesn’t know what happens when we die, because he’s “not dead yet.” He does, though, calm the Detective with a lecture on interconnectedness. The Detective sits with the Master, who after a time also falls over, dead. The Detective continues to sit alone, at first sobbing, then at peace as Nora’s ghost leaves him. The film ends with a shaven-headed Detective sitting with Jane, holding hands. He asks Jane how long she has to live, and she says she doesn’t know. The Detective accepts this, and they continue to sit together quietly. ===== Jamie Ashen and his wife, Lisa, receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". As Lisa is playing with Billy while Jamie goes to pick their carry- out dinner order, a figure approaches her, causing her to scream. Later, Jamie returns home and finds Lisa dead with her tongue cut out. After Jamie is released from custody by Detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair. Returning to Raven's Fair, Jamie visits his estranged and wealthy father, Edward, who uses a wheelchair, and his much-younger wife, Ella, for information regarding Mary Shaw. Dismissing them as superstitions, Jamie arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of a local mortician named Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, warns Jamie that Mary Shaw's spirit is dangerous and vehemently urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so, but shortly afterward is confronted by Detective Lipton in his motel room, the latter still doubting Jamie, after returning from the cemetery where Mary Shaw and the rest of her dummies are buried. Henry tells Jamie that Mary Shaw was a famous and popular ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared, and his family blamed it on Mary Shaw and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a dummy and buried with her 101 dolls. Henry, then the young son of the local mortician, saw Shaw (after she was turned to a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to keeping his mouth shut, because Mary takes her revenge by killing only those who scream. Jamie then finds out that Michael, who was indeed murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. As part of their lynching of Mary, the Ashen family forced her to scream and permanently silenced her by cutting her tongue out; as such, she has since been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline by killing them using the same method. While crawling under his house after discovering Marion with Billy, Henry is killed by Mary, who steals his tongue. Detective Lipton then discovers that all of Mary Shaw's dolls have been dug up, and informs Jamie, who receives a call from "Henry", asking him to go to Shaw's theatre as he has a way to prove Jamie's innocence. There, both Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls lined up in their massive display case, along with Michael's body, which has been turned into a marionette. Through a clown doll, Mary reveals to Jamie that she killed Lisa because, unbeknownst to Jamie, she was pregnant with his son, thereby killing any potential newborn of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton then burn the theatre and all of Shaw's dolls, though in the process, Lipton falls and screams, causing him to be killed by Mary. Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary, but he repels her by throwing Billy (the 101st and last dummy) into the fireplace. He then learns, much to his horror, that his father had already died long ago; the current "Edward" is actually a doll converted from his corpse and controlled by Ella who, it turns out, is the "perfect doll" that Mary Shaw created just before her death. Jamie then screams in terror as Ella, possessed by Mary, lunges forward and kills him. The film ends with Jamie reciting a nursery rhyme about Shaw while a photo album with human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Detective Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself. ===== The movie begins with the rivalry between Model College and Government College. Subrahmanyam (Pawan Kalyan), the youngest son of a family, is a wastrel, gypsy, and ladies man. He has a bunch of friends, including Kodandarama Manoharam (Ali). His father Vishwanadh (Kitty) always scolds him for his attitude, but his brother Chakri (Achyuth), who is a determined boxer, and friend Jaanu (Preeti Jhangiani) dote on him. Meanwhile, Subbu falls in love with a rich diva, Lovely (Aditi), who is from the rival college, and for this, he keeps on telling lies to her that he is very rich. His brother Chakri and Rohit (Bhupinder Singh) are rivals and are pro boxers. Chakri eventually loses the much-hyped university boxing championship to Rohit. Meanwhile, Jaanu truly loves Subrahmanyam and gives him everything he asks her for, thinking that he is doing these for her, but he does it for Lovely. While the final of the next boxing tournament is coming up against his former opponent Chakri, Rohit realises that Subbu is behind his crush Lovely, beats up Chakri, and injures him fatally, thereby seeking his revenge on Subbu and aborting Chakri's match against him in the next week. The incidents that led Subrahmanyam to change, the way he realized the true love of Jaanu, and the final twist of him becoming a boxing champion by beating Rohit is the real plot to be seen. ===== The story is about law graduate Vikram Saigal (Arjun Rampal) who is not happy with his lot at all. He is very idealistic and wants to battle corruption and society and change the world. A young girl, Ritika (Manisha Koirala) takes a fancy to him and goes all out to woo him, at first he rejects her advances and eventually he gives in after she presents him with an expensive painting and they become a couple. His idealism includes him wanting to set up a "free for the poor" law service, but he finds it impossible to find any other like- minded lawyers. His boss and his father (Suresh Oberoi) think he's too young and naïve to fully understand the implications of giving free legal services and he becomes more and more disillusioned and plans how to rob a bank to get money to set up his free legal institute. Together with Ritika he hatches a plot to rob a bank. But soon after, Ritika develops cold feet and dissuades Vikram from carrying out the robbery. On the day of the bank robbery, a lady informs the bank authorities about the burglary and the officials get on a high alert. Thereafter, Ritika is found dead and all fingers point towards Vikram. A courtroom battle ensues. Vikram successfully defends himself by fighting his own case. After the verdict Ritika's best friend tells him that it was she not Ritika who had informed the bank authority of the plan of robbery. Drenched in guilt Vikram tries to kill himself but can't seem to do that as well. So he decides to rob the bank again, this time with an empty pistol. He goes to the bank on a seemingly suicide mission, robs the bank and gets shot fatally while coming out. ===== Atys, scene "songes funestes" The French style of opera, established in the 1670s by Lully, was in five acts with a prologue. Prologue Lully's prologues normally served to comment on current events at the court of Louis XIV in a way that flattered the king. When the opera was premiered in 1676, France was at war with the Netherlands, and the French winter campaign had resulted in the tragic death of Henri de la Tour. Louis XIV was waiting for the fairer spring weather to arrive so that he could invade Flanders.Isherwood, Music in Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century, 218-219. The overture is in standard French overture form and style as developed by Lully, featuring three sections: a slow section in duple meter and pompous dotted rhythms in G minor, followed by a faster middle section and concluded with a second slow section ending with a Picardy third. The scene for the prologue is at the Palace of the allegorical character Time. A chorus of Hours of the Day and Night sing the praises of a 'hero' (Louis XIV) in "Ses Justes loix, ses grands exploits" ("His just laws, his great exploits"). Flore, the goddess of spring and her nymphs arrive and discuss the arrival of spring and perform dances. A Zephyr, on the other hand, laments the coming of spring and the battles that will follow. Just as the hero is about to leave for battle, Melpomene arrives and, in a gesture functioning as a transition to Act I, proceeds to tell the story of Atys in the recitative "Retirez vous." Iris then enters and relays the message from the goddess Cybèle in "Cybèle veut que Flore." This is followed by more dances and the chorus "Préparez vous de nouvelles festes." Act I Scene 1 takes place at the holy mountain of the goddess Cybèle. Atys sings the air "Allons, allons" at a brisk tempo to wake up the Phrygians so that they can give a proper welcome to Cybèle. Idas mocks him in Scene 2, suggesting his motivation might be too much love for the goddess in the air "Vous veillez lorsque tout sommeil." Sangaride and Doris arrive in Scene 3. Sangaride is betrothed to the king of the Phrygians, Celenus, and pretends to be excited for the wedding, especially because the goddess Cybèle will attend. The quartet sings "Allons, allons accourez tous." In scene 4, we learn that Sangaride is in fact unhappy about her forthcoming wedding, for she is really in love with Atys. To convey this, she sings the lament "Atys est trop heureux" based on the diatonically descending tetrachord model (in this case in D minor: D-C-Bb-A) that had been established by Claudio Monteverdi in his Lament of the Nymph.Although the lament was established in early seventeenth-century Italian opera, it spread to other national styles of opera including the French style that had rejected many Italianisms. For an excellent discussion of the lament convention, see Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth Century Venice, 366-386. During Scenes 5 and 6, Atys finds Sangaride lamenting and confesses his love for her in the recitative dialogue "Sangaride ce jour est un grand jour pour vous." Sangaride is astonished by his declaration of love. Atys and Sangaride sing the duet "Commençons, commençons" and are soon joined by the chorus of Phrygians in Scene 7. After some dances by the Phrygians, Cybèle appears in Scene 8 and invites all into her temple in "Venez tous dans mon temple." The chorus of Phrygians motivate themselves to comply her wishes with "Nous devons nous animer." Act II The scene of Act II is inside the temple of the goddess Cybèle. Celenus and Atys both announce their desire to be selected as the high priest of Cybèle in Scene 1's recitative "N'avancez plus loin." Atys then sings the air "Qu'un indifférent est heureux." In Scene 2, Cybèle arrives and states that she chooses Atys as the high priest because she has secretly loved him. In fact, it was because of her love for Atys that she is attending the wedding. Celenus graciously accepts her decision. The chorus of Nations sings "Célébrons la gloire immortelle" to celebrate Cybèle's choice, followed by a dance by the Zephyrs, which concludes the act in only four scenes. Act III The scene changes to the palace of the Sacrificateur of Cybèle where Atys is alone. This act includes a sommeil (sleep): a type of scene that had been established in Venetian opera. Such scenes were especially useful because they could place a character into a vulnerable position for a variety of potential dramatic purposes. For example, the sleeping character could be vulnerable to attack, brainwashing, or might reveal secret thoughts in the altered state of consciousness.Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth Century Venice, 338-342. Although many Venetian traditions were not appreciated by the French, Lully and his librettist Quinnault clearly accepted the sleep scene type. During Scene 1, Atys contemplates his unfortunate dilemma due to his love for Sangaride (who is engaged to King Celenus against her will) in the air "Que servent les faveurs." He is soon joined by Doris and Idas in Scenes 2 and 3, to whom he expresses concerns. In an uncommon outburst in Lullian opera, he exclaims "Mais quoi trahir le Roy!" (But, to betray the king!) Scene 4 is the sommeil described above, in which Cybèle causes him to fall asleep. The allegorical character Le Sommeil sings "Dormons, dormons tous" after a lengthy instrumental introduction featuring gentle music in G minor scored for a pair of flutes, violins, and basso continuo. Once asleep, Atys is first met by a chorus of Pleasant Dreams that sing of love followed by Bad Dreams who remind him that there are consequences for deceiving the gods. After this lengthy scene, Atys awakens in Scene 5 with Cybèle at his side attempting to console him. Sangaride arrives in Scene 6 and begs Cybèle to stop her wedding to King Celenus because she does not love him. Atys, confused, intervenes on Sangaride's behalf. This upsets Cybèle because she too loves Atys and has bestowed the title of high priest on him. When she is left alone with Melissa in Scene 7, she sings the lament "L'ingrat Atys," also based on the chromatically descending tetrachord in A minor (A-G#-G-F#-F-E). Unlike Sangaride's earlier lament in Act I, there is only one presentation of the tetrachord at the beginning rather than a repeated pattern. In Scene 8, Cybèle is left alone and performs the slow air "Espoir si cher si doux." Act IV This act is set in the palace of the River Sangar with Atys and Sangaride alone. Scene 1 commences immediately with a dialogue between Sangaride and Atys. She has interpreted Atys's confusion as love for Cybèle and laments in front of Doris and Idas who interject various duets. During Scene 2, King Celenus addresses Sangaride affectionately in "Belle nymphe." He realizes that she does not love him and is only doing so to obey her father. Atys arrives in Scene 3 and hears the conversation. He and Sangaride are left alone in Scene 4 and engaged in a somewhat heated discussion involving rapid alternation between recitative and air styles. Atys assures Sangaride that he loves her and they swear to be faithful to each other. Sangaride's father approaches at the beginning of Scene 5. With his power as the high priest of Cybèle, Atys orders Sangaride's father to cancel the wedding to King Celenus. The River of Sangar approves Sangaride's choice in a chorus "Nous approuvons votre choix," followed by "Que l'on chante." A jubilant dance suite and choral numbers conclude the act. Act V The final act takes place in the pleasant gardens. King Celenus finds out that the wedding plans have been cancelled and he confronts Cybèle in a lengthy recitative dialogue in Scene 1. Cybèle is not happy about the situation either. Because Atys has deceived the gods, Cybèle resolves to punish both him and Sangaride. As Atys and Sangaride enter in Scene 2, Cybèle and Celanus begin scolding them with a duet: "Venez vous livrer au supplice" that effectively becomes a dialogue in which the two pairs sing in opposition alternating recitative and air delivery styles. For punishment, Cybèle blinds Atys with a magical spell. Scene 3 opens with a furious instrumental prelude, followed by a dialogue ("Ciel! Quelle vapeur m'environne!") between Atys and Sangaride. A chorus concludes the scene with "Atys, Atys, lui-même." In Scene 4, Atys plans to commit suicide as a result of the tragic loss of his vision. Again the chorus finishes with "Atys, Atys, lui-même." To prevent his suicide, Cybèle intervenes in Scene 5 and transforms him into a tree. In the remaining portion of the opera (Scenes 6-7), Cybèle is left to celebrate her vengeance, yet lament the love she has lost. ===== The year is 1929 and in the opening episode Jeremiah Unsworth (Freddie Jones), the proprietor of the undertakers, dies. This leaves his widow Ivy (Thora Hird) and gormless nephew Billy (Christopher Beeny) to take over the business. As might be expected, the accident-prone Ivy and Billy have numerous mishaps, and hardly a funeral goes by without something untoward occurring. A running subplot is Billy's pursuit of romance, often at the encouragement of Ernie Hadfield; this later ends with Billy's marriage to old schoolfriend Mary Braithwaite - who had originally been set to marry Ernie. ===== The story is narrated as a "found manuscript" penned by Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial German Navy during the days of World War I. Altberg begins by declaring that he has decided to document the events leading up to his untimely end in order to "set certain facts" before the public, aware that he will not survive to do so himself. In the North Atlantic, after sinking a British freighter and its occupied lifeboats, the cruel and arrogant Altberg commands his U-boat to submerge, surfacing later to find the dead body of a seaman who died clinging to the exterior railing of the sub. A search of the body reveals a strange piece of carved ivory. Because of its apparent great age and value, one of Altberg's officers keeps the object, and shortly thereafter, strange phenomena begin to occur - such as the dead man apparently swimming away rather than sinking. An uncharted oceanic current pulls the sub southward, and several members of the crew suffer the sudden onset of severe fatigue and disturbing nightmares. One even claims to have seen the dead seamen from the freighter staring at him through the portholes. Altberg has him brutally whipped, rejecting the pleas from some of his men to discard the ivory charm. He eventually resorts to executing a couple of them when it is clear that they have gone insane from fright, ostensibly to maintain discipline. A mysterious explosion irreparably damages the U-boat's engines, leaving them without the ability to navigate. They encounter a U.S. warship, and Altberg kills several more crewmen who urge him to surrender. Later, when the U-boat faces ominous waves from a violent storm, Altberg orders the sub to submerge. Afterward, it is unable to surface when its ballast tanks fail to repressurize, leaving it being pulled southward without resistance while slowly sinking deeper into the ocean; they never see the light of day again. With the U-boat's batteries running low, and their chance of rescue non-existent, the six remaining, delirious crewmen attempt a mutiny, successfully disabling the U-boat by destroying several key instruments and gauges, even as they rave on about the curse of the ivory talisman. All are murdered by the venomous Altberg. His lone companion, Lieutenant Klenze, grows increasingly unstable and paranoid. Certain of their fate, the two pass the time in their drifting vessel by sweeping the sub's powerful searchlight through the dark abyss, noting that dolphins follow them at depths and for lengths previously unheard-of. Soon after, Klenze goes completely mad, claiming that "He is calling! He is calling!" Unable to soothe his insane companion, and unwilling to join him in suicide, Altberg agrees to operate the airlock, grateful to send Klenze to an assured death in the airless, crushing pressure of the deep. The Temple, artwork by Mihail Bila Altberg, alone at last, drifts for a couple more days before his U-boat finally lands on the ocean floor, where he is amazed to see the sunken remains of an ancient and elaborate city, deciding that it is the ruins of Atlantis. Overcome with excitement, Altberg dons a deep-sea diving suit, exploring the breathtaking, indescribable beauty of the ruined city and discovering a mysterious rock-hewn temple, amazed to find the image of the ivory carving within. He spends the next couple of days in darkness as the sub's last reserves of battery power and air are expended. In the end, he acknowledges that even with his mighty "German will", he is no longer able to resist the powerful visions and auditory hallucinations, nor his madness-inspired impulse to depart his U-boat and enter the temple, now impossibly illuminated by what seems to be a flickering altar flame. Slipping on his diving suit, he releases his sealed manuscript in a bottle (which is later found on the coast of Yucatan), and goes willingly to his death. ===== In St. Louis, Anson Stokes, an apathetic employee at a self storage facility, is yelled at by his boss to clean out an old and dusty storage locker. To his surprise, he finds a woman wrapped in a rug. His boss comes to check on him; while he is yelling for Anson, his mouth disappears. FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) speak with the boss, Jay Gilmore, after surgery to fix his mouth, which has left him disfigured and with a speech impediment. They question Stokes' brother Leslie at their mobile home, which inexplicably has a large boat in its tiny front yard. The woman from the storage container is in the Stokes brothers' kitchen. Mulder and Scully search the container and find old antiques and a picture of the previous owner with the woman from the apartment. The woman is revealed to be a genie. Stokes is angry that he wasted his first two wishes; Stokes had previously wished for his boss to stop talking (which caused Gilmore's mouth to disappear) and for a boat. The boat, however, was not placed in water and Stokes is still forced to pay taxes on it. The genie suggests that Anson should give his physically handicapped brother the ability to walk as his third wish; but he instead wishes for the ability to be turned invisible. Anson, now invisible, runs out into the street and is killed by a truck as he crosses the road. Scully does the autopsy on the invisible body by covering it in powder. Mulder, meanwhile, researches the owner of the container. He learns that the man in the picture was extremely wealthy and lucky for a short period, before he died with a giant oversized penis. Mulder believes the woman in the picture is responsible for everything, and determines she is a jinniyah, or a female jinn. Mulder goes to the Stokes residence and asks Leslie to hand her over, presuming her to be kept in a box. It turns out, however, that she is not in the box, but is within the rug that Stokes found back in the storage facility, where Mulder also finds pictures of the jinniyah next to Benito Mussolini in the 1930s and next to Richard Nixon in the 1960s, two men that had a lot of power and lost it in a bad way. Leslie takes possession of the jinniyah and asks for his brother to be returned to life. Anson is returned, but in a decaying state, complete with injuries from the crash. Leslie's second wish is for Anson to talk, which results in Anson screaming at the top of his lungs and telling his brother that he is cold. Back at the morgue, Scully finds the body has disappeared and Mulder suspects it is because of Leslie's wish. They go to the Stokes residence and Anson blows the house up trying to light the stove in an attempt to warm up. Mulder questions Jenn, the jinniyah, who says she's 500 years old. According to her, she gained her powers after wishing for great power and long life from another genie. She also says that Mulder unrolled her so he now has three wishes of his own. Mulder wishes for peace on earth and she wipes out the entire human population except for him. With his second wish, Mulder undoes his first wish. Mulder then writes down his third wish to be very specific. However, just before making the final wish, Scully helps Mulder realize that the power of a genie should not be used to force people to be good, and so he ultimately wishes for Jenn to be free.Shapiro, pp. 255–264 ===== While stranded in a damaged shuttlecraft, Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty recall their Starfleet Academy Command School experiences with The Kobayashi Maru, a training simulation where a cadet has rescue a crippled fuel freighter by that name from the Klingons, a no-win scenario where any course of action the cadet takes ends in failure. The purpose of the no-win outcome is to test the cadets' response to losing. The characters in the novel find themselves in a similar no-win scenario of their own. ===== The novel takes place in a small town in the 1950s. High-school student Maribeth Robertson, raised in a Christian household, has sex on prom night with a star athlete who is planning to marry his popular girlfriend after graduation. Maribeth's father is displeased by what she has done and sends her away to live with nuns until her baby is born and can be placed up for adoption. Maribeth is told that she can come back home once her baby is gone. At the convent, she feels afraid and lonely, and leaves to get on a bus with a one-way ticket. She finds herself in a small college town where she touches the lives of a family who has suffered a great loss. ===== Now being married anew and having moved to 112 Mercer Street, which is a house formerly owned by Albert Einstein, Rob and Chris have an infant son named Robbie and Rob operates a veterinary clinic and repair shop in a barn outside their house. At first, the appliances all fear that their masters will pay more attention to Robbie but later grow accustomed to him. One night, Toaster awakes to find the hearing aid in the attic receiving a message which appears to be transmitted from space. The next morning, Toaster informs the other appliances and Ratso, the family's pet rat, of the events occurring the previous night, leading to the appliances and Ratso agreeing to carefully watch the junk drawer in case of Hearing Aid suspiciously escaping again. The following night, Hearing Aid escapes from the drawer and to the attic once more. Robbie, awakened by the sound of the transmission, climbs out of his crib and follows Hearing Aid. The appliances awaken, find Robbie going up the stairs and pursue him, leading them to enter the attic just as a beam of light appears. The shocked appliances pursue Hearing Aid, but in spite of this, Robbie is beamed into space. After grilling Hearing Aid and learning that Robbie has accidentally been transported to Mars in his place, the appliances contact Wittgenstein, an old supercomputer and friend from their days in college, for advice by connecting a computer to a security camera in the museum that acts like a phone. The appliances, as per a plan by Wittgenstein, create a makeshift spacecraft with the ceiling fan, a laundry basket, the microwave, and microwaveable popcorn as fuel (Calculator is also provided with the required data to be their navigator) and launch themselves into space, leaving only Ratso to prevent two baby monitor intercoms from alerting Rob and Chris. During their flight through space, the appliances meet a pack of sentient balloons who have been let go by human hands and now float endlessly through the cosmos. Eventually, the appliances reach Mars and, upon a rough landing due to Blanky foolishly turning off the microwave, encounter multiple satellites sent from Earth, among them being Viking 1, in addition to a Christmas angel named Tinselina who was sent to Mars with the former. They also find Robbie, now encased in a bubble to enable him to survive out in space. However, soon after their arrival, the appliances and Tinselina are taken hostage by an army of military toasters who escort them to their 'Supreme Commander', a colossal refrigerator. As revealed by Tinselina, the appliances Mars were built on Earth by a corrupted Alpine manufacturer named "Wonderluxe" and designed to fail from the get-go under a scheme of planned obsolescence. Angered with their design flaws, the Wonderluxe appliances escaped, left to Mars, and built a missile rocket set to destroy the Earth. Intent on averting the earth's destruction, and with an upcoming election, Toaster decides to challenge the Supreme Commander for his seat, appointing Hearing Aid as her running mate. As Toaster and the Supreme Commander engage in a heated debate, Robbie is able to push a hand out of his bubble and touch the Supreme Commander, who is briefly overcome with warmth. The election ends with Toaster the victor. They then meet with the defeated Supreme Commander, who allows the appliances to discover what is behind his doors. As they venture into the icy interior of the Supreme Commander, they find his true form, who Hearing Aid recognizes as his long lost brother, who he has not seen in sixty years. Hearing Aid's brother then reveals that he also originally belonged to Albert Einstein, who left him in the wake of World War II, during which he fell into the hands of a Nazi leader, whose ideals influenced him, leading him to become disillusioned with mankind and to escape to Mars, where he assumed an alternate identity to rule through fear. Only after experiencing "the touch of the small boy's hand", combined with Toaster's convicted campaign, did he realize that not all humans are bad. With the conflict resolved, the appliances and Robbie, now joined by Tinselina and Hearing Aid's reformed brother, are about to return to Earth while the Wonderluxe appliances stay behind to wait for the next generation of humans to arrive in the future. After clearing the ground on their spacecraft, Hearing Aid's brother realizes that he forgot to deactivate the missile. Risking being left behind on Mars, Toaster and the ex-Commander jump out of the spacecraft, race to the missile's control panel and successfully abort its launch. The others turn back to rescue Toaster and the commander, and after the two are back on board, Tinselina gives up her clothes and hair so the spacecraft can be provided with organic fuel necessary to return to Earth. The appliances happily ride back to Earth and manage to return Robbie to his room as well as returning themselves to their original posts by sunrise. Tinselina, now stripped of her beauty and deemed 'worthless' by herself, throws herself into a trash can. Later, on Christmas morning as Robbie is unwrapping his presents, Rob and Chris hear him speak his (second) first word: "toaster". Then, they watch as Robbie gathers Toaster, Blanky, Lampy, Kirby, and Radio around the Christmas tree. As the gang celebrates, Toaster turns on the lights on the tree, on top of which is Tinselina, who was previously rediscovered and restored by Rob and Chris. Meanwhile, Ratso and the other appliances all celebrate Christmas in their own ways. ===== When Eddie Everett (Patrick Warburton) was a rookie in 1992, he was one of the best pitchers of his time. He led the California Angels to the American League Championship Series, where they played the Boston Red Sox, and were one out away from making it to the World Series (this same situation occurred in real life, but in 1986, not 1992). When a rookie playing for the Red Sox hits a ground ball to Eddie, he bobbles it and is unable to get him out, while the runners he let on base score, losing a chance for the Angels to make it to the World Series. Ever since then, he had never been the same pitcher, or the same person. Six years later, Eddie and his wife, Claire, are divorced, and he has barely kept contact with their thirteen-year-old daughter, Laurel. However, at a game where the Anaheim Angels are playing the fictitious Arizona Crimson Devils, and they lose, Claire says that she is taking a job in Boston and is leaving Laurel with him. When he takes her back home, she realizes that his life isn't at all what she thought it'd be. He can't get over losing that game in his rookie year, and she prays that he can get a second chance. After hearing this prayer, real angel, and former Angels pitcher Bob Bugler, is sent to help her. He and other angels help the team have an incredible winning streak, right when Eddie was about to get cut from the team. Soon, his game improves, as well as his relationship with Laurel. As the season ends, the Angels and the Crimson Devils are forced to play in a one-game playoff to determine which team will represent their division in the postseason. The actual devil (Colin Fox) makes a deal with Randy Fleck, the Crimson Devils' star player who was also the one who hit the grounder that blew the 1992 ALCS for the Angels, for Eddie to lose the game, and everything he cares about, in exchange for his soul. He agrees. The devil makes the game delayed thanks to rain, and Eddie leaves to see Laurel's ballet recital. To get him to the game faster, Bob speeds up the recital. When he gets to the game, the Crimson Devils are up 2-0 in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Angels soon score three runs thanks to a home run by a player who had a demon holding him back. When Laurel asks Bob why he didn't do anything about it, he replies that the angels aren't allowed to help in championships. When the ninth inning comes, Eddie gets two quick outs, but then a player hits a triple. Then, Fleck who blew the game for him in his rookie year comes to the plate, and he asks God what to do, then Bob comes up to him on the mound and tells him that his angel just arrived, and he looks in the stands to see Claire standing there. After this, he pitches to him, and he hits a ground ball just like the one he hit in their rookie year, but this time, he manages to get it, and he throws it to first to end the game, and save his career. He hugs Laurel after the game, and kisses Claire. ===== Rob McGoarty, the owner of the appliances and whom they refer to as "The Master", is in his last days of college and is working at a veterinary clinic. One night, while finishing on a thesis, his computer accidentally crashes due to a terrible computer virus. The appliances along with a rat named Ratso seek to help Rob by finding and reversing the effects of his computer virus, hence recovering the master's thesis. Meanwhile, Mack, Rob's lab assistant, plots to sell the injured animals Rob had been tending to as part of his courses, to a place called "Tartaras Laboratories," the same facility that Sebastian, an old monkey, was sent to when he was just a baby. When the appliances discover an old TLW-728 prototype supercomputer named Wittgenstein abandoned, all alone, and run-down in the basement when transistor was invented. Due to being infected by a computer virus, the same one that affected Rob's dorm room computer and the one in the vet's clinic lab when Wittgenstein tried to contact them earlier, the miserable supercomputer reveals that he is living on one rare vacuum tube, the "WFC 11-12-55" (A reference to the producer and screenwriter, Willard F. Carroll, and his birthdate, November 12, 1955). The appliances learn that unless they find a replacement quickly, Wittgenstein's tube will blow and lead to his apparent death. In an attempt to revive Wittgenstein to his superior state, Radio and Ratso go to the college's storage building to find the hard- to-find WFC 11-12-55 tube. When they come back with the last apparent tube for miles, however, Radio and Ratso (after an argument with the tube) accidentally break it, and it seems that all hope is lost. Wittgenstein does his best with all his might, but the virus causes him to blow his remaining tube with an explosion and apparently "is a goner." Ratso then blames Radio, and guilt- ridden over condemning the animals to their doom at Tartarus Laboratories, Radio gives up his own tube which turns out to be the very rare tube they had been looking for, thus killing himself. Knowing that they were given a final chance to save the animals, the appliances replace the tube. With the boosted power of the new tube, Wittgenstein miraculously wakes up, regenerating all of his other tubes and destroying the viruses within him, allowing him to be completely revived as good as new. With the appliances and Wittgenstein's help, they alert Rob, his girlfriend Chris (later referred to as "The Mistress"), the guard dogs, and they work together to stop Mack from selling the injured animals and have him arrested. After discovering the appliances in the truck, Rob and Chris assume that Mack had also planned to sell Rob's stuff as well. Later, they discover Wittgenstein in the basement along with Radio. Chris later replaces Radio's tube with a new one she found in Nome, Alaska (hence his revival). Wittgenstein is sold to a museum to be modernized with current technology. Wittgenstein has also restored Rob's thesis, to his delight. In the end all the animals are adopted to new owners except Ratso who Rob and Chris decide to keep as their pet, Rob proposes to Chris to which she accepts and they leave college with the appliances and Ratso hoping to start a new happy life. ===== Gopi (Gopichand) is a rural character of a young man, naughty and indifferent. His father (Chandra Mohan) is always concerned about his future. He has two brothers who show no such mischief in their behavior. Gopi moves to the city for college and in the very first act, he starts fooling around and teasing the girls in the college in the name of ragging. A girl named Maheswari (Kamna Jethmalani) starts admiring him. He has a gang of friends, and there is a mandatory Principal (Dharmavarapu Subramanyam) who always keeps himself at the receiving end of student mischief. Mahi's elder brother Bhagavathi (Biju Menon) is the don of the place with his goondas hovering over the city taking people to ransom. They even enter the college campus and had a clash with students. Gopi takes them to task and insists that they should apologize for the damage they had done. Back at home Bhagavati wonders at the way, the lone student in the college, Gopi, drove his men out of the campus. He himself comes to see him and orders him to leave the place and go back to his village. By then his daughter started loving this young man. Gopi says he belongs to a village near Ongole and studied there. Mahi's grandmother (Rama Prabha), who also belongs to Ongole, is impressed with him, but Bhagavati develops hatred against him. He finds Gopi still staying in the city and threatens him again with dire consequences. However, Chinna goes back to the village for a month stay and takes Mahi along with him when Bhagavathi is laid in the hospital bed with an injury Chinna made, earlier on his throat. Mahi likes the rural atmosphere and Chinna's family members to develop affection for this girl. Now Bhagavati wants to settle the score by kidnapping his father and brothers. As he plans to do that, they stroll into Bhagavati's house as strangers and even enjoy his hospitality. Only then Bhagavati realizes that these are the men whom his men are in search. Chinna notices his family members being chased by Bhagavati and his men. He goes to their rescue. How he finally corners Bhagavati and how the two face each other and wage a funny bet and how the young man wins it and also the girl's hand forms the rest of the story. ===== When the Daye family goes out for food at a Japanese restaurant, they witness a gangland slaying. A federal agent, named Mitchell, persuades the parents to be witnesses in the trial against the gang boss who ordered the hit. ===== Members of the New York City East Side boys club—leader Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Danny (Bobby Jordan), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), Scruno (Sunshine Sammy Morrison), Skinny (Donald Haines), and Peewee (David Gorcey)—reluctantly board a bus bound for summer camp. The bus stops in the town of Hillside, where Muggs and his pals flirt with Margie, a soda fountain waitress (Rosemary Portia). While they are there, a radio broadcast announces that a maniacal "monster killer" is in the area. When they arrive at the camp, the counselor, Jeff Dixon (Dave O'Brien), complains to his girlfriend, camp nurse Linda Mason (Dorothy Short), that he will get no work done on his thesis because of the rowdy juvenile delinquents. One night, Nardo (Bela Lugosi), a mysterious caped figure, and his dwarf assistant, Luigi (Angelo Rossitto), ask a local gas station attendant for directions to the hilltop Billings house, which has been deserted for years since its owner was murdered. After he leaves, another car arrives and the attendant recognizes the driver from his mystery magazines as Dr. Von Grosch (Dennis Moore). The attendant believes that Nardo is the killer and Von Grosch is hunting him, and he alerts the local constable that Nardo is a suspect. One night, Nardo and Luigi sneak into the local graveyard and are shot at by a grave digger. That same night, Muggs slips out of camp hoping to rendezvous with the soda fountain girl, and is followed by all his pals. The East Side Kids get lost in the woods, and when they wander into the graveyard, Peewee is also shot by the digger. The boys take Peewee to the nearby Billings house, where Nardo tends to his minor injury and gives him a sedative. Nardo lets the boys spend the night, but Peewee disappears while sleepwalking. The rest of the boys are unable to sleep because of Nardo's strangeness and Peewee's disappearance. Linda, meanwhile, also disappears while out searching for the boys, and Jeff goes to the police for help. When the boys confront Nardo, he claims not to know where Peewee is, but insists that the boys remain in the house. Muggs distrusts Nardo and on his command, the boys attack him and roll him into a carpet. Skinny and Glimpy disappear through a secret passage, and Scruno is spooked when Nardo reappears. At constable Jim's office, the grave digger recalls seeing the boys, and Jim believes they may have fallen into the killer's hands at the Billings estate. The boys, meanwhile, search for Peewee, but are continually being surprised by the appearance of coffins and objects that move themselves, and by the disappearance of their pals through walls and closets. Linda, meanwhile, accepts a ride from Von Grosch, who takes her to the Billings house, ostensibly to help the boys. Muggs and the boys succeed in terrifying Nardo by pretending to be a ghost, and they finally find Peewee back in bed. Just after Linda and Von Grosch arrive at the house, Von Grosch attacks Linda. The police burst in and accuse Nardo of being a killer, but Muggs has already learned that Nardo is merely a magician. When they all hear Linda screaming inside a locked room, Muggs climbs onto the roof and enters the room through a window. While he struggles with Von Grosch, who is the real "monster killer", Linda opens the door, and the police arrest Von Grosch. Later, Nardo performs magic tricks for Jeff, Linda and the boys, and when Muggs goes into a cabinet after a disappearing girl, he emerges with Scruno in his arms. ===== Winkie is the story of a teddy bear of the same name who was accused and imprisoned for over nine thousand charges including terrorism, sodomy, witchcraft, treason and others. Winkie is a teddy bear miraculously given life and freedom of movement and speech. In the novel, Winkie's gender transforms, from being a 'she' to a 'he,' as he is passed on to different children. He is first called "Marie" in the hands of Ruth, his first owner. By then Marie was just a toy, albeit already having consciousness and feelings. Marie is then passed on to Ruth's fifth children. In the ownership of Clifford Chase, the youngest of Ruth's children and named after the author, Marie is then changed into a boy. He was called "Winkie" from then on. However, when Cliff, like the previous owners, abandons and ignores Winkie upon growing up, Winkie feels betrayed, and altogether alone, for he knows that there will be no one left to 'hug' him any more. He is left sitting on the shelf above Cliff's dresser for years until given the gift of life by some mysterious and unexplainable force. Winkie then decides to go out into the world, to get away from the humans that betrayed him. He shatters the bedroom window with a book, and climbing out onto the tree outside, is able to fulfill the first of his three wishes: freedom. He continues to fulfill the other two, with nothing else to do. Noticing some brown pods underneath a tree, Winkie eats them, fulfilling his second wish. After eating, he then proceeds to defecate, "doo-doo" as he calls it – his third wish. Winkie then goes to the other lawns of the neighborhood, making his "special mark." On his twenty-fifth lawn, Winkie meets an old woman. Here he is torn between accepting the sweet croons of the woman and turning his back on her. Anger boiling inside him, he chooses the latter, scaring the woman away as he yelps "Heenh! Heenh! Heenh!" He then decides to go to the forest, trying to distract himself and forget the encounter with the old woman. After two days of walking and crawling, he arrives. Here he eats more berries. He falls asleep on a rock, only to be wakened by an excruciating pain in his stomach. Rolling over and over, Winkie feels as if his seams will burst open, only to find that the pain is intensifying. At its peak, however, it disappears. Thinking that the stomachache was brought by the berries he ate the night before, he turns to look at the terrible mess he made, only to find that, instead of "doo-doo," there was a baby "Winkie". For months, father- mother and daughter live peacefully in the forest, eating berries and sometimes from garbage cans nearby. One day, Baby Winkie is kidnapped by a mad English professor living in the woods. The professor is a terrorist, making bombs and mailing them to other terrorists. He kidnapped Baby Winkie for he fell in love with her innocence and purity, only to be disappointed to find that she speaks his language of books. For months Winkie is distraught, lying down on the ground until vines began to crawl around him. One evening, he hears a hum which he is sure came from Baby Winkie. He runs after the sound, only to find her, glowing and shining brightly, in the hut where the professor lives. Baby Winkie then disappears, leaving Winkie alone and depressed. He resolves to live in the hut, acknowledging that his daughter is forever gone yet still hoping that she will return. He disposes of the professor, who died before Baby Winkie disappeared. In the days after her disappearance, Baby Winkie appears before Winkie in a dream. "Think back," she says, and then is gone again. After three days, Winkie is arrested by the police. In the months following this apparition and his imprisonment, Winkie tries to remember everything, from his life with Ruth until his hearings in court, and is able to find meaning in his being and existence. His trial, led by the insecure and stuttering Charles Unwin against the prosecutor and most of the court audience, is not as Winkie expects. With 9,678 charges – of which he knew nothing – Winkie felt that he would lose. But when Judy, the prosecutor's assistant, sees that Winkie really is innocent and reveals that they are withholding evidence deliberately, Winkie regains hope. In the end, the jury reaches deadlock. Winkie, in the meantime, is free after the Free Winkie Committee pays for his bail. He travels to Cairo, Egypt with Françoise – a lesbian cleaning woman who mended him after he was shot during his arrest in the forest – where he begins to accept and understand why everything has happened to him. ===== Much to the dismay of Mugs McGinnis (Leo Gorcey), everyone in his East Side Kids gang (as well as the rival The Cherry Street Gang) gets to smack his rear end eighteen times in celebration of his eighteenth birthday. His mother Molly (Martha Wentwroth) then becomes distraught when she gets a letter from his "uncle" Pete Monahan (Noah Beery), a rancher friend of his late father, stating that he will soon visit them in New York. Molly explains to her only child that ever since his father lied to Pete that he had seven children, Pete has been sending birthday checks for each child. Pete is unaware that the McGinnises are so poor that they could never afford to return the checks. Just then, Pete and his grown daughter Judy (Amelita Ward) ride up to the McGinnis apartment on horseback. Mugs declares that the rest of his supposed brothers and sisters are working at a defense plant, and later, forces his gang to pretend to be his siblings. Glimpy (Huntz Hall) is dressed up like a girl, and Scruno (Sammy Morrison), who is black, is introduced as an adopted child. Pete is delighted by the brood and takes them all out to a nightclub for fun. The next day, local opportunist George Mooney (Rick Vallin) tells Pete that he is being duped by Mugs. Pete is offended when he learns the truth about the McGinnis brood, and tells Mugs to forget he ever had an uncle. The next day, Mugs and the gang go to the hotel to return the gifts and apologize to Judy, and learn that Pete has disappeared. When George, who has arranged Pete's kidnapping, comes to the hotel for a visit, the boys hide in another room, but overhear him say that Pete has had an accident, and that he will take Judy to him. Judy pockets her gun before she leaves with George, and East Side Kid Danny (Bobby Jordan) hops onto the bumper of George's car. When the car stops, Danny gets off and calls Mugs to tell him the location of the kidnappers, but is then caught himself and held hostage along with Pete and Judy. The Cherry Street gang joins with the East Side Kids in fighting against the kidnappers, and when policeman Flanagan (J. Farrell McDonald) investigates the ruckus, he arrests the kidnappers. Later, the East Side Kids are guests at Pete's ranch, and try to impress each other by riding bucking broncos. ===== Cobb stars as a small-town Georgian bank clerk with a talent for baseball. When he's signed to play with the Detroit Tigers, Cobb is forced to leave his sweetheart (Elsie McLeod) behind, whereupon a crooked bank cashier sets his sights on the girl. Upon learning that Cobb has briefly returned home to play an exhibition game with his old team, the cashier arranges for Our Hero to be kidnapped. Breaking loose from his bonds, Cobb beats up all of his captors and shows up at the ball field just in time to win the game for the home team. ===== "The Grey House is the final piece in the jigsaw of Alice Jordan's perfect life. It seems to be the ultimate achievement of her outwardly happy marriage - a loyal, if dull husband, three children, two cars and now the house. So why does she feel as if something is missing? As Alice and her family settle themselves into village life the something missing becomes something huge and then breaks, scandalizing the village, opening up old wounds. But because of it, Alice begins to feel that there is hope and humour and understanding and compassion in the new life she must build for herself." — Joanna Trollope ===== Floribella is based on the classic story, Cinderella. Flor is a pretty, young and poor girl who works for Frederico Fritzenwalden, who falls in love with Flor. However, Frederico is engaged with Delfina, who is a very mean and spoiled woman that fights against anything to marry the soonest possible Frederico and get his money. But like in the fairy tales, the love always wins: Frederico finds out all the truth about Delfina, and all what she did to everyone. Unfortunately, in the very last week of the soap opera, Frederico dies (he dies differently in each country version), and with this ending, a new story starts with Flor and Conde Máximo Augusto, so this way, the second season of Floribella begins. ===== The story is set during an alternate-history version of the Napoleonic Wars, in which dragons not only exist but are used as a staple of aerial warfare in Asia and Europe. The dragons of the story are portrayed as sapient and intelligent, capable of logical thought and human speech. The series centers primarily on events involving Temeraire (the titular dragon) and his handler, Will Laurence. The first book of the series tells how Laurence, formerly a Captain in the Royal Navy, becomes Temeraire's handler, and of their early training in preparation for battles against Napoleon's aerial fleet. ===== This tale is set in the 19th century, in the early days of Fabletown, when Snow White was sent as an envoy to the lands of the Arabian Fables. But the Arabian Fables are actually offended that a woman would be sent to negotiate. When she catches the eye of the sultan, Snow finds herself filling the unenviable role of Scheherazade, the teller of the original One Thousand and One Arabian Nights tales.Spencer, Jason. Fairy tale characters revamped in "Fables". Herald-Journal, Oct 12, 2006, p34. Snow has to amuse the Sultan with tales of wonder and imagination every night - for a thousand and one nights - to keep her head off the chopping block. We see the stories as Snow tells them in a framing sequence similar to the original. Running the gamut from horror to dark intrigue to mercurial coming-of-age, it reveals the secret histories of familiar characters through a series of compelling and visually illustrative tales. ===== An ill-wind disturbs the peaceful land of Maggiar and the wizard, Karoly requests leave to consult with his sister, Ysabel over the mountain. Lord Stani instructs his two eldest sons, Bogdan and Tamas, and his master huntsman, Nikolai to accompany Karoly. After a difficult trip over the mountain, they approach a tower, Krukczy Straz where they hope to find shelter, but are ambushed by goblins. The goblins have overrun the tower, killing all inside. Tamas is separated from the others but is rescued by Ela, a witchling who takes him to her mistress, Ysabel in a neighboring tower, Tajny Straz. But this tower has also been raided by goblins and all are killed, including Ysabel. Ela goes into the tower and retrieves Ysabel's shard from the goblin mirror. Then Azdra'ik, the goblin lord appears, but does not threaten them. He tells Tamas he must take the mirror fragment from Ela because it is too powerful for her to use. Ela takes Tamas to the next tower at the ruins of what was Hasel. Here Ela looks into the mirror but is overwhelmed by the goblin queen staring back at her. Tamas is startled when the queen looks at him and calls him a wizard, which, he assures Ela he is not. Ela is drawn to the goblin queen at the lake and Tamas tries to follow her, but gets lost. Azdra'ik finds him and together they search for Ela. Back in Maggiar, Yuri, Tamas's younger brother has been left behind to look after Tamas's dog, Zadny. But Zadny, pining for his master, escapes his pen and tracks Tamas's scent over the mountain with Yuri in pursuit. Near Krukczy Straz, Yuri finds an injured Nikolai, and together they follow Zadny, still on Tamas's trail, to Tajny Straz. But by the time they get there, Tamas has already left. Then Karoly arrives and reveals to Nikolai the story of the succession of witches, their bargains with the goblin queen, and the mirror fragment. Karoly realizes that Ela must have the shard and says he must take it from her before she misuses it. The three then head for Hasel to find Ela. At Hasel, Zadny continues his pursuit of Tamas, and realising that Ela and Tamas must be together, they all follow Zadny. Azdra'ik and Tamas find Ela near the goblin lake. Much of the surrounding landscape has been devastated by marauding goblin armies and a darkness spreads from the lake. The goblin queen is expanding her sphere of influence. Ela is tempted to try the mirror again, but Tamas, slowly becoming aware of the wizard in him, convinces her otherwise. Yuri, running ahead in pursuit of Zadny, stumbles into the goblin queen's hall. There he finds the goblin mirror and sees Bogdan in it. Bogdan, under the queen's spell, pulls Yuri into the mirror. Tamas arrives and tries to persuade Bogdan to free Yuri, but Bogdan challenges Tamas and in his rage is accidentally killed. Tamas and Ela confront the goblin queen. The shard returns to the mirror but with their combined magic they seize control of it and banish the goblin queen and her armies. Karoly and Nikolai arrive but the darkness is already receding. Karoly reveals that Azdra'ik used goblin magic to "father" Ytresse with Ylena and that Ela is Azdra'ik's great grand-daughter and Karoly's niece. Tamas, now in control of Azdra'ik, elects to let the goblin lords remain on earth. ===== Hammerfall takes place on an unspecified planet, where the Ila, believed to be a god and immortal, rules the Lakht, a huge desert, and all its villages from the holy city of Oburan. Some of the villagers, including Marak, an abjorian fighter of the Kais Tain tribe, are afflicted with a "madness" that manifests itself in the form of voices and visions, and are outcast from their communities. The Ila, however, is interested in the "mad" and orders that they be rounded up and brought across the desert to Oburan. The Ila singles out Marak, because he and his father had launched an unsuccessful rebellion against her. She queries Marak on the nature of these visions and voices, and, intimidated by her holiness, he tells her they appear to come from the east where there is a silver tower he is drawn to. She instructs Marak to lead the other mad east across the desert to find the source of the madness, and promises that if he returns with the answer, she will make him ruler of Kais Tain. After several weeks in the harsh desert, the visions and voices draw Marak and the others to the silver tower where they meet Luz, who appears to be a deity like the Ila. Luz explains to Marak that the "mad" have tiny "creatures" in their blood that makes them see and hear things. These are "makers", or nanoceles that they have infected them with, and it is Luz who has been calling them east. She tells Marak that when the Ila first arrived on the planet over 500 years ago, she used her own makers to modify man and beast to survive in the desert, but this angered the ondat, an alien species, because she had released makers on their world and damaged its ecology. The ondat feared her actions would rekindle the age-old Gene Wars, and want to rid the planet of all Ila's life. Luz's people negotiated with the ondat to give them time to undo the Ila's makers with their own more advanced nanoceles, and prevent the ondat from destroying the planet. Thirty years ago, Luz and her team landed and began releasing their own makers into villagers to draw them to her. The ondat agreed to hold off their destruction for thirty years, and to spare the area surrounding Luz's tower once it begins. Luz instructs Marak to return across the desert to Oburan and persuade the Ila and other survivors to come to Luz's Refuge where they will be safe. The thirty years is already up and Marak has to hurry because the ondat have already begun their bombardment of the Lakht with asteroids from space. To stress the urgency of Marak's new mission, Luz feeds the "mad" with a new vision, that of the final ondat assault on the world, the hammerfall. Guided by Luz's voice, Marak manages to avoid the bombardment from space and reaches Oburan, only to finds it in ruins, and the Ila and other survivors camped nearby. Keeping to his promise, Marak tells her what he found, and about Luz and her makers. The Ila reveals that she knew about Luz, and while at odds with her, she agrees to return with Marak to her Refuge because she knows that the hammerfall is coming. The return caravan with the Ila and other survivors barely makes it across the desert to the Refuge before the final hammer falls, destroying the Lakht. An uneasy truce is established between the Ila and Luz, the world's two "gods", and while the Ila insists that her makers will overcome Luz's, it is her makers that are overwhelmed by Luz's. The weather has changed—it is cold and often snows, but after several generations, Marak, whose makers have made him immortal, begins routine inspections of the transformed Lakht, and Luz prepares to release new creatures she has engineered. ===== Ellen, played by Charlotte Rampling, is a professor of French literature at Wellesley College in Boston who has spent six summers at a Haitian resort where local young men and teenagers providing sexual companionship are easy to find. Among other guests, Brenda, a stay-at-home wife from Savannah, Georgia, and Sue, a warehouse manager from Montréal, feel lonely and ignored by middle-aged men back at home. They travelled to Haiti to enjoy a holiday of sun, surf, and sex with attractive teenagers to whom they are financially generous; complicating their friendship is the fact that Ellen and Brenda both live for the attention of Legba. It is only after an episode of violence disrupts their vacation that their eyes are finally opened to the callousness of their hedonistic actions, the suffering of the Haitian people and the political climate. ===== A sci-fi story set on Mars in the future, THB features the adventures of HR Watson, a teenage girl, and her super- powered bodyguard, THB (whose name stands for Tri-Hydro Bi-Oxygenate, a fictional molecule created by Pope). THB resembles a small rubber ball carried around by HR Watson, but when activated with water, expands to take the form of a seven-foot (215 cm) super-powered man. ===== The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan) is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. (Wasimbu's father Muviro, first mentioned in this story, goes on to play a prominent role in later Tarzan novels.) Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy but all Germans, and sets out for the battle front of the war in east Africa. On the way he has a run-in with a lion (or Numa, as it is called by the apes among whom Tarzan was raised), which he traps in a gulch by blocking the entrance. At the front he infiltrates the German headquarters and seizes Major Schneider, the officer he believes led the raid on his estate. Returning to the gulch, he throws his captive to the lion. Tarzan goes on to help the British in the battle in various ways, including setting the lion loose in the enemy trenches, and kills von Goss, another German officer involved in the attack on the Greystoke estate. He then becomes embroiled in the affairs of Bertha Kircher, a woman he has seen in both the German and British camps, and believes to be a German spy, particularly after he learns she possesses his mother's locket, which he had given as a gift to Jane. His efforts to retrieve it led him to a rendezvous between Kircher and Captain Fritz Schneider, brother of the major Tarzan threw to the lion previously, and the actual commander of the force that burned the estate. Killing Schneider, Tarzan believes his vengeance complete. Abandoning his vendetta against the Germans he departs for the jungle, swearing off all company with mankind. Seeking a band of Mangani, the apes among whom he had been raised, Tarzan crosses a desert, undergoing great privations. Indeed, the desert is almost his undoing. He only survives by feigning death to lure a vulture (Ska in the ape language) following him into his reach; he then catches and devours the vulture, which gives him the strength to go on. On the other side of the desert Tarzan locates the ape band. While with them he once again encounters Bertha Kircher, who has just escaped from Sergeant Usanga, leader a troop of native deserters from the German army, by whom she had been taken captive. Despite his suspicion of Bertha, Tarzan's natural chivalry leads him to grant her shelter and protection among the apes. Later he himself falls captive to the tribe of cannibals the deserters have sheltered among, along with Harold Percy Smith- Oldwick, a British aviator who has been forced down in the jungle. Learning of Tarzan's plight, Bertha heroically leads the apes against the natives and frees them both. Smith-Oldwick becomes infatuated with Bertha, and they search for his downed plane. They find it, but are captured again by Usanga, who attempts to fly off in it with Bertha. Tarzan arrives in time to board the plane as it takes off and throw Usanga from the plane. Smith-Oldwick and Bertha Kircher then try to pilot it back across the desert to civilization, but fail to make it. Seeing the plane go down, Tarzan once more sets out to rescue them. On the way he encounters another Numa, this one an unusual black lion caught in a pit trap, and frees it. He, the two lovers and the lion are soon reunited, but attacked by warriors from the lost city of Xuja, hidden in a secret desert valley. Tarzan is left for dead and Bertha and Smith-Oldwick taken prisoner. The Xujans are masters of the local lions and worshippers of parrots and monkeys. They are also completely insane as a consequence of long inbreeding. Recovering, Tarzan once more comes to the rescue of his companions, aided by the lion he had saved earlier. But the Xujans pursue them and they turn at bay to make one last stand. The day is saved by a search party from Smith-Oldwick's unit, who turn the tide. Afterward, Tarzan and Smith-Oldwick find out that Bertha is a double agent who has actually been working for the British. Tarzan also learns from the diary of the deceased Fritz Schneider that Jane might still be alive. ===== The film tells the story of the young Siddhartha (played by Shashi Kapoor), born in a rich family, and his search for a meaningful way of life. This search takes him through periods of harsh asceticism, sensual pleasures, material wealth, then self-revulsion and eventually to the oneness and harmony with himself that he has been seeking. Siddhartha learns that the secret of life cannot be passed on from one person to another, but must be achieved through inner experience. ===== Wellman Anthony Santee is a former race car driver who has turned to a life of crime since the death of his mother. Santee and his friend Eddie Turner bend the law for profit by hauling exotic stolen cars. Santee's latest assignment is to transport such goods across the desert, but a Highway Patrol officer pulls him over. The officer notices that Turner carries a gun hidden behind his back and prepares to arrest him, when suddenly a pair of cops named Frank Severance and Jack "Rudy" Rudisill show up. There is a gun battle in which Turner and the officer is killed and Santee left wounded. After recovering in a prison hospital, Santee escapes during transfer to the fictional San Gorgonio Penitentiary in order to escape another murder attempt on him by Severance and takes a hostage named Rita Marrick, not suspecting that she's a cop, while Rita keeps her identity a secret from Santee. Rita's partner Michael Agnos leads the search for Santee and Rita. As Santee eludes capture with the help of Eddie's widow and child, Severance and Rudisill home in on the investigation. Rita's sole escape attempt fails and nearly forces Santee to shoot law enforcers, as she begins harboring doubts about Santee's guilt. Santee releases Rita and invades Severance's home, forcing his wife Esther to provide the phone number of former associate Jimmy Shoeshine, from whom he demands payments due to him and Eddie. There Santee is rejoined by Rita, who finds evidence in the house supporting his claims, and they escape, barely evading gun blasts from Esther and a highway patrolman. At Jimmy Shoeshine's warehouse, Santee handcuffs Rita out of harm's way and in a firefight he decimates the car thieves' lethal mechanics. Finally he gets the money from Jimmy through force. He, however, can escape and joins Severance and Rudisill, who arrive. It turns out that Severance and Rudisill are the leaders of Jimmy´s car smuggling ring and that they killed the patrolman because he was on the verge of finding out at that moment. They also killed Eddie and attempted to kill Santee for knowing too much about the crime. They then kill the interfering Michael and Jimmy for knowing too much. Rita, devastated by Michael's death she has witnessed, joins Santee in a desperate race for life. As Severance and Rudisill close in, a crime scene officer discovers a surveillance tape that recorded Severance killing Michael. Santee kills Rudisill while pointing at a wounded Rita during a cliff-side struggle. Later, just as he is about to execute Severance with a large stone in this fight for the murder of Eddie, the police arrive. They separate Santee from Severance and Severance is arrested and taken away. Later, a wounded Santee is vindicated through Rita. After these events, Santee returns to his former life before his mother´s death and he and Rita fall in love. ===== Everything was going fine for hot young 25-year-old Jeana (Estella Warren) until her newscaster boyfriend accidentally revealed on TV that Jeana is still a virgin despite being in her mid 20s. Jeana is completely humiliated by this, and adding insult to injury is the fact that the revelation of her virginity has made her a target for every oversexed man in the immediate area, all of them determined to "make a real woman out of her". Noting dejectedly that since it was revealed that she is a virgin, every man who looks at her "wants a date", and all her optimistic romantic ideals have been shattered. Ultimately she cannot salvage her relationship with her newscaster boyfriend, but in the end, she does finally find a man, a photographer, who is decent enough to be the man to whom she finally loses her virginity. ===== The story begins in 1939 and features many of the characters and events that Gore Vidal introduced in his earlier novel, Washington, D.C. This includes the families of conservative Democratic Senator James Burden Day, and powerful newspaper publisher Blaise Sanford. The book inserts the character of Caroline Sanford, Blaise's half-sister and publishing partner, who was introduced in the prequels to Washington, D.C. It covers America's entry into World War II and the national politics of that time in some detail, and highlights of the post-war years, and then closes with a year-2000 retrospective. ===== The action centers around President Franklin D. Roosevelt's maneuvers to get the United States into World War II while keeping his 1940 campaign pledge to America voters that "No sons of yours will ever fight in a foreign war, unless attacked." Vidal makes the case that 1) the U.S had backed Japan into a corner with the oil and trade embargo, as well as massive aid to China and unconditional demands Japan could never accept; 2) the U.S. provoked Japan into attacking; and 3) the U.S. had broken Japan's military codes and knew of Japan's pending attack, but intentionally withheld warning Pearl Harbor. This was to arouse the U.S. populace and bring the United States into the war, so the U.S could take its place as the post-war dominant superpower. The novel gives considerable attention to the rise of Wendell L. Willkie to become the Republican candidate in the 1940 Presidential Election, suggesting that Roosevelt's supporters grossly intervened in the affairs of the rival party to make sure that the Interventionist Willkie would win over Isolationist rivals, thus ensuring that whoever won the elections the US would enter the war. The book's detailed depiction of the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia even suggests—though offering no proof—that murder was resorted to in order to place a Willkie supporter in a key position of control over the convention's technical arrangements, and that such control was used to sabotage former president Herbert Hoover's bid for a comeback. An often repeated theme is the reference to Roosevelt—and afterwards to Harry S. Truman—as "Emperor of the World", to Eleanor Roosevelt as "The Empress", to the Roosevelt White House as "The Imperial Court", to Washington D.C. as "The Imperial City" and so on. Roosevelt is compared to Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. The novel also covers some of the American artistic and cultural scene after the war, with attention given to John La Touche, Dawn Powell, Tennessee Williams, and postwar Hollywood. ===== The Lightning Thief is narrated in the first person past tense by Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. While on a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the chaperones, Mrs. Dodds, turns into a Fury and attacks him. Percy's favorite teacher, Mr. Brunner, lends Percy a magical sword-pen to defeat her. After school lets out, Percy goes on a trip to Long Island with his mother, Sally. In the middle of the night, Percy's friend Grover Underwood reveals himself as a satyr and tells them they are in danger. The three drive to a mysterious summer camp, but the Minotaur attacks them, grabs Sally, and causes her to disappear in a blinding flash of gold light. Believing his mother has died, Percy kills the beast with one of its own horns, drags an unconscious Grover into the camp, and soon falls unconscious himself. When Percy awakens, he learns that the camp is called Camp Half-Blood and that he is a demigod: the son of a human and a Greek god. He settles into camp life and meets several other demigods, including Luke Castellan and Annabeth Chase. After a hellhound attacks him after a game of Capture the Flag, he is saved by Chiron and then claimed by his father, the god Poseidon. Chiron explains to Percy how the three eldest male gods—Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades—swore an oath not to have children more than 70 years ago; Percy represents a violation of the oath. This, coupled with the fact that Zeus's master lightning bolt has recently been stolen, has bred much suspicion between the gods. Percy is given the task of locating Zeus's original lightning bolt before an all-out war can break out between the gods. He chooses Annabeth and Grover to accompany him to the realm of Hades, as Hades is the most likely culprit of the theft. Before he leaves, Percy is given Chiron's magic sword Anaklusmos ("Riptide") and Luke's flying sneakers. The trio travels towards Los Angeles, where the entrance to Hades's realm resides. Along the way, they are attacked by several monsters, including the Furies, Medusa, Echidna, and the Chimera. They also do a favor for the god Ares, who gives them a backpack full of supplies and safe transportation to Nevada. Percy gradually learns more about his companions, his powers, and the world of the Greek gods. When they arrive in Hades's realm, Grover is nearly dragged into Tartarus by Luke's flying shoes. The battered group finally meets Hades, who reveals that his Helm of Darkness has also been mysteriously stolen, and accuses Percy of stealing it. Hades threatens to kill Sally Jackson (who is being held hostage by the god) and reanimate the dead unless his helm is returned. When Percy finds the missing master bolt inside Ares's backpack, the group realizes they've all been manipulated by Ares. Narrowly escaping the Underworld, Percy challenges Ares to a duel on the beach. After a long and tough fight, Percy wins, and he gives the Helm of Darkness to the Furies. Hades realizes that Percy is not the thief of the helm nor the master bolt, and returns Mrs. Jackson to their apartment in New York. Percy takes the master bolt back to Zeus on Mount Olympus, who rewards the young hero by not killing him. Percy returns to Camp Half-Blood as a hero and enjoys the rest of his summer there. On the last day of camp, however, he goes into the woods with Luke, who reveals himself to be the real thief of Hades's Helm and Zeus's bolt, following the orders of Kronos. Kronos also manipulated the power-hungry Ares into taking part in the scheme. Luke explains his beliefs that the gods are too irresponsible and are poor leaders who need to be overthrown. He offers Percy the chance to join him, and when Percy refuses, Luke tries to kill him with a scorpion. Percy manages to kill it but is badly poisoned and faints. When he has awakened and recovered, Percy is given the choice of whether to return home for the school year or stay at camp year-round. After much thought, he decides to spend the school year with his mother, even though it will be more dangerous for him with Luke and Kronos on the loose. Grover and Annabeth also leave the camp for the year but promise to keep in touch with Percy. ===== The sketch opens with a throwaway joke as the hardware shopkeeper (Corbett) hands a lady a roll of toilet paper, saying "mind how you go". The lady exits and the shopkeeper is then approached by a customer (Barker), who is holding a shopping list. The customer then requests what sounds like "four candles". The shopkeeper then takes out four candles, but the customer merely repeats his request and the shopkeeper is confused. The customer rephrases his request to reveal he in fact wanted "fork 'andles - 'andles [handles] for forks" (pitchforks). He then asks for plugs. To try to avoid a similar mistake the shopkeeper asks what kind and is told "a rubber one, bathroom". Believing that he is asking for rubber bath plugs the shopkeeper gets out a box of them and asks for the size. The customer's answer is "thirteen amp" revealing he in fact wants an insulated electric plug. He next asks for saw tips. Confused, the shopkeeper asks if he wants an ointment for "sore tips". After a better explanation the shopkeeper explains they do not have any. He then asks for "o's". This item causes the most frustration with the shopkeeper bringing a hoe, a hose ("'Ose! I you meant 'oes!") and pantyhose to the counter before working out what he wants are the letter O for the garden gate – "'o's as in Mon Repos". The box of garden gate letters is noticeably difficult to get to and put back, requiring a ladder. When he asks for "peas" the shopkeeper, believing him to be asking for the letter P for a garden gate, is understandably annoyed as they are in the box he has just put back. The customer waits for him to get the box down again before better explaining what he wants – tins of peas. At this point the shopkeeper first suspects it may be a joke. He then asks for "pumps" and the shopkeeper asks him to elaborate. The customer complies by asking for "foot pumps". The shopkeeper brings a foot- operated pneumatic pump to the counter. The customer then reveals he wants "brown pumps size nine". At this point the shopkeeper becomes convinced that the customer is playing a practical joke on him. After he asks for washers the shopkeeper, out of desperation and annoyance, recites a long list of possible items. The customer then explains he wants tap washers, almost the only type of washer that the shopkeeper failed to list. At this point the shopkeeper, having had enough, snatches the shopping list the customer has been holding to complete the order without any confusions. However, he then seems to take offence at something written on the list. He decides he cannot tolerate the customer any longer and calls his assistant from the back to complete the order. The assistant reads the list and opens a drawer of billhooks, asking "How many would you like, one or two?" (suggesting that the shopkeeper misread it as the profanity "bollocks"). ===== A mass murder–suicide occurs among a team of geophysicists at an outpost in Icy Cape, Alaska. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) head for the outpost, accompanied by physician Dr. Hodge (Xander Berkeley); toxicologist Dr. Da Silva (Felicity Huffman); geologist Dr. Murphy (Steve Hytner) and Bear (Jeff Kober), their pilot. With the scientists' bodies the group finds a dog, which attacks Mulder and Bear. Scully notices black nodules on its skin, and suspects that it may be infected with bubonic plague; she also notices movement beneath its skin. Although Bear (who was bitten by the dog) becomes ill and develops similar nodules on his body, autopsies reveal no such nodules on the bodies of the scientists. Murphy finds an ice core sample believed to originate from a meteor crater, and theorizes that the sample might be 250,000 years old. Although Bear insists on leaving, the others are concerned about infecting the outside world. When he is asked to provide a stool sample, he attacks Mulder and tries to flee. Something moves under Bear's skin, and he dies when Hodge removes a small worm from the back of his neck. Now without a pilot, the group is informed that evacuation is impossible because of the weather. The worm removed from Bear is kept in a jar, and another is recovered from one of the scientists' bodies. Mulder (believing that the worms are extraterrestrial) wants them kept alive, but Scully feels that they should be destroyed to prevent infection. The group check each other for black nodules and find none, although Mulder reminds Scully that the nodules disappeared from the dog over time. When Mulder finds Murphy in the freezer with his throat cut, the others (including Scully) believe that he has become infected and killed Murphy. Mulder is then locked in a storeroom. Scully discovers that two worms put together will kill each other. When the investigators place one of the worms into the infected dog, it recovers. Against Scully's objections, Hodge and Da Silva try to place the other worm into Mulder and Hodge realizes that Da Silva is the true infected person. He and Mulder restrain the hysterical Da Silva and place the last worm inside her. When they are rescued, Da Silva and the dog are quarantined and the others are released. Although Mulder wants to return to the site, he is told that it has been destroyed by the government. ===== Douglas Hanson, or Dougie as he is referred to by his best friend, begins the story by talking about his best (and only) friend, Andrew (Andy) Morrow. Athletic and popular, Andy is very different from socially inept Dougie, yet the two find things to talk about. However, as the story progresses it becomes evident that Andy and Dougie's friendship is not what it seems to be at first. Dougie also is suicidal and has an obsession with a train set he inherited from his grandfather. He creates, a town involving the trains, called Madham and obsessively builds a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge using match sticks in the basement of his parents home. Dougie appears to be unaware he has some form of mental illness (potentially PTSD, autism, schizophrenia, pyromania), although what type of mental illness he struggles with is never discussed. He often views others as being different or abnormal. Dougie claims he is not a troubled youth, but others seem to see him as such, and he engages in troublesome activities: stalking and prank calls. As the book progresses, Dougie mentions attending (and skipping) therapy sessions and not taking the medications he had been prescribed for anxiety. After an incident at school Dougie eventually admits to his psychologist that he hasn't been taking his medications and is also forced to remember a fateful night at the Tuttle Place. Dougie initially seems to come to terms with this reality during the therapy session, but afterwards convinces himself the illusory manifestations are also real. In the end, he sets a series of events in place that have dire consequences for him that lead to him being hospitalized. However, it is debatable as to Dougie's fate since he was hospitalized at the "Madham Burn Unit". He also mentions the hospital smells of burning plastic, referring to the plastic people in Madham, present when he set the town on fire, and he wants to find his grandfather, to see if he is mad about the train. Whether it is his imagination that leads him to smelling burnt plastic and seeing "Madham Burn Unit" or otherwise is not revealed. ===== In 1977, after the discovery of a face sculpted into the landscape of Mars, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (Ed Lauter), an astronaut, is plagued by flashbacks of an encounter with the disembodied face during a spacewalk. Sixteen years later, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are approached by Michelle Generoo (Susanna Thompson), a communications commander for NASA's Mission Control. Generoo believes that someone within NASA is sabotaging launch attempts. A recent space shuttle liftoff was aborted seconds before commencement, and Generoo fears the next launch will be similarly compromised. She also has a personal interest, as her fiancé will be aboard the next mission. Mulder and Scully travel to NASA and meet Belt, a childhood hero of Mulder's. Belt, who now manages the shuttle program, dismisses the agents' concerns and states that nothing can possibly go wrong with the mission. He allows the agents to watch the successful launch from Mission Control. As the agents are leaving, however, Generoo informs them that contact is lost with the shuttle in orbit. While driving back to Mission Control, she sees the face come at her through her windshield, causing her to crash her car. The agents manage to get her out of her overturned car and, despite being injured, she manages to get back to the base. The shuttle has moved into direct sunlight and Mission Control is unable to rotate it into a safe position, putting the astronauts' lives in danger. Generoo believes that the uplink is being sabotaged. Belt orders the uplink to be cut, allowing the astronauts to rotate the craft manually. Over the objections of Generoo and the agents, he orders the mission to proceed and lies to the press about its progress. Belt tells Mulder that the shuttle program may be cancelled if the mission is not completed successfully. Belt returns home and has another flashback. As he lies in bed in agony, an astral presence leaves his body and flies out the window, heading into the sky. The astronauts then report hearing a thump outside the shuttle and begin to experience an oxygen leak. Belt fixes the situation, but orders the mission to proceed. The payload is successfully deployed, but a crew member reports seeing a ghostlike entity outside the ship. Meanwhile, the agents examine NASA records and find evidence that Belt played a role in other failed missions, including the Challenger disaster. Belt behaves irrationally and collapses screaming as he hears mention of the entity from the astronauts. Paramedics are called to attend to him, and find him cowering under his desk whimpering and begging for help. Before Belt is taken away, he tells the agents that the shuttle will not survive reentry due to sabotage by "the face", which has possessed his body since the spacewalk. At his urging, they alert the shuttle to change its trajectory and are just able to land it successfully. In the hospital, Belt continues to wrestle with the presence, telling Mulder he wasn't responsible but also couldn't stop it, as "it came to me, it lives in me". Eventually, in a last wrestle with the re- possessing entity, he leaps from the window to his death - experiencing a lengthy flashback to his last space mission as he falls. Before his funeral, Mulder theorizes that, while Belt was compelled to sabotage the launches by the entity possessing him, he was also the one who sent Generoo the evidence of what was taking place. He lauds Belt's final sacrifice, stating that in the end he gave his life for the mission, as befits a true astronaut.Lowry, pp.120–121 ===== The stories are narrated by the boy Jeremiah, who at the age of four is taken away from his foster parents, the only family he's known. He is reclaimed by his mother Sarah, who had given birth to him as an adolescent but was compelled to turn him over to foster care. Profoundly disturbed from her own life of abuse and poverty, Sarah takes him on the road with her, moving through aimless and dangerous encounters with a series of men, some of whom beat and rape Jeremiah. She frequently instructs her son to pretend to be her sibling—sometimes her brother, sometimes her sister. She is also abusive to him and abandons him repeatedly. The child-welfare system sends Jeremiah to live with Sarah's parents: Bible- and child-beating fanatics who abuse him as relentlessly as they had abused his mother. Sarah finds him and takes him away with her, but her life continues to spiral out of control. She becomes a lot lizard (a prostitute who works the truck stops) and eventually slides into a paranoid breakdown from crystal-meth abuse. Jeremiah is last seen as a 15-year-old street hustler in San Francisco, paying for a gay S&M; session where he relives the beatings he had submitted to as a child. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things employs narrative elements and characterizations that also occur in Sarah, although it avoids the picaresque and fable-like qualities of the latter novel. Its stories are more violent, their situations more disturbing; but in Jeremiah's attempts to comprehend and redefine his mistreatment, the book shares Sarah's poetic language and sometimes fluid treatment of time. These JT LeRoy books, along with the novella Harold's End (2004), deal with themes of abandonment, betrayal, abuse, exploitation, and loss – the loss of identity and gender, as well as material and emotional loss. They also utilize the narrative device of having one's hidden life revealed to the judgmentalness and violence of others: The young Jeremiah shoplifts (on instruction of his mother) and is caught and beaten by the storeowner – a suffering and humiliation that recurs in his wanderings with Sarah as they struggle to feed themselves. ===== Eddie Campbell (Robert Vaughn) and two other members of an outlaw band watch a stagecoach as it travels toward a Nebraska town. They are leading two extra, saddled horses. Two other members of his gang are on the stage and they plan to meet in town to rob the bank when the stage arrives. Ben Cutler (MacMurray), owner of the stage line, is to be wed to Ruth Granger (Hayes). During the holdup, a bank teller is killed. Ben joins the posse. His daughter, Laurie (Joan Blackman), is in love with Eddie, who left town some time before, and does not believe him to be truly bad. Eddie shoots and kills the marshal, however. He is wounded by Ben and brought back to town to stand trial. Ben, who had once been a lawman, but gave up the profession after his daughter was born, is offered a temporary job as marshal. Selby (Edmon Ryan), a publicity-seeking lawyer who defends Eddie, insinuates that Ben was just acting in vengeance because his client had been intimate with Ben's daughter. Ben wins a fistfight with him for this slur on Laurie's character. Eddie is found guilty due to Ben's eyewitness testimony. He is sentenced to hang. Townspeople begin to have their doubts, even Ruth, partly due to Eddie's manipulation of their emotions. Laurie tries to smuggle a gun to Eddie's cell, but her father finds it. Ben must ride to the state's capital after a plea for clemency from the governor is made. As soon as he is gone, Eddie's gang breaks him out of jail. He physically assaults Laurie, revealing his true nature. Ben returns just in time, though, and shoots a fleeing Eddie atop the gallows. ===== Toby Wong (Dacascos), a special agent from Hong Kong, has had an advanced bio-device installed in his chest, giving him superhuman speed and agility. Because he does not want China to have the device after Hong Kong reverts to Chinese control, he flees to San Francisco with Chinese forces in hot pursuit. Toby plans to sell the device to a company in Los Angeles for $5 million. The forces in pursuit are led by hillbilly assassin Vic Madison. Because Toby has the device in his chest, the mercenaries are ordered to take him alive, meaning they cannot simply shoot him in the torso/kill him, giving him an added advantage in fights. While being chased, Toby enters a bar where he meets a down-on-his-luck, gregarious songwriter named Malik Brody (Hardison). After Toby dispatches his pursuers, wrecking the bar, the police arrive. They believe Toby is a criminal and try to apprehend him. To escape, Toby takes Malik hostage. Once they are in Malik's car, Toby assures him that he means Malik no harm, and asks him for a lift to Los Angeles. Malik is initially incredulous and refuses, but the two are still being chased by Madison and his men (Toby's device emits a tracking signal they can follow). After a variety of adventures, including being handcuffed together by Madison and escaping a bus station ambush, the two form a friendship and Malik agrees to bring Toby to Los Angeles. The pair stop at a motel and meet wild child Deliverance Bodine (Murphy), who is instantly enamored with Malik. Madison and his men assault the motel and try to capture Toby using shock sticks. Toby beats them up, while Malik and Deliverance get into a gun fight with more mercenaries in the garage. Deliverance proves to be both crazy and extremely effective with guns. Ultimately Madison becomes so frustrated at his team's failures that he blows up the motel with a triple rocket launcher, but Toby, Malik and Deliverance escape. Toby and Malik leave Deliverance at a diner and continue on, stopping at a karaoke bar. The chairman of the company that installed the device in Toby, Mr. Lau, has been bankrolling the pursuit of Toby. Mr. Lau's team replicates and improves the device that was installed in Toby, and they implant this new version in another man, the "Advanced Model." Mr. Lau orders the Advanced Model to take control of the hunt for Toby and to kill him, since they no longer need Toby's older model of the device. Madison chafes at having to take orders from the Advanced Model, but ultimately acquiesces. Toby and Malik have a climactic showdown with the Advanced Model, Madison, and the mercenaries in the karaoke bar. After a long battle, Toby destroys the Advanced Model. Malik, meanwhile, manages to kill Madison. The two depart for Los Angeles to deliver the device to the US buyer, with Toby now planning to split the money with Malik. ===== Dave Keenan (Josh Hamilton) left Syracuse for a new life in Arizona. When that didn't work out, he moved back to Syracuse. He works a dead-end job at a department store in a mall, his car has broken down (and the mechanic is taking forever to fix it) and his ex- girlfriend (Arabella Field) wants him to join her in New York City. To make matters more complicated, one of his co-workers, a high school girl named Nichole (Heather McComb) seems to be getting romantically interested in him. His best friend Freak (Steve Zahn) is around for him to hang out with and offer such choice philosophical observations, like "I can't think of a single movie that couldn't be improved by a lesbian sex scene." Dave is stuck in a rut and has to decide what to do with his life. ===== Kkavya Nanda, a charming and eligible young man, is the only son of the late Mayank Nanda (Ronit Roy) and his wife, Nitya Nanda (Amrita Singh). He is the sole heir to more than half of the Nanda group of industries. Kkavya is coming back to India after many years and everyone in the close-knit joint family is eagerly awaiting his return. A series of parties and celebrations have been planned to welcome him. And in one such party, Kkavya sees a beautiful girl who leaves a lasting impression on his mind. After this first encounter, he repeatedly sees the same girl in various places, but is not able to speak to her on all occasions. However, her memory haunts him and eventually, he finds himself falling in love with this mysterious woman. It was the biggest launch of 2005, for Indian soap, the serial made big news by being the comeback vehicle of Amrita Singh, Vidya Sinha and Natassha. The television ratings provided much support to the serial even in mid-August 2005, the show became the #1 show of India. But the death of the male protagonist, (Eijaz Khan) (Kkavya) made things worse. But with the entry of (Mohammed Iqbal Khan) as Shaurya and a change in the storyline, the serial recovered its lost position. It's been a year since Kkavya's death. Anjali has become a stronger person. She is performing Kkavya's duties in the family and is looking after the family business as well. It's the perfect match of a modern woman, who is also traditional. Recently a lookalike of Kkavya named Soham (Eijaz Khan) has entered the program, Anjali had made out to the family that he is Kkavya so she can find the murderer of Kkavya. Soham seems to be an evil character. However soon after finding out about Kkavya's killer which was Yug, Soham decides to prove to Anjali that the killer is Yug (Hiten Tejwani) but Yug tries to blame Kkavya and Nitya's death on Shaurya but everything is found out by Soham and he brings proof and Yug kills himself. Soon after that Soham realises that he loves Anjali but so does Shaurya. Anjali also starts to love him and Shaurya sees this in their eyes so when Shaurya and Anjali are about to get married, Shaurya stops the wedding and says bad stuff about Anjali and Soham says out loud Anjali is not and he also shouts out that he loves her. Shaurya said he knew as it was his plan to bring out his feelings. Then Soham and Anjali get married and live happily ever after with the blessings of the family. ===== A group including writer Rick (Walter Brandi); his publisher, Daniel Parks (Alfredo Rizzo); his secretary, Edith (Luisa Baratto); their photographer, Dermott (Ralph Zucker); and five young models enter a seemingly deserted castle to take photos for a horror photonovel. The castle is actually occupied by a former actor, Travis Anderson (Mickey Hargitay). Anderson initially desires to send the group away, but recognizes Edith (who was once his fiancée) and changes his mind, but decrees the dungeon as off limits. The group ignores this warning and proceed to take photos there anyway. This angers Anderson, who dons a costume and takes the identity of the Crimson Executioner, who was executed centuries earlier in an iron maiden for the crime of having his own private torture chamber. Anderson eventually kills each member of the group until only Edith and Rick remain. Anderson succumbs to his own torture devices and is killed by the poisoned barbs on the "Lover-of-Death" machine. Edith and Rick then escape. ===== The Stooges return home to their shack in the city dump after six months of unsuccessful prospecting. Just as they get to the dump, their last car tire blows. They arrive home to find it inhabited by a young orphaned woman (Harlene Wood) and her crippled younger orphaned brother, Jimmy (Sonny Bupp). At first, they want Jimmy and his sister to leave until they see Jimmy is crippled. Curly even tries helping Jimmy with his homework before Moe takes Larry and Curly outside to search for tires for their car. They are looking around the piles of cans when Curly finds a can full of coins ("canned coin," as Curly calls it). They think the can was left by accident and start sifting through the pile of cans for more treasures. Jimmy and his sister come out of the shack talking about a few coins the girl has just earned. After asking why the brother and sister were looking, the Stooges realize it was their hidden can of money they had accidentally found and return it to them. The sister explains that they are trying to raise $500 for an operation to fix Jimmy's legs. They already had $62 saved for the operation. Taking pity on the pair, the trio decide to help raise the rest of the money needed for the operation. They first try the bank to see if by just depositing the money into an account, the interest would raise the necessary funds. Unfortunately the banker explains that it would take years of waiting before it would grow to $500. It is then that two confidence men (Nick Copeland, Lew Davis) cheat the Stooges out of the $62 and their car for a map they claim will lead to a treasure. The Stooges take the map and tools and go to the house on the map. Inside, they look for the "X" spot marked on the map called Walla Walla. After trying a couple walls, Curly finds an "X" marked on a wall in the basement. Mistaking a coin he dropped for the hidden treasure, he thinks he's found the correct spot. Following the map, they dig down several feet and find another wall. This is the wall they think will lead to the treasure, but they accidentally drill into the United States Treasury. At first, they think they have hit the jackpot. They are removing stacks of money when they are arrested. The Stooges end up meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who has learned of Jimmy's plight. The President then pardons the Stooges and pays for Jimmy's operation. ===== Dennis Pitt is a disturbed young man on parole from a mental institution who becomes attracted to teenager Sue Ann Stepenek. He tells her that he is a secret agent, and takes her along on a series of "missions". Things, however, turn out disastrously when Dennis takes Sue Ann along to sabotage a factory on imaginary orders from the CIA. When the couple encounters the factory's night watchman, Sue Ann knocks him unconscious and then drowns him. While Dennis is wracked with guilt over both what he has done and what he has allowed to happen, Sue Ann is excited by the "adventure" and entreats Dennis to run away with her to Mexico. First, however, they have to get rid of her disapproving mother. The couple return to Sue Ann's home for her clothes and are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Stepanek. Sue Ann realizes that Dennis is incapable of actually killing a person, so she shoots her mother and orders Dennis to dispose of the body. But instead, he calls the police. Dennis knows that the police will take Sue Ann's word over his, so he makes no effort to defend himself in court and takes the blame for their crimes. Sue Ann, meanwhile, betrays him without a second thought, sending him to prison for life. Dennis is more than happy to be locked up, as it keeps him away from Sue Ann, of whom he is now quite frightened. While Dennis refuses to tell his skeptical parole officer Azenauer the truth, he asks him to "see what Sue Ann is up to" in hopes she will be exposed for what she really is. The film ends with Sue Ann meeting a young man and lamenting to him that the people who took her in after her mother's death won't let her stay out late; it is implied that she will use and destroy him just as she did Dennis. But Dennis's parole officer is indeed watching as she departs with her latest victim. ===== Set in a non-descript town in modern- day England, the reader meets Mr. George Palmer, a bland and upstanding citizen (if a little anal retentive), who carries with him a mysterious past, related to a missing finger. Palmer is revealed to have lost all three of his family members, (mother, father and sister) at an early age, inheriting the family's old house, which he turned into a boarding house, having moved his family's possessions into the basement. Mr. Palmer lives with two other boarders, Lisa (a nurse at a nearby hospital) and Steve, who unbeknownst to Palmer is a drug addict with a troubled family life. Both tenants withhold sordid secrets from Palmer - Lisa's past involves rape and theft, while Steve is stealing from the Palmer family's possessions to fund his addiction, which is supplemented by buying medical narcotics from Lisa. Palmer continues to live a relatively happy life, until he smells an odd scent that appears to be only recognisable by himself. Finding its source swiftly becomes an obsession. Tracing it ostensibly to Lisa's room, Palmer reads her private diary and discovers her secrets before succumbing to the scent. Removing all traces of his trespass, Palmer discovers a minute - but familiar - hole in Lisa's wall abutting the basement. Locating an old camera, he begins to take a prurient interest in her, taking compromising candid photographs of her without her knowledge. Subsequently, while hunting for items to fund his habit, Steve discovers Palmer's actions and approaches Lisa with a blackmail plot to entice Palmer into a compromising sexual situation (e.g. BDSM), which Steve could videotape and use to extort money from his landlord. Lisa, however, becomes fond of Palmer who soon feels able to confide in her his own sordid secret. Having taken a similar unhealthy interest in his sister in his youth, Palmer (when discovered) had murdered his sister, concocting a convenient tableaux to shift blame from himself. Having recorded this confession, Steve confronts both Palmer and Lisa with his blackmail intentions and a final three-way confrontation unfolds. ===== Milton Parker (Vincent Price), an eccentric game inventor, dies after losing a video game with his nurse (Carol Wayne). Parker's greedy and estranged relatives show up at his mansion for the reading of his will. Lawyer Charles Bernstein (Robert Morley) tells them the winner of a scavenger hunt will inherit the $200 million estate. The potential beneficiaries form five teams and get involved in various misadventures. The five teams consist of: # Parker's widowed son-in-law Henry Motley and his four children. # The servants: French cook Henri, valet Jenkins, limo driver Jackson and French maid Babbette. # Dim-witted taxi driver Marvin Dummitz. # Parker's widowed sister Mildred Carruthers, her attorney Stuart Sellsome, and her son Georgie. # Nephews Kenny and Jeff Stevens, and Mildred's step-daughter Lisa. Each group is given a list containing clues to acquire 100 items with various point values ranging from 5 to 100 points. The items are to be acquired by any means necessary, with the exception of being purchased. They are to be placed in five different pens on the grounds of the estate. The winner of the scavenger hunt will be the person or team to acquire the most points by 5 p.m. that day. Chaos and carnage ensue, with scavengers returning occasionally to the Parker mansion to deposit items under the supervision of Bernstein and the scorekeeper, Cornfeld. Mildred, Stuart and Georgie's adventure has them trying to win a stuffed toy bear at a local carnival, trying to haul a heavy safe out of Stuart's office building, and stealing the false teeth of a Native American. Stuart gets roughed up by a motorcycle gang led by Scum (Meat Loaf) after attempting to steal a stuffed fox tail off one of the gang's motorcycles. Late in the game, the team steals items from the servants and the Stevens/Lisa teams. The servants' adventure has them trying to steal a toilet from a fancy hotel, partaking in a robbery at a convenience store to steal a cash register and getting locked in a university laboratory while trying to steal a microscope. Kenny, Jeff and Lisa's adventure has them "borrowing" items such as a clown head from a Jack in the Box, recruiting an obese Duane, although they soon discard him. A bulletproof vest is borrowed from a self-defense-obsessed lady named Arvilla (Ruth Gordon) and they acquire "laughing gas," steal a uniform from a motorcycle cop, and get stuck in a football team's locker room trying to steal a helmet. Dummittz' adventure has him trying unsuccessfully to steal a Rolls Royce front grill and getting run over many times while trying to replicate an insurance scam he witnesses. A bridal shop security guard named Sam catches him attempting to steal a bridal dress. Sam joins the hunt. Together they steal a knight's suit of armor from a museum, with Marvin dressing up as a mummy and Sam putting on the armor. Sam, knocked unconscious, is stolen by the Mildred-Stuart-Georgie team. Motley's adventure has him attempting to make his kids proud while acquiring a beehive, a life preserver and a parachute. Motley tries to get a medicine ball from a gym and to impress the instructor Lars (Arnold Schwarzenegger), which gets Motley thrown out of a second floor window trying to catch a medicine ball thrown to him. Each team steals an ostrich from the San Diego Zoo, much to the dismay of the zookeeper (Avery Schreiber). This leads to a climactic car chase back to the Parker mansion. The three remaining teams give up their individual chances to win in order to help Kenny, Jeff and Lisa win against the unethical Mildred-Stuart-Georgie team. With seconds to go, Sam, still wearing the armor, crawls out of the Carruthers' pen and into the other pen to win the contest for the Stevens brothers and Lisa. The victors decide to share their new wealth with the rest, except for Mildred, Stuart and Georgie. ===== Ban Ha- jin is calculating and ambitious. Even though he's an orphan and a high school drop out, he will use any means to fulfill his ambition. Through coincidence, he meets Yoon Jae-myung at a bar in Switzerland. Jae-myung is a popular former baseball player who went to the same high school as he did, and Ha-jin manipulates a series of events to become Jae-myung's best friend. He also runs into Oh Dan-hee, the girl he loved and hurt in high school. Despite her painful childhood, Dan-hee grew up to be a tenacious, optimistic go-getter who dreams of becoming a world-class professional softball player. Although tormented from the memory of being humiliated by her ex-boyfriend Ha-jin, Dan- hee makes a pact with herself to move on. Her sports hero is Yoon Jae-myung. After Switzerland, the three again become part of each other's lives back in Korea. Ha-jin starts working in Jae-myung's father's company and does everything to make the rich chairman like him, shrewdly climbing the corporate ladder until he becomes the boss's right-hand man. Dan-hee, who also works for the same company, is a softball player on the company's league team. Jae-myung becomes the team's coach, and he falls in love with Dan-hee whose headstrong and optimistic personality attracts him. Jae-myung tries every possible way to win her heart, as Ha-jin becomes torn between his ambition and his love for Dan-hee. ===== The novel begins with Stephanie being stalked by Carmen Manoso, a woman claiming to be the wife of Ranger, a fellow bounty hunter with whom Stephanie has occasionally been intimate. Ranger is out of town on "bad business" when Stephanie learns that his daughter has been kidnapped. Ranger is the prime suspect. Ranger comes back to Trenton and hides at Stephanie´s apartment. He is trying his best to find his daughter, which isn't made easier by the fact that the police are looking for him. As the story progresses, Stephanie learns that Carmen is actually married to a man named Edward Scrog who is attempting to steal Ranger's identity, even going so far as to kidnap Ranger's daughter Julie. Scrog looks quite a lot like Ranger, that makes the entire thing even more complicated. Scrog wants to be Ranger, because he once saw him arresting an FTA (failure to appear) in the store he worked at and knew that he´d been meant to be Ranger. Ranger asks Steph for help, knowing that she is what the kidnapper wants. He is trying to use Stephanie as bait, tracing her with a GPS-device, so that he can find his daughter. After Scrog kills Carmen he kidnaps Stephanie to complete his "family" and start a new life. However, he needs money, so Stephanie convinces him to try to find one of her FTAs (wanted for armed robbery) and steal his money. To prevent Stephanie from escaping, Scrog constructs a bomb and tapes it to her. As they try to negotiate for the money, Stephanie's old nemesis Joyce Barnhart turns up to capture the FTA herself. In the struggle that ensues, Scrog gets shot in the foot and Stephanie manages to rip the bomb off before Scrog stun-guns her. When Stephanie wakes up, her boyfriend Joe Morelli is there. Joyce caught the FTA, as he ran over the bomb after Stephanie tossed it in the road and it exploded. Together Stephanie and Morelli return to the trailer where she and Julie were being kept, but find it empty. Stephanie returns to her apartment, where she finds Scrog. He stun-guns her once more, then ties her to a chair. Even though he originally planned to make his "family" complete with Stephanie, he´s seriously considering killing her now. Julie, who is drugged, is in Stephanie´s apartment too. Scrog's plan is to kill Ranger when he arrives. Ranger finds them, opens the door with his hands up and Scrog shoots him. Julie attacks Scrog, the drugs having worn off, and shoots him. The police, paramedics and Morelli come in. Ranger, bleeding badly, is rushed to the hospital. On the way there Stephanie finally tells Morelli that she loves him, but leaves out the fact that she loves Ranger, too. Ranger returns from hospital a while later. One of the bullets penetrated the bulletproof vest, one hit his arm, one his neck; it is still hurting, but he is managing. Stephanie brings him some get-well presents, including cake. She jokingly says that it will be pretty boring with only one Ranger around. Ranger feeds her with some cake and tells her that one Ranger is all she will ever need. ===== The story involves a young girl named Asha, who upon hearing spirits whisper on the wind pleading for help, embarks on a journey to find and aid them. Along the way she becomes master of a genie and adopts a small monster known as Pepelogoo. ===== A boy obsessed with football finds his life changing dramatically once he adds a little Samba. Danny (Ash) plays on the football team at the all-boys Catholic school he attends in Belfast. Danny's three best friends, who also play on the team, all have different ambitions for their lives. Mickey (Maclean Stewart) wants to be a fashion designer so he can get rich and date supermodels. Gary (Russell Smith) wants to become a magician so he can get rich and meet beautiful women (and presumably saw them in half). And Spike (Joe Rea) likes to beat people up, so he wants to become a mercenary and do it for a living. But Danny dreams of making football his life. The players Danny most admires are South Americans, such as Pele and Carlos Riga, who he feels have a special rhythm and flexibility. Wanting to add some of these qualities to his own game, Danny has an idea: he'll take Samba lessons, in the hope that dancing like a South American will help him play like a South American. To the surprise of himself and his friends, Danny turns out to be a pretty good Latin dancer and finds himself smitten with a student in his dance class, Lucy (Russell). However, Lucy happens to have a boyfriend, who is a fierce competitor on one of Danny's rival teams. The film also stars Brian Flanagan who plays an inspiring cameo role along with members of Celbridge Town Football Club. ===== Narasimhudu (NTR)'s parents die at a young age and he is adopted by the villagers of Kondaveedu, who all take up the responsibility of bringing him up. The sons of JD (Puneet Issar) and Pothuraju (Kalabhavan Mani) rape an 11-year-old in the village. Narasimhudu who is also the caretaker of the village, vows to take revenge on the big people and their sons for committing the heinous crime. The rest is how Narasimhudu kills them. ===== Ken Olandt as Zach Stone / Super Force. Astronaut Zachary Stone (Ken Olandt) returns from his acclaimed deep-space mission to Mars to find that his father is dead and that his police detective brother Frank (Marshall R. Teague) is missing, presumed murdered and falsely accused of being a crooked cop due to fabricated computer evidence. Frustrated at the seeming lack of concern or progress by the authorities, Zach takes it upon himself to find those responsible and bring them to justice, joining the Metroplex Police Department as a detective under precinct captain Carla Frost (Lisa Niemi). After his first failed attempt almost leads to his death in Metroplex's aptly-named "Crime Zone", Zach meets F.X. Spinner (Larry B. Scott), a research scientist at Hungerford Industries who has developed a prototype suit of space armor that was never put into production due to lack of government funding. After the murder of Hungerford Industries founder E. B. Hungerford (Patrick Macnee), a close friend of the Stone family, Zach convinces F.X. to modify the suit for urban combat purposes. Combining the armor with an experimental heavily-armed, jet-propelled motorcycle, the two form the backbone of the vigilante crime-fighting team called "Super Force", ably assisted by the Hungerford Computer (voiced by Macnee), an artificial intelligence super-computer created from a blend of Hungerford's personal records, psychological profile and company files to convince the world that the brilliant and charming but somewhat reclusive British billionaire scientist is still alive so that his company would not fall into the wrong hands. During Season Two, Zach added enhanced strength, intelligence and senses as well as a limited form of ESP to his crime-fighting repertoire, the result of a neural link with the computerized Hungerford and his near-death experience in the final episode of Season One. Also joining the Super Force team that season was Esper Division police officer Zander Tyler (Musetta Vander). The Robocop-inspired Super Force suit, motorcycle and nightstick were designed and built by Robert Short,Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows: 1946 – Present, Ballantine Books, 1995 p. 998 the special effects expert who also created the red superhero suit worn by John Wesley Shipp in the 1990 live-action TV series The Flash. Satori, a recurring villain in Season One, was played by G. Gordon Liddy, the man famous for planning the Watergate break-in. Other guest stars with interesting pasts included LSD guru Timothy Leary and former adult film stars Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn. ===== Misra (Charan Raj) is a dacoit. SP Chakravarthy (Sarath Babu) arrests him. Misra wounds himself and is taken to hospital for the cure, where Chakravarthy is waiting for his wife Geeta (Sangeetha), who is pregnant and she gives birth to twins and the doctor says that both children have reflection mentality, that means "if it pains to one other also hurts" depending on distance. Misra escapes and takes one of the twins with him, hurting Geeta. Chakravarthy goes after him, he is unable not find the child, but shoots Misra. The child is taken by a with her husband and they adopted him. They have a daughter and one day in an accident at construction place both are killed. The two children become orphans and they grow up, but the brother Deva (Akkineni Nagarjuna) with his friend Kasi (Brahmanandam), another orphan, become thieves for earning. On the other hand, Geetha goes into coma and Chakravarthy takes her to America for the cure, here the other twin Ravi Varma (also Nagarjuna) is brought up. He returns to India as a rock star to give performances. He is received by Giribabu (Chakravarthy's friend), who wishes to marry his daughter Manga (Ramya Krishna) to him. But Manga is in love with Deva. In the airport, Ravi Varma sees Ooha (Soundarya), daughter of Akkamamba (Annapoorna, 42), who is organizing his public performances and falls in love with her. Simhachalam Srihari, who is Akkamamba's brother also wishes to marry Ooha. Meanwhile, at home Manga advances with him thinking he is Deva. One day in a restaurant they see each other and find that they are identical, which leads to hilarious misunderstandings. Meanwhile, Deva's sister Kasthuri (Aruna Sri) sees the local gangster and flutist Mitra (Napoleon) son of Misra, who murdered an Inspector on the road and provides evidence in court. Enraged, Mitra sexually harasses her and Deva fights with him. So Mitra wants to take revenge against Deva, he sends his henchmen (Sivaji Raja) as the bride to Kasthuri, but Deva breaks up the plan and makes his sister's marriage with another man. The court decides on the death sentence for Mitra. Days pass, Kasthuri becomes pregnant and she is admitted into the hospital for delivery. Deva asks Ravi to stay at the hospital as he is going in search of money, Ravi visits his father Chakravarthy. At the same time, Mitra escapes from jail come to the hospital to kidnap Kasthuri and recognizes Chakravarthy, that he who killed is father Misra and also knows that Deva is his son. He blackmails Deva to get Chakravarthy to release Kasthuri. Deva, who doesn't know that Chakravarthy is his father, goes to his house where Geetha also comes out from the coma by Deva's touch and he comes to know the truth that they are his parents. Finally, Deva and Ravi join together, protect their father and sister from Mitra and the story ends with the duo marrying their respective ladies. ===== Dharma Raju (Nagabhushanam) and his son Nagaraju (Satyanarayana) run a smuggling and illegal transport racket of forest produce. Ramu (N.T. Rama Rao) opposes and raises the villagers to fight against him. Padma (Jayaprada) who is the daughter of forest officer (Jaggayya) loves him. One tribal lady Chilakamma (Jayasudha) also loves Ramu as a brother. Dharma Raju takes the help of one Jaggu (Sridhar) to send Ramu away from the forest. The second half of the film reveals that Ramu is, in fact, a forest officer in a secret mission to investigate the case of forest affairs. The story finally leads to the arrest of all criminals. ===== Carrie Stokes, age 12, is suffering a mental breakdown due to her fear of change. She is growing up without realizing it, or perhaps blatantly ignoring it, until it gets too hard for her to pretend that everything is the same as it was when she was a young girl. Carrie is a skilled artist and takes lessons with the art teacher at her school. Carrie's parents do not show much support for Carrie's passion for art; every time Carrie shows her parents an art piece, they seem unimpressed. Moira, Carrie's older sister, is a constant reminder that she inevitably has to grow up. She has an anxiety disorder because she is worried about the social graces and rites of passage – such as going to school dances – that growing up entails. ===== > The story is split into two different timelines. The events of World War II > and Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran is where the main narrative takes place, > but a great deal of the story is told through flashbacks to the last days of > Qajar dynasty by Reza Khoshnevis. Qazarian jewelry shop is robbed by Moffatesh Shesh Angoshti (Davoud Rashidi) during an official census by the government, following a direct order by Reza Shah Pahlavi. As a result of this robbery, a set of jewelry that belonged to Khan-e-Mozaffar's daughter-in-law, Amineh Aghdas (Zahra Hatami) went missing. Khan -e- Mozaffar (Ezzatolah Entezami), a mysterious aristocrat who used to be the governor of Kerman when Ahmad Shah Qajar was in power but has taken full- time residence in The Grand Hotel in Laleh-Zar Street of Tehran, asks the Head of Shahrbani (Jafar Vali) to locate the missing jewels. So the Head of Shahrbani assigns Moffatesh to find the set of jewelry. Moffatesh searches his cache of stolen jewels, but realizes the missing jewels are not among them. So he suspects that the jewels must be among the ones that are sold to an unnamed Princess (Afsar Asadi). Moffatesh then conspires to have Shaban Ostekhani (Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz) interrupt the premiere of Lor Girl so that he can steal the jewels from The Princess in the chaos. But after showing them to Amineh Aghdas it is revealed that the jewels that were taken from The Princess are not the right ones. So after yet another unsuccessful attempt, Moffatesh realizes that a Police Officer (Nematollah Gorji) stole the set in the process of the robbery. He pressures the officer and retrieves the jewels for Khan -e- Mozaffar. Khan -e- Mozaffar, pleased with Moffatesh's loyalty and services, assigns him a task to get some highly sought-after calligraphy collection from a calligrapher in Mashhad. Moffatesh, eager to please the men of power, travels to Mashhad and finds Reza Khoshnevis (Jamshid Mashayekhi). As per request of Khan -e- Mozaffar, Moffatesh then starts interrogating and torturing Reza Khoshnevis, until he breaks his will and he agrees to hand over his possessions to Moffatesh, but before doing so decides to tell Moffatesh a little about his personal history. During the ruling of Ahmad Shah Qajar, Reza Khoshnevis (known then as Tofangchi and working as a rifleman), was employed by many aristocrats to accompany them during their hunting trips and lived a life of luxury but without any purpose. Until one day Reza's world is shaken due to a meeting with Abolfath (Ali Nassirian), a bookbinder in the Grand Bazaar of Tehran that starts a political discussion with Reza about his life and the hardship of common man under the rule of corrupt politicians and aristocracy. Reza, feeling a sense of obligation to his fellow men, then joins with Abolfath's secret organization (by the name of Komiteh Mojazat, roughly translated to "Retribution Committee") to act as a hired gun. His first target was Esmaeel Khan (Esmaeel Payandeh), the man in charge of Tehran's granary and from the perspective of Abolfath, the man responsible for famine among commoners. After the assassination of Esmaeel Khan, Reza is tasked to kill another man: Matin -o- Saltane (Parviz Poorhosseini), the editor-in-chief of a conservative newspaper who was condemned by Komiteh Mojazat for publishing what they deemed as "untrue" or "treacherous to Iranian way of life". During this time, a government official by the name of Baqer Mirza (Jahangir Forouhar) is tasked to investigate the death of Esmaeel Khan. So the members of Komiteh Mojazat hire Shaban Ostekhani, then a notoriously violent homeless man whose job was to collect animal bones from eateries and make animal glue out of them, to keep an eye out for Baqer Mirza. Despite Baqer Mirza's threat, the assassination of Matin -o- Saltane goes underway successfully. Though Komiteh Mojazat later realizes the threat of Baqer Mirza more clearly, and so Shaban decapitates him as a message to government officials. At this time, Abolfath and Reza were preparing for the assassination of what they deemed to be their biggest target and the most corrupt and powerful man in Iranian government. A man that Komiteh Mojazat gave the code-name of "Hezardastan" (English: The Nightingale, though can also mean "a creature with a thousand hands") to. But Abolfath tells Reza that Hezardastan is paying off the members of committee, and is slowly buying them off. Fearing for their own lives, Abolfath sends his wife and children to Tabriz and advises Reza to leave for Mashhad. Reza at first refuses, but after he's chased by Shaban under the orders of Hezardastan he finally leaves Tehran. In Mashhad, Reza takes refuge in the home of an old aristocrat by the name of Jalal ol-Molk (Hooshang Beheshti) and marries his daughter, Qamar (Shahla Mir Bakhtiar). He then retires his gun and starts to earn his living as a calligrapher, peacefully living outside of political landscape of Tehran and not knowing what happened to Hezardastan or Abolfath. Moved by his story, Moffatesh reveals his true intentions behind interrogating Reza, but Reza refuses to go back to his home and asks Moffatesh to take him to Tehran to finish his mission and be able to locate and kill Hezardastan. After arriving in Tehran, Reza is taken to The Grand Hotel and given a room next to Khan -e- Mozaffar. In there Reza sells him his handwritten collection and begins to work as a ghost writer for Khan -e- Mozaffar, writing his memoirs. During this time the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran is happening and people are constantly rioting against the government and in one of this riots Shaban uses the opportunity to ransack several stores, including one belonging to an iron-smith by the name of Seyyed Morteza (Hosein Gil). Realizing the threat of Shaban, Khan -e- Mozaffar orders Moffatesh to kill Shaban. Moffatesh, still feeling loyalty toward Khan -e- Mozaffar, plans some government opium on Shaban and kills him. Meanwhile Reza, while writing the memoirs of Khan -e- Mozaffar, slowly realizes that he is in fact Hezardastan; and that he is more powerful than he appears to be. Reza also learns that Abolfath was killed in prison by his then cellmate, Shaban. Reza tries to inform Moffatesh of this news, but Moffatesh tells him that he knew of Khan -e- Mozaffar's influence in everyday lives of Iranian people and he sees no way out of his employment. Moffatesh then is killed in his wedding day by Qolam Amme (Mohamad Motie), Shaban's nephew who in return got hanged for the murder of a police officer. Reza, once again shaken by the events and the apparent uselessness of common man in the face of powers behind the curtain, decides to leave Tehran, but his attempt is stopped by Khan -e- Mozaffar and he is informed that he cannot leave town until the memoirs are fully written. Reza, feeling helpless, decides to assassinate Khan -e- Mozaffar and finish his mission of eliminating Hezardastan. But his decision is discovered and he is poisoned by the Head Waiter of Grand Hotel (also portrayed by Jahangir Forouhar) before his attempt. Weakened by the poison, Reza takes his gun and goes into Khan -e- Mozaffar's room to assassinate him; but instead is faced with the Head Waiter in Khan -e- Mozaffar's bed. Confused and barely standing, Reza goes to the balcony and then is pushed out by the Head Waiter. As people gather around Reza's corpse, Seyyed Morteza sees Khan -e- Mozaffar on the balcony looking down at the people and Reza. A voice over concludes the story, telling that Seyyed Morteza killed Khan -e- Mozaffar in the near future. ===== The novel begins at Union Mills, Maryland. The battle that began at Gettysburg ended on July 4, 1863 (at the same time as the fall of Vicksburg) with a decisive but costly Confederate victory. General Robert E. Lee and his troops march on Washington, D.C., and launch an assault, hoping that if they can take the capital they can win the war. Meanwhile, President Abraham Lincoln has appointed Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the victor of Vicksburg, as commander of all Union forces and ordered him to attack Lee. Grant masses his forces (the newly minted Army of the Susquehanna) at Harrisburg, while Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles gains control (through his violent pacification of the New York Draft Riots) of the Army of the Potomac. Sickles has his eye on the White House, but he needs to defeat Lee in order to win the Civil War for the War Democrats. Violating orders from Grant, he rolls his troops out to meet Lee's army alone. A sidebar shows Napoleon III planning to have France invade the United States through their client state, the Second Mexican Empire. Bloodily repulsed at Fort Stevens outside Washington (where the black troops of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment played a decisive role), Lee turns on Baltimore. Abandoned by the Union, Baltimore descends into chaos; Lee, sickened by the violence, orders the provost guard in force to end it. Using Baltimore to threaten Washington D.C., Lee turns his entire army upon the advancing Sickles, facing off at the former site of Joppa along the Gunpowder River northeast of Baltimore. Lee destroys the Army of the Potomac in a rout, with Sickles losing a leg in the process (as he did historically in the Battle of Gettysburg). The battle pens Lee up in Maryland, however. Grant and William T. Sherman converge on Virginia via Pennsylvania and Georgia. The novel ends with Lee scrambling to meet Grant's threat. ===== An elementary school teacher named Randi Coy is offered $250,000 for herself and $250,000 for the rest of her family if she takes part in a fake wedding engagement to a man named "Steve Williams," who will also win $250,000 for himself and $250,000 for his family. They have to convince their families of their engagement and get married in 12 days time with all their family members attending and without any of them objecting, in order to win the money. However, what Randi does not know is that Steve is, in reality, a professional actor, whose goal is to make things difficult for Randi. In the first episode, things get complicated as the fake fiance is revealed to be the very annoying and unattractive man who fits the show's title. The revelation of the engagement to Randi's family intentionally causes tension. The episodes after continue to follow Randi, Steve, and the Coys as they prepare for the wedding. To make matters more crazy, the Coys meet Steve's family. On the wedding day, Steve and Randi arrive at the altar and proceed with their vows. Randi says 'I do' and when it comes to Steve's turn, he acts emotional and eventually announces that the whole wedding was a setup. At the same time it is revealed that Steve is in fact actor Steven W. Bailey, and his "family" were also all professional actors – something that even Randi did not know. When Steve reveals that "it's fake" and that he is an actor, Randi begins crying. Because nobody caught on to the entire scheme, and because Randi was unaware that Steve was part of the scam, she and her family were presented with double the amount of money that Randi had expected – $500,000 for herself and $500,000 for her family. ===== Centred on a middle-class American Jewish family, The Family Markowitz touches on themes ranging from religiosity to ageing and from homosexuality to intermarriage. The novel tells the story of four main characters: Rose Markowitz (the matriarch), her sons Ed and Henry, and her daughter-in-law Sarah. Through these characters, the reader meets many other members of the family including Ed's four children, Henry's wife, and Rose's stepdaughter. ===== When a body is found hanging on top of the sign demarcating the Ontario-Quebec border, police officers from both Canadian provinces must join forces to solve the murder. David Bouchard (Patrick Huard) is a rule-bending, francophone detective for the Sûreté du Québec, while Martin Ward (Colm Feore) is a by- the-book anglophone Ontario Provincial Police detective. The bilingual detectives must resolve their professional and cultural differences as well as their bigotry and prejudices. The body is identified as Benoit Brisset, a hockey executive. The clues lead the pair to Luc Therrien (Sylvain Marcel) at a roadside bar. After a fight in the bar, they imprison him in the trunk of Bouchard's car. Bouchard has promised to watch his daughter's ballet recital, so he drives to the recital and parks the car in front with Therrien still locked in the trunk. When they emerge, they find the car being towed from the no-parking zone, and as they try to chase down the truck driver, the car explodes. With their prime witness dead, they decide to search Therrien's house where they find a large marijuana grow-op in the basement. They also discover another body, a former hockey team owner. A laser tripwire is activated by Bouchard, which sets the house on fire, destroying the house and causing the two cops to get high on the fumes of the burning marijuana. When they are disciplined by Bouchard's police chief shortly afterwards, he angrily removes them from the case after they start laughing hysterically because they're still high. The next victim is discovered in Toronto. They realize that the killer has a pattern of tattooing his victims, with each tattoo providing a clue to the next murder victim. Each murder is in some way connected to major league hockey. (The film uses thinly disguised parodies of National Hockey League teams, owners and players, however, rather than the real league). The pair anticipate the next victim, but he goes missing before they reach him. Ward and Bouchard appear on a hockey broadcast to warn people in the hockey community to be vigilant. The "Tattoo Killer" calls in to the show and threatens the two police officers, causing a brawl between them and the anchor (played by Rick Mercer) when they attempt to hang up. Ward is attacked in his home by a masked assailant whom he discovers is Therrien. Meanwhile, Bouchard has sex with Ward's sister. The "Tattoo Killer" kidnaps Bouchard's daughter, leading to the final confrontation with the two policemen. It is ultimately revealed that the murders are being committed by a bilingual portly hockey fan (Luc Therrien), as previously mentioned, under the direction and unequal partnership of a sadistic, psychopathic, sociopathic, fan of the notion of the game of hockey as a Canadian nationalistic symbol that he feels is being permanently corrupted by attempts to move ownership of Canadian teams to venture capitalist groups in the United States. He is therefore having Therrien commit the murders along with him (with the tattoos as a signature), as revenge against the hockey league for desecrating the game by moving Canadian teams such as the "Quebec Fleur de Lys" to the United States. They try to reason with him that hockey is just a game and exchange Therrien who the detectives intercepted tailing them at a conference, for Bouchard's daughter, but this only angers him. The Tattoo Killer executes Therrien, Ward distracts the man while Bouchard unties his daughter. After a fight, the killer is blown up by one of his own explosives. During the credits, a news report is shown, revealing that the hockey teams will not be moved. ===== As the story opens the second generation of Avalon's colonists are coming of age, and the potential for teenage rebellion has never been so strong. The original colonists (the "Earth-born"), although selected for optimal physical and mental attributes, suffered varying levels of brain damage due to the unforeseen effects of long periods of chemically and temperature-induced hibernation necessary to survive the long journey to Avalon. Their children (the "star-born") have no such disability; instead, they are geniuses with feeble-minded parents. The Grendel Wars (in which the Earth-Born's short- sightedness nearly led to their extermination) are still fresh in their minds. The battle-proven (yet impaired) elders preach a dogma of zealous caution which might have once tried their own patience; the brilliant (and arrogant) Star-Born deem it cowardice and tyranny. Adding to the strain are those who made the journey to Avalon as cargo: the "Bottle Babies", embryos grown in artificial wombs. They were raised collectively, lacking the family ties of their fellow Star-Born, and feel less obliged to obey. Aaron Tragon (perhaps the most intelligent of them) is more than just rebellious; he may be insane. As conflict brews between generations on the island of Camelot, on the mainland a dangerous question has been answered. The Grendels nearly drove the colony into extinction, but what preys on the Grendels is even worse. Two of the colony's best and brightest die in a horrifying, inexplicable fashion: a storm of yellow sand which has left nothing but naked bones soaked with Grendel supercharger, and a baby wrapped in a blue blanket. The Earth-Born ban further trips to the mainland, but the Star Born make an attempt to return on a quest for answers (and vengeance). Cadmann Weyland (the colony's hero from the Grendel War) stows away on the return trip, accidentally killing one of the Star-Born during an altercation. The colony holds a tribunal, which finds Cadmann not guilty; this increases tension between the generations of colonists. Aaron Tragon takes advantage of this to further his own goals. Instead of challenging the decision, he shows the tribunal unshakable evidence of an approaching danger. Tau Ceti's sunspot cycle is 50 years, not 11 like Earth's. Because of it, Avalon is entering a period of agitated weather and its lifeforms will react to it in ways the colony has never before seen. If the colony is to survive, trips to the mainland to study Avalon's life are essential – trips such as the one an Earth-Born killed a Star-Born to prevent. Over the objections of senior colonists, missions to the mainland resume. Tragon has humiliated the Earth-Born and established himself as leader of the Star-Born. Months later the yellow storm has not been seen again and the Grendels (although more numerous and varied) are only a dangerous predator, not a demonic horde. There is much to learn; the danger seems controllable until a rainstorm permits six Grendels to reach a snowy mountaintop where a study is taking place. The snow permits them to supercharge without dying, and they will not stop to eat their dead; these Grendels "cooperate". Although the team is able to drive them off with only one casualty, they are shaken. The Grendels, although dangerous, had always been predictable; now they are changing. Aaron Tragon behaves more erratically, convinced that the source of his powers is his origin as a Bottle Baby. He hopes to use artificial wombs to sire hundreds of children (breeding them like horses), and begins worshipping the Grendels. On Camelot Cadmann is disturbed and withdrawn, reflecting on events on the mainland. A small group of Star-Born, trapped in a snowstorm, killed five Grendels with only one casualty, Stu Ellington, a bottle baby. The Grendels were intelligent enough to take advantage of the snowstorm to overcome the heat generated during supercharging, and cooperated to hunt the Star-Born. In contrast, when the Earth-Born first encountered the Grendels they lost ten colonists while driving off one gravely wounded monster. What was mortal danger to the Earth-Born is a momentary threat to the Star-Born. This reveals a further dichotomy between Earth-Born and Star-Born: to the Earth-Born the mainland is no man's land, but to the Star-Born it is an exhilarating challenge. The killing of a Star-Born by Cadman Wayland destroyed any remaining trust of the Star-Born for the Earth-Born. The Star-Born see a parallel between the Earth-Born and the Grendels: both seem willing to kill their offspring for their benefit. This cements Aaron Tragon's role as leader of the Star-Born; to Cadmann, this appears deliberate. Aaron's quest for power causes Cadmann to investigate Aaron's background and psychology. He discovers that most "Bottle Babies" have a need for purpose, and bond strongly to their families as a result. Aaron did not bond with his family; he seems instead to have bonded to colonization at the exclusion of all other ties. He seems to be exhibiting megalomania. On the mainland, the Grendels are evolving. Some develop the ability to resist their instinct to hunt and kill mindlessly. One, in particular, refuses to kill her own offspring; instead she establishes a family, with unknown effects on Grendel development. The Earth-Born visit the Star-Born town of Shangri-La; now that the two groups are cooperating, discoveries are made. One is disturbing: another life-form (a pollinater similar to an Earth bee) which uses a Grendel supercharger. There is also a glorious one; for the first time, a human and a Grendel meet and neither tries to kill the other. Camelot's Grendels are an anomaly. On the mainland, some Grendels cooperate with each other and with similar species. Without the cannibalistic cycle existing on Camelot, they have more advanced traits. They hunt in packs, building bridges like beavers with "samlon ladders" to permit use by both branches of the species. One chose to leave, rather than confront an armed human. In mainland Grendels, there is the possibility for coexistence. There is a physical difference between the two types as well. Mainland Grendels are prone to infestation by a brain parasite. Although it may be lethal (reproducing uncontrollably inside the Grendel's brain until their skull breaks open) it may also be symbiotic, enhancing the Grendels' intelligence in exchange for nutrition. This depends on when the infection occurs; during development, the symbiote and host are able to adapt to each other and produce heightened intelligence. Infestation after development is fatal, and the parasite is absent from the island. The first discovery is also understood; the "bees" are the yellow storm. They are scavengers, with a taste for Grendels; after eating them the bees collect the supercharger like Earth bees collect pollen so when they are desperate, they can use it themselves and hunt rather than scavenge – stripping whole areas bare. This began the conflict; a windstorm pulled the sturdy, crustacean-like insects across a desert. When the storm hit the camp they were starving, and used their stores of supercharger to eat whatever was available. The blanket in which the baby was wrapped was an aposematic (warning) shade of blue (later called "Cadzie" blue for the baby it protected), which the bees avoided. This discovery gives the colonists an ability to deal with the "bees", at least on a small scale. This helps the Earth-Born realize the drawbacks of their perspective on danger, and the value of investigating (rather than avoiding) it. The threat to the colony is not eliminated, however. Further study of the bees shows that their nests are in areas which will be flooded by the sea as the planet warms. That is why so many bees were in that storm; their hives were flooded, and soon that will happen to large bee populations. Until the storms are over the mainland will have to be evacuated, but Tragon resists. He attacks Cadmann and another Star-Born to prevent this knowledge from spreading, to protect Shangri-La and his dream. The Star-Born survives; the family-building Grendel finds him, spares his life and takes him to safety. Tragon returns to Shangri- La with a story that Cadmann and his fellow Star-Born were eaten by Grendels, but the bees are still coming. When they arrive with devastation; not only do they eat everything but the supercharger they carry is still explosive, capable of knocking aircraft out of the sky. As Tragon rallies his people the old Grendel drags the barely alive, lost Star-Born into Shangri-La; his father welcomes both, protecting the Grendel. The boy has enough strength to say, "Aaron shot us" before the bees hit Shangri-La. The Grendel hides in the town's cistern, and Tragon survives by burying himself in a stockyard's manure pile. The rest of the town is not as fortunate. The only things stopping the bees are solid walls or fire – which ignites hundreds at once like hundreds of cherry bombs, setting much of the town ablaze. Only 63 of about 90 colonists return to the island. Aaron Tragon is not one of them. After Shangri-La is evacuated he stumbles through the ruins of his kingdom, covered in animal waste. The crops are gone, eaten by the bees. Even the cooperative, beaver Grendels must eat the samlon (Grendel "larvae") to survive. Aaron, still driven by his ambition, wanders away from the town. Two years later, the colonists return to the ruins of Shangri-La. Tragon (or what remains of him) is there. Mentally, it seems Aaron Tragon is dead but what remains is that he has made peace with the intelligent Grendels. He will serve as a bridge between the humans and the Grendels, who will reshape Avalon into its namesake. Category:1995 science fiction novels Category:Novels by Larry Niven Category:Novels by Jerry Pournelle Category:Literary collaborations Category:Victor Gollancz Ltd books Category:1995 American novels =====